VC381

That's not armour, that's sub-system damage. All I meant was WG could differentiate between face hardened armour, homogeneous armour and structural plate. They can leave the actual damage model alone, just give us more realistic penetration. The main thing it would do is completely end bow camping for all classes (which I guess most people actually like so I'm outvoted here) and give more variety of penetration behaviour when hitting various parts of upper hull and superstructure. It might make damage less predictable but also make the armour scheme of each ship behave more like people who've read RL accounts expect. I know it's a minority view but there you have it

The idea of bow "armour" is indeed fictional on all but a small number of ships. Not only are WGs thicknesses made up and greater than real life, the material itself is structural and not armour grade. It keeps the sea out, that's about it. Pretty much everything on a ship that isn't specifically armoured should be all but "transparent" to incoming shells. That's not even getting into the different properties of belt and deck armour. Yeah, forget realism when thinking about in game shell/armour mechanics.

I think people are mixing up real life performance with in game. You're absolutely right of course, but if they, say, gave these shells special overmatch just to overcome that, then they are good enough in all other relevant ways. Or they could give them better bounce angles. Or whatever. They could make it work if they wanted to. Also, overmatching cruiser bows is only one use case, even if they couldn't do that, they would still deal a lot of hurt to lots of targets in other ways, especially since (flipside of low caliber) they would be less likely to overpen.

Yup, simple and elegant, I think it was even suggested in that long circular discussion in the other thread and got shot down, because apparently "unrealistic" shell characteristics for balance is less acceptable than a fictional turret setup. Either way, I didn't really care then and I don't really care now. As long as she LOOKS right, I'm playing KGV.

The hullforms and wackier turret layouts of some of those designs really date them to the 1920s, and the speed of a few of them is wholly inappropriate to a T8+ in this game. 3x3 was a possibility but even with 18" guns it's a fairly boring layout shared by a few high tier ships. Basically WG wanted something modern, fast, with big guns and a unique layout. They couldn't really achieve that without cutting and pasting bits of different designs together. I don't think they've done a bad job in this case. Yes, there were other options more solidly grounded in actual project drawings, but this is WGs fantasy, who are we to say what they should be doing? Most people who grind to T10 and play it a lot probably don't care much for the history anyway, given how little of it there is at that tier.

This. I don't mind paper ships even if they are fairly obscure projects or single sketch studies. But I draw the line between "was drawn by a real naval architect 70 years ago" and "was drawn by WG staff yesterday".

Because we already have two T10 ships with 12 guns so it would be boring, and the RN thematically deserves to have 18" guns.

Ran into 1MajorKoenig in his Mutsu, went to opposite flanks initially before I raced back to help him double-team a Scharnhorst. Bit of a steamroller game form our side but was fun.

It's easy to say it looks close, there are a lot of ships that had 4x2 turret layout. But the internals don't make sense with the two-funnel layout, the distance between the front and rear turrets probably isn't the same, the hull is only vaguely the same shape. You may as well say Hood "looks close". I can agree that WG's idea for a 4x2 18" BB was inspired by L2 and similar designs, but to say Conqueror is directly based on L2, or that it IS L2 is plain wrong.

You know I respect both of your skills and opinions but I still think you're missing the point slightly. As I said, I agree with you that a 2/2/2 played by a high skill player can and should beat either US setup (played by an equally skilled player) most of the time. But that matchup is a tiny fraction of games. You're letting your own skill and the assumption that the enemy is equally skilled guide your conclusions. They aren't wrong, but they also aren't universally applicable. Without bragging, I consider myself above average for a CV player though nowhere near as good as you guys. I sometimes struggle with 2/2/2, I miss opportunities and do things badly because of the amount of micro required. If I could clone myself I reckon I would out-play my own 2/2/2 with a US 2/0/2 fairly regularly. Maybe not 50% of the time but close enough to call it even between the two setups. It is possible, against an average player, to use your two fighters to tie up his with time/fighters to spare to disrupt his strike and get your bombers to target unmolested, which is a win on all fronts. You can seek out his planes while being careful of his team's AA, you can protect aggressively while scouting at the same time, and you can put in surgical strikes to help at key moments. Even good players don't play optimally all the time, and the higher workload the increases probability of the 2/2/2 player making mistakes, which cost him more because of the fragility of the planes and smaller squadrons. Anyway, I'm not trying to argue that 2/0/2 is as good as 2/2/2 objectively, as I said I agree with you it isn't. But I do think 2/0/2 is equally viable relative to 0/1/3, just for different reasons, and that all three setups are usable and "balanced" in the grand scheme of things at least by the average skill level and the fact each game plays out differently to the last one.

