invicta2012

No, Peter. We've been over this before. The bots are smarter than players, they don't sail in quite as many straight lines and they certainly spot, assess and act against torpedo threats more quickly than players do. If there's room for them to dodge, they will do so, and torp pot shots from 5-6k away rarely hit their target. But that's OK, once you adapt to it.

It does say you have to send a picture of your tattoo in as part of the entry, though, which should preclude most 12 year olds.

That's how it's written in the book the film is based on (CS Forester's "The Good Shepherd") - to quote.. ""Eagle To George", it said. "Request Permission to assist Harry". Eagle was the Polish destroyer Viktor, on Keeling's port beam, and the voice was that of the young British officer who rode in her to transmit TBS messages." There are also Canadian ships in the convoy escort - as there should be, of course - does the film mention these?

Well, yes, but assuming that OP was working his way up the line I was thinking of this sort of thing: The US 6 inch guns are pretty consistent in their performance but you can see from that graph that penetration drops off above 10k to the point where you're going to struggle to pen belt armour even with a flat broadside to aim at, especially when you get Helena and Cleveland and start to see better armoured opposition. And those shell angles do get a bit floaty, especially at ranges over 14k. Comparing Baltimore and Tallinn is quite instructive, too. .

If you can see any official resource which explains it, let me know. I had to play the CVs to work it out. They're all the same as Ranger, now. I wrote this down a week or two ago but now I've got shot of my Tier VIII Cvs.... IIRC they're all front facing ellipses, apart from Ark Royal.

Cruiser guns have different trajectories to BB guns. It varies hugely from line to line, some cruisers (American ones) have quite floaty gun arcs, some have quite flat ones (Soviet ones, generally). So you won't get "through the side" citadels at all - even where armour allows it - with an American cruiser gun until about 10k, because the shells are coming down at too much of an angle. So you go for the superstructure, weak areas of the deck (bow/stern) and the side (bow/stern again). A full pen shell hit there, particularly with the number of shells a cruiser can fire, will do decent damage, and that's what you're looking for - not huge dev strikes, but banging out these 5k salvos every 10 seconds or so. With heavy and super cruisers you have more choice, but it's complicated because the guns vary so very very much in terms of their calibre, type, shell, velocity, arc, HE penetration... everything. A ship like Tallinn, whose guns do everything reliably (and whose AP will get you citadels) and which isn't made of glass, is a refreshing change.

To make it harder to attack DDs from the front, to make it more likely that CVs have to overfly the AA bubbles of other ships, to standardise the anti-rocket tactics DD players need to employ. Coupled with the proposed detection changes this should be quite effective.

Something like the mouth of the Thames/Medway or the Clyde, or Norwegian fjords around Narvik could be quite fun. Split the teams in half and put them into channels where manouevre could be difficult, but large fleets could be decisive. Brawling ships would love it...

Tier VI CVs - Ark Royal, Furious and Ryujo. Ark / Ryujo have powerful torpedo salvos which are good for Aegis, Raptor and Killer Whale. Ark struggles in Raptor due to slow planes, Ryujo has better reach but those torp planes need a long run in, which can be tricky in Aegis with AA cruiser blobs. Furious is an allrounder, overall better at Newport, as she has faster bombers than Ark Royal but more nimble torp planes than Ryujo, which means you can hassle on-rushing cruisers and DDs into beaching themselves. Tier VI DDs?- Aigle, of course. But Icarus shines in Newport and Raptor with smoke, hydro and a 10 torpedo single fire broadside, where you can help allies and get dev strike multiple enemies. Shades it over T-61, in my view. Tier VI Cruisers - Probably one from Leander, Huang He, Nurnberg/Makarov, Devonshire, Pensacola. If you are defending, you need smoke. Attacking in open water needs speed and a heavy broadside. BBs - Again, Speed or a heavy broadside. Or both! So Izmail, Dunkerque or West Virginia, from my port. WV's 406's do terrible things to Tier VI cruisers, which is always entertaining. Narai? Fiji, Atlanta, Lyon, Gneis, Scharn, Boise/NdJ, Sinop... but I like Blyskawica for her mini-cruiser guns, fast reload torps and smoke, and Gorizia for her ability to mop up the CV flank - long range hydro and punchy SAP gets rid of irritating Nicholi and Phoenixes without fuss.

