My thoughts on the Aigle

[HereCreeepers]

So as some of you might know, it has been confirmed that there will be a French destroyer coming to World of Warships. The destroyer will be the Aigle, and it looks pretty interesting. I have some stats fresh off the WoWS Development Blog Facebook page.

Hit points - 17 000, plating - 10-16 mm. Main battery - 5х1 139 mm. Firing range - 12.8 km. HE damage - 1000, AP damage - 2600. Reload time 4.8 s., 180 degree turn time - 18 s., maximum dispersion - 111 m. HE and AP initial velocity - 700 m/s. Sigma - 2. Torpedo tubes - 2х3 550 mm, torpedo range - 7 km, torpedo speed - 57 kt, reload time 77 s., maximum damage - 18 400. Maximum speed - 36 kt. Turning circle radius - 680 m., rudder shift time - 4.1 s. Surface detectability - 7.5 km, air detectability - 4.3 km. Detectability after firing main guns in smoke - 3.1 km.

Now these clearly are unfinished (139mm HE shells doing 300 less damage than the 76mm HE shells found on the Tachibana) but overall it looks like a very interesting ship. The main thing that caught my eye is the torpedo armament. That damage is on par with tier 9 destroyers. For comparison, the torpedoes on the Fletcher do 19,033 damage, which is only 333 more than those on the Aigle. If this remains the same, I see this ship being extremely fun to play as a close range torpedo boat, coming out from behind islands and blapping BBs. That being said, what do you all think of this ship? Does it seem OP, does it seem weak? I feel like there will be a lot of different opinions.

[Lert]

What I find interesting is that for one stat you agree that it's almost certainly going to change, and then you base your opinion on other stats.

[HereCreeepers]

13 hours ago, Lert said:

What I find interesting is that for one stat you agree that it's almost certainly going to change, and then you base your opinion on other stats.

While you are right about stats being subject to change, I am not entirely sure what you are trying to say here. Unless I have missed something, a 139mm HE shell that weighs roughly 90 pounds is going to do more damage than a 12.5 pound HE shell from a 76mm gun. So unless Wargaming has some reason for making the overall HE DPM of this ship lower than that of a tier 2 destoyer, I think your argument that every stat is equally subject to change (not sure if that makes any sense) is a bit flawed.

[Lert]

10 hours ago, HereCreeepers said:

I think your argument that every stat is equally subject to change (not sure if that makes any sense) is a bit flawed.

As I think that forming an opinion on a ship from the "Let's slap some random stats on the model so we can test the basic functionality" stage is a bit flawed. At least give the test model time to settle down.

[creamgravy]

Those HE shells have been carried over from tier 1 Bougainville. It's clearly a mistake and will be corrected to 2000 eventually.

[mofton]

Looks bad to me - incapable of stealth torping without CE, even with it it's poor at it. Compounded by 57kt fish.

At range as a gunboat it's not 'that' fast (although apparently the speed boost may give +20% instead of +15%) and it's limited in my view by the 700m/s muzzle velocity of the guns. The good gunboats we have in-game such as Blyskawica and everything Russian are shooting at 870-950m/s. The shells are heavy but that's a hammer blow.

With 5 guns and reasonable ROF the Aigle may be a destroyer bully, with the speed to force an engagement against some and as it has the HP to soak up a knife fight's inevitable damage. That's so long as the 1000 HE damage is a mistake. I can see her scuttling from smoke to smoke and being a pain there, she'd be a decent fire starter in that scenario.