Tzarevitch

Truthfully NO DD AA will do well vs if it doesn't spec at least a few talents and/or captain skills. That is the same with any ship in the game. I am not unicum and I can blast an unspecced Friesland even with a lower-tiered CV without suffering unreasonable losses. Most USN DDs have AA loadouts that will make it prickly to attack them all the way down to Nicholas, particularly if they take DFAA AND spec a bit. Kidd is particularly powerful vs. CVs mainly because she has all the traits the other USN DDs do, plus a heal, and doesn't give anything up for DFAA from an anti-CV perspective. That makes her really hard for a CV to rocket or bomb her to death on its own. The other USN DDs do fine if people take DFAA, but they don't have the heal to help with survivability and they give up speed for DFAA which hurts them tactically against everything else. Some of the high-tier Russians do as well too with decent AA suites but they don't, turn stop or start well and their smokes don't last as long. They do have heals though. The top-tier Brits actually are pretty good like you said, because of the good stop/start characteristics, numerous quick smokes, a heal and a bit of AA. The AA isn't super scary but they can hide very well and often, heal chip damage from rockets and dodge attacks decently. The low-tier Brits have the maneuverability but their AA is horrible and they don't have a heal. For the IJN, The Aki-boats can have decent AA but they are really, really tubby, slow, and unmaneuverable. That makes them very easy to hit. The IJN boats other than the Aki-boats are all sorts of awful, and are easy prey as are all of the French DDs. The Germans are better than the French and the IJN torp boats. They have a bit of AA, but it isn't really enough and they are tubby boats that are easy to hit. I haven't encountered enough Pan Asians to have a clue that their AA is.

I saw Dauntless. It was pretty awful.

Nice work. :)

It is probably not helping that I only have a 10 point commander for her. Her slow acceleration has gotten me killed by torps a couple of times before I switched to the acceleration module. Her agility isn't great but the acceleration without it is terrible. It can't accel fast enough to avoid torps. I'll have to change to the module to extend the speed boost as well as you suggested. That may help. Yugumo and Z haven't been problems for me, assuming the Yugumo is dumb enough to let me spot him. Fletcher and Jutland have both been issues because they are agile enough to turn out immediately and fall back off detection without smoking. If I fire at them they take some damage that leaves me waiting out their detection window with their cruisers and BBs firing at me. CLs can definitely get 2 salvos in before Kitakaze turns around to disengage. Even if I smoke to cover my turn I tend to eat a couple of salvos because it is so big and slow to turn (plus she bleeds a lot of speed in turns)... Now that I think about it, I am probably better off not firing in those situations. I'm used to Mogador's big shells and high speed where you can chunk off a lot of health in one salvo and speed away. Kitikaze needs sustained fire. A salvo or two before his minimizes his profile and hides again is probably not worth the time it takes to fall off of detection after firing. I'll have to try again with some of the suggestions people have made. I appreciate them, but this ship is really frustrating me.

What are people's honest opinions on Kitikaze? I've been going at it for about a week now with some of the most dismal DD games I've had in years and I'm about ready to give up. I'm trying to finish off some of the lines that I had not completed and I am working on the IJN gunboat line, but I am having a terrible time with Kitikaze. It is basically a faster Akizuki, but it feels worse somehow. It has middling speed, its acceleration is slow, and its agility is quite poor. The guns are nice like Aki but it feels like opponent's armor got thicker on T9. The ship feels great when opponents have to push into you, but is feels terrible if you have to do the pushing into a cap or islands due to middling concealment, large size, poor agility, poor acceleration, poor maneuverability and middling speed. It plays like a really tiny cruiser rather than a DD but you still have to perform the DD roles somehow with her. For those who like her, how do you play her? What do you do to make this thing work?

I just looked up Shattered Sword. Much appreciated. I'll have to get it now. :) It looks like it covered other areas that Fuchida didn't. It looks like Fuchida's book is one of the sources they used. Apparently they had disagreements with some of what he said. Now I'll have to read it and see. Edit: … and just finished downloading it to my phone.

