Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2

The sequel to Battlefleet Gothic: Armada, this game takes place over 800 years after the first game, at the turn of the Millennium 41. Quite a number of changes have been made to the gameplay. If you're looking for the Wiki for the original, see Battlefleet Gothic: Armada Wiki.

## Changes from BGA1

If you're just starting BGA2 and are a veteran of the first game, you would do well to read through and understand the following extensive list of updates that have been made to the gameplay which are mostly relevant to the Campaigns. PvP is for the most part the same as before, with set modes for ranked PvP and more flexible modes for skirmishes against NPC opponents.

* **MULTIPLE CAMPAIGNS**: You are no longer restricted to playing through an in-depth campaign as only the Imperial Navy. The standard game comes with an independent campaign for the Imperium, Necrons and Tyranids, and a paid expansion adds one for Chaos as well. Each one has their own independent storyline and system mechanics.
* **SOULSTORM-STYLE CAMPAIGNS**: The single-player campaigns have adopted quite a number of aspects from the Warhammer 40k Dawn of War: Soulstorm game campaign. Like Soulstorm you now have to attack and conquer multiple Sectors (akin to a Soulstorm planet), with multiple Systems in each (like the individual Soulstorm Territories), and there are only very specific connection paths between Sectors (like the Soulstorm Warp Gates). Each System has one or more planets which have different effects, and can be upgraded in different ways. The Turn system from Soulstorm is also in effect, controlling multiple aspects of gameplay.
* **NON-CRITICAL BONUS OBJECTIVES**: The mandatory special battle objectives like Assassination, Convoy Escort and the like have now been changed to optional secondary bonus objectives with a bonus reward. Completing Data Recovery will give you 3 Battleplans, Assassination will reduce the threat of the corresponding faction for a couple of turns, Convoy Escort will give you 100 bonus resources per convoy ship saved, Blockade will give every fleet involved in the battle 1 more movement point after the battle instead of being empty which allows them 1 more move (including getting into another battle in a nearby system), Siege will reduce the cost of evolving systems for a couple of turns, and there are a few new ones within the Chaos campaign for gaining special favor against one of the Chaos Gods such as causing a certain amount of damage through ramming for Nurgle or preventing any enemy boarding action on any of your ships for Slaanesh.
* **MULTIPLE FLEETS**: While in the original game you carefully selected and upgraded each ship within your single combat fleet, now within the Campaigns you can control multiple fleets of ships. Throughout the rest of this Wiki the leader of a fleet will be called the Commander, the leader's direct ship will be called their Flagship, the set of ships under a Commander's control will be a Fleet, and all of your forces combined will be called your Armada. Within a single fleet any Line ship can be promoted to the Flagship at any time, replacing the previous one in the role, and this also swaps the crews of the ships so the Flagship keeps its experience level. Each Fleet has their own allowed max Strength of ships, but the allowed total strength of ships that you can take into a battle is always higher which means you can queue up to 3 fleets for a single battle. If the sum total of ships between these fleets is higher than the capacity allowed for the battle, a random selection of ships between the fleets will be held in reserve. These will warp in at random once enough capacity of your own ships has either warped out or been destroyed, and you can switch which ships of a fleet are in reserve as long as the strength of the Active set does not exceed the battle max capacity. Each Fleet can move and fight independently on the campaign sector map and has a limited number of movement points per turn. Entering a battle always depletes the entire remainder of a fleet's movement points for the rest of that turn.
* **STANCES**: The original temporary Special Orders (Brace for Impact, Lock On, Reload, Running Silent) have been switched to permanent Stances, i.e. their effects are permanent until you switch stances or your Deck is damaged/destroyed. They still have a cooldown, but this now represents how long it takes before you can switch Stances. You can set your ships into a Stance during the fleet setup stage of a battle. On top of this, some of the Factions have a completely different set of Stances and relevant effects.
* **STEALTH NERF/DETECTION BOOST**: Stealth and detection mechanics have had the greatest change; for starters only Escorts and Light Cruisers now have the Running Silent stance. All Escort ships of every faction have also been given a new Sensor Pulse ability which reveals all stealthed and non-identified ships within a significant range, and also Marks them; Marked ships are unable to re-enter Stealth for any reason whatsoever for 45 seconds. Now, Escort ships are no longer the useless waste of resources they were before; they are now the forward scouts they were always intended to be and you would do well to have at least one Escort in every single fleet to help with this.
* **KILLABLE CREWS**: It is now possible to kill every single crewmember of a ship. Each ship has a crew Stage Size (Light Cruisers for example typically have a size of 9), and three Crew Stages. The total crew compliment of a ship is triple its crew stage size (so 27 for the aforementioned Light Cruisers). If the crew lost is only within the first Stage (so less than 9 from the LC) there are no detrimental effects. If more crew than the first stage are lost the ship suffers a permanent debuff and goes into Second stage, and the various crew restoration abilities within the factions are typically unable to restore a crew beyond its current Stage limit. If a second Crew Size worth of crew is lost (so 18 or more for the LC) they go into Third stage and take a much stronger debuff. If the entire crew is killed the ship becomes a Drifting Hulk, and is utterly disabled from doing anything. It can still be fired upon and destroyed by enemy forces but they'll typically focus on your active ships. Only allied forces can use crew restoration/transfer abilities on a Drifting Hulk, or the owner of the ship can Scuttle it to make it self destruct in a large explosion, causing significant damage to ships around it. Some factions focus more on attacking crew than others, most especially the Tyranids. Crew most typically die during enemy Assault actions, but they can also die as collateral damage from ship weapons strikes.
