VC381

That was a bundle unfortunately. I thought about it and eventually decided against. I'm hoping for an in-game doubloon cost discount, that usually is 30% on T7 ships. I really don't understand why it's more expensive than Indianapolis...

You're right, hiding behind an island lobbing shells does sound boring and anyway I have ships that can do that from smoke. That's why I'm asking what it's like to play the ship more active and aggressive, to see if I can do that. Some say yes some no, I'm still deciding while waiting for that discount.

@Ferry_25 thanks, it's nice to hear someone who is often quite critical of cruisers focus on the fun aspects. @22cm everything you say is true but in this case I have no interest in the ship as a captain trainer, only for what it is and the playstyle it offers.

Well, Soviet isn't a bad pick at all for the gameplay. They do reliable damage at long range, are fast and moderately stealthy at the tiers you're planning to play. Once you've practiced getting around their fragility they're fun because the turrets turn fast so you don't have a headache planning, the shells fly fast and therefore are easy to aim at range and you shoot lots and lots of them. Simple, effective but not boring. Burning BBs = happy Soviet cruiser captain. If you want something different, I will stick by earlier saying IJN are good all-rounders and fairly beginner friendly. The thing here is Soviets only really get their line "identity" at T6 while the IJN arguably have it all the way and get it "properly" at T5, so it's quicker to work out if you would really like them for the long haul.

Just don't get into those stalemate slug-fests to start with, or ignore the guy in front of you (provided you're angled and not taking much damage yourself) and do more damage to something that's actually presenting a better target. If you really have to, aim at his turrets. Take those out and then at least it's some damage vs. none as opposed to some vs. some. If he tries to swing out to get his rear turrets on you, aim just below the forward turrets, where the curve of the hull presents the closest thing to a flat side to you.

"Best" is really subjective, it depends on how you want to play. Cruisers are harder to play than the other classes but you should see this as an opportunity in that people don't have high expectations of you and you have the ability to do just about anything as the situation calls for. Their strength is versatility which is a really fuzzy concept to pin down and use right which is why they get so much bad rep. Personally, I have a big interest in naval history and I pick ships I want to play based on what I know of their history and their looks, and work out how to actually play them afterwards. That sort of thing may or may not work for you, but remember that in random battles the skill of opponents varies wildly. If you spend some time and effort to learn a particular branch, you can do well with anything, so really it's more of a playstyle choice, what sort of thing will suit you to lessen the learning curve and make you happy while playing rather than it feeling like a grind or chore. As I said, since cruisers are very versatile they are probably also the ones that offer greatest variety and choice between lines. From what I've been reading of the testers reacting to the new French line, I would probably not suggest that until we have a better idea what it's really like. The Russians are pretty good if you like spewing fire everywhere, they're basically long range support/DPS. Japanese cruisers are probably the most balanced all-rounders, not a bad place for someone to start. But anyway don't go hunting for the "best" because you'll end up with a dozen people each giving a different answer and you'll have learned nothing. Tell us what you think you'll like, what you expect and what you want, and we can help more from there.

For what it's worth I love that new rudder shift module, but it depends on what you want to do and how you like to play. Basically think of how it combos with the rest of the ship. If the turning circle is awful anyway buffing the rudder shift won't help that much, but if the concealment is bad anyway then making it slightly better isn't ideal either. The way I run it is rudder shift on all USN cruisers but with the propulsion modification in the other slot (so no double rudder shift). The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, -20% stacked on the -40% is really bad return on investment, usually less than 1 second additional gain. Secondly, if you're brawling and helping at caps changing speed is just as useful as changing direction for dodging, and having the super-boost to move back and forth in smoke (assuming friendly helpful DDs) will save your a** from torps more times than you can count. My summary would be: long range ship with bad concealment - stack rudder shifts (German and Soviet T9+) stealthy/ambush ship or horrible turning anyway - usual concealment build (IJN + RN + Chapaev) agile ship that prefers close range - propulsion + rudder shift (USN, also Kutuzov for smoke shenanigans)

WG makes a line simple... people complain it's boring and doesn't have unique style. WG makes a line different... people complain it's dumb, trying to hard to be different and will be bad. WG make premiums that are different to the normal tree ships... people complain they're OP, P2W or useless because they need completely different captains. WG make premiums that are similar to normal tree ships... people complain they are clones and boring. WG put "what-if" ships to balance the main tree and the real ones as premium... people complain it's money grab. WG put real ships in the tech tree and give "what-if" premium... people complain the ship didn't exist like that. Basically, people complain. That's all I've seen at the release of every new line and every new premium. For those who couldn't be bothered to spend 30 seconds on google/wikipedia, that De Grasses is how the design would have looked if she was actually built during the war. As people have pointed out, she was finished differently so this is a "what-if". We have many ships like that already. You can see the real De Grasse has basically the same hull, so it is the same ship. But it's OK, not like anyone cares, you can all go back to complaining now.

