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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

I Have Revamped and now have added onto this list some more ships but it is the same as the previous post for the most part so here are the ships: Tier 6 Cruiser HMS Arethusa a low effort premium as she's basically Leander with a superheal minus a turret (also basically an unnerfed chungking firing only ap) this is so called low effort as it doesn't entail much modeling as most of the base can be used from chungking aka her sister .She does not get HE to not end up being a reskinned Huanghe Tier 5 Cruiser HMS York Due to her Being the only British Heavy cruiser class not being able to be a tech tree ship due to Hawkins (which really should've been tier 4) she will become a premium and end up as the London to Exeter's Devonshire Tier 7 Cruiser HMS Dorsetshire Dorsetshire has a unique Playstyle for a British heavy cruiser as she doesn't have low main battery range and She doesn't Have to choose between Hydro and DFAA Tier 5 Cruiser HMS Enterprise Emeralds sister who will be using a novel twin mount up front with a superheal Tier 8 Cruiser HMS Birmingham To get the only post c/d class British Cruiser without the iconic knuckled bow shape I have added Birmingham. unlike most cruisers on this list She does not have smoke and instead has Main Battery Reload booster and Engine Boost or Radar and also has the same improved acceleration and Deacceleration like Dido. Tier 7 Heavy Cruiser HMS Suffolk Suffolk has the Same hull properties as Devonshire but has the same guns as surrey and is represented in her early 1941 Fit but unlike either cruiser she comes equipped with 16km range on her guns and radar with her hydroacoustic search and defensive aa fire in separate slots and ten kilometer torpedoes and has the same acceleration and AP shell properties as the British light cruisers and suffers from worst in tier plating like Indianapolis but not to the same extent Tier 6 Cruiser HMS Scylla The 'toothless terror' HMS Scylla is similar to her Pan Asian sister Rahmat in gun Caliber but has one less turret however she has normal torpedoes and the Same smoke as Leander with hydroacoustic Search unlike Dido. She has Some more hitpoints from having increased crew spaces for use as a Carrier Flagship Tier 6 Commonwealth Cruiser HMNZS Bellona unlike dido, Bellona has a shorter profile which makes her Stealthier at the cost of one turret which is augmented by better aa performance and the main guns being improved with faster traverse and reload speed and she shares the same consumables as Scylla with the exception being the crawling smoke generator. Tier 7 Cruiser HMS Sheffield The Legendary Cruiser, Sheffield will have smoke and hydro with Specialized Repair Teams to serve as a Captain trainer for the light cruiser line and would be in the appearance above to make it different from Fiji , Belfast and Gloucester who have more turrets but Sheffield fires faster at 6 seconds to compensate for less turrets. Tier 7 Cruiser HMS Gloucester To accompany Fiji in getting sunk off Crete at tier 7 is Gloucester .Gloucester comes with Smoke and a heal and access to HE shells but is in its as completed form so the aa isn't spectacular and there is no hydro to spot torpedoes in smoke and the heal is the same as Fiji's and the turrets fire slower at 9 seconds but Gloucester has better handling than Fiji as a compromise. Tier 8 cruiser HMS Swiftsure/ Commonwealth cruiser HMCS Ontario Swiftsure and Ontario are basically a Mysore with more health, better reload and torpedoes at tier 8 with one more secondary gun Tier 9 cruiser HMS Blake (Ignore the picture saying Hawke) Blake represents a Preliminary Design of the tiger class (Because the helicopter conversion wont be added) but doesn't completely look like the picture above, instead it has 3 4.5 inch turrets with two on the sides where the 3 inch mounts are on tiger 59 and the third is above Y turret and it has 3 Mk 24 turrets and quadruple torpedo tubes and it has a bit more health than tiger 59 and has the same consumables and stats but with Neptune's upgraded torpedoes unlike tiger 59. Tier 9 Cruiser HMS Defence A Draft Design in the series of designs that created the likes of Drake and Gibraltar Defence Joins the fray as something akin to a British Buffalo or Anchorage without Smoke alongside being basically Drake with 8 inch turrets which means it would look eerily similar to Neptune and Albemarle due to WGs Interpretation of the Admiral Class and she features AP rounds like Gibraltar and Canarias with access to Radar ,Hydro and DFAA with the Same Heal as Neptune unlike Drakes Improved Version Tier 10 Battleship HMS Temeraire The only Ship other than Cruisers in this proposal is Temeraire and it is the continued development of the lion Design postwar with the WGfication of it being a merge of two Designs to justify the Bigger Size compared to the Normal Lion. It takes the Size, appearance and armor of The Design A from the 1945 set of designs and most of the Specs of one of the 1944 designs. Here is it's Description: The last British battleship designed and laid down before the breakout of World War II. In many respects, the ship was a development of previous ships, she had greater dimensions, heavier armor, and modern 406 mm main guns. The Design was Modified in light of experience in the war and enlarged with additional AA defenses ,torpedoes and torpedo protection. Here are the features of Temeraire: Quick Speed at 33.5 knots stock and improved acceleration and deacceleration (35 seconds for full ahead and full reverse each) with good ruddershift Fast Reload reloading main guns that have Excellent Dispersion and Sigma and have the same penetration angles as Duke of York 4 Charges base of Specialized Repair teams and Engine Boost 2 sets of quintuple torpedo Launchers that can be Single Fired with excellent arcs of fire with good range and speed Fast firing secondaries Large Hitpoint Pool Short Range Hydroacoustic Search to avoid torps Here are the Drawbacks: Bad Armor plating only 27mm on the sides and 32mm on the deck Citadel is the length between the front and rear turrets and sits above the waterline, encompassing 50% of the armor belt High Detectability for a British Battleship and bad turning circle radius Big Deck area is vulnerable to fires Torpedoes can be knocked out at times if not destroyed. Slow Shells Bad HE fire Chance Tier 6 Battleship HMS Prince of Wales The Only of Her Class to Sink, Prince of Wales Joins the Game as a Stock KGV with Different consumables downtiered to tier 6 to accompany Repulse(lol). She Features Specialized repair teams like higher tier British battleships but also has a catapult fighter and engine boost like repulse and compared to her siblings she is stealthier but fires Slower but more accurately and has better secondaries and has improved acceleration and handling The 6 inch cruisers are rather Repetitive with the Sheffield, Swiftsure and Defence but the Ontario and Gloucester are unique as Gloucester is another take on a gimped Belfast while Ontario is a mid tier Commonwealth premium and despite being repetitive the other three are to fill different niches Sheffield for a t7 captain trainer , Swiftsure as a non town class/Belfast t8 premium alternative to Cheshire and tiger 59 and Defence as a tier nine premium which is something the British tree doesn't have aside from Marlborough and Temeraire Might Be too Strong or too weak lol please leave your feedback below

The following is a review of Cheshire, the tier VIII British heavy cruiser. This ship was kindly provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes. To the best of my knowledge, the performance and statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.9.3.1. Please be aware that the ship may change in the future. Quick Summary: A stealthy, but terribly squishy British heavy cruiser with a small battery of powerful 234mm guns. PROS AP shells can overmatch 16mm worth of armour, including the extremities of many lower-tier cruisers and destroyers. Good AP penetration and improved auto-ricochet angles. Excellent HE penetration, capable of directly damaging most battleship decks. Good gun handling with 10º/s gun rotation rate. Excellent AA firepower. No, really. Yeah, I'm surprised too. Stealthy, with a surface detection as low as 9.5km. British "portable dry dock" Repair Party, healing up to 40% of her health per charge before modifiers. CONS Only six main battery guns, greatly reducing her alpha-strike and DPM. Her "stepped" citadel presents a shell-trap for large caliber battleship AP shells. Only modest gun fire angles, leaves her vulnerable to return fire from AP shells. Mediocre range on main battery guns for so vulnerable a ship. Torpedoes are short ranged at 8km. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual/ CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / MODERATE / High / Extreme This ship doesn't do anyone any favours, new players least of all. Like the tier VII Pensacola of years prior, Cheshire is a lemon that will punish you for simply choosing to shoot your guns at the wrong time. As players become more familiar with the foibles of the British heavies, Cheshire (and her sister Albemarle) will become primary targets for the farming of easy Devastating Strike medals. For veterans, as appealing as the on-paper potential for this ship appears, in practice she's just too fragile to really feel worthwhile. You can do better in almost any other ship where skills like angling, island use, etc will serve you much better. Options Consumables There's nothing much out of the ordinary here short of her god-tier healing potion. Keep in mind that all consumables will be the premium version soon so I'm just listing those values. Cheshire's Damage Control Party is standard for a cruiser with a 60s reset timer. It's active for 5 seconds and has unlimited charges. Her Repair Party heals back up to 40% of her health base per charge over 20 seconds. She starts with two charges with a reset timer of 80s. You have the choice between two consumables in her last slot. Both consumables start with three charges base. Her Defensive AA Fire is active for 40s, increasing sustained DPS by 50% and explosion damage by 300%. It has an 80s reset timer. Her Hydroacoustic Search is active for 100s. It detects torpedoes at 3.5km and ships at 5km. It has a 120s reset timer. Upgrades Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. In your second slot, Hydroacoustic Search Modification 1 is optimal if you can afford it. Obviously this dictates that you'll be eschewing using Defensive AA Fire but that's okay. This will set you back 17,000 Coal . Otherwise, default to Engine Room Protection. Aiming System Modification 1 is really the only upgrade worth taking in slot three. You have a choice in slot 4 depending on how you like to play. If you prefer island humping, then Propulsion System Modification 1 is preferable to improve your acceleration from a standstill. Otherwise, Steering Gears Modification 1 is your best bet. ER MAH GERD choice in slot 5!? Well, it's not really. Concealment System Modification 1 is still optimal. But, for the sake of argument, let's look at Ship Consumables Modification 1 and how it affects her consumables: With this, her Damage Control Party will now last 5.5 seconds. Yawn. Cheshire's Hydroacoustic Search will increase from 100s to 110s (or to 132s if you have Hydroacoustic Search Modification 1 installed). This is nice. It's not game changing, but it's nice. Her Defensive AA Fire increases from 40s to 44s ... which doesn't really help. The duration of Defensive AA Fire was never the issue, but rather the damage it does. And here's the juicy bit: Her Repair Party adds another 2 ticks worth of healing -- or between 4% and 4.8% of her total health depending on if you're using the India Delta signal or not. This amounts to an additional 1,700 to 2,040hp per charge used with an upper maximum of 6,120 additional hp with three charges blown. So, is that worth giving up Concealment System Modification 1? Heck no. But Ship Consumables Modification 1 isn't terrible. It's just that Concealment System Modification 1 is (still) too damn good. Captain Skills Cheshire isn't a very skill-hungry boat. For the first 10 skill points, take the usual suspects. Your choice of a tier 1 skill -- I prefer Priority Target to let me know when my doom is nigh. Adrenaline Rush is optimal at tier 2. Through my play-testing, I used Superintendent as my skill of choice at tier 3, thinking I would get to make use of my Repair Party's extra heal. And to no one's surprise, Concealment Expert rounds things off at tier 4. Pick and choose your favourites for your remaining points. Camouflage Cheshire has two camouflage options: Type 10 and Victorian White camouflage. They both provide identical bonuses: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -10% to post-battle service costs. +50% experience earned. I do like the camouflage schemes for Cheshire. She's a nice looking ship. Firepower Main Battery: Six 234mm/50 guns in 3x2 turrets in an A-B-X superfiring configuration. Secondaries: Sixteen 113mm/45 guns in 8x2 turrets with four mounted each side in superfiring forward and rear positions. Torpedoes: Eight tubes in 2×4 launchers with one on each side mounted in the hull beneath the first funnel. Celebratory Pew-Pews Let's start with Cheshire's secondaries because they're largely forgettable. They are decent for cruiser secondaries. However, given that Wargaming has yet to implement any cruiser with kick-butt secondaries 'decent' doesn't matter. At least they have 19mm of penetration, so they're capable of directly damaging anything she faces. Their high rate of fire does spit out a lot of shells. But without phenomenal range or improved accuracy, they're just window dressing. I did kill a Dallas with one, so that was fun. The muzzle blasts off of Cheshire's guns are huge. Are 234mm guns worthwhile? This is the big question at the core of not only Cheshire's worth, but her higher-tiered sisters as well. What's the big deal with large-caliber guns on a cruiser? What can they do that faster-firing (or more plentiful) 203mm guns can't? What are their drawbacks? And finally, are they any good? In theory, a larger caliber gun provides inherent benefits over its smaller brethren. These include higher penetration values for both HE and AP shells, including energy retention over distance (which factors both into penetration and ballistics). In addition, the shells will individually cause more damage and have a higher chance of starting fires. The final benefit is that depending on the size of the shells, it's possible for their AP rounds to overmatch key armour values, ignoring ricochet mechanics. These benefits are typically off-set by a smaller number of barrels, a larger dispersion area, a slower rate of fire and worse gun handling. In summary, larger guns make it more likely that individual hits will cause significant damage but with fewer hits overall compared to smaller-caliber guns. Whether or not this exchange is worthwhile depends upon just how much these guns gain versus how much they surrender. For the sake of Cheshire's 234mm caliber weapons, we have a direct same-tier analogue to compare them to in the form of Albemarle's 203mm armament. Alpha versus DPM You would think that larger caliber guns, though fewer in number, would allow you to deliver more devastating volleys. The idea being that while you might not shoot as often, the fewer salvos hit harder. I wish that were the case. Let's take Albemarle vs Cheshire as an example. Citadel Penetrations (AP): 40,500 Albemarle vs 34,500 Cheshire Citadel Penetration (HE): 29,700 Albemarle vs 23,100 Cheshire Penetration (AP): 13,365 Albemarle vs 11,385 Cheshire Penetration (HE): 9,801 Albemarle vs 7,623 Cheshire Yeah, so that's a wash. A small bump up in gun caliber size does not provide an advantage in damage output on anything but a per-shell basis. So the increased shell damage does not make up for a three-gun deficit (though in theory it could make up for a two-gun deficit). Understandably, with a slower reload, the gap only opens up further. And it's not like Cheshire's reload is particularly slow either. Let me be clear, one of her gimmicks is the accelerated reload on her main battery guns. Drake and Goliath, using the same weapons, have a base reload time of 18 seconds. This can be modified down on these ships with the use of Main Battery Modification 3, providing them with a 15.8 second reload. Cheshire, meanwhile, boasts a 12.5s reload timer which is amazing -- this is a half second faster than Albemarle. So if there's any benefit to be found here, it has to be on how easily it is to make those shells deal damage rather than the damage potential itself. Cheshire's raw damage output values suck, so every hit needs to count. A cruiser with only six heavy guns has crappy DPM. Who knew? AP Performance Cheshire's AP shells are pretty good at ensuring they deal damage compared to 203mm AP shells found on Albemarle. I say 'pretty good' and not 'great'. There are three factors where they hold an advantage over her counterpart. She has high penetration. She has improved auto-ricochet angles. She has overmatch potential against a key structural armour value. ] Cheshire has Baltimore's AP penetration values with Japanese 203mm ballistics. Note that while Cheshire does have slightly improved auto-ricochet angles, they are not on par with Baltimore's. Her AP shells feel less effective overall because of this, even though they have about the same punch over distance. British 234mm AP shells have higher penetration than 203mm guns -- enough that it matters, but not so much where it's an advantage except at very close ranges. Like with HE shells, AP penetration values are important when they cross various functional thresholds -- like being enough to citadel cruisers at very long ranges or having enough to penetrate battleship belt armour at specific distances. Cheshire (and British 234mm guns in general) are capable of both of these things. Albemarle struggles but can still manage the former and is generally unable to do the latter. Understandably, this provides Cheshire with a bit more utility out of her AP shells -- at least in theory. That theory is much harder to put into practice. Punching through battleship belt armour is only possible at suicidal ranges -- well within 7km. At such distances, you're better suited to making use of her torpedoes rather than relying on the bite of her AP shells. I suppose every little bit helps, especially given that not all cruisers are capable of doing so. At least against cruisers, her AP shells are much more reliable, with enough extra penetration to contend with the relative increase in armour thickness due to angling. Of course, this only works up to a point. Curiously, Cheshire's 234mm AP shells have slightly improved auto-ricochet angles, though only slightly -- Cheshire's AP shells automatically ricochet at an angle of 65º instead of 60º though the chance for it to happen still starts at 45º. This runs contrary to the 234mm AP shells found on Goliath and Drake -- so it's something special found only on Cheshire. So it's less likely that Cheshire's shells will slide off before getting a chance to punch in, but only slightly. For example, 203mm AP shells normally have a 50/50 chance of ricocheting at 52º or so. That doesn't happen to Cheshire until about 55º. This a far cry from the American auto-ricochet angles, which on Baltimore run from 60º to 67.5º, This keeps Cheshire's AP from being a universal shell. Still, there are some targets that even angling against Cheshire will not avail them. Her AP shells can overmatch 16mm hull sections; an important armour threshold being found on the extremities and hulls of tier VI and VII heavy cruisers and tier VIII+ very light cruisers. It's also the armour value found tier VI and VII destroyer hull forms, providing the 234mm AP shells a whole range of targets where they need not wait for perfect broadsides in order to be effective. So that's kinda nice, if a bit of a niche superpower that 203mm AP shells can't pull off themselves. I did get a chance to put it to good effect against a Dallas in a brawl during playtesting which was nice -- he couldn't angle against me while I was able to smash shells down the length of his hull even when he angled. But that was one time in all of my play-testing. Matchmaking was part to blame in this -- being continually up-tiered meant that there were fewer targets where Cheshire's overmatch could be used, but even seeing an opponent I could overmatch didn't guarantee that I would have an opportunity to do so. These three elements make Cheshire's AP shells more useful than the AP shells of Albemarle though they don't stray into the potency of American Piercing shells which can be used a lot more often. So British 234mm AP shells are "more gooder" than Albemarle's 203mm AP shells, but I'd argue they're not good enough to make up for that alpha / DPM disparity. HE Performance The big numbers to concern ourselves with here are the thresholds needed to directly damage various parts of tier VIII+ battleships. These thresholds are: 1.) Their extremities (32mm) 2.) The upper hull and amidship deck of British & French battleships (32mm) 3.) The amidships deck of American battleships (38mm), 4.) The amidships deck of German battleships 50mm 4.) The amidships deck of Japanese battleships (57mm) 5.) The amidships deck of Soviet battleships (60mm). There is one thing, and one thing only to get excited over in regards to Cheshire's HE performance and that's her improved HE penetration. Cheshire has 59mm of base HE penetration as opposed to the 39mm she would be expected to have. This crosses an important (albeit, not crucial) threshold, allowing her to directly damage the amidship decks of many battleships along with the infamous extended armoured prows of Soviet ships. This, to me, creates a target preference for Cheshire . Specifically, she's better suited to hammering any vessel with extensive deck armour which includes most high-tier battleships (with the exception of the French and British) than most 203mm armed heavy cruisers. Cheshire is capable of stacking direct damage here where other cruisers will have their damage partially mitigated by shells that stray onto these thicker armoured sections. As nice as this is for Cheshire, it's a bit of a booby prize. While it does allow her to damage a wider variety of targets, when it comes to that DPM disparity mentioned previously, this advantage only comes into play in those select circumstances. HE penetration is a binary after all -- you can either penetrate or your shells shatter. There's no advantage to having more than you need. There's no point to Cheshire's 59mm of HE penetration when she's shooting up a destroyer or light cruiser. Thus, the only way her 234mm HE shells keep up with Albemarle's 203mm guns is through farming damage off of select battleships. That's really it. I've included the FPM of heavy cruisers using IFHE for the sake of comparison when trying to encroach upon Cheshire's massive penetration values (don't do this, it's silly). Overall, Cheshire is not a bad fire starter for a heavy cruiser. She's not great, mind you,but she's not bad. Cheshire may single fire her torpedoes like other British ships which is nice. I wish she had more range. These weapons are nice and hard hitting and could have done a lot to pad her mediocre gun DPM. But are they worth it? Heck no. Look, 234mm guns aren't terrible but short of pounding high-tier battleships with HE, Cheshire's main battery firepower offers nothing worthwhile. They didn't stand up to a direct comparison to Albemarle's guns and they're no rock stars, so where does that leave these things? Well, not in a good place. This isn't a ship that kills anything quickly, and that can be a real problem if she doesn't have the longevity to farm meaningful damage. To me, this means that the ship better have some miracle or gimmicks buried in the hull itself in order to make it worthwhile. Sadly, these don't materialize in her weapon systems. While Cheshire's six-guns are definitely a hurdle to overcome, I lay a lot of the blame with this ship's performance on her range. Her 16.1km main battery reach and her 8km range on her torpedoes makes maximizing Cheshire's firepower difficult. As you'll see in later sections regarding this ship, she just doesn't stand up to return fire. More range would have provided her with at least the semblance of being able to dodge. At 17.5km or more, I think I would have felt a lot more comfortable in this ship. 10km fish wouldn't have hurt either. In short, Cheshire's firepower is just plain bad. Her main battery guns can't keep up. Her torpedoes are too short ranged to be used in any role save that of desperation and cruiser secondaries are (still) not worth it. Like London, Cheshire's fire arcs aren't particularly good but at least they're consistent. For those wondering, "good" entails being able to fire 30º off the long axis of the ship, allowing the ship to fire while still giving her the best chance to take advantage of auto-ricochet mechanics. Still, Cheshire's 10º/s gun traverse is sexy. Verdict: Awful because she only has six guns. Also her torpedoes are too short ranged, but mostly because she only has six guns. Defense Hit Points: 42,500 Minimum Bow & Deck Armour: 25mm extremities with 30mm plating and deck amidships. Maximum Citadel Protection: 152mm belt armour Torpedo Damage Reduction: 19% With Cheshire's firepower woes, I was really (REALLY) hoping for some miracles in regards to her durability. I was an early optimist until I started playing this damn thing. Lemme show you why: [ Cheshire is a certified chungus. Look at that. Big healthy heals and a pretty chunky hit point pool to boot. Awesome! There's a whole lot to love here -- namely that Repair Party isn't a universal upgrade at tier VIII and just having one is a pretty solid advantage. Having a British "portable drydock" which heals back up to 40% of the ship's health per charge is amazing. In theory, Cheshire is built to outlast most of her contemporaries, which should largely make up for any deficits in her firepower. In theory. Cheshire's 30mm deck stands out -- normally tier VIII heavy cruisers only have 27mm thick decks. This does provide some benefits against small caliber HE shells from destroyers and overmatch protection against battleship caliber AP shells smaller than 429mm. That all falls apart when you realize that her protection scheme is a joke. Her citadel is specifically designed to maximize the number of citadel hits she takes -- I wish I was kidding. It's nigh impossible to angle Cheshire successfully against battleship fire of 380mm caliber or greater. Every incoming salvo is potentially world ending. She practically prints Devastating Strike medals for enemy battleships if they catch her out in the open, which means the best protection she could hope for is a big ol' rock to hide behind. The guilty party here is Cheshire's "stepped" citadel. Not only does this section sit up significantly higher (and let's keep in mind, the rest of Cheshire's citadel already peeks over the waterline), but the upright angles ensure that battleship caliber shells that are slamming down the length of the ship will still smack against the citadel if they're aimed high. Furthermore, it creates a weak point where ships capable of overmatching her 27mm upper hull can STILL dunk shots into her citadel when she's steeply angled where as other cruisers could at least content themselves that their belt armour will keep out the worst of it. And, while Cheshire does have some hull sections that can ricochet up to 381mm AP shells, her soft bow and stern provide openings that even these will get through. This isn't a problem unique to Cheshire, it's shared by Albemarle and to a lesser degree by Goliath. But spreading the pain doesn't make this any more acceptable. Kiting and dodging in open water a fool's errand -- any shots that come in are potentially lethal. When Cheshire is top tier, on the rare occasions where she's facing 356mm armed battleships (or smaller), surprise-surprise, she becomes a little monster. But banking on that kind of Matchmaking is a fool's errand for a tier VIII cruiser. I'm no stranger to playing squishy cruisers, but I'm used to there being some trade-off for it. Maybe the ship has excellent firepower. Maybe her consumables are amazing. Maybe she has excellent agility and speed to facilitate dodging. Maybe her Repair Party could come off cooldown very quickly? I dunno, I would expect something for all of Cheshire's woes. So here's the bad news. That 'hump' of Cheshire's stepped citadel is her Achilles' heel. It's too easy to hit and it makes angling in this ship next to impossible against high penetration AP shells. Oh, those thick citadel decks will also guarantee that AP bombs wreck you thoroughly. Verdict: Her Repair Party is amazing. Too bad she can't survive long enough to take advantage of it. Agility Top Speed: 34kts Turning Radius: 720m Rudder Shift Time: 10.5s 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 5.8º/s On the whole, I have to give Cheshire decent marks here. Her top speed is respectable for a cruiser. Her turning radius isn't horrible. Her rate of turn is acceptable. The only real glaring flaw is her rudder shift time and even that's not irredeemable. Don't get me wrong, she could certainly be better -- but she's not terrible. The only thing that I wish she had was better acceleration, especially given her love of island-humping. That can be partially corrected by taking Propulsion Modification 1 but that would preclude her from fixing her rudder shift time with Steering Gears Modification 1. I certainly value the former over the latter given the current meta. Given Cheshire's firepower and durability problems, "respectable" agility just doesn't cut it. In of itself, Cheshire's agility would be fine for a heavy cruiser -- even good, but with everything else stacked against this ship, it's just not enough. I would kill for her to have British light cruiser improved engine power -- to make taking shelter behind islands easier or to facilitate dodging. I would love it if she was even two knots faster, to make running down destroyers or dodging in open water feel a bit more viable, but it's just not there. Man, I've gotten to re-use this graphic three times now. All the time saved makes me very happy. VERDICT: She's not terrible, but she doesn't stand out here in a good or bad way. Anti-Aircraft Defense Flak Bursts: 7 explosions for 1,470 damage per blast Long Ranged (up to 5.8km): 168dps at 90% accuracy Medium Ranged (up to 2.5km): 228dps at 90% accuracy Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 249dps at 85% accuracy Cheshire has some truly monstrous levels of AA firepower -- it's enough to grant her near immunity to tier VI carriers. This, of course, translates to merely inconveniencing tier VIII and X aircraft carriers. Cheshire will shoot down a lot of planes. Given that she's not starved for commander skill points, you could even go so far as to spend a few towards boosting her AA performance further if you were so inclined. This ship has to be good at something, after all. With apologies (still) to the colour-blind. Cheshire has arguably the best AA firepower of any tier VIII vessel. Unless it was show-stopping levels of air-defense, you couldn't sell me a premium based on its AA firpower, though. Verdict: Really good. Like, "make tier VI carriers cry" levels of good. Refrigerator Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 12.1km/9.51km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 7.51km/6.08km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 7.5km Main Battery Firing Range: 16.1km Cheshire has good surface detection values. They're not great, but they're good. Any cruiser capable of dropping their concealment below the 10km range is really nice and I can't complain here at all about Cheshire's concealment values. Had this been paired with benefits anywhere else, such as agility, durability, firepower, good consumables, etc, I would probably be singing this ship's praises, but here we are. Cheshire doesn't interact well with smoke -- her 7.5km detection range when opening fire is scarcely better than her improved surface detection so she can't dare follow destroyers in to take advantage of their advanced smoke screens. Again, this further relegates this ship to humping islands and hoping against hope that she's an unappealing target. Verdict: Good, but not enough to save the ship. Final Evaluation I'm not going to mince words here. I hate this ship. I hate playing it. I'm glad this review is over. I'm not touching it again until Wargaming does something to improve her lot. Cheshire offers nothing, nothing of value. Her 234mm guns with their improved HE penetration could have been a very interesting armament but their performance stops well short of that mark. This ship needs more range, more agility and/or a faster reload before I would consider her to be a worthwhile investment. Even in co-op battles, while it's certainly possible to do well, you're not really gaining anything over taking out Albemarle instead. Yes, you might be able to get a few more HE penetrations on high-tier battleships, but you could get the same if you just stuck to peppering superstructures or the bows with 203mm guns. While overmatching the snoots of charging tier VI and VII bot-cruisers with AP shells is entertaining, it's not worth the price paid to acquire this ship. I'm sorry I didn't get this review out sooner. Keep well clear of this failure. Conclusion Reviewing Cheshire has been really taxing. My enjoyment of World of Warships was severely compromised with having to keep coming back to this damn thing. It's bad enough to play a bad ship, but it makes every little frustration just that much more poignant. Anyway, it's over, finally. I'm going to go do something else for a bit to recharge my batteries.

The following review of Repulse, the tier VI premium British 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 patch 0.10.11. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. I've had my head down for over a month, working on a handful of projects (including, but not limited to tier VIII submarines, tier VI carriers and updating my databases). However, even I've noticed the growing hype surrounding HMS Repulse and it's prompted me to throw this together. There's good reason that Repulse is creating a lot of noise. I played the Hell out of her back earlier this year when she was in testing. She was a monster then. She's a monster now. To be clear, Wargaming has nerfed her since I was testing her. The following changes were made: Her reload time was nerfed from 26 seconds to 27 seconds. Engine Boost's speed increase dropped from 15% down to 10% down to 8% (from ~36.5 knots down to it's current ~34.3 knots when the consumable is active) Her main battery rotation rate was buffed from 3.33º/s to 6º/s. Having taken her out again (yes, I whaled all the way up to Marlborough for this review -- thank you, patrons!), this hasn't been enough to tone Repulse down. And, as this review will detail, I'm expecting her to receive another round of nerfs once the population at large gets a hold of her. For those tempted to throw money at guaranteeing getting a hold of her, this may be reason for caution. No one wants a ship they spent time and money on to get nerfed out from under them. So, let's get stuck in on why I see Repulse as being a potential problem vessel that Wargaming will have to reign in with future patches. Quick Summary: A soft-skinned battlecruiser (with surprisingly trollish durability) that has incredible speed and accuracy. PROS Long ranged with a 19.76km reach which can be further boosted with a Spotter Aircraft. She uses Graf Spee (battlecruiser) dispersion combined with 2.0 sigma, giving her excellent accuracy. Her 381mm guns can overmatch up to 26mm of armour with AP shells. Her 381mm guns have 95mm of HE penetration. Decent fire angles and good gun handling. Fast reload at 27 seconds. VERY fast with a top speed of 31.7 knots. Has access to an Engine Boost consumable. Her Repair Party queues up 60%/33% of penetration/citadel damage. CONS Soft skinned structurally, with only 16mm of extremity armour (!) Thin belt of only 229mm. Main battery is only six guns which makes RNG feel more punitive. Only modest AP penetration and inability to overmatch 27mm+ hull sections. Terrible anti-aircraft firepower. Enormous turning circle radius of 860m. Only three charges base on her Repair Party. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / CASUAL / Challenging / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Repulse's appeal for new players is the simplicity of her main battery firepower. Her guns are long ranged and accurate. Her ammunition choices are simplified too, with newer players able to spam either AP or HE and generate reasonable results (though AP is preferred). The two strikes against her for inexperienced players are her speed (which can get her into trouble with over-extending) and her soft protection scheme. These will both spake people who like to play aggressively. However, a cautious player won't struggle overmuch with either one of these problems. For veterans, Repulse is a kiting-daemon. You have the speed. You have the stealth. You have the range. You have the accuracy. You have the overmatch. Play keep away and farm damage like a boss. Options Repulse's consumables stand out while the rest is fairly standard. Consumables Her Damage Control Party doesn't have anything unusual about it and is normal for a British battleship. It is active for 15 seconds and it has an 80 second reset timer. It has unlimited charges. It's her Repair Party which is unusual. While it does heal up to the standard 14% of her starting HP over 28 seconds (with an 80 second reset timer), like other British battleship, it queues up to 60% of penetration damage received instead of the usual 50% for most other nations. In addition, Repulse queues up to 33% of citadel damage too. However, unlike most battleships, Repulse only starts with three charges instead of four. We go back to normalcy with her Spotter Aircraft. This increases her range by 20% (up to 23.71km) for 100 seconds. It has a 240 second reset timer and it comes with four charges. Finally, she gets access to a unique Engine Boost consumable. This provides an 8% speed increase for 180 seconds with only a 90 second reset timer. Repulse comes with three charges. Upgrades Start your upgrades with Main Armaments Modification 1. Next up, if you can afford it you should definitely grab Engine Boost Modification 1 from the Armory for 17,000 . This increases the action time of your Engine Boost consumable from 180 seconds to a whopping 234 seconds. If you can't, default to Damage Control System Modification 1. Aiming System Modification 1 is the only upgrade worth considering in slot three. In slot four, you have the choice. Because of her vulnerability to fires, Damage Control System Modification 1 is arguably optimal. However, expert players may want to swap that out for Steering Gears Modification 1 to help with kiting at very long ranges. Commander Skills I wish I could tell you that it was worth having a unique commander for Repulse, if only to make things more interesting. However, you really can't go wrong with a standard battleship build that you're going to use for the British battleship tech tree line. It should look something like this: You're not going to need Grease the Gears given Repulse's very fast turret traverse, so I suppose that's kinda nice. But given that you probably picked it up to help with some of the awful traverse rates found on the rest of the Royal Navy line, it's not the end of the world. I much prefer Priority Target, but that's a personal bias. Camouflage Repulse comes with two camouflages, Type 10 and Snows and Stars. These are cosmetic swaps of one another with the following stats: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -10% to post-battle service costs. +50% to experience gains. Her basic Type 10 camouflage. If this looks familiar, it's because the devs gave it to HMS Hood for some reason. You can unlock this palette swap of her Type 10 camouflage by completing part of the "Naval Aviation" collection. The Snow and Stars camouflage is pretty terrible. Firepower Main Battery: 3x2 381mm/45 guns in an A-B-X superfiring configuration Secondary Battery: Fifteen 102mm/45 guns with nine in 3x3 turrets with a pair straddling the first funnel and the final one superfiring over X-turret and then six single guns with three to each side. Let me get Repulse's secondaries out of the way first: They're terrible. She doesn't have enough of them, they're not accurate and they don't hit especially hard. The only thing decent about them is their range. Do not sink any upgrades, signals or skills into these things. Moving on. Repulse has some of the best, tier VI battleship main battery firepower. Here's why: Battlecruiser Dispersion + 2.0 sigma Nearly 20km worth of range 27 second reload 381mm AP shells with 26mm overmatching 95mm of HE penetration Good gun fire angles with 6º/s gun rotation But she only has six guns, Mouse, you might say. And you're correct to be wary of small gun armaments on battleships. Having only six guns means that Repulse has smaller alpha strike potential and lower DPM than her contemporaries (even with her faster reload time). This spills over to her fire-chance as well, making her one of the worst at her tier. One of the less appreciate drawbacks of smaller main battery armaments is that RNG feels more punitive with fewer guns. When firing with larger broadsides, having a pair of shells scatter wide is annoying but less impactful than it is for Repulse where every shell counts. The quality of her individual hits is an issue too. Repulse does not boast the high-performance Royal Navy HE shells, but rather a chimaera that uses the more modest baseline stats from HMS Hood (lower damage, lower fire chance) yet maintains the 1/4 HE penetration from Queen Elizabeth (95mm of penetration instead of 64mm). So her HE alpha strikes aren't terribly impressive and she's a poor fire starter. Repulse's HE would be largely forgettable were it not for the issues with her AP rounds which will force you to still use HE on occasion. Though the Royal Navy 381mm AP shells are capable of overmatching most targets up to tier VII, that doesn't quite reach the 27mm+ threshold found on many higher-tiered cruisers and battleships. Additionally, their penetration values are only good at medium to close-range and they're largely incapble of dealing with battleship belt armour at distances in excess of 14km. This complicates Repulse's gunnery if you're looking to maximize its efficiency, requiring that you aim more carefully, choose the correct ammunition and pick your targets. Thus, when Repulse is top-tier on those smaller, claustrophobic maps, her guns (specifically her AP shells) are much more impressive. When bottom tier, their efficiency falls away. Yet conscious of these drawbacks, the only other guns at tier VI I'd rather have are the 406mm off West Virginia '41 and I only say that by the slimmest of margins. Repulse's guns are hella-comfortable to use. Aim well, and you'll hit what you shoot at. Pick the correct ammo and aim at the right hull locations and you'll see consistent damage. What's more, between the ship's gun handling, long range and high speed, these guns are excellent for over-the-shoulder kiting, taking steady bites out of your opponents. Woe betide the cruiser that flashes broadside to Repulse up to (and including 20km) ranges. She can (and will) punish careless players spectacularly. Graphic dump time! Here's the bad news. In terms of raw numbers, Repulse's six guns just don't cut it, even with their faster reload. This doesn't tell the whole story though. You have to keep shell performance (penetration, overmatch) and accuracy in mind. Andrea Doria is the only tier VI battleship using SAP on the right graph. It's the same news when you look at her fire setting potential. It's not great but her accuracy helps ensure she gets more hits than these raw numbers would otherwise indicate. Royal Navy 381mm AP penetration obviously improves as you climb the tiers, but it's not exactly an impressive round when it comes to penetration. You want well in excess of 350mm of penetration to contend with most battleship belts (allowing your rounds to defealt some angling). Repulse doesn't have this until you get 14km or closer. Compare Repulse's dispersion (blue, on the left) with Ise's dispersion (peach, on the right). Both ships have 2.0 sigma. Repulse's battlecruiser dispersion gives her a tighter overall dispersion area, making those central-landing shells pack in even closer. Still, if you manage 25% accuracy in Fuso, you'd need to managed roughly 45% or better to keep pace with Repulse; which is a pretty tall order. The alternative is to get her guns in action for longer to compensate, and that relies on good positioning and survivability. Very comfy fire angles paired with a very fast (for a battleship) gun traverse speed gives Repulse brilliant gun handling. VERDICT: Their excellent accuracy and overmatch potential makes them deadly. Kite and kill. Durability Hit Points: 56,100 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 16mm / 16mm / 38mm / 26mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 26mm anti-torpedo bulge + 229mm belt + 102mm citadel turtleback. Torpedo Damage Reduction: 16% I've removed Repulse's 26mm anti-torpedo bulges to reveal the 229mm belt armour underneath. Note that normal tier VI battleships have 26mm extremities. Repulse has ... issues. I suppose it's kinda fluffy that a British battlecruiser has durability problems. In Repulse's case, this comes from two sources: Her extremities are VERY soft. Her citadel is vulnerable to overmatching from 380mm calibre guns or greater. The 16mm bow and stern sections of Repulse's armour makes her vulnerable, not just to AP overmatch (which I'll get into) but all calibres of HE rounds as well. Repulse's extremities and superstructure can be penetrated by HE rounds of 96mm or greater. So not only is every destroyer out there very happy to make your acquaintance, even the small calibre secondary guns off a lot of battleships are capable of plinking some damage off your soft snoot and butt. Combined with Repulse's horrid anti-torpedo protection, getting in close to enemy lolibotes is generally a terrible idea unless you're particularly good at blapping them with your main battery guns. Note that this issue isn't unique to her. Other tier VI and VII battleships may also contend with small calibre HE shells doing damage to them, but normally, the offending vessel must have the Inertial Fuse for HE Shells commander skill to do so. So from an HE perspective, Repulse's extremities are a weakness but not a glaring one. That actually carries through when you look deeper into her AP protection. While her 16mm extremities look like huge weak points, there's hidden armour geometry that prevents these from becoming an automatic pass to her citadel. To be clear: Repulse still takes massive amounts of penetration damage through her butt or snoot, but it's not always going to be catastrophic citadel hits. Repulse has a lot of these hidden armour plates, including a 76mm turtleback along the interior of her anti-torpedo protection and hidden decks. While Repulse's citadel is still vulnerable, the slope of her turtleback is enough to prompt (though not guarantee) ricochet checks for shells fired at close range, giving her some rather trollish survivability at times. Hits from further out are a much greater danger in this regard, but thanks to her agility and speed, these are easier to avoid. Still, playing catch with large-gunned battleships is generally a bad idea in Repulse. It's best to break contact or Just Dodge™ until you can disengage. Though Repulse is capable of recovering up to 33% of citadel hits (be they from bomb, shell or torpedo), it's not something you want to fall back on. It's not all doom and gloom here, though. Extremities asside, Repulse's amidships hull cannot be overmatched. If you can bait shots here while angled, she can ricochet and shatter stuff for days. Similarly, while she may have fewer charges of her Repair Party, she still retains that Royal Navy 60% penetration damage queue, on top of that 33% citadel damage queue I mentioned before. So clever play can help mitigate this damage, particularly if you fight at a distance to give yourself more time to avoid return fire. The 25mm armour plate over Repulse's machine spaces and the 26mm citadel wall is a big weakness against 380mm+ AP rounds which can overmatch. From gamemodels3d.com. The arrow is pointing to the hidden 102mm v-shaped plate protecting Repulse from overmatching AP rounds. This links up to the fore-end armour belt which is visible in port. Repulse's effective hit point pool looks pretty average. Her 60% penetration damage queue and 33% citadel damage queue does allow her to make better use of her Repair Party than the ships like Dunkerque through Mackensen. Unfortunately, she's only working with four charges of her Repair Party which gives her less overall health than her hit points would otherwise suggest. VERDICT: Bad, but not like "historical British battlecruiser" bad. Agility Top Speed: 31.7 knots Turning Radius: 860 meters Rudder Shift Time: 14.4 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 4.3º/s at 23.7kts Main Battery Traverse Rate: 6.0º/s Repulse's turn radius is bad and her rudder shift time isn't good either, but thanks to being able to overtop 30 knots in a straight line, her rate of turn isn't horrid (but I wouldn't call it anything more than average). Though she needs a lot of room to come about, she doesn't take forever to do it, so that's nice. Better still, with her excellent turret traverse rates, she can't out-turn her guns which is a novelty for British battleships. High speed solves a lot of issues, though it's not without its own set of troubles. Repulse is made to kite and control the engagement distances. Between her own high top speed and her Engine Boost consumable, she's more than capable of outrunning just about any threat she faces (or running it down for that matter). Stack this onto her good main battery gun range, decent fire angles and her not-terrible concealment values and you would struggle to find a battleship better suited to dictating when she gets spotted by her opponents short of the smoke-on-demand Italian designs. On paper, she is theoretically capable of playing keep-away to such a degree that she should be capable of mitigating any of the aforementioned durability issues raised earlier. However, the reality is that her tier bites her in the butt. As nice as Repulse's top speed is, lower-tiered maps are often too claustrophobic for her to make proper use of it defensively. So while her offensive power shoots up when she's top tier, her defensive attribute granted by her speed is compromised to a degree. This can be mitigated somewhat by choosing where to fight, ensuring you have enough open water to take full advantage of her speed, but this does limit some corridors through which she can fight and avoid damage. This is much less of an issue on mid-to-high tier maps when facing against tier VII and VIII opponents. This is, in of itself, a mixed blessing given the increase of larger calibre battleship guns at these tiers, to say nothing of the reduced efficiency of her own 381mm battery. The final issue with her speed is that it's far too easy to over-extend in Repulse. Though she's fast enough to disengage, she's also fast enough to be the first ship spotted if you're not careful. Note that Novorossiysk is not included here. I did not have her unlocked to confirm her in-port turning data when I made this graphic. I have her now, but I'm not redoing this! VERDICT: I love her speed and I'll overlook her other agility woes because of it. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 1 explosion for 980 damage per blast at 3.5km to 4km Long Ranged (up to 4km): 28 dps at 75% accuracy (21 dps) Medium Ranged (up to 2.5km): 140 dps at 75% accuracy (105 dps) Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 105 dps at 70% accuracy (73.5 dps) I'm not going to dwell on Repulse's anti-aircraft firepower very long. It's awful; some of the worst at her tier. All of her damage is focused around her 40mm pom poms and 20mm Oerlikon batteries which can only shoot when aircraft are on their final attack run. Thus, they're best described as a "revenge weapons", where any damage you're doing is after already suffering from the CV's predations. While this may end up netting you a kill or two against tier VI aircraft, Repulse stands no chance at dissuading the attentions of a tier VIII carrier. You're never going to deplane a CV with Repulse unless they deliberately orbit around your ship for minutes at a time. Though, this said, it's not like any of the tier VI battleships are particularly fearsome when it comes to their AA defense. Most are just practice targets for even mid-tier CVs. Thus, Repulse has to stick with her allies to have any hope of keeping CV-safe. This runs contrary to her preferred playstyle though -- where she takes up a flank and snipes. This leaves her dangerously vulnerable to aircraft attack. I suppose that's historically accurate and all but it makes for crappy game play whenever a CV is present and intent on ruining your day. VERDICT: Terrible. Just like the state of low-tier surface ship interaction with aircraft. Repulse's AA is so crappy, I couldn't even shoot down this single Bf 109 that didn't even know how to raise its landing gear. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 14.4km / 12.57km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 9.62km / 8.66km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 13.19km Maximum Firing Range: Between 19.76 and 23.71km when using her Spotter Aircraft Repulse pairs average visibility with excellent range. Combined with her accuracy over distance and her great top speed, Repulse feels far stealthier than her visibility attributes would otherwise indicate. It's only the presence of aircraft, submarines or aggressive destroyers that easily sniff her out. While a quick scan of the enemy roster will give an indication of how effective Repulse's ability to control engagement distances, the size of the map matters a lot as well. The ballistics of her guns do allow her to make use of island cover to a degree (though nowhere near as effectively as a cruiser might), these same islands can be her bane, concealing spotting elements and limiting her ability to kite effectively. Open water is truly where her home is and being able to dictate the range between herself and her chosen target is her bread and butter. VERDICT: Unremarkable concealment but good enough to make use of her speed and range. Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Airstrike from 1.5km to 8km (plus bomb drop column) Number of Salvos: Up to two Reload Time: 75 seconds Aircraft: Two S.25 Sunderlands with 2,000hp per plane. Drop Pattern: 4 bombs each dropped evenly over roughly a 1.75km column Maximum Bomb Damage: 3,000 Fire Chance: 12% Nothing written here is going to last. We've already received word that with patch 0.11.0, ASW is changing significantly. I'm merely recording this for posterity -- Repulse's anti-submarine airstrikes were pretty good. Without knowing how the bomb blast radius is changing, I can't say for certain, but from the looks of the devblog, submarines are getting a whole lot more survivable against not only battleship airstrikes but gunnery as well. I'm taking you with me! Final Evaluation Repulse comes with a pretty hefty pricetag. If you don't want to participate in any of the dockyard missions, you're looking at a minimum cost of 20,400 doubloons. Alternatively, you can spend the dozens upon dozens of hours grinding to unlock her. If you're already planning to spend a lot of time playing World of Warships this holiday season, you can probably unlock her for free. Just be aware that this is a time commitment and any stages you're missing towards the Dockyard event's end will set you back 1,500 doubloons per. Repulse has a nominal value of 6,800 doubloons (including a port slot) -- so if you're shelling out more than for five stages, it's not worth the dollarydoos. Repulse is a great ship. She carries on the trend Wargaming has had as of late to reduce the theoretical damage output. In terms of balance, I think Wargaming's close, but I'm foreseeing this ship getting hit with the nerf hammer again before 2022 is out. A 28 second or even as much as a 30 second reload may be in the cards for this ship. It will depend how she fares in the wild in the hands of the community. I could be totally off base here, with her speed and survivability creating a perfect storm to make her newfish-bait wherein she gets herself killed way too early (and often) to bring the average score down. But it's hard for me not to see the potential here and worry. For those of you on the fence about opening your wallets, I would strongly caution you to expect the ship to get her efficiency reduced in some way. Instead of Repulse, I think the average player would do much better buying Warspite instead. Warspite trades a little main battery performance and straight-line speed for a slightly larger broadside, better secondaries (they're so good you can do a full secondary spec if you want), better armour and hit point recovery, better fire management and much (much!) better agility. Repulse goes fast and she snipes. Warspite can also snipe, though nowhere near as far. But she can brawl too. She's the better ship for all kinds of PVE engagements too if that's your thing. Repulse uptiers better, I'll give her that much, though the Grand Old Lady is no slouch. You might think Hood a better comparison to Repulse, but tier for tier, Repulse is so much better than Hood that it's no-contest. Here's the list of best to worst British battleship premium and reward ships in my opinion. Thunderer -- I'm biased. Warspite -- I'm very biased, but she's still amazing. Nelson -- ♪ Burn, baby, burn! ♫ Agincourt -- Are they ever going to sell you again? Repulse -- Repulse only rates this low because three of the above ships aren't even available anymore cuz of their performance. How bae-bote has dodged this bullet, I have no idea. Duke of York -- You're not terrible, but I hate what we had to lose to bring you into the game as you are now. Vanguard -- I hate your fire arcs, but you're better overall than Hood. Hood -- The CV rework butchered this ship. Dreadnought -- I want to rate you higher, but Wargaming has neglected low-tiers so badly that you're nothing but a bot-farmer. Marlborough -- Spoilers for my upcoming review! I'm happy to have Repulse in my port, but I am a self-avowed teaboo, so be aware of my bias. If you're a fan of historical British vessels, she's a must have and will serve you well. For anyone else, she's a good ship. Just be aware that her performance statistics aren't permanent.

