Sooo....Battlefleet Gothic Armada. Anyone else playing? Thoughts?

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I recently bought BFG Armada on preorder/Beta access because I was going to buy this game even if it sent a large man with a baseball bat round to your house to constantly hit you in the balls (or vag, let's not forget the ladies) while you play.

In general it seems pretty good so far, although my nigh unbelievable levels of suck at RTS combined with larger numbers of ships and the various abilities you need to use at the right time mean that I seem to be doing relatively OK until the larger battles or the objective missions, which seem to be nigh on impossible. Could do with a better way of turning your ships though, getting the things to turn to face the right direction on the spot is an ass. It's only in Beta but some more UI info/tooltips would be helpful

Hopefully the campaign teaches you what to do at a decent pace, because I'm finding that the multiplayer and skirmish missions don't really have enough variety to keep me interested enough to "git gud".

 

[Frankster]

I dabbled with Battlefleet Gothic Armada due to the mistaken assumption campaign mode was already in.

Since it's only the first 3 missions, I did that then dabbled with skirmish for a bit before putting it down, so my impressions are very superficial for now but the first taste was positive.

-Ships having tons of abilities means during intense fights I rely a lot on the tactical cogitator to slow things down and let me manage stuff. I don't think I'd be able to handle real time gaming vs another player based on that first impression, it doesn't help that there's a lot of hotkeys to learn too, so I know some people are going to be godly at this game simply because mass learning of hotkeys is something they grew up with whereas I grew up with consoles and a controller, such things do not come easily to me at all.

-Despite, or perhaps because of this, I find BFG super fun in small to medium engagements, the second mission which has your 2 light cruisers+frigate ambush a single chaos capital ship was surprisingly fun, the visuals help a lot as you can see the ships getting messed up. The fun continued in skirmish though I stopped myself from getting too involved.

-Did not have problems with turning, if anything that's one of moves that made the most sense for me. Don't quite get why our impressions differ on this point.

-Re: Variety. There's only 2 races in the game atm and from what I understand a lot of the options even for the races we do have are missing. The campaign missions we are given are pretty much just the tutorial, the campaign itself looks to be super meaty based on what angry joe's video showed. I think full game will be quite satisfying in this regard, especially if you compare it to other space rts games.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

I was in the closed alpha and the closed technical test. What I played of it both times seemed fairly promising, and I found the Orks pretty fun to use. I haven't pre-ordered it, though, so I have yet to try the latest beta version.
Though, personally, if I were the the developer, I'd push back the launch by a month, just in case, to give more time to iron out any possible flaws. It's fun, but like with any game, bugs can ruin it. I might pre-order it later this week. Didn't know you had access to some of the campaign missions.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

As a big 40k fan, I've very interested in the game, but I never pre-order under any circumstances, so I won't be buying until I hear what the reviewers I trust have to say about it. So long as they don't do something utterly boneheaded like go episodic (like a certain Hitman game), I'll probably give it a shot when it launches.

 

[Silverbeard]

Gothic Armada has to be one of the best space RTS games I've played since Homeworld. Yes, It's that good.
For a start, the combat reminds me of Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, which is a very good thing. In particular, the inclusion of the behaviour mechanics makes the game much easier to control. One can trust the AI to maneuver the player's ships while the player concentrates on ability usage. This is a very good thing. And of course the 40K skin is a delicious plus. The models are spectacularly detailed and damage does show up on the models themselves.
Barring any major bugs, this game will be on my 'best of the year' lists.

Hopefully the campaign teaches you what to do at a decent pace, because I'm finding that the multiplayer and skirmish missions don't really have enough variety to keep me interested enough to "git gud".

Admittedly this is one of the concerns I have for the game- mission variety. As far as I can tell, the base mission types (assassination, convoy escort and so on) are all available in the skirmish and the campaign doesn't offer any more mission types. So we'll mostly be playing the same types of missions in the campaign. They'll have different thematic wrappings and there might be a few story based missions that are different but for the most part there is a good chance that the missions will get repetitive over the course of a long campaign.

