I’m not the best person to answer your questions, because I don’t play Naval Realistic and I never liked top tiers (battleships are boring to me). But it’s probably better to get any answer at all.
I played Naval Arcade a lot (before the devs simplified the aiming system in the last major update), mostly in 1.0 - 6.3 BR area, but I also spaded a few 7.0 battleships. So while I’m not the most experienced in top tiers, I know how battles look like there.
Naval Arcade was always more popular than Naval Realistic. You can check the popularity of different game modes from the last few months here:
Rewards are similar in Naval game modes, the difference is so small that you shouldn’t care too much about this. The same goes for event scoring, both game modes are very similar. This is actually the most balanced game mode in terms of rewards. Possibly that’s why so many players prefer Naval Arcade.
I stopped playing Naval Arcade, because in the last major update the devs changed the aiming system to automatic and automatic aiming in my opinion is very boring. I don’t find that much fun in Naval Realistic, so instead of switching to Realistic, I just completely stopped playing Naval.
The devs keep changing how shells interact with the water all the time. It’s really easy to get lost in all these changes, but in general shooting too low is not recommended these days. Water will drain the energy from the shell like crazy and you won’t be able to penetrate the target.
I stopped playing Naval over 2 months ago, but from what I understand, currently fires near the turret can cause ammo explosions. So it should make sense to shoot the turret area. You will disable turrets, cause fires and possibly explode the enemy ammo as well. As usual, it all depends from the target you shoot at and what shells you use. You also have to follow update changelogs closely, because this kind of things usually change from update to update.
This is something I never liked in Naval, too many huge damage model changes that you have to follow to be effective in this game mode. Someone who still plays Naval will have to tell you how it works right now, what’s the most effective way to get good result. And soon we will have another major udpate that will most likely add even more changes to the damage model.
It depends from your guns. Main guns shells should still hit from an angle, your secondaries at longer distances can hit from above with very little energy left (that’s why HE shells can still be a good option for secondary guns, but of course it all depends from the guns and available options).
On the Scharnhorst I would probably use AP shells for main guns and SAP (but AP should also be a good choice) for secondaries. These guns have very good muzzle velocity, so it’s not a problem.
This means that you are shooting the wrong areas. If you keep shooting the same area over and over again, you will cause less and less losses among the crew. In the game there is something like the reserve crew inside the ship’s sections. If you kill all the reserve crew in one section, shooting this section more can only kill active crew member in this section modules, which is not very effective. Ideally you want to kill the reserve crew in all sections. Just keep in mind that the first and last sections don’t have any reserve crew, so there is no sense to shoot these sections.
In Naval, you basically have to follow changelogs to understand how the current damage model works. It usually changes a few times per year. It’s pretty much impossible to keep updated guides for this game mode. Especially it’s not very popular, so CCs don’t gain much money from Naval videos.
I don’t shoot battleships, unless they attack me first and I also have a battleship. There is no sense to attack battleships if you use e.g. a cruiser. It’s better to make yourself a hard target to hit, so the enemy will often switch to easier target.
If you want min-maxing everything then yes, it makes sense to use SAP against targets with a lower armor than SAP shells penetration values. In my experience, it’s not needed though, as you can still be very effective with AP shells against heavy cruisers.
HE shells are good against boats, but if I remember correctly a few months ago the devs changed how AP/SAP shells interacts with boats and now they are much more deadly (previously they didn’t do much damage). Just try them both and see how they work these days. Keep in mind, this can also change at any time. HE shells should always be very effective against boats.
You probably mean secondary 15 cm guns. Using them is a personal preference. I used main and secondary guns together, but on some ships I only used secondary guns against standing targets (due to muzzle velocity difference between main and secondaries they weren’t accurate against moving targets).
My priority was always the easiest target. Of course if someone started shooting at me, they became my new priority.
It didn’t matter when I played Naval, but I saw in the changelogs that it will matter now. So this is another change that you have to consider in your playstyle.
Some people like ranging shots, other people like salvos, it’s a personal preference. I always preferred full salvos.
A long time ago, someone asked me why I don’t use ranging shots on my channel, and this is what I replied:
Spoiler
I don’t use this technique, for a few reasons:
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I prefer to hit hard, especially at the beginning. Making delays between shots decreases your chance to hit hard with your first salvo (this is of course a debatable statement). Because you delay shots, you are always a few seconds behind with your damage. There is also a higher chance, you will only damage (yellow, orange) some areas of the enemy ship, but not destroy anything, when you spread the damage. With first salvo hit, ideally I want to see both destroyed (black) part and the fire same time, which will make enemy life much harder.
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Since SAP/AP shells became META, I often try to hit weapon racks. And because guns in naval aren’t 100% accurate, using single shot into weapon rack area has poor chance to explode ammo. When you use a salvo, your chance is much higher to first hit the ammo rack and possibly explode it (each shell hit has a separate chance to explode ammo rack). Basically, if you spread the damage all over the enemy, you decrease your chance to explode the ammo rack.
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With HE shells, it’s usually a good idea to spread the damage. Because with HE shells, you want to ideally destroy parts (make them black) on the deck, which kills whole the crew inside that part. If you have big enough explosive mass with a shell, one hit can be enough to destroy one part. So spreading the damage makes more sense, as you can kill the crew quicker. Especially the devs some time ago fixed the bug that allowed HE shells to explode ammo racks by direct hit. Right now you can’t do that anymore, so killing enemy with HE shells usually takes a lot of time.
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If you use ranging shot, to create constant shell chain, I guarantee you, you will be hugely visible for every enemy. As you can see on this channel, my playstyle is more to stay as invisible as I can, to stay alive. I just don’t like dying. If you shoot the enemy with salvos, you are much less visible. Sometimes it’s even hard to figure out for the enemy who hit him, especially if the guns have longer reload time. With ranging shots, you see the chain of shells in the air, that leads you right to the enemy who use this technique. I also noticed other enemies like to aim you as well, because they can clearly see that you shoot often and see you as a bigger threat.
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I’m overall pretty lazy. I know its not hard to use ranging shot technique, but that’s still something you need to have on your mind.
In some situations, like firing HE shells with big explosive mass, ranging shots technique should be more effective than salvos. But even then, it’s not a crystal clear advantage without flaws. I also rarely use this kind of shells nowadays. I used to like HE shells a lot, but after many nerfs in the last year or two, imo they are now much worse than SAP/AP shells.
Try both and see which one suits you better.
