Nipponsei

So i wanted to discuss the French tier X Battleship the Republique and why, in my opinion, it shjucks monkey balls. Lets start at the beginning, the early tiers of the French battleship line are all ships with loads of guns. I had no issues with the low tiers, in fact i found them quite enjoyable, especially the Lyon with its 16 guns. Now comes the Richelieu at tier VIII which i thought i was not going to like, but i was wrong. I managed to do fine with it and i really didn't have any issues with the ship. On to the Tier IX the Alsace, oh boy what a ship to behold. Lovely lovely ship, 12 guns, very fast with speed boost, turtleback armor making it harder on the enemies to citadel you and great secondaries to top it off. Yeah i really liked this ship and if the Republique was going to be anything like the Alsace then i would be very pleased. Unfortunately the Republique could not be more different. So lets start the rant, The Republique is supposed to be a "fast" battleship, this is supposed to be the gimmick of the French battleships or at the very least its promoted that way. Well it kind of is and it kind of isn't. The Republique is reasonably fast for a battleship when sailing in a straight line with speed boost active. However the ship loses a tremendous amount of speed when making even the slightest of turns. Any A or D buttonpress will set back your speed from 30+ knots to well under 25. I've had this ship speed dip to a sad 23 knots when making a half turn and that was with the speed boost active. Although statistically it doesn't look half bad the ship feels like it goes to a complete standstill when turning. Combined with the second largest turning radius only beaten by the G. Kurfurst, which is a floating city block, the ship feels extremely sluggish. Enough about speed, lets talk guns. The Republique is supposed to have awesome guns. Large caliber, good accuracy, great shell ballistics and a fast reload time. Well for some reason i cant get the guns to work. Either my game is bugged or i'am doing it wrong, or maybe it's just that this ship doesn't have great guns after all. So far i can make all the tier X battleships work in the game. I have no issues hitting ships or getting citadel hits. However, not with the Republique. Only if the enemy shows me that perfect broadside which becomes less of a common thing at the higher tiers, i manage to get those juicy citadels. I managed to score bounces on several different cruisers with angles that any other BB would penetrate, it has frustrated me so much that i have forced myself to load the HE almost all the time. On top of that it is supposed to have great accuracy, well for some reason i don't notice that at all, and before you all shout at me saying i can't shoot for shait, i have no struggles hitting targets with any of the other tier X BB's in the game. The reason why i find it difficult is likely due to the fact that this ship only has 8 guns, and when bow tanking you lose 50% of your firepower. Now to compensate for its lack of guns the Republique gets a "fast" reload time. Well... not so fast, just like the ship's speed the reload time is not as fast as you might think. With base upgrades its 21 seconds, that's only 5 seconds faster then most of the other tier X's, so in reality that might give you 1 extra volley in a 60 second shell-slinging contest with another BB. Also take in consideration that every other tier X is slugging 12 shells per volley while the Republique only throws 8. The only exception being the Yamato, but well yeah, its a Yamato, i'll give up 3 of my 12 guns any day of the week to get those 460mm guns. Adrenaline rush can help reduce the reload even more but this goes for the enemy as well. Sure you'll get like a 19s reload near the end of the game but the enemy has a 23s reload now so the difference is even smaller than before. The only thing that is really good about the Republique's guns is that with flags you get a 50% fire chance which makes this frenchie a great fire starter, although the fire chance is similar to that of the Conqueror, the Brit has 12 shells with 50% while the frenchie has to deal with 8. All in all the TL:DR version, I cant believe that the Alsace felt so much better in almost every way compared to the Republique. This is the first line in the game where the Tier X felt more like a downgrade, or rather a sidegrade instead of an upgrade to its tier IX counterpart. The guns, which should be the Republique's selling point, feel terrible and i much rather play with the guns of.... well any other tier X battleship really... ALL of them feel more useful. Republique: Pros: - Reasonably fast reload - Fast as long a you move in a straight line - Turtleback - Great firechance Cons: - Only 8 guns - Sluggish maneuverability - Lack of guns - Sensitive to HE - Not enough guns - Great accuracy my ASgard - Its missing at least 4 guns - Great penetration, pffft - It needs more guns - Huge turning circle - 404 GUNZ NOT FOUND

The Conqueror is kind of weird, it kind of is super OP on one side and super not on the other. It doesn't have great armor values so it eats a lot of damage, luckily you can heal most of it back with your crazy heal. Use the stock guns because they're simply better. Load HE, i mean yeah it's kind of a dikc move but why load AP if you can get 10k HE hits AND set double fires with 1 salvo. Seriously though the AP is actually really good. Use it on broadsides and DDs alike. The short fuse on the AP will cause pain and suffering to the poorly armored. It has a small turning circle so make sure you use that to your advantage, you don't want to end up eating torpedo's in a Conqueror, they don't like that. It is an absolute MUST to get one of the special British Dunkirk captains because they have a buffed version of the Jack of All Trades and Expert Marksman skills. The JOAT skill in particular is especially good for the Conqueror because it's special British super heal also has a special British super long cooldown timer which can be reduced significantly with the JOAT skill as it is percentage based. Here is a step by step guide on how to play the Conquistador: 1. I would recommend just staying at mid to long range, don't snipe from the back tho, stick to your allies like your life depends on it cause frankly.. it does. 2. If you notice the enemy starts focusing on you prepare to turn tail. 3. Wait until you soaked in enough damage to get the most out of your heal and then run away with your tail between your legs a.k.a. hold fire. 4. Holding fire will activate your cloaking shield which will render you invisible to the enemy unless they have planes spotting you. 5. Once healed up turn back around and step in line behind your allies. 6. Slowly cut in line of your allies like some creep waiting in line for a Disney World ride. 8. By the time you're in front your heal should be almost back up from cooldown. 9. Now repeat steps 1 to 8 and voila, you're playing the Conqueror. Good luck and fair HE spam mah dude. P.S. Here's a comparison of my Conq stats compared to the rest of my tier X BBs

