VC381

That only proves the majority of people can't make it work, which I won't disagree with. But "difficult to play" =/= "bad". EDIT: except for the 5% bit but even so, it does have some strengths and obviously quite a few people do enjoy it. If a player is looking for something that just gets good numbers they are equally free to play other ships.

Then don't play it! You have multiple people trying to help you, if it doesn't suit your playstyle then just say that and be done with it, nobody will blame you. But don't present your opinion as fact. Honestly there is so much variety of ships in the game and people complain about balance but really it's 20% the ship and 80% how you play it. Even known "bad" ships have their fans and Pensacola isn't even in that category. It's just specialised. Why do people find it so hard to accept that just because they don't like something it doesn't mean it needs a buff? /rant

Other things about KGV are generally too good for T7. 28 knots, 14.7" belt, the AA. Tirpitz isn't a good point of comparison for displacement because her design is arguably a very inefficient use of her weight (German inexperience due to not building a ship that size since WWI). North Carolina is the equivalent 35,000t treaty battleship and that's Tier 8.

I'm curious to see what you dig up on dispersion with supercharges, I guess we need to look at the R class for that. I'm thinking that they would be more prone to incomplete burn and that the greater force/acceleration needed to get a higher muzzle velocity in a short barrel would be more prone to inconsistency. After all, that's why weapons designed for higher muzzle velocities have a longer barrel, to allow the propellant to burn slower and accelerate the projectile smoothly. P.S. sorry for derailing the thread!

Scharnhorst's speed is probably pessimistic based on the fact she wasn't a great sea boat. Gneisenau would have got a new, long bow as part of the upgrade that would improve this. And longer ships have less resistance.

Maybe then... Historical KGV at T7? Damn the RN and their design decisions, going to have top tiers filled with fiction... Not sure what you mean about playerbase and muzzle velocity. I'm just saying IRL a big reason for dispersion is the internal ballistics of the gun. In game it would just state a muzzle velocity, 800m/s as you say, but it "should" have a worse dispersion if they wanted to be realistic about it.

That's why I asked thanks for clarification.

OK, so where is this info from? There are a few too many different threads on this to read all of them. Is this also speculation or is it official?

Backtrack a second. Pirit are you speculating? Do we whether KNOW Gneisenau will or won't have the 280 as stock?

Is your 15" KGV speculation influenced by Gneisenau? I would hope they don't do that. I think the chances are lower because the 15" guns were on a preliminary design so they don't make as much sense as an upgrade (especially since they need different barbettes). And the 14" guns, while a bit weak for the tier, aren't as unusual as the 280mm, so it would be easier to buff e.g. RoF a bit and make them viable than to insert a whole new concept. I think we're also likely to have a 3x3 Lion at T9, that might start off with a 15" and upgrade to 16". As for sigma, most of shell dispersion comes from the ballistics of individual guns, not aiming errors between turrets, although RPC does largely remove the latter. Using supercharges for greater muzzle velocity on a short-barrel weapon like the 15"/42 also makes this velocity inconsistent between shots, so it would make dispersion worse.

Really? BBs top my team most of the time, although I'm still working my way through the lower ranks. Usually the top 2 players on the winning team both have "High Calibre" and the game is won on kills after each side takes one cap.

Yes and yes, but I understand why they didn't do it. WG is just playing it very safe because balancing something with guns so different from a normal BB is a minefield, especially if you have a premium with that config. It could turn out as another Mogami, with the stock config more viable or borderline OP, but they then can't nerf it without also nerfing the premium or showing huge hypocrisy. EDIT: this is why, if they always planned to have Scharnhorst as a premium in historical configuration, I think the T7 in the normal tree should have been something like the Ersatz Yorck battlecruiser design.

Why would the KGV have 15" guns?!

Didn't say she was, only that it would be nice if we had her, and even nicer if we had BCs I think given what we've now seen of the German BB line, I think the RN BB line will be straight up battleships (not mixed) with some BC premiums. Wouldn't hold my breath for a dedicated battlecruiser line although they could easily fill one. Furious would be so troll... I think I would buy it regardless of how bad it was in gameplay terms! The 4 x 15" configuration of her sisters might be slightly more bearable... What I really, REALLY want though is a Renown class. I feel they are overshadowed by Hood but I find them better looking and "purer" to the BC concept. I'm thinking Tier 6.

Vanguard would be great. Battlecruisers would be AWESOME!

Of course, it's essential due to the low view angles we have when aiming. I meant the blinking stopwatch for lead shouldn't exist.

I actually enjoy the smaller team format of ranked. I was shocked though by the overall skill at low tiers. I shot to rank 15 with 80% win rate and I don't consider myself a great player but many games I carried very hard. Hopefully it will continue for a bit.

