Ultimate necron post beta thread.

Hello all, with how many threads there have been for the necrons and considering that the beta is now over, I have decided to summarize all points here. It took me a while as I was busy, but here it is at last. We had a fleet tier thread, and without starpulse all agreed they were the absolute bottom tier, along with astartes. Being considered is the imminent star pulse nerf, so that will affect things a bit:

-Variety: There is none. Besides the lack of new weapons systems that necron ships canonically have (such as solar pulses or throwing chunks of dead stars at people) they only got one new ship they didn't have for a total of 8 ships, the smallest roster of all. The druhkari on the other hand, who were no where near as hyped or demanded, got SEVENTEEN new ships, more than twice the number of ships the necrons have total. They also still lack a carrier, reducing them from participating in many strategies and counters that are necessary, like dealing with the hide escorts and cap points strategy via bombers.

-No shields: This was obviously going to happen, but it lacks the trade offs necrons got on table top. In addition to the high armor, they had a armor save (ie chance for no damage) on all their ships, one that was buffed by brace. For some reason, they have neither brace nor the save. Additionally, they were passively immune to celestial phenomena, as opposed to being required to grab an upgrade for that same ability. There was literally no reason to change this, and no one will ever pick that ability over any other due to not only its relative uselessness, but the fact you can't see what map you are going into, and thus weather it will be needed. Additionally, no shields mean necrons are critted exceptionally easily, and their armor isn't worth much with all the ap in the game. Even the IN can surpass it due to the necrons loss of brace for no explicable reason. Additionally, shields regenerate much faster than necrons do, in some cases more than thirteen times as fast, and the shield regen upgrade is much better than the necron regen upgrade. Other factions can have permanent shields as well, or health upgrades, while the necrons cannot. They are exceptionally weak to skills because of this, and get annihilated by things like nova spam. They are supposed to be tanky by their racial descriptor in game, but right now they are glass with no cannon, and one of the easiest factions to kill. They don’t even get an armor advantage over a lot of ships, and when imperials use brace they have less than them.

-Phase out: necron ships just kind of disappear when they disengage. Not only is it unloreful to have a windup, but easily defeated due to no shields making them very vulnerable to boarding and to damage in general, especially considering that you wouldn't use it in good conditions.

-Repair in general: Beyond how slow regen is, it has a cap. Shields do not, and give back way more health. Additionally, repair of crits is very slow and they have no repair order like everyone else, with crippling results.

-Pathing: Something is off with their movement. Perhaps it is because they are so wide but they seem to always ram when near each other.

-Maneuverability: Its terrible. They are slow, have no all ahead full or turn to compensate, and only move not only has a very long cooldown and doesn’t go as far as AAF, but cannot be used to turn the ship, leading to said ship being likely out of position when used. Additionally, due to only once per 90sec rules, once used if the enemy is say a nova cannon fleet that ship is dead as it cannot dodge in time. This is not including the fact the cooldown and lack of turn means any other fleet can just get behind them and kite them forever, or run away and ord spam with no real counter. They also cannot really ram without AAF, which while not a goal of the crons makes me very sad. I really wanted to see a lore/TT accurate Necron fleet, as then I could ram a fleeing elder ship from halfway across the map. Not very viable, but hilarious.

-Upgrades: These should be upgrades, not necessary patches to holes like the repair one or useless like the regen one.

-Anti ord: They have starpulse and fighters, but the fighter lose to every other factions in the game despite being able to slag hive cities with weaker ground based weapons and starpulse has a longer cooldown that most ordinance, and are defeated by staggered ordinance anyways. They lack the ever changing stance that buffs turrets as well, making like even harder for them, which is exacerbated by a lack of carriers as mentioned in the variety section.

-Stealth: Most Necron ships don’t have it, despite it being their save on TT (there was a hard to hit roll that brace would turn into a normal armor save). They are also bad at getting around it, as their escort lack shields and thus instantly explode on enemy contact, and in a battle where the enemy cycles out to restealth will be long dead.

