So I just started getting into naval after finishing Italy’s air and ground trees and right off the bat you can tell most of the other nations get WAY better coastal ships then Italy.
Take the Italian MS-472, a 2.3 torpedo boat, It has a single 40mm on the front getting 81mm of penetration, also with 2 torpedo’s and 8 depth charges, So its a pretty good boat (apart from the gun depression).
But then lets take a look at a few other boats that this will be facing.
First lets look at the Fairmile D (601). It has a single 40mm auto cannon on the front getting 60mm of penetration almost like the MS-472 accept, it has a additional twin 20mm auto canon on the back and another two twin 12.7mm Vickers MGs in the middle, and it also has two torpedo’s. And to top it off this is at the same BR, 2.3.
Next lets look at the PT-314, it has a 40mm auto cannon on the back getting 81mm of penetration and another 37mm on the front, also a 20mm on the front next to the 37mm but there’s even two twin 12.7mm browning MG turrets on the middle front and middle back part of the boat, This also gets 4 torpedo’s. The funny thing is though is this is at 2.3 as well.
I don’t want to be that guy but come on now, what happens with Italy is when you get a new boat its just the same one you had before but with one more gun and its bumped up 1.0 more in BR while the other country’s naval units and basically gunboats with torpedo’s.
Plus to anyone who is going to say Oh just use the GIS 811 or the MV-611. The GIS-811 cant do anything to gunboats with 40mm+ 2km away cause it only has a 20mm AA gun and a 2cm AA gun on the back which feels like shooting spit balls out of a straw. Same could be said with the MV-611.
All I’m saying is this could be a bit balanced more cause the type of boats that Italy has to deal with.
What do you all think of this and if you don’t see a issue why?
Penetration is not much of a factor for most coastal boats as they have nonexistent armor anyway, but the Italian coastal fleet tree is super lacking. I’m not knowledgable on the Italian coastal fleet to know if it can be/how to fix it, but it is lackluster.
To have higher penetration on a gun, its nice to have when shooting longer ranges like 2 km+ cause it keeps its power. But with 20mm and lower, after about 1.2km the rounds lose a lot of their power so even if the hull of the boat is wood, it takes awhile to even do real damage to it which for 2.3+, the maps become way larger then 1.0-1.7 maps so you run into these issues.
There were many suggestions on the old forum, if you want to look at them:
Though imo coastal fleet in general doesn’t really have a place in the game currently (apart from being annoying capturers in high tier), needs some gameplay revision.
Okay first off you’ve inadvertently mixed up Fairmile D No.617 picture over No.601 description as 617 has a 57 mm 6 pounder 7cwt QF Mk.IIa cannon not the 40 mm 2 pounder QF Mk.IIc Pom-Pom cannon (also the Mk.VII torpedoes give it away as well).
Anywho yes Italy suffers compared to the other TT’s as sub 2.0 is pretty good but after that it’s quite crap, I’ve never really bothered playing Italy that much especially post 2.01 in which Italy suffered the most from the split seeing near useless vessel going from sub 50k rp to over a 100k rp & the lost of units that were effective in battle being able to research the small craft quicker (a reason my stats look shit with only the Freccia class Motoconvertibili having normal looking stats as those are pre 2.01 ntm the BR compression of the mode doesn’t help their vessels out to well.
I can think of a great many machines that could be added to spice up this TT including a gunboat with a 16" cannon for the lolz.
It sucks the MS-74 Series 2 never came back from CBT as that would probably be very mean at 2.3 BR but the ahistorical placement of the flakvierling saw it not return (not like there ain’t any other AhIsToRiCaL messes in game, stares at the IKA Type 5 Escort Boat).
I spaded the Italian coastal fleet - it actually works pretty well IMO, despite the angst from looking at the specs - for example 1 x 40mm gun on the front it significantly better than the rear mounted one on the 314 even with the additional lighter calibers - you will actually outshoot it by a lot in a head on, which is what you should be doing.
However it does top out and you get a fair number of 3.0 and 3.3 games where you are outgunned - but that is normal got being in an uptier.
Well sure the front mounted 40mm works pretty well for hulls but at the same time, the other boats have way more turrets shooting at you that your crew gets knocked out in a matter of seconds.
The entire Rank III is useless against all what you have to face, also you always get 3.0 or 3.3 uptiers. Not mention the insane RP research for the next Rank IV boat.