The following review of Marlborough, the tier IX premium British battleship, was sponsored by my patrons on Patreon who helped me afford this ship. Yes, I whaled for this damn thing. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as patch 0.10.11. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. Wargaming has gone out of their way to actively sabotage anything redeeming about Marlborough. I would like to say that this is the kind of design I would have cooked up if I was actively trying to troll the community, but I have to be honest with myself: I am not capable of coming up with something this frustrating to play. Marlborough's sins are many, though the base premise is one that is very appealing: Lots of guns big guns firing very quickly. It's a testament to how badly the ship is built that this core design gets mangled so thoroughly. Quick Summary: A tier IX battleship with an enormous battery of sixteen, quick-firing 356mm guns. She has poor fire arcs, poor gun handling, anemic AP and HE shell performance, horrid accuracy and bad armour. PROS Enormous battery of sixteen 356mm guns with ridiculous DPM potential and fire setting. HE shells have 89mm of penetration. Solid top speed of 31.5 knots. Good concealment with a surface detection as low as 12.07km. CONS Horrible citadel placement and protection. Highly vulnerable to HE spam with her homogenous 32mm structural plate. Poor anti-torpedo defence. Some of the worst battleship sigma in the game at 1.4. Only modest range. Awful fire arcs and poor gun handling. Terrible shells with anemic individual performance across AP penetration, HE damage and fire chance. Slow rudder shift time. Unlike other British battleships, her Repair Party only queues 50% of penetration damage. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Marlborough punishes players. If you try and use her as designed, you'll end up back in port very quickly. Her horrible citadel placement combined with terrible fire arcs means that if you open fire and the enemy shoots back, you're going to lose the exchange. And better still, she's just fast enough to get you into position to get spanked without enough agility or protection to survive attempting to disengage. This is toxic to inexperienced players who will find themselves getting smoked for playing the ship exactly as envisioned. How is that fair? Marlborough's carry potential is as mild as may. The surest path to reasonable numbers from this thing is to spam HE. But those reasonable numbers won't come quickly and you better know when it's safe (and necessary) to push. Marlborough doesn't do you any favours when it comes to outlasting the enemy and you're certainly not going to win any damage trades. Most of your game play in this thing devolves to bow tanking and hugging islands. Options The only surprises with Marlborough's options is how few (and crappy) they are. Consumables For instance: Marlborough only has two consumables. Her Damage Control Party is standard for a British battleship with a 15 second active period, unlimited charges and an 80 second reset timer. Her Repair Party is also standard, but not for a British battleship, which often have all sorts of weirdness going on. Instead, Marlborough's consumable is akin to one you might find on a French, German or Japanese battleship. Marlborough's version comes with four charges base and an 80 second reset timer. It heals up to 14% on her maximum health over 28 seconds. It queues up 10% of citadel damage, 50% of penetration damage coming from torpedoes, bombs, rockets and shells and 100% of all other damage types. Upgrades I'm not a fan of using upgrades to band-aid over flaws, but on Marlborough, it's almost necessary. Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. Next, start building up your anti-fire regimen with Damage Control System Modification 1, though we might not go full hog here. You have a choice in slot three. Aiming System Modification 1 is generally going to be optimal, HOWEVER, Marlborough's fire angles are crap and her gun handling isn't good, so Main Battery Modification 2 isn't a bad idea. it will also save you a couple of commander skill points from having to purchase Grease the Gears. Priority Target is much more important for Marlborough, so saving those two points here is pretty important. Similarly, in slot four, Damage Control System Modification 2 is optimal for reducing fire damage. HOWEVER, Marlborough's fire angles are crap and her gun handling isn't good. Therefore, having the improved rudder shift time from Steering Gears Modification 1 isn't a terrible idea. Concealment System Modification 1 is the only consumable worth considering in slot five. You've got another choice to consider in slot six. Understandably, having an even faster reload is most appealing in Marlborough. Main Battery Modification 3 enables that, dropping her reload from 25 seconds down to 22 seconds. However, given Marlborough's fragility woes, standing further back from the action isn't remiss. Taking Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 increases her range from a modest 20.86km to a respectable 24.2km. Commander Skills I don't think anyone is really surprised I get to re-use this same battleship commander skill graphic yet again. Without improved secondaries, there's nothing really noteworthy here, so fall back on the standard battleship survivability build. Camouflage Marlborough came with two camouflages when you unlock her via the dockyard. They provide the usual bonuses for a tier IX premium: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -20% to post-battle service costs. +100% to experience gains. Marlborough's War Paint camo is the typical over-the-top patriotic style we've seen repeatedly in World of Warships. As garish as the War Paint camo is, Marlborough's default Type 10 camo makes it look downright appealing. Blech. This camo pattern is hideous. The alternative palette (unlocked through the Naval Aviation collection), tones down the Type 10's garish colours at least. Firepower Main Battery: Sixteen 356mm/45 guns in 4x4 turrets with an A-B-X-Y superfiring configuration Secondary Battery: Sixteen 133mm/50 guns in 8x2 turrets in superfiring pairs firing forward and aft down each side. Let's start with the obvious: On paper, Marlborough has fantastic damage output. Sixteen battleship calibre guns with a 25 second reload are a potential nightmare. With the right upgrade, Marlborough can reduce this to 22 seconds. Marlborough puts a lot of shells downrange very quickly and she has the potential to stack damage out faster than her contemporaries. This is the dream that Wargaming is selling, but it's not a dream that's easily realized. As we'll see, there are a stack of problems that get in the way, making this advertised gameplay challenging to achieve at best and downright frustrating to pursue. Marlborough is a case study on why DPM charts shouldn't be taken at face value. Problem the First Much ado has been made about Marlborough's poor dispersion but it's not as bad as players imagine. This lies solely at the feet of her 1.4 sigma which is among the worst sigma values in the game. Marlborough's dispersion values are otherwise normal for a British battleship, using the same horizontal dispersion values as most of the British, American and German vessels. Thus any accuracy woes the ship suffers must be laid at the feet of her shell grouping. So the question becomes just how bad is 1.4 sigma? Well here, judge for yourself: These are three of my "standard dispersion tests". This is 180 AP shells fired at 15km at a Fuso bot. All of these tests were conducted using the Aiming System Modification 1 upgrade to reduce dispersion by 7%. The Fuso bot was stationary and lacking camouflage. Shots came in from right to left. Two of these dispersion tests were conducted with Marlborough's 1.4 sigma. One was conducted with King George V, who uses identical guns but has 1.8 sigma instead. The difference may be a little harder to discern than expected. Sigma is an often overvalued statistic among players and represeents only a trend, not a guarantee of better accuracy on a per volley (and per match) basis. Dispersion is highly volatile, even with excellent sigma parameters. Marlborough's poor sigma makes it less likely that shells cluster towards the centre of the target area, spreading them out to the same overall area as her contemporaries but more like a "shotgun blast" than ships with higher values. Still, thanks to RNGeebus, it's entirely possible to have good salvos with poor sigma and terrible salvos with excellent sigma. With how few salvos are often fired in a single match of World of Warships and how few key "match defining" shots are needed to make accuracy stand out for good or ill, Marlborough's poor sigma value generates vastly different experiences for players. Missing key citadel hits when the perfect broadside is available is infuriating and likely to stick in someone's head, especially with the knowledge that had the shells behaved, a Devastating Strike was guaranteed. I spent a few days combing over accuracy statistics of some of the better players who had unlocked Marlborough and compared them to how said players did in HMS Lion. The overall accuracy difference was about 1% to 4%. So Marlborough's accuracy is worse, but it's not worse on a level that would be readily apparent if you just went by number of hits. That's perhaps misleading as the quality of said hits will also suffer. There's an enormous disparity in player experience for having a salvo land three citadel hits versus one that lands three over penetrations through the super structure. So yes, Marlborough's sigma value is bad, but it's not game-defining terrible. It's a flaw that's worth keeping in mind, but I personally feel that the import of sigma is overvalued. Problem the Second Marlborough's TERRIBLE fire angles are why I hate playing her. It's no secret that I despise a ship with poor firing angles, particularly if it's paired with shoddy gun handling. Marlborough ticks both of these boxes and, as we'll later see in the durability and agility sections, compounds it with hilariously bad protection and sloppy turning. In order to fire all sixteen guns, Marlborough opens herself up to taking citadel hits in return from not only enemy battlehips but some high-tier cruisers as well. This danger is so pronounced that you can only cycle all your sixteen guns when the Red Team is too busy to shoot back. And so, her main selling feature is horribly compromised. In practical terms, Marlborough is not a sixteen-gun battleship. She's an eight-gun battleship, incapable of using her full broadside for fear of getting clobbered or beaching herself every time she does. For expert players, the big drawback here are her rearward firing angles. Marlborough cannot kite to save her life. In order to trade fire, her only option is to fight bow-in, preferably keeping an island to one flank to prevent crossfire. This severely limits not only her firepower but overall flexibility. Marlborough should be treated as an eight-gun battleship that can occasionally fire sixteen guns. Between her awful fire angles, poor protection and agility, she cannot take advantage of her full broadside unless the Reds are already losing or they're idiots. While bow-tanking at high tiers is nothing new, it is much more pronounced iwht Marlborough. Thus, I feel that it's this second issue, Marlborough's gun handling and fire arcs, that is the most damning for the ship. But we're not done trash-talking yet... Problem the Third Marlborough's AP shells are effectively non-functional. Alright, I'm exaggerating but Marlborough's AP shells are very bad. As 356mm rounds, they lack penetration necessary at this tier. Outside of 14km, they lose all ability to contest battleship belt armour and their ability to citadel enemy battleships falls away significantly closer. Given Marlborough's horrible fire angles, gun handling and protection woes, taking her into a brawl to be able to use her AP decisively is a loser-move. Firing at range means aiming for superstructures and the upper hull, but her dispersion makes that a bit of a crap shoot anyway. You would think that it would get better when facing cruisers but it's still a mixed bag. While she has the penetration necessary to land citadel hits against cruisers at just about any range, she lacks the ability to overmatch anything but very light cruisers like Minotaur, Edinburgh or Smolensk. I would have thought Wargaming would have at least gone so far as to give her AP rounds improved auto-ricochet angles to prop up their poor penetration values and lack of overmatch but it's not meant to be. This means that most cruisers can simply face-tank Marlborough's salvos, risking only taking over penetrating hits through their superstructure or turrets. And speaking of over penetrations, Marlborough doesn't even benefit from the short fuse timers of other Royal Navy battleships. Her 0.033s fuse timers makes over penetrations much more likely against cruisers, especially ships with a narrow beam like Ochakov and Smolensk. With her AP rounds being such poor performers, that just leaves her HE. Problem the Fourth So Marlborough is ostensibly relegated to being an HE spammer. With Marlborough's AP being so crap, I would have thought that Wargaming would have leaned more heavily on Marlborough's HE performance but that's not the case. Like Agincourt and Repulse before her, Wargaming has been nerfing the HE performance of newer Royal Navy battleship designs. But while Agincourt's HE was only gently nudged away from these higher damage and fire setting values, Marlborough's were thoroughly gutted. So while Marlborough is an HE spammer, she's a bad HE spammer, especially when you remember that between fire arcs and accuracy, you're not landing as many hits as her on-paper design would have you think. Those fearsome 10k+ salvos just don't materialize very often and Marlborough is usually only slapping targets for 3k at a time (if even that -- her individual shells usually strike for 480 to 1,584 damage). She's not even a particularly fearsome firebug. On paper she's the best at her tier. In practice, Alsace and the German battleships are more apt. Marlborough just doesn't get to fire all sixteen guns often enough (or hit often enough) to realize anywhere close to her potential. The best thing she has going for her is the increased HE penetration on her shells, but 89mm of HE penetration isn't that much more effective than the 59mm of HE penetration she would have otherwise had. There's a few decks and upper hulls that she can now directly damage that she might not have otherwise, but it's such a niche ability that it's not a merit worth considering. Marlborough's fire setting potential is the best at her tier though it's surprisingly only marginally better than that of Lion. This, of course, hinges on the ability to be able to fire all of her guns and hit stuff reliably ... which you won't. Problem the Fifth This last bit is just nit-picky but it plays into how inept Marlborough's base design is. The best way to counteract all of Marlborough's gunnery and durability issues is to keep her at range. From further away, she's a less appealing target. This, in turn, gives her more opportunity to take full advantage of her fast-reloading broadside. Her HE (crappy as it is) isn't affected by distance and her armour becomes more effective against AP rounds fired back at her. But, once again, Marlborough is held back. While her 20.86km range isn't terrible (it's average for her tier) there's two things to keep in mind. First, Marlborough does not have access to a Spotter Aircraft consumable to provide a temporary boost to her reach. Second, unlike most of the other battleships at her tier, Marlborough's performance improves considerably the more reach she has. When you're bad or your battleship is bad, humping the back of the map and farming fire damage is the way to go. If Marlborough had a few more kilometers of base range, then her design would work as advertised. As it is, taking Artillery Plotting Room Modification 2 helps band-aid a lot of her other problems. Secondaries They suck. Ignore them. Summary Marlborough is a ship that punishes you for trying to play her to her advertised strengths. Her guns are difficult to bring to bear. And when you do get guns on target, she's not going to land as many hits as you might imagine. And what few hits you do land aren't likely to be effective on a per-hit basis. Would that Marlborough's problems end here, but there's more problems coming that compounds her gunnery woes. Her dispersion is bad, but it's not as bad as you're imagining. She has a lot of guns and they do fire quickly, but it's rare you get to use all sixteen of them. Her individual shell performance sucks. Unless you can land a lot of hits, her salvos don't feel particularly strong. VERDICT: Wargaming believes that you should be punished for wanting to shoot Marlborough's guns. Shame on you. Durability Hit Points: 76,800 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 32mm / 19mm / 32mm / 32mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 381mm belt Torpedo Damage Reduction: 23% You could be forgiven for imagining that Marlborough's citadel layout mirrored that of Vanguard or the King George V-class battleships. But it's worse than that. It's much worse. While those battleships have citadels that sit at or just slightly above the waterline, Marlborough's citadel is hiked up to her nipples. The one (and only) advantage of this is that her citadel roof is made up of the 152mm reinforced deck found on most ships that's usually hidden by the armour viewer, making her immune to overmatching AP rounds that strike at a shallow angle. But, because her citadel sits so high (indeed, taking up the full height of her belt armour) the above advantage is irrelevant by making lateral hits against her citadel such an easy shot. I might have been okay with this if she had REALLY THICK armour, but 381mm of nearly vertical plate with no extra bells and whistles is pathetic at tier IX. Marlborough is dangerously vulnerable to citadel hits against her contemporaries at almost any distance. But it gets worse. Remember those awful fire angles we discussed earlier? If you try and fire sixteen guns at a target, their return fire can (and will) citadel you. Marlborough's fire angles are so terrible that incoming shells striking her belt will auto-pass their ricochet check a minimum of 81% of the time when she's firing forward and ALWAYS when she fires over her shoulder to the rear. It's never (EVER!) a good idea to trade fire with enemy battleships using all of Marlborough's guns. You'll give up huge chunks of your health if you don't simply die. Things don't get much better against cruisers or destroyers. Her homogeneous 32mm structural plate makes her an easy HE damage farm from heavy and light cruisers. Given her damage output woes, she's not likely to fare well in these trades. Incoming torpedoes from lolibotes and subs don't have to contend with very much anti-torpedo protection either. And if you're thinking "oh, well she's soft skinned because Royal Navy battleships get a good heal", stop right there. Marlborough has a worse heal than any of the other Royal Navy battleships in the game. So not only does she take more damage than other Royal Navy battleships, she doesn't recover health anywhere near as quickly. If you see Marlborough on the enemy team, know that she's an easy target. As an xp pinata, there's a lot to like with Marlborough. But playing her? She's a total drag. Marlborough's potential health is totally average. But when you combine this with her poor protection scheme, she's a lot more fragile than these numbers suggest. There are hidden armour plates in the bow and stern of Marlborough. Unfortunately, her citadel sits so high that any shells bouncing off these plates will just slam into her 305mm bulkheads and citadel her anyway. VERDICT: Bad, horrible and terrible. Agility Top Speed: 31.5 knots Turning Radius: 860 meters Rudder Shift Time: 16.8 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 4.2º/s at 23.5kts Main Battery Traverse Rate: 4.0º/s I wish Marlborough's agility was enough to bandaid her other problem. Sadly, one issue sours the experience. Let's start with the good: Marlborough's top speed is great. 31.5 knots is very comfortable at this tier. Similarly, her 860m turning radius isn't terrible; it's better than a lot of the other high-tier battleships, so I've got to give her a pass here as well. These two factors combine to a 4.2º/s rotation rate when she's at top speed which isn't stellar but it's okay. Unfortunately, this is enough to allow her to out-turn her turrets, but I've already complained enough about that. So you're probably wondering where the issue is. It's her rudder shift time. 16.8 seconds isn't appalling but it's pretty bad. And given her fire angle woes, her lack of torpedo protection and her citadel vulnerability, it's just that much worse. Marlborough feels like she handles poorly. Just Dodging™ isn't in her repertoire and you can forget being able to swing her butt out and back in order to flash her guns and avoid return fire. If she had Vanguard or Yukon's rudder shift time, I might be more forgiving here but given what Marlborough needs, her agility just doesn't deliver. Two things to note with this graphic. First, Giuseppe Verdi's agility is assumed -- I have not tested it yet. She appears to have the same agility as Marco Polo (I suspect her agility performance is cloned) but until I get my hands on her, I won't know for sure. The second item to note is the lack of data for Prinz Rupprecht. I have not unlocked her yet to test her. VERDICT: Close but no cigar. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 3+1 explosions for 1,540 damage per blast at 3.5km to 6km Long Ranged (up to 6km): 80.5 dps at 75% accuracy (60 dps) Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 528.5 dps at 75% accuracy (396 dps) There's not much to say here. Marlborough doesn't put out a lot of damage overall. She's pretty crappy when it comes to how many flak explosions she generates (even if the individual hits are beefier than many at her tier). The best that could be said about her is that she has good reach with her long-ranged batteries so she can support her allies decently. But she just doesn't generate the numbers needed to make any CV player balk. VERDICT: A whole lot of meh. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 15.36km / 12.07km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 11.94km / 9.67km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 13.35km Maximum Firing Range: Between 20.86km and 24.2km when equipped with Artillery Plotting Room Modification 2. Marlborough's concealment is good. As it stands presently, Marlborough has the tenth lowest upgraded surface detection of all of the battleships within her matchmaking spread. She ends up with a surface detection around 12km which is very comfortable and about on par with a lot of cruisers she faces. With her guns silenced, she has little to fear from being spotted by larger ships, with only the usual culprits of submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers being able to routinely outspot her. In late game settings, this gets quite powerful, particularly when she needs to disengage. It's unfortunate that she cannot pair this with good kiting fire angles, but such are the woes of her design. There are two other flies in the ointment. The first is her relative lack of range with no ability to boost it short of taking a 6th-slot upgrade. The second is a lack of any bonus detection consumables. Though the days are long gone where orbiting aircraft could help sniff out threats, consumables like Hydroacoustic Search aren't unheard of on a fair number of battleships and Marlborough goes without. Overall, her concealment is one of the few straight-up good things about the vessel. Marlborough has excellent concealment for a battleship. VERDICT: Good, but not good enough to save the ship. Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Airstrike from 1.5km to 10km (plus bomb drop column) Number of Salvos: Up to three Reload Time: 75 seconds Aircraft: Two S.25 Sunderlands with 2,000hp per plane. Drop Pattern: 4 bombs each dropped evenly over roughly a 1.75km column Maximum Bomb Damage: 3,000 Fire Chance: 17% I'm again merely reporting this for posterity's sake rather than speaking towards its efficacy. The Royal Navy battleships have some of the better airstrikes in the game at this stage in testing. But with overhauls planned, who knows how things will change in the future? VERDICT: Don't know, don't care until things get closer to final. Final Evaluation Welcome to flavour country. Like the tobacco industry, Wargaming will tell you their product is well researched and fine for consumer consumption. This is despite their own evidence that players do not enjoy ships with compromised main gunnery performance. Playing Marlborough isn't likely to give you cancer as far as I'm aware. It just feels like it. This is a bad design on Wargaming's part. The amount of arrogance or ignorance needed to think that it's a good idea to [edited]-slap players for playing the ship the way they promoted her is just astounding. The worst thing is that Wargaming is patently aware that frustrating gunnery isn't received well by the player base, yet they go out of their way to cook up this mess. I'm glad most players I've encountered seem aware that this ship is poorly designed and are keeping away. I really wish Wargaming would stop jerking us around with bad products like this. But let's talk about what a "bad" product means in the context of this game, because invariably there's going to be someone that enjoys this ship -- whether by it's own merits or simply to because they're an unrepentent hipster that can't help but find enjoyment in things panned by the community. It's important to appreciate that unlike her sister game World of Tanks, bad premiums in World of Warships create the illusion of being redeemable. Any ship in the game is capable of damaging any other. It was a meme back in the day, but you could take a tier II Umikaze into tier X matches and with a bit of skill, still pull of some surprising numbers. This addage holds true for Marlborough. She's a bad ship, make no mistake, but she can still generate numbers. Fire and HE spam are the great equalizers after all. All it takes is someone stubborn enough to sit behind the helm and keep trying and Marlborough will eventually deliver. What makes Marlborough bad is the amount work needed to get the same results as other ships. Meanwhile, your team is forced to carry harder to make up for your ships deficits. This isn't an insurmountable ask by any means given how World of Warships is designed. But Marlborough is still a liability. This is obviously in the context of PVP modes. Bots are dumb and you can make nearly anything work in Co-Op. It wouldn't take much to make Marlborough less punitive to play. Wargaming can't do much about her fire angles without clipping into the ship's geometry, so that's a wash. But they could do one of or any of the following: Drop her citadel down another deck. Give her an improved Repair Party. Increase her range by 2.5km. Give her Duke of York's improved auto-ricochet angles (60º to 75º) on her AP shells. Give her King George V's HE rounds. Improve her rudder shift time dramatically. Improve her gun handling dramatically. Even the addition of only of these would vastly improve the experience of playing Marlborough. Some are admittedly powerful (KGV HE, I am looking at you) and might necessitate further balancing measures. Preserving her as-advertised 25 second reload might necessitate giving up range, speed and concealment. I would happily sacrifice those to make her a better gun platform. Main battery performance is the key aspect of game play for battleships in World of Warships and Wargaming screwed it up bad with Marlborough. You shouldn't feel like you're fighting with the ship in order to fire her guns -- especially not with a vessel that comes with a $200 price tag. Shame on you, Wargaming. Mouse out.

