HMS Tiger

[Carl]

So i kinda got into a bit of trouble by duplicating someone's ADLA last time, sorry all. Hopefully no one else gets one on this off before i do .

 

As an aside if anyone wants to do their own version in future to offer another opinion, feel free. Permission given.

 

The Tiger class had a bit of a troubled History with the ships laid down in the last years of WW2, the design revised several times, (i believe both the neptune and the Minotaur design where eventual final designs of these half completed ships at various points), then the construction was stopped on cost grounds and a great deal of debating about what to do went on until the final design they where completed to was drawn up and the ships were actually built.

 

Honestly narrating the history of a ship isn't my strong point. Fortunately the first few posters in the thread gave some exra info, so here you go courtesy of mr3awsome and Tom_tamale25:

 

As ordered, there were 6 ships of the same design. 

Superb was finished to the original design. 

The ship that ended up being called Bellerophon (there were a lot of name changes) was never really started, and ended up being changed over to a Minotaur class cruiser later. 

Hawke, Defence, Blake & Tiger were unfinished at the end of the war.

The armament changed to:

 

3 x 3 BL 6"/45 Mk XXIII on Mount Mk XIV (DPish)

5 x 2 QF 4"/45 Mk XVI on Mount RP52 Mk XIX

4 x 2 40mm Bofors STAAG Mk II. 

20mm Oerlikons Mk V? I forget. 

2 x 3 21" TT. 

 

But Hawke ends up cancelled along with a substantial number of largely complete ships, mainly destroyers but also some carriers. 

 

Defence gets renamed Lion as the battleship is dead. 

After Korea new plans are made for them. 

Scheme I is what we all know, Scheme II had a uniform 3"/70 armament. 

The light AA battery was 40mm/70 twins, which were ultimately never fitted. 

Torpedoes might have been planned too, I'll have to check when I can. 

 

 

 

 

So onto statistics and how that transfers in game. I will note there's some question about certain things WG'ing could do but we don't know if they will or won't because they're so pervasive.

 

DISPLACEMENT - 11,700 tons - 31,700 HP

 

This is a nice figure, it's more than Leander or Perth, but less than Belfast and very slightly more than Fiji. The big question really is will Tiger keep or lose repair party. It really comes down to what tier they put her at. Due to her other stats if they don't want her to have repair party like the other premiums, it;s really going to limit her tier placement to T6 IMO. I'll discuss why in a bit more detail at the end.

 

AMOUR - 89mm belt 38-51mm ends, 51-38mm deck

 

The belt is 89mm think and is arranged just as on Fiji/Edinburgh/Neptune/Minotaur. The ends are as much as 51mm but thin the 38mm, Navypedia does not provide details but i imagine based on british practise elsewhere that the thin section might be below the aft armour deck over the steering. The citadel roof is 51mm with 38mm over the steering, which should i belive be aft of the citadel.

 

Overall not great, better than leander but weaker than everything else after it. That said it is borderline because some HE can pen it but can't pen a post Leander belt, (at least without IFHE).

 

MAIN ARMAMENT - 2x2 152mm Mk XXVI Dual Purpose

 

No your eyes aren't deceiving you, these are the same twin mounts found on Minotour, albeit only 2 mounts. One fore, one aft. On the T10 these have an 18.75RPM RoF, but WG'ing could based or real world data justify anything from 15 to 20rpm quite easily. For reference the Leander/Perth pull 64rpm, and Belfast/Fiji pull 96rpm. Depending on the exact RoF, Tiger could pull 60-80rpm. This is adequate for a 6 placement. But would struggle severely at T7. However both Fiji and Belfast overperform ATM, OTHO i can't really see WG'ing wanting to release a worse premium that the line ship. The obvious option might be to make like Belfast and give her the T9/T10 module slots and options since it's a closely related design that shares much of the armament. This isn;t a done deal ofc, but it's a definite possibility and would allow with MBM3 a total RoF of 90RPM, still not quite Belfast/Fiji, but much more competitive, especially with the slightly higher shell damage.

 

Thats where the bad news comes, Minotaur shells means Minotaur arcs.  Which are worse than her tier mates, (they're literally same as cleveland afaik). OTOH if they give her the usual normal AP, but with HE treatment she might not see any boost on her HE. However she may also break the pattern and be pure AP. It's hard to say how WG;ing will react to Belfast's overall performance long term.

