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Accuracy is marginally better on Thunderer, but hardly to the point where it's incredibly noticeable. The bigger difference you should focus on is: Do you want to go fast at T9 with better credit income? Georgia can get almost 40 knots of speed and as a T9 ship has better earnings. Do you want to have a tool for any situation and make the lives of any non-CV miserable at T10? Thunderer's strength is versatility with two strong ammo types, great concealment and great rudder shift. Good players should never find any situation where a Thunderer can't do something useful. As a consequence, whether it is by deleting people who don't pay attention with accurate AP or laying waste to anything else with HE, not giving a damn about angling or silly DD overpen rules, it is easy to cause a lot of grief with this ship. I consider Thunderer the stronger option of the two, though Georgia by no means is weak and its speed, secondaries, good guns and strong economy certainly can make it an appealing choice. I did not consider listing Georgia's heal though as an advantage over Thunderer, because while it is faster, Thunderer has a heal that is just in the middle in between normal heal and Georgia's heal, but with more hp recovered, better citadel restoration and better pen damage restoration, so in terms of repairing damage, both are actually quite strong.

Azur Lane has Zara for a good amount of time already. You still won't get a non-SAP one in WoWS though. Fun fact, she also has SAP in AL.

Dispersion on Amagi is only better because it lists the maximum dispersion at maximum range and Hizen has 300 metres better range, so 3 metres more maximum dispersion. At 20 km, both have identical dispersion. More important is that Hizen has 1.6 sigma, Amagi 1.8, so Amagi's shell groupings are a good bit better.

By picking no "fair" fight against these ships. Obviously a T8 ship is worse than a T9 or T10 one, just like T6s or T7s are worse than T8s. And the 3 mm of more plating Hindenburg gets on most of its hull don't matter in a Hipper vs Hindenburg fight, as both have more than 50 mm of HE pen. Even a non-IFHE Cleveland doesn't differentiate in this regard with 30 mm of pen.

Which is fine. Even if Colombo just hits 3 shells out of 16, it'd be 12k damage. Hit 6 out of 16 and you get 24k. For a normal BB, that's already a decent salvo. With only 500 more damage, the SAP becomes a bit more situational and you have to consider whether you want the chance of citadels or the guarantee of not overpenning and ricochetting less.

Issue is, on cruisers, it replaces HE and HE for cruisers is important, so SAP being this useful to make up for the loss in fire damage is kind of necessary. On BBs, the SAP as it was doesn't just replace the HE, it powercreeps the AP shells. C. Colombo for example would only ever need to load AP if there's a perfectly broadside cruiser or BB that can be very reliably citadelled, because otherwise, with old alpha, you are looking at up to 75k in a SAP strike. Even if it's unlikely you wipe out a Stalingrad as you'd need to hit 16 out of 16, just hitting 12 on most cruisers is just going to wipe them out.

IX HIZEN Number of "Repair Party" consumables reduced from 4 to 3. I'm at a loss of words.

Broken because you claiming it is, not because there's really anything proving it. I mean, you can tell me how you see it as a pressing issue when most people that showed up to respond haven't really shared your opinion. Maybe leave the politics out? Or got nothing else to base an argument on?

Well, guess I'll wait and see what Plymouth and Vampire II shape up to be. Got 3 months still.

Do we know any other free exp ship coming up? Smaland seems ok, but not much of a DD player...

More like, everything is lagging behind, except the plane kills.

No, the most important question is "Is it necessary?" And judging from the responses you got, a good amount of people seem to very much doubt that.

Usually, people who commit thread necromancy aren't doing so while being absolutely aware of the age of the thread they are responding to.

