MWC Top 10 Elite Ships

Greetings,
I wanted to pose the question to some of the experts out there as I have only been battling a very short time and haven't been exposed to a good variety of ships. I would like to see how everyone here ranks the Top Ten Elite Ships of MWC (Battleships/Battlecruisers Only). From most of the material I have read, and the few battles that my ship and I have been in, here is the list as it exists in my mind:
1.) USS North Carolina Class - This thing seems to be an absolute beast and extremely popular.
2.) HMS Queen Elizabeth Class - From what I have seen, a great combination of speed, turning radius, and a decent number of combat units.
3.) SMS Bayern Class - Haven't seen this on the water yet but have heard horror stories of an extremely low freeboard, amazing turning radius, and a casemate wall leading to it never really giving up much points while dishing out a good deal with 5.5 combat units.
4.) USS South Dakota Class - Again, haven't seen it on the water yet but have heard it is quite a dangerous ship to come up against.
5.) HMS Invincible Class - These seem to be extremely popular ships and the turret arrangement allows a lot of flexibility for cannon setup.
6.) SMS Von Der Tann - See HMS Invincible Class.
7.) IJN Nagato - From most of what I have heard, it is a very good ship which can deliver devastating firepower, however I have seen and heard that she isn't the most seaworthy of ships and the hull design leads to poor flooding management.
8.) DKM Bismarck - Another popular ship that bristles with guns but I have heard it is extremely difficult to captain. I haven't ever seen one on the water.
9.) SMS Derflinger - Good combination of speed and units. Nice wide hull for her class.
10.) DKM Scharnhorst - Triple sterns are nice but the ship seems to be a bit too long and thin to be in the top 10.

Please weigh in on what you think are the Top Ten Elite MWC Ships. This should also help to generate some ideas for my next ship. Glad to be a part of the best hobby of all time.

Jeff

 

Just count the number of each type that would give a good indication of which were the "elite" ships.

 

I am not sure how to put it into 1 list but here is mine:
Axis
Nagato, Baden, Kongo, Bismarck, vdt
Allied
ID QE NC WV Tiger/SD

They are all the most common.. for a reason.

 

There was a thing out several (maybe more than several) years ago called Combat Effectiveness Factor or CEF. I don't know who devekoped it, but it was a matrix that assigned points and numbers to features of ships and arranged them by these numbers into the most and least potentially effective ships. I've actually tried to find this, but it may have been lost to the depths of the internet. I recall that Baden, QE, NC, Bismarck, Nagato were all very high.

Some ships are easier to get their full potential out of. The NC is naturally gifted with beam, weight, dual rudders, and triple sterns. They turn well and are well armed. They battle very much like big cruisers, which makes them pretty good to learn on and don't get you into as many sticky situations as other ships.

Nagato and Bismarck are very lethal ships. Full compliment of sidemounts, good length/beam ratio, and dual rudders. They are much harder to learn on and master than an NC.

QE (and really all the other 26 and 28 second ships) are solid ships, but they can't run away. They live in the slugfest. If you take a bigger ship into their world most likely the slugger will come out on top (all other things being equal).

Captain skill and style is a huge factor as well. Some captains are quite good with most styles of ship, but most tend to be much better with one kind or another, maybe even one class or gun arrangement over any other. There are some wicked good cruiser captains who wouldn't be very effective in a sidemount ship. There are some slugger captains who get torn apart in bigger ships. The captain/ship combo is just as big a factor as anything else and that is hard to "track." Some ships are popular because they are famous (Bismarck, Nagato, Arizona, Warspite, etc) or because they have a good reputation (NC, Baden, Iron Duke, VDT) or because they have been availible in the hobby for a long time (Lutzow, Derfflinger, West Virginia, etc).

All that out of the way. This is how I might rank the top 10 elite on paper ships for MWC if I were forced to
10) South Dakota
9) Baden
8) Moltke
7) Iron Duke
6) Invincible
5) Von der Tann
4) Queen Elizabeth
3) North Carolina
2) Bismarck
1) Nagato

There are also some 'specialist' ships that are very very very good at one particular thing or another.
King George V(1936), Vittorio Veneto, Scharnhorst: excellent super cruisers
Kongo, Tiger, Lion, Strasbourg, Richelieu, Vanguard: fast sidemount ships that don't turn as well
Fuso, Konig, Moltke, Seydlitz: slow sidemount ships that have turrets capable of haymakers on both sides plus stern gun(s)
Nassau, Helgoland, Von der Tann, South Carolina, Viribus Unitas, Dreadnought: small, hard to hit, defensive ships
Arizona, Tennessee (WV), Revenge, Nelson: slow sidemount ships that don't turn as well with great amounts of hull volume

There's also the Allied/Axis angle to look at. There are a lot of captains that only battle one side or the other, or even one country or another. It wouldn't matter to him how "good" a certain ship is, they would never battle it because it isn't their side or country. You'll never see a NC in my workshop, for example. Some captains also really like unusual or rare ships. They might choose, for example, the Indefatiguable over Invincible because there aren't many around or Rivadavia over Baden because there aren't any others out there. Ships also come and go through cycles of being "it" and fading away. One captain battles a certain ship and does well, it is more likely that more will try it because it gets a reputation for being "good."