The following is a review of Agincourt, the tier V British premium battleship. This ship was provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes at no cost to myself; I did not pay to get access to this ship. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.10.4. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. Summary: A slow but stealthy WWI era Dreadnought armed with fourteen 305mm guns in seven turrets (!) and a powerful secondary battery. PROS Dispersed armour scheme with an icebreaker bow & stern and resilient upper hull and amidships deck. Comfortable forward fire angles for most guns and that gorgeous Friday 360º turret traverse. Massive broadside of fourteen 305mm guns. Improved HE penetration. Powerful, accurate secondaries with long range and increased rate of fire. Tiny surface detection. CONS None of her armour is especially thick, making her easy to damage with battleship AP if not perfectly angled. Painfully long 36 second reload. Horrible main battery dispersion with 1.5 sigma. Terrible ... nay, craptacular AP penetration. Reduced HE damage. Slow and cumbersome. No anti-aircraft firepower whatsoever. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / Challenging / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme For an inexperienced player, Agincourt is a bit of a rough ride. This is all down to her horrible rate of fire. At 36 seconds, a missed volley is downright painful and this is further complicated by the poor performance of both her AP and HE shells. You might aim properly but still find everything shatter or ricochet. There are further challenges with trying to manage her poor armour values and sluggish handling. At least they don't need to worry about managing AA defence as she doesn't have any. Admittedly, Agincourt's skill ceiling all comes from managing the brawling side of things. If you ignore that potential, then her skill ceiling is no higher than Moderate. But Agincourt fully encourages you to get your brawl on and it's a lot of fun. Agincourt embarrasses a full health KGV in a joust with a Devastating Strike. Options One of the nice things about reviewing lower-tiered ships is that there are fewer options to worry about. Still, there's quite a bit of weirdness going on here so pay attention. Consumables Her Damage Control Party is standard for a British battleship. It is active for 15 seconds, repairing all critical damage and removing fires and floods. It has unlimited charges and an 80 second reset timer. Agincourt's Repair Party is strange only in that it's perfectly normal. It lacks the additional damage queue normally found on British battleships nor does it heal an additional amount. Instead it queues up 50% of penetration damage from shells, bombs, rockets and torpedoes, 10% of citadel damage and 100% of everything else. Each charge heals up to 14% of her starting health over 28 seconds. She begins with four charges and an 80 second reset timer. Upgrades Business as usual here. Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. Then take Damage Control System Modification 1. For your third slot, you have a choice between main battery optimization or going with some secondary craziness. Aiming Systems Modification 1 is generally optimal for your main battery performance though there's a good argument to be made for taking Main Battery Modification 2 to reduce the time it takes to switch aim between targets. HOWEVER, the Agincourt does very well with a secondary specialization (yes, you read that right), so taking Secondary Gun Battery Modification 1 is the start of that magical journey. Commander Skills There are two builds worth considering here. The first is your typical fire resistance specialization. Start with your choice of Emergency Repair Specialist (1) or Gun Feeder (1). That's 1pt spent. Grease the Gears (2) is next. That's 3pts total. Basics of Survivability (3) is the first of our fire-mitigation skills. We're now up to 6pts. And Fire Prevention (4) caps us off. That's 10pts. From here, you're encouraged to pick skills that again emphasize survivability and main battery performance where possible. Good skills include: Emergency Repair Expert (4), Concealment Expert (4), Adrenaline Rush (3) and Priority Target (2) along with doubling back for the tier 1 skill you skipped. The second build is a brawling spec. You want to pair this with the Secondary Gun Battery Modification 1 upgrade for maximum effect. It starts pretty familiar with either Emergency Repair Specialist (1) or Gun Feeder (1) again but we also toss on Pyrotechnician (1) as a tertiary option (in both meanings of the word). That's 1pt spent. Grease the Gears (2) is still the best option, though Priority Target (2) is equally good for dealing with low-tier lolibotes, so it becomes a choice here. Now we're up to 3pts. Long Range Secondary Battery Shells (3) is the first major deviation we're seeing. Grab it. This is 6pts spent. Finish this off with Improved Secondary Battery Aiming (4). And that's 10pts. From here, grab a mix of survivability and gun performance skills along with doubling back for some of your favourites you had to pass over. Good skills include: Emergency Repair Expert (4), Concealment Expert (4), Adrenaline Rush (3). Fire Prevention (4) and Basics of Survivability (3) still have their place but you'll have to make some compromises somewhere. It is worth mentioning two controversial skills for Agincourt's secondary build. These are Inertial Fuse for HE Shells (2) and Swift in Silence (4). The former will make Agincourt's 76mm secondaries capable of directly damaging most tier VI and VII destroyer extremities, along with buffing her 152mm secondaries to be capable of doing the same versus tier VI and VII battleships. This comes at the cost of gutting their fire chance, which is a pretty stiff blow when dueling other dreadnoughts, especially with the prevalence of dispersed armour schemes that even the improved HE pen on her 152mm won't be able to best. Still, it's hard to argue with more direct damage. As for the latter skill, I go into more detail in the agility section below. I'm not a fan. Camouflage Agincourt has access to two camouflage patterns, Type 9 and Veteran of Jutland. They are cosmetic swaps of one another and both provide the following bonuses: 3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells -10% to post-battle service costs +50% experience earned. You can unlock the alternative colour palette (the blue) by completing the appropriate section of the Royal Navy Destroyers collection. Agincourt's Jutland camo. Like the ship itself, this is only available from a loot box. Where's that puky emoji? Firepower Main Battery: Fourteen 305mm guns in 7x2 turrets in an A-B-P-Q-X-Y-Z layout. A-B are in a superfiring configuration. P faces forward, Q aft. Y-turret superfires over X and Z, with X facing forward. Secondary Battery: Twenty 152mm guns and ten 76mm guns. Fourteen 152mm guns are mounted in casemates in the upper hull, four mounted in casemates in the fore and aft superstructure and two deck mounts straddling the main bridge. Eight of the 76mm are mounted in casemates on the upper-superstructure with a pair of turrets one platform higher on the rear superstructure. Fourteen Guns and They're All Crap Agincourt's guns are terrible. Ostensibly she uses the same guns as Bellerophon and Dreadnought, the tier III British battleships. However, they somehow manage to be worse on a per-gun basis. Specifically, Agincourt's 305mm guns have a longer reload than her tier III predecessors, worse dispersion and gutted HE performance. Yes, you have fourteen of the bloody things, but they're terrible. Unequivocally terrible. If Oklahoma weren't a thing, Agincourt's guns easily takes the prize for the worst gun performance at her tier. Thankfully, they have two redeeming qualities. She has fourteen of them. She has improved HE penetration. The major issue facing Agincourt's gun performance is her AP shells. If Oklahoma's AP was bad, Agincourt's is worse. It's so bad you can't reliably penetrate battleship belt armour outside of 8km distances. This necessitates keeping a ready list in your head of what the armour thicknesses are of select battleships and, in turn, what ranges you can engage them. Does New York have in excess of 340mm of belt armour, or is it only 280mm? At what range can Agincourt citadel a broadsiding Izmail? How much relative armour does a Conte di Cavour have at a 50º angle? When in doubt, you can always aim higher and hope for penetrating hits but you're working against troll, 1.5 sigma dispersion. Now you could be forgiven for thinking that Agincourt's AP penetration woes would make her better at landing citadel hits on cruisers, but this simply is not the case. Unlike other low-tier, small-calibre guns, she does not have the shortened, 0.01s fuse timers ideally set to for dealing with the smaller breadth of low-tier cruisers. Instead she has the longer, 0.033s fuse timers that are better suited for plunging deep into a heavily armoured vessel in order to destroy machine spaces and magazines. Thus, Agincourt's AP shells work at cross purposes to themselves. She does not have the penetration to readily duel with other dreadnoughts and her fuse timers are poorly set for popping the thinner citadels of low-tier cruisers. About the only targets where this low penetration and long fuse timers work to her advantage is blasting shells down the length of bow-in ships you can overmatch. Waiting that painfully long 36 second reload, setting up for that perfect broadside shot only to watch everything thrown at your opponent over penetrate or shatter is heartbreaking. That's painfully commonplace. Agincourt has some of the worst AP penetration values at her tier. And just to make things more frustrating, she has abnormally long shell fuse timers too which makes over-penetrations against cruisers more likely. So they suck on both ends of the spectrum. The two differences between the HE shells on HMS Dreadnought and Bellerophon versus those of Agincourt. Graphic pulled from gamemodels3d.com which i cannot recommend highly enough for players looking to expand their knowledge into the more esoteric details of World of Warships. Things get a little better with Agincourt's HE shells, but it's not all sunshine, rainbows and puppies here either. You need only look at the difference between Bellerophon and Dreadnought's HE shells versus those Agincourt was dealt. Dreadnought's HE shells hit 18% harder than Agincourt's and have slightly improved fire setting characteristics. Thus Agincourt's broadside is the equivalent of a 12-gun British battleship, not 14. Agincourt's HE DPM is little better than Wyoming, the tier IV American battleship, though the differences count. Perhaps the best saving grace of Agincourt's HE shells is that they retain the 1/4 HE penetration of the British battleship tech-tree. At 76mm, the modest damage output of her HE rounds becomes much more formidable and she is capable of landing citadel hits on a whole list of cruisers within her matchmaking, including but not limited to such prominent targets as the American Omaha-class and Pensacola-class. Farming up some of those black ribbons with HE shells is very satisfying, especially after being repeatedly trolled by her AP, let me tell you. Guess which ammo you'll be relying on? Agincourt's a decent fire setter. If you can land the hits, a full broadside is quite formidable. The catch to that, of course, is landing those hits in the first place. Her dispersion isn't kind nor is her reload. There just isn't anything really redeeming about Agincourt's main battery firepower short of the number of barrels. That 36 second reload is painful in the extreme. Her 4º/s gun rotation is lame, but at least she cannot out-turn her turrets (even if you slap on a Sierra Mike signal and the Swift in Silence commander skill). Her fire arcs aren't great on the whole. Some of her gun turrets are amazing but in order to maximize her firepower, you have to expose a lot of broadside. Her ballistics are incredibly floaty, with her shells suffering from a heavy amount of drag. And finally there's that awful shotgun dispersion of her's which can foil even the most carefully aimed shot. On the flip side, every now and then you'll land this amazing, Devastating Strike and it will make you wonder why you can't do it more consistently. I'm not a fan of Agincourt's main battery guns, if you can't tell. You can make them work, don't get me wrong, but it's an uphill battle. Okay, making this graphic nearly broke my brain. Y-Turret is my favourite (TGIF! ♥). Not only does it have great arcs, it can also rotate 360º. So long as you keep P and Q turret masked, Agincourt's forward fire arcs are very good. Historically, these seven turrets were named after the days of the week, from Sunday through Saturday, fore to aft. One of my standard dispersion tests. This is 180 AP shells fired at 15km. Agincourt is equipped with Aiming Systems Modification 1. Shots are coming in from right to left with the stationary Fuso-bot effectively bow-tanking. Agincourt's 1.5 sigma makes her gunnery all kinds of wonky. Their low velocity has their shell fall angle coming in at a rather steep 17º angle. I Need a Hero! ♫ Agincourt's secondaries to the rescue. Low-tier secondaries have long sat in the shadow. This was largely owing to the old Manual Fire Control for Secondary Armament skill which provided a 60% dispersion reduction to tier VII+ ships that designated a target for their secondaries but only a 15% for lower tiered vessels. For four skill points, it just wasn't worthwhile. That's changed with the skill rework, with low-tier battleships gaining the same flat 35% dispersion reduction as higher tiered vessels. So while high-tiered battleships definitely had the potential of their secondaries nerfed with the rework, lower-tiered vessels had their's buffed. But there's more to secondary performance than how well it synergizes with a particular commander build. There are four main elements to look for to see if secondaries are worth specliazing into: Range. This is the real kicker. If your secondaries don't have the reach, they're not of much use. A 5km base range is really the minimum I consider to be viable for secondary builds. Between skills, signals and upgrades, a 5km secondary can reach out to 7.56km which is outside of torpedo range for most destroyers, giving the guns some comfortable use. Most low-tier secondaries sit between 4km and 5km in reach. Agincourt's have a 5.5km base range, maximizing out to 8.32km which is very usable in lower-tiered matches. Volume of Fire. You need a lot of guns and/or a fast rate of fire to make a secondary build worthwhile. This simplifies to looking at the damage-per-minute potential of the base secondaries and seeing if they're putting out big enough numbers to make opponents balk. Agincourt has more DPM potential than a lot of the high-tier secondary heavy-weights. Yes, really. The reload on her guns is ridiculously short, with a mere 2.7 seconds on her 76mm and only 4 seconds on her 152mm guns. She puts out a lot of fire, very quickly. Penetration. Having a lot of potential damage doesn't matter much if those guns are incapable of directly doing any harm to the targets they hit. This is what largely damns a lot of high-tier French battleships. This is one area where low-tier battleships luck out. Structural armour plate at low tiers allows for even small calibre guns to be useful. Agincourt's 76mm can still directly damage the hulls of all tier IV and V cruisers and destroyers and even those of the very light cruisers at tier VI and VII. Her 152mm are a threat to anything but tier VI+ battleships and select heavy cruisers. Accuracy. The final piece of the puzzle is accuracy. If this isn't present but all of the others are excellent, then it can be overlooked. However, having this is definitely the icing on the cake. Agincourt has improved secondary accuracy on ALL of it's guns, not just the casemate weapons as found on ships like Warspite and Iron Duke. This gives her Massachusetts-style dispersion patterns on her secondaries. Agincourt's secondaries fall under the "accurate" category. Agincourt ticks all of the right boxes. Good range, solid DPM, workable penetration and great accuracy. I am firmly of the opinion that if you do not specialize Agincourt with a deep secondary build, you are doing it wrong -- or at the very least, you are missing out on one heck of a ride. While I can appreciate that some people do not find the AI driven guns to be entertaining, there is no arguing their efficacy on this ship. Fully tricked out, Agincourt's secondaries shred exposed destroyers and I've seen them make cruisers and battleships panic. As if their direct damage weren't enough, they're INSANE fire starters -- like Worcester levels of fire starting potential. If you've already been throwing HE shells from your main battery guns about, your secondaries will often find targets that have their Damage Control Party consumable on cool down, making for some easy damage as you move in to a joust. I cannot sing high enough praises for these weapons. Bring them into range whenever possible. You won't be disappointed. Have some perspective. Of the 452k done by Agincourt's secondaries, 330k comes from her higher penetration 152mm casemates. These can be buffed with IFHE to make them capable of damaging the hull extremities of anything within her matchmaking. If mapping her main battery guns nearly killed me, this turned me into a trigonometry zombie. This maps the fire arcs of Agincourt's secondaries with her 152mm in red and her 76mm in light blue. Agincourt's secondaries have most of their arcs weighted rearward. However, do not ignore the fact that she can still bring six of her 152mm guns to bear on a 30º angle forward, giving her a very meaty weight of fire on a brawling aspect while maintaining auto-ricochet angles. Go ahead and take IFHE if you want. She's got FPM to spare. Summary Terrible (HORRIBLE) main battery AP shells but decent HE. Long reload and wonky dispersion makes for very trollish gunnery. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it's heart breaking. If you're not spec'ing Agincourt for secondaries, you're missing out. Seriously. Durability Hit Points: 48,400 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 19mm / 13mm / 152mm / 38mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 229mm belt + 38mm turtleback + 38mm citadel wall. Torpedo Damage Reduction: 14% Dispersed Armour The thickness of Agincourt's armour is a serious issue. In order to cram so many guns onto her hull, her armour was compromised, shaved down to the level of a WWI era battlecruiser. She simply does not have the overall thickness needed to repel battleship calibre AP shells at any range. Even heavy cruiser AP rounds become an issue at closer distances. Without careful angling, Agincourt surrenders too many hit points to high-penetration AP attacks. The thick plates covering the ship ensure that every AP shell that does best the armour will fuse for full damage. The only ray of sunshine here is that while she may not have thick armour overall, it is well dispersed which can be downright troll against certain attacks. For cruisers and destroyers slinging HE and SAP shells, Agincourt has only a few vulnerable areas, namely her bow, stern and her small superstructure. Everything else they throw at her will shatter or ricochet which makes Agincourt feel quite tanky. Similarly, these vulnerable points are the only areas where battleships can land overmatching penetrating hits when Agincourt angles correctly. With her icebreaker bow, waterline shots will simply ricochet off. It pays to keep her gun fire angles that we discussed earlier in mind. Unmasking P & Q turret will generally leave her vulnerable to returned AP shells. You don't want to nose in perfectly as this will bait shots into her vulnerable upper snoot and barbettes, but sit her at a slight angle. If you can unmask everyone's favourite day of the week (Y-Turret) then you're doing it right. Thus Agincourt's armour protection rewards player skill; both for the attacker and defender. Knowing how to exploit her weaknesses bipasses a lot of her strengths. Knowing how to properly angle her can mitigate a lot of incoming damage. Look at that lovely dispersed armour scheme. Agincourt's armour is excellent when angled in a close-range brawl, though it doesn't quite stand up to long-range punishment. Still, keep her angled and she'll serve you well, resisting AP, SAP and HE shells equally. Do it wrong and those thick armour plates will ensure that battleship calibre AP shells fuse and deal full penetration damage. Her big 19mm snoot and butt are obvious weak points. Citadel & Turret Protection Understandably, the issues with her thin belt carry over to a poor citadel protection scheme. In particular, Agincourt is highly vulnerable to 380mm+ calibre AP shells as there are sections of her citadel which may be overmatched; namely the walls of her boilers, machine spaces and the roof. Still, Agincourt isn't a free meal for overmatching weapons. There is a hidden 25mm and 38mm plate in her bow and stern that caps directly on top of her 102mm and 152mm belt respectively, along with her 38mm turtleback. While the 25mm plate cannot resist 380mm+ AP shells, the latter 38mm will foil shots that come in a bit higher. Her turtleback isn't a significant barrier on its own. However, if she is angled, it's one more plate that may prompt a ricochet and save her for from taking a citadel hit. And really, that's the best you can hope from Agincourt's citadel protection: to turn a catastrophic hit into merely a serious one. One of the things AP shells LOOOOOVE to fuse on are Agincourt's turrets. She has a lot of them and they act as catchers mits for battleship calibre rounds. This leads to a lot more damage than you might otherwise expect and it's definitely a weakness to exploit when going toe to toe against her. While their turret faces are a chunky 305mm in thickness, this isn't enough to repel anything but the longest range fire from the weakest guns out there. Furthermore, below deck, the barbettes of her P, Q and X turrets are just 76mm. Penetrating AP hits love arresting within these rings and blowing up your guns. Similarly, the roofs of her guns are only 76mm. While their slope alone is more than enough to see off AP and SAP shells, Royal Navy battleship HE can and will penetrate if you're unlucky enough to get hit there. This will deal HE penetration damage AND prompt a critical damage check and again, you may end up temporarily losing a turret. Because so much of Agincourt's deck space is taken up by main battery guns, they get hit often. This in turn means more critical damage rolls so be prepared to see more temporarily disabled weapons on this ship than you might otherwise be used to. That's okay, though. You have more where those came from. The last thing to touch upon here is that with Agincourt's citadel being so long (long, long maaaaaan! ♫) every torpedo that hits you will be causing citadel damage. Agincourt has almost nothing in the way of usable anti-torpedo defence. She floods easily and you're not healing back much (if anything) from torpedo hits. Agincourt's main battery turrets are not very well protected, with P, Q and X-turret having very thin barbettes. It is not uncommon for any of her weapons to be disabled or permanently knocked out over the course of the battle when trading fire with other battleships. Y and Z turrets mirror B & A's barbettes respectively. Furthermore, Agincourt's citadel has 25mm sections of it vulnerable to 380mm+ AP shells overmatching. Be careful when facing battleships with these higher calibre weapons. Do keep her hidden geometry in her bow to help protect from overmatching hits punching through her 19mm bow and stern. Also, there's a 38mm turtleback that runs from the 152mm plate in the fore to the one dittoed in the rear, adding to her citadel protection but it's angled incorrectly to prompt ricochet checks. Health and Heals The strangest thing about Agincourt's durability is that it's so normal. Royal Navy battleships have, since their introduction into World of Warships, had special Repair Party consumables. While the portable dry-docks of Nelson, Lion and Conqueror are perhaps the best known among the community, Warspite always healed back more damage per charge of her consumable while also queuing up more damage as well. Even Iron Duke queues up 60% of penetration damage. Agincourt doesn't have any of that. Her Repair Party consumable is completely normal, healing back a "mere" 14% of her starting hit points per charge (base) and queuing up a "mere" 50% of penetration damage. The only ships she has a leg up on are Soviet battleships with their reduced number of healing charges. So while she may have a comparable number of starting hit points to Oklahoma, for example, she has less overall healing potential. Similarly, while Iron Duke's theoretical hit point pool is smaller, the tech-tree battleship has more efficient heals. So there's nothing really worth getting excited about. Thanks to the smaller hit point pools of Conte di Cavour and Viribus Unitis, Agincourt has a better-than-average base hit point pool but that's nothing remarkable. Nothing too out of the ordinary here. For those wondering, Agincourt's maximum effective health is 2.61 Viribus Unitis while New York, the best of the bunch, has 3.05. Summary Agincourt's dispersed armour scheme is a mixed blessing. It's good against small and medium calibre HE and SAP but only good against AP when perfectly angled and useless when not. Her guns get knocked out often and this has a spillover effect leading to Agincourt taking more penetrating hits. Nothing special about her heals. VERDICT: Pretty average for a low-to-mid tier battleship. Better than some, worse than others. Agility Top Speed: 22 knots Turning Radius: 670m Rudder Shift Time: 13.4 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 3.8º/s at 16.6 knots While Agincourt may have a battlecruiser's armour, she does not have a battlecruiser's speed. This is a slow, cumbersome ship. Her only saving grace is that there are a lot of slow, cumbersome ships at tier V so she doesn't feel horribly out of place. This said, her turning radius is one of the largest at her tier. And while a 670m turning circle radius looks pretty good if you're used to higher tiered ships, this is pretty bad down here in the kiddy pool where islands are plentiful. When paired with her pedestrian top speed, this results in one of the slowest rates of turn for a low-tier battleship. Agincourt feels big and sluggish. What's more, she doesn't get anywhere quickly. This isn't so bad if she ends up on a low-tier map, but when Agincourt gets uptiered, you really start to feel this lack of flexibility. Maybe there's room for the new Swift in Silence skill? I want to be able to recommend it. I would love it if the skill was competitive for certain ships and certain builds, but it's so hard to justify. With it and combined with a Sierra Mike signal, Agincourt's speed gets up to an impressive 25.4 knots, which largely corrects any flexibility deficiencies. That's incredibly enticing. The catch is, of course, that she needs to go undetected in order for this to work. Put one aircraft carrier in play or end up on a flank with a concealed lolibote and her boost goes away. One of the major reasons I want the extra speed is to allow Agincourt to kite but if she's detected (or firing her guns), that's not going to work. Furthermore, the skill and signal combined do not significantly boost her rate of turn, upping it to 4.0º/s. This comes at the cost of her turning circle, jumping up Agincourt's radius to 730m. At four skill points, it's just not quite there in my opinion. Maybe if the speed was always on? Maybe if it provided more speed? I dunno. Agincourt has some of the worst agility at tier V. She's not only slow, but she has a large turning radius at her tier too. Granted, that 670m is pretty small compared to higher tiered battleships, but still, it gives her some of the worst handling at her tier by a noticeable margin, making her feel like one of the higher tiered thunderchunkers when she tries to come about. VERDICT: Crap. Arguably one of, if not the worst at her tier. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: None Long Ranged: None Medium Ranged: None Short Ranged: None There are two ways of looking at Agincourt's complete lack of anti-aircraft firepower. The first is to look at it as a crippling flaw. Any aircraft carrier that knows that Agincourt is bereft of AA defence can attack her with impunity; especially if she's isolated. Furthermore, tier VI carriers can drop fighters on top of her and keep her perma-spotted until she sails out of their spotting range. At her slow speed, this will take quite a while and it strips her of her stealth advantage. The general lack of long-range AA support at low tiers makes this quite likely and carriers can engage her confident that they will less planes than if they attacked one of her supporting team mates. Playing on the receiving end, it's a bit disheartening to know you're going to take repeat drops and it necessitates changing some behaviours. We already know that Agincourt is not agile enough to pretend to Just Dodge™ ordnance but if the CV player is in a hurry, they might flub a torpedo or bomb drop. But what's most important is to properly gauge when to use her Damage Control Party. Don't make the mistake of dousing fires too early or patching up floods you could just heal through. The second and cynical way of looking at things is that Agincourt's lack of anti-aircraft firepower doesn't matter. Few tier V battleships have any kind of anti-aircraft firepower worth getting excited about nor can they see to their own protection. In this sense, Agincourt dispels any illusions of counterplay against a carrier. There's not much anyway, so removing it entirely provides a more "pure" CV vs Surface Ship experience. Man, that's [edited]. And they said there's no such thing as a free lunch. VERDICT: There is now a level zero. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 12.24km / 10.69km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 8.7km / 7.83km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 9.35km Maximum Firing Range: 15.34km Upgraded includes the use of a camouflage providing a concealment bonus and the use of the Concealment Expert skill and Concealment System Modification 1 upgrade if available. Agincourt has no right being as stealthy as she is. She is the stealthiest battleship in her matchmaking pool. If she were a tier V cruiser, she'd be sneakier than half of them. It's a shame she's not a faster battleship because she could then take full advantage. The closer Agincourt can get, the better. Her armour just isn't thick enough to trade at range and her own AP shell performance is piss-poor until you're up close -- sometimes point-blank-range close. As it is, you can almost (almost!) get her to within secondary battery range before she's detected which is pretty hilarious. You need simply sprint the last 2.37km to start opening fire. Unfortunately, that 2.37km "sprint" is more of a wobbling bag of rancid liposuction meat gently rolling downhill. 2.37km is pretty substantial for a ship that can only manage about 22 knots; it takes her a full 40 seconds to cover that distance. Without the use of island cover, boxing your target in or your opponent making a mistake, Agincourt's not sneaking up on anyone this way. Agincourt's stealth is meant to band-aid a lot of other flaws. Bad AP penetration? Sneak up and get closer. Reliant upon secondaries? You can almost sneak into range. Poor armour protection from long range fire? Keep silent and go stealthy to mitigate it. I mean, Agincourt's stealth certainly helps but again, that lack of speed really makes it difficult to fully capitalize upon. It's only on those claustrophobic, island choked maps where this stealth + speed combination works in her favour and can be used offensively. In all other aspects, Agincourt's stealth becomes a purely defensive ability and used whenever she holds fire. Now this can be used to great effect by an experienced player. Disengaging at the right time will keep you alive, after all. But there are a whole range of "what ifs" that undo it -- the most simple of which being a shadowing lolibote or aircraft. Agincourt's stealth is a trait that's nice to have but it's hard to argue that it's especially powerful without speed to control engagement distances. VERDICT: Cool to have but not game-changing. Final Evaluation As Drachinifel has elucidated, Agincourt has always been a troublesome vessel. Her acquistion caused problems then and it's causing problems now. The only way to get Agincourt at her launch was through gambling through loot boxes. There was no direct sale offered. Using my press account, it took me 11 pulls before she dropped. That's 8,250 doubloons worth if I bought the crates individually. I didn't, I bought a huge bundle so it technically would have cost me 13,750 doubloons. That's the cost of a tier VIII premium for a tier V ship. While receiving dragon signals is nice, I have no practical use for any of the other contents from the containers. Ergo, these loot boxes are worthless to me but for the ship and the permanent camos. If I didn't get access to Agincourt via Wargaming, I would not touch this vessel with a ten foot pole. And that's a shame. This is a really fun ship. I've enjoyed Agincourt immensely and I highly recommend her for anyone that misses brawling in higher tiered vessels. But I hate loot boxes. I cannot and will not support them. So hard pass on Agincourt until she's made available by more conventional means. Thank you for reading.

the Gibratar need buff he has bad Health, no he , no torps, smoke with 9.5k detection guns fire, ok is very bad. AA bad, protection anti torps bad, many things bad!

Within the British tree a lot of lines depend on their High explosive rounds and so forth the concept the British tree was brought in with has been only present in one line so far: the light cruisers as a result i have come up with a line of ships that need to represented eventually in the tree and have a large fanbase behind them so I present : British Battlecruisers! features: Standardized Main and secondary gun Caliber for each tier Group Extremely Good Accuracy at each tier with best in class sigma and good dispersion Main Battery AP Shells share same characteristics as British Light Cruiser shells but Maintain standard fuse characteristics of non British battleship lines but as a result there is no HE shells good turret traverse , main battery range and reload Low concealment and same energy retention and acceleration as British light cruisers Cruiser duration fires and floods Engine boost consumable from tier 6 Surveillance Radar from tier 9 Tier 3: Indefatigable the first ship in the line, we are greeted by the Indefatigable who is the second fastest at her tier but has noticeable ammunition storage issues Survivability Stock: 32,600 Upgraded: 36,900 Main battery 305 mm/45 Mk X 4 х 2 pcs. Rate of Fire2 shots/min. Reload Time 30 sec. Rotation Speed3 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time60 sec. Firing Range14.68 km. Maximum Dispersion210 m. AP Shell305 mm AP Mk VIa Maximum AP Shell Damage8,100 Initial AP Shell Velocity831 m./s. AP Shell Weight389.8 kg. Secondary battery 102 mm/45 QF Mk VII 16 х 1 pcs. Firing Range4.3 km. Rate of Fire20 shots/min. Reload Time3 sec. HE Shell102 mm HE 35 lb Maximum HE Shell Damage1,500 Initial HE Shell Velocity811 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell6 % AA Defense 76.2 mm/45 HA Mk IV1 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second2.1 . . . Firing Range3 km. Maneuverability Maximum Speed 25.5 knot Turning Circle Radius 570 m. Rudder Shift Time 15.6 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 12.4 km. Air Detectability Range 7.97 km. Tier 4: Princess Royal As second ship in the line we are greeted by princess royal the second ship of the lion class representing the class as lion is busy being a tier nine battleship Survivability Stock: 41,900 Upgraded: 47,200 Main battery 343 mm/45 Mk V 4 х 2 pcs. Rate of Fire2 shots/min. Reload Time 30 sec. Rotation Speed 3 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time 60 sec. Firing Range 16.4 km. Maximum Dispersion 162 m. AP Shell343 mm AP Mk I Maximum AP Shell Damage 9,900 Initial AP Shell Velocity787 m./s. AP Shell Weight567 kg. Secondary battery 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 16 х 1 pcs. Firing Range4.3 km. Rate of Fire20 shots/min. Reload Time3 sec. HE Shell102 mm HE 35 lb Maximum HE Shell Damage1,500 Initial HE Shell Velocity811 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell6 % AA Defense 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 4 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second24 . . . Firing Range4.5 km. 40 mm/39 QF Mk II 4 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second22.8 . . . Firing Range2.49 km. Maneuverability Maximum Speed 27.5 knot Turning Circle Radius 640 m. Rudder Shift Time 19.6 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 11.4 km. Air Detectability Range 7.97 km. Tier 5: Queen Mary the third ship in the line is the unique queen mary who improves slightly over her predecessors Survivability Stock: 42,500 Upgraded: 48,200 Main battery 343 mm/45 Mk V 4 х 2 pcs. Rate of Fire2 shots/min. Reload Time 26 sec. Rotation Speed 3 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time 60 sec. Firing Range 18.4 km. Maximum Dispersion 162 m. AP Shell343 mm AP Mk I Maximum AP Shell Damage 10,000 Initial AP Shell Velocity787 m./s. AP Shell Weight567 kg. Secondary battery 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 16 х 1 pcs. Firing Range 6.3 km. Rate of Fire20 shots/min. Reload Time3 sec. HE Shell102 mm HE 35 lb Maximum HE Shell Damage1,500 Initial HE Shell Velocity811 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell6 % AA Defense 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 6 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second24 . . . Firing Range4.5 km. 40 mm/39 QF Mk II 8 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second22.8 . . . Firing Range2.49 km. Maneuverability Maximum Speed 28 knot Turning Circle Radius 630 m. Rudder Shift Time 18.6 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 11.2 km. Air Detectability Range 7.47 km. Tier 6: Tiger the fourth ship in the line is the original tiger that has battle in front of her type of cruiser unlike the other one who has light instead. she improves ever so slightly again over the previous ships. the B hull is shown above is a renown style refit Survivability Stock 44,500 Upgraded: 50,100 Main battery 343 mm/45 Mk V 4 х 2 pcs. Rate of Fire 2.8 shots/min. Reload Time 21 sec. Rotation Speed 4.5 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time 40 sec. Firing Range 19.4 km. Maximum Dispersion 162 m. AP Shell343 mm AP Mk I Maximum AP Shell Damage 10,000 Initial AP Shell Velocity787 m./s. AP Shell Weight567 kg. Secondary battery 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 4 х 2 pcs. Firing Range 6.3 km. Rate of Fire20 shots/min. Reload Time3 sec. HE Shell102 mm HE 35 lb Maximum HE Shell Damage1,500 Initial HE Shell Velocity811 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell6 % 152 mm/50 BL Mk XVI 12 х 1 pcs. Firing Range 6.3 km. Rate of Fire6.98 shots/min. Reload Time8.6 sec. HE Shell152 mm HE 4crh Maximum HE Shell Damage2,200 Initial HE Shell Velocity914 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell12 % (upgraded)113 mm/45 Mk II BD 6 х 2 pcs. Firing Range 7.96 km. Rate of Fire12 shots/min. Reload Time5 sec. HE Shell113 mm HE 5crh Maximum HE Shell Damage1,700 Initial HE Shell Velocity746 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell8 % AA Defense stock 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 4 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second24 . . . Firing Range4.5 km. 40 mm/39 QF Mk II 12 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second22.8 . . . Firing Range2.49 km. upgraded 113 mm/45 Mk II BD 6 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second89 . . . Firing Range5.01 km. 12.7 mm Mk III6 х 4 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second12.6 . . . Firing Range1.2 km. 40 mm Vickers 2-pdr. Mk VIII 4 х 8 , 2x4 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second79.2 . . . Firing Range2.49 km. 20 mm Oerlikon Mk IV 8 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second28.8 . . . Firing Range2.01 km. Maneuverability Maximum Speed stock 28 knots upgraded 30 knots Turning Circle Radius 720 m. Rudder Shift Time 17.6 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 12.2 km. Air Detectability Range 8.47 km. Tier 7: Renown Such a Beauty. Unlike her lower tier sister Repulse Renown is only modeled in her post refit form and her armament loses a turret for an increase in gun caliber compared to previous ships in the line Survivability Stock: 53,400 Upgraded: 58,100 Main battery 381 mm/42 Mk I 3 х 2 pcs. Rate of Fire 3 shots/min. Reload Time 20 sec. Rotation Speed6 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time30 sec. Firing Range 20.1 km. Maximum Dispersion 183 m. AP Shell381 mm AP Mk XXIIb Maximum AP Shell Damage 12,400 Initial AP Shell Velocity731.5 m./s. AP Shell Weight879 kg. Secondary battery 113 mm/45 Mk II BD 10 х 2 pcs. Firing Range 8.96 km. Rate of Fire12 shots/min. Reload Time5 sec. HE Shell113 mm HE 5crh Maximum HE Shell Damage1,700 Initial HE Shell Velocity746 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell8 % AA Defense 113 mm/45 Mk II BD10 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second89 . . . Firing Range5.01 km. 12.7 mm Mk III 4 х 4 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second12.6 . . . Firing Range1.2 km. 40 mm Vickers 2-pdr. Mk VIII 3 х 8 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second79.2 . . . Firing Range2.49 km. 20 mm Oerlikon Mk IV 12х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second28.8 . . . Firing Range2.01 km. Maneuverability Maximum Speed 32.5 knot Turning Circle Radius 860 m. Rudder Shift Time 14.4 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 12.4 km. Air Detectability Range 8.62 km. Tier 8: Anson the second ship representing the admiral class in game ,Anson represents a fictional refit given to Hood around the time Queen Elizabeth was reconstructed so despite the picture Anson has 4.5 inch secondaries Survivability Stock: 60,100 Upgraded: 67,900 Main battery 381 mm/42 Mk I 4 х 2 pcs. Rate of Fire 3 shots/min. Reload Time 20 sec. Rotation Speed6 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time30 sec. Firing Range 21.1 km. Maximum Dispersion 183 m. AP Shell381 mm AP Mk XXIIb Maximum AP Shell Damage 12,400 Initial AP Shell Velocity731.5 m./s. AP Shell Weight879 kg. Secondary battery 113 mm/45 Mk II BD 12 х 2 pcs. Firing Range 9.96 km. Rate of Fire12 shots/min. Reload Time5 sec. HE Shell113 mm HE 5crh Maximum HE Shell Damage1,700 Initial HE Shell Velocity746 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell8 % AA Defense 113 mm/45 Mk II BD 12 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second89 . . . Firing Range5.01 km. 40 mm/39 QF Mk VII 6 х 4 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second 79.2 . . . Firing Range 2.49 km. 40 mm/39 QF Mk VIII 4 х 8 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second79.2 . . . Firing Range2.49 km. 20 mm Oerlikon Mk IV 22х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second28.8 . . . Firing Range2.01 km. Maneuverability Maximum Speed 32.5 knot Turning Circle Radius 860 m. Rudder Shift Time 10.4 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 13.4 km. Air Detectability Range 9.92 km. Tier 9: Invincible One of the G3 preliminary designs design J3 is a fast battlecruiser armed with 9 15 inch guns. Unlike the picture above she continues the trend of the renown style refit albeit with post war armament Survivability Stock: 65,500 Upgraded: 72,200 Main battery 381 mm/45 Mk II 3 х 3 pcs. Rate of Fire 3 shots/min. Reload Time 20 sec. Rotation Speed 9 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time 20 sec. Firing Range 23.45 km. Maximum Dispersion 183 m. AP Shell381 mm AP Mk XIIIa Maximum AP Shell Damage13,900 Initial AP Shell Velocity836 m./s. AP Shell Weight879 kg. Secondary battery 113 mm/45 Mk IV 12 х 2 pcs. Firing Range 10.95 km. Rate of Fire 15 shots/min. Reload Time 4 sec. HE Shell113 mm HE Mk XVI Maximum HE Shell Damage1,600 Initial HE Shell Velocity746 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell7 % AA Defense 113 mm/45 Mk IV 12 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second89 . . . Firing Range5.01 km. 40 mm Bofors Mk II2 х 4 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second31.8 . . . Firing Range3.51 km. 40 mm Vickers 2-pdr. Mk VIII10 х 8 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second198 . . . Firing Range2.49 km. 40 mm Bofors Mk V4 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second49.2 . . . Firing Range3.51 km. 20 mm Oerlikon Mk V 6 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second36.6 . . . Firing Range2.01 km. Maneuverability Maximum Speed 33.5 knot Turning Circle Radius 890 m. Rudder Shift Time 12.4 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 13.3km. Air Detectability Range 10.2 km. Tier 10: St. Vincent another design leading up to the g3 class design k3 is armed similarly to thunderer with 9 457 mm guns. her armament placement allows for less broadside to be shown and unlike thunderer and conqueror and the picture above showing her weapon layout her bridge is built akin to vanguard. Survivability 92,300 hitpoints Main battery 457 mm/45 Mk II 3 х 3 pcs. Rate of Fire 3 shots/min. Reload Time 20 sec. Rotation Speed 9 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time 20 sec. Firing Range 25.5 km. Maximum Dispersion 189 m. AP Shell457 mm AP Mk II Maximum AP Shell Damage14,900 Initial AP Shell Velocity762 m./s. AP Shell Weight1506 kg. Secondary battery 113 mm/45 RP 41 Mk VI 12 х 2 pcs. Firing Range 11.95 km. Rate of Fire20 shots/min. Reload Time3 sec. HE Shell113 mm HE Mk XVI Maximum HE Shell Damage1,600 Initial HE Shell Velocity746 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell7 % AA Defense 113 mm/45 RP 41 Mk VI 12 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second106.8 . . . Firing Range5.01 km. 40 mm Bofors Mark X on a STAAG Mark 2 mount 10 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second160.8 . . . Firing Range3.51 km. 40 mm Bofors Mark IX on a Mark VI mount 8 х 6 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second141.4 . . . Firing Range3.51 km. 40 mm Bofors Mk VII8 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second69.6 . . . Firing Range3.51 km. 20 mm Oerlikon Mk V4 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second24.4 . . . Firing Range2.01 km. Maneuverability Maximum Speed33 .5 knot Turning Circle Radius960 m. Rudder Shift Time10.4 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 13.5km. Air Detectability Range 11.2 km. Consumables Standard Damage control Repair party :4 charges (t8+ Advanced repair teams 4 charges) Spotter/ fighter (t9+ loses them for Surveillance Radar 10km 30 seconds) Engine Boost (t6+) Cons of the line: Bad plating exposed above water citadels Weak Armor Leave your feedback below and also G3 and I3 didn't make the cut for the line as the best bet of getting them is as a premium that people will drain their wallets for. edit. changed some names and added indefatigable

