RamirezKurita

People go on about upgrading the guns on the Sharnhorst because historically the Gneisenau was in the process of being upgunned to 38cm guns after being damaged. Part of the design always included the plan to replace the 28cm triples with 38cm twins. It's similar to how the Mogamis were built with 155mm guns but were always planned to be upgraded to 203mm guns, and it wouldn't make sense to not have the option in the game when it happened historically.

I don't think people would be happy about having three basically identical premiums in the game.

You quite possibly suffer from the desync issue that a lot of players (including myself) suffer from. Basically, everything on your computer is a second or two behind what is actually happening, so shells that appear to "hit" the enemy actually go straight through because the enemy ship isn't actually there. Likewise, shells look to fall into the water in front of the enemy actually deal damage. It even happens to your own ship, as I have gotten used to the back half of my ship not actually being there, meanwhile I have a big invisible prow sticking out from the front of my ship that I have to be careful to not let torpedoes hit.

It's not just the balance aspect, it's easy enough to fiddle the numbers to make things relatively balanced no matter where their are in the tech trees, it's more just how the tier lines are roughly in chronological order (admittedly the different lines don't quite follow the same age process, but at least it is fairly consistent within a line). I don't care too much about realism overall, but it would be really jarring to have a nice WWI fleet battle, except for a single errant interwar cruiser. It would mean that the Panzerschiffe will never actually be able to face most of their historical opponents in game, as practically all the ships they faced are or will likely be T7+. It would be like shoehorning the Tsukuba-class armoured cruisers into T9 or T10 because of their large main battery, which I'm sure is achievable with sufficient balance tweaks, when really they should be with Mikasa at T2.

It really doesn't make sense for the Deutschlands to be shoehorned into the really early stages of the battleship tree, as others have pointed out - they are basically worse than the Myogi in practically every respect. You simply can't compare a 10,000 ton escort to a 25,000+ ton capital ship, no matter the age difference between them. It also doesn't make sense to lump an inter war ship with all of the pre-WWI ships. As we all know from the Cleveland, trying to force a ship into a period that it doesn't belong only causes problems. It's also not as if they are lacking in German ships of the right age and displacement to fill out the lower tiers of battleships. If they want to have more fast ships at the lower tiers, then they also have the German WWI battlecruisers to choose from, as Germany has enough battlecruiser designs over a long enough period to have a dedicated battlecruiser line going up to about T6. Really they belong in T7-8 as a cruiser as the beginning of their own panzerschiffe branch (maybe with a preliminary design a tier earlier to flesh out the panzerschiffe line a bit more), alongside the other 10,000 ton treaty cruisers. They have bigger guns with more penetration than the other treaty cruisers and a stronger secondary battery, but a lower RoF, lower speed, fewer guns and comparable armour. Scharnhorst at T7 seems like a distinct possibility, particularly with the option of the planned upgunning to 3x2 38cm guns. I'm pretty sure that, considering how Tirpitz does fine at T8, the 3x2 38cm guns will be a solid force at T7, while the standard 3x3 28cm guns would make them pretty solid cruiser hunters for those that don't want to go battleship hunting.

That's the hangar deck armour on the final unarmoured then further cut-down design though, the previous design had 6" armour, while the designs before that had that 6" armour at the flight deck level instead of the hangar deck.

Then explain the Myogi, Kongo, Ishizuchi and Amagi? They are all battlecruisers. Generally speaking, magazine detonations account for a good chunk of all battleship and battlecruiser losses, even the mighty Yamato went down due to a magazine detonation (although it was due to fire rather than penetration). The famous USS Arizona was also a victim of a magazine detonation when a bomb penetrated through its decks. Either way I find magazine detonations to be extremely rare and they only tend to occur when one side is heavily outmatched in guns vs armour. I don't know if I have seen a ship cause on a detonation on an equivalent ship since about T3, the rest of them are all due to battleships' guns being able to ignore the armour of cruisers and destroyers (and in the destroyers' cases, often even HE can ignore their armour). I would also like to see more building up of the damage in the game, as I don't like the way a ship with 10% health will probably still be fighting with close to 100% efficiency, when realistically they have probably had half of their main batteries taken out, are missing one of their rudders and most of their engine rooms are going to be flooded. Obviously nobody wants to be completely immobilised in the game, but most ships had multiple engine rooms so it would allow for a gradual decrease in speed. Realistically, almost every citadel penetration should either result in a detonation, loss of a turret or the loss of an engine room, as that's literally all that is in the citadel.

