German BB Gun Accuracy. Or Rather The Lack Of It.

[Sir_Sinksalot]

Hi guys,

 

So today I decided to fast-track my way to the tier6 German battleship Bayern. Now, on paper, this battleship with it's low number of guns but of large caliber is pretty accurate. According to WoWs fitting tool website the guns boast 1.80 sigma with a max dispersion  221 m with the aiming mod at a max range of 17.7km which btw isn't really an amazing gun range either tbh, especially when coupled to her leisurely 25 kts that takes an age to get to and quickly scrubbed off upon turning.

 

Now by comparison, the Bayern's French counterpart, the Normandie, is an absolute joy to play. I picked that ship up a few weeks ago and was really pleasantly surprised by how good and fun it is to play, a real gem imho. This BB is pretty agile for a BB, sails along at a pretty fast 30 kts which she hits fairly quickly and unlike the 8 guns of the Bayern, the Normandie rolls with an almighty 12 guns housed in 3 turrets bristling with 4 guns each. The guns of are of a lessor caliber than the Bayern but they have a pretty impressive range of nearly 20 km. Thing is though, on paper the Normandie has inferior gun accuracy with a sigma of 1.60 and a dispersion of 242 m with the aiming mod although with a larger range one would sort of expect more dispersion anyway tbh. Thing is though, the Normandie lands a lot of her shots and bags plenty of citadels too and yet the more accurate German thus far in Ops, has been utterly hopeless at hitting accurate shots where I am aiming and thus far has hit zero citadels somehow.

 

So, am I missing something here? How is it the more accurate guns are actually less accurate. Is this a case of the Bayerns fewer guns being less effective vs an area being saturate by the 50% more guns on the Normandie? Or are German battleship guns generally totally trollish and not actually conforming to the levels of accuracy that their stats say they should lol?

 

Edit- I'm also playing this ship as aggressively and close as I can too it's not like I'm sitting back sniping behind a island with it but regardless of range the ships a total pacifist and simply refuses to hurt another ship.  

[Miscommunication_dept]

9 minutes ago, Sir_Sinksalot said:

Hi guys,

 

So today I decided to fast-track my way to the tier6 German battleship Bayern. Now, on paper, this battleship with it's low number of guns but of large caliber is pretty accurate. According to WoWs fitting tool website the guns boast 1.80 sigma with a max dispersion  221 m with the aiming mod at a max range of 17.7km which btw isn't really an amazing gun range either tbh, especially when coupled to her leisurely 25 kts that takes an age to get to and quickly scrubbed off upon turning.

 

Now by comparison, the Bayern's French counterpart, the Normandie, is an absolute joy to play. I picked that ship up a few weeks ago and was really pleasantly surprised by how good and fun it is to play. This BB is pretty agile for a BB, sails along at a pretty fast 30 kts which she hits fairly quickly and unlike the 8 guns of the Bayern, the Normandie rolls with an almighty 12 guns housed in 3 turrets bristling with 4 guns each. The guns of are of a lessor caliber than the Bayern but they have a pretty impressive range of nearly 20 km. Thing is though, on paper the Normandie has inferior gun accuracy with a sigma of 1.60 and a dispersion of 242 m with the aiming mod although with a larger range one would sort of expect more dispersion anyway tbh. Thing is though, the Normandie lands a lot of her shots and bags plenty of citadels too and yet the more accurate German thus far in Ops, has been utterly hopeless and hitting accurate shots and thus far has hit zero citadels somehow.

 

So, am I missing something here? How is it the more accurate guns are actually less accurate. Is this a case of the Bayerns fewer guns being less effective vs an area being saturate by the 50% more guns on the Normandie? Or are German battleship guns generally totally trollish and not actually conforming to what their stats say they should lol?

Bayern has better dispersion than the Normandy and better Sigma.

8 guns always feel worse then 12.

In fact, due to the aiming systems module, it actually has better dispersion than its American counterparts so is second only to the Japanese  battleships in dispersion.

 

That said, German battleships certainly feel less accurate than the Americans.

This I cannot explain but vertical dispersion sometimes comes up.

[ColonelPete]

21 minutes ago, Sir_Sinksalot said:

Thing is though, the Normandie lands a lot of her shots and bags plenty of citadels too and yet the more accurate German thus far in Ops, has been utterly hopeless at hitting accurate shots where I am aiming and thus far has hit zero citadels somehow.

More guns, more hits, even with less accuracy.

12 less accurate guns also have the tendency to hit stuff, even when you aim wrong. The bigger dispersion can work in your favour.

