Developers blog update on Kii

[renegadestatuz]

Looks like she's getting buffed a little.

[m373x]

Just had Vanessaira driving one of these and I was very curious about it but before I could zoom in my sights to check her out our Shima launched them torpedoes at point blank...

[DemonGod3]

That's good, the gun stats before seemed meh to me.  With those buffs she should be good.

[Seraphil]

Fixing the guns is a step in the right direction.  Now remove the torpedoes.

[TornadoADV]

25 minutes ago, Seraphil said:

Fixing the guns is a step in the right direction.  Now remove the torpedoes.

Why? She needs to be different then the Amagi.

[Seraphil]

Just now, TornadoADV said:

Why? She needs to be different then the Amagi.

Kii is to Alabama as Amagi is to North Carolina, as a loose comparison.  She doesn't need torpedoes to be different.  The Japanese navy removed torpedoes from all of their battleships when modernizing them and this is a what-if modernized Kii so she should not have torpedoes.

 

They are already making Kii stronger than Amagi in regards to armor and a better AA suite, and they now buffed her guns as well.

[Doomlock]

Yay! I was hoping she'd get some gun love and she did! 

[FayFay731]

31 second reload? That's pretty lengthy.

[Hurlbut]

1 hour ago, Seraphil said:

The Japanese navy removed torpedoes from all of their battleships when modernizing them

 

Technically they did same thing all other navies around the world did when they could; removing submerged tubes.

14 minutes ago, FayFay731 said:

31 second reload? That's pretty lengthy.

You do know NC and Alabama are only 1 second faster for their 9 16" guns battery reload time?

[Cognitive_Dissonance]

2 hours ago, m373x said:

Just had Vanessaira driving one of these and I was very curious about it but before I could zoom in my sights to check her out our Shima launched them torpedoes at point blank...

I was in that battle, not that I was a good performer myself (far from it), but she seemed a bit anemic.

[Big_Spud]

Still has the ebin 1.7 sigma meme. No thank you.

 

Take those torpedoes off and give me 1.9 sigma, and I may consider it. The entire damn line focuses on mid-long range gunnery over anything else, don't stick this stupid gimmick on.

[YamatoA150]

Unnerf the armor and buff the sigma to Amagi's 1.8 and I'll pay 100 for the Ultimate.

 

The crappy TDS can stay in exchange for the torpedoes, and get fixed on a proper T9 version.

[Big_Spud]

16 minutes ago, _RC1138 said:

Yeah cause what this game needs is another IJN Lazer BB that's good at long range sniping. That's sure to improve the overall experience. Oh and have it be a premium so we can get more Derpitz players jumping into T8 with the 'perfect' BB for that tier, giving it amazing guns, its already trollish AA, and deepset Citadel/Great armor. No way that will be annoying to literally everyone that doesn't own/operate one.

I'd like to see the torps stay (and thus the Sigma), but with perhaps a Sims like alteration; super long range, stealth, but slow and medium to medium-to-low damage per torp. So say a 0.5, 0.4 km detection, 50 knots, 15-18 km range, and about 9000 dmg per and maybe a... 50-55 second reload? It'll be spammy as hell but given the firing angles, travel time, and lower damage it becomes less of a genuine annoyance and more of a potential nuisance and something to consider when spotting one at sea.

 

The problem here is that it's an IJN premium battleship, yet it plays to none of the lines strengths in favor of more stupid gimmicks. If you want to get full effectiveness out of this ship, you need a special captain to do so, which defeats the purpose of it being a captain trainer. Look at all of the other tier 8 premiums by comparison.

