invicta2012

Krasny Kavkaz? I see why you were so keen to have her at Tier IV now. I'd be up for that...

Monaghan is good value, as you can switch her back into gunboat mode for operations and still have an interesting and AA capable DD for randoms. Atlanta is a must have, and Scharnhorst is a very able battlecruiser.

The Leone, Lazo and Yahagi are all ready but have been handed over to the department of Launch Gimmicks, who are currently deciding whether to make them available as part of irritating bundles, for a new currency, or as part of an exasperating marathon. Never just for cash, comrades!

@SparvieroVV That's interesting info, thank you. I was hoping for a five gun RN DD leader first but this looks a worthwhile design. Wallet is unlocked...

USS Hill looks interesting. A Farragut / Nicholas gunboat hybrid (and not a real ship, by the looks). Should be powerful at Tier V. Tier X cruisers look good, too : nice to see postwar cruisers showing up (hint hint, Blake).

Washington as a Tier VIII Premium BB with the CV/BB radar consumable would be fun, as NC is a great ship in its own right. But it's never a Tier VII. Didn't WG take the radar consumable off the Soviet BBs, though, as it was too powerful an advantage in Cyclones, and the like? I also thought that the Premium US Tier VII BB of choice was Tennessee? I know that getting a US BB below Tier VIII which isn't tediously slow would appeal to lots of people (including me) but I'm not sure how it would be done.

I hope so. One of the reasons I have ended up playing Destroyers more than any other class, recently, is because they don't feel hemmed in by "the meta". Yes, there are ideal ways to play each ship, but you can play most ways and still have game-winning potential. You have more map freedom and more possibilities in how to play, and that keeps the game fresh. If that is limited by the CV rework then that would be a big, big disappointment.

"Best players unaffected" does not mean "no issue". Hate to say it, what with their being oracles an all...

Having the ability to reduce the accuracy of a CV drop, rather than shooting down planes, is something missing from the current AA game and it really should be put back in (both for balance and for realism). CV vs CV end games seem to be the norm and their power increases exponentially as other ships receive damage and lose AA defence capacity. This is fair if you've been given a zombie heal capability like a Nelson, but other ships without this skill just get chipped to death and can do nothing much by way of response.

Sometimes you have to. And you still have better tools than any other ship class to do this. The question is whether taking a cap (and likely losing your ship in the process) is worth the trade. While all the advice about working with cruisers and AA ships is good, it's all dependent on other players understanding your needs and helping you - sometimes they just won't - and then you've got to fall back on your own resources. That means some lines of DDs are much more attractive than others - the upcoming French ones are likely to be particularly tricky vs CVs if they lack smoke and decent AA.

This is true, but WW2 navies were focused almost entirely on the protection and/or destruction of capital ships - battleships and aircraft carriers. Unlike the carriers in WoWs, the Kido Butai did not spend their time hunting destroyers. But we have to adapt to what WG have given us, I suppose, and I would agree with Verblonde's post on technique. If you take a low AA DD into a Domination game with 2 x co-ordinated enemy CV, though, god help you, because that's no fun. Three/four squads spotting over a cap + fighter drops.... perfect area denial with no counter.

They'd probably be better if they let us control Mikasa's secondaries (with their full range) and automated the main guns. I've often thought that Krasny Krym is like playing a pre-dreadnought's secondary armament, so it would be quite a fun ship to play. For the bigger Pre-Dreadnoughts, you just let the player use the main guns and large calibre secondaries..... the latter just won't fire if they're not in range!

Well, perhaps. If I was feeling malicious towards Tier X CVs I would equip Tiger (should be Blake, I suppose) with a baked in Target Acquisition Mod which would increase the detection of surface ships and aircraft (blindfire being a vital part of the 1950s Tiger class requirement) and let her have AA stealth fire capability. This should be the ship which parks behind an island close to a cap and screens destroyers from the attentions of enemy CVs. Minotaur and Worcester have ludicrous numbers of AA and DP main guns so there is no way they can be balanced for this role, but Tiger's 3 x 2 3 inch batteries are much fairer.... especially if they only achieve their maximum 90 RPM through the use of DFAA consumables. Is this unfair? No more so than radar cruisers, which do the same "Gotcha!" on DDs all the time. CV players would just have to adapt. She's a similar size to Fiji so its possible to get sub 10k surface detection, add enhanced detection of other ships + torpedoes, as above, and rapid firing DP secondaries with increased range, and this would be a ship DDs might think twice about charging. We have battleships with absurd numbers of secondary guns firing out to 10k from Tier VIII onwards, why not a cruiser with a balanced number going out to 8k? I would, however, make it so that they can only do one job at once.... you'd have to turn off AA batteries for the 3 inch guns to work on the surface. There are some late 1950s/1960s designs for gun cruisers which would also work well. UK shipyards were offering them out to South American navies who were still interested in that type of vessel. The RN looked at them but were more interested in missile cruisers at that point...

