its honestly the best option as the south dakota class will just wreck everyone
scarnhorst is unrealisticly durable so basing the stats off of the scarnhorst is really good for accuracy
Bismarck more or less replicates the armor scheme of Scharnhorst with in most cases marginal improvements. Without a complete damage model overhaul it will be just as unrealistically durable, while having guns that hit massively harder, negating Scharnhorst’s one real disadvantage. While South Dakota is a very competent design with the current damage model Bismarck would be a much stronger ship. However even with a damage model that more accurately replicates the irl weaknesses of the German designs you’d need at minimum a North Carolina as a counter, not a Colorado.
Actually, this point is not sure.
First, because of laser accuracy of Scharnhorst’s 11-inch gun(which should not) vs 380 mm which would have bad accuracy like all other 380~410 mm guns ingame(yes they all have same accuracy for now)
Second, current Scharnhorst has unhistorically buffed shell velocity so penetration difference between two guns will only like 70 mm in 10 km and even shorter at close range. It should be like 120 mm in 10 km actually.
So one more gun with way much more accuracy, with both having penetration that is enough to penetrate armor at close range but not enough at long range. Not sure Bismarck would have advantage over Scharnhorst at this point
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As it stands absolutely, 15” guns are in a terrible state and Scharnhorst’s guns overperform in about every way possible. I’m just assuming the change to realistic dispersion and change back to realistic penetration for the bugged guns HK has talked about before are probably intended to happen before or concurrent with whatever update starts adding the last generation fast battleships, as those changes are mostly to their benefit. I could be wrong of course, but assuming that’s the way it goes it would completely flip the current 11” vs 15” dynamic.
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Scharnhorst scored one of the longest ranging main calibre hits on a moving capital ship in history (vs. HMS Glorious). The shot was over 24km. So good accuracy makes sense. Also keep in mind balance is just neccessary in a video game. If you make the truly huge calibres as accurate as smaller ones, it would make alot ship too op.
I guess Bismarck will be ingame with the next patch. Hood is there, Nelson is there. So needs the Bismarck.
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Gun itself was not as accurate even compared to Kriegsmarine’s 380 mm gun during test. The shot was quite a luck.
‘Balance’ is to kill smaller, fast firing gun’s accuracy bad and slow firing big guns accuracy good.
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This artificial nerf of a balance wouldn’t have been needed if they had a broader range of BR and assighned ships properly, the issue is apparent at 6.0-7.0 where ships with small gun meets big guns. A mutsu in no way should be fighting a westfalen
Ironically the large dispersion of the 28cm guns helped Scharnhorst to score one of the longest hit on moving target. At such range, firing control is a much more pronouncing problem than dispersion and it’s easier for ships with large dispersion to straddle target.
This is the German official diagram of gun dispersion (given as 50% zone):
According to this diagram, at 25km the full spread of 28cm gun would exceed 700m, while most of WW2 battleship guns would have 250-500m spread at such range. With the information we have so far, Scharnhorst had the 3rd least accurate guns in WW2, only followed by Littorio and Richelieu classes.
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I aagree with your opening post, but aircraft don’t play a huge role right now and Bismarks lack of modifications might make it more survivable in battle. Isn’t there something undementally flawed about german 15" guns… I have played German Naval games before and basically you were supposed to stop at 11" c/34’s becaue Germany never developed long range 15" guns that were good. they were never perfected. Their good 15" shells were land based and they didn’t have enough money to develop these for use at sea.
Dispersion irl is much different than in game, where larger calibers have worse spread to fit an idea of balance. Small caliber shells would reach an unreliable level of dispersion much sooner than the battleship caliber ones for a variety of reasons including generally more tightly spaced mounts, less inertia making them proportionately more susceptible to blast effect disruption and atmospheric interference, and only being capable of hitting shorter ranges period. IRL the Bismarck’s 15” was far superior to the Scharnhorst’s 11” in both dispersion and hitting power. HK posted a chart just above showing just how much worse the 11” was. The 15” guns themselves had perfectly competent ballistic performance, with the largest downside coming from the mountings. They were in overly large turrets that ate up valuable weight and ship space in the name of higher rates of fire that never materialized in combat.