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Made in us
Ancient Venerable Black Templar Dreadnought





Where ever the Emperor needs his eyes

Hey fellow Dakkaites, I didn't really see any WoWS threads, ok I saw one. So I figured I'd see about starting one.

How many of us play?

What nations do you prefer? Which classes? Favorite ship?

What would you like to see?

Is there a DakkaDakka clan?

How many of you are in clans?

How good or bad are you at the game? We wont judge too harshly.

To kick it off;

I mainly play the Kriegsmarine, with a spattering of ships from every other nation. I've reached Tier 10 in the KMS Battleship and Cruiser lines though admittedly I dont sail them as much as I probably should. I've got every KMS ship from T6 up barring the Z-52, Graf Zeplin and the unreleased Premium Destroyers. I actually like all classes other than CVs in the game, but tend mostly towards Battleships, with the most games played in them and most of those being in the Scharnhorst.

I'd like to see the Italian Navy fully in the game, and luckily they are well on their way.

I'm not in a clan.

I'd say I'm fairly ok at the game, but nothing spectacular.

Feel free to take a look at my profile (and judge), and even add me to your friends list if you'd like.
https://worldofwarships.com/en/community/accounts/1001253740-VictorVonTzeentch/!/pvp/overview/
https://na.warships.today/player/1001253740/VictorVonTzeentch
https://na.wows-numbers.com/player/1001253740,VictorVonTzeentch/

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/22 22:08:01


 
   
Made in gb
Veteran Inquisitorial Tyranid Xenokiller





Colne, England

I play but on EU obviously.

I know AlmightyWalrus plays, but whenever I see him and say hi I have a trash game

Started playing DD's back when it was just the IJN and USN lines, but lately have been playing USN BB's/CV's, French and RN cruisers.

In a clan based upon my tf2 comp team called McV on the SeA, just me and a few mates, not really looking to expand unless people on my tf2 team sign up.

I mostly just want the Arc Royal at the moment.

I'm pretty okay at the game (unless I say hi to Almighty Walrus ) but getting better.

Better stat websites (obviously have to switch to whichever regional server you're on).

https://wows-numbers.com/player/536525343,Von_Parkenstien/

https://eu.warships.today/player/536525343/Von_Parkenstien

Also check out Flamuu if you want to improve.

and for Walrus's benefit i'm El_Beno1 on twitch just to confuse with having at least 4 different usernames

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/22 18:39:54


Brb learning to play.

 
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Black Templar Dreadnought





Where ever the Emperor needs his eyes

I watch Flamuu and Flambass from time to time and Jingles for entertainment. I like to think I've gotten better watching them. Sometimes the game just doesnt go my way. Like last night, everytime I team up with my friend we have the worst games.

Arc Royal would be pretty cool, I'd have to give it a pass, but a ship with that history would be awesome.
   
Made in gb
Keeper of the Holy Orb of Antioch





avoiding the lorax on Crion

I not played for a while but mostly cruisers, US and German..

I probbly should give it a go again some time.

Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

"May the odds be ever in your favour"

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.

FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.  
   
Made in gb
[MOD]
Villanous Scum







I fired it up again yesterday, playing as British cruisers or IJN DDs. Lost my clan membership due to long absence. I suck, badly.

On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire. 
   
Made in gb
Keeper of the Holy Orb of Antioch





avoiding the lorax on Crion

Any earth shattering changes bar the Royal navy etc being added?

Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

"May the odds be ever in your favour"

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.

FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.  
   
Made in gb
[MOD]
Villanous Scum







Torpedos have been made worse, CVs have been made worse, loads of new maps, French have been added, Soviets are no longer godly, there are missions and campaigns which there were not before, IJN DDs split into two different branches of the tech tree (guns or torps presumably), there are now hydrophones, loads of new badges/flags/consumables, a crate drop system that allows for extra stuff daily.

Think that's the major changes since I played before but bear in mind NZ is on the Asia server so no idea how that compares to any other (except I know we had fewer maps before).

On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire. 
   
Made in gb
Keeper of the Holy Orb of Antioch





avoiding the lorax on Crion

Thanks. Yeah torps where pretty good like bevfore. One volley could cripple a ship several tier higher.

Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

"May the odds be ever in your favour"

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.

FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.  
   
Made in gb
[MOD]
Villanous Scum







Still can, I sank three BB in one match with my Tier IV IJN DD, they were all Tier VI but that was six torps hitting just behind the main turret! (always amuses me when people don't zigzag or go through the middle of island clusters in a Battleship). I am not sure on exactly what has been done to them but it seems that they run slower, the range has been cut, take longer to reload and spread...worse (wider?). Hopefully someone who has been playing continuously can tell us.

On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire. 
   
Made in gb
Veteran Inquisitorial Tyranid Xenokiller





Colne, England

Torpedo's suffer from the same problems they always have done. bad players straight in straight lines so eat all of them, good players changes things up occasionally, then of course there's the "battleship gap" that just forms in your torp spread because of RNG.

Other major things are the Pan Asia DD's with deep water torpedo's (don't damage DD's and have low detection range).

AP dive bombers on the US CV at tier 8+ and the Graf Zepplin.

Brb learning to play.

 
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Black Templar Dreadnought





Where ever the Emperor needs his eyes

Managed a 99k damage game in a Katori last night while playing low tier with a friend that was just getting into the game. Still managed to lose.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/02/26 18:38:08


 
   
Made in se
Ferocious Black Templar Castellan






Sweden

I do indeed play.

Also, torpedoes are fine:

Spoiler:



Bragging aside, some ships that rely on torpedoes (looking at you Shimakaze!) are horrifyingly inconsistent to play. Some games you have 200k+ "loleveryone'seatingtorpedoes" and some games you do 20k and get a cap. I guess it's the same problem I have with the French and UK BBs; they're horrifyingly reliable on good RNG to get good damage (except the Conqueror, but feth that unholy heretical piece of excrement with a flaming chainsaw). Being entirely reliant on torpedoes is just too hit and miss to be fun. That's probably why the Akizuki is my favourite IJN DD; it doesn't play like an IJN DD:

My most played ship's the Warspite though, so I naturally hate the Royal Navy BB line with a passion: they had a perfect play-style to emulate in the Warspite and instead they went pants-on-head and made the unholy abomination that is the Conqueror. Should've given the Conq 2.1 sigma, left the 457mm guns as the only option (ideally it'd have been 460mm so it could overmatch 32mm but that's the Yamato and the Musashi's schtick) and given it Warspite-like handling and the Warspite repair instead of the zombie heal it has now. In short, they could've made a perfectly fine ship by just taking the Warspite's characteristics and morphed them into a T10 ship. Weaknesses would've been an iffy armour scheme, semi-bad AA and the relative lack of guns, which would've been fine by me.

At least the French BBs actually have citadels, I got a 100-0 volley (without a detonation) off on a Normandie yesterday with the Warspite.

