HaachamaShipping

These are the statements that show a person has no clue what they are talking about. In this case, because fire resistance is tier-based, a Gneisenau has as much chance to catch on fire as a KGV, Lyon or Nagato. It just eats less HE pen damage.

Yes. You get faster planes with more payload. AA gets more fierce too, but if you can manage to beat it, CVs have much more power. Unless it's IJN, then it likely has no flak and you can just spawn a fighter ontop to do the spotting for you. It got more or less firepower? I assume less. Played my first game in her today. Got way less done in top tier match, but I sure learned what rockets do to 25 mm or less of armour plating. And given you get an insane amount of those...

Funnily enough, either no, or he just doesn't use it much in the battles he uploads to YT.

Normal tank build, Main armaments Mod 1, Damecon 1, Aiming Systems Mod 1, Damecon 2.

Likely no. WG is more concerned with Stukas needing to be unhistorically fast to work in the role of the Ta-152s than with the Ta-152 needing heavy modifications to be used as a torp bomber/dive bomber. But hey, at least they keep the horn... Seriously though, every time this topic was mentioned it seems to have been dismissed and there's nothing indicating a change in WG's stance on the issue.

Likening it to something that purely is up to chance is however a flawed comparison then.

Nothing of that adresses why you'd run a different captain build on any T3 to 10 RN BB, premium or tech tree-wise, except for speccing into utter niche builds. And that's not a matter of permacamo, premium status or god knows what. It's a matter of ship characteristics. and for example Warspite vs QE is basically the exact same build, unless you want to spec into AA/secondaries, in which case, that's basically what I refer to as niche build. Not that either is terribly effective anyway. Similarly, you don't seem to grasp that while ships are different in playstyle, what I refer to is captain builds. In that case, IJN and RN are almost the same, with the only exception being people running Dunkirk at RN T9/10 to get the improved JoAT to reduce the CD on repair party. But that's the basic extent to which you'd spec them differently while still trying to make relevant builds.

If you play your ship as if its a random dice that lands on whichever side regardless of what you do, I think that's a bit... Naturally, if you actually know how to play your ship to minimise worst outcome and maximise best outcome, then your comparison is a bit...

Apart from retraining restrictions, what's there different to run on RN BBs or IJN BBs from T3 to T10? In @BLUB__BLUB's case I know it's because he runs IFHE on his KGV (despite it being mostly a waste, but he won't accept that). But if you just use a normal tank build captain, like most people, that fits pretty much perfectly on all these ships. Funnily enough, while BLUB__BLUB seems to run same captain on QE and Hood, Hood is the sole RN BB captain I have that uses a different captain in my port, as I use her with AL Hood captain (all my other RN BBs are helmed by Nelsons), who's main specialisation is Minotaur. Mostly due to Hood not needing EM really to work and the captain being AA spec, which is nice on both ships. Still would recommend tank build on Hood for best results though.

Monarch! Lovely ship.

Yeah, but at that point it doesn't matter whether it's good for CB or not. If you got Montana, getting another BB gives you about as much more use in CB as getting a CV would.

As I already stated, if competitive was a priority, Henri, Des Moines, Moskva should be next, not another BB. He already has Montana.

Crate ships always get 10 pt captain. Kaga and Saipan in shop don't.

You can go wrong with Kurfürst. If I didn't already have other ships and didn't care about the credits and time invested, Kurfürst is the first ship of any tier I'd trade in right now. Some people like it, but it is undeniably not a good ship and if you don't care about your secondaries, there's almost no point in getting a Kurfürst when you have a Montana or could get a Conqueror. And if you plan to do CB, get a cruiser. There is 1 BB spot on a CB lineup. There'll always be someone with a T10 BB. Being the one dude that has to take the spot because they have no cruiser is kind of terrible. Even a DD-only player with a competitive DD is likely more appreciated from a pure CB perspective. Having a cruiser meanwhile allows you to be fitted in much more flexibly. Also, Montana or Yamato, doesn't matter, both are viable for CB. In a clan that insists on a specific BB, you likely won't be in the lineup if you don't have experience in some cruisers anyway.

Saipan too.

Lies, I only got 26 rocket planes on mine. As to the OPs question, haven't tried Saipan yet, but would say that GZ is easier, Enterprise has more potential. Kaga is pretty solid though, if you know how to not just feed your 102 plane hangar + recoveries to the enemy team.

Yes, Kaga gets HE bombs. Doesn't get huge USN 11k alpha, but 50% fire chance is pretty decent.

