Dropfleet Commander/Tactics/Resistance

With Battle For Earth out, Resistance can now, officially, into space.

Main tactics page

Why Play Resistance

You want to play as a group of plucky underdogs surviving in the void with nothing but their hard-won knowledge of the ships they've managed to hold onto.

You want to play as a totalitarian dictatorship in space.

Customizable ships give you a choice between turrets or broadsides and many other choices on top of that.

You want the bragging rights that come from winning with the smallest scan range in the game.

Your admirals are better than everyone else's because apparently DIY training and hiding in deep space prepares you for orbital combat better than regimented training, AI assistants, or centuries of experience.

You want to crash remote controlled bulk landers full of explosives into enemy ships.

A common question about Resistance is why their ships have things that the UCM doesn't. After all, the UCM should have used these ships as a starting point for their own fleet, and then had a couple of centuries to develop new technology. The answer is that the ships now used by the Resistance were designed at a time when resources were plentiful and enemies were few. Building the fanciest ship money could buy made sense at the time. The UCM on the other hand has whole teams of analysts working to figure out how to get the most dead Scourge out of every dollar they spend. I guess putting 2+ mass drivers with fusillade on cruisers just isn't economically efficient.

Special Abilities

Elite Bridge Crew: Remove a major spike instead of a minor spike when taking standard orders. The Resistance faction has this, so all of your ships get it even if it isn't listed in their stat block.

Subsystem Network: When you fire a weapon, you can fire an additional weapon of the same type. So basically if you take two of the same turret, you can shoot them both at once on standard orders.

Ablative Armor: Improves the ship's armor by 2 until the ship is crippled. The larger ships have the bonus factored into the armor listed on their stat block, but the heavy frigate doesn't (because Battle For Earth didn't have enough mistakes in it already).

Low Power: When you fire another weapon, you can also fire your low power weapons instead of your close action weapons. This can add up to a lot of shots without the need for Weapons Free, and most of your close action weapons suck anyways.

Squadron-X: If X or more weapons shoot at the same target at the same time, one of them gets an extra d6 shots.

Unstable: If an Unstable weapon with a random attack value is fired on a Weapons Free order, the ship firing it suffers one damage for each die that rolls the maximum. If it doesn't have a random attack value, it always takes one damage when fired on Weapons Free.

Ship Customization

Aside from the single upgrade that Scourge destroyers can take, the Resistance is the first faction in Dropfleet Commander with options for its ships. All Resistance frigates and cruisers choose their weapons and a few other upgrades from a list. This gives your fleet a huge degree of flexibility, and you can spend hours figuring out the optimal builds (customizing the look of your ships is also pretty fun).

