ST 0.9.11 - 0.9.12, new ships. (DB 90)

[Tanatoy]

Hi,

 

Italian battleships Dante Alighieri, Conte di Cavour, Lepanto, and Marco Polo, as well as Pan-Asian destroyer Fen Yang and Commonwealth destroyer Vampire II were added to the game for testing.

 

Read more.

 

Please note that all information in the development blog is preliminary and subject to change during testing. Any showcased features may or may not end up on the main server. The final information will be published on our game's website.

[lafeel]

As expected Cavour comes in her pre refit state.

 

Nice on Feng Yang and Vampire, and Marco Polo looks interesting.

[TomsonPRD]

While Cristoforo Colombo for the T10 is a pretty inappropriate name (especially considering the concurrent existence of an Italian training vessel of the same name, sistership of the famous Vespucci from 1926 to 1963), Marco Polo is unfortunately even worse. For a start, the only warship ever named after him was an armored cruiser laid down in distant 1890, not even reaching 5.000 tons of displacement. As many others have pointed out, it would be like naming a Japanese battleship Suzutsuki, a H-39 Prinz Heinrich or another Montana-class USS Chicago. And in the 1930/40s, as you can see in this official 1931 document for RM Naming Conventions, capital ships' names were starting to steer towards figures of the Risorgimento, Admirals, new Provinces, fundamental concepts of the Nation, the Savoy dinasty or great victories. 

You put an exceptional amount of logic into the addition of Alighieri, original Cavour, Andrea Doria and Caracciolo (albeit with terrible gun mounts), but then something happened and what we got is a second Roma copy-paste (please, please Lesta, use a bit of the time saved from modeling a T3 to make those two simple changes), a questionable T9 and an absurd T10. 

We all know how much you care about "consistency" in the progression of Tech Tree branches: so, just like last year's correction of Verona/Torino/Milano in the far better and more appropriate Amalfi/Brindisi/Venezia (for which you have my most sincere gratitude), the T8 Italian Battleship is named after the notorious battle of Vittorio Veneto, and you did the same with Lepanto and the 1571 naval engagement: why not change a totally incongrous name such as Marco Polo into something like Piave? 
Other options, as noted by Phoenix_jz, would be Patria, Unità, Costituzione, Re (or Re d'Italia), Isonzo, Enrico Dandolo, Francesco Morosini, Giuseppe Mazzini, Vittorio Emanuele II and Regina Elena. There are just so many other choices that would fit late Regia Marina naming conventions.

[Toivia]

Marco Polo, as predicted by people, is the freemium, only Italian BB with larger than 15inch guns.

Curious thing is it gets SAP but not the Exhaust smoke. So it sorta ties the current italian premium BBs with the upcoming reserachable ones.

Depending on where the BB SAP ends up balanced at, it might be a sweet fast and stealthy BB.

 

Fen Yang, unless I'm missing something (other than the Asashio style deep water torps), looks to be basically an even better version of Akizuki, which is terrifying, to be honest. Maybe it lacks the quarter pen of IJN 100mm guns?

 

Vampire II looks kinda fine. Terrifying for other DDs that get caught close (say like with Haida) but somewhat limited against capital ships. Then again, Daring does fine thanks to fire setting, so...

[Aetius85]

11 minutes ago, TomsonPRD said:

While Cristoforo Colombo for the T10 is a pretty inappropriate name (especially considering the concurrent existence of an Italian training vessel of the same name, sistership of the famous Vespucci from 1926 to 1963), Marco Polo is unfortunately even worse. For a start, the only warship ever named after him was an armored cruiser laid down in distant 1890, not even reaching 5.000 tons of displacement. As many others have pointed out, it would be like naming a Japanese battleship Suzutsuki, a H-39 Prinz Heinrich or another Montana-class USS Chicago. And in the 1930/40s, as you can see in this official 1931 document for RM Naming Conventions, capital ships' names were starting to steer towards figures of the Risorgimento, Admirals, new Provinces, fundamental concepts of the Nation, the Savoy dinasty or the (limited) great victories of WW1. 

