28 July

Ranked Matches Now Available!

Greetings Admirals,

As announced in our development roadmap update last week, we're excited to roll out a new major patch today!

This latest patch brings the Ranked Matches and Leaderboard, as well as a lot of bug fixes and tweaks.

Update 29/07/16: We updated the game to fix several known issues:

Fix of the issue where, in ranked mode, if you replaced a ship, the associated skills and upgrades were not refunded.
Fix of the issue where, in ranked, manual refund of weaponry upgrades wasn't working as intended and gave back only 50% of the initial purchase price.
Fix of an issue causing Space Marines Strike Cruisers to have 4 assault actions instead of 3.
Fix of an issue with the Master of Forge.

Here’s the patchnotes:

Features

Ranked Matches are now available.
Integration of the Selection/Creation of ranked profiles flow.
Leaderboard now available.
New achievements for Space Marine faction and Elite Mode.
Cruiser Clash can now be played with increased fleet point limit in Custom Matches (1v1 & 2v2) and in Multiplayer 2v2, allowing you to take 800 point fleets to your games.

Gameplay

Ranked
- In ranked mode, refund grants 100% of the cost back.
- In Ranked Mode, Admirals and ships start at max level.
- In Ranked Mode, Reconditioning is free.
Chaos
- Tzeentch “Wind of Change” now hides all allied ships, regardless of the faction.
- The Desolator Battleship has been modified.
  - Its speed is now 188 instead of 150.
  - Its cost is now 235 instead of 233.
Ork Pirates
- Zzaps Damages divided by 2 and cost reduced accordingly.

Bug fixes

Fixed a bug allowing skills to be launched twice in a row, once with Auto-launch and once manually.
Fixed a bug allowing the same part to be critically damaged multiple times, with its penalties stacked.
Fixed a bug on the “Fear the Darkness” Space Marine skill causing the indicated chances not to be modified by the Chief Librarian crew member’s level.
Fixed a bug on the “Fear the Darkness” Space Marine skill allowing the guest to use it without setting it on cooldown.
Fixed a bug allowing a player to click on “return to main menu” then on “quit” while still in the escape menu, causing the game to load the Main menu then close immediately afterwards.
Fixed a bug allowing a player to use the “Void Energy Transfer” skill on an Eldar ship, which had no effect.
The Critically damaged parts feedback in Advanced Info mode sometimes did not refresh.
Fixed a bug causing the “Warp Echo Signature” to appear in the Tzeentch cloud.
Fixed a bug causing the “Rigour” upgrade to malfunction and allow insubordinations.
Fixed a bug causing manipulated skills to be deselected if an auto-launched skill was used.
Fixed a bug forcing a ship in “All Ahead Full!” to stop to turn if the move order is too close to the ship.
Fixed a bug causing a guest ship warping out with the Auto-launch to have its warping out gauge filled instantly.
Fixed a bug keeping the Attack Orders on the “real” ship if it swaps with the Tzeentch decoy.
Fixed a bug causing the attack orders to stay (linked to nothing) if they are given on the Tzeentch Decoy and it disappear.
Defensive platforms triggered the move Acknowledged sound when given an order. It is no longer the case.
Fixed a bug preventing the camera from colliding with celestial bodies.
Fixed a bug causing the same countdowns to be kept between successive Custom Planetary Assault missions.
Fixed a bug preventing a player to be unlinked from its ally at the end of a Custom mission, which prevent further Custom missions to be played the way it should.
Fixed a bug that prevented the player from rotating the ship in the Docks using a maintained right click.
It was possible to invite a friend while searching for a multiplayer game. It is no longer the case.
A loading screen is now displayed between the Solo Docks and the Main Menu.
Fixed a bug causing Boarding Shuttles to follow their target ship out of the map if it was destroyed.
Fixed a bug allowing the damages from a Plasma Engine Surge to be dealt to ships before the according FX.
Fixed a bug sometimes preventing the Insubordination/Execution part to be triggered.
Fixed a bug placing a long waiting time between the end of the “Attack on the Webway” campaign mission and the cinematic.
Fixed a bug allowing a player to give an attack order on a ship currently invisible to him by clicking on its position (the sound of an attack order can be heard.)
Fixed a bug allowing the timer of a Multiplayer Set your Fleet screen to go under 00:00 if the guest use Alt + Tab.
Fixed a bug preventing the “Restart the Mission” button from working properly.
Fixed a crash ocurring when the Host of a Multiplayer game is disconnected in the end mission cutscene.
Fixed a bug making disappear the Admiral ship during the starting cutscene if the player uses the Tabulation key.
Fixed a bug not keeping the “Locking Cursor” option setting through a quit and relaunch of the game.
Fixed the auto setting functionality which wasn’t working anymore.
Fixed a bug causing the chat to be on “To All” by default in 2v2.
Fixed a bug preventing the Guest of a multiplayer match to hear some “acknowledge” sounds.
Fixed a bug causing the guest and the host to see different detection ranges for the Space Station.
Fixed a bug preventing the Defense Platforms to cast the Energy transfer skill in the mission “The Planet Killer”.
Fixed a crash in the 2v2 Multiplayer Lobby.
Fixed a bug blocking the guest of a multiplayer game if the host disconnects in the Battle Report after clicking on Ready.
Fixed a bug allowing a Guest player to select the same ship multiple times if he clicks quick enough.
Fixed a freeze that happened when a player disconnected in the battle report or if the guest disconnected in the end cutscene.
Fixed a bug allowing the player to select evacuated transport ships through the ship list.
Fixed a bug granting +9.000 range to macro-weapons in addition to the +3.000 to lance when the Refined Lenses upgrade was set.
Fixed a bug preventing the guest from using “Burn Retroes if he used it too often too quickly.
Fixed a bug causing discrepancies between the losses in game and the recapitulated losses in the Battle Report.
Fixed a bug causing an Ork ship that received a critical damage on its prow that to lose all its subsystems.
Fixed a bug preventing the Invoked Cobra Escort ship from having a name.

