YamatoA150

If we're going by design evolution, Harugumo would likely either have been an enlarged Akizuki Kai with 4x Twin 127mm/50 Type 1s like you mention, or a Shimakaze sister-ship but with the newer 127mm/50 Type 1s. Hayate technically is close to being a "Shimakaze Kai", but it's worse than Shimakaze and unnecessarily longer. Both would have been more realistic than the WG originals we got, but it's already done and implemented. All that can be hoped for is more realistic versions being available in the future.

Harukaze's concept isn't much different than the post-war surplus DDs Japan got from the US; which did have the USN 5" 127 guns that loaded and fired relatively fast. That said, the design itself could be semi-plausible, given the experimental IJN 127mm Type 1/5 (1 being ship-based, 5 being the land-based variant, WG just stuck with "Type 5") were said to have been semi-powered/semi-automatic to aid with faster reloading, especially at higher barrel angles, incorporating lessons learned with the 100mm guns. Hayate in-game has the guns in a semi-nerfed state; having a lower RoF (15 RPM) than what other projections and estimates put it at (closer to 16~18 RPM), and using the same 127mm shells as Shimakaze instead of the experimental shells a few IJN historians have dug up. Not that it would have mattered much damage-wise; probably another 50-100 points worth of extra damage; the real difference would have been the estimated velocity/energy retention over range given the longer shell tips vs the existing 127mm shells, and would have given the in-game Type 5s better performance at range vs the older 127mm/50 Type 3s used by most IJN DDs on top of faster reload times. On the other hand, the IJN would have historically stuck with twin mounts, so for a gameplay perspective, OP's Harukaze at T9 with unnerfed Type 5s in single mounts would have made sense; being effectively a Japanese Fletcher (same base RoF as Fletcher @ 18 RPM, and same number of torpedoes; 2x 5-Tube Torpedo Launchers). Slightly better HE and AP (regardless if it was using the existing IJN 127mm shells or the experimental 127mm shells) and more damaging torpedoes, but worse traverse and longer torpedo reload times.

Frankly, considering that same "team" screwed up: Dutch Cruiser superstructures and ignored every Dutch superfan on them Cheated out the IJN's ship design evolution towards tiered emplacements and other planned refits, including Izumo, who should have had tiered emplacements similar to Yamato and was also promised a long overdue HD update Shikishima, which is not only missing a pair of 10cm DPs, but missing the armor upgrades planned for the Yamato-class Satsuma, who has a mixed secondary armament despite Japan shifting towards uniform 10cm DP secondaries, and missing properly tiered emplacements because they arbitrarily chose to supersize the superstructure Kii, which is some half-assed hybrid featuring late-war secondaries on some sort of interwar hull/superstructure Allowed a modeler to also ignore ship design evolution for Monarch and Conqueror/Thunderer by keeping the lattice masts simply "because it looked cool" Among other less-blatant ignorance of ship design evolution Screwed up H-42 and 43 (or 44, they can't even get them right) GK simply could have been H-42 with Twin 480s and torps, making it a Mega Tirpitz without yet another hull upscale Hannover is technically H-44, but opted for uniform secondary batteries when Germany stuck with mixed secondary batteries, and nerfed the guns from 508s to 483s for no reason Among other "historically researched" designs, consider me having zero expectations they won't subtly screw up HMCS Huron somehow, like going with the planned 1945 tropical refit, or picking her ASW 1950s refit simply because she'd be one of the first purpose-included ASW DDs, rather than her 1943+ self.

And the HSF Cat Captain that was only available via a special means. He sounds like he's just chugging sake half the time (Gugugugugugugugugugugugug!!!! Gug!).

First, thanks for the review. Second, this is the first time in a long while since we didn't have a monkey-pawed IJN Premium. Here's to hoping we'll see more down the line. It's a bit of a shame Hyuuga didn't get a fictional secondary/AA refit taking cues from her historical one (mostly the AA mounts on the superfiring turrets and extra 127mm around the superstructure), but at least she's not another stock ship gimmicked out the aft just to make her playable at the chosen tier.

