NobleRipper

I'd be interested to see one as well, but seems like it would take a heck of a lot of work to go through everything and check. Generally speaking, it's battleships up to ~T5/6 and cruisers/destroyers a bit lower, usually around T3 and some T4. T1s are a special case, as they don't follow the same chronological progression as the rest of their lines; from the sounds of it the upcoming Dutch cruisers are rather later designs for their tier than most. There are no WW1 aircraft carriers in the game apart from Furious, which is not in the state in which she appeared during the war (although it would be cool if they introduced one or both of her wartime guises).

Yeah, that's my usual benchmark for 'how well do the devs seem to be able to integrate things into their own game?'-type hypothesising as well.

More thinking that the subs have taken, what, half a dozen tests so far with no end in sight to even setting down the basic mechanics; not sure any of us will be able to wait long enough for them to be released. As you mention though, there are plenty of other reasons ;)

Not sure I can wait that long myself, especially given the current pace of development ;)

I think that last time some similar proposal came up, the Training Room was recommended. Maybe we could do like WoT did once upon a time, and get together a bunch of like-minded folk willing to try out some experimental rules in one of those and see if it takes off to the level where WG might buy it out with the intention of adding in carriers take notice?

Seems like a lot of other folks here share my 'love it, won't happen' reaction. In the interests of offering something a little new to the topic: it shouldn't happen in WoWs. As per my attitude to submarines, having an Authentic Great War mode would be a wonderful addition to an historical naval sim; unfortunately WoWs ain't that, and as again the subs (and CVs, recent line additions, past problems with Ops etc. etc.) have shown, I'm not sure that these devs would be able to do that kind of concept justice. Though I hear that Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts is showing promise...

Don't forget the '...Esquire' ;)

I think you mean 'remixed', like on the Bourne Identity Woe is me, for I will never again see the like of Graf Spee or Nelson, oh except in my port its alrite guyz... Ahem. I'd like to say Belfast but for the associated taint; is a shame I'll likely never get hold of Haida or Z-39 due to my newfound affection for T7 destroyers; other than that, the only ones I can really think of that weren't just from the latest round of gulagings are the Agincourt (burn in the circle of hell devoted to legal dubiety, loot crates) and the ARP Takao which was only available F2P long before I turned up. If we expand things a little from the original premise to include other aspects of WoWs that are no longer available, I'm really bummed that I didn't get the chance to play any of the really awesome-looking Halloween Ops or the Bathtub Battles...

Ah, yes indeed, I've seen that one. As you say, a very interesting subject (although don't get me going about armoured cruisers at any point, the above really was my attempts at being concise ;)! I don't mean to seem as though I'm knocking the Osprey books incidentally, they have some really good stuff; I particularly appreciate the two they have on the Austro-Hungarian battleships and cruisers and destroyers, for the historical context they provide as much as anything. I've been getting a little too deep down the Burt/Friedman/Brown et al rabbit hole of late, I think...

Well, if an Osprey book says it... That's about as short as you can keep a debate, after all ;) I know I've come across my info in an historian's work or two in the past although annoyingly I can't remember exactly who; Drach is pretty switched on about the drawbacks of various ships, he might have something similar in one of his vids (which people should obviously watch anyway, because it's Drach). I'd point out that the 'correct' conclusions to have drawn from Dogger would probably have been, 'our battlecruisers are slower (because of their design philosophy) and far less numerous (because of the limits of our industrial base, that our design philosophy takes into account in terms of the battleships/risk fleet strategy but not so much for the scouting/commerce raiding side of things) than our enemy's, it would be a mistake to continue using them to draw out the Grand Fleet as we might get caught if we end up with less Beattine incompetence luck in future'. By comparison the RN really weren't in danger of any magazine explosions and so didn't have the lessons there to learn, to be fair, although they certainly did have Beatty signalling and leadership issues which they didn't address. My point is, the Germans built some somewhat faster, albeit lesser-armoured, battleships; they were useful for sitting in a line against their RN counterparts, but they weren't as good at being battlecruisers. But then you could argue that the concept of a 'good battlecruiser' is somewhat oxymoronic anyhow ;) Strangely enough though (and in a thinly-veiled attempt to justify the above as on-topic), I think that the thinner-armoured faster battleship-type battlecruiser is potentially a pretty good fit for WoWs: as long as they can bully cruisers they're doing their main job, and if they can't stand up to more heavily-armoured battleships then at least they should be able to get away from them, the platonic ideal for a battlecruiser really.

