VC381

Ignore possible effects on gameplay choice, this is actually a step towards realism. Ships only fired HE when bombarding land targets, the idea of shooting basically incendiary shells at an enemy ship is pretty ridiculous. On the other hand, AP IRL was pretty reliable since even overpens could cause a lot of damage due to pressure/force of the shell going past, and even bouncing hits where the shell did not enter the ship could break parts of the armor and send them bouncing inside for damage, not to mention structural strain from absorbing the impact. So AP shells that do reliable damage even at steep angles or on light armor plus always using AP on ship targets would be more realistic than anything else in this game. Personally I love the US AP and how their penetration angles work so if RN is that combined with RoF + concealment I can't wait for these ships to come out, even if they are as leaked.

Both ships started life with a completely straight bow (think stock Hipper): http://gmic.co.uk/uploads/monthly_01_2007/post-101-1168888348.jpg Both ships had this changed to an Atlantic bow in 1938/39: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Bundesarchiv_DVM_10_Bild-23-63-01,_Schlachtschiff_"Gneisenau".jpg

The idea that Gneisenau was to get a longer bow has been around in books and sketches long before WG even dreamt up their game. The decision to finally upgrade Gneisenau was taken after her bow was more or less blown off in an air raid, so at the very least, she needed a new one anyway. The barbettes were designed to accept the 15" twin turret but that doesn't mean the hull buoyancy was planned for their weight from the start (this weight was probably not even known with certainty given the design date of the ships vs. the actual build date of the turrets). The Scharnhorst class had mediocre seakeeping at best and the first "Atlantic" bow didn't fully solve the problem. In fact it created a buoyancy issue because all that metal built up to create the flare and clipper bow added weight above the waterline without adding buoyancy below. It would have been a huge wasted opportunity to rebuild Gneisenau's bow without redesigning to solve this known issue. Fitting a longer and finer bow to a ship like that would almost certainly increase speed and improve seakeeping despite the ship being slightly heavier overall. The designers would have been aware of this and welcomed the benefits. And I'm not speculating, the next gamer on this forum might not know about battleship buoyancy but I think 4 years studying ship design has to be worth something.

Well, the height of the rangefinder is always used as the reason IJN BBs have a range advantage over the USN ones (at least until T7) but I don't know how exactly it translates and how consistently it's applied to other classes. I'm more or less convinced now that the height of the rangefinder is probably a starting point for gun range but there is more to it than that. Of course they can do what they like for balance but I feel it takes into account the overall quality of the optics and fire control.

Partly this, but also to improve seakeeping and increase speed.

What about Fiji minus one turret (historically correct late war config) at T6 and Southampton as built (4 turrets) at T7? Although I do agree Leander is probably fine as she is, that's a possible alternative.

OK, OK, let's think of a compromise. BB fire resistance is significantly increased BUT as a trade-off we introduce the following (mostly) realistic module damage effects: - main rangefinder knocked out: -50% to maximum gun range - direct hit to bridge: +10s delay to all orders (rudder, engine, target selection etc.) - upper spotting area damage: vision radius reduced to 7km - main fire control disabled: +100% to shell dispersion, lose ability to "lock" targets and salvo fire - secondary/AA fire control disabled: +100% to secondary dispersion, -50% to AA DPS, cannot select manual targets for either - etc. - etc. With possibility of full destruction for each (but with redundancy where relevant). Pick your poison...

The German Navy stored boats both on top of the turrets and on the deck at different times, so neither is "wrong". They are also not life boats, they are the ship's boats used to transfer crew, mail, small supplies to land while the ship was at anchor. Most, if not all of these boats would be left in port when the ship sailed for battle, precisely because they get in the way of the guns (and are a fire hazard). Even the ones on top of the turrets would be blown to pieces by the muzzle blast of the opposite turret firing alongside, they wouldn't risk bits of falling boat jamming the turret so those shouldn't really be there either. MajorKoenig has it right, the biggest problem that limited this cross-deck firing practice was the blast wrecking the deck, or the funnel sides, or whatever else the muzzle is near to. It could also deafen and stun the crew of the other turret, not ideal.

