VC381

You also need to be smart about ammo choice. HE is strong on this ship as well as AP, you need to adapt one salvo ahead as you see the fight develop. Thing is, if this is one of your first lines played Kirov will be a super punishing ship as you noticed. It really takes going back to it as an experienced cruiser player to make it shine, in which case it's a monster. It's easy to say "use range and angle" but it's not really possible to teach the situational awareness and gut-instinct decision making needed to play a fragile cruiser well. My advice would be to take advantage of the long reload to look around. Once you've fired don't worry about that salvo. Leave the zoomed view, check the map, check what enemies are a threat to you and which are making themselves easy targets. Think about where you're heading and if you're going to be in a really bad situation a minute or two down the line. Do you use the captain skills Priority Target and/or Incoming Fire Alert? At least one of these is vital on a cruiser. Also use the amazing turret traverse to switch target to the one offering the easier shot. Following the squadron around and spamming HE from the second line is the bread and butter of the Soviet cruiser line from here upwards. Don't be disheartened about kills, get that supporting damage and look for opportunities to do more as you get more confident with the ship.

I found it quite quickly with a google. I was going to make one but this is so close to what I imagined anyway I didn't bother. Knowing WG though, this will be seen as "boring" and they will do something stupid with it anyway. Also, the full Warspite bridge isn't necessary, they could trunk the funnels into one and just beef up the tripod a bit like the R class. That would leave them closer to that elegant as-built look. Genuinely more worried about Orion though. Given all the other T4s also have 1930s hulls (of which only one is real), she would change the most from her historic appearance. Do you really need to be stupid as well and make a fuss about reading blocklines? Just cut it out. We're talking about possible rebuilds for Iron Duke so that she's got a 1930s vibe like WG want in their T5s.

Here we go. Plausible and I dare say quite attractive:

I don't specifically dislike Montana, but the situation gets sillier with other lines where even their never completed wartime designs are currently T9s and filling T10s for them requires a mix of fishing for some fairly implausible projects plus making stuff up. I just don't think the game should be designed around a top tier that's almost completely "what-if" even if grounded in real projects. This is the main reason I have very low interest in high tiers with the exception of a few specific ships, almost none of which are BBs. Iowa is the only BB above T8 I actually care about playing. CVs will have the same problem when we eventually get more lines given that Midway is setting the standard there.

Refit for sure on Iron Duke at least, but if they copy-paste Warspite it will at least be believable. My objection to the German BB refits was not that they shouldn't have been done, but that they are badly executed and make no sense. If WG follow standard RN pattern for refits based on the ships that did get them, I will say that's acceptable.

Why not? Or NC at T9, Colorado T8 and another missing class (Tennessee) inserted at T7. Or all T6-9 moved up one and Nevada or Pennsylvania new T6. But NC T8 and SoDak T9 would work as well. There are already a few cases in game where ships are a tier apart without there being a really meaningful upgrade between them in RL.

I know Yamato has this mythical status but the second part is completely WG choice. Real life analysis suggests Yamato wasn't as amazing as her big numbers sound and Iowa would be her equal in battle. They could have made Iowa T10, moved some of the T8s to T9 and filled in some more real ships with this adjusted power curve. That way T9 and half of T10 would be real, and there would be space in the tree for more real ships at lower tiers, instead of what we have now.

Literally the only reason the 14" guns "won't work" at high tier is due to forced game mechanics. There is no realism based argument for why KGV should be incapable of facing the opponents it would face as a T8 ship. So, in order for the ship to be realistic i.e. perform as well as it would in real life and not be gimped due to arbitrary and unrealistic game mechanics, WG need to trick their own game and dress up the guns. It's not elegant but it's the correct solution.

It's only a 15" gun according to what that means in game. Realism is about how it compares to real life. What we want is for the 14" gun in game to behave as the 14" gun did historically. If the game code doesn't make that happen naturally and you need to model it as 15" gun get a realistic end result, so be it.

There is no physics inside the game, it's all an abstraction. The 15" label is just that, they could call it a 333km Mk.XYZ, it's just a number to trick the game into making the shell behave as it should. Your realism argument is based on the assumption that both 14" and 15" shells as defined in game are inherently realistic and that calling one the other breaks the laws of physics. That's not the case. It just so happens that the game armour and damage model is so simplistic and unrealistic that the easiest way to make a 14" shell behave realistically is to call it 15" behind the scenes for the purpose of some of the calculations. Note "some", namely overmatch, I expect the actual broadside armour penetration to be correct to the 14"/45 spec. If that's the case, what's the problem?

Dictionary definition of realism: "The quality or fact of representing a person or thing in a way that is accurate and true to life." So historical accuracy is an intrinsic component of realism, the split is in your mind only. The immersion comes from ships looking and feeling like they did in real life. You simply cannot split appearance and performance and call them different things to suit your agenda. Realism is the whole package and "historical accuracy" is a synonym. What you define separately as "realism" is just historical accuracy of gun behaviour. Furthermore, the game is a mathematical model, the realism we should be looking for is in the final result. Can KGV in game effectively fight what it was designed to, and on occasion did, in real life? Realism is a "yes" to that question regardless of what unrealistic coding hoops you have to jump through to get there.

