Hi folks!
With the latest update, we've got some new ships in the tech tree. This time around, it's mainly Russian (and later Soviet) destroyers. I've started with some low-tier ships, and so far, it's been great fun.
Of course, we'll need to compare them with the US and Japanese destroyer lines. Overall, the Russian destroyers have great fast-firing guns, are quick, and have rather shitty torpedo range and damage.
This is the tier three destroyer of the Russian imperial navy, the Derzky.
She's got three 103mm guns, with a base reload of only 5s, as well as five (!) dual torpedo launchers, that reload in a blistering 26s. They only have a range of about three kilometres, and only do about 1900 damage each, but they reload almost as fast as a battleship's main battery.
This ship is so much fun to play, that I haven't even bothered to unlock the higher tiers yet. While it doesn't have any health whatsoever, you can two-shot a US battleship. Other destroyers are in for a nasty surprise as well, since you can fire three salvos of torpedoes at them, have them dodge, only to run into two more on the way, all while you're peppering them with the main guns.
These guns do almost 300 HE damage when fully upgraded, which is on par with other destroyers of similar tier, but reload so quickly that you can put out some serious damage while you're waiting for your torpedoes to reload, and that doesn't take long at all.
Battles with the Derzky are hectic, fierce and just plain fun. With a detection range of 5.3km, you can't get close enough to launch torpedoes without being spotted, but it's great for just running along the side of the battlefield and surprising the enemy battleship line from behind.
In higher tiers, things get mildly better in terms of torpedo range, but also with higher reload times. The Russian / Soviet ships retain their great guns, and while not as numerous as on US destroyers, they've still got great reload times.
Hi folks!
If you've been playing "World of Warships" for a while, you will have noticed that there are two different types of ammunition for your ship's guns: armour-piercing (AP) and high explosive (HE) shells. Today, we'll have a closer look at these, and what the impact of using the correct ammo for the situation on the game is (spoiler: it's huge).
High explosive
These shells carry a large amount of explosive in a solid casing, and some form of fuse. The effect is done by detonating the shell, which has a hot explosive blast, and a wave of very fast shrapnel. These things are very good at causing damage to lightly-armoured ships - imagine a heavy naval shell going through a thin armour plating, and then blowing up. Carnage. Due to the large amount of explosive, they've also got the tendency to easily set fire to flammable things, which is a nice side-effect for some additional damage over time.
But then, consider a more heavily-armoured ship, like a heavy cruiser or a battleship. HE shells will be much less likely to make it through the thick steel plates, and will detonate on the surface. So while it will cause damage (there are lots of useful, and vulnerable, things on the outside of a ship), it won't cause the same devastating damage it does to ships with less or lighter armour plating.
Armour piercing
That's where AP shells come in. They have a much smaller explosive payload, but in return, are designed to get through pretty much all armour plates. That means they can penetrate deep into the innards of the enemy ship, and explode there, causing damage to critical parts, by help of e.g. a timed fuse, giving the shell a moment to get through the armour before blowing it up.
But what happens if you fire an AP shell against a lightly-armoured target (or something like a ship's superstructure)? Depending on the weight and power of the shell, you might end up going clean through it, and not actually causing much damage at all.
Why can't I sink that destroyer?
Consider a common situation. You're in a battleship, a slow, heavily-armoured, can with huge 350 or 400mm main guns. Your destroyer or cruiser screen, as usual, is pretty useless - they've all gone off by themselves hunting, leaving you exposed. You see an enemy destroyer steaming through their lines at full speed, coming towards you. You know what's coming - they're looking to get close to you, and then fire a full load of torpedoes into your side.
You bring your main battery to bear, and unload at him at a good range. You've got AP shells loaded by default, and they do somewhere beyond 1200 damage - per shell. Your guns fire away, and you get some good hits - but they only do about 200 damage each, barely scratching the destroyer. Now, you have to wait 20s for the reload, and your secondaries don't have the range. Even if you could get a second salvo in, you'd only manage to take away about half of that destroyer's health before they unload their torpedoes on you.
I've been in that situation before. It's utterly frustrating, and I believe one of the reasons so many people play destroyer - they really don't have to worry much about battleship guns. So what's going on here? Some weird kind of rock-paper-scissors?
No, you're simply using the wrong ammo type. Your big, powerful AP shells are great at dealing damage to cruisers and other battleships, but they'll punch pretty much right through a destroyer. So next time you're in this situation, switch to HE, and the destroyer will be having a bad time indeed.
When to use which
A lot of this comes down to experience. Some rules of thumb:
- Destroyers - they'll mostly have relatively small calibres, around 120mm. You can use AP shells against other destroyers, or maybe light cruisers, but anything else, use HE rounds. The guns fire quickly, so you've got some chance of causing fires, in addition to the flooding from your torpedoes.