GUI

Fixed a bug causing the apparition of a small white square in the Set your Fleet panel, on the Escort ship cards when the mission is launched.
Fixed a bug causing the Pulsar’s weaponry range feedback to be an arc instead of lines.
Fix of two Space Marine Captains portraits that were switched with one another.
Fixed the Arcs of attack that were slightly misplaced of a few degrees to the right.
Fixed a bug preventing the Captain XP bars to update while in the Battle Report.
Fixed a bug showing the Elite option in Skirmish Docks as grey.
Fixed a bug preventing the Eldar Space Station Shuriken’s range from being displayed.
Fixed a bug delaying the apparition of the Disruption Bomb’s feedback for the Guest in Multiplayer.
Fixed a bug hiding the Special Order cooldowns if the deck was destroyed but the Enhanced Battle Bridge was fitted on the ship.
Fixed a bug displaying the “Cancel Warp” button for a brief instant after Executing a Captain.
Fixed a bug hiding the Torpedo feedback if the ships are selected through Tabulation in a multiple selection.
Corrections brought to the Mode Selection in Multiplayer.
Animation added to the Mode selection in Multiplayer.
Fixed a bug causing some Weapons skills to display a Permanent Critical damage icon when its affiliated weapon is only temporarily damaged.
Fixed a bug causing the Back button in the multiplayer mode selection not to work.
Fixed a bug always displaying “1” in the gamma setting when we relaunched the game.

