HaachamaShipping

It's the least useful part of the build and the only part of the build that is not a significant buff in the capabilities of the secondaries. 11% increase in dpm is minor compared to 20% range, ability to pen BB at all and Secondary accuracy. Even just taking DE instead arguably has similar pay-off.

I'd not go further than this though, tbh, because investing into secondaries on a ship that regularly goes up against enemies it will not want to brawl isn't worthwhile. Secondary Nagato died with Scharnhorst/Gneisenau and it pretty much stays dead.

One more gun turret (apart from not making much sense historically) would be quite OP. Typically, when you find lower tier ships sporting guns from the next higher tier, the ships get absolutely neutered in other areas. The only thing Gneisenau loses out on compared to Tirpitz is the upper bow and stern plating and about 16k or so hp. Other than that, it's fast, tier for tier has arguably as good if not better secondaries, a set of torpedoes with only one less torp, better AA for its tier, better belt armour... As for competitive strength... I would consider Gneisenau competitive. Maybe not top pick, but if you can play the ship to its strengths, not a bad pick either. T7 competitive formats typically don't exist, but if they were to ever again happen, T7 Ranked this ship should be doing ok in good hands, as the lower amount of ships per side gives the ship less to worry about. T7 CB, the main issue is that only one enemy ship is a BB, rest is cruisers. This could mean designs with more cruiser killing firepower are more useful. But Gneisenau would bring HE resistant plating and to be fair, it's hard to find much better overall deals for cruiser killing as while Gneisenau lacks the shell output, Colorado is slow, Colorado and Nagato both are 25 mm plating that has issues vs the inevitable HE spam of T7 cruiser picks, Lyon and Scharnhorst have small guns that can actually be tanked by ships like Myoko and partially Yorck (don't know Algerie armour scheme atm). Nelson due to lolheal and Hood could work still, but overall, Gneisenau doesn't look as bad as it might seem, though you really need to put that survivability to use. Much would depend on the cruiser meta and honestly, cruiser meta most of all dictates that T7 CB is hardly going to happen, given T7 would devolve into a battle of vision control, where you can expect smoke blobs and the three cruisers that can counter that are premium. At best a F2P clan got an Indianapolis from the marathon, but if not, have fun going up against the spam of Belfast/Fiji/Flint. Anyway, after having arrived at Ibuki yesterday night, I can tell you, there's a special quality in not losing 5-6k hp every 6.5-10 seconds.

Honestly, I just went through German military commanders that.. had some prominence had no more important ship named after them that would cause confusion if the actual ship was implemented were dead by the time WWII happened Seeckt fulfilled all three criteria.

For Germans, the dpm on HE is usually not great except for Königsberg, Nürnberg and Yorck. That's because the HE shells typically lack damage potential. The AP shell meanwhile typically are light shells with enormous potential. Typically, you have to use HE, unless the enemy gives you some unangled plate to shoot at. If you can make the AP pen though, that's where the real dpm lies. Normally, German HE dpm isn't utterly garbage, but underwhelming to say the least (and Hipper is straight up crap with HE), the reason why the three mentioned ships stay decent is because Königsberg and Nürnberg just spam shells non-stop (7.5 and 6 seconds reload at T6 on 9 guns. Even if the shells do less damage than DD shells, that damage adds up) and Yorck has actually ungimped HE in terms of damage potential (fire chance is still in the dumps). Typically, it is great to know your armour profile and to know what plating can tank what. Every cruiser is better off dodging than tanking though, because superstructure overpens are still damage and if you don't have a repair party, it is still irrecoverable. No, rudder shift is superior. You don't want to stop your ship really, because speed and responsive rudder saves your life. A ship that's just powering up cannot turn properly and gets blapped, as it is entirely predictable. Rudder shift on Mogami is important enough that double rudder Mogami (taking Steering Gears Mod 2 and 3, instead of Concealment Mod 1) is a thing. Personally, I don't use it, but I can see why it is viable.

The issue is not premiums, but OP ships. If you look at T6 Ranked for example, T-61 is OP, but it isn't far further ahead than the freely available Leander, while most premiums show similar performance to regular ships. If WG were to kick out all premium ships, sure, you'd no longer see T-61s, but then you'd still have Leanders vastly outperforming Nürnbergs and Pensacolas, just because allround Leander is better suited for the format and frankly a more versatile cruiser.

