Re-balancing the naval tree

Machinery of War Discussion Navy
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I’m going to be using the US Bluewater Tree as an example, because it’s easier to explain with ships I’m familiar with. There is a SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT proposition in the MM/ECO/PROG section, but I’m going to try to explain why I think my solution would be better for Naval as a whole, and more rewarding/intuitive for players.

For starters. in general I believe that you should work up from the oldest ships, to the newest. it makes sense, it works like every other branch generally does, and is easy to understand.

The Naval tree is currently the outlier in nearly every other facet of tech tree organization.

Where the Air and Ground Trees have heavy vehicles/bombers available from the get go, the Naval Tree locks battleships behind several hundred thousand RP and three to four tiers. Ships like the North Dakota, with only a SINGLE PAIR of 3" AA guns is 6.3, and I hardly ever see it sailing, even in the EC events. Why a ship that is listed in game as 1919, and has a laughable AA armament that even the earliest destroyers can outperform, is 6.3, with planes like the P-51H, F8F-1B, and AM-1 being adjacent or on BR, is beyond me.

my proposal is thus,
Every Class of ship being moved to it’s own researchable line. there are enough ships for every major country to support this, especially with the addition of partial or even barely floating hulls being added as fully functioning ships.

Further,
Adjust the BR ratings of various ships based on their actual capability, to support the new Tech Tree.
Obviously if a ship like the North Dakota is 4.3 (very reasonable seeing as it can easily be bombed out, is slow, and doesn’t have a good secondary armament for fighting smaller ships), then the Mitscher Class Destroyers, could easily be moved up to 5.7, the early Cruisers dropped down to 4.0, and still maintain the evolution of technology that makes War Thunder the game it is.

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No, this simply wouldnt work. There is no way a destroyer can do meaningful damage to a battleship without getting in range to torpedo it, and a smart BB will never let that happen. And thats just the 2 extremes. Even the weakest of Cruisers would just farm destroyer kills all day long.

This works in games like WoW because they have HP and damage based mechanics which can be tuned to create balance between disparity of classes. In War Thunder you have a realistic damage model where this simply wouldnt work.

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the actual threat to battleships is planes, not really destroyers. contrary to popular belief anyway. far more battleships died to torpedo/bombing runs from aircraft than destroyers. also, several destroyers in game have reasonable torpedo ranges.

Also also, the earliest method to killing a battleship isn’t even torpedos in game currently, it’s just shredding the crew with HE until it dies from fires and crew loss.

the current meta is not a good justification to not give this a shot, as it would almost completely rework how naval operates

besides, this wouldn’t change too much about the actual ships, just adjust the disparity between the capabilities, and stop the power creep of the naval tree, which I believe is far more damaging to the game mode than the ships questionable damage models can be

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I very rarely die to aircraft, also aircraft are a mid to late game thing, there is still plenty of time for the BB to massacre everything. Also a smart BB without good AA will stick close to their teammates with AA.

It would render Destroyers and potentially also cruisers unplayable

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have you played navy lately? battleships are compressed to hell to the point that dying to aircraft of course doesn’t happen, naval AA is stupid powerful to the point that again, dying to aircraft isn’t very often, and destroyers and early cruisers are pain anyway.

really think about the last time you played a World War 1 era battleship that wasn’t refit in the 30s. That’s primarily what I’m talking about here. the North Dakota isn’t rendering any ship unplayable just by existing at a lower tier, it’s just making the North Dakota a viable ship.

It’s also getting rid of the power creep that exists at the end of the Naval tree. the US tree has seven or eight battleships at the end of it. only like five of them actually belong there. the rest of the should be mid tree based on their ACTUAL capability.

a lot of battleships and cruisers currently suffer because of how the naval tree is worked, and it’s astonishing that the devs would deviate from what has worked in every other tree for naval.

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I haven’t simply because of being uptiered to fight the 7.0s. This was fixed last major and whilst I havent done so yet, I intend to create a 6.3 ish line-up which Im expecting to be highly playable now the former 7.0s are now more like 7.7.

Such as?

From my experience playing Britain. id say the relative BR difference between the destroyers and cruisers is okay, and the difference between cruisers and battleships is okay. Could it be better? Yes? But I think your proposed changes would make it way way worse. I have no idea how something “modern” like HMS Diamond would do anything against something like HMS Belfast nor do I see HMS Belfast doing anything against something like HMS Marlborough. Its kinda bad enough as it is having the Twon-class cruisers at the same BR as the Dreadnought.

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I think you misunderstood what I’m trying to argue for here.

I do NOT want modern ships fighting ancient vessels. World War 1 should fight contempory vessels, as should World War 2, and etc…

I’m simply saying that the power creep and compression issue renders certain BRs and ships unplayable as is, and I’m proposing a rework of the tree that I think would fix it.

currently for the US, the best BR is 5.0. not for the cruisers, the early US light cruisers are garbage. but you have ships like the Moffet, Porter, Sumner, Somers, and Mitscher Class destroyers, with either a very effective 5" gun platform, or you have a long range torpedo to surprise a new spawning enemy with.

everything after 5.0, you WILL fight battleships. that’s not a question, it’s a fact. but atleast at 5.0-5.3, you’re only fighting very early battleships, so it’s not bad right? WRONG, because you fight the meanest cruisers before fighting the weakest battleships.

the fact remains, that the North Dakota is a higher BR than the Northampton, Pennsylvania, and even Helena class, despite all of those classes performing better in every regard. the North Dakota is like flying a B-17 in a 7.7 Air match. you are outperformed in every category except the amount of secondaries you have, even if they aren’t good. the North Dakota, a 1919 era Battleship, should not be 6.3.

