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A lot of people want a Commonwealth Cruiser line so I thought I'd create my own proposal to throw into the ring. If this post is well accepted, I may propose a Commonwealth Destroyer line later on. Line Specifics: Commonwealth cruisers have poor armor yet good survivability They are equipped with main battery guns that have high arching shell trajectories and medium range They have a decent rate of fire with good shell damage and penetration They are equipped with torpedoes that have good damage and ok range They have decent AA They have excellent surface and air concealment Their detectability after firing in smoke is notably lower compared to other cruisers They have good maneuverability and speed. They have a good set of consumables From T2 onward they are equipped with the Repair Party consumable similar to that of Mysore From T4 onward they are equipped with Hydro with the option to swap it out for DFAA From T5 onward they are equipped with the Crawling Smoke Generator consumable similar to that of Perth Tier 1: Kistna HMIS Kistna was a Black Swan-class sloop which served in the Royal Indian Navy during World War II. She saw action as a convoy escort and naval invasion supporter. Tier 2: Encounter HMAS Encounter was a protected cruiser used in WWI by the Australian navy. She was the first Royal Australian Navy ship to fire in anger when she attacked the Toma Ridge during the Siege of Toma. Tier 3: Melbourne HMAS Melbourne was operated by the Royal Australian Navy during WWI; she barely saw action. Tier 4: Adelaide Named after the capital of Southern Australia, HMAS Adelaide was used as a convoy escort during WWII. She underwent numerous refits during the 1940s, leading to a modernization of her armament. Tier 5: Achilles Originally operated by Britain, she famously saw action at the Battle of the River Plate against Graf Spee. She was transferred to the New Zealand navy in 1941. In-game she is represented in her 1944 state where her X turret was removed and replaced by additional AA mounts. Tier 6: Sydney Purchased by Australia in 1934, HMAS Sydney saw action in the Mediterranean. She was famously sunk in a mutually destructive engagement with the German auxillary cruiser Kormoran. Tier 7: Canberra Originally tasked with patroling and escorting duties, HMAS Canberra operated in Guadalcanal when WWII broke out. She was sunk at the Battle off Savo Island. Tier 8: Cockatoo In the 1920s, Australia's naval forces were starting to become obsolete; because of this the Australian navy put out a request for ships and ship designs. One of the proposed designs was for a "10,000 Ton Cruiser", which was to be built at Cockatoo Island if construction had been authorized. Tier 9: Hobart Throughout the 1920s, Vickers created "Export Designs" that were purposefully designed for other countries. Project 1074 was another 10,000 ton cruiser proposal that was offered to Australia. HMAS Hobart is named after the capital city of Tasmania. Tier 10: Australia Yet another Vickers Export Design, this one from the later 1920s. Seeing that Vickers exported other designs to Australia around this time, this design could have easily ended up in Australian hands. Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. If you like this proposal, please give it a 👍

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.

Well I said my next project would be proposing a Commonwealth cruiser line, so here it is. In the absence of T9-10 options that aren't straight clones of Neptune and Minotaur (or British export designs offered to South America and thus better-suited for the Pan-America line) and because of several Australian CA designs, I opted to make it a heavy cruiser rather than light cruiser line. This also differentiates the tech tree from the existing Commonwealth CL premiums yet also retaining the signature Crawling Smoke Generator consumable. I had to revise this line because just less than a month ago my long-intended Tier 10 choice was announced as a British premium. But what's bad for uniqueness within the line might be better for keeping a coherent line progression. With 190mm guns at T4, it's the lowest tier transition from CL to CA of any tech tree. Tier I: HMCS Prince David For T1 we could do a lazy copy-paste of one of the Black Swan class of India or Pakistan, but there's something more interesting. A passenger liner. No really. HMCS Prince David is a relatively small (5700 ton) passenger liner that was converted to an armed merchant cruiser. She was surprisingly cruiser-like in appearance after the conversion with 4x1 152mm guns in AB-XY superfiring pairs. Which might have saved her when she allegedly encountered Admiral Hipper in 1941; since German cruisers on surface raiding missions were supposed to avoid battle with enemy cruisers to avoid damage. But in reality this reported confrontation was probably invented for propaganda, and what she really chased off was a supply ship for U-boats or at most one of Germany's disguised auxiliary cruisers. I have no idea what if any formula WG uses to come up with HP pools of T1 cruisers. It's not the same that they use for other cruisers. So I'm arbitrarily giving Prince David 10k HP. She's an ocean liner hull, the only armor is the gun shields. She's also the biggest target with the worst concealment of any T1. She needs a big HP to survive. Tier II: HMAS Encounter Challenger class protected cruiser At T2 we use the Challenger class protected cruiser HMAS Encounter. (Gratuitous ship's cat photo now.) She has a very hefty armament of 11x1 152mm guns with up to 6 gun broadside, so I'm nerfing her muzzle velocity to 784m/s (the velocity using light instead of heavy charges) to make the shells floatier and reduce the AP