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

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

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.

Ok, that's not right. They should have the same PV limit as you. You can choose to take less, but they shouldn't be able to take over. I have no idea what would cause it, but it seems like you've got some sort of weird glitch or bug.
In 200 point battles I've only ever faced 1 light cruiser and a couple of escorts, sometimes even just a whole bunch of escorts. Have you offended the Emperor in some way? Called Khorne a pussy? Flicked Tzeentch's feathery nutsack?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

So here's a great screen shot of the average mission I face.

I have 1 Dictator, 1 Dauntless, 1 Sword. The Enemy has 1 Goliath, 3 Dauntless MK2, a sword and a Cobra

Basically a 2/1 Enemy mission, where I'm lucky if any of my ships survive. And if not, you'll bet you're last Renown I spend money repairing my ships.

Spoiler! It was a defend the station mission. All three of my ships died less than 30s later. and I mean that literally. I paused the game to make this post at 12:51. I was Defeated by 12:52.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I have 1 Dictator, 1 Dauntless, 1 Sword. The Enemy has 1 Goliath, 3 Dauntless MK2, a sword and a Cobra

Basically a 2/1 Enemy mission, where I'm lucky if any of my ships survive. And if not, you'll bet you're last Renown I spend money repairing my ships.

Spoiler! It was a defend the station mission. All three of my ships died less than 30s later. and I mean that literally. I paused the game to make this post at 12:51. I was Defeated by 12:52.

Do you mean Gothic? The Goliath is the forge tender ship they made out of old Spaceship models from 1980.

I think you must have offended the Emperor, seeing as those are Imperial ships.

Spoiler

My defend missions have only ever been to defend 2 stations and the worst I've had to face in a defend mission is a Lunar and a Dauntless against my Dictator, Dauntless and Firestorm. They had the durability and firepower to just charge through the middle and take out the stations. They did virtually zero damage to my ships and they took a kicking, but I couldn't get a crit on their engines, so the cruiser escaped and I lost. Amusingly enough, that was about an hour after I had said I hadn't lost a mission with my second admiral.

Have you tried starting a New Admiral? Reinstalling?

EDIT: Ok ,scratch that, just got a defend mission with 3 space stations. I had a Dictator, Dauntless and Firestorm and they had 2 cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 2 frigates. I wiped them, lost the frigate and the 2 small space stations and the light cruiser went down to 100 hp. I got a bit lucky in the one side of the stations was protected by an asteroid field, so they could only really come at me from one direction.
Looking at your mini map, it looks like you separated your fleet from the stations, that's not a good idea, you want your ships to be a screen and the big station is a total badass. Thing kicks ass. It'll choose it's own targets but you can use it for targeted lightening strikes and it's a carrier too.
Still not got your focus target button active.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Oh I'm sure some of my tactics lag, but I've found that in the Station defense mission, if you let the enemy fleet get into range its over. They'll tear through the station like a chainsword through a heretic. Even with its launch bays, they can drain its shields and launch lightning strikes and destroy it in no time flat.

But to my larger point, that screenshot is from a 300pt match. And the enemy fleet had 300pts worth of Dauntless cruisers alone! And I find that when I inevitably lose, its not really from poor tactics. Focus Target, or Autoshoot or targeting the engines doesn't make up for a 2-1 ratio. I literally don't have enough guns to fight them.
And that seems to be the game in a nutshell.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Oh I'm sure some of my tactics lag, but I've found that in the Station defense mission, if you let the enemy fleet get into range its over. They'll tear through the station like a chainsword through a heretic. Even with its launch bays, they can drain its shields and launch lightning strikes and destroy it in no time flat.

But to my larger point, that screenshot is from a 300pt match. And the enemy fleet had 300pts worth of Dauntless cruisers alone! And I find that when I inevitably lose, its not really from poor tactics. Focus Target, or Autoshoot or targeting the engines doesn't make up for a 2-1 ratio. I literally don't have enough guns to fight them.
And that seems to be the game in a nutshell.

Ok, well, maybe I am just super fuckin 1337 at this, but after the station defence (which I've just realised is different to breakthrough, which gives you 2 little stations) I had another station defence game vs chaos with exactly the same ship makeup. My cruiser, light cruiser and a firestorm, 300 point match vs 2 cruisers, 2 light and 2 chaos escorts. That was another floor wipe, only lost the 2 small stations. Asteroid field was in similar place, so that helped. I'm guessing they get more points in station defence because you get a big tanky space station.

You might want to hit generators first in spaceship missions. They are coming to you and the station can't move, so their speed isn't as important as killing them before they do damage.

Another point might be that if you've been losing and spending all your renown on repairs you might be a bit behind. Choosing the right upgrades helps. My Firestorms have the extended range lances and extra crit chance. They just hang back out of range like little assholes, plinking away until a capital ship shields go down and then they lock on to crit, while the bigger, tougher ships get in close and take most of the fire. I have the lance Dauntless with the same, so if it takes lots of damage it can retreat back out of range and still support the fight like the Firestorms. I've found the shield recharge upgrade to be very useful as well. Dictator with reduced cooldown for bombers etc, increased range and long range accuracy on the macro cannons allows it to kick the shit out of things at very long range. Fully upgraded flight sergeants make the bombers much more survivable and servitors to reduce cooldown again. Give a cobra extra detection range and speed and use it as a spotter, suddenly you can actually make use of the longer range weapons on your ships and probably take out a couple of their escort before they even get into range to fire. All those play to the strengths of the ships and compliment each other

I dunno, I can't really see why you're finding it ultra impossible and I'm having a cakewalk every mission. Maybe cakewalk is a bit much (the first defence mission felt touch and go), I do actually have to put effort in and carefully manage my ships, but I'm pretty much annihilating them for maybe the loss of an escort. Are you are manoeuvring properly? You have to do that pretty much the whole time, almost constantly making course adjustments, you can't just click on a spot, click on a target and then leave them to it.

