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

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

The following is a review of Dido, to tier VI premium British light cruiser, supported by my patrons on Patreon. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.11.1. Please be aware that her performance may change in the future. The purpose of this review is to support the players, not the company behind the product. Posting this review is not an endorsement of current goings on nor is it a statement about them. It's been a while, and not for the lack of trying. I have a half-finished Giuseppe Verdi and Kearsarge reviews archived before I got distracted with mapping sustianed AA DPS (kinda important when talking about Kearsarge's planes). My AA project has ballooned out of control which I feared it might. I'm putting those reviews on hold to get a (relatively) faster one out. Now Dido is a ship that players have wanted for a long time. A quick forums search finds talk about these ships going all of the way back to the game's launch, with players eagerly looking forward to more "Atlanta-style" ships. This ship has definitely been one I've highly anticipated knowing how important it is to not only Royal Navy enthusiasts but also players in the Commonwealth nations where she might be used (with modifications) to represent HMNZS Bellona or HMNZS Black Prince. Wargaming seems to have developed allergies for rapid-fire ships over the course of 2021 (to say nothing of AA specialists), with ships increasingly having longer and longer (and unfun) reloads and Dido's implementation obviously suffers from this new design direction. I was expecting Nürnberg levels of rapid-fire. Instead we got Dallas with much weaker guns. The silver lining (supposedly) is that they gave her smoke. So let's see if reaching into the Box o' Gimmicks™ has saved us from unfun design choices. Quick Summary: A fragile British light cruiser with ten, slow-firing destroyer-calibre guns. She's agile with good concealment and boasts a Short-Burst Smoke Generator. PROS Small citadel. Large battery of ten 133mm guns that fires both HE and AP. 360º traverse on rear turrets. Powerful, single-fire torpedoes. Excellent acceleration and decent agility. Good concealment. She has smoke. CONS Tiny hit point pool. Very thin citadel protection, vulnerable to even 203mm AP overmatching. Uses cruiser dispersion instead of destroyer dispersion. Slow firing for such small-calibre guns. Low HE and AP penetration. Clumsy main-battery firing angles. Bad anti-aircraft firepower. No access to Hydroacoustic Search. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / CASUAL / Challenging / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / HIGH / Extreme Dido has a nice, comfortable skill floor for inexperienced players. Park in smoke, apply HE to faces. Displace. Rinse and repeat. For veteran players, there's a lot to know. Map awareness, map positioning, proper smoke use habits, commander skill builds, ammunition juggling, using and abusing concealment, etc. They'll all serve you well here and help pad some of the ship's obvious weaknesses. Dido's carry potential is somewhat limited, however, by the issues with her penetration and damage output. She just doesn't hurt things quickly enough for bold plays barring a torpedo strike, so this is a ship that requires patience, caution and even more patience. Options The most variety you're going to find in optimized Dido builds comes from commander skill selection, and that's mostly focused around whether or not to take Inertial Fuse for HE Shells or to emphasize fire setting instead. One of these is a bad idea. Consumables Dido's Damage Control Party is standard for a cruiser. It comes with unlimited charges and a 60 second reset timer. It is active for 5 seconds. Her Defensive AA Fire consumable is standard for a non-American cruiser at this tier. It starts with three charges and it has a 40 second active period and an 80 second reset timer. While active, it increases sustained damage by 50% and quadruples flak explosion damage. Dido comes with a Short-Burst Smoke Generator reminiscent of that found on Belfast '43 and British destroyers. However, it's very much its own beast with no direct clones that I could find. It starts with five charges and emits smoke for 15 seconds. However, the smoke clouds only last for 35 seconds each (Belfast '43's smoke lasts for 40) . Her reset timer is also longer than her tier VIII cousin, with an 80 second wait time instead of 70 seconds. Upgrades Not much variety here. Start with Main Armaments Modification 1. Next, take Engine Room Protection. Aiming Systems Modification 1 is the only upgrade worth considering in slot three. And finally, Steering Gears Modification 1 is also the only upgrade worth taking. Commander Skills Why haven't you taken Heavy HE & SAP Shells yet? YOU MUST TAKE HEAVY HE & SAP SHELLS for Dido. There's no reason not to. Take it now. NOW. Have you done it yet? Okay, good. Now we can talk. You're going to want to pair that with Inertial Fuse for HE Shells along with the usual light-cruiser suspects of Concealment Expert and Last Stand is also recommended. You've got some wiggle room after that. I highly value Priority Target and I wanted the extra charge of smoke with Superintendent (though you're not always going to get to use it). With such as a small hit point pool, the extra 2700 (or 11% total) hit points from Survivability Expert is worth taking, though you could trade one of the latter two for Adrenaline Rush if you wanted. Finally, I had a point leftover which I dropped into Grease the Gears. Here's some of the skills I'd consider but didn't have room for in my current build: Gun Feeder - On more than one occasion, I wish I had this skill when the flat broadside of a cruiser finally presented itself. Demolition Expert - Nice to have, but expensive at two points. Adrenaline Rush - Mentioned above. Radio Location - See Demolition Expert. This would be nice to have but it's too expensive given Dido's priorities. Of course, if you're only playing Co-Op and scenarios, than other than Heavy HE & SAP Shells, your choice of skills doesn't matter much. Camouflage If you unlock Dido through the Gibraltar Pillars event, she comes with two camouflage options. Her Type 10 and Atlantic camos are palette swaps of one another, providing the identical bonuses of: -3% surface detection +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells. -10% to post-battle service costs. +50% to experience gains. This is Dido-s standard Type 10 camouflage. If she's put on sale on the regular later, this is the paint scheme with which she'll come. You can unlock this alternative palette for her Type 10 camouflage through completing a specific part of the Naval Aviation collection. For early adopters, they also received this Atlantic - Dido camouflage which is nice and striking. My guess is we'll see this as a purchasable option for and estimated 1,000 doubloons or 6,000 community-tokens for later-comers if they become available separately. Firepower Main Battery: Ten 133mm/50 guns in 5x2 turrets in an A-B-C-X-Y superfiring configuration. Torpedoes: Six tubes in 2x3 launchers on wing mounts straddling the rear funnel. Dido barely survives a ram attempt from Kijkduin, using her powerful torpedoes to sink the cruiser just before impact. Dido has better rearward than forward torpedo arcs. Torpedoes Let's start with the fish! Dido has surprisingly powerful fish for her tier. This is owing to her using the same torpedoes found on the tier VIII destroyer, Lightning, giving her quite a heavy punch. Their 8km range means you're not stealth firing at anyone barring extreme kiting situations or using concealment to setup a torpedo attack. However, their individual hits are devastating. A full broadside of her torpedoes will sink just about any cruiser she comes across. BUT (and I stress this but!) three torpedo hits aren't enough to take down any of the battleships she faces short of Viribus Unitis, so don't suicide charge anything that's not already damaged. Like other British cruisers and destroyers, Dido can single fire her fish which is welcome. It's just a shame these aren't a little longer ranged. Oh well, they're good at what they do when you are able to use them. Those these may be destroyer calibre, they do not have a destroyer's rate of fire. Tech Tree versus Premium I'm honestly surprised Wargaming chose to release another premium with destroyer-calibre guns, to say nothing of a whole tech tree lined based on the armament, without first addressing player concerns about their performance. Firepower wise, specialized cruisers are in a rough spot since the commander skill rework a couple of years back. Wargaming has made improvements, but super-cruisers and cruisers with destroyer-calibre weapons had their efficiency severely reduced. Ostensibly, Dido's arrival long after the rework (nevermind a full Pan Asian line dedicated to this armament choice) means that Wargaming has designed these ships with these deficits in mind. Ostensibly. Maybe they're couching their implementation with the promise of future fixes. I dunno. I can't hold their feet to the fire like I used to. These teething troubles are still apparent with Dido's gunnery and it takes a careful hand (and careful skill choices) to fix these issues. She's not quite a comfortable gunnery platform -- she gets close, but her weapons are far from the fun weapons of Atlanta and Smolensk, for example. As a premium version of Rahmat, the tier VI Pan Asian tech-tree vessel, it's natural to want to compare her and Dido. There's a lot of give and take between the two ships. Dido has better range than Rahmat, with a reach of 14.1km to Rahmat's 12.496km. This is a huge improvement. Rahmat has better fire angles on her Y-turret with a 270º arc compared to Dido's 268º. Minor, but still. Rahmat has the better rate of fire, reloading in just 7.5 seconds to Dido's 8.5 seconds. This is pretty big. Dido's shells have less drag and thus better ballistics. This is important. The reduced drag gives Dido's AP shells better penetration too. This is not so important, as we'll cover. Dido's AP shells have longer fuse timers of 0.033s instead of 0.025s. This is more of academic interest than practical. This all translates to Dido being a more comfortable platform to engage targets at a distance, which is good, but you pay for it with overall damage output. Of course, besting Rahmat's range is like bragging that your ship is faster than New Mexico. It's a pretty damn low bar to hurdle. Dido is short ranged, make no mistake, but she is the longest-ranged of any of the smoke-bearing cruisers at this tier barring Trento. Between having to choose between range and rate of fire, I'll take the range, especially when paired with Dido's improved ballistics. I'm not happy about Dido's rate of fire, especially when paired with her penetration woes. This isn't a cruiser that kills things quickly. Dido's DPM is middling. Her lack of penetration makes it very difficult to realize these numbers, however. It should be noted that Dido (and Rahmat) can boost these listed numbers by 10% by taking the Heavy HE and SAP shells commander skill, which they totally should. This bumps up Dido's AP DPM from 180,000 to 198,000 and her HE DPM from 134,118 to 147,530. With her guns being only 133mm in calibre, she doesn't suffer the accompanying concealment penalty normally associated with this skill. Dido's improved ballistics means that her AP penetration is lightly better than Rahmat's, even though they're using the same guns. This ballistic difference translates into Rahmat's shells taking 10.63 seconds to reach 12.5km. Dido's cover the same distance in 9.46 seconds and doesn't experience the same kind of floaty arc as Rahmat until a range of 13.47km. These arcs allow Dido to make good use of terrain cover to lob shells over islands. Dido's penetration isn't good. Her AP penetration is among the worst for cruisers at tier VI. Landing citadel hits against cruisers requires not only the enemy ships to provide a broadside to shoot at, but also specific armour thresholds. While something soft and squishy like Pensacola's 76mm belt over her machine spaces can be contested in excess of 12km, the 102mm plating over her magazines is proof until you get into sub-10km ranges. Dido's AP works well against lower-tiered and very light and scout cruisers but it's nowhere near reliable against higher tiered ships. The long fuse timer on her shells also makes overpenetrations more likely against soft parts like battleship superstructures. Her HE penetration doesn't get much better. Sure, the 22mm she starts with is enough to contest all destroyers and most (but not all) tier V, VI and VII cruisers she might face. This is also enough to hurt the extremities of tier V battleships and the superstructures of the remaining vessels. Taking Inertial Fuse for HE Shells greatly expands the targets she can directly hurt, being able to smouldering HE holes into any cruiser she might come across as well as opening up the extremities of tier VI and VII battleships as well. Pair this with the Heavy HE and SAP Shells commander skills and Dido's DPM starts to look respectable. This comes at the expense of setting fires, of course, but Dido's not a great fire starter to begin with. Even with a deep build into fire setting, she barely gets close to the stock-values of the 152mm armed ships. So I stress again: Take Inertial Fuse for HE Shells and Heavy HE and SAP Shells on your commanders or Dido's gunnery performance suffers. I'm not happy with this solution. It means that in order to be competitive, destroyer-calibre armed ships like Dido must pay a commander skill tax. If skills like these are so game-changing as to become mandatory, that's bad for the player-base. Players are punished if they don't take them. Dido is only ever a modest fire-setter. You can dump skills and consumables into trying to improve it, but you're only ever going to be as good as a stock Makarov. It's better to bite the bullet, take IFHE and go from there. British ships are notorious for having bad fire angles. Dido's forward fire angles are good for four out of her five turrets, but Y-turret sucks. Her rearward fire angles are pretty bad, though. There are two good points though: Her X-turret has phenomenal fire arcs and both it and Y-turret have a 360º traverse arc. Gun Handling & Accuracy Dido keeps up with the British tradition of cramming their guns in so tightly to their superstructures that it impedes their gunnery arcs. Her fire arcs are bad, with her Y-turret being especially awful. You can mostly ignore this when firing forward, with four guns capable of addressing very accute fire angles. It's just Y-turret that's nigh-impossible to bear without flashing your full broadside. Unfortunately, things are worse rearward, with her forward turrets having bad arcs. At least her turret traverse isn't painfully slow and her rear turrets can rotate 360º. So you're not going to be able to fire all five guns safely without cover. Being out in the open is just asking for trouble with Dido anyway, so use the crummy arcs as a bit of a reminder to get back into cover ASAP. Special mention should be made about her dispersion. Dido, like Rahmat, uses cruiser horizontal dispersion formulas; namely: dispersion in meters = {[(range in km) x 6.9]+33 } as opposed to the more accurate destroyer dispersion formula {[(range in km) x 7.5] + 15}. Wargaming has never been consistent with when it applies one formula or the other. Bogatyr and Krasny Krym, for example, use cruiser dispersion while ships like Atlanta, Flint and Smolensk use the destroyer version. The difference isn't huge, but it is noticeable -- especially with destroyer calibre guns that fire as slowly as Dido's do. Summary As a weapon platform, Dido is okay, but only okay. There's nothing novel about her gunnery. She's not like Atlanta or Smolensk or Colbert where a smaller calibre weapon brings the promise of a greater rate of fire. This is a shame, because spamming small calibre shells is a lot of fun. Instead, it's better to think of Dido as analogous to a 152mm-armed ship but with nerfed AP and HE performance. Her shells are bad; they can be made functional with the correct commander skill build, but that's more of a bandaid