As a big 40k fan, I've very interested in the game, but I never pre-order under any circumstances, so I won't be buying until I hear what the reviewers I trust have to say about it. So long as they don't do something utterly boneheaded like go episodic (like a certain Hitman game), I'll probably give it a shot when it launches.

Not sure if you trust Angry Joe but I'd recommend you give this video a look-see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw5V2O7jQJU
Even if you don't trust him specifically, the video revolves around a playthrough/interview with the developers and you can get some good first-hand accounts of what the game will be like straight from the makers. It's very entertaining; the devs refer to their own tech department as the Adeptus Mechanicus and constantly praise the God Emperor. It's encouragingly cheesy: this is the game that the devs wanted to make and they've clearly poured everything they have into it. They remind me of Larian Studious in that sense: talented developers who are passionate enough about their work to not cock it up with needless garbage like episodic gameplay or day one DLC.

 

[Gorrath]

Bought the game this weekend despite my rule about never buying games before they are finished (My English girlfriend begged me too. I am a weak man.) The game is surprisingly well made and fun to play, though it currently has a glaring lack of variety in the missions so far. I am quite happy with the ship customization and the wide variety of playstyles that can work. The game is easy to pick up but I can tell it will quite difficult to master, as any strategy game should be. I have a lot of positivity toward what's been done so far, so as long as they add more of them same and a bit of variety, I think it's a great game for 40k fans and those of the RTS bent.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Gothic Armada has to be one of the best space RTS games I've played since Homeworld. Yes, It's that good.
In particular, the inclusion of the behaviour mechanics makes the game much easier to control. One can trust the AI to maneuver the player's ships while the player concentrates on ability usage.

Ah, putting the ship on AI control is something I've not tried yet, I suppose trying to manage everything at once is a bit of a steep learning curve.

Admittedly this is one of the concerns I have for the game- mission variety. As far as I can tell, the base mission types (assassination, convoy escort and so on) are all available in the skirmish and the campaign doesn't offer any more mission types. So we'll mostly be playing the same types of missions in the campaign. They'll have different thematic wrappings and there might be a few story based missions that are different but for the most part there is a good chance that the missions will get repetitive over the course of a long campaign.

Yeah, while there is a lot to learn in terms of micromanagement of your individual ships, the things you are doing in terms of overall objective each mission are pretty similar. Regardless of the dressing they put on each mission it's probably going to boil down to 'fight these guys on an open plain'. I might be wrong, they might manage to put in some more variety, but yes, I share your concerns.

-Ships having tons of abilities means during intense fights I rely a lot on the tactical cogitator to slow things down and let me me manage things. I don't think I'd be able to handle real time gaming vs another player based on that first impression, it doesn't help that there's a lot of hotkeys to learn too, so I know some people are going to be godly at this game simply because mass learning of hotkeys is something they grew up with whereas I grew up with consoles and a controller, such things do not come easily to me at all.

Yeah pretty similar to my thoughts.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Has anyone here played both this game and the tabletop game?

Haven't gotten around to Gothic Armada yet, but I used to play the Battlefleet Gothic tabletop game, so I'm pretty interested to know whether or not the videogame is a (relatively) faithful translation or if it does its own thing. I'll pick it up sometime either way, but I'm just curious is all.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

Has anyone here played both this game and the tabletop game?

Haven't gotten around to Gothic Armada yet, but I used to play the Battlefleet Gothic tabletop game, so I'm pretty interested to know whether or not the videogame is a (relatively) faithful translation or if it does its own thing. I'll pick it up sometime either way, but I'm just curious is all.

The game wasn't out that long before GW did what GW always does to their side games - take it out of the stores and relegate it to mail order, thus allowing it to die quietly as soon as they realise it won't sell 40k-like numbers. I doubt many people got to play it.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Has anyone here played both this game and the tabletop game?

Haven't gotten around to Gothic Armada yet, but I used to play the Battlefleet Gothic tabletop game, so I'm pretty interested to know whether or not the videogame is a (relatively) faithful translation or if it does its own thing. I'll pick it up sometime either way, but I'm just curious is all.