• General rules
  • All ships in the same group have to take the same options.
  • Structure (non-weapon) options can only be taken once per ship.
  • Each ship can only have two broadside options, and no, it isn't one on the left and one on the right. Each option adds to both sides, then there's one in the front and one in the back.
• Frigate Systems
  • N-31 Hybrid Gun Turret: The cheapest option is this basic turret, though squadron can give a group of frigates with these some bite.
  • NC-16 Missile Turret: A close action weapon for if you want to swarm enemies like you were a Taipei. Keep in mind that you don't exactly have the best scan range.
  • Light Vent Cannon Turret: Initially it's a couple of oculus rays complete with scald, but you can overcharge it for double damage (Subsystem Network does not allow you Overcharge two at once). Unlike the larger vent weapons, doing this will always damage you.
  • Sensor Dome: The only non-weapon option for a frigate, this grants you the Detector special rule that the UCM's Lima has, allowing you to Active Scan with all of them regardless of their battlegroup's special order. This is extremely helpful in making up for your terrible scan range.
• Cruiser Structures
  • Scanner Array: Adds 4" to your scan range.
  • Ablative Armor: Improves the armor by 2 (to a 3+) until the ship is crippled. More valuable on ships with more hull since it takes longer to lose it.
  • Drive Refit: Adds 2" to your signature and thrust. Consider it for bulk landers and other ships that need to get into position quickly.
• Cruiser Broadsides
  • N-31 Hybrid Gun Bank: Basically PHR medium broadsides, though you don't get as many shots.
  • N-8 Artillery Cannon Bank: More shots at lower accuracy than the Hybrid guns, but more importantly it has Low Power, so you can fire it along with another weapon. If your goal is to shoot a lot of guns without needing Weapons Free, this is a good place to look. Also not a bad choice if you want to take potshots into atmosphere.
  • NC-16 Missile Bank: A decent close action weapon, and it doesn't replace the one you already have. You probably need the boosted scan range for this to be effective.
  • Fighter/Bomber Hangar: At three launch per hanger, you can make a pretty point efficient carrier. Resistance bombers are less accurate than other factions, but they get more attacks. They end up broadly equivalent to UCM bombers, but with more hits and fewer criticals (so worse against armor). Resistance fighters are going to be pretty essential for you. They give the highest PD bonus of any faction, which is good because you start out with the worst base PD. You're going to need these against anyone who's bringing close action or bombers of their own.
  • Bulk Lander/Fire Ship Hangar: Gives you a single bulk lander or fire ship. What's a fire ship? A very short range bomber that hits on a 2+ for 3 damage. That can be pretty scary, though you'll need to launch a couple at once to get through anyone's PD. Since your strike carriers don't have Open, you should seriously consider using bulk landers for your ground game.
• Cruiser Turrets
  • XN-31 Mass Driver Turret: A single shot on a 2+ and another on Weapons Free. If you take one, take two for the Subsystem Network.
  • N-11 Artillery Cannon Turret: Three shots at 4+ with Low Power.
  • N-109 Bombardment Mortar Turret: Your only bombardment gun fires 2 shots at 2+. It should be obvious that you take them in pairs because of Subsystem Network. Clusters have no signature, but they also don't move, so you probably don't need the extra scan range for a bombardment ship (debatable, there will be times when the extra scan range would allow you to start bombarding a turn earlier). Some low power guns might be useful to defend yourself while bombarding.
  • Vent Cannon Turret: D3 shots means that this won't always be better than a frigate's vent cannon, but that doesn't make this useless. For one thing unstable won't damage you unless you roll a 3. For another, you can give yourself extra scald range with a scanner array.

Ships of the Line

• Light Tonnage:
  • Munifex-class Corvette: Generally a pretty standard corvette. Compared to a Santiago, it's 2 points cheaper, has less scan and thrust (for a 4" difference in threat range), an extra attack on its weapon, and Squadron 3 (though the Adepticon errata gave that to the Santiago as well). It's your only way to kill stuff in atmosphere, so take it or leave it.
