So a very popular strategy I've seen these last few games I've played in the beta, is to play as tyranids, and just fill up on ships that have a high amount of launch bays, rush towards the enemy, and take out the enemy in a single blow by blasting all your assault boats on a single ship.

I've no idea how to counter this, because all it basically requires, is for the tyranid ships to be close to your flagship or their preferred target for one tenths of a second before it gets instagibbed by the 10000 boarding actions it suffers. As if that wasn't enough, they can repeat these shenanigans once more a measly 60 seconds later.

The only way I see of beating this, is to fill your fleet with low cost vessels, which doesn't work either, because now you can't counter their tentacles (which are also superbly powerful)

I'm all for this game, but it feels very unfulfilling when battles are decided in 5 seconds when half your ships are reduced to drifting hulks because some nid sneezed at them.

This is why every fleet I've been building has 6 squadrons where possible, to launch counter-fighters.

The risk of a wave of boarding craft mandates such defensive measures during fleet building. I've had limited success with escorts as well, but they're vulnerable to getting picked off by actual guns. (And tend to get rammed)

I don't know if assault boats function the same way they did during BFGA 1, but if they don't, then I think point blank assault boats will still get through.

Either way, it sucks when 'nids can field 5 battlecruisers with 6 launch bays each, that basically railroads everyone into finding a way to counter that one strategy

the problem is that 6-8 hangars are a huge liability in every other match-up. less won't cut it against 20 hangars.

@goldenchicken said in Assault boats....:

I don't know if assault boats function the same way they did during BFGA 1, but if they don't, then I think point blank assault boats will still get through.

Either way, it sucks when 'nids can field 5 battlecruisers with 6 launch bays each, that basically railroads everyone into finding a way to counter that one strategy

4 bays, only the hive ship has 6 and then you cant even bring 3
the biggest viable nid fleet you can build is 5 ships
and they either have jaws and 2bays or tentacles and 4bays
anything under battlecruiser for nids is ridiculously overpriced trash that has no way to be viable at all so you have this great "swarm" fleet that is outnumbered by everything in the game except necrons
and when not using assault boats or jaws you would have to use trash macros that can supposedly be good if you bring enough ships that have them but again, ridiculously overpriced so thats impossible

gonna take a break from the game till nids are fixed. 80 turrets on braced with 48 friendly fighters cannot deal with 160 harpies per charge. the 2nd wave comes in before you can clear the first.

I have been playing a Nid fleet with a focus on hangar bays a lot and won almost every game. I only lost 2 in fact against another Nid player and Dark Eldar (because I could of stealth).

Against fleets that have no fighters I can wipe out half their ships (and gotten some others low on crew) before they reach me. A wave of harpies first to destroy defensive turrets and then just boarding crafts. When they do reach me one wave of boarding turns the rest into huks in under a minute.

It does not always work that well if they do have fighters but I have won every time.

All the Bay options are a bit much right now. Add on top of that the fact that Fighters/Bombers refund their charge if the squad survives and it's just ridiculous.

Meanwhile my NC's are limited in shots as my poor AdMech get ravaged by like 2 boarding actions lol.

the nid assault boats charge is used up, if they reach an enemy ship. I think the problem is that turrets takes longer to clear the nid fighters than it takes to launch the next wave.

if you go all in on hangars with the other fleets, you have a low ship count / weapon damage fleet with at best 96 fighters and around 60 turrets vs 160 harpies per charge (with both having the same stats except speed). fighter dogfights are pretty quickly resolved, so I doubt any turret support will save your fighter charges (would need some playtesting to confirm). but even if that would work to neutralise offensive nid ordnance use, you have nothing to take them down in a reasonable time frame. you can't use your numerical weaker ordnance in an offensive manner, you don't have the dps to get through their shielding and hull and you can't board them. the nids contrary to that, have several tools to get into boarding distance or they could just take and hold three VPs and do some shield cycling.

Assault boats can be countered and are on limited charges.

Sure its powerfull but it can be countered if you know what you are doing.

First make sure to have at least a carrier or two along with you. Fighters are very powerfull for countering enemy ordnance. At the very least they will slow them down.

Second if there are incoming waves of assault boats make sure your ships are next to eachother (called massing turrets) and on brace for impact special orders. This increases their turret's firepower.

If you got like 20 assault boats markers coming in make sure your fighters are close to your ships. They wont be able to take them out on their own but because they should be delaying the enemy markers near your ships the turrets should be constantly firing at them.

