HaachamaShipping

Fighter is programmed to go away after having done its job, which is kill as many planes as it has fighters. Most obvious way to cheese that is by aggroing it on your own fighter by spawning one right next to it.

Well, I go by the policy that while fighter is a nice AA tool, I rather run spotter on pretty much any ship that can run spotter. On some ships for range, but on BBs also for shots behind island cover. Being able to accurately snipe over sight blockers without having to rely on minimap is great. For non-CV games obviously better, for CV games, I feel it is better to just try win as fast as possible, before most CVs can turn anything around.

*cries in no plane at all on Richelieu B hull* Not like the Bofors really do anything worthwhile anyway...

Kronshtadt guns still need considerable fuse and have BB dispersion. Stalingrad guns have short fuze and better accuracy (than Kronshtadt, not better than Siegfried), but lack the overmatch and are a tier higher. It's not like they are miracle guns without some significant downsides compared to Siegfried.

Conqueror is one of the BBs least bothered by the Smolensk and Hindenburg though. Hindenburg with 50 mm pens almost every BB at T10, Smolensk with is peashooters pens almost nothing. In either case, Conqueror has no disadvantage. Conqueror does care if something like Zao, Des Moines, Worcester or such show up, ships that pen 32 mm, but don't just go and pen the whole 50 mm like Hinden does. Similarly, Conqueror doesn't care when Yamato shoots HE. You basically laugh your [edited]off, because the yamato HE dpm is way worse than yours, its fire chance is way worse than yours, its ability to tank the HE shells and repair is way worse than yours. Meanwhile an AP shell can straight up overmatch your ship at any angle above the belt, drop down on the citadel, overmatch the citadel deck and hit you for a good chunk of your hp pool that you can only repair 10% of (33% in Thunderer, but still worse than repairing 60% of pen damage). Conqueror also no longer has a longer CD phase, it has a normal 80s CD, Thunderer even has just 60s. From citadels, yes. Pens, no, 75% restoration is insane.

Emphasis on "annoy". You also need someone willing to hold it off from just closing the gap and forcing you to get out.

So far, I haven't seen the apocalypse this line was supposed to bring. Unlike Russian battleships, this line has done very little to influence my games or even ship choice (ok, maybe I'm unfair, given I shelved Zao already when Kremlin released, so it cannot be shelved again). Stealth radar is annoying, but not a new feature ingame and quite short. AP bounces off angled side. HE is utter garbage. armour is cool, but you know, when you have incosistent volleys of poor HE coming back at you, it still isn't hard to win the fight and anything that pens the armour (so any cruiser vs Talinn, Germans, high 234 mm British and Henri vs Riga and Germans and 234 mm British vs Petro, also any supercruiser, except the Germans) is basically guaranteed to win the exchange if they don't mess up. I mean, it's basically a line of Stalingrads.

Alaska has improved ricochet angles, better accuracy and better HE damage. Ägir has better accuracy though. Also, Ägir has the worst guns of any supercruiser short of the Graf Spee which sits 3 tiers lower. Only reason Ägir can outcompete other supercruisers with guns alone would be if it can leverage accuracy against Kronshtadt and PR, but in all other regards it is inferior. Americans get better ricochet angles and HE damage, IJN gets better accuracy and far better HE damage, Kronshtadt gets far better pen and HE damage, just worse accuracy, Siegfried is highly accurate BB guns. What makes Ägir workable is that it's mobile, stealthy for a supercruiser and while the guns aren't great, they are only really showing their crappiness when you need to shoot HE, where they at least have the same fire setting as Alaska, just way worse alpha. Now enter Odin, a ship that gets these guns without the supercruiser dispersion. You cannot pen crap at range, your ship is way slower, your shells miss quite a bit more often and when you have to shoot HE, you are pretty poor at it. NC is a better HE slinger than Odin and you know how much fear that thing inspires when it loads HE.

Issue is... Which T8 BB isn't quite survivable when top tier? And while the armour is pretty solid, Odin's ability to dish out the hurt compared to other T8s is not really great either.

1v1 Ranked, most other T8 BBs crap on it if they don't misplay. It has no hp and while it has good concealment, the crappy guns mean you can turn around and just kite it. If it decides to only bow-in, load HE. Its secondaries are crap when bow-in. A Monarch can crap on it. If you are playing Tirpitz, which was the meta, you also have the disadvantage of Odin being able to spot your torps first, but frankly, just rush it down. Point-blank, Odin cannot dodge and Tirp torps connect before Odin ones do and have a much higher chance of just sinking Odin outright than Odin torps to Tirp, when combined with the main guns, thanks to the hp pool.

