Necron Campaign -- Ancient One

[Sang The Racc]

I completed this mission with relative ease during my Imperium playthrough. A mix of nova cannon shots and keeping my distance saw me through it with only one destroyed ship.
Doing it with Necrons, however, exposes that they simply don't seem to posses the tools necessary to win this fight. Fighting Tyranids with the Necrons in regular battles is simple enough. I set up a firing line and use all my available fighters to create a scouting net to reveal them all before they get close. Dispersion stance, keep firing until 'Nids are how you like 'em cooked.

The main issue seems to be with how few ships Necrons are able to field. I'm trying to do it with a Cairn and 4 Shrouds for maximum shots on target, but it's nowhere near enough. Plus it appears that the Ancient one is as fast or faster than my ships. So my choice is to either teleport away, then get smacked by the psychic scream, or take a pounding waiting for the scream to start, then teleport away, taking massive amounts of troop damage in the process.

Has anyone completed this in the Necron campaign? How the hell did you do it?

[UnchainedGaruda]

I have been completely unable to defeat the ancient one in the Necron campaign. So utterly annoyed.

[Namelesswanderer]

I had two Cairn Tomb Ships and a battle cruiser with one fleet full of shrouds.

So essentially I had my escorts "bait" by attacking the Ancient one first.

That made the Ancient one move down to the map so when I get reinforcements they can get into the fight.

While this happened the Ancient one eventually focused on my main tomb ship and I just kept them on the run with "RELOAD". The Reload meant they would shoot faster and reload the inertial driver faster.

When the Scream was about to happen I simply teleported my ships out of the way at the last minute.

Didn't take long to kill it despite reinforcements coming in I just focused fire on the Ancient one.

The Shrouds were my sacrifice and I just threw them into the fire whenever they came in but I think I could've won the battle even without them.

[jerryfanfan]

Have you tried kiting it, never letting it into weapons range, and just launching lightning spheres special ability at it until it dies?

[Mike / Vorath]

Spam as many Cartouche class light cruisers as you can fit into the map, along with your faction leader in a Cairn. Move the Cairn in first, lightning strike to agro the ancient one, inertialess drive away and emergency warp the faction leader out, you no longer need him and it's not worth risking him. Then set all the Cartouche's to circle the ancient one at 9k distance all on the same side for firing (so they don't bump into each other), and lightning strike/boarding action it until it dies. Use inertialess drives ONLY to get away from psychic screams.

The key is the lightning strike/boarding action spam. Boarding action removes more troops but obviously you have to be closer.

As a Necron you're not going to kill it traditionally as it has a rediculous 8k health and one of the fastest large ship movement speeds in the game.

Once you take its troops down to 0 it dies and the Tyranid reinforcements don't matter as the mission immediately ends on its death.

[Tacitus]

I actually killed it by whittling its health down to zero--that takes a long time, though. The problem with boarding it and using all Cartouches is that you also have to deal with the adds, and the light cruisers don't have the firepower, durability, or troop count to stand up to repeated rams and boarding actions from the Tyranid reinforcements.

The other issue I see with boarding it repeatedly is that that strategy seems to work a lot better for Astartes, who can have lightning strikes, boarding torpedoes, and Thunderhawks all on one ship for rapid use... and 'Honour the Chapter' if you get close enough. That's four spammable boarding actions per ship, versus one lightning strike on cooldown. Still, I do see the value in your strategy, since it isn't as tedious or dangerous for your ships as what i did.

What worked for me was bringing the faction leader in a Cairn battleship with an escort for backup and a Reaper battlecruiser, a second fleet with similar composition, and a third fleet of all Shroud light cruisers. I sent the escort to aggro the Ancient One whilst keeping all of my forces near the starting area--you want the Ancient one to come to you so that its reinforcements will have a longer distance to travel.

I used one of the Shrouds to kite it whilst I had the two Cairns and the battlecruiser keep pounding it until it finally died. I did lose several Shrouds (and the admiral of that fleet), but no battleships were lost.

No matter how you do it, though, it's damned tedious to deal with this mission. What makes it even worse is that normal Tyranid invasions aren't much of a problem for the Necrons--it's actually nice to have Tyranids attack other factions' holdings, because the bugs don't build space stations on territory they fortify.