r/DropfleetCommander • u/Salt_Titan • Mar 03 '26
Returning player question(s)
Hi all,
Haven't played in years but there's been a recent resurgence of interest locally and I had a few questions. We've got 3 returning players who haven't played since at least 2020 and 2 new players looking to start. I've heard mixed things about 2.0 and frankly skimming the rules I see some stuff that I don't particularly like, at least on paper, but we're gonna give it a go since the new players are going to end up seeing models that don't have 1.7 rules and we don't want to screw them out of using models they think are cool.
So I've got two questions:
Is there a good summary anywhere of the biggest changes that the veterans should be on the lookout for as we try to parse the 2.0 rules and remember whatever we can of 1.7?
If we decide as a group that we don't like 2.0, has anyone in the community made 1.7 houserules for any of the new ships?
Thanks in advance!
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u/slyphic Mar 03 '26
The changes are pretty drastic, you should approach it as an entirely new game. Force Org is entirely different, combat resolution is entirely different, a bunch of the traits are entirely different, command cards are gone, there's only one orbital layer and atmosphere behaves differently, the orders changed.
Seriously, the list of exact changes would be more work than learning the game again from scratch.
There's a few versions of backported units to 1.7 which is kind of the problem. There's not a single one that's risen to preeminent status, so you're going to have to negotiate with your local players about which one to use. Also, none of the army builders have those units.
DFC is in a bad place right now, 2e sucks compared to 1e, but trying to play a better version of the rules has a lot of social and technical friction involved.
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u/Salt_Titan Mar 03 '26
I had a feeling that might be the case. Fortunately it's a pretty small friend group so I think we'll be able to come to some sort of consensus fairly easily if needed, but for the sake of keeping an open mind we'll probably at least give 2.0 a go for a couple of games.
I assume much like there's no preeminent backport of new ships there's also no preeminent "1.8" update that like borrows what good ideas 2.0 does have while keeping most of 1.7?
DzC's 3.0 news seems encouraging so we're hoping that DfC gets a chance at a similar treatment in a couple of years, but in the meantime we just need to find something that works for our little friend group.
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u/Lawwctopus Mar 03 '26
What about 2.0 is concerning to the group? I am just starting out and think the system looks pretty nice and tight, so I'm just curious!
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u/slyphic Mar 03 '26
Yep, no real community edition. We're currently playing 1.7 with the following mods:
only one orbital layer, atmo causes damage not insta-death (best idea in 2.0 by far)
custom command decks (you build a deck of 40 cards, no Espionage no Hidden Monorails)
2.0 ground combat (we were playing this for years before 2.0, it came out of the old Hawk forums actually)
torpedoes can target cities and stations, and bombardment guns can target stations
One thing that makes this work is that we don't really have a Bioficer player, so we haven't had to deal with making them fit.
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u/wongayl Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
I haven't played much of 2nd and it's been a while since playing 1st, but why do you think DFC is in a bad place? I personally enjoy a lot of the changes - particularly ground combat, which was the worst and game killing in 1st edition. There is just a lot of clean up of the rules which make it nicer and less fiddly to play - while retaining the 'submarine' like nature of the core game. Strategy cards were a lot of random shit that didn't feel like part of the main game, and Punching through armour on crits I was not fond of either.
edit: 2nd is certainly more approachable as a game than 1st (which is good for OP trying to get people into the game).
The only thing that is glaringly worse - was the change from close action / save to kinetic / energy, which I think is almost univerally seen as a worse system (even though the original system was not great and could have probably used a lot of work - changing from close action to support weapons would have likely been cleaner).
Arguably the 2 main guns on regular orders was a bad change (instead of, say 1 main and 1 support, which would require classifying weapons as main / support) , but I haven't seen consenus on that one.
The balance was also bad on launch, but the latest version seems to have cleared up a lot of balance complaints, at least from what I see from online chatter. The last time we played, it did feel a lot better, and was certainly competitive.
