Roma - Tier VIII Premium Italian BB suggestion

[Historynerd]

Funny; the Abruzzi's guns are given a stupenduous RoF, the Roma's (which were the same model IRL) are kept down at the IRL rate of fire, and shoot useless potatoes.

 

It is consistent with WG's saying "Hey, this is not a secondary build BB, choose other options!", but it's funny nonetheless.

[Affeks]

2 minutes ago, Historynerd said:

Funny; the Abruzzi's guns are given a stupenduous RoF, the Roma's (which were the same model IRL) are kept down at the IRL rate of fire, and shoot useless potatoes.

 

It is consistent with WG's saying "Hey, this is not a secondary build BB, choose other options!", but it's funny nonetheless.

WG just doesnt want players to have the option to choose different builds

 

its obvious they want every BB to grab CE/fire survivability build

[Historynerd]

Just now, Affeks said:

WG just doesnt want players to have the option to choose different builds

 

its obvious they want every BB to grab CE/fire survivability build

If you're a BB, and you have to deal with the RN competitors (aka "I just want to watch the world burn"), that seems a pretty foregone choice. Especially if you can angle real well and have nice belt armor; therefore even skippers willing to try out AP once in a while will just switch over to HE.

 

But let me say, it would've been pretty comical, to have WG whip up a ship with secondaries... with this concealment!

[Affeks]

Just now, Historynerd said:

If you're a BB, and you have to deal with the RN competitors (aka "I just want to watch the world burn"), that seems a pretty foregone choice. Especially if you can angle real well and have nice belt armor; therefore even skippers willing to try out AP once in a while will just switch over to HE.

 

But let me say, it would've been pretty comical, to have WG whip up a ship with secondaries... with this concealment!

yeh

 

but tbh I dont want BBs to have this concealment anyways

 

Id rather have buffed secondaries on all BBs and have the concealment nerfed. Not because it would make BBs stronger, BUT BECAUSE IT DOESNT CONFUSE THE WHOLE GAMES SHIP TYPE SYSTEM

[Historynerd]

Eh... what can I say?

 

To be completely honest, I don't mind the "smallish range, great concealment" as embodied by the Cesare; it's a more challenging style to me than the "point bow towards enemy base, point guns at enemy ships, pew pew pew" style that I can find in, say, New Mexico.

It looks different here, though, and the Roma's saving grace is that, unlike Cesare, she has the armor to survive if she's forced into a fight you did not want to have.

 

However, I cannot say anything definitive until I get my hands on her. I do look forward to her, I merely hope I can pull it off.

[Affeks]

6 minutes ago, Historynerd said:

Eh... what can I say?

 

To be completely honest, I don't mind the "smallish range, great concealment" as embodied by the Cesare; it's a more challenging style to me than the "point bow towards enemy base, point guns at enemy ships, pew pew pew" style that I can find in, say, New Mexico.

It looks different here, though, and the Roma's saving grace is that, unlike Cesare, she has the armor to survive if she's forced into a fight you did not want to have.

 

However, I cannot say anything definitive until I get my hands on her. I do look forward to her, I merely hope I can pull it off.

Sure stealthy is fine, but when it outspots most cruisers something is fundamentally wrong.

 

Thats why I was fine with NC for example... but Monarch/Rome really doesnt leave a nice aftertaste

[Historynerd]

1 minute ago, Affeks said:

Sure stealthy is fine, but when it outspots most cruisers something is fundamentally wrong.

 

Thats why I was fine with NC for example... but Monarch/Rome really doesnt leave a nice aftertaste

Only when there are no CVs around, or even spotters, same as it goes for the GC. Planes can keep you alight, allowing the other ships to ruin your day, or at least be warned that you're creeping about.

The Roma seems somewhat less weak than the GC in this, though, also because you can equip a fighter instead of a spotter; still, it's a weakness that helps counterbalance that strength.

[Affeks]

1 minute ago, Historynerd said:

Only when there are no CVs around, or even spotters, same as it goes for the GC. Planes can keep you alight, allowing the other ships to ruin your day, or at least be warned that you're creeping about.

The Roma seems somewhat less weak than the GC in this, though, also because you can equip a fighter instead of a spotter; still, it's a weakness that helps counterbalance that strength.

DDs and Cruisers suffer a lot more from plane spotting than Roma or GC does, you cant really say its a weakness either of those has.

[Historynerd]

Just now, Affeks said:

DDs and Cruisers suffer a lot more from plane spotting than Roma or GC does, you cant really say its a weakness either of those has.

In both these ships you have weapons and countermeasures that the Roma or the GC don't have. Cruisers can pop the DFAA consumable; DD can pop up the smoke. Both are way smaller targets than a battleship, especially than the Roma. They have a speed advantage and can disengage faster.

