Adeptus Mechanicus seem pretty bad. Am I missing something?

[Arcimbaldo]

Always difficult to judge balance between factions, but since Adeptus Mechanicus ships are all variants of Imperial Navy ones, it seems easier to make a direct comparison...and the Mechanicus mainly come out looking like a rubbish version of the Imperial Navy.

They get far less variety of ships, their boarding and morale is hugely nerfed (including crew numbers and boarding defence), they get no melta torpedoes (which means their ships carry only half as many salvoes) and no boarding assault craft (meaning their carriers have half as many offensive strike craft launches) - all really significant negatives.

And what do they get in return? The extra flak turrets are nice, but not hugely significant - and completely useless if you aren't playing against a carrier heavy fleet. The extra escort options are okay, but I'm not really convinced of the value - the differences are fairly marginal, and it's not as if escorts are normally decisive.

On paper, it looks really nice that all their cruisers get dorsal lance turrets, but if you consider it with the other changes it looks less like a bonus. The Imperial Navy can take (much cheaper!) cruisers without the upgrades, or they have the option of taking battlecruisers, which have the same upgrades as Mechanicus cruisers but with extra lance turrets and normally better broadsides. So the Imperial Navy still seems to come out significantly on top in that regard. Also lances feel really weak at the moment anyway.

It seems like the only significant advantage Mechanicus get is access to loads of nova cannons. And obviously those can be very powerful, but it makes it seem like there's only one viable play-style for Mechanicus. If you aren't just spamming cruisers with nova cannons, you might as well be playing as Imperial Navy - playing Mechanicus is just an artificial handicap.

Am I missing something? Is there some significant bonus that I've not noticed?

Negatives

• no Dauntless light cruisers
  
• no battlecruisers
  
• no grand cruisers
  
• only one battleship
  
• nerfed boarding
  
• nerfed morale
  
• few torpedo-armed options
  
• no melta torpedoes

Positives

• nova cannon spam
  
• some extra flak turrets
  
• a couple of extra escort options
  
• ...err...that's it?

Worth comparing it to the tabletop as well, where Mechanicus on the face of it looked much stronger. For one thing, they had access to all the same battleships as the imperials. More significantly - they had loads of options. The fact there's no customisation in-game for individual ships doesn't help here.

But on tabletop, it wasn't that every Mechanicus cruiser had a nova cannon - it's that they had the option of taking one. And similarly they could choose to upgrade to longer ranged plasma macrocannons, and had access to special upgraded torpedoes - whereas in-game, they actually have worse torpedoes for some reason!

How would I fix them?

The other factions seem to have all their different tabletop options represented as separate ships, so why not give Mechanicus access to alternate versions of their cruisers which drop the nova cannons for torpedoes, and upgrade to longer-ranged plasma macrocannons. Also give them back their battleships.

And the carriers should get 6 wings of bombers, to replace the lost assault boats. Similarly, if they're not allowed melta torpedoes (why not???), they surely ought to have six salvoes of regular torpedoes.

If the problem's that nova cannons are OP, so everything else in the Mechanicus fleet needs to be artificially nerfed, then really they should just nerf the novacannons. Nobody enjoys playing against cheesy novacannon spam, and Mechanicus players don't enjoy only having one viable playstyle. Either make novacannons weaker, longer cooldown, etc, oe more expensive, or just give Mechanicus fewer novacannon options. Less cheese, more options please.

EDIT: Also, in tabletop they had access to 'gifts of the mechanicus' which was randomised per ship so hard to model exactly in game, but could end up giving their ships upgraded weapons, engines, shields, etc compared to the baseline. If anything, was more similar to the upgrade system in the first game

[juxstapo]

+1 I've heard the question "why does no one takes admech" several times also and I was just as perplexed by their apparent lack of strengths

[Gekko]

Admech are in soo much trouble if they come against a fleet that likes to board. As SM I have won shockingly quick battles against them, especially when you rush their capital ships. There is literally no chance.

In 2 vs 2 they are more viable if there brawler holding the line.

[Grand Hazzard]

The Mechanicus Ark is the worst point sink in the game right now. It has no fighters to defend itself, is slow as ♥♥♥♥ and gets taken down by any half hearted boarding attempt.

You have to bring a seperate fighter cruiser to escoprt it or it will be killed by boarding torpedoes, and for all this you still get outshot by almost any battlecruiser out there.

Worst ship for the points around.

The cruisers are better, but they are too expensive. Mechanicus suffers same problem as all the fleets: The Devs want to keep the original "pts" values from the tabletop, but this just makes choosing a fleet no fun.

After enough games you realize there are certain combos that are just so clearly the best because of the odd pts system. Calling all Admech cruisers a flat 200 pts and then balancing their weapons to make them equal but different..... this is the only way to make the game pvp competetive. At least with that system the devs can actually tweak things and make it better.

Sticking with the old pts values is propbably the biggest failing of this game.

[The Mogician]

The Ark Mechanicus is currently one of the worst ships there is, not to mention capital ships. When you compare it to its Imperial Navy cousin, let's take Retribution class for example, for they have similar point values, the Ark's broadside and lance attacks can't even remotely compare to the Retribution class, the Retribution has torpedos while the Ark has a Nova Cannon. The Nova Cannon is fairly slow and you have to tie down the enemy ships if you want to use it, a feat extremely hard for the Mechanicus due to it's poor boarding stats. Therefore, I think the Ark Mechanicus is a pretty bad ship in the current state.

[::Maethendias::]

not to mention they have the same amount of shields as navi too...

[Androas]

Could add "Canticles of the omnisiah" which admech get in 40K (Tabletop) as a group of secondar buffs/stances, like:

"incantation of the iro soul" Reduce moral loss by 50% or Cap moral at 100 (cant get lower or higher for the duration)
"Litany of the Electromancer" Add 1-3 Troop damage per boarding Action / Reduce damage taken by Boarding actions by 1-3 Troop Damage
"Chant of the remorseless fist" Add 20% crit chance to boarding actions
"Shroudpsalm" all ships gain stealth for the duration
"Invocation of machine Might" Higher crit chance for Macro/Lance weapons
"Benediction of the omnisiah" Higher accuracy for all weapons

Would be in line with fluff (at least more current fluff) and give admech a few good options and adaptability

[Eclipse]

Their light cruisers have the strongest broadside. And they are cheap. Not sure is this a bonus or not but may be it is possible to build something like all stealth light cruisers. But likely this won't work as in BG2 all escorts have sensors.

[ColdWonder]

The thing is they dont really have the dps or kiteing power to be a real ranged fleet.
So you will end up brawling and all you got is cruiser brawlers with shockingly poor troops.

You can still win if you land some nova cannons and skills but ot have every match so dependant on landing skill-shots is pretty unforgiving.