Tier 9 Roma....with 12 guns

[2020_kag]

WG  Make a Tier 9 Roma with 12 guns, then count my money. But seriously ....get rig of the gimmicks(Smoke and Sap) and give us a real Battleship with armor...Don't really have to change anything else the Roma already sees tier 10 ships. I think a extra turret and she becomes a tier 9 Beast .

[Crucis]

SAP isn't a gimmick.  It's a very real ammo option that existed, and a very large number of people wanted on Italian BBs for the last few years.

If anything, I'd think that with the plethora of HE being spammed by BBs these days, players would love to see some BBs that didn't have any HE to spam.

[Uncle_Lou]

Not to mention that when angled correctly the Italian BBs are among the tankiest in the game.  Like any other BB though, give up your sides and you will be punished.

TBH though from early gameplay I've seen on Twitch, I think the new tech tree ships give up entirely too much for SAP and smoke.  Low to middling range, terrible dispersion, low sigma, and long reloads; it just seems like a punitive rather than a fun experience.  I wanted to much to remain excited for this line, but that is rapidly fading for the tech tree ships.  However, Marco Polo remains very intriguing to me and I am very much looking forward to seeing how that ship plays.

[Halcion]

I got super lucky and got the Lepanto with my second random bundle.

Have a few Co-op games in it and the Battleship is underwhelming so far. I don’t want to bother taking this thing into a Random.

As stated above the ship has paid dearly for the oddball smoke feature and SAP. It is a Roma with Roma 15” guns at T9. 37 second reload base and splatter spread.

It’s just not a consistent ship at T9, rear gun angle is very limited thanks to some random boats put behind the gun.

I’ll revise this if I find a better setup that makes it work.

PS- Stupid number of fast firing secondaries, 90mm dual guns put out a huge amount of dakka for nothing but the odd fire or two.

[Skuggsja]

@Halcion Agreed. It's not a horrible ship but it doesnt feel that good either.

SAP doesnt feel very rewarding most of the time because it's the easiest round to mitigate damage from. For SAP to feel rewarding you need Good RNG/Luck to actually hit what it can pen otherwise it's just tons of bounces and shatters. The reload times make switching from AP to SAP a waste of time I feel like.

The amount of secondaries feels good but they dont have any decent benefits and I really expected the ships to be a bit more tanky. I enjoy Roma but these ships dont feel the same. 

Obviously I'm going to need more time and games to figure it out and make a final desicion but for now mediocre is the best description in my opinion.

[Uncle_Lou]

So the sample size is still only 6 games yet, but I don't think Lepanto is terrible; my average after the 6 games is 96k damage.  I took the range module instead of reload because 18.1km range is just terrible at t9.  I also built concealment and Deadeye to help mitigate the dispersion issues.  I think the key to good results with this line is going to be proper ammo selection.  With Sansonetti and his improved Expert Loader (whatever its called now) skill, the reload drops to about 8 seconds.  I have been defaulting to SAP use but if the opportunity is there I switch to AP, especially at closer ranges were cits are much more likely.  There isn't a huge difference in damage between SAP and AP (12500 vs 12000) so my thought is that if there is a chance the SAP won't pen then AP is the better choice, since 4000 or 1200 damage is better than none.  The AP definitely does work, too; I blasted a Pommern for 28k in one salvo (no cits) and got a triple cit for a kill on a Sinop as he was trying to turn into me.