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G'day Folks, Another one for your enjoyment. From a friend of mine on NA (and a former 151 player), now one of Bex's B-Z guys. KingNeptunes is an excellent BB player. Enjoy!

How is my good old GK destroying allied aircraft? I thought friendly fire from secondaries and AA were disabled?

I normally play IJN BBs. I absolutely love my Fuso and especially my Amagi. Just recently got the Bismarck. A very impressive ship indeed and she can do tremendous damage in close and tank like nobody's business. The problem I have with the Bismarck is that sometimes it isn't possible to engage the enemies at close range. The "Tears Of The Desert" map in an "Epicentre" game style match is a classic example: everyone hides at long range and snipes behind the islands on their side of the map. There are no islands you can use as cover to get to the other side of the map, so if any Bismarck captain is foolish enough to attempt a close range engagement... they'll be doing it solo and be bush-whacked by 3 - 4 ships shooting at them simultaneously and killing them very quickly. Where close range engagements are not possible (either due to map layout, the type of game like Epicentre, or player psychology), I often find the Bismarck to be a very ineffective vessel. I don't know if it is the dispersion or the psychological effect of knowing my guns are only 380mm, but it is difficult to hit enemy vessels reliability beyond 15km. When I play my Nagato or Amagi, I don't have this problem. A big frustration I have is that when I sometimes hit cruisers, my 380mm shells will over penetrate. It happens quite often and I think to myself: Is the Bismarck really the cruiser killer people make it out to be? At that same 15km range, I can put the fear of God into cruisers with my Amagi. I have had success with the Bismarck's guns at close range but I think that's besides the point. Basically unless the map's terrain allows me to sneak up on the enemy, or I do a suicide charge, I find the Bismarck just really isn't able to assist my team. The inability of the Bismarck's main guns to hit targets or do damage aside, I'm obviously wary of getting into a 15km - 18km shooting match with the Bismarck because her deck armor is so thin and she's very vulnerable to plunging fire. What strategies do Bismarck captains employ to make themselves combat effective when close range engagements are not possible? When I do fire at enemies at 15km+, I either miss or do token damage... then I have to run like crazy to dodge the incoming plunging fire lest it wreck my ship before I get out of detection range. My Bismarck is configured as follows: Auxiliary Armaments Modification 1 Secondary Battery Modification 2 Damage Control System Modification 1 Steering Gears Modification 2 Concealment System Modification 1 Side Note I have experimented with swapping out the "Secondary Battery Mod 2" with "Aiming Systems Mod 1" to reduce my main guns dispersion by -7%. I didn't really find it to make much difference and I found it really annoying to have my secondaries engagement much later where close range engagements did occur. Regarding "Manual Fire Control for Secondary Armament", I know some people prefer to avoid this Captain's skill because they like the idea of their ship shooting on both sides. I've found that having secondaries shoot at multiple targets wasn't the "hand of death" people might assume it to be: I've found that in practice, when your secondaries are shooting at multiple targets your firepower is divided and thus has less effect on individual vessels. Furthermore you do less damage due to lack of a secondary dispersion reduction you get with manual control. I once engaged three ships at once at close range and one of them was a DD, who could've cared less because whilst Bismarck's secondaries have crazy high DPS there are not that many individual secondary turrets and the firepower was severely curtailed when the turrets were divided over three enemy ships. Don't get me wrong, I did a ton of damage but it wasn't like my multi-ship secondary fire was making the Bismarck a killing machine who can take on multiple enemies and win. I think when your secondaries can target multiple ships, it leads to false confidence. Finally if you're engaging multiple targets at close range, at fun as it is and even if you do tremendous damage, you usually die because you're copping enemy fire from multiple directions. In my mind it's better to have manual control so you can concentrate your secondary fire on a single enemy ship and have a realistic chance of killing them (or near killing them). When your secondaries are manually targeted on a single vessel, it encourages you to angle more effectively and not expose yourself to shell fire from other vessels (which is normally how you expose yourself in order to have your secondaries blazing on both sides of your ship). The one area where I think forgoing manual secondaries might make sense is if you don't want the mental distraction of having to manually target your secondaries, especially if enemies are slipping out of smoke or islands all the time. That makes sense, but that again puts the focus onto the Bismarck's main guns which.... frankly.... I find very lacklustre. Unless I'm 10km or less, I don't really find Bismarck's guns all the effective. I've over-penned plenty of times at that range and I scratch my head thinking what purpose the Bismarck's guns are except for show?

Posted on the NA forums: http://forum.worldofwarships.com/index.php?/topic/122349-64-public-test-secondaries-broken-at-close-range/page__st__20__pid__2958936#entry2958936 Just transferring eVa's post on the other thread.

I've bought this two before on my ARP ships (Kongo,Hiei) , as well as other higher tier Cruisers (Tier VI-VII) I was once use this to Aoba and their dispersion of secondaries decreased, In BBs, when i used them, it's Mostly Rapid-Firing turrets against other ships so i did try adding them a Signal (Mike Yankee Soxisix ) and it's like 6.0 km when added by AFT. and i didn't know Secondaries are one of the fears of DDs and CL/CAs, i got 2 kills in my secondaries in my Konigsberg... How's anyone's build doing?

I've been thinking a rather long time since CBT playing both DD's and BB's with regards to the issues regarding this. As a avid DD player, nothing ruins your day more than sneaking up to an unsuspecting BB driver and getting a torpedo tube, engine or rudder knocked out by a lucky secondary shot, even though the fella has no idea you're there due to his tunnel visioning, ruining a perfectly set up attack run or ambush. Hence its understandable why the Devs made secondary gunners have the accuracy of drunkards and the range of a crossbow. But on the other side of the debate are the BB drivers who do notice and try their best to pro-actively take evasive action, this is where secondary batteries become useful and important. After a few recent games with my North Carolina, involving a very adrenaline filled close quarters knifefight between myself and 2 separate suicidal DD charges (a Benson and Hatsuharu), alongside close quarters gunnery duel with 2 Fuso's, I thought about what I believe would make secondaries fairer while maintaining balance Improvements/Suggestions: Secondary battery range and accuracy are somewhat fine, but for me in the North Carolina and for the ships above, the biggest issue I have is the batteries are literally made of paper, 1 scratch and they are out of commission. and when all 5 secondary turrets on the starboard side are out, I was completely helpless (yes I was at fault for letting them get close, but it was endgame battle in a stock NC). I took out the Benson with my mains in the above mentioned game and a nearly the same for the Hatsuharu (friendly cruiser took him out at the last second). I've noticed the casemate and even the non turreted secondaries (like the pedestal DP 5" mounts on the Colorado and New Mexico ) have better survivability. So a small buff to the survivability of these would be nice, at least making them less prone to damage from HE perhaps? And another suggestion being, a small accuracy buff for secondaries when an alert captain actually designates a target for them, and also the accuracy of the said guns being better for larger targets like BB's in a close quarters gun duel, while maintaining drunkennessfor small DD's , an accuracy proportional to ship size *DD spotted , BRING OUT THE RUM BOYS!!! Anyways cheers for reading this long thought bubble

We all have Problems on Destroying Destroyers, so i planned for this Consumable as another Defensive method against Destroyers,Cruisers (With torpedo arnament) and Battleships. Its simple, it will Rapid-Fire for 20 seconds and it will burst like for 0.5 seconds of "Secondary turrets" which can be useful if a Destroyer is Around (OFC Carriers are the problem here).... So...Yes or No or Neither?

Please Select one of the Choices