HaachamaShipping

There's little to no basis for the rumours. If Thunderer would get removed, they'd announce it. Thunderer is a better ship though.

Tried to play BB after seeing people bring up Zoup again. Literally unplayable. Cannot punish broadsides at any range. 20 km, Cleveland goddamn survived for his horrendous mispositioning two caps away... 6 km and I still get a friggin overpen on a T10 cruiser. Where's my third citadel? Worst accuracy and smallest gun count on T8 btw... Honestly, if anything is too unreliable to punish it's BBs, like the Richelieu that broadsided me multiple times and never got citadelled ever.

I'll react with "Funny". If I could, I'd also react with "Sad".

Zoup claims supercruisers encroach on BBs and BBs are no longer fun. Then today he claims he regrets not getting Bourgogne instead of Stalingrad. Can someone tell me what "contribution" this person makes to the community?

Pommern.

I'm having fun in Mainz, tyvm.

For future generations, imo, all I got from this review and that I think is important to take away from it is:

I was prepared for many things. But not the third image...

Things haven't changed and turtleback comes in different qualities. German BB turtleback at close range is impenetrable to pretty much anything that cannot boast improved pen angles, stuff like Amagi or French ships are just there to make it less likely to eat reliable cits compared to ships like NC, Massa or Alabama with overmatchable citadel deck or Monarch, Vladi or Lenin with above water cit.

Problem is, it is not up to Flamu to decide who watches him, nor is he required to try address the bottom of the viewership. It's also not that he deliberately seeks the views from these kind of people, so, them ending up there is nothing you can blame him for. Thus it still is a player issue, not a CC issue.

You call it a CC problem. I call it a player problem. The stuff Flamu says isn't wrong, nor is it necessarily a failure as an educator, as @dasCKD seems to put it. Flamu seems more directed at people who have some idea of how the game works, but want advice on how to get better. It's not directed at people who need to be told how to breathe to not suffocate. It's not the fault of the educator if the contents are taken by people who were never intented to be adressed. If I go to a university lecture on advanced astrophysics and I don't understand anything but take the first few bits out of context, that also isn't the fault of the lecturer, who tailors content to the people who are actually intented to attent.

The ideal solution in a CV game would have been to form multiple minor blobs of 3-4 ships, which, if you split ships properly and didn't put together low AA ships, would already be a counter. Because even a single semi-AA spec Hipper (and really got better ideas what to spec into on Hipper?) could shred an entire attack wave by itself with defAA. But that would require people to not run hydro due to scarcity of CV and to know how to coordinate in any sensible manner, so outside something like competitive formats you'd never see much of that. Naturally, WG only put CVs into CB after this kind of counterplay became obsolete. Now blobbing is just a "counter" in that the blob is less attractive to strike than more isolated team members.

Having acquired Richelieu recently, the ship is ok. It isn't the strongest T8 BB. I'd even go as far as to consider it among the worst, if not the worst BB overall, though such sounds way more negative than it really should be. Pretty much all T8 BBs are solid ships, just one has to be the least powerful and to me, Richelieu is that one. Mostly comes down to how I value the strengths and weaknesses of the ship and Richelieu to me is basically the definition of a ship that most of all is fun and not all too powerful. Gunnery-wise, the guns are the worst AP dpm in the game, with the tied worst accuracy with Roma. The turret placement is nice, but wouldn't care too much. Roma's turret angles forward are good enough and stuff like Monarch will win the bow-in contest thanks to HE. Richelieu's survivability is also mediocre and apart from citadel protection among the worst. Richelieu can be strong though, don't get me wrong. It's a flanking opportunist. It has speed, it has derpy high pen guns and it has decent citadel protection, meaning risky maneuvers get less punished. Sitting bow-in throws away much of that, moving around as necessary to catch people in their sides is how you get the most out of Richelieu. It's like the only thing where Richelieu shines, but it's not bad. You couldn't do this in some other ships like Monarch or NC who are too slow and too vulnerable to make risky plays. When I rate these other ships higher than the Richelieu, it's because of dependancy on others to make this work. If you'd for example take away all other BBs and throw the Richelieu against a Monarch, Monarch wins most of the time, because it can outspot, out-dpm and outheal the Richelieu and kill it way before it gets the side. Monarch HE also deals way better with something like 27 mm plating cruisers if necessary and with DDs. Also, Richelieu has insane base range, but having more modest range + spotter plane would be a better deal. Thankfully though, in randoms you have enough team usually to get by with Richelieu. For turret survivability, which can be an issue, watch from where you get shot and inbetween your own shots, angle turrets to make it harder for them to get penned and knocked out. Not necessary all the time, but if you know there's some high pen BB that could shoot your turrets in the side, it may help keep the turrets alive. And you don't need to sit super far back, just limit the amount of incoming firepower. Flamu made a guide on BB positioning a few days ago, featuring Jean Bart and Jean Bart is basically same survivability one tier higher. Note though, as Flamu stated in his third video on BB positioning, don't just nilly-willy run into the center of the map, do it when you know there are people on the flanks already. This is especially important for the French, because if someone has to go flank, French are among the best there, due to having the easiest time to reposition short of Georgia. But the key priority is to create a crossfire, so your superb gun gets an opportunity to shine.

