- Yes, help this ship!
- No, she’s fine as she is.
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.
