"Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II" - Tyranids Battle Cruisers [Advanced Ship Guide]

"Spreading through the stars and consuming systems whole to help you get better at games to impress your Hive Mind."

Tyranids Battle Cruisers

The Tyranids Battle Cruisers give you some nice weapon combinations you couldn't get with the Cruiser classed vessels, mixing various standard weapon and Launch Bay broadside mounts with the Feeder Tentacles and Claws special prow weapons, not available from the Razorfiend vessels. Having these weapons installed on the large vessels in this class gives significant boosts to their base capabilities, ensuring higher destructive potential than those found on the Light Cruisers.

Unfortunately, the Battle Cruiser class ships of the Tyranids do not get a direct offensive firepower increase like most other factions get with the tier up in weight class. Instead they do get an increase to shields and hull points that other factions do not. This gives them a better defensive bonus relatively speaking.

Patch Status: Updated for Patch 7 [v.11218] - July 15th, 2020

Tyranids Guide Navigation

• Destroyers
• Frigates
• Light Cruiser
• Cruiser
• Battle Cruiser <- You Are Here
  
  • Devourer
  • Corrosive Clutch Devourer
  • Bio Tentacles Devourer
  • Infestation Devourer
  • Corrosive Tentacles Devourer
• Battleship

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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.

Tyranids Battle Cruisers Stats

Thanks to the rarely seen increase in shields and hull for the Tyranid's Battle Cruisers, their ships finally become more in line with the higher hull ships of factions like the Imperial Navy. When the special Spores ability is taken into account, this grants excellent damage bonuses and defense turret coverage, as long as you can maintain the shield status of most of your vessels.

Shield: 600
Armor: 67 (All Sides)
Identification Range: 9,000
Speed: 160
Rotation Speed: 8
Hull: 1600
Defense Turrets: 24
Bravery: -75
Boarding Damage: 12
^{+ Causes 4 Assault Actions}
*Lightning Strike Damage: 6
^{+ Causes 2 Assault Actions
*Only available with Lictor Brood upgrade.}
Defending Troops per Stage: 20

Tyranids Battle Cruisers Attributes & Skills

If you have read the other Tryanid ship section guides, you've probably seen this mentioned multiple times already, but just in case you have not, it is worth making sure to mention again. The Tyranids really have a large wealth of special abilities for their faction that give them such a unique play-style. It is difficult to cover all of it's entirety here without over inflating this section, so I have tried to summarize the highly important ones. There are plans in the near future to move these sections to an overall faction guide, where they can be elaborated on further.

Movement

• Shroud Hull: Starts stealthed and whenever stealth is regained, it is kept until revealed again.
  
• Adaption: Immune to asteroid fields, plasma storms and spore fields.
  
• Synaptic Link: Unique Tyranid control feature (will be covered separately).
  
• Tyranids Propulsion: Gives access to Tyranid maneuvers.
  

Defensive

• Spores: Ship has 1 defense turret for every 25 active shields and deals 1 DPS for every 100 active shield points, bypassing enemy shields, to all enemy ships in 4,500 units.
  
• Regeneration: Light criticals repair after 20 seconds.

Assault

• Instinctive: -75 Bravery penalty. Standard weapons always target closest enemy.
  
• No Lightning Strike: Given back by Lictor Brood upgrade.
  
• Boarding Expertise: 270° arc for boarding attacks.
  
• Brutal Strike: 10% chance to deal +1 troop damage per assault action.
  
• Deadly Troop Efficiency: Deals 3 troop damage per assault action.
  ^{*Not listed but carried over from other vessels for Feeder Tentacles use}

Devourer

Tyranid Battle Cruiser - "Devourer" - [Behemoth Sub-Faction]

1 / 8

Point Cost: 196
Raw Total Crit Output: 2.9* critical hits per minute
Raw Total DPS: 14.3*
^{*Does not count Claws}

Armament:

• Devourer Claws
  ^{Immune to frontal ram damage, Ignores Armor
  50 melee damage every 2 seconds}
• 2 x Bio-Plasma Battery Weapons
  ^{Armor Piercing, Shield Piercing, 100% Accuracy
  90° Side Arc (1 per Broadside)
  Range: 4,500}
• 2 x Pyro-Acid Battery Weapons
  ^{Causes Fire on Critical Hit.
  Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  90° Side Arc (1 per Broadside)
  Range: 9,000}

Of the two claw equipped Battle Cruisers, the Devourer is the more direct fire focused of the two, bringing Bio-Plasma batteries on a vessel that's going to see a lot of close up action. These are also the largest Claw weapons you can find in the Tyranid fleet, along with the Corrosive Clutch, dealing 50 armor negating damage every 2 seconds.

Thanks to the Devourer's massive size, it is liable to do high damage to any target it rams, and with the Claws and batteries to follow up with, the Devourer more than capable of consuming Light Cruisers within moments.

