Sovetskii Soyuz and balance

Dev Server "Leviathans" Dev Server Changelog
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Well, as we know with this update we will get top battleships (maybe except H39 or smth)
In my opinion they all are pretty balanced, every ship has some weak spots, even Yamato, except… Sovetskii Soyuz

While playing versus it on Yamato on Dev server I couldn’t do anything with it in 10km, it stayed with 90% hp and all my 4 games versus it ended with Yamato’s ammo rack in 3 minutes. You can try 1v1 guys, looking forward for your experience

But ok, if Sovetskii Soyuz is so much better then - why they should be on one br?.. Soviet battleship really scares me in terms of balance, if it make angle - then there is literally NO weak spots. Front side with couple plates is impenetrable, 400mm belt with angle too, even if you use crazy 460mm Yamato shells, but what about other ships?.. Only one weak spot where it’s POSSIBLE to penetrate if it angles - it’s 2d barbette, but 1. you need really good luck to hit it with 90 angles and have A LOOT of penetration to do it and 2. It still most likely does nothing, except one black barbette in completely full hp ship

So guys, in my opinion it will be new old Scharnhorst, but this one will ammo rack everything what it sees, cause penetration is just too high. I don’t really know what other people can do to it

What are your opinions, have someone tried to play versus Sovetskii Soyuz? Maybe there are any advices how to fight it, or maybe it’s just me who couldn’t find any really weak spots?
Honestly this is absolutely horrible and disgusting experience to play versus it on any ship, when you can do literally NOTHING with it, and the question is how fast he will land his shells to your shells room

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It is pretty much Scharnhorst II. Ironically engineers from 80 years ago managed to tailor its armour scheme in every possible way to fit well in this game 80 years later, where players can angle the ship as they wish to increase the effectiveness of armour. Namely as the invincible bow armour layout that you have pointed out already. I am afraid the only thing developers can do right now is to use some soft balancing factors to reduce its effectiveness, which to be fair they have already been doing it, for example, its rate of fire was reduced from 2.6rpm to 2.1rpm.

If the ship still ends up being overwhelmingly OP when live server drops, there’re still more things can be done, maybe nerfing the ship itself, or maybe introducing some DM changes to reduce its effectiveness (just look at what happened to Scharnhorst)

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I’m skeptical it would be Scharnhorst II although agree it has invincible bow armour. Schanhorst of that time was notorious for not considering almost any angle for magazine or shell room detonation and just went straight into enemy zone, punishing everything with faster reloads than contender.

Soyuz is not. It’s bow is invincible but it’s side armor isn’t that great when not angled, and shell room and engine layout is just as Kronshtadt, meaning that if enemy success to catch its side, it would cause disasterous result for Soyuz. On that situation, Iowa is actually better.

On random battle I would assess Iowa and Soyuz has pros and cons each other.

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What? it went from un-killable to just broken OP?.. AFTER TWO GOD DAMN YEARS OF RUINING NAVAL! really comforting! Also why can’t I get any answer as to why engine steering was removed?

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Well, I can agree, that if Sovetskii Soyuz goes perfectly perpendicular to you - it is possible to penetrate 420mm belt for many 380mm guns, so previous Scharnhorst was more “brain-dead” to play in this terms

But actually if there is even a little angle - that’s not 420mm anymore. And it’s not that difficult to keep angle to all enemy team, considering that your angles of turrets rotation are amazing and that your bow is invincible so you shouldn’t even care to hide it

Considering another fact, that this ship has the most powerful shells in game, IMHO Soyuz will be absolutely crazy OP. 1v1 there are no competitors

And for me it would be interesting to make a challenge, like 3 Yamatos on one side versus one Soyuz on another, maybe someone would like to make it?

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It should be Iowa vs Soyuz as Yamato is prone even to Colorado at this point, and will be not changed

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But I think Soyuz will win, I don’t know have u battled with _ HMS _? If they are in Soyuz side, they will retreat back and control battle distance in 13-15km or even further. In this distance and using the right angle, there is no chance to kill a Soyuz, even using 3 Yamato vs 1 Soyuz.
And you know, Gaijin change the guided bomber’s BR, and bloody AA bot’s VT ammo, only a little chance to bomb it in air.

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Actually Yamato’s 18.1’’ AP only has chance of penetrating Soyuz’s bow armor cause of long fuze delay. More problem is that Yamato has terrible survivability that cannot assure survivability even against modern 14’’ AP shells.