  • Seneca Detonators: Ever thought, 'Damn, I really like fire ships, but how can I get more?' The Seneca is here to explosively fulfill that desire. With 3 fire ship launches per suicide freighter, a group of these little bastards are cheap, throwaway fun, that will punch your opponent in the dick for ignoring. Don't count towards any tonnage values when killed, so use em like you stole them...which as the Resistance, you probably did.
  • Resistance Strike Carrier: The Resistance strike carrier is mostly pretty standard, but it doesn't have Open, and it's not clear if this was a mistake. This is kind of huge as it means that you can't send them off in whatever direction you want. This will make it much harder for Resistance to respond to the layout of the map. You can give the strike carrier an option from the frigate systems list, but you can skip it if you want to keep the ship as cheap as possible. Giving it a weapon is a good way to give it another job since it can't just fly off by itself and drop troops.
    • However, their biggest advantage is that they can be taken in squads of 1-3 rather than 3-6 like the normal frigates combined with them only costing one more point each you can save a cool 33 points if you take two strike carriers with the sensor dome rather than 3 normal frigates, at that point the drop capacity is just a bonus if you need it.
  • Resistance Frigate: The Resistance frigate gets a single option from the systems list, letting you specialize your groups for a particular job. Generally lackluster for the points compared to heavy frigates.
  • Resistance Heavy Frigate: Give up 2" of thrust for 3+ armor until you're crippled and the option to take a second system. You can add some versatility or double up on the same gun to take advantage of Subsystem Network. Very competitive for the points, especially dual light vents combined with a Galileo.
  • Newton Monitor: Has the Monitor rule, so don't expect to go anywhere fast with 4" of thrust, but has a Resistance unusual 8" scan and more notably, the only non-Shaltari particle ruled weapon in the game. This big stick doubles as a bombardment weapon, if you got bored of crippling destroyers in one hit or taking chunks out of cruisers and heavier. Expect to get focussed down once your opponent gets their flagship torn up by a trio of these landing hits; pairs well with...
  • Galileo Orbital Telescope: Has Monitor, but this is completely mitigated via the open rule. Not that you would care much since this class exists to provide major spikes for anyone it active scans. Yes, this can knock a ship out of silent running and minor spike it on a 4+, along with a neat ability to allow one group of activated friendlies to cause crits on +1 from their native lock. Can lead to hilarity where a squadron or two of heavy frigates outfitted to chuck shots can maul cruisers to a battleship nearly to death with some decent rolling.
  • Armstrong Destroyers: Comes totting a damage 2 mauler weapon as its claim to fame, making this ship ironically best suited for fighting the other Human factions, especially other Resistance vessels. Nothing much of note beyond this, surprisingly high PD and scan values of Resistance ships, whilst coupled with ablative armor. Pray lady luck and admiral awesome bless you and your Armstrong cores a PHR battlecruiser on its own, then bid it farewell as it gets blown the fuck up for its valiant efforts.
  • Aldrin Colony Ship: Follows the trend of bulk lander destroyers set by the PHR...or vice versa; this armoured colony ship exists to speed down the table and delivery a pair of bulk landers per turn. No frills and no diztractions from what its job is; keep it safe or use it to suicide drop defensive batteries into middle clusters the enemy hasnt gotten to yet
  • Collins Support Carrier: Provides the secret sauce/octane booster to resistance fighters to stay in the PD game instead of being removed when you use them for PD but only within 4". Takes advantage of the 'Open' rule, but seems expensive for what it does. Best to skip it for all but the largest games, with floods of CAWS and bombers flying too and fro in this anon's opinion.

