Editing Battlefleet Gothic Armada (section)

===Space Marines===
Space marines and their space metal boxes are first DLC fleet added into game.

Compared to other fleets, SM are quite unique in a few aspects, most notably lacking any ship of battle cruiser class, but having access to two battleships (battle barge mark I and II) instead of just one in fights. Astartes ships are quite a sight, being moderately fast (somewhat faster than their navy counterparts but slower than most Chaos ships of the same weight class) and very well armoured. That however makes them expensive as well, and SM fleet will usually be ship or two behind in numbers (it’s actually not unusual to be out numbered 3 or 4 to one against Orks). Also, while SM ships have 75 armour all around they tend to have a lower HP total then other ships, which makes them very vulnerable to ordinance.

The thing you have to understand about the Space Marine fleet is that the same patch that introduced them to the game also tweaked the way assault actions worked to make them a bit more useful, and the SM fleet takes great advantage of this. All but a very few of their ships can launch Thunderhawks to provoke assault actions from a distance, and basically every ship has the option to upgrade their lightning strike action to roll three times for damage. They also have boarding torpedoes, which can lock on enemy ships, from unlimited range. You can take advantage of this by sending an escort ship while having the boarding torpedoes of the other ships in autocast and unleash salvo after salvo of attacks without risking any direct confrontation, good against fleets low on interceptors, not so much if your enemy has them. Finally, the SM racial ability lowers your opponent’s troop-value, making your assault actions more likely to succeed.

The major drawback of the fleet is that their guns tend to be a bit lacklustre, firing on average about half the number of shots of an equivalent Imperial Navy ship per salvo. A few of their ships do get access to a gun with a stupid high crit chance, but it fires very slowly. Also as mentioned above the SM fleet will often be outnumbered rather heavily, which combined with the low firing rate of their guns and cooldown time of their abilities, can often lead to them being swarmed over.

When it comes to favours, Astartes are again rather unique. Each specialization is incredibly powerful, but can only be mounted on a single vessel in the whole fleet. The favours are also actually the named character that fills that roll in the fluff, hence why they are unique. They also actually unlock that character as a crew member, and the special skills tied to them become more powerful the more points you put into them. The favours are:
* Chaplain: when active the ship becomes immune to assault actions for a short duration, which is excellent for trolling the Orks, but is otherwise the least useful of the four.
* Librarian: has a very large chance to trigger a mutiny on enemy ship, with the number of points put into the Librarian crew member decreasing their resistance to the effect. Again perfect against Orks, however can be countered with the Rally skill.
* Master of the Forge: Extra upgrade slots, one per level spent on the crew member, for the blingiest ship in entire segmentum.
* Chapter Master: Toggled ability. When off it passively buffs the special order for the entire fleet, when on it rises the troops value for the ship it is assigned to and decreases enemy ships troop value.