The following is a review of HMCS Yukon, the tier VII Canadian Famous & Historical Monarch-class battleship. There's three things you need to know about Yukon before we begin. Yukon was provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes at no cost. I did not pay to get access to her. Yukon's performance may change in the future. As with all premiums added after April 1st, 2021, nerfs as well as buffs are always possible. As we saw with Hyuga, these changes can come very quickly and may sting early adopters. @Chobittsu and I are responsible for HMCS Yukon being added to the game. Yes, really. While I will try and be objective about Yukon, my opinion on this ship should not be trusted. Now more than ever, you should really (REALLY) check out some other reviews before deciding whether or not you want to add Yukon to your collection. Do not take my word alone; my bias should be obvious. Now, this is not like HMS Thunderer where they took a joke idea of mine and ran with it. We were involved with the project from day one, eighteen months ago when the need was first identified and sixteen months ago when it formally began. Quick Summary: A stock Famous & Historical Monarch-class battleship with powerful heals. She lacks the improved HE shells from the Royal Navy battleship line and she has very (very) poor range. However, she has good concealment and handling for a battleship. PROS Armed with nine 381mm guns capable of overmatching up to 26mm hull sections. Good accuracy with 1.9 sigma. Shortened fuse timer on her AP shells helps reduce over-penetrations. Very fast rudder shift time of 9.7 seconds. Good concealment, with a surface detection as low as 11.5km. Her powerful Specialized Repair Team queues up to 60% of penetration damage dealt & restores up to 40% of her health per charge. CONS Horrible citadel placement. Very soft skinned and highly vulnerable to HE spam, rocket attacks and AP overmatching. Poor anti-torpedo defence. Her main battery guns are short ranged with a reach of 15.65km Slow reload of 31.5 seconds. Bad fire arcs and slow gun traverse. Though Yukon is a British Famous & Historical Monarch-class battleship, she does not have improved HE penetration, damage and fire chance. Our country reeks of trees...! ♫ Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme It's hard to recommend Yukon to inexperienced players, which is a shame. There's a lot that's very forgiving about her. She has great heals. Her ammunition choice is very simple (use AP -- always use AP). She handles well and her concealment is good. The downside, of course, is that you have to put her in harms way in order to pull the trigger. Her (very) short range greatly hampers not only her survivability but her flexibility. If you play passively, the battle can outpace you, keeping enemies out of reach and functionally eliminating your from the match. If you play too aggressively, her soft skin and exposed citadel will get her blown up. Worse, her long reload punishes poor gunnery. Yukon doesn't offer anything new to veteran players. Her higher skill ceiling comes from using and abusing her concealment, including using islands to mask her approaches. Her good rudder shift time allows for some clever dodging and she can flirt with brawling so long as you respect her highly vulnerable citadel. If this sounds familiar, her game play largely echoes other sneaky, flanking battleships like Roma or skulking, island-bound heavy cruisers. Options The only two things to get excited about are Yukon's Specialized Repair Team and her Maple Leaf camouflage. Consumables Yukon's Damage Control Party will be identical to those found on most battleships with a 15s active period, an 80s reset timer and unlimited charges. Her Specialized Repair Teams is identical to that found on HMS Nelson; a slightly nerfed version of the same consumable found on Lion and Conqueror. It queues up to 10% of citadel damage, 60% of penetration damage that misses the citadel caused by bombs, torpedoes, rockets or shells and 100% of everything else. It heals back up to 40% of her health per charge over 20 seconds. It starts with 3 charges and has an 80 second reset timer. In her third slot, you have the choice between a Spotting Aircraft and a Catapult Fighter. The former (which you will always use) comes with 4 charges, boosting her main battery range by 20% for 100s (up to 18.78km) with a 240s reset timer. The latter (which you'll never use) launches three aircraft which orbit on station for 60s. It has three charges and a 90s reset timer. Upgrades I don't normally recommend this, but Spotting Aircraft Modification 1 has some value with HMCS Yukon given her range woes. This increases the action time of her Spotting Aircraft from 100 seconds up to 130 seconds. You may purchase this from the Armory for 17,000 though I'm not convinced it's worth the coal. If you have one already kicking around gathering dust? Go ahead and use it but don't go out of your way to buy one. Otherwise, default to Main Armaments Modification 1. In her second slot, take Damage Control System Modification 1. In her third slot, you have the choice of improving her accuracy or her gun handling. Take Aiming Systems Modification 1 for the former to decrease her horizontal dispersion by 7% and Main Battery Modification 2 for the latter to improve her gun rotation rate from 4º/s to 4.6º/s so that she can no longer out-turn her turrets. You again have a choice in her fourth slot. Damage Control System Modification 2 is optimal for reducing the duration of fire and flooding. However, if you want to play to Yukon's strengths, you can take Steering Gears Modification 1 to decrease her rudder shift time from 9.7 seconds down to 7.8 seconds. Commander Skills Dust off a boring ol' survivability build. Yukon does best with that. You've got some choice here, but it's not particularly interesting. At tier one, pick between faster shells swapping with Gun Feeder or a slight reduction to the reset timer on your Specialized Repair Team and Damage Control Party from Emergency Repair Specialist. Those are your best two options. A distant third is to shave off 24 seconds from your Spotting Aircraft consumable from Consumables Specialist. At tier two, choose between increased gun traverse speed with Grease the Gears or the still totally broken and ridiculously helpful Priority Target. The former is really helpful if you haven't taken the upgrade Main Battery Modification 2 as Yukon can (and will) out turn her turrets without at least one improvement. I will [edited] about this often in this review. For your first ten skill points, grab Basics of Survivability and then Concealment Expert. Then grab the other two tier 4 skills before finally taking Adrenaline Rush. Camouflage Yukon has access to two camouflage patterns, Type 10 and the gruesomely patriotic Maple Leaf. They are cosmetic swaps of one another and provide the usual bonuses of: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -10% to post-battle service costs. +50% to experience gains. Yukon's Type 10 Camouflage doesn't have a palette swap for the moment. She will in future updates according to Wargaming, it's just a matter of when. It's nice looking, though it's not visually striking. Our yaks are really large....! ♫ Firepower Main Battery: 3x3 381mm/45 guns in an A-B-X superfiring configuration Secondary Battery: Sixteen 133mm/50 guns in 4x2 turrets arranged in superfiring pairs fore and aft on each side of the ship straddling the two superstructures. Butt-first, a word on Yukon's critical flaw Let's start with Yukon's deal breaker. She's short ranged. How short ranged, you might ask? Take a look for yourself. Here's all of the battleships in her matchmaking spread: You knew Yukon wasn't going to be in the top 25. APRM1 is the American Artillery Plotting Room Modification 1. It increases a ship's base range by 16 and is available to American battleships from tiers V and up (Arkansas Beta gets it too). GFCSM2 is the upgrade Gun Fire Control System Modification 2 for tier IX+ ships. These upgrades are mutually exclusive. Keep scrolling. We haven't even gotten to the sub-19km ranges yet. Almost there! There she is. Just to give you an idea, if we included every single battleship in the game, not just those within her matchmaking, Yukon comes in at 118th out of 133 battleships. Even South Carolina, a tier III battleship, has better range than Yukon. Yukon has tier IV range on a tier VII hull. If there's any reason not to get this ship, this is it. It predicates all of the quirks with this vessel and it's what makes her harder to play for inexperienced players. As Chobi put it: 'To use Yukon effectively, you'll have to break social distancing rules and close to well inside the range of literally everyone else'. Activate your inner Karen and get close enough to cough on people. This has some interesting side effects, both good and bad (but mostly bad). The bad generally speak for themselves so let's focus on the hilariously good consequences of this. First, her AP shells feel far and away more punchy than they actually are. British AP shells have long been overshadowed by their HE performance. With Yukon lacking the extra kick with her HE, the former has their time to shine. Yukon's AP penetration isn't that far off from those on Gneisenau and Bismarck and they do more damage per hit. Furthermore, with her shortened fuse timer, overpenetrations are less likely -- at least so long as the fuse hit a plate sufficiently thick to arm them (64mm). Cruisers beware. This combination of short range with completely reasonable AP penetration means that Yukon's guns hurt when they hit. And being up close also means that her dispersion feels far less wonky too. Again, this is not caused by any special gimmick; it's simply a factor from having to play closer to your targets than you may otherwise be accustomed with a mid-tier battleship. The final benefit to Yukon's painfully short range is that it shapes player behaviour. You can't camp the back with this battleship; you have to be up front. You have to be tanking and/or actively kiting. And while this may have lurking lolibotes licking their chops, it has the additional effect of pushing enemy cruisers back. Yukon inadvertently forces her captains to play the objective. Imagine that. Let me be clear: Yukon isn't a good ship because she's short ranged. It's a huge flaw. All of those above benefits could be realized in any other ship simply by playing more aggressively. It's just one of those "feels" things. Yukon's AP will feel more punchy than it is. Yukon's dispersion feels less punitive even though it's completely normal. Yukon's performance feels more successful only because she encourages good positioning and manoeuvring habits. A comparison of the tier VII fifteen-inch gun AP performance (and Vanguard from tier VIII). Yukon's AP feels strong, only because she has to engage targets at such close ranges. Her shortened fuse timer also helps ensure fewer overpenetrations, provided the shells strike a sufficiently thick plate in order to activate their fuse. Yukon's other flaws There are three other gunnery drawbacks to keep in mind: #1: Yukon does not have improved Royal Navy HE shells. Famous & Historical Monarch is one of the worst HE spammers of the entire British Royal Navy line with relatively weak HE compared to other British ships. Yukon' is even worse, using the same HE shells as Hood; so she gets no 1/4 HE penetration. She has worse damage. She has worse ballistics than Monarch. She has a worse fire chance. Don't spam HE in Yukon unless you have to. Your AP shells are your primary damage dealer. #2: She has awful gun handling. Check out my gun fire arc graphic below in the Agility section. Pair this with sluggish turret traverse rates and you'll find yourself fighting with Yukon's guns as often as the enemy. I've made it no secret that I loathe poor fire angles, especially when paired with bad traverse rates so I'm going to make a bigger stink about this than it perhaps deserves. Taking at least one gun traverse improvement, be it an upgrade or commander skill, is almost a must. #3: Yukon does not have Monarch's improved reload time. Monarch, for all of her flaws, has one really good thing going for her and that's a 25 second reload. It would have been amazing to see this preserved on Yukon in some form, but that would have been a completely different ship. Instead Yukon has a 31.5 second reload time. This is bad, but it's not like... American battleship bad. She had a 33 second reload during testing at one point, to give you an idea -- that was bad. That was a miserable, terrible, horrible experience. Now just you wait, I've gone and jinxed it and Yukon will get nerfed back down to a 33 second reload. 31.5 seconds is just long enough to put a serious dent in her damage output and complicate things like gunnery (missing with a long reload hurts), switching ammo (Gun Feeder is a must if you do this on the regular), or simply trading fire with a dangerous opponent (German and American heavy cruisers, I'm looking at you). Furthermore, this all but kills her chances to be a semi-decent fire-starter. Nine 381mm guns with a slow reload means that Yukon sits on pretty modest AP totals. Without the improved British HE shells, her HE DPM sucks monkey butts and should be avoided in preference to her AP. Yukon is in the wrong half of this list for a Royal Navy battleship. Like Hood, she's not a good fire starter and you'll struggle to set more than a single perma-fire if your opponent's Damage Control Party isn't already taxed. These are the raw fire-per-minute value and do not take into account the fire resistance of a given target. Against most ships in Yukon's matchmaking, the actual chance of setting a fire will drop by about 30% to 50% depending; so pretty terrible overall, especially once you account for dispersion too. Yukon Gold Guns They're potatoes. And while quality potatoes are the basis of any good poutine, Yukon's guns do not make the grade. Her guns do not up-tier well. Her 381mm weapons cannot overmatch the 27mm hulls of tier VIII+ American and German heavy cruisers, to say nothing of the extremities of tier VIII+ battleships. In higher tiered matches, the simple act of pulling the trigger may get you killed. Yukon is stealthy as we'll cover later, but flashing her guns gives away that advantage. Yukon so often rides the edge of her concealment in order to bring her weapons in and when lit, she is often the closest, if not the easiest target for the Reds to shoot at. So not only is her 31.5 second reload slow, you're encouraged to throttle your own rate of fire for the simple sake of staying hidden and staying alive. Only pull the trigger if (a) it's not going to get you killed and (b) your AP shells will actually do something. And because you're not shooting as often, any RNGeebus shenanigans like wonky dispersion, are only going to feel more pronounced. Yay! Aren't you glad you shelled out money for this crap? So that's fun -- you know, not being able to do effective damage and all. I cannot stress enough how frustrating these guns are and how bad of an experience they create when Yukon isn't top-tier. What, you joined the battle hoping to be able to SHOOT? Yukon's too Canadian and polite to do something so unneighbourly, you big silly! I wish I was exaggerated, but Yukon's gunnery has had me in tears, it's so frustrating. I want to rate Yukon's firepower more highly (mostly because of her ability to overmatch up to 26mm hull sections), but even this out-dated meme can't save her from an overly dramatic F-tier evaluation. Not that there's anything serious going on in this graphic. VERDICT: How to ruin a ship: 101. Bad range. Bad reload. Bad gun handling. Hell, even the secondaries (which I didn't talk about) are terrible. Do you really need to read any further into this review? Durability Hit Points: 60,500 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 26mm / 16mm / 26mm / 26mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 356mm to 381mm belt Torpedo Damage Reduction: 22% This is Yukon's main selling feature. With Nelson being retired, Yukon becomes the new zombie-bote. Just when you think she's on the ropes, she regenerates a whole new version of herself. This effect is VERY disheartening to Yukon's opponents. The only way to keep her down is to either focus fire in between her healing charges or hit her citadel so that her damage queue is only 10%. Coming back from the dead is fun. It's probably the most fun thing about this ship (cuz it sure as Hell isn't about dealing damage). Yukon is the new zombie bote, joining the ranks of Nelson, Lion and Conqueror with having a Repair Party consumable that allows her to claw back from death's door. Watching one of these ships go from nearly dying to returning to fighting condition is incredibly demoralizing for Yukon's opponents. While I'm not convinced this is the healthiest of mechanics for the game, there's no arguing that it isn't strong. It's so strong in fact, it band-aids a lot of the problems with Yukon's gunnery. A correction to either Yukon's range or the rest of her protection scheme would easily push her into overpowered territory with this ability, that's how reliant this whole design is upon this one consumable. It holds the whole mess together, like a big ol' helping of Red Green's duct tape. For skilled players, this heal is especially potent when paired with the Adrenaline Rush commander skill. Choosing when (and if) to use it after taking damage gives a measure of control over Yukon's shoddy reload time. Yukon's heal contrasts with her armour and citadel protection. They're anything but good. The King George V-class are notoriously soft-skinned. Their structural armour never gets over the minimum at their tier, which is 26mm in Yukon's case. This makes her vulnerable not only to AP overmatching from larger calibre battleship shells but HE shells from even destroyer calibre weapons. Worse, her citadel protection is horribly flawed. It is artificially huge . It has a T-shape with the cross made by an additional deck over top of the magazines and machine spaces. This abuts against the hull and sits just over the water line. It's impossible to angle the ship to prevent citadel hits from guns capable of overmatching her bow or stern. The only thing keeping AP shells out of her citadel is the straight-line thickness of her belt and for that to work, her opponents have to be at ranges greater than 15km. And guess what? Your guns are going to force you to get in close so that belt of yours means nothing if you're not angling it. Yukon is similarly soft-skinned when it comes to taking torpedo damage with minimal anti-torpedo defence. Citadel hits, forever the bane of battleship healing, are doubly potent here as they neutralize the advantage of Yukon's Specialized Repair Team. She only queues up 10% of citadel damage, so the surest way to sink her quickly is through citadel and torpedo hits. Yukon trades best with HE spam and battleships with 356mm guns or smaller. Against these opponents, she can angle, she can tank, she can soak and she can heal. Naturally, when this ship is top tier, she feels like an absolute monster. Take her out of that environment and her durability sucks. If your opponents don't focus fire and if you can keep Yukon from being the most appealing target, this ship has some very long legs when it comes to survivability. This is the catch, of course. This is the challenge with playing the ship: How to keep from becoming a target when you need to put yourself in harm's way just to use her weapons? I mean, the obvious solution is just not to use her weapons at all and play Yukon as Wargaming intended: a soft-skinned piñata for the Reds to beat up. If you truly insist on fighting back, you'll have to make use of every trick at your disposal to keep her alive. Use islands. Use and abuse her advantages in Agility and Vision Control. Wait for your opponents to get bored and shoot someone else. Yukon doesn't tank so much as bleed strategically. Whatever the case, so long as you survive, you can all but guarantee to win a Dreadnought medal. Yukon inherits a similar armour layout to King George V, including having no structural armour thicker than 26mm. She is highly vulnerable to HE spam from even destroyer calibre weapons, to say nothing of overmatching AP shells. Yukon doesn't tank damage so much as soak it up and keep going despite all of the hurt. She can take a lot of abuse, sure, but don't think for a second you can easily (or safely) repulse incoming fire. This ship gives away citadel hits and torpedoes (even wimpy ones dropped by Ise) are her bane. VERDICT: This ship isn't one for farming potential damage missions -- she doesn't resist damage, she soaks it. Don't kid yourself into thinking she'll resist incoming fire so much as heal through it. Agility Top Speed: 28 knots Turning Radius: 790 meters Rudder Shift Time: 9.7 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 4.1º/s at 20.8kts Main Battery Traverse Rate: 4.0º/s (uh-oh) Yukon dittos King George V and Duke of York's turning radius and rate of turn (#10 on this list). Rudder Shift TIme King George V: 15 seconds. Famous & Historical Monarch: Also 15 seconds Duke of York: 17.5 seconds Yukon: 9.7 seconds Yukon's short rudder shift time defines this ship's agility. The rest of it is pedestrian. She's not slow, but she's not fast. Her turning circle radius isn't terrible but it's not good either. She has no quirks of energy preservation so the combination of her modest top speed with a modest turning radius means that her rate of turn is predictably meh at 4.1º/s. Again, not awful but certainly nothing worth celebrating. But her rudder shift time...! Her glorious rudder shift time! It's A M A Z I N G ! (for a battleship) Yukon starts turning very quickly. Her movements are very precise, not at all the clumsy, sloppy wallowing that other battleships fumble through. This precise little princess tip-toes and twirls the moment you ask it of her. Granted, she doesn't put a lot of gusto into her spin, but still. Yukon can Just Dodge™, which is rather impressive for a portly battleship. This is life saving, not only for dancing to torpedo beats but also for juking incoming, long range fire. Being that Yukon is so often the closest visible target, having this extra level of wiggle is a godsend. It's so good it almost (ALMOST) makes me want to take Steering Gears Modification 1 instead of Damage Control Modification 1 just to make it even better. I cannot overstate how pleasant Yukon's handling is. It's important to appreciate that this only means she starts turning quickly. She can begin one turn, arrest it and go the other way much faster than contemporary battleships. Once she's locked into a turn, Yukon does not spin quickly. Thus you're not going to foil strike groups from aircraft carriers by spinning in place, for example. You might be able to throw off their aim by waiting for them to commit to an attack run and THEN throwing your rudder hard over. This isn't going to guarantee you take no hits, it just might mean you take fewer. Similarly, for this to work against gunfire, it needs to be done against opponents pretty far off to give Yukon enough time to get out of the path of shells. Would that she had better gun fire angles and didn't out-turn her turrets. It's this crap -- this crap right here -- that will get you killed more often than anything else. Yukon baits you into touching her rudder (her awesome, super-nice, candy-coated rudder) in order to unmask her guns. This invariably makes you flash a broadside and then you take the big damages you can't come back from. Stock up on either the Grease the Gears commander skill or Main Battery Modification 2 (or both) to help prevent Yukon-broadsiding. Yukon has slightly improved fire arcs over the King George V-class battleships, but she still has to expose a lot of broadside to fire all nine guns. VERDICT: Surprisingly pleasant ship handling. Unsurprisingly horrid gun handling. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 3 + 1 explosions for 1,330 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.2km. Long Ranged (up to 5.2km): 84dps at 75% accuracy (63dps) Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 311.5dps at 75% accuracy (234dps) Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 175dps at 70% accuracy (123dps) Yukon's anti-aircraft firepower is surprisingly decent for a "stock" ship. Yukon is using Famous & Historical Monarch's A-Hull with some modifications but her AA firepower is unchanged. Stock hulls are notorious for having bad AA suites so I was expecting Yukon's defences here to be akin to that of a typical IJN battleship but this isn't the case. The difference between Monarch's A and B hulls is largely focused around increasing the range of her medium-calibre guns from 2.5km to 3.5km. There's only a modest uptick to the DPS to her overall damage output. Thus, while Yukon's sustained AA DPS and flak values are pretty good for a tier VII battleship. There's just a slight step down in efficacy from Duke of York's and those are respectable, at least as far as the average goes. In play testing, Yukon's certainly not capable of driving off a tier VIII aircraft carrier's attacks but she can bloody their nose a bit. Something like Enterprise or Kaga will soak up those casualties and keep coming back over and over but the tier VI carriers like Ranger or Ryujo won't be as comfortable after a wave or two. I even managed to skunk a Weser, shooting down all of his dive bombers consistently before their drops. So... yeah. Not great, but relative to the other tier VII battleships? Yukon's AA is decent. Yukon ends up with marginally better AA power than King George V owing to having more of her DPS focused in her 2.5km pom-poms than her 2.0km Oerlikons. Overall, her AA power is very much focused upon personal defence rather than lending support to allies. VERDICT: Surprisingly not as bad as it could have been. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 13.18km / 11.51km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 9.06km / 8.15km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 12.17km Maximum Firing Range: Between 15.65 and 18.78km when using her Spotter Aircraft You'll have to click to expand this list if you want to see the values. The forums does not let me show graphics in any resolution higher than 800p. Or you could just squint at the red box and appreciate that Yukon has the 4th best concealment within her Matchmaking, just behind Viribus Unitis, Famous & Historical Monarch and Conte di Cavour. Yukon is one of the stealthiest battleships within her matchmaking spread. She has comparable concealment to a Myoko-class cruiser which, while impressive for a chungus, it isn't very competitive in the grand scheme of things. Still, her concealment is workable. For a ship with zombie healing powers, workable is all that's really needed. Her game play mirrors that of a heavy cruiser in this respect but with the twist that you're able to absorb a lot more fire than any cruiser ever could. Yukon must keep an an eye on which ships can spot her when she fires her guns. Once she is spotted, she doesn't need to hide right away; at least until the enemy starts firing back. Once that begins, she needs to drop back into concealment. The idea is to strategically break contact whenever things get too hot, give time for Yukon's zombie-healing powers to recover any lost health and then re-engage on more favourable terms. This largely involves rotating Yukon from the front lines to a secondary line while she heals and then pushing back out onto the front when she's good to go. The challenge in playing Yukon has less to do with getting (and keeping) her guns in range than it does with surviving whenever she is lit. The short range of Yukon's main battery guns makes it very likely that she will be one (if not the) closest spotted ships for the enemy team to shoot at. Knowing when and how to drop contact when things get spicy is the key to Yukon's success. This is why I subscribe so heavily to the Priority Target skill for Yukon. It lets you know when it's safe to keep cycling her guns and when it's probably time for you to go silent and drop back, letting her good surface detection conceal her once more. This has more use than the more reactionary Incoming Fire Alert, allowing you to preempt enemy gunnery, taking evasive action with her excellent rudder shift time. This won't prevent you from taking damage, keep in mind, it will simply limit the amount taken and hopefully keep you alive a little longer. Shadowing lolibotes and orbiting aircraft are Yukon's bane as they limit her ability to drop back into stealth. If there's still a significant lineup of enemy ships taking pot-shots at you, there's not much to be done. Use islands if you can, but if that doesn't work, just keep falling back. Yukon's goal is to keep the rate at which she's being damaged below that of her healing potential. She can take a lot of abuse, but you need to pump the brakes when this damage spikes in order to give your heals time to recover. Like her agility, Yukon's concealment is just good enough to give you the tools needed to facilitate but not guarantee this improved survival. VERDICT: Great for a battleship. Not quite good enough to be a reliable asset but certainly a weapon in Yukon's survivability arsenal. Yukon-Ho! Let's talk about the project itself and Chobi's and my involvement with adding HMCS Yukon to the game. I'll let Chobi take first chair. There's about to be a very stark whiplash in tone and for that, i offer a sincere Canadian apology. Chobi's Chibi-Chair Bonjour, mes amis. Plenty of you already know me, but for those who don't, I'm Chobittsu. Normally I just support Mousey by providing her with cute art and some minor little visual tweaks to her reviews like turning a spread of torpedoes into bunnies wearing snorkels... but this is a rather unique tale, one that requires us both to tell. Once upon a time in the far off land of Febuary 2020 Mousey, and I were approached by someone at the Wargaming North American office (name withheld deliberately, do not ask) and they offered us a chance that even my grumpy ol' cynical bones couldn't pass up... the chance to design a Canadian ship for the game [ There's some clarification about this in my section below. It's marked with bold text and a (1). If you have any questions about this, please ask us to explain. Do not assume. - Mouse ] . The only problem was we had a time budget; it had to be ready for Canada Day 2020. This ruled out modelling a ship from scratch, it takes many months of round-the-clock work to build a ship model, texture it, code everything related to it... there just wasn't time. Our only option was a clone with only tiny cosmetic changes. Several ideas were pitched around, some good, some silly, some that might even still be used. The initial proposal of one of the Royal Canadian Navy's (RCN) historical cruisers was dashed when it was noted that they had vastly different models than the in-game Fiji, there was no time to rip off a whole turret and slap an HMCS Quebec bumper sticker on it... but in mid-march we'd settled on our pick; a fictional Canadian Monarch clone. Right from the start we were stoked and immediately set to work, Mousey with most of the heavy lifting on balance and features while I tackled the visuals, chiefly the ship's camouflages. The initial project name we started with was HMCS Acadia; improved accuracy but with weaker HE shells and a reduced heal, but the added quirk of an Italian Exhaust Smoke. A glass cannon, as Mouse put it, something that could appear, take a big bite outta your stern and then try to slip away under a veil of smoke. But after a while under this name, we traded it out as Mousey wanted to save "Acadia" for the Queen Elizabeth variant that was actually proposed to parliament in the interwar period, and so by mid-2020, we'd settled on a new name; "HMCS Nunavik", as a tribute to the much under-loved peoples of the northern reaches of Canada. And with this name, we wouldn't step on anyone's toes for other historical ships as none were ever named for this northern Quebec region. We spent the next months fiddling with the details and pushing the date back a full year to make sure we had all the time we needed to develop a proper ship (in hindsight, maybe could have pursued the HMCS Quebec or Ontario after all, c'est la vie). All the while I bashed together a pair of camos for the ship, a crest, some flags and plenty of fun stuff in between. The original special camo was to make the ship look like an enormous war canoe of the Haida tribe (because most Inuit canoes are frankly rather plain)... and that was goin' great... until USS Anchorage was released with almost exactly the sort of special camo that I'd been developing... like, straight up uncanny resemblance. So that was a month and a half down the drain for me! But hey, at least I had the standard camo done; an up-scaled version of HMCS Sackville's camo and tribute to our use of Flower-class corvettes, small punchy escort ships and sub-chasers that would normally be too small to appear in WoWS. Put a pin in this part, we'll come back to it. Fast-forward now to the start of 2021. It's been a few months since we started this adventure, and things are going well. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the worlds on fire with Spanish Flu Too: Electric Boogaloo and we're hit with the first punch in the gut from the devs; They've vetoed the name "Nunavik" as their naval historians felt the region was too small to warrant a ship being named for it. Now, I'm not an expert on these matters, but 443,685km² is pretty damn far from small. They instead chose to call the ship "HMCS Yukon", after a Canadian territory of about 482,443 km²... but lets just ignore that battleships have been named for places smaller than the difference between these two regions... And the fact that we had a Mackenzie-class HMCS Yukon in 1963... With this new name, I had to throw out much of the work I'd already done. Name plates, crests, commemorative flags... back to square one. The only upside with this ship's new name was that I very quickly had ideas for where I could take the motifs: Huskys, Fireweed and Gold. I quickly had a new flag featuring the provincial flower of the Yukon; a husky wreathed in fireweed (a pink but rather poisonous boreal flower) on a background of golden yellow. The crest; a heraldic husky prancing over snow-capped mountains and blue skies with a band of gold. The camos? That same Sackville blue and white from the Nunavik I'd brushed up (don't take that pin outta this just yet, it'll come back again a few times), with the big fancy camo you'd get from the special premium edition of the ship being... the exact same camo again~! But this time with veins of gold cracked through the structure of the ship. Not any fancy geometry mind you, just clever bumpmaps and reflective texturing to make the ship appear as though it had bean carved from the Klondike itself. Add onto that the name plaque of the ship, similar in design to the one adorning HMCS Haida, a piece of history I've personally visited several times. And lastly, to top it all off, a large steel maple leaf afixed to her aft funnel, painted a vibrant green; a tradition our navy still follows to this day, though with a more crimson hue. My work was done, there wasn't anything left to do but wait and muse about what I could work on next for Wargaming, perhaps another ship when this one proved to be a resounding success~! Months pass while I wait to see the results, I was vibrating with excitement so much that I nearly phased between the molecules of my chair and ended up in the basement. Then the big day arrives, the first hinting of the ship being released! It was a rocky road but we'd done it! Our very own ship! The community gets hyped, there's naturally some who bemoan that it's non-historical, and I feel for those players, I too would have loved to have seen a built-in-steel ship instead, but with what we had to work with, I felt we'd accomplished something truly special, something unique. ... and then Wargaming arrived. With each successive change-log, the ship lost another element that made it worth looking into. The smile faded from our faces as the "fun-tax" was applied. But this was just the beginning... Remember that Sackville camo I designed? A tribute to the literal hundreds of corvettes that saw service around the world with only one remaining today as a museum? Well it's time to go back to that pinned note from earlier, spit on it, throw it in the shredder, and dump what's left into Halifax Harbour for the gulls to peck at. While I fully and completely admit that the standard Type-10 camo Wargaming designed for the ship is gorgeous, they entirely missed the point of the one I'd designed. And that gold vein version? Nope. Instead we got another post-1965 Canadian flag camo like what Haida has. A safe, boring choice... The ship's brass and wood nameplate was replaced with a stamp down on the stern... The crest? Well this is the part I turned out to be entirely wrong about, as our navy reuses crests when ships share the same name, but with the Mackenzie-class HMCS Yukon being made first I was a lil bit blind to that footnote, kinda glad that Wargaming caught it and I learned something new too. But back to being grumpy; Remember that husky flag? It's the only part I can say with confidence that you can see my involvement in. The finished product? No no, it looks nothing like the golden banner from before. This one is blue, no fireweed, and with the husky silhouetted on a yellow circle. (I'll hazard a guess that it's supposed to be the moon, which would then make it a wolf... not a husky.) They got the maple leaf on the funnel though, but since that was a historical element on our ships anyway I can't even claim credit for that... I literally have had more content added to the game as a result of being one of the finalists for the community patch design contest, at least my mermaid arrived with only a few minor changes. This was, in my opinion, a year of work wasted. Thankfully it didn't consume much of my time, but this was not the vision that I set out to pursue. As for Mouse's work, she can describe it better than I ever could. I'm just the visuals and "Can I secondary-build it?" guy... but this project, I had hoped, would lead to a whole series of fictional role-filler ships that would plug up gaps normally present in the Commonwealth tree. Once the Yukon's camos were done, I also started work on a proposal for a Maori camo once HMNZS Achilles finally appears on the development slipways, as well as additional fictional ships I'd love to help design for nations without large capital ships like fleet carriers or battleships... but this whole experience has left a terrible taste in my mouth... And while (our immediate contact within the company) was more than helpful in getting this project off the ground, I can't help but feel that everyone after them in the chain of development simply said "Y'huh, that's nice, here's what we're gonna do instead". So while Yukon got started as a result of the work Mouse and I did... this is anything but our ship. I can only apologize profusely to the other thirty eight million Canadians on this planet for this incredibly flaccid result, a travesty of poor representation and mediocre game-play. I've always been critical of Wargaming's decisions, always looked over them with a fine-toothed comb, always wanted to make sure that the content we get was the best it could be. And for the first time, I had the chance to actually truly shape some content... but in the end, it was an illusion. The hope I'd built for over a year, all the "maybe this time they won't disappoint me"s that I'd stashed away for winter... well, it's late spring now, just about summer... but I have yet to see the fields of pink boreal flowers bloom and bring life to this barren tundra... I genuinely hope it can be fixed, that the ship will grow into the hype we originally had for it, but it's out of my hands. All there is left for me is to eat my soup and watch the show unfold. Chobi even went so far as to play with Azur Lane designs. Mouse's Minutes Chobi and I are clearly entitled idiots for thinking anything good would come of this. Somehow, Wargaming didn't know we were involved. Chobi and I came into this project with high hopes. Wargaming was unaware where all of the ideas were coming from and didn't pay our dreams much heed. The decision to step over Chobi's and my submissions had nothing to do with malice and everything to do with ignorance; while our contact knew who we were, this wasn't important further up the chain. It seems our contributions were perceived as suggestions from random Canadian players. Yet somehow these suggestions were sufficient enough to get the Yukon project off the ground in the first place? I don't quite understand it either. Famous & Historical Monarch's a bad ship, there's no two ways about it. The only way to make a successful premium out of it, especially for a non-existent (and possibly dead-end) tech-tree like the British Commonwealth, is to have solid appeal. It needs to look good. It needs to feel good. You're sure as Hell not going to get that appeal based on the parent ship's reputation. If you can't hit either of those first two points, make it disgustingly overpowered. I would not have suggested Monarch if I had known how little influence my designs would have on the project. While I did not expect any proposed game play element to survive development fully intact, the spirit of it certainly could. I wanted a glass-cannon Monarch at tier VII, in the spirit of what Ashitaka is to Amagi. Wargaming went the complete opposite direction, giving us a damage-sponge. This is where I clarify that (1) footnote above in Chobi's section. Like Chobittsu, based upon my conversations with Wargaming North America, I thought that we were being asked to design the ship. According to Wargaming we were not asked to design the ship (1) (and this was only clarified now). Apparently, we were just to be reached out to if they needed us.... despite needing us right from the word go. No one at Wargaming thought to tell us this for well over a year. They took our design submissions. They took Chobi's art. They took our discussion and built the ship we have now. They took sixteen months of time, energy and enthusiasm from us. And all we knew was the devs liked our ideas and were moving forward with the Monarch premium. We had to figure out for ourselves how much or how little Wargaming was going to use because they weren't going to tell us. It turns out they used almost nothing. And we didn't figure this out fully until May 25th of 2021 when her Type 10 camo was finally datamined and the last element that could have been something Chobi and I made didn't materialize. For sixteen months, they have unwittingly dragged us along. Again, I must stress, this was not out of malice but out of ignorance; almost every WG employee I have spoken to since seems genuinely surprised I had anything to do with Yukon. My feelings really don't care about that, though. Wargaming had given me hope. They could have known if they bothered to look and listen to the feedback I was giving. Once Yukon was in testing, I was obviously upset. I was making noise about it. Wargaming still hadn't put two and two together. No one had reached out to us. No one had clarified our position or the worth of our submissions. "You were not asked to design a ship (1)" is only being mentioned after the fact. Like this week. Had they told us this back in February of 2020, it wouldn't have mattered. Expectations would have been set. Chobi's and my level of investment would have been set appropriately. But we weren't told. And the project went forward. Here's the final result. A crappy Monarch-clone and the players responsible disillusioned. This is where it gets fun. You're not reading the first draft of this review. You should really find some other reviews of Yukon and here's why: Being the nice Canadian I am, I went out of my way to warn Wargaming that Chobi and I were going to voice our upset about our contributions being ignored about having been left in the dark for so long. I submitted a preview of this article to them and they finally reached out: They didn't like our first draft. We apparently had some facts wrong (our bad!). They asked that I make sure that this review is clear about the following: They did not ask us to design a ship. They took our suggestions and feedback but they designed and made Yukon, not us (1). They said we should feel proud that some of our design elements made it into the final product. Yeah, what elements exactly? There's so very little in this ship that's actually ours. Not her name. Not her feel. Not her look. They even butchered poor Chobi's husky flag and turned it into a bloody wolf. Yukon is in the game. She's a Monarch premium. Should I feel happy about that? Should I be happy that I worked hard and waited over a year for a promised vessel that bares no resemblance to the project I wanted? Should I be happy they want to celebrate our involvement despite not even being aware of it until I bloody-well pointed it out? I don't feel happy. Crazy, I know. They talk like players getting a ship into the game is new and unprecedented. They're forgetting who they're bloody talking to and the abomination known as HMS Thunderer. They're forgetting that Chobi has literal art-assets already in the game between a patch and another flag. They talk down to us like we should be sparkly-eyed and enthusiastic for this humiliation. They've pushed me even further away from this ship over the last couple of weeks and I did not think that possible. I'm supposed to be on break and now they're jeopardizing me ever coming back after this crap. I feel disrespected, hopeless and sad. Please do me a favour: I know Chobi's all for pitchforks, tar and feathering but I'm not. If how Chobi and I were treated bothers you, speak with your wallet, not with drama and sensationalism. I won't think less of you if you ignore all of this and want Yukon anyway. All I ask is that things be kept civil. The HMCS Sackville camouflage included with our proposal for HMCS Nunavik. This included the green maple leaf upon her rear funnel, ship badge and name plate. We couldn't get you a historical Canadian ship so we thought we'd at least dress her up in the colours of one of our honoured vessels that did a lot of heavy lifting. Final Evaluation I'm not sure I can trust myself to be objective about this ship's performance given my history with her, but here goes. I don't think Yukon is terrible, but let's not kid ourselves: she's saved by her mega-heal. Her 15.7km range sucks. Her 31.5 second reload also sucks. Her gun handling and fire arcs suck. Her armour sucks. Her citadel layout sucks. Having 381mm guns at tier VII is great, but using them is a struggle. It's heart breaking when they misbehave. Yukon's heal holds everything together but even that cannot be relied upon. I think if it weren't for her comfortable rudder shift time, I'd genuinely hate this ship. Scratch that, I do hate this ship. I'm just capable of seeing some elements of redemption. That won't save her from a GARBAGE Angry Youtuber rating, however. Famous & Historical Monarch is a bad tier VIII battleship. Yukon is a bad tier VII battleship but she has a good heal. Yukon is ostensibly the new HMS Nelson. Yukon has better survivability from the OG zombiebote, but this comes at the expense of her firepower. It's not an even trade, however. There's no compensating for the loss of (a) 406mm AP shell overmatching (b) Royal Navy HE spam, (c) a 30 second reload and (d) not-horrible gun range. In exchange, Yukon gets a "better"hull design than Nelson's (though it's certainly not good), with the Canadian battleship being faster, more agile and downright sneaky. I think it's Yukon's 28 knot top speed which Nelson-fans will appreciate most. That's the flexibility Nelson lacked. Still, it's hard not to miss those sixteen-inch guns and that rage-inducing HE, to say nothing of Nelson's comfortable (yet modest) 18.2km range. Yukon has none of Nelson's reliability when it comes to dealing damage. The new Canadian-bote's performance is far more volatile, especially when she isn't top tier. Sometimes you like unto a God of War, long of neck, black, white and brown of plumage and full of hiss. At others, you're just a poor beaver, frantically just trying to plug leaks. If you're someone who prides themselves on consistency, this isn't your chariot of choice. Yukon upsets me. She is not the ship Chobi and I proposed. There's nothing about the ship that's ours; not her name, not her game play, not even her look. What should have been an easy PR win for Wargaming is anything but. The two Canucks responsible for this Canada Day ship feel alienated and are actively bad-mouthing the experience. Like, seriously, I would have gushed about this ship had we felt our contributions mattered. It's silly, but had Wargaming just provided Yukon with her Sackville-camo and the whole tone of this article would be different. I'm trying to like this ship. I really am. I've put in dozens upon dozens of games since she was finalized hoping to get past my own bias but my experiences out of game regarding her are insultingly-bad. I honestly hope that those players who do pick her up find her enjoyable. It would be wonderful to hear that I'm completely off-base and that Wargaming has served up a winner in the eyes of the community. I think there would be some kind of catharsis to hear that Yukon ends up being horribly overpowered in Ranked Battles, or beloved by Newfoundlanders or something like that. I just don't see it. I'm not capable of seeing it.