 

Range based on a comparison picture however is going to be good, seems to have a higher director than Belfast. But Bh with those arcs even belfast rnage will be hard to fully use.

 

NEW MAIN ARMAMENT INFO - Some new info has turned up in the video provided. I'm not going to rewrite the whole thing as having no other source for it i can't really be sure WG'ing would use it. However as shows in the clip below in firing trials it was apparently possibble to realise a RoF from these guns of 5 rounds in 7.46 seconds from first to last round, meaning 4 cycles of the loading system for a RoF of 32rpm, this would give Tiger a total RoF of 128rpm. This with appropriate heal would be sufficient to work at T8 IMO.

 

Cut down clip showing the 4 shot sequence, note that given only one gun was firing here it is in fact possibble that sme aspect of the shoot allowed a single gun RoF that could not be realised with both guns firing together.

 

 

SECONDARY ARMAMENT - 3x2 76mm

 

No your suspicious mind isn;t wrong. These are the same 76mm twin guns as on minotour. Now on Minotour they don't work vs surface targets. However there are several good reasons why WG'ing would have omitted this on Minotour that would be much less severe on Tiger. A). At 1.5-2 shells per second per barrel minotaur could create some serious server load on a ship that's probably allready higher load than they really like, Tigers fewer number of guns brings this down to much more manageable values. B). Even with the german BB 1/4 calibre pen rule, the 19mm HE pen would be very poor at T10. Again Tiger's much lower placement would make 1/4 sufficient rather than requiring an even more extreme value. C). That extreme RoF means even piddly damage and fire chance numbers would add up to a secondary battery two or more times as good as the next best on any ship of any class anywhere in the game. Again Tiger with fewer mounts and a max of 2 mounts on a single target wouldn't be anywhere near as severe, (still equal to a bismark most likely, but not totally OMG stooopid). Despite that i don't think WG'ing will do it. But it's at least sufficiently remotely possibble to be worth mentioning IMO.

 

AA ARMAMENT - 2x2152mm, 3x2 76mm

 

This adds upto:

 

47 DPS @ 6km

118 DPS @ 5km

 

Those are some impressive numbers. But how do they stack up. 

 

Without any AA build elements or DF this is holding par with belfast IMO. Both of them throw up more DPS than an Atlanta, the Belfast trades a bit of max range to do that, in comparison to atlanta whilst Tiger doesn't and has better total DPS than atlanta but worse than belfast. Without upgrades IMO the range difference isn't enough to give any clear winner here. If you thrown in a full AA build except form Manual AA Tiger just walks away from the rest. Belfast's shorter range band on it's biggest piece of DPS is much more important when you start throwing range upgrades on as the higher the average range, the more powerful those become due to their larger total effect on engagement time. Atlanta is still behind in total DPS and the Tiger still has a range advantage on a modest chunk of DPS. Throw in Manual AA and Atlanta pulls ahead in total DPS as a much larger piece of it's DPS is affected by Manual AA, (Totals are 289 for tiger vs 318 fo atlanta), but that same manual AA comes back and bites atlanta because the non-focused squads only receive 159dps from Atlanta whilst Tiger can throw 220 at them. Also Tiger has that modest (124dps), chunk that goes out a full 1.44km further than atlanta's. Dang.

 

DF allows where the Atlanta to effortlessly storm ahead, (flint and a few other ships in full AA builds can do the same). How far ahead? Full AA spec atlanta's including manual AA with DF running throw up a modest chunk more total DPS than the DP guns on the new RU T10 that Flamu was raving about the AA of. However there is the point that given her, (Tigers), history as a pure AAA gun cruiser, her all AAA capable armament and the inevitability of a DF RN CL someday, she's just about wearing a neon sign saying "I will have DF". That, thats scary as it takes that 8.6km DP DPS of 124 and raises it to over 375.Thats only beaten really by Pensacola without BFT plus signal flag stacked, and she can only do that inside of 5km. In fact i can tell you even without AFT, Manual AA, BFT, or Signal Flag, the 459DPS @ 4.2km of a Pensacola's combined 40mm and DP guns is enough to tear apart a T6 or below CV's aircraft. And Tiger could pull a vast majority of that at 8.6km. This thing would chew lower tier CV's up and spit them back out with DF running. And even T9 CV's will be hurting, bad, once they hit that 7.2km band. 

