CommissionerJan

I agree, a CA only has one chance to use the barrage, and even the first CV already gets more than one bomber squadron to space out the attacks. Nerfing this ability would further reduce the need to even play CA, becasue high-tier BBs already have enough AA to cause losses to attacking aircraft. Those losses, however, are not very important (aircaft losses only seem to become heavy when there is an enemy carrier with lots of fighters), and there is no reward for shooting them down (beyond the theoretical benefit that maybe you shot those aircraft down before they dropped their torps and bombs, so that maybe some potential damage to you and your team was avoided) Regarding the survivability of CAs and DDs, I wonder if a return to the overpenetration mechanic might help?

The IJN reliance on torpedoes means that you can only kill distracted enemies. There are very few ships at high tiers that are so slow and immaneuverable that they cannot dodge torps that are launched from one side easily. This means that the torps are mostly a way to force the enemy into a turn that leaves him at some kind of disadvantege instead of a weapon that just kills enemies. The IJN cruisers are pretty much useless at this point. Why play a CA that is fragile as hell, gets uselss torps and pays for that with no gun rotation, bad guns and no AA? The DDs are mostly viable, but aircraft hard counter them (put fighters near them to keep them visible, use planes to spot torps), BBs regularly onehsot them (with AP, how the [edited]can that even happen) and cruisers, which are classically their enemy, also kill them rapidly. The high tier DD faces a high threat, low reward environemnt. That may be fun and challenging for a while, but it gets old really fast. I cannot really put my finger on the exact changes that caused this, but when comparing the last alpha build (or, for that matter, the weekend beta build) to the current build, I feel that pretty much everything got worse. The balance changes to DDs were probably OK overall (though I cannot help but feel that the IJN DD's guns were nerfed too hard, they were not great before but are almost useless now) But the apparent increase of RNG in battleships, the removal of useful torps from IJN cruisers, the reduction of maneuveability of many CAs. . . I do hope that this is not the final state of the game, because if it is, I doubt many people will play much beyond t6.

Both Pensacola (and new Orleans) have very big citadel hitboxes, apparently. Both have no armor. They do have very accurate 8" guns to compensate for these drawbacks. Try playing them, they are extremely fragile, and their (potentially) high damage output is not exactly easy to use.

The short and simple answer is: Not all parts of a battleship are armored. Some parts are only protected against splinters and shrapnel, some parts are only lightly armored. Only the very vitals of the ship, the machinery spaces (boilers and turbines/engines) and magazines are fully protected, behind the belt armor and under vertical armor to stop plunging shells. This area central protected area is meant to keep the ship afloat and in working and fighting condition.It is generally located along the waterline and ranging from the first turret in the front to the last turret in the rear. It's commonly called the citadel. The main turrets and conning tower are, generally speaking, also well protected. They stick out above the citadel. Over time, the way the citadel was designed and the armoring schemes changed, but discussing those things in depth can fill whole forums, so let's just not go there now. All those 200, 500, 1000 and 2000 hits you receive are hits into those areas that are less heavily protected, or uanrmored. They represent hits that can start fires, wreck your radios, rangefinders, AA guns, secondary guns, smokestack, masts, etc. etc. It will take dozens or hundereds of those hits to actually threaten a battleship, but that is not unrealistic. And it is very much needed for game balance.

As an initial step, it could be moved to t5.

While I agree with the changes in tier and balance proposed here, I think discussing those details is not important yet. I'd just like to know if such a split/expansion/change in tiers/etc.is planned for later. Right now, going up a tier with the cruisers often just means you end up fighting tougher enemies in a ship that is effectively weaker.

Considering the 'Cruiser Mission' in the loading screen advises players to 'support with AA', the AA on most cruisers (especially those on lower tiers) is actually laughably weak. Even with the AA barrage cooldown active, the Cleveland for example barely even haresses squadrons and fires maybe two AA rounds per second at them, despite haveing four or so 5"/38 guns in any given direction. The problem here is that BBs just have more (or the same amount of) AA as cruisers That being said, the balance between carriers and AA is rather good, planes are very deadly against lone targets, and they take losses against groups of ships.

Fun fact: There is a minimum arming distance in the game. But that's a secret only known to people who actually use ships with torpedoes instead of crying for nerfs to torpedoes here.

Some good points here.

He can't hear you, his horse is too high.

To avoid this confusion it would need to display the changes of the values that are being modified, like modules do.

12, 14, or 16km are far from infinte. In fact, that is less than the BBs have range. 18 or 20 is pushing it, but (again) the BBs have more range at t10. Also, I do not expect the torps to all hit for 1337 dmg farming. Torpedoes are as much a tool to force the enemy to turn, to break up the (excuse the language) fuckhuge BB lemmingtrains that are forming on one side of the map as they are a weapon to actually deal damage and sink the enemy. This is someting that defined the playstyle of the IJN CAs. Once upon a time, in a testing session far, far away. But without those torps, the IJN CAs will forever be shitty copies of the USN CAs, with some funny 10 km torps stuck on.

What the IJN cruisers need is between 2 and 10 km more torpedo range, increasing with Tier. Starting at T6 with 12km, ending at T10 with 20km. Problem solved, they are now fragile, with OK-ish but slow turning guns. Also, it would give the Myoko at least something to research, instead of just three hull upgrades on the way to the Ibuki.

DD and cruiser Torpedoes are slightly underpowered at lower tiers, and completely useless at higher tiers. Torpedo bombers are very dangerous in the hands of skilled players, though.

NIce post, but I think that your 2nd pic does not show Graf Zeppelin. That drawing looks a lot like USS Ranger. . . Also, I remember reading about a Polish expedition finding the wreck of Graf Zeppelin in the Baltic. She had apparently been used as a target ship by the Soviet navy and air forces for some time.

This is going to be a good counterpart for the Alaska class in the game. . .at least more or less. But I can't really say how those 'super cruisers' would have performed in real life.

That's one hell of a well thought-out and written article. Very interesting.

I wonder if some low-Tier ships will get single turrets like this in the game. Well, maybe this is something they will do as T2 premium ships?

Those big guns firing are always impressive. . .but the shot falling around Bismarck and PE are more chilling.

Cool improvements. But I think this one would look better with a 2nd smokestack.

Those are some neat designs, but most seem rather overgunned and overloaded.

Maybe it can be a Tier 1 premium ship ;)

Very well written, very interesting article. Those ships are a great example of how important the somewhat less glorious 'utility' vessels are.

That looks REALLY strange in color. Somehow when seeing the B&W pics I always tend to imagine them in blue, gray and maybe white.

Some interesting photos, but I only get an error message on a few of those links.