alpha to 2800, and restricting the reload speed to 10 sec. I haven't been able to find any pictures that show her gun layout, but the preceding Highflyer class had the same layout: As a protected cruiser, she has no actual belt armor. Her protection is entirely from the deck armor. Most T2 cruisers are like this. When being shot from the front or rear she does get the advantage of 127mm engine room hatches, which mean part of the citadel athwartships is quite thick. Tier III: HMAS Adelaide Birmingham class light cruiser The CL HMAS Adelaide would be my choice for T3 (she's basically the British T2 Weymouth except with the addition of an extra 152mm gun and more importantly some actual armor). I'm choosing her instead of HMCS Niobe (which I see as T3 premium material) because of Adelaide's historical importance of actually being built in Australia and also to lead into the T4 cruiser. During WW2 her armament was rearranged so that she had only 7 guns but retained the same 5 gun broadside. But since those refits would be counterproductive in WOWS (the AA would still be bad even after the refit, and even after subs get added a T3 ship will never see them) I'd skip those.   Instead I'll go with a fictional blend of the 2 refits to create a B hull with a 6 gun broadside: Tier IV: HMAS Darwin Improved Birmingham Variant B HMAS Darwin is an enlarged alternative design that was considered for Adelaide, armed with 190mm guns in turrets all down the centerline. The longer hull and slightly increased horsepower also gives her 1 knot more speed. Gameplay-wise this is where the Crawling Smoke Generator makes its first appearance in the line. I'm also altering the design by adding a triple torpedo launcher on each side. Turret thickness in my stat sheet is guesswork based on the similar turrets of WW1 British armoured cruisers with 190mm guns, but it might be much thinner on account of the smaller ship. Tier V: HMNZS Canterbury Vickers Design 1242 While this Vickers export design was offered to Australia, I decided to spread things around a bit by giving her to New Zealand instead. The hull and armament are extremely similar to the British T5 premium Exeter. But as a Commonwealth CA she gets Crawling Smoke rather than Repair Party Tier VI: HMAS Australia Kent class heavy cruiser HMAS Australia is a ship that was actually built and saw extensive wartime service. She's a Kent class CA and thus half-sister to London and Devonshire. She has a thicker main belt than them, but it's not as tall. Whether that's good or bad depends on what's shooting at you. You'll probably get more pens but also more overpens from shells that go high rather than hitting the citadel, and the citadel itself is slightly better protected with the 127mm rather than 114mm belt. But since you don't have Repair Party, any damage you take is going to stick. Tier VII: HMAS Brisbane Cockatoo Naval Yard heavy cruiser design of 1924 At T7 we see the Cockatoo Naval Yard Heavy Cruiser of 1924, which uses a slightly enlarged version of the Hawkins hull but mounts 3x3 203mm guns. This one is an oddball on several levels. The casemated secondaries (an oddity even on the conceptual level for a heavy cruiser) are apparently American 5"/51s and the Hawkins hull is badly armored. But the main armament is such an obvious upgrade over Australia means she needs to be a tier higher. And the fact that she's an indigenous design of Australia's shipyard means she can't just be skipped over. Of all the paper ships of a Commonwealth CA line she's probably the most important one to include. But Australia herself is also too important to skip so I can't toss her at T6 and find something else to be T7. If her armor is kept the same as Hawkins she'll have a 38mm icebreaker but also a massive citadel that's only 64 to 76mm thick on belt along with citadel deck and bulkheads that are only 16mm thick in parts. Personally I'd just lower the citadel (though it's still above waterline) and beef up the belt armor around the citadel portion to 127mm. The B hull would probably also remove the casemate secondaries to make room for 102mm AA guns. Tier VIII: HMAS Newcastle Vickers Design 1074X Newcastle is Vickers Export Design 1074X, another 3x3 203mm cruiser. This is essentially an enlarged York class (or Vickers 1242) with triple turrets rather than being in the direct lineage of the British County class CAs. Another interesting feature is that it calls for 4x3 622mm torpedo tubes. IRL the only ships ever to mount this weapon (the 24.5" Mk I torpedo) were the Nelson class battleships in fixed underwater tubes. But despite the huge caliber these wouldn't hit any harder than British 533mm torps. They only had a 337kg warhead, actually a tiny bit smaller than the Mk IX series of torps that mid to high tier British cruisers carry. The purpose of the huge size was to increase range, with the lowest range setting being 13.7km at 35 knots (though remember that all ship launched torps have their speed in WOWS set to ~20 knots faster than IRL). I'm going to make fictional upgraded versions of these torps for the T9-10 CAs, just for "flavour" purposes. Given that British cruiser design of the time had near-nonexistent 25mm belts (to meet the 10k ton treaty weight limits) but were suspiciously easily to refit with thicker belts once the treaties were breached by Japan and Italy, probably the same is true of Vickers 1074X. So I'll just give her a 152mm belt and call it a day. Tier IX: INS Vikrant 1940 21,500 Ton Cruiser Design B At this point we've run out Australian CA designs, so I'm resorting to the leftovers that WG didn't use in the British CA line. T8-10 of that line are based on early 1940s British design studies for post-treaty heavy cruisers. But there are more such ships that WG didn't