VC381

Shh, I know it's currently my main barbecue co-ordinator. I also think Mogami might eventually get kicked out into a separate light and/or aviation cruiser line and replaced by Takao in the "main" line. Something like Oyodo > Mogami (upgrade guns then new C hull with flight deck) > Tone.

Hmm, didn't think of that combo actually, handbrake turns all day! Kutuzov likes this idea... (Still don't see it working on US ships)

IJN, USN and German all go up and stay there. My point is that changing up and down is not as smooth as having a whole line with the same concept. I'm only saying it's nice from a game design point of view, and is actually in keeping with RN doctrine that favored light cruisers. I'm not screaming and crying it makes cruisers unplayable (because I'm not you, and BTW cruisers are my main class). But I see from your extreme reaction there is no point trying to reason with you further.

I struggle to think which cruisers you would willingly forego the concealment module on, even with such a big rudder shift boost that (presumably) stacks with the -20% from the other slot. Besides, US cruisers are already amongst the best turning. I just think the BB spam, and in particular the close-range setup of the German BBs, has hit them disproportionately hard. They need to be closer to hunt DDs (therefore dead when spotted from BBs that are more numerous and way closer than they would be normally). The other thing US cruisers excel at is hunting and duelling other cruisers with their AP, and currently they are starved of targets as well as the above problem of half a team worth of hungry BBs waiting for the only cruiser on the enemy team to reveal themselves. I don't think they need direct buffs, what they need is space. A BB cap would solve this but WG would never implement something that upset the most popular class. I think though the arrival of RN cruisers will end the BB spam somewhat while providing US cruisers with the perfect targets to satisfy their niche role/ability.

Hate it, usually a snowball whitewash that is decided by which team has the dumbest players, no real possibility for tactics or good plays to make a difference.

Because having a line that jumps up in gun caliber (and hence playstyle) then comes back down a few tiers later is horrible from a consistency point of view. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the tiering of the ships. The Royal Navy lost interest in 8" gun cruisers so at best that would be a partial second line similar to what the IJN DDs are now getting, which I take as evidence this will happen to more lines in future. Besides, the RN "heavy" cruisers have lackluster combat stats because their design prioritised things like sailing range and seakeeping which don't mean squat in game. I would play them for historical reasons but I doubt they would be great ships at the tiers they will end up (6 to 7). And if you actually read the thread instead of posting a rage response you would have already seen the arguments I just summarised. Nothing unreasonable from WG on this count.

Fair point, and while I know the guns are powerful (same guns on Nagato can citadel an Iowa) I'm not sure yet if it makes up for it. Then again, I only just got Amagi past stock so I need to play more and find out for myself. I don't have Bismarck but I have Tirpitz and I never felt those guns to be weak (possibly because I default to cruiser hunting most of the time). I know Nagato can citadel Tirpitz but needs to be at about 16km+, and to be honest under 15km Bismarck/Tirpitz guns already feel very dangerous. So with the way Bismarck pushes without a care in the world, it's difficult to keep her at optimum range (where you can reliably hurt her and still be moderately safe from return fire) and still be somewhere useful in the grand scheme of things (i.e. not camping). Again don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying my Amagi and I know I need more games to pass this judgment, but it seems from initial impressions she's lost her niche a bit.

I can't help feeling that while Amagi is very good she pays a steep price for her high mobility, which in fact isn't that high. As a battlecruiser she sacrifices speed for armor, and she does have a speed edge over NC which is fine. But Bismarck is actually faster and turns better, while having the best armor at tier. So much for great mobility at a cost when Bismarck does better without the penalty, it kind of invalidates the point of Amagi IMO.

Makes sense, they might even end up feeling very well-protected (against other cruisers) in the game-meta at close range due to having a mostly submerged citadel that's also split into three separate parts (forward/aft magazines and engine spaces) and the rest of the hull easy to hit but only for overpens. Also great concealment. Other than that though closest comparison would probably be Pensacola.

I might start using it on some ships although I'm not convinced it's universal. The Main Armaments Modification 1 also increases the survivability of torpedo tubes, and on most DDs losing one of those is half your torpedo armament and is much more likely than losing a turret. I think your experience with USN DDs, most of which have 5 separate rapid firing guns, is skewing your perception of how much impact losing a turret can have. But on Ognevoi for example I wouldn't trade out that turret HP module for anything. And getting turrets disabled even if not completely destroyed is still pretty annoying, you definitely don't want to waste a repair party for it but on non-US DDs that can be a big chunk of your firepower (up to half or all depending on arc) gone for a crucial 30 seconds of an engagement. Same with the torpedo tubes as I said above, they don't need to get destroyed but if they go down at that crucial moment it's enough. I don't have any statistics to back it up (especially since I use the module all the time so I don't know how much I would lose turrets without it) but my gut feeling is I don't detonate often enough to make me think "damn I wish I equipped the magazine modification". And maths is kind of against you, since detonation chance is pretty low anyway (not sure exactly but in the 1%-2% range it seems), -70% of "very unlikely" is still "very unlikely". If it's the difference between detonating 2 games out of 100 or 1 game out of 100 that's not worth it IMO. As you say though, now I've said that I'm ready to go boom in my first DD game today

