HaachamaShipping

All things the CV does not really need to concern itself with. Given all you need to consider is what target is best. BBs camping in the rear is basically free damage once priority targets are dead.

Mostly, the low plane count, which means if you lose any plane, you feel it more than on other CVs. Squadron size is small, plane restoration slow, planes have T10 hp, but the hp increase is not in line with how much harder it is to get planes back. If you can play the conservative style, the planes can reward you by being Midway planes (except rockets are always Tiny Tim, no choice there and the torps are pre-nerf damage, two torps per plane for the highest torp alpha strike at T8). But even then, you are working your rear off for basically slightly better planes. Saipan gets HE bombs.

No, because whether a ship is fun or not a player cannot tell without playing it themselves. I cannot say "Hurrdurr, this is fun, so I guess it is fun for everyone." I don't know whether the community thinks it is fun or not, but I also do not state it is fun for everyone. Because I do not know, I leave it out of the picture usually or link it to reasoning why it might be fun or list caveats as to why it might contrast to actual performance. Because my fun is not useful to others. And ranking ships according to fun in a thread about performance is pointless. And I know there exist lots of people who don't like the Roma, because any Roma threat will have some of those, I know clan members I talked to, I know YTers that said Roma was underwhelming... Which is why I could list performance criteria to explain why it is not a good ship, instead of just saying "I don't have fun in this ship". See 3. And I'm not dismissing stuff like it being fun for others when DDs or cruisers melt in secondary range. But with a sub-10 km sec range at T8, you can guess what big brain play it takes for a cruiser or Akizuki to just decide to stay at 10+ km and spam you down. This is a caveat. People should not expect to buy a secondary CV and get secondary kills all the time. It's a CV first and foremost and the secondaries are not useful in at least 95% of matches that are properly played. If you ask for "factual" and "unbiased" info, why are you so up in arms about defending a listing according to "fun", which totally is bias and non-factual. Stats are factual. Entertainment is not.

Just use Lexington. Saipan is like playing on hard mode, for somewhat better payoff when you succeed.

You may realise that Furutaka is a T5, which I used just to highlight, the Atago guns reload slower than even the T5. If you take a T6 Aoba, the dpm advantage narrows a lot. As for torpedoes, there is a major difference in (discount) Hipper hull and Nürnberg hull, which is, one of them at least has some BBs that it can tank to torp rush, the other just gets utterly wrecked. Or let's look at Chapayev vs Budyonny. One more gun turret, radar consumable instead of a plane, 40% LESS torpedoes. And Chapayev isn't even a tankier delivery platform... And if dpm on large guns would not matter, I guess Hipper and Prinz Eugen are fine having no dpm. Because decent alpha outclasses dpm... IJN CAs aren't Stalingrad-style alpha blappers. DPM is a consideration for them too.

I use it on Thunderer and Stalingrad.

Measuring the upgrade in gun turret alone is faulty. Nürnberg is the best T6 dpm on a fragile hull that blows up way too fast. Mainz is a modest dpm upgrade, but a major survivability upgrade. Even with the somewhat nerfed Hipper hull. Just for comparison, Atago has basically the same gun performance you get on T5 Furutaka, just 40% more guns and slightly more range instead of 33% and Atago has a worse reload per gun. If it wasn't for the major improvements aside from dpm, you'd never see how this thing is actually good.

Tech tree T4 BB, as built.

It out dpms Yamato, Kremlin and Republique thanks to its silly short reload. If you cannot beat a Minotaur in Thunderer, that's on you, not the ship.

Soviet radar is 12 km.