Yeah, pretty close in many ways. Obviously this is realtime. Damage is a lot more granular, destroyers don't go down in 2 hits. 1 shield basically equals 100 points of damage and so does a hull point. Frigates now have 200 hp rather than 100 they had in the base game and specific system criticals don't apply to escorts or destroy them instantly. Firing arcs are still in there and are faithfully represented for the various ships, as are the weapons, although chaos get light cruisers as a balance issue, which they didn't in BFG. Special orders are automatic and have a cooldown. Any capital ship can perform boarding actions or lightening teleporter strikes.
There are also various passive upgrades ships can earn, like better shield, lower cooldowns etc and a few skiills that add things that weren't in the original game, like a short range warp jump.
Unlike the game the movement is also more granular, you don't have to move a set distance before you can turn X amount depending on the ship type and then move the rest, the ship has a set turn rate it can turn at. The special movement orders, Burn retros, & hard turn are now basically energy bar based, you can continue to fly quick or turn sharply as long as you have the energy to do so.
Ordnance are now cooldown based and targeted on release, so you can't build up a giant wave of death by hanging back with your carriers and reloading wave after wave of bombers.
Batteries have a hit chance % based on range, have a certain number of attacks and do X damage with each hit. As far as I can tell, target heading doesn't affect this hit chance anymore. Armour reduces damage as far as I can tell (or it might have a % chance to negate it}. Lances always hit and basically negate armour.
You can target specific systems on capital ships, which, if you score a crit and disable them, can disable the skills associated with that part of the ship as well as engines, shields etc. As far as I can tell, ships aren't crippled in terms of firepower etc when reduced to 1/2 HP.
There's more I imagine, but that's a good rundown of the most obvious I can think of.

The game wasn't out that long before GW did what GW always does to their side games - take it out of the stores and relegate it to mail order, thus allowing it to die quietly as soon as they realise it won't sell 40k-like numbers. I doubt many people got to play it.

It was out for 14 years dude, while it certainly never got to 40K numbers it does have the usual small but dedicated playerbase that a lot of their smaller systems pick up.

You'd be surprised how many people on the Escapist have and also gnash their teeth at it's demise.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

The game wasn't out that long before GW did what GW always does to their side games - take it out of the stores and relegate it to mail order, thus allowing it to die quietly as soon as they realise it won't sell 40k-like numbers. I doubt many people got to play it.

It was out for 14 years dude, while it certainly never got to 40K numbers it does have the usual small but dedicated playerbase that a lot of their smaller systems pick up.

You'd be surprised how many people on the Escapist have and also gnash their teeth at it's demise.

Wow, was it that long? Sure didn't seem like it. It wasn't in stores for very long though (at least not in Australia).

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Wow, was it that long? Sure didn't seem like it. It wasn't in stores for very long though (at least not in Australia).

Sorry, not in stores, I meant overall. Being free on pdf helped keep it going I think, I picked up some of the models because I'd always wanted more 40K ships since Space Fleet, but I started playing the game because the rules were free, which meant I wanted more models for my fleet.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So I played some of this last night and it has potential, sure, but OH MAN did it need like Beta testers or something. No way these bugs and design choices got past play testers!

For one thing, the camera locking whenever a ship is selected is terrible. Yeah, it does that. Click on a ship and arrow keys no longer move the camera back and forth. Makes commanding ships to do something off screen damn near impossible. I got around it by grouping ships together(which I should mention I assumed you could do. Nothing in game told me so I guess I lucked out), unclicking them, moving off screen, then clicking what I want them to do.

Also abilities lock the screen to. Oh, you want to launch torpedoes? Well I hope the target was literally directly in front of you because you can't scroll or rotate the camera one bit. On that note, how fucking worthless are the torpedoes?! A super slow moving, directly in a straight line weapon in a game where literally everything is constantly moving in circles continuously. Even a point blank I never hit with them.

Full screen mode cutting off valuable mission text and instructions is great. I love having huge blocks of incomplete text telling me to 'Escort the convoy to th-
Be on the lookout for R-
Move Your Ships to the e-'

So fun.

