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Aoba is one of my favourite ships in the game :-) I disagree about the turret rotation mod; her turret turn speed is pretty good for a heavy cruiser (it's by far the best on the IJN line, at least), and if you plan to go further up the line you NEED to get used to slower turrets (the Myoko turrets at T7 have the same rotation rate as some battleships!). Meanwhile, only having 6 guns (of which you can often only use 4) means that she can sometimes lack raw damage output, and so I wouldn't want to give them a longer reload time. Personally I use the gun accuracy upgrade, in the spirit of playing to the strengths of a ship. Aoba is decent at splatting destoyers, but as the only T6 with 8" guns she really excels at citadelling similar-tier cruisers, and accuracy helps a lot :-) Apart from the lack of guns, IMHO Aoba's only real weakness is that her steering gets knocked out easily, so the upgrade that reduces the chance of that is a must.

I don't think that's quite true: based on a couple of results screens recently, I don't think that AP that bounces shows up in the headline "hits" ribbon - but it does show up in the Detailed Results.

Premium ships - at least glamorous ones - seem to have a bimodal distribution of skill levels: They have the experienced players who decided to buy a premium of the class that they like, and they have the people who've bought something at T8 having never played above T4, and not a lot inbetween. But don't be too quick to complain if they make a mistake - we all have bad matches from time to time, where we make a tactical error and die fast, and I find that when that happens in a Tirpitz or (to a lesser extent) Warspite, there's so much rage about it that isn't evident when I have the same sort of match in a non-premium...

Under 100 is normal. I'm on a bit of wet string at the end of Scotland, and often have "issues". Up to maybe 200-300 is playable for destroyers, but you're at a disadvantage in a knife fight. A bit higher for battleships, but once it starts spiking up to near the 1 second mark it becomes unplayable.

Pretty sure it's one of a few possible responses when you get a citadel.

How to hit destroyers that are side-on to you: Step 1. Estimate the lead that you need. Step 2. Add some more. Step 3. If it's russian, add even more. Step 4. Shoot

Yep, it's definitely like that. At >T5 or so, when you can't rely on enemies sailing in straight lines, you're trying to outsmart the opponent by guessing what they'll do. Sometimes they play along... often they don't! At T6 and T7 I've had many games where I've not managed a single torp hit. Note that games without a hit aren't useless though, even if they are frustrating. IJN destroyers are still good at stealthily capping (which earns lots of XP), and those torp salvos that the enemy dodges may still force them to turn their side to the friendly battleships (which earns you no XP, and may not achieve anything if the friendly battleships aren't awake ;-))

Yeah, she is a nice ship, although not as invincible as some seem to think (those 15" shells seem to bounce quite easily until one gets close) Similarly to yourself, I waited until I had plenty of experience in a Colorado first - so it's a jump up one tier, but no more so than the next ship would have been anyway...

Hit me up if you want a Tirpitz for the team (soon Fubuki also), and don't find me too awful :-)

Most premiums - or at least the "glamorous" ones - seem to have a bimodel distribution of player competence. The people who buy them fall into two broad categories, Experienced players who are reasonably good at what they do and will learn the quirks of the premiums People with no clue but plenty of cash Thus, most premiums are either to be feared or to be laughed at and sunk, and figuring out which can be quite important! I like to think that I fall towards the bottom end of the first category, but who knows ;-) Tirpitz makes this very obvious, but I've observed the same thing with Atago.

I gave up on it about a week ago... I'd been travelling and thus away from the game for 2.5 weeks in March, and then had a few days of high damage but no kills when trying for the 100 kills... that meant that the amount of damage I'd have to do to catch up and get the 10m was such that I'd be sat grinding battleships for longer than I wanted to every night in April. Not fun, and not worth it. Especially as I don't have the ARP Myoko and don't like playing Kongos, so I wouldn't use the captain much anyway :-)

I used to always fire a ranging shot, and then follow up with more guns. I stopped doing that most of the time on higher tiers, partly because I got better at judging lead distance, but mostly because if you fire one round at a cruiser and it lands near or on them, they'll then usually change course and speed, messing up the shots that follow. If you get it right with a full opening salvo (and I admit that I don't always), you can catch them by surprise while they're still vulnerable. Another other reason for preferring full salvos (in any ship) is that it leaves me more time in which I'm not aiming, which I can use for steering, picking AA targets, and general situational awareness. In reality I tend to find that in BBs I fire my forward and aft guns separately, because they usually come to bear at different times - so that's part way in-between the extremes. (EDIT to note that firing all guns at once doesn't always mean firing them at the same spot. If I'm shooting at a destroyer or a cruiser who hasn't noticed me, I'll often spread my aiming points around a little to maximise the chance of hitting with something)