It can be seen as a celebration of victory, though there's more obvious cases of such going on in other countries, like Italy (Trento and Zara classes being all named for newly acquired territories, Vittorio Veneto being named after the final victory in WWI). In the case of the Soviet Union, It generally seems to have liked using city names for ships and given many of the older SSRs were already represented, spreading it to the newer ones also fits the narrative of "equality" and to try show that these are officially comrades, not oppressed. Might not be the truth in the new SSRs, but well... Alternatively, you could name it after some minor place wherever in Russia and at some point people would ask, why every minor Russian settlement has a city named after it, but the Baltic SSRs (with a good number of ports) have none.

It was the historical name though for the Lützow that the USSR bought. And back then, the Estonian SSR became very much part of the USSR, not by free will, but hard to call the USSR the "loser" on that matter.

Typical Italian SAP shens. You play like an opportunist [redacted] and basically keep an eye out for any and all opportunities to do damage. You go with team mates, because that means enemies also have others they can shoot and they might be more willing to give you broadside while angling against allies. You don't go on your own, because that's going to get you killed. You don't needlessly push up, because your cruiser has f***-all in terms of vision control consumables or otherwise meaningful things to provide. You can move up to mid-range and blap a DD if it gets spotted, but you got the ballistics to do it at 12-13 km and you should have a feeling for the cruiser and the enemy team first, so you know you don't get killed in the process. Your torps are harassment mostly, trying to torp brawl with them is a folly, so don't do it. Just throw them out every now and then when you know no ally is ever going to steam into them. And believe me, they are slow and crap and I played games not launching any torps, because its not worth going pink for the potential damage these pathetic fish could ever get (unless they detonate something). For shooting things, shoot whatever shows you any armour plate you can pen and that isn't too angled. If you need to shoot angled ships, try to hit superstructure. Try to shoot as much as you can, your damage correlates to the shells you hit. You cannot effectively farm DoT, so switch targets freely and don't get bogged down. Shoot mostly SAP and learn two things: Your SAP pierces like 54 mm of plating. Wtf is the plating strength of every plate you'll ever encounter in your MM spread. The more you internalise the latter, the more success you'll have with SAP. Knowing what you can pen and what not (and how to potentially get around that) can move Zara from absolute trash to insane fun. Later cruisers get the advantage that most high tier ships are like crap plating all around the ship except the belt (never shoot center of mass with SAP unless you know the enemy has almost no citadel plating), but Zara runs into fun ships like Fuso or Bayern that have weird plating all over the ship. In these cases, shoot extremities, shoot superstructure, or, if you are very desperate, open distance, pop spotter plane and watch shells pen the deck (that's literally the only way to actually reliably deal any gun damage to Sinop and Trento was better at this). Thankfully, Zara also still sees ships like Ranger, Kirov and such, which are SAP cits waiting to happen. Do not forget however that you can load AP and Zara has the best AP pen at T7 among cruisers, so you can wreck broadsiders at most ranges. And AP cits > SAP normal pens. You can play like the most ignorant ship around, just minding your own business, because really, there's only dpm to these ships. When you know you can dodge or tank (good side armour bounces shells when angled) bait shells that otherwise your team might eat. Watch the PT counter though. If it goes up too much, use your lolsmoke to just