solution than a true fix. You can bring them up to a state of usability but they're never going to cross that threshold into being truly competitive. The same goes for her fish. They hit like trucks (which is awesome), but having only three isn't enough to make them a true trump card. Furthermore, her 8km range is only ever going to be okay and not great. She'd need another 2km onto their range to become something that could be used on the regular and another 2km beyond that to become a mainstay weapon. VERDICT: Very meh. Functional, but very meh. Durability Hit Points: 23,600 Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 13mm / 10mm / 89mm / 25mm Maximum Citadel Protection: 89mm belt Torpedo Damage Reduction: 4% That's not a lot of health. I don't think anyone was expecting Dido to be anything but squishy. She's not a heavily armoured cruiser and as far as tonnage goes; she's quite small compared to her contemporaries. The only question I had was whether or not she would get access to a Repair Party consumable to pad these vulnerabilities and the answer is decisively: "Very no". As it stands, it takes as little as a pair of 381mm citadel hits to send her to the bottom. Fun! I'm not going to tell you that "Akchooally, dis is gud," cuz it's not. This sucks. This sucks moose balls. This sucks so much that it makes Survivability Expert not only a viable skill choice, but arguably a necessary one. The commander skill-tax on patching Dido's flagging performance gets more and more expensive (for those keeping track, we're up to 10 mandatory skill points). The only decent thing about Dido is the size of her citadel. It's a small target and in my playtesting, its small size has kept me alive just a little longer as players overestimate it's scope. So catastrophic ends, while still possible, are a little less likely owing to this small target. Of course, once word gets out and familiarity with this ship jumps up with exposure, this advantage will mean less and less. Most of us now know how to blow apart an Omaha-class or an Emerald, for example, despite their citadels being smaller than higher-tiered cruisers. That same kind of baseline knowledge will eventually disseminate down to Dido as well and she'll pop as readily as the rest of them. Still, you might be able to pull off the occasional troll manoeuvre. Angling in Dido is generally a bad idea as even 203mm AP shells can overmatch her bow and blow her machine spaces apart (incidentally 203mm AP can overmatch much of her citadel roof too, so dueling with American heavy cruisers is generally a stupid idea). Remember that at ranges less than 8km, it's better to show a full broadside to most enemy battleships than to try and angle against them, trusting that their AP shells don't have sufficient time to arm inside your ship. This doesn't work for shorter-fuse timers from AP shells, such as the 305mm rounds on König, Scharnhorst's 283mm or Yukon's 381mm guns, but go nuts on trying it out against other battleships. Just remember: flat broadside. Any kind of angle and you risk giving enough room for those shells to pop you good. Given Dido's short range, German secondaries ended up being something I dreaded facing. HE of just about any calibre hurt and it's important to keep a respectable distance away from anything bristling with functional (or semi-functional) secondaries. This dittos for HE spam from gunship destroyers, but they tended to keep a healthy distance from Dido's guns for the most part. So, yeah. Dido's durability sucks. No surprises there, though, so don't get hit. Dido is made of squish. Dido's citadel is much smaller than players might think. You have to aim beneath her funnels to score citadel hits. Otherwise, you're very likely to overpenetrate. Dido's citadel is shown here in yellow. Her magazines do not count as part of the citadel and are featured here in dark red. This image comes from Gamemodels3d.com.. VERDICT: Bad but not like, meme-worthy bad (which would be kind of redeemable). Shooting beneath Dido's turrets may disable them or even knock them out, but you're not getting citadel hits if you aim there. You can try baiting shots here by offering up a full broadside at very close ranges, trusting her thin armour to prompt overpenetrations from battleship calibre guns. Agility Top Speed: 32.3 knots Turning Radius: 580 meters Rudder Shift Time: 6.5 seconds 4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn: 6.9º/s at 25.8kts Main Battery Traverse Rate: 10.0º/s Dido does not have all of improved agility characteristics as other British light cruisers do. Still, Dido has some pretty good agility according to her in port stats. She has a tiny turning circle radius and a good rudder shift time. However, the tech tree British light cruisers and destroyers have improved engine performance, given them much better handling than their stats alone would otherwise indicate. Dido gets a half-measure of this bonus. She accelerates much faster than normal ships. However, she doesn't get the improved energy retention in a turn, decelerating to the normal 80% of maximum speed when she comes about instead of retaining 97.5% to 98.5%. You can see this here in the time it takes the tier VI cruisers to each 30 knots. The percentage in brackets is how much 30 knots is relative to their top speed, with the idea being that the closer this is to a ship's maximum speed, the longer it will take them to accelerate. 10.0 seconds Dido (92.9%) 10.5 seconds Perth (92.3%) 10.8 seconds Leander (92.3%) 11.3 seconds Mysore (94.9%) 22.9 seconds Dallas (92%) 23.8 seconds Molotov (83.3%) 24.3 seconds Budyonny (85.5%) 24.5 seconds Duca d'Aosta (82.0%) 24.9 seconds Trento (85.5%) 26.5 seconds Aoba (85.5%) 27.0 seconds De Grasse (89.6%) 27.5 seconds London (92.6%) 27.9 seconds Huanghe (90.6%) 28.8 seconds Pensacola (92%) 29.8 seconds Kijkduin (90.6%) 30.8 seconds Canarias (90.6%) 32.1 seconds La Galissonniere (96.8%) 32.1 seconds Nurnberg (93.8%) 32.1 seconds Makarov (93.8%) 35.5 seconds Devonshire (95.5%) It's obvious looking at this that Dido, along with Perth, Leander and Mysore, has much improved acceleration over their peers. She's hitting 30 knots while they're struggling to make 10. Even when her rivals are equipped with Propulsion Modification 1, their acceleration just doesn't compare. Here's a few examples of the same test, but this time equipped with the upgrade: Dallas: 20.8 seconds (2.1s faster) Budyonny: 19.2s (5.1s faster) Nurnberg: 26.9s (5.2s faster) Duca d'Aosta: 19.4s (5.1s faster) (Note: There's something weird going on with Dallas). So other than that, there's nothing too surprising going on here. Dido's not especially fast (she's not slow either). She has a good rate of turn, but not outstanding. Her turning circle radius is nice and tight, which is great. She doesn't get top marks in this category (Perth and Leander are a thing), but she's pretty damn good. Dido combines the small turning circle radius of Huanghe and Rahmat with the improved acceleration of Mysore, Leander and Perth. She does not have the improved energy preservation of the latter two, though, which would have spiked her rate of turn from 6.9º/s up to 8.4º/s! VERDICT: On a scale of one to awesome, Dido is super-great. Anti-Aircraft Defence Flak Bursts: 2+0 explosions for 1,260 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.2km Long Ranged (up to 5.2km): 63 dps at 90% accuracy (56.7 dps) Medium Ranged (up to 2.5km): 63 dps at 90% accuracy (56.7 dps) Short Ranged (up to 2km): 94.5 dps at 85% accuracy (80.325dps) DPS Aura Ranges Total DPS by Range Effective Damage vs 186.2knot Aircraft Dido's AA firepower stinks worse than unwiped monkey butts. And I take issue with this. Dido's 133mm only have a 5.2km range and this makes me grumpy. 'What's the big deal?' you might justifiably ask. After all, the dual purpose guns on the KGV-class, Famous & Historical Monarch and Yukon all share the same range. It's that consistency which is bothering me. You see, Rahmat, using the same guns, gets a 5.8km range. Yeah! No consistency there. In the Pan Asian cruiser's case, I imagine it's to make the 133mm guns feel like a 100% upgrade over her 113mm weapons. Can't have the upgraded guns making her AA worse now can we? I also take exception to Wargaming's game design in regards to large calibre anti-aircraft firepower. It's been troublesome and busted since the rework back in 2019 and no iteration has worked sufficiently to my liking. It nerfed the Hell out of Hood's defensive AA rockets. It made Atlanta's AA power go from top tier to bottom. It makes Dido's AA power terrible in game, despite having a good track record historically. This is not the first ahistoric gameplay element to marr World of Warships but given the sorry state of surface ship to aircraft interaction, it's infuriating to me that Wargaming still hasn't ressurected the AA-picket ship role that has been gone since patch 0.8.0. Dido was a chance to amend this and they didn't take it. I'm not surprised they didn't. The whole CV rework reeks of incompetence three years on. Dido's AA, when paired with Defensive AA Fire will shoot down a plane or two so long her small and medium calibre AA guns are still intact (these will break as soon as you get hit by HE). She doesn't do enough damage, nor does she spit out enough flak bursts for any specialization into this role to be worthwhile. So don't bother. A few HE rounds between the funnels will strip her of most of her small and medium calibre AA and there's nothing you can realistically do about it. VERDICT: Ahistorical and laughably bad. Vision Control Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 10.54km / 9.2km Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 5.78km / 5.2km Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 4.43km Maximum Firing Range: 14.1km There's good and bad here. THE GOOD Low surface detection Upgraded aerial detection matches her long-range AA battery range Smoke! THE BAD Cannot stealth-fire torpedoes No access to Hydroacoustic Search Each smoke cloud only lasts 35 seconds (a max of five salvos) It's the lack of access to Hydroacoustic Search that stings the most. Especially because her Defensive AA Fire is so bloody useless when paired with her abysmal AA values. Parking in smoke out in open water is just asking to get fish shoved up your butt, which is an embarrassing and carpy way to go out. I found myself prefering to keep smoke on standby while using islands as my prefered way to keep out of sight. Using smoke if spotted by aircraft or by an unseen vector became the better play. I even used it to help flush out a destroyer in a Ranked Batlte which was much more useful than parking in it. If Dido did have hydro, she could make some aggressive plays on occasion and behave a little more comfortably in open water, but it's not meant to be. Overall, she's good here. As limited as her Short-Burst Smoke Generator is, it's still very handy to have and it will help you win games. I'm just being bitter. Islands make better waifus than smoke. VERDICT: Good save for lacking hydro Anti-Submarine Warfare ASW Armament Type: Depth charges Number of Bombs per String: Five Number of Strings Carried: Two (may be increased to four with Depth Charges Modification 1) Reload Time per String: 40 seconds Drop Pattern: Rolled off rear deck in a line. Maximum Bomb Damage: 5,000 (estimated 2,567 damage) Fire Chance: 20% At the time of writing, submarines have been removed from public testing. I'm merely recording the data as it exists. It may become relevant later. Without Hydroacoustic Search, taking on subs is going to be a bad idea with Dido. Drop order of Dido's depth charges. Final Evaluation So Dido's good. Not great, but she's good. She's a cruiser with smoke that exists in an environment that's not saturated with Surveillance Radar and claustrophobic maps with lots of islands to shoot over. She'd have to be pretty terrible across most metrics not to do well. I'm not a fan of her given her lack of Hydroacoustic Search, mostly because I like bold-aggressive plays at low and mid-tier matches and not having the tools to dig out lolibotes sours me to the whole experience. Go figure, I don't have fun when my own idiocy gets me justifaibly blown out of the water for over-extending. Her lack of AA performance also bothers me considerably more than it should, admittedly. I wasn't looking for her to be god-tier when it came to shooting down planes. I just expected her to be better than bloody Molotov and Leander for crying out loud. But such isn't meant to be. Sucks to be me and have my preferences, I suppose. I admittedly haven't played her as much as I should, what with trying to get some Ranked Battle time in and poking at Canarias too. Still, the more I played her, the better things were turning out. I'm very curious to see how the community receives her. I personally feel her tiering holds her back. Wargaming just isn't incentivizing playing mid-tiers enough and they really should. I think it's a riot, but that's just me. Speaking of preferences, London is the better buy when it comes to tier VI premium British cruisers. She's much more reliable and nasty. In Closing I want to talk a little about what goes into making one of these reviews and just how much of a time investment these are. This one graphic demonstrates it quite well, I think. It takes me about two hours to put together one of these twirling graphics, assembling it through assets I make by hand with MS Paint and a calculator and then importing them over to photoshop to piece together in layers. That's already a lot of work, but it's only scratching the surface. There was no template for this. I had to make it. That took a lot of trial and error and a lot of botched attempts. I listened to feedback from my readers and my peers on how to improve my earlier results until I could create something that would show with a reasonable level of accuracy, how individual ships performed in a way that cut through the obfuscation of in-port statistics. I'm reasonably happy with how these turned out, though the number of ships at a given tier is making them too cluttered, so I will have to pair them down to only the relevant ships. But that still doesn't speak to all of the work that went into this, because there's all of the data collection that went into it as well. Simply timing ships twirling isn't all of it either (as arduous a task as it is keeping that database up to date). That ignores all of the testing and head scratching and math that went into figuring out how the in-port stats were created in the first place. This was further complicated by just how many ships had incorrect values listed in port too which created further hurdles. I have over 100 hours of recorded twirling data in my archives. 100 hours spent watching ships twirl in circles. And this is just for one graphic, I remind you. This has been repeated for other elements as well, be it detonations and module damage, smoke emission and ship hit boxes or god knows how much time I've lost trying to map dispersion. I'm not getting that time back short of using the data to share information. And I'm just speaking about my own time invested in these. @Lert and @Chobittsu are right there beside me, listening to me grumble. They provide feedback and suggestions, art and editing. To be able to speak confidently about any one aspect of a given ship's performance -- something I can back with actual provable stats -- takes time. It takes more time than you might assume from some throwaway DPM graphic or a funny little blurb about moose-testicles or an Angry YouTuber "meh". These reviews stand upon a a mountain of 'behind the scenes' work, an investment of a bunch of time about a video game that, let's be honest, hasn't treated me well over the last couple of years. It's hard producing these reviews. It's a lot of hard work that's built upon a lot of other work done in the past. Every new ship that's added to the game increases the workload. The last time I reviewed a tier VI cruiser, I didn't have to worry about Rahmat, Canarias, Dido or Kijkduin. Now I have to make sure those ships are covered too. I say this all not to complain, but to express my gratitude. The only thing that makes all of this time spent worthwhile is that you all see value in what I do here. For that, I am forever grateful. Thank you for reading.