No, they were going to be more in line with the 16" MkI guns that were designed for the G3s, as the developments of the N3s and the G3s were so closely related. The only sources I have found for the projectile weights are that they were going to be either 2916 lbs or 2837 lbs, which isn't much more than the US 16" 2700 lbs shells (with significantly less cross-sectional density) and is noticeably less than the 3320 lbs of the MKI. Navyweaps has some information comparing the MkI and MkII. I've not been able to find out that much concrete information regarding the later Lion designs, the only points that the scant information I have found agree on are that the guns were to be fast firing and have notably heavier shells than the 16" MKIII. I think part of the problem is that the later designs were little more than vague proposals made by a very small development team over a long period of time (the design work continued up until about 1949) about what would be feasible to fit on ships of the suggested displacement, so unless WG has access to better records than the historians' who have published the well known information they will have a fair amount of freedom to tweak them. Even the figures for the later designs seem to vary greatly from 50,000 tons standard displacement up to 65,000 tons standard displacement. As far as I am aware the heaviest designs were actually the ones with the 2x3 guns, as they were willing to sacrifice the firepower to simply mount more armour, they basically got stuck in the same design issues as the later German H-class designs which lead to the infamous 144,000 ton H-44, namely trying to armour the ships to withstand the ever increasing power of air dropped bombs (I've seen the deck thickness quoted as up to 12" for some of the designs, which is notably higher than the 9.3" of the Montana).

I hope that if they use the Malta-class as the T10 CV they use the original armoured design rather than the stripped down unarmoured one. It would feel somewhat disappointing for armoured carriers to be the main theme of the RN carriers only for the final ship in the line to be basically a super sized Essex.

The later Lion designs were developed around the MKIV 16" guns, which was designed around a significantly higher fire rate than other similar guns of the period (most documentation I've found about it put it's firing cycle at about 20 seconds, compared to the 30 that is standard on battleship guns) as well as firing some extremely heavy shells for a 16" gun. Overall, they wouldn't have the same broadside weight as the N3s, but they would put more 16" shells out per minute than the Montana (assuming they use one of the 3x3 proposals, some of them were only 2x3 guns, although the 2x3 designs had even more armour to compensate). Not to mention that the later Lions were primarily designed around incredible deck and underwater protection because of the threat of aircraft and submarines, which would make them all but immune to air and destroyer attack, so it wouldn't be just a matter of battleship vs battleship matchups as the Lions would have the advantage against other ship types. The N3s have the higher caliber guns, but the later Lions are faster, more armoured, higher fire rate, similar broadside weight and better penetration (as the British 18" MkII guns were not a good design). The N3s would actually fit better at T9 than T10 now I have looked into it a bit more, considering their age and displacements. It is only a few thousand tons heavier than the Iowas but is significantly older. Considering how both the Amagi and the North Carolina are in the same tier, we can assume that being slightly heavier is balanced by the age of the design. It's also worth noting that the British 18" MkII guns had the same poor design as their 16" MkI guns, namely firing light shells at high velocities which lead to very poor penetration and high dispersion at longer ranges, so they probably aren't going to be more powerful than the US 16"/50s, similar to how the British 16"/45s were only about as effective as the old British 15"/42s due to the poor design. I'd still rather see an earlier Lion design at T9 though, if only for progression's sake.

