HaachamaShipping

I'd guess you could call it aficionado, but fiend...

Is this what they call weebs these days? Pretty harsh.

Same here. Though one came with Graf Spee and was kept on Graf Spee, but now got put on the German cruiser line, which is not ideal (EM/SI on Nürnberg instead of AR/DE), but works and it's only till I get Hipper, where I hope for AL Hipper. Other Thea is on the FdG. I now have enough 10 pt captains for all my IJN needs though and a 6 pt cat to spare.

Well, GK can pull it off if you get Vigilance and JoaT instead of BoS and EM on a tank build. So, if torpedoes really bother you (on a ship with hydro), you can take it, but frankly, I'd pick BoS over Vigilance any day, because the threat from fires seems just that much larger, while with torpedoes, if you make a push against DDs, hydro is just better and the long range torpedo thread is better countered by semi-random maneuvering. Not to mention, the real long-range torps, Shima are spotted early enough anyway and Asashio you still die to, if you rely on Vigilance to save your ship with the worst turning radius of all BBs.

Hindenburg, would be my guess. It's the ship that needs the points the least and has the most to get out of the two skills that the new captain improves (including German cruiser hydro to stack with Vigilance). Honestly though, in my opinion I'd know better skills to pick on any German T10 than these two skills. It's the complete opposite to something like the French captain, where it's two skills almost any line would pick, here you have two skills where I'm not even sure whether improved they are good enough to be picked over other skills.

I guess you mean the current offer or did you really just buy HSF captains for their points?

I mean, PA DDs already are erratic around the middle and USN-like at the top.

Please go play proper IJN DDs. Asashio is basically as easy as it'll ever get for someone with no experience, but to know what IJN DD gameplay is like, you should learn how to use normal torpedoes first and then return to the Asashio after you learned what a IJN DD can do and what it cannot do. And maybe also what it should do. This would be helping yourself and your team.

I'd say 8.5 km 65 kt on a 6 km stealth platform at T7 is not too bad. It definitely is a torpedo boat more than a gunboat. I own no higher tier Germans, but I'd guess the AP on the 12.8 cm guns is pretty decent vs broadside DDs and cruisers at short range, meaning like with the IJN 10 cm guns you are best of switching ammo types to use chances to apply that AP damage potential. Obviously, 12.8 cm is less likely to citadel ships than 15 cm is at range. Also, nice 10 pt Thea. Others claim it's ridiculous to pay 10 bucks for a 10 pt special commander, yet some spent money on this.

Yeah, but Bismarck secondaries have 11.3 km range on an all-out secondary build and actually can do decent damage against BBs and cruisers. The 105 mm guns might only be useful for fire chance, but the 150 mm guns do have the penetration to matter. The main damage will still be your main battery guns, but it certainly beats a Monarch, which, as you noted, has bad range and it cannot do much harm against BBs and cruisers apart from setting fires and for fires alone, Bismarck has just more HE spam at better range. I think secondary builds as they are are fine the way they are and don't really need any buffs or such. The only ship that might need the secondary buff is Mikasa, but not for the rest. Buffing the other ships to German levels would take away one of their unique strengths and overall, I don't think Bismarck has great issues with the point requirements (FdG and GK are more in need of added points).

I would disagree. There exists no other line with secondaries on par with German ones. The closest you get are French, but French secondaries basically are all about starting fires, they won't do much raw damage against anything that's better armoured than a DD and French BBs also have a bit too much 32 mm plating to not get hurt by another secondary build.

Who all has 203 mm secondaries? Kaga has 200 mm secondaries, but that's a CV.

Most ships where secondaries are worth a damn have HE secondaries. Something like the Mutsu has a mixed set, but even if they all were HE, they'd be garbage and you shouldn't invest in secondary builds on these IJN BBs.

Kitakami was a cruiser though and it took a cruiser spot and not a precious DD spot. Also, Kitakami could hit anything.

Thing is, killing a BB is not equivalent to getting a car. Killing or often just heavily damaging BBs is more like some 50 Euro, if the jackpot of hitting a DD and killing it with 1 torp (or reducing it to a oneshot) is 100 Euro, as DD who typically cannot repair and has more utility value is of greater importance than a BB. Insofar, a Kagero has typically some slim chance against DDs, not too bad chances against cruisers and decent changes of damaging BBs. An Asashio meanwhile has good chances vs BBs, but no chance at all against BBs. That's like 5% vs DDs, 20% vs cruisers and 50% vs BBs compared to maybe 0% against first two and 70%-80% against BBs. The fact you can kill a BB easier shouldn't be overhyped, because even for a normal IJN DD, hitting BBs was the easiest of their tasks and quite achievable, so you trade making this even easier for being unable to do the entire rest. The only time the Asashio is going to be of greater use than a Kagero overall is when your base hit rate in Kagero is so low, that somehow you need an Asashio to hit BBs, at which point... well, draw the conclusions yourself.

Well, it's not about WWII participants, it's about having a Navy. Countries like Korea and Indonesia (both in the PA DD tree) weren't even countries in WWII. That said, I do agree that WG should focus on major navies first, which would mean fleshing out Royal Navy, Marine Nationale and introducing the Reggia Marina properly as a tech tree should have priority over adding some minor countries that had a couple imported DDs. Quite a few would also just be ok premiums in the wake of the Blysca, such ships like Yavuz Sultan Selim or so, which just has no clear predecessor or follow-on and pretty much would be single ships anyway, yet appeal to people.