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

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dido-class_cruiser "The Dido class was a class of sixteen (including five within the Bellona sub-class) light cruisers built for the British Royal Navy. The design was influenced by the inter-war Arethusa-class light cruisers. The first group of three ships were commissioned in 1940, the second group (six ships) and third group (two ships) were commissioned between 1941–1942. The Bellona subclass ships were commissioned between 1943 and 1944. Most members of the class were given names drawn from classical history and legend. Post war in the expanded 1951 programme of the Korean War Emergency a broad beam Bellona class armed with 4 twin Mk 6 4.5 guns was considered as a cruiser option along with the 1951 Minotaur class and the Tiger class completed with two Mk 24 6 inch turrets and 4 twin Mk 6 4.5. From the initial trials of the lead ship of the class, Bonaventure the new light cruisers were considered a significant advance, with the 5.25 turrets, far more modern in design than previous light cruiser turrets, and offering efficient loading up to 90 degrees to give some DP capability. While some damage was experienced initially in extreme North Atlantic conditions, modified handling avoided the problem. The fitting of the three turrets forward in A,B and Q position depended on some use of Aluminium in structure and the non availability of aluminium after Dunkirk was one of the reasons for only 4 turrets being fitted to the later ships. The Dido class were designed as small trade protection cruisers and for action in the Mediterranean Sea, where they were surprisingly effective in protecting crucial convoys to Malta and managed to see off far larger ships of the Italian Royal Navy. The 5.25-inch (133 mm) gun was primarily a surface weapon, but it was intended to fire the heaviest shell suitable for anti-aircraft defence and accounted for around 23 aircraft and saw off far more. Four original Dido-class ships were lost during the war: HMS Bonaventure, HMS Charybdis, HMS Hermione, and HMS Naiad. The original ship of the class, HMS Dido, was mothballed in 1947 and decommissioned ten years later. HMS Euryalus was the last remaining in-service ship of the original class, being decommissioned in 1954 and scrapped in 1959. The Bellona class (as well as four rebuilt Dido ships) were mainly intended as picket ships for amphibious warfare operations, in support of aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy and United States Navy in the Pacific. HMS Spartan was the only ship of the sub-class to be sunk, struck by a German Fritz X while supporting the Anzio landings. Post war modernisation proposals were limited by the tight war emergency design which offered inadequate space and weight for the fire control and magazines for four or five 3-inch twin 70 turrets combined with the fact the heavy to handle 5.25-inch shells fitted when the cruisers were built had a large burst shock which made them a more effective high level AA weapon than post war RN 4.5-inch guns. HMS Royalist was somewhat different from the rest of the class, as it was modified to be a command ship of aircraft carrier and cruiser groups intended for action against German battlecruisers. It was later ordered to be rebuilt, by Winston Churchill, for potential action alongside HMS Vanguard against the post-war Soviet Sverdlov-class cruisers and Stalingrad-class battlecruisers. In 1956, Royalist was loaned to the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN), with whom it served until 1966. Despite being part of the RNZN, Royal Navy officers made up the majority of the senior command. During the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation, it was regarded not only as the last Dido-class ship but also the last cruiser of the Royal Navy. The ship was decommissioned in 1967. The class were intended to be armed with ten 5.25-inch (133 mm) guns in five twin turrets, which were of the same circular design as the secondary armament in the King George V-class battleships. A shortage of the guns, due to difficulties in manufacturing them, led to the first group being armed with only eight 5.25-inch guns in four twin turrets. The fifth twin turret was added later to Dido only. The first group was also armed with a 4-inch (102 mm) gun for firing star shell and two quadruple QF 2-pounder (40 mm) "pom-poms". The second group had the five twin 5.25-inch guns but did not have the 4 in (102 mm) gun. The third group's armament was changed due to the shortage of 5.25 in guns, being armed with eight 4.5-inch (113 mm) guns in four twin turrets instead. The 4.5-inch gun was better suited to the primary anti-aircraft role of the Dido class. The forward A & B 4.5 turrets were mounted on the top of conjoint deckhouses, extending the superstructure to allow the 2 cruisers to play a flagship role with more accommodation and radar rooms. The high mounting of the 4.5 turrets forshadows the high freeboard and superstructure of the twin 4.5 A & B mounting on the County GMDs, 20 years later. The high rate of fire of the 4.5 turrets and the unique arrangement for a British cruiser of the shell and charge being loaded in a combined case,and simpler DP twin DCT, Red DCT for A 7 B and Blue for X & Y m meant in many senses the Scylla and Charbydis were the only Dido class that were, true AA cruisers The 4.0-inch (102 mm) gun was also fitted and the 2-pounder armament was increased from eight to ten. The Bellona subclass differed in appearance somewhat from their predecessors. They had eight 5.25-inch (133 mm) RP10MkII guns in four twin turrets and had greatly improved anti-aircraft armament, with twelve 2-pounder guns and twelve Oerlikon 20 mm cannons. The bridge of the Bellona class was lowered by one deck compared to the previous three groups, which allowed full radar control to be fitted to the 5.25-inch (133 mm) turrets and 2-pounder guns, due to the decreased topweight. These ships used the HACS high angle fire control system. The two funnels were more upright than the raked ones of the original Dido class. In World War II, the Dido class saw much action, including the Battle of Cape Matapan, the Second Battle of Sirte, Operation Torch, Operation Overlord and the Battle of Okinawa, as well as many other duties in the Mediterranean and Pacific. The class lost five ships during the war (Bonaventure, Charybdis, Hermione, Naiad, and Spartan); in addition Scylla was badly damaged by a naval mine and declared a constructive total loss. The post-war survivors continued in service; all were decommissioned by the 1960s. Bellona, Black Prince and Royalist were lent to the Royal New Zealand Navy post-World War II. In 1956, Diadem was sold to Pakistan and renamed Babur. The Dido's Bonaventure completed with only four twin 5.25 in turrets because of shortages and received a 4-inch starshell gun in "X" position. She had received a radar set before October 1940 but was otherwise unaltered. Naiad completed with five turrets. She received five single 20 mm in September 1941 and had radar Type 279 by this time. Phoebe completed with four turrets and was fitted with a 4-inch gun in "Q" position forward of the bridge. The latter was landed during her refit between November 1941 and April 1942 at New York City, along with the .5-inch machine guns and Type 279 radar, while a quadruple 2 pdr supplanted the 4-inch gun and eleven single 20 mm guns were fitted. Radars were now Type 281, 284 and 285. The "A" turret was temporarily removed at the end of 1942 after torpedo damage. During repairs in the first six months of 1943, all three quadruple 2 pdr mounts were landed, as were seven single 20 mm, to be replaced by three quadruple 40 mm Bofors guns and six twin 20 mm. Radar Type 272 was also fitted. A turret was replaced in July 1943. Her light anti-aircraft weaponry in April 1944 was twelve 40 mm (3 × 4) and sixteen 20 mm (6 × 2, 4 × l). Dido had four turrets and a 4-inch gun similar to Phoebe. The 4 in and the machine guns were removed in the latter half of 1941 at Brooklyn Navy Yard, when Q 5.25 in turret was shipped and five single 20 mm were fitted. In the early summer of 1943 three single 20 mm were exchanged for four twin 20 mm and the radar outfit was altered by the addition of Types 272, 282, 284 and 285. April 1944 lists show only eight 20 mm. Euryalus completed with her designed armament. In September 1941 the .5 in MGs were landed and five single 20 mm fitted. Two more were added by September 1942. By mid-1943 two single 20mm had been removed and four twin 20 mm shipped. The type 279 radar was replaced by types 272, 281, 282 and 285. In a long refit from October 1943 to July 1944, Q turret was replaced by a quadruple 2 pdr and two twin 20 mm were fitted. Radar 271 and 272 were removed and types 279b, 277 and 293 fitted. Hermione was also completed as a five-turret ship. She had the .5 in MGs removed in October/November 1941 and received five single 20 mm. Sirius was completed with five turrets and five 20 mm. She had received two more 20 mm by mid-1943. One of these was landed at Massawa at the end of 1943 and two 40 mm Bofors Mk III were fitted. She is listed as having only seven 20 mm as light AA in April 1944. By April 1945 she had two Mk III 40 mm fitted and had landed two single 20 mm. Cleopatra was completed with two 2-pounders in 1942 in lieu of the .5 in MGs but these were removed in the middle of the year and replaced by five 20 mm. A sixth 20 mm was added in mid-1943. During repairs between November 1943 and November 1944, Q turret was removed, as were two quadruple 2 pdr and five 20 mm. Three quadruple 40 mm Bofors and six twin 20 mm were fitted and the singles numbered four. In 1951 the US sourced quad bofors and Oerilikon's were replaced by 3 twin MK 5 Bofors and 8 single Mk 7. Argonaut was completed with four single 20 mm in lieu of the .5 in MGs. She had Q turret removed during repairs in 1943/44, and lost the four single 20 mm. She received a quadruple 2 pdr in lieu of the 5.25 in, and had five twin 20 mm fitted. By April 1944 her light AA comprised three quadruple 2 pdr, six twin power-operated 20 mm and five single. By the end of the war with Japan she had received five 40 mm Bofors and three single 40 mm Bofors Mk III. Scylla was completed with four twin 4.5 in Mk III in UD MK III mountings because of a shortage of 5.25 in mountings. The forward superstructure was considerably modified to accommodate these and also to increase crew spaces. Her light AA on completion was eight single 20 mm. Six twin power-operated 20 mm were added at the end of 1943. Charybdis was also completed with four twin 4.5 inch, and had in addition a single 4 in Mk V forward of X mounting. Her light AA at completion was four single 20 mm and two single 2 pdr. The 4 inch starshell gun and two single 2 pdr were removed and replaced by two twin and two single 20 mm, probably in 1943. Bellonas Spartan received no alterations as far as is known. Royalist was converted to an escort carrier squadron flagship immediately on completion, when an extra two twin 20 mm were fitted as well as four single 20 mm. She was the only ship to receive an extensive postwar modernisation ordered for the RN but was later sold to New Zealand. Plans were drawn up to fully modernise the four improved Didos with either four twin 3 inch L70 guns or Mk 6 4.5 inch guns. However, that would have required building new broad beamed Didos (as was seriously considered in 1950-54). This was because the magazines of the Royalist type could hold only enough 3 inch ammunition for 3 minutes and 20 seconds of continuous firing. The refit of Royalist was shortened and that of Diadem abandoned because new steam turbines were regarded as both necessary and unaffordable. Royalist′s reconstruction, like that of Newfoundland, incorporated much of the RN's late 1940s and early 1950s view of a desirable cruiser. Royalist′s 5.25 inch armament was given some of the improvements of the final 5.25 inch mounts built for Vanguard, but not the extra space or power ramming. Also added was a secondary armament of 3 STAAG auto twin 40mm, new 293, 960M radar and Type 275(2 sets) DP fire control for the 5.25 guns, and a lattice mast. (Royalist was loaned to the RNZN in 1956, in exchange for Bellona). Bellona had four single 20 mm added by April 1944, and received an extra eight single 20 mm by April 1945. (She was loaned to the RNZN after the war and operational 1946-52, the twin Oerlikons had been replaced by 6 single MK3P 40mm in the RNZN unique kiwi electric powered mount, but Bellona was never actually fitted with 6 standard tacymetric directors, requested by the RNZN for controlling the Bofors. The RNZN mothballed the quad pom pom mounts for manning reasons, but maintained the single oerlikons on HMNZS Bellona.). Black Prince and Diadem also received eight single 20 mm, and had a further two twin 20 mm by early 1945. (Black Prince was loaned to the RNZN after the war and was operational briefly in 1947 before part of her crew mutinied and were discharged, and after a 1952 refit with 8 single Mk3P 40mm which were electric powered, like the RN Mk 9 and 6 single Oerlikon and operated till 1955, which included a visit to the 1953 Fleet Review at Spithead. Diadem was sold to Pakistan in 1956, after a modest refit with 293 and 281 radar and standardised 40mm twin and single light AA guns. Her 5.25" guns were fired in Pakistan's brief war with India in 1961. Diadem became a cadet training ship in 1962 and was renamed Babur)." They were basically RN versions of the USN Atlanta, and in-game could possibly work the same; instead of radar getting a British heal? I honestly don't know for this one, tell me what you think they could do for this series of ships.

Been doing some research, and kinda started wondering why the Royal Navy couldn't stand to have a second branch of battleships in-game. Of course, they'd have to be different from the current line to be attractive, so why not have a battlecruiser line? There is no shortage of battlecruisers built by the royal navy; a new arc could likely start as early as tier 3, since the first battlecruisers were laid down at the same time as HMS Dreadnought. I would appreciate it if other players could recommend ships they'd like to see, if this new branch were to materialize in the near future. As battlecruisers (and not battleships), they would feature large calibre guns typically found on battleships, but sacrifice some armour for a speed advantage. As a side note, it would be nice to have Royal Navy battleships that don't sling OP HE all the time, and without an absurd repair party. Instead, I propose better AP (or at least standard compared to other nations) and not-so-OP HE. Also, many of the ships I have named carried some form of torpedo armament. Might be interesting (and make sense) for these to b the standard Royal Navy torpedo launchers, which can launch single torpedoes. The stats provided are historically accurate *cough*, so bear with me. All proposed HP values were calculated using player Fr05ty's tried and true formulas, which he graciously provided. In my work, I noticed that there seems to be a 12% increase in HP for the existing British battleships. This change has not been accounted for in the numbers I offer below. Designs yet to consider: https://warshipprojects.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/washington-cherrytrees-2/ https://warshipprojects.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/washington-cherrytrees-2-ii/ https://warshipprojects.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/washington-cherry-trees-ii-part-3/ I3 J3 K2, K3 L1 L2, L3 M2 M3 N3 X4 Design Y Design B, C1, C2, D Design A Design T1 LII LIII Battlecruisers K --> A Battleships L --> Z J3, I3, H3a, H3b, H3c – battlecruisers all-in; Nov.-Dec. 1920 O3 F2, F3 Here are my ideas for potential ships, by tier: TIER III Invincible class (HMS Invincible, HMS Inflexible, HMS Indomitable) Main armament: 4x2 305 mm guns 2x2 450 mm torpedo tubes (one on each side, amidships) 1x1 450 mm torpedo tube (stern-mounted) Secondary armament: 16x1 102 mm guns Speed: 25 knots (ridiculous speed at tier 3, let alone tier 4) Displacement: 21,084 tonnes HP: 35,700 (vs Bellerophon at 38,100) TIER IV Indefatigable class (HMS Indefatigable, HMS New Zealand, HMAS Australia*) Main armament: 4x2 305 mm guns Speed: 25 knots Displacement: 22,846 HP: 37,800 (vs Orion at 42,700) This ship is far below the average 43,900 of other tier 4 ships, and therefore would need to be buffed. HMS Neptune (below) - very similar to Imperial Germany's Kaiser class... nothing special in my opinion. Please let me know if there is any disagreement in the comments below. Premium... maybe? Succeeded by very similar Colossus class dreadnought (only real difference being more torpedoes... but who doesn't love a battleship armed with torpedoes?). TIER V Lion class (HMS Lion, HMS Princess Royal) - As there exists a Lion in-game, the latter name would be better Main armament: 4x2 343 mm guns Speed: 28 knots HP: 47,200 (current maximum HP at tier 4 is 46,400, with the average at 43,920. If this ship were to be used at tier 4, its HP would have to be nerfed moderately. HMS Queen Mary Main armament: 4x2 343 mm guns Speed: 28 knots HMS Tiger Main armament: 4x2 343 mm guns 2x2 533 mm torpedo launchers (one pair amidships on each side) Secondary armament: 12x1 152 mm guns Speed: 28 knots Displacement: 34,332 tonnes HP: 51,400 (vs Iron Duke at 47,100) HMS Canada (aka Almirante Latorre (below), could be the first South American (Chilean) battleship in-game) Main armament: 5x2 356 mm guns 4x 533 mm torpedo tubes Speed: 23 knots HMS Agincourt - unique in that it was armed with 7x 2 305 mm guns and 3x 1 torpedo tubes; this ship has an interesting story, but it isn't truly a battlecruiser (it is a true dreadnought), and therefore might make a very appealing premium ship rather than fitting into this proposed line. TIER VI Renown Class (HMS Renown (below), HMS Repulse) - could be a little OP at tier 6, stats similar to Gneisenau at tier 7 Main armament: 3x2 381 mm guns 2x1 533mm torpedo launchers (mounted in the bow) Secondary armament: 5x3 102 mm guns 2x1 102 mm guns Speed: 31 knots Displacement: 33,265 tonnes (slightly less than the HMS Tiger) HP: 50,130 (vs Queen Elizabeth at 55,300) (Note that this is slightly less than my calculated values for HMS Tiger at tier 5) FOR LOLZ: the Courageous class (HMS Courageous, HMS Glorious, HMS Furious), in particular HMS Furious, which had a grand total of 2x 457 mm guns... this would make an "interesting" premium light cruiser, considering it had the armour of a light cruiser. This thing could lol-pen anything within several tiers, but the number of guns is a "limitation". Personally I wouldn't buy it unless it had a decent reload, and even then... If enough interest arises in these ridiculous ships, I will post their stats, but here's a pic to satisfy your interest: TIER VII Admiral Class (HMS Hood, HMS Anson, HMS Howe, HMS Rodney) Main armament: 4x2 381 mm guns 10x1 torpedo tubes!!! Secondary armament: 12x1 139 mm guns Speed: 32 knots Displacement: 48,191 tonnes (based on Hood's displacement) HP: 67,800 (vs Hood at 67,700) TIER VIII G3 Battlecruisers (paper ships) Main armament: 3x3 406 mm guns 2x2 622 mm torpedo launchers (some serious calibre) Secondary armament: 8x2 152 mm guns Speed: 32 knots Displacement: 55,652 tonnes HP: 76,574 TIER IX *** Ideas welcome Different iteration of G3? Move rear turret closer to stern, faster reload? TIER X N3 Battlecruisers (paper ships) - the ship to rival the Yamato (difference in calibre of 3 mm) Main armament: 3x3 457 mm guns 2x3 (or 2x4) 533 mm torpedo launchers Secondary armament: 8x2 152 mm guns Speed: 30 knots (maybe increased for the tier) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *HMAS Australia would be a good addition to the Commonwealth tech tree Please send me suggestions by replying! Also, here's a link to a very similar topic on the Asia forum: https://forum.worldofwarships.asia/topic/3961-british-royal-navy-and-battlecruisers/

