User blog comment:FlammeumDraco333/Tales From the Not so Blocky Seas/@comment-10905876-20160226205907

-USN Revisited-

The thrilling sequel to Royal Navy Revisited:

Today's subject, the early American battleship line

So, today I returned to the American early battleship line. I had been using an Omaha cruiser for a while, and fought my last battle with that ship, landing me somewhere around 80% complete on level 22. So, after confirming that the Rexp I had on had would be enough to finish the job, I upgraded to the Indiana class. Boy am I glad that I was only playing that one for kicks. Slow, unimpressive armor, the only redeeming quality was the ability to mount triple 8" guns. (Those look very derpy on a pre dread btw...) I was glad that I only endured two battles in that horrid contraption.

After those two battles which reaffirmed my low opinion of the Indiana, I, with mixed feelings of anticipation and dread, upgraded again to the Florida class. Now, the Florida, if any of you remember, rated quite lowly for me in my previous reviews of the class. I never made any reviews, but I did say that it was a poorly armored piece of crap, which detracted greatly from the playability of the early American battleship line.

I think that I was wrong. Yes, the accuracy of the 12" guns are atrocious. Yes, there isn't a whole lot of room for armor. But, she's got a lot of speed, and her armor is fairly reasonable if distributed right. Now, I think I can see where my inexperienced past self went wrong, and dismissed poor Florida as a worthless rustbucket.

Firstly, the guns. I only knew British guns at that point, so I was probably spoiled by their superb accuracy. But, each gun has trade offs. The trade off for the American 12" twin was range over accuracy. The gun has the same range as higher level weapons such as the basic British 15", and has decent reload and damage values. The triple 8" is also an option at level 25, and is a superb gun. Also, let's not forget that you can mount freakin torpedoes as a secondary.

I can also see where I went wrong with the armor. At the time, I was still using the basic armor system, and giving uniform thickness values for the whole ship. With uniform armor, you can achieve a 12" belt and 3" deck, which I considered horrible, and contributed greatly to my low opinion of the Florida class. But with more fine tuned armor values, I could get a deck with thicker amidships values, where most hits land, and thinner ends. This has led to a more satisfying layout, though still a bit skimpy for my tastes.

And finally, her most redeeming characteristic, speed and general layout. While most other early dreadnoughts have to settle with, at best, 18 knots full load, the Florida can make a respectable 21 knots even with a full load. This, coupled with long range guns, provides a distinct advantage over comparably leveled ships. And it doesn't end there either. This ship has the best broadside of her level, with 10 guns (or 14 if using the triples) available vs the usual 8 guns offered on other ships. This capability also puts some possible context for the sub par accuracy and armor. The ship has to be balanced compared to her peers.

So yes, I was wrong to criticize people who brought their Floridas to battles. Turns out they're not the fools that I dismissed them as, but actually have a good ship under their command. Sorry bout that folks. So, yeah, on to the New York class then! We all know that she's a favorite of mine, even if the devs did a horrible job modeling her.