You can see the plane rotate and something like the IJN DDs have a bit over 3km air detectability usually and enough speed to get out of the way. Those like Kiev with higher air detectability are even faster. In your example though, only that DD actually has a good shot at the enemy DD and unless it's a Russian DD, at that range it won't kill anything before the planes pass by. And if it really becomes an issue, there exists smoke. And for this very situational play you just gave up 40% of your guns. Also, if this was a Fletcher, then you just lost however many planes were in that squad.

Alright, park your T9 Mogami 8 km away from a BB and tell me how there is a DD inbetween that gets caught lighted up by your planes. Way to get yourself sunk. If the planes are up, most of the time that people get caught out is when they were caught off guard, in which case, could as well have been a spotter plane. And even if it worked, the cost in your ship performance is so garbage and the benefits su situational that most people wish this was an Ibuki on their team.

DDs already don't like spotter planes if they are vulnerable to them. DD AA can actually shred carrier planes quite fast, especially defAA with its special x4 modifier. DDs without good AA (especially Japanese) typically avoid getting that close. Given you cannot send your bomber squad after an unspotted target, it isn't any better than a spotting plane which those DDs vulnerable do try to avoid anyway and if not caught offguard they manage to do that usually. DDs don't like CV matches, but typically that also is because DDs who don't have the necessary AA can just have a fighter squad flying overhead, spotting them the entire match, even if the CV is on the other side of the map, not just 8 km away. And the DDs best equipped to deal with spotter planes also can shoot down carrier planes, making it potentially too costly to try keep them spotted for extented periods.

If you only want to spot, Ibuki has a spotter plane, you know. And those DDs with less AA are typically not going to shoot that one down easily, while those with good AA would farm a bomber squad too. The issue is, for spotting, a bomber squadron is not any better than double spotter plane (it even may be worse due to air visibility limitations) and you give up a lot of firepower for it, losing 2 out of 5 turrets on a Mogami. Tone still loses 1. Ooyodo was not an aviation cruiser. It had seaplanes, but mostly for scouting and its utter stats make it ill-suited for upper tier. That ship is practically worse than Huang He.

You mean to help those T8-10 DDs get more plane kills? I mean, these are tiers where you get matched against Fletcher, Gearing, Grozovoi, Akizuki and the super-ducks. These are tiers where autodropping a DD is pretty much a waste of your time and I'd rather you as a cruiser go waste a couple seconds to designate me as a target and launch those planes before shooting with your abysmal dpm than actually blasting me out of the water with a decent gun setup. To make an Aviation cruiser (or battleship) worth it, you'd need to strike a balance between how much firepower you give up and how much utility the planes have, especially in mirrored MM of CVs, where this ship could very well be the autodropper with anaemic dpm and no real use if given too few tools or be a quasi CV in a CV-free match if given too much control over the planes. It's why it'd be better to not implement such designs until WG actually reworked CV design and knows how to make seaplane aircraft other than spotter/fighter worth a damn. Also, worth noting, there's absolutely no reason to put Suzuya at T9 like this. Suzuya herself was never made an aviation cruiser (Mogami was) and putting a T8 cruiser at T9 with a crappy setup and some silly floatplanes to justify the uptiering is just not going to work out. At that point, Tone should be the go-to pic, for a ship that actually was finished as aviation cruiser and which has 4 twin turrets, retaining a more competitive dpm on the guns. It still would need WG to figure out a proper way to implement these hybrids.

Ibuki existed just a bit more than Amagi did (given in Amagi's case it was the sister ship that was finished). Never in the form it is in the game, as the Ibuki got converted to a light carrier and as such was never commissioned.

Just that save for killing the radar ship, you cannot kill the radar. And DD with decent AA can kill floatplanes. As can any cruiser or BB with decent AA and god forbid if a carrier just strafes them down for a few free kills on the way to KotS achievement. If you want to kill a target in line of sight that close of your cruiser, use your guns or ship torpedoes. You aren't going to delete much with your few floatplane bombers, not even DDs. And disregarding the gimmicky and likely not too effective planes, the ship is a T8 cruiser known for garbage armour with the firepower of a T6 at T9. This ship would look bad even on T8, trading 40% of Mogami's dpm (if people use the 203 mm Mogami. IFHE 155 mm Mogami obviously beats it even harder) for a few autodropping planes. Frankly, for giving up that much firepower, these planes ought to actually be worth something beyond autodropping.

The Austro-Hungarian k.u.k. Kriegsmarine was a thing. It just lacks the ships to go past T5 at most. But leave it to WG to fill in the tech tree till T10 with ships that never existed and likely weren't ever designed.

These kind of players still make credits at T9-10 and even if they drop down to T7-8, where the money really comes in, it's hardly sealclubbing. If you really need credits, playing T4 or 5 has such poor returns, it isn't really worth it if you are skilled enough. So, for credit reasons alone, few skilled players will go for lower tiers. If they go there, then because they have fun there.