VC381

Koenig any sources? I don't recall sketches showing the trunked funnel but I've seen models built where the builder chose to interpret it that way. The other thing that bugs me is that tiny triangular bridge. Most sketches show this being closer in size and shape to Nagato, although not on two levels. In any case, the rebuild (I believe based on some fan sketches that have been around the internet) looks gorgeous. Not that the stock doesn't, but it's not quite how I picture her. Also, sorry for the thread derail!

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll118/kiyone4ever/TigerRebuild.png Look pretty neat to me too...

I wish they used the original two funnel design instead of that merged monstrosity. But I don't regret playing mine stock, even if I had to HE spam those German BBs.

You need to pick your target and your moment. A really good DD you will indeed struggle to hit but you learn to spot when the guy is distracted, blissfully unaware or has cornered himself. My favorite is annoying them with fake runs until they smoke and blind-torping them where they stopped. I treat hack accusations as a badge of honor in those cases. Also I try to group my TBs side by side but not merged together, so you get effectively a single tight spread of 6 instead of 2x3. Cross-drop takes too long to set up and is still dodge-able due to spread.

From a time period point of view, real top hulls for all real ships T4+ saw action in WWII, sometimes with and against ships way outside their MM range in game. That's quite consistent if you see it as moving up power level, separate to build time if required. The stock hulls are of course inconsistent, as is the leap in time frame between T3 and T4. Note also other inconsistencies, e.g. New York A hull is not WWI fit (she had cage masts too) even though T6/7 are.

Unfortunately unlikely. The German line wasn't mixed, so I would assume the RN BB line will be pure battleships, at least to start with. Maybe, in the distant future, we might get a split line similar to IJN DDs, with a battlecruiser branch, or a couple of premium battlecruisers. Renown would be T6 either way, less likely as a premium since Warspite fills that slot already. To be honest I would be surprised if we see anything more than Hood anytime soon.

Most powerful and accurate main battery and fastest ship at her tier. Armor is made of paper (8" gun cruisers can citadel you). Basically, T8 Kongo. I assume from your post about HMS Renown you're a fan of battlecruisers. Just bear in mind that's what she is and you'll be fine. You've got huge maps at this tier to flex those 30 knots, hunt cruisers and turn up to support friendly BBs once they have the enemy's full attention. Don't show broadside but don't stand around trying to bow tank either, flank and weave. Your guns have good angles and she's an excellent kiting ship. Stay away from Bismarck/Tirpitz. Unfortunately they match your speed without sacrificing armor and in that sense make you a bit obsolete. Close the range to one and you're toast. But they can be citadelled at about 16km+ and are less accurate than you at that range so keep them at arms length and let your guns do the work. Builds, you can go full secondary although it's usually not advised to get that close to things. I'm planning a stealth build once I get my 15th captain point. Skip A hull with free XP unless you just like its looks for historical reasons.

Great advice indeed, although playing strike Lexington I prefer to do it the other way. TBs first, get the flood, wait for damage control then bomb. 2/3 fires are way more damage than a single flood (and you can't stack floods). As for Saipan, load TBs and go DD hunting. Not great damage but good for farming first blood + devastating strike and win every time by cap points. Fighters protect your own DDs and spot theirs when your TBs are reloading. To be honest that goes for both, hunting DDs at the start wins games.

In my opinion no full size fleet carrier (T7+) should have a loadout that's missing one of the plane types. I don't think US are weak, but I also don't think they would be OP with 2/1/1 and 1/1/2 at Ranger/Lexington. IJN are fine as they are. To be honest CVs should be made more different by plane stats. If giving high tier US CVs more balanced loadouts makes them too strong, they should make US planes slower and/or IJN planes faster. So US planes are slow but tough, IJN fast but fragile.

Thank you very much for doing this video, more people need to watch it as I feel this is a very misunderstood ship. Of course you are completely honest and correct to point out its big weaknesses, as well as excellently demonstrating her strengths. I just wish some people would learn that "challenging" is not the same as "crap".

I don't know, maybe stay at about 15km and move around to get the best angle to shoot in between the islands? You're creating an extreme choice out of nothing. I don't like the islands either but there is always compromise.

I've played naval combat games that aimed at very high realism and enjoyed them very much, although I realise not everyone would. That's why I said the game needs to capture the "feel". I think WoWs does a great job, I love the game and I'm totally on board with, for example, the distance/time compression required to maintain fast-paced action. What I'm arguing against are artefacts of game mechanics that promote behavior and tactics that are completely alien and illogical in a naval setting. You can encourage a bit more realistic tactics without losing any of the fun. In fact you might increase it.

Are you being serious? I mean, the ship is gorgeous and I kept it in port a long time just for that but rarely played it because I just wanted to grind my highest ship in the line. Now I'm actually looking for a "chill out at low tier" cruiser and considering buying it again (or, Tenryu, or Kuma). I don't remember if the AP on Chikuma is worth using, if I can just run around and citadel all those broadsiding noobs it could be fun but the RoF sucks compared to other options.

Indeed, and the game is simplified and unrealistic in many other ways. But it is still the intention of the game to capture the feel of naval combat, which is why I consider this a step in the right direction.

