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History This 1908 design was a earlier german proposal for Argentina of a BB to counter the Minas Geraes class. Germania 1908 Historical Characteristics - Dimensions: 163.4 × 26.1 meters. - Displacement: full 20,400 long tons. - Engine power: 28,900 horsepower. - Fuel: 2,500 long tons. - Maximum speed: 21.5 knots. - Belt protection: 225.0 mm. - Deck protection: 10.0 + 25.0 + 25.0/25.0 mm. - Complement: 1,060 p. - Main guns: 12 (6×II, 12|12) 305mm/45cs. - Secondary guns: 16 (16×I, 8|8) 150mm/45cs. - Tertiary guns: 8 (8×I, 4|4) 57mm/50cs. - Torpedo launchers: 4 (4×I, 2|2) 450mm. - Antiaircraft guns: 4 (4×I) Mg. - Aircraft: No. Germania 1908 in WoWs It can work as a tier IV researchable or premium battleship. Name - Label: "(General) Urquiza" is my suggestions. Hitpoints - Average: 33,600 hp. - Stock: 32,100 hp. - Elite: 35,100 hp. Maneuverability - Engine power: 28,900 hp. - Maximum speed: 21.5 ks. Protection - Belt: 225 mm. - Deck: 25 + 25 mm. Main guns - Mark and Model: 305mm/45cs Krupp. - Configuration: 12 (6×II, 12|12). - Rate of fire: 2.0 rpm. - Reload time: 30.0 s. - Rotation: WIP dps. - Range: WIP km. - Dispersion: WIP m. Piercing Projectile (Alternative 1) - Mark and Model: AP Krupp Heavy. - Singular damage: 8,650 hp. - Barrage damage: 103,600 hp. - Per minute damage: 207,200 hp. - Penetration: 632 mm. - Muzzle speed: 835 mps. - Weight: 415.0 kg. Piercing Projectile (Alternative 2) - Mark and Model: AP Krupp Light. - Singular damage: 8,150 hp. - Barrage damage: 97,850 hp. - Per minute damage: 195,700 hp. - Penetration: 633 mm. - Muzzle speed: 942 mps. - Weight: 350.0 kg. Proposed rate of fire was 2.0-3.0 rpm. I will add an HE projectile later. Secondary guns - Mark and model: 150mm/45cs Krupp. Configuration: 16 (16×I, 8|8). - Rate of fire: 6.0 rpm. - Reload time: 10.0 s. - Range: 5.0 km. - Rotation: WIP dps. - Dispersion: WIP m. Piercing Projectile (Alternative 1) - Mark and Model: AP Krupp Heavy. - Singular damage: 3,100 hp. - Barrage damage: 24,600 hp. - Per minute damage: 147,650 hp. - Penetration: 309 mm. - Muzzle speed: 844 mps. - Weight: 51.0 kg. Piercing Projectile (Alternative 2) - Mark and Model: AP Krupp Light. - Singular damage: 2,900 hp. - Barrage damage: 23,350 hp. - Per minute damage: 140,100 hp. - Penetration: 309 mm. - Muzzle speed: 941 mps. - Weight: 41.0 kg. Proposed rate of fire was 6.0-8.0 rpm. I will add an HE projectile later. Tertiary guns I will ignore them. Torpedo launchers I will ignore them. Antiaircraft guns - Short distance: 4 x Mg. Needs a buff. Aircraft No. Consumables - Slot 1: Damage Control Party. - Slot 2: Repair Party. Pros - Good weight on projectiles. Cons - Bad armour. - Needs HE projectiles (WIP). Regards

It's an 1-hour-and-31-minute video, so to save your time, here is the list in text. This is just Flamu's personal opinion of course. Everyone can have his or her opinion: S Tier: Repulse A Tier: Izmail, Bayern, Renown, Fuso, Ise B Tier: Mutsu, West Virginia 1941, Warspite, Mackensen C Tier: Novorossiysk, Prinz Eitel Friedrich, Queen Elizabeth, Dunkerque, Normandie, Andrea Doria D Tier: Arizona, New Mexico

Original article (spanish) History In 1907, Brazil commissioned the United Kingdom to build 3 battleships similar to but superior to the Dreadnought type, two to be built in a first stage ("Minas Gerais" and "São Paulo") and a third in a second stage ("Rio de Janeiro"). Due to the magnitude of the purchase and the capabilities of these weapons, it is at this moment that the naval arms race is triggered in the ABC. In 1908 Argentina observed the obsolescence of its fleet and for this reason it did not renew the pact for the delimitation of naval armaments signed with Chile and began an extensive bidding process between companies of the foreign naval industries, adjusted to exceed Brazilian capacities. In 1909, the "A" country signs a purchase order for two dreadnoughts ("Bernardino Rivadavia" and "Mariano Moreno"), with the option for a third. And the following year, in 1910, the Chilean government authorizes the purchase of two superdreadnoughts ("Santiago" and "Valparaíso", later respectively "Constitución" and "Libertad", and finally respectively "Almirante Cochrane" and "Almirante Latorre"). "Rivadavia", "Latorre" and "Minas Geraes" dreadnought battleships This situation put Peru on alert, this navy had only two scout cruisers as modern ships. So in February 1911 the utilitarians of the Vickers house of the United Kingdom offered this Navy the designs of two small battleships "Mini"-Dreadnoughts, Design 512 and Design 513, of similar dimensions to the Spain class, but more powerful, since it would have had the same model of guns as the future battleship "Valparaíso" (later "Latorre"). Almirante Grau-class Explorer Light Cruisers The First World War (1,914-1,918) put a parenthesis in the Peruvian naval development. An attitude of neutrality was adopted, although it was emphatic and fines and confiscations were applied for the sinking of its merchant ships. To give us an idea of the relative importance of the Peruvian Navy, around the year 1915 its fleet had a maximum displacement of 12,064 long tons, still far from Chile with a squadron of 44,486 long tons (fourth in America), from Brazil with a fleet with 70,447 long tons (third in America) and Argentina with a fleet with 124,420 long tons (second in America and ninth in the Globe). The general characteristics of the "Vickers Design N°513 of 1,911" - Dimensions: 119 × 22 meters. - Displacement: normal 11,500 & full ~13,500 long tons. - Engine power: 12,560 horsepower. - Fuel: ~2,000 long tons. - Maximum speed: 19.0 knots. - Main guns: 6 (3×II, 6|6) 356mm/45cs. - Secondary guns: 14 (14×I, 7|7) 102mm/50cs. - Antiaircraft guns: 2 (2×I, 1|1) 76mm/45* and 2 (2×I, 1|1) 37mm**. - Torpedo launchers: 2 (2×I, 1|1) 533mm. - Belt protection: 178 mm. - Deck protection: ~38 + ~38–25 mm. - Complement: ~750 p. * Not confirmed as anti-aircraft. ** Or 40mm/39 "pom-pom". With a minimum displacement and limited dimensions, they would have presented a reduced target for projectiles and enemy torpedoes. And although the speed was not superior to the average dreadnought, having big guns would have allowed them to equalize the battle distance and not risk moving into a dangerous area. Realistically, in a one-on-one battle against the "Latorre" class, the "Vickers N°513" would have had every chance of being defeated, however, if we use the displacement as the base parameter, it would give us that the "Latorre" could be an equivalent to two proposed battleships, which in a 2 vs 1 match could have evened the battle and perhaps think of a Peruvian victory. WoWs 1,914 "Vickers N°513" or "Huáscar" It can work as a tier III premium. It won't make a lot of money, but it would be a nice touch from the company. Name - Label: "Huáscar" suggestion. Hitpoints - Average: 25,600 hp. - Stock: 24,400 hp. - Elite: 26,800 hp. Maneuverability - Engine power: 12,600 hp. - Maximum speed: 19.0 ks. Protection - Belt: 178 mm. - Deck: 38 + 25 mm. Main guns - Mark and Model: 356mm/45cs Armstrong Mark A?. - Configuration: 6 (3×II, 6|6)*. - Rate of fire: 2.0 rpm. - Reload time: 30.0 s. - Rotation: WIP. - Range: WIP. - Dispersion: WIP. Piercing Projectile - Mark and Model: AP 356mm. - Singular damage: 10,200 hp. - Barrage damage: 61,200 hp. - Per minut damage 122,400 hp. - Penetration: 684 mm. - Muzzle speed: 823 mps. - Weight: 635.0 kg. Explosive Projectile - Mark and Model: HE 356mm. - Singular damage: 4,550 hp. - Barrage damage: 27,300 hp. - Per minut damage: 54,600 hp. - Fire chances: 24 %. - Penetration: 684 mm. - Muzzle speed 823 mps. - Weight: 635.0 kg. * Speculated. Secondary guns - Mark and model: 102mm/50cs. Configuration: 14 (14×I, 7|7). - Rate of fire: 12.0 rpm. - Reload time: 5.0 s. - Range: 5.0 km. - Rotation: WIP. - Dispersion: WIP. Explosive Projectile - Mark and Model: HE 102mm "HE 31 lb". - Singular damage: 1,350 hp. - Barrage damage: 9,300 hp. - Per minut damage: 111,650 hp. - Fire chances: 5 %. - Penetration: 17 mm. - Muzzle speed 884 mps. - Weight: 14.1 kg. Torpedo launchers - Mark & Model: 533mm Armstrong?.- Configuration: 2 (2×I, 1|1).- Rate of fire: WIP rpm.- Range & Speed: 3.5 km @ 58.0 ks or 7.0 km @ 49.0 ks.- T 533mm:- Mark & Model: 533mm W. Mark III.- Single damage: 7,100 hp.- Barrage damage: 7,100 hp.- Flooding chances: WIP. Antiaircraft guns - Medium distance: 2 (2×I) 76mm/45*. - Short distance: 2 (2×I) 37mm* + 7.7mm. * Not confirmed as anti-aircraft. ** Or 40mm/39. Consumables - Slot 1: Damage Control Party. - Slot 2: Repair Party. Scheme Mini-Dreadnought Battleship Vickers Design N°513 (Own Illustration XD) Regards

HMS Vanguard—I don't know how to best describe the HMS Vanguard. Relatively nimble, yes. Beautiful lines, also a yes. And atrocious firing angles, a definite yes, unfortunately. Link: https://youtu.be/6C96XwnSf3s This is 6th Tier VIII Premium battleship I have played for the past couple of weeks. I'm trying to revisit Tier VIII battleships, and by far the Vanguard has been in my experience the more challenging ship to play. (I think I'll reserve the 'most challenging' title to Roma.)

The last time I played the Gascogne was more than 6 months ago. That was a good battle (I think), but not that memorable enough for me compared to this one. While we had the caps, the red team (or what was left of it) was still hell bent on snatching victory from the jaws of defeat—destroying our own CV in the process. Staying alive still works. Got to sink a submarine and the enemy Lexington too. Link: https://youtu.be/1BVP0zaQVTA I'm revisiting Tier VIII premium battleships in my port, and this is the 5th ship that I've played so far. Gascogne feels like a Tier VIII version of the Republique: 2 turrets, front and back, with 4 main guns each, and just like her Tier X sister, can burn quite easily.

Having played Borodino and Champagne, I went to Kii, transferred Yamamoto, loaded a few signals, and went to Random Battle. The last time I played Kii in PVP was many, many eras ago—and those were few and far between. After our flank collapsed, I kited away from the enemy's push, trying to stall their advance. At one point, the ship was just a sword's edge away from certain death... Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDpDTVHkH40&t=462s I particularly liked this battle because it lasted the entire 20 minutes, something that has been increasingly a seldom occurrence for me when I go to Tier X. It feels meaningful, especially if I was able to stay in the battle for at least 15 minutes.

Hello! After doing some research I found it is possible to make a pan-EU BB line without diving too much on fiction, unlike some lines added recently. All ships from the line are from the Austria-Hungary Empire, I picked only a single nation to make the progression more cohesive without sudden changes in gameplay, therefore increasing the chances WG might add the line in the future, just like the "pan-EU DD line" that is basically Sweden. Obviously, feel free to point out alternatives to solve it. Some I saw include: Greece, Turkiye and if u go deeper in the rabbit hole you can even find projects for the Nordic countries for further additions. Precise information about the battleships are hard to find, because each place of the Empire was responsible for different parts of the construction, nowadays different sovereign states. Fortunately, I found a source that compiled all the information in one place that I will share at the end. Enough with the introduction, in the game the ships would have the following characteristics: ships with the dreadnought armor scheme, small for their respective tiers (dockyard limitations IRL) making hard to land bulky salvos against them and incredibly maneuverable even with the limited maximum speed, on the other hand they would have a small HP. Offering a different gameplay without adding gImMiCkS. Possible modernizations would include Škoda weapons created after WWI and the fire control and large caliber weapons would utilize German technology due to diplomatic narrowing between the Austro-Hungarians and the Germans before the Empire felt. The naming convention for the warships used mostly references to the Habsburgs, the Royal family of the empire and other important noble citizens. Furthermore, names from pre-Dreadnought vessels that were being decomissioned will be used as well. Now a quick summary: Tiers III and IV are the first generation of battleships, the first being a preliminary design of the Tegetthoff-class and the second one Tegetthoff itself that operated for the navy. Tiers V and VI are projects resulted from the Arms race from the period, being the first one a preliminary design of the Ersatz Monarch class and the second the finalized version. Tiers VII and VIII are the result of the experience shared from the Germans about the Battle of Jutland, in other words, the caliber of the weaposn are prioritized over the volume of the salvo, meanwhile the end of the war was approaching and the navy was anxious to restart its capital ship building program with the conclusion of the conflict, oblivious to the destiny that the Empire would face soon. Tiers IX and X are fictitious ships that could have been build if the Empire didn't dissolve and lasted a little longer to progress with the naval development, using references German projects. Here they have a dangerous firepower and low survivability. Tier III – Tegetthoff - prelimiary (Siegfried Popper II project) Dimensions: 151.5 (wl) x 26 x 8.6m Displacement: 20,000 tons = 33,500 HP Main armament: 4x2 305/50mm K10 Secondary armament: 4x2 190/50mm Other: 20x1 100/50mm em casamatas AA: 2x1 70/45mm Speed: 20,5 knots Armor: turrets - 60 a 280mm; deck - 48mm; belt - 230mm Comments: a generic battleship for the tier with pre-Dreadnought "vices", like large secondary weapons in turrets, even so, prepares the player well enough for the tech tree. Tier IV – Tegetthoff Dimensions: Viribus older sister :) Displacement: 21,689 tons = 35,700 HP Main armament: 4x3 305/50mm K10 Secondary armament: 12x1 150mm AA: 18x1 66mm Speed: 20,5 knots Armor: turrets - 60 a 280mm; deck - 48mm; belt - 280mm Comments: in-game the ship would have lower alpha and longer reload to become balanced one tier lower compared to her sister Viribus Unitis (tbf the ship was fine at this tier in the first testing version, but WG became hesitant to create a seal-clubbing premium). Tier V – Ersatz Monarch - preliminary – Maria Theresia (Design I / 22.000t MTK Project 1911) Dimensions: 161 (wl) x 27.6 x 8.4m Displacement: 22,000 tons = 36,300 HP Main warmament: 4x3 305/50mm K10 Secondary Armament: 6x2, 10x1 150/50mm casemated AA: 24x1 75mm Speed: 21 knots Armor: turrets - 60 a 280mm; deck - 63mm; belt - 300mm Comments: Similar to the tier IV with improvements to the armor, secondary armament and AA weapons. Tier VI – Ersatz Monarch finalized project – Monarch Dimensions: 172 (wl) x 28.5 x 8.4m Displacement: 24.500 tons = 45,100 HP Main armament: 3x2, 2x2 350/45mm K14 Secondary armament: 14x1 150/50mm casemated Other: 12x1 88mm dual purpose weapons AA: 2x1 47mm Speed: 21 knots Armor: turrets - 80 a 340mm; deck - 72mm; belt - 310mm Comments: Keeps the gameplay from the previous ships with considerable improvements in fire power and protection to keep competitive at the new tier. Tier VII – Erzherzog Karl (Battleship project III - 1917) Dimensions: 200 (wl) x 30 x 8.75m Displacement: 32,300 tons = 52,800 HP Main armament: 4x2 380/45mm SK L/45 (German origin - weapons from Prinz Heinrich in-game) Secondary armament: 18x1 150mm casemated Other: 14x1 88mm de duplo propósito AA: unknown amount of 47mm weapons Speed: 25 knots Armor: turrets - (similar to Prinz Heinrich turrets); deck - 40mm; belt - 300mm Comments: sacrifices armor, on the other hand gains a substantial amount of fire power and speed. Tier VIII – Zrínyi (Battleship project V - 1917) Dimensions: 215 (wl) x 32 x 9.5m Displacement: 39.600 tons = 62,700 HP Main armament: 4x2 420/45mm SK L/45 (German origin - weapons from Schlieffen in-game) Secondary armament: 20x1 150mm casemated Other: 4x1 150mm dual purpose AA: unkown amount of AA weapons, problably the 47mm option and newer guns. Speed: 24 knots Armor: turrets - (similar to Schlieffen turrets); deck - 40mm; belt - 300mm Comments: the old design starts becoming a problem, on the other hand is compensated with the largest main battery guns at the tier, being a threat to any target being aimed by this ship. Extra: here we would possibly have the oldest 150mm DP gun if it gets implemented... how effective it would be in reality is dubious, because even similar weapons several years later were a disaster in this function, some of them were only solved somewhat during the Cold War. Tier IX – Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand (fictitious) Displacement: 45.000 tons = 67,500 HP Main armament: 3x2, 2x2 420/45mm SK L/45 (German origin - weapons from Schlieffen in-game) Secondary armament: 12x1 150mm dual purpose AA: 18x2 40mm from Skoda Speed: 26 knots Armor: turrets - (similar to Schlieffen turrets); deck - 40mm; belt - 320mm Comments: a considerable more modern warship, without the use of casemated guns, also with a heavier focus protecting the ship against air raids. On the other hand keeps the obsolete armor scheme, low speed compared to the competition and low HP. At first I thought increasing the caliber of the weapons, but it would be hard to balance (Georgia, Musashi both no longer available to purchase and Sun Yat-Sen with a pathetic alpha damage per salvo) Tier X – Habsburg (fictitious) Displacement: 58.000 tons = 81,000 HP Main armament: 4x2 450mm (Preussen weapons, but not quite... several posts in the forum already cover this) Secondary armament: 6x2 150mm dual purpose Other: 8x2 128/61mm KM40 dual purpose (German origin) AA: 24x2 40mm from Skoda Speed: 27 knots Armor: deck - 50mm; belt - 350mm Comments: a warship with the same gameplay from the other high tier ships from the line, at first it seems like a boring vessel to play, but she has unmatched handling uncommon for tier X behemoths. Tier VI (premium) - Sankt Georg (Battlecruiser project II - 1917) Dimensions: 220m (wl) x 29 x 8,5m Displacement: 34.000 tons = 55.300 HP Main armament: 3x2 380/45mm SK L/45 (German origin - weapons from Prinz Heinrich in-game) Secondary armament: 18x1 150mm casemated Other: 12x1 88mm casemated AA: 6x1 88mm weapons Speed: 30 knots Armor: deck - 40mm; belt - 225mm belt Comments: The KuK navy got impressed how SMS Goeben evaded the British and how effective the Battlecruisers were at the Battle of the Falklands (1914) and designed some of their own, since they lacked a warship of this type. So, I picked this project as a premium, since there are only a few battlecruiser projects that couldn't be the base of a different tech tree line, in-game the stats might be intimidating for a ship at tier VI, but the armor is vulnerable even against some 203mm AP shells and the poor placement of the turrets will force the player to show a considerable amount of the weak sides of the ship to the enemy. Source: http://www.viribusunitis.ca/bb-bc-pre-designs Extras: I forgot to name some ships; I need to rethink the AA, even if it gets buffed somehow the protection against airplanes will still be weak; If the ships can't deal enough damage on paper in the game, the addition of underwater torps might be an option; There might be some Portuguese words randomly lost in the text above, since the original version I made for fun in Portuguese last month after @Captain_Benevolent_Fair dared me to create a BB line not added to the game yet that isn't pure fiction nor a PanAM one. The HP I used don't follow the formula used in the game to calculate it using displacement, I did it in a rush in the last minute because it was missing, still an aproximate value; To see the designs click on the source I provided to see Tzoli reimagination of the ships. He always does an amazing job!

