Campaign battles not including all ships of all my fleets

[dagobert dogburglar]

I've noticed that in campaign, when I deploy multiple battlefleets I will only get a majority of the ships from the other fleets, and instead replacement ships appear once I lose ships, all the way across the map. What's up with that? Wasn't this game supposed to have an emphasis on larger battles? I cannot find an option to alter it either and it's really bugging me.

[Majere]

Originally posted by needlenuts:

Originally posted by Art:

When you start the fight, you'll see a "Leadership" value in the middle of the pre-battle screen.

This is how many points worth of ships each fleet can contain on the battlescape at one time.

It will take as many points as possible from the top fleet in the list, then take ships from the second fleet and so on to try and get you as close to the cap as possible.

Any other ships will enter from your deployment zone as reinforcements should your ships be destroyed or jump out.

The enemy suffers from the same cap. What you're probably seeing is that you should be destroying enemy ships way faster than they kill yours, so they have reinforcements from their fleets constantly entering, while you have multiple ships waiting in reserve.

You can manually force your reinforcements in by warp jumping your ships, at the risk of warp effects. This can be useful to save important ships (like your Admirals) if they get focused. I'd suggest not warping out if you're in red crew or below 200 hull, as the warp effects can destroy you.

It's important to note that this cap raises as your Renown level increases, allowing you to control more ships as the campaign goes on.

I understand all these mechanics, but they merely an illusion to hide engine and design limitations with the game. In the last game, modders artifically edited the fleet cap to see how much the game could actually handle. The final result: a buggy catastrophe at max fleet cap battles - which were relatively still small. I suspect the same engine limitations are in this game too, because there is absolutely no logical reason nor lore reason to not deploy all the assets at once, as well as the fact that the in-game battles are still laughable skirmishes compared to not only what was advertised, but what's in the lore.

I wouldn't call the campaign battles 'laughable skirmishes' in the slightest. The last story battle I did took getting on for an hour, and saw me destroy some thirty enemy ships including a battleship. I had ships that were on fire mounting last attacks to finish off damaged enemy vessels before disengaging, Imperial cruisers desperately ramming Tyranid ships and reinforcement marine cruisers flinging themselves across a map at full burn dodging asteroid fields and spore clouds.

I'd say it couldn't have been more epic if it was painted gold and on fire, but the Marines were Imperial Fists so at times they were both of the above.

Knocking the fleet limit up might be technically possible, but it'd just mean more micro and start to prevent people with less powerful machines playing at all. If you take the fleet points up to 3000, say, and someone turns up with all Light Cruisers and escorts, that's going to get out of hand fast.

[Connatic]

Originally posted by needlenuts:

I understand all these mechanics, but they merely an illusion to hide engine and design limitations with the game. In the last game, modders artifically edited the fleet cap to see how much the game could actually handle. The final result: a buggy catastrophe at max fleet cap battles - which were relatively still small. I suspect the same engine limitations are in this game too, because there is absolutely no logical reason nor lore reason to not deploy all the assets at once, as well as the fact that the in-game battles are still laughable skirmishes compared to not only what was advertised, but what's in the lore.

Of course, maybe their engine can't handle that many ships on your average PC. I still think the amount of ships we can use is plenty for this type of gameplay. This isn't an RTS where you just Attack-move a horde of units. Ship headings and ability micro is important in this game.

I don't recall much advertising that this game will have twice the fleet size or anything. I mean, how many ships would qualify as an "Epic battle"?

[Joe]

Originally posted by needlenuts:

Regardless of the reason or the exaction function of the mechanic, I think it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I was advertised larger battles and as of now it's barely a scale upgrade on it's predecessor, as well as a downgrade in quality of life with the removal of autocast; despite their early announcements stating their intention was to *ease* the micromanagement headache, they have made it worse.

this auto cast being gone is A cluster flop

[Connatic]

Originally posted by JOE the boomer:

Originally posted by needlenuts:

Regardless of the reason or the exaction function of the mechanic, I think it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I was advertised larger battles and as of now it's barely a scale upgrade on it's predecessor, as well as a downgrade in quality of life with the removal of autocast; despite their early announcements stating their intention was to *ease* the micromanagement headache, they have made it worse.

this auto cast being gone is A cluster flop

Auto casting what though? I don't remember any autocasts being super critical in the first one. Did the first one have the Auto-Engagment option BFG 2 has?