use. Bringing back the 9.2" (234mm) as a cruiser gun was Winston Churchill's pet project as First Lord of the Admiralty. After becoming PM he was less directly involved in naval affairs and that's when the project died. But one of these large cruisers was instead armed with 4x3 203mm and weighed in at 21500 tons standard (so maybe 23000 tons full load). That's the design I'm suggesting for T9. This is a hull very similar to Drake in the British line but with a larger number of smaller guns. I'm putting this one under the Indian flag as INS Vikrant. Tier X: HMCS Canada 4x4 203mm Goliath And here we have it, the dreaded copy-paste turret-swap. I'm left without any other options for this tier since the British T10 premium Gibraltar is using the design I'd originally wanted. But maybe it's better this way, since suddenly springing a 234mm gun cruiser at T10 after 5 straight tiers of 203mm wouldn't be the smoothest transition. I'm going to give this one to Canada under the name HMCS Canada. And here's some potential associated premiums: Tier III: HMCS Niobe Diadem class protected cruiser Niobe was the 2nd ship of the Royal Canadian Navy, and the 1st that's workable for this game. I chose her as a premium because she's just so different from the rest of the tree. She has a lot in common with St. Louis but there are a few differences. She has even more guns and better HE DPM, but worse AP DPM and much worse shell velocity. She has even bigger HP pool (800 more HP than South Carolina!) and a thicker turtleback deck over the citadel, but no belt armor at all. Tier III: HMAS Sydney Chatham class light cruiser Sydney is a direct predecessor of Adelaide. Largely the same ship as stock Adelaide but with 1 less gun. The layout is identical to British T2 Weymouth. But she's too strong for T2 so here she is. I'm just including her for historical importance as the ship that won the very first battle in the Royal Australian Navy's history. On November 9, 1914 she hunted down and defeated the German cruiser SMS Emden (already in WOWS as a T2 German premium) in the very one-sided Battle of Cocos. This is what Emden looked like afterward: To somewhat make up for the weaker armament she gets faster reload. Tier IV: HMCS Prince Robert d Prince Robert is the sister ship of the T1 cruiser Prince David. Initially she was given the same conversion as an armed merchant cruiser. While her sister ships were converted again to infantry landing ships for D-Day, Prince Robert was instead refitted as an AA escort. With 5 twin 102mm, a pair of quad 40mm pom-poms and 12 single 20mm Oerlikons she should be a bit of a surprise T4 CV players who are used to nonexistent AA. Those 10 fast-firing guns mean great DPM as well. But she's still a merchant ship hull with no armor, and unlike her T1 sister her HP pool is now rather low for the tier. Everything can pen her everywhere, including HE shells and rockets through the belt. She's also slow. The protected matchmaking spread of T4 isn't a luxury for her but a necessity. You'll need to make use of islands and your smokescreen to stay alive long enough to make use of the DPM. Tier V: HMAS Canberra Kent class heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra is Australia's is sister ship. She's a tier lower for a good reason though, which you'll be able to see in stats. The 25mm belt is not a typo. She's one of the County class that didn't have time to get refitted with a proper belt. Which probably didn't help at the Battle of Savo Island where she was lost, though the 3 New Orleans class cruisers with 127mm belts also sunk in that battle indicate it wouldn't have mattered. Otherwise she's pretty much a stock Australia. With arbitrarily lower shell velocity and AP alpha (same as the inaccurate velocity WG used for Devonshire). This is the definition of glass cannon cruiser. At one point I would've put Canberra in the tech tree at T6 and Australia at T7, with the Cockatoo heavy cruiser as a T7 premium. But cruiser powercreep starting with the USN cruiser split meant that ceased to be viable. And a no-belt-armor CA in the tech tree would've been awkward anyway. I didn't include the Dido class cruisers PNS Babur and HMNZS Royalist in my premium ideas because @Commissar_Carl already covered them in detail (the links are to his posts). There's also 1944 Australian light cruiser design that's essentially a mini-Neptune (4x3 133mm guns instead of 152mm) that would fit at T8. But aside from not being thematically related to the CA line, in the event that suitable T9-10 designs can be found other than copy-pasting Neptune and Minotaur she'd be a good fit for a Commonwealth CL split. Such a split could consist of T4 HMS Dunedin (a Danae clone representing the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy; the Royal New Zealand Navy proper didn't come until 1941), T5 HMNZS Achilles/INS Delhi (the same ship, a Leander with 1 turret removed), T6 HMCS Quebec (ex-HMS Uganda, a Fiji with 1 turret removed like the premium Mysore) and T7 HMCS Ontario (an improved Fiji but still with only 3 turrets, could get buffed reload to fit into the tier). While the CL line would have fewer paper ships, it would also be less unique so I went with CAs. I would like the CL line to happen as well, maybe even just stopping at T8 until proper top-tier ships can be found like WG initially did with the IJN DD split. In the unlikely event that WG ever expands low-tier in the way I've proposed before by redesignating the T1 ships as "Tier 0" and putting small turn of the century cruisers and destroyers at T1 along with pre-dreadnought BBs at T1 and 2 (so that T1 would become part of the normal tiers instead of a walled-off training area) I'd put the small protected cruiser HMS (later HMNZS) Philomel at that new T1.