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But I don’t think Yamato can survive in first round, duo to its terrible mag and under water shell: (
And if u guys decide to test it in next update, I wanna join: )

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Since I quit playing naval after the ridiculous arcade changes, all I can say is it’s nice to not have to care about the blatantly stupid bias being introduced with this fantasy ship. Since none of the ships got past about 20% construction, and the Soviets couldn’t produce most of the components in the current ship in-game, this is nothing more than wishful thinking, but will still dominate against actually completed warships.

Meanwhile, for ships that were actually completed, we have to beg and plead for them to have the capabilities they actually had. Even with good sources, they very often get ignored. Sketch something on a cocktail napkin and affix Stalin’s signature to it though, and it will be put in game.

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This. The Scharnhorst only moving to 7.3 is the second worst decision on this update.

At 7.0, vs. all the ships that will be moving to 7.7+, two of these on my team go 10 and 0. It’s absurd.

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Yeah I’m sure Yamato would not survive in first round, not only Soyuz’s but also even at ships of 8.0 BR

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I’m certainly sure that the next Scharnhorst is HMS Vanguard, if in a 10km battle. To my surprise, Vanguard’s armor perfectly protects at least 80% crew members and almost no fire damage to the ammunition when the turrets or loaders are damaged, but Sovetskii soyuz has such kind of issue which is same as Scharnhorst right now.

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Would be much better if Gaijin follows deep waterline as it should be, but yes, British fast battleships were famous for their extremely deep citadel and diverse armor distribution design in real life too. Sad thing compares to Scharnhorst is that British doesn’t have 3 rpm gun…

Next safest would be Iowa and Richelieu in my guess as they still have engine room around waterline but can empty shell room and magazine.

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In my opinion, Soyuz should pay for that stupid bow armor by being heavily vulnerable to flooding. Theres a reason no other nation used that design, if a AP shell hit it, it’ll detonate and bring in tons of water.

In fact, I think she should just die from flooding after a significant amount of penetrations from it. That is the only way this soviet dream boat can be balanced.

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Roma, Kriegsmarine designs.

Especially Project 23’s bow armour is enlargement of Littorio class’ bow design.

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Damn tell that to light cruisers with 6.0 br. trying to fight off 6.0 br. battleships

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They can reduce armor quality for plates over 230mm, reduce accuracy(dispersion, and increase rangefinder erro), reduce reload, lower muzzle velocity to lower penetration.

Nawywep: 13,600m 406mm of pen at 25° inpact angle

In game: 15,000m 450mm of pen at 30° inpact angle

The AP overperfoming by a lot. And who knows what armor plate quality was used for the test if they couldn’t produce thick rolled cemented plates.

Gaijin balance ships with reload and accuracy. Why Soyuz still has fast reload and the best accuracy (together with Iowa and Yamato) if she overpeformes every ship in game (including Iowa and Yamato)?

For Roma people write essays just to prove 30s reload. And get rejected afterwards…
But unfinished ships that never been tested gets all the best theoretical stats. There’s no prove that Soviets were able to reload 16in guns in 29s, or if those guns were accurate as Iowa and Yamato or even Roma (battle tested ships)

Soviet used Italian consultants, stole some ideas from Italian proposed 16in battleship, and without much experience they manage to design better battleship than Italians themselves with Littorio class. With much better reload and accuracy also lol

For example Dunkerque was planned to have 20s reload, but after they built it and test it French realised that they can do around 30s only. So Dunkerque would be better if she was never fully completed so we could have 20s reload.

For unfinfinished ships ( if there’s no prove of performance for stuff like reload and accuracy) the estimation should be lowered, and not given the best among the best stats.

PS: This is not at you mate. I’m just replying to your comment. It’s frustrating to see nothing has changed since the first dev server. Unfinished ship with unrealistic, questionable stats will dominate top tier.

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That’s the problem with unfinished ships that only had part of their hull completed.

You can pull every data from different tests, combine them to create the perfect ship and nobody will be able to claim you’re wrong as there are no other data apart from the one you’ve chosen.

From what we know this ship could have just snapped in half due to the stress caused by the weight of her gigantic “all around” armor scheme on the first ocean wave.

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Scharnhorst is also an very unstable ship, but of course this has no effect in war thunder either.

the Soyuz is very questionable, although I do like that it is coming, but also do wish it didn’t had stats that seem to be weirdly better than all competition… (it does seem too good to be true) But I don’t mind a little bit what if it did work out situation.

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