Graphics

Small tweaks on Space Marine Engines FX.
Small tweaks on planet FX.
Modifications brought to the Imperial Navy engines.
Less brightness on Chaos Lances FX.
Fixed a visual glitch on the Master of the Forge parts of a ship.
Fixed a bug preventing some Ulthwe and Saim-Hann favour details to appear on the Kurnous pattern Shadow and the Vaul Pattern Eclipse ships.
Fixed a bug showing the Eldar Transports reactors FX to be flipped.
Corrections brought to the Generator subsystems on Nurgle marked Chaos ships.
Fixed a bug causing some ships in the starting cutscenes not to have reactors FX.
Fixed a bug preventing High Energy Turn and Emergency Repairs from being displayed properly on the Retribution Battleship.
Fixed a bug causing the Space Marine Chapter insignia to keep a standard color even if the part was critically damaged.
Fixed a bug causing the smoke FX of the first mission’s space station to stay active on every Space Stations.
Solaris and Eclipse Eldar ships now have Asteroids-damage FXs.
Fixed a bug preventing Space Marine insignia from being suppressed in case of permanent critical damage on their parts.
Ships not yet visible now still play the Augur Disruptor FX.
Augmented the Memory allocation to texture streaming.
Fixed a bug displaying small black squares in the Reactor FX of the Space hulk in “The Hunt” Campaign mission if the Advanced Unfos mode is activated.
“Word of the Emperor” FX entirely changed.
Fixed a bug causing the Reactors FX not to be linked to the ship, thus ignoring the roll of the ship.
Some Reactor FX are now visible in the Deployment phase.
Fixed a bug causing a side element of the Despoiler Battleship to disappear if the Mark of Khorne was fitted on it.
Improvements brought to the Nova Cannon feedback.
Fixed a bug causing visuals to be blurred when switching from Medium to Low graphic details without changing textures.
When a Dauntless ship takes a Permanent critical damage to the prow, it was separated from the ship. It is now kept as intended.

Optimisation

Randomized Space Marines Admirals are now created with a Random Chapter too.
An assertion message is now displayed when you want to quit or restart a mission, to make sure that you want to leave.
Admirals randomly generated now feature a fully randomized fleet rather than a ship of each model.
A red circle is now displayed around celestial bodies in Advanced Infos mode.
A red circle is now displayed around Eldar Maelstrom in Advanced Infos mode.
The recipient of a message is now displayed on chat.
Writing a save name then using Enter now saves the game under such name.
The Tactical Cogitator now have a different look when the enemy uses it.
The Antialiasing Option has been modified to be clearer.
Timeout added to the Ranked Battle Report to avoid a blocking situation if a player is disconnected.
The admiral panel is now modified to fit the options possible in the Ranked Multiplayer docks.
Like Space Marine torpedoes, Shuriken and missile pods projectiles now lose their targets if it becomes stealthy.
A special overlay message “Boarding Resist” is now displayed when a ship resists an assault action due to the Master of Sanctity “Word of the Emperor” skill.
While in game, the Nemesis ships names are now translated.
New Loading tips are now displayed in Loading screens.
The escape key now stops the timer in a change of resolution.

Text

Various Modifications.
Space Marines Macro-batteries had the wrong names for their stats, it is now fixed.
Suppression of the “Alt for More” text of numerous elements. Their base versions now display the Advanced Content by default.
Modification on the ships names. They are now in a more suitable order: Class Name + Model Name (Example: Light Cruiser Vanguard).
Fixed the Asteroid Tooltip that indicated an accuracy modifier of 0.
Fixed a bug showing wrong values in the “Fear the Darkness” Tooltip in Set your Fleet and In-Game.
Ships names written raw in the game are now linked to the localization.
Campaign “Exterminatus” and the “Turns left” are now localized.
One of the Space Marine Captain did not have Capital Letters on his name. It is now fixed.
Fixed a bug displaying the Tooltip of “Fear the Darkness” in the set your fleet screen incorrectly.
The confirmation message in the resolution change is now translated in all available languages.
The Adversary surrender message was too long in some language, cutting the text. It is now displayed correctly.
The description of the “Rigour” Imperial Navy favour upgrade is now explaining its real effect.
All the variables in the Traktor Kanon Tooltip have been replaced by their correct value.
The confirmation message for leaving the Campaign was cut in several languages, now it fits as intended.
The “Back” button in the Multiplayer mode selection is now translated.
Multiple bugs fixed : Decaled text in the scorescreen, flicking text in a confirmation message, text cut in some places.
A text in German was too long and created a flicking.