 

-Tirpitz: can use any KMS battleship and most cruiser captains and get 100% of the utility from those builds, plays identically to the ships in its tech tree

 

-Alabama: can use any USN battleship and most cruiser captains and get 100% of the utility from those builds, plays identically to the ships in its tech tree

 

-Atago: can use any IJN cruiser captain and get 100% of the utility from those builds (baring 155 Mogami), plays identically to the ships in its tech tree

 

-Mikhail Kutuzov: can use any VMF cruiser captain and get 100% of the utility from those builds, plays identically to the ships in its tree, except it has smoke for some reason instead of radar

 

And then you have Kii in its current state, which:

 

-doesn't get full utility out of most Japanese battleship captains

-sacrifices the traditional role of the line in favor of some stupid gimmicks

-won't play like the ships that are in the main tech tree

-is even more fragile than the normal line ship

-doesn't even make sense as a ship in terms of its fantasy refit when compared to other Japanese battleships that were rebuilt in the 30s

-needs a specially trained captain to get maximum utility out of it

 

The entire damn line focuses on relatively fragile gunships over everything else, releasing a terrible gunship with torpedoes that are going to bait idiots into trying to brawl with it doesn't help anything at all. Not to mention the pants on head retarded USN tier AA,  because AA powercreep at high tiers wasn't bad enough for CVs. 

 

People dump on Mutsu all the time, but at least it PLAYS like a tier 6 Nagato, and can use any other Japanese battleship captain to their full potential.

[LittleWhiteMouse]

3 hours ago, renegadestatuz said:

Looks like she's getting buffed a little.

This should make playing her a little more comfortable, though I think this may nudge her into "makes Amagi obsolete" territory.

[renegadestatuz]

13 minutes ago, LittleWhiteMouse said:

This should make playing her a little more comfortable, though I think this may nudge her into "makes Amagi obsolete" territory.

I was thinking the same thing. But I also know she's WIP and all stats can change or be altered before release so I'm not gonna worry about it at the moment.

[LittleWhiteMouse]

26 minutes ago, Big_Spud said:

-sacrifices the traditional role of the line in favor of some stupid gimmicks

-won't play like the ships that are in the main tech tree

-is even more fragile than the normal line ship

-doesn't even make sense as a ship in terms of its fantasy refit when compared to other Japanese battleships that were rebuilt in the 30s

-needs a specially trained captain to get maximum utility out of it

Allow me to address your concerns:

• Kii doesn't get full utility out of most Japanese battleship captains

The proper way to build your Kii commander is the same as you would for most mid-tier IJN Battleships before Izumo and Yamato.  You want to stress survivability options, primarily with fire prevention.  The points leftover can be spent where you wish.  If you want to be silly, you can try for a heavy secondary / anti-aircraft build with Basic and Advanced Fire Training.  I would stay away from the two 4pt skill Manual Fire Control for Secondary Armament.  They simply don't have enough range to make this build worthwhile, especially when Fire Prevention is so much more useful.  You can go with Manual Fire Control for AA Guns if you can scrounge up the points for it (and you really hate CVs).

• Kii won't play like the ships that are in the main tech tree

Kii plays like a normal IJN Battleship in all respects with the exception that she has butt torpedoes she can use in a pinch.  She should be played very similarly to Nagato or Amagi.  Think of her torpedoes as a weapon of last resort.  Trying to make use of them as a primary weapon will only get your face chewed off.  She's not like Tirpitz or Scharnhorst where your secondaries are murderously powerful and you're nigh immune to close-range citadel hits.

• Kii is even more fragile than the normal line ship

Kii is tougher than Amagi except where torpedo protection is concerned.  She has better armour and more hit points.  It's only where her anti-torpedo defense is concerned that she loses out, with almost half of the battlecruiser's underwater damage mitigation.

• Kii doesn't even make sense as a ship in terms of its fantasy refit when compared to other Japanese battleships that were rebuilt in the 30s

Kii receives the same fictional modernization as Amagi -- well, almost.  She doesn't get the same underwater protection and she receives the more modern 100mm/65s from Akizuki.  So it's a little give and take.  This echoes similar modernizations that occurred on the real Japanese Battleships such as Yamato, Musashi, the Kongo-sisters and Nagato.  This creates a homogeneous look throughout the battleship line.