I should point out that historically, the number/calibre of guns has never been part of the specification for a battlecruiser; it's actually just a side-effect of the increased speed, given that they required significantly more installed power on roughly the same displacement as equivalent battleships. Strictly speaking, a ship is a battlecruiser if it's designed as a merchant raiding apex predator and a supplemental/expediency battle-line unit primarily focused on scouting and flanking for the battle fleet (both roles inherited from the armoured cruiser it was an elaboration upon, arguably also a flawed concept). Specifically, the Scharnhorsts were intended as battleships and only really referred to as battlecruisers by the RN (which had a bit of a complex about the term!) and by the KM only partway through the war (one senses Lil' Adolf's having something of an inferiority complex over half his navy's 'battleships' only having 11" guns, and trying to downplay their perceived importance accordingly) ;) Certainly the RN shells were defective (largely to do with the soldering/attachment of the aerodynamic caps being faulty apparently, as well as some poor-quality metal leading to an above-average number of shatters; Jellicoe was working to get the situation resolved while he was at the Admiralty before the war but unfortunately he moved on and the matter was dropped by his successor), but the guns were excellent. To be honest, it would be rather hard for a German 12" gun to outperform a British 15" in any case. As far as the German battlecruisers' ability to withstand damage goes, they were also without doubt more heavily armoured than the British counterparts with the cost of some speed (although to be fair all German capital ships at the time sacrificed firepower for protection), although they also had the advantage of less extensive storage and accommodation arrangements that the RN ships as they were designed only to operate in the North Sea, so the cost was not as high as it would have been had they been built with the RN's typically longer radius of action in mind. Arguably however, the German philosophy was flawed: it's clear from the Battle of the Dogger Bank that their battlecruisers were hardly impervious to RN 13.5" guns (also the origin of the Germans' extra precautions against magazine explosions, which the British didn't realise were so potentially likely until Jutland), and all the German battlecruisers at Jutland were rendered almost or fully combat ineffective by the end; so given that the extra armour was not really successful in keeping the enemy shells out, it's possible to argue that it was rather superfluous and thus dead weight that might have been more usefully used to give them more speed (the crux of their tactical role); it's entirely likely that if the British shells at Jutland had been working properly the Germans would have lost a great many more ships, including most or all of their battlecruisers and even potentially some of the Königs from the van squadron which was almost as heavily engaged at points. However, in contrast it's worth pointing out that the RN 5th Battle Squadron (the Queen Elizabeths) actually took the brunt of the High Seas Fleet's fire for quite a while without any of them being sunk or disabled (albeit Warspite came close), so there was no shortage of tough shipss on both sides ;)

Thanks for the link, a really interesting document! Sadly I can't read Turkish but there are some great pictures in there. I've often thought how much of a shame it was that they were never able to work out a scheme to preserve Yavuz when she was decommissioned...

I'm hoping they go with Moltke in her late-career iteration: Ahem. Curious how we're getting the first of the long-awaited battlecruisers (and the less popular one at that, presumably to amp up anticipation for the appearance of the RN big cats) after a string of underwhelming line releases. Will have to listen to how Mackensen plays in Ops to see if it's worth going that far down the line...

Armoured cruisers, as they all had a belt (otherwise their bell-bottoms would fall down) ;) Apparently the Georgios Averof wanted to have a go at Goeben too when she was going through the Aegean, but a) the Greeks were neutral at the time and b) that would have been such an unequal contest it would have made Ardent and Acasta vs. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau seem almost fair by comparison... Personally I'm very much of the opinion that Admiral Troubridge was a morally brave man who was sorely hard-done by in the aftermath; whereas Admiral Cradock was a pointlessly bold idiot who got 1,600 RN sailors killed for nothing, but then his pre-doomed empty gesture got all the plaudits. Funnily enough, Beatty was in charge when the official history was being written...

