Rebalancing via era doesn’t solve anything & will still be far worse than the current game.
If you wanna see what I mean just take your Clemson class or Wickes class (heh only one in game is a Town class 1940 destroyer) & bring it to 6.3 with your WWI Dreadnought & see how your battle goes, aka pretty shit mate.
Even if you made stuff to date all your WWI / interwar vessels would get shafted by WWII/ late WWII equipment ntm most post WWII vessels are armed with WWII designs & surplus equipment eg the 3"/50 Mk. 22 cannon for the former & the 40 mm/60 for the latter, not sure how fun that would be if those weapons were done by dates eg 1968: as RIP HMAS Arrow P80 facing the JDS Chikugo DE-215 & SKR-7 lol an only the latter has nasty mid cold war guns while the rest are WWII guns (RUR-5 armed with W44 for Chikugo class when?, I want my sea nukes).
GF equivalent is essentially taking the PBV301 up to 7.7-8.7 BR or taking the M41D up to 12.0, would you wanna see those matches if done by era?
bringing any ww1 dreadnought out at it’s br is automatically a loss anyway lmao, you get outperformed by every cruiser and battleship around you in terms of speed, damage, reload speed, AA, crew loss limits, survivability, and general playability.
Ironically, a destroyer would be a better option because even at 4.7 US you have the Mitscher Class with 9mi ranged torpedoes, which can hit nearly any spawn from your own on most maps.
And I do concede, using an example of bringing the North Dakota down to 4.3 was a bit extreme, it could probably be moved to 5.3 and perform reasonable considering other ships at the BR are more than capable of dealing with it.
I don’t want battleships to smack everything, I just want all the battleships to be a viable option in game. Which currently, the dreadnoughts at 6.0-6.7, are not.
the reason why is simple. you get uptiered to 7.3 and 7.7, which features the more advanced battleships and battlecruisers that delete you, and you can’t even fight cruisers because you get one salvo off to any other cruisers’ five or six salvos
And, this would allow space for more modern naval designs than we have in game to be added easily, notably designs which would throw the current tech tree even more out of order, like the Arleigh-Burkes, Ticonderogas, and whatever equivalents for other nations.
If you are being out-preformed by a cruiser, I’m afraid to say that you have a bit of a skill issue.
In my experience playing the first gen dreadnoughts plays quite differently to that of cruisers, which really messes new BB players up.
In a CL/CA if you’re fighting a BB, you tend to want to close the range as you don’t really have armour and the extra pen is nice. But in a BB if you close the distance, your armour becomes weaker without a notable increase in pen. So you want to keep your range open, enough for your armour to become effective, but not too far as to reduce your accuracy to a near useless level. This also allows you to avoid/out range most torpedoes.
If you keep being targeted by multiple ships, I would recommend staying in the centre spawn on the ocean maps, and waiting to spawn in when the game starts, such that your not in the front of the spawn. Basically hide behind bots and team-mates, such that the enemy shoots them and not you while keeping the range open.
armor doesn’t matter when the most effective way of dealing with a BB is to use HE and destroy the weak armored superstructure repeatedly.
secondly, I’ll admit I probably have a skill issue with regards to battleships, that’s a fair assessment.
HOWEVER, that does not dissuade me or prove my point wrong, that the North Dakota, and other early dreadnoughts are outperformed by every ship that exists in their match
The most effective way of dealing with any ship in the game, regardless if it is a BB or a DD is to penetrate and ammo rack them, hammering the superstructure where nobody is except mostly useless secondary and AA guns, is just trying to steal the kill of someone who is setting the ammo elevator on fire and make the game bug out and give the kill to you when their magazine explodes from the elevator fire from the other guy
I will happily take HMS Dreadnought, one of the earliest battleships in game (might even be the earliest) or even HMS Invicible which is even weaker though slighly more modern than HMS Dreadnought (by 3 years) and fight any WW2 or even post WW2 cruiser in-game.
Sure, you will probably eventually wear me down, but probably over the course of multiple lives, but that is why these dreadnoughts are at 5.7/6.0, becausae they can be eventually killed by these cruisers. Especially if multiple people focus fire, including a few heavy cruisers with 8" guns. But I dont consider them anywhere near weak enough to justify them being any lower than they already are. In fact HMS invicible which is truly dismall ship to play, probably should still be 6.0 and not 5.7
But I would not say they are outperformed in any way. I will quite happily take multiple foes down with me, and by your entire argument, a ship like HMS Hood (1920) , HMS Barham (1915) or even HMS Rodney (1927), should be a lower BR than most 5.7 light cruisers because they are more modern. (HMS Barham, Rodney and others like Marlborough have the same fire power in their secondary guns as most 5.3 light cruisers, with 6/7x 6" guns per side, ontop of their main armament)
They also have a damage system based upon HP and not actually anything else. Which means a destroyer can do meaningful damage to battleship because the guns are set to do damage.
War thunder operates completely differently to WoWs
Also a big diffrence is on torpedoes
In wow u can reload them without limit and they also more effective
Like u cant rly survive a slabo of torepdoes unlike kn wt when u can take few hits if u are bb
Improved maps and better spawn points would go a long way in ensuring all classes remain viable in most matches. Id even split DDs and Frigates as even the strongest Frigate is barely stronger than reserve destroyers at the moment and would give them a little better flexibility.
But OPs argument is that a WW1 battleship, like say, HMS Barham. Stands absolutely no chance against even the most modern destroyers in game. Which is quite frankly untrue. Heck, Id not want to face HMS Dreadnought in a Type 45 Destroyer like HMS Duncan at the moment in game. (i.e no ASMs)
not destroyers, but cruisers and aircraft available at the BR. the North Dakota (6.3) is outperformed easily by a Cleveland or Fargo (both 6.0), which sailed 20 years later conservatively. Of course a single destroyer would not 1v1 a battleship and win. They’re not supposed too. Destroyers a screening vessels, designed to protect convoys and fleets from submarines, aircraft, and small vessels like light cruisers, other destroyers, and patrol boats.
The fact that some modern destroyers exist in game at a BR where they don’t belong is another topic that I’d also like to resolve.
Frankly, that the design doctrine between 1945 and 1950+ changes dramatically and that makes Destroyers stronger at their role, even if that initially makes them weaker against other ships.
HMS Belfast which is a post-war refit (1959) of the WW2 era Town-Class cruiser (1936) and both HE and SAP spam into the 1908 SMS Nassau did bugger all damage and he rapidly sunk me in just a few salvos.
If your argument had even a thread of truth, I should have destroyed him in seconds.
And Nassau is only 6.0 ship. Imagine now the 7.3 HMS Barham from 1914. Only a few years older and yet that fight would have been over in the first salvo, it wouldnt have taken 2 or 3 salvos