Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

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Max Peck
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Max Peck »

If you bought it early enough (pre-order or within the first 2 months after launch, iirc), you got the first 2 dlc for free.
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GreenGoo
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by GreenGoo »

Thanks Max. I didn't pre-order but I did buy it way earlier than I normally would. I guess it must have been within 2 weeks of release, but that surprises me. I didn't even buy it on Steam, so it's especially nice to have the DLC show up for free.

I've got a few other things on my games list right now but I'll try to load it up and take a look around in the near future.

I enjoyed the base game very much.
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NickAragua
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by NickAragua »

Is this Tau stuff multi-player/skirmish only?
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Isgrimnur
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Isgrimnur »

An RPS comment states that all other factions are skirmish/MP only.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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NickAragua
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by NickAragua »

Well, that'll save me seven bucks.
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GreenGoo
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by GreenGoo »

NickAragua wrote:Well, that'll save me seven bucks.
Yeah, I don't think any of the other races have a single player campaign, just the Imperial Navy.
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NickAragua
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by NickAragua »

I bought this during a recent steam sale for 60% off, and it's already well worth the money. Played the campaign to about turn 14 so far, and got myself a battle cruiser, two cruisers and three light cruisers (of course, I usually only deploy about three or four of them). I love the large, lumbering spacecraft. The campaign layer is no GalCiv, but it's fine. I'll admit to reading a lot faster than the guys talk, so I wind up skipping about half the voiceovers because they're so slow and dramatic.

I've taken about four or five losses so far, including losing some kind of artifact to Chaos. Look, Inquisitor, if you didn't want to lose your ship, you should have stayed with the escorting fleet. We couldn't keep up with you! As I was recovering from a near total fleet wipe, I stumbled upon the tactic that worked for me pretty well (in straight up battles anyway). There's a destroyer class vessel that mounts a lance and macro cannon turret, both facing forward. I upgraded both the lance and macro cannon range to 9000 and tend to bring about three or four of these little guys. I use my big ships to take down enemy shields quick (lances don't seem to work too good on those), then have the little lance guys focus fire on one enemy at a time to take him down. The mission after the total fleet wipe, I had two light cruisers to bring to a 600 point mission, which meant that I had ~400 unfilled points. So, the two light cruisers, three torpedo boats, three macrocannon boats and three lance boats (roughly). Hard to believe, but I got through it only losing one of the light cruisers, even though the enemy outnumbered me in capital ships by about three to one. I think part of it is that the AI isn't too good at focusing fire to finish off a wounded ship (that, and my entire fleet was sitting in a gas cloud)

The lance boats were so effective, I now skip bringing a big ship to bring them instead. The 9000 range means that they sit pretty outside the fight and anyone who shoots at them does so at a pretty low accuracy. Next upgrade will probably be the macro cannon accuracy upgrade so they hit more often. Theoretically, I can also probably use them to chase down stray objective ships, although I've been sticking to straight up fights since I kind of suck at most of the objective missions.

Also: Nova Cannons are good but not spectacular, becoming useless when the engagement turns into a knife fight (and it always does). Torpedoes are pretty solid, especially against slow ships from "just far enough" range. A full spread of 6x torpedoes is no joke.
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Lordnine
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Lordnine »

NickAragua wrote: Also: Nova Cannons are good but not spectacular, becoming useless when the engagement turns into a knife fight (and it always does).
Nova Cannons can have ridiculous results sometimes. I remember playing a mission where I had to destroy a specific ship. At the start of the scenario I fired the cannon at random where I though the enemy might be, nailed a direct hit on the mission target and won about 30 seconds in.
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NickAragua
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by NickAragua »

Lordnine wrote:
NickAragua wrote: Also: Nova Cannons are good but not spectacular, becoming useless when the engagement turns into a knife fight (and it always does).
Nova Cannons can have ridiculous results sometimes. I remember playing a mission where I had to destroy a specific ship. At the start of the scenario I fired the cannon at random where I though the enemy might be, nailed a direct hit on the mission target and won about 30 seconds in.
No question about it, they can be really good at long range if the enemy has stationary targets or dawdles, and are really good at softening up the enemy force before they close in. They get even better with the servitor upgrade. I've taken out groups of enemy destroyers using them, not to mention the obvious utility against stationary targets. Seems that, 90% of the time, the AI prefers to charge straight in though, meaning that you get maybe two or three rounds off before the enemy fleet gets too close.
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NickAragua
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by NickAragua »

Game's still great, but I hit some kind of bullshit bug. There's a scripted mission where I have to defend against an orbital bombardment. So, I group my guys up with the allied ship and begin the festivities. We lose two out of the three orbital bombardments but it's cool, we've got two enemy cruisers left. We take one down, and are working on the second one. We blow it up with one last salvo, and I get a "defeated" screen. Only thing I can think of is that the orbital bombardment marker must have spawned right under him. Too bad that the game suddenly suffered a mysterious crash to desktop immediately afterwards, that was a real lucky break for the AI. I've been playing it more or less ironman previously, but I'm going to keep redoing this one mission until I get my rightful victory.
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NickAragua
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by NickAragua »

I've advanced quite considerably in the campaign. Bringing three light torpedo boats in each mission turned out to be not too viable (they kept getting blown up), but I still try to bring at least one. The "widowmaker" has 10k sensor range naturally, and I improve it to 12.5k with the sensor upgrade. This means I can bring slow-poke big gun ships with weapons that fire off to 15k and beyond but normally couldn't spot a chaos ship until it crashed into the hull. With the sensor boat in the squad, we can engage the chaos scum from long range, rather than having to suck up beam weapon fire until we close in.