Probably the best one I've read of Midway from the Japanese viewpoint is Mitsuo Fuchida's book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1485056.Midway Fuchida led the first airstrikes on Pearl Harbor. He came down with appendicitis so he couldn't lead the Midway attack himself but he was on Akagi's bridge throughout the battle (and had to evacuate the sinking Akagi along with Adm. Nagumo). He was privy to, and talks a lot about the Japanese planning up-to and through the battle and does a good assessment of what went wrong. A lot of the points he mentioned were ones I had not heard before. Such as the poor decision for Yamamoto to try to command from Yamato rather than do what Nimitz did and command from a shore base with better communications. He also talks a lot about the communications issues the carriers had with radio communications. They couldn't use the huge radio masts the BBs used because they interfered with flight operations so Nagumo did not get a lot of signal intercepts that would have given him clues that a US force was in the area until it was too late. (On a side note, that explains why Halsey commanded the fleets at Leyte from USS New Jersey rather than from one of the carriers.) I really recommend reading it. You can also get it on Amazon in print, digital and audio formats.

Lol. Yes. Some of the air-to-air, and air to ground maneuvers look like they came out of Star Wars, but the movie is enjoyable nevertheless.

Yep. And I honestly don't think Nagumo would ever have come to the decision to launch immediately. Other than Yamaguchi, I don't think there are many Japanese commanders who would have. There's a good youtube video here: which does a great job of showing the time window involved and why very few commanders would have launched immediately. I couldn't remember what the Arashi's crew did to execute the servicemen they captured but knew they would never have wasted an actual anchor when scrap metal would do. I think the anchor was there to add emphasis since everyone recognizes an anchor. I'll definitely get it on vide when it comes out. I do want to rewatch it.

That is true. It isn't for that reason, but it is one of the benefits.

It was. The lady next to me in the theater cringed. I think it was there to make it clear how dangerous carrier aviation was even when not at war. I don't know if that really happened there, but it most certainly did happen quite a few times even into the modern era. That's part of the benefit of angled decks for modern carriers. If the engines fail and the plane has to ditch on takeoff you launch off to an angle so you don't get run over and killed by your own carrier.

I was really pleased with some of the small details. I really loved the Nevada even though you just see it back there. I also really liked the small detail like how surprised Enterprise's crew was to see Horned loaded with B-25s. That's actually accurate. There was a multi-part history program on USS Enterprise a couple of years ago (unsurprisingly sponsored by Enterprise Rent-a-Car). Some of the Big-E's crew described just that reaction. They did not know what Hornet was up to until she appeared with the Army bombers on her deck. Even then they had no idea what she was doing with them.

Ok. I just saw the Midway move in a matinee and it wasn't bad. I won't worry about spoilers because it is not like it is a new story. lol Much better than I expected. It had a lot more in common with the old Midway movie than the Pearl Harbor movie. The CGI of the ships was generally good. Unlike Pearl Harbor they took the time to correctly model the ships in question and put them in the roles where they actually appeared. Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet looked mostly accurate. The battleships in Pearl Harbor looked accurate. Obviously they focused in on Arizona a lot but I could clearly see Tennessee ahead of Arizona (she was behind her from the viewing angle) and Vestal alongside her. I am pretty sure I could see Nevada doing her breakout in the background as she went past Arizona but they didn't mention it. Both at Pearl and Midway I could clearly see a New Orleans class cruiser, which I suspect was New Orleans herself. On the Japanese side, the carriers looked reasonably accurate (they did get the islands on the correct side). I could also spot a Kongo class battleship. I think it was Kirishima although I won't profess to be able to tell her from Hiei. They also modeled Arashi well and covered her role in the battle from depth-charging Nautilus to "rescuing" US airmen and obtaining information from them. I'm big on ships being correctly modeled in old war movies so this pleased me. It is mostly told from the point of view of Edwin Layton and his intelligence team, and [edited] Best on USS Enterprise. Dennis Quaid did a credible Bull Halsey impression and Woody Harrleson played Chester Nimitz. Aaron Eckhart played Jimmy Doolittle. The air combat is about as realistic as you would expect from a movie, but that was fine and enjoyable. The bombing runs were even less realistic, but it's a movie not a documentary, and they were entertaining so that was fine. (Funny thing is one of the bombs was dropped on Hiryu so late in the pull-up phase that all I could think of was that it would just skip off the deck. lol.) The only issues I had were minor ones: 1. The movie doesn't explain much. I am well familiar with the battle so I knew what was happening but in a few places I wasn't sure who some of these characters were. They rarely used nameplates so you are left figuring out who people are from context. I suspect people who are not as familiar with the history will have a hard time following. Part of this issue is there is just so much that went on from Pearl Harbor to Midway and they tried to get a lot of it in. In order to cover it and let it lead the viewer to the events at Midway they had to be really FAST telling the story. So be prepared. 2. They used Admiral Nagumo as a bit of a scapegoat for poor decisions that Japanese naval command made up to Midway. Having read a lot about Pearl Harbor and Midway (including Commander Fuchida's book which described it from the Japanese side), that kinda annoyed me a bit. I understand it because events need to be personalized in a movie. In a movie the bad things are caused by a person not by an impersonal entity like "High Command" and they used Nagumo since he already has a major role in the movie. Oddly though they did not go a lot into his indecision between needing a second attack on Midway and realizing that there may be enemy carriers in the area. Again I suspect that was a time issue. Other than those small things I enjoyed it. It is at least worth a matinee viewing if you like naval history. If you don't, your mileage may vary. It's exciting but you may have a hard time following what is happening.

