Drop Spam Commander

Has anyone done the math on no PD in atmo vs Corvettes? I bad at that so won't offer my sub par services but I wonder if that would make a significant difference...

Disallow PD in atmosphere and you have Corvettes as AA.

An interesting idea, but beyond the fact that PD is available in atmosphere fluffwise (New Orlean's use their PD lasers to provide ground support in the form of Kodiak attacks), mechanically it does very little.

As an example, the probability of a squadron of three Santiagos, including crippling damage, fully destroying a New Orleans, Gargoyle, or Medea are as follows:

New Orleans: 57.87%
Gargoyle: 60.55
Medea: 25.68

Without PD in atmosphere, the probabilities become the following:

New Orleans: 68.81%
Gargoyle: 77.57
Medea: 34.16

Better, certainly, but still a bit of a tossup. For instance, even the best case scenario (against Gargoyles), more than 1 in 5 attacks will result in an undestroyed Gargoyle. For nearly three times the point investment in ships that are specifically designed to destroy strike carriers, that's a still fairly low rate of success. It'd certainly make corvettes more effective, but it's not really the best way to go in my opinion. Optimally, 3 corvettes would have an 85-90% success rate of destroying a New Orleans or Gargoyle as a baseline.

This is mostly due to the fact that PD has less and less of an impact the more CAW is consolidated into a single attack; 3 PD is an effective defense against a single corvette, but becomes proportionally less effective against 3 or more corvettes. It still helps some, but losing that PD wouldn't hurt as much as it would against smaller, individual attacks.

Maybe the first step should really be to buff corvettes in Atmosphere, before the release of Destroyers. I agree that Strike carrier spam is a very viable tactic and you can still bring a lot of firepower with such a list if needed to contest the space arround clusters enough, or to kill troopships.

However I really dislike the fact that you can win the ground while losing space, that just feels off and not very combined armes approach if you ask me.

Yesterday I had a game with Scourge against PHR, where we limited drop to 10 at 1250 points, and we played Station Assault. This resulted in two reasonably firepower heavy lists and still some interesting plays for objectives. But I'm not convinced that limiting drop is the way forward. I'd rather have a balanced list between anti-atmo, drop, and space then put hard caps in.

Maybe just buffing Corvette damage isn't enough (of the right approach), what if they also functioned as defense batteries as well?

Maybe just buffing Corvette damage isn't enough (of the right approach), what if they also functioned as defense batteries as well?

That'll be too much imho. Just enable them to trade cost efficiently against Strikecraft while not buffing (reducing in case of the Echo) their abilities in orbit.

Maybe just buffing Corvette damage isn't enough (of the right approach), what if they also functioned as defense batteries as well?

That'll be too much imho. Just enable them to trade cost efficiently against Strikecraft while not buffing (reducing in case of the Echo) their abilities in orbit.

Eh, maybe? It's something to consider so that once Destroyers come on the scene (assuming they're going to be the "shoot into the atmosphere" ships between the size of Frigates and Cruisers) Corvettes won't just be shunted off because they do the same thing, but are worse at it since they can't hold Critical Locations at the same time.

Do not forget that they operate in atmo which makes them far less vulnerable. Destroyers will most likely be around 6 Hull Points which is not a lot.

True, but their protection only lasts until the other side brings in their own corvettes or gets orbital superiority and brings in their own destroyers.

@Swampsheep

The Idea sounds interesting but this will most likely lead to boring splitmaps and fighting for one single objective. What I like about DFC is that you can play around the complete map right now bringing some action nearly everywhere. And again... I see this shifting balance by a lot potentially.

Maybe you're right. My experience and intuition do not agree, but I understand your point and think it has merit.

We run - comparatively to the more min-maxed lists - some rather balanced lists in my meta. If anything, we might be a bit low on drop and frigates in general.

We don't get much split-map. Unless objectives are really far apart, most ships that survive the entire game are being engaged in more than one "action point" during a game.

However, if they were needed for scoring, I think they would tend to "stick around" to secure an area, so in that sense you might get a bit more split map.

You might need to rethink how the missions are designed to resolve that. We have done quite a bit of experimentation about where entry points are, missions that cannot be mirrored in the line between the players (but are still symmetrical), distance and number of clusters / space stations, etc. I think that you can counteract some of the split-map with this as well.

We don't get much split-map. Unless objectives are really far apart, most ships that survive the entire game are being engaged in more than one "action point" during a game

Are we talking about groundbased game or in general? As Groundgame and Orbitgame are, besides destroying the key ships in Orbit, very much different parts of the game that do not overlap as much I was referring to groundgame for the most part. Orbit ships usually need some flexible play as opportunities occur or disappear but groundgame tend to split the map if there is not enough strikecraft. E.g. why would someone play around all 5 Take&Hold objectives with only 8 strikecraft - way more effective and more reliable to concentrate on 3 clusters - everything else will result in huge gambles and that's what you do not want competitively. I don't see this happening with 12+ because you have enough spare ships to also take some risks. Of course this mainly applies for competitive play but that's what I'm concerned about as casual games do not rely as much on balance and houserules are easy to install.

You might need to rethink how the missions are designed to resolve that. We have done quite a bit of experimentation about where entry points are, missions that cannot be mirrored in the line between the players (but are still symmetrical), distance and number of clusters / space stations, etc. I think that you can counteract some of the split-map with this as well.

Can you elaborate on that? Sounds interesting but I have problems with missions that cannot be mirrored but are still symmetrical?! Not quite sure about balance...
That's also one reason why I like dropfleet - it is, compared to other Tabletops very easy and still fun to built completely mirrored maps giving nobody an advantage.