- Light cruisers - they've got guns between 150 and 180mm. AP rounds are murderous against destroyers, and will get through most cruiser protection, but mostly bounce right off battleship armour, doing no damage at all. Use HE rounds for these - a light cruiser at range is hard to hit, and can fire a constant barrage of HE shells, causing fires and slow, but steady, damage.
- Heavy cruisers - bigger guns at 200mm. If your cruiser has good HE damage, you might consider using these against destroyers, as APs have a tendency to sometimes overpenetrate. Against anything else, AP is the way to go.
- Battleships - as discussed, the 350/400mm main guns are useless against destroyers with AP - they actually do much less damage than the secondaries. HE, on the other hand, can burn these pesky little ships with surprising effectiveness.
- Carriers - I normally load AP, since I often have to deal with destroyers as a last-ditch defence. Doesn't really matter all that much, though.
Don't forget to fire your loaded shells before switching ammo types, otherwise you're just wasting them.
All in all, using the right ammo type is one of the most important skills in the game, together with dodging torpedoes.
Hi folks!
After saving up for quite a while, I've finally made it - the tier 8 "Admiral Hipper" class heavy cruiser. And I have to say, I'm not disappointed, it was worth it. The tier 6 Nürnberg was already a mean weapon, but I was struggling against battleships, due to the light armour and ineffective 150mm guns.
Strengths
The "Admiral Hipper" is classified as a heavy cruiser - she's got eight 200mm main guns, set up in four twin-turrets. They reload slightly slower than the Nürnberg's, but do significantly more damage - and, most importantly, they can get through battleship armour.
As secondary, she still has the torpedo launchers - with two triple-launchers on each side, she can field more torpedos than many destroyers.
The defences are good, and with over 30000 health, she can withstand quite some punishment.
Weaknesses
Her main weakness is the slowly-responding rudder, which makes dodging torpedoes rather tricky initially, so definitely consider getting both rudder upgrades to compensate. For the third upgrade, I chose the 5% reload time again, so she's got the same equipment as the Nürnberg.
My Playstyle
If I compare her to my tier 5 "Kongo" class battleship, she's got pretty similar defence and health, but main guns firing twice as fast, doing almost the same amount of damage with AP shells. I'm playing her more aggressively than my Nürnberg, since she's got more health and better defences. The torpedo launchers have a good forward angle, so with the rudder upgrades, I can attack a battleship head-on, turn one side, launch six torpedoes, and quickly turn about, launching the other six, all while raining gunfire on the target.
She's at a slight disadvantage against destroyers, since her guns are slower than the Nürnberg's, and she's less mobile, but it's not a big difference. The sonar is improved, giving her great detection range - which is important, since many destroyers at that level have smokescreens.
All in all, I'm really happy with this ship, she's a great allrounder, suits my aggressive playstyle, and has enough endurance to get through the fight.
Hi folks!
Today, I'll talk a bit about my favourite carrier so far, the tier 6 Japanese "Ryujo" class. Japanese carriers have smaller squadrons than their US counterparts, but instead more of them, making them somewhat more flexible in their attack patterns.
Strengths
Ryujo has a fighter wing, two dive bomber wings and a torpedo bomber wing, three planes each. The torpedo bombers are the heavy hitters, but, as usual, require babysitting to target, while the dive bombers sort that out by themselves once they've got their targets set.
Besides the planes, Ryujo has a decent amount of artillery, which can be used in a pinch against ships getting too close quite effectively. She's also quite quick, if you need to make a run for it.
Weaknesses
Being a converted cruiser, rather than a purpose-built carrier, she has a rather small set of planes in spare, so with two dive bomber squadrons, you tend to run out of planes easily towards the end of the battle. This means you can't attack head-on into larger groups of ships, especially if they have a decent amount of AAA.
Once the enemy is closing in on her, Ryujo won't last long, so it's best to carefully position out of range.
Playstyle
I usually open with the fighters on scout duty, to get a quick overview of the enemy fleet positioning. Meanwhile, I'm sending the dive bombers out together on the flanks, and once I've spotted the vanguard, drop some bombs on the leading destroyers. That minimises the loss of planes in the opening moves, when the enemy fleet is still concentrated, and makes some dents into the ships most likely to become dangerous.
Once the fighter wing has spotted the enemy fleet, I'm pulling them back, as to not to waste them on enemy AAA. If the enemy fleet has their own carrier, I'm keeping an eye on their bomber wings, and send the fighters to intercept, while keeping them away from strong AAA. Don't position them too close, otherwise they won't have much effect - best place to intercept is halfway between the enemy carrier and mine.
Once the fleet is spotted and the dive bombers have their targets, I'm sending the torpedo bombers out as well. I can be a little more reckless with them, since there's only one wing. I either send them after one of the damaged destroyers, or after the heavies following suit.
