HaachamaShipping

Giulio Cesare. 20 Euro for the strongest T5 BB there is, not even really too punished by T5 MM. König Albert if you want to stat pad at T3 for 10 Euro. Some other ships (Warspite, Ishizuchi, Yuubari, Scharnhorst, Kidd and Atlanta imo) might be worthwhile, depending on how much you value money vs ships, but these two are likely the most bang for your buck.

Would you bother load AA rounds for planes spotted 15 km without knowing yet they are coming for you?

Well, with expert loader you might actually make it in time to shoot before you get dropped.

Load HE, blast will knock it over. Just look at the splash radius of BB HE.

I like FAL too. Currently also my highest level T-doll. If you like FAL, maybe also Five-seveN? Personally, my favourite is kind of obvious. Apart from that though, I do like that GF makes some low rarity dolls still quite useful. It allows me to keep using some of the starting units I grew fond of, like SIG-510 and M38. Sadly, not much fanart of them seems to exist though.

I guess it's currently only Mino, PA DDs and Black? Maybe Neptune and Edin?

I wouldn't mind the hilarious option of Type 3 AA incendiary shells for IJN ships. Doubt it'll be very useful, but it'll look awesome. Maybe for an operation, so the BB folks don't start making even worse ammo choices in randoms. Edit: Also, in regards to OP: lol NO!

Cap contesting is never easy, but typically, you are in a better position to do it in an US DD than an IJN one. You always have to watch out for the support both sides have at the cap, but typically you should master approaching with terrain covering some flanks to not be shot at from all sides and with an exit strategy in mind. If you do, you can shred any enemy DD. If you survive on half hp and the enemy doesn't, then already you managed to accomplish something. I don't play USN DD really, but that's what I gather from the few gunboaty DDs the IJN line has. For getting damage on larger ships, use smoke or islands. I have the suspicion you mix up the Akatsuki (T7 IJN DDof the main line) with the Akizuki (T8 IJN DD of the alt line). The Akatsuki has decent guns, yes, but it is still a torp boat. Akizuki is almost a light cruiser with 8 rapid firing 10 cm guns. They are two quite different ships, though both deserve respect if played well.

That's actually older than half the ships in this game.

I bought it, because of the T2 secondary memes and because it's the Misaka, but I actually am training a secondary focused IJN captain on it now. Slowly, but steadily.

I am up to Kagero on the IJN line and Shiratsuyu on alt, so, I won't comment much on Shima, Yugumo or Akizuki, though I think I never heard anyone say Akizuki was not a nice ship and I'm looking forward to it. For highlights... I'd say it depends. Personally, I rate the Minekaze, Fubuki, Akatsuki and Kagero highly so far. For turds, my picks would be the Hatsuharu, Mutsuki and I do not quite like Shiratsuyu, but that's more of a personal thing, I guess, as many will claim Shiratsuyu is a great ship. Fubuki and Akatsuki both get the very versatile 3x3 torp setup, which for their tier is the best setup there is (and you kind of wish later DDs had the same), as it has fast reload and allows for more options in how you spread out torpedoes or for keeping some torpedoes in reserve. Minekaze and Akatsuki I rate highly for the okish guns for their tier. You won't use them as your main tool, hopefully, but when you have to, they aren't that bad. Kagero is nice for its 5.4 km concealment. My low opinion of the Hatsuharu stems from it being in the same tier as Fubuki and basically getting negligibly better guns and maneuverability and concealment for losing a torp launcher and some health. As it is way harder to try make that concealment work in your favour than just doing torp walls, the ship felt underwhelming. Mutsuki has 2 guns which have decent ballistics but aren't going to really kill anything. Felt too limited. Shiratsuyu I rate this low, because its main advantage over Akatsuki is the concealment and turning qualities. Otherwise, it is slower, it has less torpedoes, less guns, less hp and the option to trade smoke for TRB to get occasional 16 torp spreads. Which is nice, but too gimmicky for my taste, as I prefer consistency. And as a T7, when you meet T8 and T9 your concealment is worth nothing and your lack of smoke, speed and hp is just going to get you killed. IJN reload is pretty terrible. If you think you'll be better off with them, no. The reload up to Fubuki is typically two digit numbers, then it becomes 7.5 for akatsuki, 7 I think for Kagero and only gets 5 and something for Yugumo and Shima. When the Gearing pumps out shells at almost twice the speed. IJN guns have a bad reputation for a reason. The only allround good IJN guns are the 10 cm Type 98 of the Akizuki and Harekaze, which combine reload with favourable ballistics, acceptable turret traverse and count as AA ontop. The rest typically has only good ballistics, average damage per shell, but poor reload and traverse speed, which contrasts with the USN who have poor ballistics at range, but good reload and traverse speed. That's what makes USN the knife fighters as they get close and shred other DDs. IJN has the best chances to get out when it tries to kite and use its better shell ballistics to get more effective hits on target. Cruisers have citadels and worse concealment. Also no superior smoke screen. Yes, they have more dpm, but it still is not a DD. And IJN DDs basically only will allow you to torp. Their main means of contesting caps is going in, counting on stealth advantage, running off if they get pressured. RU guns are good at range. Especially later on, you are like a very light cruiser. You depend on setting fires a bit more than cruisers, because the HE pen is not going to beat high tier BB armour, but hitting a high tier RU cruiser is easy compared to hitting a high tier RU DD with 40+ knot speed at 13 km away. You can pretty much gunboat in the open at times and be a pain in the rearend to the enemy, soak up potential damage, but you really cannot count on concealment. Concealment-wise, you are almost closer to British CLs than DDs. Germans are hybrids. They have better guns than IJN, but worse torps and concealment. They can stealth torp comfortably though and get decent reload numbers. Especially high tier, where at the end Shima is a torp wall every few minutes and Z-52 is an almost constant stream of torpedoes. As to PA DDs... it's other nation's DDs with TWDs most of the time. High tier, it's USN-style with the super stealth torps. Tachibana Lima sadly is not too iconic for IJN DD gameplay. The Tachibana has great guns, quick reload low damage torps, almost no stealth torp window. Only thing typical for IJN on it is the bad hp pool. Also, at T2, you get away with dumb stuff obviously. A Kagero will be hard-pressed to make similar plays with its frankly bad guns for its tier, slow reload (of lethal torps when they hit) and 4.6 km stealth torp window.