As far as I can see, at this point in time, there only need to be 5 lines that need to be added to WOWS before we can stick a fork in it and call it done, only 5 lines to cover the main ships that actually fired their guns in anger in the first and second world wars. However, I have not seen any movement on these lines being implemented, so I decided that I need to do the heavy work for Wargaming, so they don’t have an excuse to pass this softball that I’m meandering over the plate. Below, I will list the line, the characteristics of the line, the historical reason that it should exist, the gameplay reason that it should exist, each tech tree ship in the line, each premium ship associated with the line, and god help me, when I get done with them, proposed stats for each stinking ship that I mention. A lot of thought and work will have gone into this, so if you hear me out, you have my thanks. Probably the line that needs to be added the least while still needing to be added to the game would be a line for British AA cruisers, so that is where I will start just due to the novelty of it. In terms of the historical reasoning for this line, during the 2nd world war, Britain was one of two countries to go all in with the idea of creating surface ships with a main role of screening against air attacks, and the first one to come up with the idea. In all, a total of 25 ships were built or refit as AA cruisers for the Royal Navy, more than any other navy in the world. These ships would serve from the beginning of the war, taking part in numerous surfaces actions, sometimes heavily outgunned, but punching far above their weight. At the end of the European theater, the Kriegsmarine would formally surrender on one of these vessels. Gameplay wise, there is a slight call for these ships to be added, with the feeling of CV’s being broken, perhaps a measure to help correct that. Really this is like a band-aid on a bullet wound, but a series of ships with noticeable AA advantages over their peers would be nice. Apart from that, the gameplay need is simple, new content to keep people engaged. So before we get into the individual ships of the line, we need to get into the characteristics of the line. The Feel of the Line. There are a lot of characteristics to this line that will be dictated by the characteristics of the historical ships in the line, and from here the remaining characteristics are added to flow with that established flavor. A lot of this has already been posted in my Bellona proposal, but as a refresher here are these restraining factors listed below. 1. These ships are small in comparison to other ships of their class and tier, this comes with the advantages of having best or near best in tier concealment, as well as best in tier or near best in tier agility, but at the detriment of having worst in tier or near worst in tier HP pools. 2. These ships have uninspiring armor, worse even than the British light cruisers. 3. The ships main battery are dual purpose mounts, and there is no secondary battery. They will have shorter range and are smaller in caliber than nearly every other cruiser gun in game. 4. The ships long range AA is going to be best in tier or pretty darn close. This is where most of the AA firepower comes from. 5. These ships are not particularly fast, in fact in many cases they are quite slow for a cruiser. So those are the historical constraints, and they already take care of the guts of the lines character. Now what needs to be filled in are any specific traits from the box of gimmicks to flesh things out. As far as this line specific traits, I have in mind a few. These traits being. 1. The ships have the RN CL energy retention in a turn. RN CL’s keep something like 98% of their top speed during turns while most other ships drop to like 80% or something. These cruisers would have that. They would not have the RN CL’s crazy acceleration. 2. The AA flak bursts would have lower accuracy than average. Currently, flak spawns in zones ahead of an aircraft carriers planes. The A zone is directly in front, and something like 80% of your shells spawn here. The B zones are off to the side, and shells have only a 20% chance of spawning here. I would have the flak bursts for these ships spawn either 50-50 between the A and B zones, or even 33-66 favoring B. the though behind this is that while it is easy to just turn and dodge the A zones and avoid most of the flak bursts, this would make it far more likely that you take from them. Finally, there is the question of what consumables would be used. As discussed with Bellona, I think that these ships should get AA defensive fire (they are AA ships after all) smoke, and a special radar. Pitchforks down please, hear my pitch. This smoke is going to be contentious but hear me out. I do not want these ships to have a repair party so any damage that they take should be permanent. Smoke is one of the few consumables that helps against aircraft (you pop smoke to frustrate their drops and can still shoot out of it) and would aid in this being an AA cruiser. Also, with one of the slots being AA defensive fire, there will be a fair few matches where that consumable is worthless, and you need a strong consumable to be able to rely upon. Also, to date I think that every cruiser that has smoke in game also has hydro-acoustic search, making it much harder to torpedo them in smoke. These won’t, which should make it much easier for countering HE spamming ships in smoke clouds. Finally, there is a little bit of democratization here, finally giving regular players who don’t buy premiums or farm silver in clan battles the ability to get their very on HE throwing cruisers in smoke. So the radar, good news, will be totally unable to detect ships. it’ll be a whole new type of radar, called “Air Search Radar” and its going to do 2 things. First is that it’ll detect planes. Through islands, sure, regular radar can. More importantly, through smoke, allowing the ships to totally on their own be able to smoke up and shoot out at aircraft with impunity and a degree of safety. The second thing that it will do is act as a combo of Radio location and incoming fire alert. When a enemy shoots at you from a far enough range (to be determined) the radar picks up the incoming fire and displays roughly where it is coming from, allowing you to make a educated choice on how to react to ships firing into your smoke from range. So, it is mainly a consumable against aircraft, but with a ship-to-ship combat benefit. So, there we go, in general, this is how the line would feel. Now to the individual ships. Stats will get added in as individual writeups are made. Ships of the Line Tier 4: The C class AA Cruiser. This is the AA ship that started it all. With the ships on hand and obsolete, the Royal Navy decided to do a refit after the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935. The Italians had a large air force at this point, and the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean would have to deal with them. Thus, there were 3 series of refits to the C class cruisers to make them AA ships. The first two converted, Coventry and Curlew, had 10 single 4 inch cannons and 2 octuple pompoms. However, the standard outfit was 8 of the dual 4-inch mounts that are ubiquitous on British cruisers, as well as a single quad pom-pom and a pair of quad Vickers 50 cals. This would be the A hull for this ship. The B-hull would be the refit applied to HMS Colombo, being 3 of the dual 4-inch mounts, 2 twin 40mm bofors, and 14 20mm cannons arranged in 6 dual mounts and a pair of singles. Armor: 6 mm turret armor 10mm superstructure plating 13mm end plating, plating, and barbette armor 25mm auxiliary spaces roof armor, citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 38mm extremities belt armor 57mm mid belt armor 76mm citadel belt armor Survivability: ? Artillery: 4x2 4."/45 QF MkXIX (Standard AP+HE) (3x2 for B hull) MV: 811 m/s Reload: ? 180 degree turn time: 18s Max dispersion: ? Max AP Shell Damage: 1800 Max HE Shell Damage:1500 Fire Chance: 4% Range:? AA Defense: 4 x quad .50 : 35 DPS @ 1.5 Km w/ 85% accuracy 1 x quad 40mm Pom Pom:35 DPS @2.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 4 x 2 102mm/45 Mk XIX : 96 DPS @ 5.8 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 4 x 1396 damage @ 2.5 – 5.8 km 2 x 20mm Mk IV: 16 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 6 x dual 20mm Mk V: 81 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 2 x 40mm bofors Hazemeyer : 126 DPS @ 3.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 3 x 2 102mm/45 Mk XIX : 72 DPS @ 5.8 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 3 x 1396 damage @ 2.5 – 5.8 km Maneuverability: Max Speed: 29 Kts Turning Circle Radius: 580 m Rudder shift: 5.6s Concealment: Detectability by Sea: ? Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 2.0 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Tier 5: The Proposed D class Cruiser AA refit. As a part of the AA cruiser refits, it was decided that the similarly obsolete but larger D class cruisers would get a slightly larger and better laid out version of the C class AA refit. These would be armed with 4 twin 4.5 in turrets (similar to the secondary battery of Ark Royal), a quadruple pom pom, and the 2 quad 50 cal Vickers guns. as below, but lose the aft pom pom and replace the 20mm cannons at the stern, behind x turret, and on the wing deck with a smaller amount of quad vickers guns, i'm thinking 4. B hull is as below, exactly as is. This means 3 quad pom poms, and 9 single 20mm mounts. This can be adjusted, but shows the general look and changes between hulls. Armor: 6 mm turret armor 10mm superstructure plating 13mm end plating, plating, and barbette armor auxiliary spaces roof armor, citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 38mm extremities belt armor 57mm mid belt armor 76mm citadel belt armor Survivability: ? Artillery: 4x2 4.5"/45 QF Mk3 UD (Standard AP+HE) MV: 746 m/s Reload: ? 180 degree turn time: 18s Max dispersion: ? Max AP Shell Damage: 2200 Max HE Shell Damage:1700 Fire Chance: 6% Range:? AA Defense: 7 x single 20mm Mk IV: 56 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 3 x quad 40mm Pom Pom: 105 DPS @2.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 4 x 2 113mm/45 Mk III UD: 100 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 4 x 1470 damage @ 2.5 – 5.8 km Maneuverability: Max Speed: 30 Kts Turning Circle Radius: 590 m Rudder shift: 6.1s Concealment: Detectability by Sea: ? Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 2.5 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Tier 6: Charybdis HMS Chardybis was a Dido class cruiser but modified to meet the urgent requirements of war. She and Scylla were modified from the standard dido design to use 4.5-inch turrets originally made for the proposed D class AA cruisers, just because they were on hand and the ships could be completed much faster than waiting for the proper 5.25-inch mounts. Charybdis would have the 4 twin 4.5 inch cannons, as well as 2 triple torpedo tubes, 2 quad pom-poms, and 8 20mm. b hull would add 10 more 20mms. Armor: 6mm turret armor 10mm superstructure plating and machinery citadel roof 13mm end plating, plating, and barbette armor 25mm, auxiliary spaces roof armor, citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 51mm Magazine citadel roof armor 89mm auxiliary room and citadel belt armor Survivability: 25500 HP Artillery: 4x2 4.5"/45 QF Mk3 UD (Standard AP+HE) MV: 746 m/s Reload: 4.5 seconds (13.33RPM) 180 degree turn time: 18s Max dispersion: 116m Max AP Shell Damage: 2200 Max HE Shell Damage:1700 Fire Chance: 6% Range:12.5 km Torpedoes: 2x3 533mm Mk IX Damage:15867 Range: 8 km Reload: 72s Speed: 61 Kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: 18 simgle 20mm Mk IV: 144DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 2 x quad 40mm Pom Pom: 70 DPS @2.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 4 x 2 113mm/45 Mk III UD: 100 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 4 x 1470 damage @ 2.5 – 5.8 km Maneuverability: Max Speed: 32.25 Kts Turning Circle Radius: 610 m Rudder shift: 6.7s Concealment: Detectability by Sea: 9.65 km Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 2.5 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Tier 7: Dido Dido was lead ship of the most numerous class of Royal Navy cruisers in WWII and had an absolutely stacked combat record that is far to lengthy to cover here, and is basically the main reason I'm doing this. Reference my profile, i'm a simp for this ship. Her A hull would have 4 twin 5.25 inch cannons, two triple torpedoes, 2 quad pom poms, and 2 quad .50 cal Vickers. B hull would have 5 5.25-inch cannons, the triple torpedo tubes, 2 quad pom poms, 2 single 20mm and 4 dual 20mm. Armor: 10mm superstructure plating and machinery citadel roof 13mm end plating, plating, and barbette armor 25mm all turret armor, auxiliary spaces roof armor, citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 51mm Magazine citadel roof armor 89mm auxiliary room and citadel belt armor Survivability: 26000 HP Artillery: 5x2 5.25”/50 QF Mk1 (Standard AP+HE) MV: 814 m/s Reload:6 seconds (10RPM) 180 degree turn time: 18s Max dispersion: 116m Max AP Shell Damage: 2700 Max HE Shell Damage:1900 Range:13.5 km Torpedoes: 2x3 533mm Mk IX Damage:15867 Range: 8 km Reload: 72s Speed: 61 Kts Detectability: 1.3 km Or 2x3 533mm Mk IX Damage:15533 Range: 10 km Reload: 72 Speed: 62 kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: 2 x 20mm Mk IV: 16 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 4 x dual 20mm Mk V: 54 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 2 x quad 40mm Pom Pom: 70 DPS @2.