You put an exceptional amount of logic into the addition of Alighieri, original Cavour, Andrea Doria and Caracciolo (albeit with terrible gun mounts), but then something happened and what we got is a second Roma copy-paste (please, please Lesta, make those two simple model changes), a questionable T9 and an absurd T10. 

We all know how much you care about "consistency" in the progression of Tech Tree branches: so, just like last year's correction of Verona/Torino/Milano in the far better and more appropriate Amalfi/Brindisi/Venezia (for which you have my most sincere gratitude), the T8 Italian Battleship is named after the notorious battle of Vittorio Veneto, and you did the same with Lepanto and the 1571 naval engagement: why not change a totally incongrous name such as Marco Polo into something like Piave? 
Other options, as noted by Phoenix_jz, would be Patria, Unità, Costituzione, Re (or Re d'Italia), Isonzo, Enrico Dandolo, Francesco Morosini, Giuseppe Mazzini, Vittorio Emanuele II and Regina Elena. There are just so many other choices that would fit late Regia Marina naming conventions.

I agree with you, especially, following the official naming convention book:

 

1) Lepanto, although was a pre-dreadnought battleship, in that book should be named for minelayers

2) Cristoforo Colombo and Marco Polo, as explorers, should be used for Training Ships (as Colombo was like her sister Vespucci)

 

In my opinion Costituzione/ Unità and Re d'Italia would be 3 great names for the t9/t10 and premium t9

 

 

[Astolfo_Is_My_Waifu]

Not sure what to make of the Italian BBs. Dante Alighieri and Conte di Cavour both look great. Lepanto looks surprisingly small for a tier 9 with a 12 gun salvo, but for a ship with 18km range she has a frankly massive 17.1km surface concealment and 15.8km smoke firing concealment. Much like CCs 17.8km surface concealment and (I assume) 16.4km smoke firing concealment I'm not entirely sure I see the point of them even having smoke.

 

Next we have what finally and most certainly appears to be a horribly named ship based on UP.41.

I assume we will see something like 115mm of penetration on the SAP, with SAP shell damage rivalling USN 457mm guns and the ability to overmatch 27mm of armor these seem very dangerous indeed, particularly for destroyers who can look forward to >5k regular penetration damage from these shells.

For lacking the smoke consumable she has a much better surface concealment compared to Lepanto.

I'm keen to see her armor scheme in more detail, but not as keen as I am to finally see her ingame.

Please do, though, increase the shell velocity.

 

Fen Yang seems like a frankly ridiculous idea.

A ship that is for most intents superior to Akizuki, with equal or superior stats in almost every category.

Slightly superior AA, the option of DFAA instead of engine boost, smoke with 20s less duration but 60s less recharge time, torpedos with 2km extra range that have half the reaction time of akizukis, 1.1s faster rudder shift and the ability to mount the PAN unique commanders with improved DE and SE.

And all it costs is 700 hp (19,700), 10s of torpedo reload time (122s) and the ability to torp cruisers and DDs?

Like I said, ridiculous.

 

Lastly, Vampire 11.

A tier 10 commonwealth DD based on Daring. Interesting but I'm not totally convinced.

1km additional range on Darings guns seems like a useless addition.

1k less HP than Daring is an unfortunate change.

The reload time of 3.5s which is 0.7s slower than Darings is quite a painful change, bringing her DPM down from Darings respectable 218k base DPM to a mere 175k.

Another painful reduction in the threat this ship poses is the loss of a torpedo launcher, removed to create more accomodation much like the real ship so little improvement to the AA to speak of here either. The reload time is even retained, the single launcher takes a full 125s to reload, not receiving the notable increase that Cossack did.

Manouverability mostly unchanged, although a tiny 0.2s increase in rudder shift time does exist.

Concealment remains identical.