I'm facing this choice for the first time at present, having just bought a Tirpitz - and while I see the offensive benefit of concealment, I think both should also be useful defensively. Acquisition range would obviously help with dodging torps, but more concealment means more potential, cruiser-style, to stop firing and drop out of sight so that you can turn around in safety. Could be invaluable when you start closing on that lone BB and find that there actually two more and an escort waiting behind an island :-) I'll try it out when I have 2m credits to spare...

You can see it as a small superscript number after your name on your "Player profile" screen.

Just checked in my port. NY has 18.1km range and 241m dispersion; NM has 17.3km range and 233m dispersion (both ships have the range module, neither has an accuracy one). Seems pretty similar to me. I suspect the perceived difference is simply that if you throw more shells you'll tend to get more hits, regardless of accuracy - remember that if you don't use the middle turret on the NY much, the NM gives you 50% more guns than you're used to :-)

Ah, I shared the OP's surprise about DD shell, but a torp... yes. The most common way for battleships to detonate from torps is if they're turning towards the torp at high speed (something that they're often doing to try to clear it), which exposes the lesser-armoured part of the hull that's normally beneath the waterline, and then it hits near a magazine... I've detonated a Colorado with a BB shell at the same spot. It's one reason that (if all else is equal, which it usually isn't) turning away from torps can be preferable.

Correct.

I can't look up the dispersion figures right now, but they're talking about real life here - I wouldn't assume that that effect will be present in the game.

Shooting at two targets at once is certainly possible, but it's tricky, because you have to be quick. Let's say you want to engage target A with your forward guns and B with your aft guns. All the time that you spend looking at A, your aft guns are moving away from B. All the time that you spend looking at B, your forward guns are moving away from A. So you have to split your attention, and be able to aim and shoot relatively quickly rather than spending a lot of time lining up a target. Typically this isn't something that I plan for, but if my forward guns are reloading and the aft ones are still turning, and I notice a target that the aft ones could hit straight away, I'll try for it. It probably *could* be planned for, but I'm not that good :-)

Wheras in this game, the disadvantage of triple (or 3-gun, for those who care) turrets is when you want a ranging shot, you have to waste three guns on it rather than one! I'd love to be able to fire a single gun rather than a single turret... Returning to the point, AIUI the reason that navies put more and more guns in each turret was one of weight - by sharing magazines, armour and so forth they could get more guns in with less weight per gun.

I use the C, because you have to have it for the upgraded torps. It costs you one turret, but it's only a single-gun turret with fairly poor arcs.

The Hatsuharu is... different. Probably worse, on balance, but it's not clear-cut. Significantly slower and less manoueverable Less stealthy (6.5km with camo, compared to 6.0 in the Mutsuki) Faster torps (62 knots without the captain skill, IIRC, compared to 53 knots on Mutsuki), with the same range but a longer reload Larger calibre guns, and more of them (4 in 2 turrets), which are actually pretty good, but get very easily destroyed and turn (slightly) slower than upgraded Mutsuki ones.

FreeXP the better torps - the 6km ones that you start with are hopeless. Two things to consider that may not be obvious: 1. The upgraded guns, even though there are fewer of them, have a rate of turn and rate of fire that's unmatched on IJN DDs to that point. You can actually turn and shoot at the same time. Don't be afraid to use them, at the right time. 2. The 4th tier captain skill that accelerates torps can make the upgraded Mutsuki torps feel more like Minekaze ones, with a 8km range and a mid-60s speed (but still a slower reload).

I'm a long way off owning one (grinding Hatsuharu right now), but every time I've spectated one it looks as though it's 10 seconds of launching torps, then over 2 minutes of hiding. And repeat. While I appreciate that it's effective, is it fun?

Ah! From that post, "- Citadel repair is the same as all other BBs, 10% of dealt damage (this used to be higher due to a bug that became a feature for a while, but seemed they fixed that bug sometime late last year)." Suspect this fix is the difference that I'm seeing - when I bought the Warspite (last year), a lot of citadel damage could definitely be repaired, and this is no longer the case. But it sounds as though this is now working as intended. Bah :-(