Ironically, your example of the Town Class cruisers being the same BR as the Dreadnought is exactly my point. most battleships are actually outdated by the time they set sail, the HMS Dreadnought included. A 1917 ship should not be fighting a 1940 ship even in a downtier. that’s just hilariously unfair to the 1917 ship.

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Okay. Again, that would just be a massacre. Tell you what, you bring a WW2 destroyer like USS Gearing and I’ll bring a WW2 battleship like HMS Vanguard and we’ll see who kills who first

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You’re missing my point. That dynamic already exists in game. and Vanguard isn’t even WW2, it’s 1946 funny man.

I literally used an example from YOUR tech tree of choice to demonstrate how destructively dumb the organization of naval trees are, and you refuse to address it.

  1. Battleships primary threats were carriers historically (aircraft is their largest weakness)
  2. The Early Battleships in game (1920 and earlier) are at a marked disadvantage considering that Battleships have been nerfed considerably to make them easier to kill/severely damage
  3. Re Arranging the Tech Tree would make it more intuitive for players to focus certain ships, allow for more balancing based on ship capabilities and win rates like every other tech tree, and largely solve a lot of problems I’ve personally seen several players complain about in-game. (modern ships fighting WW2 destroyers/cruisers)

But if you really insist, sure. It would be a pointless endeavour, because when every other tech tree is largely balanced based on capability and age, the Naval tech tree should be the sole exception to the standard that the rest of the game relies upon

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HMS Vanguard began construction in 1941, but name a battleship any battleship. Rodney is 1942. I’ll quite easily take on any destroyer in that.

Again. dreadnought (1917) vs HMS Belfast (1959) Dreadnought will pretty much always win. So your argument doesnt doesnt work>

Which arent in game and only really in the Pacific theatre in WW2. Ships like Bismark and Scharnhorst were sunk not by aircraft carriers but other battleships. Heck. HMS Rodney that took part in sinking of Bismark entered service in 1927.

It would render smaller classes of ships unplayable. There is nothing a WW1 destroyer could do vs a WW1 dreadnought. I dont really think there is much a WW1 cruiser could do against a dreadnought.

Except they aren’t. None of them are. This is why you have aircraft like the A-10C which is from 2010+ at a lower BR than the F-4s at 12.0 that entered service in the 1970s.

This is why you have the F-117 (1980s) stealth bomber at the same BR as Mig-17s (1952)

This is why you have the 2S38 which has barely entered service at the same BR as the Challenger 1 that entered service in 1983.

Balance isnt achieved in any of the trees based upon year of service, just in ground and air, as the year increases so does the capability. You dont really have the mix of “classes” like you do in naval except maybe in air with strike aircraft vs fighters and the strike aircraft are always typically a lower BR than their era specific fighters (Such as Mirage 2000D RMV at 12.7 vs Rafale at 14.0) .

Though you do have older destroyers at a lower BR than more modern destroyers etc. But even the strongest destroyer will struggle against the weakest of cruisers and same holds true with cruisers onto battleships. So all the destroyers, cruisers and battleships are ordered in the exact same way as the other trees, just then stacked ontop of each other

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Quoting real life in War Thunder??🤣

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this is a terrible terrible idea mate. many of the reasons are already said here but simply put the ships are designed to be close to real and take damage as such while beingt limited by the game. already manny of the player bnase hate when they get to around 5.7 and start seeing battleships in their cruisers and destroyers. in many cases these cruisers and destroyers are far younger then the dreadnoughts they face yet struggle to do much more then set fires while hiding. wows can do this because they have hit points, gun damage scores, made ups armour, made up weapon performance, insane reloads, invisibility and physics defying speeds. none of this works in war thunder.

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The only way to get remotely close to a naval gamemode where all classes of ships are useful (and keeping it realistic) is to make maps significantly larger, and matches significantly longer with expectations set on players to stay for the whole thing. 3 things gaijin seems to hate.

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How would a battleship be so low? Anti-aircraft isn’t everything… that’s like saying that the Canberra should be 4.3 because it doesn’t get guns

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In War Thunder,there is a gap between destroyers and cruisers,and Cruisers to BBs too.
Only the best DD/Cruiser can deal damage to the worst Cruiser/BB,i mean deal damage not kill them,it is impossible to cross the gap to kill someone by cannons(tropedo can did this but it just like a Roulette)

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What most players hate too. One of the most reason why other modes player don’t play naval is it is too loose and time spending. And making it even severe won’t seem like good idea.

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Tbh cas is hella weak in naval unless u have germany pritz x or how the bomb called

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I agree that it sounds great but it would be extreamly hard to balance
Maybe if u make that only a 3 bb can be deployed at the same time or smt like that it can be balanced

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Poor RN Aqulia

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Inadvertently probably would receive the rating of cruiser then heh (rated as a scout cruiser upon launch & requisition into the Italian royal navy in 1915, in game model 1917, rerated a destroyer in the 1920’s once sold to the original navy that ordered it).

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