So the most siginficant changes are all mostly reductions in her ability to fight, reduced DPM, reduced health, reduced torpedo capacity.

When we look at her consumables we can also see that repair party is gone, combined with reduced HP this further reduces Vampires ability to trade with other DDs quite substantially. In exchange she receives engine boost, not very useful on a ship whose benefits involve crawling and whos max speed is only 35knts as standard

All of the positive benefits of the ship are confined to the remaining two consumables;

90 seconds of crawling smoke with access to a 5km hydro that is actually better in terms of total parameters than even the German T9 Hydro. Whether crawling smoke is a viable/positive alternative to RN DD smoke for gunnery or rather just inferior is debatable.

So essentially, it's a tier 10 Haida. It has a few advantages over Haida generally (torps are a bit longer, hydro reaches a bit further, Vampire probably has the improved AP) and Haida works quite well at her tier but tier 10 is another thing entirely.

[lafeel]

3 hours ago, TomsonPRD said:

While Cristoforo Colombo for the T10 is a pretty inappropriate name (especially considering the concurrent existence of an Italian training vessel of the same name, sistership of the famous Vespucci from 1926 to 1963), Marco Polo is unfortunately even worse. For a start, the only warship ever named after him was an armored cruiser laid down in distant 1890, not even reaching 5.000 tons of displacement. As many others have pointed out, it would be like naming a Japanese battleship Suzutsuki, a H-39 Prinz Heinrich or another Montana-class USS Chicago. And in the 1930/40s, as you can see in this official 1931 document for RM Naming Conventions, capital ships' names were starting to steer towards figures of the Risorgimento, Admirals, new Provinces, fundamental concepts of the Nation, the Savoy dinasty or great victories. 

 

Actually Cristoforo Colombo happens to have been planned to be the name of the second Caracciolo class battleship so it's not entirely out of the question.

[WWDragon]

1 hour ago, lafeel said:

Actually Cristoforo Colombo happens to have been planned to be the name of the second Caracciolo class battleship so it's not entirely out of the question.

It is because, as pointed out, the official Regia Marine naming conventions of 1931 are the ones that should be used and not from 1915.

[alexkon3]

9 hours ago, TomsonPRD said:

While Cristoforo Colombo for the T10 is a pretty inappropriate name (especially considering the concurrent existence of an Italian training vessel of the same name, sistership of the famous Vespucci from 1926 to 1963), Marco Polo is unfortunately even worse. For a start, the only warship ever named after him was an armored cruiser laid down in distant 1890, not even reaching 5.000 tons of displacement. As many others have pointed out, it would be like naming a Japanese battleship Suzutsuki, a H-39 Prinz Heinrich or another Montana-class USS Chicago. And in the 1930/40s, as you can see in this official 1931 document for RM Naming Conventions, capital ships' names were starting to steer towards figures of the Risorgimento, Admirals, new Provinces, fundamental concepts of the Nation, the Savoy dinasty or great victories. 

You put an exceptional amount of logic into the addition of Alighieri, original Cavour, Andrea Doria and Caracciolo (albeit with terrible gun mounts), but then something happened and what we got is a second Roma copy-paste (please, please Lesta, use a bit of the time saved from modeling a T3 to make those two simple changes), a questionable T9 and an absurd T10. 

We all know how much you care about "consistency" in the progression of Tech Tree branches: so, just like last year's correction of Verona/Torino/Milano in the far better and more appropriate Amalfi/Brindisi/Venezia (for which you have my most sincere gratitude), the T8 Italian Battleship is named after the notorious battle of Vittorio Veneto, and you did the same with Lepanto and the 1571 naval engagement: why not change a totally incongrous name such as Marco Polo into something like Piave? 
Other options, as noted by Phoenix_jz, would be Patria, Unità, Costituzione, Re (or Re d'Italia), Isonzo, Enrico Dandolo, Francesco Morosini, Giuseppe Mazzini, Vittorio Emanuele II and Regina Elena. There are just so many other choices that would fit late Regia Marina naming conventions.