With a 10-point captain and just the B Hull module mounted, I decided to bring the Tier IX Delaware to Random Battle to get Ship XP at a faster rate. I want to play the Tier X Louisiana before real life commitments take a huge chunk of time allotted for games. I have been playing this ship in Co-op, and the meager returns on Ship XP is unacceptable given my internal deadline. After a few days of playing the ship in PVE, it was time to sail in PVP. In my first few battles, I can see that the main battery dispersion is very much improved, unlike how it was with the Tier VIII Nebraska. Perhaps the one (reasonable) advantage it has over the Iowa is the capability to deal damage even if a target is out of range of her main guns. However, I still prefer to play her as a battleship; the planes are just an added bonus. And I find Delaware's geometry infinitely pleasing to the eye compared to that of her downright ugly Tier VIII sister. 😄 Link: https://youtu.be/rzXHdAhPsYw

Premium Ship PREVIEW: West Virginia '44 The following is a preview of USS West Virginia '44, specifically a look at the Work-in-Progress stats from the DevBlog here! I have not played this ship; this analysis is based solely upon interpreting the stats as published within that one article. Please keep in mind this ship will change during the course of testing. It's been over four years. Four long years, we've been waiting for this promised ship. Wargaming forgot about their promise at one point. It took a foofaraw from the then soon-to-be ex-Community Contributors back in the Summer of 2021 to get them honour it. But here it is! So while it may have taken nearly five years to get the ship that was promised, their turn around time was technically less than two when they finally got off their butts and committed to it, which isn't completely terrible in my opinion. Good job, team. I'm really looking forward to seeing this ship in game as I have a BIG soft spot for WWI era battleships and the modernized American Standard Types in particular. WeeVee 44 rose as a phoenix from the ashes of WWII and is such an amazing success story of the American Naval Yards and Navy personnel, it's downright inspiring. Here's hoping her release can be similarly poetic for World of Warships, though I think that's just my love of the dramatic speaking. Anyway, seeing as there are now going to be TWO West Virginia premiums and I will be mentioning both in this, it's time for some nomenclature clarity. In this article, if I mention "West Virginia", I'm talking about the tier VI premium that was released way back in 2018. If I'm talking about this new tier VII version, I'll use the term WeeVee 44 to help keep things clear. Quick Summary: A slow brawling standard-type battleship with powerful 406mm artillery backed by quick-firing and accurate (gasp!) 127mm/38 secondaries. WeeVee 44 PROS Good anti-torpedo protection Strong 406mm artillery with good penetration and overmatch potential at her tier Long ranged when properly upgraded. Improved secondaries Her Repair Party heals more per charge than standard consumables Thicc! WeeVee 44 CONS Short base range for a tier VII battleship Below average main battery dispersion Bad main battery firing arcs and gun handling Slow as butts AA isn't as good as it looks. Thicc? Options Consumables We don't know the specifics of a lot of these consumables but a lot of these are fairly standard. Assuming these are standard unless otherwise indicated by the article, then we get the following: Her Damage Control Party will PROBABLY be standard for an American Battleship. These have unlimited charges with a 20 second active period (instead of the normal 15 seconds) with an 80 second reset timer. We know that her Repair Party is special. From the stats quoted, it appears to mirror that of Colorado. This queues up 10% of citadel damage, 50% of penetration damage and 100% of everything else. This will heal up to 18.48% of her health per charge over 28 seconds with four charges base. She has an 80 second reset timer. Again, we can assume her Spotter Aircraft will be standard for a tier VII battleship, increasing her main battery range by 20% for 100 seconds with a 240 second reset timer. This should come with four charges. If she swaps this out for a Catapult Fighter, this launch aircraft that will orbit on station for 60 seconds (again, assuming this is standardized). We should expect to see three charges and a 90 second reset timer. Camouflage We've only seen the 'standard' type 10 camouflage from the preview image, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that given the time frame of her announcement that WeeVee 44 will be released for the week of July 4th, 2023. To this end, you can expect a gruesomely patriotic camo to accompany her release for those who want to splurge on a bigger bundle. I doubt we'll see any tagged on economy bonus over the usual premium for either camo, though. Firepower Main Battery: Eight 406mm/45 guns in 4x2 turrets in an A-B-X-Y superfiring layout. Secondary Battery: Sixteen 127mm/38 guns in 8x2 turrets laid out in superfiring-pairs on each side with two sets firing forward and two aft. West Virginia (Tier VI)'s 1.8 dispersion. This is 180 AP shells fired at 15km at a stationary Fuso bot. Shells are coming in from right to left (Fuso is bow tanking). On Main Battery Performance I don't think we're going to see anything unexpected with WeeVee 44's gunnery. Colorado's gun performance is a known entity. There's even a closer analogue to what we're getting with this new ship in the form of the tier VI version of the premium which has shorter range and reduced sigma over Colorado's own. The drop down to 1.7 sigma will feel noticeably different to Colorado's but almost identical to the tier VI West Virginia premium's, so anyone that's put the original premium through the paces will feel right at home. A difference of only 0.1 sigma between the two premiums will be imperceptible in regular gameplay (it's only something you'd see in accuracy stats over the course of dozens and dozens of matches). I am honestly surprised to see her presented with a 30 second reload, however. If I was going to point to one aspect I think might change with WeeVee 44, it's here. With improved secondaries and improved heals, I'm fully expecting her to get the Yukon treatment and her reload will bump up and up and up if she proves to be too efficient during testing. We'll see. The big thing to talk about is her range, or rather her advertised lack of it. On paper, WeeVee 44's range does look pretty mediocre. Though, I admit, when I first read the "short range" thing, I thought she might get the Yukon treatment and end up with a sub-16km base reach. As a base stat, 17.5km IS really short for a tier VII battleship, putting her just behind Caracciolo and barely ahead of Prinz Heinrich. Only Sinop, Renown '44 and Yukon have less. This looks doubly painful given her advertised concealment woes along with her slow top speed. She's not like the Italian battleship with her speed or Yukon's sneakiness to help close the distance. However, there's one caveat to all of this: she's an American Battleship. She gets access to Artillery Plotting Room Modification 1 (APRM1). Equip her with this upgrade and suddenly her reach jumps to 20.3km. With this, she jumps from 18th of 23 ships to 6th for her tier, behind Hyuga, Nagato and the three other American battleships when they equip APRM1. So yeah, that's not terrible. It's not going to be a crippling flaw the way it is for Yukon as you have an easy out if you don't fancy brawling. But that begs the question: is it worth taking APRM1 over buffing her secondaries? Gun damage output. From left to right: AP DPM, HE & SAP DPM and Fires per Minute. I've also included things like overmatch potential (for AP) and base penetration (HE & SAP). Colorado's guns have always been solid. A sixteen-inch gun at tier VII is hella punchy and it allows her to bully even heavy cruisers with 27mm structural plating. To this end, at least from a hits-landed perspective, WeeVee 44's guns should perform comfortably. Approximate AP penetration values for Colorado's 406mm AP shells. These are good (not amazing, but good). It's likely WeeVee 44 will duplicate these barring any Krupp tomfoolery. Secondary Guns Though WG didn't say specifically, I'm just going to assume WeeVee 44 's secondaries will have the same accuracy parameters as other American premium battleships with souped-up secondaries like Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Georgia. This ticks one of the requirement boxes I have on whether or not secondaries are considered "good" for their tier and worth specializing into. The other aspects are range, penetration and volume of fire. So let's look at those. We know her initial range value for her secondariees. It's 6.3km. With a deep build, you can get that up to 9,526m which is ... well, it's not great. It's okay. It's the same other tier VII secondary specialist ships are stuck with (Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, etc). But it's far worse than those I'm more used to seeing at tier VIII which often exceeds 7.5km base. So WeeVee 44's good company, I suppose. A little extra reach would have been more comfortable, especially given her lack of speed. It would certainly be something I'd keep an eye on during testing. As for rate of fire, there's some uncertainty The article mentions that they have a "fast reload". Like with her accuracy, I'm just going to assume they have the same reload as Massachusetts' secondaries which is 4 seconds instead of the usual 6 seconds for mounts of this type on most other American battleships. The good news is that the layout of the guns will allow all of them to be easily brought to bear, and it should be easy to get all of the secondary gun mounts off one side firing at 30º off the bow. This will help prompt some auto-ricochets from AP rounds in brawling situations, so long as her opponent can't overmatch her (or doesn't just blast her gun turrets / superstructure -- brawling isn't as strong as it used to be). It's important to remember that WeeVee 44 has only eight turrets instead of the ten found on higher tiered ships with the same mounts. So she's only putting out 80% of the potential damage of Massachusetts. It's overall bad news for penetration, but that's nothing new with the 127mm/38s. They have 21mm of HE pen which can be buffed to 26mm with the Inertial Fuse for HE Shells (IFHE) commander skill. In Random Battles, I'd be loathe to take the skill, simply because Matchmaking is unkind to tier VII vessels and she'll end up facing a lot of opponents with 32mm and 27mm plating. The skill points could be better spent elsewhere. However, if you can guarantee she'll be top tier, such as a Ranked Battle season, then IFHE's value increases dramatically. Given what I'm seeing, I think kitting out WeeVee 44 for a brawl in top-tier situations will go well. Otherwise, you'd be better optimizing her for main battery firepower range. We'll see what WG thinks after the testers have got a hold of her. Firepower Feels I think WeeVee 44 has potential here. I think she'll mostly spend her time pew-pewing with her main battery guns. As a long-range (when upgraded) sniper, I think she'll do okay, but only okay. Colorado's not exactly topping the lists as the most efficient of tier VII battleships and WeeVee 44 entering the races with a dispersion nerf certainly isn't going to turn any heads. I fear for her secondaries, though. Brawls are a rarity outside of Co-Op anyway and they're certainly going to be harder to justify with such a slow ship. I REALLY hope that her secondary performance doesn't become a casualty because of the difficulty of getting her into secondary range. If anything, I hope to see secondary range buffed a bit to Massachusetts' 7.5km base (giving her a max reach of 11.34km) to facilitate this if it becomes an issue. The elephant in the room, at least for my biases, is the firing angle on her guns. West Virginia at tier VI has pretty bad firing angles. The refit is going to make it worse. Pair this with her slow 4º/s turret traverse and I can already feel my eye twitch. Bad gun handling is a personal pet-peeve of mine so this may end up a deal-breaker for me, but it won't sink the ship as it were. If I can make Yukon work (she has West Virginia gun arcs / turret traverse rates) I can probably stomach this. These are the gun fire angles on the tier VI premium West Virginia. These are already bad. WeeVee 44's refit is probably going to make them even worse with all of the AA guns and superstructure changes in the way. These are California's gun angles. They're probably the closest proxy to what we're going to see on WeeVee 44. VERDICT: Looks a-okay to me, though I'd like to see more range on the secondaries. I won't be surprised if Wargaming (a) nerfs her main battery reload because they like doing that, or (b) axes her good secondaries because testers couldn't make them work. Durability Hit Points: 59,100 Bow & stern / Superstructure / upper-hull / amidships-deck: : I'm guessing 26mm / 16mm / 26mm / 26mm? Maximum Citadel Protection: I'm guessing 35mm Anti-torpedo bulge + 343mm belt + 45mm citadel wall? Torpedo Damage Reduction: 37% Health We'll start with what we know for certain: WeeVee 44 has a good chunk of hit points. Her 59,100 initial hit point pool is nice and respectable, but on top of this they appear to have given her an identical Repair Party consumable to her sister-ship, Colorado. This is an improved version of the consumable, recovering more health per charge than a standard version of the consumable (up to 18.48% per charge instead of the normal 14%). In theory, this gives her the potential to have one of the largest effective health pools at her tier, outshone only by her sister ship and those two weirdos that carry portable dry-docks. If this survives testing, it will be to a player's advantage to spend at least some commander skill points to pick up the Emergency Repair Expert commander skill and use an India Delta signal to take full advantage of this consumable. Again, forgive the lack of a graph. You'll have to squint at numbers. Armour & Citadel Protection This is a big ol' question mark. It's likely that WeeVee 44's armour scheme will largely carry over from her tier VI equivalent, but with an extended superstructure, deck surface and massive anti-torpedo bulges. We're likely going to see the ship almost entirely covered with 26mm plating on her bow, stern, upper hull and amidships deck area, with no stand-out areas of thicker armour as appeared on California's 37mm rear deck plating, for example. It's likely her belt will be the same 343mm thickness for most of it, tapering to a thinner 203mm belt well below the waterline. We don't know how thick they will make the plating of her anti-torpedo bulges. It would be wonderful if they ended up the same 35mm thickness as California as these can cause all sorts of fun ricochet mechanics and absorb stray shells. The article describes them as "thick" but that doesn't necessarily refer to the armour value and may instead simply describe the width of spacing provided. Functionally, aside from whatever shenanigans to bulges present to incoming rounds, WeeVee '44 will be an XP pinata for cruiser-calibre HE and SAP spam, with large, easy-to-shoot areas to farm damage. You can expect a lot of harassment from destroyer gunships too. Against battleship calibre AP shells, it's bit more of question. While the anti-torpedo bulge thickness is one unknown variable, so too is citadel placement. The tier VI West Virginia has a citadel that sits right at the waterline as does Colorado. I can't see it being submerged and will likely mirror their placement. The good news is that the citadel is rather narrow. It doesn't abut against the exterior of the hull the way a lot of British battleships do, which should downgrade potential citadel hits to merely penetrating ones. So she won't be citadel proof, but she's not going to be handing them out for free the way some recent battleship premiums have. Still, I think it likely that WeeVee 44 will give away more penetration damage to incoming AP rounds than players might be used to. I predict she'll have a lot of areas easily overmatched by 380mm+ guns, on top of poor geometry and gun firing angles which will make easy vectors for return fire to take bites out of her health pool. Once again, California is standing in to give an example of how WeeVee 44's layout may appear. In this case, we're looking at her armour. Odds are, WeeVee 44 will have 26mm of structural plate across most of the ship with a massive anti-torpedo bulge. Hopefully this bulge will be up-armoured, providing some overmatch and HE protection for the ship, but we won't know until we see the ship in question. Note that California and West Virginia have similar belt thicknesses. So some of these values may carry over. California again, this time showing her belt layout and giving an indication of the size of her anti-torpedo bulges. I'm very curious to see if this will be a hit-gobbling void on WeeVee 44 or if it will count as penetrating hits if it's punctured. Anti-Torpedo Protection This is worth commenting on, if only for the absurdity of it. WeeVee 44 has 37% torpedo damage reduction from her anti-torpedo bulges. This is an improvement over the original West Virginia's 22% torpedo damage reduction and better than California's 35%. But this is identical to Colorado's and Arizona's (37%) but worse than New Mexico's (40%). I guess I should be happy that it's at least on par with Colorado's but given the geometry and specific reinforcements made to the ship historically, this still makes me raise an eyebrow. Alright, enough grumping about 'muh history'. VERDICT: WeeVee 44 looks like a damage sponge to me. I've got pretty strong hopes that she won't give away citadel hits left, right and centre, but I don't think she'll be functionally immune except at very close ranges. Cruiser-spam will be a pain in the butt for her to handle, but that's not a problem unique to her. We'll see if her awesome heal survives testing. Agility Top Speed: 21 knots Turning Radius: 670 meters Rudder Shift Time: 14.8 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 3.6º/s at 15.8 knots (estimated) Main Battery Traverse Rate: 4º/s There's not a lot of good news here, but I don't think any of us were expecting there to be. With the stats as listed, WeeVee is going to feel slow as dirt and handle like a wheel of cheese under a blowtorch (on fire, gooey and painful to handle). It's likely Wargaming is going to clone West Virginia's performance at tier VI over, though they did change out their rudder shift time, so we'll see. Still, those are some crummy stats. In terms of agility (and as written in the article) WeeVee 44 is definitely a contender for the worst ship at her tier, though California and Nelson provide a bit of challenge to that title. At least her rudder shift time looks somewhat passable. It's not quick, but it's not irredeemable. At least she can't out turn her turrets. I think it's a bit of a pipe dream to hope that they might give her some improved energy retention the way the standards of old once had. At least then she'd be able to keep her top speed up. I'm not holding my breath, though. I've co-opted this graphic from my Hyuga review from back in 2021 to save on time. This doesn't include ships that have been added since then, but I think this gives a pretty good idea of where WeeVee 44 sits. I've added WeeVee 44's curve in yellow. She's third from the top. Her turning circle radius is small but her rate of turn is awful. VERDICT: As bad as you imagined. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 5? (probably 4+1) explosions for 1,400 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8km. Long Ranged (up to 5.8 km): 140 dps at 75% accuracy (105 dps) Medium Ranged (up to 3.5 km): 263 dps at 75% accuracy (197.3 dps) Short Ranged (up to 2 km): 445 dps at 70% accuracy (311.5 dps) I hate that as much time as I've spent looking at AA firepower last year, I look at these numbers and I can't tell if it's supposed to be "good" or not. Time to break out a calculator. After some quick thumbnail math, WeeVee 44's sustained AA DPS is decent for her tier, but a significant step down from California who leads the pack. Against a simulated UFO with unlimited health, heading directly towards the ship at 186.2 knots (500m/s once you factor in distance compression in World of Warships) and disappearing once they get within 0.1km of the vessel, here's how much damage the top five battleships at tier VII do: California: ~4400 damage Duke of York: ~3900 damage WeeVee 44: ~3800 damage Florida: ~3600 damage Lyon: ~3300 damage AA sustained DPS drops significantly after that with Colorado putting out ~2800 damage and it continues to drop like a stone the further down the list you go. So what's that tell us? Well, it's nothing new, for one. We've already seen this level of AA power before and Duke of York and Florida provide good analogues for how well this ship can defend itself -- which is to say that it's okayish against a tier VI carrier but little more than ceremonial fireworks welcoming in higher tiered attackers. You're hoping that the enemy CV player will oblige you by running into flak; For what it's worth, her flak is strong for her tier, with higher damage and generating more of them than a lot of other battleships. But they're not insurmountable or even a significant challenge to avoid. Early on, while all of your small and medium calibre AA is intact, WeeVee 44 might not have to suffer repeated runs from the same squadron and you may even thin out a Soviet CV strike by a couple of planes. Later on in the match, though, after she's taken some HE damage, her AA is going to be significantly weaker.Just Dodging™ is out of the question with her awful handling. Her AA will undoubtedly be used as an advertisement feature on WG's promotional material. Be warned that without further boosts or gimmicks, it's not worth getting excited over. This is how WeeVee 44's AA would have looked like back in 2018 under the old AA system. This is awesome. California's would have still been better, don't get me wrong, but WeeVee '44 would have been a welcome addition to the fleet. Gone are the days of AA standardization, sadly. There's no reason to ever improve a battleship's AA firepower under the game's current design. VERDICT: Disappointing, but through no fault of her own. She could have been awesome, but the game isn't designed like that. Refrigerator Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 15.2 km / 13.68 km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 9.5 km / 8.55 km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 15.1km Maximum Firing Range: from 17.5km to 20.3km (GFCSM1) all the way up to 24.36km (GFCSM1 + Spotter Aircraft) WeeVee 44's surface detection is on the bad side of average at her tier (which sits closer to 14.8km) though she's right on the mean. The glut of new British ships over the last couple of years have driven the average down with Yukon, Renown '44 and Rooke all having a sub 13km base surface detection range which is skewing the numbers a bit. WeeVee 44's surface concealment is all but identical to the Scharnhorst sisters and is better than Colorado's by 600m, so that looks okay to me. That said, there's nearly a 4km gap between the max theoretical range of WeeVee 44's upgraded secondaries and her surface detection range, so they're only going off if someone makes a mistake. That's probably going to frustrate a few during her trials. I suspect that with a main battery artillery build, her lack of concealment will be a non-issue. I don't expect to see these values changed at all unless they really try and prop up her brawling design or if her survivability REALLY sucks. VERDICT: Not good, but not a serious flaw by any means. Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Airstrike from 0.5km to 8km (plus about 200m for part of the bomb drop column which can extend past 8km) Number of Salvos: Two Reload Time: 30 seconds Aircraft: One PBY Catalina with 2,000hp Drop Pattern: 1 bomb Maximum Bomb Damage: 3,400 Fire Chance: 19% Bomb Blast Radius: 300m ASW has been standardized so there's nothing really to write about here with all tier VII battleships spitting out the same drop pattern of a single bomb. WeeVee 44's awful handling will make dodging fish a bit of a pain, but at least she's got good (but not great) anti-torpedo bulgest to help mitigate side-on hits. Mouse's Guesswork On the surface, we have a worse-Colorado. WeeVee 44's gunnery just isn't as strong as the lead of her class, having a deficit in both accuracy and range. In exchange she gets good (?) secondaries, better (but not good) surface detection and better (but not good) AA. Though determining balance is always guesswork until the raw numbers are in, she LOOKS okay? To me she looks like a solid contender when she's top tier and arguably better than Colorado. Like, in Ranked Battles she might even be a bit overtuned as range doesn't matter nearly as much and brawling is much (MUCH) easier to instigate. But when facing higher tiered opponents, Colorado is the better boat. There's still a couple of important questions to be answered about the ship. The armour value of those anti-torpedo bulges and where her citadel is placed are the biggest X-factors to me right now. 26mm anti-torpedo bulges with a waterline citadel and the ship will feel a LOT squishier than California. 35mm anti-torpedo bulges and a citadel dropped below the surface like California will make WeeVee 44 feel a lot more tanky than Colorado. Heck, even a thinning of the citadel wall from the estimated 45mm down to something that can be overmatched by battleship calibre rounds would be enough of a significant difference in her survivability. Without knowing these things, it's really hard to guess at her performance. I'm guessing we'll see at least a few changes over the course of testing. At the top of my list, I'm expecting her reload to be tweaked or she might lose her improved Repair Party. I'm dreading what might happen if they can't get her secondaries to work. We shall see! Thank you all for reading! ♥