I had previously posted this before some months ago but im now going to revisit it again ... to make some changes to it to suggest they add a british dd split with a more torpedo focus and the line features guns of a smaller caliber and or Number than the current line that reloads faster ,smaller hitpoint pool and lower stealth with the advantages of longer ranged hydro albiet shorter duration and quicker torpedo reload and engine boost Tier 6 : Inglefield (swaps places with icarus in the main line who is the start of the new line) While not actually part of the line it replaces Icarus in the main line who gets moved to the new line . Specs: Hitpoints: stock: 10,400 upgraded:12,800 Main Battery 120 mm/45 QF Mk IX 5 х 1 pcs. Rate of Fire 11 shots/min. Reload Time 5.3 sec. Rotation Speed10 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time18 sec. Firing Range10.55 km. Maximum Dispersion102 m. HE Shell120 mm HE Maximum HE Shell Damage1,700 Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell8 % Initial HE Shell Velocity808 m./s. HE Shell Weight22.68 kg. AP Shell120 mm AP Maximum AP Shell Damage2,100 Initial AP Shell Velocity808 m./s. AP Shell Weight22.68 kg. Same perfomance as Icarus but the reload is slower to compensate for having one more barrel Torpedoes 533 mm QR Mk II2 х 4 pcs. Rate of Fire0.63 shots/min. Reload Time 95 sec. Rotation Speed 25 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time 7.2 sec. Torpedo533 mm Mk V Maximum Damage 11,967 Torpedo Speed 59 knot Torpedo Range 6 km same as icarus but for balance reasons when upgrading to the upgraded torpedoes it only changes the range AA 12.7 mm Mk III 2 х 4 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second 4.2 . . . Firing Range 1.2 km Less than Icarus as it trades the Oerlikons for and extra gun Maneuverability Maximum Speed 36 knot Turning Circle Radius 560 m. Rudder Shift Time 4.2 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 6.9 km. Air Detectability Range 2.84 km. She's slightly longer than Icarus at 330ft so she compensates with a higher detection radius and turning circle and slightly faster speed Tier 7 : Battleaxe From Icarus we are greeted by Battleaxe who lets you down on speed and is overall an improvement in the gun area Basically she's a black swan with torpedoes Hitpoints: Stock:12,300 Upgraded: 13,100 note: the stock hull has 4 guns in two turrets and two squid launchers in place of B turret and the b hull gains the extra turret but loses a squid and the remaining one gets relocated aft Main Battery 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 3х 2 pcs. Firing Range 10.7 km. Rate of Fire20 shots/min. Reload Time 4 sec. HE Shell102 mm HE 35 lb Maximum HE Shell Damage 1,500 Initial HE Shell Velocity 811 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell 6 % uses Black Swan's old Ap shell with the same dmg all the turrets are 360 degrees unlike jervis who one has a 360 degree rear turret Torpedo Tubes 533 mm PR Mk II 2 х 5 pcs. Rate of Fire 0.5 shots/min. Reload Time120 sec. Rotation Speed25 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time7.2 sec. Torpedo533 mm Mk VII Maximum Damage15,733 Torpedo Speed 59 knot Torpedo Range 8.02 km. Gets 1km more range than Jervis to help differentiate the two a bit more AA Defense 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 3 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second 37.6 . . . Firing Range5.01 km 40 mm Bofors mark X in a STAAG mk 2 mount 2 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second 26.8 . . . Firing Range 3.51 km. 40 mm Bofors Boffin2 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second 17.4 . . . Firing Range 3.51 km same aa as jutland Maneuverability Maximum Speed 31 knot Turning Circle Radius 590 m. Rudder Shift Time 5.9 sec. historically a sluggish ship so its sluggish again Concealment Surface Detectability Range 7.1 km. Air Detectability Range 3 km despite being slightly longer and wider than Jervis it gets .2 km more detection to survive at the tier with the slow speed Tier 8 : Gurhka the odd ball of the line in a sense as it has the most gun barrels technically in both lines Hitpoints: Stock:12,900 Upgraded: 15,800 Main Battery 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 4х 2 pcs. Firing Range 11.5 km. Rate of Fire 20 shots/min. Reload Time 3 sec. HE Shell102 mm HE 35 lb Maximum HE Shell Damage 1,500 Initial HE Shell Velocity 811 m./s. Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell 6 % uses Black Swan's old Ap shell with the same dmg When Broadside she has four Turrets but most of the time can only use three due to bad firing arcs on the rear turrets the turrets are all 360 degrees for turning Torpedoes 533 mm QR Mk IV2 х 4 pcs. Rate of Fire0.57 shots/min. Reload Time126 sec. Rotation Speed25 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time7.2 sec. Torpedo533 mm Mk IX Maximum Damage15,433 Torpedo Speed61 knot Torpedo Range8.01 km. AA 102 mm/45 QF Mk XIX 4 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second 37.6 . . . Firing Range5.01 km 40 mm/39 QF Mk VII1 х 4 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second12.9 . . . Firing Range2.49 km. 12.7 mm Mk III2 х 4 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second4.2 . . . Firing Range1.2 km. slight downgrade in aa Maneuverability Maximum Speed 36 knot Turning Circle Radius590 m. Rudder Shift Time 5.3 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 7.1 km. Air Detectability Range 3.1 km. Same odd ball of the line type as lightning but with one more barrel with higher reload and less pen with slightly more detect and less health to nerf it Tier 9 : Savage The gun count goes down significantly compared to the tier before like the jump from lightning to jutland Hitpoints: Stock: 14 ,700 Upgraded: 15,200 unlike the other dds in the line her hp was done using full load displacement for the stock hull as the standard displacement is too light for the tier and the upgraded one is the same calculation using short tons and buffed 200 hp Main Battery 113 mm/45 Mk IV 1 х 2 / 1 х 2 pcs. Rate of Fire 15 shots/min. Reload Time 3.5 sec. Rotation Speed20 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time9 sec. Firing Range11.37 km. Maximum Dispersion100 m. HE Shell113 mm HE 5crh Maximum HE Shell Damage1,700 Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell8 % Initial HE Shell Velocity746 m./s. HE Shell Weight24.95 kg. AP Shell113 mm SAP 55 lb Maximum AP Shell Damage2,100 Initial AP Shell Velocity746 m./s. AP Shell Weight25 kg gets Jutland's original reload to compensate for having fewer guns at the same tier which when maxed out has a similar reload to daring's Stock Reload but with worse aiming due to two of the guns being in single turrets of which one does not go 360 degrees and although ahistorical to the ship b hull gives it another double mount in exchange for the two single mounts Torpedoes 533 mm PR Mk II 2 х 4 pcs. Rate of Fire0.45 shots/min. Reload Time 106 sec. Rotation Speed25 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time7.2 sec. Torpedo533 mm Mk IX** Maximum Damage15,533 Torpedo Speed62 knot Torpedo Range9.99 km AA 113 mm/45 Mk IV 1 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second29.8 . . . Firing Range5.01 km 20 mm Oerlikon Mk IV 5 x 2/ 2 х 1 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second14.4 . . . Firing Range 3.01 Maneuverability Maximum Speed 36 knot Turning Circle Radius 590 m. Rudder Shift Time 5.3 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 7.0 km. Air Detectability Range 2.9 km. Basically a Kagero and yugumo killer but savage will have trouble fighting off other dds due to the low hp Tier 10 : Gael The only paper ship in the line , it was to be an improved weapon class but its more of an improved savage its a secretive design and these are the only pictures I could find but if it was built it'd look similar to daring the armament specs are from wikipedia Hitpoints: 16,000 this puts her as the smallest high tier dd in terms of hitpoints and in terms of displacement she is the smallest by far being only 2780 short tons which was used to calculate her hp then rounded up Main Battery 113 mm/45 RP 41 Mk VI 2 х 2 pcs. Rate of Fire 21.43 shots/min. Reload Time 2.5 sec. Rotation Speed25 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time7.2 sec. Firing Range12.78 km. Maximum Dispersion110 m. HE Shell113 mm HE 5crh Maximum HE Shell Damage1,700 Chance of Fire on Target Caused by HE Shell8 % Initial HE Shell Velocity746 m./s. HE Shell Weight24.95 kg. AP Shell113 mm SAP 55 lb Maximum AP Shell Damage2,100 Initial AP Shell Velocity746 m./s. AP Shell Weight25 kg. gets vampire 2's reload to compensate for the one less turret compared to daring and both go 360 degrees Torpedoes 533 mm PR Mk II2 х 5 pcs. Reload Time105 sec. Rotation Speed25 deg./sec. 180 Degree Turn Time7.2 sec. Torpedo533 mm Mk IXM Maximum Damage16,767 Torpedo Speed62 knot Torpedo Range9.99 km AA113 mm/45 RP 41 Mk VI 2 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second53.4 . . . Firing Range5.01 km. 40 mm Bofors Mk V1 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second12.3 . . . Firing Range3.51 km. 40 mm STAAG2 х 2 pcs. . . . Average Damage per Second26.8 . . . Firing Range3.51 km Maneuverability Maximum Speed 33 knot Turning Circle Radius 560 m. Rudder Shift Time 4.3 sec. Concealment Surface Detectability Range 7.0 km. Air Detectability Range 3.2 km. will struggle at tier ten with faster ships like kleber but will have a low enough detect to avoid them Consumables Short burst smoke generator Quick Hydroacoustic search 50s 3km torp detect 5km ship detect 6 charges Advanced Repair teams (tier9-10) 3 charges Engine Boost : 8% bonus 120 sec cooldown and duration same as premium dds ASW inglefield has the same saw performance as icarus same can be said for gurkha whose is the same as lightning but savage unlike jutland will put out 16 depth charges instead of 12 and like druid who has a squid launcher also battleaxe will put out the same amount of squids but gael will have double the amount of squids dropped at two sets of 18 instead comment your thoughts below I think they'd work but are very fragile I did not add any wartime emergency dds other than savage as I found her to be the most unique and with the most potential firepower and the other classes are quite lacking in firepower but they could be possible low tier premiums

The following is a review of Mysore, the tier VI British Commonwealth cruiser. This ship was provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes at no cost to myself. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.10.1. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. Mysore is a curious ship. She competes directly with not only HMAS Perth, the other tier VI British Commonwealth light cruiser but also Huanghe, the Pan Asian tier VI light cruiser. All three ships are of British design and incorporate, to varying degrees, elements of the British tech tree light cruiser game play while adding on a Crawling Smoke Generator. Mysore keeps to the "AP only" element of British gunnery, for example, while Perth and Huanghe more closely match the British energy retention. Throughout this review, I'll be touching base back to how Mysore matches up against these other two premiums while using Leander, the tier VI British tech-tree light cruiser as a baseline measurement. Quick Summary: A slow-firing, nine-gun armed British light cruiser with excellent handling and agility and a Crawling Smoke Generator. She has no torpedoes or HE shells, using only modified AP rounds. PROS Improved auto-ricochet angles on her AP rounds AP shells have shortened fuses with improved sensitivity to limit over-penetrations Excellent acceleration and agility Stealthy Has a Repair Party Has a Crawling Smoke Generator CONS Short range Slow reload on her main battery, greatly reducing her DPM No access to HE shells or torpedoes Struggles to damage severely angled targets Short fuses makes it difficult to land hits on internal citadel spaces No access to Defensive AA Fire. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / CASUAL / Challenging / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Mysore looks new-player friendly on the surface -- sneak around, park in smoke, apply pew-pews. Her fragility and short-range make this risky though. It's not the firing in smoke that presents any kind of challenge; it's surviving in between those smoke clouds which is difficult. There are other challenges too, but they're relatively minor compared to managing her consumable use properly. It's her low damage output which limits her performance in the hands of an expert, however. Her inability to deal large alpha strikes or even output damage reliably holds back her carry potential. Options Consumables Mysore's Damage Control Party is standard for a cruiser with a 5 second active period, a 60 second reset timer and unlimited charges. She has a standard Repair Party. It heals back up to 14% of her starting health over 28 seconds. It queues up 10% of citadel damage, 50% of shell, bomb, rocket or torpedo penetration damage and 100% of everything else. Her Hydroacoustic Search is also standard for a tier VI cruiser. Active for 100 seconds and with a 120 second reset timer, it comes with three charges to start. It detects ships at 4km and torpedoes at 3km. Finally, she uses a Crawling Smoke Generator. It belches out smoke continuously for 90 seconds with each cloud only lasting 10 seconds. It starts with three charges and has a 160 second reset timer. Upgrades Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. The special upgrade Hydroacoustic Search Modification 1 is the best choice in slot two if you can afford it. It costs 17,000 from the Armory. If you cannot afford that, default to Engine Room Protection. Also for 17,000 (and best in slot) is the Smoke Generator Modification 1 special upgrade. If you can't afford that, default to Aiming System Modification 1. And finally, take Steering Gears Modification 1 in slot four. Captain Skills For testing, this was the build I settled upon for Mysore. I started with Last Stand. Though ships can still crawl when their engines are knocked out and still turn (kinda) with their rudders damaged, this gives a bit more speed and agility which is life for a cruiser under fire. Priority Target is too good of a skill to pass up at tier 2 and was my go-to choice there. I grabbed Superintendent at tier 3 as my first pick for more smokes and heals. And finally Concealment Expert just makes the most sense at tier 4. That doesn't leave a whole lot of viable skills beyond that for Mysore to take. Adrenaline Rush is easily the most advantageous, but after that, the pickings get pretty slim. I eventually settled upon skills that would help Mysore play keep-away, namely Radio Location and Outnumbered. Camouflage Mysore has access to Type 10 Camouflage providing the usual tier VI bonuses of: A 3% reduction in surface detection ranges. A 4% increase to the dispersion of enemy gunfire. A 10% reduction to post-battle service costs. A 50% increase to experience earned.  Mysore's simple, uniform colour scheme is kinda nice. She comes with the default blue, but you can unlock the tan-colour by completing the "Naval Aviation" collection. Firepower Main Battery: Nine 152mm/50 guns in 3x3 turrets in an A-B-X superfiring configuration. Secondary Battery: Eight 102mm/45 guns in 4x2 turrets, with two turrets per side, mounted behind the rear funnel facing forward and back. Only having one ammunition type sure simplifies this data dump. Mysore pays dearly for her access to her consumables. Her firepower is downright terrible, owing to the staying power of this ship. Between her Repair Party and her Crawling Smoke Generator, Mysore has a good survivability toolkit -- better than Leander, Perth or Huanghe. Thus, Wargaming has paired her with bad damage output, probably figuring that given she'll be around longer (on average), her numbers over time will win out. Given that I prefer glass-cannons to cast-iron squirt-guns, you can guess why this disappoints me. The problem here is three-fold. Mysore does not have access to HE shells. Mysore does not have access to torpedoes. Mysore's reloads more slowly than my 2021 update schedule. A lack of any one of these isn't damning in of itself (though it does bear investigating). But having all three shoves Mysore into the doldrums of damage-output. Let's look at why. A More-Different Perth The lack of HE shells on Mysore immediately sets her apart from Huanghe & Perth. Like Leander, short of (somehow) managing to pepper targets with her secondary batteries, Mysore cannot start fires. She cannot take advantage of skills like Inertial Fuse for HE Shells, Pyrotechnician or Heavy HE and SAP Shells. Mysore is restricted to firing AP shells, slightly modified versions to those tossed out by Leander herself. These behave like normal 152mm AP shells with the following differences: They have improved auto-ricochet angles. Mysore's AP shells do not check for ricochet until they strike at an angle of 60º to the perpendicular as opposed to the nominal 45º. The do not auto-ricochet until they strike at an angle of 75º as opposed to the nominal 60º. Thus Mysore's AP shells are much less likely to ricochet off an angled target, making them more viable against enemies that aren't offering up their flat broadside. Note that this does not come with increased penetration values. These shells have the same normalization as other 152mm armed guns (8.5º) and must contend with the increased relative armour thickness the same was any other AP round. Thus, Mysore's shells may be less likely to ricochet, they may still shatter if the sloped plate of steel has a relative thickness too great for her to punch into. Furthermore, it is still possible to ricochet these shells by angling aggressively against incoming fire from Mysore. They have improved fuse sensitivity. Mysore's AP shells arm upon impact with thinner steel than other 152mm rounds. Normally, a 152mm AP shells needs to strike steel 25mm thick (relative thickness due to angling counts). Without this, the shells will not arm and you will only see overpenetrations. For Mysore, her fuses are much more sensitive and need only 12mm to activate. Thus penetrating hits are more likely. They have shortened fuse timers. On top of their increased sensitivity, Mysore's AP shells explode more quickly when the fuse is armed. This again reduces the chances of the shells overpenetrating. In this case, they are more likely to blow immediately after entering a ship. In Mysore's case, her fuse timers are a mere 0.005s -- translating into a maximum distance crossed at muzzle velocity of 4.4m. Had she normal fuse timers, this would have translated to as much as 21.8m (though keep in mind, no shell will arrive inside a ship travelling anywhere close to muzzle-velocity; air friction and punching through steel slows them down appreciably). The reduced fuse timer is bit of a double edged sword, however. While it does mean that Mysore's shells are more likely to deliver penetrating hits, they cannot punch deep into a ship to strike buried citadels. Thus against ships with fully internalized citadels or with anti-torpedo protection, it's entirely possible that Mysore is patently incapable of landing citadel hits. Mysore's shells have a bit more punch than Leander's, grace of increased damage, shell mass and muzzle velocity, though this comes at the expense of less Krupp. So Mysore's AP shells are good, but they're not so great that they replace HE (or SAP) shells entirely. To this end, it's Huanghe and Perth that take the lead here when it comes to gunnery and I'm inclined to give it overall to the Pan Asian ship simply because she can make best use of both ammunition types with her high-velocity Soviet AP shells that make her a little more capable of landing citadel hits at range. Mysore comes dead last, of course. Mysore's not too far behind Huanghe in terms of penetration values over distance. While she is capable of landing citadel hits against soft-skinned cruisers that have their machine spaces abutting against the exterior of the hull (such as the Omaha-class for example), her ability to do so against other cruisers largely falls away after 10km. This isn't a problem unique to her but she feels it more with AP being her only ammunition choice. No Country For No-Fish Cruisers Why are torpedoes good? Well, three reasons. They can be used to aid in gunnery. No, really. When in doubt about the direction or velocity of a given target, switch over to your torpedo launchers and take a look at the lead indicator. This can tell you if a bow-on ship is reversing or not. It can also show you when a ship is slowing down, speeding up or changing direction. This is easily the most minor bonus having torpedoes provides, but it's handy and Mysore misses out. Obviously, they can be used to deal big alpha strikes. Individual torpedoes easily deal damage equivalent to a battleship-calibre citadel hit (or greater!). Land multiple fish at once and print those Devastating Strike medals. Mysore obviously doesn't get this and what's more, she's largely left without an ability to rack up damage quickly save for against specific cruisers and a few aircraft carriers that have their citadels abutting against the exterior of their hulls. It takes her time to chew through an opponent's hit point pool and she's generally incapable of dealing singular knockout blows. Torpedoes are a deterrent. You have to be stupid-confident (or just stupid) to close with an enemy ship with loaded torpedoes. Closing with an enemy ship that has torpedoes is always a gamble and this can be enough to deter people from trying to sniff out your ship in smoke, for example. Similarly, torpedoes can be used offensively to prevent people from camping their own smoke cover or for pushing them away from a strong-point such as an island. Short of supporting fire, there's nothing to deter an enemy from charging Mysore when she's sitting in smoke. Especially coming at her bow-on, they can largely mitigate any damage she can do them as they charge in. Leander and Perth have the best torpedo armaments of the four (naturally). Huanghe sits well behind them, not only for having triple launchers instead of the quadruples boasted by the Leander-sisters, but because she cannot single-fire her torpedoes as they can and is stuck with only a narrow-band when launching. Mysore really feels her complete lack of torpedoes, particularly when enemy ships come sniffing her out in her crawling smoke. Heavy Cruiser Reload The lack of alpha-strike potential on Mysore gets even worse when you consider her poor damage output. Her 10.7 second reload is just downright painful and greatly hurts her damage output. You can't count on Mysore to be able to out-trade some destroyers, particularly in close-range knife fights where they might be able to land the occasional citadel hit. Just look at this shoddy DPM: Mysore's slow reload gives her less potential DPM than Huanghe, despite having 50% more guns than the Pan Asian cruiser! Granted, it's easier to damage with Mysore's AP shells than it is Huanghe's. Now down to brass-tacks. Mysore's AP DPM is so low that some of the better HE DPM at tier VI rivals her. HE has the benefit of being much easier to use and it stacks some tasty fires as well. The only drawback to HE is that it's very skill-hungry in order to optimize. And even then, for a tier VI cruiser, it doesn't optimize well. Odds and Never-Ends-Well Overall, Mysore does not put out damage quickly, but she does do so steadily provided she's picking the right target. To this end, close-range fights are invariably a disaster with all but the most fragile of targets. Instead she's best served by keeping at a distance and peppering shells annoyingly at exposed enemies. She can use her Crawling Smoke Generator to do so for long periods (largely) uninterrupted, and really, the strength of this shouldn't understated. With her smoke deployed, Mysore's gunnery switches over to easy-mode and she can cycle her guns with near impunity for nearly two minutes (fully buffed). It's what comes after that's more difficult. When her smoke is on cooldown, she's reliant on either firing from open water (bad idea) or using island cover to keep bombarding targets. Otherwise, she'll have to go dark and redeploy. Mysore's range is on the short side -- just 14km, so the islands she uses has to be close to the front. This same lack of reach makes firing from open water stupid-dangerous. While she is an agile little boat, the shell flight time for incoming battleship rounds is much too short to be able to dodge effectively and her thin extremity plate and exposed citadel makes every hit hurt a lot. As for the rest of it? Her traverse rate is mediocre. Her gun fire angles are trash. Her ballistics are kinda floaty (though admittedly better than Leander's) and her her AP penetration sucks. Overall, Perth takes the big win here. Perth has both ammunition types. Perth has good torpedoes. Perth's reload rate doesn't suck and she has eight guns. Mysore is sadly at the bottom of the pile. This imposes limits on how Mysore can be played. It's too dangerous for her to be up on the front lines or to try and rush down targets because she simply cannot kill most enemies with any kind of alacrity. While the other three cruisers are not front-line brawlers, they can manage it in a pinch. Mysore's fire arcs are pretty terrible (most Royal Navy ships have poor fire arcs). Her 7º/s gun rotation rate is pretty meh too. Summary It's all about the AP spam. Her low DPM and lack of torpedoes makes her struggle to kill anything quickly. Play keep away and just keep spitting out shells. VERDICT: Pretty uncomfortable, I'm not going to lie. She's the worst of the four. What's worse, Mysore's gunnery isn't fun which is pretty damning for a premium. Durability Hit Points: 30,600 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 16mm/10mm/19mm/19mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 114mm Torpedo Damage Reduction: None Mysore is easily the best-protected of the tier VI British light-cruisers. Objectively, Mysore is the most resilient of the four cruisers. She has Leander's ability to heal coupled with better citadel protection than any of the other ships. Her armour profile is overall better too. It doesn't hurt that she comes with more hit points than any of the other ships either. For a cruiser, for a light cruiser especially, Mysore weighs in well. Her 114mm belt armour is very respectable at her tier. Her citadel placement, while peeking just over the waterline, isn't so high that it's a ready flaw. Furthermore, she doesn't have any "camel hump" shell traps that afflicts so many British cruisers (infamously damning some of the British heavies). The stepped section of her belt leading up to the 51mm portion of her deck doesn't count as part of the machine spaces the way it does on Perth and Leander. While admittedly her citadel is larger than her three competitors, it's hard to argue that she's more vulnerable than Perth or Leander due to their wonky citadel geometry. Huanghe arguably has the best citadel layout but hers has the worst protection. All four ships have an easily overmatched "hole" directly overtop of the machine spaces where any shells coming in high can easily dip into the citadel and generate big damage. Unlike Leander, all of the premium ships conform to normal, tier VI light-cruiser armour layouts, with 16mm extremities and 19mm upper hull and deck armour. Leander only has 13mm on her bow and 16mm on her upper-hull and deck, leaving her vulnerable to overmatching through her butt and snout by 203mm AP shells to which the premiums are thankfully immune. As for heals, only Leander and Mysore have them which puts them well above the others in terms of survivability. Combine this with Mysore's Crawling Smoke Generator and Hydroacoustic Search and she is easily the most survivable of the four. Her consumables remove many opportunities to easily pick her off with either torpedoes, aircraft or shells making her very annoying to deal with. The elephant in the room is, of course, that heals don't amount for much if you lose all of your hit points quickly. Mysore's horrible gun arcs means that any target she's engaging with all three turrets can damage her back and quite easily. The nightmare scenario for this poor ship is knife fighting with any other vessel. Even some destroyers are capable of out-trading her provided they keep angled to foil her AP rounds. And if Mysore is trying to protect her own citadel, this disparity in damage output only increases further. Her defence is far from perfect. While she is a tough little ship for a light cruiser, she is still a light cruiser. Keep her to the second line. Your best defence is to keep from being spotted in the first place. Mysore's base hit point values are pretty modest, but the presence of her heals makes her far more resilient. When you include how often her Exhaust Smoke Generator keeps her from being an easy target, she fast becomes one of the longest-lasting cruisers at tier VI. Her opponents really need to prioritize bringing her down in those rare occurrences where she's exposed or she'll keep coming back. Of the four British light-cruisers (highlighted in red) she has the most effective health to play with. VERDICT: Great survivability, especially for a light cruiser. She's the best of the four here and beyond that, she's one of the best cruisers at her tier for survivability. Very respectable. Agility Top Speed: 31.6 knots Turning Radius: 610m Rudder Shift Time: 8.6s 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 6.5º/s When evaluating a ship's agility, there's a checklist of factors I consider. I tend to favour a high-top speed over most other factors, especially when paired with a quick rate of turn. But there are other things to weigh my decisions, including turning radius, rudder shift time, energy preservation and acceleration. Mysore is weird in this regard. Top Speed: Let's start off with how slow she is. Mysore's top speed is slow for a cruiser. She's not in the thunder-chunker, waddle-bert zone of Graf Spee, but make no mistake, she is not quick. She is one of the slowest of the tier VI cruisers. Unlike the slugga-butt La Galissonniere, she does not have access to an Engine Boost consumable to help pad her numbers. Equipping the Sierra Mike signal is a very good idea to help cover this mistake. Similarly, the captain skill Outnumbered can help, but generally speaking, if the enemies are in that close, you're in a whole lot of trouble anyway. Turning Radius: Mysore has a nice, tight turning radius. She'd be best in category if it weren't for Huanghe. So this is great. Rudder Shift Time: Mysore's rudder shift time is a bit chunky. It's not terrible, mind you, but it's on the slow-end for a tier VI cruiser. However, with her lack of access to Propulsion Modification 1 means that you will always have Steering Gears Modification 1 installed instead. Granted, most other cruisers will too, so Mysore's not gaining a leg up here, but the raw value isn't as bad as it looks. Acceleration: Mysore has ridiculously-good acceleration. She reaches 30 knots in almost no time at all with a similar kind of rocket-butt acceleration Propulsion Modification 1 applies to the first get-up and go from a dead stop. This is all but identical to the same acceleration found on Royal Navy tech tree cruisers like Leander. Energy Preservation: Mysore does not have any special energy preservation. The Royal Navy tech tree ships are famous for bleeding little to no speed in a turn (they maintain upwards of 98% of their 4/4 speed setting while turning). Mysore is decidedly normal in this regard, keeping the usual 80% of her 4/4 engine speed while turning. Rate of Turn: Her lack of improved energy preservation means that her rate of turn is normal for cruiser with her speed and turning radius. Though she is slow for a tier VI cruiser, it's not by such a large margin that her tighter turning radius doesn't end up being the deciding factor here. Mysore's rate of turn is better than average, but far from the top competitors at her tier, behind the likes of Hangue, Perth, Leander and Trento. Altogether, Mysore is a very responsive cruiser with good handling but a slow top speed. She has much more in common with Huanghe than Perth or Leander in this regard. While none of these four ships could be considered fast, Mysore is definitely the slowest of them. On top of this, due to the improved energy retention on Perth and Leander, they can at least maintain their top speed for longer (on average) than Huanghe or Mysore. Mysore really struggles to control engagement distances, subject to its whims rather than being able to comfortably dictate to it. For a cruiser that really doesn't like being up-close in a brawl, this is bad news. While she has a lot going for her, it's this lack of speed which bothers me the most. VERDICT: Good overall handling but she's not perfect, not with that slow top speed. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 2 explosions for 1,120 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8km. Long Ranged (up to 5.8km): 52.5dps at 90% accuracy (47.3dps) Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 161dps at 90% accuracy (144.9dps) Lemme open with this graph: These are sorted roughly by effective AA DPS using the formula [DPS x (range -1km)] to value longer-ranged defences more. Mysore looks pretty good sorted like this. Mysore almost has good anti-aircraft firepower. Almost. The catch is that it's hard to claim that any tier VI cruiser has "good" AA defences, especially when they're regularly forced to contend with tier VIII aircraft carriers. I'm aware this is a bit of an unfair comparison; weighing the merits of a given system against ships two tiers higher. I didn't weight Mysore's DPM against tier VIII cruisers, for example, nor her durability. Maybe this says something towards my frustration with surface ship interactions with aircraft in general? Be aware of the author's bias, peoples! Mysore's numbers are 'okay'. With all of her guns intact, she has enough DPS to knock down a plane or two, but she's not going to prevent drops, never mind provide adequate defence for ships around her. Generally speaking, what tends to make or break whether or not these ships can deter same-tier carriers is their access to Defensive AA Fire. And most of these ships have to choose between taking that or Hydroacoustic Search. The latter usually wins out from a pure utility standpoint which weakens AA power as a whole in a given match. This said, Huanghe, Perth and Mysore definitely have it easier time protecting themselves from bombers, but not because of their AA firepower. Their crawling smoke really gives them an edge in frustrating carrier drops so it would be inaccurate to label any of them as 'useless' when it comes to seeing to their own protection. Mysore and Huanghe especially are particularly good at chewing up aircraft that make the mistake to linger over their smoke screens, but that's a rookie mistake you can't count on a CV to make. It's disappointing that the best AA feature of Mysore comes from her smoke. But it is what it is. VERDICT: Mysore and Huanghe are definitely the better of the four (with Huanghe being way at the top) but tier VI AA firepower just isn't good on the whole. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 10.98km/9.59km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 6.44km/5.8km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 5.04km Maximum Firing Range: 14km What Mysore does well (and what all of the tier VI British-designed cruisers do well) is her vision control. This is a stealthy ship that easily gets her surface detection down below a sub-10km range (which is great). On top of that, she has Hydroacoustic Search which is always a plus for sniffing out fish and the occasional ship hiding in smoke. But moreover, it's her access to her Crawling Smoke Generator which is the feather in the cap of this ship's design. Of the different varieties of Smoke Generators in the game presently, Crawling Smoke Generators are one of the more powerful for individual ship play (they have less value in team-based, competitive modes). The moving nature of the rolling smoke screen allows Mysore to take it with her. It helps frustrate torpedo salvos intent on combing her out of her cover and similarly, it provides some protection against counter-battery fire from people trying to blind-snipe Mysore from smoke. Finally, it's a very effective from of AA defence. While said smoke can be used offensively (as Haida has want to do), Mysore does not belong up on the front lines due to her poor damage output and alpha-strike potential. This all combines to make it a lot more difficult to take out one of these ships using Crawling Smoke. Perth, for example, is notorious for her longevity because of this. Mysore inherits this but couples it with her improved durability and heals, giving her even greater staying power. Short of charging this ship in point-blank encounters or scoring a lucky broadside's worth of battleship-calibre citadel hits, Mysore is a difficult ship to put down quickly. If she had a little more range, she'd be downright overpowered even with her horrible DPM, simply because it's such a nuisance to put her down permanently. Her points of vulnerability here come from the usual suspects: Surveillance Radar - There's not much you can do about this short of doing your best to keep out of range. Generally speaking, you should be far enough back that only Soviet Surveillance Radar should pose any kind of threat. While you may be picked up from other sources, you can usually count on there being an island being in the way. However, in those circumstances where Mysore is caught flat footed by a radar-flash, she gets wrecked in a hurry. Keep an eye on those team rosters and watch your minimap. Aircraft - There's not much you can do here. If you're in danger, you can try hiding in smoke. Destroyers - These present a much greater threat to Mysore than they do to many other cruisers. This is largely owing to her low-damage output which is easily foiled by aggressive angling on the part of the destroyer in question. While having some friends nearby should (SHOULD!) discourage a lolibote from sniffing around, if Mysore is caught alone, she's in for a lot of trouble -- especially if the destroyer knows what they're doing. Smoke on Cool Down - And here is perhaps the greatest challenge to playing Mysore well. With as much as two and a half minutes in between smoke charges, figuring out how to engage the enemy without getting blown up is just something you have to figure out for yourself. Take a page from the old light-cruiser playbook; make an island your waifu and rain fire as your ballistic arcs and range will allow until your smoke allows you to get a little more adventurous. The temptation with Mysore is to be overly reliant upon her smoke. Want to shoot someone? Blow smoke! Aircraft overhead? Blow smoke! Get spotted by some under-aged boat? Blow smoke! Battleships looking at you funny? Blow smoke! Sometimes it's definitely the right call, but using her smoke preemptively will greatly reduce her efficacy. This isn't easy to get right and it's dirt-simple to get wrong. VERDICT: Excellent vision control, easily on par with Huanghe and Perth. Final Evaluation Mysore feels like a British light cruiser that's been sprinkled with British heavy cruiser flavour crystals. She espouses the same game play from that whole line. To refresh people's memories (or to educated those who have wisely kept away from them), the British heavy cruisers have poor damage output but improved survivability. The premise is simple enough; these ships survive longer, ergo they will have similar damage output to more fragile, harder-hitting cruisers -- at least on average. The combination of consumables on Mysore makes her VERY likely to survive a long time (provided she's played reasonably) so her damage output really sucks butt. Is she BALANS™? Probably. I suspect Mysore's numbers will end up being pretty decent once they've had some time out in the wilds for a few months. She can be really slippery so there's plenty of opportunity to make even her modest guns put out some hurt. Is she fun? Not in my opinion. Mysore's game play is excessively passive. What's worse, she only deals one particular type of damage -- AP chip-damage, specifically. She doesn't have HE. She's not farming fires. There are no big alpha strikes from fish. And she's not even likely to be landing citadel hits either. You're just going to see penetrations, saturated penetrations and the rare over-penetration with Mysore. If you play in PVE modes, MAYBE you'll see a few citadel hits at point blank ranges. Her need to play constant keep-away in PVP modes really limits the variety of her game play. There's still enough to do, I suppose, in between managing her smokes, reset-timer and making best use of islands. But that lack of variety (and quality) in damage output really bugs me. The bad news for Mysore is that Perth is a thing that exists. These two ships directly compete with one another and Perth is, hands down, the more interesting ship to play. I would have much preferred to see Wargaming shove Mysore in at tier VII and maybe stuck their hand into their bag of gimmicks to make her more interesting. Honestly, if they had just given her a British dry-dock heal and/or massaged her reload time to 8 seconds, she would have made a great tier VII cruiser. I don't understand why she ended up at tier VI. It doesn't make sense to me, business wise. But I can't see the full picture there. As it is? Mysore's a hard pass for me. Perth's the better bote. It's not that I think Mysore is awful, perse. She's just not fun. Heck, I'd rather play Huanghe and I didn't enjoy her the first time around. I think that says a lot right there.

