Grumpy Gnome Sci-fi (page 6 Core Space, Mars Attacks, Stargrave, 5 Parsecs)

[Grumpy Gnome]

It is proving a bit tougher to settle on a color scheme for my UCM ships.

I tried white with blue trim, a look I commonly like in artwork but it just did not grab me. I tried grey and yellow with a bit of a US Navy vibe but that did not work for me.

My first MCRN attempts looked more Farscape Peacekeeper than MCRN, mostly down to the red I think. I ordered some Army Painter Martian red but that was still to vibrantly red. I tried mixing it with orange but still too bright, then my wife recommended mixing it with desert yellow (tan) which at first I thought mad it too brown but I have been coming around to it. The trick now is to get it military looking rather than looking like a race car.

[Daeothar]

Hawk's resin products were always the best I've ever worked with. The products were absolutely free of any flash, fit like a glove, were not warped and the resin used was also of excellent quality; just the right balance between flex and hardness.

But since production has shifted to TTC, I've seen a regretful decline in quality, with what seems a lesser type of resin, loads of flash and also warpage. None of the above are beyond redemption, but are absolutely not up to previous standards.

Luckily I play Scourge, so warpage is less of an issue; the tentacles actually require some repositioning or warping here and there to keep each ship unique. So as long as the cast is complete, I don't particularly mind a bent appendage here and there...


And Battle for Earth is still on my to-get list too. Thanks for the pointers; I'll re-read that section, but from what you outline, their presence is indeed a bit more involved than I had previously assumed. Still more marginal than the others, but at least involved

+++EDIT+++ Rick W.: that scheme looks pretty cool! It does have a bit of an Expanse Martian feel to it; I like it. Large stencil type numbers and some warning stripes usually work well to make something more utilitarian and military. Use a very abstract, forbidding font, no serifs, and higher than wide, with no borders. White might work, but the red you used as well. And then a very thin yellow or white stripe all around the hull just in front of the engine nozzles, just like on aircraft.

Please keep it up

[Grumpy Gnome]

Yeah I am just now tracking down us navy decals and numbers.... I would love to put on ship names but that seems excessive.

[Daeothar]

I've been working on creating UCM logo decals for my fleet. Thinking of a charcoal base colour, with white and red (maybe orange) stripes reminiscent of Mass Effect Terran ships (like the Normandy, even though those were blue) and possibly some numbers as well.

Ship names, while possibly very fiddly and even superfluous (considering the ship names can go onto the bases) would nonetheless look very cool IMHO, and I might do those as well, once I get to paint up my UCM ships

[Hobby Services]

I wound up doing my first fleet of UCM ships in a gray-and-orange scheme.  Came out okay, although it was a bit of a rush job to get playing quick, and I wound up selling it off eventually.

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2017/07/dropfleet-commander-lemuria-class.html



More recently I experimented with a base metallic and "hot color" paneling, which I kind of liked.  If I do more I'll probably add more shades on the panels.

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2019/06/dropfleet-commander-ucm-light-cruisers.html



Think my favorite scheme to date was the pale-gray-and-orange here, although I may just be biased by liking the nonstandard assemblies more than the canon one.  I mean, if you're going with stupidly huge turrets, you might as well go all the way, right?

https://brokenstarsburningships.blogspot.com/2019/06/dopfleet-commander-kitbashing-ucm.html

[Grumpy Gnome]

Yeah, ideally I would figure out how to make my own decals, precisely to get ship names and UCM logos.

I saw someone had done their fleet in a Mass Effect scheme. Looked great, but also looked like a lot of work.

Hobby Services. I trawled your blog researching my design concepts.

Your metallic UCM ships have an interesting retro 80‘s heavy metal vibe to me... looks like ships to compliment the recent Colony 87 Kickstarter figures. Really cool!

As for huge turrets, I did consider trimming down the rail gun barrels but they look long in the Expanse as well.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Hmm... I am having a terribly hard time settling on a paint scheme for my UCM ships. I thought I had cracked it with the MCRN look but now the original box art simplicity is calling to me. And I like this similar but slightly different take on the original artwork.

http://fullsd.blogspot.com/2017/03/dropfleet-painting-guide.html

[Hobby Services]

Hmm... I am having a terribly hard time settling on a paint scheme for my UCM ships. I thought I had cracked it with the MCRN look but now the original box art simplicity is calling to me. And I like this similar but slightly different take on the original artwork.

http://fullsd.blogspot.com/2017/03/dropfleet-painting-guide.html

That scheme strikes me as something you could probably emulate with GW contrast paints fairly well.  Save you most of the panel lining, anyway, which is one of the more tedious parts of the painting.

[Grumpy Gnome]

I have not tried contrast paint yet. Samples I have seen done look good but I prefer the look of washed items so far, even if it means a bit more work. EDIT: I am not patient enough to panel line or highlight every edge. I respect those that are, and do.

