History VideoGame / BattlefleetGothicArmada2

** A Tyranid 1st-tier upgrade (meaning it's immediately available and applies to all ships regardless of veterancy) allows Tyranid vessels to shoot their bio plasma cannons at 150% the normal rate while in gas clouds and asteroid fields. This allows the normally not-very-shooty Tyranid ships to simply sit in a convenient asteroid field (which doesn't damage Tyranid ships and conceals them to boot), force the enemy to come to them through a rain of plasma fire, and fight the Tyranids at close range.

* BoringButPractical: Most factions have ships with specialized, often directional abilities like torpedoes or Nova Cannons that can deal a lot of damage at the cost of additional micromanagement. Conversely, there's usually also a bunch of ships that carry nothing but gun batteries, gun batteries and even more gun batteries. These aren't nearly as fanciful as the first group, but all you have to do to use them to their full potential is to activate a suitable stance, set their optimal engagement distance and let them loose on the enemy. They won't actually kill anything very often, but the sustained, reliable damage they deal throughout the battle is nothing to sneeze at, and it allows you to focus your attention on the specialist ships that require it.

* PortalCut: An Imperial vessel that was half way out of the warp was cut in half when a wave of the Tyranids psychic energy disrupts the warp.

* PortalCut: The an Imperial vessel that was half way out of the warp was cut in half when a wave of the Tyranids psychic energy disrupts the warp.

** The game has minimal documentation about ship stats, weapons, abilities, and the role of each ship and given the large number of ships this game has, you are going to need an outside guide to know which ship does which.

* MileLongShip: The standard battlecruiser is about 2 kilometers long and so are the equivalent vessels for all other faction, but then there are Gloriana class battlecruisers being more than 20km long. Still, there are even bigger ships in the galaxy.

* CurbStompBattle: Admiral Catallia is on the receiving end of one of these after attacking the Vengeful Spirit, who only has to fire one salvo to kill six battlecruisers. Resulting in the destruction of all but one of her ships and the loss of countless Imperial Lives. Not a great idea to attack the legendary ship that has the durability to withstand [[PhysicalGod Chaos Horus]] and [[PersonOfMassDestruction the Emperor himself]] fighting inside it.[[note]]An old source even states that the fighting between these two can level planets. The Vengeful Spirit withstands that![[/note]]
* CutscenePowerToTheMax: The famous prologue cutscene that shows Abaddon's Vengeful Spirit annihilating a whole fleet of Imperial battlecruisers in a single salvo is a textbook example. The massive vessel was eventually made playable as a Titan-class ship for Chaos fleets, but although it certainly is immensely powerful, the only ships it has a reasonable chance to destroy in one hit are escorts, and even then not so many at once.
** The same cutscene shows fighter craft (not bombers, ''fighters'') knocking out an undamaged light cruiser in a single strafing run; something absolutely impossible during normal gameplay.

** Imperial Navy warships look like flying Gothic cathedrals with massive white and gold prows on the front, festooned with statues and other Imperial icons. Astartes ships are essentially flying bricks with BlingOfWar, [[SigilSpam coated in chapter markings]] to show their allegiance. Mechanicus ships look like AceCustom versions of Imperial Navy ships with more technology... and guns.
** Chaos ships are a dark parody of Imperial vessels, angular and spiky ships that have long since been retired from Imperial service, retained by the servants of the Dark Powers. Thousand Suns ships are blue and gold and covered in arcane glows, World Eaters ships are covered in skulls and dried gore, Death Guard ships are coated in rot and buzzing with flies, and Emperor's Children ships are decorated with garish Slaaneshi imagery.
** Ork ships are floating hulks of scrap metal, collections of parts that clearly come from different ships. Tribal fetishes and slapped-on plating cover the hull, while large, smoke-belching engines move the ship through space.
** Aeldari Corsairs have elegant ships that look like glistening tropical fish, with glimmering solar sails and clean decks. Asuryani ships follow a similar design philosophy. Drukhari ships on the other hand are unrecognisable as Aeldari in origin; their ships are decorated with wicked-looking blades and driven by powerful propulsors, like the terrestrial Reaver jetbikes.
** Tau ships are rounded and utilitarian with little decoration, a hallmark of their pragmatic mindset - if it serves no purpose, it comes off. Protector ships look modern and are shaped like rays, whereas Merchant ships appear older and follow the StandardHumanSpaceship design.

** Tyranid "ships" are rather giant floating lifeforms, propelling themselves through space with flapping wings and tentacles instead of engines. Their forward prows are giant toothy jaws and snapping mandibles.