 

[XDSkyFreak]

SNIP

To deal with your multiple issues:

are you using the cogitator pause? Just press spacebar and you'll get alot more breathing room.

are you setting up your ships engagement arcs and ranges? Prefered engagement side? This can be done with the buttons on the left of the GUI, you can pick between frontal arcs and broadsides, and engage at 4 different ranges (boarding 3k, short 6k, medium 9k and long 12k).

do you bother micro-ing the skills? Do you stasis bomb fast enemy ships and then pick them off, do you constantly use the speed boost movements to realign yourself/avoid a bad situation? Winning depends on you doing that efficiently.

Are you using Focused fire? it's a really small button just above the ship detail part of the gui, it makes your ship maintain it;s target priority when you over-ride it's movement orders to save it from incoming pain.

Are you actualy ordering your ships? You know, the 4 orders? Reload, Brace, Lock on and silent running? Reload lowers the CD on your skills, Brace (which you should abuse like mad if you are imperial once you get into broadside range) increases your armor, Lock on increases your crit chance and silent running means you can move without the enemy getting a blip he can throw daka at.

Are you targetting enemy modules properly? Select the enemy ship and you'll get 4 main targets you can aim at: bridge (disables his special orders and other skills), engine which is obvious, turrets which will slowly kill all his guns and generator which takes away his abilities. This is further helped by using lighting strikes on enemy craft with no shields or boarding actions at 3k range.

Did you study what your ships actualy do and what the enemy ships actualy do? Imperial Navy ships have 2 things going for them: frontal armor and crippling broadsides. They are however slow and have short range. Chaos on the other hand has speed and range and usualy packs quite alot of fighter bays, but their ships are made of wet tissue paper if the imperials can bring them in broadside range.

Did you bother studying the map? Did you know Imperial ships have such good armor they don't give much of a shit about going in asteroid fields while chaos ships possitively dread the experience? Did you also know that there are gas clouds that mask your ships emisions and you can even fire from them and not get spoted and fired back at?

In you case, I'd say you are suffering of a clasic case of death by lances from 12 km away because you didn't bother scouting (augur probe is your friend), didn't bother slowing down your enemy to catch him, didn't bother running silent so he can't lance you to death, didn't bother exploiting the map, didn't bother using stasis bombs to pin down his fleet before pelting his pinned ships with a full spread of torpedoes (incidently, just the fact you call these useless says alot ... torpedoes are one of the best weapons the imperium has right behind their broadsides and nova cannons) and finaly didn't bother taking out the enemy engines engines. In other words, no mate, it was not a bullshit death, you simply exploited none of the strenghts of your fleet while letting chaos exploit his to hit and run and kite you to death. Even an outnumbered imperial fleet will tear a chaos fleet to shreds if the chaos player is dumb enough to stand and fight. Chaos can only hope to put up a decent frontline only when he gets battlecruisers/battleships, and even then he is better served by staying at maximum range and kiting.

My tips for you: start over on the campaign and this time: use your tactical pause, become familiar with how your ships turn and when and how to boost to avoid things (the orc "ram" is not auto-aimed, he is simply boosting his ship towards yours, quick turning at the right moment and he sails right past you eating a broadside for his trouble). Then when you go back to the skirmish BE AGRESIVE when playing imperial navy. Your ships are armored linebreakers. So break their line. Allways advance towards his zone, try to either box his fleet in OR divide it and devour it piecemeal. Scout with the augur probe, move silent till you get in range to reliably stasis bomb, then spring out of stealth with a speed boost (preferably speed boost into his ships so you get ramming damage in and pop gis shields) and as he is reeling and your ships have entered his formation fire all broadsides and end him. If you hang back or if you just slowly ponderously move towards him, guess what? Chaos ouranges you and outspeeds you. Can you spell "kited to death"? Do this and you will be fine until you level up and get enough renown to buy your first cruiser. Free one: GET THE DOMINATOR. I don't care if you want fighters yourself (won't matter chaos has more and you're better off investing in turrets on your ships), I don't care if you want another cruiser, get the dominator. Why? 2 words: Nova Cannon. It is the trump card of the imperial arsenal, their one gun that can not just outrange chaos, but the amount of punishent that one gun can deliver to enemy ships is absolutely worth it. Grab the Nova Cannon, learn to fire it and learn to love it. It's so powerfull it's actualy getting nerfed and even after what they plan to do with it it will still be powerfull. It's frontal fire only has scatter and a minimum range but if you've learned the above leasons you won't have a problem using it. And hey, if the enemy is close enough that you can't fire the nova cannon, that also means he is close enough to get a big loving face-full of your broadside. So oblige him.

As for the discrepancies in force sizes: yeah, get used to it. Some missions give your less ships than your oponent, others give you more. IN that space satation scenario, you shoudl have used the station to spam fighter wings to intercept chaos bombers with, it's lightning strike to cripple enemy ships and your smaller force backed by the station guns to focus down priority targets.