Nerf Scharnhorst Armor or make it 8.0

BUMP for Unanimous Consent. I’d really love to play those cool 6.0-6.3 Cruisers once in awhile without getting Scharnhorsted up the waz every match.

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One should be using 4m depth at all times anyway, unless playing at below-destroyer Coastal BRs. :P

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Again please remember chaps, the scharnhorst has modern layered armour profiles. And most people are using ww1 dreadnoughts with ww1 shells which means they don’t have the penetration power or have shell shatter that stops them reaching the vitals of the scharnhorst. All this means is that the Scharnhorst was abit early to the game, But Alaska and that russian ship can out tank the scharnhorst easily sometimes.

Theres nothing wrong with the model, just the game does not have many ww2 counterparts yet.

(An edit note: we are slowly gaining ships closer if not equal to it’s combat power and hopefully with more modern ww2 additions will have ships outclassing it).

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This is the primary point. Scharnhorst should probably be more like 7.3/7.7 and every other nation should get new top tier BBs ASAP. But they seem to be dragging their feet with doing that.

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France, still stuck with one crappy modernized WW1 dreadnought as their top tier…

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Honestly not sure how much i agree with this. The real primary reason the scharn performs so well isnt its tankyness imo, its the gun characteristics. The thing is incredible at dealing with cruisers and smaller ships. Between its fast firing guns and extremely good turret traverse, it rips through most things that arent BB’s. It does struggle significantly more with BB’s though, to the point where sometimes the only actual reasonable recourse is to close the distance and torp them. THATS where the armor comes in. It can be hard to sink fast enough if its rushing you, at that point though, you focus more on the 2 forward turrets and the conning tower to limit its firepower and maneuvers, and then use HE to knock out the torps, and you’ll chew through its crew.

I think if it went up in BR and faced more fast battleships, its effectiveness would tank to the bottom and lead to it getting downtiered back to 7.0

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Funniest part is the modernisation is about AA, one of the main turret is removed xD

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And the Bretagne still has a bug that makes its secondary guns shoot off target by a wide margin. The bug report’s been around for 3 months now.

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/ZjFdJMyAXICy

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Damn still here?

Guess if Scharnorst on its release got this problem it would have been resolved in 3 days.

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Exactly. We don’t need Scharnhorst nerfed into uselessness, we need counterparts for everyone.

Sadly, Haijin keeps giving U.S DDs and CCs, other nations WW1 dreadnoughts/BCs and PT boats, none of which serves as a counterpart.

For some reason it’s like they forgot Top Tier BBs exist- even years after implementing Scharnhorst and, now, after implementing a damn Nagato class ship.

I have no idea how they can implement such stuff without counterparts for months and even years… but last thing we need is artificial needs that would never be reverted.

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USN’s time will come. As soon as they start to add US fast battleships, the issue will be gone for good. Right now its just the US WW1 designs…you can’t expect these to be on paar with Scharnhorst/Gneisenau. Which had a reputation to soak up damage (Torpedo hits, mines, bombs, BB main gun shells during their countless battles and operations).

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Interestingly though, the modern U.S BBs will be more glass canons than anything else.

On the one hand, their super heavy 406mm shells will devastate everything… but on the other hand, their mere 307mm thick belts won’t do much to protect them.

I think that, in War Thunder, Bismarck will be the peak performance apex, at least in the standard Naval mode.

Bismarck’s armor was designed for engagement ranges found currently in the standard Naval modes’ maps, while the armor on fast American BBs was designed for longer engagement ranges, which would give them an edge on EC or larger maps.

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I would like to see how can Alaska or Kron “easily” out tank Scharnhorst in current WT settings even if it is sometimes.

But in general I agree Scharnhorst could be quite balance even with current ships but we would need one thing for that and thats range and long range accuracy. If we got larger maps the Scharnhorst would quickly got major disadvantage since its light guns wouldn´t be potent enough to punch through the armor of other and some others would get some slight chance to pierce through the armor at that range.