The issue is, this depends on actually landing those torps and inflicting crippling damage. If not, then you'll likely run out of time. If the map is small enough and the DD not stealthy enough, you also have the issue that you cannot easily hide in at least the innermost cap (or in case of the BB having RPF, it can pinpoint your location if you stay within the circle). And in the cases where I handed it to the BB, what exactly is your Izyaslav or Minsk going to do to inflict crippling damage to the BB? Spam it from afar to set fires? In a 1v1 that means open water gunboating and while a DD has far better chances to hit the BB, the BB can take hits. The DD reacts very poorly to the sporadic hit scored. In those cases I'd certainly take my chances as the BB, because it's nigh impossible for the DD in these cases to actually beat the BBs in question on their own when properly prepared. Also, stripping a Gneisenau or Scharnhorst of all its secondaries as a DD requires a pretty large volume of fire. On Ishizuchi it doesn't matter. Here the real threat are the fast firing main battery with 2.0 sigma and IJN HE damage on a fast high hp hull that would make any torp rush a suicide maneuver. In most situations, the DD will have better chances, but there can be circumstances where the chances of BBs start to look pretty favourable.

Assuming you can stealth torp, you need to actually land a devastating blow within the time. Assuming you cannot stealth torp, you need to survive the rush. Depending on tier and ship, the chances vary. Best options for DD are IJN and PA, due to the PA DWTs and IJN getting either good torp reload, 3 launchers or TRB, which all help get a flood. But for example some low tier non-stealth torping USN ship can basically just hope the BB is terrible. For BB, best options would be German or Brit, though IJN can work too, especially at lower tiers. But even a Kagero would be hard-pressed to stop a Bismarck with its hydro before it can cap the innermost circle out and as soon as the BB capped, the DD has to kill or lose. Most lop-sided matchups in their tiers, imo, are Asashio vs Monarch TRB Yuugumo with F3s vs Izumo and Tachibana vs Mikasa for DD, for BB it'd be Scharnhorst/Gneisenau vs Minsk and Izyaslav vs Ishizuchi, I'd guess. Because good luck torp rushing those without getting absolutely wrecked by their secondaries and/or main battery HE.

What about 1v1... epicentre?

If a tech tree ship gets replaced, you typically get the replacement. Say, WG think Roon is a terrible design and they come up with a new design, let's call it the Seeckt, to be the new T9 German cruiser, they'd just switch it out and give you the new one researched and if you own it, they give it in your port. If a tech tree ship gets moved, due to for example line-split, then you get the new ship and if the ship you had exists in the new line, you get the new ship too. For example Cleveland was the T6 USN cruiser, but got moved to T8. Pensacola, New Orleans and Baltimore got moved down. People who had the USN line up to Baltimore would get all the new ships in the heavy cruiser line up to the new Buffalo, as well as Cleveland at T8. They'd not get anything on ships like Dallas or Helena, which were new. If a premium ship gets removed, it usually gets refunded. This is very rare though. Usually WG just remove it from shop, not from account and pretent the ship doesn't exist. For example, Kitakami and Graf Zeppelin in its first version got removed and for Graf Zeppelin WG offered refunds to people who did no longer want the ship and wouldn't want to bet on the reworked version being useful. Kitakami got removed and never was intented to come back and is the sole premium I remember that ever got such radical treatment. Most ships just get removed from shop or tech tree, like Belfast, Kutuzov, Missouri, Musashi, Kronshtadt, etc. These ship continue to exist on accounts that owwn them.

While I do not have the ship (and no intention of getting it), I'm not really sold on TA. The main issue is not losing 4 km range. To me, it's losing 2 captain points to get a better speed when old speed is pretty serviceable. Also, pretty much means just running standard IJN DD captain, with LS and AR for 2 pt skills, TAE and SE for 3 pt skills, RPF and CE for 4 pt skills. Especially if you actually plan to get involved, the AR seems more useful, imo. Alternatively, 19 pt Akizuki commander. May seem stupid at first, but with IFHE, the 127 mm guns can pen cruisers and being actually able to do some reliable damage might alleviate some of the lack of versatility issues. In neither build, TA features as I don't see the value.

In Mogami and ibuki you don't have to learn to angle, you have to learn to dodge. Something like an Atago, Myoko, Zao could get away with angling if shells strike the reinforced deck, but 25 mm on Mogami will not bounce much unless you are tanking Lyons and Fusos, while the Ibuki will just eat a lot of normal pens instead. Something like German cruisers need to learn how to angle, though even then the amount of BBs they can tank before Hindenburg is limited. Broadsiding is the death of any cruiser though.

