Tzarevitch

I understand and was agreeing with your overall point that people should not be expecting Dallas to be as good as Cleveland. Dallas intentionally isn't as good as Cleveland. I was only correcting your statement in the first part that Dallas leads into Pensacola. It doesn't. Dallas is a side-grade to Pensacola. Dallas leads into Helena.

The CCs who've actually played her seem to think she is ok. It isn't on the public test server. I don't see how you've decided she is a "garbage scow" without actually playing her when the people who have played her seem to think she is ok. I doubt the ship will be great, but there's no reason it won't fit in with the other T6 cruisers. The CCs seem to really like Helena and Worcester. Most of them seem to think that Seattle and the T8 Cleveland (after a second round of buffs) are at least ok as well. What is the basis for your argument that WG wants "to keep US ships in a 'mediocre' place?"

Point of correction: Dallas does not "lead into" Pensacola. It's on a side line. Omaha leads into both Pensacola and Dallas. I agree with the point though. The intent is to unnerf Cleveland and put her at T8 amidst the late-war light cruisers that are more similar to her and make both the heavy and light cruiser lines make more sense.

^This 100%. To the OP: Graf Spee is one of the ships I play the most. I also play around the islands. Thrawn's ambush tactic works very well on BBs too. Higher tier BBs are a problem, but Spee can ambush on-tier BBs (and some T7s) one-on-one provided you don't let them get shots at you from longish ranges as you approach and you don't give them shots on your broadside. On-tier BBs are mostly pretty slow don't have the dispersion to kill you easily through the nose if you can get to 8-10k without them targeting you and you charge them. Don't turn out to launch torps, unless you are sure he isn't reloaded. Just keep closing and firing with the bow turret and make a close strafing pass along side them, then dump your torps and turn sharply into them. (Don't be so close that they fail to arm.) It is very hard for BBs to depress the guns to citadel you if you pass close and turning in after you launch brings you even closer under their guns. You will take damage, but that's what your repair party is for. If the torps don't kill him, once you pass him turn out a bit and dump the torps on the other side out the back into him. It takes practice, but works pretty consistently for me by now. The biggest thing they can do to counter it is start to turn away early. If the BB does this turn the other way to keep his guns from easily following you, break off, and run for the nearest island. Don't chase. You can't close fast enough even against a 21kt BB, and you are giving him too much time to land shots on you. Don't do this with 16" gun BBs (Mutsu is the exception) and don't try it on T8 BBs. Their accuracy is too good, their guns hit too hard, and they are too fast as a group. Spee is hardly a ballerina by cruiser standards but it is better than the Russian CLs and it is way more agile (and a smaller target) than a battleship. It also has access to German hydro so torpedo boat DDs aren't a huge issue. Gunboat DDs however, are Spee's worst foes. If they know their business and stay on you at medium ranges it is very hard to deal with them and they can keep you prema-spotted trivially and keep you on fire. You really don't have the dispersion or ROF to kill them easily like most CA/CLs. The biggest thing with Spee is to remember that it is a CA with BB guns, BB speed, and near-BB detection (and a heal). Do not press in early. You don't have the speed to get yourself out and you can't hide. Don't fight in open water unless you have to. If you screw up your positioning you can't get out with that speed. You are slower than every CA or CL within miles of your matchmaking spread and you are slower than (or same speed as) quite a few BBs in your spread. Post up near islands so if you do screw up your positioning and need to escape you can duck behind it to break vision and give yourself cover. Also, here's @LittleWhiteMouse's review on Spee. http://shipcomrade.com/news/405/once-more-with-feeling.html

That's the big issue with Vanguard. The real world is irrelevant. Game-wise it isn't a good ship. It is a T8 or T8.5 hull using T6 guns. Play-wise, it is a slower Hood with better armor, worse guns (older generation) and better AA. Advanced FC does nothing because that is the responsibility of the player in the game. That just leaves Vanguard with QE's T6 guns which don't penetrate well against higher tier BBs or CAs for that matter. Extra range really doesn't do much. I think the ship will show up eventually because they could use a T8 British premium and she is the obvious choice, but it will need a gimmick or something to make it a solid T8 and get past those guns. And with all the British BBs they released recently, I don't think they are in a rush to tackle her. Vanguard was the obvious choice for a T8 when they created the line, but they passed it over for Monarch, which is a paper ship. That says something about what they thought of her gameplay at T8.