gtfo. Smoke is not for farming. Smoke is to get out. Save it for when you need it. Lastly, don't care about getting uptiered. It really does not matter. Zara has no consumables that care. The biggest issue a Zara might have in T9 is that you need to mind radar cruisers and can't smoke up 9 km away to turn around. But that's it. Your armour plating is overmatchable bow and stern, 150 mm belt, 30 mm upper belt, 25 mm upermost belt and deck. A Bayern can overmatch the same parts an Iowa can. Georgia and Musashi can overmatch the 30 mm part too, but only get normal pens then, as you cannot citadel through the 30 mm section. And shooting an Iowa is so much more pleasant than trying to deal with Fuso. As an added bonus, if you dodge a few salvos, people start ignoring you, because Zara's that T7 cruiser that won't set them on fire and only hits them occasionally for a few k, nothing big in T9. But as you keep shooting, the damage adds up. For build, it's straightforward, PT. so you know when to dodge and smoke, then AR, because extra damage, then SI for extra smoke and spotter (and because no fire chance anyway), then CE, so you can have somewhat ok stealth. Next point then goes into EL, so you can do opportunist ammo switch when you need it and after that, RPF, as it is immensely useful to know where DDs are or if you are about to run into trouble. Last four point can be spent on god knows what, JoAT, LS, SE, IFA, EM, FP are all options, TA with Sansonetti might work too, though I'm not sure that investing anything into the torps will ever be worthwhile. Sansonetti will give you great value out of EL though. And use spotter over fighter. If you end in a CV match, you aren't usually first pick to kill for CV, as Zara can dodge torps nicely and isn't near the frontline. If the CV goes for you, smoke bails you out too. Fighter might thwart a couple attacks, but will not save your bacon. Spotter will always be useful and in the end, it's just better to try maximise your damage and spotter is insanely useful to shoot over obstacles or extent your range if you ran away too far.

That's how you get the new Soviet CAs.

Don't say that or we'll get another thread about how Ohio should get 2 knot buff.

People shoot HE, because it's reliable and given how cruiser AP overmatches little and hasn't gotten great pen values at range, no wonder that most don't switch to AP for shooting targets at range. Now, if you think that the playstyle does not get punished when AP would have been the better choice, well, guess what, it does get punished, you are losing out on effective damage. Potentially even a kill. Not exactly Flamu's fault though. And for what it is, I consider the two guides on central positioning pretty good, because they discuss not just where to go (minor part, imo), but by highlighting why he went where, they show two other things commonly misunderstood and which lead to much whining among "BB mains": Letting yourself get farmed for free is not tanking. One of the main jobs of a BB is map control, zoning people out with the threat of guns and with how hard it is to kill a properly positioned BB. Also other minor things. Overall, for anyone trying to play BBs with half a brain, it's useful enough, I'd say.

Would certainly be worth looking into, if not gutted. And you know... if we weren't confronted with the subpocalypse...

Yeah, but neither Nürnberg nor Mainz were OP. The München for T7 is agile, has good dpm, but no armour. Best tech tree comparison would be Shchors, where the München has 170k HE dpm instead of 198k, but it gets better turning and better concealment. Also, München gets no option for spotter, but better hydro.

Reload gives it dpm right inbetween Nürnberg and Mainz.

Well, at least it has the maneuverability and concealment.

Armour will likely be utter garbage, citadelled by stuff like Cheshire HE. And overpenned by most BB...

Yes, but with 105s instead of 88s. AA is still dogshit. However... Colour me interested. This is almost Amalfi-levels of maneuverability and sub 10 km concealment.