Well that's exactly what I am trying to say, they sell this ship off as if it is fast/speedy/not sluggish but in practice it really is very sluggish, Unless you only move in a straight line, But you don't want to do that unless you want to eat torpedoes all day. Well then its probably the Arms race gamemode because I enjoyed the Alsace way way more. I never said the Alsace's guns were amazing but it doesn't really matter because you have 12 "average" guns. Now i haven't played the Alsace and Republique a whole lot but from the battles i have played (which are mostly random battles) I ended up with a higher personal rating on my Alsace then my Republique. Yes i deal more average damage in my Republique but that should be self explanatory, It is a Tier X after all. If it did the same or less damage it would be horrid. Also the damage done in the Alsace is mostly AP while in the Republique I switched to HE a for the majority of my shots because I was only getting 5k hits with these guns. I am no history buff but those proposed ships you mentioned do sound a lot more interesting to what we currently have. That may be so, but please tell me then how i should play this ship? Because i really enjoyed playing the Alsace and i am using the very same play style for the Republique and it's not working for me. Lets look at it this way, I played the pre-buffed Izumo and even though everyone was saying that ship was a turd I really wasn't bothered by it. I thought it played just fine. Once I got to the Yamato it felt like a major upgrade though. When i played the Iowa or the Lion I had no issues with those ships either, they were just fine to me. Once i got to the Montana and Conqueror though it once again felt like an upgrade. The only Tier IX I struggled with was the Friedrich der Grosse, I really didn't like that ship despite everyone saying it was really good. Now even tho i didn't like it, it doesn't mean i couldn't make it work. Then at Tier X the Grosser Kurfurst felt like an upgrade to me. With the Alsace It didn't feel like I was playing an upgrade when I got to Tier X. I am struggling with the Republique. To me it feels like I am playing a Tier IX with a different play style, which i can't figure out, to the Alsace.

I hate this operation. Its the only one i cant manage to complete. Every time we get rekt. Tried it like 10 times now, all but 1 victory and it was a 1 star...

So anyone else bothered by the fact that the signal flags in the premium shop are bundled really crappy? For example: if you want the India Yankee signal flags you need to buy the second package which comes with a whole lot of stuff you don't need or want. Flags could be a lot cheaper and more appealing to buy if you could just buy the flags you want without all the useless extra's. In the example mentioned above my best choice would be to go for the last package which is rather expensive and only comes with 55x India Yankee flags. If i use them in every battle (and when you have these flags you will) i end up paying almost 1,- per flag. Over half of the remaining flags in the package i don't ever use and the main flags from the package (the 555x ones) will end up overflowing your signal flag inventory. In the WG interview videos by the YouTuber The Mighty Jingles they said that WG was going to make the premium shop packages more appealing by giving the player more choice. This however does not apply to the signal flags within the premium shop. The only choices you have are 2 packages with a lot of unwanted extra's both with a high price tag. Opinions?

I don't really like this ship, its hard enough in tier 2 battles let alone tier 3. Also i have a feeling the game treats this ship as a tier 3 ship probably because its a battleship because i often get matched against teams that have one tier 3 more than my team. The secondaries fire a lot of shells but the problem is it doesn't really matter because if a destroyer manages to get within secondary range you're already dead. Or in order to fire your secondary guns you need to face a ship broadsided which in most cases results into citadel hits from other battleships. All of this wouldn't really be an issue if it wasn't for the bloody guns. Sure they are high caliber and have a lot of potential when they hit. But that's it, they don't hit anything. The guns are ridiculously inaccurate and you only have 2 at the front and 2 at the back, with a beefy reload time so you cant reliably hit anything unless its really close. or facing full broadside. The Kawachi suffers from this as well but at least it has 8 guns to fire instead of a measly 4. The only real use this ship has is if you are in a mostly tier 1 dominated battle and everyone is noob enough to get close enough to you to get battered by the secondaries.

Yeah i just noticed when looking at the Gun Control upgrade it says 14.5km firing range, however when looking at the main battery firing range it says its 21.8. Thats great news. But i still need to grind trough the first hull with a stock 13km range Fuso and ooh boy is that frustrating...

Jezus Christ i only have terrible games in this ship.. Ok i just unlocked it but still.. first match didn't fire a single shell, Team lost on points before i got in range of an enemy. Second match. I had to get within 13km range to be able to return fire. By the time i got in range i had received so much damage already i lost half of my HP... Pffew so far this ship is downright terrible... and the worst part is the upgrade only increases its range by a meager 2km~ ... How do you play this ship if you cant get within range without losing almost all of your HP?