Dropfleet Commander

[Ruckdog]

To be honest, I have many of the same concerns, Landlubber. I wouldn't be surprised if we see an expansion within the year that extends combat out away from the low orbit setting, but who knows! I think we will just have to get the game in our hands and mess around with it some before we can say for sure how well the low orbit setting of the game holds up.

[Landlubber]

Well, I certainly give it a try. MarkyMark should have a few fleets. And if I don't like it, that's OK, I have a few space-based games already. And like I said, if nothing else, I'll probably pick up some of the models at some point if they start selling them individually. I'm always on the lookout for unique starship/starfighter designs, and those certainly are, especially the UCM and PHR ships.

[Dakkar]

Was just catching up on Firebase Delta, and Josh had nothing good to say about the mechanics, whatsoever.

[Ruckdog]

An Update

Dave has been over at Beasts of War for a number of days, and we are hoping that many of you will have seen the update to backers that was on the recent Weekender video. But for those of you who haven’t seen the video or the reviews on it about the Rulebook, we have put together some information below. There will also be a range of videos coming out over the next few weeks with various focuses, whether that is gameplay, spaceships or space stations!

Kickstarter Fulfilment Update

As many of you will have seen, we have been packing and dispatching a plethora of orders, with many leaving the Hawk Warehouse on a daily basis! Our UPS and Interlink drivers have had to make several return trips with larger vans to pick up what have been going out!

Over the past 2 weeks the team at Hawk have been hard at work packing and dispatching Kickstarter pledges for Dropfleet Commander, and although we are making good progress, the logistical complexity of processing 4000 individual orders is proving to be very time consuming, and though this was planned for, the delay caused by the printed elements has further delayed the shipping, more than recently anticipated.
We have increased the number of warehouse staff and secured additional warehouse space to help expedite the delivery process, as well as sending down a number of our own ‘elite team’ to help move and pack items. We wish to emphasise that the delays in fulfilment are no way due to lack of fulfilment stock and are purely reflective of the volume of orders to be processed mixed with the delay in receiving the printed material.

Dropfleet Commander Wave 1 Retail Release

Most of you will be aware that the wave 1 of the Dropfleet Commander retail release is scheduled for the 14th of October and unfortunately it is likely that there will still be some Kickstarter pledges awaiting delivery at this point.
Since the retail release consists of around a dozen pre-arranged bulk shipments of stock to distributors, delaying wave 1 of the release would not actually speed up the Kickstarter fulfilment process. This is a hard pill to swallow for us, as we have put so much effort into endeavouring to get this Kickstarter delivered before release, but we also have to be conscious of the game and with agreements made with our distribution partners.

We will, therefore, be proceeding with wave 1 of the retail release on the 14th of October as many wheels are in motion for it, and we hope that you, as our backers, will understand that we are doing everything in our power to ensure completion of the Kickstarter fulfilment in October.

What are we doing to Prioritise Kickstarter Fulfilment?

In addition to the hiring of temp staff, increased warehouse space and deployment of the Hawk elite team, we have taken the decision to defer wave 2 of the retail release. Whilst the deferring of wave 1 of the retail release would not impact Kickstarter fulfilment, pushing back the wave 2 release does mean that the warehouse staff allocated for manufacture of the battleships can be reallocated to Kickstarter fulfilment as a priority.

We are also withdrawing the sale of promotional stock at our Dropfleet pre-release events, and will be focusing every available member of the Hawk Wargames team toward the completion of the Kickstarter fulfilment in October.
We appreciate the patience and understanding shown by you, our backers, and our supporters as we reach the final stages of delivery. It has been a big process, but we are extremely proud of the finished product and we hope that when it reaches you, you will find that it was worth the wait.

Here is the video from Beasts of War if you would like to see it - Hawk Wargames Content begins at around 1:03:50:

https://youtu.be/hJUJYx9ozl0?t=1h3m50s

We can't wait to get Dropfleet Commander rewards out to you all!

Kind regards, and thank you for all of your support!

