Uncle_Lou

Spee gets my vote as well. I want to like PEF more than I do, but the wonky dispersion and weak AP shells just make it more frustrating than fun to drive IMO. Mistakes will be punished much harder in Spee, but the guns just flat out work better.

For me the issue is less one of balance directly, and more about fun factor and how my actions directly affect the enemy ship. With any other ship type in game, if it attacks me I can directly attack it back. If you shoot me, I will shoot you back. That's fun, because we each are trying to be better than the other guy; skill and to a lesser extent RNG play a factor in deciding who wins. Now if a CV attacks me, all I can do is maneuver and manage my AA - a little skill and a LOT more RNG involved. While this is happening, there is absolutely nothing I can do to directly threaten the attacking CV. I am functionally impotent. Shooting down aircraft is kinda like shooting a DD's torpedo before it hits. Yeah, I stopped that attack but the DD will have more to launch soon. That's not fun for me. I want to be able to directly retaliate when I am attacked. The ONLY way to do that against a CV is with another CV, and I feel like CV vs CV interplay is disincentivized. IMO interactions between surface ships and CVs are just not fun for the surface ship, and THAT is where the angst comes from. I don't care how much damage a CV does, or that they can permaspot my DD. I want to be able to fight back, but I can't. And its Just. Not. Fun. And if I'm a developer, that would concern me. My $.02. Also - I'll save any stat hunters some time - I don't play CVs, because that type of gameplay holds no interest for me. That should not, however invalidate my opinions on how it feels to play AGAINST them.

I went with the reload module. The reload is punitive as it is, and I felt that maximizing damage output made much more sense than boosting range. And while I might wish for a bit more range, what you get with the 2nd range finder is very workable especially with the flatter arcs the Italians have. If you have Sansonetti, one of his specials gives you a small bonus to range; it takes Venezia up to 18.6 IIRC. Once you get to Venezia you can ditch Last Stand as she doesn't lose her rudder every time you get hit near the stern. I have Sansonetti in my Venezia, my captain is specced with: PE, PM, EL, JoaT, EM, AR, SI, Vig, CE. The Italians are not terribly skill intensive IMO; I took Vigilance mostly because I had 3 points to play with, and the Italians don't have any real utility. Once they adjust the captain skills per the recent dev blog I will likely revisit the build. I just got booted from the game due to the patch starting, but IIRC for upgrades I took the standard ones in the first 3 slots then Steering 2, Concealment, and the RoF one in the final slot. Not sure if my build is optimal, others may do it a bit differently and like I said, Amalfi and Brindisi definitely need Last Stand due to their rudder/engines being super fragile but Venezia does not. I think there is a captain build thread in the Italian Cruisers sub-forum, but either way I'd be interested to see other builds.

Grats! I got the one ship I really wanted in the Santa crates as well as several I did NOT want. Oh well - at least I can't get them again next Christmas!

I use it primarily to disengage and create distance. It is a nice get out of jail free card if I mess up and overextend, or if the enemy BBs start looking at me funny. I have also used it to go dark and push in undetected, although the smoke is a giveaway that something is coming. Once in a while I will use it to farm a little damage at range without fear of return fire. Italian smoke is pretty flexible, you just have to be aware of its limitations.

Tell that to the Khab I just deleted in a single salvo from Venezia. Hit with 11 shells out of 15 at around 6.5km. I honestly thought I got a detonation on him.

I had a red Smol give me grief for an entire match just for having a PR. I had to lol. WRT a nerf/buff for PR, I'd say its WAY too early to talk about; if I had to do anything to it though I would reduce its max dispersion by maybe 10-15m and call it good.

Not looking to join, but did find it somewhat comical that one of your members literally followed me around in a match tonight trying to TK me and failing. Not upset, just a bit surprised and amused by it.

Mine should complete in around 6 hours 20 minutes, while I am asleep. I have to work tonight and tomorrow night, so Wednesday will be the earliest I can take it for a spin.

I've said since she was released that Roma's dispersion is bugged, I just wish I could prove it. I honestly feel like her dispersion is the full 240-ish meters even at point blank range instead of scaling as it should. But yes, I'd like to see a bit more consistency in the guns. Maybe a 0.1 - 0.15 buff to Sigma. She doesn't need much. The trouble is, if you looks at Roma's stats she is still performing quite well which is likely to dissuade WG from even considering a buff of any kind. Too bad she didn't benefit from the recent change to German dispersion, since Roma shares it.

Detection range remains the same. The only thing that changes is the amount of time the target has to react. I'm sure the math is out there somewhere; I'm not sure what it is but I expect it only reduces reaction time by 1 second or so.

I don't think Smol is OP. It has a combination of traits that make it annoying to deal with, and IMO promotes a cancerous form of braindead gameplay. Not OP though. And TBH I think Colbert is way worse than Smol, its just much more rare to run into one. I still see a lot of Smolensk in randoms, but I think more average players are using them now and it shows. The best way to get rid of a Smolensk if you need to is for your team's cruisers to stop farming BBs for 10 seconds and shoot the Smol. Cruiser AP (especially large cruiser AP) absolutely wrecks them, and any of the rapid-fire HE spammers will DPM them down pretty quickly.

They are not ships that will click with everyone. They are opportunists and require a good deal of patience to rack up the impressive damage totals. Amalfi is good, Brindisi is MUCH better due to the heal and t9 upgrade slot, and Venezia can really bring the pain with her 15 rifles. I even liked Gorizia. With SAP, Venezia can virtually delete DDs in single salvos and can consistently take 10-15k chunks out of BBs. Don't underestimate their AP either. But driving an Italian cruiser, you have to be constantly moving, constantly working your WASD hax, and have above-average situational and minimap awareness. They have a higher skill floor than most other lines, but I feel they also have a pretty high ceiling as well. Having said that, I certainly wouldn't shed a tear if they were given a little utility - maybe a short range, long duration hydro similar to the British. But their specialty seems to be just pure damage dealing - not through high alpha or DPM, but through patience and proper ammo and target selection. I don't think they really need the utility. Too much in the way of buffs would make the high tier Italians OP.

I logged in yesterday and decided to work on unique upgrades, just to have some kind of goal for the session. Needed 7 wins in Republique to finish stage 4. Probably should have done it in co-op, but wanted to stock up some captain xp during the process and randoms are better for that. Took me 28 games to get 7 wins, averaging just shy of 100k damage. After finally finishing that I moved on to other ships; managed to finish the session with like a 47% WR and just over 100k average damage... but it was painful. Some ships for me are just crap magnets. I don't normally check stats on other players, but I checked a few yesterday... Yikes.

Biggest problem I've seen so far with Yoshino is that the instant you are detected, PT immediately jumps to 5+. Seems like great damage potential in the ship, but you have to play so conservatively in order to not be deleted its not even funny.