There's a static preview of it literally next to the Marco Polo on the Premium Shop page for the Big Italian Bundle, though if you mean an in-game close up, then good luck:

I agree; Shikishima isn't A150. A150 was at minimum a 85k ton battleship design with 4x Twin or 3x Triple 510mm turrets and armoring thick enough to have an immunity zone to them at 20-30km of range. That said, Shikishima IS WG's half-arsed attempt at the planned Yamato Refit, in which Yamato, Musashi, Shinano, and Hull 111 were supposed to be upgunned and updated according to the same specs as Hulls 797, 798, and 799. The major things missing though are a least a pair of Twin 10cm DPs (replaced 1:1 with the 12.7cm DPs; some sources said the Triple 155s would have also been replaced too with Twin 10cm DP mounts), the full-length TDS upgrade, and the updated armoring to the belt and turret facings.

Fuso was the first, and to be fair, it works out for her given IJN BB dispersion curves. She still has it even to now. The long and short of it is that WG has hard pigeonholed themselves into "flavors" and other balance issues. 32s-34s reloads were not a problem for a long time; given that the IJN BBs from Nagato up used to have 32s reloads and something like 34s with the old traverse module that had the reload nerf penalty, and could still put out some heat. Then WG for a time period tried to chase the "instant action" nature of other PvP games including WoT, and ended up trying to push reloads into 30s or less. Now, as they're trying to shift the meta again in order to be more flexible with gun count, gun size and shell performance, some ships are unnecessarily getting reloads that don't make sense for their tier. California, Oklahoma, Hizen, and Florida (to some extent) are the most immediate examples of this, where they're given a longer reload that doesn't justify whatever little strengths they do have and end up much worse than the free line equivalent or earlier similar Premiums before them.

That poor Hizen. WG must still be salty about Tsushima I guess. After Shikishima managed to mostly make it through without any major nerfs and becoming a semi-viable alternate playstyle to Yamato (although it's still not correctly modeled, due to "balans reasons"), I was wondering if WG was going to finally give the IJN more decent premiums. Looks like WG is back to the usual crappy IJN Premiums for the IJN fans bender they never left. At this rate, it seems possible that WG just abandoned Hizen in favor of a possible future T10 version, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. WG has since shifted to making money off lootcrates instead of ships, so they no longer have any incentive to make fun, and occasionally OP, Premiums like they used to (and they've never made a decent IJN Premium since Harekaze). All of them are either just boring side-grades of existing ship play styles, or half-arsed just to pad their Super Containers and X-Mas Crates.

If what they said on the stream is accurate: The T10 will have a fully submerged citadel, 400mm long belt armor, a turtleback, icebreaker and 55 mm deck armor. The T9 is still being modelled but they said it has 4x3 381mm guns. Different AP mechanics from Roma So the T10 at the very least is going to be a tank to make up for the lack of pen power and short gun ranges (although 16x 381mm SAP shells are pretty lethal).

Would it be too much to ask if you could please copy/paste and send my post to me in a PM?

I'm under the assumption it's more that the USN doesn't have any other 18" gun carrier designs while almost all other nations do, and they're also experimenting with high-caliber broadside alphas (massive punch, but low reload). For the longest time, Amagi was actually one of the better alpha broadsiders thanks to 10 guns vs 8 or 9 in its tier but pretty well balanced for the most part, but now we get the SoDak20 with 12 of them in the tier, but is also paying a heftier penalty in exchange for being able to further massacre T6s and abuse unlucky T7s. Whatever the outcome of balancing is, it's quite likely that none of them will see a major reload buff (maybe 38s at T8 and 35s at T9-10), but at least get some defensive buffs; maybe just the same artificially enhanced maneuverability as the rest of the USN Standard BBs and faster reloading DCP.

Is there no way we can look back at our old posts at least? I have written up an in-depth comparison of PC WoWs lackluster AL Collaborations vs Mobile WoWs that was posted in this thread (linked to my post), but now I have no way of viewing it.