And the difficulty, even on easy, is...well maybe I'm playing it wrong and have like...shooting disabled for my ships or something. Even the first mission, when you have to do a Warp Jump to get out of the system. I barely survived because the entire Chaos fleet was hammering away at me! I had like 10/600 health left with all my turrets and shields destroyed! Because you're literally surrounded, not allowed to fire back, and there's like 30 heavy cruisers right on top of you, broadsides blasting away!

Next mission: Ambush the renegade ship with 2 Dauntless and a Firestorm(may have been a Cobra.) 3-1. By the end, my escort and 2nd Dauntless had been destroyed. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but every enemy ship seems to be stronger, faster, tougher, more weapons with better range and accuracy. The Escort was destroyed in one volley while it was moving it for attack. I won, but only by the skin of my teeth! On easy!

Next Mission: Ork Pirates. Curb stomped me. The Ork Kruisers having a battering ram ability that hones in on you and instant kills you...yup, lost all my ships inside of 3 mins. Cruisers, Escorts, Convoy. Each destroyed with little to no effort from the Orks.

Either I have shields and guns disabled, or there difficulty settings don't mean much, or or manually controlling my own ships is so wildly inefficient that I should just have Auto-Control on, thus letting the computer play the game I spent human money on.

I know it sounds all negative, and to be fair its close. It's really close to the Abyss. It really needed testers or something. These are glaring, obvious, reoccurring and critical design mistakes. And I'm honestly shocked there are so many so soon after whatever passed for its 'testing'
But I see potential. Die hard 40k fan, and I love ships. And the music and voice acting are perfectly serviceable.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

And the difficulty, even on easy, is...well maybe I'm playing it wrong and have like...shooting disabled for my ships or something.

Just going to check, you are using the bullet time and have the "attack move" button pressed for each ship, yeah? Because I mega suck at RTS', I've been playing DoW2 since it came out and I still can't beat the computer on multiplayer on hard and the only reason I can beat it on normal is that Elite mod has a bug that stops the computer attacking generators. I am not good, in any way, and I managed the campaign missions before I started using those options. It really does sound like you're missing something, at least on the difficulty front.

There is a lot of shit you need to keep track of and abilities are very important. I don't think the tutorial does a good enough job of pointing out how vital it can be to target specific ships systems and to use boarding actions as often as possible, it doesn't point out the attack move button and how it affects ship behaviour or how closely ships obey their AI and how different setting should be used in different situations. They should also start with the info button pressed as it marks out gas clouds, asteroids and critical damage to your ships and the enemies. I think the ships base should have the little directional arrow on at all times and maybe keys to turn it left and right when selected, which would allow much better control of torpedo direction.

The tutorial does tell you that you can Ctrl group.

The second mission, the loss of the escort is scripted. 1st mission, you're meant to only just escape. They are basically semi scripted tutorials.

TLDR. There is a lot to learn, an the tutorial doesn't really teach you anything more than the very basic aspect of the game.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Actually I did have auto-attack on. And honestly I have NO idea what it does! I had guessed it auto attacks a target. Except when I order a ship to attack a target, it shoots at it. So whats the point? Does it just go after the nearest enemy? 'cause tactically, that's bullshit.

Also whats the difficulty curve? I was doing perfectly fine on 200/250 skirmish missions on easy. But at 300, I simply get curb stomped. I had a mission to destroy Chaos bases, and I had a light cruiser, a Lunar Cruiser and 2 cobras. And literally before I was even in range to target the instillation, my Lunar cruiser had already been destroyed. Because Chaos apparently have infinite range, ignores shields, auto-hit bombers that can't be stopped.
And they don't appear on radar. You just have to be lucky enough to see the really small dark red shapes against the blurry dark red background.
And truly, first mission with it and the Lunar cruiser was destroyed without getting a shot off.

On easy.


I wouldn't have released this for Beta yet. Its not even Alpha. There's no balance or explanation about getting curb stomped. Like its totally frequent to have 2 light cruisers and 2 escorts against a single Chaos light cruiser and lose. Just all 4 ships completely destroyed as if I'm fighting a massive elite Super Cruiser.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I wouldn't have released this for Beta yet. Its not even Alpha. There's no balance or explanation about getting curb stomped. Like its totally frequent to have 2 light cruisers and 2 escorts against a single Chaos light cruiser and lose. Just all 4 ships completely destroyed as if I'm fighting a massive elite Super Cruiser.