For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back. 
   
Made in gb
Keeper of the Holy Orb of Antioch





avoiding the lorax on Crion

Wow...

I'm rubbish after not playing for ages.

Max so far 18 hits, no fires... :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:
40 hits, one kill.

Getting better again.

That British cruser with only AP shells is painful.
I normaly would of just cooked the BB with He than plink Ed it bit by bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Anyone got any tips for a very very rusty captain?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/03/07 21:53:05


Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

"May the odds be ever in your favour"

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.

FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.  
   
Made in se
Ferocious Black Templar Castellan






Sweden

Low-tier UK cruisers are pretty bad, but it gets better at T5 when you get smoke and at T6 when you get a good turret layout. If Belfast didn't exist at T7 the Fiji would be the best T7 cruiser. The Minotaur is a beast at T10 as well.

Two important things for winning: always try to kill Destroyers and always be aware of the minimap. Destroyers win games more than any other (non-CV) class, both through capping and spotting. Being aware of your minimap helps you figure out when you need to GTFO from a position. You can press + to I cease the minimap's size and control opacity by holding down ctrl and pressing the cogs above the mjnimap when in-game.

For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back. 
   
Made in gb
Keeper of the Holy Orb of Antioch





avoiding the lorax on Crion

Yeah, all the early cruisers, have rather unpotimized layouts. Though only I make alot of points and money annoying battleships and so. Rapid fire, small hits, the BB nearby means I ain't always forst on Thete list.

I'm used to having only 60% of guns online at once.

Thanks, I'm working back up, I got a ton of left over credits but I need to rebuild my skills before getting later ships.

I'm a rusty noob right now lol

However the US T3 cruser has not changed much. That was not a fun ship to face...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/08 00:26:40


Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

"May the odds be ever in your favour"

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.

FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.  
   
Made in gb
Keeper of the Holy Orb of Antioch





avoiding the lorax on Crion

US cruisers seem more forgiving abit than UK tree. playing german too, there more like machine guns on HE.

plus the have HE, the UK class vs ships like destroyers there not always optimal, and light cruisers. you seem to have to hunt up, more than down to be effective.

UK cruisers seem lighter in armour than US tree, unless i was spoiled by the pocket battleship[ st louis thats darn nasty in a gun duel. There pretty fast, but you abit more of a glass cannon. the turn, speed and pick up on UK crusier was good, they can soon get out of dodge fast and ran circles round a BB, even if full ahead gunnery is not exactly acurate, its faster than heavy BB turrets can keep track of easily.

the fact you only have AP, certainly makes it intresting... hunting destroyers and lighter cruiser, your natural role is quite abit harder.




This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/08 13:23:56


Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

"May the odds be ever in your favour"

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.

FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.  
   
Made in se
Ferocious Black Templar Castellan






Sweden

Royal Navy CLs are actually among the best DD killers in the game; you have good concealment so you can sneak close to caps while your friendly DDs move in to cap/contest, and once you get smoke you can just sit in your cloud with hydro to avoid torpedoes while blapping enemy DDs.

This is further made possible by the fact that UK CLs have short-fuse AP shells and better autobounce angles than other nations.

Short-fuse AP means the shells detonate sooner than normal shells after hitting something that arms them; this means that your shells tend to explode inside DDs rather than overpenetrating, giving your AP shells full penetration damage vs. DDs. This is huge!

Better autobounce angles (75 degrees as opposed to 60 degrees IIRC) means that the enemy has to be more steeply angled towards you for your shells to automatically bounce off of the armour (dealing 0 damage) so where the AP of a Japanese cruiser, for example, would just bounce off of an angled ship yours will still do damage.

For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back. 
   
Made in gb
Keeper of the Holy Orb of Antioch





avoiding the lorax on Crion

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Royal Navy CLs are actually among the best DD killers in the game; you have good concealment so you can sneak close to caps while your friendly DDs move in to cap/contest, and once you get smoke you can just sit in your cloud with hydro to avoid torpedoes while blapping enemy DDs.

This is further made possible by the fact that UK CLs have short-fuse AP shells and better autobounce angles than other nations.

Short-fuse AP means the shells detonate sooner than normal shells after hitting something that arms them; this means that your shells tend to explode inside DDs rather than overpenetrating, giving your AP shells full penetration damage vs. DDs. This is huge!

Better autobounce angles (75 degrees as opposed to 60 degrees IIRC) means that the enemy has to be more steeply angled towards you for your shells to automatically bounce off of the armour (dealing 0 damage) so where the AP of a Japanese cruiser, for example, would just bounce off of an angled ship yours will still do damage.


oh.. no wonder the enemy destroyer kept there distance and slinked off that game then. i concentrated on cruisers, as i thought my AP might stand better odds against heavier ships.
Il go after them next time!

Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

"May the odds be ever in your favour"

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.

FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.  
   
Made in se
Ferocious Black Templar Castellan






Sweden

Don't get me wrong, your AP is potent as hell against pretty much everything, it's just that you're essentially the natural predator of DDs along with radar cruisers (at higher tiers).

To illustrate, the Minotaur, the T10 UK CL, can reach 8.9km concealment with the right setup. The stealthiest T10 DD is the Yueyang, at around 5.7km. If you hang ~3 km behind an allied DD any incoming enemy DD will spot your allied DD and you at the same time, at which point you delete them with your 3 second (!!) reload while hiding in your smoke cloud.

I wouldn't recommend pushing hyper-agressively until you get your own smoke generator at T5 though, at T4 and T3 you're a floating powder keg without any defenses to help you live. Even after that you remain the squishiest cruiser on your tier. You absolutely have to be careful as hell when playing RN CLs or you'll get instantly deleted.

For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back. 
   
Made in gb
Keeper of the Holy Orb of Antioch





avoiding the lorax on Crion

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Don't get me wrong, your AP is potent as hell against pretty much everything, it's just that you're essentially the natural predator of DDs along with radar cruisers (at higher tiers).

To illustrate, the Minotaur, the T10 UK CL, can reach 8.9km concealment with the right setup. The stealthiest T10 DD is the Yueyang, at around 5.7km. If you hang ~3 km behind an allied DD any incoming enemy DD will spot your allied DD and you at the same time, at which point you delete them with your 3 second (!!) reload while hiding in your smoke cloud.

I wouldn't recommend pushing hyper-agressively until you get your own smoke generator at T5 though, at T4 and T3 you're a floating powder keg without any defenses to help you live. Even after that you remain the squishiest cruiser on your tier. You absolutely have to be careful as hell when playing RN CLs or you'll get instantly deleted.


Yeah I noticed that. My "armour" at T2 is 6mm

Every ship at that level is averaging a 5-6 inch main battery!
Might as well not count it as armour!

Quite she Suprise from someone previously used to phoenix, and St Louis etx.

Learning RN cruisers I admit is frustrating and almost want to give up, yet we'll I kinda wanted to unlock them as from the UK!