Some human carrier players can be quite tenacious in insisting on carrier vs carrier battles. I usually ignore that kind of nonsense, since that means I have to send my planes all the way across the map, through enemy AAA. The amount of damage I can do in a battle depends on how quickly I can cycle (deploy - attack - return - rearm) the bomber wings. So I usually use the dive bombers to keep the destroyers at bay, and torpedo bombers to help out with that or quickly snipe damaged enemy ships.
One of the most important aspects in this game is - unsurprisingly - sinking ships. A ship with a single health point usually still has its full firepower, whereas a sunken ship obviously does not. Carriers, given their huge range, are very good at taking out wounded enemy ships, tipping the balance of firepower in your favour.
Hi folks!
Last time, I talked about my favourite cruiser, the Nürnberg class. Following a close second is the Fubuki class destroyer. I've been going up the Japanese tech tree initially, so I don't have much exposure to the US destroyers, but the main difference, from what I can tell, is that the Japanese ships are having a longer torpedo range, in turn, the US ones are more nimble in turning.
Strengths
The Fubuki is fast, has a huge range with her torpedoes, and can cause a crazy amount of damage for a tier 6 ship. I've managed to get above 100000 damage done in a single battle. She has four decently-fast firing main guns in two turrets. Using AP shells against other destroyers, these can do quite some damage, and can finish them off if they didn't get destroyed by the initial torpedo salvo.
The torpedoes are obviously the main weapons. Fubuki has three triple launchers, and the 8km range means she can fire well outside detection range. The power of these torpedoes is enough to severely damage battleships of similar tier, and sink pretty much everything else.
Weaknesses
In close combat, the inferior mobility means you'll get some hits in pretty quickly. Fubuki has decent health, but won't stand against enemy fire for very long. She can survive a full salvo from a US destroyer, barely (and her torpedoes will kill the opponent), but these kind of engagements are best avoided. I usually play her at range, negating the lesser manoeuvrability, and trying to predict the course of an enemy destroyer, unless I have a better target, and disengage.
Playstyle
I usually try not to vanguard with her - even with full rudder upgrades, it's hard to wiggle out of enemy crossfire. Instead, I go for ambush cover, or try to take the flanks. Once I'm through the enemy lines, battleships are preferred targets. Unless they're covering each other, they can be attacked head-on - the small silhouette and fast speed makes it hard for them to hit, and I can choose to either do a safe shot at close range (3km or less) or launch a sneaky strike outside detection range (6km).
Next time, I'll talk a bit about the Ryujo class carrier.
Hi folks!
Today, I'll start a series of posts about the ships I'm currently sailing. Given the steep price increase past tier 6 (which is around 900k silver), I decided on skipping over tier 7 (2.7m silver) and going straight for tier 8 (6.3m silver plus about 150k free XP). I'm aiming for the "Admiral Hipper" class heavy cruiser, since my current favourite ship is the tier 6 "Nürnberg" class light cruiser.
Strengths
The German navy line in the tech tree was introduced fairly recently, and I was already well into the Japanese tech tree, but decided to switch, since they looked like great allrounder ships. Before it got nerfed somewhat in the 1.0.0 update, the Nürnberg was an absolute killer. I did a full fleet sunk twice, here's a screenshot from one of the battles:
These were three human players and four AI players.
The Nürnberg is a fast, well-armed light cruiser. Her nine guns, fully upgraded, do a whopping 640 damage with AP shells, and reload in under 8 seconds. This means you can sink a destroyer at full health in three good salvos. At a range of 10km, and with the "precise aiming" perk, these guns wreak serious havoc against enemy destroyers and cruisers.
The cruiser has four triple torpedo launchers (two on each side) for a total of 12 torpedoes, with a range of above 5km. They can be used in spread to hit unsuspecting destroyers which snuck up on you, or concentrated fire to sink enemy battleships.
Lastly, at 33kn, she can keep up with vanguard destroyers, and the "sonar" perk allows for improved first detection when fired at the right time.
Weaknesses
Being a light cruiser, the Nürnberg's main guns have trouble dealing damage against battleships. AP shells usually don't get through the armour plating, and HE shells only do about 180 damage, which means you'd need about 20 full salvo hits. This leaves two options: staying away from them and dodging, or closing in and using torpedoes.
The ship's armour is weak for a cruiser, just barely above destroyer plating. Together with only 20k health at full upgrades, this means two or three good hits from a battleship can finish her off, so you definitely can't rush into battle head-first.
My playstyle
I'm seeing her as a long-range, manoeuvrable hunter and ambush predator. Her main gun firepower means she can stand up in a one-to-one with any other cruiser, and is deadly to destroyers.