 

And of course if they do decide to give you the Minotaur modules, whilst it would really hurt you elsewhere to do it, you could add in AAM3 to give you even more DPS than the atlanta overall spreading better outside of focus targets and with equal DPS @8.6km as my prior Pensacola example had @ 4.2km. This thing would eat up, chew up, and then spit back out the aircraft of any CV it faced regardless of tier. You could pair with a T8, get dragged into a T10 match with two T10 CV's a side and still scare the pants off them.

 

SPEED AND MANEUVERABILITY - 31.5knts

 

At a couple of knots slower than Fiji and Leander it's not the fastest cruiser in the world. However the Length to Beam ratio is about the same as Fiji so turning should be similar. I think speed factors in to WG'ings calculations so it might turn a bit better. But overall other than the question of rudder shift i'd expect it to handle like Fiji.

 

NEW SPEED AND MANEUVERABILITY INFO - The video included above with the historical info includes a shot of Tigers knots gauge during trials showing an apparent speed of 34.5 knots. I have no other source for this info, and as with the main gun RoF there ae several factors that could be at play here, nor can i be certain wargming would use such flimsy evidence, but it is at least possibble WG'ing could justify a higher speed should they so wish.

 

CONCEALMENT -

 

Obviously concealment is tricky, but based on the lower masthead height in the comparison pics better than Belfast base concealment is possibble. If they give her access to Concealment module, then she could become really stealthy. But even without it she'd be very good.

 

OVERALL -

 

Normally i'd do pros and cons here. But in this case it's tougher than it should be because there's a lot of details WG''ing could fiddle with and that makes her pro's and cons very variable. Her only real set in stone aspects are good to excellent concealment, good to excellent maneuvering, good to excellent AAA, and Average speed. Of which only the AAA stands out as being notably different from the british standard. I will note up front a T6 placement would mean no gimmicks. But given what the AA would do to T5 and T6 CV's i really don't rate that as a probable tier, it is however possible at the outside. In terms of probable gimmicks and their effects i rate them as follow, (assuming a T7 placement):

 

DF - This is the most likely. It isn't going to make or break the ship, even in a meta with more CV's than now. But it's a strong flavourful contender for defining feature.

 

Minotaur Module Slots - A distinct possibility that would do a lot to offer various ways to paper over her deficiencies next to Fiji and Belfast. Worries about extreme AAA and concealment may make them just let her take MBM3 instead of MBM2 in her second slot however.

 

No Repair Party - This would be consistent with the other premiums but i can't quite see it myself unless they explicitly want her to be quite a bit worse than both Fiji and belfast which have numerous and considerable advantages over her without gimmicks even with her having repair party. Take that away and she's going to be really bad by comparison, even with other tweaks.

 

AP Only - This isn't so much a buff or nerf tweak TBH as an unknown attribute of the ship. Belfast says no, as does perth, but equally Belfast is considered a mite OP and i'm not sure they'd want to repeat that as IFHE is a major culprit there.

 

Secondaries - I don't consider this a strong possibility, but it would open up some interesting options for WG'ing if they chose to. But it's really unlikely IMO.

 

 

Overall my verdict is T7, but weather she'll be a poor T7, an average T7 or a good T7 is very dependent on what WG'ing does. The most i can really say is she will be better than atlanta regardless. Which is admittedly a pretty low bar to beat, but a not unimportant one IMO.

 

Images (which i forgot at first):

 

And Comparison with Belfast.

 

[mr3awsome]

As ordered, there were 6 ships of the same design. 

Superb was finished to the original design. 

The ship that ended up being called Bellerophon (there were a lot of name changes) was never really started, and ended up being changed over to a Minotaur class cruiser later. 

Hawke, Defence, Blake & Tiger were unfinished at the end of the war.

The armament changed to:

 3 x 3 BL 6"/45 Mk XXIII on Mount Mk XIV (DPish)

5 x 2 QF 4"/45 Mk XVI on Mount RP52 Mk XIX

4 x 2 40mm Bofors STAAG Mk II. 

20mm Oerlikons Mk V? I forget. 

2 x 3 21" TT. 

 

But Hawke ends up cancelled along with a substantial number of largely complete ships, mainly destroyers but also some carriers. 

 

Defence gets renamed Lion as the battleship is dead. 

After Korea new plans are made for them. 

Scheme I is what we all know, Scheme II had a uniform 3"/70 armament. 

The light AA battery was 40mm/70 twins, which were ultimately never fitted. 

Torpedoes might have been planned too, I'll have to check when I can. 