-18% main battery reload time in exchange for -24% main battery firing range feels a bit too much in some situations. However, in this PVP game played in the Mountain Range map, it felt balanced. Link: https://youtu.be/3enIHTDePbY

I’m aware there’s little possibility of these ships getting added into the game (or maybe there are on their plans, who knows). However, in the current meta full of so many paper ships, hybrid monstrosities and “we can assume…” (like the upcoming high tier Pan American cruisers), it would be interesting to see real historical ships once in a while (or other paper ships, but with a historical background). Again, it’s hard to see these added on the near future, but at least I can dream about it. So, this is my list of ships that would be interesting to see on WOWS. Disclaimer: this is all 100% my opinion. You can feel free to agree or disagree with some of them. No worries about that. Spoiler alert: there’s gonna be some CV, but please, stay with me. Submarines Just kidding. Of course there are options, but please no. Now, let’s start. Destroyers San Giorgio: a post-war Capitani Romani-class destroyer with 6 5”/38 caliber American guns and without torpedoes. Could be a decent Tier X gunboat with the Italian exhaust smoke and the engine boost. Johnston: we all know this one. I know, another Fletcher, but one that would sell like crazy (specially in the NA server) for her history. IMO, I’d see her at Tier IX with the heal of the Kidd (or even a zombie heal), the typical American smoke, the 10 torpedo launchers and an engine boost. Piourn: the Polish DD that screamed “I am a Pole” to the Bismarck the night before her last battle. Maybe at Tier VIII, similar to the Orkan but with smoke instead of radar. Laffey: an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer (like Gearing, but a bit slower) that participated on the D-Day and survived a fierce kamikaze attack. Today is a museum ship. A similar concept like Gearing (Tier X), but with DFAA and maybe a heal. Churruca: a Spanish destroyer with 5 120 mm guns, 6 torpedo launchers and a decent top speed (36 knots). A solid Tier VI. ZH1: a Dutch destroyer captured by the Germans scuttled at the Battle of Ushant after being crippled by British forces. It was armed with 5 120 mm guns and 8 torpedo launchers. Could be a Tier VII. Holland: a Dutch destroyer similar to Friesland, but a bit slower. Could be a decent Tier VIII gunboat. Eversten: a Dutch destroyer (very similar to Acasta) that was sunk in 1942. At Tier V. Cavalier: a British destroyer that is currently a museum ship. Armed with 4 4.5” guns and 10 torpedo launchers. Would need IFHE. A good Tier VII torpedo boat. Cruisers Sheffield: a light cruiser with a rich history behind. A solid Tier VII. Similar to Fiji or Edinburgh, but with HE added. SMS Blücher: not to be confused with the Admiral Hipper-class cruiser sunk in 1940. The last armored cruiser built by the German Empire, which was also sunk. Good artillery (210 mm guns), good armor, but not so fast (25-26 knots) and pretty much no AA. A beast at Tier V, but will suffer when up tiered. Bolzano: in a nutshell, a Trento with Zara’s guns and forecastle. Another glass cannon. Because of it, I’d slot her on Tier VI (maybe with a small heal, like Maya’s). Canberra: a County-class cruiser in service with the Australian Navy and sunk off Savo Island in 1942. Very fragile, but with guns that can hit hard. As her sister ships, Tier VI. Duquesne: a French treaty cruiser with basically no armor that will explode only when you see it. Maybe a YOLO cruiser or a sniper one at Tier V. Gotland: a Swedish hybrid cruiser with also not armor, nor good guns, and slow (28 knots). Could be reliant on her aircraft (similar to the Swordfish with HE bombs) and torpedoes. I’d slot her at Tier V. Tre Kronor: a post war Swedish cruiser with the same guns found on mid-tier Dutch cruisers, but with torpedoes. A decent Tier VI or VII. Averof: another armored cruiser with an outstanding history. Similar to Blücher, good guns, good armor, but slow. However, with not-so-mediocre AA. A good Tier IV, or a Tier V that would struggle (like Viribus Unitis). Houston: an American cruiser which was between the Pensacola and the Indianapolis (much closer to the latter) sunk alongside the Perth in 1942. A similar concept to the Indianapolis, but without the radar, a bit less range and worse AA at Tier VI. Ajax: a New Zealand Leander-class that fought against the Graf Spee in 1939. Similar to Leander (Tier VI), but with HE added. Admiral Scheer: the sister ship of Graf Spee that received some updates throughout the war (different superstructure, a clipper bow, more AA). Same speed, with a thinner armored belt. Like her sister, Tier VI. Quebec: a Fiji-class transferred to the Canadian Navy. Quite similar to Mysore (Tier VI), with torpedoes and HE added. Veinticinco de Mayo: an Argentinian heavy cruiser built in Italy armed with 6 190 mm guns, but light armor. Could be slotted at Tier V. Battleships Royal Oak: a Revenge-class sunk early on WW2 while anchored at Scapa Flow. A bit slower than QE, with slightly better armor an this particular one with torpedoes at the bow. Could be good at Tier VI, with the gyroscopic torpedoes of battlecruisers. Maybe sold alongside the U-47 (just kidding). Almirante Latorre: a Chilean battleship built in the UK, served with the Royal Navy and fought at Jutland, before being sold again to Chile. Good guns (10 14”), decent armor and not-so-mediocre AA (in her 1930’s configuration). Either at Tier V or VI. Erin: a battleship ordered by the Ottoman Navy but seized by the Royal Navy at the beginning of WW1. Similar to Iron Duke, but smaller and with pretty much no AA. A decent Tier V. Ersatz Monarch: basically, a bigger and better Viribus Unitis with bigger guns. Still, slow and with pretty much no AA. A better Tier V. No. 13 battleship: a project of a big battleship with 8 18” guns and better armor than previous Japanese designs. Seems like a bigger Nagato. I’d put it at Tier X (with a similar refit like Amagi or Kii), because there’s already a lot of Tier IX Japanese battleships. New Jersey: yes, another Iowa. Maybe taking a similar approach to the Massachusetts or Georgia (a brawler with precise secondaries), but that could still be able to snipe if necessary. Tier IX. Salamis: a cancelled Greek battleship (which by armor seems more like a battlecruiser) with 8 14” guns and lots of secondaries. A good Tier V. Seydlitz: a German battlecruiser based on the Moltke-class with improved armor and machinery. Was a big piñata at Jutland. Either Tier IV or V. Tosa: a Japanese battleship that was never completed with 10 410 mm guns. Similar to Amagi, but a bit slower. Either Tier VII or VIII. N3: a big, slow battleship with 9 18” guns. Also, ugly as hell. Preceded the Nelson-class design. A Tier IX fattleship. Arkhangelsk: oh yeah, Soviet bias. Like Royal Oak, a Revenge-class that was leased to the Soviet Navy. Like her sister ship (Tier VI), without the torpedoes, but with less mediocre AA and Stalin-guided shells. Pennsylvania: the sister ship of Arizona that survived Pearl Harbor. She was given a refit, on which she received better secondaries and AA. Still, very slow. Unlike California, she should sit at Tier VI. Spanish Littorio: yes, there was a plan for build a Littorio-class for Spain. If this come into fruition, please not another copy-paste of the Roma. At least with different secondaries at Tier VIII. Riachuelo: a Brazilian battleship project similar to the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes. Also at Tier VI. L20e a: a proposed German battleship that was intended to succeed the Bayern-class. Armed with 8 420 mm guns, but somewhat slow at 26 knots. An interesting Tier IX with a “what if..” update. Rivadavia: an Argentinian battleship built in the US. She carried 12 305 mm guns an had a speed of 22 knots. She served for quite a long time. Either Tier IV or V. Aircraft Carriers (I’m sorry. Please, don’t be mad) Akagi: a famous Japanese carrier with similar characteristics as Kaga, but a bit bigger and faster. An aircraft printer at Tier VIII. Wasp: a deviate of the Yorktown-class carrier with a smaller air group and no torpedo protection. Also, slower at 29 knots. Could be slotted at Tier VI. Sparviero: an ocean liner intended to be converted into a carrier for the Italian Navy. Never completed. It was supposed to carry a small air group, and be slow at 20 knots. Due to the aircraft carried (same as Aquila), I’d put it at Tier VI. Unryu: one of the last fleet carriers built and commissioned by the Japanese. It was similar to the Soryū and Hiryū. Fast, agile, but lightly armored. With a smaller air group, but with late war aircraft, could be a “balanced” Tier VIII. Shinano: the sister ship of Yamato converted into a support carrier that wasn’t completed when she was sunk by a submarine (how the turnarounds). Even though it was supposed to be a support carrier, I’ll see her as a broken Tier X with an absurdly large hangar. Europa: a gigantic ocean liner planned to be converted into a big carrier. I’d see her as a hybrid of Loewenhardt (same planes) with the sheer amount of planes of the Kaga, at Tier VIII. Karel Doorman: a sister ship of Colossus that was sold to the Dutch Navy in 1948. Could be a similar concept to the Saipan (Tier VIII with small air group but up tier aircraft with Dutch air strike). Glorious: a British aircraft carrier sunk by the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in 1940. A similar CV to Ark Royal at the same tier, with different fighters and carpet bombers (only the Swordfish torpedo bombers). Elbe: a proposed conversion of a German ocean liner. With the same planes as Weser (Tier VI), but quite slower. Intrepid: I know the plans for uneven carriers removed during the CV rework. However, there can be an Essex-class with characteristics between Lexington and Midway at the same tier as the latter. Jun’yō: a small Japanese carrier that looks like a mini Taihō. With a decent amount of aircraft aboard, decent speed at 25.5 knots and no armor. Could be slotted at Tier VI. Joffre: a French carrier project that was cancelled when Germany invaded France in 1940. With similar characteristics as Béarn, but with updated planes and at Tier VIII. So, these are my proposals. I know there’s little possibility of one of these getting added into the game, but again, at least I can dream. Let me know what you think about. If you have other proposals, or anything else, feel free to write it below. Just be respectful, please. Thanks. Good luck and fair seas!