Sound

Lightning Strikes and Boarding successes acknowledge sounds are now played.
Heavily Damaged acknowledge sounds are now played.
Recovery and Assassination missions acknowledge sounds are now played.
Fixed a bug causing problems on Disengagement acknowledge sounds.
Fixed a bug causing the Tactical Cogitator to affect the time between two acknowledge sounds.
Fixed an error in Planetary Assault Space Marine acknowledge sounds.
Fixed a bug not playing “Escort destroyed”, “Success”, “Failure”, “Movement”, “Order”, “Fire at will” and “cancel order’ acknowledge sounds for the guest of a game.
Fixed a bug not playing “Bombardment mission Expiration” acknowledge sound.
Some acknowledge sounds for the Data recovery mission were switched. They are now playing with the intended event.
Fixed a bug causing the guest to not have any collision sound.
Corrections brought to the Big Red Button’s acknowledge sound.

Known Issues

When the Host uses the "Running Silent" order, the guest sees the "Lock On!" special order icon.
The Imperium Space Station weapons range is not displayed correctly.
Sometimes, the guest can't see the enemy ships in a gaz cloud.
A rare crash might hapenned between two round of a Ranked.

22 comments Read more

21 July

Ranked Matches Coming!

Greetings Admirals,

It’s been just under 3 months since we posted our development roadmap for Battlefleet Gothic: Armada, so we thought it time to update you on our progress and all the cool stuff still to come!

Before we get into the future of BFG, we’d first like to summarize the features and changes that have already been added since launch:

Space Marines Fleet
Online Custom Games against Friends
Improved Regional Matchmaking
Russian Language Version
Chat Improvements
Co-op versus AI Mode
Elite System
Pre-Set Behaviors
In-Game Newsfeed
Subsystems Temporary Critical Damage
Major Balance Changes
New Upgrades

Many of these changes and features were added to the game directly based on your feedback, and we look forward to hearing more from everyone as we continue into BFG’s future!

Here’s the main features that are still to come:

Ranked Matches
Global Leaderboard
Tau Fleet (Forge World) Fleet DLC
Custom Online Leagues
(Even more) new Skills
Fleet Color Customization
Profiles and Heroic Deeds
…and more to be announced!

For further details on what these additions mean, refer to the development roadmap.

The next major feature for implementation will be the Ranked Matches and Leaderboards - we're happy to announce that they'll be making their way to Battlefleet Gothic: Armada next week!

To keep you sated until next week, here’s a sneak preview of what you can expect in ranked play:

Ranked Matches

All Ranked Matches will take the form of a 1v1 Best of Three (BO3) format.

Each player is given an equal number of points (8000 Renown) to create whatever fleet they want. All Ship Slots are unlocked at the creation of a Ranked profile, and every ship added to a Ranked fleet will automatically be set to the maximum level. This fleet can be rearranged before a battle, and any Skills, Upgrades or Favours are refunded in their entirety if players wish to change their fleet composition.

Fleet persistency (ship damage, destroyed ships, lost in warp, etc.) is applied during each BO3, but NOT between BO3s. Matches can be won, lost, or abandoned (which will result in an automatic loss).

The BO3 format will take place over the following steps:

First Battle: Player A chooses the mission (eg. Space Station Assault, Convoy, Data Recovery, etc).
After the first map is played, all ships destroyed will not be able to be selected for the next matches and those that are heavily damaged will not be available for the second battle.
Second Battle: Player B chooses the mission.
Again, any ships destroyed or heavily damaged in the second map will not be selectable in the third map.
Third Battle: If players are tied 1:1, a Cruiser Clash game will decide the winner.
The first player to win two matches gains ELO for their ranked admiral!

Based on this format, players will need to be very careful not to lose their best ships during the first match!

Ranking System and Leaderboard

The ranks of Admirals will be divided by leagues – separate for each Admiral of a player. Each league will be composed of a certain percentage slice of the current total ranked Admirals.

Your ELO ranking will determine which percentage and league your Admiral will fall into.