As far as I can tell from the screenshots the blast bags and muzzles are painted over in grey. But even if they're not the WG model is claimed as 1940 not 1941 and they weren't painted over immediately at the start of the war, so it wouldn't be completely wrong either way.

I'm not against using islands in principle but I would rather I was using them to get into range and set up an ambush or as escape points not literally camping behind one lobbing shells over, that strikes me as a little boring. I don't want to play completely open water but I was hoping for something of an ambush/brawling flavour, even with being cautious around not getting shot back. The attraction to me of the "overgrown DD" thing is that DDs are fun but sometimes frustrating to play because the expectation to cap means you can't always go where you want and do what you want. A cruiser has that freedom and although I have quite a few cruisers I kept at that tier and enjoy a lot, I'm occasionally yearning for something that just spews shells, where I don't have to care about reload and turret traverse and can just get stuck in and blast away. I basically want a ship that is instantly responsive. As I said I'm happy to plan my engagements around the fact the ship is fragile, but I want to play dynamically not static.

As has been said, planning is your friend. Learn to see those situations coming and don't get into them in the first place. Factor in enemy BBs into your turning options. Also Fiji is a devilishly agile ship, most cruisers won't be able to do that to you as easily.

Hmm, really not liking the sound of that. No CE at all? Doesn't seem like my kind of thing. Not that fussed about running away so long as the ship dodges fine, and it seems to have a decent turning circle.

I would say the best ship to try this in is probably a Shinonome, because of 9 torps fast reload and it's easier at low tier where there are more dumb people sailing into your torps. I might try for it a couple of times today but I don't care that much. For me the best reward (1 mil) I already got at 4/5.

A lot of actual turrets, especially larger ones, did have hard limits on how far the mechanism could turn it even if theoretically the barrels wouldn't hit anything if it turned further. Also there's a big difference between how far the turret could turn before the barrels would physically hit some other part of the ship, and how far you would want to turn it and actually fire it without the muzzle blast damaging all sorts of things on your own ship. You can say it's "just for balance" and maybe sometimes it is, but it is just as easily believable in most cases.

OK so still toying with the idea of this, I'm somewhat hung up on the required captain skills. I know people are saying they're not completely necessary but if I do get the ship I don't want to play it sub-optimally (especially since I want to play it for fun so I may as well make my life easier). So, say I'm willing to re-spec a 10-point captain specifically for this ship and nothing else, which combination of T3 and T4 skills is best? DE + CE DE + IFHE BFT + CE BFT + IFHE DE + CE would actually not require a re-spec since all my CA captains run this anyway. Personally I'm leaning towards BFT + CE so I can get closer, unload faster, run away. Been playing Benson a bit recently and while I can deal with the arcs I don't feel there's much point to getting AFT with those guns, provided I have CE to give me the margin to close first.

Sorry, completely misunderstood, I thought "middle" turret means the third one because technically that's closest to the middle of the ship Yeah, OK it would be cool if it could do that. And if the third turret was pointing forwards not backwards.

It does not, the barrels would hit the barbette of B turret. Having said that, there are versions of the A-140 battleship design (that Izumo is based on) where this turret is "parked" forwards. I don't know why WG chose it the way they did, probably they thought it would be too OP if it could quickly change from all guns left to all guns right through the front, or too weak without at least one turret being able to quickly swing through the back while kiting. I think the "all pointing forward" arrangement is better but we have what we have.

I believe the point was merely adding detail and confirmation to mine regarding the fact that Hood was closing the range under the mistaken assumption she was still vulnerable to plunging fire (as she would have been if Bismarck was using the RN 15" guns). However, I have two concerns about the books interpretation (haven't read it but found a brief synopsis that touches on the key points here http://www.hmshood.com/reference/written/santoriniReview.htm) How does it arrive at the range of 15,000m? This is significantly closer than the 18,000m I've seen quoted as "most probable" before. What assumptions does it make about target angle and the stage of Hood's turn to arrive at the obliquity it's using? Anyway, the main thing the ongoing debate shows is that the problem with Hood's armour wasn't thickness vas such but rather layout. In ideal cases the armour was about as good as you could expect from a ship of her time but the complex layout of multiple thicknesses left multiple (low probability but nevertheless possible) paths that offered less protection.

I also didn't know it existed but honestly it's hardly a hack. It's clunky to use and makes you lose track of where your own ship is going. Situational at best, 3/10 probably won't use again.

