What happened to Dropfleet Commander?

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Been pretty out of the loop this year, does anyone now what happened to all the Dropfleet Commander miniatures?  TT Combat's site is entirely empty of them, nothing at all on sale and the game's site still points you at that gaping hole to buy figs.  Did someone else pick them up, is there some kind of production delay/hiatus, or is that whole sprawling range just gone?

Certainly hope not, they were some of the best plastic starship minis ever made.

[BeardGoblin]

They've discontinued *Everything* as of August 9th 2024, to make way for Dropfleet 2.0 coming 'Later this year'.

They also said that 'some items may return in a new format, others are gone forever'.

That's basically the info from the email TTCombat sent out on August 2nd, not had anything except this link to their Youtube channel since - it's a 3 minute 'Faction Focus' video - I can't speak as to the content, I'm only aware of Dropfleet through being on TTCombat's mailing list, and haven't watched it.



Sign up to their mailing list to get any updates about the new releases direct from source - I only receive one email a week from them, on a friday afternoon, so it's not so spammy.

I am not affiliated with or a representative for/of TTCombat - beyond being an occassional customer who is signed up to their mailing list.

[Daeothar]

Here's to hoping version 2.0 will not be for Dropfleet what 2nd ed was for X-Wing, as it's the space combat game I'm most invested in right now (after X-Wing 1.0 ).

I'm still after a couple of those ships, so let's hope they will return. And also that my existing fleets are still viable, because I'd really hate a repeat of X-Wing...

+++EDIT+++ Just to be sure, I downloaded every resource they put up on their site. I've pulled some of them over the years, but without knowing how things will develop, I just grabbed it all.

Those planetscapes could be very useful for a lot of other games as well I reckon...

[Chief Lackey Rich]

That sounds very bad.  I hope none of the plastic stuff is on the chopping block, those were phenomenally useful outside of DfZ itself.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Interesting half a video, though the subtitles look like they have not been checked by a human.

Can anyone advise how to get the video window scaled so it fits in the post - the full screen button is off the visible part and it is not possible to scroll across the YouTube window to reach it.

Only ever glanced at Dropfleet Commander and was unaware there were plastics.

[Daeothar]

No idea how to accomplish that; sounds to me it might be related to (the settings of) your browser of choice perhaps? It works fine on my devices 

As for the Dropfleet (and Dropzone)models; the starter sets have always been injection moulded plastics. They were/are great and form the basis of all of my forces. But the same models were/are also on offer in resin, plus of course the more advanced/esoteric ships.

When Hawk Wargames was still operational, they used an absolutely wonderful, very lightly coloured (almost white) resin. I've never found any flaws in any of the casts I've bought, but whether that was due to proper QC or simply a good casting process and the right material, I can't tell.

The material also had a lot of flex to it, so was really forgiving when being mishandled.

Later, when TTCombat bought Hawk, they immediately changed the type of resin to a more grey colour. It was also somewhat brittle and I started to find air bubbles and warped parts at that point too. So they turned down their QC and started using a lesser grade resin as well.

Not Forge World unworkable, mind, but more work than simply cleaning and assembling.

The plastics remained the same though; they were still great after the transition

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Most or all of plastic ships were never available in resin, although there were visually-distinct variants of some classes in resin IIRC.  The kits (especially the space station kit) were an amazing parts mine since you'd always have many leftover pieces from the variants you didn't build.  I devoted quite a bit of blogging time to showing off what you could make out of the plastic leftovers, as well as dozens of station builds and other kitbashed variants.  You can see the various posts over here - and I didn't even get around to doing any of the Resistance kits, which came along after I'd petered out on the project and are even more modular than the earlier fleets were:

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/search/label/Dropfleet%20Commander

To put it mildly, if those plastics are gone for good gamers and modelers have both lost a fantastic resource.

[Daeothar]

Actually, they were, but they were all different variants, often with a very different look to them. Which has always made me fear they would eventually phase out the plastics.

Maybe that time has come now? 

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Actually, they were, but they were all different variants, often with a very different look to them. Which has always made me fear they would eventually phase out the plastics.

Maybe that time has come now? 