The fact I managed to dent, a heavily armoured T3 battleship, and larger cruisers. Yes the RN guns certainly hit above there weight. The only thing is... Tactics.

USN, there He is powerful and you can simply toast, and v cook enemy warships. Going to a AP only platform is certainly a 180.

Honestly hardest part Bern remembering how to lead shots.
The guns, are rather finicky at times when trying to calculate the firing solutions.




This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/08 22:16:11


Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

"May the odds be ever in your favour"

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.

FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.  
   
Made in se
Ferocious Black Templar Castellan






Sweden

Knowing what part of the enemy ship to aim for is crucial for RN CLs as well. It's not enough that you hit the enemy ship, you have to actively aim to hit parts that you can damage consistently, especially against BBs. Take into account that what I'm about to say depends on how far away you are from your target; your shells might not be able to punch through thicker armour if you're too far away.

TL;DR; Aim for the superstructure and bow/stern armour of BBs, avoid the armour belts.


Spoiler:

This was going to be a few quick tips but turned into a monster post, read at your own peril.


St. Louis:



The front and stern armour are all 9mm and thus easy to penetrate, while the (non-bridge) superstructure is 6mm. 9 and 6mm is, as you said yourself, best described as "armour". In this case, counterintuitive as it is, you probably want to aim for the main belt, because 9mm is going to see your shot punch clean through, even with the short-fuse AP of the Royal Navy, leading to an Overpenetration (10% damage) instead of a Penetration (33% of damage). The main belt is 102mm thick, which you can punch through with your shells assuming you're not at too extreme an angle. If the shots start bouncing you simply have to start aiming for the tinfoil parts and hope that your shots penetrate in an angle to give you full Penetrations, overpens are better than no damage after all. If you're too far away you might also have to aim for the weaker armour, as your 6" guns might not punch through the 102mm belt at maximum ranges.

You also want to aim right at the waterline so that your shots penetrate through the armour belt into the citadel, where the powder magazines and boiler rooms are housed. Citadel penetrations deal 100% of your shell's potential damage, so a Citadel is worth 3 "ordinary" penetrations or 10 Overpenetrations. The Repair Party consumable also can't heal more than 10% of Citadel damage taken, as opposed to 50% of penetration damage, so landing Citadels on ships not only deals maximum damage per shell, but also means they can't come back as effectively later in the match if they manage to sneak away.

This is where the St. Louis surprised me too, because it's not as simple as it might look on the surface. Turning off the main armour belt in the viewer lets us see what the citadel looks like inside:



As you can see from this image, there's a further 76mm of armour plates in an angled shape usually called a "turtleback" (because of its shape) inside the 102mm belt (I didn't know the St. Louis had a turtleback, but it explains why it's so dang tanky even against Battleships of the same tier). The angle further means that the effective armour of the turtleback is more than 100mm additional armour. Trying to hit the citadel of the St. Louis with an RN Cruiser thus means first punching through the 102mm main belt, and THEN the 100+mm of internal armour. What will happen is most likely that your shell will penetrate the main armour and then bounce on the internal armour, causing the shell to explode inside the ship but outside the Citadel. This is still good, because it gives you a Penetration, but trying to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis in a Cruiser of roughly the same tier means having to literally push through Battleship-levels of armour plating. It's possible, but only through fluke shots. Battleships can do it, of course, but 6" guns just aren't strong enough at these Tiers to do it.

Just as a point of comparison, here's the Caledon's Citadel armour layout.



That's 76mm, as opposed to 102mm on the St. Louis. The major difference, however, is that that's all there is; there's no internal armour present in the Caledon, meaning anythign that punches through the yellow parts on that image is going to deal full damage. Even if a Caledon is at a very sharp angle towards an enemy Battleship (thus effectively making the armour thicker because the shell has to penetrate more of it) the shell might just punch through anyway and deal full damage. T3 BBs do around 8000 damage with one AP Citadel hit, so one Citadel hit on a Caledon from such a round is almost 50% of the ship's max HP, whereas the same shell hitting a heavily angled St. Louis would either bounce at the thicker outer belt or, if it penetrates, not get through the internal belt and thus do "only" 2650-ish damage rather than 8000.

Even though you probably cannot hope to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis, you still want Penetrations rather than Overpenetrations, so you want to aim for the upper 13mm belt primarily and the 102mm belt secondarily, trying to avoid the bow and stern with tinfoil armour.

Nassau:

Moving on to Battleships, I'm using the Nassau as an example because it's the most heavily armoured T3 BB that isn't the König Albert (which is a Kaiser-class battleship that's been lowered a tier because it lacks some anti-air and thus has better armour than its competition).


As you can see, the main armour belt is 210-270mm thick, labelled "LOLNO" because it's going to result in your shells shattering, doing 0 damage before falling impotently into the ocean. This is armour meant to resist 12" guns, your 6" peashooters aren't going to have a fart's chance in a hurricane to do anything there. Above the main belt is the 160mm upper belt armour. A Battleship giving you enough broadside could possibly be vulnerable here, although it doesn't take much of an angle or range for it to be enough to bounce your shots again (I tested the Caledon against the Nassau at 2km range in a training room just now and the 160mm belt just shattered everything anyway, RIP :(). The best place to aim for would be the 16mm bow and stern armour, which is thick enough to arm your short-fuse AP shells and give you full Penetration damage, even on a Battleship. Getting 3k damage might not seem that impressive, but the BBs only have around 30k HP, so if you're doing 3k per volley by punching their noses you're taking off 10% of their HP per salvo. They're not going to like that! The superstructure is 10mm armour and the deck armour is 25mm armour, so if you can hit there that works too, but the turrets are in the way and if you hit them your shell will just flop like a dead fish and shatter.

The Nassau also has a secondary "turtleback" armour covering its Citadel, but since you're never getting through the main belt in the first place this doesn't matter. It does if you're playing another Battleship though; German Battleships are very, VERY hard to land Citadel hits on because of their internal armour, but in return they tend to take more "normal" Penetrations instead.

The third example I'm going to use is the T8 German Battleship Tirpitz, because its armour layout is a good illustration of where to aim on later-tier Battleships.

Tirpitz:


As you can see, the main belt is a nope. The upper belt is likewise not an option; not even Minotaur at T10 can punch through 160mm armour. If you were a BB this is where you'd aim to hit a German Battleship; you're not going to get through the turtleback to the citadel anyway, so you want enough armour to arm the fuses on your AP but not enough that it'll shatter or bounce. Against a ship like this, a UK CL has to aim for the 19mm superstructure, where you can get full Penetrations. If you cannot hit the superstructure for some reason, the 32mm upper bow armour also works, as does hitting the 32mm deck armour (but beware the turrets, they're heavily armoured). Even the Caledon, a T3 Cruiser, can penetrate these parts of the T8 Tirpitz with ease (I tested it, it works!).

