Ultimate Guide - Necron Campaign

Before you start your Necron campaign, read this to avoid making critical mistakes as you go along. Follow this guide, and you should be able to easily beat the Necron Campaign on Hard.

THE ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL

Every ship should always be in a stance. See the Stance section for the best stance for each situation.

TESSERACT CRPYPT is an absolutely essential tech upgrade (renown research tech upgrade as opposed to a Leader Upgrade) and should be the second tech upgrade you get (you have to get Engrammatic Command first to unlock it, otherwise it would be the first skill I would advise you get).

Tesseract Crypt tech upgrade allows you to use your stances even if your deck is damaged. Necrons do not have shields, and while their ships are tough to kill, they suffer critical hits on sub-systems easily and frequently. It does not matter how tough a Necron ship is if the enemy destroys its engines and then camps a ship behind it where it has no weapons and slowly pounds it into oblivion with impunity.

PYRAMIDAL RECONSTRUCTION - a skill only available on fleet Flagships. The Necrons can probably fight even 3000+ point enemy fleets with just 2 fleets pretty easily, but this skill is a pivotal reason why it is probably good to bring 3 fleets into each battle. Pyramidal Reconstruction instantly repairs sub-systems damage by 1 level. This means 1 use will cause a destroyed engine (colored Red) to become simply damaged (colored Yellow), and 1 use will cause a Damaged engine (Yellow) to be fully healed. And the skill has a huge radius, it can easily repair your entire fleet if all ships are located within a generous radius of the flagship using the skill. I highly recommend not using skills that put this skill on cooldown (like launch Doom Scythe Fighters) to save this skill for when it is needed except under specific circumstances (see the Hive Mind battle guide below, or if you are winning so handily that you don't need to worry)

Why it is essential - The Necron teleport skill (Inertialess Drive I think) is a crucial element of Necron strategy. If a ship's is even just Damaged (Yellow), you cannot use the teleport skill. This is very bad. So let's say a ship has a Destroyed (Red) engine, and you have 2 Flagships. If you use Pyramidal Reconstruction from 1 flagship and then followed by the other flagship's using it as well, you can restore a ship from being slowed and unable to teleport to fully mobile and able to jump wherever you need that ship almost instantly. An absolute lifesaver.


CAMPAIGN PROGRESS - Your main limitations in the campaign will be CONSTRUCTION POINTS and TROOP REPLENISHMENT. Income should not even be remotely a problem if you upgrade and protect the income generating systems. Basically, if you take and hold all of SENTINEL WORLDS, CHIN-CHARE (language filter doesn't like this word), SCARUS AND AGRIPINAA, I think that is enough to support like 12-13 fleets, the rest is icing on the cake. Only if you are bad or reckless with your ships losses should income ever be a problem. The real problem with either completely losing ships or taking tons of troop losses in battles is:

1) Sectors have a limited number of ship construction points, ESPECIALLY for Battlecruisers (4 points), the Scourge (5) and the Cairn (6). Even Cruisers (3) can quickly use up all your build points in a sector if you are building a new fleet or replacing multiple ship losses. And while some sectors replenish Construction Points rapidly (Chin-chare), some seem to take forever, especially before you secure the whole sector and upgrade every system to Tier 3.

Heed my warning, you could literally have 20,000 currency in your bank with 3,000+ income a turn coming in, and still be overrun because you lost too many ships/fleets and cannot replace them fast enough due to not enough Construction Points.

2) While you can get ships to replenish their Hitpoints (HP) in no more than 1-2 turns with the right Maxed Veteran Leader Trait (Master of the Scarabs) and stationing them in a high repair rate system (like Reznor in Chin-chare), troop replenishment could be many turns even in the best system if your ships lose all but a few troops during battle. Assuming a ship has 45 troops, and a ship loses all but 1 troop, and the system the ship is in provide 9 Troop Replenishment per turn (which is a high replenishment rate by the way, can be much less), it will take 5 turns to replenish your ship to full troop capacity. Having 2-3 fleets twiddle their thumbs for 5 turns is way too long, if you want to win you must be able to keep moving as the situation demands.

Heed my warning, Necron ships have tons of armour and hitpoints but that is all for naught if the enemy kills all of a ship's troops and it becomes a drifting hulk.


TROOPS - You get 45 troops on a ship: 15 Green, 15 Yellow, 15 Red. This means if your ship shows 10/15 Troops and the color is green, you lost 5 out of your 45 troops. If it shows 10/15 Yellow, you have lost 20 out of 45 and only have 25 remaining.