Failing that, give it supercruiser dispersion. That way, at the very least the ship can hit its HE shells, when it has to use them and gets consistent AP results when it gets close enough.

Furutaka and aoba are 48 mm, Myoko and Ibuki are 32 mm. Mogami is 27 mm. Zao is 30 mm.

I mostly use Concealment Mod, but used the LU briefly, when Smol released and I thought IFHE Hinden with LU can laugh at the Smol and Kremlin. Frankly, as memeworthy as the fire duration reduction is, the main advantage really is the -20% rudder shift, as Hindenburg actually has a pretty solid turning circle, so with faster rudder you dodge a good bit more. Overall though, that'd raise the question why one doesn't run the rudder mod in the first place. Before IFHE change, I would have considered it worth it, as it also means you have tankiness vs fires without speccing into it, allowing for dodging and sinking your skill points into IFHE to pen Kremlin and Yamato deck, but after the IFHE changes, running Concealment is just better, or straight up rudder + propulsion mod. I don't feel range mod is needed, as Hindenburg might hang back more, but effectively, it just means you don't push in further than needed to HE spam some BB or cruiser and at 15-17 km you can dodge better than standard Hinden. You just can't play at 12-14 km as effectively anymore.

Got Odin yesterday night. Frankly, the ship's trash, as one would expect. And sure, I was uptiered most of my games, which certainly drove home the weaknesses, as did the presence of CVs, but you can't call a ship good that only becomes okish when you fight lower tiers and falls apart vs higher tiers. This feels like PEF 2.0, which is frustrating as hell. Odin has strengths, which are the armour scheme and concealment, torps and the forgettable hydro. The hydro I appreciated once, which was when an Asashio was around, because guess what, most times you aren't that close to action to be worried about torps. The armour gives pretty decent protection, but you'll feel its hp pool whenever it doesn't hold up. Eat torps or heavy broadside hits and you are done. AP bombs end you. And CVs can drop you, hydro or not, with bombs, torps and they also obviously crap on your concealment. Odin is for people who don't want to switch to a class other than BBs, yet want to get a glimpse of how much worse CVs are for cruisers and DDs. But I could have forgiven that if the ship at least had reasonable armament. But no. The guns are just garbage. Compared to Scharnhorst, their pen is a bit better, but they still are supercruiser tier guns. And not good ones. They reload slower, given the ship barely an edge over ships with better guns and the HE is frankly trash. For a supercruiser the good thing about German 305s is that they pen Kremlin deck at least, but among BBs, any BB at T8 can do that. You can HE cit a Smolensk, but with that alpha, you are better off using AP. But Odin neither has great dpm, nor great alpha nor anything else remarkable about the guns, except how you get let down regardless of what you load. And sure, I had cruisers broadsiding me and eating double cit, but you don't need an Odin for that. With the hp pool, the ship cannot play constant mid-range either and when you try to play around your concealment, there's two limitations: CVs spotting you and the speed being actually unsuitable. For the ship most in need of getting into midrange ambushes to be decent, having trouble getting around is pretty sad. Yes, Monarch and Roma aren't faster, but they can work by just sticking around at midrange and using concealment to gtfo. And obviously when you get an ambush, you struglle with the crappiest guns that have 2.0 sigma, but still BB accuracy. These guns on a supercruiser like Ägir can be ok, because Ägir is way more accurate and reloads faster, but on Odin, they kinda suck and that is the same deal with HE spam, which Odin has to fall back on, just like the Ägir. Ägir also gets way better speed btw, to actually get around. Not gonna lie, Odin is basically an Ägir that got demolished to then get put into a T8 BB slot. Armour is better, but in every other way Ägir is similar or way better and a more functional package. And Ägir is not even an exceptionally strong T9 cruiser. As for the secondaries - they look cool. Fire volume is crap, accuracy is normal, range is nice. They might set the odd fire, but they aren't game changers. They are more harassment than a serious help to get your damage numbers up, as you can't expect anything to die in a reasonable time. Best I got was them farming some Buffalo for the better part of a 10 minute match and getting not even 20k damage. For a ship that got its main guns nerfed to buff these secondaries, I'd expect better, but no. They are just there for people who just look and go "Oh, cool secondaries" without ever considering what these things do in actual performance. Dpm on these things also is underwhelming, as is the angles. And for a ship that cannot broadside, having secondaries that need considerable broadside to have significant firing volume is brutal. Also forward bias conflicts with rearward bias an torps. This ship would be a good bit better if it could just kite people to death, Kii-style. Torps are great when used. Most often they don't matter. Frankly, if all you want is torps on a BB, Tirpitz is a better deal, Scharnhorst is cheaper and the Gneisenau is free. Most of this is apparant from LWM's review and I didn't expect greatness (though Denarmo certainly made me wonder if I missed something), but yeah. For 11 Euro, I take it, but it's just trash and maybe it'll get buffed or not. Who knows...