Yes, pls WG fix Vittorio Veneto and the names.

 

Roma, the only differently looking ship of the Littorio class, should NOT be the representative of the whole class. It looks vastly different compared to the rest. You always say how historical accurate the game is and how every ship is based on original blueprints, so why did you lower the bar when it comes to Italian Battleships? Why can you make the 2 Richelieus different from each other? The 2 Bismarcks? Why did it work here? I absolutely doubt you lack the funds for this. Pls overthink this and give VV her real model

[BruceRKF]

While I kind of like the new ships, I got a serious question: Low and mid tiers make less money and cost almost as much to make, I understand that. So can WG honestly and believably still say that they care for anything but high tiers with the huge amount of high tier premiums thrown out and almost nothing for lower tiers?

[Panocek]

3 hours ago, alexkon3 said:

I absolutely doubt you lack the funds for this

WG is perfectly aware of VV having different hull/overall design than Roma. They also are perfectly aware of amount of people caring about this can be counted on fingers of a single hand. So copy/paste is simply... cost efficiency - after all, time spent on reworking silver ship hull can be spent on copy/pasting premium ship that can be monetized directly.

[x_scheer109_x]

13 hours ago, TomsonPRD said:

While Cristoforo Colombo for the T10 is a pretty inappropriate name (especially considering the concurrent existence of an Italian training vessel of the same name, sistership of the famous Vespucci from 1926 to 1963), Marco Polo is unfortunately even worse. For a start, the only warship ever named after him was an armored cruiser laid down in distant 1890, not even reaching 5.000 tons of displacement. As many others have pointed out, it would be like naming a Japanese battleship Suzutsuki, a H-39 Prinz Heinrich or another Montana-class USS Chicago. And in the 1930/40s, as you can see in this official 1931 document for RM Naming Conventions, capital ships' names were starting to steer towards figures of the Risorgimento, Admirals, new Provinces, fundamental concepts of the Nation, the Savoy dinasty or great victories. 

I can just agree with it. However, it is now known that Wargaming does not care if names are plausible and appropriate. It's all about that they sound good. You can see it very well with the German ships.

[Toivia]

7 hours ago, x_scheer109_x said:

I can just agree with it. However, it is now known that Wargaming does not care if names are plausible and appropriate. It's all about that they sound good. You can see it very well with the German ships.

I beg to differ on that last sentence. Ludendorff sounds much better than Pommern for instance...

 

Either way, as much as I was along on the RM cruisers switching names from important yet not port cities to something more appropriate*, for the BBs, I'm kinda fine with the way they are now. It just feels Marco Polo and Christoforo Colombo should be used for large BBs. And frankly, the proposed different names sound terrible to me.

 

*I'm kinda regretting not having two beauties named Marceau and Milano at once in port, though.

[wot_2016_gunner]

@Toivia i agree; for me, as far as a name was used or proposed (ship was ordered but never completed) it's fine.

 

Btw, Cristoforo Colombo was not only the name of the Training vessel, but also it was supposed to be the 3rd Caracciolo class BB, but it never happened. 

Marco Polo was the name of an armoured cruiser, which makes it a little iffy for a BB, but, it was used, so i'm not complaining. 

This is Marco Polo

[Herwarth]

Seeing this is truly amazing, they did a great job with the models:

 

But it also highlights the disappointment of not getting Cuniberti's battleship as the italian Tier III. It shows how great it would look.

 

[x_scheer109_x]

8 hours ago, Toivia said:

Ludendorff sounds much better than Pommern for instance...

Is that meant ironically? Or did you get me wrong? Because actually I meant exactly the same...

[Toivia]

16 hours ago, x_scheer109_x said:

Is that meant ironically? Or did you get me wrong? Because actually I meant exactly the same...

Now I'm not sure anymore...

I'll lay down my opinions, let's see if we do agree or not.