[Sir_Sinksalot]

So what's the benefit in playing ships with higher gun caliber but with 50% less guns? Most shells miss and of those that do hit, most are an over-pen, a ricochet and rarely some actually really hurtful hits. It seems to me that the ships with fewer guns of bigger calibers aren't really benefiting from the bigger caliber when actually landing a nice juicy shot or over-match area are pretty rare indeed, skill not withstanding of course and all things even. A couple of over-pen low damage returns, lots of misses around the target even though the lead and aiming was as good as one can get and then you are facing into a 30 second reload being pretty much a floating hp pinata while the lower tier cruiser that suffered a bit of cosmetic damage is setting your BB ablaze and sailing torps into you lol... anyone? And like I said by comparison, the floating porcupine that is the Normandie will usually blap a cruiser to bits in the same situation as will the Izmail or Fuso.

 

Now you might say, just play the Normandie, Izmail and Fuso then and don't bother with the low gun count Bayern. Well sure, but... seems like a waste and surely there's some significant benefit of having 50% less guns I'm just not seeing?

[Fatal_Ramses]

7 minutes ago, Sir_Sinksalot said:

Most shells miss and of those that do hit, most are an over-pen, a ricochet and rarely some actually really hurtful hits.

Welcome to the Kriegsmarine BB-department.

[Panocek]

13 minutes ago, Sir_Sinksalot said:

So what's the benefit in playing ships with higher gun caliber but with 50% less guns? Most shells miss and of those that do hit, most are an over-pen, a ricochet and rarely some actually really hurtful hits. It seems to me that the ships with fewer guns of bigger calibers aren't really benefiting from the bigger caliber when actually landing a nice juicy shot or over-match area are pretty rare indeed, skill not withstanding of course and all things even. A couple of over-pen low damage returns, lots of misses around the target even though the lead and aiming was as good as one can get and then you are facing into a 30 second reload being pretty much a floating hp pinata while the lower tier cruiser that suffered a bit of cosmetic damage is setting your BB ablaze and sailing torps into you lol... anyone? And like I said by comparison, the floating porcupine that is the Normandie will usually blap a cruiser to bits in the same situation as will the Izmail or Fuso.

 

Now you might say, just play the Normandie, Izmail and Fuso then and don't bother with the low gun count Bayern. Well sure, but... seems like a waste and surely there's some significant benefit of having 50% less guns I'm just not seeing?

Bigger gun tend to hit harder when it scores hit.

 

That said, big gun also can be a big issue, as plating thickness required to arm the fuse is in 99% cases directly tied to shell caliber (that being 1/6). Thus, West Virginia boasting 406mm guns at tier 6 is absolute overkill, guaranteed to land overpens unless you land direct hit on citadel, but the same guns are marvelous for violently reminding tier 8 battleships Big Seven is not to be trifled with.

 

Also, recent IFHE/plating change was in general buff for those "bigger caliber but few in numbers" battleships, as all tier 6 CAs can ricochet 356mm guns off their central section. But 380mm or bigger will overmatch.

 

Did I mention German BBs are famous for their lack of accuracy as part of their "brawling" gimmick? For "big gun" tier 6 BB that one can actually attempt to hit stuff with, Queen Elizabeth or premium Warspite, West Virginia or Mutsu to the rescue. Bonus points for you if you study how German BB armor plating changes with tiers up

[ColonelPete]

4 minutes ago, Sir_Sinksalot said:

So what's the benefit in playing ships with higher gun caliber but with 50% less guns? Most shells miss and of those that do hit, most are an over-pen, a ricochet and rarely some actually really hurtful hits. It seems to me that the ships with fewer guns of bigger calibers aren't really benefiting from the bigger caliber when actually landing a nice juicy shot or over-match area are pretty rare indeed, skill not withstanding of course and all things even. A couple of over-pen low damage returns, lots of misses around the target even though the lead and aiming was as good as one can get and then you are facing into a 30 second reload being pretty much a floating hp pinata while the lower tier cruiser that suffered a bit of cosmetic damage is setting your BB ablaze and sailing torps into you lol... anyone? And like I said by comparison, the floating porcupine that is the Normandie will usually blap a cruiser to bits in the same situation as will the Izmail or Fuso.

 

Now you might say, just play the Normandie, Izmail and Fuso then and don't bother with the low gun count Bayern. Well sure, but... seems like a waste and surely there's some significant benefit of having 50% less guns I'm just not seeing?

