VC381

But they were only over 2 tiers initially, and Pensacola and NO are different. Indianapolis messes it up a bit. But once the US split hits they will still be spread over 2 tiers only with the ones that are actually similar in historic capability (Indy & NO) sharing a tier. Baltimore is about 50% heavier than those, historically a completely different and a much better ship overall.

Furutaka and Aoba technically count and are comfortably within limits. Although that's because they (like Hawkins) were designed before and the treaty was meant to include them with a bit of room for growth. Myoko as built was quite close. Mogami too until they realised it would fall apart from firing it's own guns and took it back to beef it up.

Yeah yeah, you win this one. She's been hit with WGs nerfbat of arbitrarily awful turret traverse "fo balans" though. 9km concealment and smoke would also solve the dilemma, otherwise Edinburgh arguably has no business being T8 either. Just depends how far WG want to push their gimmicks.

Hipper isn't a treaty design though, it cheated the limits by almost double and displaces more than Baltimore. In real life terms, it's shocking just how little firepower and armour Hipper has given how huge it is. Proves the Germans had no idea how to efficiently design a modern warship in the 1930s. In game, I have Eugen and it works very well for me too. But from reading cruiser whine threads over the years a lot of people seem to think it either needs major buffs or a downtier. To be honest Algerie plays similar and is not a whole lot worse. InB4 you say it, Atago is a treaty cheat as well

By putting Algerie at T7 and moving Pensacola to T6 and New Orleans to T7 WG have quite solidly signalled there is no place for treaty cruiser designs at T8. Although beautiful and effective ships, the County class (even war modifications) are barely on par with the late treaty designs like Algerie and NO. Of course, RN CLs are balanced a bit differently so counties with smoke and other gimmicks might work at the tiers suggested above and in the past. But I won't hold my breath and I definitely don't expect County sub-groups at different tiers. York 6 County 7 is likely. York 5 County 6 is possible. Split line from 5-10? Probably not. Premium? Maybe T6 or T7.

Yeah, the Akatsuki is better on paper but the guns (and the whole ship really) feel less usable because she's big, visible and sluggish. That is my opinion of the comparison between those two at least. But although I've had great games in both I'm not head-over-heels for either. I get the same vibe about the rest, good analysis and opinion so far but no strong emotions. It's as a if a few ships are good but none are stand-out great, am I right?

I'm not sure which is more sexist and patronising, the English idea that the thing you should care for and refer affectionately to must be a "she", or the rest of Europe idea that the awesome floating war machine can't possibly be female. Guess this is one argument that will never die though.

Ugh, great. A BB under the CA label. Such a shame how badly WG have limited themselves with the "4 classes 10 tiers" structure and now fighting to make things work.

I can kind of see your point but e.g. Bayern and Gneisenau are on the way to Bismarck so people will try them and end up liking them. Plus there's still the awesome factor of BBs in general. Sure people are more likely to stick to the easier to play lines, but they'll be playing some BB or other even if DDs and Cruisers were stronger/easier. Hood is not a bad ship but is a premium so not in these stats for comparison. It depends on extent of history knowledge. Some people might not be that keen on "the one that got spectacularly sunk" or mistakenly assume the ship will be bad in game because of that, and Hood is more iconic from the 1920s and 30s than wartime. There's probably no shortage of Arizona's either.

As I just discovered Essex can be a bit tricky. However in T8 and 9 CVs I wouldn't say I'm constantly meeting Unicums. I think with a bit of practice it's a solid contender. Have you tried Lex? Also why not Shokaku? Same 2/2/2 as Big E, should be a comfortable switch.

Problem is BBs are what most people know, famous ships people who aren't ship history nerds have actually heard of plus they're the biggest and baddest and what everyone in their mind sees as iconic and awesome about naval combat. That's the draw to this game. So even if they were completely nerfed into the ground (which horrifyingly some people think they already are) they would still be the most played class by a country mile. Always were, always will be.

It's great that they are experimenting with implementing these unique and interesting battlecruisers as powerful cruisers not low-mid tier BBs. I hope they get it right as it has big repercussions for interesting classes like Alaska, B-65, O-projekt etc. But although I want one I fear I won't get it, because something so special will be high tier and either a very difficult reward or behind a huge free-XP grind, or a massive paywall. Plus high tier play really needs sorting out in other ways to be enjoyable overall, which this ship itself won't change.