The following is a review of Brandenburg, the tier VIII premium German battleship, was sponsored by my patrons on Patreon who helped me afford this ship. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.11.4. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. The purpose of this review is to support the players, not the company behind the product. Isn't Brandenburg just a better Odin? That was my initial thought when I heard Brandenburg's announcement. I appreciated that they were different animals, with Brandenburg being derived from concept work leading to the Bismarck-class. However, it's hard not to see parallels between the two. I was worried that Brandenburg would make her obsolete. Then I remembered that Odin was already obsolete upon release and stopped feeling bad. WELCOME TO MY REVIEW OF BRANDENBURG! ♫ I started this review on March 20th, 2022. I had a lot of tier VIII battleships in my backlog, so I was using Atlântico's upcoming (at the time) release this as an excuse to try and clear out some of these neglected vessels. My usual turn around time for a review is about two weeks so long as I do absolutely nothing else during that time period. Updating my tier VIII battleship database would speed up the review process for subsequent ships by a few days. With this in mind, I was certain I could get a couple out before unlocking Atlântico. Brandenburg was the first one up and I planned to queue up Borodino and Constellation afterwards. It was going to be a hellish six weeks, sure, but knocking out four reviews in that time would be so worth it, at least so long as nothing went wrong. And oh boy did things go wrong. I got immediately sidetracked by projects like: ... pointing out all of the bad copy in Wargaming's premium shop and Armory. ... working on that AA catalogue I started back in January. ... putting time in to work on some related art projects with @Chobittsu. ... continuing to play with submarine damage models and depth charge mechanics. ... surviving COVID. So ... yeah, it's been a trip. I'm terrible at planning. I set myself some outrageous goals that don't allow for any leeway should things go wrong. I then proceed to beat myself up for not being able to fold space and time itself to meet said deadlines. Before we get started... You're going to notice a slight change with some of the graphs in this review. I experimented with trying to cut down the bloat that's ever increasing in World of Warships. There are thirty-one tier VIII battleships in World of Warships presently with more on the way. Rather give everyone eye-strain trying to compare them all in individual graphics, I cut things down to the tech tree battleships plus the other German premiums. This reduces the count down from thirty-one to twelve which is a lot more manageable. Now I'm not entirely happy with this and I recognize the flaws. For one, it shapes impressions. A given premium might stack really well against the tech tree ships but still be a poor offering compared to its peers. For another, these graphics have proven to me to be a quite helpful snapshot about the meta at a given point in time. Missing data points will make that harder to track in the future. Finally, it feels like I'm wussing out. I'm sure I could make thirty-one data points fit, gosh darn it, if I just tried a little harder! Oh well, what's done is done. Just thought you all should know. Please leave me some feedback on your thoughts and ideas. PROS Dispersed, heavy armour scheme and full icebreaker bow. Thick turtleback citadel. Good gun handling. Surprising accuracy for a twelve-gun armament with 1.8 sigma. Powerful secondary battery with improved accuracy, good fire arcs, long range and 1/4 HE penetration. Good top speed of 32.5 knots and fast rate of turn. She has torpedoes! CONS Small hit point pool for a tier VIII battleship which also compromises healing. Poor anti-torpedo protection. Short ranged at 18.5km. APPALLING FIRE ANGLES. [edited] ME, THEY'RE BAD. Small calibre AP shells lack overmatch potential and penetration. Unlike most other high-tier German battleships, she lacks Hydroacoustic Search. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme What happens when you take a brawling battleship, give it bad guns and chain it to a small hit point pool? You get a YOLO disaster waiting to happen again and again and again. Brandenburg is a bad battleship for inexperienced players. Her guns seem trollishly designed to punish new players. Her bad AP performance and her bad fire angles force inexperienced players to flash their broadsides and get themselves killed. Without a big hit point pool, they die in a hurry. The only bit of saving grace here is that at least she comes with a German battleship protection scheme, but even that seems flawed. This thing is fast too, so it's easy to over-extend and get sent back to port for being the easiest thing to shoot at. Experienced players can do a bit of flexing with Brandenburg, showing off their in-game knowledge on where it's best to change up ammo, how to optimize her with commander skills and when and how to brawl. I'm not saying she's going to be a successful ship because of this -- Brandenburg, like a lot of 2021 ship releases, punishes players for trying to play her as designed. It's just that an expert player can get a bit more out of her. Options Nothing too surprising here, other than what's missing. Brandenburg doesn't have access to Hydroacoustic Search. Otherwise, you'll have to choose whether or not to specialize in brawling, but that's an easy choice to make. If you want to win, you'll avoid brawling. If you want to be cool, brawling is the only acceptable answer. Now, you're not some kind of sensible LOSER, are you!? Options Brandenburg's Damage Control Party is perfectly normal for most battleships. It comes with unlimited charges and an 80 second reset timer. It's active for 15 seconds. In slot two, you get a standard Repair Party for a battleship. It heals back up to 14% of the ship's health over 28 seconds, queuing 10% of citadel damage, 50% of penetration damage and 100% of everything else. It has an 80s reset timer and starts with four charges. In Brandenburg's third slot, it's choice time with either a Spotter Aircraft and a Catapult Fighter. The Spotter Aircraft comes with four charges, increases her main battery range by 20% for 100s and has a 240s reset timer. Her Catapult Fighter launches 3 aircraft which stay on station, orbiting the ship at a range of 3km for 60s. It comes with three charges and has a 90s reset timer. Upgrades Let's go down the list! Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. Damage Control System Modification 1 goes into slot two. It's choice time. If you're cool, you'll take Secondary Battery Modification 1. If you're smart, you'll take Aiming Systems Modification 1 instead. You're not one of those smart people are you? Let's hope not. Damage Control System Modification 2 is the better choice at slot four. You can take Steering Gears Modification 1 if you prefer, just be aware that fires are going to hurt all the more. And because I know you're super cool, you're going to compromise your fire setting in the commander skills section in order to build for secondaries, right?2 Finally, grab Concealment System Modification 1 because Wargaming still hasn't gotten around to giving us a competitive alternative in slot five, making it a non-decision for most ships. It's just a dumb 2M credit tax at this point. Commander Skills There are obviously two commander skill builds I'll champion. The first is the basic survivability build. Memes aside, this is hands down the optimal build for Brandenburg as it emphasizes fire resistance. But that's boring. A brawling build for Brandenburg plays up to the novelties (and stereotypes) of the German battleship line. As a less than optimal build, there's a lot more leeway on what you pick and choose for your backup skills -- the idea being that you're already compromising on optimization, so you may as well just try out some fun and weird combinations. Still, the general idea is to emphasize your secondary strengths. Beyond the obvious Manual Secondary Battery Aiming and Long Range Secondary Battery Shells you want to look at grabbing either Demolition Expert or Inertial Fuse for HE Shells (or both). The latter-most skill is contentious given that it compromises the fire setting of your entire armament. It's really only worthwhile if you intend to throw Brandenburg into brawls on the regular with high-tier battleships (though it does help with high tier cruisers too, especially with amidship hits). So you may want to hold off on IFHE. Boooooring. Tasty! Camouflage Brandenburg was sold with two camouflage options, Type 10 and German Eagle. They provide identical bonuses of: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -10% to post-battle service costs. +50% to experience gains. This is the only screenshot I took of Brandenburg's German Eagle camouflage and it's terrible (the screenshot, not the camouflage). The camo was only available in a bundle when the ship was initially sold and I have not seen it made available since. I didn't pick it up at the time and it seems I've missed out. Brandenburg's base Type 10 camouflage is a striking black, white and grey. It's quite handsome. I am not a fan of the alternative palette for her Type 10 camouflage. You can unlock this via completing portions of the German Navy Collection under your Profile tab. Firepower Main Battery: Twelve 305mm/56 guns in in 4x3 turrets with an A-B-X-Y superfiring configuration Secondary Battery: Twelve 150mm/55 guns in 6x2 turrets and twenty 105mm/65 guns in 10x2 turrets. The large calibre guns are set on the main deck with the 105mm guns superfiring on one deck higher. The secondaries are divided evenly down each side. Torpedoes: Eight tubes in 2x4 launchers mounted behind the funnel on either side of the ship. Brandenburg has crappy guns, but she gets a lot of them and they're reasonably accurate. Gun Calibre, Penetration & Reload Time Brandenburg has small calibre guns for a high-tier battleship. Her 305mm weapons are the same as those found on Odin. For 305mm guns, her shells have good ballistics and penetration, but that's only for a 305mm gun. You're not contesting battleship belt armour at battleship engagement distances with her AP rounds, for example. You're also missing out on overmatching anything greater than 19mm with her AP rounds. Her individual hits aren't particularly powerful and her HE shells suffer from the usual German affliction of dealing less damage per hit than similar shells of their calibre. It's the quantity of shot that's supposed to make up for all of this, but even here, Wargaming pulled their punches. This is a recycled graphic pulled from my Odin review. Odin and Brandenburg have identical AP penetration performance. These numbers are approximate and pulled from wowsft.com. Brandenburg's AP penetration isn't great. She largely loses the ability to contest battleship belt armour outside of 12km if there's even a bit of angling going on. You want to throw AP shells as much as possible with Brandenburg, even against soft targets. Unlike other nations, her anemic HE shell damage is so much lower than her AP shells that they're only competitive when her HE is guaranteed to deal full penetrating damage. If a target has been partially saturated, her overpenetrating AP rounds will put out more hurt. This limits the optimal use of HE rounds to the following situations: (1) Against targets you cannot hurt at all with AP. (2) You're trying to start fires. Even against submarines at periscope depth, Brandenburg's AP will deal more damage. The only catch here is that Brandenburg's AP shells just don't have the bite needed to work against heavy armour. So you're forced to HE and suck up the damage disparity. Allow me to elaborate. For the longest time, I have held that 30 seconds is the standard reload time of battleship guns. This isn't necessarily true, but it's been an unspoken standard for a number years. So much so, that you could safely predict that any new battleship being added to the game would have it. Wargaming has begun to deviate from this standard. This largely began with the Soviet battleship line. Where once the odd ship with a weird reload added a little variety to a tech tree line, we're seeing slow or faster reloads defining and entire swathe of releases. Still, I find myself trained to look for a 30 second reload on any new battleship Wargaming adds. When the number is greater or lesser, it shapes my perception of its intended performance. For ships to match the 30 second reload output with a smaller armament (be it number of guns or smaller in calibre), I expect to see a faster reload. If an armament is especially large or hard hitting, then I expect to see a slower. So let's look at where Brandenburg's armament and reload sits: 22.5 seconds - Zieten with 3x2 406mm 23.0 seconds - Odin with 3x3 305mm 25.0 seconds - Famous & Historical Monarch with 3x3 381mm, Vanguard with 4x2 381mm 26.0 seconds - Bismarck & Tirpitz with 4x2 380mm 26.5 seconds - Brandenburg with 4x3 305mm 28.0 seconds - Gascogne with 2x4 380mm 28.6 seconds - Chamapgne with 2x3 406mm 30.0 seconds - Amagi & Kii with 5x2 410mm, North Carolina, Alabama & Massachusetts with 3x3 406mm, Constellation with 4x2 406mm, Richelieu with 2x4 380mm, Roma & AL Littorio with 3x3 381mm and Atlântico with 5x2 381mm 31.0 seconds - Borodino with 2x3 406mm 33.0 seconds - Ignis Purgatio & Ragnarok with 5x2 410mm, Vladivostok & Lenin with 3x3 406mm, Flandre with 3x3 380mm 34.0 seconds - Vittorio Veneto with 3x3 381mm 40.0 seconds - Kansas with 4x3 406mm This looks reasonably competitive, at least until you account for all of the flaws with her shells. I'm still balking that they didn't give Odin the same 20 second reload as Scharnhorst and Brandenburg's 26.5 second reload feels like more of the same mistreatment. Brandenburg isn't a particularly hard-hitting ship. Or rather, her guns just don't scale well against higher tiered targets and other battleships. Overall, her 26.5 second reload time isn't a flaw, per se, but it's not a strength either. It seems carefully measured to ensure she's reliant upon her other weapon systems. More on that later. Brandenburg's potential AP DPM looks great. But this doesn't account for the woes of dispersion, penetration, firing angles, auto-ricochet checks, etc. The POTENTIAL is there, sure, provided you've got an opponent willing to make things easy for you. Short of picking on lower-tiered cruisers or inside of brawling scenarios, the potential is difficult to realize. Like most German battleships, her HE shell DPM falls off the rails. I'd like to make a big deal about her improved HE penetration but Brandenburg's 76mm penetration just isn't impressive when compared to the 68mm being tossed around by most of the American, Soviet and Japanese battleships at this tier. So yeah, Brandenburg has good HE penetration for a 305mm armed battleship but that's only for a 305mm armed battleship. When stacked against the 406mm guns or the 1/4 HE penetrating 380mm/381mm guns from the Royal Navy and other German ships (and nevermind the Italian SAP shells), Brandenburg's HE looks crappy. It would be a struggle to call any of the tier VIII battleships "good" fire starters. King George V is pretty much the gold-standard of this for mid-tier battleships and she comes out just shy of 10 fires per minute before you account for things like accuracy (cut that number down to a third) and fire resistance (reduce it again to two thirds its initial value). Once reality sets in, you're looking at about two to three fires per minute for KGV. Apply the same approximates to Brandenburg and you come out at nearly two. This is probably the most reliable way for her to attempt to stack damage against enemy battleships. But unlike the British, don't expect a whole lot of direct damage to accompany Brandenburg's HE spam. There are tricks to make these guns work. HE spam is one such way. Your direct damage numbers will suffer, sure, but they won't suffer as badly if you simply stuck to AP rounds the whole time. You can try the whole "aim higher" with AP, hoping to bullseye the upper hull and superstructure of enemy battleships at range, but dispersion will troll you outside of near brawling ranges, so that's not entirely reliable. Brandenburg's guns are just not fun to use and you have to overcompensate a whole heck of a lot to get those numbers to stack. Gun Handling & Accuracy While Brandenburg's reload time is only ever going to be decent, her accuracy isn't as bad as I was expecting for a twelve-gun armed ship. 1.8 sigma isn't terrible. In fact, for a ship with as many guns as she has, it's higher than I thought it would be. Coupled with American battleship dispersion and a twelve-gun broadside, she isn't as likely to get trolled by RNG(eebus) as ships with fewer guns or worse sigma. This ultimately comes down to feels -- Brandenburg's salvos feel reasonably accurate even if their dispersion describes her as being only average. It's rare that a well aimed shot isn't going to yield at least a handful of hits. Brandenburg is good at putting warheads on foreheads at least so long as you ensure that all twelve guns are firing. And this is the other issue -- getting all of those guns firing. And maybe this helps explain some of my gripes with her reload. Brandenburg's arcs are HORRIBLE. For those unaware, I have a bias against crappy firing angles. Outside of PVE situations, Brandenburg when she fires all twelve of her guns. She's unable to angle correctly against return fire while doing so, which opens her up to taking some pretty bad hits in return. As you'll see in the Durability section, Brandenburg doesn't have a lot of hit points and she cannot afford to trade them away for the modest returns another six guns bring. Without a fast(er) reload on her guns and without good firing angles, her DPM suffers appreciably. So that paper DPM value shown before falls even further into the toilet. One of my standard dispersion tests. This is 180 AP shells fired at 15km at a stationary Fuso bot. Brandenburg is using Aiming System Modification 1, while the Fuso is completely stock and without camo. Shots are coming in from right to left with the Fuso effectively bow tanking. At 1.8 sigma and German dispersion, Brandenburg's gunnery feels "average", at least until you remember she has twelve guns and a quick(ish) reload. Volume of fire lends a sense of accuracy all on its own and Brandenburg ends up feeling more accurate than she actually is, even with a full secondary build. The HORROR. Main Battery Gun Summary Brandenburg has crappy guns, but she gets a lot of them and they're reasonably accurate. I wish I could say she had good fire angles or that they reloaded fast enough for that not to matter, but they don't. I found these guns to be incredibly frustrating to use, especially when facing same tier or higher opponents. The AP doesn't hit hard enough. And even when you do land some good hits that don't ricochet or shatter, they just don't do enough damage. Every time I reached for HE, it felt like I was giving up and begging for fires that usually didn't come. Brandenburg's gunnery takes a long time to stack appreciable damage. Brawling battleships are cool It's a good thing she's a brawler. She's designed to supplement her damage by creeping into secondary range (where possible) and spraying enemy ships down with a torrent of cruiser and destroyer-calibre HE. Up close, the deficiencies of her 305mm AP penetration falls away too and they become a lot more threatening. She's fully capable of blowing out the machine spaces of any enemy battleship with a vulnerable citadel and her twelve gun broadside ensures that it will hurt. The threat of her torpedoes makes even other heavy weight brawlers take notice. This is where she belongs. This is where she demands respect. And for a German battleship, her secondaries are contenders for the best out of all of them with better firing angles and more DPM and FPM than most. Combined with improved German secondary accuracy, 1/4 HE penetration and more guns than other German battleships, Brandenburg has some of the best brawling armaments at her tier. Check it out: Some notes to keep in mind: Massachusetts, Atlântico and Brandenburg have the same DPM when brawling, kiting or firing broadside. Zieten has the same DPM when brawling or kiting. Before you get too excited and run out and buy a Flandre or Kii, I remind you that DPM charts are not the be-all, end all. The majority of Flandre's damage comes from 100mm secondaries that only have 17mm of penetration and no improved accuracy (Gascogne has this same problem). A lack of improved accuracy also plagues Kii on top of having only a range that caps out at just shy of 10km with all buffs. Brandenburg combines good range, good penetration and good potential damage on top of solid firing arcs. She's the total package. The only thing we could ask for more would be a further improvement on her already improved "German" secondary accuracy or upgrading her 105mm to 128mm like Odin so that she can pen battleships without needing IFHE. Spreadsheets are not cool So Brandenburg has better secondaries than the other tier VIII German battleships, right? That's what the numbers say? Good, cuz I couldn't tell. Seriously, this is one of those cases where my notes on how a ship felt to play did not reflect the data I collected afterwards. I should explain -- my process for writing these reviews is to play the ship, take notes while doing so and then as questions come up, look at the ship's stats to try and understand where the feels are coming from. At no point in my play testing of Brandenburg did her secondaries stand out in any appreciable way from other German battleships I've played. I seriously thought her secondaries were bog-standard for a German brawler. It was only as I put together the graphics for this section that I said "wait, hold up" -- she has more DPM and better fire angles? Huh! So why didn't it come up? You'd think counting an extra pair of 105mm would have tipped me off. While I was conscious of them, they weren't anything to get terribly excited about. I liken it to the extra 100m Odin has on her secondary range. It's nice but it's not game changing. It was the same case for her firing angles. They're good, sure, and better than most of the other German battleships. But there's still that ugly deadzone straight ahead. Ultimately, this blasé attitude says a lot about how situational brawling is. In PVP, good brawls are so uncommon that they're an event when they finally happen. Thus, it's hard to get a good sense of value out of a secondary armament. This goes double when you've invested in them so heavily between skills, upgrades and consumables. And this is what it came down to: Brandenburg's secondaries didn't feel appreciably better than those of Tirpitz or Odin. So it was hard to care about them when the awesome experiences just didn't happen. So yeah, Brandenburg has good secondaries. But as far as I'm concerned, that trait is shared by all other German battleships so it's not a stand-out feature, so don't look at me singing Brandenburg's praises for her secondary potential as a selling feature of this ship over other German premiums. They all perform very much alike in this regard -- their potential is there, but it's so terribly situational. The pain and suffering that went into making this. Brandenburg was originally launched with bugged, asymmetrical secondary arcs on her forward-most 105mm guns. Those on her starboard side could fire up to 20º off her stern while the port side could only fire 30º off her stern. I've highlighted this difference with the two arrows in the graphic above. This was corrected with patch 0.11.4 with her port side now mirroring her starboard side (they can both shoot 20º off her stern now). Brandenburg's secondary arcs are okay. They're not great. At least she can bring all of her weapons the bear 30º off either her bow or stern, so you can use those to help ensure you're auto-ricochet safe in a brawl. I was going to ramble on about her torpedoes, but I think I can just summarize them here. Brandenburg's fish are short ranged but pack a comfortable punch, perfect for delivering a crippling blow in a brawl. The four she launches per side will not guarantee a kill on an enemy battleship unless they're already mauled, so keep that in mind. Her fire arcs are decent, able to launch 30º off her bow and just over that off her stern for a total of a 119º firing arc per side. Like other German battleships, her torpedoes are pretty fragile and have a habit of getting destroyed if she takes a lot of HE fire, so make sure they're still operable before committing to a joust. Summary Brandenburg may have crappy guns but she has good secondaries backed by short-range torpedoes. Firepower wise, she sucks if you can't get her into a brawl. If you can, Brandenburg's numbers jump tremendously. While you can all but guarantee this each and every time you take her out to a Co-Op battle, it's harder to ensure in PVP. I don't rate Brandenburg's firepower very highly. It's alright. When the stars align, it can be good. But you're setting yourself up for disappointment in PVP outside of those rare games where your enemies make the mistake of letting you brawl. VERDICT: Situational. Unreliable. Inconsistent. Durability Hit Points: 58,800 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 32mm / 19mm / 145mm / 50mm to 80mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 350mm belt plus 110mm to 120mm turtleback plus 45mm citadel wall Torpedo Damage Reduction: 23% Third from the bottom. A German juggernaut Brandenburg is not. Remember how players made a big stink about Odin's lack of health? Well, if you weren't around at the time, Odin was largely panned by the community for her tiny (52,800) hit point pool. Brandenburg has just 6,000 more. That's not a lot. That's like two more penetrating hits from battleship AP, and given Brandenburg's crappy fire angles, those penetrating hits are coming sooner rather than later. Brandenburg's hit point pool would be dead average for a tier VII battleship. And that's bad. That's very bad. Thus, Brandenburg suffers a lot of the same problems as Odin -- namely, not having enough HP left over to successful brawl when the opportunity finally arises in the mid to late game. Brawls always cost HP. Brawls can cost a lot of HP. And if you've already bled a lot of your initial health, it can be hella disheartening to not have the staying power to actually enjoy a good scrap. What might have been a game winning situation is now just a spiteful act of defiance before you're sent back to port. Even setting brawling aside, with the teething problems of her main battery guns, Brandenburg is just plain bad at trading. She doesn't have the health to spare to exchange body blows. This is partially mitigated by what appears to be a traditional German battleship protection scheme. Brandenburg has dispersed armour, including a full length 60mm icebreaker bow, thick upper hull and deck armour that will troll most HE (and some SAP!) thrown her way. This just leaves her (admittedly huge) superstructure and the tiniest portions of her bow and stern vulnerable and makes her largely proof against AP shells when angled. As for her citadel? I have ... mixed feelings... about Brandenburg's citadel protection. It's geometry is weird. It comes to a narrow point towards the bow. This creates some odd angles reminiscent of Yamato's octagonal citadel -- Brandenburg has similar "cheeks" that can theoretically yield citadel hits even when the ship is angled. Now, ostensibly, her turtleback should mitigate this. Unfortunately, I took a massive double-citadel hit early on when testing Brandenburg. Granted, these came from long range fire and double-granted, it was my fault for flashing that much side in the first place (gawd, I hate her firing angles). But given the tiers at which Brandenburg operates, most of what's going to be thrown at you from other battleships will be at long range so I got incredibly gun-shy after this. I couldn't play Brandenburg with the same confidence I could with other German premiums. I fully accept that this could have been an exception; an anecdote that biased me towards keeping a sharp eye out for repeat occurrences in a way I might not have otherwise fussed over. But it's definitely coloured my experiences. I'm aware that the odd citadel hit can (and do) happen with other German battleships so I dunno why this one shook me up as much as it did. I blame her fire angles. I'm always going to scapegoat her fire angles. Brandenburg feels squishy for a German battleship and I don't like that. Brandenburg has a dispersed armour scheme and odd citadel geometry I'm still torn if the latter is a blessing or curse.. Her citadel's 180mm tip is very thin. Combined with her icebreaker bow, this ship is incredibly difficult to citadel directly from the front when perfectly nosed in. However, that same tapering tip does make her more vulnerable when angled, in a similar manner to Yamato's infamous "cheeks" (though nowhere near to that extreme). Losing 25,000 health in a single salvo and these aren't even citadel hits. VERDICT: Squishier than her pedigree would otherwise suggest. Agility Top Speed: 32.5 knots Turning Radius: 820 meters Rudder Shift Time: 15.7 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 4.6º/s at 24.3kts Main Battery Traverse Rate: 6.0º/s Brandenburg (8) joins the SoDak-twins (2), Constellation (10) and Champagne (12) as one of the best turning ships at this tier. This is largely thanks to her high top speed. Brandenburg has a great top speed, a decent (but not good) turning circle radius and a rudder shift time on the poor side of average. These latter traits obfuscate what is, in fact, a quite agile vessel as far as battleships go. Speed corrects a lot of issues with agility, especially when they're only held back by "average" values elsewhere. Brandenburg's good top speed and modest turning circle radius translates to one of the best rates of turn for not only the tier VIII battleships, but most battleships in the game. Let's talk more about speed. It is a tremendous advantage. Not only does it allow you to get where you need to be faster, a greater range of speed makes it harder for opponents to properly guess your ship's momentum and lead appropriately. It also allows for a greater degree of control while kiting opponents which is arguably one of the most effective solo damage-farming techniques in the game. Being able to control engagement distances is a duel-winning strategy (though not necessarily a match winning one). In one game I managed to run down not one but two destroyers that strayed too close. Despite fleeing after being lit, they were unable to open up enough distance to get themselves out of spotting range before my secondaries chewed them to bits. Brandenburg's speed ostensibly makes it easier for her to commit to a brawl and use her secondaries and torpedoes, though there's a catch here. While speed is powerful, it can also be dangerous. If you're not careful, you can find yourself over-extending and making yourself an easy target for enemy focus fire. It's important to temper Brandenburg's potential with caution. She doesn't have a lot of health and it doesn't last long under concerted enemy attention. Mind that throttle. Vary your course and speed and beware blind corners. Please keep in mind that I'm comparing Brandenburg's agility to other tier VIII battleships and battleships as a whole. Brandenburg's handling still sucks compared to a cruiser. She does not compare well to Warspite's handling either. You're not going to be able to juke incoming fire or easily thread the needle and dance to torpedo beats. Finally, you can forget about Just Dodging™ air strikes. Still, Brandenburg's handling is very comfy. Good marks here. VERDICT: One of the best at her tier. Under attack from a Kagero and an Asashio. It's a losing battle from the start, but Brandenburg's agility at least frustrated the two destroyers, completely avoiding four salvos before finally being taken down by a fifth. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 6 + 2 explosions for 1,400 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.2km. Long Ranged (up to 5.2km): 192.5 dps at 75% accuracy (144dps) Medium Ranged (up to 3.0km): 511dps at 70% accuracy (358dps) DPS Aura Ranges Total DPS by Range Effective Damage vs 186.2knot Aircraft Alright, let me try and talk about this without being snarky or going on a huge rant. Some facts: Brandenburg's large calibre AA is short ranged at only 5.2km. Brandenburg has the best AA values among all of the tier VIII German battleships. In terms of effective sustained AA DPS, Brandenburg sits just behind Kansas and slightly ahead of Kii, putting her solidly in the upper third for sustained damage output among tier VIII battleships. She generates a lot of flak for a tier VIII battleship, though not enough to make her stand out. The individual hits from her flak are fairly average for a tier VIII battleship. Because of her short main battery gun range, she is unlikely to be using a Catapult Fighter over her Spotter Aircraft. She does not have access to Defensive AA Fire, not no tier VIII battleship has that presently. Where my snark and rants will stem comes from the fact that as good as this all looks on paper, it's not enough to keep her safe. A hale and whole Brandenburg is an inconvenient target for tier VI carriers as the attrition rates will erode their hangar capacity eventually. Against higher tiered carriers, short of them obliging you by faceplanting into flak bursts repeatedly, Brandenburg cannot inflict casualties quickly enough to compromise their hangar capacity, never mind stop individual strikes. Her presence will not dissuade a CV on her own and owing to her short range, she is not a particularly good asset to help protect others. As such, when she is not top tier, she is a ready victim to air attack. She might pad her experience and credits earned with some air kills, but you cannot trust Brandenburg's AA defences to do anything to protect the ship in the current meta. And that's really all AA is for as far as surface ships are concerned: printing credits and xp in compensation for letting CVs have their way with you. VERDICT: Brandenburg is better at squeezing out rewards for being [edited]-slapped by aircraft than most at her tier. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 16.2km / 12.73km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 11.22km / 9.09km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 12.78km Maximum Firing Range: 18.46km Hydroacoustic Search. Bismarck has it. Odin has it. Zieten has it. Tirpitz (and her clone) does not. Neither does Brandenburg. This consumable has increased value as Wargaming works towards completing submarines in World of Warships. This comes not only for the ability to spot incoming torpedoes but also for detecting submarines that might be lurking nearby. German secondaries are excellent anti-submarine weapons provided their target is spotted and can be shot at. The general inaccuracy of these weapons isn't nearly as much of a problem as it is against destroyers when shells only have to land nearby to score damage. Thus lacking a Hydroacoustic Search is notable. As far as surface detection goes, Brandenburg's alright. She just barely manages to squeak into the top third within her matchmaking with her concealment. It's neither a tremendous help nor a significant hindrance. It's comfortable enough to be a non issue for most game play though you'll be hard pressed to turn it into a reliable advantage. Given her relative fragility compared to other German battleships, I would have preferred her to be a bit more sneaky, but as it is, her concealment is workable. I feel her lack of a Hydroacoustic Search more than whatever is going on with her surface detection. If I've counted, calculated and transcribed everything correctly (and I'm almost certain I have not), Brandenburg sits tied for 39th out of 110 battleships within her current matchmaking. This is sorted by columns, so 1-37 in the first column, then 38 to 75 in the second, 76 to 110 in the third column. VERDICT: Meh. Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Airstrike from 0.5km to 10km (plus part of the bomb drop column) Number of Salvos: 2 Reload Time: 30 seconds Aircraft: Two Blohm & Voss BV 138C with 2,000hp each Drop Pattern: 3 bombs each dropped evenly over 1.1km column Maximum Bomb Damage: 2,800 Fire Chance: 21% Bomb Blast Radius: 300m Submarine game play is still ever changing. This section largely serves as a snapshot of how ASW worked at the time this article was published. No doubt further changes will occur before submarines get finalized. That said, Brandenburg and tier VIII German battleships in general have the best anti-submarine warfare load-out of their peers presently. Bismarck, Zieten and Odin sit at the top of the pile, combining the best air-dropped depth charges with great secondaries and Hydroacoustic Search to mitigate the influence submarines have on their game play. Brandenburg and Tirpitz have to make do without the consumable to spot fish and occasionally help sniff out subs. Now this doesn't make any of the German battleships good submarine hunters by any means -- it just means they're the best equipped battleships at their tier to fight back against submarines should they be called upon to do it. I've spent some time mapping out depth charge pattersn -- both from ships and aircraft and I'll probably publish an article a little later showing the coverage at a particular tier. VERDICT: She has the best battleship launched air strike at her tier combined with good secondaries. U-190 got too close to Brandenburg and pays the price. Final Evaluation I like Odin better than Brandenburg and I like Scharnhorst better than Odin. I think that sums up my feels about these "large cruiser" armed battleships. Short of dusting off snowflakes or whatever I'm required to test in the future, I'm not taking Brandenburg out. I don't like her guns. That's really all there is to it. Why would I want to play a ship where my primary way of interacting in the game is such a miserable experience? I mean it's a doubled-stacked turd sandwich with bad gun performance and bad fire angles. Blech. Brandenburg is just Odin-Two. The biggest difference between them is that Odin has Hydroacoustic Search and Brandenburg has more guns. There are other differences than that obviously. Brandenburg has more guns, more secondaries with better firing arcs but worse penetration. Brandenburg is faster and has better AA power and just enough more HP to fool you into thinking she might be a better experience overall. Odin is more stealthy and her guns fire faster and with much more comfortable gun laying. So pick your poison. I'm not convinced either ship is worthwhile. My honeymoon period with Odin has long since past -- as I feared in my review of her years ago, once her torpedoes became common knowledge and players became more familiar with her gimmicks, success became increasingly volatile. That volatility is alive and well with Brandenburg's game play too. It's that same feast-or-famine that so many brawling battleships struggle. It's hard to appreciate a vessel whose fortunes are so closely tied not only to what tiers matchmaker places you in but what kinds of ship you end up facing. The presence of a single carrier or a glut of torpedo boats or a brace of submarines and Brandenburg faces an uphill battle. And like most tier VIII premium battleships, facing tier Xs is never comfortable. Still, if you can manage to get her into brawls and win those scraps, her performance is fantastic. How frequently you can make that happen will dictate your success in this ship. If you can't tell, I couldn't make that happen often enough to put a smile on my face. So no thank you, Mister Brandenburg, you are not the ship for me. Of course, all of these complaints apply only to PVP game modes. In Co-Op, Brandenburg is a thug. Her guns still suck butts in there, unable to overmatch as the bots suicide charge, but at least her secondaries and fish can rip them open and help pad her numbers. Brawling in that game mode is guaranteed, so her success is all but guaranteed. Still, if you're going to buy a tier VIII German premium battleship, just buy Tirpitz. In Conclusion This one ballooned out of control. I spent way too much time fussing over getting a better understanding of AA and ASW mechanics that sidetracked me down several week-long exploratory tangents. I mean, I'm happy that I understand ASW and AA much better than I did at the onset and it's nice to be able to put into context how Brandenburg (and other future ships) will slot into this developing meta. But stack on some other projects and RL issues and the content drought really bugged me. I dunno which ship I'm going to review after this. I'm kind of "battleshippped out" at the moment. Maybe I'll poke Maya. We'll see. Speaking of other projects, you may have noticed that I changed avatars in my graphics. @Chobittsu did a wonderful job putting together this cute Fantasy Dwarf ship's captain per my request. Animating a bouncy version of her as a forum avatar is one of many things on my to-do list. Thank you all for reading and thank you so much for your continued support. ♥

