The armor isn’t great, but it can work at longer ranges if angled properly. Facing all forward is not a great idea, but angling it to 45° or even more (almost showing the side) can work wonders. Of course it won’t be enough against hard hitters like japanese ships or kronshtadt. The moment the ship isn’t angled though, the amror becomes mashed potatoes, especially in the front.
The problem is that it has great accuracy in game, but not the pen that goes with it, making it an incomplete sniper it feels like (Although i somehow managed to 1-salvo a Scharnhorst and 2-Salvo Kronshtadt right after, here goes my luck for the month i guess)
Richelieu with the current ships in game would basically stomp everything else, if played correctly
Fixing the shell on Dunkerque would already give a decent ship. Not meta in every situation, but with its own playstyle, strengths and weaknesses. Strasbourg could also be a neat addition, basically a Dunkerque which would be more comfortable at close ranges.
When it comes to a premium, one has to keep in mind that we could technically get 3 Battleships of Richelieu class if Gaijin really lacks battleships : ideally, Richelieu 1939 would be the premium, Richelieu 1943 would be in the tree, together with Jean Bart in its 1953 configuration. Strasbourg should also be in the tree imo.
That way the premium would be the worse of the 3 Richelieu-class ships, (less AA and poorer fire-control), making it a good upgrade over the previous one, Courbet, but not end of the line for Battleships like Jean Bart.
Instead of a “Richelieu 1939”, I’d rather go for a Clemenceau. It fits the rules, and it would be an ideal premium, with interesting changes such as secondaries while still being basically a Richelieu class.
We’re not quite here anyway, so until we start seeing those… Especially if, in typical Gaijin’s fashion, this generation of battleships will be added painfully slowly, one at a time.
I can certainly understand if the developers do not want to make so many changes for a new vehicle. If that is the case, then we can only hope they will be open to improvements once enough time passes to collect statistical data that supports the conclusion that Dunkerque needs these changes in her current state.
also @_Betty are you also strugling at ammoracking BB with her or is it okay ? ( im asking to you because i saw your video and we can see that you are a pretty good player , so im taking you as a reference if you dont mind ofc )
It’s a struggle. Usually I just drain their crew, or sink them with fire damage. I only ammo racked like a few battleships one of them is Scharnhorst (probably through barbette).
Penetration is too low, it doesn’t cut through the armor.
Maybe shorter fues delay is a problem too? I don’t know.
the fuze is 0.025 s and for comparaison the british APC shells also have 0.025 s fuze . i really think it’s more a question of penetration and shell durability (sometimes it “shatter” on some compartment or armor plate )
Honestly, i’m just incredibly mad at Gaijin not modelling a depleting ammorack for Dunkerque even though so many battleships have it and she’s the ship that needs it the most.
What kind of horseradish justify an 80-shell ammorack having the same size on the damage model as an 800-shell ammorack?
And there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do about it, because Gaijin will only listen to American Air players whining about not having the absolute strongest fighter in Air RB, while people asking for a basic feature to make a ship 2 years too late viable get vomitted on. I have no idea what’s wrong with the dev’s mind. I have enjoyed this game for nearly a decade and bought many premium vehicles/time/packs, and i just feel completely disrespected at either the lack of effort or just outright malicious intention at one of my most anticipated vehicle.
The visuals for the modules are still not meant to represent the exact amount of ammunition stored there. Doing so is time consuming, and at the end pointless.
I played a couple of matches in Dunkerque and from my experience, I can conclude that the lack of subdivided shell rooms is a major issue. As expected, it is easy for shells to penetrate the front bulkhead and detonate the forward shell room. However, I did not expect the damage model to bug out under heavy cruiser fire. 2 out of 8 games, I had a shell room detonation from fragmentation that ignored my armor. The first instance was a 5 inch HE shell from USS Cleveland which hit the base of my turret and the fragments magically travelled through all the plating and blew up the shell room. The second instance was a 6 inch HE shell from USS Helena that hit the bow and sent the fragments flying into the shell room causing it to blow up.
I might just be unlucky for this to happen twice already but I did not expect in-game bugs to punish a poorly implemented module layout so hard.
It is completely not pointless. The 2 separate levels of Dunkerque’s shell rooms has vastly different protection. Half of it is behind fuel tank, under the waterline, the other half is almost completely exposed. If bringing half ammo only stocked the first level, the chance of your ammorack being hit is greatly reduced.
The first instance was a 5 inch HE shell from USS Cleveland which hit the base of my turret and the fragments magically travelled through all the plating and blew up the shell room.
Use the new hit analysis feature (Community → Replays → select a replay and click Hit Analysis at the bottom → select Enemy hits from the top dropdown → find the hit that killed you → Save to blk) and submit it as a bug report at Community Bug Reporting System
BTW: These shrapnels phasing through armour has one fun benefit: Now you can kill Scharnhorst with secondaries 🤣