It's double-header time! The following is a review of both Belfast and Belfast '43, the tier VII and VIII British premium cruisers. These ships were provided to me by Wargaming for review purposes -- I did not have to shell out any dollarydoos to get access to them. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.9.10. Please be aware that they may change in the future. Belfast is a total meme. I am delighted to see that Belfast '43 is being added to the game. Belfast is an important museum ship and it's so unfortunate that her premium had to be retired. She is the poster-child for unbalanced premiums so it's nice to see that Wargaming is correcting the lack of Belfast with what is ostensibly a more balanced version. Now I could just review the new one but I know I'd be hounded by the need to constantly compare the two. And if I half-butted the comparison, there would be tons of questions and comments asking that I follow up. So to correct this, I'm going to review both ships at the same time. So consider this an update to the old tier VII Belfast while simultaneously evaluating the newer, tier VIII version. God, Belfast is such a meme. Azur Lane went so far as to predict this too with Belfast and mini-me clone version of her. No, I don't get it either. Comparing Belfast to Belfast is going to get confusing in a hurry. In order to try and keep things clear, I will be not only referring to them by their tier but I will also colour code them. The discontinued tier VII premium cruiser will be referred to by Belfast (T7) while the newer, tier VIII version will be referred to by Belfast '43 (T8). Quick Summary: Two British light cruisers with the best combination of vision-control consumables in the game. Belfast '43 (T8) has slow-firing but harder hitting guns. Belfast (T7) is a meme-ship whose over-the-top performance has transcended not only World of Warships but in Azur Lane too. Shared PROS British cruiser with access to both AP and HE rounds. Improved acceleration. Good concealment with a surface detection as low as 8.91km. Access to a Smoke Generator AND Surveillance Radar AND Hydroacoustic Search all at the same time. (!) Shared CONS Very light cruiser armour profile with very thin hull plates that are easily overmatched. Enormous 6mm "hole" in citadel roof that's easily overmatched by any AP shell of any size. Does not have the same style of AP rounds as the rest of the British light cruiser line. Poor fire chance per shell for a 152mm round of only 9%. Horrible gun firing angles, necessitating giving a full broadside to bring all of her guns to bear. Bad gun traverse speeds of only 7º/s. Only a modest top speed of 32.5 knots. Not a good training ship for British light cruiser commanders. These two ships are defined by three things: (1) They're hard to engage but squishy if you can hit them. (2) They have an excellent combination of Vision Control consumables. (3) They have HE shells. Their game play is largely defined by taking station near an island, deploying smoke and HE-spamming the snot out of anything that comes within range. As if this wasn't bad enough, their combination of detection consumables makes them an absolute nightmare for destroyers who cannot dare to operate in their vicinity. Belfast's Hydroacoustic Search and ridiculous rate of acceleration keeps her safe from most torpedo strikes, nullifying one of the greatest risks to sitting in smoke while her Surveillance Radar ensures that any destroyers operating in the area quickly regret their life decisions. Ostensibly this is balanced by their poor fragility and gun handling, but the high concealment and agility of these ships coupled with their Smoke Generators makes even drawing a bead on them in the first place quite difficult. This combines with ballistics that are favourable for making use of island cover that further off-sets any deficits to survivability. All of the above strengths and weaknesses apply to Belfast '43 (T8) with the addition of the following: Belfast '43 (T8) Specific PROS High HE alpha strike for a 152mm armed ship from improved HE shell damage. Can single-fire her torpedoes. Small turning circle radius of 680m. Very short reset timer between final cloud dissipation and reactivation of her Smoke Generator. Starts with an extra charge of her Smoke Generator for a maximum of 5 charges with Superintendent. Can stealth-radar (albeit with only a 90m window at most but still). Belfast '43 (T8) Specific CONS Small hit point pool of 38,400hp. Long reload of 10.5s on her main battery leading to poor DPM and fire setting. Torpedoes are short ranged at 8km. Horrible anti-aircraft firepower for a tier VIII cruiser. Few charges of her Hydroacoustic Search and Surveillance Radar. Short duration on her smoke clouds. Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Belfast '43 (T8) appears to have a balanced armament between AP & HE shells and her torpedoes. However, she pays for her triumvirate of consumables with nerfed weapon systems. Her main battery guns have a horrid reload time. Similarly, her torpedoes are much too short ranged to be used easily. Her AP shells suck, so that just leaves you with HE. Finally, as good as her consumable-combination is, they are limited by having either fewer charges (radar & hydro) or shorter duration (smoke), making it a challenge to manage them properly over the course of a full match. All of the shared merits and flaws listed at the top of this section apply to Belfast (T7) with the addition of the following: Belfast (T7) Specific PROS Fast, 7.5s reload leading to good DPM. Access to British light-cruiser energy retention, bleeding almost no speed in a turn. One of the few tier VII cruisers with Surveillance Radar. Has access to the 5th upgrade slot -- a rarity for tier VII ships. Belfast (T7) Specific CONS Only has 25mm of HE penetration. No torpedo armament. Long rudder shift time for a tier VII cruiser at 9.6s. Skill Floor: SIMPLE / Casual / Challenging / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Belfast (T7) is a different beast to Belfast '43 (T8) despite their similarities. This is largely owing to the differences in matchmaking -- Belfast (T7) gets to pick on tier V ships when matchmaking is being kind. Moreover, she's a rockstar at her tier giving up little while enjoying all of the same (but better) consumable benefits of the tier VIII newcomer. What's more, she fires three seconds faster per salvo and that makes a world of difference whether its stacking fires on an enemy battleship or lewding on a lolibote that you've flashed with her radar. Finally there's the extra agility Belfast (T7) enjoys. Her improved energy preservation means that Belfast (T7) is overall faster on average despite the two ships have the same top speed. This gives her a better rate of turn than her tier VIII-self despite having a larger effective turning radius. Just from the PROS and CONS list alone, you can clearly see that Belfast (T7) is much stronger (and easier to use) than Belfast '43 (T8). Bumping Belfast (T7) up to tier VIII would add on a low hit-point flaw but she would lose the slow-rudder shift as her 9.6s rudder shift time is on the slower-side of average for that tier. Belfast (T7) is, in fact, more than good enough to be a tier VIII cruiser with nothing changed about her. This explains why she was retired in the first place. So the question becomes not if Belfast '43 (T8) is a good enough replacement for Belfast (T7), because she's not, but rather if Belfast '43 (T8) is a good enough cruiser at to be worth picking up for anything but her name and history. Options Consumables At a glance, the first obvious difference between the two ships is that Belfast '43 (T8) can take a Catapult Fighter and Belfast (T7) cannot. But there's much more to it than that. Both ships share the same Damage Control Party. It has a 5s active period, a 60s reset timer and unlimited charges. Belfast '43 (T8), being a higher tier, has improved range with her Hydroacoustic Search over Belfast (T7) but with fewer charges. Belfast (T7) has a 3km torpedo detection range, 4km ship detection range, 100s active time, 120s reset timer and three charges to start. Belfast '43 (T8) has 4km torpedo detection range, 5km ship detection range, 100s active time, 120s reset timer and two charges to start. This deficit of one charge of her consumable is odd as most cruisers begin with three. Belfast (T7) has the much easier-to-use (and arguably better) Smoke Generator compared to the the new fish. Belfast '43 (T8)'s smoke is comparable to that of British destroyers, having more charges and a fast reset timer but with the smoke lasting for much less time. Belfast (T7)'s consumable is active for 15s with each 600m radius cloud lasting for 103s. It has a 160s reset timer and starts with three charges. Belfast '43 (T8)'s consumable is active for 15s with each 600m radius cloud lasting for 40s. It has a 70s reset timer and starts with four charges. Like with their hydro, Belfast '43 (T8) has improved range with her Surveillance Radar over Belfast (T7) but again, with fewer charges. Belfast (T7)'s radar is active for 25s and detects ships at 8.5km with a 120s reset timer and three charges to start. Belfast '43 (T8)'s radar is active for 25s and detects ships at 9km with a 120s reset timer and two charges to start. Only Belfast '43 (T8) can swap her radar for a Catapult Fighter. I dunno why you'd do that but hey, it's an option. Belfast (T7)does not have access to it all. Belfast '43 (T8) deploys three fighters which are active for 60s that patrol a 3km radius around the ship. It has a 90s reset timer and three charges to start. I think it's pretty easy to declare Belfast (T7) the winner here when it comes to her consumable options. Still, it would be foolish to deny that Belfast '43 (T8) has an excellent consumable suite, giving her some of the best tools possible in the game for vision control. Upgrades With Belfast (T7) being able to fit five upgrade slots like a tier VIII ship, the ideal upgrades between the two ships are identical. With both ships having improved acceleration, they cannot take the Propulsion Modification 1 upgrade in slot 4. The only apparent option in the second slot comes down to what you can afford. Surveillance Radar Modification 1 is optimal, adding another 5 seconds to the active period of their Surveillance Radar consumables. If you cannot afford that but have access to a Hydroacoustic Search Modification 1 upgrade then equip that instead. Each of these cost 17,000 in the Armory so default to the former if you can afford it. If you can't pick up either one, then take Engine Room Protection. So the optimal build is: Main Armaments Modification 1 is slot 1. Surveillance Radar Modification 1 in slot 2. Aiming Systems Modification 1 in slot 3. Steering Gears Modification 1 in slot 4. And finally Concealment System Modification 1 in slot 5. Captain Skills There are effectively two builds for the Belfast-twins. They differ on whether or not to take Inertial Fuse for HE Shells (IFHE) to increase their penetration or to build for increased fire chance. Belfast '43 (T8) benefits more from the penetration provided by IFHE than Belfast (T7) due to how the skill scales with tier. Thus, the higher-tiered ship is more likely to build for IFHE but either build can work for either ship. Well this is a colourful, confusing mess. But there's a method to my madness. Start by picking one of the two skills in the yellow squares at tier 1. Next, hoover up the light blue circles. After that, decide if you want increased HE penetration with IFHE or increased fire chance with Demolition Expert. You can take both, but it's hella expensive. The remaining skills circled in red are nice to have. Use them to pad out your remaining available points. Camouflage Between all of the camouflages available between the two ships, they share identical bonuses. 3% reduction to surface detection. 4% increase to enemy dispersion. 10% reduction to service costs. 50% increase to experience earned. Belfast '43 (T8)'s Type 10 Camouflage. Belfast (T7)'s Type 10 Camouflage. Belfast (T7) received an additional camouflage through the Azur Lane crossover. In general, the Azur Lane camouflage disappoint me. World of Warships Blitz the crossover-skins had some fun geometry changes to the model too. Still, this one is at least nice and striking, even if it's just a skin. The best thing about it is that for my purposes, it's the easiest way to differentiate between the two ships in this review when I use screenshots. Firepower Main Battery: Twelve 152mm/50 guns in 4x3 turrets in an A-B-X-Y superfiring configuration. Belfast (T7) Secondary Battery: Eight 102mm/45 guns in 4x2 turrets. Belfast '43 (T8) Secondary Battery: Twelve 102mm/45 guns in 6x2 turrets. Belfast '43 (T8) Torpedoes: Six tubes in 2x3 launchers with one launcher per side mounted in the hull between the funnels. Belfast (T7) has the Union Jack on top of her B-turret except with her Azur Lane camo. Belfast '43 (T8) has AA mounts on top of her B-turret instead. Belfast '43 (T8). Note the differences in reload time, HE penetration, IFHE penetration and HE shell damage. Balancing ships is difficult. "Murder your darlings", an often quoted phrase stolen from Hollywood, has made the rounds in game design. The premise is simple enough: Identify what you like best about something you've made and then remove it from the design entirely. Such design elements will tend to lead projects astray and create complications further down the line. The darling in Belfast (T7)'s design, I am convinced, is her access to HE shells. At the time of her release back in the autumn of 2016, it was this feature which made her stand out more than any other from the British light cruiser line. Belfast (T7)'s HE shells did make her unique, but they ultimately broke and doomed the project. To be clear, HE in of itself isn't unmanageable. Belfast '43 (T8) is Wargaming's attempt to correct some of the earlier problems of Belfast (T7)'s design while still keeping access to HE shells. In my mind, it's a lot of extra work to accommodate something that was already out of place, long long ago. The time and energy could be better spent elsewhere and left us with a premium that was better suited to training British light cruiser tech-tree captains. As it is, Wargaming tweaked Belfast '43 (T8)'s HE shells to conform to the numbers they wanted to see. These changes are so odd they will understandably cause you to second guess her performance and potential. Fool me once, shame on you Belfast (T7)'s main battery firepower conforms entirely to light-cruiser norms. Her twelve 152mm guns behave exactly as you would expect. They fire a shell with modest damage output, with a rather floaty ballistic arc over medium range. To compensate, they have a high rate of fire. This seems simple enough. The only real oddity here is their rather poor fire chance per shell. If you line up the guns from most of the other 152mm armed light cruisers, Belfast (T7) looks pretty normal. Her 7.5 second reload fits in snugly between the long, 10 second reload of Mogami 155mm, the stately 8 second reloads of Soviet guns from ships like Shchors, Chapayev and Irian and the blistering quick reloads of Cleveland (6.5 seconds), Ochakov (6.1 seconds), Mainz (6 seconds) and München (5 seconds). However, only Mikhail Kutuzov is an apt comparison for Belfast (T7)'s ability to spit shells down range. Gun performance stats from patch 0.5.12.1 back in October of 2016 back when these were among the few 152mm armed contemporaries of Belfast (T7) at the time of her release. Mikhail Kutuzov, Budyonny and Chapayev all ditto'd Shchors's shell performance but with reduced DPM in Budyonny's case. Belfast (T7) and Mikhail Kutuzov can cycle their guns for long periods of time without interruption. Their Smoke Generators are the great facilitator, increasing their chances to not only find uninterrupted periods where they can spam HE to their heart's content but also survive longer within a match to do it over and over again. While ships like Cleveland or Helena can mathematically spit out more DPM, the survivability of these other ships is far more limited. It's easier for Belfast (T7) to take full advantage of her DPM potential and do it for more of a given match than it is for comparable cruisers. Belfast (T7) puts out a lot of damage mostly because she can take advantage of situations other cruisers can't. While others have to fish for cover or worry about dodging, she can just hold down her left mouse button. Her angry smoke clouds easily bully other ships, creating 15km zones of control. The only limit to Belfast (T7)'s potential is HE penetration. The changes to HE penetration and the Inertial Fuse for HE Shells skill hurt tier VII light cruisers in a bad way. It's hard not to feel like this was an attack specifically against Belfast (T7) to reign her in. Without the Inertial Fuse for HE Shells (IFHE) skill, Belfast (T7) cannot directly damage a long list of ship hulls. Taking IFHE shortens this list considerably. However, she still cannot directly damage the hulls of tier VIII+ battleships even with this skill. Furthermore, IFHE neuters her fire-setting chances, hurting her efficiency against these high-tier chunguses (chungi?) . Thus, whether you choose to go with or without IFHE is up to you -- both styles are viable and both have their drawbacks. Presently, it feels like tier VII ships get pulled into higher tiered matchmaking more often (though who knows what the actual math is on that) so I tend to steer away from IFHE on Belfast (T7) for the moment. This hurts her efficiency against cruisers, but I tend to focus on accosting lolibotes and burning battleships so this works out well for me. Overall, Belfast (T7) is as crazy-efficient as any tier VII light cruiser could hope to be. Her Smoke Generator allows her long periods of time where she can cycle her guns with near impunity. Belfast (T7)'s fire arcs are both varied and crappy. That would matter more if she had to wiggle and dodge, but she doesn't. You have to love how naively optimistic Belfast (T7)'s design is. "Sure! Give it better-than-average damage output for a tier VII light cruiser. Never mind all of the stealth and smoke advantages she has! It will all work out!" There have been so many lessons learned over the years... I apologize for these crappy graphs. I borrowed them from my München review and didn't bother to spruce them up. The IFHE+ and Max categories are assuming that the ships are using the Demolition Expert skill, both fire-improving signals and, in Flint & Atlanta's case, using the Basic Fire Training skill as well. The base 9% fire chance per shell pumps the brakes on Belfast (T7)'s ferocity somewhat. She merely ends up being a better-than-average fire setter overall for a tier VII cruiser rather than a high-roller like the other lights... at least until you remember that she can park and hold down her left mouse button with little worry of reprisals. Fool me twice, shame on me Alright, so Belfast (T7) proved we can't have nice things. Wargaming tried their best to make sure that Belfast '43 (T8) didn't repeat this travesty. Their solution? Nerf her rate of fire into the ground. Belfast '43 (T8) has a terrible rate of fire for a tier VIII light cruiser. It's a half-second worse than the fifteen-gun Mogami 155mm's 10 second reload. That's right; Belfast '43 (T8) has a 10.5 second reload. As you can imagine, this puts her DPM numbers into the toilet. When slinging her AP shells, she has worse potential DPM than most of the heavy cruisers at her tier which is downright terrible. Normally, when your DPM is that bad, they give the ship some form of compensation for this. For example, Atago & Mogami 203mm have greatly improved dispersion and kick-butt torpedoes. Then there's Amalfi who has a long list of advantages including high speed, agility, SAP shells and her Exhaust Smoke Generator. Finally there's Albemarle and Cheshire which have ... uh ... Wait. Wait. Hold on, I can do this. Finally there's Atago & Mogami 203mm which have greatly improved dispersion and kick-butt torpedoes! So as you can see, Belfast '43 (T8) is going to be leaning pretty heavily into her other advantages. Thankfully, this deficit is somewhat mitigated when it comes to her HE shells. Wargaming artificially boosted the shell damage of Belfast '43 (T8)'s HE rounds, up from Belfast (T7)'s 2,100 max damage to 2,450; a 16.7% increase. Belfast '43 (T8)'s individual salvos thus hit harder. It's not a lot harder, mind you (especially once you account for the 0.33x penetration damage modifier), but it is harder. When you then rank Belfast '43 (T8)'s HE performance up in a DPM chart, she sits above all of the heavy cruisers but behind all of the lights. On paper, this feels right -- especially given what we've learned about Smoke Generators on cruisers. Iwaki Alpha, Mikhail Kutuzov and Belfast (T7) ruined the gimmick for everyone else. Still, it's hard not to feel like this penalized reload is just plain punitive. It's painful and prevents her from playing to the same extremes as Belfast (T7). Belfast '43 (T8) is nowhere near as good of a destroyer hunter, for example. The opportunities to pack some loving onto lolibotes is fleeting and her long reload often limits such molestations to a single broadside slap rather than a repeated, fast-cycled spanking. Though her alpha strike on her HE shells is improved, Belfast '43 (T8)'s HE shell performance isn't improved so much that your singular volleys will guarantee a mauling. At best, you're looking at 9,702 damage per broadside to a destroyer compared to Belfast (T7)'s 8,316. Yes, it's more damage, but it's not "call you daddy" kind of damage. These problems are further compounded when it comes to Belfast '43 (T8)'s fire setting. While her HE shell damage is improved, her fire chance remains the same ol' unfortunate 9%. With that shackled to her 10.5 second reload, her chance to set fires drops from "worst of the light cruisers" to Cheshire levels of bad. Mother truckin' CHESHIRE LEVELS OF BAD, ladies and gentlemen. ARGLBARGL!!! If you take Inertial Fuse for HE Shells on Belfast '43 (T8) you can largely forget about farming fire damage even if you pad everything back up with Demolition Expert and signals. You'll be lucky if you get one fire to stick on permanently against high-tier targets, to say nothing of two. Your opponent has to already have their Damage Control Party severely taxed before you'll stick blazes onto their hulls. This is not a ship I would recommend building for just fires -- it's too much of a gamble with her poor fire setting characteristics. Despite this, it would be a mistake to skip taking IFHE on Belfast '43 (T8). Unlike Belfast (T7) she has the higher base penetration number (30mm) to allow her to abuse any target she comes across, so the direct damage is worth it. You might be thinking, "oh, but her torpedoes surely balance things!" NO. NO! Go gargle some liquid nitrogen and shut your hoarfrost mouth! Forget her torpedoes. At 8km and with only a pair of triple launchers, Belfast '43 (T8)'s torpedoes will not carry the day unless your opponents are idiots. If something big enough drives within range of your fish, you're either playing co-op or things have gone to poop. They are weapons of desperation, no more and no less. Arguably, the only good they do is to allow Belfast '43 (T8) to keep up in close-range firefights against other cruisers, compensating for her horrible reload. That's at least until you remember that most other cruisers will be spitting out fish too. It's a damn good thing Belfast '43 (T8) has those improved HE shells because her AP shells and torpedoes are liabilities. Belfast '43 (T8)'s fire arcs are closer to uniform but still crappy. Her torpedo arcs have an 88º fire angle starting from 50º off her bow. This is also crappy. Belfast '43 (T8)'s DPM has a lot to be desired. With her 3,100 damage AP shells and 10.5s reload, she has some of the worst AP damage output of any of the tier VIII cruisers. The boosted damage on Belfast '43 (T8)'s HE shells allows her to keep ahead of the heavy cruisers, but she still ends up with one of the worst HE damage outputs of any of the tier VIII light cruisers. Think Ochakov-bad. Use islands and her smoke to give her more time to cycle her guns. Bruh. Role Models Despite their differences, Belfast (T7) and Belfast '43 (T8) have the same role. Their primary job is to make destroyer lives miserable. Their secondary role is to harass anything else that comes into range with HE spam, either from angry smoke or from the cover of islands. Belfast (T7)'s longer lasting smoke and higher rate of fire makes her better at this, but Belfast '43 (T8) holds her own mostly owing to her higher HE penetration. Belfast (T7) is better at putting the hurt on bigger ships with fire stacks while Belfast '43 (T8) is more focused on doing it with direct, penetrating hits. The ballistics of their guns facilitates camping islands. It's not quite American in terms of their arcs, but they are pretty damn floaty. This is good news given how much broadside these ships need to show in order to bring their weapons to bare. Both have terrible fire arcs but that largely doesn't matter unless they're out in open water (which they shouldn't be). Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with both of their armaments. In Belfast '43 (T8)'s case it's because her torpedoes are too short ranged and that long reload isn't fun to play with. It's not terrible, but it's not fun. In Belfast (T7)'s case, it's because she's overpowered. She could have just had the same semi-AP shells of the rest of the British light cruiser line and this whole mess could have been avoided or at least mitigated. Boo-urns, I say. Belfast (T7) need not apply. Belfast '43 (T8) only. VERDICT: Belfast (T7) overperforms, but no surprises there. The IFHE changes have at least turned her from a "brainless, spam HE at everything and hoover up stupidly-big damage" to a "brainless, spam HE at everything and hoover up only modestly-big damage." Belfast '43 (T8) is supposed to have a more balanced armament between torpedoes and her AP rounds, but she's utterly reliant upon her HE shells in order to compete so that kind of undoes anything interesting about her weapons. Defence Belfast (T7) Hit Points: 35,700 Belfast (T7) Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 13mm/10mm/19mm/19mm to 51mm Belfast '43 (T8) Hit Points: 38,400 Belfast '43 (T8) Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 16mm/13mm/19mm/19mm to 51mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 114mm belt. Torpedo Damage Reduction: 4% Please note the difference in scale at the bottom of these two charts. I know someone will complain if I don't point that out. I needed more room for Albermarle's "anti-fail" mitigating drydock. There's not a whole lot to say here. Belfast '43 (T8) doesn't have a lot of hit points for a tier VIII cruiser. It's not a catastrophic deficit by any means -- she just doesn't have a lot. Belfast (T7) has fewer still, but she sits a tier lower so the gap isn't as pronounced. Neither ship has access to heals via a Repair Party (could you imagine if they did?) so that really puts them behind the health-pool front-runners. Given their poor fire angles of their guns, they tend to show a lot of broadside. Their 114mm of belt armour is good enough, with only Belfast '43 (T8) being vulnerable to citadel hits from HE rounds, but that's only from HMS Thunderer (love you, boo! ♥). Still, unlike some of the more recent British cruisers, their citadel does not match the 'hump' of their belt armour, laying flush just over the waterline. At least they have that going for them. These ships have two pronounced flaws to their protection scheme, with one exacerbated by the poor fire angles of their guns. First, Belfast (T7) and Belfast '43 (T8) have only 13mm and 16mm worth of extremity armour respectively. This is easily overmatched by every battleship calibre gun they will face. Belfast (T7) is particularly vulnerable as her 13mm extremities can be overmatched by even 203mm AP shells making every heavy cruiser a very pronounced threat. Belfast '43 (T8) has it better against other cruisers, with only the 234mm and 240mm guns of Cheshire, Drake, Goliath and Henri IV capable of doing the same. The second flaw has to do with their citadel armour layout. On both ships, there is an enormous, 6mm "hole" over top of the machine spaces. If an AP shell of any caliber punches through the belt, it can easily overmatch this roof-armour and enter the citadel without contest. Thus, even shots aimed too high will still land citadel hits provided they drop through this large opening -- the 6mm plate only prevents AP shells smaller than 85mm from overmatching. It's not going to happen all of the time, but this second bite of the apple will generate a few more citadel hits that would otherwise ricochet if the armour was thicker. Because these ships have to present so much broadside to fire their guns, this vulnerability over their machine spaces can be exploited more often. These are squishy ships. HE of nearly any calibre hurts. AP will wreck them in short order. Their fragility is meant to be a key flaw in World of Warships. However, given their stealth, ballistics and smoke, this isn't as much of a pronounced weakness as it might otherwise be. If you're dumb enough to sit out in open water and try and trade with another cruiser (or battleship for that matter) you get the spanking you deserve. Belfast '43 (T8)'s armour layout is almost identical to her tier VII counterpart. There are subtle differences here and there, like around the steering gears (not pictured) but other than the differences in super-structure and extremities, they're functionally the same. You can clearly see that 6mm hole in her citadel roof that matches the raised 114mm belt section. Her turrets aren't likely to resist damage with 102mm front plates, 51mm side plates, roof and (mostly) 38mm barbettes. Belfast (T7) is very soft-skinned. Even destroyer-calibre HE shells are more than capable of direct-damaging her even without IFHE. VERDICT: Soft and squishy, just like her Azur Lane design. Agility Top Speed: 32.5kts Belfast (T7) Turning Radius: 730m/740m Belfast (T7) Rudder Shift Time: 9.6s Belfast (T7) 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 6.7º/s at 31.8kts (!) Belfast '43 (T8) Turning Radius: 680m Belfast '43 (T8) Rudder Shift Time: 9.9s Belfast '43 (T8) 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 5.9º/s at 26kts I have Edinburgh (and Belfast (T7) who clones her agility performance) listed here at a 740m radius. Her calculated radius is technically 736m or so. Normally Wargaming tends to round up when generating in-port stats but not always. So 730m or 740m is technically correct. I could go back and fix this graphic to have her overlap with Bayard and Baltimore but screw it. The best thing about Belfast '43 (T8)'s handling is her small turning circle radius relative to the other tier VIII cruisers. British light cruisers are weird. This should come as no surprise. The physics-defying, flying-saucer behaviour of British light cruisers is pretty infamous at this point. They bleed almost no speed in a turn and can, in fact, accelerate flat out with their rudder hard over in ways that appear to defy all logic and reason. Belfast (T7) conforms to these insane-norms, largely cloning Edinburgh's performance. Where most cruisers can only preserve up to 80% of their speed with their rudder hard over, Belfast (T7) preserves almost 98%. This gives her an excellent rate of turn, making her far more agile than her other manoeuvrability characteristics would imply. Furthermore, this ship has ridiculous acceleration. It's better than having the Propulsion System Modification 1 upgrade installed on a comparable ship which is probably why Belfast (T7) can't take it. Combined with her Hydroacoustic Search consumable, it's exceedingly difficult to catch Belfast (T7) with a spread of torpedoes while she's parked in smoke short of deploying a wide net in the form of a "wall of skill" from multiple salvos coordinated from several ships. The only drawback Belfast (T7) has, really, is her relatively sluggish rudder shift time. But seeing as she doesn't have to choose between taking Propulsion System Modification 1 and Steering Gears Modification 1, she can always choose to improve her rudder, so it's not real drawback there either. She gets the best of both worlds. The only place where Belfast (T7) lacks is her top speed. This makes dictating engagement distances a constant worry, especially given her lack of torpedoes to shoo-away bigger ships that she can't burn down quickly enough. It's not a crippling flaw by any means, but it's worth keeping in mind. Now, if you were hoping (or expecting) Belfast '43 (T8) to conform to the same behaviours as her predecessor, you're mistaken. The only element she inherits is the improved acceleration (and the inability to mount Propulsion System Modification 1). Belfast '43 (T8) behaves like a normal cruiser in all other respects to her agility. She may appear to have a smaller turning radius, but this is a booby-prize -- Belfast (T7)'s larger turning radius is an artifact of her preserved speed in a turn. When she was released, Belfast (T7) was advertised as having the same 680m turning radius as Belfast '43 (T8). However that derived value assumes that a cruiser only turns at 80% of her 4/4 speed, so it had to be corrected to its current value (which is, frankly, still off by 10m -- it's closer to 740m according to my tests, but whatever). So Belfast '43 (T8) has the tighter turning radius, however this only applies at 4/4 engine power. Things get ... well, they get weird at other engine settings. Belfast (T7) is the more agile ship with a tighter turning radius AND better rate of turn at all other engine settings. Here's a quick look at the other tier VIII cruisers with a top speed of 32.5 knots and how they compare to these two ships: Problems circled in red. Belfast '43 (T8) bleeds too much speed at all but the 4/4 engine settings in a sustained turn. Though this is true for almost every engine setting, it's especially pronounced at 1/2 and 3/4 power. Belfast (T7) (and Edinburgh) behaves better than its 730m (or is it 740m?) in-port turning radius would suggest at all engine settings, but this really stands out at 4/4 power where it bleeds almost no speed at all. Cleveland and AL Montpelier bleed too much speed at 4/4 engine power. The effects of these other engine settings are not likely to apply often in the average game of World of Warships. All you need to know is that Belfast '43 (T8) has worse performance than she should while Belfast (T7) has better-than-average performance at all engine settings. In short, other than in acceleration, Belfast '43 (T8) has worse agility than she should. Without the energy preservation that Belfast (T7) enjoys at 4/4 engine power, Belfast '43 (8) is otherwise unremarkable short of her small turning circle radius for a tier VIII cruiser. Belfast (T7) is the much better ship, agility wise with a laundry list of strange benefits. VERDICT: The improved acceleration is wonderful to have, especially for camping the relatively small smoke banks that these ship generate with the short action time of their Smoke Generators. Belfast (T7) has the standard, British light cruiser physics-defying engines while Belfast '43 (8) is pretty normal. Anti-Aircraft Defence Belfast (T7) Flak Bursts: 3+1 explosions for 1,330 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8km. Belfast (T7) Long Ranged (up to 5.8km): 91dps at 90% accuracy (82dps) Belfast (T7) Medium Ranged (up to 3.5km): 255.5dps at 90% accuracy (230dps) Belfast '43 (T8) Flak Bursts: 3+1 explosions for 1,260 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8km. Belfast '43 (T8) Long Ranged (up to 5.8km): 80.5dps at 90% accuracy (72dps) Belfast '43 (T8) Medium Ranged (up to 2.5km): 80.5dps at 90% accuracy (72dps) Belfast '43 (T8) Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 143.5dps at 85% accuracy (122dps) Some of this makes sense to me and then some of it doesn't. The part that makes sense to me is where Belfast (T7) has better AA power than her '43 counterpart. She is, after-all, a more modernized version of her earlier self, so I can stomach her having improved AA power if only from that aspect. What doesn't make sense to me is the incongruity between the number of dual-purpose 102mm guns and the amount of sustained AA DPS and flak bursts between the two ships. Logically Belfast '43 (T8), with her twelve 102mm guns, should produce more long-range AA DPS and flak explosions with her larger battery of large-calibre weapons. Instead, Belfast (T7) not only has more DPS but she generates the same number of explosions AND those explosions individually hit harder too. I suppose I'm forced to chalk it up to some nebulous hand-waving towards Belfast (T7) having improved AA detection systems or some such nonsense. The only consolation is that at least Belfast '43 (T8)'s long-range AA woes are at least consistent with those found on her tier VIII sister-ship, Edinburgh. Suffice to say, Belfast '43 (T8) doesn't have good AA firepower. She lacks access Defensive AA Fire (thought that's honestly a bit of a booby-prize in the current meta when forced to choose between it and Hydroacoustic Search) and she doesn't have the raw numbers to ensure her own safety. Then again, that's not something that Belfast (T7) can easily boast either, so it's not like Belfast '43 (T8)'s predecessor has an enormous leg up or anything. The only real bummer is that Belfast '43 (T8) has to deal with tier X carriers on occasion which will never (ever) go well. Overall, Belfast '43 (T8) is a decided downgrade from what Belfast (T7) can do. She's even a downgrade from Edinburgh and most other tier VIII cruisers, only having better AA power than the Japanese heavies. Word will eventually get out that Belfast '43 (T8) is an easy mark for carriers. While you could take her Catapult Fighter to provide some protection, it's not worth losing her Surveillance Radar for what little deterrent a fighter actually provides. The values here have been adjusted by the weapon accuracy (90% for large and medium calibre guns, 85% for small) and then sorted by the formula DPS x [ range -1km ]. This provides an approximate ranking system for effectiveness of AA, valuing longer-ranged mounts than shorter ones. If you're looking for Belfast '43 (T8) she's third from the bottom -- just beneath Anchorage and above the two Japanese cruisers. Yeah, her AA is that bad. Most of these ships have the option of increasing their sustained AA DPS by 50% through the use of the Defensive AA Fire consumable, but not all of them will have it due to having to choose between it and Hydroacoustic Search. The exceptions are Cleveland, Montpelier, Ochakov and Wukong which will always have it and Edinburgh, Belfast '43, Anchorage, Irian and Amalfi which cannot take it at all. For those curious, Belfast (T7) would sit just beneath Wichita on this chart, so slightly better than Edinburgh. VERDICT: Belfast (T7) has decent (but not great) AA firepower. Belfast '43 (T8) has poor AA defence for her tier. Their Smoke Generators are arguably your best protection against planes, but you should be understandably reluctant to use that unless your life depends upon it. Refrigerator Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 11.34km / 8.91km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 7.16km/5.8km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 5.28km Maximum Firing Range: 15.42km I dunno what this is or where it's from, but it's pretty apt at describing Belfast's monstrous refrigerator (Vision Control). This is the reason that Belfast (T7) is overpowered. There's a lot to cover here, so let's get stuck in. Angry Smoke Clouds Smoke Generators on cruisers, particularly HE spamming cruisers, is highly contentious. The only thing worse than being on the receiving end of an endless torrent of HE spam is aircraft carriers. ... ... Huh? Oh, right. HE spam from smoke is pretty awful too. The two Belfasts have different strengths when it comes to their Smoke Generators. Belfast (T7) has easier to use, longer-lasting smoke. Belfast '43 (T8)'s smoke is much (much!) shorter duration but it comes off cool-down very quickly -- from 15 seconds from the dissipation of your last smoke cloud to as little as 8.2 seconds if you double stack Jack of All Trades with the November Foxtrot signal. Thus for higher-skilled players, Belfast '43 (T8)'s shorter duration smoke is less of a liability as it's more likely to be available when they need it. For less expert players, the (much) shorter duration of her smoke makes it much more dangerous to use as they're more likely to be caught out when it dissipates. This said, I do believe that Belfast (T7) has the better smoke. Though Belfast '43 (T8) has an extra charge, Belfast (T7) has more overall time in concealment. When you account for the bonus charge provided by Superintendent, Belfast (T7) has as much as 472 seconds worth of smoke cover per match (just shy of 8 minutes or just over with an X-ray Papa Unaone signal). Belfast '43 (T8) has only 275 seconds (just over 4.5 minutes and just shy of 5 minutes with an X-ray Papa Unaone signal) in a best-case scenario. But let's put this math into terms that really matter: the number of salvos each of these versions of Belfast can fire from smoke. As discussed earlier, Belfast '43 (T8) has really crappy DPM owing to her long reload. Let's assume our Belfasts are moving at 1/4 speed and open fire the moment they activate smoke, targeting enemies spotted for them by allies. Here are the best case for the number of salvos fired without being detected with a single charge of smoke: Belfast (T7) - 16 salvos (192 shells) Belfast '43 (T8) - 6 salvos (72 shells) It's not even a contest. Belfast '43 (T8) doesn't spam HE from smoke so much as take a few pot shots before scuttling away. Belfast (T7) meanwhile can sit comfortably and commit Dresden-style war crimes on anything that happens into range. Thus, Belfast '43 (T8) is much more dependent upon using island cover and kiting in open water than her tier VII-self. This doesn't make Belfast '43 (T8) bad by any stretch -- smoke of any kind is a very powerful consumable. Being more flexible with the use of open water and island terrain can lead to more longevity, given that firing into smoke has become a lot more common of a player skill since Belfast (T7)'s introduction back in the Fall of 2016. However, the knowledge on how to pull this off successfully is less likely to be found in a lower-tiered lobby. Furthermore, Surveillance Radar and long-ranged Hydroacoustic Search is much more prevalent within Belfast '43 (T8)'s matchmaking, while Belfast (T7) may end up being the only ship on either team with radar so she need not contend with it as often. So, the theory goes with Belfast '43 (T8) being less dependent upon smoke, her performance will somehow make feel more fair, balanced, earned, legitimate, or whatever other buzzwords people want to assign to her reduced smoke-crutch. The simple truth is that her smoke is worse. You need to do more work in Belfast '43 (T8) to get the same kind of potential as Belfast (T7)'s easy mode. Thus, Belfast (T7) has the better smoke. What's more, she has the better matchmaking which makes said smoke all the more advantageous. Belfast '43 (T8)'s smoke is strong, but Belfast (T7)'s smoke is game-changing. Showing Ark Royal how it's done If Belfast (T7) was simply an angry HE-spamming smoke cloud, she would still have garnered a lot of hate. Mikhail Kutuzov generated similar amounts of ire (and similar amounts of being pulled from the stores). But what makes these ships such monsters is their trifecta of lolibote hunting Vision Control (refrigerator) traits. Namely: Low surface detection to close with her targets to get close-to or inside of Surveillance Radar range. Hydroacoustic Search to neutralize torpedoes or charge smoke. Surveillance Radar to scatter the roaches. For a destroyer, these things are a nightmare. There is little to no warning before they're detected and once they are spotted, you risk being in Surveillance Radar range. Belfast '43 (T8) is more dangerous in this regard, having a long-ranged, 9km consumable than Belfast (T7)'s 8.5km radar. Belfast '43 (T8) is one of the few non-Soviet cruisers capable of stealth-radar, but her window for doing so is exceedingly small (less than 100m). Still, if she's detected it means that whatever ship is doing so is within her Surveillance Radar range which is a hella dangerous situation for any lolibote to be in. While there is a small chance that Belfast (T7) shorter range might not reach out to whatever destroyer that's lighting her, it's again a small window -- a mere 400m grace. The big difference between the two ships is what they can do once they have lit a target with Surveillance Radar. Again, Belfast '43 (T8)'s crappy DPM rears its ugly head and prevents her from being the god-tier lolibote molester like Belfast (T7). At best, Belfast '43 (T8) is getting off three salvos against a destroyer lit by Surveillance Radar with one of those being fired blind. Belfast (T7) gets three guaranteed salvos and maybe a fourth chasing the DD after it disappears. The only consolation here is that Belfast '43 (T8)'s higher alpha strike per salvo helps reduce the gap somewhat, but it's still around a 4,000 penetration damage advantage to Belfast (T7). Finally, it needs to be repeated but Belfast (T7) is one of the few ships armed with Surveillance Radar at all at tier VII. This alone is a huge advantage. Both ships are excellent destroyer hunters. Belfast '43 (T8) looks more attractive grace of her improved Surveillance Radar range, but Belfast (T7) wins out overall for the combination of higher DPM without giving up much of anything in the exchange. She's simply more capable given the opponents she faces due to her lower tiering. Mister Horse The presence of these ships forces your opponents to play differently. Belfast (T7)'s presence is more pronounced, precisely because of all of the Vision Control (refrigerator) advantages she brings to the table for a tier VII ship. She is visible less often owing to her longer-duration smoke. She's able to do more damage and start more fires from concealment. Finally, she's just as capable as Belfast '43 (T8) at sniffing out lolibotes. Belfast (T7) is a priority kill if she's on the enemy team. Yes, sometimes she's an easy mark -- particularly if she faces an opponent who knows how to blind fire into smoke and RNGeebus says . But I certainly don't like that gamble. These ships both have amazing refrigerators. VERDICT: God tier, the both of them. Belfast (T7) wins out, mostly because she's only tier VII. Killing destroyers wins games and these things are purpose-built to make their lives short. Final Evaluation Long, long ago in a fondly remembered patch from many iterations before, Wargaming wished to add a new cruiser line to World of Warships. This was in the before-time, back when the game only had American, Japanese, German and Soviet cruisers -- and even then, only a single line for each nation. This was before Inertial Fuse for HE Shells existed, when four-stacks of fires were an ever-present danger and a single flooding critical could doom a ship. It was a time of a cross-drops and inpenetrable smoke that even a battleship could fire from undetected. It was a time of fresh optimism as the third battleship line ever had just been introduced and German ships were actually good. And so it was the British light cruisers were added to World of Warships and with them, a whole slew of odd features. Repair Parties across half the line. SAP shells before SAP was a thing. No HE rounds. Single fire torpedoes. Improved engine performance. Weird, short-emission time smoke. And with this new release, Wargaming needed a premium. Belfast (T7) was to be that premium. She would resurrect elements of the earlier design iteration of this weird and wonderful British light cruiser line. She kept the HE that had been nixed from Supertest from the tech tree line. But to do so she had to sacrifice almost everything else that made the British light cruisers unique. No SAP. No torpedoes. No heals. They gave her extra detection consumables to compensate and assumed the job balanced and done. Well, we all learned how that turned out. Reception was everything from "it's good" to "it's too good" and she'd only get better over time. Belfast (T7)'s legacy would be to remain on sale for 12 months before being pulled for being too popular (for obvious reasons). Moreso than almost any other over-performing premium in the game, she became the face of "pay to win" in World of Warships, earning the justifiable moniker "Payfast". This was a sorry fate for such an important museum ship. Belfast (T7) has enjoyed a long reign as an overpowered premium. She has survived well over the years with only two major hits to her dominance. The first was matchmaking. Gone are the days where tier VII ships enjoyed being top-tier in most of their games. With the sale of tier IX premiums, the higher tiers are so well populated that she gets dragged up far more than down. The second blow came with the changes to HE penetration and Inertial Fuse for HE Shells. She was stripped her of the ability to directly damage tier VI and VII battleship hulls without IFHE and tier VIII and IX battleships even with IFHE. Cruiser armour improved too. Her HE shells shatter against a wider range of targets she faces than they once did. Though her efficiency has been hit and hit badly, I don't think she's been brought into line. Belfast (T7) is still ridiculously capable. Her presence upon the enemy team forces players to change the way they play until she's neutralized (or recognized to being played poorly). Which brings me to Belfast '43 (T8). I'd argue the best thing about her is her consumable combination, but even that's nowhere near as dominant as her predecessor. Higher tiered matchmaking sees to that. The prevalence of Surveillance Radar, the crappier quality of her Smoke Generator and horribad reload ensures that Belfast '43 (T8) doesn't ditto Belfast (T7)'s performance. But this is still a ship to be wary of, especially if you're muckin' about in a destroyer. Belfast '43 (T8) simply isn't the nightmare to larger ships the way Belfast (T7) used to be. She's still unpleasant to face. Angry smoke clouds and HE spamming islands aren't fun to deal with if you're in a battleship. They're not much fun for anyone to deal with frankly. She is still a serious threat to any destroyer, but that's not unique to her. Any Surveillance Radar light cruiser at tier VIII+ is something destroyers need be wary of. Still, Belfast '43 (T8) doesn't make my cut of ships I'd go out of my way to play. She's a museum ship, though, with lots of history to her name. In competitive, her smoke and radar will ensure she's got some legs to her, but she's not going to be a monstrous repeat of Belfast (T7). I'm not entirely convinced her slow reload will keep her in line. It just takes her longer to farm the same kind of damage Belfast (T7) used to. Belfast '43 (T8) has potential -- you just need to put in more work. That'll be a turn-off for some (and understandably so), but a blessing for others that want such performance gated behind a higher skill wall. Overall, I have to say I'm happy that Belfast '43 (T8) is now available, if only because she's such an important ship historically and as a museum ship. This iteration lets people taste the same style of game play as Belfast (T7) can do, but with fewer tears of justifiable rage coming from your opponents. In PVE modes, Belfast '43 (T8) even manages to be the better ship, if only because she has torpedoes and bots are dumb. Belfast '43 (T8) really only has one major failing, honestly. She's a horrible commander trainer for the Royal Navy Light Cruiser line. Here we are, four years later, and we still don't have a good Royal Navy light cruiser premium for training up commanders. The Belfast-twins use HE, necessitating the use of Demolition Expert or Inertial Fuse for HE Shells -- skills useless on the tech-tree light cruisers. That just leaves the heavy-cruiser premiums. Exeter is powerful, bless her heart, but the penatlies of playing low-tiered ships hurts her earning potential. London does it a little better. But again, you may be tempted to take Demolition Expert on these ships. That just leaves Cheshire, bloody-monkey-sucking CHESHIRE as the de facto "best" British light-cruiser trainer among the cruisers. CHESHIRE, Wargaming's apology letter for the two years of Royal Navy battleship HE spam, as the only cruiser-premium worth training British light cruiser captains. What the Hell!? Welp, let's hurry up and wait. Maybe Plymouth will rescue us all. Somehow I doubt it. She's not likely to be accessible to everyone even if she does tick all of the other boxes. The worst thing about Belfast '43 (T8) is that she has kept Cheshire relevant. For those unaware, LittleWhiteMouse hates Cheshire and hated reviewing her. That Belfast '43 (T8) forced Mouse to remember Cheshire's existence is a crime for which she cannot be forgiven. It pisses her off so much she starts referring to herself in the third person. In Closing Heyo! ♪ Double-feature over! I hope you all enjoyed this detailed look at the two ships. I hope my colour coordination helped differentiate the two for you. Thank you very much for reading and thank you so much to my patrons for making these reviews possible. 

