Battlefleet Gothic: Armada announced

A Warhammer 40,000 themed spaceship-based real time strategy game has been announced by Focus Home Interactive and Tindalos Interactive.

Drawing inspiration from the tabletop space fleet strategy game Battlefleet Gothic, released under Games Workshop's specialist games range, Armada will let players take command of one of four races from the 40K universe.

Battling for the Gothic sector of space, players can marshal the imperial navy, the forces of Chaos, the Eldar or the haphazard Orks.

The title is being built in Unreal Engine 4 and not only covers ship battles but fleet management between skirmishes. Individual ships in the players' fleets will be able to be customised from weapon loadouts to logistical sub systems.

A release date has not yet been announced but more details are promised soon.

Following the collapse of THQ, which previously held the Warhammer 40,000 license, Games Workshop has been a bit more liberal with who can license its IP, including the universe's fantasy component.

Battlefleet Gothic is not the first of Games Workshop's specialist games to receive the video game treatment, with literal fantasy football strategy game Blood Bowl and squad based skirmish game Mordenheim both seeing a digital release. Classic and out of print dungeon crawler Warhammer Quest was also recently translated to tablet devices and later ported to desktops.

Earlier this month, an entry to the Total War series based on Warhammer Fantasy Battle was accidentally teased in a pre-release art book by developer Creative Assembly that was spotted by an eagle-eyed fan who got early access to the book.