The state of USS Tennessee is terrible and she needs changes

  • Yes, help this ship!
  • No, she’s fine as she is.
0 voters

Currently, USS Tennessee, U.S Navy’s latest addition as top dog, end of the line Battleship, is struggling severely against the top dogs of other nations, such as Mutsu, Amagi or Scharnhorst.

Its extremely poor survivability, coupled with its extremely slow (slowest ingame) reload, makes it virtually unable to be competitive against ships that can fire twice as fast and which have significantly better survivability as well.

That’s why I will suggest here a few solutions that would help USS Tennessee be actually worth its spot at the pinnacle of the U.S Bluewater tree:


Problem 1: slowest rate of fire in the game.
Sources list this ship’s average rate of fire as 2.20 rounds per minute or a 27 second reload.

However, the developers have rejected these numbers because “reload time is a balance value” (because this ship having the slowest reload in the game is balance, apparently) or because “that’s the ideal rate of fire achievable and not the real combat average value”, which contradicts their own implementation criteria, since EVERY other ship in the game has its ideal figure as aced reload and not the “historical average value”, since otherwise all other reloads would be much slower as well, so… why treat the Standards differently, with a double standard that harms them?

Why can Scharnhorst reload in its ideal theorical 17 seconds, Mutsu and Amagi reload on their ideal theorical 24 seconds… but the American Standards have to eat the terrible 40 second reloads even though it was proven they could reload in 27 seconds because they consider that their real reload was “too optimal”?

Solution: Increase its rate of fire; aced rate of fire: 1.5 RPM (40s) > 2.20 RPM (27s). I highlighted USS Tennessee’s value for this topic, but note how ALL of the Standard BBs achieved higher rate of fire values in real life than they do in War Thunder:

EDIT: I decided to give it a shot and make a bug report: Community Bug Reporting System

EDIT 2: it appears rate of fire can not be changed. Therefore:


Problem 2: hull sitting too high above the waterline.
As of now, USS Tennessee’s draft sits about 1.5m too high; typical of low ammo and fuel load capacities, and uncharacteristic of combat builds.

This has a negative impact in gameplay, since its current shallow draft exposes the ammunition above the waterline and diminishes the design of the armor belt. Once again, a bug report about this was rejected because “draft was at the discretion of the developers”; hence why I am now suggesting this change for historical and balance reasons instead of reporting it like a bug.

Solution: Lower the ship’s draft to its full combat load one. That way, her magazines will be better protected below the waterline, and even its A and D shell rooms would be safer.


Problem 3: shell room detonations.
This is not specifically a USS Tennessee issue, but more of a gamemode-wide problem that affects American Battleships with most severity.

As discussed on many Forum threads for years, shell rooms (NOT to confuse with magazines) should not detonate the way they do. The shells have thick caps and the explosives inside them are stable and insensitive. Therefore, ingame, they currently pose a severe weakness that did not exist in reality, and which should not exist in War Thunder either; both for realism and historical reasons, and for gameplay and balance ones.

Solution: Make shell rooms unable to detonate. Alternatively, make them able to detonate only upon untreated fires and NOT by being hit.

18 Likes

Gabe mention!!!1!1!111!

3 Likes

Lmaooo, fixed xD

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I also decided to give it a shot and make a bug report about the rate of fire: support it here by pressing the “I have the same issue” button!

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/9DrWx7mRDflG

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I think the same bug report was made for the USS Mississippi but it goes denied due to “balance” reasons. Like okay, it’s totally not like US BB absolutely suck right now

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No way it has 40 sec reload

Ingame? Yep, it does…

40 seconds aced, 43 expert + full, and 50 stock.

Even though reload is a balance measure, but in this case is just unfair

Yeah…

Every BB ingame reloads in ~30 seconds…

Scharnhorst reloads in 17 seconds, but it’s more or less balanced, since the guns are smaller than average…

But then you get Mutsu and Amagi, both with 24 second reloads on 410mm guns with highest pen and explosive in the game, and it’s like… really? American BBs NEED 40 second reloads on their 356s “to be balanced”…?

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welp it looks like it got denied.

There were gun trials done after the refit however, I can’t seem to find any documentation on that

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Find these documents, we must!

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Now hold on a second, on the pre 1920 fits we have for other ships these same exact documents have been presented and gaijin struck them down as well, citing that they did not believe the ROF was possible and that they would stay as they are for “balance”.

USS Mississippi main gun ROF issue // Gaijin.net // Issues

EG

image

To that same end, IJN ships in game have their rates of fire tuned to their trials ROFs which is not indicative of the fits of ships we have in game, so why is that allowed then?

This is just another incredible double standard when it comes to the standards.

3 Likes

The US doesn’t really do tests where guns fired at the minimum range possible like how it was done for other nations. The USN in the 1930s were focusing more on the medium and long range aspect of naval combat, so collecting data in a close range brawl was kinda useless to doctrine.

Regardless, even NavWeps leaves disclaimers that the rapid rate of fire seen on most cannons are only possible in zero degrees elevations. Unfortunately it seems that was all that Gaijin needed to slap 24 second reloads on 16" guns.

I just dont get how this is a thing, for ground Gaijin just got sick of the issues RoF was causing so they then based it all on balance rather than historical data. Its just bizarre that us in naval has to do the digging on a clear gameplay issue

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Even in the best case scenario the Standards, bar the 16" ones, wouldn’t really be competitive against Amagi, her equal is more the North Carolinas imo
I still don’t get what their rationale was behind adding Amagi, its not like Japan was lacking in top tier ships

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Thats more or less the entire reason why I bring it up, there are test stand results for USN guns, but thats all they are, test stand results. Gaijin however choses to only allow the USN guns to adhere to their in service ROFs, but at the same time, gaijin chooses to hold every other nation to their theoretical as designed max ROFs, EG the 180mm guns of Russia in game never attained the ROF they have in game, it was only attained on a test stand, and there is documented evidence that has been presented that this is the case, yet, the guns still retain their test stand ROF.

Gaijin either needs to hold all guns to the same measure of ROF or admit that guns of different nations are held to different standards.

2 Likes

If the rate of fire can not be changed, then the approach should be to increase its survivability by as much as it is possible.

Keep it a slow firing fortress… but fortress, nonetheless. Right now, it’s just a slow firing glass castle!

The full load draft would help, but the cherry on top would be fixing shell rooms once and for all.

I’m pretty sure it’s because the ground and naval guys are different. And for some reason I guess they didn’t feel like communicating.

And even if Gaijin’s Naval team wants to make everything fully historical:

Then remove nuclear explosion shell rooms. That would help America even more than an increase in rate of fire because at least then their ships would become the fortresses they are meant to be.

But I’m sure suddenly historical accuracy won’t matter so much then, and shell rooms will remain lethal ad they have all these years “for balance”.

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Didn’t moderators clarify in another thread that 1924~1925 documents cannot be a source as US Navy modified turrets of standard battleships in 1930s. I think I read that multiple times.

If you guys want battleship explode even with one turret destroyed, go ahead with 1920s scheme(though would be never implemented in those form)

1 Like

Yeah this ship is pure crap, stick with Alaska, only best USA ship for higher tier unfortunately