And I finally settled on a paint scheme. Went with my own variation on the official artwork and also based on the work of a couple of other artists. Got the Navy Logo. Put on red and green port/starboard marker lights. First time I ever did engine glow. And I magnetized the ship to post connection.

More info on my blog.

https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/2019/08/27/in-the-navy/

[Grumpy Gnome]

I see TT Combat is not on the trader list for Crisis this year. Does anyone know if they intend to attend? I saw them there last year.

https://www.tsoa.be/crisis_traders.html

[Daeothar]

I bought my Dreadnought there last year at a very healthy discount (quality miss I believe, but some hot water and a very small dab of putty were the only required fixes).

Too bad they won't be there, but maybe Brexit might have something to do with it? Hopefully they will still show up though, because they have more interesting stuff than just Dropzone/fleet... 

[Grumpy Gnome]

I will admit I like saving a bit of money repairing imperfect pieces.

The dreaded Brexit. That is likely going to affect a lot of us gamers on the continent.

EDIT: I decided to email TT Combat to ask them what is up. You going to Crisis again this year? Last year was my first, I had just restarted the hobby and was blown away by the sheer scope, scale and diversity of it compared to stuff I have seen in the past.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Disappointed that I have not had a reply from TT Combat.

Looking at Hobby Services blog got me looking at other games.... and Full Thrust has me intrigued. I like the idea of vectored movement.  I found an interesting fan expansion of the game. And it looks like there are beta playtest rules to improve fighter gameplay.

To those of you who have played Full Thrust, is it a bit more slugfest or do ships pop as quick as in Dropfleet?

https://emeraldcoastskunkworks.wordpress.com/category/project-continum-rules/

[Hobby Services]

Disappointed that I have not had a reply from TT Combat.

Looking at Hobby Services blog got me looking at other games.... and Full Thrust has me intrigued. I like the idea of vectored movement.  I found an interesting fan expansion of the game. And it looks like there are beta playtest rules to improve fighter gameplay.

To those of you who have played Full Thrust, is it a bit more slugfest or do ships pop as quick as in Dropfleet?

https://emeraldcoastskunkworks.wordpress.com/category/project-continum-rules/

Those rules are a fan project, and contain quite a lot of dubiously balanced additions to the GZG version.  I'd recommend reading the Remixed rules (found on the same site) which compile the GZG books and edit them together a bit for clarity, or just read the original four books available from GZG directly as free pdfs.  The former option is probably less confusing, as the FT core book and More Thrust run on notably different rules (albeit similar mechanics) than the more recent Fleet Book 1 & 2, which introduced vector movement and a new and more versatile design systems.

That said, the game is (despite the lack of an official new edition in decades) still going strong due to a fairly huge fan base and the ease of modifying the game to fit different IPs, play styles, and gaming needs.  It plays well with anything from 3-4 ships per player to 20+ for experienced players, and it supports multiplayer team and free-for-all games fairly well.  It does suffer from a lack of published "generic" scenarios (like the obsessively symmetrical ones in DfC) but those are pretty easy to either create or steal from games like Battlefleet Gothic.

In general, I'd say ship destruction rates are lower than in DfC, although very small ships will still tend to die quickly - but "small" is relative to the point values on the table.  If you're playing a 1000 point game (fairly small IME) a destroyer is a fair-sized ship, but in a 3000 point match they're likely to melt pretty darned fast.  Ships don't (barring some optional rule stuff, some fan made) explode when killed, so you don't see the firecracker chains you get in DfC frigate squadrons.

There is no "tournament scene" for the game, and the fan base is decidedly unfond of the mere idea, so not ideal if that's your thing.  Part of that comes from the rock-paper-scissors aspect of the ship design system.  Some things tend to beat others easily if you skew heavily, but there's always a counterbuild and having a bad rock-paper-scissors matchup decide a game works poorly in tourney circles.  The game is an older design from the 90s and is definitely better played "friendly" with gentlemen's agreements to not abuse the ship design rules than in the cutthroat "win at all costs" mentality you see so often these days.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Gaming will be almost exclusively with my wife. We both prefer more narrative type games than tournament games. The streamlined symmetrical gameplay of Dropfleet seems great for tournaments but less than optimal for our tastes.

The passion I have seen online for the game is a big part of what attracted me to it. I can not help but wonder what keeps people loyal to it, there must be something broadly appealing to it. On the surface it does seem more... crunchy. It reminds me more of the Wargames of my youth than the highly polished, very quick rules of today. The evolution of Rogue Trader to the current iteration of WH40K comes to mind.

The model agnostic aspect, and the price, appeals as I can use our Dropfleet ships and create our own fluff. My wife likes the Scourge ships a lot but not the fluff. So I may end up creating our own fluff even though I think the fluff in Dropfleet is good... and especially well presented in the Battle for Earth book.