World of Warships

[Thanas]

Oh, didn't realize there was a separate BC tier.

[Jub]

That assumes that the tech tree hasn't changed drastically at this stage.

[Elheru Aran]

Man, that was fun. Actually had a little battleship duel with another SC. Textbook circling around trading broadsides. For once being slow worked in my favour, he started out with perfect health-- I guess he was hiding on the other side of the map or something-- but by the time he got to the flag the cruisers had started to chip away at his health until he was a bit below me... Oh, and I blew up a Chester with two citadel hits. That was awesome

[Dominus Atheos]

Oh, didn't realize there was a separate BC tier.

There isn't one yet.

[Borgholio]

Man, that was fun. Actually had a little battleship duel with another SC. Textbook circling around trading broadsides. For once being slow worked in my favour, he started out with perfect health-- I guess he was hiding on the other side of the map or something-- but by the time he got to the flag the cruisers had started to chip away at his health until he was a bit below me... Oh, and I blew up a Chester with two citadel hits. That was awesome

I actually manged to score a citadel hit on a battleship with my St Louis. One good broadside from a long enough distance to penetrate his deck armor with HE shells. BOOM. Oh he was not happy with that one.

[Sea Skimmer]

There may not be any carriers as Germany never had any.

Well Graf Zeppelin was launched in 1938 as I see you noticed, but also they also did some serious work on converting the incomplete heavy cruiser Seydlitz into a carrier. Germany indeed had ample paper studies, and over a vast range of sizes from 10,000 to 70,000 tons, the later usually hybrids with one or two 28cm turrets, so I'm really not seeing the problem given how popular Germany will be as a faction, and the fact that something as borderline fake as Myogi is already in the game.

They are going to need a fair number of paper ships to balance out the game overall, the UK for example has cruiser designs that actually got weaker as time went on. So they have to pull out one of those 1942 era 9.2in paper monsters for the top end, or something. Much the same story with UK destroyers too.

Maybe the seven turret Dido can be a negative premium ship you have to pay not to use?

I actually manged to score a citadel hit on a battleship with my St Louis. One good broadside from a long enough distance to penetrate his deck armor with HE shells. BOOM. Oh he was not happy with that one.

Yeah... I really question that the games armor actually works anything like armor sometimes because of stuff like that. It seems to be more of a probability bias then actual hit boxes on the ship a lot of the time.

Though I just had something equally comical, game is nearly over, someone yells out a warning of a battleship on our flag and we only have three ships left, two of us had just sunk a battleship and a St Louis together, I spin my mighty Phoenix around, and fire one broadside... one shell hits and the offending Kongo sinks! Hit points are cool.

[Jub]

Just pretend every ship in the game is crewed by rate of fire over property magazine safety era Brits and things start to make a lot more sense.

[Elheru Aran]

Last game, 5 kills, and the last one I take by ramming. Wooooo. Happy captain right here That was fun...

[Jub]

I wish I had known how to record things back in the CBT. I was playing a carrier and ended up accidently torping myself while trying to torpedo an enemy carrier that ended up ramming me. In the end both of us were dead, and I got the last kill of the game.

[Elheru Aran]

That must've been something to see Another hilarious bit that happened in the 5-kill game-- two Chikumas on the opposing team T-boned each other trying to get at me as I sailed past them. Amateurs.

[Jub]

I think it could have made one of Jingle's videos had I recorded it.

[Thanas]

What is an L28?
And why H41 instead of the H42? H41 Seems rather undergunned.

[Jub]

No idea what an L28 is, it wouldn't be the first time Wargaming has made up classifications or otherwise misused a name to the confusion of all involved.

As for why the H41, I think that has to do with Wargamming not wanting to have ships armed with anything larger than 18" gun in the game. It seems rather silly given that we know 20" guns were tested IRL, but I guess they didn't want to overshadow the Yamato with a paper design.

[Thanas]

No idea what an L28 is, it wouldn't be the first time Wargaming has made up classifications or otherwise misused a name to the confusion of all involved.

