Cruisers?

[Panocek]

1 minute ago, rnat said:

Last point though: In what world is IJN AP weak ?

"hurr durr use HE on IJN cruisers because AP is weak"

 

IJN 203 AP are weaker in terms of penetration than other nations. But its like calling Ford Mustang slower than Bugatti Veyron. And it is true, but do you really need more power to be stuck in traffic?

[twoCannonsLess]

I will probably try US Cruisers because they seem to be decent

[The_Pillager]

You will meet the problem of the range of the guns again my friend 

 

US Cruisers never exeed 15,x km, up to TX. Basically the Same as the japanese ... But you dont have torps too, so think about it.

 

Germans have good range, french and russian too. 

I can fullheartedly recommend french cruisers. My daughter now reached T7 and says its the best cruiser Line she die so far

[lafeel]

43 minutes ago, twoCannonsLess said:

I will probably try US Cruisers because they seem to be decent

The problem with the USN  cruisers isn't so much their gun range but their arcs. The Germans have nice (relatively) flat arcs, making aiming a relative breeze, the USN by comparison is almost like they're trying to shoot down the ISS.

[rnat]

35 minutes ago, lafeel said:

the USN by comparison is almost like they're trying to shoot down the ISS.

The USN heavy cruiser arcs are actually comparable to IJN AP (except for the Zao) ones until you hit the Baltimore at T8 and gain access to the USN super-heavy AP. The statement is true for the USN CL though.

Also keep in mind that KM cruisers tend to have longer ranges, making hitting at the respective max range similarly difficult for CA (assuming no range mod)

[twoCannonsLess]

49 minutes ago, The_Pillager said:

 

I can fullheartedly recommend french cruisers. My daughter now reached T7 and says its the best cruiser Line she die so far

Thanks,

Would they teach bad habits? I played them and got to t4 and enjoyed them but a lot of recommendations were IJN or USN.

[rnat]

1 hour ago, twoCannonsLess said:

Would they teach bad habits?

They are a bit like the Russians or KM in that you can't really play around with your concealment too much (they aren't very sneaky), but they don't really encourage bad habits afik.

Good HE and AP so switching at the right time is rewarded well, the consumable allows dmg-bursts (very good if someone gives broadside) from mid-tier on

and due to the high speed they can reposition quickly and dodging is encouraged because it works well.

The only thing i could think of is that the long-range HE-style can lead you to keep spamming BBs all game (since BBs are relatively easy to hit even from max range)

and not push up a flank when you have an opportunity to take the pain to enemy DDs or CAs and create crossfires.

 

Last point: Don't worry too much about what might teach bad habits and focus on what's the most fun for you.

If you think you're doing something wrong or have questions on weather something is a good idea you can always come to the forum and ask ^^

[twoCannonsLess]

Thanks @rnat

 

I enjoy playing french cruisers and I seem to have more fun in them compared to KM cruisers so I will probably continue with that.

[Panocek]

15 hours ago, twoCannonsLess said:

Thanks,

Would they teach bad habits? I played them and got to t4 and enjoyed them but a lot of recommendations were IJN or USN.

Only "bad habit" I can think off would be getting used to long range, and thus discard "need" to close in to exert pressure on enemy team, especially when it comes to caps. Also despite "need for speed" theme, tier 6 and 7 are actually THE slowest cruisers, requiring Engine Boost consumable to keep up with the rest. But from tier 8 onwards you get proper fast and furious, as both base speed improves and Engine Boost becomes even more ridiculous.

[twoCannonsLess]

Thanks, I just got the T7 KM CA Yorck. I think I will probably do MN cruisers now because I haven't enjoyed KM cruisers in the mid tiers. Not just the Yorck specifically but most of the mid tier ships.

[The_Pillager]

On 3/23/2019 at 7:15 PM, twoCannonsLess said:

Thanks,

Would they teach bad habits? I played them and got to t4 and enjoyed them but a lot of recommendations were IJN or USN.

@Panocek already hit the point: they wont teach you bad habits.

French cruisers are the classic long range supporters, a role that fits cruisers best, imo.

There ar not many cruisers i would like to stay too long in mid- or brawling range. BBguns are just too devastating at highter tiers.

 

If you dont mind me saying: dont speed up the trees too fast my friend. Take your time.

Being at T7 with less than 200 randoms gives You a hard time I would predict ...

T6 and T7 are the most interesting tiers imo. Good ships, challenging ships, maybe frustrating ships, but here is the spot to stay a while and gather experience.

 

Just my 2 cents ... good luck  

[twoCannonsLess]

Thanks

[twoCannonsLess]

3 hours ago, The_Pillager said:

@Panocek already hit the point: they wont teach you bad habits.

French cruisers are the classic long range supporters, a role that fits cruisers best, imo.

There ar not many cruisers i would like to stay too long in mid- or brawling range. BBguns are just too devastating at highter tiers.

 

If you dont mind me saying: dont speed up the trees too fast my friend. Take your time.

Being at T7 with less than 200 randoms gives You a hard time I would predict ...