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 5 x 2 133mm/50 Mk 1: 150 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 5 x 1617 damage @ 2.5 – 6 km Maneuverability: Max Speed: 32.25 Kts Turning Circle Radius: 610 m Rudder shift: 6.7s Concealment: Detectability by Sea: 9.75 km Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 4.4 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Tier 8: His Majesty’s Chongus Destroyer M1 One of the proposed 1943 light cruisers. Armed with 3 twin 5.25in turrets with improved gun and mounting, 6 dual 40mm mounts, 8 dual 20mm, and 2 quad torpedo launchers. There are literally no pictures of this thing. But have some characteristics to tide you over Armor: 13mm superstructure plating 16mm end plating and plating 25mm turret top, side, and barbette armor, and citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 51mm auxiliary room roof, turret face, and citadel roof armor 76mm auxiliary room and citadel belt armor Displacement:7,150 tons length at waterline: 520 ft Artillery: 3x2 5.25”/50 QF Mk3* (Standard AP+HE) MV: 814 m/s Reload:3 seconds (20RPM) 180 degree turn time: 9s Max dispersion: ? Max AP Shell Damage: 2700 Max HE shell Damage: 1900 Fire Chance: 8% Range:? Torpedoes: 2x4 533mm Mk IX Damage:15533 Range: 10 km Reload: 96 Speed: 62 kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: 8 x dual 20mm Mk V: 108 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 6x STAAG Dual Bofors mounts: ? @ 3.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 3 x 2 133mm/50 Mk III*: 180 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 6 x 1617 damage @ 2.5 – 6 km Manuverability Max Speed:29 Kts (HP upgrade gives 30 kts) Turning Circle Radius: ? Rudder shift: ? Concealment: Detectability by Sea: ? Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 4.4 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Air Search Radar: 4 charges, 60 second duration, 90 second cooldown. Tier 9: Cruiser proposal N2 The other proposed 1943 light cruiser. Armed with 4 dual 5.25 in turret like m1, with 8 dual 40mm mounts and 12 dual 20mm mounts, as well as 2 quad torpedo launchers. B hull would have 2 quad launchers per side, be capable of 30 knots. Armor: 13mm superstructure plating 16mm end plating and plating 25mm turret top, side, and barbette armor, and citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 51mm auxiliary room roof, turret face, and citadel roof armor 76mm auxiliary room and citadel belt armor Displacement:8,650 tons length at waterline: 550 ft Artillery: 4x2 5.25”/50 QF Mk3* (Standard AP+HE) MV: 814 m/s Reload:3 seconds (20RPM) 180 degree turn time: 9s Max dispersion: ? Max AP Shell Damage: 2700 Max HE shell Damage: 1900 Fire Chance: 8% Range:? Torpedoes: 2x4 533mm Mk IX (B hull gives 4x4) Damage:15533 Range: 10 km Reload: 72 Speed: 62 kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: 12 x dual 20mm Mk V: 162 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 8 x STAAG Dual Bofors mounts: ? @ 3.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 4 x 2 133mm/50 Mk III*: 240 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 8 x 1617 damage @ 2.5 – 6 km Manuverability Max Speed:29 Kts ( HP upgrade gives 30 kts) Turning Circle Radius: ? Rudder shift: ? Concealment: Detectability by Sea: ? Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 4.4 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Air Search Radar: 4 charges, 60 second duration, 90 second cooldown. Tier 10: So, this has gone through a few a few iterations. Initially, this was going to be moving the current Minotaur to this branch, rebalancing it, and replacing it with a modernized Plymouth in the Main tree. A bad idea, to say the least. Luckily, a much better idea was proposed by @AYYYYYYMD , but then another better idea was recommended by @Lord_Magus, and then I had another better idea. so here we have 3 ideas for tier 10, and not really knowing which one to pick, going to just throw them all down. Option 1: His Majesty's Australian Ship Mini Neptune: This was recommended to me by @AYYYYYYMD as a tier 10, and its a much better idea than what I originally had, which was moving Minotaur to this line and replacing it with another ship and re-balancing it as well. The main issues with this ship are that it has very little supporting material for it, the specification is pretty vague as well, and in a perfect world this would go into a no kidding commonwealth tree. However, this ship is the one of the 3 proposals for tier 10 that best fits in with the rest of the line, having 12 5.25 inch cannons on a small ship with no secondary armament and a heavy AA focus. Armor: 13mm superstructure plating 16mm end plating and plating 25mm turret top, side, and barbette armor, and citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 51mm auxiliary room roof, turret roof, and citadel roof armor ? auxiliary room and citadel belt armor Displacement: 9000 tons length at waterline: 550 ft Artillery: 4x3 5.25”/50 QF Mk3* (Standard AP+HE) MV: 814 m/s Reload:3 seconds (20RPM) 180 degree turn time: 13.5s Max dispersion: ? Max AP Shell Damage: 2700 Max HE shell Damage: 1900 Fire Chance: 8% Range:? Torpedoes: 4x4 533mm Mk IX Damage:15533 Range: 10 km Reload: 72 Speed: 62 kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: 18 x dual 20mm Mk V: 243 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 12 x STAAG Dual Bofors mounts: ? @ 3.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 4 x 3 133mm/50 Mk III*: 360 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 12 x 1617 damage @ 2.5 – 6 km Manuverability Max Speed:30 Kts Turning Circle Radius: ? Rudder shift: ? Concealment: Detectability by Sea: ? Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 4.4 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Air Search Radar: 4 charges, 60 second duration, 90 second cooldown. Option 2: His Majesty's Ship Chongus Dido: This is my option for Tier 10, it does have some pluses, but also a lot of downsides, I don't know if I'm over the moon about this one, but am putting it in here for completions sake. This is the Z4C or Sketch D of the Minotaur Class Crusiers, and the one that was being the most actively developed. So, the good news is that this is basically a Dido, but upscaled. Nothing weird happens with gun caliber or characteristics, and there is a design precident for this ship. the main bad thing is that this breaks the feel of the line, being larger than the regular line ship by 30 ft and also being taller courtesy of the 3 deck high turrets. Being longer and taller it would no longer be as nimble or as sneaky as its in tree counterpart. Still, it is a option. Armor: 13mm superstructure plating 16mm end plating and plating 25mm Conning Tower 38mm Turret Roof, Machinery Space Citadel Roof 51mm Barbette, Turret Side, and Turret Rear 57mm Magazine Citadel Roof 102mm Citadel belt, Turret Front 127mm Citadel Bulkhead Displacement: 15280 (for reference, Minotaur has 13870 tons displacement) length at waterline: 645 ft Artillery: 5x2 6”/50 Mk XXVI (Standard AP+HE) MV: 768 m/s Reload:3.2 seconds (20RPM) 180 degree turn time: 4.7s Max dispersion: ? Max AP Shell Damage: 3200 Max HE shell Damage: 2200 Fire Chance: 9% Range:? Torpedoes: 4x4 533mm Mk IX Damage:16767 Range: 10 km Reload: 72 Speed: 62 kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: 10 x dual 20mm Mk V: 135 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 8 x 2 76.2mm/70 Mk VI: 508 DPS @ 4.0 Km w/ 90% accuracy 5 x 2 152mm/50 Mk XXVI: 360 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 10 x 1890 damage @ 2.5 – 6 km Manuverability Max Speed:33.5 Kts Turning Circle Radius: ? Rudder shift: ? Concealment: Detectability by Sea: ? Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 5.4 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Air Search Radar: 4 charges, 60 second duration, 90 second cooldown. Option 3: His Majesty's Ship The Future: This is the ship proposed by @Lord_Magus and its pretty crazy. This is Sketch A of the 1960 cruiser, named so because the admiralty was convinced that in 1948 when they drew it that it would not be possible to make until 1960. It uses 4 of the very experimental N1 5"/70 cannons, with a proposed shell weight of 70 pounds, muzzle velocity of 1036 m/s, and maximum fire rate of 66 rounds per minute! This design has some pros, its a all gun ship, that would be new, would be a AA cruiser, and with a crazy low profile would fit in with the line to a good degree. the cons are the guns. at 127mm they would not benefit the same way that the 5.25 inch guns would from IFHE and thus the commander skills for this ship would be different from the rest of the line. More importantly, its crazy guns would be weird to balance. The High muzzle velocity would change the playstyle, not to mention the firing rate would need to be nerfed and the shell characteristics are wacky (the AP shell is basically SAP as specified, penetrating 1 inch of armor at "minimum striking velocity's and angles of 50 degrees" and having a bursting charge of 5 lbs, compared to the 6 inch cannons 3.75) this ship would be interesting to implement. Premium at Tier 6: Bellona A nice lower tier trainer for the AA cruisers. Have a write up here Armor: 10mm superstructure plating and machinery citadel roof 13mm barbette armor 16mm end plating and plating 25mm all turret armor, auxiliary spaces roof armor, citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 51mm Magazine citadel roof armor 89mm auxiliary room and citadel belt armor Survivability: 27000 HP Artillery: 4x2 5.25”/50 QF Mk1 (Standard AP+HE) MV: 814 m/s Reload:6 seconds (10RPM) 180 degree turn time: 9s Max dispersion: 116m Max AP Shell Damage: 2700 Max HE Shell Damage: 1900 Range:12.7 km Torpedoes: 2x3 533mm Mk IX Damage:15867 Range: 8 km Reload: 72s Speed: 61 Kts Detectability: 1.3 km Or 2x3 533mm Mk IX Damage:15533 Range: 10 km Reload: 72 Speed: 62 kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: 2 x 20mm Mk IV: 16 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 4 x dual 20mm Mk V: 54 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 2 x quad 40mm Pom Pom: 70 DPS @2.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 4 x 2 133mm/50 Mk 1: 150 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 5 x 1617 damage @ 2.5 – 6 km Maneuverability: Max Speed: 32 Kts Turning Circle Radius: 610 m Rudder shift: 6.7s Concealment: Detectability by Sea: 9.55 km Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 4.4 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage Premium at Tier 7: Sirius A premium for the RN Cl line. It being a Dido class I put it here, but gameplay wise it would be 100% RN CL. Have a writeup here, Here are the stats if you don’t much care for the whole thing. Armor: 10mm superstructure plating and machinery citadel roof 13mm end plating, plating, and barbette armor 25mm all turret armor, auxiliary spaces roof armor, citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead 51mm Magazine citadel roof armor 89mm auxiliary room and citadel belt armor Survivability: 26000 HP Artillery: 5x2 5.25”/50 QF Mk1 (Standard AP+HE) MV: 814 m/s Reload:6 seconds (10RPM) 180 degree turn time: 18s Max dispersion: 116m Max AP Shell Damage 2700 Range:13.5 km Torpedoes: 2x3 533mm Mk IX Damage:15867 Range: 8 km Reload: 72s Speed: 61 Kts Detectability: 1.3 km Or 2x3 533mm Mk IX Damage:15533 Range: 10 km Reload: 72 Speed: 62 kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: 7 x 20mm Mk IV: 57 DPS @ 2 Km w/ 85% accuracy 2 x quad 40mm Pom Pom: 70 DPS @2.5 Km w/ 90% accuracy 5 x 2 133mm/50 Mk 1: 150 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 5 x 1617 damage @ 2.5 – 6 km Maneuverability: Max Speed: 32.25 Kts Turning Circle Radius: 610 m Rudder shift: 6.7s Concealment: Detectability by Sea: 9.75 km Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 4.4 Km Consumables: Damage Control Repair Party: 3 charges, 130 HP/sec, 28 seconds action time, 76 second reload time Hydroacoustic Search: 3 charges, 3 km torpedo detection, 4 km ship detection, 100 second action time, 114 second reload. Smoke: 3 charges, 15 second action time, 100 second dispersion time. 150 second reload. Premium at tier 8: K25F A paper design during the process of designing Fiji, has 8 of the twin 5.25in cannons. Would be a higher tier captain trainer. Armor: 10mm superstructure plating 13mm end plating 19mm deck and hull plating 25mm turret side and roof and barbette armor, citadel and auxiliary room bulkhead, and hull plating and roof over shell rooms (?) 32mm citadel deck over machinery 51mm auxiliary room roof and citadel roof armor over magazines 76mm auxiliary room and citadel belt armor at machinery, and turret fronts 89mm citadel belt armor at magazines Survivability: 31000 HP Artillery: 8x2 5.25”/50 QF Mk1 (Standard AP+HE) MV: 814 m/s Reload:6 seconds (10RPM) 180 degree turn time: 18s Max dispersion:? Max AP Shell Damage: 2700 Max HE Shell Damage:1900 Range:? Torpedoes: 2x3 533mm Mk IX Damage:15533 Range: 10 km Reload: 72 Speed: 62 kts Detectability: 1.3 km AA Defense: some mixture of light and medium AA 8x 2 133mm/50 Mk 1: 180 DPS @ 6 Km w/ 90% accuracy Shell explosions: 6 x 1617 damage @ 2.5 – 6 km Maneuverability: Max Speed: 31.7 Kts Turning Circle Radius: 670 m Rudder shift: ? Concealment: Detectability by Sea: 11.5 km Detectability by Air :6 km Detectability of Gunfire in Smoke: 4.4 Km Consumables: Damage Control Smoke: 5 charges, 15 second emission, 50 second duration, 100 second cooldown Defensive AA: unlimited charges. 40 second action time, 70 second reload, +50% continuous damage, +300% shellburst damage And those are the ships. Let me know what you think.