The Hawk Wargames Team

Looks like they are making progress! Anyone here get their goodies yet? I plan on doing an unboxing post on the blog when I get mine 😉

[Ruckdog]

Another message! I put this one in spoilers to avoid the Wall of Text:

[spoiler]

Dear Backers

We are getting into our dispatches.
We had a small hiccup last week where a number of pledges went out without notifications going out to customers. It was our intention that tracking information went out with every order, so apologies if you get your order without any tracking – we have found the error, and are ensuring that all dispatches are going out with a notification to each backer regarding their pledge. Following on from the video and Kickstarter Update last weekend,

Dave wanted to share a typed message with you all:

Firstly, we have some Feedback on the Beasts of War Weekender Kickstarter update slot. Choosing to deliver the update in video format was a conscious choice as we thought it important to convey the news verbally and in a more personal manner. Beasts of War is an ideal platform for us as we do not yet have a sophisticated video setup of our own and we felt much of it was said best via this format. I had planned a visit to Beasts of War for the purpose of promoting Dropfleet Commander, and thought it was an important time to put out a video from me about the Kickstarter.

This video was one of the last I filmed while I was there. It was unscripted and unrehearsed and as a result I didn't quite cover everything I should have. Most importantly, I did not apologise directly for the situation - I am extremely sorry that the dispatch of the pledges has not gone to plan, and that this delay has affected so many people. Omitting a clear apology was entirely unintentional and for that I'm sorry.

In my time at Beast's of War I filmed some great content to support Dropfleet Commander. The next videos will be released on October 14th, so keep an eye out for those. We will do our best to inform you all ahead of time when future content is due to go out too. This has been a challenging experience for us all in the last few weeks, but we have tried to adapt quickly to the situation. Several Hawk staff who normally work on communications are now in the warehouse assisting with packing. Getting your pledges out as fast as humanly possible is our priority.

As stated in the video update, the first wave of Dropfleet Commander’s retail launch will be going ahead as planned on October 14th. Once again we apologise for the less than ideal nature of this arrangement. Supporting all of our community, including retailers who have places where people can play the game, is one of the cornerstones of Dropfleet Commander’s future, and is very important to us. The launch had been planed far in advance for a time when we had anticipated that all pledges would have been shipped. The printing delays and subsequent logistical challenges unfortunately prevented us for realising our intentions and the current arrangement is a compromise. We have also delayed the further retail waves to ensure as much of the entire team are focused on the Kickstarter fulfilment.

You should expect another update at the start of next week to include more information on when we hope to have completed shipments of all Kickstarter pledges. The team who are managing the shipment and packing logistics are very much more in control of the situation now that the printed materials have arrived, and although I visited the warehouse yesterday, the processes are well in place to know that the daily rate of dispatch has increased to a higher level than it was previously.

The absence of an update to the Hawk Wargames website to include Dropfleet Commander is a necessary result of the additional manpower dedicated to packing. Most staff at Hawk cover multiple roles and we are of course focused on dispatch as a first priority. In addition to a final shipping date we hope to have an estimated timeframe for the launch of the revised website by early next week. A key thing to mention here, is that while we will be taking orders on the site for Dropfleet Commander products, we will NOT be shipping ANY of them until we have honoured our commitments to our backers. This will be made clear on the website also!

The penultimate point to mention, is that our retail and distribution partner in Germany will be promoting Dropfleet Commander later this week and over the weekend at Europe's biggest board gaming/tabletop convention – SPIEL. A small Hawk Team not involved in the packing process (including myself) will be on hand to assist them with English language demos and to answer any questions attendees might have for us. As this is launch weekend, they will have a limited quantity of wave 1 Dropfleet stock on hand in addition to the complete Dropzone Commander range. We look forward to seeing some of you there! You can find us in Hall 2, at booth 2-F160.

Finally, I would like again to reiterate that we are doing our utmost to get your pledges out to you as fast as we can and to apologise sincerely for the delay in your pledges, for the delay in communication and for the retail release of the game coming before all the pledges had been sent out.

Thank you all for your continued support, understanding and patience,

- David Lewis,
  Director, Hawk Wargames

[/spoiler]

Interesting. It looks like quite a few folks (me included) will not be getting their KS pledges until after tomorrow's official retail release. From what I've gathered looking at the comments on KS and in other threads, there are a few folks that are (understandably) miffed about that. I can't say I'm too worried about it; it's not like the delay will be more than a week or so it appears, and it isn't like I don't have plenty to keep myself busy in the mean time!

[BrdingPrty1]

Has ANYONE received their pledge yet or at least gotten notification of it being mailed?

I have not. 

[Ruckdog]

Nada on my end. I'm really excited about getting my hands on this stuff...the anticipation is killing me!

[Sailion]

Hey guys~

Interesting read hope get a out of orbit rule set too and same, waiting for plegdes to turn up too. Me and my mate went straigth in on the kickstarter as well, actaully really like the look of the scourage espcially that battle cruiser, but also went for phr and ucm too. Shaltari not sure on, they look too eldar for me...