T6 and T7 are the most interesting tiers

 

Just my 2 cents ... good luck  

Thanks, I just quickly got to t7 in the KM line because I really did not enjoy playing the t5 and t6. I will play MN cruisers because they are cruisers that i enjoy the most.

[The_Pillager]

A logical move imo, as the KM Cruisers are heavy ones from T7 on, so the light T5/T6 wont help you that much.

Königsberg was a keeper for me from start, but Nürnberg never won my sympathies, so all fine with your decision.

 

There are some similarities in playstyle between the german and the french heavy cruisers but the baguettes get the big guns only from T7, too. 

 

 

[twoCannonsLess]

Thanks I'm probably not going to skip any new ships but tbh the t5 and t6 KM Cruisers were just hard to play IMO

[rnat]

15 minutes ago, twoCannonsLess said:

Thanks I'm probably not going to skip any new ships but tbh the t5 and t6 KM Cruisers were just hard to play IMO

German AP is devastating but situational, so it takes some skill to use properly. Rule of thumb for KB and Nürn is to just stick to HE unless someone gives you broadside sub ~10-12km.

But as i wrote earlier and as you might have noted with the Omaha almost all T5 cruisers are hopelessly squishy. The notable exceptions being the Furutaka (good armor) and the Emile Bertin (absolutely no armor).

 

If you're interested in getting back to the line later Flamu made some good commentaries:

Spoiler

 

 

[lafeel]

7 minutes ago, rnat said:

German AP is devastating but situational, so it takes some skill to use properly. Rule of thumb for KB and Nürn is to just stick to HE unless someone gives you broadside sub ~10-12km.

But as i wrote earlier and as you might have noted with the Omaha almost all T5 cruisers are hopelessly squishy. The notable exceptions being the Furutaka (good armor) and the Emile Bertin (absolutely no armor).

 

If you're interested in getting back to the line later Flamu made some good commentaries:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Knowing which shell type to use when is the key to making the most out of that  line I have found.

 

The free ifhe definetly helps tooo.,

[twoCannonsLess]

Thanks, 

1 hour ago, lafeel said:

 

 

The free ifhe definetly helps tooo.,

Does IFHE have any advantages because when I looked at the description it says it decrease the shell fire chance.

[lafeel]

3 minutes ago, twoCannonsLess said:

Thanks, 

Does IFHE have any advantages because when I looked at the description it says it decrease the shell fire chance.

It does actually considerably increase the armour a HE shell can penetrate (and therefore do more damage) compared with normal.

[twoCannonsLess]

Thanks

[lafeel]

1 minute ago, twoCannonsLess said:

Thanks

No problem. It is, pretty much, a essential skill for any tier 6 and up light cruiser.

[rnat]

21 hours ago, twoCannonsLess said:

Does IFHE have any advantages because when I looked at the description it says it decrease the shell fire chance.

Gonna go into a bit more way too much detail here and explain why and how it is useful.

*warning: massive wall of text in the spoiler*

 

Spoiler

• The general rule

Each HE shell has a shatter threshold. It is usually calculated by dividing the caliber of the shell by 6. This value is rounded to the next integer mm-value.

It will pen any armor below that level and do penetration dmg (1/3 of max shell dmg)* , otherwise it will shatter and do no dmg (but can still cause fires)

Some lines have modified/improved HE pen though, we'll come to that later.

If you don't want to calculate the value it is shown in the client as well when you mouse-over the guns in port.

 

Example time (the Problem):

The Omaha for example has 152mm** guns (6''). divide by 6 to get 25.3mm (1''), rounded this gives 25mm

This means 25mm of armor are enough to shatter the Omahas (and all other 6'') unaided HE-shells, meaning they do no direct dmg

or equivalently the Omahas HE can penetrate 24mm armor but nothing higher than that.

The Mogami on the other hand has 155mm guns, same procedure yields 25.8mm -> 26mm needed to defeat it's HE shells. i.e. it can penetrate 25mm out of the box.

 

This is a bit of a bummer for our 6'' gun since 25mm is a very common armor value in the game, present on all mid-tier BBs (T6+7) and high tier cruisers (T8+)

 

• IFHE

What IFHE does (besides lowering your fire chance) is that it increases the penetration by 30% before the rounding occurs.

For our 6'' shell this means we get 152*1.3/6 = 32.9mm => 33mm shatter threshold.

This is massive for 2 reasons:

1) We can now penetrate 25mm of armor, which is awesome against mid-tier BBs and high tier Cruisers

since we can do direct HE-dmg to them now without having to aim for the superstructure or relying purely on fires.

2) We can pen 32mm. This represents most armor-plating on high-tier BBs, meaning we can reliably do dmg to them too.

 

Note that the increased HE dmg when running IFHE on a ship that benefits from it comes purely from the higher number of penetrations/lower number of shatters for a given number of hits,

IFHE has no influence on the damage any individual shell does when it penetrates.

