Testing ADLA HMS Nelson

[Carl]

This is a bit different to the usual ADLA. We have the ship and now i want to take a look at the ship and break her down ADLA style.

 

DISPLACEMENT - 41250 tons - 59,400HP 

 

This isn't a great HP pool, but it is better than Colorado which is about the only positive here.

 

ARMOUR - 

 

Main belt: 356-330

Citadel Bulkheads: 305-32

Barbettes: 356, 

Turrets: 406 (face) - 279-229 (sides) - 129 (rear) - 184 (roof), 

Main deck: 155 over magazines, 95 over machinery

Ends deck: 127 aft, none fore

 

To quickly clarify the bulkheads they are 305 fore except deep underwater where they 152, but thats so deep even yamato can't touch it. The stern is 279 above the water, and 32mm from the waterline down, but that 32mm section is protected by 127mm aft steering compartment armour. Both a waterline level deck and an internal turtleback. The shaping means getting to that 32mm unless nelson is showing enough side to make the belt not an autobounce is impossible.

 

The biggest issue is that the citadel is highly above water, very much in line with Colorado. Overall the average belt thickness is higher and the sloping on it improves that further, but the bow wall is considerably thinner. Overall it's probably about as tough, but there's no way vs Gneisenau, Colorado, or Nagato to angle such that they can't cit you all the way to their max firing ranges. They just have too much pen. Hood needs to get within about  10km, and Scharn can be bow tanked. But overall, don't rely on it to save you. It won't.

 

MAIN ARMAMENT - 3x3 406mm MkI

 

These shells have the same 0.015 detonator delay as Hoods shells. Stats are:

 

AP: 12,000 alpha

HE: 6900 alpha, 46% fire chance

 

The first thing i have to get out of the way is that irrespective of any penetration factors you won't see a lot of cits in this ship. Of the T6+ ships only Colorado, NC, and Iowa don't have internal citadels above the waterline. And the germans and a couple of others are internal below it too. Outside of the most ideal circumstances, the shells will detonate before reaching the citadel. At the same time as Hood drivers have found, the detonator timer is still too long to prevent overpens on cruisers in most cases.

 

To add insult to injury the pen curve of these 16" guns is the same as Hoods. That means every BB she faces at her own tier can angle such that even if you could reliably reach the cit with the fuze delay, she couldn't pen the armour at ranges of 15km or more, and some like colorado can do this to slightly over 5km. And all the enemy BB's can produce such a hard to pen belt down to 5km whilst mostly protecting their bows. And as Hood drivers have found, whilst aiming for things like upper belts can help, dispersion will still send a significant number of shells overpenning through the superstructure or bouncing off the belt and decking.

 

Ok so her AP is 7 kind of awful. Whats the good news?

 

Her HE is amazing, given it does 57.5% the damage of the AP and has an amazing fire chance. I'm virtually certain you'll average more damage slinging HE in this thing than AP vs BB's, and maybe vs cruisers two given that detonator delay will mean far fewer lolpen cits, (not strictly a bad thing for the game as a whole but still a hefty AP nerf compared to her contemporaries).

 

She also has amazing turret arcs, she can hold her belt at autobounce whilst getting all 9 guns on target. As noted she isn't cit immune in this scenario, even at extreme range. But it's still a damm nice piece of firepower.

 

Overall what i would say is that this ship is going to have about as much effective firepower as the other T8's, but it will be in a nearly pure HE spam fashion which is going to remove dev strike and big salvos from her arsenal. Vs cruisers this is probably a good thing for the game. Compared to her tier mates it's somthing of a disadvantage. But i still feel she'll even out vs them. She's no better or worse. She's just a HE spamm BB.

 

SECONDARY ARMAMENT - 6x2 152mm, 6x1 120mm

 

​To not put too fine a point on things. These are bad. The base rnage of 5km is nice but the RoF and AP only setup of the 152's is terribble thand the 102's have such bad arcs and are so few barrels with such a low total RoF as a result that the secondaries aren't great.

 

AAA - 6x1 120mm (36DPS @ 4.5km), 6x8 40mm pom-pom (119DPS @ 2.5km), 35x1 20mm Oerlikon (126DPS @ 2.0km) 

 

I'm not going to pussyfoot around. Nelsons AAA in real world terms is total utter unremitting shite.