For comparison, Flammbass called it basically balanced, not necessarily great, but still a Belfast, rated 3.6/5. Personally, the ship has some issues, mainly that anti-DD work isn't any longer as important as it was in the past and the fire chance only is anywhere close to acceptable without IFHE and even then is kinda poor, but those things don't make it an overall bad ship. Belfast '43 is still within the area of balanced and competitive ships. Sure, they could buff the fire chance or the reload, it would be a good bit stronger and still balanced, but even now, Belfast is not the underpowered garbage some people seem to like to paint it as. Obviously though, it's a T8 cruiser that requires a ton of skill to perform well when it mostly gets matched vs T9 and T10, which naturally means as a playing experience it isn't everyone's cup of tea and not worth it to many, but as far as T8 cruisers go, I do not see Belfast as a really poor choice. And obviously, comparing it to T7 Belfast and thinking the ship is just worse and thus has to be bad is just absolutely ignoring how stupid original Belfast was.

The only thing that rips a squadron to pieces before you get even a single strike is flak bursts. It is one of the basic skills of effective CV play to be able to avoid the catastrophic damage from flak bursts. Kaga starts with 3 full squadrons of every type in reserve, but restores rather slowly, Lexington like most carriers starts with 1.5 squadrons and restores faster. Overall, the massive starting advantage of the Kaga with its huge squadron size and deep reserves (starting with 96 planes base instead of 42 of Lexington) makes it the CV with the most planes in a match as noone can catch up with that. Just others can do more with the quality of their planes, if they can preserve them.

6 km hydro on a 12 km conceal cruiser is as good as a 9 km radar on a 8.9 km conceal one? Mainz is a good ship and has many things going for it, but this claim is just silly. Also, Mainz is a quite different role from Belfast '43. Mainz excels at reliable damage output and tankiness for a light cruiser, sacrificing concealment and maneuverability for it. Belfast meanwhile sacrifices exactly those two areas for a good array of consumables and great concealment. Mainz will be far better at farming BBs or heavier cruisers, Belfast '43 will dominate any DD hunt though. Mainz definitely is easier to play and for stuff like Ranked, a solid pick, but I'd not consider the two interchangeable.

If your 12 planes get ripped to pieces before you can drop, that sadly is not a Kaga issue, sorry. I'm pretty sure Lexington regens faster, Kaga just has very deep reserves.

I'm not saying that you should play it as a radar bot, but the radar still is a major part of the capabilities of the Stalingrad. Just saying, if Stalingrad has no vision tools at all, I'd feel like the ship would just not be a very good ship anymore over Petro or Moskva, as it'd really just be a tanky gun platform. And that's absolutely BB territory.

Radarless Stalingrad basically is a crappy BB, given it then has worse armour, worse concealment, less repairs, less hp and just like BBs, no vision tools whatsoever (just an even more trash version of defAA). Guns reload faster and have better accuracy, but significantly worse overmatch.

Put Lütjens on a Hindenburg, get a normal captain on GK. Not only does it make much more sense on Hindenburg, it also is less incentivising people to go full retard secondary build on GK. Because if you want ultimate GK, it certainly isn't full BFT, sec mod Leroy Jenkins silliness, as that means that you are optimising your ship for a range that is dangerous while taking away every single skill that helps survive that range realistically. If you don't want to be meta slave and go full tank, at least go get ManSec, AFT, FP and put the main battery reload mod on, because then you still got decent secondaries, you don't absolutely melt (and then go on the forums saying your German BBs burn more than others) and you still have a decent set of guns for the times you spent at mid range, shooting stuff from 15-17 km or so, waiting for lines to thin out so you can go in without getting shot by half the team. At that range, the crappy gun firing angles also matter far less. Or you go full meme, but then don't call it "ultimate" or expect it to be anything reliable. And don't complain when the next Smolensk or FDR sets four fires on you.