What value has a ship that might still float but is completely inoperable and at the mercy of the enemy? If anything, it says the ship was resistant to sink due to gunfire, but the protection did not ensure that the ship would not otherwise suffer crippling damage. By the time the ship was torpedoed it also already was listing and was going to sink sooner or later. In terms of technical superiority, it is hard to discuss whether Bismarck was anything special in this regard, as hardly any of the late 30s designs was subject to intense shelling and those that did get sunk typically did so due to aerial attack and especially aerial torpedo attack. And as said earlier, just because many ships were present doesn't mean many ships were necessary. Going for overkill when affordable is a valid approach to avoid unnecessary risks. And in that last engagement it was pretty clear that Bismarck never had a chance and the only thing it could claim was that the hull took a lot to sink (but not to be taken out of action). Bismarck sunk, 3 allied sailors died in the last battle. Even if the ammunition cost was a bit high, it's hard to argue that her last battle was anything but an absolute victory. So what? This thread still is pointless and the opening post is still just a rant. Nor does the courage of individual sailors have any importance on the discussion of whether leadership made mistakes or not or what quality equipment had. This is a non-argument that imo frankly serves to just side-track and obscure the debate by appealing to something noone openly questioned.

No comments on Massachusetts. But the AP to HE change kind of is nice for some, kind of zero sum on others. Like, Bayern and lower German BBs definitely benefit. Their 15 cm guns fired AP, which had me remark back in the day of Ranked Sprint S1&2 that Iron Duke actually has the better secondary armament than König, as it fired solely HE (with 12% fire chance at a tier where 152 mm guns are fine without IFHE). The new secondary ammunition with German 1/4 HE pen is what makes PEF's secondaries a somewhat effective tool, not just lulzy fireworks (that can't even set fires). On the other hand, I looked at for example IJN secondaries and frankly, the secondaries become barely more useful. Ships can no longer angle against them and if you invest into a IJN secondary build, the 14 cm guns rip yolo rushes in their short range apart. If you go for IFHE, they can deal with mid tier BB and cruisers (14 cm doesn't get above 29 mm pen effectively).But anything with decent armour won't care except for fires, while in the past anything angled wouldn't care, but within 7.5 km (max range of T8 and below on IJN) the AP would pen through a good deal more plating than HE does if it wasn't angled and it would deal more alpha damage. On T9 and T10, only the 155 mm guns are affected, which are of little importance. You could spec Yamato for IFHE the way you can for Republique, but the usefulness of secondary Yamato, even though it has a decent range, is debatable. The change made secondaries more reliable vs DDs but without proper investment hardly worth it and it did not make secondary builds much more viable where previously they weren't. Only real beneficiaries are German low and mid tiers.

Playing Mogamin in the morning hours... Not entirely my achievement, given the potential damage number, but this sure is some serious dpm when left unmolested. Good ship.

History is a narrative. The "history" you bring up certainly is a narrative. Don't pretent that it isn't. And it's pretty silly too, because for example arguing Bismarck was of greater importance because a lot of ships were dispatched to deal with neglects that when the RN tries to subdue a modern battleship that is a threat, they don't send out just about enough, of course they go for the overkill, because that's how you minimise losses. War isn't about fairness, it's about winning and fact is, at that time, the RN could afford to send large parts of the fleet after one battleship and its escort, because that'd be the most effective way to kill it. Just like on the USN side 11 carriers (7 of which were state-of the art Essex-class), 6 of its most modern battleships and a crapton of smaller vessels were readied to counter Operation Ten-Go, to make sure that the Yamato and her escort of one flimsy light cruiser and 8 destroyers would never arrive at Okinawa. Did it need that many? Certainly not. But it made sure that the Yamato would sink after the USN knew how much it took to sink Musashi earlier in the war and how dangerous the continued existence of large surface units could be, exemplified by the attack on Taffy 3 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. You basically are just arguing based on the glorrifying "historic" narrative you know that Bismarck deserves better, for whatever silly reason, disregarding that the ship is just doing fine on the tier and at the power level it got implemented, that the record of Bismarck does not justify raising her specifications beyond what was reasonable, that her record has no bearing on the balancing and with an arrogance about anything non-German, as clearly the British wouldn't have won even if their intelligence game and numerical advantage wasn't head and shoulders above the Germans. And only the German accounts read like the epic tales of old, screw the others. And yes, this is absolutely a rant. You basically made a thread about how you don't feel the Bismarck was treated fairly and you so far didn't even clearly state what exactly you want adressed specifically and what you feel could be done to rectify the issue based on proper reasoning. Rather you go off to recount the exploits of a couple ships and cry about pointlessly. If you don't want this to be a rant, get an actually structured argument, not just throw out some jumbled mess of words consisting of sentimentality and some of the finest examples of wehraboo trash ("If only Hitler had listened to his generals").