We will never see Graf Spee as a regular ship in the game, as regular ships in the game are representative of entire classes rather than single ships. Similar to how the Bismarck-class is already in the game code as a T8 battleship, while Tirpitz is a T8 premium. However it would be nice to see the Deutschland-class in the game as regular ships at T7 or so (as I think WG are planning to have the German cruiser tree split into cruisers and panzerschiffe around that point), with Graf Spee being a special premium as an alternative at the same tier.

To be honest, I think that one of the later designs for the Lion class battleships would fit much better into T10 rather than the N3s. The later Lion designs are both much more modern and had higher displacements than the N3s, so they would compete far better with the other T10s. Likewise, the middle Lion designs would fit well into T9, being overall very similar to the Iowas. I'm not sure where the N3s would actually fit best though, as they are likely to be far too powerful to be allowed at T9.

I'm in the camp that it should be changed to only buff secondary batteries and AA batteries, rather than affecting all guns below a certain caliber. It makes no sense that two of the skills in the "secondary weapons" commander line are actually both two of the best skills for buffing CL and DD primary weapons. All primary batteries of 155mm and below should instead receive compensation buffs and the firing training skills should no longer apply to them, possibly with an alternative version of the skills added to the primary weapons line (with lowered numbers, to keep things balanced). Having so much power in BFT and AFT also makes those skills a complete no-brainer for 2/3rds of the ships in the game. The simplest solution would be to buff all main guns of 155mm and below with about +5% fire rate and +10% range, then add a pair of commander skills into the primary artillery line to add +5% increased fire rate for low caliber main batteries and +10% range for smaller caliber main batteries (possibly with smaller increases for high caliber, similar to the turret traverse skill). The separation of the values and skills would both allow captains to specialise more into their favoured fighting style (particularly as I think the captain skills really need more variety, the amount of depth in commanders is lacking compared to WoT), as well as letting the secondary buffing skills actually make a difference without accidentally overpowering other things. The separation would also be important when if/when they get around to implementing some of the proposed 203mm IJN secondaries.

I'd rather see Renown in a dedicated battlecruiser tree, where upon it would fit quite nicely into T6, being of a similar generation of capital ships to the Queen Elizabeths (technically the generation after, but the QEs were pretty ahead of their time). I'm not sure about N3 at T10, it has the firepower on the broadside but is otherwise basically worse than the Yamato in every other regard. It is both significantly older and significantly smaller than the two existing T10s in the game. It would be nice if the RN notable trait is their secondaries, as I quite like making use of my secondary batteries (even though they are of debatable effectiveness!). It also fits well with my idea of the RN carriers staying much closer to their fleets, and having long range secondaries would help give them a reason to stick close so they can help deter destroyers. Maybe we will eventually see a Lord Nelson with their 9.2 inch secondaries as a T3?

I also hate the forced CV matchmaking, I'd rather see it removed as it makes so many other game mechanics irrelevant. At the moment, there's no point going for a full-AA specced cruiser, as you are guaranteed to have an equivalent carrier to provide air support. Likewise, there's no point going for the dogfighting expert captain skill, as the chances of you facing off against a higher tier carrier is almost remote as it requires 2v2 carrier matchmaking with differently tier carriers. I do miss the challenge of trying to operate while under enemy air superiority, trying to negate enemy air power while supporting my teams greater surface power, but now there is simply no variety. What I'd rather see is forced matchmaking between escorts and capitals, where battleships and carriers are forced together (so you could have a Nagato and a Ryujo vs a New Mexico and a Ranger) while cruisers and destroyers are matched in the same way. Obviously for performance reasons carriers would have to be limited to 2-3 per team to prevent potato computers exploding. That would also fix all the balance issues arising from high tier battleships (which we all know are rather powerful) being somehow equated to little escorts in matchmaking, as most teams would rather have a Montana or a Yamato rather than a Des Moines, with this suggestion the Des Moines wouldn't take up a valuable team slot that could instead have a battleship but instead would simply be an alternative to a T10 destroyer.