I mean I would say that the aditions are not that bad at least when we get cruisers and DDs, since the USN BBs are simply not that good even if Gaijin adds the Colorado. US would need South Dakota (the unfinished one) or North Carolina which would then very likely prompt adition of Bismarck.

I wouldn´t hold my hopes too high yes the pen on the guns will be great but even they will sometime struggle with angled Bismarck or Scharnhorst and the bursting charge isn´t that great so I doupt that they will some kind of magic bullet.

And I really thing that that is precisely what is needed - larger maps since with adition of more powerful guns I have feeling that the BB meta will quickly evolve in camping meta since sticking out your nose will mean detonation.

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Literally never lol

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Lmao alaska cant tank a thing. It is oversized heavy cruiser and easiest battlecruiser/battleship to be ammoracked, Kronstadt currently is 2nd easiest

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“Mere 307mm”

Except that belt is inclined with 19 deg to normal which equals to the effectiveness of 350-400+mm of vertical armour depending on range and attacking shells. You can observe their effectiveness via Hood which has 305mm armour inclined at 12 deg, making it one of the most survivable ship in game along with Scharnhorst. 307mm@19deg would only be much better than that.

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Isn’t he talking about mere 307 mm for USS Iowa and her sisters? In that age 307 mm would be ‘mere’ even with 19 degree compared to escalating penetration compared to nowadays. And we know, American battleships’ shell and magazine loadout is not the worst but not the best.

Still I wouldn’t use the world “mere” as Iowa is arguably the 2nd best protected battleship class behind Yamato. Perhaps Richelieu would be slightly better on paper but she lacks sufficient protection against diving shells as Iowa does. Maybe in other words, anything that is not Yamato was insufficiently protected if using “mere” for Iowa

The thing is, those sloped 307mm were optimised against the plunging fire angles of longer ranges;

At long ranges, indeed, the combined angle of attack of the shell trajectory + the angling made up for an angle of up to 45º, in which case it would go up to 435mm of effectiveness from ranges where the shells would have lost up to 50% of their penetration power already, dropping them to values on the 440mm pen range.

However, in War Thunder, typical engagement ranges are actually <10km, which means the shell trajectories are essentially flat, making the angle of attack way lower, and the shells retain up to 66% of their penetration power.

For example, let’s say:

Mutsu’s No.5 APC shell vs Iowa, 20,000m;

No.5 APC shell penetration at 20,000m: 460mm
USS Iowa’s effective belt at 20,000m: 435mm + 40mm (external hull) = 475mm

Quite impressive! Iowa’s armor actually withstands Mutsu’s shell. Right?

Well… except that’s at 20,000m, the range Iowa was designed to fight from.

This is not the case in War Thunder. In War Thunder, they will face each other from 10,000m away… and this is what happens then:

No.5 APC shell penetration at 10,000m: 555mm
USS Iowa’s effective belt at 10,000m: 340mm + 30mm (external hull) = 370mm

So… while Iowa’s armor is nearly impenetrable at 20,000m, it just doesn’t work at War Thunder’s current engagement ranges. See what I mean?

Always remember; an armor being excellent in real life under the circumstances it was designed for doesn’t mean it would be as effective in War Thunder when it would be forced to function under circumstances it wasn’t designed for.

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King George V and Litorrio: excuse me what?
And on non-commissioned we have to remember Project 23

Personal expectation of future battleship ‘protection’ and ‘survivability’ is that ‘module layout’ precede ‘armor’. Already penetration is more than enough to penetrate enemy capital ship in 7.0. And while penetration would get bigger of at least 100 mm, armor won’t be much thicker than nowadays Scharnhorst and Mississipi. Yes angling could maximize the effectiveness of armor, but you cannot always angle against every enemy, and some ships(especially US battleships) has some obstacle when trying to angle.