Tzarevitch

It could also be the rendering delay after the fog of war lifts. Without further explanation from the op there's no way to know.

I believe I saw one of the CC's say that mines attack subs on the surface and periscope depth. It's basically the same as for standard surface weapons.

Agreed. I still despise that ship. I think they boosted her accuracy a while ago, but it's still poor and exacerbated by only 6 guns.

Yep. Unfortunately the black ships are different ships even if they are clones. They don't count for anything unless the event specifically says so.

Ty for letting us know kind sir. At least Marblehead is doing something good for me. lol

I 100% agree. I was thinking the same thing myself.

Agreed. Double CV matches aren't good, and I play CVs a lot. Usually they are queue dumps. I've had matches with 11 BBs per side and matches with 10 DDs per side when the queue dumped. They aren't common but we just have to live with them.

Just a PSA. Drachinifel just put up a video recounting the really crazy saga of USS Marblehead.

Just to be clear. You aren't actually surveying a majority of players. What you are surveying is the people who actually responded to the poll.

None of the T8 Tech tree BBs are terrible in my opinion. That being said, I'll categorize them starting with the least useful pair. Bottom two Kansas - is (shocker I know) really slow, and her reload is slow. She has trouble in any of the ops that require a lot of movement. She can work but you have to be really diligent keeping up and you really have to depend on your teammates to be where they should be because Kansas can't reposition to help out. I don't like ships that are so dependent on teammates. Vittorio Veneto - I just don't like this ship much. It doesn't bring anything to the table that you can't get from another BB. Fuel smoke is irrelevant in ops. The action tends to be close enough that firing her guns reveals her even in smoke. Her SAP isn't as good against DDs as HE. Her accuracy is also terrible and her high velocity AP shells tend to go right through a lot of the cruisers. She just doesn't bring anything useful. It's still a BB and is therefore not terrible, but you'll need to work harder with her. These three are OK, but you can do better Hawke - I don't personally have this ship, so I can only speak from what I've seen. The guns are really nice, but the rest isn't that impressive in OPS. She's a big, big soft target and the bot cruisers can really melt her fast. For most operations where she is good, Zieten is better due to secondaries and more torpedoes. Zieten - Staring at her at the center of my screen for the full duration of an OP makes me want to claw my eyes out then stomp on them so I never have to see her again. Other than making me want to mutilate myself for looking at her, she is useful due to secondaries, hydro and a good torp loadout. She's like Hawke but with way, way worse main guns in number, accuracy and horrid, horrid turret placement. For secondary build BBs in OPs I prefer Bismarck for better durability and better turret layout. Monarch - The HE is really nice, as is the superheal, but that's really all she is bringing. You can do better with any of the ones below. These are the good ones Bismarck - Secondaries, hydro and a tough ship. The main battery isn't great but it doesn't need to be. Sail into their midst, turn on the hydro, and let the secondaries fly in all directions. YOu'll probably outlast them. Amagi - Awesome, accurate guns for terrific firepower. Downsides are its gun placement and the ship is large and clumsy. It eats torps if you are not careful. Sticking near cruisers or DDs to help spot them helps mitigate this problem. Vladi - Awesome guns at ranges where you tend to fight in ops, and awesome bow protection. Nothing else to talk about. North Carolina - Solid ship all around. Good AA, good armor as long as you angle properly. Good guns (but slow velocity). Can't do wrong with her unless you like sailing broadside to enemy BBs. Richelieu - This one is marginal in the top category for me. The guns have a lot of the same problems as Vittorio Veneto in that they overpen a lot and aren't terribly accuate. They also don't reload that fast. The good news is the all-forward layout means you don't need to spend time traversing turrets like the others. The speed boost is only rarely useful, but it's still more useful than the fuel smoke.