 - Purely phonetically, I find "Ludendorff" sounds better than "Pommern".

 - As far as historical representation is concerned, "Luddendorff" is definitely a more fitting name than "Pommern".

 - However I kinda sorta understand the unwillingness of some people to see ingame a ship named for a person at least associated with nacism. Then again we have "Lenin" in game as well, so...

 - And well, WG did change the name from "Ludendorff" to "Pommern", so imo from a well sounding name a badly sounding one.

 

On 10/23/2020 at 8:56 PM, wot_2016_gunner said:

@Toivia i agree; for me, as far as a name was used or proposed (ship was ordered but never completed) it's fine.

 

Btw, Cristoforo Colombo was not only the name of the Training vessel, but also it was supposed to be the 3rd Caracciolo class BB, but it never happened. 

Marco Polo was the name of an armoured cruiser, which makes it a little iffy for a BB, but, it was used, so i'm not complaining. 

This is Marco Polo

Exactly, they are names previously proposed or used on ships (some even for BBs). And when you have Dante as a BB moniker, the explorer names are that much more fitting still.

 

Again, I understand they might not have been names specifically considered at the time such imaginary ships might have been built (had history gone differently), but I haven't really seen any much better alternatives, so...

 

[Herwarth]

 

3 hours ago, Toivia said:

- As far as historical representation is concerned, "Luddendorff" is definitely a more fitting name than "Pommern".

 - However I kinda sorta understand the unwillingness of some people to see ingame a ship named for a person at least associated with nacism. Then again we have "Lenin" in game as well, so...

- As far as historical representation goes, Neither the Weimar Republic nor the nazi regime would've named a ship "Luddendorff". The WR saw him as the extremist he was and he wanted to overthrow it, and he was also ejected from the nazi party for being into weird cultist crap too insane even for them.

- And Lenin isn't comparable to Hitler. Stalin is another matter entirely.

[wot_2016_gunner]

12 ore fa, Toivia ha scritto:

Now I'm not sure anymore...

I'll lay down my opinions, let's see if we do agree or not.

 - Purely phonetically, I find "Ludendorff" sounds better than "Pommern".

 - As far as historical representation is concerned, "Luddendorff" is definitely a more fitting name than "Pommern".

 - However I kinda sorta understand the unwillingness of some people to see ingame a ship named for a person at least associated with nacism. Then again we have "Lenin" in game as well, so...

 - And well, WG did change the name from "Ludendorff" to "Pommern", so imo from a well sounding name a badly sounding one.

 

Exactly, they are names previously proposed or used on ships (some even for BBs). And when you have Dante as a BB moniker, the explorer names are that much more fitting still.

 

Again, I understand they might not have been names specifically considered at the time such imaginary ships might have been built (had history gone differently), but I haven't really seen any much better alternatives, so...

 

Agreed; the issue with Ludendorff is that since it was named after some "questionable" person, it got some people triggered and WG changed the name. I just personally think they could have chose a better name.

 

About ITA BBs, the only "better" alternative (between air quotes because of personal opinion) is ITALIA, the name that was given to Littorio in July 1943 after the fall of the Fascist government; but again, Cristoforo Colombo was used, so it's fine.

 

Btw, Lepanto was a pre-dreadnought battleship (with 431mm/27 guns)

This is Lepanto

[Sandgroper13]

Introducing HMAS Vampire II seems lazy to me, when there was also Voyager and Vendetta to choose from as names.  Also a NZ ship would be nice if you're going to add to the commonwealth ships...

[wot_2016_gunner]

1 ora fa, Sandgroper13 ha scritto:

Introducing HMAS Vampire II seems lazy to me, when there was also Voyager and Vendetta to choose from as names.  Also a NZ ship would be nice if you're going to add to the commonwealth ships...

I think they chose Vampire because it's the one that it's still there as it is a museum ship.

[x_scheer109_x]

16 hours ago, Toivia said:

Now I'm not sure anymore...

