Affeks

The most important thing to note with Stalingrad is that the velocity on the HE shell is only 700 m/s, but on the other hand Stalingrad can overmatch the 19mm hulls on DDs with AP, something no other cruiser can. So while HE will be abysmal to use against DDs, shooting AP on DDs will be like using BB AP.

The thing is this is true for Mutsu as well, but Mutsu has many other strengths to boot in addition to being 1 tier lower. And its not even like Mutsu is considered a strong premium at all, thats why I couldnt make myself buy the ship. If I wanted to play with Ashitakas strengths I could just play Mutsu and have a better time. Class Ashitaka Mutsu Hull 7 6 Concealment 17.28 km 16.92 km Full Load 47 000 HP 59400 58400 HP (as cruiser) Rounded HP Length 251.8m 215.8m Beam 30.8m 29m Draft Turning Circle 14.9 sec 13.7 sec Rudder shift 870m 770m Speed 30 knots 26.5kt Consumable dmg con, Repair dmg con, Repair, spotter plane Armament Main Guns 410mm 410mm Number 5x2 4x2 RoF 31 sec, 1.94 rpm 30 sec, 2 rpm Velocity 790 790 AP Weight 1000 1000 AP Alpha 12372 12372 Rounded Alpha 12400 12400 HE Weight Bursting Chrg HE alpha Rounded HE 6 500 6 500 Firechance 30 30 Train 4 deg sec, 45 sec turn 3.8 deg sec, 47 sec turn Pen Range 19.88 km 20.35 km Torpedoes n/a 4x1 Secondary 16 140mm, 5km 20 140mm, 4km DP 4 120mm, 10dps@4.5km 4x2 127mm, 40.4dps@5km AA 1 9x3+4x2 25mm, 74.9dps@3.1km 2x2 40mm, 15.8dps@2km AA 2 3 7.7mm, 4.8dps@1km AA 3 AA rating Armor Belt Deck Notes σ 1.8 1.8 So as you can see I compared the two, and Id rather take Mutsu into tier 8 MM than Ashitaka. In Ashitaka you get a measly 3.5 knots faster top speed, 3.4 more shells per minute and only 1k more HP. The catch is you trade about every single other stat for it. Ashitaka is significantly longer, wider, slightly less stealthy, 1.2 sec worse rudder, a significant 100m worse turning circle, you lose catapult plane all together (which is another significant loss), worse turret layout, almost half a kilometer range, lose all your long range AA (which is a big loss considering thats the only AA worth buffing with MFCAAA and lastly the thickness of the main belt armor is worse. Ive also heard people report that Ashitaka takes citadel hits from weird angles that even Mutsu shrugs off as only normal pens. In addition Ashitaka is significantly heavier meaning worse acceleration and deceleration, all while Ashitaka doesnt get the HP that weight would imply. So yeah I dont think all these cons make up for the placement on tier 7 at all and couldnt justify the buy. Edit: Oh yeah I forgot about the torps, while they arent anything like a main armament on Mutsu, it does make the ship more fun to play with all the funny moments they produced (I can remember one time I blind torped a Leningrad which almost turned the game and all the times in Ranked where I torped Fuso's that forgot Mutsu had torps). Just losing the torps all together on Ashitaka is another big loss (especially for the fun factor). Afaik Mutsu is the only ship in the game that has torpedoes that reload faster than the main armament, yet another big unique feature that Ashitaka lacks.

I was looking at something similar. My buffs to secondaries would be the ones you mentioned plus the main battery mod which gives an additional 5%to range and dispersion. This puts the secondary range at 9.26 km, which is more than enough consifering the sharp decline in hitrate over longer ranges. Especially for France your main targets should be DDs as they are vulnerable to both the 5" and 6" guns, and on long ranges you wont hit DDs that reliably. For the last 5 points though Im unsure, i kinda want MFCAAA, but I know CE will be more universally usefull, but also BoS+EM is a good choice as well.

Its a common misconception in the WoWs community that recreating a real ship is easier than creating a paper ship. In truth though its the complete opposite, creating a paper ship is 9 times out of 10 easier than recreating a real ship. This is because WG has a lot more creative freedom when basing a ship off of simple blueprints rather than trying to find old pictures and descriptions of a real ship with all their refits and deviations from initial design documents. Stop jumping the gun on this "WAAH PAPER SHIP OH NOES" bandwagon. Instead look at this as a testbed for CBs so that WG can nail the gameplay design for a real large cruiser such as Alaska.