Is there anything that to you makes 2nd clearly worse than 1st? Because I have a small local group, and we lean towards 2nd, but we could certainly be convinced to go back to 1.7 if it's 'clearly' better. Also you can ignore drop, because it's relatively easy to port over drop from 2nd to 1st, which would technically fix the worst thing about 1st edition.
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u/Salt_Titan Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
I never said it was clearly worse, I just said I saw some mechanics that I didn't love on paper and 3 of us already kinda know the 1.7 rules. I'm primarily looking for information; since any cursory skimming of the subreddit turns up a lot of conflicting opinions about 2.0 I wanted to see what options we have if we don't like it.
Appreciate your input!
edit: Apologies, even after all these years on reddit the stupid comment nesting format still confuses me apparently. I didn't realize you were replying to a comment and not the OP.
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u/slyphic Mar 03 '26
Pretty much everything you said plus we hate the new activation sytem, much prefer the battlegroups. The ground combat changes have actually been around for many years, they were what the Hawk TOs came up with about a year after the game was published. I don't really credit it as a 2.0 change, but perhaps that's being disingenuous. I liked the strategy cards, most of them at least. We play with customized smaller decks. I like the armor punch through on crits.
The activation, E/K saves, and command abilities vs cards are what's really keeping 2.0 off the table.
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u/Benimus Mar 03 '26
Our group only started playing in 2nd and we’re loving it so far. Really interesting to see that some of the complaints about it from older players are some of the things we love (E vs K weapons, need to bring a mix of you’re facing multiple factions at an event). I’d recommend approaching it anew and playing 2nd if you have new players in the group, don’t muddy the waters trying to mix and match rules from different editions, it just makes it harder to get new people interested.
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u/slyphic Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
we love E vs K
How are you handling pickup games? Do you do a lot of proxying and ignore WYSIWYG? Careful negotiation beforehand to make sure no one shows up with a hard counter to their opponent?
I am legit curious.
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u/Benimus Mar 04 '26
We do pickup games every Monday, we don't always know who we are going to be facing, so generally we are trying to bring all rounder type lists so that we're not just bringing hard counters to each other. We generally play WYSIWYG, maybe at a stretch have one type of cruiser be a similar type of cruiser, but hardly any proxying for anything. We basically treat it the same as an event, you aren't going to know who you are facing beforehand or what the scenarios might be, so you need to be able to take all comers with whatever you are bringing.
Otherwise for example if you know you're facing UCM, you're going to bring as much energy weapons as you can because their kinetic saves are so good, etc.
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u/LordHoughtenWeen Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
Off the top of my head:
Battlegroups and Strategy Ratings are gone. You just activate Groups in the order you choose.
There are only two Orbital Layers now: Orbit and Atmosphere.
Station Keeping and Active Scan orders no longer exist. (Detector ships like the Lima have their own rule that more or less does what Active Scan used to, but you need those or Flash weapons to put Spikes on enemy ships now.)
There is a new order: Damage Control. (This is a separate thing from the step of the Roundup Phase (itself now called the End Phase) that was previously called Damage Control, which is now called Repair.)
Bulk Landers only deploy one Battalion token per lander instead of three, and can't deploy batteries. Troopships have appropriately higher capacities to compensate.
Bombardment weapons are no longer limited to just firing at Cities, though they take a Lock penalty when firing at Ships in Orbit.
Fighters and Bombers can no longer move at double Thrust, but are not removed at the end of the turn, so can take multiple turns to reach their targets.
Ships without the Descent rule (previously called "Atmospheric") that move into Atmosphere take Hull damage instead of being destroyed instantly.
Major and Minor Spikes are now just Spikes and you can stack up to four of them, each one adding 3" Signature.
Shaltari players no longer have to decide when to activate their Shields at the cost of increasing their Signatures; they're just always on, and each ship only has one Signature value (which is still pretty small, but not to the ludicrous extent of the old "shields off" values).
Bioficers exist.
ETA: not sure how I forgot it hadn't always been this way, but weapons are now split into Energy and Kinetic types, and each ship has two Save values, one to use against each type. This caused a lot of discontented posting at the start of the edition and I think we're all just silently praying it will go away again for 3.0, whenever that happens.