Concealment is something that a destroyer and, somewhat less, a cruiser is supposed to have and is part of his gameplay to a degree, even though we should differentiate between lines, since it's not the same thing for everybody.

A concealment-geared BB is something highly unusual. When you deprive such a BB of its concealment, it's a bigger loss for it.

[Affeks]

Just now, Historynerd said:

In both these ships you have weapons and countermeasures that the Roma or the GC don't have. Cruisers can pop the DFAA consumable; DD can pop up the smoke. Both are way smaller targets than a battleship, especially than the Roma. They have a speed advantage and can disengage faster.

Concealment is something that a destroyer and, somewhat less, a cruiser is supposed to have and is part of his gameplay to a degree, even though we should differentiate between lines, since it's not the same thing for everybody.

A concealment-geared BB is something highly unusual. When you deprive such a BB of its concealment, it's a bigger loss for it.

Okay you are objectively wrong again.

 

CVs can spot the overwhelming majority of Cruisers outside of their AA bubble (even with AA range buffs) making DFAA absolutely useless. Even then many Cruisers use Hydro as well, leaving them with base AA values that BBs beat to the ground. 

 

On the other hand forcing a DD to pop smoke is not a countermeasure, its a last resort. When you use smoke you set yourself up to losing a lot of potential information and sets you up to be ambushed by DDs or cruiser sneaking up to your smoke. In addition staying in smoke for an extended period of time is a good way to get yourself torped.

 

leaving a BB deprived of concealment is a much smaller hit for varius reasons. Generally better range, generally more HP, generally better armor, can actually heal damage taken, can very often pen angled targets meaning they dont rely on sneaking up on broadsides as much, generally BBs dont rely on speed as much as other classes and as we all know speed and concealment is a very good combination.

 

Its just wrong to say that BBs need concealment more than other classes.

[Historynerd]

So, it's fundamentally and objectively wrong for a BB conceived to rely on her concealment, to have good concealment?

Especially since you seem to conveniently forget that, against planes, the advantage of these battleships in terms of concealment goes into negative range, no less than -4,38 km...

 

Air detectability range (km):

Roma - 13,35 

New Orleans - 7,5 

Mogami - 8,49

Edinburgh - 8,13

Charles Martel - 8,16

Chapayev - 8,04

Admiral Hipper - 8,97

 

And if you're spotted, what happens?

No big deal, you got armor! But the enemy might just spam HE... or aim for the upper belt... or aim for the turrets to disable them (in quite a few videos the Roma lost a turret)...

You got the heal! But you might be out of those...

You got the range! But what if you're lighted up outside of your 18 km range, your spotter is in cooldown and some enemy BBs decide to snipe just for the lulz?

You can WASD hack! Sure... except your mobility is nowhere near the levels of what a cruiser or a destroyer can do...

 

This is kind of a worst case scenario, I admit, but I want to bring home the point how a battleship tuned for concealment can actually suffer, if you meet planes in the hands of someone who knows his stuff and chooses you as a priority, and the fact you're a battleship doesn't mean you can laugh it off unlike CL/CAs or DDs, or you can automatically return damage for damage.

[piritskenyer]

1 hour ago, Historynerd said:

So, it's fundamentally and objectively wrong for a BB conceived to rely on her concealment, to have good concealment?

Especially since you seem to conveniently forget that, against planes, the advantage of these battleships in terms of concealment goes into negative range, no less than -4,38 km...

 

Air detectability range (km):

Roma - 13,35 

New Orleans - 7,5 

Mogami - 8,49

Edinburgh - 8,13

Charles Martel - 8,16

Chapayev - 8,04

Admiral Hipper - 8,97

 

And if you're spotted, what happens?

No big deal, you got armor! But the enemy might just spam HE... or aim for the upper belt... or aim for the turrets to disable them (in quite a few videos the Roma lost a turret)...

You got the heal! But you might be out of those...

You got the range! But what if you're lighted up outside of your 18 km range, your spotter is in cooldown and some enemy BBs decide to snipe just for the lulz?

You can WASD hack! Sure... except your mobility is nowhere near the levels of what a cruiser or a destroyer can do...

 

This is kind of a worst case scenario, I admit, but I want to bring home the point how a battleship tuned for concealment can actually suffer, if you meet planes in the hands of someone who knows his stuff and chooses you as a priority, and the fact you're a battleship doesn't mean you can laugh it off unlike CL/CAs or DDs, or you can automatically return damage for damage.

 

Not to sound like an A-hole, but...