In short, in British CLs you want to aim for the main belt of Cruisers whenever you've got a decent angle to try to get to their Citadels. If shells start bouncing or shattering, you need to aim for the bow or stern or any other place with weaker armour. Against Battleships just default to shooting the bow, stern and superstructure for maximum impact.

Finally, British Cruisers are blessed in that the first ships are the worst in the line. The Weymouth, Caledon, and Danae are rather painful ships to play, but Emerald and Leander are alright and once you hit Fiji on it's just a string of strong ships. The Edinburgh is a bit unfortunate in that it's essentially the Fiji but one tier higher with slight improvements, but it's not a bad ship. Neptune has a 5 second reload timer with 12 guns and the Minotaur, bless its soul, has 10 guns with a 3 second (!!) reload timer. The last two also have main armament that doubles as anti-air, making these ships essentially no-fly zones for enemy planes. Do note that the Minotaur, at T10, has 101mm of Citadel armour. Remember how the St. Louis had 102mm main armour at T3? Yeah, the British CLs aren't for people who don't know how to not get shot.

The Belfast is a contender for the most obscenely overpowered ship in the game and an example of what happens when you make a Royal Navy Cruiser that DOES have HE AND Radar; thankfully it isn't sold anymore.




This... turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it'd be. Whoops.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/09 00:14:46


For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back. 
   
Made in us
Lord of the Fleet





Seneca Nation of Indians

I play, though not always regularly


Fate is in heaven, armor is on the chest, accomplishment is in the feet. - Nagao Kagetora
 
   
Made in no
Terrifying Doombull





Hefnaheim

I play regulary but I can not claim to be the best player around, but I do decently enough I like to think, although the French ships have been a nigthmare for me to grind my way trough
   
Made in gb
[MOD]
Villanous Scum







 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Knowing what part of the enemy ship to aim for is crucial for RN CLs as well. It's not enough that you hit the enemy ship, you have to actively aim to hit parts that you can damage consistently, especially against BBs. Take into account that what I'm about to say depends on how far away you are from your target; your shells might not be able to punch through thicker armour if you're too far away.

TL;DR; Aim for the superstructure and bow/stern armour of BBs, avoid the armour belts.


Spoiler:

This was going to be a few quick tips but turned into a monster post, read at your own peril.


St. Louis:



The front and stern armour are all 9mm and thus easy to penetrate, while the (non-bridge) superstructure is 6mm. 9 and 6mm is, as you said yourself, best described as "armour". In this case, counterintuitive as it is, you probably want to aim for the main belt, because 9mm is going to see your shot punch clean through, even with the short-fuse AP of the Royal Navy, leading to an Overpenetration (10% damage) instead of a Penetration (33% of damage). The main belt is 102mm thick, which you can punch through with your shells assuming you're not at too extreme an angle. If the shots start bouncing you simply have to start aiming for the tinfoil parts and hope that your shots penetrate in an angle to give you full Penetrations, overpens are better than no damage after all. If you're too far away you might also have to aim for the weaker armour, as your 6" guns might not punch through the 102mm belt at maximum ranges.

You also want to aim right at the waterline so that your shots penetrate through the armour belt into the citadel, where the powder magazines and boiler rooms are housed. Citadel penetrations deal 100% of your shell's potential damage, so a Citadel is worth 3 "ordinary" penetrations or 10 Overpenetrations. The Repair Party consumable also can't heal more than 10% of Citadel damage taken, as opposed to 50% of penetration damage, so landing Citadels on ships not only deals maximum damage per shell, but also means they can't come back as effectively later in the match if they manage to sneak away.

This is where the St. Louis surprised me too, because it's not as simple as it might look on the surface. Turning off the main armour belt in the viewer lets us see what the citadel looks like inside:



As you can see from this image, there's a further 76mm of armour plates in an angled shape usually called a "turtleback" (because of its shape) inside the 102mm belt (I didn't know the St. Louis had a turtleback, but it explains why it's so dang tanky even against Battleships of the same tier). The angle further means that the effective armour of the turtleback is more than 100mm additional armour. Trying to hit the citadel of the St. Louis with an RN Cruiser thus means first punching through the 102mm main belt, and THEN the 100+mm of internal armour. What will happen is most likely that your shell will penetrate the main armour and then bounce on the internal armour, causing the shell to explode inside the ship but outside the Citadel. This is still good, because it gives you a Penetration, but trying to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis in a Cruiser of roughly the same tier means having to literally push through Battleship-levels of armour plating. It's possible, but only through fluke shots. Battleships can do it, of course, but 6" guns just aren't strong enough at these Tiers to do it.

Just as a point of comparison, here's the Caledon's Citadel armour layout.



That's 76mm, as opposed to 102mm on the St. Louis. The major difference, however, is that that's all there is; there's no internal armour present in the Caledon, meaning anythign that punches through the yellow parts on that image is going to deal full damage. Even if a Caledon is at a very sharp angle towards an enemy Battleship (thus effectively making the armour thicker because the shell has to penetrate more of it) the shell might just punch through anyway and deal full damage. T3 BBs do around 8000 damage with one AP Citadel hit, so one Citadel hit on a Caledon from such a round is almost 50% of the ship's max HP, whereas the same shell hitting a heavily angled St. Louis would either bounce at the thicker outer belt or, if it penetrates, not get through the internal belt and thus do "only" 2650-ish damage rather than 8000.

Even though you probably cannot hope to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis, you still want Penetrations rather than Overpenetrations, so you want to aim for the upper 13mm belt primarily and the 102mm belt secondarily, trying to avoid the bow and stern with tinfoil armour.

Nassau:

Moving on to Battleships, I'm using the Nassau as an example because it's the most heavily armoured T3 BB that isn't the König Albert (which is a Kaiser-class battleship that's been lowered a tier because it lacks some anti-air and thus has better armour than its competition).


As you can see, the main armour belt is 210-270mm thick, labelled "LOLNO" because it's going to result in your shells shattering, doing 0 damage before falling impotently into the ocean. This is armour meant to resist 12" guns, your 6" peashooters aren't going to have a fart's chance in a hurricane to do anything there. Above the main belt is the 160mm upper belt armour. A Battleship giving you enough broadside could possibly be vulnerable here, although it doesn't take much of an angle or range for it to be enough to bounce your shots again (I tested the Caledon against the Nassau at 2km range in a training room just now and the 160mm belt just shattered everything anyway, RIP :(). The best place to aim for would be the 16mm bow and stern armour, which is thick enough to arm your short-fuse AP shells and give you full Penetration damage, even on a Battleship. Getting 3k damage might not seem that impressive, but the BBs only have around 30k HP, so if you're doing 3k per volley by punching their noses you're taking off 10% of their HP per salvo. They're not going to like that! The superstructure is 10mm armour and the deck armour is 25mm armour, so if you can hit there that works too, but the turrets are in the way and if you hit them your shell will just flop like a dead fish and shatter.

