VC381

The 5.25" has the same MV as the US 5" but a significantly heavier shell (80lb vs. 55lb). So the arcs would be slightly better, not hugely. Where are you seeing heavier shells for the RN 4.5"? NavWeaps has 55lb same as the US 5". The reason I think these ships won't work at those tiers is volume of fire. So the RN 4.5" might be better than the US 5", but Scylla has 8 of them compared to Atlanta's 14 (broadside). The closest thing we have is the guns on Blyskavice, she has 7 similar 4.7". So HMS Scylla would basically be a cruiser with the firepower of a T7 DD, no way T6 material. 5 at most, maybe less (kind of like a RN Yubari). For the 10x 5.25" ships, the shell weight is good but the RoF is not great. 8 shots per minute (realistic figure) or at most 10 (optimistic) against 18 for Atlanta's guns (also 10 vs 14 gun broadside). And they are 133mm which means they would miss all the BFT/AFT bonuses unless the limits were adjusted to suit them. In perspective, Fiji at T7 would have 2 more guns (12 vs 10), with the same 8 shots per minute, with a harder hitting 6" shell. That's why I said T6 for Dido herself.

I'm rarely one to complain but the "special offer" of a bundle nearly twice the price of the ship with a pathetic 10% discount is a scam, not a sale. A sale is where you can buy the same thing for less, why can't we just have weekly discounts on in-game doubloon costs of premium ships?

Weirdly, Kongo stock wasn't even that bad. I mean, she did 28 knots and had most of her max range. If any hull would be removed for "gameplay comfort" it should have been Fuso. So yeah, this is completely misguided and the wrong place to start this kind of change anyway. But, we have Ishizuchi, which although was a preliminary concept and not built is essentially a stock Kongo that plays better. IMO the RoF and turret traverse make for much more comfortable play on small low tier maps, the WWI looks are definitely there.

So I got myself this gorgeous battlecruiser recently, feeling the stock pain a little but I still really like it. One thing I did notice though is that it loses speed in turns like someone put the handbrake on. Touch the rudder and boom, you're doing 20 knots. That's not helpful for something that's meant to be fast and that's the way I like to play it. So I'm wondering, is it worth putting the Propulsion Modification on it to get back up to speed quicker after a turn? At the moment I have the rudder mod with stock hull that gives me 16.6s rudder shift and I'm coping with it OK. B hull without rudder mod would give me 17.3 seconds which is a little worse but I think I could manage it if the benefits from propulsion are worth it. The way I see it it's so long and turns so slow anyway that doing a hard stop might help even more against torpedoes than the 3s rudder shift I would get from that mod. What do you think?

I recently got both Lex and Shokaku and like them for different reasons. The DBs on strike Lex are monstrous, if you know how to handle strike in general you will be rewarded. Shokaku though I must admit is probably the better all-rounder, more consistent. Having said that, grouping those Lex DBs so they blot out the sun and landing a 40k+ hammer blow on someone always makes me smile.

Furutaka with new C hull seems pretty strong at the moment and Myoko is no slouch for her tier either.

Meh, whine away guys. I realised I still need the hits for the last ARP mission so I've taken out T7 and 8 cruisers and had no trouble at all. 80k damage firing nothing but AP at German BBs superstructure in my Indianapolis, 90k damage roasting fat German HP pools in the BBQ-Ninja (Atago), crashing the DD party as often as I could. All good here.

I see two ways we might get this ship. The first, and easiest, is as a T8 premium in late war fit. In terms of capabilities and gameplay she would be very similar to Lexington, maybe they can tweak the flight modules and squadron sizes but she would be mainly unique in name and looks. The second, more unique way, would be early war fit as a T7 or even T6 premium. To make the planes "correct" for early war, she would use a mix of T5 and T6 planes. So she would be like a reverse Saipan, lower tier planes but lots of them for balance.

My understanding is that detectability is based on the height of the tallest block of superstructure. So a thin mast won't mess with concealment much but a fighting top and rangefinder sitting on a tripod will. Similarly, range is at least partially based on the height of the main rangefinder. Thing is, there are so many exceptions that it really isn't that simple. Indianapolis has a shorter tripod than Pensacola so has better concealment (correct). But her main rangefinder is lower for the same reason so she should have shorter range as well. Or rather, Pensacola "should" have something like 17.5km or more range based on where her rangefinder is (that's the whole point of a tall mast!). So they're either justifying it by Indianapolis having newer fire control (maybe RADAR is "built in" as a range increase?) or it's just better "because premium". Take your pick depending on how cynical you are. On another note, Pensacola does have some small "soft" advantages over Indianapolis. Her rudder shift is a little bit better, doesn't look like much but you can really feel it. And she's a smaller target without that hangar. So better at wiggling and less likely to take random normal penetrations in the superstructure.

As people have said, manual drop gives huge freedom to put torpedoes where you want. It doesn't need a target at all, you just aim at the sea but obviously there is no assist so you need to aim very well. I would recommend grabbing a CV for a couple of games, Hosho has two TB squads to play with. You don't have to get good with it, just get a basic understanding of their strengths and limitations, it will help you play your BB better against them.