Hey All, Just a suggestion for the T8 USS Alabama Premium ship. When it comes to the Alabama, it seems to run in the middle of the pack when it comes to T8 American Battleships. Its unique compared to the Constallation, the Massachusetts, and the North Carolina, but I don't feel its unique "enough" from the other ships. I would really like to see if receive one thing and one thing only, DFAA consumable with 2x charges. I think by adding this it would stand out a bit more from the rest of the pack as the "AA ship" of the lot, and since it historically took part in the great turkey shoot with strong success, it fits the bill from that thematic point. I just think that the Alabama needs something to set itself apart more. You take North Carolina cause its Free and cause its very accurate, the Massachussetts because secondary range, and the constallation cause you want to go super fast, but the Alabama is kinda a middle ground. Other than that I still really enjoy the ship a lot!

Hey all, Having trouble deciding what battleship line to focus on and "git gud" in. Currently I bounce a ton and try to keep up in all of them, but I feel by doing so, I'm jack of all trades, master of none and I'd like to change that. As my name implies, I do like me some secondaries, I prefer to be a bit mobile and able to engage/disengage at will, but I also like main gun accuracy...and lots of fires. (I'm a bit all over) Any suggestions?

I am about upgrade my Colorado which should I get first the Kansas or Carolina

I think everyone that has played Alsace and then moved to Republic wishes there was an actual tier 10 version of Alsace instead. Well.... you're in luck because they actually designed an Alsace with 3x3 406mm guns and 40mm deck plating. So how does it work.. the split? Tiers 8 through 10... Tier 8 Richelieu (original) Tier 9 Alsace (original) Tier 10 Gregory XI (after the last French Pope) Alsace hull but upgraded armor to 40mm plating and 81,000 hit points 3x3 406mm using the Champagne turrets on 24s reload (Republique); this puts the AP DPM at 272,250 (super average). Tier 8 Occitanie (region of France) Gascogne-style ship on Richelieu hull 2x3 380mm using Flandre turrets on 23s reload; this puts the AP DPM at 186,261 (below average [Zieten<->Richelieu]). Tier 9 Suffren (original dual turret dreadnought, 1904-1916) Republique-style ship on Alsace hull on 28s reload; this puts the AP DPM at 248,571 (above average). Tier 10 Republique (original) Curious about what people would change... Even though this seems like simple copy/pasta for WG, HIGHLY unlikely anything like this would be put into the game (even though it seems like some super easy to do).

Duncan on the Estuary. I like this ship, and will keep playing her. And she ain't ugly! 😄 Link: https://youtu.be/0MoMWxw4aqI

I finally earned enough Ship XP to unlock and purchase the St. Vincent—and just in time for the World of Warships 7th Anniversary celebrations which will start tomorrow. What a beautiful ship, aside from being capable and fast. And best of all, she's free! Link: https://youtu.be/rjGfcwE6qQ4

I really like the gun sound of the Conqueror. And the insane amount of damage that she can repair. And her amazing High Explosive shells that has a very high chance of setting enemy ships on fire. And her amazing concealment for a Tier X battleship. So while waiting for the St. Vincent to become available in the Tech Tree, I revisited an old friend, and had fun setting ships on fire. Link: https://youtu.be/wi9MPTmD2RE

Afternoon, all. Just floating an idea for the celebrating the USS Texas' upcoming and much needed drydock excursion and overhaul work. Maybe a small series of Texas themed combat missions to earn the Texas flag/Come and Take it flag (or any other on theme flag, really,) and possibly the Texas flag camo? (Obviously that's more of a reach.) I think it could be fun and raise some awareness for the foundation about their upcoming challenges as they get the ship out of the water for the work. As I said, just floating the idea... let's see what the community thinks?

hello everyone, I'm here to talk about adding the submerged torpedoes of the konig Albert, since finally WG was able to add them to the New British Ships,. I have hopes that WG can do that miracle to my beautiful Konig Albert. HMS QUEEN MARY SMS KONIG ALBERT INFO WIKIPEDIA

Teir 9 New Release BB Iwami needs to either get better Armor, better vertical dispersion of main guns, or better secondaries including range and reload speed, or a better heal....One of those or a bit of all... Its a battleship that does everything, but poorly. BUFF IWAMI Please! ( Concealment and Shell pen could also be improved )

