Yeah, it’s a shame that compression renders many cool WW1 ships literally unusable.
What are Early WW1 BBs armed with 283-305mm guns suppossed to do against Interwar and WW2 16-inchers?
I would love to play 6.0-6.3 BB lineups… but they are unplayable against 7.0s; while these 6.0-6.3 ships render 5.0-5.7s unplayable too…
Compression is a way too big problem in Naval.
That is why we should have separtate tree lines, with a battleship, cruiser, destroyer, and submarine line, just the way AIR has bomber, fighter, and interceptor lines. Only tree that has different classes all jumbled up in lines.
What Gaijin really needs to do is use the separate air BRs to decompress naval, preferably to at least 10-11BR. That way, they can have the same 7.X jets as usual fighting the current top tier, but with 3-4 more BR brackets between the tip-top ships and WW1 boats.
It’s basically the best ship equipped to mitigate the 16" guns in the game still. If Scharnhorst has a bloody nose from Amagi salvos, now imagine what kind of beating everyone else with significantly inferior protection experiences.
Sure, Amagi, Colorado and Rodney guns ruin everyone’s day. But at least most ships can give them a few good hits in return. Scharnhorst armor is so idiot-proof that there is no point in even shooting back when one wants you dead, they’re guaranteed to outlast you if you don’t have help to take them down.
I think you’re exaggerating the effectiveness of Scharnhorst’s firepower against top tier BBs, particularly after the ballistics update in this major. The 28cm guns have never been great at taking down tough targets like Hood, Rodney, Tennessee etc. In fact even before the ballistic fix it can barely hurt a properly angled Amagi. After the major update I can literally sail in Rodney without even angling and give a big middle finger on its face.
I have stopped playing Scharnhorst for a while, because I really dislike the 28cm gun lacking brutal slams like the big ones. I play the top tier to fight enemy capital ships, not for farming cruisers/bots.
But lack of “slam” is compensated for high rof!
For farming cruisers yes, for duel with well protected battleships no. If you can’t penetrate the vital area in the first place it is useless regardless you can fire twice or three times of shells on your enemy. Even with the new hull breaking system, the big gunners will still break the hull sections faster than fast firing small guns thanks to much higher KE damage from heavier shells and better velocity retention at distance.
I can’t recall how many times watching Scharnhorsts helplessly throw everything they can on my Tennessee while can’t even scratch 2% out of my crew because I stay at a range where they can’t penetrate anywhere of my citadel armour. On the other hand I can slam my big AP shells on their barbette again and again until they go boom. Yes it takes a lot of patience but watching ppl in Scharnhorst suffering is an unusual mean of entertainment.
Tennessee after the dispersion and ballistic changes is a joy to play. Doesn’t necessarily hold up the best under 15” and 16” fire but can absolutely maul other ships’ crew especially with ranging shot. 5”/38 likes to overshoot closing enemies a lot after the ballistic change but you can dial it back in quick enough in the long salvo interval.
What I’m really looking forward to is getting a South Dakota class hopefully this year and ideally Massachusetts. Looking at just the belt armor thickness I don’t think a lot of people appreciate just how tough they will be, since the 19 degree belt angle means that by the 7.5-10km range bracket where armor starts to actually matter the compound angle will make many shells use their 30 degree modifiers, reducing their penetration by nearly a quarter. Combined with the external sts plating and fuel tanks over the main belt, as well as a decent splinter plate spaced behind the main belt the armor should stand up fairly well to contemporary ships while shrugging off fire from all but the best guns in game currently. Scharnhorst especially will have a very hard time against the armor, while the ~80% improvement in broadside weight per minute of the 16”/45 vs 14”/50 will absolutely chew it to pieces.
North Carolina would also be a tough cookie herself. While her armor is not as angled as South Dakota her magazines did receive an addition 3.95" armored backplate.
Of course, its probably more than likely that their barbettes can be easily sniped and set off the magazines anyway.
I have a spaded Scharnhorst too. Barely play it, because it’s just boring and OP. They brought it years too soon into the gameplay.
no where as op as it used to be its guns are so mid nowadays and all its got going is high rate off fire and decent survivability what naval needs is decompression that just gaiijin refuses to happen we need larger maps around 8 Miles should be start off naval engaugments with removal of costal from top tier and right now most engaugements happen at 4 miles larger maps and a increse of br for scarn to 7.7 should be fine and 8.0 for 16 inch monsters ww1 dreads can probably be 7.0
more open ocean maps too as most enagaugments dont take place near land
Yeah the North Carolinas should be pretty strong. My main concern is the comparatively poor machinery protection will probably make them very vulnerable to crew bleed. I expect the modernized Nagato to have a similar issue. Shell rooms will continue to be an Achilles heel but at least the barbette protection is generally better than the standards, though to a degree that’s mostly valuable against lower br ships. To the best of my knowledge all US fast battleships should have an armor arrangement similar to that of Alaska inside the barbette, meaning in theory the powder handling room shouldn’t be part of the magazine hitbox like it is on Tennessee for example. Booklets of general plans generally have the fast battleship magazines slightly below the waterline at trial displacement rather than almost exactly at it for the standards, so that should be an improvement also. Even better if they model one at deep load, as iirc per Friedman Massachusetts in certain conditions had a draft of ~37ft vs ~33ft at standard, while current US battleships generally clock in around ~30ft.
We can only hope, unfortunately, Gaijin has fully admit that they pick ship drafts completely arbitrarily. Tennessee and Fuso are one of the bigger examples.
Tennessee seems to line up more or less exactly with the booklet of general plans, it’s just that USN battleships were rarely ever at those drafts as they were almost always loaded much heavier and those drafts were mostly a “make sure we can pull enough off the ship that it won’t run aground going into port” sort of thing. Assuming they use those plans for the other fast battleships and not deep load conditions they’ll still have the magazines underwater, even if only just.
While Scharnhorst may not be as dangerous as before because of her anemic guns, she’s still stupidly threatening and annoying thanks to map design.
No one is going to contest a Scharnhorsts when it goes after a cap. Everyone knows her guns are weaker at range so most players are happy to just let Scharnhorst win the match in exchange for not being killed by them.
So I wouldnt consider her ‘balanced’ unless map objectives are overhauled.
Since the Devs have now admitted a ships historical rate of fire doesnt actually matter.
Wait what, did I sleep through something? What did they say?
I raised a bug report that HMS Rodney’s rate of fire should be 2rpm. Based on firing practice done in 1938. Practice specifically done to test the effect of modifications to the shell handling rooms. This same document was used as proof to boost Rodney’s RPM from 1.5 to 1.7 in the last update.
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/1SaYGYr1VwDK
Response was
Developers considered it unnecessary to further increase the rate of fire.
So the historical rate of fire doesn’t matter. Not even using ‘balance’ as an excuse. The Devs will just set it to whatever they feel like.
