It’s been both my personal experience and what friends who plays naval calls that shells were seriously weakened after Hornet’s Sting update. Especially shells with short fuzes, like destroyer guns and British shells.
Some say it’s because armor and bulkheads absorbing fragments more efficiently so fuze time matters more than before. Some says it’s because shell doesn’t explode underwater reliably. Some says its because of Arcade aiming and new ‘unsinkability loss’ system.
I think it’s the massive energy difference from most shells having worse velocity at range. The worse pen makes them less forgiving when hitting armor at any angle, and much less able to get deep in a ship when struggling to defeat armor. I’ve mostly played Rodney and Tennessee since the update, and those guns still feel good. But taking Alaska for example into test drive the 12” guns feel like peashooters against the ~11km battleship target due to the energy difference.
Just did a match in Rodney and felt like the guns were better that they have been since her introudction, but probably because you can actually land the rounds where you aimed them.
But I heard about a reduction in energy/associated pen on many shells since the new update, which probably isnt help with doing meaningful deep damage
the reason why I’m skeptical about this theory is that ship that I first feel post pen damage reduction was HMS Rodney, which doesn’t got verlocity nerf at range. Also even if shells having worst velocity at range, it doesn’t mean I could not pen broadside Chapayev’s underwater hull with USS Nevada’s 14 AP at 8 km.
Especially sometimes when I failed to hit Roanoke’s shell room but only makes it red with Rodney was frustrating experience.
I’ve always felt like Rodneys guns did next to no damage, but always put that down to most of the shells missing. I dont know if they still do as little as before and they only feel like they do more because more shells are hitting or something. But I just dont know either way.
But only having Britain, and so Hood, Rodney, etc, which seem to be unaffected. Its hard for me to comment past them.
I hadn’t played Rodney prior to the update since I didn’t think it was worth the sl in the state it was in, so I can’t comment. To me it feels like the shells hit very hard when they connect right, but the low fire volume between the primary and secondary battery makes it feel somewhat unsatisfying even compared to a standard battleship, despite having a much higher k/d in it than most other ships.
Regarding the underwater hits I wonder if that might be the dispersion value change at work. I’ve noticed a lot more salvos landing relatively harmlessly in superstructures and a lot fewer lucky magazine hits and I think it’s due to tighter patterns being a lot less forgiving of very small range errors. The 14” especially I believe had their vertical dispersion angles reduced by about a third, from 0.39 to 0.28 or 0.26 in the most extreme case, and in certainly feeling it. I’ve found they’re much better at crew bleeding than they were but magazine kills not from fire are much harder.
I think this is not only in naval, most weapons and specially ammunitions are behaving oddly, I had a match were I need to use three 95Ya6 into a single helicopter just to get ‘severe damage’.
Well, not seeing this as a problem because it is not ‘reducing’ but ‘reverting’ to penetration before June 2024. Developers messed drag mechanism at that time and almost every naval gun(except French) got weird and unhistorically buffed shell velocity at long range.
And, damage is weak compared to even June 2024.
Besides, I never think I would see that video on here as I participate in making that video XD
Is it a correct change that Kronshtadt’s penetrating power is greatly improved?
I can’t help but look at it with a skeptical eye, since it is supposed to be a “reverting” change.
Can’t say sure as no one would have exact data about her gun XD
Japanese 16’‘, Italian 12.6’’ and Soviet 12’‘(not Imperial Russian 12’') are exception of ‘reverting’, that’s sure
Is there any data? They weren’t built IRL iirc and the shells are a work of fiction or paper proposal or something. If they weren’t reduced it was probably a lack of data available to nerf them, rather than any data to prove they are correct
Yeah, one thing ive noticed with the new accuracy is that you either hit the main belt or do nothing at all. Ships with very deep modules such as Kongo and Rodney benefit significantly from this, where even if their main belt is penetrated it wont have the trajectory to threaten anything important thanks to how short the distances are.
Yeah Rodney is really strong right now, thankfully a lot of people don’t play it to its strengths or a lot of other top tiers would be way more painful to play. It’s definitely annoying when your salvo is slightly off and flies through the superstructure, but good lord is it devastating when you land most of your shots in the citadel
Even though the initial velocity is fast, it seems unnatural that a 470kg shell has a penetrating power approaching that of a 16-inch main gun shell.
I expect a similar situation to occur with Sovetsky Soyuz. :3
Well, being the second heaviest 16’’ AP shell and much faster than superheavy AP(some russian sources claim not only 830 m/s but 870 m/s version was also tested in same firing trial, although 830 m/s is already much faster than superheavy AP), I’m sure 406 mm B-37 will have at least similar penetration at 10 km along with 16’’ Mark 7
Beisdes the fact that Gaijin is quite skeptical about russian sources claiming about capital ship’s naval gun though.