The Nassau also has a secondary "turtleback" armour covering its Citadel, but since you're never getting through the main belt in the first place this doesn't matter. It does if you're playing another Battleship though; German Battleships are very, VERY hard to land Citadel hits on because of their internal armour, but in return they tend to take more "normal" Penetrations instead.

The third example I'm going to use is the T8 German Battleship Tirpitz, because its armour layout is a good illustration of where to aim on later-tier Battleships.

Tirpitz:


As you can see, the main belt is a nope. The upper belt is likewise not an option; not even Minotaur at T10 can punch through 160mm armour. If you were a BB this is where you'd aim to hit a German Battleship; you're not going to get through the turtleback to the citadel anyway, so you want enough armour to arm the fuses on your AP but not enough that it'll shatter or bounce. Against a ship like this, a UK CL has to aim for the 19mm superstructure, where you can get full Penetrations. If you cannot hit the superstructure for some reason, the 32mm upper bow armour also works, as does hitting the 32mm deck armour (but beware the turrets, they're heavily armoured). Even the Caledon, a T3 Cruiser, can penetrate these parts of the T8 Tirpitz with ease (I tested it, it works!).

In short, in British CLs you want to aim for the main belt of Cruisers whenever you've got a decent angle to try to get to their Citadels. If shells start bouncing or shattering, you need to aim for the bow or stern or any other place with weaker armour. Against Battleships just default to shooting the bow, stern and superstructure for maximum impact.

Finally, British Cruisers are blessed in that the first ships are the worst in the line. The Weymouth, Caledon, and Danae are rather painful ships to play, but Emerald and Leander are alright and once you hit Fiji on it's just a string of strong ships. The Edinburgh is a bit unfortunate in that it's essentially the Fiji but one tier higher with slight improvements, but it's not a bad ship. Neptune has a 5 second reload timer with 12 guns and the Minotaur, bless its soul, has 10 guns with a 3 second (!!) reload timer. The last two also have main armament that doubles as anti-air, making these ships essentially no-fly zones for enemy planes. Do note that the Minotaur, at T10, has 101mm of Citadel armour. Remember how the St. Louis had 102mm main armour at T3? Yeah, the British CLs aren't for people who don't know how to not get shot.

The Belfast is a contender for the most obscenely overpowered ship in the game and an example of what happens when you make a Royal Navy Cruiser that DOES have HE AND Radar; thankfully it isn't sold anymore.




This... turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it'd be. Whoops.


Excellent post, thanks for that very well thought out informative explanation. You have to do every other nation and ship class now...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/09 09:48:55


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avoiding the lorax on Crion

 ingtaer wrote:
 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Knowing what part of the enemy ship to aim for is crucial for RN CLs as well. It's not enough that you hit the enemy ship, you have to actively aim to hit parts that you can damage consistently, especially against BBs. Take into account that what I'm about to say depends on how far away you are from your target; your shells might not be able to punch through thicker armour if you're too far away.

TL;DR; Aim for the superstructure and bow/stern armour of BBs, avoid the armour belts.


Spoiler:

This was going to be a few quick tips but turned into a monster post, read at your own peril.


St. Louis:



The front and stern armour are all 9mm and thus easy to penetrate, while the (non-bridge) superstructure is 6mm. 9 and 6mm is, as you said yourself, best described as "armour". In this case, counterintuitive as it is, you probably want to aim for the main belt, because 9mm is going to see your shot punch clean through, even with the short-fuse AP of the Royal Navy, leading to an Overpenetration (10% damage) instead of a Penetration (33% of damage). The main belt is 102mm thick, which you can punch through with your shells assuming you're not at too extreme an angle. If the shots start bouncing you simply have to start aiming for the tinfoil parts and hope that your shots penetrate in an angle to give you full Penetrations, overpens are better than no damage after all. If you're too far away you might also have to aim for the weaker armour, as your 6" guns might not punch through the 102mm belt at maximum ranges.

You also want to aim right at the waterline so that your shots penetrate through the armour belt into the citadel, where the powder magazines and boiler rooms are housed. Citadel penetrations deal 100% of your shell's potential damage, so a Citadel is worth 3 "ordinary" penetrations or 10 Overpenetrations. The Repair Party consumable also can't heal more than 10% of Citadel damage taken, as opposed to 50% of penetration damage, so landing Citadels on ships not only deals maximum damage per shell, but also means they can't come back as effectively later in the match if they manage to sneak away.

This is where the St. Louis surprised me too, because it's not as simple as it might look on the surface. Turning off the main armour belt in the viewer lets us see what the citadel looks like inside:



As you can see from this image, there's a further 76mm of armour plates in an angled shape usually called a "turtleback" (because of its shape) inside the 102mm belt (I didn't know the St. Louis had a turtleback, but it explains why it's so dang tanky even against Battleships of the same tier). The angle further means that the effective armour of the turtleback is more than 100mm additional armour. Trying to hit the citadel of the St. Louis with an RN Cruiser thus means first punching through the 102mm main belt, and THEN the 100+mm of internal armour. What will happen is most likely that your shell will penetrate the main armour and then bounce on the internal armour, causing the shell to explode inside the ship but outside the Citadel. This is still good, because it gives you a Penetration, but trying to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis in a Cruiser of roughly the same tier means having to literally push through Battleship-levels of armour plating. It's possible, but only through fluke shots. Battleships can do it, of course, but 6" guns just aren't strong enough at these Tiers to do it.

Just as a point of comparison, here's the Caledon's Citadel armour layout.



That's 76mm, as opposed to 102mm on the St. Louis. The major difference, however, is that that's all there is; there's no internal armour present in the Caledon, meaning anythign that punches through the yellow parts on that image is going to deal full damage. Even if a Caledon is at a very sharp angle towards an enemy Battleship (thus effectively making the armour thicker because the shell has to penetrate more of it) the shell might just punch through anyway and deal full damage. T3 BBs do around 8000 damage with one AP Citadel hit, so one Citadel hit on a Caledon from such a round is almost 50% of the ship's max HP, whereas the same shell hitting a heavily angled St. Louis would either bounce at the thicker outer belt or, if it penetrates, not get through the internal belt and thus do "only" 2650-ish damage rather than 8000.

Even though you probably cannot hope to hit the Citadel of a St. Louis, you still want Penetrations rather than Overpenetrations, so you want to aim for the upper 13mm belt primarily and the 102mm belt secondarily, trying to avoid the bow and stern with tinfoil armour.

Nassau:

Moving on to Battleships, I'm using the Nassau as an example because it's the most heavily armoured T3 BB that isn't the König Albert (which is a Kaiser-class battleship that's been lowered a tier because it lacks some anti-air and thus has better armour than its competition).


