How to deal with battleships

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.