Capra76

Yep, that's my impression. They have huge, weakly armoured deck areas that are massively vulnerable to long range plunging fire but very difficult to damage at closer ranges.

I played it quite a few times on the PT server (when it was pretty much the only game mode) and it took a while to get used to and work out what tactics to use, I wonder if part of the problem is that players are only seeing these games rarely so they don't get the chance to understand them.

Usually it's a calculated risk that goes wrong, you push into a cap only to find that your support is more interested in firing at BB rather than the DD you've just detected, or you try to cap unsupported in a low DD game only to find the one ship you didn't want to see there, or, most frequently, you find yourself in the middle of a torpedo spread fired at someone else with nowhere else to go.

I think the German BB's were designed to counter the French ships in a limited war against France rather than fight a global war against the RN. The Scharnhorst class was reasonably comparable to the 2 Dunkerque class ships, the Bismark class was comparable to the Richelieu and everything after that was pure fantasy anyway.

Nope, I think DD players will hate the mode since you're going to be expected to sail into a very small area, which will remove your one survival advantage, whilst BB play their usual sniping game. What this mode actually favours is battleship captains who are willing to go forward into the cap circle and scare other ships away.

I'm not sold on it having played a few games on PT but I'm willing to give it a go on the live server.

Maybe not sail in a straight line, be closer to friendly DD that can spot the DD and torpedoes for you, launch your spotter plane, turn on hydro-acoustic. DD have the lowest survival rates and lowest damage output at all tiers, if you are losing most of your ships to them you are doing something wrong.

Presumably if the OP has Shimi researched but not bought he won't lose that research when the lines split. Logically, WG should unlock the full line up to whatever tier has been reached and transfer any accumulated XP to that ship, so e.g. with Fubuki moving down to T6 I should have Kagero unlocked with all Fubuki's accumulated XP transferred to it. There is also the issue of silver, since a T8 ship is a lot more valuable than a T6 one, perhaps WG will buy back the down-tiered ships at cost and move the captain to reserve. Finally there is the issue of captain retraining, having to retrain your captain on a replacement ship would be an unjustified pain, perhaps WG will give them a free retrain and re-spec.

I wonder if this is because CV are so reliant on MM that some CV players exit the game if they're bottom tier.

Hydro or not, it looked like a deliberate turn to avoid detected torpedoes rather than a preventative maneuver.

Good Benson.

Had an almost perfect 7km shot on a Scharnhorst earlier from the Fubuki with stock torpedoes, he managed to simply turn inside all of them.

I am seeing a lot of games with low numbers of DD in them, you get the occasional 5 DD games but they seem to be the exception. All games now are 5 BB a side. I think this is a myth, BB snipe if there are DD in the game, they snipe if there are no DD in the game, they'd still be sniping if WG made it 12 BB per side. I think the reality is that for most players teamwork in this game means having the enemy shooting at someone else and the rewards system encourages this. Why push when someone else can get focus fired and killed quickly whilst you sit safely behind them picking up damage, credits and XP. It's actually I think an interesting example of the free rider problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem It is in everyone's interest if everyone move's forward into battle, but this comes with a cost attached (getting shot at), and since the cost is not compulsory people try to take advantage of other players paying the cost without paying themselves.

Well, most battleships didn't tend to sail around alone in hostile waters and when they did it usually ended badly.

Battle of the River Plate.

2 problems with this: BB don't really need AA support or counter DD screens; asking players to take an entirely passive role shooting down aircraft with automated AA and spotting torpedoes just isn't going to work as a game.

That could be an interesting balancing mechanic, too many DD around, spec your CL with radar, too many BB, go for smoke.

Meanwhile, the BB plague continues.

True, but the higher tier ships have a lot more defenses against them: stronger torpedo protection; radar; vigilance captain skill; target acquisition mod; more health; ferocious secondary guns manual secondary skill; and to combat all that Kagero gets slower, easier to detect torpedoes and a far worse DPM.

Why is it always nerf the good ship rather than buff the bad one (unless it's a BB)? Yes it out performs other DD including higher tier ones but the other T5-7 DD are absolute dogs, Minekaze is pretty much the only DD in the game that really does what it is supposed to do, namely kill BB who want to sail alone in a straight line.

If I remember correctly the ARP Myoko mission was a T7 challenge, whereas the Kongo was a T5, presumably WG don't want to give T7 ships out to people who don't have at least one already.

Surely vigilance is essential for any class of ships that is going to rely heavily on firing from smoke?

WR tells you how the ships perform against ships of the same class, not how they compare against other classes.

Particularly when you remember that even the T5 Konig can get it's secondaries out to beyond that range and KM BB seem to be designed to be immune to close range DD attacks. The short range torpedoes work ok at T3/4 against slow ships with terrible main gun dispersion and woeful secondaries captained by players who generally don't know what they're doing. Against T6+ BB that are almost as fast as you, can kill you with main guns and wreck you with secondary fire it's going to be a bad joke.

Took the Kirov out for a game yesterday, T7 match naturally, 2 minutes into the game, detected, turn hard to port, instant deletion by Nagato without even seeing an enemy ship let alone firing the guns. Return to port, join BB queue, forget about sailing CA above T4 again.