Cossack is a stealthy British gunship destroyer armed with eight 120mm/45 naval rifles and a single bank of four, high-tier torpedoes. She is defined by her good concealment values and awkward firing arcs. Cossack also has access to the Engine Boost consumable while maintaining improved British acceleration and energy preservation. Game play wise, Cossack is very similar to Lightning with an overlap in consumables and commander skill choices. Wargaming has set her price tag at 9,600 doubloons. This is the second Tribal-class destroyer introduced into World of Warships following the release of HMCS Haida earlier this year. She is less remarkable than her sister-ship but that's largely owing to the unforgiving environment in which she plays. Cossack contends with being up-tiered more often than her Canadian counterpart and higher tiered matches are far more radar intensive. Moreover, at tier VII Haida has a defined role -- she's a lolibote-molester. This role is generally lacking among the other tin-cans at tier VII which makes Haida stand out. Cossack doesn't share this same kind of defined specialty. She's more of a generalist scout or gunship -- roles that are replicated by other destroyers at her tier. Thus, Cossack is a workhorse, one gunship among many. She gets the job done in a tough environment which is worth noting, though she is not deserving of any acclaim in this regard. PROS Good DPM performance on her guns and excellent chance at starting fires. Powerful torpedoes for a gunship which may launched individually. Improved engine performance with increased acceleration and energy preservation in a turn while also having access to the Engine Boost consumable. Ridiculous rate of turn, throwing herself about at almost 9.0º/s! Good concealment with a surface detection as low as 5.48km. Access to a long-lasting British Hydroacoustic Search consumable. CONS Poor fire angles on all weapons. Terrible gun ballistics -- worse than American 127mm/38s. Limited to a single torpedo launcher. Her anti-aircraft firepower is effectively non-existent. Poor quality Smoke Generator consumable with short emission time and duration. Overview Skill Floor: Simple / Casual / Challenging / Difficult Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / High / Extreme Cossack is not a forgiving ship to play. For a novice player, she has many strikes against her. She struggles to do damage, hamstrung with restrictive fire sectors on all of her weapons and poor performing guns. A deep skill build is necessary to allow her to do direct damage with her artillery against larger opponents and the range of targets she can engage is limited. Having a single torpedo launcher does her no favours either. She is at her best at what amounts to point-blank ranges. At high tiers this is a range where you will get killed in short order for making a mistake. Cossack has the speed, stealth and agility enough to make her attractive to a veteran but her engagement range, optimized for short-distances and limited attack power are a severe mark against her carry potential. Still, she has a diverse toolkit that will earn her some devoted supporters. – One of, if not the worst at its tier. This is a pronounced weakness. – Middle of the pack at its tier. Not terrible, but not terribly good either. – Has a significant advantage over her tier mates. A solid, competitive performer. – No other ship at its tier does this as well as this ship. Cossack's damage output and durability are best described as average. While she does have her strong points, a combination of drawbacks with her guns keeps Cossac from outperforming her peers. Her low hit point total similarly holds her back. She gets a rating in both categories. Her anti aircraft firepower is virtually non-existent and she earns a evaluation as a result. It's arguably worse than the IJN torpedo boats which is saying something. Where Cossack stands apart truly is her agility and stealth. She takes primacy from Lightning in terms of flexibility and speed. It's a closer contest for Vision Control, but she wins out against Loyang. She's the in both categories among tier VIII destroyers. Options Cossack's options are almost all standard for a British destroyer. Cossack like (new) British destroyers cannot make use of the Propulsion Modification 2 upgrade as she already has an improved version built in. Consumables Cossack's Damage Control Party is standard for a destroyer. It has unlimited charges, a 60s/40s reset timer and a 5s active period. Cossack uses a British destroyer Smoke Generator. This has 5 charges base and a 90s/70s reset timer (it's not just you, that number is stupid-weird). It emits smoke for 10s and each cloud lasts for 40s. Unlike other (new) British destroyers, Cossack has access to Engine Boost. This is a standard destroyer-version of the consumable providing an 8% speed increase with 2 charges base, an 180s/120s reset timer and a 120s active period. Cossack uses a British destroyer Hydroacoustic Search. This has 2 charges base, a 180s/120s reset timer and a 180s active period. It detects torpedoes and ships at a range of 3.00km. Upgrades Cossack should equip Magazine Modification 1 into its first upgrade slot. If you like to live dangerously, then Main Armaments Modification 1 is fine. In your second slot, the special upgrade, Hydroacoustic Search Modification 1 is optimal. If you do not have access to it, then the next upgrade you should reach for is the special upgrade Engine Boost Modification 1. If you're lacking that, then default to Propulsion Modification 1. Aiming System Modification 1 is optimal for slot 3. The only reasonable choice in your fourth slot is Steering Gears Modification 2. Similarly, the only reasonable choice in your fifth slot is Concealment Modification 1. Camouflage Cossack comes with Type 10 Camouflage. For 2,000 doubloons you may purchase Royal Navy - Cossack as a cosmetic swap. Both camouflages provide: 50% bonus experience gains 10% reduction to maintenance costs 3% reduction in surface detection 4% reduction in enemy accuracy. Cossack comes with Type 10 Camouflage in mottled grey. I personally think she looks prettier in Royal Navy - Cossack in green, black and grey, but that's only for players with deep pockets. Firepower Main Battery: Eight 120mm/45 guns in 4x2 turrets in an A-B-X-Y superfiring configuration. Torpedoes: Four torpedo tubes in a 1×4 launcher mounted amidships. The 120mm/45s that Cossack uses for her main batteries have a lot of problems at tier VIII. While perfectly serviceable at tier VII with ships like Jervis and Gadjah Mada, against the upgraded opposition faced at higher tiers they're nowhere near as competitive on a per-gun basis. This is largely owing to penetration issues due to gun caliber but there are other things to remark. They have a modest rate of fire, damage per shell and poor ballistics. The mountings on HMS Cossack are poorly situated with limited fire arcs and a lackluster traverse rate. Their only real strength is a high fire chance per shell. Her saving grace is that she has a lot of guns -- quantity has quality all of its own. However, the competition is fierce at tier VIII and even armed with eight rifles Cossack struggles finding the edge she needs. Destroyer AP shells are highly circumstantial in their utility. Most simply do not have the penetration or damage output to make them worth chancing the risk of a bounce using except in specific circumstances. Still, when a broadside is offered, switching to AP provides a much improved damage increase -- especially if your target is already burning from fires set. HMS Cossack's poor penetration values limit the range at which she can make these exchanges successfully, with her ability to citadel enemy cruisers falling off at 4km and her ability to reliably penetrate the extremities of battleships dropping off between 9km and 11km.1 Cossack's HE damage potential looks impressive, though it's important to cross reference it with her penetration values. The chart on the right shows the armour value the respective guns can best while the extremity armour on the bottom lists the prevalence of different armour types for the bow and stern. The number in brackets is the (current as of 0.7.9) number of ships with these armour values. There is a long list of targets she is incapable of damaging directly which will necessitate her making the attempt with AP shells instead. The arcs of fire on A and Y turret are terrible, contrasting the excellent arcs on B and X. On top of this, B-turret may rotate 360º which facilitates keeping it engaged even while Cossack manoeuvres. It's thus very easy to keep six guns on target most of the time but especially difficult to keep all eight firing. Bringing all eight guns to bear makes her an easy and predictable target due to the limited fields of fire on her foremost and rearmost turrets. Sacrificing a turret makes Cossack's gunnery no better than a tier VII destroyer. Cossack doesn't have the DPM advantage to be able to best contemporary gunship destroyers. The race is very close. Once you factor in the hit point totals and detection consumables, the margins get even smaller. Against anything higher tier, Cossack comes out the worse for it. This said, Cossack does have the muscle to bully anything smaller than herself short of HMCS Haida. She can play the role of a destroyer hunter provided she can ensure the detection, hit point and DPM advantage, but she has nowhere near the primacy in these categories at her tier. Against larger vessels, Cossack's guns are a mixed bag. Her ability to deal direct damage is compromised with her poor penetration values but she's an excellent fire starter. Note that this is largely owing to volume and accuracy of fire -- Cossack must be cycling all eight of her guns onto a target and landing with most of her hits to be a credible threat this way. Where Cossack truly excels is her potential to set fires. This is especially true of she eschews the use of IFHE in her commander skill build and elects to just focus on Demolition Expert instead. While this is unlikely to ever give a hale and healthy cruiser pause, it is very effective against battleships. Note, in practice these values are approximately halved when striking ships and represent only the raw fire starting potential. Thus, against a Montana, Cossack with a DE build could expect to set about 4 to 5 fires per minute. Be warned, though, the efficiency of focusing on fires leaves a lot to RNG. Cossack's performance will not be consistent. The final issue facing Cossack's gunnery is one of range and detection. She has adequate reach but she suffers from horrible ballistics. British 120mm/45 guns have worse shell arcs than American 127mm/38s. Cossack has similar gunnery challenges to Loyang, Hsienyang, Kidd and Benson without their fast rate of fire to facilitate aim correction. Cossack is greatly endangered by the prevalence of Surveillance Radar within her matchmaking tier where her short engagement range is more likely to bring her within reach of this consumable. Furthermore, her Smoke Generator does not allow for long bouts of gunnery within the safety of concealment. Cossack must contend with much of her gunnery being done while she is vulnerable to return fire if she cannot make use of island cover. Thus, Cossack must be opportunistic. Whatever ability she has to bully other destroyers falls away as she faces same or higher tiered opponents. Her guns can terrorize lower tiered vessels, including battleships but they lack the caliber needed when facing higher tiers. Throw in the usual challenges of radar in this matchmaking spread and a pattern emerges: The power and flexibility of Cossack's guns varies considerably upon the hand which she's dealt by Matchmaking. Cossack's torpedo launchers have much better rearward arcs than forward. Like her guns, Cossack is going to have to give up her full broadside to be able to fire her torpedoes at a target. Cossack's torpedoes are decent individually, but she has too few of them and bad firing arcs to boot. Cossack has HMS Daring's torpedoes but at tier VIII instead of tier X, which looks nice on paper but that single launcher holds her back. The saving grace of Cossack's torpedo armament is her ability to fire them one at a time. While getting good accuracy with single-launch torpedoes is locked behind a skill wall, once mastered it helps greatly with making up for the lack tubes. For a gunship, Cossack has better individual torpedoes than those found on the Soviet, American or German destroyers. However, like with her guns, she places a distant second to Akizuki, lacking both striking power and being unable to keep up with her damage output Furthermore, Cossack's individually more powerful torpedoes in no way makes up for having only one launcher. Like Cossack's guns, her torpedoes perform much better when she's top tier than bottom. Their 10km range is fairly standard (and an improvement on the 8km on Lightning's), however as Surveillance Radar becomes more and more prominent in higher tiers, this reach just doesn't provide the same level of safety. Ideally, a player should be able to combine Cossack's torpedoes with her excellent fire setting to stack damage over time effects on a given target. In practice, this is much easier said than done. Their limited arcs makes finding opportunities to use them difficult, especially in a pinch. When the stars align (or skill prevails), Cossack can doom an enemy vessel in short order by overtaxing their Damage Control Party between fires and floods and score herself an easy kill. However, these will be rare events rather than commonplace. As discussed, use of Cossack's gunnery and torpedoes are both steeped in challenges. One of the drawbacks of British torpedoes is their large detection range. While not quite on the same level as Japanese destroyer torpedoes, this does limit their effectiveness. Summary: The potency of her guns varies considerably based on the tier of the target she faces. Her gunnery performance is inconsistent. Her torpedoes are individually excellent but they're difficult to use, locked behind a higher skill wall. Cossack must present a lot of broadside to cycle her weapons which can make her unfortunately predictable. Evaluation: What it would have needed to be : Cossack never quite gets her act together to seriously contest the Japanese gunships for their primacy at this tier. Yeah, I'm as shocked as you are that Japan now dominates the destroyer firepower meta at tier VIII. I always thought it would have been the Soviets, but here we are. Defense Hit Points: 15,200hp Min Bow & Deck Armour: 19mm The Lolibote with a redundant name sure looks OP when you lay out the maximum effective hit point total of the tier VIII destroyers like this. However, making perfect use of all four charges of her Repair Party happens so seldom. Still, she's way tougher than Cossack. Cossack has nothing going for her in this category. She has a downright middling hit point total and no fun quirks to her armour profile. This is a destroyer where you will have to manage any gunfire trades carefully to preserve your health. Her DPM advantage is not so high that she can afford to simply slug away at an enemy lolibote and hope to come out the better. The Survivability Expert skill, which ups her to an even 18,000hp should be considered mandatory lest she fall behind the staying power of other gunships. Veterans who are familiar with the play style of Loyang and Benson will no doubt be able to relate to the need to properly spend their hit points when making gunship attacks. The difference between Cossack and these American-based gunships is her worse Smoke Generator performance which limits her ability to make escapes when things go pear shaped. Cause they will. Evaluation: What it would have needed to be : Cossack is in the bottom half of the vast tier VIII destroyer population. It's going to take a lot to move her up in rank -- namely another 5,000 hit points or a Repair Party consumable. Agility Top Speed: 36.0 knots Port Turning Radius: 610m Rudder Shift: 3.6s Maximum Turn Rate: 8.9º/s There's a lot to cover here. Let's hope I can put it in some semblance of good order without melting the brains of my readers. Your take away should be this: Cossack is far more agile than her in-port stats might otherwise indicate. She comes about quickly. She accelerates fast. She doesn't lose speed in a turn. Stay with me here, this graph isn't as scary as it looks. In purple, we have the sustained 4/4 speed of the tier VIII destroyers with their rudder hard over. This is how fast these destroyers can move while wiggling, dodging and coming about. In green is their nominal maximum speed -- for Cossack and Lightning, that's 36 knots. In blue, we have their engine boost speed. What makes Cossack so remarkable is that her maximum speed and turning speed pretty much overlap AND she access to an Engine Boost. This makes her a much harder target to hit, akin to a fast Soviet destroyer in terms of her forward momentum but with the added bonus that she can change her heading much more quickly. Cossack doesn't have the straight-line speed of some of her contemporaries. However, she's functionally faster than many of them. Like destroyers from the Royal Navy tech tree, Cossack preserves almost all of her speed while under manoeuvres. Most destroyers bleed off between 15% and 18% of their top speed while wiggling and dodging. Cossack loses less than 2%. In addition, Cossack comes about almost as nimbly as USS Sims -- one of the most agile mid-tier destroyers in the game, and at a higher sustained speed. For enemies trying to pick her off at range, Cossack presents the dual challenge of a ridiculously high top speed with an nimble target, giving the best traits of both American and Soviet lolibotes in a single package. It doesn't stop there. From a dead stop, Cossack accelerates as much as 25% faster than a similar destroyer equipped with Propulsion Modification 2. From a dead stop, Cossack is quick to get moving again, helping her avoid sudden threats like incoming torpedoes or being lit by Surveillance Radar. Cossack gets the best of both worlds when it comes to upgrades; she enjoys better acceleration than she would have receive with Propulsion Modification 2 and she gets the improved rudder shift time of Steering Gears Modification 2. Unlike other Royal Navy destroyers, Cossack gets all of this without sacrificing access to Engine Boost. Combined with a Sierra Mike signal, she can get her speed up to 40.8kts for these brief spells while keeping all of the aforementioned bonuses to her handling. While ships like Kiev and the upcoming Le Terrible can outpace her in a straight line, Cossack wins out in overall handling and flexibility in combat situations. She trivializes dodging incoming fire and dancing torpedo beats. Paper stats won't tell the whole story. If you looked at a combination of Cossack's top speed, turning radius and rudder shift time, she'd look deceptively mediocre. The engine power of the Royal Navy destroyers and their energy preservation means that they perform on an entirely different level from the other lolibotes, making Cossack far more nimble than her stats otherwise indicate. Her Engine Boost consumable adds even more flexibility than even Lightning can boast, making Cossack the most agile destroyer at her tier.