Do you know that feeling when you got that exciting Dropfleet Commander box and scratch your head how do I build my fleet with this? Fret not, I am here to give you a quick guide on the intricate list building of your Dropfleet Commander fleet.
Before we begin, let's address the elephant in the room:
Before we begin, let's address the elephant in the room:
The amount of Medium group points dictates how large can be your total fleet.
In that context, a group is just one or more ships that are the type because certain ships can (or must) stay together which comes with various advantages and risks that I will cover some other time.
Step 1: Select your box
It might sound simple and obvious but most of the ships come in sets. Each faction will have at least these four boxes available:
1. Core Ships (in plastic), containing 3 Medium ships and at least 4 Light ships,
2. Light Ships (in plastic), containing only a mix of Light ships like corvettes, cutters, lighters, monitors, and destroyers,
3. Battlecruisers (in resin), containing 2 Heavy battlecruisers,
4. Battleship (in plastic or in resin), containing 1 Heavy battleship.
You may also find other sets like "only frigates" or "only cutters" but these are either single sprues or old resin kits that are already converted into plastic. They should be perfectly usable but remember that resin is much harder to work with.
Certain factions have also their own unique space station(s) available that you just plop somewhere on the board as a stationary dropsite. They come in resin and I will write more about them some other time.
1. Core Ships (in plastic), containing 3 Medium ships and at least 4 Light ships,
2. Light Ships (in plastic), containing only a mix of Light ships like corvettes, cutters, lighters, monitors, and destroyers,
3. Battlecruisers (in resin), containing 2 Heavy battlecruisers,
4. Battleship (in plastic or in resin), containing 1 Heavy battleship.
You may also find other sets like "only frigates" or "only cutters" but these are either single sprues or old resin kits that are already converted into plastic. They should be perfectly usable but remember that resin is much harder to work with.
Certain factions have also their own unique space station(s) available that you just plop somewhere on the board as a stationary dropsite. They come in resin and I will write more about them some other time.
Step 2: Review the Construction manuals
The easiest way to start selecting your ships for list building is to write down every single option as a list.
To do that, download and open the Construction Guide for your box and go class-by-class to list every single option. For example, the starter set UCM part is a Core Ships box:
To do that, download and open the Construction Guide for your box and go class-by-class to list every single option. For example, the starter set UCM part is a Core Ships box:
Frigates:
- Jakarta Frigate
- Lima Frigate
- New Orleans Frigate
- Taipei Frigate
- Toulon Frigate
- Sheffield Frigate
- Detroit Heavy Frigate
Cruisers:- Boston Light Cruiser
- New Cairo Light Cruiser
- Osaka Light Cruiser
- Rio Cruiser
- Berlin Cruiser
- Madrid Cruiser
- Bruges Cruiser
- Ulaanbataar Cruiser
- Bucharest Cruiser- Glasgow Cruiser
- Geneva Cruiser
- Seattle Fleet Carrier
- New Mombassa Vanguard Carrier
- San Francisco Troopship
- Warsaw Heavy Cruiser
- Vilnius Heavy Cruiser
- Edmonton Heavy Carrier
- Las Vegas Command Carrier
As you can see, you have 7 options for your 6 Light ship models and 18 options for your 3 Medium ship models. It may look a little overwhelming but don't worry, in the next steps we will bring structure to this chaos and make sense of all these options.
With that, you have composed a complete list of all available ships. Feel free to close the Construction Guide and move to the next step.
Step 3: List weapon profiles
This step requires some work so get yourself a snack and a drink before you download and open the Stats document for your faction (we will use UCM to continue the guide from the previous steps).
Your job in this step is to extend the list of available ships with their weapons profiles that will help you make an informed decision later.
Store weapon profile details in a separate list (best on top of the ship list, you will see soon why), for each tonnage class separately, in a following format:
Your job in this step is to extend the list of available ships with their weapons profiles that will help you make an informed decision later.
Store weapon profile details in a separate list (best on top of the ship list, you will see soon why), for each tonnage class separately, in a following format:
WeaponName: ARC ATT/LOCK/DMG/K Special, e.g. UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets: F/S 4/3+/1/K Critical-1
At some point you will notice that the weapon profiles repeat, you need only one entry in the list (even if the ship has the same profile multiple times).
Don't forget to add a nested list for each ship, here is a sample part of the list focusing on the Las Vegas Command Carrier for clarity:
Carrier weapons:
- UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets: F/S 4/3+/1/K Critical-1
Carriers:
- Las Vegas Command Carrier
- UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets
After a while you will end up with a very clear list of all available weapons for each class.
Step 4: List ship stats
This step is similar to the weapon profiles listing but focuses on the ships. What we need to explicitly list for each ship are:
- Groups size, because it determines how many can be built using your box
- Load / Launch variant
- Special keywords of the ship
- Special rules and abilities
You simply update the list of ships with this information in the format: Groups, Load/Launch, Special, Abilities (if any), just like that:
Carriers:
- Las Vegas Command Carrier = G1, Fighters&Bombers 2, Command Ship-1, Detector, Unique
- UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets
It's a bit of work but it's really worth it because at the end it will be very easy to compare and score each ship and shop around for that perfect combination that fits your fleet strategy.