Overestimating WG's ability to adding new ships to the game, here's some Canadian light cruiser line suggestions (then again, a commonwealth line would be easier to do probably but idk). This is a bit of a pipe dream as most of these ships are fictional. Anyone with more experience can hop in and give input of you want. Saw some people proposing lines and thought it would be fun to try adding my proposal ideas. Gimmicks (gimmicks are average and subject to change, the higher the tier) Basic Stats: Low detectability Average speed High maneuverability High HE pen Mediocre AP pen Poor armor Consumables: Torpedo Tubes [available at III and beyond] Crawling Smoke [available at VI and beyond] Hydroacoustic Search [available at VII and beyond] Fighter and Defensive AA Fire [available at VIII and beyond as options over Hydro] Surveillance Radar [available at VIII and beyond as an option over Smoke] Repair Party [available at IX and beyond] Specialized Repair Teams [available exclusively to premium IX Edmonton] Spotting Aircraft [available exclusively to premium VII Quebec] Ships (w/ main battery armaments) {reimagined = adjusted armament to fit the line) I Sackville (reimagined) (4x1 120mm) II Niobe (reimagined) (8x1 152mm) III Aurora (reimagined) (8x1 152mm) IV Moncton (3x2 152mm) V Ottawa (4x2 152mm) VI Montreal (4x2 152mm) VII Ontario (3x3 152mm) VIII Halifax (4x3 152mm) IX Vancouver (5x3 152mm) (similar turret layout to Mogami) X Victoria (4x4 152mm) (similar to Plymouth) Premiums: II Rainbow (reimagined) (8x1 152mm) VI Toronto (4x2 203mm) (imagined CAN CA of the UK County-class heavy cruisers) VII Quebec (3x3 152mm) (Surveillance Radar is available as well as Spotting Aircraft, but no Smoke) IX Edmonton (3x4 152mm) (Victoria with one less turret, but with exclusive Specialized Repair Teams) It's really late as I'm making this post so add and take what you want from this. IMAGES OF EXISTING SHIPS: I Sackville II Niobe III Aurora VII Ontario Premium II Rainbow Premium VII Quebec

If New Zealand Should Have Representation In-Game, it Should be by HMNZS ROYALIST In my last proposal (For PNS Babur) I said that the Babur could be considered the ultimate evolution of the Dido class of cruiser. The only reason that I didn’t say that it was outright is the ship I am proposing now. The last of the Didos, the last of the New Zealand cruisers, HMNZS Royalist. The ship had a history that is simultaneously subdued and tumultuous. Commissioned in 1944 Royalist had only a small amount of war left to prove her worth. However, in that time she did do some things to make her mark. Just after working up, she sailed in support of the carriers and battleships of Operation Tungsten, one of many attempts to sink the Tirpitz. She sailed to the Mediterranean, where she covered Operation Dragoon (the invasion of the south of France), then to the Aegean where she sank a pair of transports. After this, she went to the pacific, supporting carrier operations and just missing the chance to go toe to toe with the IJN Haguro. And after this, the war ended. After the war, the Royal Navy had a major issue. The war had left Britain in dire economic straits, and for the first time maybe ever the Royal Navy was not at the top of the list of priorities. With a tremulous grip on what remained of the British Empire, the Royal Navy was going to have to make do with what it could. Many ships were mothballed, many others sold, as the admirals tried to figure out what the Royal Navy was going to look like when the sun set on the British Empire. Caught up in this was Royalist, and the rest of the Dido’s. On the one hand, they were small ships, with little room for improvement and limited capability in terms of surface combat with other ships. talks of the soviet Chapayev and Sverdlov class hung heavy in the minds of planners. On the other hand, the Dido’s were by far the best AA platforms currently available, and air power had proven dominant in WWII and Korea. Eventually a decision was made. Royalist would be modernized, a trial for modernization of the remaining Dido’s. Work began in 1953, with a projected completion of 1956, but even as work began, people wondered if the ship had reached its sell by date. Enter New Zealand. Eagerly awaiting the 6 new frigates that they believed would suit their needs, and with a want to downsize from the pair of Dido’s that they already had, there were no plans to purchase any more cruisers. But after talks in 1955 about the brutal realities of a nuclear war with the Soviets, the prime minister of New Zealand decided that maybe this cruiser that the British were now trying to pass off was a worthwhile investment. So, in 1956, they bought it. Royalist had two things happen in its naval career. The first was best described as a dirty trick. British prime minister Anthony Eden had convinced the New Zealand government that having a naval presence in the Mediterranean (literally the furthest spot you can get on the planet from New Zealand) was worthwhile. And then, quite without any warning, the British and French started invading Egypt to gain access to the Suez Canal back. This operation just so happened to need HMNZS Royalist to serve as an AA picket, being at the time probably the best AA picket ship in the theater with its extensive radar and communications suite. When international outrage at the operation hit in force, the prime minister ordered Royalist to divest itself from it, but it stuck around for the duration at the back of the fleet. Keeping its radar on the skies for Egyptian air power (or Israeli, on the off chance they attacked British ally Jordan) The rest of Royalists career consisted of shore bombardments, in a series of increasingly concerning Malaysian conflicts. In all, despite having most of its career in the cold war, Royalist still was active and fired its guns in anger. In 1965 though, with a damaged keel, and on its last legs after 9 years of service, Royalist was put out to pasture, the last of New Zealand’s Cruisers. So, with Royalists credentials established as to why it should be a premium, what would royalist look like? In broad strokes, Royalist should be a Tier 6 premium for the Commonwealth Navy. With HMAS Perth already occupying this space, Royalist would have to be sufficiently unique to be added. Unless, of course, it was bumped up to tier 7. When I discuss the potential stats, you’ll know why tier 7 may be in the cards. Armor: The armor on Royalist would be the same as on a Modified Dido like HMS Bellona, and would have 16mm plating all around, with a 89mm citadel belt, 51mm citadel roof armor, 25mm citadel