What Could Italy's Future Top-Tier Premium Battleship Be?

Machinery of War Discussion Navy
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Hello to all five fans in the naval community.

Today, I’d like to discuss and speculate about what Italy’s future top-tier premium battleship could be. I’ve come up with a couple of possibilities that would make sense, but there’s one unique option that might work quite well, especially since the nation is already represented in the Italian tech tree.
I’ll get the obvious ones out of the way first.

My first guess is the modernized Andrea Doria. It would be a pretty safe, if somewhat boring addition because she’s already represented in the game by her older version.

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My second guess is the incomplete Impero, the fourth Littorio-class battleship. This would also be a fairly uncontroversial addition because she’d be very similar to the other Littorio-class battleships already in the game. Since she was never completed, it also avoids putting a fully completed ship behind a paywall… Jean Ba-

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Now for the most outlandish speculation: the theoretical Spanish Littorio-class battleships.

Spain was planning to rebuild its aging navy and was interested in the Italian Littorio-class design. The ships were intended to be built in Spain, with Italian assistance, and the slipways for their construction had already been prepared. Then World War II happened, and Spain couldn’t complete the project.

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There aren’t many details available about their planned armament, but from what I can gather, they were expected to mount 12 cm/45 guns, which can already be found on other Spanish ships, along with 40 mm, 37 mm, and 20 mm auto cannons that also appear on other Spanish warships. The main battery, secondary 152 mm, and armor would have been the same as the Italian versions. A lot of this is hypothetical, but it makes a lot of sense based on what is seen on other Spanish warships of the time.

The 12 cm gun with and without the shield.

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The Spanish Littorio-class battleships might be a bit of a controversial addition since they were never actually built. However, they would avoid being a straight copy of the existing Italian ships, make for a pretty interesting premium, and finally add some more Spanish representation to the game through what could become War Thunder’s first naval subtree represented by Spanish ships.

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There was already trustworthy leak of Vittorio Venetto as premium.

  1. Andrea Doria is already in game, so there will be no modernized version
  2. Impero could be, as she is less anti-air armed Roma, but as I said above, Gaijin seems already choose Vittorio Venneto
  3. Spanish Littorio is total paper plan, so no need to talk right now
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That wouldn’t really be true, considering it was the last one built, so it would likely have had the same level of anti-aircraft armament, if not more.

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As for paper ships, we already have a few of them in the game, so it wouldn’t be completely out of the question. Gaijin has also been able to find historical archives for these kinds of designs before, so something like this isn’t entirely implausible.

As I mentioned before, it would also present an opportunity for a Spanish naval subtree.

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Not

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Simply saying “not” isn’t much of an argument when you consider that ships like these already exist in the game. These ships were never completed or converted into aircraft carriers, and Gaijin essentially based them on their designs and the historical sources available.

The slipways for these ships were built, but construction was halted due to the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and Spain’s economic situation.

Personally, I’d rather see more ships in the Italian tech tree and some Spanish representation as well.
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7

Not completed ship =/ paper ship

All the list you shown are the ship that at least laid down. Not the case of Spanish Littorio that only ends in proposition

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If we want to see Naval continue to grow and prosper, Gaijin will eventually have to add ships that were heavily planned or nearly built like the Lion class, because they’ll eventually run out of historical ships to add.

It sounds like you’d rather be stuck with the same old battleships and never receive anything new or interesting. A Ship like this would not only add variety but also create a unique opportunity for a naval subtree, allowing other nations to receive naval subtrees of their own.

It may not have been completed, but the slipway was finished, and they were close to beginning construction of the hull.

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It is not a matter of what we’d like - it is a matter of Gaijin’s stated policy.

They have changed such policies in the past, and may do so again, but right now the system is that if it wasn’t laid down it won’t be in the game.

10

Not really, if they don’t stop gutting mechanics like engine steering and damage control and start improving maps and game play naval is doomed anyway.
And they second they add a modern missile destroyer every ship in the game without CIWS is toast anyway.

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Yes. On top of adding new game modes, improving existing mechanics, fixing long standing issues, and introducing more interesting maps, they’ll eventually need to add ships like this to give players more content to enjoy.

Put your thinking caps on for a moment. Naval is on the edge of dying completely right now because matches are filled with bots, the player base is extremely small, and a lot of people in the community think the developers are spending too much time on expensive ship models that very few people care about. To keep the mode alive in the future, they’ll have to think outside the box and probably bend some of their old rules.

They’ve already shown they’re more than willing to do that by adding what is effectively a top-tier battleship for France. The camel’s back is starting to break, and sooner or later they’ll likely begin adding ships like this as well on top of lots of improvements (I hope). Think of it as a more grounded, World of Warships.

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You and I both know this’ll change very soon

I’m really not understanding your logic here because we can get a lot more ships from this type of thing. That’s a good thing.

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Yes that is my point, they are spamming premium BBs and partially constructed ships, while completely ignoring the actual issues in the game mode (like damage control being broken and the hull breach “field repair” activating unwatering and increasing timers on other damage control ever since they broke it out of the regular “field repairer” that dose not increase other timers.
You seem to be suggesting that the way to fix naval is to add continue what they are doing, but also add ships that where never made it to having their keel laid. It just strikes me as a little odd that you recognize the short term issues facing naval, but are focusing on addressing the long term problems.
But I am fairly confident that once Gaijin runs out of real ships to add they will change their rules to add premiums they never actually had a single rivet forged in their construction to the game.

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They aren’t spamming premium battleships because every nation is getting one, and only one, that will be able to grind the entire tech tree. Not providing that for a nation in the game wouldn’t be fair.

There’s only one premium battleship left they still need to add, and that’s the Italian one, so you’re really not understanding my point here. You’re also greatly exaggerating the “premium battleship spam” when, in reality, it’s cruisers that have seen unnecessary premium additions, such as the Admiral Scheer, and before that the Myoko, which could have easily been placed in the tech tree.

They will need to bend the rules by adding unique ships that were almost laid down in order to provide players with more content, on top of fixing the existing issues with naval gameplay. You and I would both be more than happy to see a Lion-class battleship in the game, and denying that is just ludicrous.

There need to be logical exceptions for naval content because it’s a completely different situation. For example, there are many variants of the Leopard 1, but that isn’t the case for most battleship classes, where adding just one more variant could be classified as copy-paste content.

I hope this clears things up, so please don’t make silly assumptions like that.

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I need to remind you all that they could potentially add an interesting Spanish Littorio-class battleship that isn’t a straight up copy paste, which would open up an opportunity for a Spanish sub-tree. Gaijin could then explain that they may have to bend the rules a bit in the future in order to add more interesting and unique ships.

This could bring more attention to naval gameplay and potentially help get most of its issues fixed, due to the increased player interest and feedback it would generate.

16

A deep cut there

A little concerned about the line between never completed and never built being blurred here, even if it’s not an outlandish change, but Naval is going to get very difficult to balance progression wise at some point and I’m not sure what else can be done other than leave some trees behind their peers