I really doubt we will see Northampton. It basically doesn't serve any role in the game that one of the many T8 USN cruisers doesn't already serve. It also isn't historically significant enough to get collectors (like myself) to want it. As you know, historically it was an attempt to make use of an incomplete Oregon City class hull (slightly improved Baltimore, similar to USS Rochester in game) by finishing it as a command cruiser. It also spent a lot of its life acting as a testbed ship. Game-wise, even at T8, I can't see how taking this ship would be better than just talking a Baltimore or Wichita, or a Cleveland if you want faster guns to fight DDs. It's a cruiser hull with DD guns, like an up-armored Atlanta class with more armor and health, but is easier to spot, less agile, and has no torpedoes. Increasing the ASW armament is too specialized a gimmick to justify a ship. Subs aren't common enough that I would want to give up a precious gimmick "Slot" for such a specialized and rarely useful improvement and for fighting DDs you are better off with an actual DD (Kidd or Benson), or a Cleveland, or get San Diego. It also doesn't tickle the fancy of collectors as it isn't that historically significant. I thought about this ship too, a while back, but I can't see them bothering. It's kinda pointless. That being said, they have released equally pointless ships like Tiger '59, so anything is possible. I really, really doubt it though. It's much more likely that we'd see one of the Mitscher class DDs, although I really doubt that as well since Forest Sherman fills the same role.

I play CVs quite a bit in Cherry Blossom and what I've found is you really want the ones with HE ordinance that can help attack the airfields. Otherwise, you are dependent on your surface ship teammates, most of whom will get themselves killed or not understand that only killing the airfields will give you a win in the scenario. Hornet is the absolute king. With her B-25s she can destroy the airfields in 2 or so hits apiece. Ranger is actually one of the better T6 CVs for Cherry Blossom. A huge bonus is what she has two sets of planes capable of attacking the airfields and the HE dive bombers do very good damage to them. The airfield is a huge target, so the inaccuracy of her bombs isn't a problem. Among the T6s, Ark Royal and Furious are also pretty good for it. Hitting land targets is what carpet bombing is good at and like with Ranger, the airfields are big enough to get hit with all the bombs for maximum damage.

Truthfully, there's no way to know what actually happened to the OP without video. Fighters are not a stupendous defense even in the best of times, but the lion's share of the time people don't deploy them correctly. Everyone swears they launched them ahead of time and did everything right, but when I play CVs I doubt 1 person in 10 launches the fighters ahead of time but 9 in 10 swear they did. Fighters DO usually work. They aren't great but they do usually work if deployed correctly. Without video we can't do any meaningful analysis of what happened.

Not all ships are good against all things. It's intended that way. It has high speed, huge guns, and a powerful heal, but pays for it with terrible armor, poor torpedo defense, terrible agility and unimpressive AA. It's going to be a CV magnet. It's the single juiciest target for CVs and every competent CV player knows it. They'll come and work you over if you are in a position where you let them do it. She is so big that she is one of the few ships that will eat ALL the dive bombs from a good drop and all torps launched at her even from CVs with the worst reticules in the game like Midway, Saipan or FDR, if the CV lines up correctly and you don't maneuver early. There are things you can do to try to mitigate some of it, but it will never totally go away. That's a built-in weakness of the ship. Mostly you need to keep near allies and preemptively maneuver when you see the bombers incoming. That's when you see them coming, not when they are already attacking. Incomparable is so long and so unagile though that even if you maneuver to minimize the first attack, you'll eat any followup attacks unless you have some AA help from someone else. You also need to manage your damage control and heals well. Watch out for AP dive bombers and torpedo bombers in that order. AP bombers will really rip you apart if you let them fly up the spine of your ship, and you can't heal most of their damage. Incomp's deck armor is so bad you can eat citadels from fairly small AP bombs like those on Enterprise. You must maneuver to minimize their hits. TBs are almost as bad because they can reduce your speed, but at least you can heal through them. HE bombers will hurt, but you can manage their damage.

They aren't ruining fun for "everyone", they are ruining fun for you. There are others who have the same feeling and they can speak for themselves, but there are people who enjoy playing subs and CVs. It's always hazardous saying there is zero chance of something happening, but there is basically zero chance they make a mode to exclude two ship types from general play just because some find it difficult to play against them. If they do, I want a no BB mode that I can select whenever I'm playing cruisers, and a no cruiser mode when I'm in DDs.