Even among the over compressed BR’s in naval mode the HMS Leopard really stands out as underpowered which is a shame since you have to grind through the entire coastal tree just to get it.
4 x 114mm primary guns
2 x 40mm guns secondary (with almost 180 degree blind spot at front of ship)
No torps.
44 Km.h top speed
If you look comparable vehicles of other nations at the same or even lower BR’s they absolute destroy it.
For examples:
USS Aylwin at 3.7. Significantly better in every respect. gets lower BR.
4 x 127mm guns primary.
8 x 20mm guns secondary with no blind spots
8 torps
68 km.h top speed
Z15 Erich Steinbrink at 4.0. Huge advantages in every aspect especially in its secondary weapons. gets same BR
4 x 128mm primary
14 x 37mm + 6 x 20mm secondary
8 torps
70 km.h top speed
Pr.7 Besposhchadny at 4.0. advantages in every aspect gets same BR.
4 x 130mm primary
2 x 76mm + 5 x 37mm + 5 x 12.7mm secondary
6 torps
69 km.h top speed.
RN Comandanti Medagile at 4.0. advantages in every aspect gets same BR.
4 x 135mm primary
12 x 37mm secondary
6 torps
65 km.h top speed.
Kleber at 4.0 advantages in every aspect gets same BR.
4 x 128mm primary
6 x 40mm + 8 x 20mm secondary
8 torps
70km.h top speed
People been doing too good in it obviously
Mild stats like those don’t exactly show the whole picture, the Type 41 AA Frigate is an incredibly powerful warship held back by repair & ammunition along with the poor damage model of most frigates (sniff, I miss my twelve separate engine blocks).
See Gunsh1ps old video for the stronk of it, kinda didn’t help at the time a bunch of iNAVY players an a mixture of several squidrons (including myself) absolutely went to town using it at 3.7 heh heh heh, probable reason it’s 4.0.
It has a three second reload & is accurate cannons an is devastating against aircraft.
At 3.7 it was OP AF, at 4.0 it’s overshadowed but an absolutely bastard of a ship when used properly & not targeted.
Just see my stats on it, which for the most part hasn’t been made off of botting scum. Not shown is the close to -14M sl losted thanks to the BS original ammunition costs & various repair costs throughout the years (yeaaaah I sat down & did a shitload of calculations on SL gained & losted but I can say it was a free ace).
I wish the stats showed negative SL.
Inadvertently, if coupled with the Restigouche class Destroyer you can make back expenses due to the free ammunition of the armament especially the forward pair of 3"/70 QF Mk. 6 cannons.
All that lineup needs is a later Type 12 or an early Type 21 imho an it’ll be one of the most OP lineups in NF.
E, forgot one thing, was the first ship with a Squid mortar modelled, still inoperable same with the Dealey class Ocean Escort & several post war British destroyers have the reloading mechanisms, but the weapon has been landed & the mount plated over (if you ever notice that random metal rectangular plate at the stern of Battle & Daring class Destroyer).
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Remember that a few old madlads on Discord years back once almost managed to put the Italian Cl-13 Mk 4 at a higher BR than the U.S. F-86A-5 and F-86F Sabres once lol. Just as a test of course.
The irony is that most Frigates aren’t even coastal in real life. This becomes even more true in post WW2 designs where some are almost indistinguishable from Destroyer sub-classes.
Gaijins classification system is very wishy washy at the best of times. When the game progresses towards the missile era the split between coastals and Bluewater will often not make any sense at all.
There could end up being cases where gun frigates sit in coastal but missile variants of the same ship will be an order of magnitude cheaper in the Bluewater tree (or the other way around, depending on devs feelings that day). Worst case would be the same ship type in different navies but operated in very differently roles and thus coastal in one and bluewater in another…a nightmare.
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#4 ship out of 24 at 4.0 for both Kd and Kills per spawn in both AB and RB (August Statshark figures) would be why. (2.75 Kd in AB, 3.95 in RB).
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Not surprised - I use it a bit and the 4.5’s are a lot better than they appear at a casual glance!
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that’s because its at the bottom of the coastal ship tree.
by the time anyone grinds out the HMS Leopard they have a relatively large amount of experience.
All the far better destroyers are positioned right at the top of the Bluewater tree so people can get them immediately after only a couple of games.
So what you have is a bunch of inexperienced players dragging down the average for the quickly acquired ships.
This then combined with the rewards multiplier and battle pass/war bond tasks.
Z15 Erich Steinbrinck is a beast of a 4.0 but its only tier 1 with a reward multiplier of 0.9. So its not eligible to progress any battle pass tasks as all require you to be using at least a tier 2 or 3 vehicle depending on task.
HMS Leopard is a tier 5 coastal so has a reward multiplier of 4.5 (you earn 5 times more playing the Leopard than the Z15) and is eligible for progress for all events.
So this results in a relatively underperforming vehicle getting a disproportionally good KD ratio as it incentivises only the most experienced players to play it while the better vehicles are mostly played by only the least experienced ones.