AA in general usually depends on what you are up against, unless you are something like Mino, Worcester, Des Moines or Salem with their high continuous dps zone of nope for enemy CVs. As dps for most ships is mostly dodgeable, if the CV is good enough, they just don't need to give a damn. They may loses 1-4 planes, but they sure get their strikes in. Played my new Kaga yesterday, torping Kurfürst isn't even hard. And unlike regular German AA, it isn't even restricted to the short range 105 mm guns, nor are Kaga planes especially tanky or even especially fast like GZ. Thus also, what constitutes full AA spec on a T8? Basically AFT is worthless, BFT is decent, if your ship has high continuous and you can combine it with Manual AA. +2 explosions AA module is ok, but basically, there isn't much you can do to buff AA on a BB. Cruisers and DDs get a bit more AA power from spec (though BBs get better base values), given with BFT, Manual AA and defAA, you get three boosts to lift some mediocre values out of mediocrity. Some 100 continuous dps on a defAA DD's long-range can then be boosted to 110 with BFT, 198 with Manual AA's 80% boost and then to 396 with defAA. On a BB with only BFT and Manual AA of 50%, your options to boost beyond base values is limited. Overall, Richelieu sits in the same boat as Monarch, in that most AA is mid-range and by 3.5 km range, you are not going to stop much anymore. But that's normal and the Lyon is hardly better, being mostly helped by being up vs T6 or T8 CVs, instead of T6 to T10 CVs.

For Graf Zeppelin I went with this: Also showing why I think that if you want less memes, go with CE instead of AFT. Given the planes are silly fast, you can get by with sitting far away from the action for most of the match, but obviously cutting down plane times and general survivability buff is likely more useful than buffing secondary range to 9.45 km. If you think the concealment's manageable and the secondaries worthless, guess you can go with SE and Last Gasp just to get the most out of your planes.

Kaga is a T8 CV. Any DD you try kill with secondaries instead of rocket planes/DBs is basically just going to torp you with your massive 1 km+ turning circle radius and poor 28 knot speed. Even Russian DD will just gun you down or close the raimaing 2 km to get its torps off (in case of the Gnevny with its 4 km torps, rest should have enough range to kill you from 6 km). Feel free to put points into secondaries, but I for sure rather invest in skills that help me kill stuff with planes, which is reliable and safe. Thanks.

4.5 km stock range and a 15s reload on the 203 mm guns should dampen those expectations. With all improvements you get 6 km derp guns.

Thought about buying Graf Zep straight out, but then decided to buy 20 boxes, to let fate decide which premium T8 CV I should try to learn. Would still recommend anyone who's set on a specific ship to go and buy that ship, as it's just way cheaper. I for my part will now have to work the coming weeks to learn more about CV gameplay.

I see your Lion game and raise you this. People say T8 in T10 is hard. Also, with Conqueror buff, you might see it in CB indeed.

First off, good luck aiming at the superstructure specifically on a moving ship at range. Superstructure sniping you can do at short range. I didn't say the aP does not work at short to medium ranges. But KGV is the least effective BB at long range in regards to AP at T7. Only comparable case is the Scharnhorst. Additionally, when you only get to shoot superstructure on angled targets, then that's also an issue, as the superstructure will run out of hp. Meanwhile good AP will do decent damage also on the hull. It's like saying PEF AP is good. It can kill ships, it can be useful, but when you just shatter at range and can't overmatch, it is hard to categorise it as good. Meanwhile Monarch does overmatch 25 mm plating and can for example kill something like a Charles Martel before it torp rushes it. The concealment advantage is an advantage at the start, because it allows you to engage or just avoid engagement, or to get into a position to get a good shot at the enemy before they angle. Afterwards, the mere fact that 20 out of 25 seconds you are spotted from gun bloom makes it rather unusable, but by then you can just straight up trade blows. Monarch angled can tank Bismarck AP. And if Bismarck angles, just fire HE. If a Bismarck tries to do the same in return, German HE is terrible, Monarch should win every time. Secondaries don't matter. The 15 cm guns have terrible dpm, the 10.5 cm guns have not even enough pen to damage your superstructure. Bismarck secondaries are maybe intimidating, but not an existential issue and compared to Monarch main battery HE, even their fire setting is not good. If Monarch eats maybe the odd 4k per Bismarck salvo and 2 fires, that's a splendid trade compared to the 5-10k it will hand right back with even more fires. As said before, I'm not going to argue that this ship is the best ever. But in my experience, it gets the tools to get the job done. In competitive settings, for CB, I'd likely prefer the NC or Amagi, while for ranked, I'd take NC or Kii instead. But the main reason for that is that in CB, accuracy trumps mere shell output and NCs HE resistance matters more than the better citadel protection, while for ranked, NC or Kii bring better AA.

If you can't see the difference in "punishment" most high tier RN BBs take compared to other lines, then I don't know. Conqueror is second only to Großer Kurfürst in how little they have to care about exposing broadside, as worst case, the ships lose maybe 30k hp, if the enemy lands 12/12 shells on them. Meanwhile Montana and especially Yamato can potentially get oneshot or eat equal amounts of damage from just a few shells landing, but being citadels.