If it works, then sure, most of the time it does not. Also doesn't help that a 6s delay on the radar means that the effective radar for allies can be as short as 9s and that the DD in that time can try get out. Typically, the value of just radaring for some random person isn't necessarily there, given it uses up a charge of a limited consumable, gives away your presence, if you are doing it from "safety" you are meanwhile being absolutely useless in every other way, it often puts you into forward positions that can be subject to a rush, it puts your radar on a CD and for the next minute or so you can be permaspotted for free and potentially torped. You then sit behind a rock and if the DD doesn't die, getting out from behind that rock has every chance of getting you permaspotted and shot at. You might also be useless there and overall it isn't the greatest of positions. I'd stay away from referring to personal anecdotes with your record in ships that carry radar. It's not a lot and it's hardly any sign that it really is working out. If you are highly dependant on cover in a RU DD, I am not quite sure what you are doing. Together with French, it's likely the least impacted by lack of cover and presence of radar. No, a hydro DD can just ram an island in the cap, hydro and light everything up in the cap. Is it a good play? Likely not, given that you sit uselessly behind your rock doing preciously little. At best, you force an enemy DD to hide behind another rock. Worst case, there is no rock and you die. Either way, a good DD player should have better uses of their time than sitting behind a rock just to try deny the cap while doing nothing else. Same reasoning as with radar. You said: 9-12 km for a radar cruiser isn't much different from 4-6 km for a hydro DD, given the difference in ability to find cover, not get citadelled to crap, have a smoke screen to counter non-consumable spotting, etc. Also, the only radar ships with arcing ballistics are those with at most 10 km of range and pretty much all of them are not forgiving for screwups. Honestly, I feel like this sentence expresses the difference in random experience between DD and cruiser players who learned how to play around and with radars and those that don't. Because after all these years, if you play a DD in a radar match, you know where to not go to not get radared for free and get killed or locked down for no gain. As a cruiser, you should over time have learned how to maximise the gain from radar and make it s a usage of radar leaves the enemy DD ship dead or crippled to have been worth it. If you however have people just throwing out consumables nilly-willy and DDs yoloing into cap zones to contest with no plan whatsoever, to then seek refuge behind the bits of cover the devs might have put there, then you can be sure it's just the utter frustration of radar and counter radar, where one side blinks first and dies.

If you think you can radar with any efficiency in randoms from behind some silly island without putting yourself in some sort of danger, then I'm not sure you understand how to play a radar ship effectively. Compared to a DD, a cruiser also has worse concealment, worse agility, a citadel, larger target size, typically no smoke, worse speed, so it isn't exactly easier for a radar cruiser to use radar efficiently as it is for a DD to use hydro. Sure, you might say you can hide behind a rock, but same can be done by a DD. Question is, who shoots what is lit up? A DD at least opens up a longer window with the hydro, most radars just go to waste. If you are in any position to shoot the target meanwhile, you also are in a position to be shot back and unlike the lulzy smoke + hydro combo, the cruisers typically at best find an island they can shoot over, which also means others can shoot them over this island. Saying there is no degree of frontline risk for effective radar usage is a joke and against the silly waste of radar from positions where the target can't even be shot in randoms is basically just a situation update that doesn't necessarily threaten good DD players.

What do you mean it's over? Just cause they no longer call it testing, CV vs ship "interaction" is still a one-sided mess, we got a new stupid CV line with new stupid gimmicks, a premium CV that specialises in not even giving you plane kills anymore and the last DevBlog I saw were just more announced CV changes, which may or may not materialise.

Tashkent's job is what it has always been. I wouldn't call it useless. Mogador encroaches on its territory, as did Udaloi, but still. As to how to play it, well, you can burn BBs and you can actually burn a good few cruisers. Anything that isn't blessed with railgun ballistics is fair game if you open up from range. Something like a Buffalo for example can be farmed from 14 km away and there isn't much it really can do to oppose that. The job of the Tashkent is to deal as much damage as possible, while also being a distraction and annoyance at the right time and place. As for supporting friendly DDs, it's not realy that you need a competent DD to play support. If the friendly DD goes for the cap, go a couple km behind it, if it runs into oppsition, you help gun down the enemy DD. If your DD team mate is good and survives, you might be looking at a kill, a cap and they lost less hp as it didn't take as long to kill the DD. If your DD team mate was bad and died, you at least hopefully managed to wreck the enemy DD in the meantime while working on your exit and you know that most likely that enemy DD if you ever run into it again is going to be already damaged, reducing its options drastically. Also, Yuro's vid on it:

Still a better DD hunter than the new Russian CA line. And people complained already there how harsh that radar was.