 

Why are you comparing a BB's concealment in any shape or form against cruisers? Most cruisers rely on their concealment to not get chewed on by BB's all the time. I for one find the recent trend of BB's being able to sneak up on cruisers just disgusting, frankly. With all the things BB's have going for them (survivability, range, alpha strike, AA) last thing they need is to be as much or more concealed than cruisers. The other day a Lion dropped a broadside on me from concealment at a range of 11.5 km's, while I was in an Ibuki, trying to do my job and burning things. I stood no chance, because he just wrecked every single thing on the ship, and 26 seconds later he killed me with another broadside.

 

You may think that "yeah, but cruisers are still more stealthy than BB's", well, F that. Most cruisers need to be firing constantly to do their job well, which means their detection range is always full on, but BB's naturally restealth, as it takes them longer than 20 seconds to reload.
Sure, one must know when to hold their fire, but it's not always pőossible to stop shooting in the heat of battle. A BB sneaking as close as 10.4 or even 11.5 km's is not only too much for comfort, it's also too close to avoid and then comes down to pure luck if they delete you or not. Which is indeed a favourable way to fight in war, but this is a game...

[phoenix_jz]

6 hours ago, Affeks said:

with IFHE the 90mms has 19.5mm of pen.. so idk if it actually helps pen the 19mm threshold. Cause if the value round down it will not pen, but if it rounds up to 20mm then it will at least pen DD hulls and BB superstructures.

 

On the other hand though, a fatal flaw on Romas secondary loadout is that the 152mm guns shoot AP at a very slow 12 second reload. So they at least need to shoot HE if a secondary build would ever be worth it.

 

Although if the 152 shoot HE then IFHE would buff the pen from not being able to pen 25mm plating to be able to even pen 32mm.

 

5 always rounds up, so that's 20mm of penetration, so it'll penetrate up to 19mm of armor.

 

The question is, are you ever going to be willing to drop an extra 4 point on IFHE? I would say it's not worth it, there are plenty of better choices for captain skill picks.

[SparvieroVV]

@Historynerd

 

Indeed the treatment of the 152/55 secondary turret is an interesting quandary. 12 second reload is...special? We've seen high caliber secondaries for other nations get HE. Italian HE is already terribad with game mechanics so I'm not really sure which is best AP or HE. The reload time would make sense if the 152/55 was given a GZ style sigma buff and ranged out a kilometer or so to say "NO!" to any yolo destroyers or cruisers. Although I expect no changes to secondaries so please don't let that be your takeaway!

 

I was really hoping for some normalization or autobounce blessings for the 381mm round and it is is 381 not the 380 some people keep posting. However I admit my dreams of normilization and autobounce bonuses are fan boy territory and not an actual expectation. However I will just consider this to be Hipper style don't expect anything unless target is full broadside. Anything else is a bonus. 

[Historynerd]

4 hours ago, piritskenyer said:

Not to sound like an A-hole, but...

 

Why are you comparing a BB's concealment in any shape or form against cruisers? Most cruisers rely on their concealment to not get chewed on by BB's all the time. I for one find the recent trend of BB's being able to sneak up on cruisers just disgusting, frankly. With all the things BB's have going for them (survivability, range, alpha strike, AA) last thing they need is to be as much or more concealed than cruisers. The other day a Lion dropped a broadside on me from concealment at a range of 11.5 km's, while I was in an Ibuki, trying to do my job and burning things. I stood no chance, because he just wrecked every single thing on the ship, and 26 seconds later he killed me with another broadside.

 

You may think that "yeah, but cruisers are still more stealthy than BB's", well, F that. Most cruisers need to be firing constantly to do their job well, which means their detection range is always full on, but BB's naturally restealth, as it takes them longer than 20 seconds to reload.
Sure, one must know when to hold their fire, but it's not always pőossible to stop shooting in the heat of battle. A BB sneaking as close as 10.4 or even 11.5 km's is not only too much for comfort, it's also too close to avoid and then comes down to pure luck if they delete you or not. Which is indeed a favourable way to fight in war, but this is a game...

Because concealment was brought up as something that battleships can dispense with, while cruisers have to hold on it for dear life, even if they are meant to have good one and their stats are tweaked around that.

 

Besides, I don't want to incite a discussion, but it's not like cruisers are merely the moles in a "whack-a-mole" game played by the battleships. Flamu's complaints at least highlight that, while the Roma's guns are quite fond of citadels, they don't have any special overmatching mechanic that allows them to laugh at heavily angled targets.

Now, I know that in several cases a cruiser cannot just angle as he wishes, because angling towards an opponent means broadsiding another, so it's a choice between two Weevils...

Spoiler

...But Flamu's actions show that sometimes BB skippers are too fond of the "shoot at the waterline" mindset (I admit I'm guilty of this), even when a cruiser is angled, while sometimes it might be a better idea to shoot higher, perhaps try to take out the turrets or something.