The countershading is really just to obscure the number of decks to make it harder to identify the exact class and blur the superstructure into a block so shadows can't be used to estimate size and course. It wouldn't help with outright detection. EDIT: I think you misunderstood the word countershading. Countershading is painting the underside of an overhanging deck a light colour so that it looks like it doesn't cast a shadow (to hide features as I said above). What we see on Arizona, Nikolai is called "graded" camouflage and is indeed intended to better hide the top of the ship. It also makes it harder to judge the range the ship is at even when you can see all of it (knowing the height of a ships mast was one shortcut to estimating the range). But it also depends on weather conditions (see below). What used to be the standard USN paint scheme in game at launch (blue hull light superstructure) is a camouflage scheme known as Measure 22 and is another example intended to confuse the observer as to where the ship is relative to the horizon. It was also quite good at hiding the size/class of the ship as the hull blended into the water while the superstructure was hard to see against the sky. On at least one occasion the Japanese saw a US battleship painted like this and assumed it was sinking. This effect though only works in daytime with moderate visibility against an observer on another ship or on the coast. It's useless against aircraft, in fact it makes the ship easier to see from the air. It's also useless (in fact counterproductive) at night (see below). Given how big ships are, very little helps with actual detection except in highly specific conditions e.g. black DDs at night, all blue ships as seen from the air, light grey ships in haze/fog. And that kind of camouflage immediately bites you in the back side if the light/weather conditions are different to what it was designed for. That's partly why people gave up on camouflage at sea, each one can be designed for one condition but actually makes things worse in most others. This is good reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_ship_camouflage_measures_of_the_United_States_Navy http://www.shipcamouflage.com/warship_camouflage.htm EDIT: also note, since this relates directly to point 2) from Poster_2015, that this kind of colour blending to light conditions doesn't hard decrease the distance at which a ship can be seen. It only changes the PROBABILITY that an observer (tired, bored, ultimately human) might miss it while scanning open sea for hours. Now imagine RNG in the spotting mechanics... As for Pensacola, the excuse is that her fighting top on the tripod mast can be seen for miles. But then, with the same logic she should have crazy gun range (Hipper level based on height of rangefinder), which she doesn't. So it's all fiction for game balance.

To be honest, they should have known that a line of Kutuzovs would be so broken as to have to be redone. Personally, as long as they get released I don't mind what exactly their "tricks" will be. It will be interesting to see what they do with the ammo.

Good post, I agree she's a good fun ship. You need to be clear though, the ship was never built. This is the design the British offered for the Kongo, but the Japanese saw the new 14" gun and asked for the ship to be changed to have those instead of the 12". And that's what they got with Kongo. This is a nice concept of what might have been.

You are right, that it's not fun getting nuked by someone you can't shoot back at, and despite the endless cries of OP AA a good CV can still more or less delete who he likes. Also I can see how a "damage race" doesn't actually help. I realise what matters is not the total damage the CV does but the difference in damage between the CVs on each team. If each CV nukes 3 BBs then it looks like each contributed a lot to the team but on balance they've just cancelled each other out, same as if they were both AS and only sunk 1 BB each. So in that sense if AS can swing the relative damage by enough even without doing more damage overall, it would be a winner. And if you say two DB squads plus fires can do that much damage in a game I'm tempted to try it on my Lex. I'm worried though that sending them in one at a time to stack fires would result in quite high plane losses. I've also noticed sometimes playing strike I rack up a lot of damage but I do it later in the game if the enemy CV uses fighters smart early. Given the importance of early snowball especially in Domination games this can lead to a false impression of doing well (high damage) but actually not impacting the game until it's too late, essentially just damage farming a loss. There are arguments for both sides of course and while I personally (for now) prefer strike I'd like to think I'm not too pushy about making people see things my way. As I said, I'm getting more tempted to try the alternative. To be on-topic, I guess AS CVs ruin the game for the enemy carrier(s) while strike CVs (unchecked) ruin the game for everyone else. Neither is healthy in extreme and both need counterplay. But the solution shouldn't be making AS overwhelming in the air so that strike is unplayable, it should be increasing the damage potential of AS so they can meet somewhere in the middle.

I hate it when people complain about RNG. Get over the illusions in your head and stop making assumptions based on your own confirmation bias. It's random and equal for everyone, DDs are statistically less likely to get hit by DBs! Never mind the fact that unless you're standing still you can get clear of the aim circle after the strike locks in but before the drop. It's very hard to manually DB a wiggling DD. As for cross-drop, it's perfectly dodgeable as well, except maybe Taiho/Haku triple drop.

Great updated review, I agree she's a really fun ship, closest thing we have to a British battlecruiser. I don't mind the necro but this is good enough to deserve a new thread in my opinion.

The way I see it the difference between AS and strike is creating opportunities for your team vs. trying to do the job yourself. I agree both should be viable, I have nothing against people who prefer one over the other. But, the fundamental problem is in the definition. You can spot the whole enemy team from the start of the game to the end, deny the enemy all use of his planes, you can create the perfect OPPORTUNITY for your team to win, but it relies on your TEAM knowing what to do with that opportunity. You can take a horse to water but you can't force him to drink. I personally don't want to surrender my ability to impact a game to the decision making of 11 strangers.

Remember it's not just about you. If you dodge a strike and run away for a bit while spotted, you just wasted 2+ minutes of CV time, saved a friendly BB from 40k damage, forced a few enemy CAs to reveal themselves and tunnel vision so your BBs can delete them and also probably saved your other friendly DD from being spotted somewhere else. Coming from a CV player, I go for DDs at the start of the game but I usually don't risk blowing a whole strike on a guy that obviously knows how to dodge. Half the time I spot a DD nobody on my team cares, even after 3 pings. So just practice dodging and position smart so that when you're spotted the enemy can't focus you anyway, and you'll be doing a whole lot of good you don't realise.