That's a reflection of the fact that some elements of this game lack subtlety and are a bit about "brute force numbers". These ships certainly would be weaker than many equivalent pure gun cruisers in a straight out gun fight - that's realistic. However there is absolutely no reason they couldn't be given balance in other ways, based on post-war technology and elements the current RN CL lines don't have - HE main battery shells, Proximity fuse HE AA weaponry, improved hydrodynamics, enhanced fire control (giving more range, better dispersion, improved primary AA/flak burst efficacy), enhanced passive detection of enemy ships, planes, torpedoes, etc. The Tiger class does require some careful handling but Ceylon/Swiftsure and Superb are very similar to what we already have in the game, and I'm sure plenty of RN CL captains would have traded at least one turret for HE shells at some point in the game.... It doesn't have to be that specific a role. And in any case, the game already allows you to take low AA ships into two CV games, as any Normandie or Gallant captain will tell you... as long as you still have some viable options it's OK.

In the 1950s - which is in scope of the game - Ceylon ended up with 5 x 2 and 8 x 1 40 mm Bofors - which is fine for VIII.. There were so many plans for Superb that I lose count but she remains viable even if stacked with Bofors in every location, and as for Tiger - yes she does only have 4 6 inch guns but they are the ones on Minotaur, and she also has the fully auto 3 inch AA/secondaries (90 rpm) and - if we're allowed to believe in Soviet Battleships - they could pretend that they actually worked! The balancing act with RN cruisers is the size and prominence of their citadel as composed to their damage output, so there might be an argument for making these ones rather less likely to explode, as they have less damage potential.

Not quite. The ship she nicked the guns from - the Edison - was a Benson class destroyer. She's high tier US DD guns on a low-Tier RN CL hull. It's an interesting (and flawed) mix - you'd have trouble getting more than two of them into play against surface opponents without losing your citadel. She's Tier V on my line of Royal Navy AA cruisers (which is Carlisle (IV) / Delhi (V) / Dido (VI) / Scylla (VII) / Ceylon (VIII) / Superb (IX) / Tiger (X)...

The original one or the funky AA cruiser version with the American Destroyer guns?

Ah, drat. I suppose you can't have everything. Quite so. I think the game needs more heavy cruisers and making one more durable wouldn't hurt at all - the whole "Glass Cannon" thing gets a little dull after a while.

They could also think about giving her back the Heavy AP she had at Tier VIII....

Similar to the differences between Helena and Boise. Heal traded for slower reload, slightly weaker AA and other consumable changes. A more durable CA in the US line is quite appealing. I agree that San Francisco is a very notable ship of the line, but the whole Atlantic /Pacific Fleet split is quite interesting too, and does give opportunities for Arctic camo and the like.

Depends on how it's balanced. Support ships need to be able to contribute in a non CV game and in my experience they can : AA DDs are enjoyable because they can still have Dev Strike capability with toroedoes, AA cruisers have HE spam to fall back on. WG are probably concerned about a silver AA line bringing the latter problem back and there being complaints about triple Juneau and Dido games shutting CVs down and HE spamming BBs to death.

British battleship Conqueror_T, tier X: The restoration of the casemate (non-citadel) damage by Repair party increased from 75% to 85%; Sigma value increased from 1.8 to 1.9 for 419-mm guns; Citadel's upper deck armor increased from 12 mm to 32 mm

You have forgotten that 2020 is the year of the odd Tier carrier. And 2021 is the year of the Support carrier. It will never end.

Is this relevant for a thread about low Tier DDs?

I'm glad to hear it. It will take the playerbase a while to work out what to do with them, though, as they've been the chocolate teapot's worth of use up until now. You can if you're a Destroyer or a Cruiser with DP main guns. Those should be as potent at the end of the game as they are at the beginning. Well, that wasn't what I said. Dedicated AA ships would provide stronger long-range AA for team mates and have DFAA for their own short-range defence, but they'd have shorter range and weaker guns for surface combat. Ships like the RN Cruisers Carlisle and Delhi, which had their 6 inch guns replaced with 4 and 5 inch DD guns, the Dido class, and the late war modifications to Fiji/Sheffield etc where they traded X Turret for lots more AA guns. Proximity Fuse HE would increase the hit probability of DP main battery guns against planes, but it wouldn't do jack against surface targets. If that was a switchable ammo type then the player would have to choose and make sure they had the right ammo loaded - if you had Proximity HE loaded when you get attacked by the enemy, and it's 30 seconds until you can do much damage in response... tough luck! These would be ships to be played with care, to keep them alive to the end of the battle so that CVs don't always have their pick of badly weakened opponents. Well, take some away, or make CV defence more based on consumables. As it stands attacking a CV with planes is on the wrong side of the risk/reward ratio, so no-one does it.