Given the lifespan of injection molds compared to resin molds and the much newer Resistance kits, the reverse seems more likely to me.  The resins had expanded to a rather large number of product codes, which is not popular with retailers who don't want to devote a ton of wall space to a minis game that isn't from GW - or related to D&D, and even that market's dipped a bit.

The resin ship variants you're talking about shared games stats with plastic kit classes, but their names and designs were quite different.

[BeardGoblin]

Todays Email from TTCombat was the pre-order announcement for the new Dropfleet 2.0 Starter set - prominently displayed on their website.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Indeed it is.  Looks like everything is back in terms of minis (barring a few limited-availability things, which have come and gone multiple times around holiday sales times - the McRibs of DfC), there's confirmation of new cruiser and frigate frames for the UCM (they explicitly call out the older versions as being different from the ones in the starter set), and there's the rumored new fleet/faction.  They also appear to have retired the old injection-molded bases and replaced them with clear cut acrylic ones, probably with sticker appliques and what look to be screw-on, screw-off basing widgets.

Kind of a relief, albeit not to my wallet if I find myself succumbing to getting another mass of kits to fiddle with. 

[Daeothar]

Wow; I've always been taken by the designs of the ships and vehicles in both DFC and DZC, but those of the new faction are just... really lackluster

The new UCM ships are looking great enough, but those Bioficers? I hope they'll grow on me... 

[infelix]

While I don’t have a huge interest in the game itself (don’t care for the ground shenanigans), I’m slowly picking up some of the ships to use in other games so I’m looking forward to see more new ships down the line.

[Slyphic]

I've noticed 3 missing products, or maybe 2 and a half?  Only one sector token pack made it back to the webstore, the other one is gone.  Those might have gotten axed, which fine, they're a token, but I painted the old ones up and that kind of sucks to see them gone. 

The other things are two of the space stations, the Astrobotanical Garden, and the Defense Station.  The garden going missing had me finally ordering one from a domestic store before it goes fully OoP.

There's also some subtle differences in the light ships, the corvettes and frigates and cutters, between their older resin and newer plastic versions.  The Scourge were the most readily apparent to me; compare the Nickars and Hiroku.

It looks like they'll be posting more info on the rules changes, which seem fairly extensive from what they've teased, over the intervening month.

I dearly hope they post a battle report somewhere, show some record of having played a full game.  The utter lack of playtesting that came out about the Dropzone 2nd edition development, the frequent dumb mistakes over the last 3 years, really makes anything they design suspect.  They're released borderline unplayable rules before and recently.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

I've noticed 3 missing products, or maybe 2 and a half?  Only one sector token pack made it back to the webstore, the other one is gone.  Those might have gotten axed, which fine, they're a token, but I painted the old ones up and that kind of sucks to see them gone.

The other things are two of the space stations, the Astrobotanical Garden, and the Defense Station.  The garden going missing had me finally ordering one from a domestic store before it goes fully OoP.

Good catches.  I never did the token packs at all and had forgotten there were more.  The big stations might not be gone for good - easy to have an ill-timed mold failure keep them out of teh initial release wave.  Fingers crossed.

There's also some subtle differences in the light ships, the corvettes and frigates and cutters, between their older resin and newer plastic versions.  The Scourge were the most readily apparent to me; compare the Nickars and Hiroku.

Definitely, but it looks like the resins will also be available so a net gain with no loss.

It looks like they'll be posting more info on the rules changes, which seem fairly extensive from what they've teased, over the intervening month.

I dearly hope they post a battle report somewhere, show some record of having played a full game.  The utter lack of playtesting that came out about the Dropzone 2nd edition development, the frequent dumb mistakes over the last 3 years, really makes anything they design suspect.  They're released borderline unplayable rules before and recently.

Have to admit the game has been irrelevant to me for years now so I haven't paid attention to that side of it.  The minis have been doing their job nicely in various RPGs, Full Thrust, A Sky Full of Ships and a bit of Starmada - and they're just plain fun projects, especially the more modular kits.

Wow; I've always been taken by the designs of the ships and vehicles in both DFC and DZC, but those of the new faction are just... really lackluster

The new UCM ships are looking great enough, but those Bioficers? I hope they'll grow on me... 

Confess the Bioficers don't do anything for me either, but I can see where some of the parts might be useful for conversions and kitbashes.  Have to get a look at the frame layout before making any decisions on actually buying any.