I just thought it would be a nice idea to finally spade this Schutze boat, just to always end up fighting these French ships. How can these have the same BR and spawn next to small boats? Shouldn’t they get BRs around 4.3 slapped on them or get blue water spawns? These French things just rack up 10+ kills when they’re going vs. boats. Imho they even look like blue water ships, not coastal boats.
Basic balancing seems to be an issue in WT. How can small boats with just one autocannon have the same BR as these French things? I just want to understand the reasoning of Devs when they decides like this. What are you supposed to do against an Amiens or Marne with just autocannons?
Also compare early destroyers, frigates or gunboats with blue water spawn to these? Why do they have coastal spawn and many other not?
They need decompression. and the USSR surely has a similar ship but in an even lower BR. Moving them up they are gonna be pure rubbish moving it down will be Too OP. I don’t really see the problem of it being in this BR as an USSR player. Surely other nation may suffer…
But why can’t a boat with one Bofors and coastal damage model (aka one hit and its gone) have lower BRs? Thats likely an extreme example, but why can be both a the same BR?
It applies for alot other autocannon boats as well.
At this BR, u can not only use early 3.3 DD such as mutsuki, then using AP/SAP shells can easily kill these ‘cargo’ boats, and also these dumb ships have worst mobility, use u torpedos can easily kill them. For your complain, u just missed the good times with M802, they are 3.7 and really OP in last 4 years.
By the way, that German 3,0 boats have post-war bofors, it shooting faster than L/60 bofors and have HE-VT ammo.
Very sure the amiens have very slow reload rate and quite a slow boat but surely higher survivability so it harder to hit target it would took about 2-3 hit to sink and small boat and also pretty much autocannon can slap it to death. espically if your near it. try to go in circle it will be hard for him to aim you. It pretty much other nation dosen’t receive boat as good as the USSR and the Amiens. It very easy to ammorack if you have a 30mm+ auto cannon or a big gun. Aim a little front of the 130mm gun. that is the ammo storage a few shot will kill it.
It’s just the fact that it uses the bluewater DM when all the boats have the simple model.
The Arras and the Amiens are relatively easy to cripple and difficult to maneuver which were my biggest issues when playing it. In fact, as a vessel with the L/70 Bofors, you have better equipment to disable them than most boats. The problem is that due to the bluewater DM, you can’t immediately bring them down and usually have to win via attrition. This gives them a chance to point the gun at you, and they only really need that one chance to sink you. Since so many people have the Amiens and the coastal population is so low, they often ruin my matches when I’m playing at a lower BR than them.
The best advice I can give you is to avoid them where possible and bring lots of AP so you can get through the hull. If you have to fight them, make the main gun your first target and follow up by shooting the 40mm and its ammo on the back of the Amiens.
Marne is just one of those vessels that’s stuck between better destroyers and worse boats, but can still do quite well. It definitely deserved its BR increase and is still fun to play, but it’s emblematic of the jump in capability between boats and everything above them.
Bofors has no AP shells, unfortnately. At least all German Bofors boats just have 5mm penetration with HE or HE-proxy fuse. Which makes it very hard to sink these french vessels with blue water damage model. There are heavily armed boats around 3.0 with guns, torpedos and alot autocannons. With those you can got for weakspots.
But boats like a Schütze with just a single cannon @5mm pen? Not even torpedos? These really need lower BRs. What you’re gonna do if almost all players tend to use these ships with blue water damage model? Other solution would be to up the BR of Marne, Amiens etc to 4.0 area or just make them spawn with early destroyers.
I agree with the BR change but DD spawn would make them unusable (they are slow, have fewer gun compared to DD and bad firing angle) they would get slaughtered
That’s the 40L70, which of course makes up for lack of AP with higher rof and VT shells, making it hell on earth vs anything without armour - and it really has little difficulty hammering Russian River gunboats with even more armour in the game!
Even without penetration you can keep all the guns and the bridge destroyed, setting fires and reducing crew!
But more appropriate at 3.0 is the 37mm FLAK which has AP in its default belt, as does every 40L60 bofors which has 1 AP in every belt, and also all 20mm autocannon too… all of which easily penetrate the “armour” of these boats - heck even 50 cals do to - it’s only 16mm steel on the hull, 4mm elsewhere - they have nominal 20mm pen at 500m
Coming from someone currently spading most of the 1.0–4.0 coastal boats, I can say without hesitation that the current coastal balance is a real problem. The arrival of French gunboats and the ongoing Amiens spam have only intensified the compression and balance issues further.
Including Aconit and HCMS Brantford, they are actively mopping the floor with anything in their BR bracket, even putting Pr. 206s to shame!
Of course, these gunboats are slow and can be killed, ONLY provided that your boat is equipped with torpedoes and can corner them, or you are lucky with your call-in artillery to one-shot kill one of those. Those options, however, can be nullified by smart players who use careful positioning, maintain distance, and have strong situational awareness. In those cases, motor boats simply have slim to no chance unless an identical gunboat or a destroyer on their team steps in to deal with them.
Assuming the OP was running the German 3.0 lineup with his Schütze, it’s really unhelpful to suggest that. Germany has no destroyers at 3.3 or lower, only at 3.7 and above. And bringing a 3.7 destroyer into what was a 3.0 lineup is simply not worth it. At 3.7, you’re usually thrown against full destroyer teams, which leaves your coastal boats nearly useless except for capping. That nets you very little RP for the coastal grind.