As you can see, the main armour belt is 210-270mm thick, labelled "LOLNO" because it's going to result in your shells shattering, doing 0 damage before falling impotently into the ocean. This is armour meant to resist 12" guns, your 6" peashooters aren't going to have a fart's chance in a hurricane to do anything there. Above the main belt is the 160mm upper belt armour. A Battleship giving you enough broadside could possibly be vulnerable here, although it doesn't take much of an angle or range for it to be enough to bounce your shots again (I tested the Caledon against the Nassau at 2km range in a training room just now and the 160mm belt just shattered everything anyway, RIP :(). The best place to aim for would be the 16mm bow and stern armour, which is thick enough to arm your short-fuse AP shells and give you full Penetration damage, even on a Battleship. Getting 3k damage might not seem that impressive, but the BBs only have around 30k HP, so if you're doing 3k per volley by punching their noses you're taking off 10% of their HP per salvo. They're not going to like that! The superstructure is 10mm armour and the deck armour is 25mm armour, so if you can hit there that works too, but the turrets are in the way and if you hit them your shell will just flop like a dead fish and shatter.

The Nassau also has a secondary "turtleback" armour covering its Citadel, but since you're never getting through the main belt in the first place this doesn't matter. It does if you're playing another Battleship though; German Battleships are very, VERY hard to land Citadel hits on because of their internal armour, but in return they tend to take more "normal" Penetrations instead.

The third example I'm going to use is the T8 German Battleship Tirpitz, because its armour layout is a good illustration of where to aim on later-tier Battleships.

Tirpitz:


As you can see, the main belt is a nope. The upper belt is likewise not an option; not even Minotaur at T10 can punch through 160mm armour. If you were a BB this is where you'd aim to hit a German Battleship; you're not going to get through the turtleback to the citadel anyway, so you want enough armour to arm the fuses on your AP but not enough that it'll shatter or bounce. Against a ship like this, a UK CL has to aim for the 19mm superstructure, where you can get full Penetrations. If you cannot hit the superstructure for some reason, the 32mm upper bow armour also works, as does hitting the 32mm deck armour (but beware the turrets, they're heavily armoured). Even the Caledon, a T3 Cruiser, can penetrate these parts of the T8 Tirpitz with ease (I tested it, it works!).

In short, in British CLs you want to aim for the main belt of Cruisers whenever you've got a decent angle to try to get to their Citadels. If shells start bouncing or shattering, you need to aim for the bow or stern or any other place with weaker armour. Against Battleships just default to shooting the bow, stern and superstructure for maximum impact.

Finally, British Cruisers are blessed in that the first ships are the worst in the line. The Weymouth, Caledon, and Danae are rather painful ships to play, but Emerald and Leander are alright and once you hit Fiji on it's just a string of strong ships. The Edinburgh is a bit unfortunate in that it's essentially the Fiji but one tier higher with slight improvements, but it's not a bad ship. Neptune has a 5 second reload timer with 12 guns and the Minotaur, bless its soul, has 10 guns with a 3 second (!!) reload timer. The last two also have main armament that doubles as anti-air, making these ships essentially no-fly zones for enemy planes. Do note that the Minotaur, at T10, has 101mm of Citadel armour. Remember how the St. Louis had 102mm main armour at T3? Yeah, the British CLs aren't for people who don't know how to not get shot.

The Belfast is a contender for the most obscenely overpowered ship in the game and an example of what happens when you make a Royal Navy Cruiser that DOES have HE AND Radar; thankfully it isn't sold anymore.




This... turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it'd be. Whoops.


Excellent post, thanks for that very well thought out informative explanation. You have to do every other nation and ship class now...


Wow, that's a amazing detail.
And I never relised that, I din, t think that tool was in game when I first played. Not the internal views.

Now I know why the St Louis is so tanky. Its treated and sailed like a light battleship but, it's armoured like one too, and has a internal belt on top of thick flanks armour. Great investigation!

Fire used to be my go to for heavier armoured designs. There main weakness. You can land damage at least.

Yeah, the UK, cruisers are defenitely more like Japan's from that study,.. You gotta be always moving, always looking and always watching for risks. Your armour is definitely not somthing you wanna rely on, it may deflect a near splash but nothing else.

Thanks, that's certainly a intresting master class. You obviously have played alot more than me!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/09 10:30:24


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I'm glad it was of use, I'll try to make some more useful illustrations later today. Regarding the St. Louis I didn't realise the turtleback was there until I did the screenshots, so I'm also learning from this experience.

Alright, here we go:

Dr. Angling, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Bounce AP

Spoiler:
I mentioned angling quite a bit in the previous post, but it really is important enough that it deserves its own post. In fact, it's probably the single most important skill in the entire game, so I really should've started with explaining angling before moving on to Citadels and armour schemes, but better late than never.

Note that the below applies strictly to how to mitigate damage from AP shells; HE shells cannot bounce, so they're the counter to angling ships, but they do less damage than AP hits.

To start off, if you know anything about naval doctrine you know about the idea of "crossing the T", where a ship manouvers in such a way as to bring all of its guns to bear on an enemy while letting the enemy reply only with a limited number of guns. I'll let Wikipedia illustrate for me:



The top ship is "crossing the T" of the lower ship (note how they make the letter "T" together, hence the name); the top ship can fire its entire broadside of guns at the lower ship, while the lower ship can only reply with 50% of its main battery. There's a few other advantages as well; the main problem for naval gunnery was over- or undershooting the target. By turning broadside-on like the above ship, there's a narrower target lengthwise presented to the bottom ship, making it harder for the bottom ship to land a hit. The top ship also has its main armour belt towards the enemy, meaning that even a hit can hit the belt and simply bounce off without doing anything noteworthy. Further, even if the top ship DOES get penetrated, the shell might simply go clean through the ship before exploding, leading to significantly reduced damage.

The bottom ship, meanwhlle, has its relatively unarmoured bow armour towards the enemy, meaning that any hits are likely to punch clean through the armour and continue lengthwise through the entire ship (so-called "raking fire", the nightmare of navies for centuries) before exploding. This is a Bad Thing. Further, by presenting a longer target to the enemy, the bottom ship is presenting a better target, because even if the top ship over- or undershoots there's simply a bigger margin of error in distance, which was the hard thing to get correct.

ALL OF THIS IS WORTHLESS IN WORLD OF WARSHIPS!

If you try crossing the T in World of Warships you're giving your enemy a perfect target and will, if the enemy is even marginally competent, recieve a one-way ticket back to your port via the charming bottom of the sea. In World of Warships the main dispersion problem isn't judging distance to the target, but rather horizontal dispersion of your shells. Giving broadside thus minimizes the effects of enemy dispersion by presenting a target where it doesn't matter if the shells go off a bit to the side of where you aimed.