Dunno, I still cannot see the Hipper as decent. Roon at least gets to be decent dpm, if you compare it to its peers, getting slightly out-dpmed by the Saint-Louis and Ibuki, both which have less pen, while Drake is slightly less dpm, with better survivability but almost 2 km less range. Roon seems at least overall decent, even if at times feeling somewhat boring. Basically the step inbetween towards Hindenburg, which then has the best HE dpm of all T10 CAs after the US, but with good pen, ballistics and range. Hipper meanwhile only is a decent ship when people give you enough broadside for AP

Honestly, the more disappointing thing than waiting to me is that AL littorio seemingly is just a Roma. Which is cool if you own no Roma, but even though I do not mind playing Roma, owning two Romas just is eh... Can't you just do something? Dunno, 2 km more range for 2s more reload or 45s turret traverse, I dunno.

I'd say, if WG wanted to make the ship distinct, yet decent, give it 5.8 km conceal and 5.5 km hydro or 6 km T10 hydro. If the ship sucks in all other ways, it shouldn't be outclassed by the Loyang and should have a more manageable window inbetween its detection and hydro range, not over 1 km. Or give it 8 km torps, which would be more conventional. Still kinda trash, but not as bad as now.

True JoAT DDs would be Benson, Harekaze, Cossack, ships that have decent to good characteristics for all roles, just excel in no particular one. Z-35 sucks as a torp boat, sucks as an open gunboat Russian or French style and it cannot play Akizuki-style, as its abilities to make an impact just through damage is not there. Literally the only thing this ship is decent at for T8 is hydro + smoke cap contesting, where it beats Brits and the Z-23, yet gets absolutely outclassed by Loyang and even Siliwangi. So, being decent at one thing and kinda poor in every other way...

Honestly, if I would consider this ship good enough, any German premium would get a pass likely. Because which German premium really is worse for its tier? Z-35 has an ok hp pool, good smokes for bailing, but not for farming. Heck, for British, the short smoke farm at best works because of improved fire chance allowing more consistent opportunist fires if you need it. But aside from that, ships like Cossack beat other DDs with their dpm. The Z-35 is a gunboat without dpm. Its torps are too poor to be a main armament. The ship offers little aside from the main guns, it isn't like for example the Harekaze, which has poorer gunboat power than Akizuki, but instead gets to still be a stealthy torp boat. No, Z-35 gives up the flexibility Z-23 had just to get one more gun. And sure, it is rather healthy, but when you are slow, easily spotted and underwhelming in all ways to deal damage, having a bit more hp isn't exactly going to balance that out. Not that Z-23 is lacking in hp either... Me neither, but I really don't care what falls out of these. Could be a Yahagi and I'd be ok with it, because at that point I'd resign myself to whatever comes out of it. Only Asashio would piss me off, because I detest the concept of the ship, but thus I also stopped buying such containers.

How often did you play Z-23 and thought "Aww, if only I had a single gun more. It would make my ship so much better I wouldn't need torps and speed boost."? Well, in the absence of any spoken words of value, at least the game was representative.

No.1 more gun, British smokes, but gives up most of the torp functionality and engine boost.