There are six leagues:

Bronze – Players fall within top 100% to 50% ELO ranking
Silver – Players fall within top 50% to 30% ELO ranking
Gold – Players fall within top 30% to 15% ELO ranking
Adamantium – Players fall within top 15% to 5% ELO ranking
Epic – Players fall within top 5% to 1% ELO ranking
Legend – Players fall within top 1% to 0% ELO ranking

A leaderboard will also be implemented in-game. This displays the best Battlefleet Gothic: Armada players, detailing information such as their Admiral Name, Player Name, Rank, Faction, League and ELO number.

The leaderboard can be filtered to display only specific factions and leagues.

Here’s how it looks in-game right now (note that this is taken from the debug version and subject to change):

The patch is coming next week, and will include Ranked Matches, Leagues and the Leaderboard.

Next week’s patch will also allow more fleet points in 2v2 matches – something that has been commonly requested by the community. The total fleet points in Cruiser Clash have been raised from 700 to 800 under the following modes:

Custom Game 1v1
Custom Game 2v2
Multiplayer 2v2

We’ve also been busy squashing bugs – a full list of dead bugs will be listed in the patch notes next week!

See you in the Gothic Sector,

Velociraptom

29 comments Read more

User reviews:

Recent:

Mixed (169 reviews) - 63% of the 169 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive.

Overall:

Mostly Positive (2,293 reviews) - 73% of the 2,293 user reviews for this game are positive.

Reviews

“A joy to play”
Rock Paper Shotgun

“A tubthumping tribute to the 40K universe, with perfectly grim design.”
80/100 – PC Gamer

“The best Warhammer game since Dawn of War II: Retribution”
83/100 – Gamestar

Customer reviews

Customer Review system updated! Learn more

Filter:

Summary

Most Helpful

Recent

Positive (1,679)

Negative (614)

Funny

Mixed (169 reviews)

Mostly Positive (2,293 reviews)

Recently Posted

Posted: 8 August

I gave in and got this game. I loved the tabletop Gothic and was worried about this. But Its fun sometimes its unbalanced but thats the way it was on the table game.

Cons:
A lot of builds are straight from the net. About 90% of the time you can do a search for Orc builds and it will be the one you are facing.
Some balance issues, but it is the same as the table top.
The map takes a bit to get used to. All the visuals that you can see under the map that have nothing to do with the game can be a problem.
The key bindings that are standard are so misplaced its insane
A lot of elitist jerks on here who complain its not the same as the tabletop game.
Pros:
Fun
Games are a lot shorter then the table version
Some crazy people do play just for fun and not all out min/max, Ran into a Eldar player that loved to ram.
Easy to learn and worth the effort to master

Its a good game, Just have to wait for my Necrons ( if ever).
If you like the table top game you will like this.

Helpful? Yes No Funny

I first played this on release but I was horrified by the steep difficulty forcing me to leave it after 3 hrs of gameplay. Months later, I gave it another go with a more Napoleonic approach to the tactics and lo, I'm loving it! Couldn't say anything about the multiplayer though as I think it is dead by now but I'm not much of a multiplayer person either so it's good.

Graphics - looks appropriate for a W40K game, not the best but it works
Sound - one of the better voice acting and effects this side of Holy Terra
Gameplay - a bit too steep, but don't get shocked. It's an acquired taste.
Replayability - an Imperial Navy-focused campaign; a mode where you can level up admirals + ships from different factions (Tau coming soon, yay!), a quick game, MP. But hey, any plans for a Chaos campaign or any other campaign? I usually play Chaos!

I'd give this an 8/10. Not bad for a small studio. This is already looking much better than Dawn of War 3.

I've got 39hrs in this game at the time of the this review
That's been 39hrs of pure nerd boner.

only gripes is that the missions do get a little repetitive, but are still incredibly fun

Posted: 6 August

my game crashes when it get to the main menu the error message said that the direct 3D was removed and why

single player is broke af A.I cheats all the time ignores rules the player has to abide by and gets silly op buffs for everything also ignores the point values for battles example im allowed 300 points the A.I takes double tht if not more defend transport missions are damn near undoable on anything above normal difficulty because the A.I again knows exactly were things are an just rush you this game plays more like a tower defense game than an rts mainly cos there isnt any strategy involved in blobbing, why cant developers get it right an make a good 40k game? oh yea thats right cos $$$$$$$s

Posted: 5 August

The hype train among the Warhammer Community before this game's release was unreal. While the game felt somewhat unpolished at launch, it was still fantastic.