The main reason, however, that you absolutely CANNOT give broadside to the enemy (in ANY ship, not just British CLs (DDs excepted, more on that below)) is because it minimizes the amount of armour your enemy has to punch through. This is because the angle at which the shell hits matters, clearly showing the fact that World of Warships evolved out of World of Tanks, where angling of armour is the mechanic around which the entire game revolves. I'll let Wikipedia illustrate again with this photo of a cut-open T54 tank:



As you can see, the armour is 100mm thick. However, if a shell hits the sloping armour from the front, the angle of impact means it effectively has to penetrate 200mm of armour instead. The same is true in World of Warships. While the St. Louis, as discussed last post, only has 102mm belt armour, this is more than enough to bounce any Battleship shell in the game if you can present yourself at such an angle that the shell hits your armour belt at a very steep angle. I've had Yamato AP shells (so 460mm shells weighing almost 1.5 TONNES) bounce off of the armour of destroyers because it hit at such a ridiculous angle. Even if the shell manages to penetrate your armour, if you like the St. Louis have an internal belt as well this'll result in a Penetration instead of a Citadel hit, greatly increasing your survivability.

This is important for British CLs too; presenting a flat broadside means you've got, at most (in the Minotaur), 101mm of armour; that's not enough to stop 4" guns from penetrating your Citadel (and the Akizuki and the Harekaze, the two ships with 4" main guns, WILL murder you quickly if you let them hit repeated Citadel hits). Properly angling against an enemy target is thus the single most important thing you can do to survive.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE ON DESTROYERS AND ANGLING
If you're in a Destroyer and you're having to angle against an enemy Battleship that's about to remind you of the pecking order, you currently want to be broadside-on towards the Battleship. This might sound counter-intuitive to the above, but Destroyers do not have Citadels and thus cannot take more serious hits than full Penetrations. Thus, you want to be broadside-on so that the Battleship AP rounds penetrate straight through you and do 10% damage instead of punching in through your stern or bow and sticking inside your ship and doing 33%. Battleship penetrations on DDs absolutely gak all over the DD, because 33% of a shell designed to kill other BBs is, essentially, the DD equivalent of a Citadel hit. Wargaming is currently reworking the system so that BB AP can't ever get anything other than Overpenetrations against DDs, but until further notice try to be broadside-on if you're gonna get shot by Battleships in a DD.

POSITIONING AND ANGLING
The above facts have a very important implication: if you find yourself in a position where you have to angle against two different targets at the same time, you're going to have a bad time.



Imagine you are green in this image, and that the two red ships are enemy Battleships. No matter how you angle you're in trouble; if you focus on presenting the top ship with a steep angle the ship at the bottom left is going to have enough of a broadside to blast you for a lot of damage, and vice versa. Trying to angle moderately against both targets at the same time CAN work, but it locks you down completely and you still risk simply not having enough of an angle to make a difference, at which point you're getting shot by BOTH the BBs for a lot of damage. This is exactly the sort of cross-fire you want to force the enemy into, especially if you're driving a Battleship. Blobbing all the Battleships in your team in one place is thus a terrible idea, because it means that the enemy team has a much easier time of angling against the Battleships, mitigating the damage dealt. Even with all this, however, sometimes you'll still just die, even in a Battleship. A fluke shot penetrating through your deck armour into your Citadel can happen even when you're doing everything correctly, especially for Cruisers who by nature are squishier than Battleships, but by angling you can minimize the risks of being insta-blapped.

If the conclusion you draw from the above is "heh, I'll just go to one side of the map and shoot at the enemy from there, that way I can't be flanked as easily!" then congratulations, you're part of the awful crowd of people who would be better served uninstalling the game and playing something else. Sitting back and sniping is an excellent way of losing the game because you have 0 influence on taking capture points. This doesn't mean you should push blindly while shouting "BANZAI!" but no matter the ship you need to help your other teammates. Especially Battleships are vulnerable to this; you see a lot of Battleship players just sitting back and trying to snipe enemy ships, when a properly angled Battleship that is moving up to support its team can take a truly prodigious amount of damage before dying. IIRC my record potential damage in one game, i.e. the total amount of damage that all shots aimed at me would have dealt had they all been Citadel hits, is close to 5 million damage, in a ship with less than 100k HP. That's a lot of damage that isn't killing my allies. How hard you push obviously differs depending on the ship, i.e. German BBs outfight anyone else at close-range brawls whereas Japanese BBs hang a bit further back and use their accuracy and big guns to compensate for their weakness to being flanked, but you have to be in a position where you can:

A) Support the allied ships trying to take capture points, up to and including being one of these ships yourself (DDs main task is taking caps and scouting, but that doesn't mean others cannot push in close to caps to help them do so).
B) Be able to angle against enemy ships so you don't get mauled to bits by Citadels or spammed to death by a rain of HE from multiple ships
C) Disengage if you encounter a superior enemy force

Whenever someone says that playing a Battleship in WoWs is "easy mode", ignore them. Yes, it's technically true, but playing a Battleship well isn't actually that easy. Anyone can be part of the spawn-camping mafia, but being useful to your team as a BB means knowing when to push and when to run away to live another day, and you have to know it well ahead of time, because you cannot disengage as easily as DDs or CL/CAs.

OVERMATCHING, OR; "ANGLING? WE DON'T NEED NO STEENKING ANGLING
This is where I complicate things further. The above angling situation is complicated further by the mechanic of overmatching. In short, this means that if a shell hits a piece of armour and the diameter of the shell divided by 14.3 is more than (NOT equal to, MORE THAN) the armour it hits, it will automatically penetrate the armour, simulating a shell that's simply too strong for that armour to do anythng about. Angling against such shots does nothing; Overmatch happens before the additional effective armour angling provides is taken into account.

I'll use two examples to illustrate, the T6 British Battleship Warspite and the T10 Japanese Battleship Yamato, because the playstyle of these two rely extensively on this mechanic.

To start off, Warspite has a main battery of 8 381mm (15") guns. These are big for the tier (the only others with a similar caliber are the Bayern, at 380mm, the Mutsu at 410mm, and the Warspite's sister-ship Queen Elizabeth at 381mm. Of these only the Warspite and Queen Elizabeth have accurate guns; Bayern and Mutsu have other strenghts like better amour and speed that is compensated by having drunk gunners. The reason that 380mm or bigger is a big deal at Tier 6 is that all Battleships lower than Tier 8 have a maximum bow armour of 25mm (the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau at T7 have a 60mm lower bow belt, but most of the bow is 25mm). 380mm divided by 14.3 is roughly 26.5, which is obviously bigger than 25mm. This means that, no matter how other Battleships try to angle against these ships the nose and stern is always going to be vulnerable; any hit in these areas will automatically inflict at least full Penetration damage; it's perfectly possible to hit the Citadel of enemy Battleships by punching straight through their nose from the front and having the shell continue penetrating into the Citadel through the less-protected bow bulkhead, as illustrated in the below screenshot of the Fuso, the Japanese T6 BB.



