invicta2012

You probably want to use them as opportunist DD killers (although they don't have many of the tools for that, like hydro) and then park-up-and-spam HE flingers. Stealth torping becomes more viable at higher tiers, too. But if you want to open water gunboat... probably not. Try a Russian or French DD for that sort of thing.

...and I've just tried them. No real reason to pick them as it stands, there's .5 faster reload and a moderate increase in Continuous AA, which is a bit disappointing. I guess WG have had so much trouble balancing these Dido class ships that they can't give it the guns of 1 and a half DDs! I can honestly say, though, that Chungking and Rahmat are great fun as PVE ships.

Indeed. A Dido with two different gun calibres. Not sure if anyone has played with those yet, I'm interested to see how the 113mm guns play at Tier VI.

Oh yes she is! (Panto season was delayed this year due to COVID)

Exactly, rather like the development of Vanguard - you can have a fast battleship with new 16 inch guns in 1948 or one with existing 15 inch guns in 1945. That's what I meant by late war bitza for the Mecklenburg, a combination of hull + existing guns.

Do you like Strasbourg? Because that's how these ships will play. A bit large, a bit squishy, but with devastating firepower (if the Dispersion Gods look kindly upon you).

Well, the KM didn't manage to get anything bigger than 380mm on an actual ship.... the only argument for small calibre guns on these things is that they might have been reusing guns taken off other ships being refitted, which would imply the use of the 11 inch guns from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. That might be quite interesting - 16 x 283mm guns on an H class hull would be very much a late war bitza project, but still likely to be able to blow away anything the Royal Navy had at sea in 1944.

Well, sort of. I like playing Ops - and especially Raptor, Killer Whale and Newport - because they often provide exciting close finishes. And that's often *because* of random teams and the fact that at least one or more team members is generally not up to speed. Farming content is OK if you're after resources, but the random route is more emotional (be that happiness or frustration).

But the size of an Invincible BC and, by the end of WW1, of a large ocean going cruiser. I'm hoping they've kept that comparison going here and that Marseille's resemblance to Richelieu is just layout based, not in displacement - there really shouldn't be anything in the cruiser category bigger than Alaska or the Japanese B-65 (is that Yoshino?).

Aigle works well I think. Anshan will also do nicely, as can Fushun. A USN DD can be strong and has those excellent smokescreens for other players / Raptor to hide in. If you bring anything smaller your job is to stay alive to the end phase, intercept those IJN BBs and fill them full of torps. But if cruisers are a problem, bring a Weser or Loewenhardt. Those German BB rocket planes make an awful mess of low tier Cruisers, and if all else fails you can always secondary YOLO them.

Re-using unpopular assets, I guess. Does anyone like Hizen? I guess not, so try sticking some gimmicks on it and see what works.

Why not take your favourite ship and try and carry? I love playing the CV in Raptor because you are so very influential with your spotting, but you can take a good DD, gun cruiser or perhaps Graf Spee or a fast BB like one of them newfangled German ones and front up.Poor teams often rally if someone is leading the way. And if it fails, at least you can say it wasn't down to you.

Now now. The MN gave rather a good account of itself during WW2. And they had battleships which left port (unlike Tirpitz) and came back again (unlike Bismarck).

This is all a bit average, really. I know every nation has to have a Supership but for the RN I'd rather it was something based off Drake and Goliath than Minotaur. Mecklenburg looks like another in the increasingly similar high-tier German BB lineup and the Iwami is just a juiced up Mutsu. Which is fun enough, but I'll need to see the firing angles on those torpedoes before it sounds like anything more than a bad idea to turn and fire them.

She's OK, from what I can see. Feels a little sluggish compared to Huang He, though, which is a bit disappointing as HH herself isn't as nimble as the RN Cruiser equivalents. But I've played lots of games in this style of ship and she's not poor. No more fragile than any other Tier V (smoke helps), guns are Ok, torpedoes are strong and have excellent range/firing angles, and the secondaries are quite handy if you can close the range. I'd still like an RN Arethusa, though - could be a mini-Perth with a spotter plane....

It did, back in the day, and there's no reason why it couldn't do so now - it's just another AI CV.

He means the enemy carriers in that mission now have planes that will attack the green team's ships. Although they always did, IMHO. Have they been improved and does this mean I can use my Bearn's fighters as intended, now?

I'd love to know what that is! The French did have some odd Italian-inspired ideas about BBs with all the main guns in the centre (5 and 5bis in the Richelieu pic) but I've never seen a cruiser like that. I'd buy it in a heartbeat if it ended up in WoWs....

It's a cruiser version of one of the Richelieu preliminary designs (see 2,3,4, below). FWIW The French decided the "all forward" design was a bad idea after their engagements with the RN and USN in WW2, so this would never have been built, it would have been a more traditional Alsace type layout.

Here we go... "In 1926, Admiral Salaün, Chief of the Naval General Staff, requested from the STCN a study for a capital ship of 17,500 tons standard displacement with sufficient speed and gun power to hunt down and kill lightly protected treaty cruisers. The resulting ship would have had a length overall of 205 metres and a beam of 24.5 metres (corresponding figures for the cruiser Duquesne were 195 metres and 19.1 metres), and a speed of 35 knots. The main armament was to comprise eight 305mm 55-calibre guns, disposed in two quadruple turrets forward, and protection was to be sufficient to resist 203mm armour-piercing shells. Unfortunately, no sketch designs of this project have been found. ... In similar vein, although there is no detailed information on the protection system, the stipulation that the ships be able to resist 203mm shell suggests an armoured belt in the region of 150-180mm, probably with a 75mm deck. In effect these ships would have been strikingly similar in conception to the early ‘battlecruisers’ as originally envisaged by the British Admiral Fisher." That sounds rather like the Tier VII to me. There's also a table of 1920s and 30s Cruiser/BC designs in my French BB book*. There are also later BC/fast BB Designs which WG have amalgamated to make Carnot. Anyone recognise the gun layout? I have to say, though, that the Tier X looks more like a Richelieu alt. design given Dunkerque's guns and put in a cruiser slot than anything descended from here. I'm also a bit disappointed they haven't added the historical Tier V and VI French Heavy Cruisers of the Duquense, Suffren and Foch types. (*French Battleships by John Jordan and Robert Dumas, worth buying if you have an interest in these ships).

Blimey. That's retro. Tier VIII Fubuki, Tier VI Cleveland, Tier VII Pensacola, Tier VI Mutsuki. All our yesterdays, right there.

Invest in anti-detonation flags/modules, and don't run any flags which increase your chance of a detonation. It's probably just RNG and will pass. If not, consider which part of your ship you point towards the enemy.

It's pretty much Leningrad at Tier V. Which is clearly not a particularly welcome sight for anyone in her MM spread, and especially not for anyone on the same or lower tiers. But these days there are lots more scary cruisers, radar and hydro, CVs then there were when that ship was first released (which back in Beta, I think) so not game-breaking.

Yes it will. And if you get it during Early Access, then you can upgrade all its modules for free. That will also remain on the ship once it enters the normal Tech Tree, along with all XP earned during Early Access. So it's a big step up, really.

Don't see the problem provided the ship numbers involved are low. No reason why I should be able to have OP premium ships just because I was there when they came out, and I'm not convinced anything other than a Kamikaze is an "I Win" button, these days.