The problem is that WG sees Italian ships as a primary gimmick line with SAP. Never mind that the players are indifferent on the subject of SAP and its efficacy, and that it is often too effective or ineffective in the same game... they're going with it. I dread to think what a Tier V BB would be like with SAP, it would make GC look balanced.

I think there is a role for missile craft - almost like artillery in WoT, an area denial weapon useful for flanking ships to flush out ships behind islands, and so on. But it's very difficult to see how you balance that within +2 MM.

The new concept for Paolo Emilio looks interesting, shall we say....

The problem is that post-war is a very difficult era to balance. The main naval powers of the Cold War - and that's the USSR, USA, Britain and France - merrily went off building nuclear powered carriers, submarines with ICBMs and Destroyers with Surface to Surface missiles while the rest of the world was still sailing variations on the Gearing, Fletcher, Brooklyn and Colossus classes - late WW2 stuff. The only naval conflicts we have to draw on are Ops type scenarios from the Korean, Falklands and Gulf wars, which were rather one-sided affairs. To be honest - and it's become boring saying it - they'd be better off making a compelling game from the classic Age of Armoured ships, which is about 1880-1920.

The ship is fine, but the dispersion of the guns is frustrating. I tried out all the Tier VIII and IX Premiums in the last rental offer and I couldn't live with Roma's tendency to miss things 8k away showing broadside (the same way as I didn't like Vanguard's lack of punch). But, obvs, you may enjoy it where I don't.

Not if Roma is representative of the line. WoNKy guns are not what's needed.

Furious is a brilliant torpedo bomber... if you choose the Albacores. But that is "the British thing", given that rocket planes are flaky and bombers are easy to use, but inconsistent. Ryujo's torp bombers are superb, but in contrast to Furious they need a very long run in to get that aiming pattern straight - around 5-6k. Sounds like the German one got Ranger's drop pattern, which is challenging - although it definitely improves with the right captain skills.

Yes. My CVs have been doing it all week.

Tier V CVs would help. Reduce Tier IVs to Hermes style weaponry - so only one torpedo per attack - and then move the Hosho style weapons up to Tier V CVs.

Have you turned on the Dynamic Crosshair? That's a real help in judging the amount of lead you need to give a ship. Don't discount Co-op and Operations as practice modes. The bots in operations are reasonably good, they don't just sail in straight lines and they can punish you for mistakes. And you can do those at Tier VI, where there's plenty of good ships in tech tree lines to play - and you won't face enemy CVs, either.

I don't agree with the OP. I've come across plenty of test ships in random games and their impact is minimal. It can be annoying not knowing that the ship is and what its talents may be, but this doesn't seem a massive issue worthy of a flounce.

Tallinn is great. Nasty AP and effective HE in a decent ship which doesn't explode when a BB looks at it. Not much more you can ask of a Tier VIII cruiser.

You'd probably enjoy a Tirpitz, as it brawls well with those torpedoes and secondaries and turtleback armour. Main guns are also improved from the famously wonky German ones. There are silver ships which can offer the same experience, but if you don't to wait to grind them out, that's a good choice.

It's a Tier IV cruiser. It has 13mm bow armour, which is overmatched by everything other than DDs and CLs. The Citadel goes all the way to the upper deck and the top of it is 30mm, and that's not keeping out plunging BB shells. When it's spotted, it's dead.

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with Tallinn. Especially in that Soviet camo. Mmh-hm.

The problem I have is that the "level flight" sounds on HMS Furious' bombers appear to be the same ones used throughout "Airplane!"....