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I wanted to start a thread on this game since the beta opened up yesterday!
Personally, i've played the Prologue, as well as a handful of 1v1s vs AI.

I've come away with a few impressions.

I LOVE how they simplified using abilities in your fleet. If you have 5 ships with the same ability selected, click the ability, and click repeatedly, more ships will, for example, launch strike craft.
So far, the balance feels pretty solid, it took me a bit to knock the rust off, but its definitely a polished version of BFG1, which I fell in love with.

The promise for 4 distinct campaigns is....really neat, i can't wait to see what they entail. The larger fleet size and UI optimization is promising as well.

What are your take aways, thoughts, and hopes for the full release in January?

Quick Reference
BB = Battleship
GC = Grand Cruiser
BC = Battlecruiser
CA = Heavy Cruiser/Cruiser
CL = Light Cruiser
DD = Escorts/Destroyers/Frigates

What are the point values like now? More in line with their tabletop values? How many ships are in a battle now?

I'm tempted to get it, especially as a returning player with a 25% discount, but my gaming agenda is a little full between Forza, Stellaris, Civ, and the other Paradox games. If its a more faithful reconstruction of the tabletop, I'll have to jump in though.

A few questions:

1) Are fleet sizes bigger?

My main contention with the first game was that the way the points scaled as you levelled up you could take bigger and more impressive ships, but they cost more in points. So by the end you still have the same number of ships, just bigger ones. So I this game can you take more ships, can you feel like you're commanding a fleet rather than a strike team

2) How is the levelling dealt with. In the first game, even in skirmish, you had to level up a character for each race (at least one) to get access to higher level ships.So if you wanted to play one faction for a while it was great, but any faction you didn't play a lot was stuck with lower level ships; which meant you couldn't just stop playing Chaos and go play with top end Imperial Warships.

3) Detail scaling as you zoom. In the original the details in the engine were a little fuzzy at some zoom levels. How has this stood up in the newer engine and version of the game.

4) How satisfying is nomming ships as Tyranids - its is half as good as I imagine it could be?!

1. So far, the base level points for 1v1 is 1200 (can be increased/decreased), and the ships have costed the same for me regardless of that value, so the fleets actually do get larger now. As Necrons (The most expensive ships) i can take a BB/BC/x2 CL and Escorts fairly easily. If i didn't love battleships, i could take x2BC, a whole mess of CL, and escorts. Its a lot more flexible i've found.


2. In skirmish you have access to all of the ships for all factions at the start. Certain admiral skills are locked until your character is leveled it appears.

3. So far, graphics have been great, My rig is running them on 'Epic" so, YMMV, but i've been impressed thusfar. My only issue is that sometimes strike craft wings in the beta have been very, very hard to spot.

4. So far, I have not played as them yet. However, with the way boarding works now. It looks absolutely vicious. I'll report back once I've given them a spin!


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 Blacksails wrote:
What are the point values like now? More in line with their tabletop values? How many ships are in a battle now?

I'm tempted to get it, especially as a returning player with a 25% discount, but my gaming agenda is a little full between Forza, Stellaris, Civ, and the other Paradox games. If its a more faithful reconstruction of the tabletop, I'll have to jump in though.

Let me see here, with the values in place, I'd say they were fairly faithful to the table top. A cairn class battleship tips the scales as the most expensive at 500.
Most imperial battleships are around 260-320 points, with most escorts in the 30-60 range. Most light cruisers are between 100 to 170
So far, it all seems fairly appropriate to me.
(The 25% discount for returning customers was a big selling point for me as well)

Those values seem fairly appropriate, much closer than the original anyways. Glad to hear the fleets got bigger too.

Thanks for answering, might have to pick it up over Xmas break if I get the time.

Playing the beta at the moment and it has some serious issues, I would expect the game to be delayed from a January release if they want it finished, biggest issue I have found so far is a severe memory bleed caused by clicking the create custom fleet or view fleet UI.

Other than that the game is shaping up quite well, fleets are larger characters scale is larger, but slower, which I prefer, I’ve also heard this one will have mod support, which I hope is true.

 Formosa wrote:
Playing the beta at the moment and it has some serious issues, I would expect the game to be delayed from a January release if they want it finished, biggest issue I have found so far is a severe memory bleed caused by clicking the create custom fleet or view fleet UI.

Other than that the game is shaping up quite well, fleets are larger characters scale is larger, but slower, which I prefer, I’ve also heard this one will have mod support, which I hope is true.

Hrm...hadn't encountered that one yet, however, that is I'm sure something they're being made aware of. I'd love to see it patched

They are aware I sent a message in and got a reply straight away, gave them my error report and dxdiag.

Playing it now on my gaming laptop and it runs a bit smoother , really enjoying the fleet engagements I’m having so far, tyranids being a real threat against my marine fleet, so far I’ve trashed tau, eldar and ork fleets by ramming and boarding all over the place, even better is that frigates actually have a place in this game, objective grabbers and wolf packs jumping on lone cruisers sent to grab objectives.

