It really depends what ships you take, and also depends a lot on the scenario, and even the size of the table you're using and the terrain. BFG is not the most balanced game ever, that's for sure, but there are definitely some Chaos ships which do quite, quite well against the Imperial navy. For example, the Devestation class cruiser (carrier), or the Desolator class Battleship. It's true, however, that basically no matter what ships an Imperial player takes, they are likely to be useful against Chaos (because there aren't any weapons types which aren't useful against ships which have armour 5 all-round, though weapons batteries can still be pretty weak against armour 5 ships unless you're catching them closing), whereas some Chaos ships are definitely more effective than others against Imperial ships.
I find that ships with lance-heavy armaments tend to be better than ships which are heavy on weapons batteries, with Eldar being the main exception to this, though defenses with less than armour 6 (or ships which have moved slow enough to count as defenses), or (to a lesser extent) escorts with less than armour 5, are also quite vulnerable to weapons batteries. As long as a Chaos fleet has a lot of lances, they should be very competitive against Imperial fleets. Of course, if you have a decent understanding of how the game works, you'll understand that lances aren't just good against armour 6, you'll also undesrtand that they're also far more effective against armour 5 than weaspons batteries when a target is abeam. Even against Escorts with armour of 4, a strength 6 weapons battery will often only give you one die, meaning that even against escorts with an armour value of 4, lances are actually often at least as good, if not better.
@@syncmonism And the fleet is heavy on the long range and longest range WBs, less so on the lances. As you say, lances are equal to WBs even shooting 4+ escorts. Altho you can get more on the heavy cruisers and up. The Armageddon says hi to that Lance race for that bracket, same with the BBs. Weapon Batteries like to be in the rear or really close to be efective. Compare it to the main strength of imperials which just hoses chaos. Plentiful straight through shields torpedoes hitting a third of the time, per wave al;ost 2 hits garanteed coupled with 6+ prows nullifying the advantage of plentiful chaos WBs shooting closing. Its actually a lot worse tale when chaos is fighting the Eldar, bc thats just chaos one real strength vs eldars horrible weakness