 

If we calculate backwards from the 32mm for the unaided penetration we can see that we need at least a caliber of 195mm to penetrate it with HE.

Similarly we need at least 150mm to end up with 32mm HE penetration using IFHE.

We can conclude that the skill is most useful for HE-spammers that have guns somewhere between those 2 calibers.

 

• Special HE and consequences

As mentioned there are some guns that use a different formula. Those are

-German cruisers get 1/4 penetration instead of 1/6 penetration

-German 128mm and 150mm  BB secondaries get 1/4 penetration as well

-IJN 100mm guns have 25mm pen out of the box (even better than 1/4 pen)
 

Note: the improved penetration does not apply to German DDs.

 

If we apply our formula with the modified penetration we see that German 150mm HE penetrates 37mm without IFHE, making the skill unnecessary.

German 203mm guns even penetrate 50mm of armor which is enough to penetrate the reinforced deck-armor on all ships except for the Yamato.

On the other hand if we consider the 100mm on the IJN gunboat dd line (Akizuki and following)

we see that using IFHE on their guns allows them to penetrate 32mm as well, allowing them to do direct dmg to high tier BBs, which synergizes well with their high dpm.

 

• DD caliber guns

You might think about putting IFHE on DD guns. Their caliber is typically between 127-130mm, which gives them ~20mm of penetration.

That is enough to hurt almost every DD everywhere (only Khabarovsk has some 50mm plating for reasons unknown to anyone but vodka), but only enough to penetrate the superstructure on BBs and CAs/CLs.

Using IFHE one could bring that up to 27mm of penetration which is enough to hurt mid-tier bbs and high tier cruisers. on most of their plating.

 

I don't think i'm overreaching when I say that the general consensus is that it's not worth it with 3-4 exceptions.

 

On most DDs:

Even if you can pen a cruiser or BB, your opponent can typically hit back much harder and has too much HP to make it worthwhile gunboating them in the open or from smoke/cover all game.

Usually it's better to stay undetected, launch torpedos and use your guns against fellow DDs or to finish off low health targets when the situation allows.

The main reason being that as a DD you are the eyes and ears of your fleet, as well as the beset ship for capping

and your torpedos have a much higher chance of sinking a target that could just run away or kill you if you tried spamming it.

 

On VMF gunboats:

It's an option to take it on the Russian gunboat DDs to engage cruisers better, though most wouldn't.

Point is that cruisers have a much better accuracy and rate of fire than BBs and bigger shells than DDs, typically making them much more dangerous targets than either.

 

Atlanta/Flint:

The main exception here. Both are squishy cruisers armed with a massive array of 127mm guns that like nothing more than sitting somewhere safe and spamming the enemy team all day.

So IFHE is absolutely fantastic on those ships since it synergises very well with the play-style and raises the dmg output massively.

 

Massachusetts:

She's a BB balanced around her secondary armament. So IFHE to allow her secondaries to pen lower tier BBs and high tier cruisers makes a lot of sense.

 

GK/FdG:

If you want to run a full secondary build you can spec IFHE on those ships as well to enable your 128mm secondaries to do direct dmg to enemy BBs.

It's a matter of choice even on a secondary build since you could spec into concealment or fire-prevention as well

either making closing in and disengaging easier or keeping you alive longer, especially when within secondary range.

 

I wouldn't recommend using IFHE on any other BB either for various reasons.

 

 

*If it penetrates armor directly protecting the citadel it will naturally do citadel dmg = max shell dmg. This is only possible, if at all, with (some) BB-HE against most exposed citadel armor,

though some low-tier cruisers (e.g. the central deck armor on the Tenryu, Caledon, Danae) can eat citadels from  cruiser caliber HE.

**Should technically be 152.4mm and 25.4mm but the game only uses integer values for the caliber. Also go metric already damn Yankees ^^

TLDR:

IFHE is immensely useful on any ship (except for German cruisers) sporting a 150-195mm main battery that can shoot HE, USN cruisers with 127mm guns and IJN DDs with 100mm guns.

[lafeel]

21 minutes ago, rnat said:

 

IFHE is immensely useful on any ship (except for German cruisers) sporting a 150-195mm main battery that can shoot HE, USN cruisers with 127mm guns and IJN DDs with 100mm guns.

Debatably useful for the secondaries of some BB's too I've heard.

[rnat]

15 minutes ago, lafeel said:

Debatably useful for the secondaries of some BB's too I've heard.

Mostly meme-builds, the only one i'd recommend without hesitation would be on the Massachusetts. She's a floating secondary meme anyways ^^

Will include that in the wall of text.

Otherwise only GK and FdG really make sense as i consider the MN BBs way too squishy to properly pull off a secondary build.

[lafeel]

1 minute ago, rnat said:

Mostly meme-builds, the only one i'd recommend without hesitation would be on the Massachusetts. She's a floating secondary meme anyways ^^

Will include that in the wall of text.

Otherwise only GK and FDG really make sense as i consider the MN BBs way too squishy to properly pull of a secondary build.

Just hit 14 points on that skipper last night :D