Nice! Sounds like thats really the Bug's best way to fight is ramming/boarding.
In the matches I played against them, their shooting/durability was pretty poor, but that full speed ahead thing is pretty neat.

Here's a question, how is sneaking now. In the first game it was sort of useless in many ways. You still sent a ping where your ship was and since closing with the enemy was basically the requirement on nearly every map even if you didn't know what ship was what you'd mostly all be closing to the same point to find out. Plus a detection probe was pretty easy to get and standard for all races.

Most ships have a run silent stance to become (INVISIBLE) on the map when out of sensor range.

Several ships start cloaked, and thus invisible on the map until hit with a sensor etc.

Once you get closer, you get the red dot.

Being completely invisible is totally new though. Detection probes are still there, but you have to spend a captain skill point to get them basically. Not as good as they were.

Not really liking it (and this is *me* talking about something *BFG*)

Main issue is that multiplayer is horribly bugged. Agree with the above, don't expect this to make it's release date if they're going to release a finished game.

No single player skirmish mode as of yet either, and they don't sound like they're going to add one.

Disappointed with how much of the ship customization in the first game has been removed,

No skirmish vs AI is a big letdown - and as they've got a campaign they must have an AI so why leave that out? Unless skirmish VS AI is hidden in multiplayer (I've seen a few games do that but not many)

what do you mean no skirmish? I got the beta too, and it's in the multiplayer section on the left hand side of the fleet creation stuff. It won't give you experience to unlock stuff, but you can still definatly do it! heck the first four hours I played was against the AI.

I personaly been liking the game so far, but my computer is getting too old to play it at high graphics (and at low it's still chugging). It's really buggy and the deisgn elements are different enough to be annoying compared to the first but I'll get over it.




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I have played four hours so far, and the fleet I have been enjoying the most is the boys I have been waiting for for so long: the admech. They are ridiculous! every ship has a nova cannon, and It's been hilarious launching a fleet wide volley on the enemy. the skirmish mode has been fun so far, and the AI swing between very competent and dumb as bricks at times. that isn't to say there is no challenge, but there is some easiness when you know how to play, and the ai doesn't really know how to avoid nova cannons,..

My only trouble is that half the abilities are locked behind multiplayer ranked gameplay progression, and I personally am never good at RTS multiplayer. I like being able to slow down time to make decisions and you just cannot do that in multiplayer. The admec fleet is fun but I need more paitence than I have time to really get a good grasp on multiplayer stuff with them, so It's a bit saddening to be absolutely trashed left and right... though I will say the battles I won were so, so sweet.

What are you guys talking about? I've played hours of skirmish vs AI so far. It's been quite fun. The AI has a weird quirk however where it always launches all fighters at my flagship as soon as the match starts, even though it is not revealed...dunno why.

 iGuy91 wrote:
What are you guys talking about? I've played hours of skirmish vs AI so far. It's been quite fun. The AI has a weird quirk however where it always launches all fighters at my flagship as soon as the match starts, even though it is not revealed...dunno why.

When did you download, because I got a massive patch this morning.

I downloaded the day it became available.
I've heard some folks can't play vs AI, some folks can't play vs people? iunno

Honestly the last two nights had the anti-cheat software bugger my game start up, which killed the small window of time I had to play :(

I hope they fix some of the weirder bugs. But then again, Its an actual beta, so hopefully they can iron them out before the 2nd beta and final release. I can't wait to get home and play later.

I feel as though each faction *feels* right in game as far as playstyle, minus various numbers tweaks perhaps for balancing.

Watching videos, I've put off by a couple things.

The ships are rather dark and often don't stand out against the map. The shield and hull indicators do, but the ships themselves are too often fuzzy shapes blending into the overly detailed and colorful background (EnterElysium has an Eldar vs Tau video up, and the map is obscured by a giant orange planet in the background

Second, the focus on capturing 'strategic objective' in space is rather odd. Its space. Why are specific patches of emptiness contributing to winning?

I'm really looking forward to BFG2, but the seeming removal of career skirmish (the unlocking one) against the AI is a bit of a downer.

The 25% discount might get me over the line, but it still needing so much wprk after already being delayed once is making me hesitant.

Voss probably because it removes simple destruction as the only objective - which was basically about the only one in the first game.

As for the removal of career skirmish I think its a good move. They could, if wanted, add an open campaign mode where you level up a captain and fleet, but it would just be skirmish maps linked together unless they gave it a Total War style galactic map to conquer.


Thing is whilst the career skirmish feels fun for a while, its a major pain if you just want to casually play a faction on a once off and don't want to be limited to the beginner ships for it. Right now if I want to play, for example, Eldar I've got to grind hours of battles just to get to their top tier warships.