HP & TROOP REPLENISHMENT - Click on a system and look at the top left to see the panel that shows what percentage of ship hitpoints will be healed and how many troops will be restored per turn. For example, a system may heal 10%, 20%, 37%+, etc, of a ships hitpoints per turn, while restoring 3-11+ troops per turn. The Leader Trait you can choose once a leader reaches maximum experience/veterency called Master of the Scarabs increases both of these types of replenishment.


ENGAGEMENT RANGE - Set range to 9000 most of the time, especially against Tyranids and Orks. 4500 range is good against Chaos and Aeldari and especially with the reduced enemy armour tech upgrade, but the problem is your ships tend to run into each other and then stop while they try to turn. Situational, choose best option to fit your needs.

BATTLE PLANS - to delay an invasion requires 1 battle plan, to cancel an invasion requires 5 battle plans, to unlock certain systems requires 4 battle plans. You want to get and hoard as many battle plans as possible, but don't be afraid to use them. Toward the end of my campaign I had saved up 70+ (and that was after using plenty of them as I went), which allowed me to cancel a whole bunch of invasions I did not want to fight/could not respond to in time. Try to get and keep 30-40+ at least before going too trigger happy with canceling invasions. Using 5 to stop a 3600 point invasion of 3 Adeptus Mechanicus fleets (AdMechs with their Nova Cannons are the bane of Necrons) is a good use of 5 battle plans; using 5 to stopp a 1200 point Aeldari invasion is not, at least not until the end of the campaign when you are about to win and still have 50+ plans.

BE PREPARED FOR THESE SITUATIONS

MOST IMPORTANT - there is a series of missions to help and save another Necron Dynasty, pay attention to the dialogue and mission requirements and text and you should know which this is. BEFORE you complete the last mission, I would recommend that you have reached the point where you can have 13 active fleets, and I recommend you have all 13 of those fleets recruited and active on the map, even if you only recruit the Leader and no support ships.

THE LAST OF THESE MISSIONS GRANTS YOU THREE (3) FREE FLEETS!!! This means that if you have 13 fleets active already, you will now have 16 despite the limit at that point in the campaign being 13, so 16/13 fleets active. As long as you do not completely lose the fleet (you can even lose and replace the Leader as long as 1 ship in his fleet remains), you can continue to have 16/13, then 16/14, 16/16, and finally 16/16 active fleets when you finally reach the max renown level. Oh, and at another point in the campaign after that, you will get 1 more free fleet, so you can end up with 17/15 active fleets long before the campaign is over.


At points in the campaign, enemy factions can initiate a pulsing circle event of their color in a system in there sector, that can have very negative effects for you if you do not stop it.

Aeldari - can initiate a search for the Sword of Khaine or such, which you have I think 3 turns to stop. If you fail, and they succeed... if they do this 3 times, they win, and it is game over.

Orks - can start to build up a WAAAGH in a system, and if they succeed 3 times, they win, game over.

Chaos - the event for Chaos does not seem to cause them to auto-win like the others, instead it just ridiculously increases their threat level in a sector, so they can super rapidly upgrade their systems and max out their defending fleets and then attack, attack, attack. In a sector like Scelus which you can abandon after completing all the missions there, that does not really matter, but in Agripinaa or systems you really want to take and hold, this could make for a slog until you capture the system where this "event" is ongoing.

Imperials - maybe had something similar to Chaos? I don't really remember.

STANCES

DISPERSED LIGHTNING ARC - I think this only applies to Lightning Arc Weaponry (the upgrade Arc Propagator does similar for Particle Whips). This stance vs lots of bunched up ships is GOD TIER. I have annihilated fleets in seconds using this stance, especially against grouped up Aeldari. Seriously, I've teleported 5-6 Harrowers in DLA stance into a fleet of Aeldari and they just melt. If the enemy groups up, this is the stance to use.

RELOAD - If you are fighting just 1 or 2 ships and do not need to be healing, this is the stance to always be in. Weapons fire faster and skills recharge quicker. 6 Harrowers in Reload Stance focus firing on the Hive Mind and Abaddon the Despoiler made killing them a cakewalk, did not even lose a single ship on Hard difficulty. Enough said.

REACTIVE HULL SHIFT - used to heal "repairable damage". Your ships start with a full bright green HP bar. As your ships take damage, 2 bars on your ship lower. The first is a dark green bar, which is repairable damage, meaning that RHS stance or the Scarab Swarm technical skill can completely repair it. If the bar changes to a metallic color, neither bright green or dark green, that is unrepairable damage, which can only be repaired after the battle. You can use this in battle, a lot of times you may need to have 1 ship go into this stance to heal while the others shoot fast in Reload stance.

