Let’s take a look at what is being worked on in the TTCombat design office. And it seems there is something very new and exciting for Dropzone Commander in the works.

Hi Dropzone Commander players. It was just a little over a year ago we launched the first online Force Builder for Dropzone Commander, and it’s had new features and even one redesign in that time already.

In my mission to deliver the best online tool possible for all players of the game I decided to start a new design, from the ground up. Literally everything for the new version has been redesigned to be faster, more efficient and with a very fresh new look.

So what’s new? Well a few things, let’s take a look at some examples and see what Dropzone Commander players have to look forward to.

Clean Uniform Design:

The entire screen design is completely reworked. A lot less colours, white space where required. Faction Colours denote where the user has actions. Icons denote buttons and actions avoiding large amounts of text on screen meaning you only have to read what is important.

Transports with Initial Battlegroup

Though the rules may say that all Auxiliary units and transports are essentially one big group. Speaking to players, almost everyone selects transports to go with specific battlegroups, at least at the start of the battle. This is now represented on screen. Along with the totals for transport capacity, helping you to know if you have enough transports for that group.

Easier Transport Selection

Now simply select the Add Transport option for your group and you can add the right amount of transports for each squad. No need to work it out in your head. Simply select the type of transport for that squad and the builder will automatically add as many transports of that type as required for the squad.

You can of course manually add transports to the group as you currently do too, so whichever way is best for you.

Adding Options and Commanders

This is now very fast and easy. once the squad is added to the group, simply press the settings button next to applicable squads and all your options are there to add and remove as needed. You can of course add these before you add the squad to the Battlegroup too.

Cached armies.

Accidently pressed refresh, or back. Not to worry, your army will still be there, just select the faction you were in. Each faction can be saved to, so you can build armies for each action and go between them if needed. This was a heavily requested feature that was impossible with the architecture of the old Builder.

Undo

One of the things I’m proudest of with the new Force Builder is an undo function. Accidently deleted a Battlegroup? Simply press undo and it all comes back, exactly how it was. And the undo queue goes right back until the last time the page was refreshed too! So make loads of changes, then just go and undo them all.  Undo doesn’t work on small, granular changes, such as increasing squad size, or adding options, since these are easily corrected already.

Plus More!

Redeisgned print outs. Saving Armies to local device. AI selected Transports, AI selected Battlegroups. A lot of features are planned for the new builder to make the process of building your Dropzone Commander army as easy as possible.

When?

This is still early in development. So it’s going to take some time yet. However I’m hoping it’ll be available to use, at least with all needed features quite soon, then new features will be added once developed. However the images here give some indication as to design so please feel free to give feedback.

Ideas?

Something you’d like to see in the Force Builder? Please let us know so we can see if it’s something we can implement  and add as a feature to the App. More ideas we have, the more we can do.

Don’t play Dropzone Commander?

Well now is a great time to jump in with the 2.1 version of the rules free to download from the website, the range being restocked and reworked with new units coming out. (We will be back to restocks once we have everyone back in the warehouse.) And some extremely exciting stuff coming in the future, including the much anticipated Behemoths.

Take a look at the Dropzone Commander range on our webstore.

I look forward to showing you more of the new look Force Builder in the future. For now though, I hope you’ve all been busy getting models built and painted ready for when we can all get out and game again. (No mentions of my shame pile needed.)