As you can see, the forward citadel bulkhead behind the 25mm bow armour is only 241mm thick. If a Fuso is pointing its nose straight at a ship with 15" or bigger guns, the guns will thus penetrate through the nose as if it wasn't there and then hit the 241mm armour plate head-on, without the benefits of angling. Against such a ship, the Fuso has to angle so that any shells that penetrate the front armour comes up against an angled forward citadel bulkhead or risk eating a massive amount of damage. Against ships with a smaller caliber main battery, such as the New Mexico or Iron Duke (356mm or 14" guns), the Fuso can simply point its nose at them and let the natural angle formed by the bow of the ship bounce the shells. Any attempts to instead shoot at the superstructure from the front risks hitting the main turrets and bouncing there.

As an aside, I'd never noticed the fact that the Fuso's main armour belt is weaker under the two front turrets, that's a useful weakness to know about. Any penetration there is likely to go straight into the barbettes under the A and B turrets, which counts as Citadel.

The concept of overmatching also affects Cruisers, of course. Here's the interior of the British T6 Cruiser Leander.



The front armour, which isn't visible in this screenshot, is 13mm thick, which means it is overmatched by anything with a main weapon caliber bigger than 13*14.3mm, i.e. 185mm. This (barely) keeps it safe from the same-tier Molotov, with its 180mm guns, but any heavy cruiser with 8" (203mm) guns, i.e. the Japanese T5 Furutaka or T6 Aoba or any of the numerous Heavy Cruisers at T7 can punch clean through the nose, not to mention literally any Battleship in the game. The shells will then continue and encounter either the 76mm citadel bulkhead, which isn't much at all, or the 16mm non-citadel bulkhead. The good news is that 16*14.3 is 228.3, which means you have to have a 229mm or bigger gun to overmatch that part. The bad news is that it's still paper armour, and the Citadel deck behind that bit is only 35mm thick. This means that any shell that overmatches the front of the Leander has to beat at worst a 76mm armour plate to get into the Citadel. Ideally you don't want to get shot at at all in a Leander, but if you absolutely have to it's easy to see why angling even against enemy Cruisers (hell, there are DESTROYERS that can easily Citadel you if you aren't careful) is of great importance.

Worth noting is the green areas on the screenshot, the Barbettes under the turrets. This is where the powder and shells are hoisted up from the central magazines in the Citadel to the guns; a hit here is Bad News. As such, this area also counts as Citadel in the game meaning anything that penetrates that 25mm barbette armour and explodes inside is going to do loads of damage.

The second ship I'll use as an example, as promised, is the Japanese T10 Battleship Yamato. Like the Warspite at T6 the Yamato has few guns compared to most of the competition (only Republiqué and Conqueror using the wrong set up have fewer at 8 guns, while Großer Kurfürst, Montana and proper setup Conqueror has 12) but compensates by having a huge caliber (460mm or 18.1"!) and the best accuracy of any Battleship in the game. The second biggest guns in the game is the 457mm (18") version of the Conqueror, but there's a marked difference between the two. 457mm/14.3 is 31.96mm, whereas 460mm/14.3 is 32.16mm. The 460mm guns of the Yamato and its sister Musashi are thus the only guns in the game that can overmatch 32mm armour. This is immensely important because the bow armour of EVERY Battleship in the game from T8 and up is 32mm, and additionally many BBs use 32mm deck armour. This makes Yamato incredibly tricky to angle against, as you'll have vulnerable spots no matter how you angle.

In conclusion then, in general Cruisers have to be incredibly paranoid about how they angle towards enemy Battleships, as even the sturdiest Cruisers can get penetraded through the bow armour straight into the Citadel by BB AP. Even Battleships have to remain aware of their bow armour and what sort of firepower they're going up against. In short, you usually don't want to point your nose straight at the enemy, but rather at a steep angle just to the side of your opponent to angle your front armour aginst things that do not overmatch it, and to angle your internal citadel bulkhead against things that do overmatch it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/09 14:42:05


For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back. 
   
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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I'm glad it was of use, I'll try to make some more useful illustrations later today. Regarding the St. Louis I didn't realise the turtleback was there until I did the screenshots, so I'm also learning from this experience.


aye, its surprisingly informative for a game. you now relise why ships like Bismark and other BB could be so inhuman with there internal Armour decks, flank Armour and more. its very good visual explaing how it all worked.
My Grampa was on KGV and said they had a lower belt i there, lower down below the core. a foot or so of Armour steel encasing the citadel zones and main belt. entire ship shook raising dust when you fired the main guns broadsides.

downsides.. being below the belts. that would be your tomb and saviour.

.

Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.

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Made in se
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Sweden

Updated my last post with a discussion on angling and overmatch mechanics.

I'll also throw in a bonus discussion on the KGV since you mentioned it. The 260mm lower belt is indeed in game (they're pretty good about having correct armour schemes in game, it's just that the game mechanics don't always make them make as much sense in game as they did IRL. The Warspite's meat locker is counted as Citadel, for example, which is a bit... special. It USED to be the torpedo storage, which makes sense as Citadel, but the Warspite represented in-game is the WWII refit which hadn't carried any torpedoes for a good 20 years, where the torpedo storage was converted to additional freezer space for bigger food capacity).

Spoiler:



The main belt of the King George V class extends below the waterline and is very strong, at 381mm. As you can see, however, below the main belt, well below the waterline, is the actual Citadel armour belt, at 260mm. This is to protect from shells that fall short and hit the water but with enough force to continue and hit the ship under the waterline. This can actually happen in-game and was changed last patch so that ships with submerged Citadels (mainly the ridiculously OP Conqueror at T10) could actually have their Citadels hit somewhat reliably if they mess up. The KGV still has excellent Citadel protection for its Tier. The entire Citadel is actually below water (see below), so even if something gets penetrating hits through the main belt it won't actually hit the Citadel. Plunging fire, lucky shots at weird angles while the KGV is turning or being the Musashi is pretty much the only three ways of getting Citadel hits on the KGV.



The red line is roughly the waterline, the green line is where the Citadel's top is. The KGV class was monstrously well-protected IRL, in-game it suffers from the fact that it's vulnerable to being spammed by HE-slinging Cruisers since the entire deck is 32mm, which isn't strong enough to resist HE spam even without all the fires that's going to start.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/03/09 14:55:25


For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back. 
   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Black Templar Dreadnought





Where ever the Emperor needs his eyes

Thanks for all the info Walrus, never hurts to go back over that stuff as an experienced player. Sometimes you forget stuff, or get over eager.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/03/09 16:54:19


 
   
Made in se
Ferocious Black Templar Castellan






Sweden

Even if you don't forget, there's still always more to be learned. As mentioned I didn't know about the turtleback on the St. Louis or the weaker front belt on the Fuso which coincidentally coincides with where the barbettes for A and B turrets are placed. I really should be paying more attention to the armour schemes of various ships, I just haven't been bothered.

For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back. 
   
 
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