• Kii needs a specially trained captain to get maximum utility out of it

See above.  IMO, Kii works best with a standard Captain Build you would use from Kongo through to Amagi.

[_Fantomex_]

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but with the stated buffs in the dev blog, I think they should give her F3 torps. Same launcher setup and angles, just far more potent torpedoes. 

 

And as a roundabout way of differentiating the Kii and Amagi, can we please get the Amagi's sigma buffed to 1.9 or even 2.0? It has always baffled me why the Amagi has worse sigma than the Nagato before it and the Izumo after it. Always seemed rather pointless, especially given the "sniper" role of IJN BB's.

[MrKilmister]

2 hours ago, FayFay731 said:

31 second reload? That's pretty lengthy.

 

The word I'm thinking for what it is is 'arbitrary'.  

[Hurlbut]

1 minute ago, lemekillmister said:

 

The word I'm thinking for what it is is 'arbitrary'.  

I addressed that one; Alabama and NC for their *NINE* 16" guns have a reload time of 30 seconds. Kii has 10 guns of the same caliber and is only slower by a mere second on reloading.

[m373x]

2 hours ago, SmirkingGerbil said:

I was in that battle, not that I was a good performer myself (far from it), but she seemed a bit anemic.

Probably a different match as I cant see you on the list. We played 'islands of ice', did she get torped by Shima twice? That's unfortunate.

[AdmiralPiett]

With those gun stat tweaks I'm seriously considering getting her now. Still 1.7 sigma as far as I know, which is pretty trash, but that is fine. There has to be some give and take between Amagi and Kii.

[Hurlbut]

3 minutes ago, AdmiralPiett said:

With those gun stat tweaks I'm seriously considering getting her now. Still 1.7 sigma as far as I know, which is pretty trash, but that is fine. There has to be some give and take between Amagi and Kii.

I'm looking at the Wiki stats of both planned ships specifications.

Kii is heavier at full load by 1,500 tons (metric).

Amagi would have four more 12cm AA guns.

Kii is much better protected (thicker deck, thicker belt), even her torpedo bulkhead is 0.1" thicker than Amagi.

Amagi is faster by 0.75 knots.

 

Yeah, I'm starting to wonder why they went with the Amagi for the tech tree in the first place...

[ksix]

59 minutes ago, Hurlbut said:

I addressed that one; Alabama and NC for their *NINE* 16" guns have a reload time of 30 seconds. Kii has 10 guns of the same caliber and is only slower by a mere second on reloading.

Except Kii has worse Sigma and shot dispersion than Amagi which itself isn't very good. I very rarely got rewarded for aiming well and getting citadels. NC and Alabama are significantly better in this regard. More guns only means something if they actually hit.

• Quote

  Kii receives the same fictional modernization as Amagi -- well, almost.  She doesn't get the same underwater protection and she receives the more modern 100mm/65s from Akizuki.  So it's a little give and take.  This echoes similar modernizations that occurred on the real Japanese Battleships such as Yamato, Musashi, the Kongo-sisters and Nagato.  This creates a homogeneous look throughout the battleship line.

  The refit means it made it to 1945/46. All Japanese BBs had torpedo bulges added and any above water torpedoes weaponry removed by the 1930s.  

  
  
   

 

• 
  
   

[MrKilmister]

10 hours ago, Hurlbut said:

I addressed that one; Alabama and NC for their *NINE* 16" guns have a reload time of 30 seconds. Kii has 10 guns of the same caliber and is only slower by a mere second on reloading.

 

You know Amagi has 10 guns that reload in 30 seconds and they have greater range like all the others, right?  One mere second... so they might as well simply round it off at 30 seconds. 

[VTAdmiral]

10 hours ago, Hurlbut said:

I addressed that one; Alabama and NC for their *NINE* 16" guns have a reload time of 30 seconds. Kii has 10 guns of the same caliber and is only slower by a mere second on reloading.

And what about Amagi's 30 second reload with the same 10 41cm guns?