It's not a beast but it's not bad either. I enjoy mine but if I play tired or when I'm not concentrating I just get deleted and frustrated. It's challenging, especially with the German BB spam. That challenge makes it worth it when you do well. The AP is great, as others have said sneak around and ambush people. BBs are fair game as well, 10k AP salvos on broadside BBs are not uncommon. You just need to always know who might be shooting at you and from what direction because the second you reveal yourself without checking it's safe, that's half your HP gone. It's hard work, you need to be quite aggressive to get good damage but it's very risky. And another plus side, rudder shift and turning circle are best in class. If in doubt, dance and dodge.

Maybe that's the problem. With squads that big the difference between 3 and 4 squads is too hard to balance. Maybe they can give the USN squads of 5, or even 4 and instead of creating variety by layout make the actual planes more different to each-other.

Have the replay speed and other keyboard shortcuts changed? Can't get anything to work while watching.

I believe the Swiftsure was left out because despite having only 9 guns she is on balance a more modern ship. It would be a bit out of place. To be honest we should have had Southampton instead of Fiji but the difference there is minor. My initial reaction was also that Leander is an odd T6 choice but I've changed my mind. I think she'll be good. But I mostly want Fiji, that ship just looks awesome!

1. If we're talking about date of construction and tonnage, Leander is absolutely fine compared to Aoba and Nurnberg. Cleveland is the one that doesn't belong, but to be honest with all the nerfs she isn't even that strong. I imagine with fast turning turrets, good rudder and smoke a Leander could still spank a Cleveland no problem. 2. I'm actually glad they missed out the 8" ships. To be honest they are an anomaly, the RN felt obliged to build up to the treaty limit but their needs were more suited to the light cruisers they built afterwards. There were plenty of ships to fill the tree and the progression is more logical this way, rather than suddenly jumping to 8" armed ships for a tier or two (probably around T6-7) then back to 6" ships for the Edinburgh. Maybe we'll get them one day as their own dedicated "side line" similar to what IJN DDs have, but without paper ships it would basically be a dead-end line with e.g. York/Exeter at T6 and the County class at T7. 3. http://forum.worldofwarships.eu/index.php?/topic/61409-do-you-think-well-get-a-dido/ but I don't consider her a true Atlanta equivalent because her RoF is actually pretty bad considering the guns are meant to be DP. T6 premium would make me happy there. On a general note, smoke on cruisers is incredibly powerful (think Kutuzov). One thing I like about how they designed the RN line is the ships are obviously meant to be played aggressive, and that really captures the spirit of the RN for me. The fact that some of the ships look up-tiered (by age of design) only adds to the David vs. Goliath feeling. It might be weird to say that for the biggest navy of the war but remember the RN usually went for more ships to cover the empire rather than trying to have the biggest/baddest ship in each category. There are many stories involving RN cruisers beating what looked like pretty steep odds on paper. It looks like the ships will be small, agile, with gun handling to match, and I just think they'll feel "right" that way

The numbers are completely theoretical. A USN torpedo bomber squad will struggle to get more than 4 hits because even though they are grouped tighter, they don't converge and the total spread is still wider than the length of most ships. Meanwhile with two TB squads a good IJN manual drop will hit 6 without much trouble, or all 8 if the target does nothing. USN dive bombers are hugely RNG dependent. Yeah sure every once in a while you'll drop a 40k hit on a BB but most of the time it's <10k total for multiple squads. You are accusing others of smoking something, but are you playing the same game when you say USN DBs hit through defensive fire? Even without it you can get >50% misses because the circle is so wide. DF, you can forget about that whole strike. OK IJN get equally messed up by DF, but at least without it they are pinpoint accurate, you can't miss a BB and though the direct damage isn't great you're at least guaranteed the fires. Don't get me wrong, I've been playing strike Lex recently and the DBs ARE strong. Just, they are absolutely nowhere near as strong as you claim and I have no idea where you get this from. From what you said you haven't even levelled US CVs to T8 where you get those "super OP DBs". So basically you had some bad luck and pick those examples and exaggerate. Try it yourself and you will be very disappointed.

Phoenix now has better MM since they changed it so all T4 ships can only see max T5 games. The effect of this is that T5 ships see T6 and T7 games more often, so their MM is worse now.

Yes, that's correct for Dido and the other "as planned" ships but my Blyska comparison was specifically regarding those ships (Scylla, Charybdis, was there another?) completed with 8 x 4.5".

Thanks for correcting me but functionally it's six of one and half dozen of the other. The 120mm Bofors is pretty similar in performance to the RN 4.5", so my point stands that the Dido class ships with 8 x 4.5" main armament would basically have the firepower of a T7 DD. I thought it was 130mm, maybe I'm mis-remembering.