I know, another MM idea to be swept up in the storm, but hear me out. We have two seemingly impossible to balance issues. One, that BBs are not strong enough, that they don't feel like the monsters of the sea they are supposed to be. The other, that cruisers/DDs/CVs are made pointless by buffs to BBs. But, the game already solved the issue (mostly) with CVs. We can only have 2 of those per team, 1 at high tier. So why not do something similar with BBs, but in a more clever and dynamic way? I suggest a combined capital ship (CV and BB) limit of 4 per team (1/3 of the ships in game). So in a no-CV game, you get max 4 BBs per team. Each CV you have takes away a BB slot, so a mid tier game can have max 2 CV + 2 BB per team, high tier 1 CV + 3BB. That way you can buff BBs (a little) so they feel more powerful and satisfying but leave enough space for the other classes (mainly cruisers) to do their thing in each battle.

Yeah, they have phantom rear gunners but it's not as weird as it sounds. I don't think the Skyraider itself was fitted with them but some late war US planes had little blisters with remote controlled .50 cal machine guns instead of a proper manned rear gun. I can't find which planes had it though, or if they were single seat.

I wouldn't suggest Vanguard as a T9, her armament makes her too much of an oddball to be a regular tree ship. T8 premium treatment for her I would say. Tirpitz comparison is apples and oranges because she is a much faster ship that is balanced differently around a faster RoF and better gun handling. Comparing against ships of similar style, Nagato and Colorado at the same tier both fire 1,000kg. NC a tier higher fires 1,225kg. So the shells are about 10% weaker than equivalent T7 and if you put her at T8 I don't think the turret arrangement compensates for that much difference to NC (30%), especially considering NC is also faster and literally better at everything else. Also while physically the turret doesn't block that much, IRL the ships had issues with firing close to other parts of the ship (especially blast damage to the deck if the muzzles were not clear over the side of the ship). So WG could very easily make this angle as good or bad as they need to for the ship to be balanced.

If there are few BBs to target and cruisers are braver because there are fewer BBs to delete them, somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

Yup, I like atomskytten's thinking as well, I wasn't brave enough to suggest a limit as low as 3. BB only game could actually be quite awesome, while the mixed games would have a more realistic spread of capital and escort ships. A big map with just a couple of BBs per side would give plenty of space for cruiser/destroyer skirmishes and make scouting more important.

I didn't say I agree with the arguments, only that they exist.

It's not really 9 forward though, except maybe at max range, since the third turret can't fire through the second. Depending on the turret angles, Nelson might have to show just the same broadside to fire all 9 guns as the other ships do to fire their rear turrets. I know the BB meta is "bow in" but I really doubt it will be overly strong. Absolutely nothing else about the ship justfies a higher tier, her shells individually are already weaker than the 16" guns on the other T7 ships and no match for NCs shells, even if the size is the same.

I'm completely OK with some battleships having useless AA. What is most annoying to me is when the stock hull has worse reload/turret traverse/rudder shift. Most of this stuff wouldn't change with refits, and that to me is what kills "gameplay comfort" for these hulls. This is obviously a "trick" to make people convert free XP but if WG are removing some of the A hulls then they don't care about this anymore I guess. So they could have just buffed them instead.

You say that, but it's 20 years in which not much changed as far as technology level is concerned. Kongo didn't get her first major refit until 1929, by which time aircraft carriers like Lexington sporting 100+ planes (ok biplanes, but still) were already around to prey on her. And that wasn't even the major refit with full pagoda and AA, that was another few years later. Many of the early treaty cruiser classes were also in service by then. Most of the major BB refits we see as B and C hulls didn't happen until the late '30s. So reviewing the situation, even though these ships were built much earlier, the stock hulls sharing space with early carriers and 8" gun cruisers is not unrealistic or unreasonable for a late '20s or early '30s time frame.

So, I if stopped playing the German line after Konigsberg (because I didn't want to just play the same ship a tier higher followed by a concept ship that doesn't even do the German AP thing properly) but I want a Hipper class for historical reasons and I have quite a bit of T8 cruiser experience, do I free XP the Hipper or buy the Eugen?

I haven't played high tier German cruisers but I like the look of the Roon. But the turret layout is something that frustrated me greatly with Konigsberg and I also don't get why they repeated it here. I think WG missed a great possibility, since the Hindenburg just looks like a boring "Hipper on steroids" design. I think Hindenburg should lose C turret and be moved to T9 (with 9 guns in the more traditional layout), and Roon should gain a proper B turret and be the 12-gun T10 ship. It looks the part!

As I've said in other threads, the upcoming change to the IJN DD tree is excellent news if it heralds the continuation of this policy.

If the enemy CV spends all that time going around the map to try to get you and fails on the first strike, you've probably decided the game by then with your damage and spotting contributions to the early DD fight (probably 2 strikes in the time he does 1). Even if he or someone else finishes you, the point bleed and map control will be, probably irreversibly, in your favor. Sniping is not a reliable game-winning tactic.

Unfortunately that might actually be decided by the RNG in the air combat and DB mechanics.

Except you get DF at T8 which is a one button middle finger to snipe attempts. The AA range is just overkill on Lex and her murderous bofors wall.