Even if we ignore that Zoup seemingly thinks Gearing has a Fletcher gun setup, the way he played the ship is basically a waste of a DD slot. Sitting in his smoke clouds and spamming HE might look cool, until you realise that the ship has just piss poor dpm (113k HE dpm base). Just for comparison, Akizuki with a 4 point skill can do the same job better, with actual cruiser levels of dpm (192k HE dpm base), with smoke more suited to farming, with similar speed when it activates engine boost (which Z-35 does not get), similar concealment, more hp and actually strong torpedoes that can be used much more easily. Doesn't have hydro, but if you just farm damage from beyond radar range, you don't need a hydro. But lets assume you run into an enemy DD, the hydro and smoke combo is basically all you got going. With a 5 km hydro, there's a full kilometre though in which people can turn away and if you don't get to use your combo, 1v1 you struggle to even deal with T7 gunboats like Mahan and Jervis, while uptiered, there just is no DD that has to fear you in an open gunfight (while an Akizuki in an open 1v1 can be a challenging fight even for a good few T10s). And then we get into the whole matter of a DD sitting back, farming damage with its crappy small guns that have gimped HE performance, because German, not spotting, screening or contesting, basically doing nothing of value. Worth noting that Zoup lost that game and didn't even get some insane score out of it. One can argue his team died fast and wasn't great, but it certainly did not help them to have this as a DD player on their team. If you want to just pew pew with your guns, just get a cruiser. Mainz may not have the smoke, but with its dpm, range and hp pool, I'd argue it isn't in need of one to do the same job better and potentially at least draw some fire away from allies before it is the sole ship left on the flank. Hipper is free and can extend similar dpm out to over 17 km with 51 mm of pen.

A Yamato can crap on T8 cruisers, even with icebreaker, because at close range, hitting the upper bow isn't hard. And internally, neither of the two ships is actually immune to frontal cits from Yamato, as Bagration has enough bow to snipe over the icebreaker, while Hipper's citadel deck and turtleback is overmatchable. Meanwhile the only part Brandenburg can overmatch on a Pensacola, Yorck, NO and any T8+ cruiser except the super light ones of RN CL line, Smol and Colbert is the superstructure. And even then, being rushable by three cruisers vs being rushable by all but one at T8 is a significant difference. The chance of getting cits when enemy is angled is pretty much nil when you cannot overmatch. So consistency is basically consistent ricochets. There's a reason the Scharnhorst is balanced against a ship that has 50% less guns, less accuracy and way longer reload, because these guns otherwise sucks. It's by virtue of having an incredibly fast and well-armoured ship for T7, with torps, that Scharnhorst can stay balanced with the otherwise pathetic gun armament it has. 406 mm ships like NC also will be just as accurate (in the best case scenario of the ship getting 2.0 sigma) and can devastate T8 cruisers from any angle and BBs at range. It's of no importance that you have NC alpha when it only ever matters at the closest ranges, because it otherwise bounces off BB belt or at ranges where cruisers don't pay attention. Nor is it notably better than something like Tirpitz, because let's be real, in a close range broadside pass where you get to use the 305s to get cits, you basically are set up for a torp run already and you don't need the extra alpha. But in many other situations the actual pen at range and overmatch is useful. As for comparison to Montana, Montana still can overmatch extremities of T10 cruisers. Moskva at mid-range bow-in? Still can be citpenned. Yamato 15 km away broadsiding like a moron? Can be citpenned. Brandenburg meanwhile struggles fending off Yorcks that are lower tier and if it runs into a Monarch at 15 km, they can broadside you perfectly, you just don't have the pen to punish it. And sure, good players can do ok in the ship, but good players can do ok in any ship. You can hand good players some uncompetitive dumpsterfire and they'll still pull off a decent result most of the time against the people that populate the game. Doesn't mean that the ship is actually balanced though.

And for that you need an island like a DM? Honestly, early game, you stick around some allies, look at what opportunities present themselves, often you find ships going to a flank, thus giving broadside. And you can go into an opportune position as soon as you have a good idea of where the enemy team positioned itself. 24 km range means that the reach of the ship is quite generous and while not very accurate, it's still workable enough to force cruisers out of position, because especially in high tiers where overmatch is the issue, you get plenty of Moskva, DM and other crap that parks their ship paralel to some landmass and thinks that is going to be their spot till they die. Sometimes you can punish that kind of silliness from the next cap. If you are just spamming HE though, you really don't need to sit in one spot, just stay mobile and already approach positions from where you can make your dash.

Here: It's not scary. A ship you can torprush with your cruiser isn't scary. A ship that you can broadside at midrange to just turn and move away is not scary. All it may have at close range is torps, but as does Tirpitz. Small guns don't add anything.