• Medium Tonnage:
  • Resistance Light Cruiser: Your light cruisers each have to take three options from the cruiser list and come in groups of 2-3. A good place for inexpensive launch, or bulk landers on fast frames with the engine refits. That makes them much like PHR blockade runners, and just as fragile.
  • Resistance Cruiser: Your medium cruisers each get four options from the cruiser list. They have Shaltari levels of armor and worse scan and thrust than any other faction, but of course, you can change that if you want to (though you're stuck with 2 point defense). Dual vent turrets, combined with launch, drop, or artillery turrets are common and solid choices for ships that don't need to go weapons free.

• Heavy Tonnage:
  • Resistance Heavy Cruiser: Your heavy cruiser takes five options from the cruiser list. This gives you a lot of flexibility to build your perfect ship or just load up on weapons. The 2 extra inches of scan is also nice, but its speed is only 5" (the slowest ship in the resistance fleet). From a damage and durability standpoint the other heavy cruisers do it better. However the Heavy Cruiser can become an able sniper, fitted with a scanner and four XN-31 turrets it can drop four crits on most ships from 33" away.
  • Centurion-class Grand Cruiser: The same one that's been available to UCM and PHR, but with Resistance scan range (your heavy cruisers have 6, why can't this?). A solid ship that can put out some good firepower with its turret or its broadside. This has good multi-target firepower if you can get it in the middle of the board, and the armor to stay there.
  • Gladiator-class Grand Cruiser: Who needs safety when vent cannons exist? You get a turret with D3 shots and a front-mounted weapon with 2D3 shots. Hopefully, the bigger gun will be errata'ed to have overcharge. With 4" of scan and 7" of thrust, getting into scald range may be a challenge. Don't worry too much about unstable, the worst it can do is 3 damage, and you have enough hull to take that. These are the highest single target damage dealers per point in this slot, and pair well with the Galileo bonus to crit due to the damage 2 guns.
  • Senator Class Battlecruiser: The first dedicated, non customizable bombardment ship, and holy shit, does it deliver. If this thing floats into range of an enemy held cluster, every silly bitch on the ground is going to die via the huge collateral damage rule against ground troops; if the VX bombs this ship is built around damage a sector, it kills All troops in that cluster. Use this in clutch moments on turns 4 & 6 to kneecap enemy scoring, or to clear the way for bulk landers to deliver their cargo unmolested. Comes with unexpectedly good CAWS, slightly better than average scan, but curiously the detector rule; detector can add some utility to what is a points heavy bombardment ship, but such a ship should be wary of opening itself up to being shot from at least 20" away than it would be otherwise, despite the fantastic armour and HP for its cost. Considering that to take advantage of this rule one would have to pair the ship with ranged cruisers or another heavy cruiser, this is a very expensive and high SR approach. You are far better off with using strike carriers or Galileos for active scan.
  • Triumvir Class Repair Cruiser: A very interesting 6 fighter/bomber launch carrier, with a passive ability that allows vessels within 6" and same orbital plane to gain a +2 to their damage control rolls. Additionally, provides the only non-command card based vessel repair in the game; however, it is a catch-22. The Triumvir must be within 6" and orbital plane of a ship with >4HP when it is destroyed, in which it can allow a vessel within 6" of itself to repair d3 HP. The astute will notice that this puts the repair cruiser within potential detonation damage range. The calculated risk is up for each admiral however. largely useful if you want a bunch of heavy frigates to accompany your Triumvir and a battleship or dread. Your opponent will be forced to ignore the smaller ships lest they inadvertently repair the larger threat.
• Superheavy Tonnage:
  • Phalanx-class Battlecruiser: Despite the name, this is nothing like other factions' battlecruisers. It's slow, it's super heavy, and it's got almost as much hull as a battleship (though its point cost is in battlecruiser territory). With powerful turrets that double their shots on Weapons Free and a whole lot of broadside guns, you can think of it like a bigger, scarier Centurion. Treat it as such, drive to the middle of the board and shoot it out.
  • Tribune-class Battlecruiser: The same body as the Phalanx, but with a much more varied load-out. One high accuracy turret, one low power turret, two close action weapons, a fighter/bomber hanger, and a bulk lander/fire ship hanger. Wow! Somebody wanted to build a Swiss Army ship, and the fact that they kept it to just 210 points is pretty impressive. The sheer number of options this thing packs could make it a solid choice in any fleet.
  • Trident/Elysium Grand Battleship: Grand indeed, it has almost as much hull as a dreadnought, though its other stats are closer to a UCM battleship. What's packed into all that hull? Two of the big scary turrets that the Phalanx has, a whole lot of low power broadside guns, and four torpedoes (that have to be fired one at a time). This thing can put out a lot of hurt on Standard Orders, but Fusillade-4 on the turrets means that it's still worth it to go Weapons Free. All of this comes at just 340 points. The 9ks will cripple or outright destroy most things of battlecruiser level or lower, and even a battleship doesn't want to get tagged. Drop a torpedo on them as the cherry on top.
  • Olympus/Eden Grand Battleship: The only differences between the two Resistance battleships are the broadside weapons and the price tag. The Eden pays 20 points to swap out the low power guns for vent cannons on the broadside. At face value, this is a definite trade up, but whereas the Elysium's weapons are complementary, the Eden's are somewhat parasitic. The turrets have Fusillade, so they want to go Weapons Free, but the vent cannons have Overcharge and Unstable, forcing you to think about how you're going to do that. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you have to really consider how you're going to use this ship.
  • Resistance Dreadnought: Build-a-dread allows you to build your vessel based on three initial patterns of hull, with a corresponding 4, 6 and 8 weapon/equipment slots needed to run the beast.
    • Pathfinder Interstellar Raft: Roughly the lost link between Resistance Battleships and Battlecruisers, the Pathfinder can be configured with 4 dreadnought systems, (2 of which need to be broadsides). You get enough bits in a Dreadnought box to make two of these, so can make a nice duo in a Flag group. Good combos are a pair of heavy vent cannons and torpedoes, launch, or drop to avoid weapons free penalties while having good damage output.
    • Explorer Interstellar Ark:

A battleship equivalent, the ark starts to get in the range where 10k spam becomes efficient. Go weapons free and put 18 crits on anything you want, which is enough to cripple even a dreadnought.

• • • Coloniser Interstellar Dreadnought:

Supreme among the dreadnoughts. 10k spam on 7 hardpoints plus a scanner means this ship can effectively drop 21 crits on anything. Given that a Romulus has 30 hull, that means two rolls on the crippling table before armor saves. If you buffed it with the Galileo, then it's a whopping 28 which barring an extremely Luckly crippling table roll means a one phase dead dreadnought, and you don't have to line up a F(n) hypernova laser or furnace triad to do so. In addition, 35 hull means you won't be one shot by any other dreadnought as they cannot output anywhere near the level of damage.

Building a Fleet

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Tactics and Common Synergies

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Counter-Tactics

Resistance have the worst point defense of any faction, and are totally reliant on fighters to protect them from close action and bombers. Unlike most of their weaknesses, this can't be fixed with an option from the systems list.

Common Playstyles

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