[/caption] Summary Boosted acceleration. Little to no loss of speed in a turn. Cossack can rocket-butt with Engine Boost unlike other British DDs. Evaluation: What would have to happen to DOWNGRADE to : Loss of her Engine Boost consumable would be enough. This is a closely contested category at tier VIII with Lightning being hot on Cossack's heels with better rate of turn and a smaller turning radius. Anti-Aircraft Defense AA Battery Calibers: 40mm / 12.7mm AA Umbrella Ranges: 2.5km / 1.2km AA DPS per Aura: 12.9 / 4.2 Hahaha, no. Cossack has no large caliber AA guns to speak of. Even cursory HE damage is likely to strip her of all of her remaining defensive weapons. Enemy aircraft carriers should feel completely safe in having their planes loiter over Cossack and friendly carriers should abstain from dragging enemy aircraft near Cossack. She'll be of no help. ... except I did. Evaluation: What it would have needed to be : Cossack only barely ekes out the worst AA rating at tier VIII. Asashio is only marginally better with less DPS but more range. In theory, it wouldn't take much to nudge Cossack up the ladder, but don't ever assume this would make her evaluation passable here. Refrigerator Base Surface Detection Range: 6.97km Air Detection Range: 3.90km Minimum Surface Detection Range: 5.48km Detection Range when Firing from Smoke: 2.48km Main Battery Firing Range: 11.89km Detection Consumables: Smoke Generator / Hydroacoustic Search There's a whole lot of weirdness crammed into Cossack's refrigerator. She is currently the rated tier VIII destroyer in terms of stealth and detection, however this is a title she doesn't claim easily. There are three elements which define her concealment: her surface detection range, her Hydroacoustic Search and her Smoke Generator. Surface Detection Spotting distance delta (in meters) between HMS Cossack and the destroyers within her matchmaking spread when fully upgraded for concealment. This chart is restricted only to those destroyers within +/- 500m spread of Cossack's optimized stealth rating. Note that a distance of at least 200m is necessary to have a plausible chance of a reactionary advantage over an opponent and more is preferable. There are few destroyers that can challenge her concealment rating. Cossack is one of the stealthiest destroyers not only at her tier but also within her matchmaking spread. Only the Kagero-class sisters (Kagero, Asashio, Harekaze) have an improved stealth rating as low as 5.374km to Cossack's 5.476km. In open water with every other match-up, Cossack will detect enemies before she herself is seen. Generally speaking, when Cossack is top tier, she will dominate scouting. It's only when she faces tier IX opponents that things get harried, with detection ranges being close enough that Cossack is likely to trip over an enemy destroyer without enough time to react. Surveillance Radar, always the bane of destroyers (and gunship destroyers especially), is a very real and especially prevalent threat to Cossack's well being. When she's bottom tier, Cossack faces several ships with radar that meet or outstrip their surface detection range. There is very little counterplay she can exercise against ships armed with this consumable short of having advanced knowledge of their approximate location. Keep a wary eye on team rosters and behave accordingly. Hydroacoustic Search HMS Cossack comes with a Royal Navy Destroyer safety blanket -- her Hydroacoustic Search. In the radar-heavy environment in which she plays, this lacks the offensive utility found on HMCS Haida and it's largely reserved for simply sniffing out torpedoes. Still, it is possible for Cossack to unmask ships hiding within smoke screens while using her consumable, however she needs to get even closer than her Canadian counterpart to do it. This tactic is largely inadvisable given Cossack's difficulties in getting away once detected but it can be pulled off in a pinch, especially in late game scenarios where an enemy destroyer lacks support. Exploit that three minute duration -- she can outlast the longer ranged (and easier to use) consumables found on Loyang and German destroyers. Outside of these very specific instances, Cossack's Hydroacoustic Search is better used defensively -- giving her the time necessary to avoid incoming torpedo strikes. In most games, this will largely be its purpose. Vigilance is a helpful skill in this regard for team play purposes if you can afford it. Still, this consumable provides a degree of flexibility to the ship that expert players can exploit and to underestimate or dismiss it would be a mistake. Cossack belongs up on the front lines, projecting vision forward for her team and sniffing out early torpedo threats. Smoke Generator There's a big ol' "but" looming over Cossack's superior vision control. She may have great surface detection. She may have a very handy detection consumable that keeps her safe from torpedoes and can be used offensively in a pinch. Butt, her Smoke Generator stinks. Shackled to the same terrible smoke consumable as the British destroyers in the tech tree, Cossack is held back by its low emission and duration times. She doesn't make many smoke clouds for one. What smoke she does make doesn't last nearly long enough to be comfortable, undermining both Cossack's survivability and her ability to deal damage. When used offensively, Cossack can only park in smoke for 40 seconds at a time. With American battleships boasting up to 20s worth of immunity with their Damage Control Party, Cossack isn't going to seriously contest her opponent's ability to put out fires. This necessitates other tactics to get the most out of the potential damage output of her guns. Borrowing the smoke from another ship is one way such as in a division. She can also take a page from American cruiser and destroyer game play and use island cover to lob her shells at enemies that cannot see her but her lack of reach makes this difficult. Finally she can simply elect to fire from open water and risk trading her hit points. I would hardly call this ideal given her low hit point total. Defensively, her smoke is also found wanting. At top speed in a straight line, Cossack drops all of three (count 'em) smoke clouds. If you install the special upgrade, Smoke Generator Modification 1 you get one more puff. That's it -- hardly worth the coal investment. Cossack's consumable is not so much a smoke screen as a squid's ink-squirt. If Cossack has been firing her guns, she may not being able to create enough smoke to block line of sight to multiple opponents (which will make you wonder why you even bothered). Fortunately, if you cut your speed the moment you activate her consumable, Cossack will come to a stop inside the last cloud. Don't wait on the throttle though -- you need to be decelerating the moment you begin laying down your rings. At least Cossack's smoke reset timer isn't punitive. The delay between dissipating and the availability of her next charge can be as little as 20 seconds with the correct commander and signal combination. With up to seven charges available, Cossack simply needs to hold her fire for brief intervals before setting up for another round of shooting. Patience and careful planning can almost make up for all of her consumable's shortcomings. Closely Contested Cossack is an excellent scout. Few destroyers at tier VIII can sit as comfortably on the front lines, broadcasting back enemy positions for their team as Cossack can. In addition, her forward position helps protect her allies from long range torpedo salvos which become quite commonplace within her matchmaking. This isn't a safe place to be, however, and Cossack lacks reliable smoke from her toolkit to give her a sense of security. Cossack may be one of the stealthiest ships at her tier and one of the best destroyers for controlling vision for her team. However, this is very little room for error. Summary Great open water concealment. Hydroacoustic Search combined with her great acceleration and handling makes enemy torpedoes launched at range a non-threat. Her smoke smells like butts. At least she gets a lot of quick-reloading charges. Evaluation: What would have to happen to DOWNGRADE to : Top spot among the tier VIII destroyers is heavily contested. The Japanese torpedo ships have the best raw concealment values. Loyang has arguably the best combination of detection consumables though her surface detection is too big to take the crown. Cossack wins out on primacy despite the flaw of her Smoke Generator, but not without contention. Keeping Oskar from becoming a Sam Skills rated by their utility in descending order from purple, to blue, to green, to red. For the colourblind, they're also rated by hearts. Cossack's initial skill choices are fairly standard for a gunship. Start with Priority Target. Next take Last Stand at tier 2. Survivability Expert is optimal at tier 3. And finish off your 10th point with Concealment Expert. Basic Fire Training should be a must on anyone's list after that and Adrenaline Rush is also optimal. From there, spend your last four points as you will. Final Evaluation I'm not one to blame matchmaking. However, Cossack's fortunes are more firmly tied to matchmaking than many other ships I've played in recent memory. I think it's largely owing to how Cossack performs when she up-tiers. To be absolutely clear, Cossack is a beast when she's the top of the pile. There are very few opponents she cannot engage comfortably and it's only those vessels at her own tier which give her pause. However, Cossack doesn't feel anywhere near as comfortable when she has to go up against tier IX and X opponents. This isn't a problem unique to Cossack, but it is more pronounced in her case. Her guns have a very limited menu of appetizing targets when she faces same or higher tiered opponents. It's not that she can't deal damage when bottom tier, it's simply more of a challenge than for other destroyers. She reminds me very much of most tier V battleships, where they can feel like real powerhouses in those rare times that matchmaking favours them and victims otherwise. Your mileage in Cossack will vary based upon not only where your placed on the Matchmaking roster but what's on the enemy team. So long as she's facing enemy destroyers and cruisers with soft squishy bits she can pelt with her pew pews, you're going to have a great time regardless of her tier. If you suddenly find yourself facing down tier VIII+ American and German heavy cruisers, a heavy battleship lineup or Japanese ducky-destroyers, life's going to be a lot more difficult. Fortunately, Cossack still has a role when she can't be the big dog. When she's no longer able to deal direct damage easily, she excels at simply putting eyes on targets and pressuring cap circles. It's difficult to dislodge an RNDD that has setup shop around a given cap short of using concerted air power or a constant barrage of radiation from Surveillance Radar to drive them back. Cossack won't come out of said matches with much to show for it other than a win if everything goes right, unfortunately. I do like Cossack, but she doesn't inspire the same kind of awe her sister ship, Haida did for me. There's a lot to enjoy with this ship. Few feels as comfortable as she does when top tier and even in those uptiered matches, she can serve you well provided you meet the right opponents. However, in those games where there's nothing but hard targets, the pickings get mighty slim. I dunno why, but I'm a fan of Cossack's alternative camouflage. I wish it didn't cost 2,000 doubloons to make my ship look pretty, but oh well. Would I Recommend? Cossack was originally made available through the Royal Navy event which ran in the last quarter of 2018. Wargaming assigned her a cost of 50 Guineas with players able to earn up to 48 Guineas over three patches. It's not you -- the math doesn't add up. The assumption is that players will have to pay for the difference with a Guinea setting you back around $1 USD. Otherwise, players may acquire her for the equivalent cost of 9,600 doubloons + the price of a port slot. PVE Battles How well does the ship maintain profitability in Co-Op modes and how does she fare against bots? No. Cossack does alright in Operation Dynamo, but her contribution is very one-sided with being largely limited to engaging the torpedo boats. Her AA power is virtually non-existent. Co-Op isn't kind to gunship destroyers, particularly those with only modest hit point pools and limited torpedo options. Random Battle Grinding: This includes training captains, collecting free experience, earning credits and collecting signal flags from achievements. Yes with a butt. Cossack doesn't play much differently than the other Royal Navy destroyers and her skill choices overlap nicely (especially with captains for Icarus, Jervis, Jutland and Daring). The only issue is that earnings get a might bit slim of matchmaking doesn't love you. For Competitive Gaming: Competitive Gaming includes Ranked Battles and other skill-based tournaments. This also includes stat-padding. No. There are better choices, namely Loyang and Akizuki. For Collectors: If you enjoy ship history or possessing rare ships, this section is for you. Yes. Now you too can own a memento of the ship that predicated the early invasion of Norway! Slap on a Hotel Yankee signal, board some enemies and cause an international incident! For Fun Factor: Bottom line: Is the ship fun to play? Yes. While I'd rather play Haida, that's my own Canadian bias speaking. Cossack is a fun ship though be warned, she is a tier VIII destroyer. That comes with all of the hangups that tier VIII destroyers face. What's the Final Verdict? How would the ship rate on an Angry YouTuber scale of Garbage - Meh - Gud - Overpowered? GARBAGE- The boat is unbalanced, not fun to play and weak. The ship desperately needs some buffs or some quality of life changes. Mehbote - An average ship. Has strengths and weaknesses. Doesn't need buffs to be viable however she's not going to be considered optimal. Gudbote - A powerful ship, often one of the best ships at a given role within its tier. Usually considered optimal for a given task. OVERPOWERED - The boat is unbalanced and powerful. Typically she's either horrible to play against or she redefines the meta entirely In Closing Is it over? I think it's over! Cossack (and Haida) have been on books since January of 2018 -- that's over nine months of work that has gone into reviewing her and her sister ship with too many different versions between them. As you can imagine, there was a lot of information to keep track of with her performance changing so regularly. While I'm happy the two ships aren't terrible, I'm very (very) glad to be able to stop worrying about Cossack for a while. I want to thank my readers and fans who helped keep me sane over these months and an especially well deserved thanks to my Patrons on Patreon who helped keep me fed. I won't have to dig her out again until there's another tier VIII destroyer to review for a comparative study. But that won't happen for another ... Aww, sh-- ...!  Appendix (1) Penetration data courtesy of Proships.ru (https://www.proships.ru) and World of Warships AP Calculator (https://mustanghx.github.io/ship_ap_calculator/).