caps and turret armor, and 10mm superstructures. HP would be similarly quite low for its tier, I would say 27000. Armament: Initially, it seems that just taking the stats from any of my other proposals would do just fine here. It certainly works for the Shells, doing 2700 damage max with AP and 1900 damage and 8% fire chance with HE. Rate of fire is 10 rounds per minute, coming out 4 twin turrets. So far nothing to earth shattering. However, Royalist has landed its torpedoes, and as such may need some help with its firepower to compensate. The first fix is adjusting its range. I had up to this point had my Dido proposals have the shortest range in tier because they had the smallest guns, with the only outlier being that they could outrange the Atlanta’s and their 5 inch guns. With all the fire control advances that Royalist has with its postwar refit, I think that extending the range to 15.7 km seems reasonable. This does not help with its DPM, although as is Royalist would have 5th best AP DPM and 3rd best HE DPM at the tier. However… How I got to the 10 rounds per minute number comes from first-hand accounts of HMS Euryalus’s gunnery petty officer. On the one hand a primary source, on the other not technical, more antecdotal. There is a lot of contention that the 5.25 never was able to meet its designed fire rate of 10-12 rounds per minute due to a few factors. The rounds had to have their fuses set properly before being loaded into the guns, taking some time. The loading tray that the round and propellant had to be mounted on was manually operated, and so was the rammer. That all applied to the mark II mounting of the 5 turret Dido’s. Euryalus and its 10 RPM account falls into this category. The Bellonas were improved. They had powered loading trays and automatic rammers, and the similar mounting for the secondarys on HMS Vanguard were further improved with a automatic fuse setter. This removed 2 men from the turret crew, giving more space, and removed a step from the loading process. Essentially what I am saying is that it is very likely that the Bellonas had a faster all-out fire rate than the Didos, which we already have at 10 RPM. This gives 2 options. The first is just to buff the rate of fire of HMS Royalist flat out. If we increase the rate of fire to 12 RPM (the planned maximum fire rate of the Didos) and we are looking at the second best AP DPM at tier 6 behind Nurnberg and best in tier HE and fires per minute. Her damage per minute would be middle of the pack on all counts at tier 7. Option number 2 would be to keep the firing rate at 10 per minute but give it a variation on main battery reload booster to simulate them going flat out. Instead of halving the reload for 15 seconds, I would propose that this would reduce the reload by 33% for 30. Doing some calculations, this allows the ship to fire a maximum of 8 salvoes over 30 seconds, as opposed to the regular 6. What this means is that instead of firing 96 rounds per minute, every minute (if it just fired 12 rounds per minute) is that it occasionally can fire 100 rounds per minute every 2 or 3 minutes. This lowers the DPM to 5th in AP damage at tier 6 with 216000 and third in HE damage when on cooldown. The high DPM does make up for 2 facts. First is that this ship has the weakest guns on a tier 6 cruiser, so a high DPM is more necessary to keep actual damage up. The second is that Royalist only has guns. There is more of a onus on them being good. Oh, final thing, Royalist has pretty horrible firing angles. A, B, and Y turret have 40 degree bindspost on either side, making this ship abysmal for kiting and forcing it to show way too much side to get all guns singing. Concealment: On the one hand, Royalist is small. Its hull is basically the same as Huang He, so initially it makes sense for the base detection range to be 9.55 km, going down to 8.34 the only issue with this is Royalist has not one, but 2, gigantic radar arrays. Because of this, I begrudgingly admit that surface detection should be a little greater. I’d say 10km standard, dropping to a minimum of 8.73 km. Agility: HMNZS Royalist had a top speed of 32 knots. Apart from that, I would just give it the same 570 meter turning radius of Huang He. No energy retention, no fast turning, that would be it. AA: Ah, this one. Royalist had precisely 2 jobs. One was shooting ships and shore targets with its guns, and the other was shooting down planes. And it had all the best and most modern tools to facilitate that, so you bet that this ship is going to be best in tier at this. Very best in tier at this. At long range, she would do 150 DPS at 6 kilometers, with 4 flak bursts at 1617 damage a piece. However, it’s her close in weaponry that would stand out. Royalist had nothing but 40mm bofors, two single mounts in the relatively anemic Mk VII mount, but more importantly 3 of the STAAG twin mounts. The 2 would do 24 DPS at 3.5 km. the STAAG mounts though, being fully radar controlled and independent of any other fire control mechanism like a pointer, would do 65 damage per. This is based on the single “Hazemeyer” mount on Gadjah Mada doing an absurd 63 DPS, STAAG should do at least a little better. Summed up, that’s 219 DPS at 3.5km with an additional 150 tacked on. While this is not the best raw DPM, the fact that all of it is concentrated at range makes it best in tier by a good margin. Consumables: Right now, we have a stealthy, squishy ship with high DPM and good range on small guns for a cruiser, that is agile but not fast, and packs good AA. But we need flavor. So already mentioned is the main battery reload. But, what else can we do? I think that for the remainder of our consumables, we should look to the ship’s historical characteristics. Royalist was designed to do precisely three things. The first was to shoot down airplanes, so defensive AA should be included, preferably the Atlanta’s unlimited charge version. The second was to survive (as well as anything can) an irradiated world after a nuclear conflict, by being sealed up preventing exposure. Honestly, the only thing that would make sense for this would be smoke. Put a pin in that one, look at this picture, and ask yourself, what consumable do you think this ship should have, based on this picture? You know what it is. You wish you didn’t, because this is a tier 6 proposal, but you know what those two giant towers are there for. Royalist should have radar. Now, you may be saying that this oversaturates tier 6 with radar. I counter that any tier 8 match can have radar, and even tier 7 (Atlanta, Belfast, Indianapolis) can bring them into the game. you may say