• Bayern does not have 50% less guns. 50% of 12 is 6.
• Overmatching is important
• the problem of Bayern is that she got WW1 shells and slow reload, while Normandie got interwar/WW2 shells with historical reload

[Sir_Sinksalot]

7 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

• Bayern does not have 50% less guns. 50% of 12 is 6.

 

It's 50% from the Bayerns perspective. If I said to you, that ship has 8 guns and I want 50% more guns, what do you get? 12 guns of course. Since 50% of 8 is 4 and added to 8 is 12.

 

Now, from the Normandies point of view the % is different. If I said to you that ship has 12 guns and I want 50% less guns we end up with 6 guns of course. So from the Normandie's point of view, the Bayern has 33.33(infinity)% less guns lol. 

[Sunleader]

59 minutes ago, Sir_Sinksalot said:

Hi guys,

 

So today I decided to fast-track my way to the tier6 German battleship Bayern. Now, on paper, this battleship with it's low number of guns but of large caliber is pretty accurate. According to WoWs fitting tool website the guns boast 1.80 sigma with a max dispersion  221 m with the aiming mod at a max range of 17.7km which btw isn't really an amazing gun range either tbh, especially when coupled to her leisurely 25 kts that takes an age to get to and quickly scrubbed off upon turning.

 

Now by comparison, the Bayern's French counterpart, the Normandie, is an absolute joy to play. I picked that ship up a few weeks ago and was really pleasantly surprised by how good and fun it is to play, a real gem imho. This BB is pretty agile for a BB, sails along at a pretty fast 30 kts which she hits fairly quickly and unlike the 8 guns of the Bayern, the Normandie rolls with an almighty 12 guns housed in 3 turrets bristling with 4 guns each. The guns of are of a lessor caliber than the Bayern but they have a pretty impressive range of nearly 20 km. Thing is though, on paper the Normandie has inferior gun accuracy with a sigma of 1.60 and a dispersion of 242 m with the aiming mod although with a larger range one would sort of expect more dispersion anyway tbh. Thing is though, the Normandie lands a lot of her shots and bags plenty of citadels too and yet the more accurate German thus far in Ops, has been utterly hopeless at hitting accurate shots where I am aiming and thus far has hit zero citadels somehow.

 

So, am I missing something here? How is it the more accurate guns are actually less accurate. Is this a case of the Bayerns fewer guns being less effective vs an area being saturate by the 50% more guns on the Normandie? Or are German battleship guns generally totally trollish and not actually conforming to the levels of accuracy that their stats say they should lol?

 

Edit- I'm also playing this ship as aggressively and close as I can too it's not like I'm sitting back sniping behind a island with it but regardless of range the ships a total pacifist and simply refuses to hurt another ship.  

 

The Reason is that Accuracy is based on the Turret.

You get 1 Aiming Point for each Turret.

.

Each Turret Aims Slightly different as his Position on the Ship is Different and thus if you for example Fire while Angled. Towards the Enemy.your Rear Turrets have to Fire a bit Further than your Front Turrets.

 

 

 So on Bayern you get 4 Aimpoints each of which is Targeted by 2 Guns.

2 Turrets Front and 2 Turrets Rear.

So your Firing 4x2 Shells.

But 1x2 are Fired with your actual Crosshair Aim from the Turret next to your Camera.(usually the Upper Front Turret)

1x2 are Fired next to this.

And 2x2 are Fired quite a bit from the side of your Camera Angle.

 

Normandy is way better here.

She has 4 Guns per Turret.

And 3 Turrets.

So only 3 Aim Points.

And 1 Turret will Fire right out of your Camera Position with 4 Guns.

1 will Fire from slightly to the side also with 4 Guns.

And only the last 1 with its 4 Guns Fires from the other side of the Ship.

 

 

This is also why as BB you should Fire Front and Rear Turrets Seperately.

So you can Account for different Firing Angle.

[lossi_2018]

Norm and her follow up the mighty Lyon were at a point my go to BBs. Fantastic ships, with huge potential. Just too many guns to miss. I got to the Riche which is my favorite BB and stopped there. They are good ships. Fast, give options and reward the aggressive playstyle. I consider them better than the Bayern which I have slightly worse than PEF (A very good German premium imo) It has good secs and the guns when hit do dmg. That's about it  

[ColonelPete]

1 minute ago, Sir_Sinksalot said:

 

It's 50% from the Bayerns perspective. If I said to you, that ship has 8 guns and I want 50% more guns, what do you get? 12 guns of course. Since 50% of 8 is 4 and added to 8 is 12.

That is 50% more, not 50% less...

