How to use the Blackstone Fortress effectively?

[Sneakimus]

How do you guys use the Blackstone Fortess that you obtain in the Chaos campaign?

While it looks cool and has an awesome attack, I find that it is actually very weak in battles due to its high point cost, meaning that you cannot bring along any decent fleet of note to protect it beyond a few escorts and maybe a single vessel or so.

It is good against Eldar who try to kite, because it can dish out good damage at long range. But the Eldar in this game are a pushoever anyway, even with a conventional fleet, so it's not really a difference.

But against swarming and boarding factions like the Tyranids and Orks the Blackstone Fortress seems to be more of a hindrance than anything. It cannot effectively kite the Orks and Tyranids, who in turn are likely to rush the fortress and dominate in close quarter and boarding. And the fortress itself really doesn't have the speed to escape them.

And in my experiences, any ship that cannot outrun Orks or Tyranids is not long for this world.

This means that while I could win with a regular Chaos fleet, the Blackstone Fortress is actually a hindrance and disadvantage to use against Ork and Tyranid factions.

What are your experiences with the black fortress? Have you found a way to make it more effective? It's really underwhelming in my own experience.

[Azraelur]

i usually send a second fleet with it so you get at least some ships to kill enemy shields,
against nids i sit in the startzone and try to detect them early with fighters/probes so the fortress can kill them at max range.
at the point where you get it the orks schould be dead anyway, so use something else if you have to kill them in new sectors, or wait till the ai kills them.

[Sneakimus]

Originally posted by Azraelur:

against nids i sit in the startzone and try to detect them early with fighters/probes so the fortress can kill them at max range.
.

That's my usual tactic.

However, even if I discover the Nid ships at the max range of the blackstone fortress through Probes/escorts, it seems to lack the killing power to prevent them from swarming it, especially once you meet the nid 2,700 point invasions and above.

[honor]

aim, shoot, destroy

[Hyndis]

I use it to garrison some world that has a 20% chance to spawn an invasion unless you garrison a fleet there. Thats the entirety of its usage in my game right now. The deployment costs for it are far too high for it to be of any practical use.

A fleet of 5-6 Acheron battlecruisers is my workhorse fleet. I'll throw in some escorts to ping and to soak up boarding parties. Acheron battlecruisers with lock on stance can crit things to death from halfway across the galaxy. Turn, give a broadside, crit every section of the ship in sight, then turn away and boost to put distance between you and the other fleet. Two salvos of those lances and half of the ship's systems are red from permanent crits.

IMO, titans need to have a mechanic like the Tau's gravitic hook, where they automatically spawn in escort ships. Or perhaps something like the Tau ability from BFGA1 where the titan has an infinite use ability on cooldown that lets it summon escorts. Escorts would be the meatshield. Titans certainly could use it. Right now they suffer from all of your eggs in one basket syndrome. Its far too easy to disable a single target through crits or boarding action. Focus fire will obliterate anything in short order, especially if it can't move.

[xinrong.pan]

Blackstone fortress can be super op if u use it right.
Here's how you make it almost indestructible
You need to have overcharge void shield and warp jump on blackstone fortress. Another fleet with demonic ritual.

At the start of game, all ahead full a escort into the middle of the map, then let your blackstone fortress warp jump to the escort (mobility issue solved). Now you can comfortably beam down enemy ship.

A blackstone fortress with upgraded shield has 1500 pt of shield, when the shield is down, use overcharge void shield to instantly get it back to full. In most cases, when ur shield is down again, ur void shield overcharge is also available again. This alone makes you almost invulnerable. If you can, have another flagship with Nurgle power that restore hp to your blackstone fortress, that makes it even more tankier.

Demonic ritual can restore 10 crew on blackstone fortress per use, this helps protect it from boarding faction. Besides BSF can't take critical effect so unless it is reduced to drifting hulk it's not a big deal. Boarding faction need to kill 115 + 30 = 145 troops to drift BSF which never happens to me.

As for the offense, put BSF into lock-on stance, warp cannon is a lance weapon so it benefit from the crit chance upgrade, with this u can have 400% crit chance which almost always crit the target. Of course, if enemy is going heavy on carrier, switch to brace for impact.

One very important note: NEVER SHOOT ESCORT SHIP WITH BLACKSTONE FORTRESS UNLESS THEIR SHIELD IS DOWN. Even one point of remaining shield will absorb all 800 pt of damage, so don't waste a shot on 200 pt of shield, use your other ships to strip them.

For the remaining fleet, I recommend either taking Acheron to strip shield from far away or Stynx to protect BSF from carriers and one shot the nasty escorts.

[Hyndis]

The Nurgle AoE only heals Nurgle ships. It also heals for a whopping 90hp of damage. 2hp per second for 45 seconds. Thats it. Its not nearly enough to tank with. A single escort will do more than 2dps, completely negating the heal from Nurgle's power. The heal also has only 3 charges so its not like its a passive ability either.

All 3 charges used fully will heal up a nearly dead escort to almost full health, but only if the escort isn't under fire and only if you can camp out for a few minutes. Its a very weak ability. Never go Nurgle.

[pavel_strelkov]

I use BSF with Hellbringers mk 1. And, of course, overcharge void shield and warp jump. Fighters spot ships, macrocannons bring down shields, warp cannon with "lock on" oneshots almost any ship. Surprisingly effective against Necrons, but in defence BSF is totally OP against everything. Saved my ass many times in campaign during incursions on max difficulty.