"Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II" - Tau Merchant Cruisers [Advanced Ship Guide]

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Tau Merchant Fleet Cruisers

The Tau Merchant Cruisers maintain the themes established earlier in the Light Cruiser weight class, with broadsides and limited arcs preferred over full frontal facing load outs, along with higher hit point totals, allowing them to absorb significantly more damage than a lot of ships their size. They oddly get a boost back to their engine speed over their lighter brethren, making them more maneuverable while also mixing in a few coaxial weapons and the Adaptive Deflectors from the Protector vessels.

Both of the Cruisers favor taking large racks of the Tau's special homing torpedoes and Launch Bays, the former is incredibly useful as the only other torpedoes capable of homing are Astartes boarding torpedoes. This simple addition to their weapons allows them to be used from much longer, even extreme ranges since it's easier to coordinated several different squadrons and torpedo launches to overwhelm defense turrets, when they don't need to all do it from close range.

Patch Status: Updated for Current Patch (v.11218) - July 13th, 2020

Tau Merchant Fleets Guide Navigation

• Escorts
• Light Cruiser
• Cruiser <- You Are Here
  
  • Lar'Shi Vash'Ya
  • Lar'Shi Tolku
  • Demiurg "Bastion"
    ^{*Check allied/mercenary ships section.}
• Battleship
• Allied/Mercenary Ships*

*Nicassar, Kroot and Demiurg ships have their own section to reduce redundancy across Merchant/Protector fleet guides.

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Terms Used

This section briefly covers the advanced weapon data you will find for each ship. These values are calculated based off the base weapons stats and are explained as follows:

DPS - Damage Per Second - The total damage output per weapon type (all guns combined) per second, assuming 100% of shots land, before considering armor penalties.

Crits Pm - Critical Hits Per Minute - Assuming all shots land, this will be the average number of critical hit's the guns will cause every minute before modifiers. (all guns combined)

Salvos PM - Salvos Per Minute - The total number of combined waves of fire, not including multiple rounds fired from the same weapon.

Rounds PM - The actual number of shots or individual projectiles fired each minute from all guns combined.

Tau Merchant Fleet Cruiser Stats

Oddly the Cruisers actually get a boost back to their engine speed over the Light Cruisers, the only time you really see this in a faction. Pleasantly, they still keep the higher hull point totals, now with the heavy frontal armor, as long as your generator doesn't get knocked out.

Shield: 400
Armor: 83 (front), 67 (Sides & Rear)
Identification Range: 9,000
Speed: 170
Rotation Speed: 12
Hull: 1,600
Defense Turrets: 12
Bravery: -25
Boarding Damage: 4
^{+ Causes 4 Assault Actions}
Critical Assault Chance: 10%
Defending Troops per Stage
- 9: Lar'Shi Vash'Ya
- 14: Lar'Shi Tolku

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Tau Merchant Fleet Cruiser Attributes

Once we get to the Cruiser class ships for the Merchant fleet, besides seeing a few coaxial weapons mixed in with the directional arc guns, we actually get the Adaptive Deflectors ability back that grants heavy armor to Tau ships as long as their generators are active. If it gets knocked out by a critical hit, the prow armor drops to 67, the same as the rest of the sides of the ship.

• Gravitic Drive Propulsion: Grants Tau maneuvers.
  
• Adaptive Deflector: Front armor is 83% as long as generator is active.
  
• Independent: -25 Bravery penalty.
  
• No Lightning Strike
  
• Poor Troop Efficiency: Deals 1 troop damage per assault action.
  
• Brutal Strike: 10% chance to deal +1 troop damage per assault action.

Lar'Shi Vash'Ya

Tau Merchant Fleet Cruiser - "Lar'Shi Vash'Ya" - [T'aun Sub-Faction]

1 / 6

Point Cost: 188
Raw Total Crit Output: 3.6* critical hits per minute
Raw Total DPS: 18*
^{*Does not count Missile Launcher or Launch Bays.}

Armament:

• Missile Launcher (6 Tubes)
  ^{Seeker Homing Torpedoes (3 Charges)}
• 2 x Launch Bays
  ^{Barracuda Fighters (3 charges)
  Manta Bombers (3 charges)}
• 2 x Double-Barrel Heavy Railgun Artillery
  ^{Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  90° Front
  Range: 13,500}
• 2 x Double-Barrel Heavy Railgun Turret
  ^{Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  270° Front
  Range: 13,500}
• 2 x Ion Cannon Artillery
  ^{100% Accuracy, Armor Piercing
  90° Front
  Range: 9,000}
• 2 x Ion Cannon Battery Weapons
  ^{100% Accuracy, Armor Piercing
  90° Side Arc (1 per broadside)
  Range: 9,000}

The two Cruiser class Tau Merchant ships are pretty similar in loadout beyond their macro/lance options, with the Vash'Ya being the lance equipped Cruiser and the other, the Tolku, being the all macro variety.

One thing worth pointing out, the Vash'Ya has a significantly better on paper damage potential with it's prow weapons versus the Tolku as the swap from Ion Cannon to Railgun artillery doesn't come with the usual uptick in damage, thus losing out on both the switch to accuracy, armor penetration and lower critical hit chance.

Lar'Shi Tolku

Tau Merchant Fleet Cruiser - "Lar'Shi Tolku" - [Dal'yth Sub-Faction]

1 / 6

Point Cost: 200
Raw Total Crit Output: 3.6* critical hits per minute
Raw Total DPS: 24*
^{*Does not count Missile Launcher or Launch Bays.}

Armament:

• Missile Launcher (6 Tubes)
  ^{Seeker Homing Torpedoes (3 Charges)}
• 2 x Launch Bays
  ^{Barracuda Fighters (3 charges)
  Manta Bombers (3 charges)}
• 2 x Double-Barrel Heavy Railgun Artillery
  ^{Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  90° Front
  Range: 13,500}
• 2 x Double-Barrel Heavy Railgun Turret
  ^{Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  270° Front
  Range: 13,500}
  
• 2 x Railgun Artillery
  ^{Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  90° Front Arc
  Range: 9,000}
• 2 x Heavy Railgun Battery Weapons
  ^{Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  90° Side Arc (1 per broadside)
  Range: 9,000}

As brought up in the section above, the Tolku loses effectiveness in its prow weaponry on the switch from lances to macros, an unusual case as typically the damage is increased, like with the batteries, to compensate for the loss of perfect accuracy and armor piercing. Instead the Railgun Artillery keeps the same damage and loses half the crit chance. Because of this, if you are taking the Tolku over the Vash'Ya, make sure you are getting use out of those broadsides or you are wasting points doing less damage than you could have otherwise.

Changelog

7/13/2020 - Updated for patch 11218.

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