You might want to think about beginners, who are trying to unlock or spade every coastal boat. They are the ones most punished by this environment. The Amiens spam, together with other overperforming gunboats, is an absolute roadblock. Unless you’re in a destroyer or a gunboat with a 100+ mm gun, you can’t reliably deal with them. That leaves them with poor RP gains and very little fun in the process.
That doesn’t make it acceptable just because it was like that in the past. Yes, Gaijin has made some super slow BR adjustments over time to try and improve coastal balance, but the changes are far from enough.
I remember when Marne sat at 3.0, and it was very unbalanced to face against it in a boat without torpedoes. Thankfully, Gaijin responded fairly quickly, and bumping it up by one BR step was a good start. That said, the reality is that coastal balance as a whole still needs a complete overhaul if the underlying issues are ever going to be addressed
Yes, the coastal BRs need a complete decompression, and I encourage everyone to speak up about this. Please do not keep the mindset of ‘not my problem because I mainly play X nation’. That attitude continues to harm coastal gameplay, including bluewater gameplay cough Sovetsky Soyuz cough. You cannot have this attitude if you have said “they need decompression.”
If we genuinely care about improving coastal balance, we need to push for change. I spoke up during the recent BR updates, and I was disappointed to see so few people providing feedback on coastal boats, aside from myself and a few others I know personally.
Sure, but the problem is that coastal boats, especially the Pr.206s, you mentioned with 30mm autocannons, are at 4.3. Meanwhile, Amiens and other gunboats are safe in their own BR bracket, since they don’t encounter these boats with 30mm cannons. Excluding Marne, most players with those gunboats aren’t willing to uptier themselves into potentially 4.3 battles. Only those looking for a challenge or who don’t mind playing in higher-BR matches will do so and fair enough for them.
Completely agreed!
The issue is that the OP is playing a German coastal lineup, and to my knowledge, Germany has very few options for using AP shells on larger guns, mostly limited to the Drache and AF D3, which can compete within their bracket. For 20mm, 25mm, and 37mm cannons, AP shells are available, but it takes a high volume of sustained fire to penetrate Amiens’ bow, so you have to be willing to take that risk.
What strikes me as odd is that Drache is the only German ship with access to AP shells for its 88mm guns. Why don’t other German ships with 88mm guns also have access to AP rounds?
Bottom line: the solution to coastal balance is to decompress the entire BR range across the board. In addition, Gaijin should revisit the coastal economy, much like they recently did with the bluewater fleet. Those are the changes we should really be pushing for.
At the beginning of Naval Forces Germany also had this K-2 gun corvette with coastal spawn and two big calibre turrets.
It was mopping the floor with boats as well. Didn’t took long and blue water spawn was slapped on it. Despite its so slow that it never reaches the combat area around the spawn zones. Its not played anymore, its now unplayable.
So, its quite a bit strange that ships like Amiens, Marne, Bradford etc. with destroyer-like damage models and big calibre guns, spawn next to my small autocannon boat. With identical BR (?!), sufficient speed and onetap guns. You can’t defeat them with autocannons (Bofors have no AP on german top of the line boats). Also the PR206 fails, you can shot all 2000 shots into them without penetrating into the ammo or crew modules.
Wounder why they don’t get blue water spawn like the German K-2 gunboat (top speed 30 km/h lol). Or 4.3 BR as the Ger minesweepers have. Instead they’re at 3.X like small boats with Bofors and have coastal spawn on top?
At least PR206 and top of the line Bofors boats need access to AP ammo. These boats are 4.0 or 4.3 BRed, but have no chance vs. 3.0 Amiens and all these coastal spawning de-facto destroyers. So what strange balancing is it? 3.0 BR ships like 1000x stonger than 4.3 boats?
I disagree about the current state of the K2. I play her regularly and shes a beast now many potential opponents went up in the decompression. Yes she’s slow so you wont be rushing caps or spawns, but also well armoured. And whilst HE only the mains hit hard with good firing angles. Turret speed mod + reload crew skills gives her a real boost in capability.
But she also demonstrates just how useless Gaijin are at any form of Naval BR balancing, not just Coastal vs Bluewater, or ship vs ship comparisons but also the basic underlying gameplay itself. Maybe the reason K2 has become more rare is whilst being BR 4.3 shes only Tier I so cant be used in dailies. Meanwhile in my Italian tree I have 2x BR4.0/TIII destroyers…
From the seabed upwards it just doesn’t make sense, but unfortunately the Snail brain right now is infatuated with BBs, anything thats not at least a Cruiser+ takes way too long to be reassessed.
Its not the only one either…HMS Calpe is also 4.3/TI.
Imo both K2 and Calpe are far more capable than their TI rating imply (otherwise they wouldnt be 4.3!), but are also prevented from actually contributing outside of individual battles due to Gaijins failure to understand or care about low tier ships.
Unfortunately raising all 4.3 to TIII is currently unfeasible as neglect of the low end DDs has resulted in too many gaps and thin lineups as it stands. Drawing a hard line would make it even more rarified . A lot of filler is need at 3.3-4.0 but I i dont see it arriving in anything but a trickle.