That's a lotta exp. Does she already have her assignment to a ship that isn't Hermelin? But I'm almost there too.

Note, you can angle against any T5 BB, against all T6 BBs except Bayern, Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, West Virginia and Mutsu and it will fail against most T7s. In general, in a cruiser, this means you still don't want to get hit, but if they land around you, be at an angle where they have nothing flat to land on. As Aoba and Myoko get similar 25 mm armour, their armour schemes become progressively less great and Mogami at T8 is basically just going to get wrecked by every same-tier BB that hits it. Ibuki is barely better. Zao gets tanky again. But by the time you arrive at Mogami, you should have learned how to kite so you can abuse that to not get hit in the first place. Overall, the IJN cruiser line is a bunch of fantastic ships.

It took a bit more than 15 Swordfishes. They crippled the rudder so Bismarck had to fight the pursuing HMS Rodney and HMS King George V. In light of this, I find it pretty lulzy anyway that people could complain about Bismarck being shown as too weak at T8, when all BBs she encountered are T7 and ingame a Bismarck would be quite capable of wrecking them just because of overmatch. But "muh Bismarck, most heroic BB, gotta be T10"...

Frankly, this is nonsense. The only cruisers that can pen a KGV but cannot pen a Monarch are Atlanta and Flint with IFHE and the Mogami without IFHE. Every cruiser from T6 and up with IFHE except the Atlanta-class can pen both ships equally. And while at T5 and T6 IFHE is still more sporadic, in T7+ it's commonplace on light cruisers. T8+ means Akizuki and the rest of that line joins in on the IFHE fun. So, rather than more HE resistant, you meet far more people that can actually farm you. They should be workable. If it wasn't for the entire rest of the ship, I doubt people would be as miffed. T3 to T5 RN is basically just straight up better in all aspects that matter. USN can only boast the new improved repair party. Both lines are slow though and play similarly. T6, the USN gets a 12 gun shotgun, RN gets an 8 gun BB that can overmatch armour. Both are slow and easily HE farmed though. T7+ the RN line become stealthy and squishy ships with underwater citadel and a focus on picking fights carefully, while USN only transitions away on T8 with faster BBs that get a lot of hard-hitting guns, 38 mm midship deck and somewhat vulnerable citadel. Endgame, USN are versatile ships that are good all-round, RN are ships that take damage easily but get some insane repair party at T9 and 10 to offset that and get decent AP and HE. The USN line also ends in Montana and most consider Montana worth it. Not like PA DDs where Chung Mu is arguably even a better ship than Yueyang.

Germans are faster ships and even if you run off, it's not too hard to wreck a Monarch. Also, mind you that camping behind an island does not mean people cannot guess what you are and where you are and cannot figure out how to get to your position or out of line of fire. It's maybe annoying to burn a bit, but it is far from lethal and imo, likely not the smartest use of a Monarch. But whatever floats your boat.

Nelson has short fuze AP. Same as most British BBs. Short fuze AP means AP most of the time will not reach citadels on BBs before detonating, but it also means they will likely not exit a cruiser before detonating. Short fuze AP basically means anti-cruiser AP. But as HE will never reach a BB citadel either, HE basically is a good ammunition if you are dealing with angled targets you cannot overmatch or with DDs. Also on ships that blew damage control.

Bismarck deserves no dispersion buff, frankly. It is better off against T10 BBs than T6s are vs Bismarck. If T8 BBs vs T6 BBs is the main issue, then +/- 1 MM would be the adequate solution across the board, but not Bismarck buffs.

It's a T7 BB with 406 mm guns. You overmatch any cruiser and most BB. Against broadside BBs at reasonable combat distances you also got enough pen to deal decent damage. And yes, it might hardly ever land a citadel on BBs, but neither will HE. Nelson certainly benefits from proper ammunition selection, especially with the change in AP vs DDs, but the AP shells are pretty good, thanks to the overmatch caliber.

HE citadels some cruisers if it hits them on the citadel belt armour. And only there. Certain cruisers are utterly immune to HE citadels just because the citadel does not border the outer hull, e.g. Hipper. AP in these cases would actually do a lot more and citadels most cruisers from any angle.