No worries, thought I'd ask but if they have different mapping that's fine. Not sure what other historical schemes they wore.

how hard would it be to make it fit? The Grem won't ever be on sale again but that camo is really cool.

Hey, does your Gremyashchy skin work on the normal tree Gnevny?

Yeah of course but I don't actually mind. I want to play the ship for her looks and history so I don't care that much about her performance. Also this is probably a test and good news for future splits e.g. US cruisers.

This makes me happy actually, because I am only at Minekaze and soon I might get to play the beautiful and famous Fubuki class without having to grind to T8 for it.

Low tier sniping is pretty hard because the ship's are tiny and hard to hit. Not sure what you're doing wrong if it always happens, maybe you got unlucky facing some veteran CV players that went back to club a little. But yeah, just keep your fighter by your ship and strafe the incoming strike bundle. That should do the trick. What's giving you trouble, other Langley or Hosho? To be honest sniping is only really viable at T6-7 where the ship's are big and easy to hit tons of torps on, but don't have Defensive Fire yet.

It's not a glitch, it was removed because WG are afraid any imperial symbol will offend someone. Same reason we don't have the correct IJN naval ensign. Go check out the mods section, there's a beautifully made skin for the Hiryu with Hinomaru, less rust, great textures.

Alright, I'll stick with the steering mod for now, at least until I get the B hull and engine upgrade to see how she handles not stock. Takeda, did you try it a while ago? The module was buffed recently. It does give a big bonus below 6 knots but also reduces time to full speed, more than it used to.

I would assume (though I'm not 100% sure) that this anchor would be used to hold the back if they didn't want the ship to spin around on the front anchors. Normally a ship might anchor on front only and spin freely with waves and tide but this needs a lot of space. You would use both front and back anchors if you were somewhere calm but crowded. There are winches at the back as well but since this anchor is smaller it might not need heavy chains and other fittings like you see on the front. So most probably whatever chain/rope is used for that anchor just isn't there most of the time, it's brought out only when needed, but the anchor has to sit somewhere.

Thanks for the review! While I understand that the Hipper may be underwhelming in the meta I for one am happy with copy-paste premiums. The German cruiser line may be good but with project ships or outright fantasy at Tiers 7, 9 and 10 it's not something I personally care about grinding as a line just to play one real famous ship (Hipper). So for me at least, having a premium I can just dump my only German captain on that fills that slot (and an even more famous ship to boot) is not a bad thing.

Yes, the eternal balancing paradox. A class starts to perform better after a nerf because only dedicated players stick with it, so it gets nerfed even more... Just another reason (as if one was needed) as to why balancing by numbers alone doesn't work. Anyway, I get what you're saying and I generally agree. But I'm also cynical and have given up on the idea that change will happen, or if it does it will be what we want as opposed to something even worse. Having said that, I enjoy CV gameplay and as I said before I feel that at least in random games each loadout is workable for different reasons. So there is choice for people who enjoy different things and I'm happy to keep playing and keep practicing because I'm still having fun

Another one joins the dark side... yesssss

Learn to use it for every kind of plane, this is the difference between a good CV player and a great CV player.

I see where you're coming from and I agree we need more interaction because "low risk - low reward" playstyle gets boring, but there is a big risk to what you suggest and it's the reason I think CVs play has taken the route it has. The problem is, if CVs have high damage potential countered only by the enemy CV, you're basically saying one player on each team is responsible for the win/loss. No other class has this potential. Imagine you are in a T6 to T8 game and you have a guy who just bought his Tirpitz after playing for one day but the enemy team has Flamu in his Bismarck. You can still do something, you can avoid him, you have other BBs, you can gang up on him. Now imagine the same game with a potato CV and a great CV on the enemy team. Sure those two are supposed to fight each other and according to your suggestions both loadouts are balanced, but whoever (predictably) wins that fight now has risk free roflstomp. That's why AA is buffed and why they try to get rid of sniping as well. I agree it's not great but I kind of understand why they did it. The other solution would be to allow more CVs in each battle so at least if one is bad you have a chance from the others, but even there at high tiers they did the opposite

There have been at least 6 threads in the last 2 weeks that either were specifically about this "CV balance problem" or ended up being about it anyway. What I don't understand is why people rely on exaggeration and theoretical situations in their arguments. We aren't playing in lab conditions. Each game is so different from the next one and the skill of the CV players plus how the teams behave make very dynamic situations and matter far more than the theoretical balance of the ship's in a vacuum. All I learned reading these threads and playing CVs myself is that people like different things and if you spend some time to practice you can do well with any setup on any ship. CVs are such a complex thing there can never be absolute balance but does it really matter? It provides huge variety and the fact there are people who sing the praises of each setup shows the choice is healthy. So talk away, I love the conversation as much as the next guy, explain what you like and why. But consider that maybe there is no best way and as long as you're having fun, why bother stressing and hunting this mythical "theoretical" balance anyway?