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, and there's more to game impact than damage so it isn't so clear cut. Firstly, I agree that a 2/2/2 Hyr/Sho will beat a Rang/Lex in either setup if both players are of equal and high skill and their teams otherwise perform equally. But the game basically never presents such clinical "in a vacuum" conditions. Now, with Lex I noticed playing strike that my TBs dropped like flies and actually were only a small portion of my damage output. So the 2/0/2 retains decent damage potential, but there's the element of timing. Strike will do more damage over the course of a game but if you're forced to scamper around enemy fighter cover your impact will be diminished. Think camping HE-spamming cruisers, classic high damage, low game impact combination. Strike can feel like this sometimes. With your own fighters to lead the charge, you do less damage but are free to choose exactly when and where you do it. The tables are turned and your opponent now has to play around you. This means even if he eventually gets more damage in, he's lost impact courtesy of your roadblocks while you've seized small but potentially crucial bits of damage for overall game initiative. And this not counting the spotting you're doing that you wouldn't be in strike mode. So maybe as AS vs. Strike you're cutting your damage output by 50%, and the enemy's by 25%, but you gain an advantage in initiative, tempo and spotting. Is that worth the remaining damage discrepancy? That's subjective and situational from game to game. Of course as I said, if you're against a really good 2/2/2 you're probably pickled either way. But, US AS shuts down US strike harder than IJN balanced can.

To be honest, I know there is a lot of prejudice and strong opinion but the US AS loadouts aren't that bad and I've decided it's not a scrub thing to play them. I've played 2/0/2 Lex a bit recently, partly as an experiment and partly to farm some missions, and I was pleasantly surprised. My damage halved but my WR did not suffer, if anything it got better (although I didn't play many games). And the XP and credit rewards were good. The game impact is relative, it's about how much you do, not in total, just compared to the enemy CV. I think there is a place for the AS loadout because in the end it comes down to what you find fun to play and what you can make work well for you. Strike is still more satisfying though, really dropping the hammer on some BBs

I agree to an extent although I have no experience of WoT or WoWp. I find the ship design process fascinating and I like a lot of the cancelled projects. The "what-if" is indeed fun and I'm very happy WG include things like Amagi, Montana and Lion. However, I don't trust them much when they stray away from historical drawings. As I said, I think they did a good job with Conqueror, fusing inspiration from several historical projects to come up with something interesting for gameplay. But there are other examples where they've made stuff up that on the surface looks inspired by history but really makes no sense at all if you think about it. And the forced power level of the top tiers creates too many such fantasy things anyway. So I will remain sceptical going forward.

My hope is that since Orion has quite big guns and might be considered a tier 4.5, that to make her balanced at T4 they will leave her "as-built". I fully expect a rebuild on Iron Duke but if all they do is copy-paste Warspite's bridge I'll be happy enough. Better than literally making it up.

The T9 is accurate to a detailed plan that was drawn up by the RN and almost built. The T10 takes elements of later plans, some earlier plans and some real ships and combines them, sprinkles a bit of flavour. So T9 is "paper" but of the "real project" variety. T10 is "paper" of the "WG fantasy special" variety, although in my opinion they did a good job making it believable.

Is this speculation or do you have a source?

So a BB that has no real incentive to play static bow-in and acts as a disincentive for others to do that. How exactly do you arrive at the conclusion this is a bad thing?

Just free XP it, it's worth it for the Lex.

I'm in that "one hand slapping the other as it reaches for the wallet" stage...

Oh yeah, there were those few minutes where that Akatsuki was waaaayyyy too close for comfort (actually I heard the torpedo warning first and was only lucky he was out of range) and I thought "where have my BBs gone" but you played it right turning back, the other flank collapsed and you were in a position to defend. I don't think anybody on their team expected me to be there. It's good to play with guys that know how to have a laugh, will be happy to join your shenanigans anytime

To be honest, it looks like Lion is the only one that will have a plane and even then we can't be sure that the B or C hull refit won't remove it. So actually, in the absence of any kind of fighter or spotter, RADAR seems like a fair addition (especially since it can't spot torps or panic bombers, which are the two main uses of the fighter).

A 4x2 turret layout doesn't make it an L2. You could say the armament is a nod to those 18" 1920s designs but nothing else about the ship is remotely based on them. It's as good as fictional but at least it keeps to the expected design evolution and overall looks of the wartime RN BB projects.

Correct me if my maths is wrong but here is how the HE armour penetration changes: Now: 33mm After 6.6: 50mm After 6.6 + IFHE: 65mm What does this mean for these ships? What thresholds (if any) are crossed by these changes and does that make IFHE useful on German CAs?

So I ran into Redcap the other day, in an odd reversal given how active he is in this thread, I was in the CV. Anyway, I mention it because that game reminded me how awesome the full concealment Shokaku build is. I ended up in the enemy cap, in a standard battle, after pushing very close by some BBs and cruisers on a flank, took a few shots, hid again, baited and tanked a snipe attempt while providing AA for team-mates, kept a pesky DD spotted while cycling strikes as fast as they were coming back. It was really exciting close support battle-carrier stuff. I don't think any other ship could pull it off, as T7 and lower you don't get the concealment module and T9+ the base concealment on the ships isn't as good. If you like Shokaku and haven't tried this, give it a go. It's hard work but great fun!

Thanks guys. So the buff is quite significant, but IFHE doesn't really add much to it.