Majorianus

Maybe I should have bolded the parts about pre-dreadnoughts and armored cruisers, since that was the whole point. These types of ships both had very limited primary armament, typically no more than 4 guns in two double turrets. I know controllable secondaries have been discussed numerous times on general level (referring to battleships in general or all classes which have them), but I didn't find any reference to the aforementioned ship classes which have very limited number of main guns. The search function of this forum is not that good, so if it has been discussed, please provide a link, so I don't have to read through dozens of pages of general discussion about secondaries or pre-dreadnoughts. So let's say it again in other words: pre-dreadnoughts and armored cruisers would be very weak in the game if you can only control the few primary guns they had. If they are not going to be implemented that's fine, but they weren't actually THAT bad. However, we already have news that the Mikasa is going to be available as a premium ship. Even for Tier 2 her four main guns are going to make effective gameplay very difficult unless you use completely defensive tactics.

I have been thinking: If we get pre-dreadnought battleships and armored cruisers in the game, their "secondary" armament should be user controllable. It would make these ships a lot more viable and would also correspond to the actual thinking at the time: the smaller caliber guns were up to 9.2" (Lord Nelson class) and were actually intended to be used against enemy cruisers and battleships, unlike secondaries of Dreadnought BBs and heavy cruisers, which were basically just anti-destroyers weapons (later dual purpose). Note that this would NOT make said ships overpowered, since they usually had only 2-4 large caliber "main guns". Especially the larger than 6-inch "intermediate" guns were intended to be used against other battleships, although it would not make sense to make only those user controllable, since it would be unfair towards ships which did not have intermediate guns. Basically secondary guns on pre-dreadnoughts and armored cruisers should be user controllable IF the ship has less than 8 main guns (this rule is to prevent late German armored cruisers with 8-12 main guns from becoming overpowered). Tertiary guns would still remain computer controlled (with short range).

With the way optical (co-incidence and stereoscopic) rangefinders work, it is somewhat difficult to determine a single effective range. 8,000 yards was probably what the manufacturer said, but that doesn't mean it would suddenly start to give wildly more inaccurate results at slightly longer ranges. Optical rangefinding accuracy increases with the base length, but it always decreases with increased range, unlike radar or laser rangefinding. Turbine propulsion has never been a requirement for being a Dreadnaught, even though it was an important innovation on the HMS Dreadnaught. For example the German Nassau and Helgoland classes had VTE (reciprocating) engines, but could do 20 knots, which was quite sufficient by WW1 standards. In fact the main advantage of a steam turbine engine on capital ships was initially that it was more compact than VTE engines. It also made faster speeds possible, but that wasn't fully utilized in battleship design before the Queen Elizabeth-class (24 knots). The first application of steam turbines for significantly increased speed on capital ships were the battlecruisers (Invincible-class could do 25 knots) and especially the German Von Der Tann (27 knots).

Royal Navy Monitors tech tree Can't say I was really surprised about all the naysayers, though.

And arguably Jutland proves the German theory, since especially the early British battlecruisers suffered, while being contemporaries of the Von Der Tann. Invincible and Indefatigable classes were also slower than the Von Der Tann and Moltke-classes and only about as fast as Derfflinger-class. Only Renown and later classes (all post-Jutland, by the way) were significantly faster than all German battlecruisers. Of course the further increased armor of late WW1 British battlecruisers and their up-armoring during later refits finally proved the German theory without doubt; the early British battlecruisers were too poorly protected to contribute to the fleet battles. The "armored cruiser killers" role the German battlecruisers could perform just as well as the British battlecruisers. Better in fact, since they were initially faster. In the Battle of the Falkland Islands the RN battlecruisers had about 50% larger displacement than the German armored cruisers, so of course they were bound to win. (Similarly, the British armored cruisers were able defeat the German protected cruisers in the second part of the battle, hardly a surprise, either, although admittedly the Germans under-gunned their pre-war protected cruisers, which made the match very one sided)

Not to mention Fisher's original concept and the British battlecruisers based on it was a resounding failure. It was the Germans with their "Grosse Kreuzer" type ships Von der Tann and the following Moltke-class who actually made the battlecruiser concept somewhat useful and came very close to what was later called "fast battleships". The RN then adopted the German type battlecruiser, which developed into the fast battleships of WW2.

The game already has the Atlanta, which was an AA cruiser. Too bad the current game mechanics do not allow using main guns for AA...

Wrong service, but definitely mustaches with a highly nautical theme.

Magnetic detonator torps would be either too powerful or too RNG (if historical levels of unreliability would be given for US and German magnetic pistols).

I don't think we need new weapons as such. Mines are a possibility, but only if they are fairly easy to detect (i.e. much easier than in real life). Mines would also have a huge potential for "friendly fire", so I don't know if they would make sense or not. As for PT Boats / MTBs / E-Boats (S-boote), I think they could be a separate ship class. Fast, small but potentially heavy hitting with torpedoes. I know that WG says that they are too fragile, but destroyers are already pretty fragile (they usually get killed first, but people who play them usually don't complain) and MTBs would be even more difficult to hit. For DD torpedoes I think WG should implement speed setting, so that you could choose between fast but short range and slower but longer ranged torpedoes. It would add versatility, and it would also be historical. The only problem I foresee would be whining mouth-breather BB players, who couldn't dodge long range torpedoes going at 30 knots...

Because of ill-defined "balance". Myogi does not have AA, although by logic she should have some after hull upgrade like Kawachi. But because Myogi and Wyoming don't have AA, we don't give any to Arkansas, either.

WG will leave the torps out, if they think that it fits their idea of "national peculiarities" or balance. So don't get your hopes up for every German and British cruiser actually having torps.

Yeah, but those skill are really not about playing the actual game, they are just light RPG elements, which are nice but not very exiting. This discussion is going nowhere, so I won't take part in it anymore after this. I will say to Userext that Navyfield was not a simulation and WoWS is not a "pure" arcade game, so using those genre classifications as arguments is just besides the point, a red herring as they say. Saying that something can not be balanced because WoWS is an arcad(ish) game is just not an argument at all, it's an opinion based on very little fact, since like I wrote it has not been tried. But like I also implied (in case you didn't understand), it probably would not work at this stage of the game development. It should have been considered at Alpha stage when big changes to the game mechanics were still possible.

You nailed it, Sir. Phoenix and the low tier IJN cruisers are destroyer leaades and require a more destroyer like playing style. Anti-DD is pretty fun with them. St. Louis was a heavily armored and armed protected cruiser, pretty much unique in the game. The we have Myogi, which was a paper battlecruiser and is hopeless as a battleship in the game, but does OK if you play it a bit like a cruiser. I would need some AA, though. A tier 4 ship with NO AA guns is too vulnerable to air attack.

He is not controlling the secondaries himself. That has never been tried in WoWS as far as I know, not even in the Alpha stage. Having high ROF and accurate computer controlled secondaries is not the same as having player controlled secondaries. So we really don't know how well that would work in practice. Like I clearly wrote, it would probably not work very well with the current game mechanics and implementing it now would be too late. It did work in Navyfield due to very different gameplay mechanics. Btw, mid-tier US BBs have such weak secondaries in the game since WG does not count the 76mm (3" guns) AA guns as dual purpose, even though they certainly were that in real life. Later US BBs had quite good secondaries in real life, since the 5"/38 was a very fast firing gun, but I suppose WG has gone with the "IJN BBs have good secondaries" as a national specialty, which they love so much (too much IMO).