What do you mean proper specifications? If youre looking for pen values you can find it on Navweaps, other than that I provided more or less every other stat in my previous post.

Just thought of another argument for Alaska at tier 9, namely the preliminary Alaska design CA2-D/Leyte (I think it was potentially going to be named this). Just like Iowa-Montana, Alaska-Leyte would progress from a 3x3 to a 4x3 layout. Ofc this translates to all the other part of the ship as well: Class Alaska Prelim CA2-D Alaska Super A Class Stalingrad Hull 10 9 9 10 Standard 39321 29711 31905 36500 Full 45337 34253 34950 42300 HP (as BB) 64389 51297 52120 60802 HP (as cruiser) 94327 73676 74975 88669 Rounded HP 92 500 71 900 73 200 86 900 Length 259 m 246.43 m 246.2 m 273.6 m Beam 31.8 m 28 m 27.2 m 32 m Draft 9.5 m 9.68 m 8.8 m 9.2 m shp 212000 150000 167674 280000 kW 110000 208796 Speed 33.6 kt 31.8 kt 33-34 kt 35.5 kt Consumable 4xCatapult/Radar. AA/Hydro, Heal 4xCatapult/radar, AA/Hydro, Heal n/a x Catapult, AA/Hydro, Heal Radar, AA/Hydro, Heal Armament Main Guns 305 mm/50 (12") Mark 8 305 mm/50 (12") Mark 8 310 mm/50 (12.2") Type 0 305 mm/62 (12") SM-33 Pattern 1948 Number 4x3 2A2 3x3, 2A1 3x3, 2A1 3x3 2A1 RoF 3 RPM, 20 sec reload 3 RPM, 20 sec reload 3 RPM, 20 sec reload 3.26 RPM, 18.4 sec reload Velocity 762 762 810 950 AP Weight 517 517 561 467 AP Alpha 8868 8868 9494 9386 Rounded Alpha 9000 9000 9400 9200 HE Weight 426.38 426.38 561 Bursting Chrg 36 36 47.3 HE alpha 4385 4385 4807 Rounded HE 4300 4300 4800 Firechance 26.5 26.5 30.1 Train 5 deg sec, 36 sec 5 deg sec, 36 sec n/a (4.8 deg sec, 37.5 sec turn) 4.5 deg sec, 40 sec turn Pen Notes 324k AP DPM 243k AP DPM Speculative shell/turret stats 276k AP DPM Torpedoes n/a 2x4 n/a Secondary DP 8x2 127mm, 120.8dps@5km 6x2 127mm, 90.6dps @5 km 8x2 100mm, 166.4dps @5km 6x2 130mm, 167.4dps @5.7 km AA 1 16x4 40mm, 254.4dps@3.5km 14x4 40mm, 222.6dps @3.5 km 6x2 25mm, 20.2dps @3.1 km 6x4 45mm, 123.6dps @3.5 km AA 2 44 20mm, 158.4dps@2km 34x1 20mm, 122.4dps @2.0 km 2x2 13mm, 7dps@1.2km 10x4 25mm, 84dps @3.1 km AA 3 AA rating 1811 1481 903 1647 Armor Belt 330mm 230mm 190-210mm 180mm Deck >127mm 36mm+102mm 125mm 50mm+70mm Notes Belt inclined inwards @19 degrees Belt inclined 20 degrees I took the liberty to add some actual WW2 AA on it as it would prolly mount it by the time she was in service. But as you can see its just a logical step up from Alaska. Personally I think it would be too much of a waste to not use this potential Minimontana. I still think Stalingrad would be able to compete with Leyte, with its faster speed, better pen, better time to target, 50mm deck and side plating, much better long range AA aura, potential better HE performance etc. While the belt armor is much weaker, it should mostly serve as a weakness to bad players.

It plays like the rest of the IJN cruisers, but you use AP much more. I consistently deal more damage per game with AP than I do with HE+Fires+torpedoes combined. Zao s a real cruiser killer at mid-long ranges.

I kinda hope its not as good as Kii, then it would just completely outperform Zao or Ibuki. Not to mention B65 has an 20 degree incline main belt (though we still dont know how effective it will be) which helps when turning to torpedo, a freedom Zao or Ibuki doest have

I imagine they give it Spood Beest and call it a day

So are B65's torpedo tubes fixed or what? Depending what depiction I look at they are positioned differently and are often depicted as fixed. To be honest I think the torps is the way to differentiate B65 from Alaska and Stalingrad (assuming Alaska and Stalingrad will most likely get radar as well). Me and a friend discussed it and came to the conclusion that the torpedo tubes would most likely (if used in 2x4 turrets) be placed at the stern like Kii or Zao. Are there any info that can confirm this?