The other issue is that if you wanted to play in the middle or small scale battles you can't unless you start a new captain - so it weakens things on both ends.

So, last two nights the game crashed on my pic and I couldn't play without restarting, so not to happy there...

I honestly wish there was just cruiser clash mixed in with the point capture games. I want to see how my fleet does in combat and not worry about capturing random points in the map. Honestly the random points in the map makes no sense, as they protect nothing most of the time and offer no value outside of 'hey, park ships here!'

If they contained some special in game model that does nothing I would appreciate it more, but for now it's a little off and artificial

I'm kind of disappointed they're using the original Tau BFG ships. The Explorer was the worst model in the game imo. I was given one as a present by some friends trying to get me to play because I played Tau in 40k at the time. I promptly bought some Dark Eldar ships instead. I would have happily gotten Tau if the ships looked a tiny bit interesting.

To be fair, Tau get 2 whole bloody fleets to play with for some reason. So, you got that going for you at least.

As a side note, at least for the factions i play, it felt like escorts were a waste. They just die so darn easily. Only really helpful for scouting and adding AA fire vs fighters.

decided to re write the EXE and block its access to the internet so i can keep playing the beta.


So far I have noticed that

Ork: Are either balls to the wall OP or a joke depending on fleet and matchup, so not too fussed here

Marines: are completely broken, in a bad way, they simply do not work in this game at the role they are supposed to have, terrible fleet.

Craftworlds/Corsair/Dark eldar: the micromanagers dream fleet, stop and you die, dont play orks, they will eat you alive.

Necrons: solar burst is the only thing keeping them playable, they are a very bad fleet at the moment, everything is over costed to create artificial rareness of ships, but the ships dont stand up to the hight cost.

Imperial navy: spam spam spam.... spam spam spam.... spam!!! serial... the vengeance is so much better than most everything else.

Chaos: all the tier 10 abilities are sucky, but chaos is chaos, kiting, bomber spam, lance spam etc. fun playing world eaters and beating space marines at their own job.

Tau merchant: should not exist, this fleet needs to be rolled up into the normal tau fleet.

Tau fleet: these guys got hit by the nerf bat hard, and rightly so, their mantas are worthless at the moment due to the +100% accuracy for turrets due to brace, but all round a fun fleet to play.

Tyranids: bugged... ha! the boarding tube things are bugged at the moment, 1 or 2 hits can insta gib a BS, other than that this fleet is hella fun to play, being auto stealthed at the start of the game and setting up ambushes is great fun, AI can see you regardless so it only works on players.

 Formosa wrote:
decided to re write the EXE and block its access to the internet so i can keep playing the beta.


So far I have noticed that

Ork: Are either balls to the wall OP or a joke depending on fleet and matchup, so not too fussed here

Marines: are completely broken, in a bad way, they simply do not work in this game at the role they are supposed to have, terrible fleet.

Craftworlds/Corsair/Dark eldar: the micromanagers dream fleet, stop and you die, dont play orks, they will eat you alive.

Necrons: solar burst is the only thing keeping them playable, they are a very bad fleet at the moment, everything is over costed to create artificial rareness of ships, but the ships dont stand up to the hight cost.

Imperial navy: spam spam spam.... spam spam spam.... spam!!! serial... the vengeance is so much better than most everything else.

Chaos: all the tier 10 abilities are sucky, but chaos is chaos, kiting, bomber spam, lance spam etc. fun playing world eaters and beating space marines at their own job.

Tau merchant: should not exist, this fleet needs to be rolled up into the normal tau fleet.

Tau fleet: these guys got hit by the nerf bat hard, and rightly so, their mantas are worthless at the moment due to the +100% accuracy for turrets due to brace, but all round a fun fleet to play.

Tyranids: bugged... ha! the boarding tube things are bugged at the moment, 1 or 2 hits can insta gib a BS, other than that this fleet is hella fun to play, being auto stealthed at the start of the game and setting up ambushes is great fun, AI can see you regardless so it only works on players.

I think i agree on pretty much all points.
I'm not sure however how to fix marines. Battle Barges should be cheaper, and I'd think they should have some kind of extreme resistance to boarding and better boarding...
Tau should be a single faction.
Not sure how to tweak Necrons. Maybe make Starpulse a limited use ability, and increase RoF, slight price decreases?

how did you find the admec fleet so far, Formosa?

I found AdMech for some reason has just...god awful morale...its so easy to make them run...

Otherwise, only thing they have is a bucket of Nova Cannons. They're significantly weaker than Imperial Navy

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
how did you find the admec fleet so far, Formosa?

They dont play how they should play, they can and do spam nova cannons but as soon as you get close... even Tau can out board them, IIRC they have the lowest crew rating in the game, not skill but numbers, its so easy to hulk them, the Ark mechanicus is pretty beefy though and has a pretty good ram bonus built in, but that means getting close... which you dont want to do.