Since that planetary defense mission, I've only lost one other mission, where we needed to team up with the Eldar to take out a bunch of Orks. Now, the Eldar ships are great - super fast, manueverable, lots of firepower. Unfortunately, the AI decided to use that speed to get to the fight first and it wound up being the guy's battleship and two frigates against a whole 700 points of Orks. By the time I got to the fight, he had bugged out and so it was just my 350 against the same 700 points of Orks. We made about 3/4 of them retreat, but lost my battleship and light cruiser (just couldn't retreat in time).

I've grown quite fond of the thruster effeciency and instant turbo recharge upgrades, as my fleet is pretty torpedo-heavy and thus spends a lot of time doing rapid turns to line up the torpedo shots (not to mention having to dodge enemy torpedoes, bombs and ramming attacks). So, having effectively 2.5x turbo booster time is pretty huge.
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Moliere
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Moliere »

I just bought this game as part of the Thanksgiving sale. Any recommendations for getting over the learning curve other than grinding out the first few missions over and over trying to figure out what all these buttons do?
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NickAragua
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by NickAragua »

The first couple of missions will definitely help you figure it out the controls. Just remember you can go into slow-motion at any time to better plan out your moves (I think it's space bar or something easy).

As far as playing the campaign goes, it's been a while, but here's what I remember:
- You want something with good sensor radius. There's a frigate that has *really* good sensor radius and you should strive to bring one or two of those on a mission. Sensor radius is important because it lets you actually see the enemy as opposed to blips, so you know where to stick your torpedoes. Not to mention some of your ships have guns that outrange their on-board sensors.
- Focus fire. An enemy ship's performance doesn't *significantly* degrade with damage (it degrades a little bit), so you're really looking to destroy them or force a retreat. If you're pressed for time, you can let them go once they hit the "emergency warp out" button.
- Don't uses lances against shields. Hit them with broadsides first. Think 15th to early 19th century naval tactics.
- Ram ram ram. Get up close, hit the boosters and ram those SOBs, your ships are tougher and, like the Roman warships of old, have specially built rams.
- Torpedo launches have to be micromanaged, but do a lot of damage. Launch from close up and preferably against the enemy's side.
- Stick close so your ships can support each other and use point defense on incoming bullshit (torpedoes and boarding pods). The enemy often tends to deploy its ships apart, so you should try to move in a group to "divide and conquer".
- But not too close (or micromanage very carefully), as you don't want your ships crashing into each other.
- Don't let your thruster gauge run out completely, it then has to recharge all the way before you can use it again.
- Nova cannons will generally explode frigate class ships with one hit, but are awfully inaccurate. Bombs and Nova cannons take some time to activate, so it'll take you a while to get the hang of how far ahead of the enemy advance you can target those.
- Use stasis bombs to break up enemy formations for a little bit so you can pick off isolated enemies rather than have to fight them all at once.

Some race-specific tips:
- Eldar are flighty little bastards but weak. They can avoid small amounts of fire, but focus down individual ships with mass fire and they will crack open in no time.
- Chaos are crafty and love hanging out at long range and using missiles and other such annoyances. Intercept and close in, you will have the advantage.
- Orks love to "get stuck in" to close range and their front arcs are deadly. Stay to the sides and rear.
- If you have a "capture intel data" objective, make sure to save your boarding pods for the data. And then have spares in case the bad guys take that data back.

Oh yeah, and the AI allies are awful. Good luck!
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Moliere
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Moliere »

Thanks for all the tips! Is there any reason not to Execute a Captain about to flee?
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NickAragua
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by NickAragua »

Generally not. It does degrade the ship's performance a bit but better to have the ship present than not at all.

Sometimes, you might consider letting the coward go if the ship is about to be blown up anyway (it'll be out of action for longer if it gets blown up than if it just runs away). That's pretty rare though.
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Zenn7 »

Posting to bump so I can find this easier now that I have the game.
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Kasey Chang
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Kasey Chang »

I can't run the game. It crashes to desktop after I got past the mine in the initial mission.
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Freyland »

Must be an EMP mine.
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Re: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada ...Warhammer space strat

Post by Zenn7 »

Kasey Chang wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 11:28 am I can't run the game. It crashes to desktop after I got past the mine in the initial mission.
Didn't have this problem (thankfully), but found this on Steam forum:
1) I've found that this issue is related to Nvidia graphics cards. Mine being a 500 series.
2) You need to uninstall your current Drivers using DDU. http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/dis ... nload.html
^ DDU is the best way to uninstall your display drivers without anything left over afterwards.
3) Go find some super old drivers for your GPU. Hers is Nvidias advanced drivers search link. http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx
^I used and am currently using the oldest driver I could find for my GTX 555. (2016 driver)
4) Install your new driver after uninstalling your old/newer one. (After a Restart of course)
5) Play the damn game.

(poster was kinda PO'd, very long thread of people telling him his PC was under spec'd after they updated specs w/ patches/dlc)

G'luck, hope it helps!
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