De 7 provincien review

[Metal_illness]

Armour: is it even steel bro? typical cruiser. not petroesque at all.

Main guns: 16 ish kms range, 6ish seconds reload (feels MUCH longer), HE is your main ammo, and it's ok at setting fires, but expect most games to be in the 20-30k dmg range. AP is weak and pretty much useless to use. Overall main guns are quite weak.

Secondary guns: not even sure there is any?

Parabombers: exceedingly weak. by comparison, Haarlem and Johan bombers are much more resistant to AA, and can drop a lot of bombs, the De 7 planes are made of paper and not many get through to a target. Expect 1-5k dmg MAX.

AA guns: interesting, it's very unreliable, range is good, guns start up from over 6kms out, but very unpredictable in how many planes will get through, (I have the 2nd grade AA skill on Cappy, if you want to take this ship seriously you WILL have to spend more points on upgrading AA to maximum damage output, (there's a 4 point AA skill you can add).

Maneuverability: speed is ok, speed boost helps, rudder shift SHOULD be ok, but ship turns hella slow when trying to hide broadside from ANY enemy (they will ALL wreck you from DD to BB....)

Concealment: good, 10kms ish, but who's counting when your perma spotted by either planes or dd?.

Pros:

360 degree turrets, most useful when you are running away from a fight, and you're going to do this A LOT. So she kites well. Best to try and pick your time to run and gun in open water, when enemy ships are distracted somewhere else.

AA can be a good support for other ships on team.

That's literally the only pro I can think of. 360 degree turrets. If there is no cv in the battle, then MAYBE you can get away with a sneak cap steal under the noses of enemy ships, due to good concealment.

Cons:

main guns are too weak,

parabombers are far too weak both in damage output and plane armour, 

ship only comes with 2 special abilities, speed boost and heal. YUP, that's it!.

In tier 6-8 you can play your little heart out, and still not achieve much, in tier 8-10 games say your prayers during count in.

A couple of ex cc reviews are up, the one I watched also said steer well clear of this ship, and he got to use a 21 point captain, YEAH COZ WE ALL GOT 21 POINT DUTCH CAPTAINS LYING AROUND!!!!!!.

My review is based on using the special talent dutch captain for 1500 doubloons in armoury, he comes with 10 pts.

Signals, camos, 21 point captains WON'T help you enough in this ship.

Skill floor: exceedingly high

Skill ceiling: we broke the scanner, it doesn't go that low.

Basically to play this ship well and cause a win singlehandedly you need ALL THE LUCK IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW, and even then you won't believe that only 20k damage got you top of your team. Especially when you spent 20 minutes pumping out thousands of HE rounds, playing you little heart out. Your best chance for xp, credits etc is to steal caps. You won't break any damage records, and enemy ships will laugh at you if you try to attack.

To make this ship decent, I REALLY would have thought it would be given smoke or radar. The radar would have been great for setting up your parabombers. And De 7 can open water combat a little, so smoke would have also been great.

Questions or own experiences welcome.

 

[dejiko_nyo]

Ergo, it is a typical T8 that gets shat on when uptiered. Radar would draw the ire of the 'too much radar' section of the player base and would be right. Smoke would be derided by weegee as 'not dutch flavour'

[Reinhard_of_Avercland]

Main guns are too weak? The HE shell can penetrate up to 30mm by default (without IFHE), which is only second to Mainz at T8. This means the HE can penetrate many T10 cruisers (most of which have only 27mm deck & extremities) without IFHE

Parabombers are weak? The ship could use 3 sets of airstrike the last time I checked. Not even the T10 tech tree counterpart has that much sets of airstrike.

Has heal, yes. The only T8 light cruiser that has it along with Edinburgh. Atago, Prinz Eugen, etc. are heavy cruisers.

The ship had hydro during the early testing phase. But since the current trend of "DD lives matter", WG decided to remove it. So....

