Picked up Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2. Quite like it. My main gripes with the first game (the ridiculously low points limit for battles and the inability to play against friends) have been adressed. Points limit in the first game was like 800 points or something ridiculous like that? Now the campaign goes up to 1700 or so per fleet at the end, which allows for beefy and fun compositions in the late game.
The campaign is basic in features and complexity, but servicable, fun and decently written. And quite challenging I feel. You have several connected sector maps, each of which contain a number star systems you can upgrade to some degree if you own them. Some have shipyards, some give income, stuff like that. In the imperial campaign, you have access to Imperial Navy, Space Marines and AdMech. You can't mix and match those within fleets, but you can have several fleets of each. And you'll need several fleet, because you'll be fighting all over the place, a lot. You see AI movements at least one turn before they happen, and there are several ways to delay them (deploy mines in the target system, spend battle plans), so you always have a chance to react - but it's still tough, juggling fighting power, deployments and repair time. You'll also get priority missions that advance the campaign, and until you finish one, a timer ticks up that incrementally increases AI activity and aggression. That can be turned off before a campaign is started, which would make things substantially easier I think. I quite enjoy the balancing act of "well, there's several Eldar and Ork fleets attacking the Scarus sector, but I NEED to do this mission near Cadia as well...". And there's actually 3 campaigns right now (Imperial, Necrons and Nids), with a fourth one being worked on that'll be added for free.
The battles look great and feel great. I love my imperial murder space cathedrals. It's so satisfying landing a spread of torpedoes and following it up with the good old "all ahead full, ramming speed!" while blasting broadsides left and right. There's not a lot of diversity in the battle types outside the campaign story missions. It's either domination (capture points) or classic cruiser clash - clean up the battlefield. That's all right though. The multitude of factions (all the factions are in), map types, and complications like space stations, nebulae and the like keep things interesting.
There's some stuff I don't like. for example, you'll always have a limit in battles in how many points can be on the field at any one time. So you might have 2 fleets with 500 points each in a system, and the points limit for the battle is 750. Now what happens is you get your full first fleet and as close to 250 points from the second fleet as possible, with the rest in reserve until ships die or disengage. But you don't have any control over what you start with (apart from what is your first, second and potentially third fleet in the fight) - and that sucks, because I'd like control over what I have on the field at the beginning, and priorities for einforcements. I hope that'll get patched in at some point.
Some of the planet/system attributes seem poorly thought out. Agri worlds in the Imperial campaign give a bonus that's completely negigible, so upgrading those is a waste of money IMO. Another thing: the game does a poor job of explaining itself. So figuring some details out took some time for me. It's mostly small stuff like that I have problems with, nothing really major.
Overall, it's good. The game is good, and hey, the setting is fucking Battlefleet Gothic. I'd recommend it!