Editing Battlefleet Gothic Armada (section)

===Imperial Navy===
Love Nova Cannons? Certain cruisers can be fit with these murder guns, allowing you to mass enough firepower from very far away to wreck minor ships with coordinated volleys, although being highly inaccurate you may need a few of them to land some decent damage (tip, set autocast when the enemy is well inside the attack range). That aside, Imperial weaponry is high-alpha but low-medium ranged and heavily favors broadsides. Heavy armor but no special resistance to being boarded (aside from limited Ratings crew and Space Marines favour upgrades) means that Imperial ships prefer close-ranged shootouts but may struggle against dedicated assault fleets. Favours (specializations) include Imperial Navy (immune to insubordination and you can summon a ''Cobra''), Inquisition (1 free bonus level for each crew member and you can reveal one enemy ship every 120 secs), Mechanicus (1 additional upgrade and skill slot, making it extremely popular), and Astartes(extra lighting action and boarding defense, okayish).

Your escorts can be effective in squadrons if you upgrade them properly. ''Sword-class Frigates'' benefit greatly from the armor-piercing macrocannon upgrade, while ''Firestorm''s can make good use of the lance range, anti-shield and crit upgrades. The turret upgrades also help in combating strike craft-based strategies. ''Cobras'' are fast and can be summoned as reinforcements with the Imperial Navy favour, making them pretty decent disposable firepower if you upgrade their macrocannons or engines, although their torpedoes may feel a bit lack-luster as they only shoot two, still, remember, each blow landed in an a summoned ''Cobra'' is less damage taken by your main ships.

Torpedoes should be fired right off the bat. Their spread makes them difficult to dodge at long range and can deal fairly significant damage/force the enemy to maneuver and thus be revealed. The skill reload lets you fire on average 3 full salvoes per ship before the engagement proper begins. Melta torpedoes are very good later in the game when emergency repairs are on cooldown, on the other hand, conventional torpedoes are great for finishing off ships attempting to warp out, just remember there is a minimum range for the torpedoes to deal damage.

Your light cruiser options are currently limited to ''Dauntless'' with Lances and ''Dauntless MkII'' with Torpedoes. Go for the lanceboat, although the case could be made for combining multiple volleys of torpedoes from 3-4 ''Dauntless MkII'' to finish off any ships attempting to disengage.

While [[Nova Cannon|Nova Cannons can be tempting]] they may be tricky to use, in previous versions they were quite broken, but Tindalos tuned them down, they are still fairly useful against incoming blobs of enemies but not that accurate as they may end up firing in empty areas and achieving pretty much nothing, they are still quite great for dealing with Eldar, though, as they are highly vulnerable to their area of effect.

The imperials have a nice selection of cruisers and battle cruisers which allow for different combos, whether you want jack-of-all-threads fleets or specialized fleets, although they are usually better in brawls, with the ''Overlord'' Battle Cruiser and the ''Tyrant'' Cruiser having the benefit of the plasma macro-cannon batteries. On the other hand, if you feel like you want a challenge or are finding Ork and SM ships hard to deal with you can go for ''Gothic'' and ''Dictator'' cruisers and ''Mars'' Battle Cruisers, as their respective lances and ordinance bays allow you to stay relatively out of danger.

For those of you who like battleships, you may go for the ''Retribution'' Class: while this ship is slow you could make an interesting build comboing maneuvering thrusters, fuel gauge, armour-piercing macro-cannons and a stasis bomb in order to get as close as possible to an enemy ship, keep it quiet, unleash a salvo of torpedoes and then finish them with your Plasma Macron-cannon broadsides at close range, as with nearly other tactic in this game is not an automatic win but it may work decently for games such as killing the transport ships or the Space Station where your victory conditions can't be sabotaged by a warp jump, you may also want to upgrade the Retribution with a power ram, while hard to pull this out, if you manage to get close enough for melee then you can throw a bunch of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnbq7f2CcxE Consecutive Normal Punches] by quickly turning on and off your thrusters to destroy anything short of another battleship in short order.

The other battleship, the ''Emperor'' class, is actually more an aircraft carrier than a proper Battleship, although it can still unleash some heavy damage with its broadsides, can be great for dealing massive damage at long range, or defend your other ships with swarms of fighters from enemy ordinance. Its main drawback is its slow speed, an abysmal 112, though this can be fixed somehow by installing Mezoa Pattern Drives and fuel gauge as well as belt armour to reduce the chances of getting its engines blown off. Did we mention it has a great 10,000 sight range?

If you are feeling particularly manly today, get some Angry Marines favor on your light cruisers for extra effectiveness on boarding and lightning strikes as well as defense (they make your ships yellow as a free bonus), buy the light cruisers maneuvering thrusters, gauge, macro-cannon armor-piercing and then some hull upgrades, and send them in mass supported by yet another Angry Marine cruiser with the same configuration, be sure to write "FUUUUUUU---" when rushing as close as possible on the enemy for extra-lulz.