Grozovoi and Surveillance Radar.
Currently Grozovoi is in quite an awkward situation. Among tier X destroyers she has the lowest winrate and the worst combat effectiveness numbers, failing at most of her tasks. She has fair concealment, great main batteries and workable AA support, however her massive hull and mediocre torpedoes cancel out her advantages. It’s obvious that the ship needs an improvement. The question is, how exactly we go about this.
We’ve looked at different ways to boost her and came to a conclusion that close combat, negating other destroyers and support are optimal roles for Grozovoi to fulfill. We didn’t want to strengthen her torpedo armament, since there are quite a few “hybrid” destroyers in the game already: Gearing, Z-52 and Yueyang. Her main batteries are excellent and don’t warrant an upgrade either. The idea was to make those batteries usable against other destroyers.
Surveillance radar with test stats is somewhat reminiscent of Z-52’s Hydroacoustic Search. In both cases the consumable is combined with a smoke screen. Hydro detects torpedoes as well as ships, is active for much longer, but has a shorter detection distance than Grozovoi’s Radar – 5.88 km against 7.5 km. Z-52 creates a lasting threat inside control areas and she spots torpedoes while hiding in smoke screens. Grozovoi would pose an even bigger thread with her radar, however a short-lived one, and disposing of her in the smoke screens is tangibly easier. Yueyang can have Radar too, but this time instead of Smoke Generator, besides we can see that the Pan-Asian destroyer has a more compact hull, better concealment for the tier, specialized, yet very powerful deep water torpedoes as well as great guns that are quite deadly at short distances, where her less-than-ideal ballistics are not a factor.
We clearly understand, that a combo of Radar and Smoke might be risky for the balance, as it allows for damage that goes unpunished in certain situations. But keeping in mind Grozovoi’s weaker points, her Radar’s particularly limited stats and our experience with Z-52, we feel the need to test her. And remember than we can always tweak the Radar’s numbers, should it prove to be too effective.
Destroyer plating changes.
The issue at hand here is to distribute the incoming damage sources for destroyers. As of now, it is too often, that they receive damage from battleships’ AP shells, that arm when reaching the plating. However, it should be noted, that 19 mm plating doesn’t eliminate the chance of ricochet of cruisers’ heavy AP shells, yet withstands 100 mm HE shells. By lowering the thickness to 13 mm we’re getting some significant results:
AP shells
380+ mm no longer arm above the water surface and only deal overpen damage instead of standard penetration values. Sometimes they will deal normal damage by arming underneath the surface. The damage received from battleship AP shells by destroyers decreases significantly.
203-271 mm stop ricocheting and begin to always break through the plating. Can arm at an angle. Increases the damage that heavy cruisers deal to destroyers with AP shells, especially when firing in longitudinal projection.
HE shells
100-105 mm can pierce the plating without Inertia Fuse. Improves the gameplay of Akizuki and any other destroyers sporting this caliber – IFHE stops being the be all end all skill. Increases potential of such ships as Friedrich der Grosse, Bismarck, Alsace and other battleships with secondaries of this caliber.
Please note, that this change is not a unilateral one. Rather it orders up the incoming damage sources for destroyers (cruisers should obviously be more of a threat to them than battleships, as they are the designated counter-class).
We also realize that this could possibly harm the German destroyers that often use AP shells against their same-class rivals. Due to thinner plating these shells will arm less. We don’t really want to affect that particular trait of Germans, and should the change be implemented, we’ll tweak their fuses accordingly. In any case, everything described above will be tested extensively and corrected if need be.
Thanks for your continued involvement and being part of the discussion! We’ll make sure to keep you in the loop about the development plans.