Good man After a shaky start Shchors has my highest Kraken per games played density of any ship. As for the Kutuzov comparison, for me Chapa vs. Kutuzov is like night and day in terms of how aggressive you can be. And it's not just the smoke. Kutuzov is actually surprisingly agile. For me a cruiser's armor is turning circle. I run Kutuzov with the super rudder shift module and just wiggle around as long as possible while finding optimum smoke positions, then repeat. This lets you keep shooting while spotted and live at medium ranges without losing damage output. Chapaev simply cannot do this, the turning circle is far too punishing to dodge reliably and the base rudder shift is so bad it's barely acceptable with both rudder shift modules stacked (and without smoke it's not worth losing the concealment module to do that anyway). To OP: Back to Chapaev, unfortunately this is one of the ships hardest hit by losing invisifire. Before this patch it was pretty silly, you could get a 100k+ damage game with one had tied behind your back but it was so boring because of passive play and actually not that good for win rate. Right now it has good concealment + radar and really not much else. If you're close enough to radar stuff you're asking to be deleted the second you fire your guns. Having said that, if you can get in a position where you can shoot without taking return fire for an extended period of time, those 12 guns deliver and they deliver HARD. The damage and fires just come rolling in, it's just a lot of hard work to get into that sweet spot and stay there. Basically, get the range module first, this is what's going to give you more flexibility. You can use the spotter plane in the meantime to spam at long range, there's really nothing more to it in this ship. Stay at range, stay out of trouble, farm boring damage.

Never played WoT but very basically: HE always penetrates armor of less than 1/6 of the shell caliber, and doesn't care about angle. AP penetration depends heavily on shell and decreases with range. Unfortunately there is no full documentation on in-game shell performance but the "armada" videos on the main page show penetration values for the showcased ship and there is this thread as an additional resource: http://forum.worldofwarships.eu/index.php?/topic/59528-armor-penetration-curves/ As angle increases the effective thickness the shell "sees" and needs to penetrate becomes greater. If you're near the limit of your shell's penetrating ability even a slight angle will result in shatter. Otherwise, the shell starts having a random chance to bounce at angles >45 degrees, and will always bounce at angles of >60 degrees from the normal. Unless... An AP shell will overmatch armour less than 1/14.3 of the shell caliber, i.e. they always penetrate regardless of angle. There is also the concept of normalisation which basically makes a shell "see" the armour at a slightly lesser angle than it actually does. It's tied to shell caliber and gets less as shell size increases. As an example it's 7 degrees on a 203mm cruiser shell, which means a shell striking at 20 degrees from the normal will penetrate as if it had struck at 13 degrees from the normal instead. http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Gunnery_%26_Armor_Penetration#Armor-Piercing

I have a Belfast and I really don't find it particularly fun or strong. I don't regret I bought it because it's still a good captain trainer, but I will always pick the Fiji if I just want that playstyle, much better ship IMO. The Atlanta bundle is kind of tempting but I would prefer a good old fashioned discount. I'll see how well I can resist over the next few days.

Correct, superstructure often has flat elements pointing forward and is a good point for AP damage but is also a smaller and less reliable target (can also be prone to overpenetrations). With BBs though, stick to AP unless you really know what's coming next. A couple of 1k overpens on a DD will still send him running and by the time you loaded HE he's probably invisible and you could be wasting the opportunity for great broadside shot on someone else. So as I said, consider changing target as an alternative to changing ammo as a way of maximising your damage output. That also promotes good situational awareness. At low tiers cruiser and destroyer AP has pretty bad penetration so most of your "rules" will only properly come into their own later. Having said that, most ships at that tier are also made of paper and opponents sail broadside in straight lines so you have a good chance to punish them and experiment with what works and what doesn't. On fire: if you're in a battleship general rule is don't repair single fires. The repair party heals 100% of fire damage, let the fire burn out, or at least until either there are too many and you're losing health fast or you're out of the immediate danger (enemy cruiser sunk or got bored). Save the damage control for critical situations. Then repair up the damage. In cruisers, leave a fire burning until you disengage and repair when you know the chance of getting lit again immediately is low. This is risky if you leave it too long for obvious reasons, only practice helps here. Keep practicing, you're on the right track

Your basic rules should serve you well until you learn the finer points of which ship and situation combinations are exceptions. One thing to add, AP cares a lot about target angle, so even if it's a ship you should technically be using AP on, if he's coming straight towards or going straight away it's not going to go as well as you expect. It's often worth finding a better target than wasting time switching ammo, even if just for one salvo while you pre-set it to load HE for the next one.

Never completely, although it does get less frequent. I recently got friendly torped at T7 despite being about 3km from the intended target (and obviously about to finish him myself) while the guilty DD was close to max range. And I got raged at for getting in his way. I also saw a T9 DD blow up a friendly in a congested cap but in fairness he did apologise very thoroughly and it was messy. As I said though it gets pretty rare at high tier although the issue then becomes people getting cocky and thinking they know when they can risk it. Sharing smoke with a Shimakaze is always scary, you're both wiggling back and forth and then your torpedo warning goes nuts and 15 fish skim a few feet off your bow. It's almost always actually safe but still unsettling.