Wargaming doesn't just make fictional ships, it makes whole CLASSES of fictional ships! The following is a review of Giuseppe Verdi, the tier IX premium Italian battleship, was sponsored by my patrons on Patreon who helped me afford this ship. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.11.2. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. The purpose of this review is to support the players, not the company behind the product. Posting this review is not an endorsement of current goings on nor is it a statement about them. Giuseppe Verdi was released at the tail end of 2021 without much fanfare. I had hoped to review her immediately following my look at Marlborough. I could piggyback a bunch of graphics I had done for the British-chonker and even sneak some of my earlier Marco Polo graphics to speed up production. But then I got it in my head that I should finally get around to properly evaluating anti-aircraft DPS for the sake of tidying up future reviews. The idea seemed sound -- produce an active database of relative efficiency of AA DPS in World of Warships. Little would I appreciate just how big of a job that would prove to be and as such, Giuseppe Verdi's review sat in a "not even halfway finished" limbo as the days rolled by. Following Dido and Canarias' review, I had a brief window to squeeze another review out before patch 0.11.2 dropped, so I've done what I can to get this out the door in a timely manner. As is becoming increasingly commonplace, I grossly underestimated just how big of a job this project would be and I've spent more time with Giuseppe Verdi than I thought. Given that she's a ship that was largely dismissed by the community when she first arrived, this attention is perhaps undeserving. However, I feel this time has been well spent. Giuseppe Verdi surprised me. I hope you find this review worthwhile. I'm not expecting this review to change your mind about the ship, but maybe you'll learn something new. Oh, and keep this copy by Wargaming in mind. This is how they advertised the damn thing. We'll come back to it later. Quick Summary: A short-ranged Italian battleship with nine 406mm guns with HE shells, SAP-firing secondaries and an improved Exhaust Smoke Generator. PROS Dispersed armour scheme High velocity shells and good AP penetration HE shells deal increased module damage. Good gun handling and decent fire arcs. SAP armed secondaries. Competitive agility for a high-tier battleship Improved Exhaust Smoke Generator CONS Exposed citadel with easily overmatched turtleback Small hit point pool for a tier IX battleship Wonky dispersion Anemic HE shells and poor AP DPM. Short ranged main and secondary gun batteries. Crappy AA defences Differences Between Sisters Giuseppe Verdi borrows heavily from Marco Polo. She has identical durability, agility, anti-aircraft and detection parameters. The primary difference between the two vessels comes in the form of their firepower. Giuseppe Verdi's guns reload faster but don't hit as hard and her secondaries are significantly improved. In addition, the two ships have different consumables. The specific differences between the two vessels are: Canarias is only the most recent victim of weird shell weight nerfs. Before her, Giuseppe Verdi was attacked! Marco Polo on the left and Giuseppe Verdi on the right. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme I struggled a bit on where to slot Giuseppe Verdi for inexperienced players. Her exposed citadel and advertised secondaries sounds like a recipe for disaster. I had to conclude that if you played her as advertised, you were in for a rough time. The moment you try and bring those secondaries to bear, you also expose Giuseppe Verdi's weaknesses. Her guns don't perform well. Her citadel protection falls apart. However, were you to keep Giuseppe Verdi at a comfortable distance, then her initial skill floor drops down to a Casual rating. There's nothing much to worry about there short of "don't flash your sides" and vary your ammunition as needs be. Giuseppe Verdi has a very high skill ceiling, almost enough to warrant an Extreme rating. The extra level of game play provided by her Exhaust Smoke Generator when paired with possible brawling builds is just that much more enticing for players with a broad knowledge of systems and mechanics in World of Warships, especially spotting and auto-ricochet angles. This is a battleship with just that extra bit of special sauce which allows you to outplay others with its expanded toolkit. Options There are a couple of things to keep an eye on with Giuseppe Verdi. The first is her improved Exhaust Smoke Generator, which is so far unique in World of Warships. The second comes down to how you choose to build her -- wether that follows your more traditional battleship build or if you go down the brawling-battleship rabbit hole. Consumables Her Exhaust Smoke Generator is weird. Damage Control Party is standard for an Italian battleship. It comes with unlimited charges, an 80s reset timer and a 15 second action time. Her Repair Party is also standard. It heals back up to 14% of the ship's health over 28 seconds, queuing 10% of citadel damage, 50% of penetration damage and 100% of everything else. It has an 80s reset timer and starts with four charges. Her Exhaust Smoke Generator is something special. I'll do a quick side by side comparison with the one that comes on Lepanto, the tier IX Italian tech-tree battleship, which we'll use as our "normal" version of the consumable. Like the standard consumable, Giuseppe Verdi's version starts with 3 charges and it has a 180 second reset timer. But after that, things deviate. Giuseppe Verdi's version creates huge smoke clouds, 1.8km across! Lepanto's are 1.02km across. Furthermore, Giuseppe Verdi issues smoke for longer, pooping out clouds for 60 seconds instead of 45 seconds. And finally, the clouds take longer to dissipate. Normally, Italian Exhaust Smoke Generator clouds disappear within 10 seconds of being generated. You have a bit more leeway with Giuseppe Verdi as they last 15 seconds. In her final slot, you have the choice between a Spotter Aircraft and a Catapult Fighter. The Spotter Aircraft comes with four charges, increases her main battery range by 20% for 100s and has a 240s reset timer. Her Catapult Fighter launches 3 aircraft which stay on station, orbiting the ship at a range of 3km for 60s. It comes with three charges and has a 90s reset timer. Upgrades Let's do this! It's decision time. Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. Damage Control System Modification 1 is the only one that makes sense in slot 2. It's a shame she can't take some kind of smoke-making-better upgrade. You've got to choose your Destiny in slot three. The most efficient choice is Aiming Systems Modification 1, especially with how wonky Italian ballistics are. BUT, if you're going to be a CHAD-BRAWLER, then take Secondary Battery Modification 1 instead for the extra range and rate of fire. Damage Control System Modification 2 is the best choice in slot three. You can take Steering Gears Modification 1 instead if you want, but be prepared to burn. Still, for someone intent on brawling and knife fighting, it's not a terrible choice. Concealment System Modification 1 is still the only choice worth considering in slot five. And finally, you can choose between Main Battery Modification 3 to help with her shoddy reload or Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 to make up for her lacklustre range. Commander Skills Now OBVIOUSLY, the optimal build here is the same tried, tested and true battleship survivability-focused commander. You specialize in fire-resistance with your choice of skills at the lower, mandatory tiers. It's worth noting that for Italian battleships especially, the second tier Brisk is particularly effective. The extra jump in speed kicks in everytime they activate their Exhaust Smoke Generator, on top of the extended periods of time between their salvos owing to their longer (and sometimes downright punitive) main battery reload times. As a nerd that has spent way too much time twirling ships, I like the extra kick it provides to a ship's rate of turn. With Giuseppe Verdi's smoke lasting longer than other Italian battleships, she stands to benefit from this longer and getting her up to X knot top speeds is thrilling. It's like combining Engine Boost to your Exhaust Smoke Generator. Very fun. But SURELY you didn't come here for optimization; you came for AWESOME. I know your type. You're a Giga-Chad who plays a secondary-spec'd Montana. You're the Boss-[edited] who took Survivability Expert on your battleships. Well, Giuseppe Verdi will not let you down. Her SAP-firing secondaries are SCREAMING for a dedicated commander build to fully optimize the ship, citadel exposure be damned. Well, worry not my valiant, hyper-morphed blokes and lasses, I've got your needs covered. Brisk comes up once again as an excellent skill for this build. Secondaries don't increase a ship's spotting radius in smoke, allowing Giuseppe Verdi to close to knife fighting range while still delivering the hurt. Between Secondary Armament Modification 1, the November Echo Setteseven signal and the following build, she can yeet her shells out to a respectable 10.51km, making her a threat to anything she wants to flex on. Only Manual Secondary Battery Aiming and Long Range Secondary Battery Shells are truly mandatory for this build, leaving you with lots of options to play around. I'm a fan of pairing this with Concealment Expert and Emergency Repair Expert but you're free to pick and choose your favourites. Obviously, I'm biased towards a secondary build. You'll understand why by the time you get to my Final Evaluation, if not before with my Firepower section. Of course if you elect to use secondary build, that precludes Giuseppe Verdi from being an effective commander trainer for your other Regia Marina battleships. That's a significant strike against her and worth keeping in mind. Camouflage Giuseppe Verdi only has access to a single Type 10 camouflage. It provides the usual bonuses for a tier IX premium battleship: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -20% to post-battle service costs. +100% to experience gains. Giuseppe Verdi's base camo looks fine. It's helped that Regia Marina battleships look bloody gorgeous. Firepower Main Battery: Nine 406mm/50 guns in in 3x3 turrets with an A-B-X superfiring configuration Secondary Battery: Twelve 152mm/55 guns in 4x3 turrets and twenty-four 90mm/50 guns in 12x2 turrets superfiring over the 152mm guns. These armaments are spread evenly along each side of the ship. Main Battery Let's do things a little different this time and start with the main battery. There's a world of difference between Giuseppe Verdi's main battery firepower and Marco Polo's and it's worth reiterating them. Giuseppe Verdi has a faster reload by 5 seconds. Marco Polo is more precise with 1.9 sigma to Giuseppe Verdi's 1.7. Giuseppe Verdi's AP shells do 450 less damage and are lighter. Marco Polo has SAP shells, Giuseppe Verdi has HE shells. While it's nice that Giuseppe Verdi does not to have Marco Polo's 36 second reload, the rest of the changes suck monkey butts. I mean, I can accept having HE instead of SAP. It's a fair trade for the reload reduction. But, I have to ask just what the heck is going on with her AP shells? 450 less damage on a citadel (149 damage on a penetration) isn't a lot but that makes me wonder why it was even necessary. Now, I do like my consistency so incongruencies bother me more than they should. So I'm left scratching my head at this design decision. I think it points to Wargaming fussing with things that don't matter for the sake of making their "behind the scenes" performance-graphs look pretty. The same goes for a 31 second reload instead of the standard battleship 30 second reload. That smacks of Wargaming looking for optimization so someone can make their bonus rather than a design decision that's to the benefit of the players. That kind of change is a nuisance to players. Seriously, there's been a lot of this unnecessary fidgeting with stats away from established norms and I can't see the reason why. Giuseppe Verdi could have had a 30 second reload and 13,050 damage on her AP shells like her sister and it wouldn't have made an enormous difference -- her DPM would have still sat beneath Hizen's (freakin' Hizen for crying out loud). Wargaming could have bought back their numbers with something that players can't perceive anyway, like a 0.05 sigma reduction or whatever. When is Wargaming going to learn that messing with main battery performance is a sure-fire way to annoy their customers? Giuseppe Verdi isn't winning any prizes for sustained damage output. I'm aware I forgot Prinz Rupprecht. She's at the bottom of both. I'm not redoing these. Again, Prinz Rupprecht is missing, this time because I recycled this from my Marlborough review. She sits beneath Giuseppe Verdi and above Georgia. Speaking of annoying, let's talk about dispersion. Giuseppe Verdi's accuracy is ... well, it's not good. It combines the triple headache of French & Italian dispersion formulas AND Italian high-velocity vertical dispersion AND 1.7 sigma on top of that. Even if you do hit your targets, Giuseppe Verdi is likely to yeet her AP rounds clean through the broadside of a cruiser at anything less than 12km. Now, this is countered by the fact that her AP rounds retain a lot of energy over distance, so smackin' battleships for citadel hits at long range is totally in her wheelhouse... or at least it would be if she could reach out to 20km. You need to activate her Spotter Aircraft or install Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 in order to shoot that far. Her short range is a real pain in the butt sometimes, so ditch the Catapult Fighter and keep the other consumable on standby. You're going need it. If you don't, you'll have to install the range module instead and that's only going to push her DPM potential further down the list. Giuseppe Verdi's dispersion with 1.7 sigma on the left. Marco Polo's with 1.9 sigma (and minor ballistic changes) on the right. Giuseppe Verdi doesn't quite top the charts in terms of her AP penetration for a sixteen-inch gun but it's pretty darned close. She's a threat to battleship citadels up to 20km and beyond. A Curious Note Towards the tail end of this review, I noticed something weird in Giuseppe Verdi's datamined stats. This came from spotting a typo on one of my graphics. I got the HE damage value wrong, so I went back and double checked all of the info for her main battery HE shells just to make sure that I wasn't misquoting other stats. That's when this little value jumped out at me: "Alpha Damage 9,230" Now, Alpha Damage is weird. It's not the same as regular damage. That regular damage value for Giuseppe Verdi appears normal -- it's 5,700. It's the same amount of hurt that Iowa and Missouri spit out with their 406mm guns. Alpha Damage for HE shells is a bit of a holdover from the Closed Beta days where HE shells had a splash effect that could even damage ships on a near miss. To my knowledge, this may have had an effect still on modules (WG never gave me a clear answer on this as a Community Contributor). With the inclusion of submarines taking splash damage from near misses, it was something I had ear marked to explore when I could take submarines into the training rooms finally. So what does this value do? Well, frankly, I don't know. It could mean that Giuseppe Verdi will do more damage to submarines with her HE shells than she should. It could mean that she does more damage to modules (including exposed magazines of destroyers and some cruisers) than her contemporaries. Maybe it's more HE penetration against modules (they have a kind of armour -- module damage is hella weird). It could mean absolutely nothing and it's just a holdover from Closed Beta. Just be aware that she has more of this than Iowa and Missouri (4,620), Thunderer (7,730) or even Incomparable (7,800). I'll make some inquiries and keep you posted. [ Edit - This has been confirmed. Giuseppe Verdi does more module damage than other battleships. ] I'm borrowing this graphic from my Marco Polo review. The two sisters have the same firing angles. They're almost good. Almost. Main Battery Summary Giuseppe Verdi's main battery firepower sucks. She has bad range. Her AP shells have nerfed damage. She has only nine guns and yet she's stuck with an abnormally long reload. Her HE shells aren't SAP and they suck at starting fires. Her dispersion is also terrible. Her guns' redeeming qualities are decent fire arcs and gun handling, good AP penetration over range and you're playing with a larger calibre of gun than you normally can with Italian battleships. Seriously, that last bit is meant to be a selling feature of the ship and it makes me laugh. "Ooh, you get to play with 406mm guns!" Yeah, everyone else already does that and has been doing that since as early as tier VII. 406mm SAP with a bad reload was novel on Marco Polo. Nerfed 406mm AP with a bad reload is just a bad tier IX ship -- being Italian doesn't make that better somehow. Wargaming is obviously banking that her secondaries will make up the deficit. Her Secondaries Don't Make Up the Deficit There are four things I look for when evaluating if a ship's secondaries are worth upgrading into: Range: Look, you gotta have range. I don't care about the rest if a ship can't reach its target. Without range, secondaries are not going to come into play often enough to be worthwhile. The next three are all distant seconds to this first criteria. I cannot stress this enough: without good range, your secondaries suck. End of story. Dispersion: Dispersion helps put more hits on target for few shots. This can be counteracted somewhat by a high volume of fire (more bites of the apple) or meatier individual hits (good penetration / high damage or fire chance per shell). Penetration: Will my hits do damage when I get there? Like Dispersion, this can again be overlooked if the other two boxes are ticked . The idea being that if you don't have good penetration to hurt all targets, landing enough hits may pad the numbers through fires. Potential Damage: This category is kind of a catch-all. It combines volume of fire with fire arcs, shell damage and fire chance per hit. We're evaluating if the ship has the potential to deal a lot of damage -- pretty much, if all of the ducks were in a row, how much hurt can this ship dispense? A ship with poor potential damage may still be a decent contender for a secondary specialization if dispersion and penetration are present -- the idea being that you make up for the deficit by hitting more often and the quality of said hits being higher than average. We can look at a few examples: Prinz Rupprecht has arguably the best secondary battery at tier IX. She combines accurate "Massachusetts" level of accuracy with 1/4 HE penetration. Her 105mm guns fire quickly and her 150mm casemates hit like trucks. With nearly an 8km base range, the only marks against her are the poor firing arcs on her casemates and the fact that her 105mm can't quite penetrate 32mm battleship hull sections without dipping into IFHE. Still, she can do without and rely on fires to carry over the rest. Georgia is a step down from Prinz Rupprecht. Though she dittos the German battlecruiser's accuracy, she has slightly less range. Furthermore, her 127mm/38s don't have the penetration needed to contend with anything short of destroyers and very light cruisers. Dipping into Inertial Fuse for HE Shells allows her to engage cruisers, but this hurts her poor fire-setting ability when facing other battleships, forcing a choice. Her fire arcs, however, are excellent, ensuring she can bring her full secondary broadside on anything that creeps within range. Alsace has the range and massive volume of fire but she lacks everything else. Her penetration is infamously terrible with her 100mm guns unable to directly damage destroyers or the superstructures of ships at tiers VIII+ and her dispersion is just the baseline secondary accuracy which is awful. Still, she's one of the best potential fire starters. Marco Polo has absolutely nothing going for her. On paper, she can deal more potential damage than Georgia but her range is even worse. Furthermore, she inherits Alsace's penetration issues. The bulk of her fire comes from her 90mm guns and they can't hurt anything directly. She's only a modest fire starter and her accuracy is terrible. So where does Giuseppe Verdi fall on this spectrum? Giuseppe