I'd certainly be interested in seeing a Spanish cruiser line (to be honest, if the Netherlands has their own tech tree Spain should probably have one as well given they actually had heavy cruisers and battleships). One issue is that the ships would mostly be based on British designs; it would be interesting to see them done with a different set of consumables/USPs compared to the originals though, like Perth is to Leander; perhaps they could be altered to be without torpedoes (with additional extras to make up) or something. As for Canarias and Baleares, I think it was the latter that only had three of her turrets fitted initially; would be interesting to see her as a premium in that configuration. You're a scholar and a gentleman sir ;)

Wikis are never the best source of info (although incidentally a mate of mine has written an article or two that are of course thoroughly well-researched ;)), but the references section usually gives you a good place to start if you're interested in learning more. Plus this pic is pretty cool: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/San-shiki_dan_explosion.jpg/ Entirely possible, although I don't know much about the specifics myself. The problem with trying to use area-effect shells against planes was pretty much the same problem as using direct-hit types, in that hitting where you need to against a fast-moving target with three dimensions to take into account (well, four if you account for deflection as well) is hard, and getting the right fuse-setting on a shell for an area-burst takes extra time. In one of Derek Robinson's books (novels but well-researched) there's a section where an anti-air gunner is giving tips to some pilots on evading AA, and the main piece of advice is to change heights rapidly as that makes it harder for the gunners to change fuses quick enough to keep up. On the other hand, later on in the war the allies managed to perfect the technology for proximity-fused shells (putting it crudely and probably technically incorrectly, they used a very basic form of radar in the nosecone) which eliminated the problem to a large extent as the shells would go off automatically in the right area without needing specific settings.

What @WWDragon said. Guns being dual-purpose (that is, able to engage surface and air targets from the same mount; the term HALA (High-Angle/Low-Angle) comes up in relation, often specifically with regard to fire directors) is usually a factor of how high they can elevate rather than ammo type. Best I can find with a quick search on Yammie's main battery is that they had a 45-degree elevation, which is ideal for long-range naval engagements and shore bombardment but I think at least 70 was usually considered necessary (if barely adequate) for AA work.

They were indeed DP mounts, as with the 8" guns on the rest of the earlier County-class variants (everything before the Norfolks if I recall correctly); the turrets allowed elevation of up to 80 degrees although experience in service showed that trying to use that size of gun against aircraft was pretty futile. Then again, there were beehive rounds for bigger guns (battleship-calibre), so apparently naval planners weren't too worried about practicality...

Me too! She's almost as good as the original Nürnberg ;) And Yukon isn't as good as her original techtree forebear either, so, y'know... Same?

One is all you need... (Or I guess one per plant ;))

Only if you stand upside down on your hands while you do it ;) Toughest wank ever, bar none. Damn, but my ignore list is getting long... ;)

Second time in a row. Wonder how many more we're in for? Anyone wanting to play the line while they're still recognisable, best get in quick. Apparently they've only just now gotten overpowered; one might be tempted to imagine that a whole lot of the more recently-released ships in the game must be pretty crappy to drag down the average to where Leander is firing too fast...

Also in the thread: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/240702-premium-ship-review-yukon/?page=27&tab=comments#comment-5501508 Seems WG's comeuppance may be sooner than we all thought...

Second nerf to Leander's reload in as many months, I note; wonder how many more we're in for before WG's satisfied? I seem to recall that when they were fiddling with Hawkins' reload recently it took them about six months to get it right (albeit speeding up instead of slowing down)...

Judging from what I've been able to pick up about the carrier rework and WG's stonewalling in the aftermath, this seems sadly to be how they go about doing things now: set a target number of players for the new ship type, bait them in with overly powerful mechanics regardless of how those affect the rest of the game, keep buffing steadily until they get the percentage they want; throw in a few meaningless nerfs here and there as a vague sop to game balance/the vast majority of players, only to roll back on them if the percentage drops too far. That's not how you develop a game to be the best experience it can be for players, it's how middle-managers try to make themselves look good to their superiors. Subs aren't being introduced for the players, they're just for furthering some guy's career. Agreed about the Halloween event incidentally, that was a really good example of a for-the-players addition; it seems bizarre to me that in all these seemingly-endless rounds of test iterations and live-server PvP events (where WG apparently can't even settle on the basic mechanics for subs) they've not tried to introduce a subs-based Operation (or a few of them) to help the development. If they got them to work against the AI to begin with, it would make it a lot easier to make them work against other players.