Sounds like the game is just operating under canon rules - Chaos=Lulz.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Actually I did have auto-attack on. And honestly I have NO idea what it does! I had guessed it auto attacks a target. Except when I order a ship to attack a target, it shoots at it. So whats the point? Does it just go after the nearest enemy? 'cause tactically, that's bullshit.

[BIG IMPORTANT EDIT: No! Turn that fucking thing off, you need to control your ships manually, I wasn't talking about the auto attack button, I'm talking about the "Focusing Target" button, sorry, calling it "attack move" was probably confusing, I just remember that as a function in the original DoW]

In a really quite unbelievable move, without that, if you move after making an attack order, it will cancel your attack and just default to the usual AI behaviour of "shoot whatever is nearest". Why you would ever turn it off I'm not sure.

Were you also using bullet time? Without that it is very, very hard as soon as you get to use than a couple of ships.

Also whats the difficulty curve? I was doing perfectly fine on 200/250 skirmish missions on easy. But at 300, I simply get curb stomped. I had a mission to destroy Chaos bases, and I had a light cruiser, a Lunar Cruiser and 2 cobras. And literally before I was even in range to target the instillation, my Lunar cruiser had already been destroyed. Because Chaos apparently have infinite range, ignores shields, auto-hit bombers that can't be stopped.
And they don't appear on radar. You just have to be lucky enough to see the really small dark red shapes against the blurry dark red background.
And truly, first mission with it and the Lunar cruiser was destroyed without getting a shot off.

On easy.

I really don't know what to say. I'm 5 hours in and my second admiral hasn't lost a ship yet, maybe one escort, and certainly not a mission, and I suck at every other RTS I've played.

Without watching you play I can't really tell what you're doing wrong.

I wouldn't have released this for Beta yet. Its not even Alpha. There's no balance or explanation about getting curb stomped. Like its totally frequent to have 2 light cruisers and 2 escorts against a single Chaos light cruiser and lose. Just all 4 ships completely destroyed as if I'm fighting a massive elite Super Cruiser.

The management of individual units is pretty complex for an RTS and they really don't go into any of that in the campaign/tutorial missions. I had real problems with the objective missions to start with because they hadn't really explained the importance of various aspects of the game. As for straight up fights, again, I really can't explain how you're doing so badly. 2 cruisers and 2 escorts vs 1 cruiser should be a walk in the park.

I mean really, only suggestions I can make are bullet time, concentrate firepower on 1 ship at a time, hitting escorts first will deplete their firepower the quickest, get in close and use your broadsides, keep maneuvering for advantageous firing positions, target specific parts of their capital ships, generators, then engines. Boarding actions, boarding actions, boarding actions. Boarding actions. Torps are decent, but they are skill shots, got to lead the target and use bullet time.

I will say though, the fact that chaos get a light cruiser carrier and the Imperials don't isn't helpful.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Okay so can you explain how the Assassination missions work? Like I get the premise. Kill the Admiral. But they seem, literally, impossible.
I've played 3 so far. 1 as the defender, where I thought "Hey, I'll just warp my Admiral out of here and be done."
Instant defeat. Admiral has to stay within the map.

The other two as the attacker vs. Chaos both times. Both times the enemy Admiral's ship Warp jumped out of the area within the first 45secs. Never even knew where he was. Didn't appear as a blip, no red smudge. Nothing. Just going forward, barely out of my deployment zone and DEFEAT!

I feel like there's a serious cliff in difficulty. Like in 300pt missions, I can't take 3 cruisers. Each costing 104, I'm limited to 2 and Escorts.
Yet the opponent consistently gets 3+ per mission. Even on easy I am so fucking out-gunned and out-numbered that, as I've said early, I consider it a win if even 1 of my ships survives.
It feels like the 40k board game where I have 1000pts vs 4000pts. Like...no contest.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Okay so can you explain how the Assassination missions work? Like I get the premise. Kill the Admiral. But they seem, literally, impossible.
I've played 3 so far. 1 as the defender, where I thought "Hey, I'll just warp my Admiral out of here and be done."
Instant defeat. Admiral has to stay within the map.