It's not. It's just pointing out the fault of making a list that is subjective to the point it might hold up only a handful of people if not even just one person. I have the Roma, I like the Roma, but I also know that the Roma is not necessarily the strongest T8 in the game. I bought it despite that. But fun in Roma is subjective. There exist many people who despise Roma and for a reason. Are you going to devalue them too? Are you going to say all the people who argue that this ship with a tendency to overpen, short range, bad accuracy and limited overmatch can be very frustrating are wrong? This is why I stated it is best to list performance, not "fun", because what YOU find fun is not shared by the community. But the fact that Roma has 381 mm guns that reload in 30 s and a great armour scheme are shared among all Romas and are things anyone can use with some understanding of game mechanics. Listing those makes sense, because these are objective performance characteristics, not subjective experiences. And people can then think "Do I want to buy that?" and make an informed decision on what they get. For all it's worth, I enjoy Roma because I knew I'd get a ship with memeworthy guns, but I can absolutely see why anyone expecting consistent performance would absolutely detest the ship. With GZ, you are betting on enemy CVs being too crap to matter more than you, because GZ frankly is terrible among its peers. And for "fun factor", it doesn't help that any cruiser and indeed most destroyers can kite you outside secondary range, necessitating you to use planes to kill them, as you would with any other CV too, while the AP DBs, with the famous Jericho trumpet sound, another reason people want to get the ship, are utterly garbage. GZ's fun points work either against people who are too dumb to outplay you or only when RNG permits. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. It's all fun in GZ, until you realise that every other CV at T8 is vastly more useful, except maybe Implacable, which is just a more useable concept. If an enemy CV has an actual clue what they are doing, they will wreck your team harder than you can wreck theirs and in the end, they'll end you. Been there, done that in an Implacable of all things. Very fun when you know their AP bombs are worthless against your CV, while you bomb their flight deck for 10k and 2 fires that waste damecon and set them up for the flood. And this thing costs over 50 Euro and gets a black version. Would you rather people get to know that, yes, the secondaries are memes, but the CV otherwise is crap, or rather they cough up that kinda money just to find out that, yes, sometimes someone had fun when morons got too close to a secondary specced GZ (which means less investment in plane-related skills, btw) but most of the time the CV play of GZ is underwhelming and they then potentially get frustrated? Swordfish are extremely maneuverable though, even during attack sequence...

51 mm Hood deck. And the fact is, it is better, which is lulzy, given one is a T7 CA, the other a T10.

Yorck is ok, Hipper and Prinz Eugen are two different kinds of underwhelming. Just, one you pay money for. I do own both and you know a ship is kinda in a bad spot when even a repair party at T8 doesn't actually make it a good ship. While Yorck still has acceptable dpm for its tier, Hipper only improves on the situational AP dpm, while the HE dpm actually decreases, making Hipper a ship that is highly useless when it comes to dealing with angled ships (at least you aren't stuck with SAP though) and Prinz Eugen has even worse reload, to get a heal. Concealment is bad on them all, speed is nothing to write home about, arnour is dependant on not facing big gun BB that overmatch you anyway and your torps can be good, but you trade so much for that, it's just not worth being a decent torp brawler. Get into a T10 match and likely that T10 BB is just going to delete you before you get close. Also, even ships like Scharnhorst can outtrade you in HE contests.

On a gun by gun basis, Yorck also has better HE pen and dpm (despite the reload!). Yorck is notable in the German line for actually having some actually decent HE alpha to its shells.

Rating fun is subjective and absolutely not useful thus. e.g. I could counter with calling Lucky E unfun because boring OP, GZ because frustratingly bad and getting into brawls against non-morons gets you killed and Implacable fun, because Idgaf about playing the best CV, when I play Implacable I just want to know that some poor sods had their games ruined just as WG intented and the bombers imo are the most a**hole planes that exist, with their minimal skill drop to firebomb BBs. Is that useful? No it isn't. Thus ships get ranked in performance, not fun, which is utterly dependant on the player.

Ark Royal planes may look T4, but have hp levels on Ryuujou levels and tons of planes. Against T8, yes, you may lose a few, but every T6 CV will start losing planes against something like NC. Ark Royal vs T8 has the advantage though that you can sustain loss rates better than others without getting shut down. Obviously though, if you try to focus T8 BBs as a T6 CV, you are not doing your job really and everything apart from the T8 BB is not too hard to wreck. Also, if airburst is your main worry... get better at dodging them. When you don't fly into flak buffs all the time, squadron size and squadron hp actually become meaningful.

