Anybody around here have any experience with these games by TTCombat? I saw something about them in passing on facebook and they sound interesting.
My threshold question is can they be played solitaire?
I haven't played Dropzone but I did try Dropfleet a couple of times at a local miniatures group. It was a pretty fun game. Rules were fairly light and there was a lot of randomness between the card activation system and the bucket of dice combat mechanics. I liked that the scenarios were objective based and I thought the design being based on orbital battles was a neat twist on space combat games. Movement is pretty simple and fast but combat can bog down a bit as you have to take into account the stealth rating of your potential target (it changes depending on their speed/energy allocation), the amount of power assigned to your weapon, your speed, and (I think, your sensor setup). Then if you do manage a hit, some weapons do breakthrough damage which can take a bit to calculate. It reminds me a bit of the detailed interior damage modelling used by games like Starfleet Battles/Federation Commander, Battletech, and Car Wars but it's nowhere near as detailed. I also liked that the different factions seemed quite unique and each had their own special rules and abilities.
The downsides of the system that I see (at least from my part of the world) are that there doesn't seem to be much of a player base; not sure about availability of the minis as I never see them in any of my local game stores (used to see them in the discount bins quite a bit), and that (at least in the scenarios I played) you needed to have a LOT of minis to field a fleet. Painting all those ships can be a bit of a chore.
I don't know if there are any AI bot rules for solo play. I guess you could play it solo if you wanted to but from what I saw of it, you'd basically be playing both sides.
Dropzone Commander looks pretty cool but I've never seen it being played at any of the game events I attend.
Yeah. It sounds really cool. Would love to see a PC version of both games combined.
Thanks for the feedback.