In the opening phase, I usually rush ahead with the vanguard up to detection point - when the enemy battleship line comes into view, it's time to hit the sonar and turn about. You'll run into the enemy destroyers at that point, so I want to fall back and take them out at about 5km distance - too far for them to hit me with torpedoes.
Once the destroyers are dealt with in my section of the battlefield, it's time to turn about again and start the second run-up. Either against enemy cruisers or battleships, using cover if possible, and get torpedo hits in.
If things get rough in the opening moves - for example, you run alone into two or three fast cruisers - the best strategy is to run for it. In a battle today I had a run-in with a US Omaha class cruiser, plus a French De Grasse. The Nürnberg has a configuration of two aft turrets, so I was able to run from the De Grasse, losing the Omaha in the process, and getting enough shots in that I was able to sink the better armoured Frenchman, who was clearly getting frustrated at me dodging most of his shots.
All in all, even after the nerfing in version 1.0.0, she's still my favourite ship overall, and I can usually make a decent killing of three enemy ships per battle.
Next week, I'll be talking about the Japanese Fubuki class destroyer.
Hi folks!
Today, we're going to take a closer look at tactics to use against enemy battleships. There are only two nations so far in the tech tree that sail these - USA and Japan. While US battleships are usually slower, they're heavier armoured, but both have similar offensive characteristics: large-calibre, turret-mounted main guns with relatively slow reload time, but devastating armour-piercing shells, and short-range secondary guns.
Higher tier US battleships have quicker reload special capabilities, whereas the Japanese ones have improved precision. In both cases, you don't want to be at the receiving end of their main artillery. The flipside to all that firepower and defence is lack of speed and manoeuvrability.
Human vs computer player
The difference between the two player types is much less for battleships than it is for the other classes. The main distinction is that computer players often are more aggressive in positioning, sailing into close-quarters combat, where they can easily be torpedoed. An experienced human player will often stay in the open, with their back against the map border, using their range and firepower to rain hell into the centre of the battle.
Torpedoes
Usually, the heavy armour prevents the smaller (around 150mm) guns of destroyers and cruisers from penetrating with AP shells. High-explosive shells do damage, and add a chance of setting it on fire, but it really takes too long to take a battleship down that way. The ideal weapon against battleships are, obviously, torpedoes.
Destroyers, due to their small size, have a fair chance of doing a head-on run, evading most of the fire, and then timing a narrow spread of torpedoes in at short range (around 4km). You want to do your turn right after a broadside of their main guns, since you'll be presenting your flank, and you don't want to have eight 400mm shells ripping through you at that point. A full torpedo salvo at that distance is relatively hard to dodge, and usually enough to destroy or very seriously damage a battleship. Keep hitting it with HE shells during the run-up and evasion. Once the torps are in the water, you can either complete the turn, or try to pass it, outrunning the turrets' turn.
For cruisers, this is quite a bit more difficult. Larger size, slower speed and slower turns mean you're going to be hit a lot more on a frontal run-up, dealing potentially fatal or near-fatal damage. You've got to be smarter. One obvious solution to that is having the battleship not shoot at you, or at least not get more than one salvo off. There are some ways you can get this done.
Flanking
Main gun turrets are great, because they allow a ship to concentrate all firepower towards either side. But they turn slowly, so if you approach it from the other side, you can get a good shot in and get out again before you can be targeted. Observe your target battleship, you can usually see the position of the turrets and blasts from their main guns to determine which way they're shooting.
Teamwork
Another way of not getting hit is to work together. Battleship captains usually will consider a destroyer to be a more dangerous opponent, so sail with one of your destroyers, let it dodge the main gun fire, and get a clean torpedo run. Especially Japanese cruisers with their long-range torpedoes are good for that, whereas Soviet cruisers would need to get into 3km range, which is way too close for comfort. Also, it of course means you've got to somehow get the destroyer to play along, which isn't easy, given the limited amount of communication in the game. I often end up just checking if a destroyer is on a run-up against a battleship, and joining in if I'm nearby.
Ambush
Provided battleships make the fatal mistake of getting too close to islands, you can simply wait for them - you'll have visual long before they see you, then get out, launch torpedoes, and full-on reverse back. They might still get a shot in, but torpedoes are almost guaranteed to hit. This is often more useful against AI players. Against human players, try to pick a battleship that's focused on another target, there's a good chance they won't notice you until you're close enough for torpedo hits.
Battleship tactics
Good battleship players will stay back behind their destroyer / cruiser screens, using their range against hard targets, and covering each other. Cover fire between two battleships creates a death zone, since they'll often sit at an angle, you'll be presenting your flank to either of them during a run-up, making for an easy kill. If you see them set up like that, avoid if you can, or try to flank one of them. Do not sail straight into these open jaws.
Keep these things in mind, and battleships will be a lot less scary opponents.
This is the tier three destroyer of the Russian imperial navy, the Derzky.