I dont get the hate, this was my favorite T4 cruiser. Short and turns well for dodging, decent AP so you can actually kill enemy cruisers quickly, overall very fun. Might re-buy to test this new hull, and as others have said she's very pretty.

The target lock doesn't help with lead but it does with range, quite a lot. Try shooting at a ship 12km away while having lock on a guy behind him at 13km and watch your shots go wild. I agree in principle this shouldn't exist, but from the sounds of it I can't see it being game-breaking. I'm looking forward to all the noobs who think this will make them good, going YOLO tunnel vision scanning for a blinking stopwatch while the people who really know how to aim delete them and move on. As for BB camping/sniping, that's determined by dispersion and RNG not ability to lead...

I watched Flamu's review, his conclusion was basically that it's slightly worse than NM but that isn't saying much because the NM is so strong and T6 BBs in general are very good. It might not be that different but then again the US idea of a "standard" battleship gives that away. Nice to have her for the history but I probably won't buy one because I'm not sure US BBs are my thing.

Well, the AP on Atago has pretty bad normalisation and the penetration RNG is all over the place on it. I normally don't consider it worth the risk to switch to it although broadside (same or lower tier) cruiser at <10km can produce good results. You really need to KNOW that the guy's going to stay broadside though otherwise you're wasting a salvo. HE will reliably net you 5k to 8k damage salvos on basically anything and with DE I regularly see two fires off a good hit. The other thing, since you're coming from the US cruisers is I think you're expecting to be able to dodge too much. NO is a very short ship that turns on a dime. Atago has excellent maneuverability overall, but NO is still a go-kart compared to it, and Atago is loooooong. That might be the source of your perceived extra citadels. Atago also doesn't do the bow-in thing very well because you're down to 4 guns and that bridge structure is a shell magnet, and also that wastes her speed. It might be a playstyle thing, when I play NO things are very hectic, dodging, trying to snipe cruiser citadels. Atago is more chilled out and a much more reliable source of consistent damage. I like both very much, but I'm yet to have 150k damage games in NO. Other than that, what others have said. Stealth, fire spam and torp walls are your friend. The shell velocity is better than USN, so you can get hits at longer range but then you definitely don't want to be using AP. Sweet spot is to zig-zag around the edge of the fight about 12-14km out and throw HE, gives you enough time to dodge incoming, option to disengage just by ceasing fire but still close enough to hit reliably, close for torps and generally be useful. I would also say keep your speed up. It's pretty hard to lead something doing 35 knots, 37 with speed flag, so even small course/speed adjustments can cause people to miss completely. Also use that speed to get where the enemy doesn't want you to be. Check where enemy BB guns are pointing before revealing yourself. Things going wrong, just vanish. Took a few hits, heal up and come back swinging

It looks like the belt only covers the machinery spaces. I think the logic is it doesn't need to cover the magazines, because these are smaller and deeper in the ship and hence protected by an armored deck at (or slightly below) the waterline and water around. Or as described here, separate armored boxes for the magazines (same as County class), which are fully internal and don't show as a visible belt on the hull. It was a common way to increase protection on weight-tight cruisers, the US did something similar on some classes. The machinery needs more headroom so the armored deck above it is higher, but that then needs a belt to "complete" the protection. The downside is there is very little protected buoyancy, so a waterline hit outside the armored belt might not be fatal to e.g. magazines but would cause serious flooding.

Actually it might have been that... don't remember either now but it is there somewhere.

I believe your question has been answered. The Japanese in particular had trouble during the war building something that size quickly. The "improved" or "modified" Taiho design (aka Taiho-kai), under the project designation G-15, was thought up long before Taiho herself was complete, as part of the expansion program that included the Unryu class. The fact she was designed/planned so early in no way reflects when she might have been built, never mind been in service. Hakuryu is based on the G-15/Taiho-kai design but is even bigger and has more AA guns than the original plan.

They toyed with destroyer leader concepts but decided they weren't appropriate scouts for the vast expanses of the Pacific. Eventually they did build things like the Porter class with that idea, but not until much later. The armored cruisers in game discussion is one for another thread We have exactly the same problem at Tier 6 anyway. Because the US Navy decided after Omaha that small ships aren't efficient for what they need, they built their next cruisers right up to the 10,000t treaty limit and just made them bigger from there when the treaties expired. So yeah they had hundreds, but none of the type the game needs to fill that power gap. Cleveland is really a temporary solution, a "time-traveller" to fill a gap. Trainspite has a whole thread dedicated to what might go in its place but the choice there, like Phoenix, is from various rejected concepts.