LEADER TRAITS, TECHNICAL SKILLS AND UPGRADES

Once a Leader reaches his maximum level he will have 2 Technical Skills, 2 Upgrades, and 1 Trait.

Traits (don't remember most of the names, you can see for yourself)

1) Hitpoint and Troop Replenishment for all fleets in a system (as in the 3 fleets you can have in 1 system, not the whole sector), does not stack (this Trait is called Master of the Scarabs)
2) Upkeep Reduction for all fleets in a system (as in the 3 fleets you can have in 1 system, not the whole sector), does not stack
3) +1 Movement Point per turn (Necron Fleets have a base of 2 movement points per turn) for this leader's fleet
4) Ships recruited in this leader's fleet and only this leader's fleet start at Level 2 veterency
5) Provides 1 additional evolution point per turn to a system this leader's fleet is stationed in

Dilemma
Master of the Scarabs is awesome for helping restore your ships after battle especially in poor repair rate systems like when you first invade a sector and have not captured a shipyard yet. However, you only need 1 of this trait in a system (a system can hold up to 3 fleets), this trait affects all fleets in a system but does not stack, same as the upkeep reduction trait. Only having 2 movement points sucks, so the +1 Movement Trait is also awesome, but it is the opposite of MotS, each fleet's leader must have this trait in order to get the benefit.

Possibilities
If you are good and confident enough to only ever use 2 fleets per battle, then I would suggest have 1 leader be +healing and the other be -upkeep. Once you can have 16+ fleets, if we call 2+ fleets an armada (fitting given the game's name), that gives you 8 armadas to attack/defend with, so you should not need more than 2 movements points a turn to respond to threats.

If you attack/defend with 3 fleets, that is only 5 armadas. For 3 fleet armadas, you could do +healing, -upkeep, +recruit level; +heal, -upkeep, +heal (in case you need to split off a +heal fleet or start a new armada and always ensure your armadas have +heal trait); or just pick either +heal or +movement on all of your leaders and adjust your strategy accordingly. If you go with +movement strategy, you will need to figure our the systems with the best repair rates to pull your damaged fleets back to more often than if all your fleets have the bonus to replenishment.


Technical Skills
I think the best 2 choices for Cruiser Clash are Scarab Swarm and Resurrection Orb. SS for healing your ships and damaging the enemy (it is pretty sweet), and Resurrection Orb to get Drifting Hulks back into the fight (remember my warning about the Necron's vulnerability to troop losses and being made into drifting hulks). You can "transfer" troops from a healthy ship to a hulk, but "transfer" shares a cooldown with other skills, and transferring troops takes troops away from the sending ship. You can literally turn 1 ship into a drifting hulk by trying to restore a hulk using "transfer". Resurrection Orb does what it says, resurrects troops, and does so on all ships in a wide radius. In Cruiser Clash, if you are skilled and do not lose any ships, then you should not need Mass Recall.

If you want to go Maximum Damage, then choose Transdimensional Thunderbolt and Lightning Link and master using Lightning Link.

Canoptek Probe is good but you can scout out enemy fleet by sending out Doom Scyther Fight Squadrons that all LC+ ships have.

MASS RECALL - Another guide writer said MASS RECALL is the best Technical Skill hands down. I can see this in Domination mode, and indeed it can be super useful in Cruiser Clash as well if you suffer losses, but I want to emphasize that you must know a key point about it and plan how you will use it. Key Point is: Mass Recall only teleports ships lead by the Mass Recall-possessing flagship to that flagship; it DOES NOT pull all ships and other flagships to that flagship. This means that if a flagship is destroyed/forced to flee and the reinforcements that arrive belong to that flagship, your other flagships cannot teleport them. Or, if you have 1 flagship with Mass Recall but the other flagship does not have it, and a non-flagship is destroyed/warped out and the reinforcements belong to the flagship that does not have Mass Recall, again, you will not be able to teleport those reinforcements into the fight, they will have to slowly sail all the way from the spawn point to join you.

So if you are going to use Mass Recall, then all flagships need to have it and you need to make sure non-flagships take the brunt of damage so if they are destroyed then the reinforcements can be teleported to the fight (or if your armada has a flagship without Mass recall, you need to carefully plan your battles so that any reinforcements will belong to a flagship with Mass Recall and be sure to keep the Mass Recall flagship alive).

I've never used Intertialess Manoeuvre, it is probably important to have if you have a Cairn as a flagship, but otherwise I think any of the others are better options.


