Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Campaign Guide, Hard 

tip Nr. 1 disable tutorial, immediatly kill ofthe 2 weak chaos fleets with spire and sm fleet on turn 1, plus 1 capture with admech Nr. 2 fighting battles with smaller fleets then the enemy will earn you much more renown

with space marines, just field small armies of 4 Mk1 light cruisers and use them to take down anything 900 points or less. send in interceptors and boarding torpedoes to clean out some ships, then switch to firing standard torpedoes (to get the attention of the aa grid) whilst you send in thunderhawk boarding parties using the torpedoes as cover. at this point, there shouldnt be much left, and you wont have been seen yet if you do it right, you can then speed into range and begin to board what is left with boarding actions.

15 minutes of complaining

turn 1 throw all 3 fleets together, take cadia, its hard, but it can be done. turn 2 build a 2nd imperial navy fleet, basically buy a 2nd lunar cruiser with good skills. Spire, and your 2nd admiral, 2 Lunar cruisers, can roll the entire system. take ?Kantrael next, then xersia, take fremas next, then wait till the urgency meter gets really high, build up all your resources, then take the prison planet, the name escapes me From here do what you want really, since you will be taking 330 points of stuff, vs 600 + points regularly, you will be able to field a battlecruiser by the time you take the prison planet give or take.

I found Nova Cannon is not really effective dealing single big target like Battleship, Since bigger ship usually have higher shield values, so you have to follow up with more lances or marco cannons to do the damage. However, they are good at handling bunched up small targets, such as tyranids escorts and light cruisers, orks lighter ships. The only big ship that would fear the Nova Cannon is the Necron battleship, since Necron don't have shield.

I'm on easy, still in Cadia, and am past Tier 2 threat level. This game is frustrating, and doesn't explain a damned thing! Basic stuff, is simply left to the player to figure out. I've replayed both tutorials, twice, and still am quite clueless about basics. The actual battles themselves, are by far the most confusing part.

thanks man great tips. i am having trouble dealing with tyranids. do you have a walkthrough on how to deal with a tyranid fleet? i usually tend to send out probes to see them at long range and broad side them with imperial ships. the problem is when they get close, their exploded husks slow down my ships and thats when my problems begin

Awesome beginners guide! Do you have other videos like that?

Ty

good video. i completely agree with the space marine fleets, ive only been using them for garrison duty. yes the almighty space marines are on garrison assignment. i've had a lot of success with melta torpedo's and would argue torps are just better value than nova cannons.

I think the marines work pretty well in a combined arms fleet. Yes u have to be careful with them, but keep them behind ur navy cruisers and lights, then when the eny is occupied, the are fast enough to get on the tail of most ships, with torps, and honour the chapter and a boarding action, its devastating. use those shields to full effect and time it well and u wealk all over people in campaign and multiplayer. Except those pesky nids of course.

This didnt rly sound like a guide on dealing with the Campaign on Hard, just how the Campaign works and what you should consider no matter what difficulty your on. If you struggle with playing Space Marines very well just use them in combination with your other fleets, if you have one of each fleet in a battle it should be very hard to loose if you know how to use your ships, keep navy up front, Mechanicus in the back with artillery and space marines flanking with boarding parties. If possible try to get Astartes fleets with the Emission Dissipation so they can move quicker without detection and do hit and runs, smaller ships may very likely loose their Thunderhawks so the best way to keep them for re-use is to get in close, use everything and then fly out, that way you can at least re-use your Thunderhawks. Use the Mechanicus to shell the enemy with Nova Cannons which is especially helpful if your Mechanicus Admiral has infinite Nova Cannon shots, they can also be useful with they Launch bays. The Navy you can just get a load of big ships and let them tank, ram and so on, hell you could even get some cruisers with Nova Cannons in the Navy, the more the merrier. Battle Barges are pricey and SM ships arent as good as i wish they where but they can be put to good use. At the very least i wish they could have had more boarding actions if not infinite. The basics of what he says is give to give yourself as much time as you can and grind your enemies for as much XP as you can get. One of my biggest tips for all factions is rank up your Admirals and give all your fleets the extra movement point, your fleets being able to travel one more system can make a big difference. One think il say not to do though is try to tank just with big ships like Battleships, their usefull but you can only get so many of them and while one or 2 battleships or even Grand Cruisers can take a lot of punishment, theirs only so much they can take from an entire enemy fleet.

how are fighter put to best use? defense of capital ships or offensive?

So annoying that the Adeptus Astartes sucks so much in the campaign... Can only show strength in a 1vs1 battle and thats just about 10% of the battles in the campaign. (maybe even less) Only thing i manage to find the least bit useful is 45% bonus crit on lightning strikes and target the engine on eldar ships since the AI will still try and kite you with the engine dmg. so you kill them one or two ships at a time and even then they are not better at fighting eldar than any other fleet...

You and everyone else who bags on Astartes as not being a good fleet are not playing them correctly. I have had amazing success with them both in multiplayer and in my hard campaign. I will admit that they are not as strong as the other fleets you can field but that advantage is only really because of nova cannon spam which is honestly cheap, game breaking and takes no real skill. (see the tactic you use against the green skin fleet to "bleed them"; BTW I took the same system at full strength on hard with two marine fleets and didn't lose a single ship!) The fact is you don't know how to use them or even more rudimentary even which ships to choose. You stated incorrectly that Adeptus Astartes only have 3 boarding actions but because you didn't read the full ship specs or something I don't know, ether way, you were just incorrect is that statement. In fact, if you choose the correct vessels they will have 4 boarding actions and the flagship will even have a fifth assuming you take honor the chapter as well. Just so you don't think I am making this number up the boarding actions are lighting strike, assault boats, the standard boarding action, boarding torpedoes and honor the chapter as the extra for your flagship. Combine this with the skills in the campaign; one which adds an additional ordinance, one that causes a fire from each boarding action and, one that adds an extra moral shock from each boarding action and Space Marines are by far unmatched in power in any of the three campaigns with the exception of the cheap @$$ nova cannon spam fleets which I do use mind you because it does win battles but it is kind of OP. Yes, the Tyranids have a higher rank in boarding actions but because they get less actions total per ship they are actually less effective as they only get 2 boarding actions and kind of a third if you count the tentacle "thing" that only a few of their craft get. You can also take 1st order terminators which make the lighting strikes on your flagship the same level as the Tyranids and then you are basically god! I believe that most people think they suck do is because they don't know how to play them or lack the skill to do so; they require a different style of play entirely. Instead of direct engagement at the beginning of battle you must dance around and send your fighters to take out their turrets and then swarm them with boarding craft and boarding torpedoes while still remaining hidden. Once you are almost out of those actions then you move close and unleash all the rest of your boarding actions and fight them as you normally would in close quarters. Fighting battles this way takes a fair bit longer and requires a bit more skill plus it takes a crap ton more micro and you never turn on the game speed multiple EVER but with this tactic I have yet to find anything that can beat me in the campaign even when vastly outnumbered point wise and very few players on the servers that can ether even with Tyanids; I have about an 80% victory with my fleet of Astartes online. The best makeup for campaign is a battle barge with the launch bays and torpedoes obviously as your flagship and then actually all light cruisers with the same armaments for the rest of your fleet. Light cruisers are cheap and can send more strikes per fleet point then their larger counterparts. Moral of the story they take a bit more skill but the correct fleet of Astartes with the right player is the best in the game!st Sanguinius Death!

10 mins in, and no guidance, just moaning. Maybe this ought to be a balance discussion vid.