It's a shame, if they had released the Mikasa for £5 or less, with the only included extra being an extra port slot, I probably would have bought it. But as it stands I'm not going to pay a load extra for stuff I don't care about.

The later Lion-class designs approached a similar scale to the Yamatos and Montanas, the design work for them continued up until about 1948 or so but progressively became larger and larger to deal with the ever increasing power of aircraft and submarines. They basically ran into the same design issues that lead to the monstrous H-43 and H-44 designs that the kriegsmarine had. As far as I am aware, the final designs for the Lion-class were to be 60,000+ tons, with 2x3 autoloading 16" guns (they went down to 2 turrets to save weight, compensated by an increased rate of fire from autoloaders), and enough armour on the decks and torpedo belts such that no carrier-based aircraft or torpedo could truly threaten them. The earlier designs would fit nicely into T9, as they offered quite similar performance to the Iowa-class, being 30+ knots and having 3x3 16" guns. Vanguard was actually a heavily modified Lion design, altered to include 4 turrets rather than 3, but otherwise with the same armour scheme and propulsion, there would be no need to magic in some 16" guns for Vanguard as the original design she was based off had 3x3 16" guns. It would be nice to see the KGVs with 15" guns, one of the original designs for them actually had them with 3x3 15" guns similar to the Italian battleships, but the design was altered to 3x4 14" guns due to the treaties at the time (which was then further reduced to 2x4 + 1x2 14" guns as they weren't willing to sacrifice armour or speed to stay within treaty displacement limits).

The G3s were basically just 30+ knot Nelsons though, and the Nelsons would fit right into T7 alongside the rest of the 16" gun battleships of the time. A few knots extra speed is not worth 2 tiers, otherwise the Iowa should be fine at T10 (which it isn't, it's fine at T9). As I said, the G3 would be faster and better armoured than the Amagi, however the awkward turret layout, fewer guns, fewer turrets (making it more vulnerable to having turrets knocked out) and the British 16" MK1 being a pretty terrible gun (mostly no better at penetrating than the old 15" MK1 due to a flawed design), giving them pretty poor firepower compared to the other T8s. They would overall be more like the Bismarcks than the Amagis, trading firepower for speed and armour. Other minor imbalances can be worked out by changing around the AA guns and things like the turning circle. Putting the G3s at T9 puts them up against the Iowas, and the Iowas are practically better in every single regard than the G3s. They have similar displacements, except that the Iowas have the advantage of 20 years of technological progress on their side. The only way the G3s could go up against the Iowas is if they allowed them to upgrade into the preliminary G3 design with the 16.5" guns, which would give WG a lot of flexibility for balancing them as there was practically no development done on the 16.5" guns so they would be allowed to basically make stuff up for them.

The only possible issue I could see with putting the Oaklands at T6 is that they have incredible AA power, which would easily rip apart any of the lower tier aircraft. Remember that even the initial T4 CVs can face T6 enemies, and I don't imagine that T4 and T5 aircraft could do anything about an Oakland, particularly considering the Atlanta causes problems even for T7-9 carriers. I'd rather see some kind of Brooklyn-class preliminary designs or the planned Omaha successor with the 4x2 6" gun turrets as the T6. More likely the Omaha successor, as it would be of a similar age and discplacement to the Aoba-class, only with 8 6" guns rather than the 6 8" guns of the Aoba.

She will still never be as effective as an Amagi. The basic Amagi design was still several thousand tonnes heavier than the Admiral-class, 5 years newer, had the more efficient all-or-nothing armour scheme and had the reinforced deck armour of a post-Jutland ship. Even a fully-modernised Admiral-class would struggle to go up against a stock Amagi (except in AA, as the Amagi's design was before AA was seen as important, so obviously the modernisations would make a lot of difference here) The Admiral-class was basically just a QE-class that was built for more speed and 6 knots is not worth more than a single tier. The G3s on the other hand are of similar displacements and ages to the Amagis, and compete well with them in most areas, having the edge in speed and armour but the Amagi having more firepower and a better turret arrangement.