Also, allow me to observe that, it's difficult for a BB to restealth while reloading, in the case I was mentioning above, i.e. a cheeky CV skipper wanting you to remain lighted up, and also, not all, but many cruisers have other weapons other than guns to try and drain a battlewagon's HP, namely torpedoes.

And allow me that to mention AA about the Italian BBs is rather useless. The Roma might be somewhat better, I'm waiting for what LWM might say about that to be certain, but the Cesare can only rely on its rudder to try and avoid a carrier's planes, and must feel happy if it can drop one or two planes tops, if you're lucky, in an attack.

 

Also, I find that those points are rather... generalizing. We're not talking about the whole battleship population here, we're talking about two Italian battleships, who happened to be chosen by WG as sporting a concealment-based concept. I'm not saying it was the only one nor the best way to bring them into the game or to give them a flavour, but that's how they are given to us, and while it is our right and duty to provide feedback, positive or negative that may be, I am willing to play along and see if they can be workable.

I'm not 100% convinced they are balanced (the Cesare, about which I stated multiple times I'd welcome a sensible nerf to HE alpha and fire chance) or going to be (the Roma, whose balance I found however rearranged by the emergence of AP bombs). But, for all my game stats and my opinion are valid for, I'd like to give them a try.

[Historynerd]

Sorry for the double post, I wanted to link Flamu's new video.

 

He seems quite impressed by the armor, and it seems really tanky.

Again with the guns' "trollishness", but I keep believing they are fine. Although I keep saying I'd like to see at least once how the HE shells feel; I get the AP are nice, but even against DD I think the effort to switch ammo types could be made...

One thing I noticed is that it's not that infrequent to lose a turret. Main Armaments Modification 1 seems a must have.

[SmartassNoob]

Yeah, I've seen a few videos too where it loses a turret.

 

This video is also not a good representation of the armor. He was constantly in smoke and bow-taking most of the time.

[Affeks]

On 12/6/2017 at 4:53 PM, phoenix_jz said:

 

5 always rounds up, so that's 20mm of penetration, so it'll penetrate up to 19mm of armor.

 

The question is, are you ever going to be willing to drop an extra 4 point on IFHE? I would say it's not worth it, there are plenty of better choices for captain skill picks.

IFHE or manual secondaries are never competitive IMO, not even on German BBs like GK.

 

A concealment/fire survivability build is just sooo much more consistent and usefull ingame currently.

 

THen again I go with an IFHE secondary build on my GK because its fun.

 

So I just hope WG makes it so that you actually CAN use IFHE or Manual secondaries and get some actual performance out of it. I dont need it to be competitive, but I want to play around with it at least.

On 12/6/2017 at 6:10 PM, SparvieroVV said:

Italian HE is already terribad with game mechanics so I'm not really sure which is best AP or HE. 

HE will still be leagues stronger. AP is so damn situational on secondaries its never going to be worth it. The AP will shatter on BB broadsides, bounce on DDs and overpen superstructures. Sure if AP secondaries had some artificial accuracy buff or a different way of aiming I might change my mind, but no such luck. AP secondaries also lose all their punch at range compared to HE, idk if youve tried using Duca AP at range but damn it has some terrible velocity retention and zero shell weight which means zero pen at range.

[SparvieroVV]

200 point hits are fine. 

[Affeks]

3 hours ago, SparvieroVV said:

200 point hits are fine. 

THen you realise the AP hits do 0

 

I have experimented so much with secondaries to the point I'm ashamed for it.. and trust me you want to avoid AP secondaries as much as possible.

[SparvieroVV]

3 hours ago, Affeks said:

THen you realise the AP hits do 0

 

I have experimented so much with secondaries to the point I'm ashamed for it.. and trust me you want to avoid AP secondaries as much as possible.

 

I had reset my Nagato captain from manual secondaries to only have two Destroyers just sit off my stern and laugh. The secondaries on this ship just mock me. Bismarck secondaries seemed more psychological after the fire chance reduction. It just seems silly to have these large secondary turrets that seem less than useful. So yes I would be a little peeved to wait twelve seconds to have a battery maybe bounce one round. 

[deBanfield]

When is the RM 'Roma' being released?

[SmartassNoob]

Soon™

 

Could be as early as christmas, but it could also be around the time the french battleships are released. And they're not even in the tree yet.

[SparvieroVV]

8 hours ago, deBanfield said:

When is the RM 'Roma' being released?

 

RN Roma

 

————-

 

so many ships ahead ahead of the Roma in the queue and I imagine Duke of York and Scharnhorst bundles will dovetail the campaign with loot boxes. WG will wait for wallets to recover before tossing out 120€ Roma bundles. 

[Verdius]

And her sigma just got nerfed to 1.8

Because apparently WG really wants stealth BBs