PROS:
+Nails the Warhammer 40k universe.
+Single-player campaign is a wonderful mode of picking the least-devestating outcome out of your few mission deployments. At least in strategic mode.
+One of the newest fleet-strategy games I've seen in a while.
+Each faction feels distinctly different, and plays completely different from eachother.
+Despite some bias towards the Eldar faction, it's still pretty easy to counter any faction's combat style.
+Outstanding soundtrack
+Story campaign which takes place throughout the 12th Black Crusade
+Excellent demonstration on the graphical capabilities of Unreal Engine 4.
+Ship Ramming has never been more satisfying.
+Ship upgrading leads to very different specializations for your ships and crews.

CONS:
-The campaign in tactical mode is very repetitive. Basically the same missions against different targets.
-While you can still win against any faction (if you know what to bring), there's still a major bias towards the Eldar.
-Multiplayer is already dead.
-While you can do team battles, the fleet sizes are strictly limited.
-Game was unpolished at launch.
-Hard to get into if you're unfamiliar with the setting.

Overall, the game is still enjoyable, but with several large drawbacks. I'd get it if you know and love Warhammer 40k or if you have a friend to play with/against. If you want a good fleet strategy game, I'd get Starfleet Command if I were you. Much cheaper, and much more gameplay availible.

So terribly unbalanced it's barley even playable.

Posted: 4 August

is good game kinda hard and unforgiveing but still the only thing is i swere i saw somthing that says the ships are fully custmizable thay are not that is only disapointing thing about it

Fly me closer, I want to hit em with my Lance!

F**CKING HERETIIIIIIICS!

Posted: 3 August

Solid Naval combat game with a 40k skin

The Emperor would approve

Most Helpful Reviews In the past 30 days

Ellywelly

2,913 products in account

402 reviews

Posted: 18 July

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada, is a real-time strategy game set in the popular science-fiction universe created by the ever popular Games Workshop. The game was developed by Tinadalos Interactive, known for their work on Stellar Impact and being published by Focus Home Interactive.

The gameplay is very slow paced and strategic control of an armada of ships, as you take on various missions, which have a number of objectives pulled randomly out of a pool of about 5 or 6 different styles of objectives. Whilst the game does have a linear main plot line, there is plenty of room for shaping the universe into your own. Outside of battle scenes, you have an overview of the universe, where you can see which planets have been overrun by an enemy race and which you control. You get roughly 2 or 3 missions to complete per turn; after each turn, the enemy will subsequently take over a portion of the universe, which is essentially your clock on whether you are going to be successful in the overall campaign; if you lose control of the galaxy, you’ll get get a big game over, so you do have to focus on missions which are not part of the main plot line. Even if you win every single story mission, you’ll still fail by not completing side missions. I would have liked to see this explained a little more in detail prior to finding it out for yourself half way through the campaign when you have skipped a few turns of side mission opportunities but hey, you live and learn.

The real time game play of Battlefleet is obviously where all the action will happen. You’ll spend a lot of time waiting for your fleet to get into position as they slowly creep across the map. You are able to set your ships into warp speed but this will knock them out of their cloaking systems and reveal your position to the enemy. Each map has various environmental objects which you can use either to your advantage, or which work against you, such as asteroids fields which just rip your ships to shreds. The combat is definitely going to be more enjoyable for people who enjoy hugely strategic games and planning your attacks meticulously; with plenty of micro-management thrown in too. I for one am normally looking for a faster paced experience so I found it slightly annoying how slow this game is; this isn’t to say it has a bad design though.

Armada’s visuals are nice. The ships designs are very nicely modeled, which is basically all you’ll see in this game. How pretty can you make the darkness of space look? Yes the environmental objects do look good, but again, they are asteroid fields, they can only look so good. The game has an abundance of voice acting which is done to a high quality level; fans of the Warhammer 40k lore will fall in love with the amount of story on offer here.