 

[Wulf_Ace]

41 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

That is 50% more, not 50% less...

 

Well to get into that discussion about guns, I ve played Gneisenau who has only 6 guns, by far less then any tier 7 BB, and I am overwhelmed how good he is. While playing it, never felt that shortages of guns are issue. 

 

On the topic to owner of post, try new mexico and bayern and my friend you will see the diffrence. Bayern is by far better, sure mexico hits hard, but the slow speed is pain, real pain , while bayern is great to play, amazing ship. WG by my opinion actually did ok job on german ships, unlike in world of tanks with tanks.

[invicta2012]

I share @Sir_Sinksalot's problem with derpy German BB guns. I don't see any particular reason for these to be so wonky other than "national flavour"... which is a bit odd when you've got British BB's with eight 15 inch guns at the same Tier which are much more dependable. The same thing applies to Gneisenau, which has to be played for citadel hits as an occasional bonus, even if presented with a broadside Russian BB 10k away. That ship does have a lot of other things going for it which a same Tier BB like Hood, for example, doesn't, but it can be frustrating when a ship won't do the simple thing you want it to.

[ColonelPete]

They are not wonky, when they are more accurate...

[Miscommunication_dept]

8 minutes ago, ColonelPete said:

They are not wonky, when they are more accurate...

Do you happen to know anything about  vertical dispersion? I understand it is far worse in the Yamato then the Kremlin. I would like to know what it’s like for the Germans but it’s not a stat that seems to be available.

[Sir_Sinksalot]

1 hour ago, Sunleader said:

 

The Reason is that Accuracy is based on the Turret.

You get 1 Aiming Point for each Turret.

.

Each Turret Aims Slightly different as his Position on the Ship is Different and thus if you for example Fire while Angled. Towards the Enemy.your Rear Turrets have to Fire a bit Further than your Front Turrets.

 

 

 So on Bayern you get 4 Aimpoints each of which is Targeted by 2 Guns.

2 Turrets Front and 2 Turrets Rear.

So your Firing 4x2 Shells.

But 1x2 are Fired with your actual Crosshair Aim from the Turret next to your Camera.(usually the Upper Front Turret)

1x2 are Fired next to this.

And 2x2 are Fired quite a bit from the side of your Camera Angle.

 

Normandy is way better here.

She has 4 Guns per Turret.

And 3 Turrets.

So only 3 Aim Points.

And 1 Turret will Fire right out of your Camera Position with 4 Guns.

1 will Fire from slightly to the side also with 4 Guns.

And only the last 1 with its 4 Guns Fires from the other side of the Ship.

 

 

This is also why as BB you should Fire Front and Rear Turrets Seperately.

So you can Account for different Firing Angle.

 

That's really interesting and very helpful. When you explain it like that it really highlights how accuracy perception can be somewhat blurred by other factors. It therefore also stands to reason that not only does the Normandie hold the edge via it's 3 turret perspective firing being less obscured by any additional turrets but the ship itself is pretty short and thus it's 3 turrets are also therefore very close together just to make shell trajectories that much more predictable and reliable whereas a really long ship with lots of turrets stretched out across it would stand to reason that from a one camera view range perspective over a just one area of the ship would appear to have "what the actual F?" sorts accuracy lol but its actually all perspective to that viewing point. I actually accidentally discovered the option to switch viewing points between turrets not so long ago lol.

 

Thing is though, while we can switch cameras to a turret at the furthest most extremities of our really long BB offerings as to see where it needs to be more accurately aimed relative to the default camera views perspective, this isn't really all that ideal in the heat of battle tbh along with keeping map awareness at the same time and maybe dodge another ship or island or torps etc so... ya I guess it just plays into the hands of the shorter French BB with closely packed turrets stuffed with guns in each on lol. 

[Sir_Sinksalot]

1 hour ago, Panocek said:

 

Did I mention German BBs are famous for their lack of accuracy as part of their "brawling" gimmick? For "big gun" tier 6 BB that one can actually attempt to hit stuff with, Queen Elizabeth or premium Warspite, West Virginia or Mutsu to the rescue. Bonus points for you if you study how German BB armor plating changes with tiers up

 

So it seems sadly. I have the Warspite, same small gun count but it just lands shots way more reliably. I've grown to really like that British dreadnought, the guns are way more accurate and so far on Killer Whale it's been deleting the other BB's pretty reliably tbh and even swatting away DD's with her stronk Brit HE and secondaries. It's also really tanky and for me I think this dread looks amazing, especially in the white and blue alternative perma-camo.