I'd say the real problem with the Atlanta is not a problem with the Atlanta itself, but a problem with carriers. There's no point having the infamous "steel umbrella" when carriers are such a rare sight that are so ineffective until the late US carriers, and on the rare occasion that there is an enemy carrier you are guaranteed to have an allied carrier to keep the skies clear for your team anyway.

The only way it would be balanced with any increase in power is if they also increase it's tier. In both age and displacement is belongs in T8, hence why it is so comparable to the Mogami-class (interestingly, the Cleveland's predecessor, the Brooklyn-class was developed specifically to counter the Mogamis). That's also why it has better AA than every cruiser up until the Baltimores, it was part of the same generation of ships where the Cleveland was the light cruiser to the Baltimore's heavy.

Battleships were never designed for shelling land positions, it just turns out that they were rather good at it because of their numerous high calibre guns. The ships that were designed for shore bombardment were the RN Monitors, which were small, shallow draught vessels for getting as close to land as possible and were typically equipped with guns from old decommissioned battleships.

The current idea for the IJN that I have heard is that rather than having CA and CL lines, they are more likely to go into a regular cruiser line (CLs going into CAs) that splits off into an aviation cruiser line. The main advantages of ships like the Agano, Ooyodo and Tone classes were that they had massive floatplane facilities compared to ships of similar age and displacement, they were meant to be squadron leaders that used their enhanced reconnaissance abilities rather than being powerful combatants in their own right. Having a dedicated CL line for the IJN wouldn't really work because all of their CLs are either really old or are focused on aviation facilities, with the exception of the Mogami class which was part of the generation of London Naval Treaty cruisers as so was basically a CA with 155mm guns.

The main things that I feel need fixing are the RNG aspect of AA guns and how the damage is distributed between multiple squadrons. Fixing the RNG aspect is easy, simply give aircraft actual health (even if it's not shown on the HUD) and make AA fire damage them. If a bomber squadron has 500 hp per plane and is in a bubble of 200 AA DPS, then bombers should be lost after every 2.5 seconds (or possibly after 3 seconds, then 2, then 3, then 2 etc if damage is dealt every second rather than continuously). The multiple squadron damage thing irks me a lot because it means that sending more planes to focus a target results in you losing more planes, as somehow a ships AA guns manage to shoot every single aircraft simultaneously. It would be better if damage was simply divided equally between all squadrons, rather than being multiplied by the number of squadrons. This would also fix some of the strange aspects of the AA focus fire command, as all it currently does is increase damage against a particular squadron at the cost of damage against other squadrons, making it technically "best" to focus fire when you are only faced with a single squadron as then there's no drawback, while my suggestion would make focusing a lone squadron unnecessary. Obviously this would require AA guns and/or aircraft durability to be rebalanced because of the increased effectiveness of massed bomber attacks. Lastly, rather than planes taking more damage while carrying bombs, I'd quite like to see planes get a small speed increase when empty, as they are no longer carrying so much weight. If this would screw up fighters trying to catch them, then instead bombers could instead move slower while carrying their payload but be made tougher to compensate. Either way, it would be nice to have bombers be a bit more resistant on their way out, as it is quite annoying to know that if you lose a plane or two going in, you probably aren't going to have any planes coming back. And I agree that the game should be balanced around teamplay, things should always be balanced around players knowing what they are doing and it never works if something is balanced assuming rubbish players. It might be fine to balance T4-5 like that, as in those tiers people are likely still learning, but by T6 players should know how to deal with carriers. Going solo when there's enemy carriers about is basically like a battleship sailing in a straight line when there are enemy IJN destroyers unaccounted for, it's just simply a bad idea and should be punished rather than rebalancing the game to punish those that take advantage of said mistake.