Will people stop calling it a nerf to BB armour? There is no armour on the outside of the bow of a BB, this is just structural steel. The idea that this section could bounce a shell is laughable, so stop crying about the removal of a mechanic that should never have existed in the first place. All the BBs still have a huge great plate of armour closing the front of their citadel, which is as thick as the belt if not thicker. You just need to learn to "angle" that part as well, so the optimum will be approaching at 45 degrees. The game is meant to capture the feel of naval battles. These are dynamic, everyone always moving. The stop-reverse thing BBs do is one of the most immersion-breaking elements of the game. And so what if BBs use their range a bit more? To be honest as a cruiser player I welcome this. The recent German BB spam proved to me that what kills cruiser gameplay is BBs being able to push without risk. A camping/sniping BB is no threat to a cruiser with half a brain because you can dodge anything at long range. It can actually create space in the centre of the battlefield for cruisers to push and support DDs at caps. It will hopefully also force BB players to stay on the move and learn to find an optimum range to engage, comprising between accuracy and safety. I know most won't but that's true for all classes. I think it will add some more skill requirements to BB play. Overall, big thumbs up this change!

It really doesn't look like you're doing anything wrong, game just has ups and downs. As long as you're having fun, take pride in your own performance and don't worry too much about winning every time also, drop me a message in game if you ever feel like doing a Benson tag-team.

Correct, but only really for a WWI timeframe, so before most of the ship's in game were built. When armored cruisers were made obsolete by battlecruisers the CA designation fell out of use and everything was just a "cruiser" (although the USN called everything CL at that point, remember at the time these letters abbreviations were made up and used by the USN). This is because all cruisers descended from the light and scout cruisers of WWI but were left as the only kind of cruiser by the end of that war. When the Washington treaty was signed in the 1920s, it said nobody is allowed to build cruisers with guns bigger than 8" (203mm) and maximum displacement of 10,000t. So everyone built cruisers with guns that size, in fact the US was still calling them CL (e.g. Pensacola was built as CL-24, that doesn't mean she was designed as a light cruiser, just all cruisers were CL at that time). The change came in 1930 when the London treaty said new cruisers can only have 6.1" (155mm) guns (but still be 10.000t). But ships with 8" guns already existed, so to make a distinction the new ships with smaller guns would be called "light" cruisers and the old ships with bigger guns would be called "heavy". The US decided to re-use CA to mean "heavy cruiser" and so the CA/CL distinction stuck since. The dumb thing was though, the new "light" cruisers were the same size as the old "heavy" cruisers, in some cases they were actually heavier! And they were more modern in every way, including armor, they just were forced to have smaller guns because that's what the treaty allowed. They built monsters like Mogami and Brooklyn that would kick the snot out of the "heavy" cruisers built 10 years earlier. In any case by the time the different names for heavy and light cruisers were invented nobody was building new battlecruisers, they were not supposed to be an intermediate type. So really, the names of types cruisers is a complete mess and has more to do with politics than actual combat power. It's convenient to call them something I guess...

The CA/CL designation difference has nothing to do with armor, only gun size. The T7/8 RN cruisers have equivalent or better armor to their "heavy" counterparts in other nations. Also, the game meta favors messy short range engagements, hunting DDs or spamming BBs, where RoF is king over damage per shell. So if anything CLs are stronger. Anyway, the tiers they are at should create a good MM without treating them as a separate class.

This is an occasional glitch, possibly lag. I see it as well, sometimes the hits and damage appear and the planes have barely crossed their "no return" circle. It does mess with lead though...

You've not worked in an engineering environment, have you? Even with today's computer software you don't know exactly how much a large complex piece like that is going to weight until you've built it. The exact design of the turrets was very unlikely to be final at the moment the first bit of metal hit the slipway for Bismarck. These sort of things are done in parallel with other construction and take time. Real life engineering on a project as big as a ship is a minefield of delays and design changes. I would imagine they just wanted S&G finished to spec and in the water, and worry about everything else later.

You can dodge anything being thrown at you if people are shooting you from your max detecatbility, good way to make half the enemy team reveal themselves and tunnel vision.

Switching to AP is always a risk but sometimes if you can see the situation developing (e.g. using your concealment to ambush someone or your opponent is clearly doing something stupid like turning broadside to torp not expecting your ammo change) it's well worth it. 2-3 citadels not unlikely at 10km, plus a couple of regular pens you're looking at hitting them for ~15k or more. It's still HE most of the time though! Reading this thread has made me want to go and try this Kuma you all seem to love. I remember I hated it and it was the first ship I Free-XP skipped but I was a noob at the time (I had Kongo and Kuma and nothing else) so maybe I could make it work now. Especially with the new MM. Has it lost the BFT/AFT benefit or does it just get it?

We need this, it's so frustrating you come online and you see friends in battle, but you have no way to ask them if they just started or nearly done. So you can waste 20 minutes waiting for them to be back in port or start a battle alone and 1 minute later they are asking where you are but now you can't even see this. So annoying, why can't we have full social panel stay in battle?

And so as usual a few idiots will mean the rest of us can't have nice things :p

Yes, the 38cm twin weighed 1,050 tons while the 28cm triple weighed 750 tons. So you are right, with total 900 extra tons, 600 of which is on the front, the ships would not float in the right place (but they wouldn't sink either). What I meant when I said "designed" is that the diameter of the barbette (the circular structure the turret sits on) was made deliberately the same for the 28cm and 38cm turrets, so that they could be swapped later without rebuilding this part of the ship. The Japanese did the same trick with Mogami to upgrade from 155mm to 210mm guns.