Upgrades (Leader Upgrades, as opposed to Research Tech Upgrades)

The only 2 I would pick are Nightmare Shroud (being in Reload Stance and within certain range causes morale damage to the enemy) and Arc Propagator (acts like the Dispersed Lightning Arc stance for Gauss Particle Whip weapons). The others are: No damage from asteroids, etc; more healing in gas clouds; Boarding Actions cause Fire Aboard effect, Lightning Strikes cause +1 Assault Action. Many of these only give the ability to the flagship, not the whole fleet. Meh.

BEST SHIP CHOICES

Escorts (E), Light Cruisers (LC), Cruisers (C), Battlecruisers (BC), Grand Cruisers (GC), Battleships (BS)

Weapons:
Lightning Arc Artillery (90 degrees forward)
Lightning Arc Turrets (270 degrees forward)
Lightning Arc Batteries (180 per side)
Gauss Particle Whip (270 degrees forward)

The bigger they are, the more hitpoints they have, the more construction points they cost, and the slower they are. Both Escorts fire forward. The Sekhem, Shroud, Reaper, and Cairn fire forward (Ruiner mainly forward but it also has batteries on sides). The Khopeh and Cartouche can fire forward with the Partcle Whip or to the side with the Batteries. The Harrower only has Batteries, but has 8 of them. Scourge has 6 Batteries and 4 Launch Bays.

KEY POINTS - BEST SHIPS
For Cruiser Clash and Missions, there are only 4 ships to be concerned with, the best ones. (#) is the number of points the ship costs. Jackal (E, 59), Khopesh (LC, 194), Scythe Harrower (C, 246), Scythe Reaper (BC, 342). That's all you need, here is why:

The Jackal has 4 guns to the Dirge's 3 and 400 HP to the Dirge's 200 HP for only 5 extra points (59 vs 54). The Dirge's Speed is 400 vs 320 for the Jackal. Only reason to bring a Dirge is if you need a super fast scout or if it allows you to squeeze in 1 more escort within the points limit.

Why Khopesh over Cartouche? Khopesh has 1200 HP when all the other LC's have only 800 HP. Khopesh has 1 more Battery than the Cartouche. That extra 400 HP is very important, Cartouche get destroyed too easily.

Harrower over Harvester (C, 276). 4-6 HARRROWERS can reap absolutle destruction with their 8 Batteries each. Yes they only fire from the side, but in DLA stance they absolutely melt a bunched up enemy fleet, and in Reload stance they melt a single ship.

The Harvester has 2 Particle Whips and 4 Batteries and Starpulse Wave vs the Harrowers 8 Batteries. Starpulse Wave is great to instantly destroy fighters, bombers, and boarders (can be very useful in the Necrons vs. Space Marine missions), but the extra 30 points really limits the number and types of ships you can take. Overall, the Harvester is not worth it.

Reaper over Ruiner - I actually did not even realize that the Reaper's weapons all fire forward, I thought the Reaper had 2 Whips and 6 Batteries, but it has 2 Whips and 6 Turrets which all fire forward, which is awesome. Anyway, 3-4 Harrowers + 1-2 Reapers was also a good choice besides all Harrowers, the reaper has more hitpoints but keep in mind that it is slower. I think the Reaper has Starpulse Wave as well? and I would go 4 Reapers over 5 Harvesters any day.

Let us use 1500 point battles as our guide for fleet composition. 1500 points =
7 Khopesh (8 if 1575 points)
6 Harrowers (1476 points, cannot bring anything else)
4 Reapers (1368 points, can bring 2 jackals as well)

You can also do things like:
3 Reapers + 8 Jackals (all shooting forward, could be brutal, I actually want to go back and try this)
3 Reapers + 2 Khopesh + 1 Jackal (Reapers and Jackal fire forward, Khopesh fire forward and then sides while aggroing enemy)
4 Harrowers + 8 Jackals (Harrowers aggro enemy, then circle and broadside while Jackals focus fire 1 target in Reload stance from 9000 range)

By the way, 8 Jackals in Reload stance can put out respectable damage. I think 6 Harrowers would still be better, but play around with it.

TECH RESEARCH

After getting Tesseract Crypt with your 2nd Research Upgrade Point, at that point, up to you. The Engine Line is good, especially Tier 2 that cuts the slow from 50% to 25% for damaged engines. If you love escorts, get Living Metal Substructure for the bonus hitpoints (higher HP benefits their morale as well, means it will take longer before they flee).

Be careful with Galvanic Gravity Projector, it is simply lovely against Chaos, Eldar, and Imperials, but can work against you when fighting Orks and Tyranids. Might be a good idea to do the Annihilation Missions to end the Ork and Tyranid threats before getting it.