As for why the H41, I think that has to do with Wargamming not wanting to have ships armed with anything larger than 18" gun in the game. It seems rather silly given that we know 20" guns were tested IRL, but I guess they didn't want to overshadow the Yamato with a paper design.

Well I am just wondering. I mean, the US at least got SH shells for the Montana or something but how are the Brits and Germans supposed to match the Victory?


***********************

Ok, now back to the game. This looks quite interesting, I don't know if I have a lot of time to commit to it, but is there some kind of noob faq?

For example, do the factions play differently?

[Jub]

This was posted on page five, but I figure that it ought to give you a general idea of how the factions play.

When it comes to BBs the Japanese tend to have the faster ships with much longer ranges on their main batteries but they generally don't manoeuvre as well, can be spotted from a greater distance, and have worse AA guns. There isn't a ton to say here beyond that.

For cruisers the biggest difference is that (outside of the Pheonix and Omaha class ships) American ships don't get torpedos what they do get is better guns, with turrets that rotate faster and better AA. The Japanese are much more focused on offense and getting a torpedo run off while the American ships want to try to stick with a buddy and use their AA fire to keep him safe.

For the destroyers, it's similar to cruisers but the Americans do get torpedos. American torpedos tend to be slow and short range, but their guns are actually worth using and can turn fast enough to let you make hard turns while holding a target in your sights. The Japanese have guns that you can go entire games without firing but have much longer range torpedos (think 10 km versus 4.5-5.5 km) that also move faster.

In carriers, the US get fewer air wings but more planes per wing. It seems most people think the Japanese carriers are somewhat overly powerful right now, but I find carriers to be dull to play so really can't say much here.

As for HE versus AP the consensus is that HE is very good right now. However if you can reliably penetrate something going for citadel hits with AP will do loads more damage than AP so don't get locked into the HE spam mentality that so many people have.

[Thanas]

Thankks.

Also, any good gameplay videos or guys to follow on twitch?

[Jub]

If you can get past the fact that he isn't the greatest player ever the Mighty Jingles is informative and entertaining if you want something with less humor try Side Strafe. Beyond those two, I haven't really sought out other sources for gameplay videos.

[Thanas]

Both on twitch or youtube?

[Jub]

I watch both on youtube. Jingles and SideStrafe.

[Nephtys]

Basic food chart.

Carriers > BBs > Cruisers > American Destroyers > Jap Destroyers > BBs+Carriers.
In effect, Japanese Destroyers can play the game of 'spam torps at long range while evading'. This is annoying more than it is effective.
American Destroyers have horrifically bad range. BUT if you're firing within 3 KM anyway, nobody's going to be able to dodge your torps... so it's just telling you to use better tactics anyway. American Destroyer guns are substantially stronger, so that USN DDs will prey on Japanese DDs hard.

One crazy thing I just found out: Many ships with the useless Sonar gear can swap it out for enhanced flak powers! I just realized this was a Cleveland ability (under 'consumables') and swapped to it immediately. Saved me and a friendly BB from several torp bomber waves.

[Sea Skimmer]

No idea what an L28 is

Real ship. High speed 1918 German battleship project with 6 x 42cm guns. I am vastly less then impressed with that fan chart overall though.

As for why the H41, I think that has to do with Wargamming not wanting to have ships armed with anything larger than 18" gun in the game.

Some of the people supporting them on the research end of things I vaguely know from years ago said the general concept was not to go above ~60,000 ton class ships. Little exists to support the notion that bigger guns would have actually been more effective in action either; while a fair pile of data suggests about a 42cm gun was actually about the biggest that made any real sense. If you factored in barrel life a 14in gun was optimal; but generally that was not relevant to naval combat, as 16in weapons could still have good enough lifespans.

It seems rather silly given that we know 20" guns were tested IRL, but I guess they didn't want to overshadow the Yamato with a paper design.