-Stats on general/DPS: being a fleet explicitly expected to be outnumbered, they have several disadvantages. They lose fleet variety, many tactics, skill count, troop total, and feel each loss more keenly than the enemy, and thus need more points to compensate. This means they should be at least equal to the enemy point for point stat wise, if not a little better to compensate for the above. Instead we have escorts that lose to ork ones in max range shoot outs, light cruisers that explode when looked at, cruisers that cost more than a battleship, a dumpster fire for a BC, and a expensive battleship that I have witnessed lose 1v1 to, among other things, demiurge battleships, tau battleships, ork battleships, hive ships, and to top it off two druhkari cruisers. To the message with a short analysis of the sythe cruiser I did a while ago:
“They just aren't very good for their points right now. Lets take the baseline cruiser, the scythe harvester, and compare it to say, the apocalypse class battleship. Why that battleship? Because it is actually 14 points cheaper than the necron cruiser. So if this cruiser is more expensive than an imperial battleship than it must be at least equivalent right? Well...
Lets compare, I'll even throw in the common retribution class for extra evidence (7pts more than the cruiser):
Apocalypse Scythe Retribution
HP: 2.4k 1.6K 2.4K
Shields: 800 0 800
Total HP: 3.2k 1.6k 3.2k
Morale: 100 150 100
Turrets: 18 10 18
Troops: 18 14 18
Speed: 120 240 160
Armor: 83/67 83 83/67
Rotation: 4 10 4
Raw DPS(not counting abilities): 16.8(4.5k)/15.6(9k) 12 28.6 (4.5l)/22.2(9k)
So in short the ships in the Scythe Harvesters price range have higher raw DPS, much more health, shields (which regen faster than the harvester does I think) more turrets and more troops. The harvester has better speed and rotation (because CR v BB) but loses overall in those departments when comparing ID vs Imperial maneuver gauge. It also has flat better morale due to the necron +50 morale a racial trait. You'll notice I did not mention armor. Why? Because the armor of 83/67 gets a boost from a certain stance that is always on. This boost brings it from 83/67 to 108/92 (if I remember how armor works correctly anyways), which is vastly better than any necron ship. So the only thing the Harvester has is that it is (theoretically) faster, and starpulse, which is getting nerfed. The two mentioned ships also have abilities, one of which is a nova cannon (200-400 damage, aoe, -100 morale, faster cooldown than pulse I think) and torpedoes (8x 90D, 45 reload) but I left those out because one is a skill shot so DPS is variable (it will always hit a jump on cooldown necron ship for 720D though) The other is disabled if you get to close, so it can be avoided. Also to take into consideration is that necron can always be critted because no shields, while all other races do not suffer from this. On stances, they have the same reload as the imperials, a splitshot not useful in a direct comparison (or most of the time) and a nearly useless healing ability. To extrapolate on the uselessness of the healing ability: despite using starpulse, today I had a scythe harvester lose 1v1 to a emperor. Despite killing all of its ord with starpulse. Oh, and there was a dauntless there too but he got starpulsed. I might have done my math wrong somewhere but this really doesn't seem to be equivalent point for point (aka balanced). Maybe I'm missing something?”
Keep in mind this ignored that fact that the apoc had mainly AP damage, which would hard counter the scythe.

So we have ships that don’t have quantity, don’t have variety, and certainly don’t have quality. They spent the beta leaning on starpulse for what else could they do? But that is going away now. If they are to be viable, hell a main story faction for singleplayer, they need to at least be able to match the other main factions. They cannot right now. Someone should probably get on that.

last edited by Nemesor Xanxas

Agreed on all points. I will only add that adding more ships to the roster shoulnd't require much brainstorming, as other factions that used to have customizable ships (Dark Eldar, Tyranids, Orks) now have one ship for each possible combination. I believe the same treatment would work very well on Necrons too: just add variants of already existing ships with different armaments. Hopefully with more weapons to choose from, too.

Also, if the Inertialess Drive is going to remain as the only movement option, then its cooldown should be reduced, and it would be great to be able to choose the orientation of the ship as it reappears, like we were able to in the teleport ability of BFGA1. Would essentially combine Ahead Full and High-Energy Turn into a single ability.

Oh, and I just discovered the cartouche is from the book of nemesis, so its not something new either. So they got nothing to the Druhkari's 17 ships. Oh and it, like the Kopesh, has a unique model not shown in game, rather like how they copy pasted the scythe to make the reaper bc rather than give it its own models. So that is three ships without the correct models as well.

last edited by Nemesor Xanxas

"glass with no cannon"

Perfectly encapsulated my good sir. Upvote for you👍🏼

Phase out: the only part I dont agree with. Normal ships dont jump out in a mid battle either unless the need is very high. Disengage what we got on the tabletop was basicly the ship stealthing up by making their sensor signature as little as possible and sneaking away. While the short distance jump is a canon thing the windup wouldnt be known to enemies either. So its more a game mechanic thing...

But my opinion on it: keep it for balance. Just straight up dissapearing would completly take away the risk factor for Necrons. A ship that escapes is worth alot less points then a destroyed one. And on tabletop when they do phase out, the entire fleet does.

So keep it, even if its not entirely true to canon. The other points I fully agree with.

@demoulius I suppose. My point boiled down to “with no shields and no health it’s dead anyways” because only wounded ships flee and at that point with wind up you might as well have it fight and die because it won’t escape.

Well back in the previous game I hardly saw anyone pull out their ships either and only started doing so when they were already down to like 10%, at which point it is indeed way to late to pull them out of combat.

If you want to conserve your ships you have to do it alot earlier. Your opponent can also prevent your ships from porting out with well timed lightning strikes so if you dont take that into consideration and keep some leeway for yourself you will see alot of them ending up in massive fireballs...

A bit sad to see that all of this is still true in beta 2; the one change they did make, better armor mechanics across the board for all factions, is barely noticeable for Necrons.