Maybe not a sure fire way to deal with this. But otherwise you can also recrew your ships. They will be damaged by the crits (more then in the previous beta) but still can be used.

@demoulius

Ah, the old "everyone highlighting the exact same problem is wrong" followed by "just do these twnety-five otherwise ridiculous things just to counter one aspect of your opponent's strategy".

@Romeo yea, no. Im saying they can be countered. And bringing carriers of your own to offset enemy carriers is far from a rediculous thing.

Tyranids assaults are very powerful this is true, and some toning down may be in order. On the other hand this is how Tyranids win matches. Their firepower is minimal and they move very slow outside of their sprinting maneuver.

Do what other have said. Keep your distance, try to use fighters and all ahead full to slow down and kite their ordnance.

Keep your ships closed and keep re-crewing your hulked vessels. If you get zerged by a huge deathball that insta hulks you, make them pay with a well placed scuttle+bombs.

Nids are very straightforward to use (just rush the enemy to ram him and spam ordnance) and their in-your-face style of ramming and hulking can feel disheartening at first, but if you get them into the attrition game the odds start shifting.

@romeo: these "advices" always ignore hard numbers. it is 160 harpies vs whatever you can muster on hangars and braced turrets. even with a full list of 18 hangars from the extremly cheap 3 hangars DE LC with the 10% dodge advantage (which is huge, it is 30% more health per fighter) you don't have a list that can win a neutral ordnance fight, because you have a fight between 108 fighters with dodge included 1080hp vs 160 harpies with dodge included 1067hp, in which the harpies at the start of the fight attack 1,48 times more often in the same time frame compared to the DE fighters. 24 or even 48 fighters gets buzz sawed against such a harpie swarm.

I don't know the turret stats (average damage per second against ordnance per turret) or the formula for the chance to destroy a turret with fighters per second, both would be needed to be more precise, but from in-game observations I know that the swarm has no big problem to chew through significant portions of 1200 points of turrets with the first charge.

Lore wise, aren't Tyranids supposed to be one of the weakest factions in the whole damn universe of 40k, when it comes to void battles? Massive amounts of ships, granted, but no speed, weak weapons and even weaker hulls?
Or do i remember the main defence tactics of the Imperium wrong?
Kill the nids in orbit, because u cant possibly win the ground war.

@djesusuncrossed said in Assault boats....:

Lore wise, aren't Tyranids supposed to be one of the weakest factions in the whole damn universe of 40k, when it comes to void battles? Massive amounts of ships, granted, but no speed, weak weapons and even weaker hulls?
Or do i remember the main defence tactics of the Imperium wrong?
Kill the nids in orbit, because u cant possibly win the ground war.

Not exactly. They have some nasty weapons to their disposal. Like the bio plasma that burns through ships, huge maws that bite ships into pieces. But the biggest threats that they have are defenitly their cargo. Boarding and assault boats beeing their biggest trump cards isent far off from the lore.

But you know... They have other things aside from that............ Dont think the nids in this game really have that

@Demoulius
Well im sure they dont have anything a good old makrocannon salvo cant fix. And in case it doesn't, what about those Terminators with heavy flamers boarding your pesky xeno vessel?
Burn Xenos, Burn!

Sorry, got carryed away there for a sec. As far as the gameplay goes, i just dont get the insane speed boost the nids have. Neither balance nor lore wise.

Probably to represent all ahead full. In the TT all factions had it, and the nids are slow. Not giving them any speed boost would allow everyone to kite them. Heck even Orks have it.

Boarding hive ships is a very bad idea. Marines have done it in the past, most notably to capture a Norn Queen by the Deathwatch but it cost alot of them their lives.

I laugh every time when I board something (specially Necron or Nid things) and see their crews go down.

Assault boats aren't an issue. It's the metric fuckton of high dodge and high number fighters that come before them that are.

@solaire said in Assault boats....:

Assault boats aren't an issue. It's the metric fuckton of high dodge and high number fighters that come before them that are.

exactly this
assault boats alone all die
but they arnt alone because interceptors just never die
lower their dodge chance and they can be stopped
compensate with lowering the time interceptors hang around their target so they have a chance of surviving the lowered time and can be reused
make the carrier game slower by doing this
make the interceptor game less reliable and turrets less useless vs interceptors and keep them useful but not too useful vs assault boats on their own
make the boarding more about bleeding and less about insta hulking