* HoistByTheirOwnPetard: You can lower campaign difficulty settings to your liking by fiddling with a whole bunch of parameters, but if you do it wrong you can actually make the game harder instead of easier. For instance, if you increase the action cost of enemy fleet movement on the strategy map, hostile fleets will never move out of heavily garrisoned systems, which is the opposite of what you want. Upping the command limit also tends to favor hostile fleets over yours because the AI is much better at microing such large numbers of ships than the average player.

* ArbitraryGunPower: Doubling as GameplayAndStorySegregation, the Blackstone Fortress' gigantic Warp Cannons have a damage rating of 800. Although this is by far the most powerful single-shot attack in the game, the only thing it can reliably one-shot is escorts, and even then only when their shields are down. This is a weapon that, in the fluff, can destroy ''planets'' in a handful of shots and can even blow up stars when multiple Blackstones combine their firepower. Even more ridiculous is the fact that a weapon of this magnitude is mitigated by the target's armor rating, so its 800 points of damage are usually reduced to 400 or less, which is weaker than what a decent bomber squadron can inflict.

* EleventhHourRanger:
** Near the end of the Imperial campaign, [[spoiler:Roboute Guilliman]] appears in the Eye of Terror to assist you, being so impressed with your prior exploits he even places himself [[spoiler:and his flagship ''Macragge's Honour'']] under your command, just in time to bring the fight directly to Abaddon's stronghold.
** Near the end of the Chaos campaign, [[spoiler:your fleets are joined by Abbadon the Despoiler and his flagship, the ''Vengeful Spirit''.]]

* TractorBeam: Ork battleships have a special ability called the Traktor Kannon Shot which fires a tractor beam at a chosen target. It is more subtle than it appears as the Traktor Kannon can force a ship to move in any direction, possibly even causing friendly rammings with some skill.

* NotSoStoic: Captain Tor Garadon of the Imperial Fists is usually very calm and has nerves of steel as befits a Space Marine captain, but even he is horrified at the sight of the ''Monarchia Redeemed'', a corrupted ''Macragge's Honour'' that Vrykan deploys during the last mission of the Chaos campaign.

* EleventhHourRanger: Near the end of the Imperial campaign, [[spoiler:Roboute Guilliman]] himself appears in the Eye of Terror to assist you, being so impressed with your prior exploits he even places himself and [[spoiler:his flagship ''Macragge's Honour'']] under your command, just in time to bring the fight directly to Abaddon's stronghold.
* TwoDSpace: Zigzagged. While the gameplay plays it straight with the ships moving on a plane grid, the cinematics and cutscenes involve more three dimensional actions. In Chaos Campaign After Saving Abaddon from Aforementioned Confrontation and Defeating Above Mentioned character you receive Vengenfull spirit, for Cleansing of Final sector and then Final mission. But it is awesome

* TheAllSeeingAI: There's no hiding from AI fleets in this game. Even if you only have a single ship, in stealth mode, hidden in a nebulae, all hostile ships will make a beeline for it the moment the battle starts. Fortunately, stealth still remains useful because even though the enemy knows where the ship is, they won't actually fire on it until it is revealed.
* AlwaysAccurateAttack: Lances have 100% accuracy no matter the distance. It makes them ideal for extreme-range sniping, coupled with the most reliable damage output available, but at the cost of lower per-shot damage compared to macro-cannons and similar ballistic weaponry.

* AnotherSideAnotherStory: The four campaigns all treat the same major events from different perspectives, and you need to play all of them to get the full picture. For instance, Admiral Spire has no clue why the Ork Waaaghboss he's come to kill is suddenly attacked by another greenskin Space Hulk. Playing the Chaos campaign reveals that Malos Vrykan and his cabal pulled a DivideAndConquer by manipulated this second boss into instigating an EnemyCivilWar. That said, there are a few inconsistencies between the campaigns... which just makes it consistent with [[BroadStrokes how WH40K generally operates]].

* ArtifactTitle: The Gothic War that ''VideoGame/BattleFleetGothicArmada'' took its name from happened many centuries before the events of this game, and it has no influence on it at all except for the returning main character of the Imperial campaign, Admiral Spire. You ''can'' deploy Battlefleet Gothic flotillas against the 13th Black Crusade, but the only difference between them and the other fleets like Battlefleet Solar is their color scheme.
* AscendedExtra: The Adeptus Mechanicus, who were only represented through ship upgrades in the first game, have been PromotedToPlayable, to represent Belisarius Cawl's Explorator fleet.