Step 5: Score everything
This step is fun if you like Data Science! Let's start with the weapons — look at each weapon in the list and use bold and italic formatting to mark what you like (bold) and dislike (italic). Feel free to add little notes on the side to give you some context should you revisit this list sometime in the future. For example, your list might look like this:
Carrier weapons:
- UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets: F/S 4/3+/1/K Critical-1
- Cobra Heavy Laser: FN 4/3+/1/E Burnthrough-1, Flash-1, Focused
- Piranha Missile Turrets: F/S 6/4+/1/K Close Action
- UF-4200 Mass Driver Turrets: F/S 4/4+/1/K Fusillade-2
- UF-B-8000 Bombardment Turret Pair: F/S/R 8/4+/1/K Bombardment, Scald-1 — great for attacking dropsites!
- Taipan Laser Turrets: F/S 2/2+/1/E Scald-2 — very little shooting!
- Arowana Missile Turrets: F/S/R 6/3+/1/K Close Action, Scald-1
- Cobra Heavy Laser Pair: FN 6/3+/1/E Burnthrough-2, Flash-2, Focused
As you can see the 18 possible ships are just a permutation of 8 weapons. Your list and formatting will be most likely different because you will have different likes and dislikes and that's great — that's what makes the game so exciting and unique!
Do the same scoring for the ships, using following criteria:
- Groups Size (G) — pay attention to this number because some ships are in groups of 2 and more and you have only so many available models in your box; If that's your first box and you don't plan to have a large fleet, maybe focus more on G1 or G1-2 ships to keep your options open.
- Load/launch assets — the game is won not only by weapon supremacy but also by smart and strategical control of dropsites and playing the objective. You should pay extra attention to bulk landers, dropships, drop pods, boarding pods, and fighters&bombers.
- Special keywords — these can make your ship more survivable or bring more strategical options. The most valuable keywords are Marines-X, Aegis-X, Detector, or Command Ship-X.
For example:
Carriers:
- Las Vegas Command Carrier = G1, Fighters&Bombers 2, Command Ship-1, Detector, Unique
- UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets
Make sure both weapoins and ships are scored.
Step 6: Rank everything
Now the real fun begins! Take a look at your weapons list and see which profile looks best with the formatting: has the most bold text and as little italic as possible. You should focus on the following aspects of each weapon profile:
- ARC — most powerful weapons will have very narrow arc like FN but consider having a versatile arc range to make sure you're always in arc to shoot,
- ATT — more is better,
- LOCK — lower is better,
- DMG — more is better,
- TYPE — if most of your weapons are Kinetic (K), having a couple of Energy (E) or even Core (C) is a smart move.
Going one by one, move the better weapon to the top and worse to the bottom — remember that it will be your personalized, unique list in the end but here is just a sample:
Carrier weapons:
- Cobra Heavy Laser Pair: FN 6/3+/1/E Burnthrough-2, Flash-2, Focused
- Cobra Heavy Laser: FN 4/3+/1/E Burnthrough-1, Flash-1, Focused
- UF-B-8000 Bombardment Turret Pair: F/S/R 8/4+/1/K Bombardment, Scald-1 — great for attacking dropsites!
- UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets: F/S 4/3+/1/K Critical-1
- UF-4200 Mass Driver Turrets: F/S 4/4+/1/K Fusillade-2
- Taipan Laser Turrets: F/S 2/2+/1/E Scald-2 — very little shooting!
- Arowana Missile Turrets: F/S/R 6/3+/1/K Close Action, Scald-1
- Piranha Missile Turrets: F/S 6/4+/1/K Close Action
As you can see in my list, Cobra Heavy Laser (Pair) is for me the clear winner, followed by UF-B-8000 Bombardment Turret Pair and UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets.
You can go now and mark those weapons in the ship list with a bold formatting, fortunately the Las Vegas Command Carrier used in the sample has one of those!
Carriers:
- Las Vegas Command Carrier = G1, Fighters&Bombers 2, Command Ship-1, Detector, Unique
- UF-6400 Mass Driver Turrets
You can mark the weapons from the bottom of the list with italic formatting to see that you didn't like them.
Now do the same ranking with the ships themselves looking at their scored groups size, Load/launch, and Special keywords. Remember that your list will be very unique to you and your personal style of playing so trust the process and carry on.
Step 7: Building the list
By now your list should be full of ship and weapon options, scored and ranked, so the actual list building becomes a formality.
Simply take enough ships from the top of each list to fulfill the amount of available models:
- Some ships are G1 so you should take them one by one (unless they are also marked as Unique),
- Some ships are G2+ so you must take at least two (especially relevant to the Light ships).
See? All that elbow grease used to collect, score, and rank the ships made it an easy process and you are left with a reusable list of stats that you can use to build different types of lists — try making one list for every single strategy type: Offense, Defense, and Control!
Simply take enough ships from the top of each list to fulfill the amount of available models:
- Some ships are G1 so you should take them one by one (unless they are also marked as Unique),
- Some ships are G2+ so you must take at least two (especially relevant to the Light ships).
See? All that elbow grease used to collect, score, and rank the ships made it an easy process and you are left with a reusable list of stats that you can use to build different types of lists — try making one list for every single strategy type: Offense, Defense, and Control!