that tier 5 would be negatively affected. I point back to tier 7, which sees tier 5’s, and the fact that tier 5 is where the training wheels come off. At this point, you have to be able to deal with things like radar. And finally, I point out that for the purposes of this ship, the radar will not be very good. To keep the ship from being able to either insta-radar destroyers or stealth radar, the range on this will only be 8KM. This is not like the soviet “let’s just see what’s in the area” type of radar, or Belfast’s “who’s looking at me” radar. This is more in line with Atlanta’s or DD radar, designed to either root people out of smoke, or spot a destroyer that’s sneakily trying to stealth torpedo you. The difference here is that the duration of this radar will be 40 seconds, so long lasting. Long lasting enough to find your target, lay on, fire up your reload booster, and get the full duration before shutting off. What a coincidence. Which brings us back to the smoke. I don’t think that it is necessary. I think that between radar, reload booster, and Def AA we have ourselves a pretty good thing going here. But, if it was to be a bit to short lived for a cruiser, we could add a smoke. In this case, I would recommend crawling smoke to keep with the commonwealth theme. However (keeping with the others) I would have it have 5 or 6 charges but 40 seconds of emission. And finally, keep in mind that if WG wanted to wring some more money out of the playerbase, they could bump this up to tier 7. Bump the firing rate to 12 RPM base and keep the reload booster, add smoke on top of this, and massage the HP pool and this could fit in at that tier. I like it more at tier 6, but, you know, options. Why people would buy Royalist Well, radar at tier 6 is novel. That alone would probably make it a tempting ship for ranked at tier 6 or clan battles or things like that. Collectors would probably want this ship. It’s a Dido, and much to my disappointment there aren’t any of those in game yet. It’s historical, a real ship that really sailed and really shot at things. And finally, this ship would satisfy the small, but rabid, New Zealand contingent in the playerbase. Paint this up in Māori war paint, make a rugby tie in (after all, Royalist did get crippled in a storm because the captain wanted to make it to a match to watch the All Blacks crush the Wallabies, which they did) and you have an entertaining little ship. Again, I’d buy it, but I’d buy any Dido. Let me know what you think.

I had previously posted this before some months ago but im now going to revisit it to make some changes to it to suggest they add a british dd split or a Commonwealth dd line The line as a british dd split is more torpedo and support focused having Slightly different Consumables from the main line with the chioce between Defensive aa fire and repair party, Short burst Smoke and standard hydro but as a Commonwealth line they have Crawling Smoke / or Radar and engine boost but lack access to a heal or HE shells but the AP is the same as british light cruiser AP Tier 6 : Inglefield (swaps places with icarus in the main line who is the start of the new line)(British Version Only) While not actually part of the line it replaces Icarus in the main line who gets moved to the new line . in the commonwealth version of the line Ingelfied becomes HMAS Stuart instead Specs: Hitpoints: 11,100 - 13,200 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 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 7.1 km. Air Detectability Range 2.84 km. She's slightly longer than Icarus at 330m 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 Commonwealth Version : HMCS Tomahawk (Fictional Name) Basically she's a black swan with torpedoes Hitpoints: 12,100 - 14,900 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 and the stock hull has her refit that added squid launchers in place of the b gun 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 STAAG 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 7.3 km. Air Detectability Range 3 km slightly longer and wider than Jervis so it gets .1 km less Tier 8 : Gurhka the odd ball of the line in a sense as it has the most gun barrels technically in both lines Commonwealth Name : HMIS Gurkha Hitpoints: 12,800 - 15,600 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 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 7.04 km. Air Detectability Range 3.07 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 Commonwealth Name : HMAS Success Hitpoints: 13,100 - 15,200 a decrease as she's even smaller than Jervis but its more than Battleaxe who is closer in size to her for balance at high tier 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 current as of the date of this post maxed out 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 degress edit: 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 will have trouble fighting off other dds due to the low hp Tier 10 : Gael The only paper ship, it was to be an improved weapon class but ingame its more of an improved savage Commonwealth name : HMNZS Gift its a secretive design and the only picture I could find was of a model but if it was built it'd look similar to daring the armament specs are from wikipedia Hitpoints: 17,200 this puts her as the smallest high tier dd other than shima in terms of hitpoints and in terms of displacement she is the smallest by far 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 barrel and both go 360 degress Torpedoes 533 mm PR Mk II2 х 5 pcs. Rate of Fire0.48 shots/min. Reload Time125 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 7.3 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 no engine boost like main line or propulsion mod defensive aa fire /Short burst smoke generator (tier 6-8) Hydroacoustic search 100s 3km torp detect 5km ship detect 3 charges Repair party (tier 6-8 ) /Advanced Repair teams (tier9-10) 2 charges Defensive aa fire (tier 9-10) 40s 4 charges Icarus, Battleaxe and Gurkha have access to hydro and repair party but must choose between Defensive aa fire or smoke Savage and Gael have access to all commonwealth versions use the same consumable set as vampire 2 with the exception of radar which is 6km for 25 seconds which is tier 8 and up comment your thoughts below I think they'd work but also kinda powercreep four lines also : german dds in general ijn torpboats and lower tier eu dds i did not add any wartime emergency dds other than savage as I found her to be the most unique and the others are quite lacking in firepower but they could be possible 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.