Verdi, Marco Polo and Friedrich der Große have the same brawling and kiting DPM. Pommern and Georgia have such good fire arcs that they can fire all of their guns whether kiting or brawling. Giuseppe Verdi's SAP ammunition provides tremendous potential, both through her theoretical DPM but also her high penetration. There's just one problem... SAP Armed Secondaries SAP secondaries are a game changer. On paper, Giuseppe Verdi's secondaries have more damage potential than Alsace's, which is pretty frightening. And this comes paired with high(ish) penetration. Her 152mm secondaries can smack 42mm hull sections and her 90mm can hurt up to 26mm. Pair this with (very) high damage per shell and she appears capable of front-loading some big alpha when her secondaries start singing. I was initially skeptical, expecting most of these shells to ricochet but her 152mm have VERY forgiving bounce angles. Her 90mm are less so, but still highly respectable. This was enough to make me curious. I could accept her not starting fires or damaging internal modules with these kind of stats (you're not detonating anyone with SAP). It stung a bit that her 90mm were stuck at 26mm of penetration -- 27mm would have been preferred to hurt ALL cruisers within her matchmaking, but I could deal with that, especially when her 152mm guns had been buffed with a slightly faster reload over those on her sister ship. Things were looking up. At least, they were until I looked at their range. Lemme dig up that meme I used on my Marco Polo review. There we go. With a 6.95km base range, Giuseppe Verdi's secondaries cap out at a modest 10.51km. That's a kilometre and a half shorter than Alsace and Prinz Rupprecht. That hurts. That sucks. What is it with these Italian battleship premiums post-Cesare being so close to good but fumbling at the last minute? Thus, Giuseppe Verdi ends up having excellent potential damage, good penetration, poor accuracy and, most damning of all, modest range at best, though I'm loathe to call it anything other than 'poor'. It's not that a 10.51km range isn't workable, it very much is, especially if you're a PVE-junky. Giuseppe Verdi's secondaries are boss-level badass in Co-Op and it's not uncommon to see her do in excess of 40,000 damage with her secondaries if you throw her headlong into jousting scenarios with a full secondary build. However, you can't expect this kind of regular performance in PVP where brawling scenarios are less common. Giuseppe Verdi doesn't pair these secondaries with a citadel profile that's healthy in a knife fight. That's not to say that there isn't some use for her secondaries in PVP, it's just not idiot proof the way it is on German battleships. Giuseppe Verdi's ace in the hole when it comes to making use of her secondaries is her Exhaust Smoke Generator. She can blink off people's radar, show up closer than people are expecting and saturate them with a hail of surprisingly damaging fire. This works best against destroyers and cruisers, obviously, and only select cruisers at that. But still, it opens the door for some fun, dynamic and aggressive plays that are so very dear to my blood thirsty heart. You just can't count on it being the trump card that people so often envision brawling to be. I really do like the combination of decent secondaries (I am loathe to say 'good') and an Exhaust Smoke Generator in brawling scenarios. So long as no one brings Hydroacoustic Search or a Surveillance Radar to the party, it's going to be amusing. I can't promise it will be game winning or even a good idea, but it will be amusing. After the disappointment of her main battery armament, having "amusing" secondaries is high praise. If you can fire all six of her 90mm guns at a target, you're showing waaaay too much broadside. Secondary Summary They're better than I initially thought. Their short(er) range is a pain in the butt and really hurts what could have been an impressive and novel armament. It would have been nice to see them reaching out to at least Georgia levels of range (7.5km) or getting at least German battleship levels of accuracy. Still, the way her secondaries synergize with her Exhaust Smoke Generator is a lot of fun, so top marks there. VERDICT: Giuseppe Verdi's offensive capabilities are only "okay". Her main battery firepower is pretty bad compared to her contemporaries and if you're not interested in a secondary-build, then you should probably stay clear of this ship. Durability Hit Points: 69,100 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 32mm / 19mm / 70mm to 80mm / 55mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 320mm belt + either 25mm turtleback or 50mm citadel wall Torpedo Damage Reduction: 27% Marco Polo and Giuseppe Verdi share the same hit point pool, which is really generous of them considering it's not very big. Giuseppe Verdi entirely clones Marco Polo's armour and hit point profiles. This means she has a tiny hit point pool for a tier IX battleship, a dispersed armour scheme and a highly vulnerable citadel. Giuseppe Verdi's armour is excellent for resisting cruiser calibre HE, SAP and AP rounds, even the latter two which may have improved auto-ricochet mechanics. Her amidships deck and upper belt are immune to HE rounds from even small battleship calibre weapons, being proof up to 330mm calibre guns. She can similarly shrug off the 1/4 HE penetration of 203mm calibre weapons found on the German cruisers. Similarly, all cruiser-calibre SAP rounds are patently incapable of damaging the ship in these places. This limits the effectiveness of these attacks to her extremities and superstructure. Given the difficulties of accuracy at range, the further away Giuseppe Verdi is from said cruisers, the more effective her armour becomes if only grace of dispersion. Even players who know what to target will find their shells occasionally straying and piffing off Giuseppe Verdi's thick plate ineffectively. Against battleship calibre rounds, she fares alright. She can bow-tank with the best of them, though she has to worry about the usual 460mm+ guns like everyone else. This all changes if she gives up a little too much side, however. Barring having an ice-breaker on her bow and stern, Giuseppe Verdi's external armour is excellent. The citadel protection of the Marco Polo-class isn't great. It's almost good enough. Almost. Against anything 356mm or smaller, it holds up well. Her turtleback is sloped steeply and it prompt ricochets (or at least ricochet checks) against most incoming rounds, deflecting them up and away from her magazines and machine spaces. However, at only 25mm thick, any larger AP shells simply ignores the armour entirely through overmatch mechanics. Similarly, ships with improved auto-ricochet angles like American heavy cruisers and battleships like Duke of York won't bounce off this plate. Granted these two ships in this specific example need to be extra close in order to get through her belt armour, but ships like Stalingrad and the Alaska-class do not. Exposing Giuseppe Verdi's sides is baaaad juju and it's just begging to get her sent back to port from the ensuing big citadel hits. That 25mm turtleback is just begging to be overmatched. It may as well be non-existant for any AP shells greater than 356mm. Flash her sides at your own peril. This raises the point on how it's generally a REALLY STUPID IDEA to bring this ship anywhere close to brawling distances against other battleships in PVP. Like, seriously. You'd have to be a flaming moron to want to engage in knife fights using Giuseppe Verdi and expect her to come out the better for it. Even her Exhaust Smoke Generator can't keep her safe at these ranges (and that won't save you from enterprising blind fires at a distance either, btw). Even if you don't get flashed by Surveillance Radar or sniffed out by a Hydroacoustic Search, the guaranteed detection range will ensure she gets lit. Barring "being the torpedo", you'll have to expose your sides to your quarry (if not their friends) and probably suffer for it. As good as her secondaries (potentially) are, Giuseppe Verdi's citadel protection should make you think twice about getting her anywhere close enough to use 'em. Or you can live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Up to you. Shut up. I look fabulous. VERDICT: Nice external armour. She doesn't have enough HP, though and her healing suffers because of it. Furthermore, citadel gets tapped too easily especially at brawling distances where WG wants her to be played. Agility Top Speed: 32 knots Turning Radius: 860m Rudder Shift Time: 16 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 4.3º/s at 24.1 knots Main Battery Traverse Rate: 5.0º/s Fourth from the top in bright, booger green. There's nothing really special about Giuseppe Verdi's handling. Her 860m turning radius looks decent. Her 32 knot top speed is good, but she's not the fastest at tier by a long shot. She lacks the Engine Boost consumable which makes Alsace, Wujing, Georgia and the Jean Barts so flexible. And finally, her rudder shift time is only kinda-sorta okay. Plug this all in and you get a ship that isn't exemplary in any one area, but she's not terrible in any of them either. And yet, she strangely feels kinda lame. This is largely owing to the empty niche at high tiers. We have fast battleships but we don't have any nimble ones. Put Giuseppe Verdi at any of the lower tiers and sure, her speed stands out, but her handling would be all kinds of meh by comparison. At tier VII, Gneisenau has a comparable top speed but scrapes off another 30m from her turning radius (and over a second from her rudder shift time), allowing her to manage a comfy 4.5º/s rate of rotation. The German tech tree ship feels fast and aggressive. Yet just a few different paraemeters undermines Giuseppe Verdi. The end result is that she only feels okay. There's room at this tier for Wargaming to play with agility as a perk if they wished. Something with short rudder shift time like Vanguard or Yukon would be welcome, especially if it came with something close to (or just below) an 800m turning cricle radius and around a 30 knot top speed. As it is, Giuseppe Verdi's agility misses the mark here. Because of this, I fell in love with the Swift commander skill in my play tests. Paired with the Sierra Mike signal and her Exhaust Smoke Generator, it gave her a top speed of 37.1 knots in a straight line and a maximum rate of turn of 4.5º/s over a 910m turning circle radius at a sustained turning speed of 26.6 knots (for those unaware, when you exceed your in-port top speed, your turning circle radius increases in size). Giuseppe Verdi can very comfortably come about 180º under the cover of her Exhaust Smoke Generator with time to spare. Furthermore, her Exhaust Smoke Generator ensures she can always have access to this extra speed on demand, allowing her to redeploy even from hotly contested fights. I know I'm making more of a big deal about her synergy with this skill than it perhaps deserves but I was delighted by this pairing and I'ma spread the word to mah peeps. Overall, Giuseppe Verdi's agility is "good enough", I suppose. It's not bad but there are better ships at her tier, like Georgia and Jean Bart. VERDICT: It's not terrible. It's not good either, but it's not terrible. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 6 + 2 explosions for 1,330 damage per blast at 3.5km to 4.6km. Long Ranged (up to 4.6km): 196dps at 75% accuracy (147dps) Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 199.5dps at 75% accuracy (150dps) Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 206.5dps at 70% accuracy (145dps) Range of Gun Types and DPS Combined AA DPS by Range Look, the only thing "good" going on here is the wall of flak that Giuseppe Verdi puts out and even that's held back by the pathetic short-range of Italian large-calibre batteries. You can count on anything short of dive bombers being able to engage an attack run before they have to consider dodging and that really undermines their efficacy. On paper, she has enough sustained DPS to do some damage to loitering planes (if they loiter), but in practice she's one of the softer battleship targets at her tier. You're pretty much hoping that enemy aircraft will run into a combined flak-wall or be out-muscled by Giuseppe Verdi's DPS paired with something much more frightening, like an American or French battleship. Here's how Giuseppe Verdi's sustained AA DPS holds up against the best three and worst three battleships at her tier. This is the approximate damage done by sustained AA DPS against a fictional, 186.2 knot squadron travelling in a straight line from max range to 0km over a ship. The colours separate the damage done by mount type, with darkest being the large calibre mounts, the medium being the medium calibre and lightest being the small calibre mounts. Iowa (5833) Missouri (5019) Jean Bart & Jean Bart B (4884) Marco Polo & Giuseppe Verdi (2948) Hizen (2157) AL Sovetskaya Rossiya (1914) Musashi (1198) Overall, your best AA defence is going to be to activate her Exhaust Smoke Generator if you come under concerted attack. Make sure you put the rudder hard over to Just Dodge™ any blind drops of rockets, fish, bombs, or Soveit easy-mode ordnance. VERDICT: Not enough so it's entirely forgettable. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 16.8km / 13.2km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 12.98km / 10.51km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 16.26km Maximum Firing Range: Between 19.12km and 22.18km (max of 26.62km with Spotter Aircraft) 52nd (or 53rd) out of 93 vessels listed here. Giuseppe Verdi (and Marco Polo) have concealment on the poor side of average for a battleship within their matchmaking (the average being an upgraded concealment of 13.05km). That's not surprising given that short of Roma (and her unfortunate AL clone), most Italian battleships tend to have unremarkable surface detection ranges. However, with very few exceptions, it isn't the raw concealment value that's the interesting aspect of a given battleship's vision control -- it's what consumables they bring to the table to shake things up that makes individual ships stand out. With Italian battleships, it's access to their Exhaust Smoke Generator consumable that's their defining feature here. This provides concealment on demand, at least so long as they haven't fired their main battery guns recently. That Marco Polo lacked this consumable at all was a big hit against her comfort-level which was admittedly already suffering due to her punitive reload time on her guns. Well, it seems that Wargaming has taken the Exhaust Smoke Generator Marco Polo should have gotten and added it onto her sister-ship, because Giuseppe Verdi's smoke is strange and powerful. It provides all of the usual benefits for an Italian battleship, giving cover to allow it to disengage and manoeuvre as needs be. With her great secondaries, you can also use it offensively, spitting ribbons of SAP fire into the faces of enemies that get close without being spotted in return -- at least until someone activates Surveillance Radar or Hydroacoustic Search or slips within 2km of her. Still, this can be enough to cause some amusing shenanigans, such as foiling early torpedo attempts and getting a leg up on damage done, especially against the impatient. It might be enough to protect her citadel against some opponents. Exhaust Smoke Generators are a selfish consumable by their very nature. They don't really provide smoke that can be shared by other ships unless you VERY tightly coordinate with a peer. That's nominally beyond the scope of trying to help some Random Battle buddy you meet in a one-off match. The Exhaust Smoke Generator clouds don't last long enough for another ship to hide in them comfortably. Trail behind an Italian battleship by more than a boat length and you're not likely to keep hidden, especially if you're struggling at all to match their exact course and speed. This is where Giuseppe Verdi stands out. Her Exhaust Smoke Generator can be shared. While most Italian Exhaust Smoke Generators create smoke circles that are 1.02km in diameter, Giuseppe Verdi's is a massive 1.8km. The extra duration of each individual cloud also ensures that it lasts long enough for a friendly ship to be able to follow in her wake. Finally, the extra emission time gives a bit more room too coordinate. While this may still be beyond the average player in a pick-up battle, it is enough to provide at least temporary cover and easily too. That can make all of the difference in a Random or Ranked battle. Still, I wouldn't go so far as to say that Giuseppe Verdi's Exhaust Smoke Generator is game changing. It's just that much more comfortable to use and it opens the door for some team play options that didn't readily exist before. Lepanto on top with a standard Exhaust Smoke Generator. Giuseppe Verdi's smoke is large enough to hide a small fleet inside, provided they can keep up. VERDICT: Bad unless you account for her Exhaust Smoke Generator. Then it's at least interesting, if not downright competitive. Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Airstrike from 1.5km to 10km (plus bomb drop column) Number of Salvos: Up to two Reload Time: 30 seconds Aircraft: Two Kawanishi H8K with 2,000hp per plane. Drop Pattern: 3 bombs each dropped evenly over roughly a 900m column Maximum Bomb Damage: 2,800 Fire Chance: 21% Not much to say here given that submarines were largely a non-entity during my playtesting. I'm recording these stats for posterity and they're likely to change in the future. VERDICT: I'm not looking forward to when this section becomes relevant, if only because these reviews will get even more complicated. #MouseTroubles Final Evaluation Marco Polo, was entirely forgettable and short of Christmas events, I never see any reason to take her out. This is largely owing to Marco Polo's atrocious main battery reload time. Seeing that corrected with Giuseppe Verdi caught my interest, especially when paired with the missing Exhaust Smoke Generator. But when I became aware of the other gunnery flaws, namely the 1.7 sigma, the terrible range, the 31 second reload (for some reason) and nerfed AP rounds, my enthusiasm was dashed. I resigned that she would never be anything more than another forgettable offering from Wargaming, not worth a deep dive. I began framing this review as a quick comparison between the two ships. That was until I took a look at how Wargaming was promoting her. I told you we'd come back to this. What stood out to me was the claims of a powerful secondary armament. Now, I was aware of her development and how she had been touted as having SAP secondaries. But just looking at their range gave me reservations, to say nothing when datamining pulled up that her dispersion wasn't improved. But the more I looked and the more I played Giuseppe Verdi, I felt it wrong to be so dismissive. There was something interesting there. Oh, my forays into trying to make her secondaries work in PVP were largely disastrous -- I'm not about to tell you that Giuseppe Verdi is a good ship, don't you worry. But what I did find was that they were fun, especially in PVE. I don't usually focus on individual game modes much in my reviews but I think it's worth examining here with Giuseppe Verdi. If you are a co-op main, Giuseppe Verdi is a fantastic ship. Secondary-heavy battleships and battleships with torpedoes do extremely well in PVE modes and Giuseppe Verdi is no exception. If you're looking to scratch of some event mission that requires secondary hits, this isn't a bad pony to bet on. In PVP modes, she's only alright though. You can pull off some fun shenanigans every now and then the same way you could with say, Tirpitz or Odin. I just don't feel that her long range fire is good enough to warrant purchasing. Yes, it's nice to have an Italian battleship with 406mm AP rounds AND smoke. But given how heavy handed Wargaming has been to balance her, I don't think she's worth while. Similarly, close combat just doesn't happen often enough in PVP battles to allow you to enjoy what makes her novel. Her shorter ranged secondaries make that even more challenging -- you're getting less secondary incidental fire than you would from any other specialist and that's a shame. I want to like Giuseppe Verdi, but I cannot in good conscious recommend her for anyone that enjoys Random and Ranked Battles. She's not terrible. She's certainly more novel than her sister ship, but I'ma stick to my guns. Give her a pass if you're a PVP junky. Thanks for reading. Mouse out. <Sinister pasta noises!>