* **50% RANGE INCREASE**: In general all of the weapon and ability max ranges have been increased by 50%. The original max-range weapons with a baseline maximum range of 12000 have had their max range increased to 18000, upgrades that increase the range of something by 3000 now increase it by 4500; this is prevalent absolutely everywhere.
* **NON-BLOCKING ARMOR**: The Armor rating of a ship no longer represents a flat block chance against receiving damage. It is now a damage-reduction ratio, reducing the inbound damage to a ship's Hull points by its shown percentage.
* **AMMO**: Multiple active abilities (but not all of them) now have ammo capacity and consumption (typically 3 charges by default), namely Torpedo skills, fighters, Lightning Strikes, Boarding Actions and various other special abilities. So, for example, you can no longer stay at maximum initial range as the Imperium constantly ripping torpedoes off at the enemy sensor blips as they approach you to soften them up as much as possible. As compensation, these abilities have generally been made stronger than before such as a higher damage per hit of torpedo and much tougher fighter planes that are more difficult to shoot down with defense turrets.
* **SPLIT UPGRADES**: The various active and passive upgrades on ships have been split between three separate systems. All Active abilities are now purely held by your Commanders, and only their Flagship can fire them, with new ability slots getting unlocked as your Commander gains experience levels. Basic Crew upgrades have been removed completely and are now based on the Crew experience of each ship within a Fleet. When a ship gains a crew level it gets passive boosts in multiple areas, such as Bravery, Weapon Firing Rate and Weapon Critical Chance. The main passive upgrades to ships have been split between passive skillslots on your Commanders which affect only their fleet, and new research Tech Trees which give you upgrade points as you gain Reknown levels. The tech tree upgrades are typically armada-wide.
* **ECONOMY AND UPKEEP**: The economy of BGA2 has been significantly enhanced in the campaigns. Not only do you have to spend resources on ships and upgrades, only certain planets within certain systems even give you income in the first place. On top of this, every active ship in your armada has an upkeep cost, reducing your overall income. You will need to pay careful attention to your economy to avoid overstretching your resources to a dangerous level, balancing fleet strength with what you can afford, and carefully focus on conquering and upgrading planets that give a good income rate.
* **SHIPYARDS**: You can no longer simply add ships to your fleet once you have a high enough level and funds. Not only are the level limits and costs in place, you need to own a Shipyard with a big enough construction capacity within the same sector as the fleet you want to add a ship to. Shipyards have to "front-load" their construction capacity by building up Construction Points, and upgrading a planet with a shipyard typically increases its point regeneration rate and max capacity. Building a ship from a shipyard is instantaneous but that shipyard will then need to regenerate its points again. Escorts take a mere 1 construction point, going up by 1 point at each size classification. The Shipyard planets within a single system add together, so finding a very large system with multiple planet shipyards will be required to build a Battleship.
* **SLOW MAINTENANCE AND PERMADEATH**: During the Campaigns your ships no longer recover from damage instantly between turns, and outside of the Easy difficulty you can no longer spend extra resources to repair them quickly. There is a set amount of Hull Strength and Crew Count that your ships can restore per turn, with some system planets giving boosts to these amounts, and destroyed subsystems (also known as Heavy Criticals) can linger for several turns as well. On top of this, you can no longer simply restore a fully destroyed ship by waiting 2 turns or just paying for it. Destroyed ships are GONE. Permanently. Which can be all the more painful if it was a high quality one with a very experienced crew, and expensive to replace. Furthermore for your Commanders, if their final Line Ship is defeated via Mutiny they will escape after the battle to the closest friendly system. However, if their final ship is fully destroyed the Commander will be very dead, and you will have to hire a brand new fleet. You lose the game instantly if this happens to your primary storyline commander's flagship, even in mid-battle. This is one of the biggest differences between play on the Campaign and the PvP Battles; while in PvP you have the same system as in BGA1 where you can be near-suicidal with your ships if need be, in the Campaigns you need to consider your long-term endurance over many battles which will vastly affect the resulting ship configurations and tactics.
* **RAIDS**: A System can get hit by a random Raid. Unlike a regular enemy attack from a connected system, a Raid can occur on a system even if it and every system connected to it are under your control. The higher the Threat level of a faction in the sector, the higher the chance of a Raid. Certain planets also have an effect that increases the chance of a raid from a specific Faction unless you have a fleet stationed in that system. The Raid always has a countdown until it happens and the attacking force is always strong enough to fully capture an undefended system. Like a standard attack it has a turn timer before it occurs. You can slow down the attack by 1 turn by spending one Battleplan, or cancel it entirely by spending 5.
* **TIME LIMIT**: The Campaigns now have a time limit, broken up into Objectives and Urgency. You will always have at least one Objective active, which typically requires you to conquer a specific System or even do a special campaign mission, and there will be multiple Objectives throughout each campaign. While any particular Objective is active you also have an Urgency meter on the bottom right. For every turn you take the meter increases, and every 5 turns or so you get a Penalty which typically increases the threat level of the enemy factions, making it more likely for them to attack you. If the entire meter gets filled (after roughly 20 turns of not completing your objective) you will LOSE THE GAME INSTANTLY. Completing an objective always resets the Urgency meter to zero. This, combined with the various economy and ship maintenance factors above all combine into you needing to very carefully plan your economy and tactics. You can't afford to wait multiple turns per battle to let your ships fully repair (not only for the time limit, but also for the fact that the enemy controlled sectors will build up their forces and defences as well and you might get random raids) and you can't afford to uselessly waste ships. The Urgency Meter can also be reduced by spending the rare Battleplans resource.