 

Most of her DPS is so short ranged it barely gets to fire at TB's before they drop and this means out of the 42 BB's i've worked up AA stats she's in 33rd place after mutsu and very barely ahead of Kaiser. In fact of the T5 BB's only New York has worse AAA. And none of the other T5+ BB's are worse than her. Hell even without DF all of the T6 cruisers have better AAA. Their are even DD's she will face with better AAA. the situation does improve slightly with a full AAA build, (she's still far and away the worst T7 though), and vs DB's she's actually passable but not great. The problem is TB's are the main threat and the AAA is still so bad in a full AAA build it's utility is questionable at best. 

 

Simply put your a floating target waiting helplessly to die in a Nelson vs a CV. Don't expect to do well in any match with an intelligent CV in it unless you have multiple T6+ cruisers escorting you.

 

SPEED - 24 Knots, 19.4 second rudder shift, 750m turning circle

 

Speed and handling wise she sits between colorado and Nagato. To be blunt she's still slow and is going to suffer most of the same issues Colorado does, especially given her anemic maximum rnage. But she's at least a little better than colorado.

 

 

CONCEALMENT - 15.3km sea, 12.36km air

 

Honestly this is better than i expected and is actually pretty good, especially if coupled with a concealment build. But honestly it's not a huge plus, she's just not built for brawling and trying to take advantage of this would be a huge mistake. Which only emphasizes her AP issues.

 

CONCLUSION -

 

Pros -

Excellent HE

Excellent Gun Angles

Good Concealment

 

Cons - 

Slow

Terrible Citadel Shape and Size

Poor AP pen

Short AP Fuses

Horrific AAA

 

In the words of the mighty mouse. Mehbote.

 

At the end of the day she's got a few edges over colorado in basic hull stats in terms of speed and HP, and some negatives in terms of armour and especially AA, and main guns that go back and forth all over the place but probably even out to on par with the other line ships overall. The result is a ship that i don't think is going to be outperforming Colorado any time soon. But i don't think she's going to be underperforming her anytime soon either. Unfortunately Colorado is the worst performing of the T7 BB's and is verging on underpowered. So overall i don't expect great things of nelson.

 

Turning this into an actual Gudbote is going to take work. A lot of it. That AAA needs to be sorted for one. But the real work needs to focus on making those guns AP worth it by bringing the pen up to reasonable levels and ditching that utterly unnecessary nerf that is the shell fuse timer. Give her normal fusing. Give her usable by tier AP, (Gneisenau the next lowest line ship has 30% moe pen at 15km or >100mm more, we're talking roughly 2950 krupp to do that from her current 2266). As far as AAA, much as my inner brit prefers to stick to british weapons to do it for thematic purposes. Go with a partial proposed US refit that was never carried out IRL for time reasons and replace the 152mm secondaries with US 5"/38cal twin mounts. That would give her a very nice long range aura backed up by the weak but still serviceable with this buff 120mm aura.

[dseehafer]

If you're going to buff her AA do it along historical lines and give her more 20mm and the 4x4 40mm Bofors she had in 1945. She had like 60 some 20mm AA guns at one point. 

 

Another viable buff can be found in her health, in-game she weighs 41,250t but by 1945 she weighed 44,054t.

[Cruxdei]

bow on ishizuchi,now that's something.

[m373x]

ADLA

I have no idea what ADLA means and google is not providing me with a suitable answer. Care to elaborate?

[Lert]

In which we post grand sweeping on early draft in-testing content that's far, far from release.

 

I have no ide what ADLA means and google is not providing me with a suitable answer. Care to elaborate?

 

'A detailed look at', originally used for looking at ships that weren't in the game and discussing how they might fit, now apprently an excuse to gripe about perceived imbalanced about in-testing content.

[dseehafer]

In which we post grand sweeping on early draft in-testing content that's far, far from release.

 

 

'A detailed look at', originally used for looking at ships that we're in the game and discussing how they might fit, now apprently an excuse to gripe about perceived imbalanced about in-testing content.

 

^

[Carl]

If you're going to buff her AA do it along historical lines and give her more 20mm and the 4x4 40mm Bofors she had in 1945. She had like 60 some 20mm AA guns at one point. 

 

Another viable buff can be found in her health, in-game she weighs 41,250t but by 1945 she weighed 44,054t.

 

You could add all of that, at it would leapfrog her just a handful of places. 20mm are basically irrelevant to AAA in reality, thats what my spreadsheet work on AAA has shown. If your relying on them for anything but a fireworks show then your AAA might as well not exist for all the good it will do. Pom-Poms are only barely long ranged enough to not fall into that category. The quad bofors would be a huge help in that they'd double the effectiveness of her AAA roughly. But she's so far behind that even twice the effectiveness doesn't put her on par with Nagato who has roughly 3 tiems the AAA effectivness. Thats how far out of line Nelsons AAA is ATM.

