invicta2012

I think anyone willing to pay for Vanguard or Alabama probably has one by now, tbh. They could put those two in the Armory without much fuss.

There was one. The USS Hull. She mounted one auto loading 8 inch gun for trials ( although two would have been possible). They were concerned about a lack of shore bombardment capability as older gun cruisers retired. She's another one on the list...

FenYang is just fine. Really, she is. You want to play Siliwangi for the real awkward experience. What is it with DDs with 2 x 2 at either end of the ship? They seem to be the worst gunboats going. Anyway: ships I would make up? HMS Benbow Admiral Class Cruiser, RN Supership. Instead of Minotaur's 5 x 2 MK26 6 inch guns, Benbow replaces "B" and "C" turrets with a launcher pod for Ship-To-Ship Missiles (which work rather like a cross between Dutch Airstrikes and IJN Torpedoes - they have a long range (but fairly long flight time) and can be directed at an area of the map, rather than requiring targeting on specific ships; some form of homing could be considered, allowing for counterplay. They tend to overpenetrate lightly armoured vessels but will cause significant explosive damage to cruisers, and have a high chance of causing fires on battleship superstructures. Up to 4 missiles can be launched every 120 seconds). This is a merger of Minotaur, Tiger and the Batch 2 County Class DD, and the intention is to provide an artillery-style long range deterrent to camping and sniping. The ship combines the range of a high tier battleship, with the waspish damage/fire setting of DD guns, along with the general qualities of the original ship (impressive gun damage at mid ranges, especially when concealed or kiting, but low survivability). ---- HMS Devastation Royal Navy Battlecruiser, Tier VI Originally ordered as HMS Resistance, a Revenge-class battleship, Devastation is the ne plus ultra of Jackie Fisher's thinking - the biggest possible guns on the fastest possible ship. Devastation shares some characteristics with her Renown class half-sisters; huge size, a three turret main battery and moderate armour. However rather than the 3 x 2 15 inch guns found on Repulse, Devastation features 3 x 1 18 inch guns of the type fitted to the battlecruiser incarnation of HMS Furious, the largest guns ever fitted on to a Royal Navy ship. It was found that Furious, being lightly built, could not deal with the forces generated by firing her guns and was converted into an aircraft carrier. Devastation, on the other hand, with her Battleship hull, is built to take the strain. As a result her normal top speed is substantially reduced compared to Repulse (28 knots, rather than 31) but her overall armour build is stronger. She suffers from a Warspite-esque slow turret traverse and the slowest reload of any RN BB (33 seconds). Her huge size is also an invitation to HE spammers, but they will find that guns of Devastation's calibre are not be trifled with, and that her RN "SuperHeal" keeps her in the game longer than might be expected. --- HMS Pendennis Castle Class Destroyer, RN Supership The real-life tier XI RN DD, the County Class, was the largest destroyer ever built by the Royal Navy, and merged the category of Cruiser and Destroyer. Built at a displacement of 6000 tons (similar to a Dido Class Cruiser), much of these ships' internal volume was given over the space needed to accommodate the large and ineffective SeaSlug missile. The Castle Class removes the need to accommodate this poor quality weapon and instead replaces it with 5 x 1 5 inch N1 guns. The N1 is an experimental Dual Purpose gun developed in the 1950s for a Destroyer/Cruiser hybrid ship - it never entered service but a modified version (Mark Q 4"/62) was used in destroyers built for the Chilean Navy. The N1 was designed with a theoretical rate of fire of 60+rpm but it was soon agreed that this would be a problem because of the ammunition the ship could carry and the impact of the barrel life of the gun. Consequently her 1s reload potential is only achieved in an alternative Burst firing mode, with her "normal" firing rate being approximately 2.25s. While Pendennis lags behind other comparable DDs in terms of maximum speed, her substantial health pool (the largest of any Supership DD), nimble RN handling and Burst fire mode make her a formidable enemy if an opportunity can be found.

Depends on the ship! Reading further it seems the externals for Greyhound were done on the Kidd - there's some amusing local news footage of the filming, all of which was visible to the public, green screens everywhere to avoid inconvenient background objects like road bridges..... but you're right about the interiors. You need a BB sized ship to film those (interiors of "Missouri", which must be the warship with the most movie credits, are in "Under Siege" and "Battleship".)

