VC381

Aha, need to pay more attention to the smoke angle! Thanks guys! I'm reasonably accurate with knowing how much to lead a certain ship and a certain range as long as it's going full speed, which most of the time it is, but I get thrown off when it isn't.

Yeah but it's a playstyle I'm not massively enjoying so I can't wait to get to the Nagato playstyle and stick with it (looking forward to Amagi even more but that will take me a while). Plus I have Atago as a money maker.

Well, I'm starting to have a bit of fun throwing the Fuso around, I made two "high caliber" with it over the last couple of days so I guess I'm doing something right now. I'm unlikely to keep the Fuso though once I'm done grinding the Nagato, which I'm really looking forward to, because everything about it's stats and the way I've seen others play it tells me I'm going to like it

Well, I definitely do use SA and the second I see that exclamation mark I hit the rudder, then check the map for what might be shooting. I still get blasted by BBs, but I consider it exclusively my own fault when that happens, usually because I put myself somewhere dumb (read surrounded) and can't track everything that might be shooting at me from multiple angles. Yes, it is certainly possible to devastate a CL/CA from a high angle or through the bow/stern but the angled situation complicates aiming lead significantly, while the bow/stern shot just makes for a really tiny target. I guess what I'm saying is, I'm really not a good enough shot to hit a target that's actively dodging, but it's interesting you say 5 salvos to kill a cruiser is still "good". That makes me realise the reason I was so frustrated is unrealistic expectations. I know I can 1-shot a cruiser, so I get annoyed when it doesn't happen. Or rather, I get very frustrated with the RNG game where any shot could be the killing one... except not this one! A cruiser could take the same amount of time or longer to kill another cruiser, but usually your first shot hits, every salvo gets some hits and the damage is steady and predictable. I know how long it will take me to kill him and usually nothing can drastically change that expectation, every shot is it's own little reward. With a BB every shot is a nail-biting "will it hit" followed by the inevitable "1000 damage" and waiting 30 seconds to try again. It's frankly exhausting... Also, my game experience still differs from yours. 5 salvos at the same cruiser? 2.5 minutes is a very long time in a game that only lasts 15. Usually by the time I've fired my second salvo at a cruiser he is either a) running away so hard I can't hit, b) behind an island, c) out of sight or d) killed by a team-mate. Basically he's anywhere but it my sights long enough to kill him. The other problem is that in those 2.5 minutes you are committed to one side of the map, trying to kill 1 thing, and usually you look up after that and half your team is dead. So even if you do nail that cruiser there's no payoff, you're now out of position and down in numbers and it's too late for you to affect the game.

Well, to add another one to the long list of honours the Konigsberg has gathered in this thread... or should I say Krakenberg This was my first ever Kraken, second ever High caliber, and a confederate on top in the same game!

I think HE is worth it especially with the fire chance as people have said. It's not really hard to predict when you need it. By switching I don't mean reloading shells I already have, but queuing HE after an AP salvo when you can see how the situation will develop. For example, you see your target is a good player and knows how to angle, or is just running away stern pointing at you, then you can plan to use HE from that point on. I also agree it's best to prioritise cruisers but I don't know what games you guys are playing where there are so many cruisers flashing broadsides at you. Normally they turn and run and are very hard to hit. Actually I had a game the other day where the only cruiser that went to the side of the map I chose ran away, leaving me with only BB targets all game. And I know from playing a cruiser, I don't really fear Fuso at all as long as I don't sail in a straight line, with that spread he's wasting time shooting at me.

No, I'm never going to get her lol. Well I have AFT anyway so I can max out the range by swapping out the upgrade, I might play a few games as if I had it and see how often I get into secondary range and survive when I'm doing it on purpose.

It's not that I was planning to skip it, more that it would take me so long to get to it. On that note, I just got "close quarters expert" in my Fuso after rushing a NM and leaving him on 700 HP from a good but not perfect salvo.

Amazing. You can give anything in your tier range brown pants with a good salvo if they show broadside at close-medium range, then use your RoF to do it twice more before they can reload and shoot you back. AA isn't worth it given how slippery you are, it's quite easy to avoid air attack and often you aren't priority target for CVs anyway.

Meh. It's great to know about the terminology, it's great to teach others about it, but you should be more gentle about enforcing your opinions.