What do you mean? What kind of new coal premiums or what?

8x4,700=37,600 Myoko has 39,200 hp. Unless it is stock, you cannot oneshot a Myoko and even then it requires all 8 shells to be cits. On the flipside, Myoko obviously can wreck Genova hard. As can most things.

Who cares about the Fiji reloading faster when you can load AP and citpen it through the bow?

No and no. GZ reticle is round and it throws two bombs somewhere inside. The fundamental limitations of the GZ AP bombs are not linked to that though, but to: 2 bombs, leading to low alpha and high RNG terrible attack sequence, which forces you to drop bombs in a small time window very limited ability to slingshot due to falling speed limited damage reduction on attack, due to needing to start attack almost above the ship There's at least a few more things that just piss me off, like the reticle being poor indication as to where you need to start an attack run to drop properly, but which you can overcome by learning how to play GZ. Meanwhile Implacable bombers, while absolutely trash vs DDs (as are GZ bombers), mediocre vs cruisers and okish vs BBs typically have an easier time getting something meaningful out of their damage. While GZ theoretically has a way higher max potential in damage at 14k vs cruisers, landing two cits is so random and rare that on average you don't get more damage than an Implacable bombing pass and it should be kept in mind that the difference in repairable damage is non-existent when top tier (as few cruisers have repair party at T8 or below) and is 33% cit damage vs 50% pen damage for cruisers with repair party. For BBs, the GZ is far too limited in its effective damage output with AP bombers, that I'd not even rate the cit damage being hard to restore as more impactful than being able to just set fires and burn and flood a BB out. Not to mention, against something like USN BBs, the AP bombs are trash. As for carry potential, neither has much, both play way too much like opportunistic damage farmers. Implacable is imo better though when you have to focus a priority target down and scare enemy ships off, GZ is less great at that, because while planes are fast, they have neither good hp, nor good restoration. Imo, GZ is better off being played around torps and rockets, but rocket planes are slow, low hp and while decent pen and damage, just to combo with the torp bombers vs BBs, Spearfish are better in that role still. For pure carry, both CVs are basically only able to do that due to being CVs and are outclassed by better CVs (which is anything else on the tier except maybe Indomitable) and both are quite fragile when it comes to AA changes, as any uptick in AA potency disproportionally affects them, especially though GZ, which just has a bad combination of IJN grade plane health and poor restoration.

Implacable imo is better than GZ. Both aren't great, but Implacable bombers at least do their goddamn job and you can work on forcing BBs away by overtaxing their damecon. GZ AP bombs can't do that and the usual reasons why AP bombs are better than HE bombs don't apply, because the AP bombs are unreliable garbage. Admittedly, if GZ AP bombs were buffed to actual usability, it'd beat the Implacable, imo. Also, Kaga, imo is inbetween Shokaku and Lexington, Saipan, dunno. Just as you did not list those.

Rockets vs DDs are ok on the RN line, but any CV can hunt DDs with rockets without too much issue and get them killed and some CV have other armaments good vs DD, like HE DBs. What other CVs have though, is better counters vs everything else, especially cruisers and more up front damage, less fire/flood dependant one. RN carpet bombers are some of the most terrible planes in the game for impact. Lastly, RN CVs have slow planes with long regeneration that cuts down reaction speed and flexibility in how you use them.

Nagato lacks any reinforced armour plating except on turrets, conning tower and the citadel protection.

Then give a better explanation, please.

If the timer combined with plane speed only allows me to go this far, it is in effect a range restriction. If the timer is so generous I could reach any part of the map anyway (like the timer post sinking of a CV), then it's kind of pointless. Funnily enough, if the timer doesn't allow you to go across the map, it basically is more restrictive than a simple range restriction, as range would mean within that distance I can do whatever for as long as I want, while a timer dictates a maximum distance, but only if you go straight there and you cannot do anything else. That's not "soft".