I would say less lazy people and just dumb people. Lazy people don't write this much on the boards instead of opening the calculator and typing it in (if they can't do it in their head).But I'd say if the current system doesn't work out for OP, I think no system might be easy enough to understand...

I wanted to suggest "Let's all stay together and fight as a group.", but then they'd likely do that...

English not broken enough. "TIS SHIP SO crap. TORP HIT PEPOL BUT NO HIT! NO DAMAGE! WG WTF!!!1"

Raptor Rescue indeed is getting hard to complete, but mostly because of teams acting dumb. At the start, it is key to kill the cruiser and DD, because they pose a torp risk. If you are something like a Molotov, stay away from the frontline, because the bots fire at what they see first and while the Myogi typically is a joke, because, well, it's a Myogi vs a bunch of T6 ships. Later, after the CV gets rescued and it provides some repairs, I actually hate how it creates this bubble where everyone camps around the repair ship and CV and noone goes out spot the DDs and Aobas closing in, until Raptor gets torped from point blank as soon as it moves out. Other than that, mission is easy though. Don't play DD, they are mostly not good at this, due to lack of dpm and hp. Cruisers are decent, but BBs are kind of necessary to wreck all the cruisers (cruiser-wise, Graf spee gets a special mention from me as a really nice T6 that can shine vs bots and has a good combo of cruiser killer guns, survivability and German hydro/defAA to get things done). CV, Ryuujou is better, but either CV is mostly there for three things, that are basically what CVs do also in random battles (or should do): Spotting (light up all those incoming targets so your folks know the enemies are coming and don't camp in some repair zone hopefully) Fending off air strikes (bots never strafe, so that's not hard) Take out priority targets (at the beginning of Raptor Rescue, the Myogi and Furutaka, then CVs in the South (sniping in ops means your team doesn't have to go on a detour for this crap, don't snipe in randoms though), BBs at the end) A good CV can make many of these ops a good bit easier. Prioritise BBs over CAs, because it reduces chances of RNG citadels and devstrikes on your cruisers.

Well, you should also have them for shiplocking, because if you run into an event with 3-4 tags and at least two are combined fleet, you are about out of DDs with 10. Something like transport escort CF goes up to 7 DDs and you really don't want to lock anything too valuable there. Also, I recently obtained a ship I really just ever wanted because I found the AL art cute. Sadly, it will likely not get any collab love, given the ship seems to be overshadowed by so many others in popularity... HMS Leander. Using Belfast now, where I'm pretty sure I'll never own the ship.

Tbf, it also is useful for events. If you want to play at any difficulty with shiplocking, having the necessary amount of ships is kind of nice and have the ines needed for better routing.

I think I lost more hp to torps and fires in that match (as FdG), but it does look nice. Can't be bothered to grind some other BB line though for now.

Met @MortenTardo in their Alsace. They even killed me with it.

Can someone translate to English, please? I don't understand.

I started out mostly with IJN and German BBs, but gravitated towards IJN DDs more when the British BBs came out. On cruisers... Recently I played most lines except American and personally, I find the British very fun. At the Leander, it likely is one of the most interesting and fun experiences I had so far. Definitely the opposite of RN BBs, which range amongst the most boring BBs I ever played.

For allround performance, Z-39. It can torp comfortably, the guns are ok, the hydro is nice, hp pool and good concealment make getting uptiered a less painful experience.

But cyclone is best BB weather. Needs not even be German. Any BB that can brawl should love cyclones. And you have like 5 minutes to get into position, so even a 21 knot dreadnought can get into position.

For doubloons, Scharnhorst. For money, Giulio Cesare. With max tier 6, I'd not yet recommend the Atlanta, but with more experience, it would be a good one too.

3x Lyon is less OP than just kind of for the lulz. Not really that much different from 3x Bismarck/Tirpitz. Atlanta/Flint/Belfast divs meanwhile...