 

In which we post grand sweeping on early draft in-testing content that's far, far from release.

 

 

'A detailed look at', originally used for looking at ships that we're in the game and discussing how they might fit, now apprently an excuse to gripe about perceived imbalanced about in-testing content.

 

Woah, hold up there. I've seen a  lot of discussion about the new brit BB's but it's been very higgledy piggledy. What i'm trying to do is produced some focused discussion on the basis of the info we have on individual ships. I wasn't sure what to call it or how to structure it, but i found the ADLA format in the past quite good and i was comfortable with the format. And someone has to get the ball rolling by stating their thoughts.

 

I should also be clear, (though i'm more than a little annoyed that i have to you know come out and state this), i am expecting changes, and i'm sure you and the other super testers with a much more accurate appreciation are giving good feedback. But i'm not, nor would wish to be a supertester so i can only discuss things in the light of the info i DO have access to. And what i'm seeing now doesn't impress me for a whole bunch of reasons. I could be completely off base and honestly i really dislike that if you feel i'm way off base you aren't allowed to comment on it. That sucks honestly much as i understand and even agree with the reasons why it's that way. But at the end of the day i do want actual discussion. If someone's got some thoughts of their own to lay out as actual counterpoints on this and who can do so i'd love to hear them, i may be a stubborn old geezer, (well not that old but still :p), but i honestly enjoy stretching the mental muscles.

[TheDreadnought]

Nelson ought to suck for stealing KGV's slot.

[Carl]

Stuntman's allready done his video's and where using the same source so i assume so.

[m373x]

'A detailed look at', originally used for looking at ships that weren't in the game and discussing how they might fit, now apprently an excuse to gripe about perceived imbalanced about in-testing content.

 

Good lord, thank you so much. This one has been bugging me for a while, have my uppervote.

[Sakuzhi]

 Her HE is amazing, given it does 57.5% the damage of the AP and has an amazing fire chance. I'm virtually certain you'll average more damage slinging HE in this thing than AP vs BB's, and maybe vs cruisers two given that detonator delay will mean far fewer lolpen cits, (not strictly a bad thing for the game as a whole but still a hefty AP nerf compared to her contemporaries).

 

There's no way that isn't getting nerfed down before Release.

[renegadestatuz]

 

There's no way that isn't getting nerfed down before Release.

The tier 10 has a 63% fire chance for her HE shells right now lol.

[Sakuzhi]

The tier 10 has a 63% fire chance for her HE shells right now lol.

 

Doesn't change my answer that there's no reason to have that idiotically high of Rate Chance.

 

It's like WG is just giving the British the most idiotically broken 'trait's' that abuse bad game design.

 

I.E. Smoke, I.E. Fire (Now, before you ask the reason why I say this is because you can be lit on fire by a non-damaging hit (like you could hit a Iowa's Belt with a 5" HE round and light it on fire)

[Dr_Venture]

Oh no...the ap is going to suck....

 

*aims at BB superstructer...citadel's bismarck*

 

Problem solved!

[Carl]

 

Doesn't change my answer that there's no reason to have that idiotically high of Rate Chance.

 

It's like WG is just giving the British the most idiotically broken 'trait's' that abuse bad game design.

 

I.E. Smoke, I.E. Fire (Now, before you ask the reason why I say this is because you can be lit on fire by a non-damaging hit (like you could hit a Iowa's Belt with a 5" HE round and light it on fire)

 

Thing is fire chance is based on shell bursting charge, not some random made up number and british shells traditionally have massive bursting charges. it's a good job really AP alpha isn't based on bursting charge or the british 15" would have better alpha than most 16", and the 16" would be pressing hard on the yamato's 18".

[mofton]

I think she'll be fine.

 

I don't particularly like the way it looks like she's planned to be balanced, very weak against air attack but otherwise pretty strong on the surface front - we're talking 3kt faster than Colorado and 1kt slower than Nagato (which I never see complained about on the speed front), a decent chunk of HP, equivalent or better armor to Colorado and although the Brit 16in may lack AP punch in some ways, there are 9 of them and the arrangement should be highly advantageous, though that's something testing will demonstrate or not.

 

All in all there are some parallels with a certain T4 Russian battleship with forward-oriented ASuW firepower but poor AAA.