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

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

Hi All, A wile back when WG announced that there was going to be RN CVs I was exited. I was never a big CV player but was always a fan of Royal Navy carriers like HMS Ark Royal and HMS Glorious. I was hoping they would include the HMS Glorious on the tech tree but sadly it was not to be. I know we got HMS Furious and I am happy. I love the ship. But My heart was set on Glorious. We did get the Legendary Ark Royal as a Prem. Like it or hate it she is in game. If they where to bring her in gave would she make a good T6 CV? She would not be a Clone of the Furious since she was what they call a "half-sisters" ship and her design and construction where very different. What does every one else think? Oh Note: Please No CV hate on this thread. We already know many do not like CVs.

Hello all, I've got some thoughts and questions on destroyers I'm currently playing, and I'd like other opinions. This is really me just thinking out loud, because I'm a middling player (you're welcome to check my stats) and I've been playing on and off since closed beta. 1. Playing my German Destroyers Like everybody else I started off as a BB and CA/CL main. That's still the case, but I jumped onto the German DDs a few years ago when they came out. I'm now on the tier 9 because I grind up pretty slowly, so that's the highest tier I have currently. I think I'm playing too aggressively to be honest. I try to cap fairly early, and after reading the forums and giving it more thought I'm thinking that's just not a good idea. Between RADAR and the proliferation of attack planes these days, it just feels like a recipe for failure. After bumping around the forums and reading DestroyerKuroshikai's (I can't spell the name properly) posts, I'm thinking I'm playing more aggressively than I ought to be, and that I need to be hanging back more in my German DDs? Is that everybody else's experience? I don't feel like I can effectively contest caps anymore because torpedoes usually don't actually kill enemy destroyers, and the guns on the German DDs just feel weak honestly. The anemic HE damage gimps you if you try to use HE, and I do frequently use AP, but it's so easy to get the angle wrong and either overpenetrate or simply ricochet with it. At least that's my impression at the moment. I'm not averse to using my guns, but honestly? It's so frequently not worth it. Battleship AP wrecks you, and the agility isn't enough to agility tank. So all that HP you have just ends up being useless. I'm not sure what to do. 2. Switching to British Destroyers On the other hand, I'm about to get the tier 5 British destroyer (Acasta) and honestly I've been having a blast in the Wakeful. I know a lot of that is simply because the standards at tier 4 are much lower, but it feels like a useful DD. The guns fire fast, the torpedoes reload fast enough (for someone who grew up on German DDs) and the single shot torpedo system is just fantastic! I don't struggle to hit things, and even a single torpedo hit feels useful and satisfying. The smokes are awful short, but at least they come back quickly! I'm hearing the next few tiers of British DD are much more difficult to play. Is that really true? I'm not expecting it to be as bad as the T-22 at least. I want to know if people really do think they're weak, and I'm interested in hearing how people are playing them, especially after the recent buffs. I have a 10 point captain, I just haven't allocated my points yet. On that, is using the Bert/Jack Dunkirk special captain a good idea here? I'm trying to decide if I want to use him on my British DDs or my BBs. 3. Premiums I want to get a premium DD. Right now I'm looking at the Gallant and the T-61, but the Z-39 has also caught my eye. I hear good things about the T-61, so that's appealing. However I may end up playing British DDs more in the new meta, we'll see. I also hear good things about the Z-39, but maybe not as many good things about it as I do the T-61. Finally I don't know a whole lot about the Gallant. I'm also grinding up the French, American, and Soviet DD lines (yes I'm doing too many things at once, it's why I don't have a tier 10.) I'm really enjoying the French (they do so much damage!) and the Soviets, though they're a definitely style-change. I already own the Monaghan, and take that out sometimes to derp around. Been having great fun using that to sink subs in the submarine mode. If you got to the end here, thanks for reading. I'm rambling a lot I know. I hope you all have a great weekend though!

i want to have some t8 premium BB but i dont know which onesni should get. I have alabama and i am not very found of her. I will surely get Amagi pack: Ignis Purgatio and Ragnarok. i was thinking into get at least 2 more of these ships. are they worth of it? i seen youtubers video and wg video regarding them and couldnt decide... I see some Roma in battles, no Lenin, no Amagi and much Massachusetts. should i get any? should i get 2? none? all of them?

So I was in the HMS Gallant, still had most of my hp left(green healthbar), on the winning team, and that's when the enemy Izmail shows up to charge me. Being in a DD I outmaneuver him and fire depth charges to detonate underneath & snap his keel. Now that submarines have gone live, you can use depth charges by pressing G. Or at least, that's what the game tells you. But...I pressed G...none of the K-guns fired. wth?! So I did no damage, he kills me for all my trouble. I do, however, get the It's Just a Flesh Wound award since I got torps away-all 8 hit after I died. So if it isn't G, what do you actually press to use depth charges?

What are your thoughts on the Royal Navy heavy cruisers in WoWS so far?

Anyone else consider RN attack aircraft a waste of deck space? I'm talking about the Sea Hurricane, Firefly, Seafire and Wyvern. They're fighters They're slower than the bombers they accompany Their speed boosts last barely a few seconds (so in no way compensate for ultra slow speed) Rockets highly RNG dependent when you finally get to target They're very fragile. I get slow speed and fragility for rocket-carrying Hurricanes (an out-dated, adapted fighter). I get fragility for Seafires (designed to be an interceptor, and as such was the fastest naval fighter of the war). I don't get slow speed and fragility for the Firefly (which was actually built to be a rocket strike and recon aircraft. Yes. That is why it was a heavy fleet fighter. The second person was for long range navigation and recon.) I don't get the slow speed and fragility of the Wyvern (which was actually built to be a strike fighter). People say "use them to spot". I say ... what? At that speed? And use my torp/carpet bombers as at least their speed boost has some sort of duration and means my intel is sort of timely. People say "use them to contest cap" ... what? By the time they get there, the DD has done their job. And that perfectly aligned rocket drop goes ahead, behind, above and below the target - not on it. People say "use them to deliver fighter cover" ... what? By the time they get there, the squadron has either been shredded by enemy ships or the ship they are supposed to support has been sunk. People say "it's about the flavour" ... I say Seriously, they're only there to fill the time between waiting for the torp and carpet bomber squadrons to restock. I'm really, really hesitant to consider buying Indomitable (a shame as I'm such a big RN carrier fan). She's only going to carry fighters: Sea Hornets. The Sea Hornets were among the fastest piston engined aircraft ever built. They were also ultra nimble, and ultra-long ranged. I shudder to think what Wargaming will do to them.

Do the lower-tier British carriers feature the venerable Swordfish in their air wings?

So. I was just messing around and I found the list of the ships that the British that took part in the Falkland war and I noticed something, most ships were equipped for air defense and for ASW. Since my knowledge of naval warfare post 1945 consist of watching Hunt for the Red October and other sub movies please could someone please answer me how was a surface combat between destroyers, frigates and other ships of the like supposed to be conducted by RN ships? Whit what weapons and whit what possible startegy? PS: Yes, I know that submarines would had sunk anything that was too close (Like the Belgrano) but still, there had too be some doctrine to engage other ships whit their own.

Today I am going to showcase my experience in the Tier 8 Royal Navy Destroyer, the Lightning. Overall a decent ship, but my experience in it was "something different" compaired to other ships I have played.

I love my gunboat DDs. I'm an average at best cruiser player, and only good in some BBs, but my happy place is filled with names like Clemson, Farragut, Z-52, Akizuki/Haragumo, Vampire, Fletcher, etc. I enjoy hunting DDs, controlling caps, spotting and vision control, and such, and I find it's my best way to contribute to wins. I like playing fast and aggressive but still having to be thoughtful about movement and positioning. I'm an average player overall, but in a gunboat DD I can carry games that I am not capable of carrying in other ships. So when it became evident that the RN line would be optimized for the fleet DD role, I was excited. So far....the results are mixed, but I am optimistic for the rest of the line. I won't unlock Lightning until Wednesday as I've completed all the container missions and didn't unlock her, but I've gotten some time with Acasta, Icarus, and Jervis. (Valkyrie looks like it will play similarly to Vampire with a bit more torp flexibility and emphasis, so I'll try her and Wakeful after launch as well.) Here's my impressions of Acasta, with Icarus and Jervis coming later tonight or tomorrow and the rest coming soon (I probably wont have much time to play next weekend so it will be a bit of time before I cover Lightning, Jutland, and Daring.) 'The Acasta Doing Business - Mid-Tier Meh "A lot like T-22, except even more boring and ineffectual" It was evident even before playing them that a lot of the British DDs would have reasonably high skill floors and would be 'better than sum of its parts' boats given the 'fleet DD' niche. Acasta is clearly a step in that evolutionary line, but in her case, sh's likely a 'grindwall' boat that most players will be glad to get out of. Even as someone with realistic expectations and who enjoys that playstyle, I didn't enjoy her. Full disclosure: I played 2 games in her and then sidelined her after unlocking Icarus mission. So maybe others make her work better after some more time, but I have played enough Gallant and enough other gunboat DDs to know Acasta wasn't for me. She's just aggressively meh. She doesn't excel in anything, but neither does T-61 and that's one of my favorite boats; she's just not good enough at enough things to make her fun. Her guns are meh, with a slow traverse and low dpm output making her vulnerable to USN DDs, and aside from the flexibility of her singlefire torps, her torps aren't anything to write home about. You can't launch from stealth except in ambush or at an approaching target. When the cards fall right, you can still devstrike anything easily with 8 torps on the same vector, or easily design your own spreads to improve odds of getting at least one hit. I have used this skill to great effect with my Gallant, but with 6km torps (and 6km stealth even at full-stealth build) I struggled to do so with Acasta. Good players will get some fantastic results out of these torps on occasion when they use single-fire perfectly, but it's going to be rare-ish and you're going to have to work harder to get good torp results than other DDs. Her guns are also a weakness. Like USN DDs, RN DDs have high shell arcs that necessitate engagements at closer ranges than Russian or (to a lesser extent) German DDs. But USN DDs just spank this boat 1v1 in a gunfight. She isn't even competitive with Clemson for cap control, much less Nicholas or Farragut. Her nimbleness helps her avoid torps but you wont dodge much gunfire at that range, and her RN smoke is even shorter because tier 5. Plus, the hydro later tiers get isnt present here. I've played a lot of Farragut and Clemson and know every trick in the book to use torps when you can't *quite* stealthtorp in most conditions, but the singlefire capability doesnt make up for the fairly weak torpedoes here, and her guns just aren't good enough to deal damage when you can't pull off ambushes, unlike the USN boats. This is a boat in which even experienced gunboaters will struggle to do damage on a consistent basis. She's nimble and accelerates quickly, she can use singlefire torps to torp entire smokescreens to flush or kill red DDs or to devstrike a BB from ambush, and she can spot and help kill DDs, but she doesn't beat ANYTHING 1v1 in a stand-up fight except a badly played IJN torpboat, and even then she doesn't have hydro for the extra cushion so her nimbleness is key to not eating torps. I think very good players can make her work very well, and I wouldn't be surprised to see her do well in the t5 ranked season in the hands of a good player. But she's going to uptier even more poorly than most tier 5 boats. She'll never be a popular boat; for one, the most OP dd for its tier is Kamikaze at tier 5, and although tier 5 is a fairly weak tier for gunboat DDs anyway, Acasta is just not equipped to excel in randoms with her toolkit. PROS: *Single-fire torps. Great for island ambushes of ships coming around a corner, strait/gap control, or torping smoke clouds when you're pretty sure a red DD is in there due to flexibility of torp spread design (can drop them all in a row or spread them out as you see fit. *Good acceleration and handling: RN DDs don't get speed boost, but they accelerate quick and hold speed in a turn. These aren't huge advantages, but they help you knife-fight other DDs and still avoid torps, and help get you out of trouble. *Decent stealth: You'll outspot Clemson and Farragut (Nicholas noses you out), outspot Gaede and Maass, and all Russian DDs. You get outspotted by IJN DDs but not by too much. And your smoke is great for breaking contact and vision control even though it sucks for offensive use. CONS: *Meh guns: the improved AP ricochet angles RN ships get doesn't seem to help much (although small sample size as I didn't play too much of her) and the low effective range (due to firing arcs), meh traverse, meh reload speed, and meh DPM mean you get your [edited]kicked by any other gunboat 1v1 assuming equally skilled players. *Situational torps: I'm used to not being able to stealthtorp; as I said, I play Clemson and Farragut often. But these torps are slowish, meh damage, and your torp range is identical to your concealment. Use them to torp smoke clouds, but don't count on racking up BB kills when they're not dumb enough to come around the corner of an island predictably enough for you to launch your torps in a line right at him. *No speed boost + low hp = low survivability: She's nimble, and her quick-reload smoke can help break contact, but if you overextend you're not going to find it easy to get back out. Her stealth is ok but she can still be outspotted by several common DDs at that tier, and she can't just boost out of trouble, so she can find herself getting focused down and her smoke is really the only thing that can buy time to bail. And once she is getting focused, she doesn't have the HP pool to last long. You've got to play smart; lone wolf deep-penetration tactics are a death wish in Acasta. *Tier 5 matchmaking: I personally enjoy the challenge of being bottom tier in most boats. However, aside from her stealth advantage over many tier 6 and 7 DDs, this is a boat that gets murdered at bottom tier. I think she'll surprise people in tier 5 ranked, but this boat is going to be terribad in randoms because she'll be bottom tier 40-50% of the time and she just doesnt have the toolkit to be effective at all. This is literally the worst t5 DD to be in a tier 7 match with. When you're uptiered, you'll jhave to work hard and play out of your mind doing all the little things to get your xp and contribute meaningfully, because you can't effectively engage anything but isolated and wounded targets and you will get pushed off caps easily. TL;DR: she fits perfectly in the niche Wargaming wanted RN DDs to fill, but in this tier, that niche just doesn't work. She's right up there with T-22 as an incredibly boring boat, and even when you find ways to win and contribute, you won't feel like you've done all that much even though you worked hard all game to do what little you did. But don't worry, Icarus is an improvement and Jervis is a strong boat, so just keep grinding. It'll be over soon. (My other reviews - British BBs: Conqueror/Lion Monarch KGV Queen Elizabeth French BBs: Overall Line Review German DDs: Flottentorpedoboot My Waifu)

Just wanting to share a video I think many will find intresting. It's about how the Royal Navy used one of the relics of the R class battleships during the Battle of Britain. Hope you enjoy.

I am confused as to the HE penetration on the two high tier DDs, Daring and Jutland. If I recall correctly both Notser and Flamu have stated that without IFHE thier guns are incapable of penning other top tier destroyers or the superstructure of larger ships. My question is why? The 4.5 inch guns are in metric 114 mm. With the 1/6 caliber ruler for HE pen, 114/6=19mm of HE pen... which is the same as the plating of all the DD's in their tier and the superstructure of any BB or CA. More than this, with IFHE the guns get a extra 25 percent, so 19/4= 4.75, and added to 19 is 23.75. That shouldn't be enough to cross any armor thresholds, and should make IFHE worthless for these ships as opposed to compulsatory. The only 2 reasons I can think of that this would not be the case are that A) I actually do not understand how HE pen works, or B) Wg is using the technically more accurate caliber of 4.45 inches for the shell, making 113mm so it is barely not enough. However, they advertise it as being 114mm in the dev blog. So, thoughts?

While I am a bigger fan of Wikipedia than almost anyone I am NOT a fan boy of the site, and if I see something whitout citations I immediately raise an eyebrow. In this case the following bold claim made by wiki is that the destroyer HMS Jervis went around WW 2 whitout loosing a single crew member. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Jervis#1940_(Mediterranean)) So is it true, false, 50/50 or something else?

Just had to share this.

Hello everyone, This is my first post. :) I would like to suggest this ship as a new premium and like to discuss what would it be like if it was actually added to the game. HMS Dido The reason why I chose this ship is because I would like to entertain the thought of having a RN Atlanta. Having similar armament, it would have a reload time around 5 seconds and just like the Atlanta, have unlimited charges of the DFAA consumable because of its AA build. Some difference would be the shell type. Being a RN cruiser, it can only fire AP shells with the special RN ballistics while Atlanta could fire both types. While the Atlanta has HE and Radar, Dido trades these off for heal and smoke, making it different in terms of handling from Atlanta and Flint. However, because of its armament, it would have similar range like the Atlanta requiring the player to adapt to a similar game play of Atlanta. So what specs, consumables, or other stuff should the ship have while keeping it relatively balanced?