Let's battle

Hi folks,

today, let's go through a battle, and I'll explain a bit about my playstyle.

Ship

I'm going to use the German navy tier 6 light cruiser "Nürnberg". This is currently my favourite ship, for a variety of reasons. It's fast, very agile, and carries a massive punch for its size. Let's look at some stats:

We've got a max speed above 30 knots, so she can almost keep up with fast destroyers. The turn time is ridiculous at just above 5s. 

She carries three turrets with 150mm calibre triple-guns. Usually, they'd be on the weak side for this tier, but you can see they're doing 600+ damage with AP shells, so unlike e.g. the Soviet Budyonny-class, you can actually use them against battleships of similar tier and still get some decent damage in.

They reload extremely quickly in under 8s, and three good salvos will take out any destroyer. Combined with the range of over 10km and the special abilities of sonar (extended target discovery) and precise aiming (concentrates fire), she can usually shred enemy destroyers without ever coming into torpedo range.

While the AP shells do have a tendency to bounce off battleships' heavy armour, the secondary torpedoes can do massive amounts of damage against them quickly. The range is decent with over 5km, and she's got six tubes on each side. You'll see them in action later.

Equipment

The "Nürnberg" is classified as a light cruiser, and she's definitely not a "ship of the line" - with 20000 HP, she's slightly sturdier than a destroyer, but still very vulnerable against heavy guns. Battleships cause massive damage, and even heavy cruisers can't be engaged in broadsides. She really plays more like a gunned-up destroyer.

So when it comes to equipment, there are two choices.
Either try to compensate for her weaknesses, or play to her strengths. I'm usually going with the latter. Yes, we could go for faster turret traverse, improved damage control against fire, flooding and torpedoes, but we can't sail in a straight line anyway, and large calibre guns do enough damage that fire or flooding really aren't our main concern.

So she carries my typical destroyer package, geared towards maximum manoeuvrability and fire rate.

Opening of the battle

So we're off to battle, and the first decision is based on information we're getting from the loading screen. Who are our enemies? What ships make up the other fleet? Our own fleet setup doesn't really matter that much - we're a hunter, tank or protective duties aren't suitable anyway.

The enemy fleet has a good mix: One carrier, one battleship, two cruisers and three destroyers. Take a close look at the names: The ones beginning with colons are computer players, who are generally not as strong as human players. We've got humans on the battleship, one of the cruisers and one of the destroyers. The carrier is computer-controlled, so much less dangerous, since they can't aim their torpedoes if their life depends on it (which it usually does).

This means we can mostly ignore dodging airplanes. We're likely to see the destroyers first, since they're fastest, so the human destroyer captain should be our first target. We can use AP against all targets (I'd only consider using high-ex rounds if we'd be mostly up against battleships).

First moves

My initial moves are:

• set engines to full ahead
• greet my fleet
• switch guns to AP
• plot course I'm planning to take

Take a look at the battle map in the top left corner. We've got three areas to control, and a fair amount of small islands, a.k.a. cover, scattered all around. Since we're starting on the left flank, we'll take area C. 

This means we'll mostly get enemies on our right side, so first thing I do is align the gun turrets to that side. Starting around tier five, most ships don't have broadside-style single gun emplacements, but rotating turrets. This has the advantage that all guns can be brought to bear in a volley, but the downside that it takes a while to rotate them from one side to the other. To compensate, I usually make up my mind at the start, and stick with it as long as possible.

Depending on the opposition we're going to encounter, I can then do a turn towards the centre area, or keep heading straight for the carrier.

Ready to engage

About 30s into the battle, I've got my bearings: heading straight for the area of control, guns aligned to the right.

If we're facing destroyers, which is likely, they should be close to the other side of the area of control, so this is a good time to fire up the sonar and extend our detection range. I can easily turn left to get a full salvo in, while maintaining my distance - you don't want to get into close-range fights against a destroyer.

Unless, of course, you're steering one yourself. Given that destroyers can mostly outmanoeuvre my ship by a slight margin, and I've got a massive range advantage, it's all about finding them and killing them from a distance.

We've got a big one

In this battle, I did in fact dispatch of the enemy destroyer vanguard pretty quickly. It was a computer player, and they're very poor with torpedoes, so you can take a slightly more risky course and give them a good broadside. Don't try this with even a half-decent human player.

Then things get more interesting - the battleship is heading straight for us, and it's a human player. We're not alone, though, together with our battleship right on the heels, we have superior firepower, so he can't go for open battle.

Ambush

Using the island as cover, I'm getting a good torpedo shot at close range off. He's seen me, and got some good hits in, too. I've come in at full health, so I can trade that for a torpedo hit, and he's less likely to dodge when he's got me in his sights. 

The other human player has shown up as well, engaging our battleship, so it's balanced out, and this will decide the outcome of the whole battle.

My cruiser has the somewhat unusual layout of having two aft turrets, so while I turn and "run", I can still get shots from most of my quick-firing guns in.

The battleship is heading past behind the island, while having most of my torpedoes hitting their mark. I suspect he thinks I'm out (as a destroyer would be), and tries to get into close range to finish me off. I can dodge most of his shots at ranges of 7km and above, while still laying fire on him with my rear turrets. But I still have the torpedo tubes on my other side loaded and ready.

Battle won

Our battleship has taken out the enemy cruiser, and I've completed the turn, getting the second torpedo salvo on target after ambushing him again behind the island. Those six hits finished him off, and I was still able to take out the carrier as well.

There are many different tactics and playstyles. To be successful, you've got to both find your own style, and work together with your fleet, concentrating your firepower. I'll be going through some of the things I use frequently and observe in other players in more detail in future posts.