I love the firespam but I had a fun game yesterday where I did the opposite. I loaded AP and snuck into a dense island area, a Mogami, NO and Atago all in turn rushed into 10km range of me and immediately regretted that decision. 90k damage AP only OK it's not super huge damage in the grand scheme of things, but I was quite proud of it given I'm still new-ish to the game.

Lol, I thought this thread was a troll/joke until I realised it was a slight necro. Atago is strictly better than her direct equivalent in the normal tree (Mogami) and is arguably the best Tier 8 cruiser in the game at the moment (yes, probably better than MK but hard to compare directly because they are so different). I love mine, never had issues with any other ship of any class other than Tier 10s. BTW the change to premium camouflage is an indirect Atago buff anyway.

Well, they were designed as scout cruisers and had a much bigger aircraft complement compared to their "regular" relatives. The way I would see them working is having some special consumables representing their aircraft capability instead of the normal cruiser consumables. So something like: - R: repair - need to have that - T: fighter - same as the one we already have but at higher tiers can launch a pair rather than a single - Y: scout - when pressing Y, opens the map to target a square to scout; after that you don't control the plane, it just goes there, flies around a bit then comes back - U: bomber - (high-tier only) when pressing U, opens the map to target an enemy ship, then a small squadron (a pair or maybe three planes) go and bomb it; again no player input after launch To compensate they can be balanced by tiering the ships higher than they would be normally based on their armament/armor alone. I think that would be amazing and not too OP or taking too much away from the CV gameplay, especially since even your limited bomber squad would be fully AI controlled after targeting so you can't do fancy stuff like use the map edge or aim manually.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agano-class_cruiser Sleek, beautiful, light cruiser, why don't we have one of these in game? I wish they had this as the Tier 4 or 5, it could probably be balanced at either tier and certainly better than Kuma and Furutaka.

Again though, BC is used informally and is a modern construction. In fact, none of the BB/CV/CA whatever designations are factually correct outside the USN (in a WWII context) but they're convenient to use. There's no point getting fussy about it, most of the time people know what you mean and it's easier to type. Personally I don't find CC confusing but that's because I've read about the ships and am familiar with the designation.

I like...

Very interesting, thanks for the links. Of course it's nice to speculate! I wonder though if it would be boring to fill the tree up with Fuso preliminaries that would play very similar to their US counterparts, while at the moment the IJN tree has an "identity" of being faster while less well armored. Fuso herself fits the bill compared to NM but the preliminaries are all slower so the differences wouldn't be as noticeable. Having said that... could we have A-53 with the 15 x 12" guns please? Wow... that's a pretty ridiculous setup!

The closest thing the Germans have, which is sometimes considered equivalent to those post-war battlecruiser designs, is the GK10. Yeah, I can see the IJN line being fine for BBs, swap Amagi for Tosa and stick something else at Tiers 4 and 5 (I'm not that familiar with the Fuso preliminaries but I imagine something like Japanese versions of Wyoming and New York). BCs though would have a gap at Tiers 6 and 7, would be interesting either way. Still, I think more nations first, fill out existing ones later. I'm happy with a bit of zig-zag for variety

Honestly, Tier 8 isn't that scary. Cruisers aren't the gods of everything anymore but they're still pretty fun, it only took me about half a dozen games to get used to what I should be doing when I bought the Atago while only being Tier 5 in other lines. Kutuzov is strong but takes some getting used to, it's good at quite specific things but will punish you very hard for screwing up. If you don't mind the learning curve, you would probably enjoy it.

You say that but the IJN line already zig-zags between battleships and battlecruisers and the Lexington class is the direct counterpart to the Amagi, if we had both it would be awesome as a "what-if 1920s" pairing.

I nearly made this very thread yesterday then I decided I didn't need a rational reason to buy it. I just always wanted once since I found out it was in the game, not because it's OP or whatever but because I think the Sverdlov class are beautiful ships and it would be awesome to captain one. I have half a dozen games now and I would disagree it's beginner friendly. It SEEMS beginner friendly (trololo I can shoot from a safe distance) but you will make no damage if that's all you do. The shell travel times and arcs take some getting used to. You need to be getting 200+ hits per battle to really be doing good damage with this ship and consistently getting hits, even with its range and RoF, is not easy. It's not enough to get that one good salvo, you won't be one-shotting anyone, you need to be shooting constantly, hitting constantly, it's actually quite hard work but very fun! It is however very pleasant to sail, very agile, lighting fast turret traverse and great firing arcs. And you can troll people with the smoke. But it's unforgiving without the heal. Atago you can screw up, take a BB salvo to the face and lose half your HP, duck back out of sight range and heal up. MK the damage is always permanent, you can't make mistakes, and you DO need to get moderately close (~16km) to be dealing consistent damage. Also the AP shells on it are awesome, 4k salvos on BBs at most ranges, it all adds up.

