What is this #2

[sherlock71]

And what are the towers on German ships with the bulbous tops?

 

 

[Unabletony]

Those are fire directors for the secondaries. Each nation battleship had different style directors for both primary and secondary guns.

[sherlock71]

Got it!  Thanks!

[Ghostdog1355]

Those are fire directors for the secondaries. Each nation battleship had different style directors for both primary and secondary guns.

 

Great answer. Back in the "old days" it would be called the crows nest.

 

[Sabot_100]

The little pegs sticking out to the sides had the lenses for optically determining the range to a target. The wider they were apart, the more accurate they could be in determining the range. Real target ships didn't have little numbers hovering over them telling you it is 16.2 km away. Gun director crew had to find the target, focus on it, do some math and compute the range, estimate the course and speed, do more math to determine where the guns had to point to have your shells intercept the target. A pretty much impossible task if both the target and the firing ship are constantly turning. Fortunately WOWS makes (relatively) easy.

 

As a side note, thats one reason slow turret rotation (looking at you IJN DDs) wasn't a deal breaker in real life. If you actually wanted to hit a target at long range, you drove straight, waited until the ship rolled level, and fired. Checked your fall of shot and made corrections and repeated the process.

[req_]

As a side note, thats one reason slow turret rotation (looking at you IJN DDs) wasn't a deal breaker in real life.

 

The main reason being that those turrets can track surface targets perfectly fine when everything isn't moving 500% faster than they do IRL.