[crzyhawk]

I imagine the name Tiger will go to the WW1 battlecruiser.

[TheDreadnought]

Right?  Took me a bit to figure out this wasn't about her.

[Hot_tamale25]

I'd imagine it would be called Blake so as to reserve Lion and Tiger for the battlecruisers. As far as an AA ship goes, you're far more likely to see a Dido at tier 6. Blake would be interesting though, probably a tier 6 because unless Belfast is removed there would be no reason to buy Blake.

Since the forum is dumb and won't let me post pictures here's a YouTube video.

[Carl]

Sorry for the confusion, totally forgot about the ww1 BC. @mr3awsome: Thanks for the detailed history. I really suck at that stuff.

 

Oh hell forgot my pictures i found, Will edit though in btw. Damm, aaarggggh.

 

@Hot_tamale25: Nice video thnx for that too. I agree they could do her as T6, but that AAA would be utterly brutal at that tier even without DF.

 

Now to sort those pictures out. .

#5

 

#2

 

[mofton]

The belt is 89mm think and is arranged just as on Fiji/Edinburgh/Neptune/Minotaur. The ends are as much as 51mm but thin the 38mm, Navypedia does not provide details but i imagine based on british practise elsewhere that the thin section might be below the aft armour deck over the steering. The citadel roof is 51mm with 38mm over the steering, which should i belive be aft of the citadel.

 

 

 

Nice post, I've kind of wondered about these ships. The ROF is a good balancing factor compared to age, so they'd be interesting. Losing a turret would be bad.

 

My Grandfather served on Tiger (post-conversion) in the '70's so she'd be one of the most tangible links to me.

 

The Fiji also has an 89mm belt on paper, but in game gets the 25mm back for total 114mm. I think Tiger would likely be the same for whatever that's worth. Obviously it's very important that WG gets exact plans of RN ships so they can do things like this...

 

 

[Carl]

Just done some timing on the main gun shoots in that video. For the single barrel shots the delay between rounds was just 1.9 seconds. And theres a shot of her knots gauge showing her doing 34 knots. So uh, nav weps. Explanation please? Turns out these guns could do 31.5rpm...

 

You know if WG'ing wound her up that far and gave her the right heal, she might be workable at T8. It's the main battery firepower that really holds her back. As an aside the 76mm are spot on, but variable. Specifically the average comes out at or very close to 120rpm per gun, but the actual delay varies from as low as 0.4 to as high as about 0.6 seconds with neither barrel staying synced to the other. Definitely a weakness of the design, but very impressive given Oto Melera took a few decades more to come up with their own 120rpm 76mm mount.  suspect the lower rated Rof for the main guns may be a synchronization thing therefore.

[mr3awsome]

So uh, nav weps. Explanation please? Turns out these guns could do 31.5rpm...

20rpm is the design reload, and anything over that is likely to be a burst rather than prolonged firing. 

 

As an aside the 76mm are spot on, but variable. Specifically the average comes out at or very close to 120rpm per gun, but the actual delay varies from as low as 0.4 to as high as about 0.6 seconds with neither barrel staying synced to the other. Definitely a weakness of the design, but very impressive given Oto Melera took a few decades more to come up with their own 120rpm 76mm mount.  suspect the lower rated Rof for the main guns may be a synchronization thing therefore.

They were kept to a lower RoF to prolong their lifespan, both weapon systems suffered from breakdowns iirc. 

[Carl]

 

They were kept to a lower RoF to prolong their lifespan, both weapon systems suffered from breakdowns iirc. 

 

Actually according to nav weps reliability wasn't an issue for the 152's, getting enough people qualified enough to handle maintenance however was. And the 76mm worked fine when the designed unscored steel pins were used instead of the scored aluminium ones, (my inner engineer is screaming at this btw, scored aluminium pins vs unscored steel pins is like putting a part in thats designed to breakdown).

 

 

20rpm is the design reload, and anything over that is likely to be a burst rather than prolonged firing. 

 

Well yeah but usually with entirely mechanically driven guns the RoF doesn't vary too much. OFC the same should apply to the 76mm. OTOH it dosen;t really matter, WG'ing have used optimistic values to balance ships before so unless that was a 1 barrel only thing it's quite plausible if WG;ing have sufficient substantiation that it could be used as a balancing factor. Also unlike the 76mm that 152mm RoF was consistent across 4 successive cycles.