They still do a lot of filming on the real ships... "Greyhound" was filmed on the USS Kidd, I think. It's probably easier to do that than to spend huge amounts of money on set design for the internal spaces. Where would you even source a lot of that stuff from?

There's an imposter in that picture. :) The French have photobombed them.....

She did. Quite obvious to everyone that she wasn't the Spee! (Although clearly they were going to have trouble finding a Panzerschiff in the 50s.....calling Jacques Cousteau).

Fair enough; I would be interested to see how the Averof was classified in Royal Navy service, though. I know the French Contre-Torpilleurs were considered Light Cruisers, I wonder which bracket old Georgios was in?

They were. But I don't see why everything pre-Hawkins should be excluded. Averof was designed in 1904, Hawkins in 1915. Averof was armed with modern British made guns in 9.2/7.5 inch calibres - they are the same ones as the 7.5's on Hawkins. The principle differences are in range, speed and hull design, none of which come into the treaty classifications of "Heavy Cruiser". Averof and Hawkins have much, much more in common that Hawkins and Des Moines do and yet no-one really argues about their categorisations. And, of course, Averof was the only "armoured cruiser" to actively serve in the Royal Navy in WW2... so she probably deserves to be considered in those modern categories.

Largely because "I've explained the counterplay, you're just not good enough to execute it" is usually the argument of people who play a broken class of ship, not those who have to play against it. The best advice is to go back down the Tiers and learn sub counterplay as you learned to play the original game. One thing that everyone can agree on is that people who buy a high tier premium when they don't understand the basics of the game are looking to get whacked and they deserve it; if you're trying to play to Tier X against subs when you've played a dozen matches in a sub environment then it's not a surprise if you get the same outcomes as a 50 game newbie in a Tirpitz. Because that's your skill level. So you have to learn and practice lower down the Tiers. Tier IV and V would be ideal, if WG hadn't mucked them up with double CV spam and no AA. They could do everyone a favour at this point and give anyone who wants it a free CV pass to Tier VI so that people can use IV-V for sub practice.... (FWIW I do think subs are broken - having tried to depth charge a few in DDs and finding myself dealing with sonar guided 70kt torps with no apparent arming distance is *such* fun. I was hoping for a proper shoot out (like in a Western) and what I got was press "R" and hope. )

She was an Armoured Cruiser when she was built (although there was no such official designation, they came during the treaty era in the 20s and 30s) but fits the definition of Heavy Cruiser and served in WW2 when the light/heavy designations were in common use. Having the same displacement and several of the same guns as Hawkins, the model ship for a heavy cruiser, she feels a comfortable fit in that category.

Other than giggling at Simon's *frightfully* posh accent I do think he's pushing some points too far here. Salem isn't the last remaining heavy cruiser (Georgios Averof, with a displacement of 10,000 tons and a maximum calibre of 9.2 inch guns, would fit that description) and Salem's fame is wholly down to her preservation as a museum ship, not her military career (the "other" Des Moines class cruiser, Newport News, served until 1975 and had a much more active career than Des Moines and Salem, including a prominent role in shore bombardments and the destruction of port facilities during the Vietnam War). The Ionian Earthquake bit and the ghost stories are amusing but we are basically talking about a ship with a fairly quiet career.

They'll still appear as Battleships in the game as there is no separate "Battlecruiser" class - I guess they would have added that when the German line came in if they were going to. Repulse and Hood could end up being outliers, really.... all the designs from Tier VI onwards in the new line can mount guns which would be very different to the existing RN BCs - more like Nelson's 16 inch Mk1 guns which have a light shell and higher muzzle velocity than the ones on Hood. That choice could define their role in the game....

Sort of she is... New Orleans guns on a plus sized Helena hull. Nimble, decent range, lots of consumable options, but she's not as durable or as hard-hitting as Baltimore.

Completely agree. Obvs. no-one who has played the ship can say why it was OP (because it's under NDA) but I do have the feeling from those stats that when the ship *could* do damage, it did far too much of it, and now they're trying to find the right balance. Hopefully they'll take their time and get it right!