 

A gorgeous Dreadnought? Yes! And also a bloody good-un too!

 

 

27 minutes ago, invicta2012 said:

I share @Sir_Sinksalot's problem with derpy German BB guns. I don't see any particular reason for these to be so wonky other than "national flavour"... which is a bit odd when you've got British BB's with eight 15 inch guns at the same Tier which are much more dependable. The same thing applies to Gneisenau, which has to be played for citadel hits as an occasional bonus, even if presented with a broadside Russian BB 10k away. That ship does have a lot of other things going for it which a same Tier BB like Hood, for example, doesn't, but it can be frustrating when a ship won't do the simple thing you want it to.

 

Sad to here the Gneisenau is more of the same. I was looking forward to eventually unlocking that for Narai and any more T7 ranked battles. The Russian Sinop doesn't have any accuracy issues(rather unsurprisingly lol).

 

Does this German "How the hell did that miss? It was bloody harder to miss than hit!!" sort of gun handling continue up the tiers? In fact, is there actually ANY stronk German ships? I played the German DD's up to and including tier6 and while they were pretty solid, good boats, they were not AS good as other nations offerings in different areas, just a good all-rounder.

 

[ColonelPete]

20 minutes ago, gopher31 said:

Do you happen to know anything about  vertical dispersion? I understand it is far worse in the Yamato then the Kremlin. I would like to know what it’s like for the Germans but it’s not a stat that seems to be available.

KM BB dispersion is not worse compared to FR BB.

[Miscommunication_dept]

1 minute ago, ColonelPete said:

KM BB dispersion is not worse compared to FR BB.

They used to share the same pattern for horizontal dispersion but now German battleships use the superior USN model. Vertical dispersion is a hidden stat that seems to make a big difference.

This graphic shows vertical dispersion:

[ColonelPete]

9 minutes ago, gopher31 said:

They used to share the same pattern for horizontal dispersion but now German battleships use the superior USN model.

That is why it is not worse than the FR BB.

[BlackYeti]

56 minutes ago, gopher31 said:

Do you happen to know anything about  vertical dispersion? I understand it is far worse in the Yamato then the Kremlin. I would like to know what it’s like for the Germans but it’s not a stat that seems to be available.

It used to be bad but got buffed. Now germans have the exact same dispersion curve as US and UK bbs. Bad german dispersion is mostly a myth now, if anything its because of slotting secondary module instead of aiming systems.

[HaachamaShipping]

5 hours ago, Panocek said:

Did I mention German BBs are famous for their lack of accuracy as part of their "brawling" gimmick? For "big gun" tier 6 BB that one can actually attempt to hit stuff with, Queen Elizabeth or premium Warspite, West Virginia or Mutsu to the rescue. Bonus points for you if you study how German BB armor plating changes with tiers up

Bayern has literally the same accuracy as West Virginia though... And at shorter ranges outperforms the Mutsu. PEF beats both.

[Ze_Reckless]

I didn't like the Bayern before the accuracy buff, now it's actually fun to play. In general, all german BBs feel a lot more consistent.

There is only one thing that helps against overpens: Know your targets. Sometimes it is better to take a worse angle (80° vs 90°) or aim at different parts of a ship, e.g. the 380s can pen the nose of most targets.

[Miscommunication_dept]

9 hours ago, ColonelPete said:

That is why it is not worse than the FR BB.

 

8 hours ago, BlackYeti said:

It used to be bad but got buffed. Now germans have the exact same dispersion curve as US and UK bbs. Bad german dispersion is mostly a myth now, if anything its because of slotting secondary module instead of aiming systems.

Ive said this about the Horizontal dispersion and therefore agree with both of you.

I am asking about VERTICAL dispersion.

Beyond the statement by Sub Octavian stating that IJN battleships have poor vertical dispersion and the graphic above, I have seen little information about it.

 

Sigma and horizontal Dispersion are known parameters when it comes to accuracy in WOWS but do not tell the whole story. Vertical dispersion is a semi hidden stat that seems to be unrelated to both horizontal dispersion and shell speed.

 

Better understanding of vertical dispersion may help us to understand why some ships seem to have better or worse accuracy then one would expect from available stats.

[1MajorKoenig]

11 hours ago, ColonelPete said:

the problem of Bayern is that she got WW1 shells and slow reload, while Normandie got interwar/WW2 shells with historical reload

I think that is exactly the problem. 8 guns with BB dispersion and 30sec reload just feel very meh unless the accuracy would be „good“.

 

Solution is simply: give Bayern her historical 23 sec reload