"Dropzone Commander: Urban specific rules?" Topic

Title says it all. Every DZ game I have seen looks pretty much the same- tables filled with cardboard buildings. Are the rules specifically geared towards battles in dense urban terrain or can the scenarios be played in different settings?

Can be played in any terrain but the game engine needs lots of line of sight obstructions to masks the dropship/long range and movement matrix work, so a cityscape is ideal.

I've played it in a bunch of different settings but I like the city the best. The reason why is that the scale allows you to have something that actually resembles a decent portion of a city on the tabletop and the fluff gives you reasons to play in them.

What bruntonboy mentions is pretty important too. An open table is hell in the game. A lot of the advantage of the rules over other rules is the maneuvering and shooting is a big aspect of combat. You would lose a lot of that if you could just drop your attack units off and let them blaze away at long range.

Incidentally I think a lot of sci-fi and modern games benefit from there being a lot of terrain on the table.

Ok. Just for the sake of playing on something other than a city table all the time is why I was asking; I rather got the impression that the buildings were integral to the game for reason other than just providing cover and blocking LoS. I can come up with lots of hills and bushes so that is not a problem.

Urban-specific sci-fi rule 1: all blasters must be held sideways.

This has been a sticking point with me as well, and there's some solutions that I was going to try using.

First, when playing on a decided non-urban area with clear terrain, replace the At the Deck rule for aircraft with: Nap of Earth, which is mostly the same as At the Deck except if the 2d6 roll is failed (rolled a 2) then the aircraft loses 1 damage points instead of immediately crashing and dying. This represents flying in more open countryside with relatively softer things to collide with, instead of tall urban areas with tall lights, signs, bridges, etc.

Flying at the deck causes aircraft to count as being 2" above the ground, which is easy enough to have a 2" high hill, or large trees block LoS.

You can also try making some thick forests count as a kind of structure that infantry can garrison.

But overall, yes, there are some issues with the rules in terms of terrain neutrality.