I'll lay down my opinions, let's see if we do agree or not.

 - Purely phonetically, I find "Ludendorff" sounds better than "Pommern".

 - As far as historical representation is concerned, "Luddendorff" is definitely a more fitting name than "Pommern".

 - However I kinda sorta understand the unwillingness of some people to see ingame a ship named for a person at least associated with nacism. Then again we have "Lenin" in game as well, so...

 - And well, WG did change the name from "Ludendorff" to "Pommern", so imo from a well sounding name a badly sounding one.

Then we are of one opinion after all . "Ludendorff" not only sounded better than "Pommern", but also went well with "Friedrich der Große". If Wargaming had at least dealt with this topic, they could have saved themselves this whole discussion. But since we have names like Odin, Siegfried, Ähhgier and in the future also Brandenburg, Wargaming shows that it does not want to deal with the topic of names for German ships.

[ZaalKoris_vas_QwibQwib]

OK so I jumped in with something different, but I see that debate Ludendorff vs Pommern still rages on.

 

So it was decided and MrConway confirmed this live on Twitch that name was changed because (and that's accurate historically) Ludendorff was na awful man and he doesn't deserve the glorification. I dig that, no problem, but then we have (interesting) ships named for example:

 

- Stalingrad, akhem...

- Lenin, *cough*,

- Piotr Vielkij - just like Stalin only killed/worked to death half of its own citizens,

- Molotov,

- Richelieu, 

- Charles Martel * cough*

 

Do I need to continue? *cough* Must be covid all that coughs. If you intend to run politically correct ship names do that for everything not just one.  

 

*****

 

Anyway that's aside. I would like to propose tiny modification to the Italian T10 Colombo (seriously this name - just like Pommern argument). It will literally take 30 seconds to do it, just press Shift+D/Alt+D (or whatever shortcut you have for duplication) and put in the turret D mesh coordinates which you already have. Empty roof of turret D spoils the effect for me, this will overall improve the silhouette of the ship from purely aesthetically point of view. It won't break the game/model as extra 2 AA mounts will raise the short range aura maybe by 5 points in total, in short: irrelevant.

 

 

 

 

[Astolfo_Is_My_Waifu]

44 minutes ago, ZaalKoris_vas_QwibQwib said:

Anyway that's aside. I would like to propose tiny modification to the Italian T10 Colombo (seriously this name - just like Pommern argument). It will literally take 30 seconds to do it, just press Shift+D/Alt+D (or whatever shortcut you have for duplication) and put in the turret D mesh coordinates which you already have. Empty roof of turret D spoils the effect for me, this will overall improve the silhouette of the ship from purely aesthetically point of view. It won't break the game/model as extra 2 AA mounts will raise the short range aura maybe by 5 points in total, in short: irrelevant.

 

But AA mounts on the A turret would stop the B turret from being able to depress for short range fire...

[Herwarth]

Here's the ultimate reason why no german ship would've EVER been named Ludendorff in the 1920s, 30s or 40s:

• The Weimar Republic hated him for being an extreme right anti-republican coup monger who constantly spoke about abolishing the entire system and establishing a dictatorship.
• The german military didn't particularly like him because he did establish a dictatorship towards the end of WWI and lost the damn war, then spent his postwar years complaining about the military high command.
• The nazis expelled him from the party for being too insane, EVEN FOR THEM, and for costing them a lot of prestige in his failed presidential election in 1925, an election in which he ignored Hitler's instructions and tried to take over the party.
• The people of Germany didn't care for him all that much, as was evidenced in his electoral failure.

So tell me, under which circumstances would any of these groups, the Weimar Republic, the Reichswehr/Wehrmacht, the nazi government or even the german people as a whole, propose naming one of their main battleships after him?

 

All of the ships mentioned, Stalingrad, Lenin, Piotr Vielkij, Molotov, Richelieu, Charles Martel, were either based on existing ships, named like real ships or taken from the names their countries planned to use.