That's really awesome but how did you do it? Seriously teach me, my Kongo games look like twice to three times as many hits with only 1 or 2 citadels and less than half that damage. How you get almost 50% citadel rate? 0.o

I'm still relatively new to the game but I feel I've reached a decision point. My favorite ships so far are the Kongo and the Atago, I love the combination of speed and firepower and playing like a battlecruiser, either with the actual battlecruiser (Kongo) or with a very strong heavy cruiser (Atago). Basically I like being quite aggressive but also sneaky. I like ships that can close the range fast and surprise explode someone but also have excellent rudder response and speed to dodge and get back out of trouble when needed. I think though that apart from the Amagi (or I guess Iowa but I don't have the patience to grind to Tier 9) there are no other battleship in the game at the moment that are fast enough to play like that, so I am setting my sights on what other heavy cruisers I want to play. As I said, I probably don't have the patience to grind to Tier 9 so I'm basically trying to decide which ships to aim for in Tiers 7/8. I also currently have a Furutaka and a Karlsruhe but nothing in US tree. Basically I want to try an make a decision that I won't regret, like investing a lot of time and/or free XP grinding a line only to realise it doesn't suit me. So my options are: - Continue grinding the IJN cruisers. Seems like the best option since I like Atago there is no reason I would not like them. But on the other hand, since I have Atago I feel "do I really want to waste time grinding something that plays the same?" and "Would I really play a Myoko or Mogami when the Atago is basically the same ship but makes more XP/money?" - Continue grinding Germans. I kind of want to, I like the look of the ships but I am unsure if I would like their playstyle. Would they suit me? Can they be payed like I described above? Basically I would be aiming for Yorck+Hipper. I know the K-berg is a good ship but like I said I am more interested in heavy cruisers, not light, so I would most likely try to skip to Yorck as fast as I can. Is it worth my free XP to do this? - Start US cruisers from nothing. This would be a big grind especially since, as above, I don't care for light cruisers so I would be trying my best to reach Pensacola+New Orleans ASAP. Is that worth my time? Would I like those two ships? - Save up for Russian cruisers. These are a big unknown, but from what I can see they have a real "heavy" cruiser at only Tier 5 (Kirov). Do we know enough about them to judge their playstyle? What would that playstyle be like? What should I do? What would suit me best?

Ah, I didn't realise Tier 9 opened up an upgrade slot to increase main battery range. Is it still accurate at that range and how useful is it actually? I'm not a fan of just sitting back and spamming max range fire, just not my style. If a battleship is pointing guns at something that isn't me I like to take the risk to close to increase accuracy significantly. Usually in the Atago I'll come to about 10km and if it looks like their turrets are turning towards me I usually have time to dodge the first salvo and then get back out of detection range until they leave me alone. Destroyers, annoying if there are multiple Shimas on the enemy team, other than that I don't have a huge problem with their torps, I only have a problem with detection because I like to play sneaky. Makes me rage a bit when that little exclamation mark just won't go away and I keep taking salvos from BBs I can't even see! Back to the topic slightly, I noticed the Kutozov is on sale again and I'm kind of tempted by it. I just don't know if it's worth the investment seeing as I already have the Atago. And on the one had I would like a different playstyle (that rate of fire!) but on the other not sure how I would adapt. Some people say the Kutuzov is a long range back-line spammer, which honestly as I said above, I wouldn't want. But I see that rudder shift and turret turn time and I just think "this must brawl like a god". I've recently had a lot of fun in the Konigsberg, also not playing to its strong range but rushing in and dodging fire while returning accurate AP. I hear Kutozov has pretty good AP as well, so can I play it more aggressively now that there are fewer BBs around?

I haven't been playing long enough to have a good idea of what T5/6 battleship damage should be like before 5.3 but I've been very frustrated with my Kongo and Fuso recently for really random unreliable damage. I haven't looked out for specific damage numbers but basically if I'm shooting at any US BB I now switch to HE because AP just gives me weird damage even if I see the hits land in places that can't be over-pens. Probably doesn't help you since I've not done any "hard testing" but adding a voice as it were.