 

When you get a ship that needs carriers to be balanced it's not much fun for someone, if the game is carrier-free or the carriers are AS, incompetent, blind or otherwise useless then AA's irrelevant. If a carrier means certain and inevitable death? That's not much fun to be on the receiving end of, especially as word will get out that Nelson's a soft-touch on AA and worth going for. Handling isn't that great in this incarnation and I don't know on her TDS either.

 

I don't think high HE/fire chance damage is greatly advantageous, there's a reason even the best HE firing BB in-game currently mostly fire AP, fires are irregular, counterable with good use of the DCP and 100% repairable. Even if 57% of the AP damage is relatively good, HE is far less damaging. Firing at a same-tier ship, 46% turns into 32% which is great but number of hits per volley is important to start fires, 3 hits would give you about an 8/9 chance of a fire. There's also the issue of hitting ships already on fire (no more fires) damage saturation etc. The reason cruisers can burn the world is partially thanks to their reload giving them plenty of chances in the 76s or so between damage control cooldowns. A Nelson at 2 RPM only gets a couple of tries before the DCP will be back up, and every 30s without a fire means more likelihood it'll be a short fire if any is set.

 

I could be completely wrong, but I don't think a HE-spam BB will be a sensible in-game choice. Nice of WG to try it on the RN though...

 

Nelson's sigma and dispersion which you don't mention will be critical to either HE or AP use.

[Carl]

I think she'll be fine.

 

I don't particularly like the way it looks like she's planned to be balanced, very weak against air attack but otherwise pretty strong on the surface front - we're talking 3kt faster than Colorado and 1kt slower than Nagato (which I never see complained about on the speed front), a decent chunk of HP, equivalent or better armor to Colorado and although the Brit 16in may lack AP punch in some ways, there are 9 of them and the arrangement should be highly advantageous, though that's something testing will demonstrate or not.

 

All in all there are some parallels with a certain T4 Russian battleship with forward-oriented ASuW firepower but poor AAA.

 

When you get a ship that needs carriers to be balanced it's not much fun for someone, if the game is carrier-free or the carriers are AS, incompetent, blind or otherwise useless then AA's irrelevant. If a carrier means certain and inevitable death? That's not much fun to be on the receiving end of, especially as word will get out that Nelson's a soft-touch on AA and worth going for. Handling isn't that great in this incarnation and I don't know on her TDS either.

 

I don't think high HE/fire chance damage is greatly advantageous, there's a reason even the best HE firing BB in-game currently mostly fire AP, fires are irregular, counterable with good use of the DCP and 100% repairable. Even if 57% of the AP damage is relatively good, HE is far less damaging. Firing at a same-tier ship, 46% turns into 32% which is great but number of hits per volley is important to start fires, 3 hits would give you about an 8/9 chance of a fire. There's also the issue of hitting ships already on fire (no more fires) damage saturation etc. The reason cruisers can burn the world is partially thanks to their reload giving them plenty of chances in the 76s or so between damage control cooldowns. A Nelson at 2 RPM only gets a couple of tries before the DCP will be back up, and every 30s without a fire means more likelihood it'll be a short fire if any is set.

 

I could be completely wrong, but I don't think a HE-spam BB will be a sensible in-game choice. Nice of WG to try it on the RN though...

 

Nelson's sigma and dispersion which you don't mention will be critical to either HE or AP use.

 

I forgot the dispersion, ( Sigma's par for tier). I need to nip over to SEA group to get that though, converting GM3D's numbers to in game is still WIP.

 

I don;t think she's going to overpower the other T7's though. You're not wrong on the Colorado point and maybe i overstated the mehness a bit there, but Colorado is basically a worse Nagato in everything but AAA. Nagato has the better health, the better guns, and arguably equivalent armour with better secondaries and better speed. I see Nelson maybe pulling a bit ahead of Colorado, but she's never going to match Nagato IMO.

 

And one fire of 30 seconds duration is worth 2 AP or 3 he normal pens. given she's going to see shatter rates similar to hood that strongly suggests to me fies can make up the difference.

 

One aside before i head out the house. Most of the T7's have a number of significant edge's over the T6's. Nelson is in a funny spot where she is very all over the place compared to same tier, but all but hr AAA is at least on par with T6 and T5, (the pens on the low side, mutsu levels, but still within the T6 range), but she still has those awesome gun angles. So i expect her to be a really nasty stomper of lower tiers, but for much the same reasons struggle to fight uptier.

 

 

p.s her dispersion is the same as hoods at 242m according to SEA.