You can buy either in a ship-only bundle if you want to: https://eu.wargaming.net/shop/wows/vehicles/sh_112/ https://eu.wargaming.net/shop/wows/vehicles/ps_p_20074/ You then buy the Lacquer camo with Doubloons from the Exterior Tab in game. I know they don't say that on the front page, but this is why we always do the little PSA notes in the forum.

I think she would be - I'm saying that looking at a port with Myoko, ARP Myoko, Tone, Atago B and Mogami in it! The IJN cruisers have always had lots to recommend them for PVE. My problem is just that I have these and a lot of excellent German cruisers too in the same ballpark (Weimar, Yorck, Hipper, Mainz), as well Algerie, Gorizia, Indianapolis and New Orleans, so I'm wondering if I've got all the CA bases covered. Or maybe another one wouldn't hurt....

The thing to remember is that Hyuga is £27 and the Lacquer camo available in-game for 4000 doubloons (£11.26). The rest of the cost is all those flags and camos.

Certain ones look better on certain ships. I love the way Type 59 goes with Japanese Cruisers (Myoko and Tone shown below). It somehow seems to accentuate their features (that trunking, the block bridge) and break them up at the same time. I'm also very fond of the Cornish Tea Set one (Ocean Soul, Blue and White Horizontal Stripes) and the Regia Marina ones (Grey tones with V shaped blocks).

I'll be interested to know if anyone does buy the ship and what they think of her, though. It's often the case that people can have fun with so called "bad" ships, there are only a few which turn out to be hopeless (I'm looking at YOU, Poltava and Florida...)

Her potential DPM was much higher, she didn't need IFHE to damage higher tier ships (because her SAP's base pen is 37mm). They've also changed the shell ballistics so that the shell's don't do the "mortar round" thing that US DD guns usually do. The concept probably needs three, four rounds of testing before it's ready.

Yes. You should thank Hornet for existing because it's the only thing taking the shine off Chkalov, which in all other respects was outperforming Enterprise and was completely OP.

I like her too, but poor old Benson. She's sitting at the back of the class singing "What Do I Get?" by the Buzzcocks. Not only is she the only ship in the game worse than *herself* (Benson is LoYang) but she has to watch her little sister being given a TRB.

It's called market research. And of course you get a spread of answers, just as you would do for any question asked to a decent sample group. But what you do establish is what important segments of your market are thinking, what they value, what they don't like. Most companies know that it is possible to get lost in a data rabbit hole from time to time, but that's usually a better risk to take than not engaging with your customer base and giving them something they don't want. WG *might* be a little guilty of that from time to time. I think verisimilitude is important and certainly forms part of the reason why I like this game, and why I play it. If I have a disconnect between the real world ship and the in-game ship, I tend to avoid playing it. I'm sure there many others who don't care so much (a valid point of view) but I would be disappointed if WG's approach to development went completely speculative. As for Tier VIII Austin - that's a great idea. Just don't call it San Diego. :)

+1 for the transparency. But I think something is being missed. If you want to take a real world ship and announce it as an upcoming premium, then you have to understand that the player base already has a view on that ship. It's an existing brand. Any company with a decent marketing department would be asking its players about potential new premiums and finding out how they react to certain names and what the expectations are.Then take a concept ship of that type and see if it's fun / effective, before making an announcement about any particular name. San Diego, as a brand, is a Tier VIII Atlanta. A traditional one, that fires HE and AP from DD calibre guns and is quite good at air-defence*. I might want some of the challenges faced by existing Atlanta class ships (ballistics, armour, range) to be looked at but I don't want that core vision for the ship lost. If it turns out that a trad Atlanta at Tier VIII isn't much fun and a surface combat version is better, then that's good - but you can't call it San Diego, it's Tacoma or Albuquerque or Galveston. Insisting that the ship is San Diego even if the testing ship has no relation to their existing concept makes the players cross, and the dev blog transparency makes it worse: players just say "this ship isn't what I wanted", "you don't listen", "you're making it up as you go along" and "we don't like your new design either". It's a world of sour grapes that could be avoided with a bit more care.