Necrons Skills
Pyramidal Reconstruction
- Instantly cancels all light critical and heavy critical effects on ally Necron ships within 9,000 units aroud the ship.
While the Necrons do have a passive ability which removes all light critical effects every 60 seconds from their ships, the ability to eliminate heavy critical effects is amazing. Are your engines destroyed? Not anymore. Are some of your weapons and your deck destroyed? Don’t think so. The amazing use for this ability is to keep the engines of your ships online so that you can use the “Inertialess Drive” (Necron teleport ability) whenever you need to. The fact that this ability also does it for every ship within a medium range of the flagship makes this skill very good.
Transdimensioinal Thunderbolt
- Launches an energy orb that hits all ships on its trajectory and inflicts 200 damage, ignoring shield/holofield and armor.
This is simply a damage ability which can be used against any targets within 4,500 units of the flagship. While bonus damage is nice, the fact that this is such short range means it has limited use unless you can teleport towards an enemy. The fact that it also ignores shields/armor/holofields makes it good, hitting multiple ships is a plus.
Canoptek Probe
- Launches a probe to a designateed location. The probe moves in a straight line and detects enemy ships within a 4,500 unit radius. Once it has reached its destination, it is deployed after 10 seconds. The deployed probe detects enemy ships within a 9,000 unit radius. Once activated, it lasts for 120 seconds.
- If it collides with an enemy ship, it sticks to it and automatically deploys itself.
This probe is an essential utility skill used for scouting and detecting enemy vessels. If you are also lucky enough to have it hit an enemy ship (it is very easy to dodge, so don’t expect this) then you have free mobile intelligence of the enemy fleet. This effect may force the opponent to split this ship from the primary fleet in order to not give away its current posistion, use this to your advantage but beware of clever players who may use this as a bait to get you to commit to going after one ship.
Mastering this skill doesn’t take quick reactions, but more calculated thought. It is important to aim the probe in an area where you don’t want your enemy to stay, such as gas clouds or asteroid clusters. By doing this you deny the enemy an ambush posistion and force them into the open. You may also aim this at a capture point so that an opponent has to reveal a ship in order to capture the zone. This is especially useful for countering or at least forcing redeployment of fleets which specialize in ambushes or stealth based warfare, such as the Eldar (all variants) and the Tau.
Resurrection Orb
- Resurrects 1 troops on ally Necron ships in light or heavy casualty steps and ally drifting hulks.
- Effective Zone is 360 degrees around the flagship at a range of 9,000 units.
This skill simply reinforces your troop numbers on your ships and has the benefit of bringing drifting hulks back under your command. Considering that this is only useful against forces that want to board you and that you have an ability on your ships to reinforce your troops by a larger amount depending on ship class, I would skip this skill. Its only real use is the convenience to get a ship that is drifting back into the fight, however even then all an enemy has to do is lightning strike that ship and it goes back to drifting. Not good.
Stasis Bomb
- Teleports a bomb to a maximum distance of 13,500 units. The bomb explodes after 15 seconds. The speed of all ships, squadrons and projectiles within a 2,500 unit radius is reduced by 90% for 20 seconds.
The most utility based of all bombs, this is simply a “nope” bubble which you can deploy on the battlefield. This sphere changes the battlefield more than any other bomb because of the duration of the effect, once ordinance/squadrons/ships are trapped in it, they are going to be staying there for a significant duration unless they are on the outer periphery of the zone where they might escape sooner.
This skill has an odd synergy with the Necrons, it doesn’t work well with most of the weapon systems because they aren’t lances, meaning the shots are delayed as well. This means the only real use for this skill is to be used as an area denial ability to shape the combat zone.
Scarab Swarm
- Enemy ships within a 4,500 unit radius around the flagship suffer 10 damage per second, ignoring armor.
- Ally Necron ships within the same radius regain 2 hull points per second.
- This effect lasts for 45 seconds. A ship can’t be affected by more than one Scarab Swarm at the same time.
This skill is incredible for a number of reasons. The fact that it discourages your opponent from staying close to you is a huge bonus and can do a considerable amount of damage. If you have your other ships close to the flagship, they all will be healed by a nice amount and this stacks with other effects. This means that you can have “Scarab Swarm” (2 hull) + “Hull Cauterization” (1 hull) + “Reactive Hull Shift” (2 hull) all going at the same time. This translates to your ships regenerating 5 hull per second against your opponent losing 10 per second. This is a massive tempo swing and will keep your ships in the game for a long time.
Lightning Link
- Creates a lightning link between the flagship and any all Necron ship at a maximum distance of 9,000 units. Enemy ships caught in the lightning suffer 60 damage per second, ignoring armor.
- The link lasts for 20 seconds unless the linked ships are seperated by more than 10,000 units.
This is probably one of the most unique and coolest skills in the entire game. The fact that you create a space lightning tether that does immense damage to ships that pass through it can put a lot of pressure on the enemy. It is however quite difficult to use and fairly easy for an enemy to dodge unless you are trying to destroy a ship that has its engines knocked out or is wedged between the two ships creating the tether. It is very effective vs larger captial ships but considering how most factions can just run away this ability leaves something to be desired.
Mass Recal
- All ships of the leader’s fleeet are teleported within it”s flagship’s detection range. Their targeting and move orders are cancelled and they are identified by all enemies.
This is a movement based skill which allows for even more mobility for the fleet. It also allows you to play mind games with enemies because of this increased agility. You can teleport several ships into an enemy formation, commence boarding and use your Star-Pulse to cause then damage, then recal them back to safety next to your flagship. You can also isolate your flagship and send your fleet in another direction and when the enemy splits their fleet, you can recall all of your ships to fight half of the enemies fleet.