Armoured cruisers had already grown to approximately the same size, complexity and construction and running costs as a battleship before the dreadnought revolution. Even a turbine powered "dreadnought cruiser" with intermediate e.g. 7.5" or 9.2" guns would not have made much financial sense in the battlecruiser era. If you really want numbers you have to go a lot cheaper (5k ton 6" CLs), or you may as well spend the little extra to give it battleship level firepower and save yourself the logistics of another gun caliber in the fleet. Scale effect comes into it as well. If in the 1930s you could build 3 CAs for one BB you can have them in 3 places (where they are likely overkill) but even if you put them together the BB would win fairly handily. But the only reason everyone was in a mad rush to build powerful cruisers in the 1930s is because BBs were banned, so the design of those ships is a distortion. Once treaty limits lapse you see the gap open again with a return to size race at the top end (genuine BC level designs like Alaska, arguably also Iowa), coupled with light cruisers at the other end that stagnate or even regress in terms of individual power in favor of utility and mass production (Cleveland, Colony etc.).

Edit: stupid necro.

There are two possible templates for longer games, based on my experience with other games: - MOBA model. 45 minute games but with less reward difference for win/loss and a vote to surrender mechanic after e.g. 20 minutes. - Long drop-in sessions (WT players, think EC). An objective based battle, basically a mini-campaign, that goes on for several hours where you can join/leave whenever you want and have infinite respawn. Reward based on personal contribution only and not win/loss. I'm in the group that would like the game to be more realistic but I'm not sure longer battles are the answer. It's nice to drop in and play a few different ships one after the other, and the focus on action makes sense as a business model since it attracts more players. There are other things you could make more realistic without IMO removing that instant fun factor. I understand the need for compressed battles to a large extent. 100% realistic naval combat would be drawn out and boring as hell. So tentatively I would say yes to longer battles but not just simply making current battles bigger. I would favour a large drop-in/drop-out style running campaign as it's the best of both worlds and people can do what they want and stay as long as they want.

Shame, if that was the reason you could have made it a graphics option so the ones with better PCs can turn it on. I don't think it affected visibility and aiming in any way for it to be abusable if some people see it and some don't. It can't be as bad as some maps e.g. Neighbours where if you are looking East shell tracers are invisible against the sky and you eat damage without ever seeing what hit you! I think it would be cool to have several different time of day or light conditions on each map. Maybe not night (although that would be a cool separate mode) but some variation and atmospheric twilight would be cool!

I was thinking about this the other day as well. The old lighting on that map was gorgeous, but I think I remember some time ago reading in patch notes that they got rid of it on purpose. Shame, I would like it back!

Only Fletcher and Gearing can realistically use TA without it crippling their range. On Fletcher I decided not to use it, the torps are solid all-rounders anyway, don't have gearing yet. The general builds above are great for everything. You don't need DE to set fires, the rate of fire completely makes up for that, so there's no compromise needed between burning BBs and DD hunting. Just dakka-dakka everything

I use this skill only on some CAs. In BBs even 12-15 seconds is way too long to wait for an ammo change. Pre-select the HE and fire the last AP salvo like Pete says. If you're having trouble with AP aim higher, you will get useful penetration damage on the superstructure and might even take out a turret. Apart from UK BBs where it's part of the deal I almost never use HE when I'm in a BB. If someone's bow tanking you, ignore them, go for an easier target that then creates an opening for your cruisers and/or DDs to burn/torp him for you. That's teamwork.

FWIW I didn't find the firing angles on Algerie particularly annoying and that's the sort of thing that's high on my list of possible complaints about a ship. It's far better than Myoko at least. As for eating citadels, I find her agile enough especially in combination with the speed boost to effectively avoid fire. Also the AP on Algerie was a very pleasant surprise for me. So to update, my "top tier" for T7 cruisers would be Fiji, Algerie and the US heavies (Pepsi/Indy/NO as they are similar enough and I imagine it won't change when NO replaces Pepsi).

