Necron ships are very weak.

[gpavlidis94]

I started the necron campaign 2 days ago and I'm really diasappointed by Necrons. Their ship's get light and heavy ctitical damages way to easily and the star pulse ability doesn't do the 200 points damage as advertised. Is it just me or a general opinion?

[Necroledo]

Originally posted by Primagen:

The biggest problems with Necrons is that they only have 2 gun types thats it.... all their ships do the same thing they just get bigger and slower. So even if they buffed them... without differentiating the ships they will just be better but still boring.

Necron ships actually have 3 weapon types: lightning arcs, particle whips and gauss. But you're right on the boring thing: it'd be nice to have much greater variety of ships with different combinations of weapons (maybe some only having one type, but many).

[FroGG2]

the problem with necron is not diversity. most other races have the same amount of weapons but they are doing something contrary to necron weapons

[Lord Holland of Wessex]

Quoted form Quasar above:
Things I'd like changed/added:
- More ship variety. They're by far the faction with the least options, and for no real reason, since other factions like Drukhari and Tyranids simply got, for a given hull, all possible weapon variations as separate ships. Why couldn't Necrons get the same?
- When Scythes survive their runs and come back to their mothership, they don't give you back a charge, like other factions do. So eventually you run out of squadrons even if they always survive. I'm willing to bet this is a bug, because there's no reason for them to not get it back... especially when we're talking Necron technology.
- Pyramidal Reconstruction should be an inbuilt admiral ability. As they're so easy to crit, it's pretty much a must-pick, and that removes tactical flexibility. Let's see how the new crit chances work out for them first, though. [/quote]

Some ships with ramming ability would be nice, or torpedoes perhaps ( i'm not up on necron lore tbh )

Been playing them for a few days, knew there was something going on with my cylon fighters ;)

Pyramidal reconstruction could go where Rally ability is for other factions imo.

[Psikraut]

Once you get Reapers and Cairns its laughable against the Ai. With almost 360 degree aoe at 13,5k with 1 Cairn and 2 Reapers you just sit in the middle of the enemy fleet and see them explode. Scarabs and Pyramid heal thingy is important and thunderbolt is nice too.

[gpavlidis94]

While it's true that at the later stages of the campaign it gets easier, I still have trouble against the orks, who surprisingly deal a lot of critical damages despite being inaccurate and field huge amounts of big ships

[His Majesty, the Lord of Space]

Originally posted by gpavlidis94:

While it's true that at the later stages of the campaign it gets easier, I still have trouble against the orks, who surprisingly deal a lot of critical damages despite being inaccurate and field huge amounts of big ships

for what it's worth most teams have trouble with Orkz, they're definitely one of the strongest factions right now

Necrons actually fare pretty well against them though if you utilize all the AoE options Necrons have access to, you just can't let them swarm right on top of you

[Sev]

They are tricky to make. One build that I have found that works okay is going heavy into LC and escorts. With upgrades you can up Jackel HP to 500 which is pretty damn solid with the upgrade doubling Lightning Arc crit chance you can crit spam pretty well.

Say:

3 x Shroud
1 x Cartouche
8 x Jackel

7,200 worth of health ( a lot for Necros) and enough speed to kite pretty well.

Biggest problem I have found is that they simply don't hit hard enough. Even this fairly min maxed build is running at like 78 DPS across the whole fleet. While they can AoE well they can struggle against single high armour targets.

[kknd]

Originally posted by Quasar:

- Hull self-repairs. It's not a huge repair speed, but if you take a damaged ship away from combat for a while chances are it will be at full capacity again later, especially when using specific upgrades.

... They won't be 'at full capacity' since you lose 1 point off your max hull for every point you recover (no matter how fast or slow, even via scarab swarm.) meaning at most a ship that gets pounded comes back with roughly half health. I'm not impressed with the rate either but I had to chime in on that misrepresentation.

Originally posted by Quasar:

- All weapons have 100% accuracy and 270º angles. You don't have to worry about distance and angles nearly as much as with other factions.

... No they don't. They should all be 270º firing arcs, but about 1/2 of our ships got 90º broadside arcs instead for no logical reason at all. The diffrence between the scythe and scythe Reaper is functionally that the Reaper has 270º firing arcs, and the regular Scythe has broadside 90º.

I can somewhat forgive this one the escorts, but it's utterly insulting to my sensabilities on the LC's an up. I played Necrons on TT BFG. I know how bloody important having 270º is. Heck with Dispursed Lighting Arc stance being what it is, you need those 270º arcs to make any use of it since we don't have any range boost options.

Originally posted by gpavlidis94:

While it's true that at the later stages of the campaign it gets easier, I still have trouble against the orks, who surprisingly deal a lot of critical damages despite being inaccurate and field huge amounts of big ships

It's because Orks rely of sheer number of shots I suspect. We've got no crit protection (and won't have extra post patch, but it'll still help.) so sheer volume of fire is the best option for fishing for criticals.

Originally posted by Sev:

Biggest problem I have found is that they simply don't hit hard enough. Even this fairly min maxed build is running at like 78 DPS across the whole fleet. While they can AoE well they can struggle against single high armour targets.

Yeah, with only Gauss Particle Whips for anti-armor options (not even bombers) with their low numbers of mounts (no dedicated versions of ships for this? For shame!) and slow fire rate (not boosted by reload stance either IIRC) fighting heavy armor is a problem.

At least, the above is my contribution to the conversation. Still looking forward to the proposed critical hit protection for ships based on weight class though, it'll help Necrons more than anyone else.

[KDR_11k]

I thought they were easy mode TBH. The spread lightning stance is pretty vital to getting your DPS up, for that reason I tend to field a lot of Shrouds. Starpulse is more of a defensive thing for me with that instant squadron and projectile shutdown. Always stay together, even if that may lead to a domination loss. You may need to micromanage your ship movements more than with other factions since you want as many targets as possible in your firing arcs and get those armor piercing arcs and stances with broken deck upgrades ASAP. Also the campaign is super generous with income, I could pretty much buy all POI upgrades immediately and after a bit had enough income to replace a full fleet every turn even with the maintenance expenses of having my full fleet cap (or even more than that thanks to free fleets from sidequests) running around.

The stealth stance shouldn't be underestimated either.

[Jeslis]

The hardest thing about the necron campaign is fishing for captain abilities.

Personally; I replayed the very first mission ~10 times to get both the right ability combo on the FIRST free fleet they give you.. and then replayed (from a save) the final system battle in the first sector where they give you a 2nd free fleet after it.. again, to fish for good abilities.

Basically going for Pyramidal recon, Scarab Swarm, and now that I know how to use it, Transdimensional Thunderbolt (click and HOLD, draw in direction you want the bolt to go)

Stasis bomb is almost useless (You don't get the other bomb types to combo it with), Resurrection orb is lul, and mass recall is worthless outside of maybe pvp.

Note; I play with the urgency bar off, which allows me to wait several turns fishing the 'hero pool' for better skill matchups.

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I'll state that the above sucks to HAVE TO DO to get good skills.. but once you have them, necrons are very easy in cruiser clash mode (F the new domination mode, I'm sorry).. Abuse the gas cloud stealth mechanics against eldar/chaos, scarab swarm hump the orks, save the star pulses for the imperial/marine torps and bombers.. abuse the aoe stance, and now the reload stance for single target since they fixed it supposedly.

[KDR_11k]

Domination barely matters unless you are going up against lots of defenses since the AI doesn't know to back off and run the clock down.

Urgency bar shouldn't be that much trouble since you get a lot of sidequests and every single sidequest step also resets the urgency meter.