[Plymouth_MyWife_PrPr]

1 minute ago, Reinhard_of_Avercland said:

"DD lives matter"

Bought Ark Royal today and this was my first game

[Project45_Opytny]

3 minutes ago, Reinhard_of_Avercland said:

Main guns are too weak? The HE shell can penetrate up to 30mm by default (without IFHE), which is only second to Mainz at T8. This means the HE can penetrate many T10 cruisers (most of which have only 27mm deck & extremities) without IFHE, no other T8 light cruisers can do that (except Mainz).

Which translates into "the same as all other regular T8~10 Light cruisers without enhanced HE penetration". This is the result of the IFHE Rework.

Bofors 152-mm M42 has approximately the same ballistics performance of Omaha-class and "regular" German 150-mm of Konigsberg and Nurnberg. Workable but just so-so at T8.

About her advantages I would nominate her almost submerged citadel and armored stern section.

[Reinhard_of_Avercland]

18 minutes ago, Project45_Opytny said:

Which translates into "the same as all other regular T8~10 Light cruisers without enhanced HE penetration". This is the result of the IFHE Rework.

I forgot It happened. But yes you are right.

 

19 minutes ago, Project45_Opytny said:

About her advantages I would nominate her almost submerged citadel and armored stern section.

Yes the ship has better citadel protection than some at T8.

[Metal_illness]

15 hours ago, Reinhard_of_Avercland said:

Main guns are too weak? The HE shell can penetrate up to 30mm by default (without IFHE), which is only second to Mainz at T8. This means the HE can penetrate many T10 cruisers (most of which have only 27mm deck & extremities) without IFHE

Parabombers are weak? The ship could use 3 sets of airstrike the last time I checked. Not even the T10 tech tree counterpart has that much sets of airstrike.

Has heal, yes. The only T8 light cruiser that has it along with Edinburgh. Atago, Prinz Eugen, etc. are heavy cruisers.

The ship had hydro during the early testing phase. But since the current trend of "DD lives matter", WG decided to remove it. So....

You're forgetting the part most planes get shot down before dropping over target. The armour weakness is mentioned there, once or twice.

HE shell penetration paper stat does not equate to real in game experiences.

Hydro would even have helped, as you do get cv focused a lot, espcially if setting ambushes from behind islands...to prevent island camping with your parabombers.

[Puggsley]

16 hours ago, dejiko_nyo said:

Smoke would be derided by weegee as 'not dutch flavour'

Man in my travels smoke was definitely "Dutch flavour"...........

These vodka quaffers need to be a little more worldly.

[dejiko_nyo]

Just now, Puggsley said:

Man in my travels smoke was definitely "Dutch flavour"...........

These vodka quaffers need to be a little more worldly.

I knew someone was going to say that but I just kept silent waiting...

[legionary2099]

Just unpack their torpedo tubes ...

I mean, the Dutch flavour is a contradiction : Their main guns work best at range, where their squishiness is less of a problem. But they are inaccurate and their AP is lacklustre.

Meanwhile, to launch airstrikes and fire accurately, you need to camp island and static exchange; where their cardboard boxes truely shine.

I really struggle to understand their concept. They don't have the armor nor the fire arc to play island, but their airstrikes require you to play camp and flush out other campers.

[Metal_illness]

20 hours ago, legionary2099 said:

Just unpack their torpedo tubes ...

I mean, the Dutch flavour is a contradiction : Their main guns work best at range, where their squishiness is less of a problem. But they are inaccurate and their AP is lacklustre.

Meanwhile, to launch airstrikes and fire accurately, you need to camp island and static exchange; where their cardboard boxes truely shine.

I really struggle to understand their concept. They don't have the armor nor the fire arc to play island, but their airstrikes require you to play camp and flush out other campers.

Yes they are a misfit to pretty much any form of meta.

The Haarlem I probably found best fitting to damage potential/ tier combat.

I am eager to see how the tier 10 fits.

Long range torps would be great, like you say the dutch cruisers can engage from long range and open water combat ok(ish) *just using dodge! TM, and the long range torps would definitely keep an enemy on its toes and also *just using dodge! TM. The 152mm main guns on the De 7 just don't seem adequate vs tier 8-10, and even though they are dual purpose Bofors, they never open up on incoming aircraft in time for their range. 

So the paper AA stat says AA range is 6.9kms, but AA doesn't really start firing until around mid range.