* BeamSpam: Chaos fleets that don't focus on launch bays tend to be lance-heavy instead, and the Chaos roster offers ships that carry (almost) nothing but lances in all classes except escorts and cruisers. A fleet composed of Desolator battleships and Executor grand cruisers, with some escorts for spotting duty thrown in, spams unfailingly accurate ruby laser death from so far away that many factions will have trouble even spotting the Chaos vessels, let alone getting close enough to retaliate. Their broadsides don't hit particularly hard, but they hit reliably and with a high chance of dealing lots of SubsystemDamage very quickly. That they also lack special abilities for you to micromanage makes them BoringButPractical.
* BetrayalByInaction: In the Tyranid campaign, [[spoiler:Imperial Navy admiral Catalia winds up used as cannon fodder by the Adeptus Mechanicus when the promised [=AdMech=] reinforcements purposely fail to show up. Funnily enough, nobody seems to hold much of a grudge about it, which might have something to do with Catalia's earlier EpicFail during the battle for Cadia.]]

* BigBadEnsemble: Alongisde the Heretic Astartes, the Segmentum Obscurus is threatened by an Ork infestation, the awakening of a Necron dynasty and a tendril from Hive Fleet Leviathan. You get to play all three factions as VillainProtagonist in their respective campaigns.

* BoringButPractical: Most factions have ships with specialized, often directional abilities like torpedoes or Nova Cannons that can deal a lot of damage at the cost of additional micromanagement. Conversely, there's usually also a bunch of ships that carry nothing but gun batteries, gun batteries and even more gun batteries. These aren't nearly as fancyful as the first group, but all you have to do to use them to their full potential is to activate a suitable stance, set their optimal engagement distance and let them loose on the enemy. They won't actually kill anything very often, but the sustained, reliable damage they deal throughout the battle is nothing to sneeze at, and it allows you to focus your attention on the specialist ships that require it.

* EasyLogistics: The campaigns usually brush over the herculean task that creating, manning and supplying kilometers-long warships. You only need worlds that will supply nondescript resourves without a hitch, and shipyards only need said resources and enough docks to immediately create new fleets. In the long run, the only thing restraining you is the number of admirals you can assign a fleet to.

* EvilAllAlong: Lord Admiral Drang is purported as the BigGood and Spire's immediate superior during the first parts of the imperial campaign. However, he eventually sets Spire up into a trap. By the time Spire survives the encounter, Lord Inquisitor Darkhammer has already executed him for being a traitor sworn to the Alpha Legion. Though the Chaos campaign reveals he actually answers to the Word Bearers.

* GenerationShips: During the campaigns, the player will have the occasion of crossing path with the Os' Tara craftworld, a continent sized ship designed to house millions of Eldars. It is never playable but can be seen in the background, intervening with powerful shots that may destroy battleships in only a handful of hits.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Following Admiral Catallia's failed attempt to destroy the Vengeful Spirit, upon realizing that her brash attack had not only failed, but resulted in the loss of 65,000 crew, the destruction of every ship in her fleet save her own, and left her ship all but crippled in the face of an approaching Chaos battlegroup.

* RegeneratingShieldStaticHealth: Most ships in the game have DeflectorShields that negate attacks and slowly regenerate over time, protecting the real health that doesn't naturally regenerate. However, shields are a system like any other on a ship and if the generator is disabled for one reason or another, the ship is left vulnerable. Subverted with Necron ships, which totally lack shields and instead rely on [[MightyGlacier tons of armor]] and a HealingFactor.

* SchizophrenicDifficulty: The campaign doesn't have a difficulty curve but rather a difficulty mountain range. Generic fleet battles on the strategic map are simple affairs that most players resolve via the Auto-Battle button, and if they do play them personally, it's unusual to even lose a single ship. But then you start a story mission and immediately get your arse kicked. These missions usually throw two to three times your own fleet strength at you, spiced up with special battlefield conditions and mission objectives. The internet is full of forum threads about how to beat specific missions because they're so damn unfair that some factions consider them downright unwinnable.

* StealthInSpace: There are several ways a ship can be stealthed in space. Common ways of becoming stealthy and thus invisible and untargetable is to run silent, lowering the heat signatures to a minimum, or hiding inside of an asteroid field or gas cloud. The Drukhari and Tyranids are stealthed because of their technology or their status as bio-ships.

* TeleportInterdiction: Lightning Strikes, which is just another term for Teleport Assaults, can't be performed while the target's DeflectorShields are up, unless the attacking ship is an Ork Space Hulk. These things have a special Lightning Strike with incredible range that goes right through shields.