Italian BBs are due early in 2021, though two T9 BBs (Hizen then Marco Polo) back to back seems inconsistent with what WG has done in the past with the dockyard. Probably one of the Ducas will be the 1/2 or 2/3 dockyard consolation prize. The only alternative could be Vampire II with Mysore as the consolation prize, but that would be even more inconsistent because they likely would not sell her simultaneously with the event as they have done with post Puerto Rico dockyard ships. She would also be the first DD in the dockyard (although that would not be a bad thing) and the first T10 since the botched Puerto Rico rollout of the dockyard. Also there hasn't been any clue that we are getting a Commonwealth tech tree line for the Vampire to correspond with, though I'd love to see one. That leaves the Vampire as a resource/FXP or Research Bureau ship. She looks like a coal or FXP ship to my eye, but that is more rampant speculation.

With the Indian Celebration a couple of weekends ago and the request for Indian ships in WoWS, I was reminded that at one point the subcontinent was part of the Commonwealth (and still participates in the Commonwealth Games). I would like to propose a new Commonwealth Tech Tree that contains mostly real ships in all four of the classes from Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and Pakistan. Characteristics: It is already established that the Commonwealth tech tree ship characteristics already include the creeping smoke generator, as well as both HE and AP for their main guns. For additional characteristics, I think it is appropriate that they be given an anti-submarine specialization once subs become part of the regular matchmaking. This can be approximated by giving all ships Depth Charges and an improved anti-sub Hydroacoustic Search Consumable. Aircraft carriers would have access to a squadron that could drop depth charges on top of Subs that they encounter. Cruisers: These will be Light Cruisers with better than average concealment and lower than average HP. Tier 1 - (AUS) Warrego (Grimsby-class) A sloop that provided escort duties in WWII. Provided some defence during the bombing of Darwin in 1942. Slow at 16.5 knots, it has three 4-inch guns so it will probably fit the RoF at Tier I, not like many people stay around at that level anyways... Tier 2 - (AUS) Pioneer (Pelorus-class) Built in 1897, transferred to Australia and commissioned in 1913, saw more actual combat than any other Australian ship of WWI, capturing several German merchants and helping blockade German East Africa. A bit slow, but should be serviceable at this tier. Tier 3 - (CAN) Aurora (Arethusa-class) Involved in the Battle of Dogger Bank in WWI, she was transferred to Canada in 1920. Became the victim of budget cuts and her equipment was cannibalized for other Canadian ships through the 1920s. Her specialty could be only 2 main guns and a lot of secondaries. However, she may be undergunned for the tier and may also be confused with the Russian Cruiser of the same name. Perhaps the Sydney and Adelaide should both be moved down one Tier with something else (paper ship?) to replace at Tier V. Alternately, choose: (CAN) Niobe (Diadem-class) Commissioned in 1898, was transferred to Canada in 1910 as one of the first ships of the new RCN. Reassigned as a depot ship partway through WWI, she was damaged in the Halifax Explosion of 1917. She has a lot of guns, similar to St Louis. Tier 4 - (AUS) Sydney (Chatham-class) Commissioned in 1913, she defeated SMS Emden at the Battle of Cocos. Had Depth Charge chutes, so would be good for Anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Tier 5 - (AUS) Adelaide (Birmingham-class) Similar to Sydney but with an extra main gun. Might be a too-highly tiered, but WG can probably tweak the design to fit at this level. Tier 6 - (NZL) Achilles (Leander-class) The legend. Similar to Perth. (AUS - Premium) Canberra (County-Class) This would be the one Commonwealth Heavy Cruiser option, with characteristics similar to Devonshire/London but with crawling smoke. Or maybe can fit it at Tier VII if the smoke makes it that survivable. Tier 7 - (PAK) Babur (Dido-class) Originally HMS-Diadem which covered convoys and raided german shipping routes in WWII, transferred to Pakistan in 1956 and participated in the Indo-Pakistani wars of 1965 and 1971. This class would have a similar performance profile to the Atlanta/Flint cruisers, so should fit at this tier. It was small, so should have the best concealment at it's tier and small HP pool to match. There might be an option to add the variant that had 5 turrets instead of 4. Tier 8 - (CAN) Ontario (Swiftsure-class) Commissioned for the RCN in 1945, she was too late to see service in the WWII Pacific theatre and had a relatively uneventful career. It has the same guns a Fiji with one less turret, but more secondaries. Since it wouldn't be a clone, there is leeway to make it's specs that would fit at this tier. If the original main battery RoF is too slow, have the ability to research and mount the Neptune guns to increase RoF. Tier 9 - (IND) Mysore (Crown Colony-class) Acquired by India in 1957, she served as flagship of the Western Fleet and commanded the missile attack on Karachi Harbour during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. Granted this is an uptiered Fiji, but having access to both Slot 5 and 6 upgrades (possibility of improved concealment and RoF) should keep it competitive with other Tier IX CLs. If WG really wants to, maybe give it an option to upgrade the main battery and torpedos to Neptune guns/torps so it will be squishy offset by high DPM. Tier 10 - (???) Commonwealth (Minotaur-class?) May as well use the RN TX design here, but could make a complete new design (not like many of the TX ships were ever real anyways). But should still have both HE and AP, Crawling Smoke, and ASW options instead of radar. Destroyers: These will be similar to RN DDs, with crawling smoke, Depth Charges, and improved ASW Hydro. Tier 2 - (CAN) Patrician (M-class) WWI destroyer transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1920. Tier 3 - (CAN) Vancouver (S-class) Acquired from RN in 1927, ended up used as a training ship. Tier 4 - (AUS) Stuart (Scott-class) A Flotilla