You did not indeed, but you're saying it needs to be realistic in a very specific way. I don't see how you can logically hold that position when any realism gained from what you're so keen on proposing is a) at the expense of realism elsewhere (not your personal definition of it) and b) completely wasted in the context of other unrealistic elements.

If you say so, for me pointing your bow at the enemy and stopping dead in the water being a valid strategy breaks immersion long before petty inconsistencies of gun performance. The game is not and will never be a realistic simulation, so I can't take you seriously when you cherry pick and call on realism to argue a very narrow point that is largely made moot by how unrealistic everything else is. Especially when the "unrealistic" tweak ironically makes the gun behave more realistically (as in, more like RL) in terms of what ships it can reliably damage.

I would say realism in terms of ship looks comes first, otherwise it isn't the ship as most people see it in their mind's eye. I do agree with you that it would be nice to have more realism and immersion in terms of gun performance. But the only reason this is a problem for KGV in the first place is because of the grossly simplistic and unrealistic overmatch and autobounce mechanics. To me, making the guns behave as if they were bigger isn't a step into fantasy, it's an acknowledgement that the guns are a special case and should behave differently to how the game would otherwise force them to, which would be less immersive and realistic. It might be done ham-handedly due to the labelling, but it's no different to saying "we were wrong to make all guns of X size share Y property, so we're making a tweak to better represent this shell on its own merits".

It's not good enough to look at the year the ship was built. You have ships that are designed with certain capabilities then delayed in construction, so the year they enter service plus a few toys they get on top doesn't change the fact they are from the previous generation (looking at so-called 1950s ships like Kutuzov and Belfast). The chronology doesn't look right on the surface but you can argue in most tier spreads those ships did serve at least partly at the same time and could have met in battle (although maybe not looking how they do in game).

Or you could stick the super rudder shift mod on and troll dodge like there's no tomorrow (while still getting decent stealth with Concealment Expert). Now with 12s reload, the thing is amazing fun

So... this just happened: The MM was utterly heavenly though, top tier with 3 BBs and 9 cruisers per side. Just charged a flank and dished out death sentences left and right.

Warspite hands down win, Colorado close second! bronze medal to Hood

Hood is not easy to kill if played right but is probably perceived as such due to large size and poor turning circle. The thing I feel gives Hood good game impact is that while the German sisters can join the action at similar speed, their threat radius is smaller and they need to take more risks and brawl to be really effective. Hood is potent at medium range and that gives her more of a "drive-by" feel, being in range to hit hard sooner, with less commitment and risk to self. She's very flexible, honestly feels the closest to a cruiser of any BB, I even run mine with a cruiser captain.

The high tier ship purchase costs are only prohibitive if you don't sell any ships as you move up the line.

I'm having a blast in Hood so far. The speed is great, always gets you where you need to be to make your impact on the game. The ship really does justice to the radio phrase "Roger, proceeding to assist you!", like the heavy cavalry turning up. Although she needs a lot of room to turn, she goes around quite fast thanks to the speed and quick rudder. Angling is a breeze as well. I don't see why people are saying the guns are inaccurate. I know it's all perception bias but I've had consistently some of the tightest spreads I've seen in a BB. Only Warspite is better. Citadels are rare but normal pen damage is very consistent and reliable. The overall damage output is on par with my other T7 BBs, mainly because it's so easy to get guns on target with how comfortable the speed and turret traverse are. I guess she divides opinion though because the playstyle isn't for everyone. I just find she works really well for me. The way I play I felt I didn't have to learn or adapt at all, it just did exactly what I wanted.

We can put incentives in but if bad players don't get it and keep stubbornly playing even with bad performance instead of choosing to practice at a lower tier, I don't think it's our right to put in some hard denial. The economy becomes punishing enough around T8 I think to discourage a below average, non premium player. And if they pay that keeps the game afloat for all of us. And actually the economy does help slow down progression. If you're playing badly then from around T6 you won't be able to afford a new ship when you have the XP for it, even if you sell the current one. I stand by what I said, that it's nice to be able to jump around a tech tree and play specific ships you like instead of grinding. If people who can't handle the game don't have the self control to practice and progress at their own pace who are we to make them?

I wish they did do it, and that's what I was referring to when I said I doubt it would be popular.

Then they're probably USN in which case that BB is about to have a very short and harsh lesson in respecting cruiser AP.

Personally, I play the game for specific ships not for the grind. If the ship I want is high tier in a boring line I want to be able to get to it quickly and painlessly. If it happens to be mid tier I'll keep it and play it long after I'm past it in the line anyway (or in some cases I'll just stop progressing the line). The point is, making the grind longer restricts choice, so I'm not for it.