Density Magnifier and Animator Coils are good for damage.

Subatomic Fire is awesome but you won't be able to get it until you can get to Clausten in Cadian Sector and upgrade it to Tier 3. You want to prepare for that though and be ready with an available tech upgrade point to spend on it as soon as you can.

TYRANID HIVE MIND FIGHT

Bring 5-6 HARROWERS (as many as your point limit allows, if you cant bring 6, bring 5 and hopefully a Khopesh or at worst a Cartouche). I don't know if targeting the brain or weapon sub-system is helpful or not, but you probably should. Normally I would advise that your flagships not launch their fighters so as to keep Pyramidal Reconstruction available, but your goal is to kill the beast before reinforcements arrive, you have to go all in. Therefore, launch all fighters at the beast. Once in range, have all ships use Lightning Strike on it. Set engagement range to 9000, and blast it.

Be prepared for its Huge Red Circle Attack. Be prepared to hit space to slow time to half speed (or hit pause), and have all your ships teleport away to get them out of the circle. As soon as the red circle disappears, re-engage the beast with your ships. Keep launching fights and Lightning Strikes. If you have the Technical Skill Transdimensional Thunderbolt, use that on it. Burn it down fast before reinforcements overwhelm you. I won my first try on Hard difficulty.

Useful Exploit

A thank you and shoutout to Aedwynn in the comment section for this tip:


"An exploit that still works with Necron troop replenishment:

During the Fleet Deployment Phase (when you have the 'READY' button on top of screen) you can set your ships to Reactive Hull Shift stance. The game is NOT paused whilst you do this - so every 30 seconds you will recover 1 Troop point.
You can switch between stances for free at this time, so if you take a depleted Necron ship into battle, set it to RHS and go make a cup of tea before the fight."

[MinMaxRex]

@HeathenSW - I'm finishing up a Chaos campaign and it was the first time I played around with and finally understood carriers. I'm gonna have to go back and test out carriers in other factions soon. My Chaos campaign guide should be up soon. Thank you for the comment!

[HeathenSW]

Any insight on necron fighter carrier? It feels quite powerful, since their fighters are amazing, but it's real hard to implement into fleet compo it seems.

[Aedwynn]

An exploit that still works with Necron troop replenishment;

During the Fleet Deployment Phase (when you have the 'READY' button on top of screen) you can set your ships to Reactive Hull Shift stance. The game is NOT paused whilst you do this - so every 30 seconds you will recover 1 Troop point.
You can switch between stances for free at this time, so if you take a depleted Necron ship into battle, set it to RHS and go make a cup of tea before the fight.

[stugerb]

Some thoughts I have had though.
For most enemies (NOT Tyranids or either Eldar) target the engines. For Eldar, the shields, but thats a good idea for...any faction.
Without engines, suddenly your enemies are at most on par with the Necrons.
This is particularly good after picking the Renown skill that prevents shields from regenerating. Which is an extremely useful skill that should be gotten fairly quickly, but not 1st priority I agree.
Also...while I agree that any 2 Necron fleets can take on any 3 fleets (in campaign)...maybe take a 3rd fleet for large Tyranid fleets. I can handle those fights, but barely, usually with my capital ships all at less than 5 crew members each..

[MinMaxRex]

@stugerb - Thank you very much for expressing your appreciation. I appreciate it!

[stugerb]

Just wanted to say thank you! This guide has proven a great help. Got to Renown rank 10 very quickly. Funny isn't it? The best ships in a faction seem to often be either cruisers or battle cruisers, and not the big battle ships.

[killtastic201]

I gotta agree, the harrower is the workhorse of your armada. I think that the one's that let you take mass amounts of particle whips is also decent, but only if you have the arc propagator, aswell as the specialized upgrades like the one that reduces teleport cool down, and the one that reduces cool down per particle whip hit, etc. you can play a bit of a annoying hit and run, slowly wearing down foes while mostly ignoring shields.

[KingKuma]

Starpulse is good, especially after a jump attack, but don't lean too heavy on it - it's a wonderful opening move, but after the opener you still need the guns to back it up.

[Capt.Cruck]

Starpulse gets too much shade. You give it the 50% damage and jump into the fleet poping pulse and scarab...it's(that fleet) at 45% by the time it's fired its first volly and you're already piling on the boarders and landing rams.

[Last Seraph]

... What an odd game design decision, for Necron ships not to have shields. They *should* have shields - they have them down to the level of infantry scale with things like lightning fields in the lore. Not to mention phasing, which is objectively *better* than shields, really.