Whilst the gameplay is slower than most RTS games, there is a huge difficulty curve to overcome here as well; the game starts out easy enough with a tutorial showing you the basics of combat and moving your fleet around, but you soon find out that you are in way over your head as you come up against timed missions, bigger and more powerful ships that will easily rip you to pieces if you don’t plan your attacks extremely carefully. I am not afraid to admit I did have to use a few guides and wikis in order to get past a handful of missions!

It’s well worth mentioning that I am basing this review entirely on the single player aspect of Battlefleet, however there is a popular multiplayer scene that is active with matches too; this is where the game is going to get the large amount of replayability that RTS have been known to have. Not only is the campaign roughly about 15 hours long, but you’ll get the added bonus of having skirmishes and multiplayer matches to ramp up your time in Battlefleet to potentially another 15 hours again!

Battlefleet is not without it’s faults though; the game is riddled with technical issues which not only caused my game to crash to desktop more times than I can remember, but there are huge loading screen waits between missions, frequent frame rate drops even when nothing is really happening on screen, and odd issues with controls. I mainly play RTS by moving the screen around by using either arrow keys or WASD, for some reason the screen movement keys seem to stop responding if you try and move around for a few seconds at a time. These technical issues really knocked a lot of the shine of this title that I was having an OK time playing.

Whilst Battlefleet is not my favorite genre of game, I can still appreciate a well made RTS when I play one. There is plenty of content on offer, as well as strategy on an extremely detailed scale too. You can honestly get lost in the amount of numbers and options you have available for customizing your fleet with upgrades so min-maxing fans will find this to a game of their dreams. Although I have praised the game quite a lot throughout this review, I still cannot rate this game higher than a mere recommendation; it’s just not my cup of tea and the price of this game at £29.99 is way higher than you should be paying. The technical issues alone may even give this a red flag for most people. Warhammer 40k fans will definitely get more milage out of this release though. Everyone else will really want to wait for it to go on sale.

Tom's Score Card
1) Stay away
2) Not Recommended
3) Only recommended when on sale
4) Recommended
5) Highly recommended
6) This is a must play

If you found this review helpful, please give it a thumbs up. If you would also like to follow my reviews more easily, be sure to join my group by clicking here and checking out the TeamTom Review site
You can also find me Streaming here, or check out my YouTube channel here

http://store.steampowered.com/app/363680

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Fustercluck

121 products in account

2 reviews

Posted: 29 July

I wanted to like this game. I wanted to, so badly.

Not just as a part-time (non-tabletop) warhammer fan, but also as a lover of fleet battles.

Let's sart with the positives;

- Amazing voice acting; everything you can hope for is present in this department, both in multiplayer and outside it.
- Cutscenes and general art direction are absolutely amazing. Whoever was on the art team knew what they were doing completely.
- Campaign is a solid 30-40 enjoyable hours and the main flaws of the game, while still present, aren't that bad there.
- It's Warhammer.

However, these positives don't outweigh the negatives;

- Multiplayer is an umitigated disaster; there is, at most, ~200-300 players on at any one time, and according to steamcharts that isn't even guarenteed to be people on multiplayer. For the longest time the progression system, the same one in the campaign, was present in multi - one of the worst design choices I have ever seen in a game. It absolutely devastated the mulitplayer community and, now even with ranked (which removes it), I don't think the community will recover.

The fact is, with the progression system if you lost a ship in a fight, you couldn't use the same ship in the next 1-2 matches(you can otherwise spend points on fixing it, but that just sent you behind and forced you to grind even more). This means, before you can get the real goodies, you have to have your teeth kicked in basically on principle and without exception, no matter how good you are, a tleast a few times. And with a dwindling playerbase, the life of a noob got very hard, very fast, as you were put up against pros. It destroyed the community in the single worst decision I have seen an otherwise competent dev make.