[Quiz42]

This isn't SOASE, this isn't Solaris, this isn't Homeworld, this is BFG, this game was made to emulate the original tabletop game which has a limited point value per fleet in each game. You can bring way more ships in this game vs BFGA1 but it is still on par with the tabletop game as it was planned to be. If you don't consider ships of absurd size with insanely high crew numbers throwing building sized shells at each other "epic" then maybe this game isn't for you?

There was no false advertising, this is what the game is supposed to be as this is what the source material was.

[dagobert dogburglar]

Originally posted by Sapperactual42:

This isn't SOASE, this isn't Solaris, this isn't Homeworld, this is BFG, this game was made to emulate the original tabletop game which has a limited point value per fleet in each game. You can bring way more ships in this game vs BFGA1 but it is still on par with the tabletop game as it was planned to be. If you don't consider ships of absurd size with insanely high crew numbers throwing building sized shells at each other "epic" then maybe this game isn't for you?

There was no false advertising, this is what the game is supposed to be as this is what the source material was.

if you count way more ships as a grand total of six in 2v2s and ten maybe in 1v1s then okay

[Nukular Power]

If I could just deploy the ones I wanted a'la Empire At War (which is really a great space battle game, even if you dont like star wars) I'd be happy. Or if fighters worked like in that game.

[Existor]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ how Wh40k fans are so whiney and crying...

Every ship have value, the more ships you have - the less valuable each ship.

It is similar to Dawn of War 2 rather than Dawn of War 1. you controll smaller army but you control it carefully. If you wan't a-moving to enemy fleet and drool from special effects, then this game isn't for you.

I really like how they made it so every of your units have some spells to be useful. Spamming spells and having 10 big ships is dumb and boring.

[Left-Hand Path]

The issue in my opinions isn´t the point value in itself.

They tried to emulate tabletop, fine by me. The problem is that you cannot choose which ships to deploy and which to keep in reserve. In tabletop I can do that, even when implementing some sort of campaign rules.

At this point, the campaign is missing two crucial features in my opinion, choosing your fleet composition before a battle and most important: A proper fleet management screen where I can switch ships between eligible fleets.

[Majere]

Originally posted by DJ Geräteschuppen(Ricochet):

The issue in my opinions isn´t the point value in itself.

They tried to emulate tabletop, fine by me. The problem is that you cannot choose which ships to deploy and which to keep in reserve. In tabletop I can do that, even when implementing some sort of campaign rules.

At this point, the campaign is missing two crucial features in my opinion, choosing your fleet composition before a battle and most important: A proper fleet management screen where I can switch ships between eligible fleets.

That's a far more valid criticism. At the very least we need a fleet reserve where you can put ships you have to take out of fleets. Put a turn or two cool-down on the ships before they can be reassigned so they don't just leap between two fleets on opposite sides of the map and I'd say we're good.

It certainly would be handy to be able to pick which of the available ships you take in when you have 2+ fleets. After a while you get a feel for it and it's consistent at least, but it certainly could be handled better. At the moment I tend to try to make my support fleets up of light cruisers because they're pretty predictable and fast enough to get into the action when they arrive.

[Doomfist]

I just skimmed through the comments but if I understand the discussion; that the game mechanics caps the limits on the ships that is allowed in actual game compared to the number of ships in the fleet? I´m early in the game and I miss a 242pt cruiser in a battle with a force that is 200pt stronger than me; and this cruiser is available through reinforcement? Just want to know the game mechanics.

[Doomfist]

I´m in the middle of the battle and I want reinforce the fleet with the missing Cruiser. How do i do that?

[Majere]

Originally posted by Doomfist:

I´m in the middle of the battle and I want reinforce the fleet with the missing Cruiser. How do i do that?

You'd need to disengage (or lose as casualties) enough ships that the missing Cruiser can fit into the Leadership cap. If a Cruiser is only just not fitting in, usually disengaging an Escort will be enough to do it. Once there's enough space, the reinforcing ship will turn up somewhere at the bottom of the map.

[Joe]

Originally posted by Connatic:

Originally posted by JOE the boomer:

this auto cast being gone is A cluster flop

Auto casting what though? I don't remember any autocasts being super critical in the first one. Did the first one have the Auto-Engagment option BFG 2 has?

dude wut ? if u didnt find auto cast useful or use it i cant help you and yes the first one had the auto engagement and yes auto cast is extremly helpful when your trying to micromanage

[R@ndom]

I hope they bring autocast back.