I'm not making any judgments, but I am guessing you actually want the as-completed version of DeGrasse, i.e. the AA cruiser. This guy: Rather than this one that is in game which is basically this: As I recall there was some call from the community for that one rather than the DeGrasse as-designed that we got. I personally prefer the as-designed version since is era-appropriate and more generally useful. That being said. @LittleWhiteMousegraphed out the AA power of the post-Cleveland T6 cruisers. It's in her re-review of Graf Spee. (Here it is at Shipcomrade http://shipcomrade.com/news/405/once-more-with-feeling.html . It's down in the AA section.) Pensacola's AA maxed-out is far above everyone else on the tier. I suspect Dallas will be a bit above Pensacola since she also has some 5"/38 mounts that Pensacola lacks. T6 doesn't have a shortage of powerful AA ships. Cleveland gets replaced by 2 AA boats which aren't quite as ridiculous as she was but they are still well above almost everyone else.

I'm not sure what you mean by "AA power vacuum" or what DeGrasse has to do with Cleveland moving to T8. Cleveland was an outlier at T6 because it really always was a T8 CL. They aren't going to put another CA or CL back in with T8 AA on T6. Dallas is still quite strong for its tier apparently and so is Pensacola. DeGrasse appears in-game as she was originally intended to be built - an improved version of the La Galissonniere class. It is one of the best T6 cruisers in my opinion. There's nothing particularly powerful about her but her overall package is quite good. I highly doubt they are going to change anything.

I'll almost certainly be using Pensacola. Her firepower is tremendous and her AA is strong. The bots don't dodge so her slow turret traverse shouldn't be much of a problem, and their targeting behavior is extremely predictable so her big, high citadel shouldn't be too big an issue either. I'll probably use Dallas some, but honestly new Pensacola looks tailor-made for scenarios. Players know how to take advantage of her flaws, the bots don't.

Wait, what? Thunderer is coming in as a premium?

I may be wrong but I don't think Richelieu's is movable. That type of smokestack structure that Richelieu has is called a "mack" by the way. The word is a contraction of "Stack" and "Mast". The combined mast and smokestack unit is mostly to save space rather than having a separate smoke stack and mast structure. The exhaust outlet of the mack is then tilted to keep the gases and smoke away from the gun directors.

Yep. It was an attempt to keep smoke away from the flight deck. It didn't work well so it wasn't repeated in any other US carrier. Not surprisingly the swivel mechanism wasn't very reliable. Lots of nations did similar things with carriers and other surface combatants to keep the smoke and hot exhaust gases away from the gun directors and manned locations on the ship, and/or sometimes just to clear space. Some Japanese carriers noticeably angled the stacks outward to reduce the smoke over the deck. Here's Shinano with it's whole island pushed nearly off the starboard side of the ship and its stack leaning even further starboard for example:

I was wondering that too. The only thing I see new is the Halsey campaign. I assume they are going to update it with the re-tiered ships at some point.

I'm all for these. It's high time we had new game modes. I have been advocating for something like Mode 2 . I like the idea of something forcing people to move forward. I would like it to be something more in tune with the game though. Put a repair ship or a floating dock in the center like in the operations and have adversary ships like a submarine or bombers spawn to the edges and start attacking if people don't move in. I think that would be more fun.

Sometimes one ship doesn't do well against another. That's what allies are for. It's not a dueling game, it's a team game. Shima is not an anti DD platform. It does best against BBs and clumsier cruisers. It needs to play smart, use superior spotting, and bide its time against other DDs. The Shima in the ranked game I was just in was baiting the Yueyang to come out where I could get at him in my Des Moines from behind an island. He'd go in and spot him and draw some fire, then run so I could pinpoint him. I wasn't able to kill it completely, but I was able to badly damage it and drive it out of the cap so the Shima could take it.

If you are going to actually play the ship, then yes. If you plan on free-xping past the ship to Des Moines without playing it anymore, then save the credits.