So we get even more camos for Dunkek.... but when is Dunk getting buffed? Hopefully with the release of Frenchy BBs

I dont have any sources sorry, but Hakuryu seems to be derived from Taiho the few times I looked at her and line drawings on shipbucket depict Taiho Kai very closely to Hakuryu so I just assumed it was more or less the same ship since it also makes sense progression wise in the tech tree. I havent actually looked more into this in over a year so youre probably right.

I know, choosing between those is a constant dilemma for my cruisers, but for Moskva I rarely have turrets knocked out so I cant imaging Stalingrad having the same issue. One thing I actually wonder is if the Aux arma mod actually gives double bonus to DP guns? I mean the flavor text says +100% to AA +100% to secondary guns And DPs are techincally both of those, so do they get 100%, 200% or 400% extra HP? I have had medium and small caliber AA guns get knocked out after using aux mod, but never ever had a DP gun knocked out... Idk about secondary only guns though. Might make a thread about it.

Id rather say that the only ships worth to use secondaries on is Gneisenau and GK. Bismarck with all the 105s with nerfed firechance and 1/6 HE pen sucks anyway.

Someone hasnt tried Auxiliary armaments modification 1

Yet Stalingrad has none of the lolpen capabilities of actual BBs or the agility, dpm or concealment of cruisers. Also if the closest ingame counterpart (graf spee) is any indication then Stalingrad wont have cruiser dispersion either. Idk how Stalingrad does not fit tier X

Tier 9-10 dont give a danm about AA button anyways But Stalingrad has just straight up better AA than Moskva. Stalingrad has 167dps on 5.7 km plus a better TDS than Moskva, so I would say it would be enough to do okay against CVs without AA button, especially if you have MFCAAA ro double that dps to over 300.

Well I dont think baiting them with arguably the worst premium of the year is an effective practice. One of those friends got a Huang He as well. Huang He and Ashitaka... Yeah nice baits WG

Russian bias? Moskva is middle of performance in tier 10 Fletcher is top tier performance wise, rivaling tier 10s Its US bias if anything right here. Not even gonna start with saturation and the fact that 50k is already an insane amount of damage even to a BB.

So 2 of my friend that havent played in many months both found an Ashitaka in their port despite no one gifting them or getting any other message that would indicate why they had one. Anyone know anything about this happening?

The guns were made and tested so the only thing that would not work as planned is barrel life time, so maybe IRL the velocity would have been reduced after a while. On the other hand though Moskva kept the trial stats for its 220mm gun, you can also find that gun on navweaps. So I am very certain that Stalingrad will keep the trial stats for its gun ingame.

Hakuryu and Taiho-Kai is the same ship

A step in the right direction, but still thunk Richy is just waaaaay better. Give Gascogne back the 7 km secondaries and we can start talking.

USN CAs have autobounce and they have HE. Your argument bears no weight. Also RN CLs have under half the AP detonation timer which would still make it more viable against DDs and superstructures. And no afaik WG never officially mentioned autobounce for USN CLs, but i think its a too obvious way to make them viable and/or fun to give up. The terrible ballistics doesnt make these ships safe long range spammers, their low weight, armor and speed makes them bad tanks, the worse pen compared to CAs dont make them cruiser killers. So in short a very easy way to empower their short range effectiveness is to buff the autobounce. If HE is your only tool in short range then the dpm or alpha isnt enough to quickly dispatch incoming threats or quickly punish an enemy coming around an island. And before you say "RN CLs dont have HE to deal with angled targets in CQC!!!", Ill say RN CLs has torpedoes to do things in close quarters USN CA AND USN CLs can only dream of.

Stalingrad is armored like a cruiser Scharnhorst is better armored than Nagato, Colorado or KGV So to be treated like a BB a good argument would be that it needs the armor. Other than that Stalingrad has tier 9-10 AA and insanely much better guns compared to Schiny. Not to mention Stalingrad is a post war ship with most likely radar. Stalingrad is also faster than most cruisers, Faster than Moskva. Balancing all this against the cruiser armor is difficult. It would have to be tier 8 or 9 BB, but only have barely 60 000 hp and no armor. Another reason is that Stalingrad was an upscaled Moskva, so having the bigger version of the more or less same ship 1-3 tiers lower doesnt make sense.