Leader purchased from Britain in 1933, saw action throughout the Mediterranean and Pacific during WWII. Tier 5 - (CAN) Saguenay (River-class) Active in the Atlantic duing WWII, survived a torpedo hit and a ramming before eventually serving as a training ship until the end of the war. Tier 6 - (IND) Rajput (R-class) Originally HMS Rotherham and used in WWII, she was transferred to the Indian Navy in 1949 and saw active service in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. Tier 7 - (AUS) Norman (N-class) Commissioned for the RAN in 1941, she was active in the Indian and Pacific oceans and was involved in freeing Burma, the Madagascar campaign, and Battle for Okinawa. Tier 8 - (CAN) Athabaskan (Tribal-class) This ship was built to replace the original Athabaskan that was sunk in the English Channel while operating with her sister ship HMCS Haida. Note that the Guns are 4x2 102mm, differing it both from the Haida and Cossack. Tier 9 - (PAK) Khaibar (Battle-class) Originally HMS Cadiz, she was sold to the Pakistani Navy in 1956 and was sunk during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war by Styx anti-shipping missiles from Indian Fast Attack Craft. Tier 10 - (AUS) Vendetta (Daring-class) Commissioned in 1958, she had a relatively quiet career except for providing naval gunfire support during the Vietnam War. Carriers: To differentiate these CVs from others in the game, they should have an ASW-aircraft option. Crawling smoke might be fun on this as well. Additionally, these could pioneer a Light Carrier concept: Being a CV with only 2 squadrons available instead of 3, with faster regeneration and captains can choose what squadron types they want on board (flexibility for the Captain, uncertainty for the opponent). Another option is to design them like regular CVs, but with smaller squadron sizes that regenerate faster. Or just have higher tier Aircraft available. Tier 4 - (CAN) Puncher (Ruler-class) Mostly a Bogue by any other name. A bit of a cheat, was run by the RN but crewed by Canadians. Tier 6 - (AUS) Vengeance (Colossus-class) WWII carrier that didn't see active service, she was loaned to the RAN from 1952 until 1955 then sold on to Brazil and renamed Mineas Gerais. Propeller aircraft included the Fairey Firefly and Hawker Sea Fury. Tier 8 - (CAN) Magnificent (Majestic-class) It was this ship or the HMCS Bonaventure, but this seems to fit better at its tier and the Bonnie only ever operated jet aircraft. Participated in transporting Peacekeeping forces to Port Said during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Aircraft are later generation Firefly and Sea Fury. Tier 10 - (IND) Viraat (Centaur-class) Originally the HMS-Hermes that participated in the Falklands Conflict. This is a real stretch as it operated early versions of jet aircraft and I don't know what type of aircraft complement WG would want to give it, but this could be the one carrier that gets jets (Sea Vixens and Buccaneers) and ASW prop-job Gannets. I'm not sure what else could fit at Tier X. Battleships: Not much choice here, as really there was ever only one class. Tier 5 - (NZL - Premium) New Zealand (Indefatigable-class) This Battlecruiser was paid for by the New Zealand government but spent most of it's time defending Britain During WWI. She participated in the battles of Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank, and Jutland. Much more interesting history than her sister ship, HMAS Australia. Some might say this should be Tier IV, but Tier V is the breakpoint for a lot of directives and matches what WG did with the Viribus Unitis.

Seriously, I've been waiting all year for the Haida to come on sale on Canada Day weekend - and nothing. No bundle, no discount, nothing. :( I'm very sad. I'm uninstalling right now! Lol, no. But seriously, it would have been nice if you had given a little thought to your Canadian neighbours. I mean, I'm very certain next weekend is going to feature a metric tonne of bundles and discounts on American stuff for Independence Day weekend, am I right? Little help pls Wargaming? :)

No Italian/Regia Marina Dasha? I'm not mad wargaming, just disappointed and sad. Especially since there's bound to be a line for them eventually, same (possibly) for the Commonwealth. Sure its only premium ships currently but that doesn't mean you couldn't've released one anyway, The Italian Navy is not only my favorite from WW2 from a historical standpoint, but also based on designs/looks. As such it deeply saddens me I wont have a Italian Dasha captain to use on them

The in game ensigns for Pan Asian, Commonwealth and the up coming Pan American (I assume) are just symbols with no historic meaning. They are fine for organizing the incumbent ships in the tech tree and premium shop but do not fit on the ships when in play. Please consider updating the in game ships with the current naval ensign, on the rear of the ship, by replacing the likes of the commonwealth flag with the corresponding national ensign. For example, Australia would become , Canada and New Zealand . The same could be done for the others. While this would have no effect on game play it would be very respectful to those nations, and as every other ship in the game fly's a national ensign, even the single ship Polish navy (who coincidentally served with the Royal Navy as did commonwealth ships) it would only be fair.

Today the Australian Government announced the new design for an ASW Escort Frigate for the Royal Australian Navy: the BAE Type 26 GCS has beaten out the FREMM and F100 designs for the contract. Cureently the class is planned to be 9 ships built as ASW specialised Escort ships will be built under with the lead ship to be named HMAS Hunter to be Commissioned in the Mid-2020s as the ANZACs retire. some oddities/fun facts: this "Frigate" is looking to displace 1000 tonnes more than our current Hobart Class Destroyers (as well as being Longer and a wider Beam and a longer range) and 5200 tonnes more than the ANZAC Frigates they will be replacing. Thoughts on the Type 26 beating out FREMM and F100 and the capabilities that each class brought to the table? Or on if ship classifications (Frigate vs Destroyer vs Cruiser) even matter anymore beyond semantics and politics?