So I’ve been working on a side project on my own for the past 6 or 7 years where I have been coming up with ideas for a fictional alternate history series. I had an idea for a German battlecruiser design that combines the designs (both external and internal designs and the armor layout) of the German battleship Bismarck (using wows’s B hull upgrade as the basis for her exterior design) and the British battlecruiser HMS Hood (using her design in wows as exterior basis). My question is what would this design probably look like in your opinion? I would also like photos/reference drawings to be used in this discussion if whoever reads this wants to in order to make it easier to visualize the design aspects used.

Following advices taken (here) i got my first "real" coal ship: Thunderer Unfortunately, by now i have about 30% wins on it. Trying to play in the back as people told it is a ship to snipe and not a ship to engage in fights.

HMS Vanguard is the ghost of the Royal Navy battleship tech tree everyone wanted to see. Ostensibly, HMS Vanguard was designed to be a tier VIII version of HMS Warspite. However, Vanguard falls short of this aspiration. For a high-tier Royal Navy battleship, she's surprisingly not idiot-proof, with a vulnerable citadel that needs to be protected with angling and manoeuvres. What's most exciting: Her AP shells are wonderful. Wargaming has offered some concessions to both of the fans of the current Royal Navy battleship line. They included HMS Monarch's excellent high explosive shells to Vanguard's arsenal, ensuring that these two players can continue spamming HE without a guilty conscience while everyone else rolls their eyes. I want to thank Wargaming for providing me access to this ship. This is the release version of the vessel and all of the statistics discussed here are current as of November 15th, 2018. PROS Large hit point pool of 71,700hp. Main battery has a quick 25s reload and excellent gun handling. Has the same dispersion pattern as Warspite, Hood and Queen Elizabeth and boasts 2.0 sigma, making her one of the most precise battleships in the game. Excellent AP and HE performance for a 381mm shell, including good penetration and damage values, rewarding versatile ammunition choice. Very fast rudder shift time for a battleship of 9.7 seconds. Improved Repair Party, queuing and healing back more than standard and with fast reset timer. CONS Exposed, above-water citadel. Absolutely appalling firing angles on her main battery. Main battery is only eight 381mm rifles creating issues with overmatching and DPM. AA defense is for self defense only and is concentrated in 3.5km range, medium caliber mounts that are easily knocked out. Large turning radius of 850m and slow rate of turn exacerbates the issues with her fire angles. Overview The maximum rotation positions of X and Y turret (her rear guns). They are not new-player friendly. They're not even veteran-player friendly. Vanguard's terrible fire angles so utterly dominate her game play, I felt the tremendous compulsion to wear white-lace and beg her to be gentle. These fire angles screwed me over more times than I can count. Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Vanguard encourages players to sail with their broadsides exposed. With her above-water citadel, you can imagine how well she's going to go over with novice players. You know what? Never mind the novices. The veterans are going to find this frustrating too as it limits the amount of firepower she can dish out when trading. She's a battleship that reward cautious, opportunistic play -- which is review-speak for "hide in the back, shoot when you can and don't brawl". – One of, if not the worst at its tier. This is a pronounced weakness. – Middle of the pack at its tier. Not terrible, but not terribly good either. – Has a significant advantage over her tier mates. A solid, competitive performer. – No other ship at its tier does this as well as this ship. Vanguard has strengths and weaknesses across the board, giving her a rating in Offense, Agility, Anti-Air and Vision Control. It's only in Defense where she stands out with a rating. Her citadel is very vulnerable for a battleship, however she counters this with a the largest hit point pool at her tier and an amazing Repair Party consumable. Options Aside from Vanguard's Repair Party, there's nothing out of the ordinary to be found here. Consumables Vanguard's Damage Control Party is standard for a British battleship. She has unlimited charges. It has a 15 second action time and a 120s / 80s reset timer. Her Repair Party is improved. See the DEFENSE section below. There's a lot to go over. This starts with 3 charges base. Upgrades Optimization of Vanguard's upgrades will see the usual suspects rear their tired old heads. Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. Next take Damage Control Systems Modification 1. You've got a choice in your third slot. As ever, emphasizing gunnery is best so your first pick here should be Aiming Systems Modification 1. However, if you're salty about CVs, taking AA Guns Modification 2 is an okay choice. It's not great, but it's okay. Damage Control Modification 2 is arguably the best choice for most players in slot 4. You can elect to take Steering Gears Modification 2 to emphasize the strengths of her already quick rudder shift time. Be aware this is harder to make use of optimally even if it can yield higher results -- it's easier to tank damage than it is to dodge it, after all. Finally, take everyone's favourite no-brainer: Concealment Modification 1. Camouflage Vanguard comes with Type 10 Camouflage. This provides: 50% bonus experience gains 10% reduction to maintenance costs 3% reduction in surface detection 4% reduction in enemy accuracy. Firepower Main Battery: Eight 381mm guns in 4x2 turrets in an A-B-X-Y superfiring configuration. Secondary Battery: Sixteen 134mm guns in 8x2 turrets. These are superfiring with two forward facing and two rear facing per side. Secondaries Let's start with the small guns. You can largely forget that Vanguard has secondaries. These 134mm guns lack the range, reload time and volume of fire needed to present a credible threat to opponents. This is really unfortunate given their nice shell weight and fire chance. If they had the range or they had the rate of fire, maybe a secondary build would be fun to play around with. Lamentably, it's a mistake to invest anything in upgrading these weapons -- they simply can't do what you need them to. At best they might be able to start a fire on an enemy capital ship that strays too close. However, with Vanguard's high citadel, getting into a brawl is a death sentence, so stay out of secondary range. Main Battery Precision There's so much to like about Vanguard's main battery. First of, there's her precision. Vanguard is a blast from the past, sharing same horizontal dispersion value of the older British premium battleships, including Hood and Warspite. Inside of 12km, she overtakes even the vaunted Japanese battleship accuracy, making her much more adept at picking off close range targets like destroyers. Combined with her 2.0 sigma value, landing hits feels very comfortable, even at long ranges. Standard dispersion test for my reviews -- 180 shells fired at 15km locked onto a stationary target Fuso without camouflage. She was equipped with Aiming Systems Modification 1. Vanguard doesn't quite enjoy the same level of precision as Warspite owing to her faster shell velocity and energy preservation. This gives her a larger vertical dispersion area at all ranges. However, this does lead to improved shell lead times making gunnery easier. Note that Vanguard suffers from a lot of "downward drift" which adds a margin of error to these shell maps as I had to readjust aim with every volley fired. Thus the dispersion area maybe slightly smaller than shown. Shell Performance Vanguard's HE shells don't share the same performance anachronism as her dispersion. They're modern, almost (but not quite) matching HMS Monarch's HE, including her shell damage and penetration. Monarch's have a 1% higher chance to set blazes over Vanguard, though -- don't ask me why. Vanguard doesn't quite match up to the tech tree Royal Navy battleships for fire setting ability. This is good news to me -- it removes some of the brainless quality of HE spam. When you do reach over for her AP shells, you're rewarded with a welcome change from other Royal Navy battleship AP. Like Warspite before her, Vanguard has a longer fuse timer with her AP. This has a few effects. The downside is that she's more likely to overpenetrate soft targets, including broadside cruisers and battleship extremities. The upside is that it provides her AP with increased bite for reaching machine spaces and magazines buried deeper within the core of enemy warships -- especially those with spaced armour protecting their citadels. Vanguard is especially good at punishing broadside battleships at range. Approximate penetration values for Vanguard's AP shells. Vanguard's HE shells are fixed with 95mm of penetration -- not quite enough to punish the few exposed citadels found on high tier cruisers. Inertial Fuse for HE Shells will add a few more ships to the roster that her HE can punish, but it's not worth the points investment. Data pulled from World of Warships AP Calculator. Site linked in the appendix. Penetration wise, her AP shells are well setup, having comparable bite to Tirpitz and Bismarck. It pays to keep their caliber in mind, however. Her 381mm shells cannot overmatch the 27mm bows of American and German heavy cruisers. As good as Vanguard's AP shells are, spamming nothing but won't do you any more favours than if you used HE shells exclusively. Switch shells often in Vanguard and she'll reward you. Vanguard's fast 25 second reload facilitates swapping between ammunition while also padding her damage output when it comes time to cycle her guns. Damage output among the tier VIII battleships is very close. Vanguard keeps pace with her fast rate of fire, compensating for her smaller armament. As ever, take these numbers with a pinch of salt -- they do not represent the challenges of getting shells on target or penetrating when they get there. For whatever reason, Vanguard's HE shells only have a 34% base fire chance as opposed to Monarch's 35%. This creates an increased gap in their fire setting potential and makes Vanguard no better of a fire starter than American battleships. Still the increased damage she dispenses makes this more than worthwhile. Before any of you get yourself all hot and bothered about Monarch's fire setting, Cleveland (the gold-standard of tier VIII burnination) can spit out 9.97 fires per minute with the IFHE penalty and no other buffs. The same disclaimers apply for this chart as the others -- this is merely an indicator of performance and does not represent actual in game results. A myriad of factors will always conspire to mitigate a ship's ability to set fires including (but not limited to), target selection, opportunity, shell dispersion, fire resistance, etc. The Deal Breaker All of these strengths are present to pad for one massive weakness: Vanguard's appalling fire angles. Vanguard has a fast rate of fire, great HE shells, fast turret traverse and excellent precision because her fire angles are so bad. It's all meant to be compensation because Vanguard must present a near perfect broadside in order to fire all eight of her guns at a target. This leaves her incredibly vulnerable to reprisals. She is functionally incapable of autobouncing enemy shells while firing her full armament and instead she must rely on her armour thickness to repel shells. At anything but the longest of ranges, this is a fool's errand. Thus, Vanguard often has to sacrifice firepower in order to properly angle against her enemies. This is why her gun performance is so good: she's often forced to fight with only half of her weapons. Wargaming have done everything they can to make it easier to bring the other half to bear when possible. Her gun traverse is quick. Her reload is fast. She answers her rudder quickly too to help swing her butt out to unmask her guns. I'm not going to lie: These bad fire angles are enough to put me off this ship entirely, which is saying a lot given all of the wonderful perks her guns otherwise enjoy. Vanguard has the same (terrible) forward firing angles as the King George V-class battleships. However, her rearward firing angles are worse than the tier VII battleship. No matter how you choose to engage an enemy, when you use all eight of Vanguard's guns, you open yourself up to return-fire and potential citadel damage. Bad firing angles are one of my personal pet-peeves. I can stomach a lot of things, up to and including sluggish gun traverse, but not bad fire angles. This has greatly soured my opinion of this ship. Summary Secondaries are bad. Her main guns perform beautifully provided you can use all of them. Her fire angles will get you killed. Evaluation: What it would have needed to be : I almost gave her a rating here -- that's how bad her fire angles are. However, there's just too many perks glued onto her weapons to make that a fair assessment. She'd need a much faster rate of fire before I would consider bumping this up. Or, you know, completely redesign the ship to give her better fire angles. That would work too. Defense Hit Points: 71,700 Min Bow & Deck Armour: 32mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 356mm Torpedo Damage Reduction: 25% Armour Protection The 356mm/343mm armour is replicated again around her rear magazine. Her turret faces are 343mm front, 228mm side, 178mm rear, and 152mm on top with 305mm barbettes. Let's start with the elephant in the room: Vanguard's citadel sits over the waterline. Much fuss will be made over this and rightly so. Only Roma shares this high-water vulnerability and the Italian ship is much better equipped to angle and bounce incoming fire. The net effect is that Vanguard is more likely to take citadel damage than other battleships when someone catches her side. This isn't to say that citadel damage is an exclusive weakness to Vanguard. However, it pays to keep her vulnerability in mind. Her aforementioned firing angles on her main battery guns exacerbates this problem. When Vanguard is firing all eight of her weapons, whatever she's shooting at has an easy target from which to farm damage. What makes Vanguard's fire angles such a liability compared to other battleships has to do with autobounce mechanics. Let's get technical for a moment to explain why. If AP shells cannot overmatch armour, there's an autobounce check. This occurs before any penetration attempts are made. The angle of the shell is compared to the angle of the surface it strikes. Normally, battleship AP shells that hit with an acute angle of 30º or less will auto-ricochet. This is why bow-tanking is so prevalent -- shells simply slide off the ship's bow and deck, unable to bite into the armour. No matter how much penetration a shell has, if it strikes at too shallow of an angle, your ship can avoid damage. Normally, battleship AP shells that hit with an angle of 45º or more cannot autoricochet. Any shells that strike between 45º and 90º to the hull will follow normal penetration mechanics. In between these two values, the auto-ricochet chance scales linearly. For Vanguard, when she fires her all eight guns forward at a 43º angle, any return fire from her target has only a 13% chance of suffering a ricochet. When she fires all eight guns to the rear at a 40º angle, this improves to a 33% chance. Most battleships are capable of firing all of their guns 35º off their bow, allowing them to ricochet shells automatically 2/3s of the time. The steeper they angle themselves, the better this defense. This mechanic is absolutely essential for keeping battleships safe from the monstrous levels of penetration found at higher tiers. Not only does it provide a better chance of automatically deflecting shells, it adds relative thickness to their armour belts. The steeper you angle, the greater the effective thickness. Vanguard's belt has between 503mm and 522mm worth of protection at 43º. However, if she could fire at 35º off her bow, this would increase to 598mm to 621mm. Data pulled from proships.ru (link in the Appendix). Values are approximate, usually with about 5% higher estimates than Wargaming's values published in their Armada series of videos. You can see by these values that at range, Vanguard makes an excellent bully when top tier -- with rare exceptions, she can unmask her X and Y turrets and fire, confident that her belt will be proof against return fire. This falls away when dueling with tier VIII+ opponents. With few exceptions, they all have the raw penetration needed to best her belt while she fires a broadside. Her citadel protection isn't all bad, though. First off, AP bombs can't citadel you. Hooray! Second, shots that land high that attempt to bi-pass her belt and drop down into her citadel have to contend with a 32mm citadel roof. Only Yamato and Musashi's 460mm guns can overmatch this, meaning that any other shell will skip off the top of her machine spaces for only penetration damage. Thus it's only shots fired directly at her waterline which can damage her citadel. The use of Priority Target is almost a must to alert you when enemies are looking your way to give you time to angle in and protect yourself. Vanguard needs time to stack damage -- to find those moments where she can sit broadside and make excellent use of her precision and rate of fire but don't push your luck when you're taking hits. There's one last little point of contention with Vanguard's protection scheme: With the entirety of her deck and extremities boasting no more than 32mm of armour, Vanguard is a juicy target for light cruisers. Expect to burn a lot if they catch you out in the open. Provided you can protect Vanguard's citadel (and that's a pretty big if), she has the largest effective hit point pool of any of the tier VIII battleships. With optimal use of her consumable, her theoretical maximum (less Survivability Expert) effectively doubles her hit point pool. In practice, you're never going to see that kind of number. Repair Party If Vanguard appears a little squishy, she all but makes up for it with her excellent Repair Party consumable. While she doesn't boast the same portable dry-dock found on HMS Lion, Nelson and Conqueror, she has the next best thing. Here's the bonuses she has baked in: Her Repair Party resets quickly. The reset timer on consumable is 90 seconds / 60 seconds for standard / premium. Compare this to the usual 120 seconds / 80 seconds of the normal Repair Party. She queues up 60% of penetration damage. This is admittedly standard for Royal Navy battleships, so Vanguard doesn't stand apart from the rest of the ships in her line. For most other battleships it's 50%. Vanguard queues up 33% of citadel damage. This is huge. While it would best to avoid taking citadel damage of any kind, Vanguard heals up more than the 10% of other battleships. Keep in mind, this also applies to torpedo damage which is the most common form of citadel damage battleships receive. This is especially good in Vanguard's case given her poor anti-torpedo protection. She heals up to 16.8% of her hit points per charge. Normal Repair Party mechanics heal up only 14% over 28 seconds -- or 0.5% per second. Vanguard enjoys a 20% boost over this like Warspite, healing 0.6% per second over the same time period. With up to five charges at her disposal through the use of premium and skills, Vanguard's faster reset timer ensures that she's able to make full use of her health regeneration. Her enormous hit point pool also guarantees big returns as Repair Party scales with a ship's starting hit point total. Summary For all of Vanguard's potential vulnerability with her high citadel, she's well equipped to mitigate and manage said damage. When she's top tier, the vulnerability of her citadel drops down considerably, making her very powerful. Light cruisers are always going to be pain in the butt, though, and beware HE spam from battleships too. Vanguard isn't done yet with her tricks, though, as you'll see in the AGILITY section below. Evaluation: What it would have needed to be : Can a battleship with an exposed citadel even be considered ? It feels a bit of a stretch to me, but if you can keep her citadel protected, Vanguard is hella tough. That's a pretty big 'if' though when she's not top tier. She may lose her current rating when the North Carolina Repair Party buff goes through. Agility Top Speed: 30.0 knots Port Turning Radius: 850m Rudder Shift Time: 9.7 seconds (!) 4/4 Engine Speed Turning Rate: 4.1º/s The big thing to talk about here is Vanguard's rudder shift time. Now I've harped on rudder shift before -- it's a mean to an end, not an end of itself. Boasting that a ship has a great rudder shift time is like boasting that a ship has great range on its main battery guns -- it's nice to have but it's not a good indicator of a ship's performance. The same applies here. Vanguard answers her rudder quickly and her movements are much more precise as a result, but it would be a mistake to call this ship agile. Vanguard's rate of turn holds her back. 4.1º/s is painfully average for a high tier battleship. She sits well behind ships like the Richelieu-class sisters and the South Dakota-class sisters. This is caused by two things. One, her turning radius is big. Two, she doesn't have any baked in bonuses to help her preserve speed in the turn. The upside to her modest handling (and it's a stretch to call this a benefit) is that she can't out turn her turrets. She starts with a 5.0º/s rotation on her main battery guns and Expert Marksman only widens the gap, making adjusting her fire very comfortable if it weren't for those damned firing arcs. Vanguard's fast rudder shift time is almost good enough to allow her to fire her guns and angle back quickly enough to avoid reprisals. Almost. The simple fact of the matter, going from a 30º aspect to a 43º and back again takes too long. I never managed better than 15 seconds during trials. You might be able to pull this off against an inexperienced opponent but this is owing more to their mistakes rather than the merits of the ship itself. If you want to be able to fire all eight of Vanguard's guns while not getting your citadel blown out, you're going to have to play clever. Now just because Vanguard can't wiggle-wiggle-shoot doesn't preclude her from being able to dodge. This is something she's quite good at and where her rudder shift time makes her deliciously unpredictable. You'll still need range in order to pull this off, but you can pretend to begin unmasking your guns in order to bait shots and then double back on your course to bounce their shells. Similarly, the amount of bounce and twirl in her badonkadonk makes her a real nuisance for destroyers to land torpedoes. Vanguard is all about frustrating gunnery -- both yours and your opponents. Evaluation: What it would have needed to be : She's not a speed demon like the French botes nor wiggling like the SoDaks. She's also not a thunderbutt like Kii, so there's that. I was personally hoping to see her preserve a little more speed in the turn to get her rotation rate up -- that would have done it, but it didn't pan out during testing. Anti-Aircraft Defense AA Gun Calibers: 134mm / 40mm AA Umbrella Ranges: 5.2km / 3.5km AA DPS per Aura: 68 / 413.1 For personal defense, Vanguard's anti-aircraft firepower is excellent -- comparable to the American battleships. However, that's about as far as it extends. Vanguard lacks the weight of fire with her dual purpose guns to be a credible threat to aircraft further out. This precludes any claims of efficiency with Manual Fire Control for AA Guns -- too much of her flak is focused upon her 3.5km 40mm batteries. This adds a second weakness: her medium caliber weapons don't stand up to punishment very well. If you've taken even a light dusting of HE shells, odds are your anti-aircraft firepower is nowhere near as formidable as it once was. So, while you're pristine and perfect, you'll shred planes. It's worth investing in Advanced Fire Training to help boost this further, but that's about as far as improving her anti-aircraft firepower should go. Hey look, I made it through a section without mentioning her awful fire ang -- aw, damn it. Evaluation: What it would have needed to be : She's very close. Were it not for FOUR American battleships all having very similar AA firepower (and Kii besides), she might be able to muscle in and make her presence felt. As it is, she sits in their shadow. Refrigerator Base Surface Detection: 16.04km Air Detection Range: 13.7km Minimum Surface Detection Range: 12.04km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 14.73km Main Battery Firing Range: 20.0km There's not much to go over here. Vanguard's concealment is "sufficient unto the task" and nothing more. She sits in the middle of the pack for surface detection behind Monarch (14.6km), Roma (14.9km) and North Carolina (15.7km) and just ahead of the Alabama-twins (16.2km) and Bismarck-sisters (16.4km). Vision Control consumables are rare at this tier, being limited to Bismarck's Hydroacoustic Search and various spotter and float plane fighters found on select ships. Vanguard doesn't have access to any of them and she ends up feeling blind without them. Evaluation: What it would have needed to be : More stealth or a spotting consumable other than an aircraft. Alpha and Omega There's not much to say in regards to the skill choices for Vanguard. You can buff up her anti-aircraft firepower if you're super salty about CVs, but on the whole a generic battleship captain build emphasizing fire resistance would serve you better. Start with Priority Target. Take Adrenaline Rush as your second skill. Follow this up with Basics of Survivability at the third tier. For your 10th point-skill, choose between Concealment Expert and Fire Prevention with your 14th point-skill, take the alternative. With your remaining 5 points to spend, customize as you will. Advanced Fire Training will serve you well if you want a little more teeth to your AA guns -- especially when paired with AA Guns Modification 2 from your upgrades. For your remaining 1pt, take either Preventative Maintenance or Expert Loader. Alternatively, you can mix and match between Superintendent, Expert Marksman, Jack of All Trades and High Alert. Keep those tier 1 skills in mind as filler. Final Evaluation She has two main flaws and only two: Her citadel sits high over the water and her fire arcs suck. If you can mitigate these two weaknesses, this boat is amazing. She's been padded with all of the perks possible to compensate for these challenges. If you can't mitigate them, or you find it frustrating, Vanguard is a steaming pile of doo. "The second coming of Warspite" has such a nice ring to it. So many of us were hoping that the Royal Navy battleship line would have borrowed heavily from Warspite's game design -- namely her gun's precision, sluggish gun handling, good agility and improved heals. Instead we got a pack of flame throwers with cloaking devices and portable dry-docks. Complaining about what became of the Royal Navy battleships is so 2017, though. I had pinned my new hopes that Vanguard would be my baebote #2, echoing a lot of what made Warspite great. She almost got there which is pretty surprising. But let's not sugarcoat things -- Vanguard fell short of the mark. This isn't a tier VIII Warspite. So is Vanguard "good"? Well, yes. Yes, she is. However, there's a big ol' butt attached. She's good but she's also potentially frustrating as all get out. I've grumbled enough about her fire arcs. This is a personal pet peeve of mine, if you can't tell. This right here is what would relegated Vanguard to a port-queen for me. For others, her exposed citadel is going to be a big no-no. Why play a battleship that can get her machine spaces easily blown out when you could play something similar that doesn't have to put up with that nonsense? Her inability to overmatch select heavy cruisers will be a turn-off for others. It will keep her from being a contender in competitive play because of it. Finally, her longer AP fuse timer gives her an increased chance of overpenetrations. There's few things as heart breaking as lining up that perfect shot on a cruiser only to watch your shells sail clean through, inflicting minimal damage. One of the ways a premium ship can get in my bad books is by forcing a player to take extra steps to accomplish the same task as other vessels. Vanguard ticks this box. If Famous and HIstorical Monarch can do what Vanguard does and with less frustration, why bother picking up Vanguard? If the comparison to Monarch is bringing you pause, good. The two ships have very similar play styles with the tech tree ship being idiot-proof. I think this is perhaps the most damning thing that could be said about Vanguard: like Monarch, she's a little dull. Thankfully, Vanguard does borrow just enough from Warspite to spare her being called the second coming of the King George V that never was. I'm just not sure it's enough to redeem the ship in my eyes. Her perks are compelling, but it keeps coming back to those frustrating elements for me. I suppose that says it all right there. Know thyself. If those elements seem like turn-offs to you, then stay away. Otherwise, she'll do you no wrong. Would I Recommend? Vanguard acted as the gatekeeper to the initial offering of HMS Dreadnought. If you wanted the latter you had to also buy the former. Make sure you weigh the merits of both ships before pulling the trigger on a purchase like that. PVE Battles How well does the ship maintain profitability in Co-Op modes and how does she fare against bots? Yes. Bots are dumb. Battleships vs bots is always a good fit. Random Battle Grinding: This includes training captains, collecting free experience, earning credits and collecting signal flags from achievements. No. You are absolutely spoiled rotten for choice when it comes to Royal Navy premium battleships. Warspite, Hood, Nelson, Duke of York and Dreadnought are all on offer. Vanguard does have the advantage of being the highest tier, and thus potentially making the most bank, but you could do almost as well for yourself in most of the others. (I can't believe I'm recommending Duke of York as a reasonable alternative...) For Competitive Gaming: Competitive Gaming includes Ranked Battles and other skill-based tournaments. This also includes stat-padding. No. Get yourself Massachusetts or Alabama instead. For Collectors: If you enjoy ship history or possessing rare ships, this section is for you. Yes. She's the last Royal Navy battleship ever -- built in steel and she's drop dead gorgeous. For Fun Factor: Bottom line: Is the ship fun to play? No. I didn't find her fun to play. However, that's because I'm a whiner when it comes to firing arcs. Maybe your own mileage will be different. What’s the Final Verdict? How would the ship rate on oh-so scientific, not-sarcastic at all, Angry YouTuber scale of Garbage – Meh – Gud – Overpowered? GARBAGE– I hate it! Mehbote – An average ship. Probably forgettable. Gudbote – The best thing ever. Totally not overpowered because I like padding my stats in it. OVERPOWERED – I hate playing against it! In Conclusion It's only a week late. That's unfortunately going to be the status quo going forward as I perpetually play catch-up with releases. Since Dreadnought and Vanguard were ninja-announced last week, Bourgogne has been finalized. In addition Charleston was released without any warning, so there are three new reviews in the queue. What's more, the Black Friday ships, Massachusetts, Tirpitz, Atago and Asashio are on their way out. While Tirpitz and Massachusetts' reviews are still reasonably up to date, the changes to the latter two could warrant a revisit. Given the limited access I'm going to have with Bourgogne, I'll probably be prioritizing that one as my next review unless something else comes up. Thank you all for reading. Thank you very much to everyone that supports me on Patreon for helping me produce this content.  Appendix Armour penetration data was pulled from two sites: http://proships.ru/stat/ships/ https://mustanghx.github.io/ship_ap_calculator/

Is it just me or Implacable bombs are just underpowered weapons when you compare them to other tier 8 cvs? Most of bomb drops I make on a BB will either miss or fail to pen on a perfectly lined up drop. Most of the bombs miss on smaller ships like cruisers. Tier 8 aa really hurts if you're not careful and making it past 2 drops is far too risky. Is it time to actually buff this CV? I propose to make the aiming reticle smaller or increase the pen of the bombs. What do you guys think?

So I've been playing for a while and I've been a cruiser/dd main. I picked up British CVs a couple months ago and grinded up to Implacable and then sold it for credits after playing 20 games or so to fund something else. Now I've picked up the ship but I can't figure out how to make the most out of it. I try to play for my team's objectives and try to spot dds and assist team mates whenever possible. I find that in every match ships are always clumped up together and I find my planes being shot down like free candy no matter what WASD hacks I employ to dodge the flack. I even try to drop some loads ahead of time to minimize my plane losses each run but I find that my planes are always being depleted. I did OKAY in the Hermes and Furious but it seems that I really suck in this ship. Any advice on how to play CV in general and also specifically in respect to this ship? I'm not sure if average damage would help but it seems that I'm getting around 40k. Any advice would be appreciated.