The other two as the attacker vs. Chaos both times. Both times the enemy Admiral's ship Warp jumped out of the area within the first 45secs. Never even knew where he was. Didn't appear as a blip, no red smudge. Nothing. Just going forward, barely out of my deployment zone and DEFEAT!

I feel like there's a serious cliff in difficulty. Like in 300pt missions, I can't take 3 cruisers. Each costing 104, I'm limited to 2 and Escorts.
Yet the opponent consistently gets 3+ per mission. Even on easy I am so fucking out-gunned and out-numbered that, as I've said early, I consider it a win if even 1 of my ships survives.
It feels like the 40k board game where I have 1000pts vs 4000pts. Like...no contest.

Assassination missions as Imperium vs chaos can be pretty difficult, as they are faster than you in general, and they will run away so you're always chasing (remember your boost button). Get a couple of lance boats (firestrom and Dauntless) and set to frontal engage. Broadside engage means that when they get in range, they turn side on to fire, chaos ship carries on running and gets out of range again. Torps can be quite good, if they're running in a straight line and you follow, once you get close you can launch a load right into their ass. *cough*. Anyways, target their engines first, once they're down then go to broadside engage and target their generators. Downing their generators means their warp out takes longer to engage. Early on you can use lightening strikes to try and cripple their engines and generators, but later you want to save them for disrupting the warp out. Stasis Bombs.

[EDIT: Just read on a forum that the taunt skill upgrade will reset the warp out timer when used on a ship, so that might help as well]

45 seconds? That's not right. The cooldown on the warp jump when you start a game is a lot longer than than.
As for the lack of red blob, it's probably on silent running. Fairly smart thing to do.

As Imperium defending. That's harder still, I must admit. I kind of lucked out on that as I had a Dictator Cruiser by the time I got a defend assassination mission. In general, just try to keep circling the edge of the board, don't engage with your admirals ship until something comes into range of you, but don't stop to fight, keep running (I was lucky, the Dictator is a carrier and the attack craft have massive range so I can support at long range and still run, so now that's my go to admiral ship of choice in these missions). Escorts aren't so much of a worry as your admiral ship can probably take them, best to take out any perusing capital ship's engines. If they get in range to lightning strike, say goodbye to your engines. This goes double if it's a carrier and has assault boats. Also, take Stasis Bombs.


...you fight 3+ chaos light cruisers in a 300 point game? That shouldn't be possible. Chaos light cruisers cost more than the Imperial ones. 107 or 112 pts each. Are you sure you haven't clicked on hard or something? (not that I've played on hard, I don't actually know if that gives them more points than you)

I don't know, I can give you advice on tactics, I did play a fair bit of tabletop so I do understand the game at a base level, even if this differs a bit, but some of this sounds like you've recently run over an old gypsy woman's dog or the devs hate you and have somehow given you a copy of game coded to cheat and screw you over.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Its a real curse of mine! If a game has a glitch, I either have it or are the first to report getting it. Got the BlackScreen of Death on Mass Effect 3.

Spoiler: Alien Isolation

For me all the QTEs were completely blank and I never had any idea how to proceed. Died countless times! And no, it wasn't from having a controller plugged in

Spoiler: Warhammer 40k: DeathWatch

This one was fun honestly! The Chapter of the Marines would switch every mission. See here, a Templar, but the hub says he's a Dark Angel. Mission before he was an UltraMarine. Keeps me from getting nearly half the achievements of complete a mission with an all X Chapter team.

But to Gothic. The very first Skirmish mission I played was 200 Imp v Imp Cruiser Clash. I got 1 Dauntless Cruiser and an Escort(pretty sure it was a Firestorm. Love those little suckers!) The enemy had 2 Dauntless and 2 Escorts. I barely survived with a heavily damaged cruiser with a fire, no deck, engines destroyed, half my turrets gone and the escort destroyed. Whatever renown I earned, I have to spend fixing my ship.