Whether it is "worth it" depends on why you are considering it. It is a cool-looking, unique ship with an interesting history. If you have a long collector streak and like naval history it is absolutely worth it. If you want it for capability, it really isn't. IT isn't as bad in play as people make it out to be, but it is not a powerful ship. You can do just fine in it but you will have to work harder at it to get the same results than in any other CV. You hit the nail on the head with the DBs. The bombs are powerful but their accuracy is absolutely hideous. The circular reticle means that you can attack from any angle but with the same poor chance of hitting. Even if you hit, they will overpen soft areas on ships a lot or skip off of turret roofs or conning towers. The fact you only drop 2 bombs with bad accuracy means that even if you drop right on target it is common for one to miss and for the other to either overpen or bounce. They AP bombers are completely and utterly unreliable. I love AP dive bombers but hers are just completely unreliable. Shokaku's and Enterprise's are much better. The only real good point to GZs is they are quick and you can use them for scouting and to bait out fighters. The TBs are her best weapons. They don't do much damage and they have a rather long launch distance but they are reliable and the TBs themselves are quick. The biggest other downside is the planes don't turn well so you can't easily execute multiple drops on the same ship. Ideally line targets up so you drop on one and the remaining planes carry on to the next target so you can drop again. The rocket planes are thoroughly forgettable. They aren't hard to use but they don't hit that hard and they are (oddly) quite slow compared to the bombers. That's really unusual for CVs. Rocket planes are basically fighters carrying anti-surface rockets so it is odd that these would be slower than the bombers. As for her intangibles, she has credible secondaries but it is generally foolish buffing those because that costs you upgrades you need for your planes, which need all the help they can get. Unfortunately she is also easy to deplane. She doesn't have large capacity or fast regen. Overall she has a lot in common with Saipan in that she operates small numbers of very advanced planes, but Saipan is just better. Her rocket planes hit harder, her DBs more reliable, and her TBs are at least similarly effective. Plus she also has smallish capacity and slow regen. I play CVs a lot. I have all of them. I love having GZ in my harbor and looking at her but I don't like playing her. I also have Enterprise and I can think of almost no situations where I would prefer to use GZ over Enterprise … or Lexington … or Shokaku … or Implacable … or even Saipan. GZ is too much work for the middling effectiveness you tend to get from her. I won't tell you not to get her but you pretty much assessed her effectiveness. If you are looking for an effective T8 CV for ranked or something, look elsewhere.

It is definitely better, but has some issues. I found that it freaks out close to the map edge. The minimap shows that you can set a course along the edge byt the CV will not navigate there. Also it if hits the map edge it won't just turn out. It will stop and backup. Also, the mini-map doesn't 100% match the real world map in places. There are spots on certain maps where the CV can fit through but the course layout in the minimap will go around. It will also sometimes change the course on its own. I had a couple of occasions where I plotted a course, when I looked at the CV I found it was going in a completely different direction and when I checked the course it now had a course that was different from what I set. It hasn't happened often enough for me to figure out what is causing it.