[GrandAdmiral_2016]

The 16-inch guns on this ship were high velocity flat trajectory weapons. Give it the slight AP buff and add 1km range and she will be fine at Tier 7, not Tier 8. The KGV 14-inch guns had better penetration and equivalent HE power to Nelson's 16-inchers. Despite what may seem logical in terms of main gun caliber progression by tier, the RN BB line is going to have to be an exception to it. KGV and Bismarck are contemporary fast BBs with modern guns and both are Tier 8s IMHO.. Nelson and Rodney are a 1922 design with a 23-knot practical maximum speed (nerfed from 45,000 ton postwar designs never built 27-knot designs due to treaty restrictions). That puts them on a par with Colorado and Nagato at Tier 7 with 16-inchers. Gneisenau is a modified paper ship at Tier 7, done with 3 15-inch turrets so that Scharnhorst could be the premium alternate, Gneisenau's alter ego in the RN are Repulse and Renown, which fit below Hood as BCs at Tier 7 if they ever get in the game. The logic is there, but will WoWs follow it? The Shadow Knows....

[SinqueScheiDeMona]

In Reddit, and reposted in the KGV thread, there is a wind tunnel model of a proposed refit of Nelson. So if WG wanted a B hull with better AA there is a possible historical reference. I don't share the fear that the ship is hopeless. The AA being kind of bad fits. A sparviero torpedo bomber was able to get close enough to torped Nelson on the bow in a time where the fleet AA had become strong enough that they usually dropped from much further out. 

[Sakuzhi]

 I don't think high HE/fire chance damage is greatly advantageous, there's a reason even the best HE firing BB in-game currently mostly fire AP, fires are irregular, counterable with good use of the DCP and 100% repairable. Even if 57% of the AP damage is relatively good, HE is far less damaging.

 

Keep in mind BB HE is usually around 1/3rd of the AP round(s) Damage.

 

So even when the HE does it's 1/3rd thing, it's around the same as the 1/10th of the AP round.

 

The Yamato actually has such a difference that the AP round does more damage regardless of target without Fire(s).

 

My issue is the Fire chance needs to be more 40% and less 45%+ because it's a stupid gimmick that promotes idiotic BB play, I get peppered by HE rounds enough when I broadside when I shouldn't be.

[Dr_Venture]

Give it the proposed refit the admiralty wanted in the United States....then it becomes an AA monster. 

[Captain_Doll]

Thanks for the post Carl.

 

 

[Battlecruiser_Siegfried]

'A detailed look at', originally used for looking at ships that weren't in the game and discussing how they might fit, now apprently an excuse to gripe about perceived imbalanced about in-testing content.

 

So in other words, a ship he's never sailed? Okkkaaaayyyy.

[Eisennagel]

 

Nelson's and KGV's AP have sub 2300 Krupp values.  Which means both will suck.

 

As for the Nelson's belt,

 

356mm extends from the first turret all the way to the third turret.

 

From the third turret, all the way past the funnel, you get 330mm.

 

While the citadel is high, the belts show quite a bit of inclination, which means their effective thickness will be higher than their static numbers.

 

On the KGV, only the belt sections under the turrets, are 381mm.  The area between the B turret and the C turret, covering the machinery, is 356mm.  Unlike the Nelson however, the belt doesn't seem to be inclined.  But the citadel is quite low on the water.

 

The KGV's turret faces are only 330mm.  Which means if an enemy battleship is shooting at the turrets, good chance they will get knocked out, especially if the ships are bow on.

 

The Nelson's turrets have 406mm faces, so that's going to be quite tougher to knock out the turrets if the ship is bow on, though it remains possible with the right ship shooting at it.  It also should be noted that the Nelson only requires to be off angle by 20 degrees from its forward axis to lay all nine guns.

 

So its quite clear, the Nelson is going to be the upper mid tier king of bow on.

 

As for Sigma, the Nelson is 2.0, the KGV is 1.8.  The Nelson also has better than average HE damage, and higher fire chance, like 46%, than the KGV or any other battleship.  Its going to make sense to use HE on the Nelson, especially with bow to bow fighting.  

 

 

[Sakuzhi]

 

So its quite clear, the Nelson is going to be the upper mid tier king of bow on.

 

As for Sigma, the Nelson is 2.0, the KGV is 1.8.  The Nelson also has better than average HE damage, and higher fire chance, like 46%, than the KGV or any other battleship.  Its going to make sense to use HE on the Nelson, especially with bow to bow fighting.  

 Like I said, the HE Fire rate needs a nurf. Because having anything over 40% is just stupid, and the British don't need another abusive mechanic like their Cruisers have.

 

Keep in mind at Tier 7, Bow on They aren't immune to getting penetrated through the bow by 16" AP rounds.