Um, down south at my aunties visting family atm. Very good dystopian wars scene here so got to bring my models next time. ^^ They also had some Dropfleet at the local model shop.. had 2 player boxes and the fleet start boxes on the shelf. Beening magpie for ship models, i could'nt resist.. getting a box or two. >_<

Sailion

[Ruckdog]

Yeah, I suspect I might end up grabbing a second starter myself at some point. Hawk posted another update on KS:

[spoiler]Update #56

Oct 21 2016

Shipping Update
26 Comments
 
 Liked
 38 likes
Dear Backers

Sorry that this is arriving to you today rather than earlier this week. This is a quick update to address a few questions that have been raised and to let you know the progress of Kickstarter shipment and our projections for completion.

1) Shipping Progress - Our rate of Kicksarter shipment has increased significantly as we apply extra manpower, and have real room to move in the warehouse. Notably, all Admiral Pledges have been shipped. At current projections, and we plan to have all pledges packed by the end of this month (October). We are doing our best to work with our couriers to ensure as many parcels can be picked up as possible each day, so that pledges go out as quickly as we can pack them. It might be that some of the dispatch goes into early November, but we are doing what we can to plan for fast dispatches of rewards. The order in which pledges are shipped is determined by efficiency and product locations within our warehouse, and is not biased towards any particular pledge level or regional location. We're simply following the best procedure to get the maximum amount of packages out per day as we can while clearing more working space. Thanks for bearing with us as we complete this monumental logistical task!

2) Lack of Retail Packaging in Kickstarter Pledges - We did not intend to ship kickstarter rewards in retail packaging for several reasons. Firstly, with over 7000 2 player starter sets to pack, store and shrink wrap, this would have severely slowed the packing progress, taken up much more space and resulted in an additional 5 Tons of packaging being sent out. Secondly, since these products are not for retail (and therefore do not need to advertise themselves) the additional boxes and plastic shrink are unnecessary.

For such reasons it's common for wargaming Kickstarter rewards to not be shipped in retail packaging. Having said that, it's clear that we didn't communicate this adequately and for that we apologise. As a result, we are working on a solution for backers to obtain 2 Player Starter Set outer boxes for free if they want them once the pledges are all shipped (as any disturbance to the admin/packing process at this stage will cause great disruption). We will let you know more on this in a future Kickstarter update.

3) Support Structure for Dropfleet - As mentioned in previous updates, the website, forum, tournament pack, download pack, downloadable scenery and fleet stat reference lists will be made available online in due course. Their rollout has been slowed somewhat due to essential manpower being diverted to packing pledges. This is just a reminder that we haven't forgotten about these important elements and that we'll have them out as soon as humanly possible!

Thanks again for bearing with us and we hope that you enjoy the game!

Kind regards

The Hawk Wargames Team
[/spoiler]

Keeping my fingers crossed that the shipping notification will pop in then next few days!

[Sailion]

Thanks Ruckdog.

Well, only waiting i guess? Nothing not used to from pre-orders. So, how does the size of the fleets work and such? avergae game size?

Side note: Thinking of starting playing world of warships on NA sever, notsure yet. xD

Sailion

[Dakkar]

I'll be curious to see if game-play improved from what you reported at GenCon, Ruckdog.

LEO Space Combat has so many potentials (I'm thinking to the orbital hijinks in SEVENEVES for instance). I'd hate to see a game tackle that without an innovative and playable aspect. (Mere Height Levels has proven eternally insufficient ... looks at SILENT DEATH 3D...)

[Ruckdog]

Here is a pretty good blog post that talks initial impressions on the rules, minis, and other components:

http://www.tfgradio.com/tactics/dropfleet-commander-first-playthrough/

I still can't wait to get my hands on my stuff!

[Fracas]

The base looks interesting

[Ruckdog]

It is! Hawk is trying to be very clever with their bases, to try and show as much information as possible to minimize book keeping and tokens. It mostly works, from what I  saw at Gencon. A bit fiddly, but no more so than having a lot of tokens around.

[Landlubber]

Still on the fence about this one. Models look great, and there are some mechanics that I like--the energy spikes making you more visible, the ability to change "altitude", etc. (would be awesome to show physical altitude differences). Still not sold on the game, though, just can't wrap my head around combat in orbit only. Ah well. Not like I need ANOTHER game to play.