The following is a review of Indomitable, the tier VIII British Aircraft Carrier. This ship was provided to me for free by Wargaming for review purposes. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.9.0. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. Well, this won't be popular. Seriously, what a way to tank my readership numbers -- reviewing an aircraft carrier of all things. I can already hear the furious keyboard mashing of the rework-haters preparing to repeat oft-rehearsed mantras and soundbites. Well, whether social media likes it or not, Indomitable is a premium that Wargaming is charging money for and it should be reviewed. Players should have access to as much accurate information about her as possible. So here I am. Don't hate the facts. Hate the feels. Welcome to 2020, everyone! Quick Summary: A carpet-bombing nightmare. Her planes are super fast and super tough but she gets so few of them. The game play is quick, monotonous and heavily RNG based. PROS Armoured flight deck. Her aircraft are very fast. Enormous aircraft health pools. Her bombers are very easy to use. Bombers are good at starting fires. Accelerated reset timers after attack runs, allowing for faster repeat-strikes. Very fast patrol fighters, excellent at intercepting enemy air groups. CONS Enormous, high-water citadel. No torpedo planes whatsoever. Tiny hangar capacity and slow regeneration of aircraft. Strike groups are very small and easily wiped out when caught by flak or fighters. Low agility on aircraft. They're only fast in a straight line. Her bombers have very poor energy retention. Low penetration on bombs and rockets limits their ability to stack direct damage. Success is heavily RNG based, banking on fires to burn down targets or a good drop pattern to pulverize destroyers. You can setup everything correctly and still fail. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / CASUAL / Challenging/ Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low/ MODERATE/ High/ Extreme Indomitable isn't terribly complex -- she's arguably one of the easiest aircraft carriers in the game to learn. If she could automatically avoid flak, fighters and negate the effects of AA, I'd give her a "simple" rating but she's not quite there. There's not much else to Indomitable beyond proper target selection. Few of the high-skill CV tricks work here. Indomitable has a shorter immunity window than other carriers so sling-shotting provides less returns that it would for other carriers. Fast recall doesn't work either. This limits "high skill play" to pre-dropping planes and knowing which ships you can damage directly with her low-penetration attacks. Options Ship Consumables Aircraft carrier consumables are fixed and activate automatically. Indomitable's Damage Control Party is activated anytime she takes critical damage. This includes taking floods, being set on fire, taking critical damage to her steering gears or engines. This is active for 60 seconds with a 90 second reset timer. It has unlimited charges. Her CAP Fighters (combat air patrol fighters) are activated anytime Indomitable is spotted. Once launched, these will patrol for TEN MINUTES (600s) if they're not destroyed or they aren't required to intercept. The four fighters (five with the Direction Center for Fighters commander skill) orbit Indomitable at a range of 1km and engage enemy aircraft that slip within 3km of their current position. Each aircraft is capable of shooting down a single plane. This consumable has four charges and a 40s reset timer. Aircraft Consumables Indomitable's two squadrons each have consumables with her fighters being slightly improved to compensate for the lack of torpedo bombers. The Engine Cooling consumable restores the carrier's boost meter to full over the course of five seconds. In addition, while it's active, boosting will not drain the meter. Each squadron has two charges and they reset over 80 seconds. Indomitable's Patrol Fighters come with an extra charge compared to most of the other tier VIII carriers. She starts with four charges instead of three. This gives Indomitable a total of eight charges compared to the nine the other carriers enjoy. These fighters fight on station for 60 seconds with a five second reset timer after the planes depart. Upgrades Take Air Groups Modification 1 in your first slot to accelerate aircraft return & recovery time. Next, take Aircraft Engines Modification 1 to give you more boost time. You have a choice in slot three. Attack Aircraft Modification 1 will give you an additional 2 seconds of time to fire your rockets in an attack run. If you patently hate your rockets (or don't see an additional 2 seconds as useful), then AA Guns Modification 1 should be your fallback. You have the choice between increasing the hit points of your attack aircraft or bombers here. Pick whichever one you're more reliant upon. I personally prefer Bombers Modification 2 over Attack Aircraft Modification 2. Let's not kid ourselves: Flight Control Modification 1 is hella important for a carrier with such limited hangar capacity as Indomitable. Concealment System Modification 1 will help keep your carrier alive (somewhat), but Indomitable's surface detection isn't so appalling that she needs much help. Commander Skills I'd like to be able to tell you that you should take a unique, Indomitable-only commander build but it's really not necessary. Focus on aircraft survivability skills primarily, increasing boost time, regeneration time, health and protection versus AA power. After that, do whatever. Demolition Expert is probably the only must-have that you might otherwise skip on some carriers. Camouflage Indomitable comes with Type 10 Camouflage providing the standard bonuses for a tier VIII premium: 3% reduction to surface detection. 4% increase to enemy dispersion. 10% reduction to post-battle service costs. 50% increase to experience earned. Provided you've completed the necessary collections, you have two palette options for Indomitable. This is the alternate camouflage colours. Both are nice. The Planes Indomitable's most telling trait isn't what she can do, but rather what she can't. She does not have access to any torpedo bombers and is thus entirely reliant upon her attack aircraft and bombers to carry the day. The former are pretty forgettable, leaving most of the heavy lifting to Indomitable's bombers. For a ship with already pared down game play options, having success largely stacked onto the shoulders of a single aircraft type makes for hella-dull game play. Like more than a few recent ships, Indomitable's fortunes are tied directly to her matchmaking. I cannot stress this enough: She lacks penetration. The more well armoured her opponents, the more reliant she is upon RNG to stack hits on the few squishy areas that remain or to start fires. This has the potential to severely limits her damage output. There's a world of difference between nearly every hit causing damage and only a choice few. At her core, Indomitable is little different than an HE-spamming heavy cruiser or British battleship. Her preferred means of damage comes from landing penetrating hits, but in a pinch, fires will do. She manages this by fast-cycling her aircraft. Indomitable greatly reduces travel times compared to her contemporaries, taxing Damage Control Parties and repeat-striking exposed ships until they are burned or bombed to death. Her preferred targets are the squishy and the battleships. The former she can hurt directly, the latter she can burn. However, she is deathly allergic to strong, combined AA auras. Thus, most cruisers are off the menu, making Indomitable's already limited gameplay incredibly myopic. Burning battleships leads to three things: big numbers, Witherer medals and lots of raging in chat. This kind of triple-stacked positive reinforcement will all but guarantee that most Indomitable players will ignore objectives, dismiss targets of importance and focus instead upon farming battleship tears. What else did you expect from a demented Sky-Conqueror? Hangar Capacity Attack Aircraft Capacity: 12 Aircraft Attack Aircraft Regeneration: 115s per Bomber Capacity: 8 Aircraft Bomber Regeneration: 117s per Indomitable's hangar is ... well, crappy to say the least. The only positive here is that she holds more aircraft than she otherwise should. With her squadrons a mere four bombers and six attack aircraft in size, I would expect her to house six bombers and nine attack aircraft in her hangar if she conformed to CV norms. However, Wargaming "balanced" her by letting her carry double the size of her squadrons instead. Indomitable's aircraft regeneration is painfully slow to boot. This isn't a terribly forgiving aircraft when it comes to mistakes. At best, she can regenerate a maximum of 11 of each aircraft type over the course of a twenty-minute match and that's only the theoretical maximum. In practice count assume you're getting one aircraft of each type back every two minutes provided you're using both types regularly. There's no way in Hell any of these carriers will reach their theoretical maximum capacity. Regeneration of aircraft only occurs when there's empty room in the hangar. The moment the hangar is full, typically from returning aircraft, regeneration stops and any remaining progress is lost. Bombers Aircraft Type: de Havilland Sea Hornet Ordnance: Six 250lb general purpose bomb Group Size: Four aircraft per squadron with two aircraft per attack flight Hit Points: 2,590hp per Aircraft Min/Cruising/Boosted Speed: 157kts/182kts/217kts Easy to Use, Easy to Praise Indomitable's bombers are amazing. They are fast. They are tough. Her bomb aiming reticule isn't punitive with a short and forgiving aim-time. She dumps a ton of ordnance allowing her to land big alpha strikes or ensure a hit on even a small target. She's capable of starting multiple fires per run. It doesn't take five years for her bombs to drop either. British carpet-bombers are little more than over-glorified rocket aircraft in terms of their ease of use. Indomitable may not have torpedoes, but her bombers pretty much make up for this lack -- they truly are excellent. Let's start with the basics. This is what she uses to aim: Photoshop composite showing the size and shape of Indomitable's fully aimed bomb reticule. Aircraft are moving from the bottom of the screen to the top. Reference-Mahan™ for scale. Indomitable drops twelve bombs over this small area and it takes no time at all for this marker to settle to the narrowest aim. Bomb drop times are about 3.5 seconds, so this necessitates quite a bit of lead. However, if you can predict ship movements properly, it's possible to score multiple hits even on a Just-Dodging™ lolibote or cruiser. They've a very gentle learning curve which makes it easy to score some big numbers provided you pick the right targets. All of Indomitable's bombers have a reduced recovery period. This allows her to launch repeat strikes faster than most of her contemporaries, however it makes her remaining planes more vulnerable to AA fire after the drop. It should be noted that Indomitable, like Implacable, cannot fast-recall her bombers immediately after an attack. The ease of use continues with the aircraft's survivability. These things are fast and they're tough. With full upgrades, it's possible to get their hit points just shy of 3,000hp (and exceed it with the new legendary commander). These aircraft can literally outrun some of the fighters they come up against, making them capable of leading them on merry chases forever and a day. Similarly, their high speed and durability trivializes modest AA defenses and get through with few (if any) casualties. Indomitable's bombers are tough as nails, but it pays to invest in every health upgrade you can afford to give them. These aircraft will be your mainstay damage dealers, so do everything you can to keep them intact. Complications I only have two general areas of complaint with Indomitable's bombers -- penetration and their agility. I'll start with the latter mostly because it was a Hell of a lot of work to isolate. Agility wise, Idomitable's bombers are great in a straight line. However, they're as awkward and uncoordinated as Wargaming's PR and marketing departments. Indomitable's bombers require a RIDICULOUS amount of room to come about. While boosted, their turning circle radius is a whopping 1,700m! Even at normal speed, it isn't much better requiring 1,200m. The aircraft are slow to respond to commands and feel sluggish compared to the American or Implacable's bombers. These are not winning any agility prizes. No, I don't know why so many aircraft had similar agility. Lexington and Enterprise make sense (they're the same aircraft, after all) but the others? No clue. Happy coincidence, I guess. If you elect to make follow up attack runs with Indomitable's bombers, don't try and turn about immediately. Power through the ship's AA bubble before you begin coming about. It's ridiculously easy to overshoot targets with Indomitable's bombers. Her agility woes continue, though. While it looks like she shares parity with Graf Zeppelin's Ta-152s, this isn't the case. The German bombers are faster, having both a higher boosted speed (+40kts vs the +35kts of Indomitable's bombers) and better energy preservation besides. Graf Zeppelin (and most, if not all other carriers) can ride and flutter their throttle to extend the use of their plane's boost consumable. When Indomitable let's go of the W-key, her planes bleed all of the extra speed like they hit a brick wall. What energy preservation? Deceleration from boosted speed is a linear-loss. The longer aircraft can preserve speed, the better. The consumable has 20 seconds of active time and a 40 second reset timer. These both can be increased by 10% with an upgrade. Players may flutter the boost-power, stretching out its duration. Indomitable can't do this at all, losing everything almost instantly. Even her Attack Aircraft preserve speed better. Lert recklessly took his finger off the boost button while playtesting Indomitable's bombers. I wish I could take credit for this one, but this is all Chobittsu. As for Indomitable's HE bomb penetration, it's not terrible. It's simply not high enough to make it a universal threat against all targets. When she's top tier, the monstrous potential of what could have been is unleashed -- there are few ships at tiers VI and VII that have protection schemes to defend against 32mm of penetration. Indomitable wrecks all comers with her fast-cycling planes. Against tier VIII+ battleships and carrier, Indomitable's HE penetration starts feeling sub-standard. Shatters abound and her alpha-strike potential plummets. Neither of these two issues damns Indomitable's bombers. They're merely minor complications. 32mm of penetration is PRETTY good, but it's not good enough to hurt everything she comes across. I've left the AP bomb comparison out of this as their damage output is hella wonky, with impressive citadel hits, the occasional penetration or horrible over-penetration damage. HE bombs by contrast are pretty reliable in terms of their binary -- either a penetrating hit or the bomb shatters for zero damage until saturation kicks in. The Genuine Problem So let's recap: Indomitable has fast, tough planes. They're not especially agile and they don't preserve speed very well. Furthermore, Indomitable can't afford to take many losses -- she doesn't have the regeneration to recoup from mistakes being made. Screw up against flak, fighters or misjudge the potency of an AA-wall and you're in trouble. Finally, they do good direct damage against tier VI and VII targets, but struggle against tier VIII+ battleships and some aircraft carriers. In short, Indomitable's bombers over-perform against lower-tiered targets but they fall back into an unhealthy behaviour against higher tiered enemies. With AA power increasing, higher-tiered cruisers are generally off the menu. She can't afford running the gauntlet of taking even one or two casualties per attack run. Thus, Indomitable's design encourages players to focus on stacking fires against isolated, modest-AA defended battleships -- namely Japanese and German designs though any will do if there's a lack of available targets. Fire resistance cuts these values in half against tier X targets and by roughly 1/4 against tier VI targets. Indomitable tends to average 1-2 fires per attack-flight drop against most battleships. This game play is infuriating to suffer. Her bombers can outrun many fighters and outlast modest AA fire coming from a single battleship. A target 25km away will face repeat strikes from even a single flight every 50 seconds -- those fires will begin to stack and there's little to nothing they can do to stop it. They can't hide. They can't run. Their only hope is to be rescued by fighters fast enough to catch Indomitable's bombers and this isn't guaranteed or to find themselves under the combined AA umbrella of several allies. To the Indomitable player, the damage numbers this generates are incredibly rewarding. Big numbers. Lots of medals. All but guaranteed kills. Fun and Engaging 101. Why hunt cruisers and destroyers when battleships are such easy farms? Yes, Indomitable's bombers are capable of wrecking cruisers. Yes, they're perfectly suitable for nuking lolibotes, but why bother when you can Sky-Conqueror your way to the top of the experience pile? Sure, you might win more if you actually helped out your team and took out targets that mattered, but that's not going to help you average over 100k to 200k damage every match, now will it? Summary: Indomitable's bombers are powerful, versatile, fast and deadly. It's too bad all you're going to use them for is farming fire damage off battleships. Attack Aircraft Aircraft Type: de Havilland Sea Hornet Ordnance: Eight RP-3 60lb HE No1 Mk1 per aircraft Group Size: Six aircraft per squadron with two aircraft per attack flight Hit Points: 2,100hp per Aircraft Min/Cruising/Boosted Speed: 158kts/188kts/228kts I don't like Indomitable's attack aircraft. Well, I don't like attack aircraft in general and while I'm sure that bias carries over here, Indomitable's aircraft feel of poor quality compared to her bombers. They're fast, sure -- and that's probably the best thing about them. They have other positive traits, such as a good health pool, faster reset-timer between attacks and a decent fire-chance per rocket hit. However, we still need to be aware of Indomitable's lack of torpedo planes. Unlike her bombers, Indomitable's attack aircraft don't take up any of the slack. They don't exactly need to given the general cancerous awesomeness of her bombers. ("I'm sorry, son, you have cancer. The awesome kind of cancer.") And that's really the problem: most of the jobs you would delegate to attack aircraft are performed better by Indomitable's bombers. Thus Indomitable's rockets lack purpose. The only reason to take them out is when you're running low on bombers. Let's look at these aircraft in more detail: Survivability I'm not going to lie -- the survivability of Indomitable's Attack Aircraft is pretty damn good. This shouldn't be any surprise after her bombers. She hasless exposure time to damaging effects and more health to tank through it. While this doesn't make her aircraft invincible by any means, it does all but guarantee that her planes will survive long enough to deliver an attack provided you don't drive into a flak explosion or fighter swarm. It's the speed of her aircraft that are the real superstars. At 188kts cruising speed, she covers 5km every 10 seconds. This accelerates not only her ability to deliver strikes but also to return the limited number of aircraft to which she has access. Indomitable's Sea Hornets have the same hit point pool as Implacable's Seafires which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but whatever. Indomitable has not only the fastest attack aircraft at tier VIII, but some of the fastest attack aircraft in the whole game. The same problems that plagued her bombers are repeated here. She doesn't have the reserves to tough-out taking sustained casualties. As resilient as her individual aircraft are, every loss hurts. Indomitable has an absolute maximum of twenty-five (25) attack aircraft to play with over the course of the game with more realistic numbers sitting closer around sixteen to twenty depending on frequency of use and game duration. Losing a mere eight aircraft in quick succession severely limits her ability to deliver-repeat strikes without a pronounced wait on aircraft return times. Her attack aircraft agility sucks too but it isn't as much of a disparity gap as it was with her bombers: Unlike ships, if you want to improve both the rate of turn and turning radius for aircraft, hit the brakes. With her airbrakes, Indomitable's Attack Aircraft have a 30.6º/s rotation rate and 790m turning radius. Don't boost -- that just makes everything worse. The horrible agility and twitchy aim marker makes lining up shots with Indomitable's rockets difficult unless you start VERY far out. Any kind of manoeuvring will throw off your lead Indomitable's attack aircraft have a very short recovery timer after a run. This allows Indomitable to make repeat-attacks faster than her contemporaries, however it limits the range of her sling-shot immunity from AA fire. In addition, her Sea Hornets cannot make a fast-recall like other attack aircraft. Ordnance As controversial as rockets are, Indomitable's are pretty forgettable. Their individual damage values are decent and their fire chance per hit is good. However, their flight fires only a modest 16 per salvo limiting their effectiveness. It's not that these weapons are terrible, they're simply average while those of many other aircraft carriers are much better or at least more interesting. On paper, the stats of Indomitable's individual rockets are pretty good. Comparison of the tech-tree carrier rocket-ordnance including the shape of their attack reticle. Comparison of the premium carrier rocket-ordnance and the shape of their attack reticles. Protecting the Lolibotes Indomitable's rockets were nerfed repeatedly over the course of her development to limit their effectiveness against destroyers. They had their damage reduced and dispersion worsened. Only half of Indomitable's rockets will ever land towards the center of the target marker, greatly limiting the maximum amount of damage possible in a single run unless hitting a chunktacular-sized vessel. Photoshop composite showing the size and shape of Indomitable's fully aimed rocket reticle. Aircraft are moving from the bottom of the screen to the top. Reference-Mahan™ for scale. The orientation of this aiming reticle makes it harder to land hits against small targets like destroyers compared to the perpendicular drop pattern of American FFAR and HVAR rockets. The 27mm of penetration on Indomitable's rockets repeats her improved performance parameters against tier VI and tier VII targets of all types. When Indomitable is top tier, there isn't anything her rockets are incapable of preying upon, delivering reliable damage against cruisers and battleships and supplementing her bombers well. When facing tier VIII+ ships, the number of targets reduces. In theory, she should still be quite effective against cruisers and some carriers, however, the level of anti-aircraft firepower from most of these ships at tier VIII+ precludes them from being viable targets until the very end of a match. If these ships absolutely must die, then certain her rockets are preferable to use over her more valuable bombers -- the larger effective health pool of six rocket planes versus four bombers will tough out AA better, but the casualties will cost Indomitable dear. While not essential for putting down the hurt on most vessels, higher penetration allows for more damage to a greater range of targets. With Indomitable's rocket penetration being kinda meh, it puts more of a burden on her bombers to carry her performance when dealing with high-tier battleships. Against ideal, soft targets, her damage caps out at 11,088hp per attack assuming they all hit and penetrate... which they won't. Effective fire resistance of most target ships will reduce the odds of stacking blazes. Indomitable's rockets are a poor choice for starting fires unless you can make repeat strikes. It's only against targets with very weak AA power where this is even remotely feasible. These are yet even more reasons that Indomitable's rockets should generally be relegated to pounding soft targets. Summary: Indomitable's rockets are okay. They feel pretty good when she's top tier. Make sure to use and abuse them when tier VI and VII targets are present as this takes some much needed strain off her bombers. Just remember: Her bombers are better and will do the same job more effectively. Fighters It's not uncommon for ships to use different types of aircraft for Combat Air Patrol (carrier defense) and Patrol fighters (summoned by squadrons). All of the tier VIII American carriers use Corsairs for CAP while they use a mix of Corsairs, Hellcats and Bearcats for patrol summons between Lexington, Enterprise and Saipan respectively. Indomitable is no different, making use of the same Seafires as Implacable for CAP and recruiting a wave of Sea Hornets for patrol duties. The latter are MUCH faster -- some of the fastest fighters in the game while the former are some of the slowest CAP fighters at tier VIII. Thankfully you can all but guarantee that whatever planes are coming towards your carrier will fly right into your Seafires so their speed is less of an issue. Indomitable uses Implacable's Seafires for her combat air patrol defense around the carrier. These orbit at a range of 1km around the ship and engage enemy aircraft that slip within 3km of their position. The flight size can be modified by taking the Direction Center for Fighters skill. Indomitable starts with four charges of CAP fighters but you may increase this to five if you take Superintendent (but why would you?). Nothing can outrun Indomitable's summoned Patrol Fighters. Once they lock on, casualties are all but guaranteed. Praying to RNGesus Indomitable is the great equalizer. Forget skill -- it will only take you so far with this ship. The layers of RNG are stacked pretty high with her performance. While timing and target selection matter, you can do everything right and still do poorly because your rockets scattered oddly or you didn't set that fire when it was optimal to do so. Fires and dispersion make all of the difference in Indomitable -- it's what separates a good game from a poor showing. You'll need between five and eight permanent fires to score a Witherer's medal -- that's five to eight fires pushed past an enemy battleship's Damage Control Party. If the numbers aren't coming up, there's not much you can do to stack damage quickly against higher tiered battleships. Similarly, bad bomb or rocket scattering can make even a perfectly lined shot fall flat. Conversely, a well timed triple (or quadruple!) fire and suddenly you're a rockstar. This is why I rag on Indomitable's low penetration and also why I say this ship patently over-performs when facing a glut of tier VI and VII targets. Lower-tier AA power largely doesn't matter, but more importantly she can partially bypass RNGesus. She's no longer reliant upon fires for her damage totals and can stack the hurt directly. I would have gladly traded some of Indomitable's alpha-strike and fire setting potential for better penetration or more accurate drops. It would have taken some of the lottery-feels out of her successes. This is what's so infuriating about playing with and against Indomitable. You're forever hoping RNG screws over your opponent. You don't need to get good in Indomitable, you just need to get lucky. The Ship Carrier hulls aren't worth noting until they're being shot at. There's really only one carrier currently in the game that rewards you for taking control of the hull and that's Graf Zeppelin. For every other CV in the game, the hull is just where your planes are stored. It's a box of hit points you try to keep as close to the action as possible while remaining hidden. Durability Hit Points: 51,400hp Maximum Citadel Protection: 114mm belt Minimum Hull Armour: 19mm to 21mm Flight Deck Armour: 25mm to 76mm Torpedo Damage Reduction: 28% Aircraft carriers are not known for their durability. British carriers have an marked flaw with their high-water citadels. Indomitable's citadel pokes up well over the waterline with a noticeable 'hump' beneath her conning tower. Taking hits to her machine spaces is tragically commonplace, even from incidental pot-shots. It's not all doom and gloom, however. Indomitable has good anti-torpedo defense for a carrier. She also boasts an armoured flight deck. The latter element provides some immunity to HE attacks and can ricochet poorly aimed (or poorly dispersed) long range AP fire. This only applies to the central part of the deck, however. Her bow and stern are still highly vulnerable to both HE and large caliber AP shell over-matching. Still, it's nice to see this historical element do it's job versus HE bomb attacks, allowing Indomitable to shrug off sniping attempts from dive bombers. Except AP bombs. Oh lordy, does she hate AP bombs. Damage over time (DoT) effects have very little impact on aircraft carriers and Indomitable is no exception. This is in part due to their long-duration, automatically deploying Damage Control Party which activates the moment critical damage is done and provides a 60 second immunity window. In addition, fires and floods simply don't last as long as they do on other types of ships and deal less damage. Maximum Fire Damage per Ship Type: Destroyers & Cruisers: 9% over 30 seconds. Graf Spee: 13.5% over 45 seconds. Battleships & Large Cruisers: 18% over 60 seconds. Aircraft Carriers: 2% over 5 seconds. Maximum Flood Damage per Ship Type: Destroyers & Cruisers: 10% over 40 seconds. Graf Spee: 15% over 40 seconds. Battleships & Large Cruisers: 20% over 40 seconds. Aircraft Carriers: 7.5% over 30 seconds. Thus attempting to stack DoTs to bring down a carrier is a fool's errand, really. Even if you do get past their Damage Control Party, the returns just really aren't worthwhile. This was ostensibly designed to mitigate the effectiveness of aircraft carriers sniping one another. The result of this is to make direct damage the only effective way of sinking the ship itself. Indomitable is super squishy. The best thing about her protection scheme is her armoured deck which can shrug off HE hits that avoid striking its extremities. However, her enormous, high-water citadel means that it's always (ALWAYS) worth a battleship's time to fire Hail Mary shots from across the map at her if she's spotted. Heavy cruisers should do the same. Citadel hits from the extremes of range are painfully commonplace. Agility Top Speed: 30.5kts Listed Turning Radius: 970m Rudder Shift Time: 13.0s 4/4 Engine Speed Rotation Rate: 3.2º/s Well, this section's going to be hella brief. Aircraft carrier agility is a cruel joke. They can barely manage to maintain 2/3s of their forward momentum when you touch their rudder. The only thing that's ever considered good about their agility is their top speed. Indomitable is downright mediocre in this regard, barely managing to exceed 30 knots. Running away means sailing straight lines or risk being overtaken by even the pedestrian velocities of some of the tier VIII battleships. It's not like her autopilot is going to do her any favours either. They're all pretty terrible but Kaga gets the special loser-points for being so slow. I do get a laugh that Indomitable can turn inside her own aircraft. Refrigerator Base Surface Detection: 13.5km Minimum Surface Detection Range: 10.61km Air Detection Range: 10.58km Indomitable's surface detection range is decidedly average for a tier VIII carrier though her aerial detection is a bit on the high side. That "Minimum Surface Detection Range" is a pipe dream -- you're not going to use Concealment System Modification 1 so Indomitable's surface concealment tends to cap out at around 11.79km Secondaries Secondary Battery: Sixteen 113mm/45 rifles in 8x2 turrets with four on each side of the ship. Her turrets are not superfiring and arranged on platform-wings jutting out from the front and rear of the flight deck. Graf Zeppelin, this carrier is not. Indomitable's secondaries are a mere afterthought. These dual purpose weapons work better as anti-aircraft mounts than anti-surface weapons and they don't win any prizes for the former. I took her out and tried to have her sink a stationary Reference-Mahan™ at a range of 4km with secondary fire only. It took over 230 shells fired (that's two and a half minutes worth of shooting) to sink the darned thing and that's largely owing to some lucky fires. Don't waste your time with these. If you squint, you can make out the secondaries fore and aft on their isolated platforms. Unless a target is completely broadside, you're not bringing all four turrets onto a target. Indomitable has an 8° blindspot directly forward and an 18º blindspot to the rear where an enemy ship can sit with impunity. Anti-Aircraft Defense Flak Bursts: Four for 1,330 damage per blast. Long Ranged AA: ~88dps at 5.8km Medium Ranged AA: ~228dps at 3.5km Short Ranged AA: ~366dps at 2.0km I kinda wanted to rag on Indomitable for her AA not being up to scratch, but looking at the numbers, she's alright'. Indomitable's AA firepower is based around point defense, with the majority of her AA limited to engaging aircraft just before or during an ordnance launch. This isn't ideal -- I'd prefer to see a lot more teeth in her 3.5km batteries as per Implacable but whatever. Ranking wise, I'd put her tied with Graf Zeppelin overall which is just ahead of Saipan, Shokaku and Kaga. Most of Indomitable's AA defense comes from her multitude of 20mm Oerlikon mounts. Seriously, those things are scattered everywhere. It's pretty impressive. Aircraft Carrier Summary I've got to give Indomitable's hull failing marks. The carrier's purpose is to keep out of harm's way and cycle aircraft. Indomitable isn't terrible at the former -- she doesn't win any prizes, though. She's pretty darned awful at the latter. Unremarkable AA power, agility and concealment. Below average durability due to high vulnerability to AP citadel hits. Her armoured deck is nice but it rarely comes into play short of being attacked by other carriers or long-range HE spam. Hangar capacity is stupid-small with very long aircraft recovery times. Laughable secondaries. Final Evaluation I was expecting this ship to be released with patch 0.8.2. The early rework was Hell for me. Not only was I trying to familiarize myself with the new CV systems, I was trying to make myself expert on Indomitable on a short time frame. I put in over 100 games in this ship between patches 0.8.0 and 0.8.0.3. This was when the changes to AA power and aircraft performance were almost constant. I fully expected Indomitable to be released with the British Aircraft Carrier tech-tree; if not with Hermes, Glorious and Implacable in patch 0.8.1, then surely with Audacious in patch 0.8.2. There was never enough time. But those deadlines came and went. More changes occurred and the data I had collected faded to frustrating obsolescence. Indomitable was hit with a few small evolutionary changes for patch 0.8.3 and I put in almost another 100 games, updating my notes. This was especially hard to do with my health struggles at the time, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't behind the curve with the carrier rework. And then nothing happened. Indomitable disappeared. She went back into the vault even as the rework continued. What followed was a series of dramatic changes to her performance but with no follow-up testing. Indomitable lost one of her most defining features -- the ability to have her aircraft exceed 250 knots. I didn't get to play test her through this. Anti-aircraft firepower became ridiculously powerful only to see-saw back towards a much more modest state we have currently. I didn't get to play test her through these changes either. Indomitable was placed upon the back burner. Ark Royal ended up being released instead -- a much better and more interesting premium carrier in my opinion. Indomitable made a reappearance late in 2019, hidden among all the fuss and fluff of the then upcoming (and highly anticipated with much positivity!) Puerto Rico build. I still didn't get to play test her during this time and expressed some pretty firm concerns that she might have lost her pizazz. Y'see, with all of the games I had played with her previously, I had actually found some enjoyment in the rampant fire-setting sadism that Indomitable provided. Looking back, I think this might have been some abusive transference. I was in pain. Keeping track of the CV rework was similarly a pain. So, sharing the hurt around seems entirely in character and reasonable. The kinder, gentler and more fluffy Mouse of today doesn't do that. I don't need to farm Witherer medals in Indomitable anymore -- the hurt has gone away. I don't need to terrorize poor destroyers and battleships with her planes to spread hate for the CV rework. I have Ark Royal for that. Whatever charms Indomitable once held have long since faded. She's pretty boring to play. Don't get me wrong -- she can generate the numbers so long as you're okay with farming useless damage off battleships. Getting those big numbers, farming Witherer medals and hoovering up the hate in chat is amusing too. But she's definitely not a great performer. I think Wargaming is understandably gun-shy about releasing a carrier premium that's anywhere close to "good" these days. Graf Zeppelin is never allowed to be good ever again and Indomitable stands proudly beside that train wreck as a whole bucket-load of meh. At least both of them are interesting design concepts, I'll give 'em that much. There's always a chance that if Indomitable under-performs that she'll get buffed in the future, but I don't honestly see that coming in any significant way. Here we are almost a year after my testing of Indomitable began, near unto the one year anniversary of the CV-rework. I wish I could go back and tell myself to go lie down and take a few months off. The final product that Indomitable became isn't worth the attention. I'm not sure the rework is either. Would I Recommend? Generally speaking? No, if only because Ark Royal is a thing. Not only does the tier VI premium come at a lower price point, she's much more interesting and fun to play. It's a shame because Indomitable looks gorgeous. The potential is also there but in practice her game play is so repetitive and infuriating. Indomitable is arguably the weakest (or at least, the most inconsistent) of the tier VIII premium carriers. As a co-op boat, she's an especially poor choice. It takes time to stack fires -- time is at a premium in such encounters. Conclusion Thank you all so much for reading. The next reviews will be short and sweet, each covering the new Pan Asian clones Wukong, Bajie and Siliwangi. Look for them soon!

How about a semi Frankenstein British battleship that has a kind of hull, main armament, speed, about the same armor as the hood, gun lay out as gneisenau, and secondary's and structure as warspite. I am talking about the HMS Renown. Renown was laid in 1916 , she and repulse set a record on being the fastest capital ships upon completion. she didn't see action in ww1, but was overhauled twice in between. during ww2, she was part of the group to hunt the graf spee that was sinking merchants at the time. unfortunately, she couldn't be able to find the ship. She was part of the British squadron that was sent to the Norwegian campaign and came across the Scharnhorst ang gneisenau, she received minor damage but also critically damaged gneisenau in return. She was later part of the search group to find the Bismarck, although the ship did find Bismarck's supply ship. after this she was sent home for repairs and upgrades. after this, she was sent to protect the winter convoys to Russia, then transferred to protect the carriers for Operation Torch. after this, she was sent home to have her aircraft removed and her AA upgraded and added. After this, she helped send Winston Churchill back home. She was sent to the pacific to help in Operation Cockpit and bombarded enemy positions at the Nicobar islands and Andaman islands. She continued with other operations until she was relieved by Queen Elizabeth. She was sent home for another refit but was cancelled. She hosted a meeting with King George Vi and President Truman, and after this she was scrapped and survived a few days longer than the carrier Furious. The Renown that I would like to see in the game is the 1939 refit. The reason for this is because I believe that hood and warspite had a baby and had a extra cromosone from gneisenau. I think she can do well in the game as she will have pretty much the same things as a a regular tier VI regular British battleship but in a tier VII slot right next to hood. naturally, hood would at least be 2 or so knots faster than renown, but dreams can be dreams I guess.

someone suggested the HMS (ex SS) Carmania (1905), well here she is with as much info as I can get *the other participant will be added in a separate post* HMS Carmania Ship Specs: Length: 650.4 ft (198.2 m) 678 ft (207 m) LOA Width: 72.2 ft (22.0 m) Tonnage: 19,542 GRT Armament: 8 x 1 QF 4.7 in gun MK V Machinery Specs: Propulsion: 8 double-ended boilers and 5 single ended boilers 3 Parson Steam Turbines (high pressure for center shaft and low pressure for other shafts) x3 shafts Speed: 18 knots *this is an idea and it may not go into the game thank you captains*

Great analysis! I just want to know why London is premium and Devonshire not. It seems than both are similar, but DEvon is better in many aspects: - Better torps and main battery reload time - Better torps speed and distance - Better antitorp protection - Better main battery range - Better AA - Better DPM - Better HP recovery - Better concealment Better Hydro - better etc.... The london it seems better in speed (+1 knot) Those without significant captain skills and upgrades. (The skill selecte for both ships are Priority taget and Expert Marksman) my Devonshire has Demolition Expert activated.

I noticed the new high tier British CAs have 114 mm secondary batteries, as do the UK carriers. Are they good for anything except causing the occasional fire? Can they penetrate tier 8 - 10 destroyer hulls? Do the 114s on the new UK CAs get the increased HE penetration like the main batteries? Thanks!

Ok, 9.0 is nigh and this is the low down on the event. Once again, WG is not giving out sufficient info before the patch drops, so some info will have to wait until the patch drops. Index Start and stop times Earning British Tokens (Directives, Daily Chains, & Daily Shipments) Spending British Tokens (Early access bundles and maybe other stuff) UK CAs (heavy cruisers) early access and how they work PA New Year Server Outage compensation (Jan 11th-15th) Start and stop times. Patch 9.0 is scheduled to drop at 8am EST on Wed, Jan 15th. The maintenance window starts at 5am EST. Patch 9.0 is expected to end at 5am EST on Wed, Feb 12th when the maintenance window for 9.1 starts. A new Directive starts each week and ALL Directives end at 2am PST Mon, Feb 10th, so plan on being done by end of day on Sun, Feb 9th. Directive I starts with the patch drop, likely 8am EST, Wed Jan 15th. Directive II likely starts 5am EST, Mon Jan 20th. Directive III likely starts 5am EST, Mon Jan 27th. Directive IV likely starts 5am EST, Mon Feb 3rd. You must complete Dir I, before you can start on Dir II, even if Dir II has started. Daily Chains will have British Tokens starting 5am EST, Fri, Jan 17th and will likely end at 2am PST Thu, Feb 6th. So 20 days from Jan 17th to Feb 5th likely means 10 per day between the two Daily Chains. Daily Shipments will start at 8am Wed, Jan 15th and end at 2am PST Wed, Jan 29th. So the last day to collect a Daily Shipment is Tue, Jan 28th. To collect all 10 rewards, you have to start collecting by Sun, Jan 19th. PA Lunar New Year starts Fri, Jan 24th at 2am PST and ends Mon, Feb 10th at 2am PST, so plan on being done by end of the day Sun, Feb 9th. Earning British Tokens (600 total available) You will be able to earn British Tokens in the Directives, Daily Chains and Daily Shipments only during 9.0. You will be able to spend the Tokens in Armory from 9.0 through 9.1. When 9.2 drops they will be converted to credits. So 9.2 is scheduled for Wed, Mar 11th currently and Brit Tokens will be converted at the rate of 1 for 4,500 credits when that patch drops. Directives (360 total) There will be 4 Directives with one coming out each week. Each Directive will likely have 8-10 Missions (36 total) and you will likely need to complete 5-7 Missions to complete a Directive. There will be 360 British Tokens in the Directives and the British Tokens are apparently the reward for completing the Directives. The Brit Token rewards will average 90 per Directive, but will likely be between 50 and 200 per Directive (starting low to high) to add up to the 360 total. A new Directive starts each week and ALL Directives end at 2am PST Mon, Feb 10th. Directive I starts with the patch drop, likely 8am EST, Wed Jan 15th. Complete 5 of the 9 Missions to complete the Directive and the reward is 80 British Tokens. Directive II likely starts 5am EST, Mon Jan 20th. Complete 5 of the 9 Missions to complete the Directive and the reward is 80 British Tokens. Directive III likely starts 5am EST, Mon Jan 27th. Complete 5 of the 9 Missions to complete the Directive and the reward is 100 British Tokens. Directive IV likely starts 5am EST, Mon Feb 3rd. Complete 5 of the 9 Missions to complete the Directive and the reward is 100 British Tokens. You must complete Dir I, before you can start on Dir II, even if Dir II has started. Daily Chains (200 total) The Daily Chains from Fri, Jan 17th through Wed, Feb 5th will have a TOTAL of 200 Brit Tokens. That is 20 days of Daily Chains, so expect there to be 10 Brit Tokens per day which would be 5 per Daily Chain that day. You get 5 Brit Tokens for completing each Daily Chain. Daily Shipments (40 total) The Daily shipments run from Wed, Jan 15th through Tue, Jan 28th. If you want to collect all the Daily Shipment, you have to start by Sun, Jan 19th at the latest. To collect a Daily Shipment, you need to log into the game and go to the Daily Shipments tab to click and collect your Shipment for that day. You can set the Shipments tab to come up automatically when you log into the game in the Shipment tab. Shipments Rewards are below. 1st - 3x Union Jack one-use camouflages 2nd - 10 British Tokens 3rd - 50,000 credits 4th - 10 British Tokens 5th - 3x Union Jack one-use camouflages 6th - 10 British Tokens 7th - 50,000 credits 8th - 10 British Tokens 9th - 50 doubloons 10th - 1 day of Warships Premium Account Spending British Tokens NOTE: Per WG, If you get an early access ship from one of the bundle types, you can STILL GET THE SAME ship from the other type of bundle. You get credit compensation for duplicates. So for example, if you get an early access Hawkins CA from the Token bundles, you can still get the Hawkins CA from the Doubloon bundles and you will credit compensation. You can spend British Tokens in patches 9.0 and 9.1. That is scheduled to be from Wed, Jan 15th to Wed, Mar 11th. When patch 9.2 drops, on what is scheduled to be Wed, Mar 11th, any left over Brit Tokens will be converted to credits at the rate of 1 to 4,500 credits. The big item to spend Brit Tokens on is the Token bundles. Currently we do not know the amount of Token bundles that will be available when the patch drops, but we found out it is INFINITE likely between 20 and 30 bundles. Four of the bundles will be the four early access T5 to T8 UK CAs that will include the perma-camos this patch which is new. Token Bundles You will have one bundle, randomly determined, for purchase for 20 British Tokens in the Armory. Once you buy that bundle, a new randomly determined bundle will be offered. There will be 11 variants of bundles with likely an infinite number of bundles that are not the ships. You can only get an early access ship once, but you can get the other 7 bundle options infinite times. The other bundles you will be able to get a certain number of times, listed in the Armory. If this is like past events of this type, there should be enough British Tokens available (600) to buy all the Token bundles. So if you buy all the Token bundles, you may or may not end up with the 4 early access UK CAs. If RNG is bad for you, you may not get a ship at all. There may or may are not other things to spend the British Tokens on in the Armory.. NOTE: The ships are the rarest of the bundles, so it may take many bundles to get a ship. IF RNG is bad for you, you may not get a ship. Since there is nothing else to spend the British Tokens on, go ahead and buy the bundles with Tokens and see what you get. NOTE: The T5 to T8 UK CA early access ships WILL BE available in the tech tree to grind for in 9.1, which is scheduled for Wed, Feb 12th. NOTE: Per WG, If you get an early access ship from one of the bundle types, you can STILL GET THE SAME ship from the other type of bundle. You get credit compensation for duplicates. So for example, if you get an early access Hawkins CA from the Token bundles, you can still get the Hawkins CA from the Doubloon bundles and you will credit compensation. Doubloon Bundles You can possibly get the same early access UK CAs in the Brit Token bundles, so you DO NOT NEED to buy the dub bundles to get ships. There will be doubloon bundles you can buy in the Armory for 1,000 dubs each. They will have the same four early access UK CAs as the Token bundles and other items as well. There may be as many as 65(!) dub bundles in the Armory. The more dub bundles there are, the less likely you are to get an early access ship as a random offering. You will have one bundle, randomly determined, for purchase for 1,000 doubloons in the Armory. Once you buy that bundle, a new randomly determined bundle will be offered. There will be 13 variants of bundles with as many as 65(!) bundles total. You can only get an early access ship once. The other bundles you will be able to get a certain number of times, listed in the Armory. If you do not value the other items in the bundles, I highly, highly suggest not buying the doubloon bundles. Since there will be 4 ship bundles among 65 dub bundles, ships will appear rarely. If you are not happy with possibly spending tens of thousands of doubloons, I highly, highly suggest not buying the doubloon bundles. The dub bundles are likely there for the whales with money to burn to whom spending LOTS of money to get something they want now, is not a concern for them. NOTE: The T5 to T8 UK CA early access ships WILL BE available in the tech tree to grind for in 9.1, which is scheduled for Wed, Feb 12th. NOTE: Per WG, If you get an early access ship from one of the bundle types, you can STILL GET THE SAME ship from the other type of bundle. You get credit compensation for duplicates. So for example, if you get an early access Hawkins CA from the Token bundles, you can still get the Hawkins CA from the Doubloon bundles and you will credit compensation. UK heavy cruisers (CAs) The T5 Hawkins, T6 Devonshire, T7 Surrey and T8 Ablemarle will be in early access. These are still WIP ships and these stats may still change before the line goes live in 9.1 which is scheduled for Wed, Feb 12th. Pics and stats in the spoiler. - They will be semi-premium ships in that you can put any Cmdr into the ship. - You can grind XP on the ships, but can not use that XP to research the next ship until the line goes live in 9.1 which is scheduled for Wed, Feb 12th. - Any Cmdrs placed on the early access ship, that are not already trained for that ship, will need re-training when the ship goes live, if they want to stay on that ship. - NOTE, all the early access ships will be fully researched but will have stock modules mounted. So make sure to mount the upgraded modules if you get an early access ship. Contrary to past events of this type, the early access ships will come with perma-camos which are worth 1,000 to 3,000 doubloons depending on tier. The T5 Hawkins starts the line and may branch off of the T5 Emerald instead of the usual tier before the split. The T9 Drake and T10 Goliath are scheduled for 9.1 when the line goes live which is scheduled for Wed, Feb 12th. NOTE: These early access ships will be tech tree ships when the line goes live which is scheduled for Wed, Feb 12th. PA Lunar New Year Starts Fri, Jan 24th at 2am PST and ends Mon, Feb 10th at 2am PST, so plan on being done by end of the day Sun, Feb 9th. During the PA Lunar New Year Event, you can earn up to 8 Lunar New Year containers for completing a Big Fireworks mission chain. The container contents are listed below, but include chances (very small) at PA premium ships. If you get a ship/perma-camo you already have, you are almost certainly going to be compensated in credits for the duplicate. Here are the requirements of the mission chain. You must complete one Part of the chain, before you can move on to the next Part. Using T5+ ships in Random, Co-op, and/or Scenario battles; Part 1 - Win six battles and get one Lunar New Year container. Part 2 - In battles, earn 15 "Hits to citadel" ribbons and get one Lunar New Year container. Part 3 - In battles, sink 10 enemy ships and get one Lunar New Year container. Part 4 - In battles, earn 30 "Set on fire" ribbons and get one Lunar New Year container. Part 5 - In battles, earn 15 "Captured", "Assisted in capture", and/or "Defended" ribbons and get one Lunar New Year container. Part 6 - In battles, earn 60,000 XP and get one Lunar New Year container. Once you complete all 6 Parts of the Mission Chain, you will get two Lunar New Year containers and two Asian Lantern one-use camos. Lunar New Year containers The Lunar New Year containers will have Pan-Asian premium ships, alternate perma-camos, FXP, doubloons, premium days, and one-use camos. The perma-camos have the standard bonuses based on the tier of the permium ships they are set for. While not explictly stated, it appears that each container will contain ONE of the following per the Premium shop (the graphic is misleading); either a perma-camo OR a ship OR one of 5,000 FXP OR 250 doubloons OR one WoWs premium day OR 3 Lunar New Year one-use camos OR one of 1 Asian Lantern OR 1 Spring Sky OR 1 Mosaic OR 1 Type 59 one-use camos. During the event, there are other rewards you can get. Festive Discounts and Gift Starts Fri, Jan 24th at 2am PST and ends Fri, Jan 31st at 2am PST, so plan on being done by end of the day Thu, Jan 30th. +200% XP first win bonus for each ship each day -50% to the cost of Port slots in doubloons in game -50% to the cost of upgrades in credits -50% to the cost of demounting upgrades in doubloons Starts Fri, Jan 24th at 2am PST and ends Mon, Jan 27th at 2am PST, so plan on being done by end of the day Sun, Jan 26th. Convert Elite Commander XP (ECXP) into Free XP (FXP) at the rate of 1 doubloon for 35 FXP Warships Premium Account for Victory (can only be done once per account) Starts Fri, Jan 24th at 2am PST and ends Mon, Feb 10th at 2am PST, so plan on being done by end of the day Sun, Feb 9th. Win a battle with a T5+ ship and get a commemorative flag and 3 Wargaming containers. The Wargaming containers each contain 1 day of WoWs premium time, 3 Papa Papa signals and 3 Juliet Charlie signals. The flag is honoring the Year of the White Metal Rat. The premium ship is selling premium Lunar New Year boxes for $3 each. The prizes are similar to above, but 3-5 times more items depending on what drops. https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/sales-and-events/missions-090-weekly-1/ PA Lunar New Year missions Article Server Outage compensation Jan 11th to Jan 15th, times in thread Notes: Articles referenced: https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/game-updates/british-cruisers/ came out on Jan 13th Edits: First post: 2100 Mon, Jan 13th Edit 1400 Wed, Jan 15th Directives, bundles in the Armory and PA Lunar New Year Edit 1415 Wed, Jan 15th credit compensation for duplicates and you can get the SAME early access ship from the Token bundles AND the Doubloon bundles. Edit 1841 Wed, Jan 15th made the Missions in the spoilers easier to read Edit: Server Outage compensation Fri, Jan 17th 1515 Edit: Fri, Jan 17th Daily Chains Edit: Thu, Jan 23rd 0930 PA missions article Edit: Thu, Jan 23rd 1050 Expanded on the PA Lunar New Year event Edit: Fri, Jan 24th 0724 Lunar New Year containers are random drops per the premium ship, the graphic was misleading

Any tips/strategies for a beginner playing the UK Cruiser line? I'm currently at the Tier V Emerald and I honestly feel like I just get instadeleted when running into anyone on the enemy team, BB blow me up from far away before I can gap close, DD come out of nowhere and blow me up, my AA seems really inefficient against CV's but I honestly die before having trouble with them most of the time, I've only really had success against other British Cruisers. I never sail in a stright line when I am detected, I change up my speed and which direction I am going constantly but it seems to really only postpone death. I know I'm supposed to stick to my team's BB but it's pretty difficult when I start way ahead of them and am faster than all of them even when at half speed. I do not want to say that the Emerald just sucks because I know the fault lies in my gameplay somewhere but it really feels like it does.

I’m proposing adding another premium Commonwealth ship to the game and being Canadian we all know what part of the Commonwealth it’s probably going to come from. This idea is based off of the success of Haida which was originally was going to be the Cossack but thankfully we all know how things worked out. HMCS Ontario was a Minotaur class light cruiser which was from what I can gather is a class that was designed based on war time modifications to the Fiji class which consisted of removal of one of the rear turrets in favor for more AA. Ontario, when originally built by the British was called Minotaur thus once transferred to Canada the British class name was changed to Swiftsure. Fiji Class Minotaur/Swiftsure Class What I propose is to take the Fiji in game design, remove the appropriate rear turret and add appropriate AA or secondary mounts, change the Fiji smoke to the Commonwealth creeping smoke, and add HE shells which would have low fire chance but be hard hitting. To counter these improvements the improved auto bounce angles found on the Fiji could be removed as to help balance the addition of HE and improved AA. Knowing how strong the Fiji is at T7 it may be possible that this would be just a side grade Fiji and would require the Ontario to stay at T7. Initially I thought T6 would be nice based on the Haida vs Cossack scenario but knowing how strong the Fiji is at T7 it may be possible that this would be just a side grade of the Fiji and would also not interfere with the sales of Perth. On the subject of Perth, I suspect the same captain skills used on the Perth could work well on the Ontario as well which is nice. @LittleWhiteMouse I know how much you like your Haida and would like to hear your what you think of this idea :D