I do have a Saipan. I won't go as far as to say I regret buying it, it's been a good and useful captain trainer and re-trainer, but I don't hugely enjoy it and as you can see I don't do that well in it either. Lex, Sho, Hiryu, those I really enjoyed and did well with. I'm going up US because I know I'll struggle with the micro for IJN, that's why I re-bought Hiryu to mess around with instead of grinding Taiho. Plus the Essex class is iconic and Midway is real/historical. Anyway, that's a bit of personal background to how I got to T9 CVs. I see what you're saying, I guess it's just practice. I'll try as you say a couple of different strategies, just going for it, splitting up, see what works for me. When you say "man aim the strike if you need to", are you saying you auto-drop when you're busy elsewhere instead of holding back until you can concentrate on a manual attack? I might take the masochist route and just keep playing Essex (stats be damned) because I'm afraid if I practice strafing in Saipan with the slight easy-mode you get from the fast planes and free exit I won't really learn properly. Also there's obviously a major shift at T9 because it's like I've hit a brick wall in terms of my skill vs. opposition even though I didn't have problems at T8 in either ship. Another reason I don't want to learn at lower tier. I'm slowly getting close to the B hull as well, the extra reserves will make me a bit more confident. Torn on the DB upgrade. I know the HE was demonstrated to be better but the AP just sounds like too much fun to ignore...

@Redcap375 thanks for taking the time to give feedback. Captain skills: 14 points, aircraft servicing, TA, TB reload, AS and Concealment. I am only about 4k XP from the 15th point so I'll spend some elite captain XP and get dogfighting there. Upgrades (the ones that matter): aircraft guns damage, fighter HP+ammo, attack plane HP. Flags: aircraft guns and AA damage, flooding one. 1) I know I should win head-on strafes but it's never exactly head-on. Either I just miss or the angle is a bit off and I lose 2-3 planes while he loses 0-1. I've also lost a straight click-fight against Taiho though I guess this is because no dogfighting skill. I've also just been completely outplayed with the guy juking my strafe and immediately strafing me, or strafing out and back before I can react. I don't understand how that happens because I sure can't make my planes respond that quickly. 2) locking up doesn't take me out 100% but doing that fighter dance and trying to strafe/counterstrafe with 2 fighter squads does. It's not different with Hiryu/Shokaku. The fact there are more attack planes doesn't stretch my attention because they're grouped anyway. It's just the fighter micro that takes all my effort. 3) see above. A few times I've tried to move my strike forward to try to do something and then switched back to fighters to do a strafe only to find I lost half my strike package to AA while I wasn't looking. Or if I focus on the strike the other guy wipes out my fighters then comes for the strike anyway. Depending on how much AA there is and my approach, sacrificing my fighters doesn't always give me enough time to complete the strike before his victorious fighters turn up to stop me. I'm not confident enough to do this wrecking ball thing you describe, I need to take his fighters out first so I can concentrate on my strike in peace otherwise I get everything wiped out.

Had a slightly better Essex game last night but only because I was against another Essex that really didn't know what he was doing. I still lost the fighter battles and eventually all my fighters but at least sank 2 DDs and did some damage to a BB while he wasted his strikes trying to bomb a Des Moines over and over (!?). Trying to practice all this strafing though has really highlighted how horribly clunky the UI is.

It's easy to say WG should teach the mechanics as they are but they teach much more basic things that nobody reads either. These are advanced tactics, the few who actually care and would benefit from learning them have no issue seeking them out here on the forums. The effort is wasted on most of the rest who fail at a more basic level and wouldn't read guides anyway. I'm not saying I don't appreciate your efforts but I personally dislike the strafing mechanic and all these little nuances you're teaching feel like bugs/exploits to me. I admit that's partly because I'm bitter I can't do it myself very well but I'm with @MrConway on this that the right decision as a company is to not publicise these "mechanics" pending a major re-work, however long that may take.

When I play DD I try to go as fast as possible to the nearest cap to where I spawn. If I literally have no support I won't, but usually I think getting into position first, scouting etc. is crucial so that's why I do it. Maybe I'm wrong here? Anyway, depending on where the enemy team goes sometimes I achieve nothing doing this and the game is won or lost on the other side of the map. Thing is, I have to decide where to go with no information at all if I want to be quick, so it feels like a lottery whether I spawn somewhere I can affect the game or not. I'm not a great DD player but I do pretty well when I'm where the action is. But I feel my game impact is limited by not being in the right place, and that the "right place" is sometimes more luck than skill. Does anyone else feel that way? How do you plan your moves and deal with situations like that?