No 20 inch battleship gun is actually known to have been tested. The largest naval weapon to see firing trials was a Japanese 48cm gun which produced less then impressive results. The basic problem is that declaring you shall build a bigger gun does not make steel get stronger. Yet the bigger the gun the larger the shell weight and overall muzzle energy is in proportion to the surface area of the bore. Which means erosion and gun strength problems rapidly increase, which is a reason why 18in guns tended to have fairly light shells, and thus overall gun weight for firepower rapidly increases. The mounting size and weight also skyrocket.

End result is ever diminishing returns and little real incentive to use much heavier guns. This is why Montana could have a heavier weight of broadside then Yamato, even though Montana is several thousand tons smaller and had to mount an entire additional main battery turret to carry her main armament. The speed and armor of the two ships are otherwise highly comparable. In some context the number of 16in vs 18in guns on a ship could favor the former caliber by 50% outright! The difference to a 20in gun would be more like 100% or greater.

Russia put battleships on paper postwar up to 130,000 metric tons full load, but largely to carry absurd amounts of armor, they actually still had a main armament of just 9 x 45cm guns, while the Project 24 monster they designed in detail still used a big 40cm class gun. The bigger German H class were purely studies on armor weights, which is why things like the secondary armament on H-44 remained exactly the same as on Bismarck. It is very hard to see any reason why such illogical and often very poorly designed and documented ships should in present in the game, when they would force a large amount of paper invention to match things out from other navies, and simply not really change anything. Its not like you can rank up to tier 10 quickly. Far too many real ships exist to be made, and too much already will need inventing just to balance out trees to the 60,000 ton standard as it is.

[AniThyng]

This maybe doesn't belong here but the double think in the war thunder forums about making a game more realistic than wows while holding up battlestations as an ideal baffles me. I'm pretty sure battlestations was just as if not more arcady than wows. I'm not even sure how allowing manual aa control and forcing a player to choose between tunnel vision on airplanes versus tunneling on ships is " realism ".

Though I think the alpha idea of ship buoyancy should come back. That seems cool.

I mean I can see a game being more of a rpg:rts crew management and plotting sim working but not a third person shooter if you're aiming for realism and your gold standard is silent hunter...

[Imperial528]

In carriers, the US get fewer air wings but more planes per wing. It seems most people think the Japanese carriers are somewhat overly powerful right now, but I find carriers to be dull to play so really can't say much here.

In my experience so far the balance is two-fold. Japanese carriers are strong against ships but weak against other carriers; the opposite of this is true for the American carriers.
Fighters are basically useless for a Japanese carrier because an American fighter wing can and will easily wipe the floor with Japanese fighter wings, and indeed even American bomber wings can put the hurt on Japanese fighter wings. On the other hand American carriers have pitiful anti-ship capability, especially with the terribad performance of dive bombers as of the current version.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and I can't say I can see any way to fix it at the moment.

[Jub]

In carriers, the US get fewer air wings but more planes per wing. It seems most people think the Japanese carriers are somewhat overly powerful right now, but I find carriers to be dull to play so really can't say much here.

In my experience so far the balance is two-fold. Japanese carriers are strong against ships but weak against other carriers; the opposite of this is true for the American carriers.
Fighters are basically useless for a Japanese carrier because an American fighter wing can and will easily wipe the floor with Japanese fighter wings, and indeed even American bomber wings can put the hurt on Japanese fighter wings. On the other hand American carriers have pitiful anti-ship capability, especially with the terribad performance of dive bombers as of the current version.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and I can't say I can see any way to fix it at the moment.

The reason I find that the Japanese are more powerful is that, if played correctly, they'll always be able to dump their torpedo load at least once before enemy fighters become an issue. This means the AA carrier will often be playing from the backfoot trying to mop up bombers that have already had the chance to impact the game. Plus the Japanese carrier can have an impact even if there is an enemy carrier, the same can't be said for a pure AA loaded American carrier facing a fleet lacking air support.

[Borgholio]

Just got into the South Carolina. I think it's a decent ship for getting your feet wet in a battleship. It's slow of course (being a dreadnought), but four turrets is fine from my experience. I just tool around near maximum range and take potshots at ships as I see them. I can waste cruisers easily, destroyers I let my secondaries handle them, and battleships still go down if I hit them enough.