## Other General Mechanics

Aside from the above, there are a few game mechanics specific to the Campaigns that you should be aware of:

* **DIFFERENT DEFENSES**: NPC controlled systems do not act the same as your own. NPCs are able to construct Space Stations in systems that you normally could not as you can only do so in systems with a specific planet type in it; enemy Minefields will take up one of the three allowed fleet attack slots forcing you to use at most 2 fleets for an attack, compared to your own minefields delaying an enemy attack by one turn; and all enemy forces are able to spend resources to rapidly repair one of their fleets compared to you only being able to do so on the Easy difficulty setting
* **FACTION SPECIFIC PLANETS**: All of the factions you can play as in the Campaign treat many planet types differently; for one example, an Agri World held by the Imperium reduces the resource cost of upgrading any of your planets by a small percentage, while the same type held by Chaos reduces the Bravery of enemy Imperium ship crews. Always double check the effect of each planet under your control before you spend valuable resources on upgrading them, to avoid upgrading one that gives your specific faction a less important boost than others.

## Factions

Imperium (BGA2) (with subfactions Imperial Navy, Adeptus Astartes and Adeptus Mechanicus)

Necrons

Tyranids

Chaos (BGA2)

Tau (BGA2) (with subfactions Protector Fleet and Merchant Fleet)

Aeldari (with subfactions Corsair, Asuryani and Drukhari)

Orks (BGA2)

To be continued