♫ Florida man, Florida man... ♪ Guess the tune. The following is a review of USS Florida, the tier VII American premium battleship. I did not pay for this ship. It was provided to me by Wargaming for evaluation purposes. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.9.9. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. Quick Summary: A tier VII, prototype version of the North Carolina-class battleship with twelve 356mm guns instead of nine 406mm guns. She's highly accurate but her guns don't hit very hard, even for 356mm rounds. On top of this, she's super squishy. PROS Huge broadside of twelve 356mm guns. Solid rearward firing angles, well suited to kiting. Uses the improved battlecruiser dispersion instead of that of American battleships. Good range for a tier VII battleship, able to reach out to 21.6km with her APRM1 modification. Improved penetration on her AP shells for their calibre. Good anti-aircraft firepower, including access to Defensive AA Fire. Decent concealment. CONS Small hit point pool for a tier VII battleship. Softer-skinned than contemporary battleships with 25mm extremities. Vulnerable, high-water citadel with as little as 285mm worth of armour. A 33.5 second reload. Anemic damage values on both her HE and AP rounds along with poor fire setting. Horrible rudder shift time of 15.4 seconds. Has one fewer Repair Party charges than most other battleships. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Difficult New players beware. As easy as border-humping battleships can be, Florida asks a bit more of players in order to get her to perform. Neither her AP or HE shells are idiot proof, requiring players to be dynamic with their ammunition choices. That's bad enough, but even when you have the right ammo loaded for the right target, her anemic shells leave a lot to be desired, especially with so long of a reload. Even her good improved accuracy can be a bit of a turn off -- at least with bad dispersion even a poorly aimed shot might have something strike the target. Finally, this ship just feels cumbersome with sloppy handling, a slow reload and sluggish turret traverse. Her carry potential is limited. While expert players can flex a lot of their in-game knowledge to get more out of Florida's potential, her defensive limitations thwart most attempts to push aggressively. Her guns don't hit hard enough or fast enough and are foiled by even limited angling. Still, she's a nice support ship. If you want to play a more passive, supporting role, Florida works well, especially against CVs. Options Consumables Florida's consumables are a little weird. There are two items of note: Florida uses an American battleship version of her Damage Control Party. This has a longer-than-usual active time compared to other battleships, repairing critical damage and preventing fires and flooding for 20 seconds instead of the usual 15 seconds. It has unlimited charges and an 80 second reset timer. Her Repair Party is also standard for a battleship. It queues up 50% of penetration damage, 10% of citadel damage and 100% of everything else. It heals back 0.5% of her health every second for 28 seconds. Her consumable has an 80 second reset timer but only comes with three base charges instead of the usual four. Like the other new American battleships, Florida has access to Defensive AA Fire. This is active for 40 seconds per charge with four charges base. While active, this provides a 50% increase to sustained AA DPS and a 300% increase to flak damage. It has an 80 second reset timer. Finally in the last slot, you have your choice between a Spotting Aircraft or Catapult Fighter. The former comes with four charges and is active for 100 seconds, during which time main battery gun range is increased by 20%. It has a 240 second reset timer. Her fighter has the usual 60 second active period with three fighters patrolling around the ship. This has a 90 second reset timer and comes with three charges base. The big takeaways here are that Florida has access to Defensive AA Fire and her Repair Party has one fewer charge. Upgrades Florida's upgrade choices are pretty dull. Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. It's arguably the best choice in the first slot. You can take the special upgrade Spotting Aircraft Modification 1 to increase the active time of her consumable from 100s to 130s but this doesn't exactly wow me. This upgrade will cost you 17,000 from the Armory. Unless you plan to hump the back-line regularly, you're better served increasing the survivability of your guns. Damage Control System Modification 1 is the best choice for slot two. Again, if you feel the need, you can take another special upgrade. This time, Defensive AA Fire Modification 1 is up for grabs at the same 17,000 cost in the Armory. This increases the active time of her consumable from 40 seconds to 48 seconds and reduces the reset timer from 80 seconds to 72 seconds. In slot three, Artillery Plotting Room Modification 1 is really the only one worth considering. This will up her main battery firing range from 18.62km to 21.6km (her secondaries get boosted from 5km to 5.25km). Finally, in slot four, fire damage mitigation is still your best option so Damage Control System Modification 2 is your best choice. If you want to be a little more active in your dodging, then you can take Steering Gears Modification 1 instead. This will reduce her rudder shift time from an appalling 15.4 seconds down to 12.32s. Captain Skills You're not reinventing the wheel with Florida. Take the usual battleship survivability build. It's boring but it works. For variety's sake, you can swap out Priority Target and Expert Marksman for your tier 1 and tier 2 skills of choice. Some good alternatives are Expert Loader, Jack of All Trades and High Alert. Expert Loader in particular is a very good choice. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this graphic. This speaks a lot to how badly the skill system needs to be reworked given how optimized skill choices have become. Camouflage Florida has access to two different camouflage patterns. By default, she comes with Type 10 Camouflage. However, They provide the same bonuses and are merely a cosmetic swap. -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -10% to post-battle service costs. +50% to experience gains. Florida's default camo is alright. I really don't like her alternative palette. It's a dull, elephantine grey in unflattering patterns. Florida's "Golden Eagle" camouflage has the same pin-up girl on her funnel as the camouflage made available for the new American tech tree battleships. I'm surprised by how much I enjoy this camo, though that may simply be because I'm not big on the other two. Firepower Main Battery: Twelve 356mm/50 Mk11 rifles in 3x4 turrets in an A-B-X super-firing configuration. Secondary Battery: Sixteen 127mm/38 guns in 6x2 turrets and 4x1 turrets. Huh! Neat! Let's start with Florida's secondaries, because they're kind of neat in a pointless, fun bit of trivia kind of way. Her secondary armament is divided into two gun types. The first is the twin 127mm/38 we're used to seeing on every American battleship. But these are supplemented by four single 127mm/38 turrets akin to what you might find on an American destroyer like Benson or Sims. This effectively gives her an eight-gun secondary broadside -- two fewer than you'll see on higher tiered American battleships like North Carolina, the SoDaks, the Iowa-sisters, etc, but it's right on par with California's battery. However, Florida manages to have the equivalent broadside to a ten-gun secondary battery like the higher tiered ships because most American twin 127mm/38 guns have an artificially lowered rate of fire and the singles have a boosted one. Check out this nonsense! Iowa & Missouri's secondary broadside: 10 guns with 6 second reload = 100rpm. North Carolina & Alabama's secondary broadside: 10 guns with 6 second reload = 100rpm. California's secondary broadside: 8 guns with 6 second reload = 80rpm. Florida's secondary broadside: 6 guns with 6 second reload + 2 guns with 3 second reload = 100rpm So there you go! Florida has a better secondary battery than California, equivalent to most of the other American battleships (but obviously excluding Massachusetts & company cuz theirs are souped up). Florida's secondaries are too short ranged to be worth specializing into. They also lack the accuracy buff that makes Massachusetts and Georgia such units. These twin factors are enough to discourage anyone from spending skills or upgrade slots on them, to say nothing of Florida's durability issues (which I will [edited] about at length below). Alright, that's enough fussing over what is little more than a curiosity. Let's get onto the meat of the matter. Big Guns Go Boom Make Squeaky-Toy Noises I don't like Florida's guns. They're perfectly adequate -- I'm not here to tell you that they're broken, bugged, under-performing or what have you. They're well balanced and put out the hurt reasonably well. In fact, they've got a lot of good things going for them including good(ish) fire arcs, good range, decent AP penetration values and that sweet, sweet battlecruiser dispersion. So what's my beef? Well, its' two things gentle reader: She has a slow rate of fire. Her shells suck moose-balls. The first element is symptomatic of American battleships as a whole, especially the new line of American battleships that Florida heralds. At 33.5 seconds per volley, Florida's reload isn't as bad as some of the others in the new tech-tree, but let's not mince words: It sucks to wait that long between trigger pulls. I can stomach this if the results for waiting are particularly amusing, however Florida's gunnery is an exercise in frustration for me because of my second gripe: Florida's shell hits are not satisfying. Florida's shells, both AP and HE, don't hit especially hard. Their damage values are lower than you might expect for a 356mm weapon. In fact, Florida's damage output on her AP and HE shells is most closely matched by those off the sixteen-gun Lyon. Lyon has only a 30 second reload, I remind you, 3.5 seconds faster than Florida with a four-gun advantage. Compare: American 356mm/50 (Florida): 9,500 AP damage, 4,750 HE damage, 22% fire chance American 356mm/50 (New Mexico, California): 10,500 AP damage, 5,000 HE damage, 30% fire chance American 356mm/45 (Arizona, New York, Texas): 10,300 AP damage, 5,000 HE damage, 30% fire chance French 340mm/45 (Bretagne, Normandie, Lyon): 9,500 damage, 4,700 HE damage, 26% fire chance Her individual hits just aren't doing as much damage as other American battleships. While she still has better broadside weight than the ten-gun armed New York-class, she's well behind the other twelve-gun armed American standards despite having a better reload time than all of them. This deficit in shell damage (combined with her slower reload) means that in terms of raw damage potential, Florida falls way behind, ending up in the bottom half of the DPM charts despite her large number of guns. Take these values with a pinch of salt. This is not accounting for such factors as accuracy, penetration, overmatch, normalization, etc. In terms of raw DPM, yes, Florida lags behind. She's also hurting when it comes to overmatching targets, especially when she's middle or bottom tier. However, her penetration is decent and her accuracy is good, offsetting these factors somewhat but only against select targets. More on this later. Look at all of this negative space! This is what happens when I scale the HE values to the same scale as the AP values. The order of ships shuffles a bit with German HE shells being terrible and British and Japanese HE shells doing more damage than you might otherwise expect for their calibre. Florida's HE performance remains unfortunate. However, given the troubles with her AP shells, you'll still be reaching for them often. Don't Trust DPM Charts The problem with simply looking at DPM charts is that it assumes everything is not only 100% accurate, but also that all shells perform equally when they strike a target. It patently ignores two crucial elements: How easy it is to hit a target. How likely your shells are to do damage if they do hit. As Roma so painfully demonstrated, you can have gorgeous paper stats but if you simultaneously struggle to (a) hit a target and (b) get anything other than over-penetrations, then your experience is going to be hella inconsistent. Florida has her own struggles, but at least she's very consistent when it comes to landing hits. Florida uses battlecruiser dispersion -- the same found on ninja-accurate battleships like Thunderer. Sadly, this isn't paired with a god-tier sigma value. Florida has 1.7 sigma competed to 1.9 of Thunderer or 2.0 of Champagne, so she doesn't feel quite so accurate as some of the higher-tiered snipers. The lower sigma means that the occasional shell will still fly wonky, though the smaller dispersion area means this won't be as wildly askew as other ships. In short: Florida's accuracy is good. You should land more hits per volley than her contemporaries which should help mitigate some of her DPM issues -- not all of them, but some. Florida (on the left) using a standard dispersion test. This is 180 AP shells fired at a stationary Fuso bot. Shots are coming in from the left to right (Fuso is bow-tanking). California is on the right with the same parameters. California uses American battleship dispersion with 1.9 sigma versus Florida's battlecruiser dispersion with 1.7 sigma. Florida feels appreciably more accurate than most other American battleships, though her lower sigma value will make her feel only slightly better than ships like California or Arizona. The difference in penetration performance between California and Florida is manifold. Their shells have different masses (555kg for Florida vs 680.4kg for California), different shell velocities due to different drag coefficients (0.271 for Florida vs 0.331 for California) and different Krupp values (2,945 for Florida vs 2,545 for California). AP penetration is more of a contentious issue for Florida. There's a stigma against lower-calibre guns for having poor penetration performance and this is largely undeserved. American 356mm AP shells, for example, have very good penetration and Florida's is improved even beyond this. She is capable, for example, of penetrating upwards of 400mm worth of plate at 15km. She has more than enough punch to land citadel hits against just about any broadside target, including some of the softer-skinned battleships up to ranges of 20km. So you don't need to worry about Florida not having enough teeth to citadel an Iowa in most encounters, should the opportunity arise. I stress the word opportunity, however. As nice as the raw penetration values are on Florida, she doesn't have a lot to spare once you aim at battleships in excess of 15km out. Using the usual tricks of aiming for softer sections of the hull can help, especially given Florida's reasonably tight dispersion to ensure good groupings. This helps somewhat, but again, angling is very effective against Florida's guns because she doesn't overmatch a whole lot of armour. Her 356mm AP rounds overmatch a maximum of 24mm worth of plate and there's a whole lot of structural steel within her matchmaking that's 25mm or thicker. Tier VI+ battleships, tier VIII+ cruisers all have a minimum of 25mm worth of structural armour. But that 25mm+ threshold crops up in other places, such as the decks and amidship hulls of tier VI and VII heavy cruisers and the decks of tier VI and VII lights. Having a working knowledge of which ships you can still punish when they angle helps immeasurably, but Florida is very often forced to rely on either aiming for over-penetrations through superstructures or resorting to her HE rounds. Ouch. I don't know why Wargaming decided to neuter Florida's fire setting so badly. I guess this will encourage players to reach for AP whenever possible. Keep in mind that these values do not include the fire resistance of their opponents nor the ship's accuracy. Fire resistance values against the opponents Florida usually faces is anywhere between 30% to 45% or so. So if you're managing to hit with 1/3 of Florida's shells against a tier VIII target, then instead of 4 fires and change, you're more likely going to see one per minute. Maybe. Sadly, Florida's HE are lacking. Their modest damage per-shell and slow reload might not be such a bad handicap if their fire chance was better, but her fire chance per shell is horrible. The 22% value she's shackled with is downright painful for such a slow rate of fire. Getting one permanent fire to burn is a feat, never mind doubling up. Her HE performance is so bad that I would happily recommend sticking with AP spam if it weren't for the aforementioned issue with angled and higher-tiered targets. It's stupid-important to be patient with your shots. Look for opportune targets where you can maximize her AP efficiency. You don't want to have to start spamming HE. Similarly, you don't want to force encounters where this is your sole option. Florida doesn't have the armour or hit points to facilitate trades against same-tier (or even tier VI) opponents. Blapping a full broadside of HE into an enterprising lolibote is hilarious, don't get me wrong -- her improved accuracy means that she easily can land four to six shells (or more!) against a destroyer at stupid-close ranges. But against any other target, her HE is just found wanting. If given the opportunity to fire nothing but AP, Florida does really well. Frankly, this is only going to happen if your opponents are idiots. You have to remain flexible with her ammunition choices. Keep the Expert Loader skill in mind. It's very handy for this ship if you're going to build a dedicated Florida captain. Enough Facts, Gimme the Feels I hate these guns. Lemme stress: They're fine. And I mean that in the same way I tell my significant other that "it's fine" when things are clearly not. It's all of the little things which add up to a bad experience for me. If you asked me to point at the one thing that bugs me the most about them, I'd probably tell you it's the 4º/s gun traverse, which seems stupid to complain about given all of the other issues. However, I think that this quibble illustrates my beef with Florida's gunnery as a whole. Her slow turret traverse is just that "one more thing" that feels off about this ship. No matter her advantages, there's always a big ol' butt attached. Florida has good AP penetration she has overmatch issues. Florida has good dispersion her sigma value is subpar. Florida has a huge broadside her shell damage is artificially low. Florida has decent fire arcs her turret traverse is slow. Florida can land a lot of hits with her HE shells she's terrible at starting fires. It goes on and on like this. Yes, yes, yes, this is all in the name of BALANS™, tovarish, and Florida's gunnery is balanced. I just don't like it. Florida's fire angles are decent. They're not good -- good is a 300º fire arc or more, but she's not as appalling as some of the ships I've dealt with recently. I just wish her turret traverse was better. Summary Big broadside, wussy shells. Guns are very accurate. You have to be dynamic with shell choice. VERDICT: You would think that for a sniper-battleship, her guns would be fun. But they're not fun. I didn't have fun at all with these weapons (except for maybe paddling a lolibote or two at very close range. Defence Hit Points: 51,800 Min Bow & Deck Armour: 25mm extremities, 26mm upper hull & 37mm deck Maximum Citadel Protection: 285mm belt or water + 213mm belt + 56mm, 96mm or 140mm citadel wall. Torpedo Damage Reduction: 26% Short Version Florida is pretty much a normal tier VII battleship with an exposed, vulnerable citadel and weak Repair Party. Florida's citadel layout tells you all you really need to know about this ship's durability. The TL:DR is that her citadel abuts against the exterior of her hull and it sits above the waterline. With only 285mm worth of belt protection, this exposed "T-section" of her citadel is stupid-easy to bullseye for waterline-aimed shots from enemy battleships. For 380mm+ AP shells aimed at her bows, her transverse bulkhead is almost as vulnerable. Irrelevant trivia time. There is a 16mm hidden plate dividing the upper and lower parts of Florida's citadel. The line of it can be found between her 285mm upper belt the 213mm of her lower belt Long Version The most pressing thing to worry about when playing Florida is her citadel. Unlike the other "sniper" battleships like Slava and Champagne, the "softness" of Florida's hull is barely a concern. The 25mm extremities which damn her higher tiered cousins do not apparently have a lower-tier equivalency. I was expecting Florida to appear with 19mm of extremity armour but she instead clones the higher tiered ship weakness with 25mm instead. Given that all of the other tier VI and VII battleships are rocking 26mm worth of extremity plate, the loss of a single millimeter is not that much of a drawback. At most, this makes Florida slightly more vulnerable to HE shells from small and medium caliber guns -- specifically 152mm HE shells from tiers VII and below do not need to reach for Inertial Fuse for HE Shells in order to stack direct damage against Florida as they would against her tier-mates. Similarly, Florida is vulnerable to 120mm HE shells with Inertial Fuse for HE Shells. That's really the extent this soft skin provides in terms of vulnerability. Otherwise her superstructure, upper hull and amidships deck all conform to normal parameters for a tier VII battleship. If you swapped out Florida's 25mm bow and stern for 26mm versions, she'd be a perfectly normal tier VII battleship. Florida's artificial fragility instead comes from three sources. The most influential of these is her citadel placement and geometry. Any battleship with her citadel sitting high over the waterline and abutting against the ship's exterior has a big ol' weakspot that's pretty easy to exploit. That, in of itself, isn't enough to damn a ship. For example, Soviet battleships all share this weak point, but many (if not most) of them are considered super-tanky. Therein lies Florida's second weakness: she lacks any form of extended armour to assist with shattering HE shells and ricocheting incoming AP rounds. While her amidships deck is a respectable 37mm, her butt, snoot and upper hull are all highly vulnerable. 25mm and 26mm armour are easily over-matched by the oh-so commonplace 380mm+ AP shells found at this tier. This armour similarly doesn't hold up against HE spam from cruisers and some destroyers. Thus Florida is much more limited when it comes to tanking incoming rounds. She can bounce 356mm armed battleships throwing AP in her face for days but angle improperly or test your luck against larger caliber guns and she goes down in a hurry. The last piece of her squishy puzzle is her effective health pool. Florida's hit point pool is small for a tier VII battleship. Heck, it would be on the low end for a tier VI battleship. This isn't enough to damn her in of itself -- she's not so low that she's on Viribus Unitis levels of parody. But a smaller hit point pool means that she heals less penetrating damage with her Repair Party. While this has no impact on fire and flooding damage (as their damage amount scales with the starting hit points of the ship), 10,000 damage worth of penetrations hurts Florida more than other tier VII battleships. But there's more. Florida comes with one fewer charges of her Repair Party, so this deficit is felt even more. I wanna gloat like a happy teaboo, but Florida's health is just too appallingly low for me for me to brag with good conscience. Her lacking an entire Repair Party charge just feels mean. I have felt these three combined weaknesses acutely with Florida. I don't feel that they're enough to damn the ship, but they are very obviously weaknesses. Unlike the higher tiered sniper-battleships, Florida finds herself more often in claustrophobic maps where she cannot rely on simply out-ranging targets. She's asked to tank a lot more more than say, Champagne. Even when she does appear on larger maps, this comes with the threat of higher-tiered opponents and more overmatching guns so it's catch 22. Knowing which opponents you can face tank and which you can't are important. But so very often I was forced to show my cute butt and kite away when the pressure was on. Florida's not-good(ish) forward fire angles meant that firing all three turrets forward was just asking to have shells rammed into her stepped citadel. It was far safer to fight, firing over her shoulder with her forward turrets slinging shells to her rear. Being far more limited in what aggressive plays this ship can make hurts her carrying ability. Turning to fight will often just get you killed. It limits what decisive actions she can take. It's hard to be heroic if you're constantly forced to follow Sir Robin's playbook. VERDICT: She's squishy -- squishier than the usual tier VII battleship and they struggle a lot with durability. Florida struggles even more. Don't brawl. You'll die. Agility Top Speed: 27 knots Turning Radius: 760m Rudder Shift Time: 15.4 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 4.1º/s If Florida was a battleship from any other nation, there would be very little worth noting here. Her top speed of 27 knots is completely acceptable for a tier VII battleship. Her turning radius of 760m is decent. It's not amazing, but it's alright. Her rotation rate of 4.1º/s is again, pretty average. Her rudder shift time of 15.4s is the most remarkable thing about her and not in a good way. It's slow. Her 27 knot top speed has the illusion of meaning something only because she's an American battleship. All other American battleships from tier VII and below cap out around 21 knots as their top speed. With the nerfing to American Standard-type battleship agility with patch 0.9.6 Florida's speed advantage is even more pronounced. Were she a battleship from any other nation, her 27 knot top speed would be unremarkable. So yes, Florida is faster than Colorado or California. Big deal. So is everything else at this tier. Focus instead on her sloppy rudder shift time. She doesn't feel like she handles well because of it. Add on her modest turret traverse rate and she feels like a chunk-lord. Ships with stars have been changed or added since patch 0.9.6. VERDICT: Not as nimble as you might expect. Good enough, I suppose, but definitely not one of her strengths. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 5 explosions for 1400 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8km. Long Ranged (up to 5.8km): 157.5dps at 75% accuracy Medium Ranged (up to 4.0km): 269.5dps at 75% accuracy Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 318.5dps at 70% accuracy I've sorted these by the formula of [ AA dps x { range - 1km} ]. It's not a perfect system but it does weight heavier, longer-ranged firepower over masses of short-ranged defence. I admit a terrible reluctance to call any battleship's AA firepower "good". This said, when a pristine Florida activates her Defensive AA Fire and doubles her DPS, she has good AA firepower. Florida's AA power is nice. Taken on it's own merits, her AA power is pretty fearsome when it comes to personal defence. In the support role, she's not bad either, with a sizable chunk of her AA power dedicated to long and medium range weapons. When her Defensive AA Fire is active, she can wipe out full tier VIII squadrons -- it's not contest here. A determined CV player will still be able to make a drop, but it will cost them everything. Carriers must anticipate that she will always have Defensive AA Fire ready and it's best to bait its use by ducking in and out of her 5.8km bubble and then waiting it out, even if she's not your primary target. Florida is effectively a no-fly zone for tier VI carriers because of this consumable and raw AA power combination which is a pretty impressive boast. Add on a catapult fighter and Florida duplicates this for tier VIII carriers too, at least until she comes under sustained HE attack. Most of her teeth come from her 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikons, barring a CV being gracious enough to face-plant into a flak-cloud. These do not survive long under HE fire and even cursory smattering of HE rounds will quickly reduce the effectiveness of her AA and open her up to the potential of air-attack. All hail Florida's lord & saviour. VERDICT: Honestly, some of the best AA defence we've seen in a long time. I'm kinda shocked. Refrigerator Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 13.86km / 12.1km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 10.08km/9.07km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 12.01km Maximum Firing Range: Between 18.62km and 25.92km Flordia's concealment values are pretty darned good. She doesn't quite get into that magical sub-12km surface detection range which is quite impressive for a battleship, but at least she gets close. Given her preferred engagement distance, it's pretty easy for this ship to drop off from detection range in typical encounters -- especially given her long reload. If she had a bit more grunt in her engines, controlling the engagement through use of her stealth would be a lot more feasible, but her 27 knot top speed just isn't enough to kite away from all of the battleships she faces, to say nothing of cruisers and destroyers. Florida's great range (especially when upgraded and modified with her Spotter Aircraft consumable) can work against her here, especially with those enterprising shots in the early stages of a match as everyone's deploying. While it can be super-tempting to try your luck against targets spotted early by your own lolibotes or Just Dodge™ simulators, you can all but guarantee you'll be spotted in return when you pull the trigger. With nothing else to shoot at, you can bet that every battleship on the enemy team that can draw bead on you will take a shot and given Florida's super-squish citadel, bad things will happen if they've got the range. Keep in mind that Florida's rudder is terrible so it's not like she dodges well. This is definitely a risk-reward element at play here, so be careful. VERDICT: Pretty darned good for raw concealment values, though she struggles to spot stuff on her own. It's too bad she doesn't have the agility to make better use of this trait. Final Evaluation When it comes to my battleships, I know what I like. Big, punchy guns are a must. I prefer durability to agility, but I need one of those two elements to be present. If a battleship can't manage these things, they've got a big, uphill battle to win my affections. Some of them still manage it. Scharnhorst, for example, doesn't have the main battery guns to wow me, but she still pulls off a win between her secondaries, fish and the combination of speed and tankiness. I've tried to keep an open mind while play testing Florida, but good gravy, my time in her has not been pleasant. I'm under no illusions that this is very clearly a me problem. Florida herself is a well balanced ship. I just hate her. She doesn't have any one element of this trifecta that I enjoy in my battleships. When Florida was first announced, I thought she would immediately obsolete California. I tore California a new one a few months ago for being not worth the asking price. While I do feel that Florida is a superior vessel to California, I don't feel that she's worth it either. Frankly, you're better served picking up Arizona at tier VI or even Alabama at tier VIII instead of Florida. Let me stress this: I don't think Alabama is worth the asking price either, but I would definitely recommend her over Florida. She's more reliable, if dull. The best bang for your buck for American premium battleships is Massachusetts and she's been one of the best premiums you can buy if you're shopping for one. Her primacy isn't challenged by Florida in the least. With Black Friday a little over a month away, if you're in the market for Massachusetts, then you might want to wait a month and grab it when her Black version goes back on sale if you like the cosmetic difference. I don't mean to try and sell you on other ships, my point is simply that there are a lot better choices for your time and money than investing in Florida. In closing, I should stress again: Florida is fine. She's not broken. There will be some people who really dig her sniper game play. I'm not one of those people. I like to have the option of getting in close and hitting people with my sword. Florida doesn't let me do that. In Closing Well, this accidentally turned into a much longer review than I had intended. I was originally just going to line up Florida alongside California, compare the two and then pull a surprise-reveal that they both suck equally. Instead, I learned last week that Ship Comrade, the site run by @Critter8 that has hosted my reviews since the first quarter of 2016 was going to close down. Instead of working on how to cleverly cast shade on anyone that enjoyed either one of these tier VII American premium battleships, I spent the better part of two days going through years worth of archived jpegs and text, reflecting on the years I've spent writing for World of Warships and all of the help, support and encouragement Critter8 provided me. I wouldn't be a Community Contributor (CC) if it weren't for Critter8. I'm not sure the WGNA CC-program would have even existed if it weren't for him. Back in 2015, before there was a Community Contributor program, content creators like myself worked unsupported by Wargaming in any capacity. The predecessor to the NA-CC program was Club Wargaming which promised the world and delivered nothing but a booger-green title on the forums. Club Wargaming included dozens of content creators which had sprung up during Closed and Open Beta, including some big names like @PhlyDaily. All of us were paying out of pocket to produce content or having to rely on donations from fans to get access to the newest premium content. Critter8 took exception to this. He had made Ship Comrade -- a fan site whose best early features included tracking Rank Battle progress and had one of (if not THE) first Captain Skill calculator. He took his fandom seriously and wanted a professional relationship with Wargaming to facilitate content production. He approached me about my frustrations with Club Wargaming and he took an active leadership role among the various content creators to approach Wargaming about our complaints. It was by his initiative that the WGNA CC-program took shape under NikoPower (of CorgiFleet fame). From those conversations, @iChase, @NoZoupForYou, @Notser, @TitiuBlack, Critter8 and I became the first NA-CCs in early January of 2016. While I could gush endlessly about everything NikoPower did for us, it was Critter8 who stands out as the leader we needed. He brought the six of us would-be professionals (with integrity) together. For me, Ship Comrade allowed me to greatly increase the quality of my reviews. This long format, like you're seeing here with Florida, was facilitated entirely by having my content written for Ship Comrade. Critter8 encouraged CCs like myself and @Aetam to host our content on his site. As you can imagine, writing for a web-page is much more forgiving than writing for a forum post -- it didn't have to all be written in a single sitting, for example. In going over Ship Comrade's archives, it was a treat to watch how my reviews grew in size and ambition. My early reviews were usually written in an afternoon and seldom held more than four or five jpegs. Florida's review has nearly thirty and has been written over the course of a week. I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity and help he provided for me. For personal reasons, he had to step back from World of Warships. As the CC program again got overhauled, Wargaming dropped his CC-status despite his continued efforts to host and support other CCs. Sadly, Ship Comrade was never a profitable enterprise. Donations helped keep the lights on for a time, but all things must come to an end. He ran the site out of his own pocket for over five years. I don't fault him in the least for retiring. Thank you for everything. And thank you all for reading. I'm going to take some time sorting and organizing some of my older reviews over the next week or so.