- The factions are broken. While Chaos is at a good place, and Imperial Navy is playable, Orks are horribly overpowered (now from when they weren't, they used to be a joke of a faction) and basically can't be beaten by anyone. They have stronger everything until the devs decide to nerf them, where they will once again be worthless. The Eldar used to be unbeatable, but now they are the joke faction. This constant swing between god-tier and ♥♥♥♥-tier make playing multiplayer like putting your life savings on black.

- The missions are a joke. What if I told you that on some mission modes, both in single-player and not, it's literally impossible for you to win? Well, that's the reality in BFG. Planetary Assault and Starbase Assault, for instance, are basically unbeatable as the attacker in both instances, although Planetary can be just as bad for the defender if RNGesus frowns on you as the results are completely up to chance.

- I will quote the lead Dev himself: "I am uncocnerned about balance." Yes, that's literally what they said.

- With multiplayer dead and untouchable, single player is worth maybe $20, not the 40 they charge.

As I said, I wanted to like this game.

jvel305

16 products in account

1 review

Posted: 17 July

Its an awsome game especialy the campaign which has a good story. But I do wish there were more mission types and that you could field more then 4 ships.

[3305] Longscope

625 products in account

38 reviews

Posted: 16 July

Really well done space RTS, in the universe of WH40k

Great voice acting, stellar art, solid mechanics lifted directly (or very nearly) from the tabletop game rules.

It plays great, it sounds great, it looks great.

Multiplayer matches could be a little more diverse than just skirmishing... objectives based perhaps.. but it's still a grand time.

the tryhard rabbit

77 products in account

This is a fairly slow paced strategy game that you can play for a long time without getting tired ( unlike certain clickfest RTS )
The game feels true to the 40k lore, with good voice acting, music etc.
Factions are alot more balanced than whiners might believe.

I've bought all the warhammer IP games, and this one has the best multiplayer by far.

Ginja Ninja

90 products in account

Posted: 19 July

A different style of RTS in which you are forced to think of more than just the current engagement. Reccomended if you like the setting, or you've been looking for a multifaceted RTS that rewards you for taking the time to properly plan your actions (rather than your APM).

With 5 unique factions (and more on the way) there are enough unique playstyles to keep things interesting, but balance tends to shift from patch to patch. You should also be warned that you'll need to rack up a few hours to get the most out of this game.

CYBORG

171 products in account

7 reviews

Posted: 31 July

Beautiful battle in the Gothic sector!

dumpinator

81 products in account

Posted: 13 July

Take note that I haven't tried much of the multiplaying, only played one skirmish game and the campain.

First off: The game captures the warhammer atmosphere perfectly, the games begins with your captain discovering chaos (comon its a warhammer game, thats not a spoiler) and when he comes back and warns the impirium, they first electricute him, just to make sure he isn't a heretic. Normal francises wont do this and this is why this games setting is awesome.

Now to the campain When I first completed the tutorials missions and got my first escort mission against orcs, I thought the game was impossibly hard. Each time I tried to get the escorts to the other side the orcs would just rush in and kill them. I wanted to refund the game, but I decided to try and look up tactics how to beat it. It turns out I wasn't using the tactical navigator or pause button often enough, which made abilities like missiles less easy to hit. I also forgot to activate my abilities a lot, which didnt help either.

After beating the mission I found the rest of the missions do-able, but still a challange. The battles are fun to manage and there is a decent degree of tactical positioning going on. You have to try and cut off ships try and keep ships within broadside range, dodge rams of the aggresive orcs, keeping a eye on ships that have good front weaponry or side weaponry and try and use your abilities with their large cast times to inflict the most damage. The combat is awesome for this reason.

the upgrade system still let me wanting, the upgrades feel kind of boring since its mostly stats up (more broadsides, faster missiles, faster shield regen). A ship is always stuck with the same guns but their abilities can be changed but most seem pointless after you see how powerfull the stasis bomb is. luckly the game does provide you with larger ships later on which al seem to have intresting abilities

I would give this game a solid 7/10 for this reason as the games battle system is really fun, the setting is spot on, but the game has a learning curve that is too steep and the upgrade systems left me wanting more.