Panocek

I'm afraid you're overthinking this. While Wargaming as of late does like tampering with stats invisible from user endpoint, like ricochet angles, fuse settings or shell air drag just for sake of making ship "different", in Iwami case all these are standard. Gun name, "410mm/50 10th year" is shared with Izumo, which happen to be one of the punchier guns in game, let alone at tier 9. But sadly, different shells with different damage/velocity let these guns down, as overall AP performance is barely better than Nagato. Horizontal dispersion seems to be identical to IJN ships, with vertical being technically better than Izumo, but we're talking about only 2m less difference, 154m vs 156m at 18km. Yamato in comparison have 143m vertical at the same range. So in TL;DR, you've got yourself a bit faster Nagato with gimmicky secondaries and torps but at tier 9, which is much more likely to face cruisers with 30mm plating, thick enough to prevent overmatch as well battleships with 400+mm main belts, penetration of which becomes a wishful thinking past 15km, unless they show PERFECT broadside. And 410mm guns still need to meet about 68mm effective armor to trip the fuse, otherwise they will overpen.

In other news, another product of Wargaming bankrupt balancing department

Preussen fixes two main issues with GK - awful firing arcs and lack of 30mm overmatch. Broadside weight is worse, but in return Preussen guns reload faster, 21s with reload mod.

Well yes, but she have pretty good by cruiser standards secondaries mated with usually enough survivable hull (when angled) and torpedoes to make "brawling" build an option. Currently she and Siegfried when given secondary upgrade in slot 3 and signal flag boast 10km range, which is something, but accuracy as usual leaves something to be desired.

Glass with HUGE citadel, but actually reliable and hard hitting guns. On other side, Yoshino exists. Less huge citadel, but HUUUUUGE 90mm upper hull that act as convenient arming point for whatever AP is sent your way, so you die just as fast. Guns are kinda tragic - worse dispersion, abysmal HE and AP deals only superficially better damage than Azuma's. Also ship that lost its "secondary gimmick" with Commander REEEwork Overspecialized gunboat that trades A LOT of destroyer properties for her anti air, smoke and hydro combo. Good if you have slave div mate who will do the spotting for you, as solo ship... no. Nope, thats Alaska. Gron in division yes. Otherwise "good" tier 9 options were removed from sales because *ba-dum tssss* they were good - Musashi, Alaska, Georgia, JB. Though latter IMO fallen hard with armor changes and proliferation of 27mm plating.

Given effort needed to obtain her, kinda yes. You don't need particular qualifiers to sit in smoke/behind island and farm, especially as Druid pays considerable concealment tax, rendering her at mercy of teammates to do the teamwork things. To me she's barely an upgrade over Georgia. More hp and 400mm main belt are welcome, but major loss of speed, as well extra pair of cannons is "compensated" by worse dispersion and reload. If you forget about Montana she can send you back to port just as fine. And both rapidly start struggling against angled cruisers.

If that would be the case, then you wouldn't have carriers and subs, certainly not in current shape.

You mean Wargaming finest principle of "not fun to play with and not fun to play against" is at work once more?

If you happen to use firewall and you actually manage permissions yourself, make sure to permit "cef_browser_process.exe" in "world of warships\bin\[current version]\bin64\cef\"

Can WG make more money by making game more balanced? No? Then why you're asking?

You mean Ohio? I see also ammo bill becomes noticeable

Beats me why tarp is off. Its not like it would provide any shrapnel, let alone projectile protection, but at least would keep water away from near misses? But then it would help with ventillation to get rid of residual smoke during prolonged firing sessions. Maybe case of just being caught with pants down err tarp off?

Benson with reworked hull also received "properly open" turrets in the rear, before change they just had tarp texture. And as Lo Yang is literally THE Benson, first and namesake of Benson class destroyers but in Republic of China Navy service, it only makes sense for her to have open top turrets. Even wiki image shows her that way, with turrets 3 and 4 having soft tops.

Turtleback is a rarity in cruisers and no ship "lost it" over time. If there's something that could use addressing, is proliferation of 30mm overmatch capable guns in hightiers. At the same time, playing 406 armed BB is highly irritating against cruiser clad in 30mm and said cruiser is smart enough to stay angled, so whole overmatch mechanic could use an overhaul instead being yes/no.

In game, click on your name in top-left, then Inventory. You can also sell any leftover stock hulls/guns/torps/whatever for bit of credits.

I'm keeping them. If I ever find myself very short on credits, then I'll sell some of them, otherwise they cause no harm.

Now compare Missouri bonus to actual tier 9 ship. T10 bonus no longer comes with -50% maintenance reduction, main reason you'd buy perma camo for T10 in first place.

To my knowledge they have roughly the same "economy" as T10, so get any T10 of choice into battle and then crank up their repair bill 360k

So far I'm positively impressed by the change, but given its Wargaming we're talking about, I suspect there either was shaft somewhere with bonus conversion or their influx will be diminished over time. Or both Camo selection is noice, so is no camo option, mostly for IJN ships which usually used just gray paint. 200 gold for permanent camo for ships I like is also acceptable price If you don't care for ship looks and you're happy with base gray/blue coat, sure. Also keep in mind you can empty your camo selection once, while supershits will remain and continue draining your money

Actually other nations PR ships could be a thing, IIRC French navies in AL started with PR Saint Louis? On second thought, only weed cruisers and maybe Atlantico would make a sense, as all "european" hightier DDs actually existed and I'm not sure if manjuu want to poke "superships" ideas, at least just yet. But Błyskawica or Velos certainly could make an appearance as "freelancers" of sorts.

Bonus coming from permanent camo, be it on tech tree or premium should be on that "golden" tab on the left. And IIRC WG stated somewhere you could split bonuses somewhere?

Yes, but also baseline maintenance cost IIRC goes down to 150k instead 180k and thats for all tech tree ships. In general goal is to make rewards tied to player performance, penalizing bad/afk play while actually rewarding someone playing with screen turned on.

if you like the ship and don't care for economy, I'd just buy the visual camouflage post patch. If you want both, whether you whip out 5k doubloons now, or 200+4800 post patch, the shaft you receive will be the same.

If you really would want to stretch a leg, you could say heavy cruisers have "consistent" "dpm" due to meeting most common thresholds with HE rounds, decent fire chance and ballistics making them usable at 15-18km ranges, while most CLs start strugging hitting things past 12km On the same reason why Russian/French large destroyers have baseline damage output as IJN torpedoboats, as they have longer "effective" range than average dual purpose mortar. I know its copium explanation, but still ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"DPM" never really was a thing for cruisers. Light cruisers maybe, but CA universally were lacking and still are lacking in that regard, with exception of Des Moines and maybe Hindenburg. If you look at older heavy cruisers, their "dpm" was on par with destroyers, and not of the "gunboat" kind. cruisers just by virtue of being in the middle between destroyers and battleships usually means they get worst of both worlds, it takes gimmicks like Radar, actually obscene DPM, high gun penetration or survivability to actually consider them