Corrosive Clutch Devourer

Tyranid Battle Cruiser - "Corrosive Clutch Devourer" - [Behemoth Sub-Faction]

1 / 8

Point Cost: 205
Raw Total Crit Output: 1.4* critical hits per minute
Raw Total DPS: 9.3*
^{*Does not count Claws or Launch Bays}

Armament:

• Devourer Claws
  ^{Immune to frontal ram damage, Ignores Armor
  50 melee damage every 2 seconds}
• 2 x Pyro-Acid Battery Weapons
  ^{Causes Fire on Critical Hit.
  Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  90° Side Arc (1 per Broadside)
  Range: 9,000}
• 2 x Launch Bays
  ^{Harpy Interceptors (3 Charges)
  Ether-Swimming Assault (3 Charges)}

The Corrosive Clutch Devourer trades the Bio-Plasma for a pair of Launch Bays that actually fit the Claw equipped Battle Cruiser rather nicely. At it's affordable cost, it can be a nice compliment to a Carrier fleet or just a support close range ship without additional significant carrier support, since it's melee range ram attacks will put it close enough to launch assault squadrons point blank to bypass the majority of turret defenses.

Bio Tentacles Devourer

Tyranid Battle Cruiser - "Bio Tentacles Devourer" - [Behemoth Sub-Faction]

1 / 8

Point Cost: 207
Raw Total Crit Output: 1.5* critical hits per minute
Raw Total DPS: 5*
^{*Does not count Tentacles or Launch Bays}

Armament:

• Feeder Tentacles
  ^{Applies 2 assault every 6 seconds (4 Assaults Max)
  Enemy ship must stay in range.
  90 second cool-down.
  Range: 9,000}
• 2 x Bio-Plasma Battery Weapons
  ^{Armor Piercing, Shield Piercing, 100% Accuracy
  90° Side Arc (1 per Broadside)
  Range: 4,500}
• 2 x Launch Bays
  ^{Harpy Interceptors (3 Charges)
  Ether-Swimming Assault (3 Charges)}

If you want a little standard weaponry fallback with your Battle Cruiser/Feeder Tentacle option, you have the Bio Tentacles Devourer available to you as an option. While it doesn't have the efficiency of the full Launch Bay boating Infestation Devourer, it does at least have the potential to cause real hull damage when it needs to.

One fun fact, having Feeder Tentacles on a carrier this heavy can be really useful in terms of hooking enemy line ships and pulling them away from their fellow defending vessels, thus eliminating their ability to cover each other with defensive turret fire. This allows you to pick apart and isolate enemy ships before overwhelming them one by one with assault squadrons, a useful tactic if facing grouped defenders or not having enough carriers yourself to punch through defenses.

Infestation Devourer

Tyranid Battle Cruiser - "Infestation Devourer" - [Behemoth Sub-Faction]

1 / 8

Point Cost: 260
Raw Total Crit Output: N/A
Raw Total DPS: N/A
^{*Does not count Tentacles or Launch Bays}

Armament:

• Feeder Tentacles
  ^{Applies 2 assault every 6 seconds (4 Assaults Max)
  Enemy ship must stay in range.
  90 second cool-down.
  Range: 9,000}
• 4 x Launch Bays
  ^{Harpy Interceptors (3 Charges)
  Ether-Swimming Assault (3 Charges)}

The Infestation Devourer is by far the most cost effective Launch Bay boating craft of the Tyranid fleet, coming in at 55 points per bay, significantly cheaper than any other carrier option. The downside to this efficient carrier craft is its utter lack of standard weaponry to fall back on.

Now, while the Infestation Devourer can't fire on enemy targets regularly, something nice it can do is stay at long range, occasionally causing heavy assaults with its feeder tentacles while launching squadrons outside of stealth detection range. Your enemy will probably notice where you are launching squadrons from eventually, but the Feeder Tentacles are harder to notice, and the lack of continually firing batteries highlighting its position every few seconds will make the vessel much harder to pinpoint.

Corrosive Tentacles Devourer

Tyranid Battle Cruiser - "Corrosive Tentacles Devourer" - [Behemoth Sub-Faction]

1 / 8

Point Cost: 201
Raw Total Crit Output: 2.9* critical hits per minute
Raw Total DPS: 14.3*
^{*Does not count Tentacles}

Armament:

• Feeder Tentacles
  ^{Applies 2 assault every 6 seconds (4 Assaults Max)
  Enemy ship must stay in range.
  90 second cool-down.
  Range: 9,000}
• 2 x Bio-Plasma Battery Weapons
  ^{Armor Piercing, Shield Piercing, 100% Accuracy
  90° Side Arc (1 per Broadside)
  Range: 4,500}
• 2 x Pyro-Acid Battery Weapons
  ^{Causes Fire on Critical Hit.
  Efficient Accuracy (80/60/40/20/0)
  90° Side Arc (1 per Broadside)
  Range: 9,000}

As is often the case with Tyranid ships thanks to their large numbers of slightly different craft, there isn't much special to highlight about the Corrosive Tentacles Devourer, being one of the two full standard/mixed battery Battle Cruisers, besides it trading the melee damaging claws for the assault causing/ship puling tentacles.

The Bio-Plasma does not complement the extended range of the tentacles as nicely as it does the melee ranged Claws and the Feeder Tentacles can also be found mounted on one of the larger Hiveships, so the Corrosive Tentacles Devourer loses out a bit on uniqueness too. Overall though, still a decent vessel, just not as special.

Changelog

7/15/2020 - Updated for patch 11218.

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