Panocek

Secondaries and AA always tracked targets. Though there was period of few months (?) when AA tracking was broken/disabled, it was restored in the end

All auxiliary armament movement should be tied to "Animate small object" setting in Graphics menu

Also the charm of supercruisers is to bring bigger guns and better survivability in place of regular cruiser. Bringing battlecruiser, without protection of a battleship is like bringing Russian, German or French gunboat - you're bringing ship that cannot carry out usual roles of the class.

Given my brief WoT comeback experience after looong break... Odds are, WoWs you might return to in 6-24 months will be very much different WoWs as you've left it. And most likely it will be "different" but not in good direction, as I've yet to see crap rolling uphill.

Which doesn't work most of the time

Afaik WG haven't announced anything AL related for WoWs yet, so "AL Ise/Hyuuga" is not impossible.

Don't worry, WG will find some tsarist era carriers to populate loltiers with planes

How many of those came from ship strengths and how many of those came from enemies being speshul? Most, if not all ships can "punish" enemy doing mistakes, but few are good enough to remain effective when enemy isn't doing them.

Azuma is also powercrept by existence of a Yoshino, though latter is available for coal. And both her and Yoshino, are battleship sized glass cannons. Citadel sticks out like a sore thumb with plating thickness requiring angling and/or range to stop heavy cruiser guns, overall plating (25mm/27mm on Azuma, 25mm/30mm on Yoshino) doesn't protect you at all against larger battleship guns. 310mm guns found on both ships pack meaty HE shells with sufficient penetration, while AP penetration is, if memory serves me right, bested only by Russian 305mm guns. Issue is, 310mm notoriously overpen anything with all-or-nothing armor layout due to need for 51mm effective armor to arm the fuse, while penetration is inadequate to reliably perforate 350mm+ plating found on hightier battleships outside of yolo range. So, as selfish long range HE damage farmer imploding the moment someone looks at you funny, yes. As ship that can tip the scales in randoms, not really.

Haven't TiTs got short end of the stick with recent rocket change? Like, 5s "preparation" time instead 2-3s on usual "fart in general direction" rockets?

CV hull with smoke is too mainstream, squadrons with smoke/chaff/whatever to prevent being fired upon by AA is where you at

I would keep Free Exp for time being. At the same time, with Wargaming releasing increasingly mediocre premium ships as of late, odds are, you will not find anything "worthy" of a 1M Free Exp pricetag. USN CA line is overall very solid. While Pensacola used to be meme tier bad half a decade ago, since moving her to tier 6 and then repeatedly being hit by a buffing stick, she's little monster of a cruiser. Nope Orlean also kinda lost its "Nope" part. "Baltinope" when downtiered years ago also turned into "BaltiOP" of a sort. Buffalo would be weakest link in the line I suppose, but should be very much playable as well. French heavy cruisers especially from tier 8 onwards also were fun and I suppose still are, with access to Engine Boost and good main gun range you can actually try and play them in open waters like big angry gunboat DD.

Z-31 was designed to be Free Exp sink and thats how you play her which I guess applies to entire line as well

At the same time, window where new ships have to fall into to be "balanced, interesting, fun to play and bring something new to the table" is extraordinarily narrow in a game with mechanics shallow as a puddle. If you make ship line that is "balanced" but without anything else, you end up with something as forgettable as Brit CA. But if you make new ships "outrageous" or "powercreep" in some way, odds are, the same people that will skree about "new ruski/germon/aliexpress/whatever OP balanswagon" will also spend their time/money to get ships in question ASAP.

Well, when "old players" are accustomed to WG serving [edited] in regular intervals and they happen to have number of premium ships already as well most of the tech tree already researched, it would be extraordinarily difficult to sell new content to those people. Especially as WG already expended stock of "historically significant" ships to sell as premiums. Thus, new, "expendable" players is the way for WG, because pleasing long term players is going to be nigh impossible, or at least require admitting defeat with number of "reworks", and that can actually threaten devs and their position directly... what are odds of that actually happening?

Company speaks and understand only one language, money. And so far, WG seems to be successful in that regard. If you don't like what Wargaming is doing, then clearly you're not their customer they aim for

Po wystrzale, czy to z niszczyciela czy z pancernika, twój zasięg wykrycia zrówna się z zasięgiem artylerii na 20s jeżeli jakikolwiek wrogi okręt jest zasięgu Twojej artylerii ORAZ tenże okręt ma bezpośredni widok na Ciebie, tzn nie ma wyspy lub zasłony dymnej* pomiędzy Tobą a nim. Okręty w dymie lub za zasłoną dymną wciąż mają swój zasięg wykrycia po strzale, im większy kaliber tym większy dystans wykrycia. I pancernikiem "z kamuflażem" nie tyle "manewrujesz i zachodzisz od boku" krążowniki, co czekasz aż krążek lub inny pancernik pokaże się bokiem, zazwyczaj nieświadomy tego, że ktoś się czai na niego. Oczywiście, jeżeli masz co szybszy pancernik, możesz nim "opłynąć" niezauważony by mieć więcej celów bokiem. Tylko wtedy raczej będziesz tam sam, a pojedyncze, wyizolowane cele to ulubiony cel lotniskowców I skróty skojarzyłeś prawidłowo.

Overpens probably happened on 13mm superstructure. I guess you might want to check replay again and see where they went and how many were ricochets. 113mm AP have improved ricochet angles, but they still can ricochet and Gearing firing arcs being on excellent side, you actually might be in "ricochet possible" territory, even when chunky Freedom bote is all guns blazing.

Back in ancient days, assisting CV in AA duties to deny early snipe was actually not bad of an idea. Especially with Iowa, that had speed, actually meaningful AA and main gun range to take pot shots when doing so.

Flint used to be Steel ship, thus its considerably higher price in Coal. Also it was repeatedly hit by various "global changes" and to make Flint work, you'd have to work for it. HARD. Lazo would be much more user friendly pick And then you have issue of tier 7 being tier 7 in 2020-21. And that means rough Matchmaking with regular uptiers AND artificial, WG made gap on game mechanics ground - no access to Concealment upgrade, while regularly seeing ships with those, also 152mm armed CLs are limited to 25mm HE pen. Which means you're not going to have fun time against 26mm plated T6-7 BB, or T8+ cruisers with 27mm plating. While you can "fix" that with IFHE skill, you're slashing fire chance in half and you get only 31mm HE pen in the end, which means T8+ battleships remain immune anyway + you can't burn them down as quickly. Wargaming simply don't want you to have fun on anything below tier 8

Gearing torps can clap you just fine and nothing stop her from bringing her own teammates into the brawl

Gearing can stay angled and keep all 6 barrels blazing. And while doing so bow/stern is primarily exposed, well within 120mm HE pen, it will saturate quickly. In return, Gearing can go full Freedom on entire hull length.

And how exactly you monetize that?

Welcome to Wargaming, paying for live testing

But ricochet angles are standard, while Gearing firing arcs are on excellent side.