Alright, that was pretty heavy. Short version: build what you want, get it reliable, know where your guns hit, and have fun.

 

Have to agree with previous posters... the best ship is the one that suits your style of fighting best.
That said, I'm a "slugger", so for me turning ability and gun placement / numbers is more important than speed. Here's my rankings:

1. South Dakota - Good manueverabilty, trip sterns, 2 sidesmounts, huge hull volume.
2. Baden / QE - extremely manueverable, twin sterns + 2 sidemounts
3. Nagato - fast, reasonably manueverable, nasty sidemounts and (bulged) lots of stringers to help protect sides
4. Viribus Unitus - tiny, very manueverable, triple sterns
5. North Carolina / Bismark - longer & less manueverable than the SoDak, but faster. If one of these tangles with anything ranked above, it's sunk. Anything less, it wins
6. I-boat / Von der Tann / any early WW1 BC - nimble, lots of options for mounting guns, but not much firepower
7. late WW1 BC - longer, faster, but with the traditional 4-turret on centerline layout. Pretty but not good sluggers
8. Vittorio Veneto - same gun layout as NC, but half the manueverability. Nice looking boat, though.
9. Iowa / Yamato - huge, not very manueverable. But triple sterns & dual sidemounts pack a lot of hurt
10. Anything except French

French boats (especially the Dunkerque / Jean Bart classes) have funky turret layouts, poor manueverabilty, and (IMHO) are butt-ugly to boot.
I'd rank the hexagon turret German dread's in there somewhere around 4th b/c of their turret layout and manueverability, but I haven't had the chance to see one on the water yet.
Keep in mind this is strictly my opinion. Actual milage may vary

 

Fantastic stuff. I'm glad to hear some inputs from people from other clubs and especially some input on ships I have yet to see. I'll search around for that CEF thing.

 

All of this discussion (good stuff, btw) reminds me of some famous sayings:
There is no such thing as a dangerous weapon, only dangerous people.
Gun control means hitting what you aim at
"Halt!" BLAM "Who went there?"
BANZAIIIII

 

My first battling in the fast gun style was the IRCWCC nats 2011. I battled Ron Hunt's Invincible. I quickly learned that I would take a peppering of stern guns in exchange for some haymaker shots. Also Ron's outstanding pump allowed me to do some silly things. I took approx. 110 above- 10 on- and 30 below one round. That's what I get for messing with 3 to 4 German dreadnoughts. And why I don't disagree that they are rated highly. They were tough to get the better of.
Das Butts

 

To try and pull the discussion back to "Elite Ships" and not "CEF and what it means" ....
Note that this will be aimed more at choosing a ship to battle more so than just rating them. After all, why rate a "top ten" and then build something not ranked in there? LoL
To decide what are the best ships, an individual first has to determine what criteria they will use. Since it's strictly subjective, I'd suggest you use your own battle preferences to determine your criteria.
First would be, are you committed Axis, Allied, or a switch hitter? This will possibly eliminate 50% of the ships out there from consideration.
Second would be availability: Is there hulls available? Good documentation and plans? Without hulls, you have to have the plans to scratch-build. Also, is there a size or other constraint? (bad back means no heavy ships, budget may mean nothing above a cruiser).
Another would be desirability: Even if the ship is awesome to fight, if it's butt-ugly or a pain to work on, why build it?
Finally we get to the nitty gritty:
If you like "Run and Gun", your emphasis would be on speed, stern gun configuration, number of units.
If you like "Hug and Slug", your emphasis would be maneuverability, gun config (stern and sidemounts), units, and (for lack of a better phrase) "toughness" - casements, low freeboard, other factors making a ship a tough kill.

 

Very well put.

 

I really only know a lot about hug and slug type ships so I'll talk about those!
Ships that have really good defensive properties:
Nassau, Helgoland, Kaiser, Dreadnought, VU, Von der Tann. These ships all have low freeboard and large casemate decks, making them harder to damage with stern guns. They are all fairly small ships yet pack a lot of firepower into fairly small hulls. They all have dual rudders and very nice length/beam ratio making them highly manuverable. They all have clustered or wing turrets making for a wide variety of gun placement options. While they are slow (except for VDT which is in the medium speed range) they tend to not lose any speed while turning. These ships are very hard to engage 1 v1 and their difficulty in being hit keep damage down. However, the slow speed means that if they stay on the water too long without friends, they will need to run like crazy to make it off '5'.
Ships that have really good offensive properties:
Kongo, Nagato, North Carolina, Richelieu, Iowa, Yamato. These ships all have speed and sidemounts. The NC only has 2 sidemounts, but it has triple sterns to make up for it. All these ships are relatively large and relatively heavy, meaning they can carry a lot of batteries and a really hot pump. In the case of Iowa, Rich, and Yamato they have dual sidemounts. Of these ships, only NC and Nagato turn very well but the others turn well enough to stay in the chase against a fleeing ship that doesn't want to be sidemounted (maybe a ship on 5). These ships can really dish out damage, but due to their size and less than top tier manueverability have the potential to take a lot back if one is not careful.
Ships with very good balance (offensive and defensive) properties:
Queen Elizabeth, Moltke, Konig, Baden, Bismarck. These ships all have various degrees of speed, but they all have excellent turning due to dual or oversized rudders. They all have good turret arrangements and good displacement to take large batteries for hot pumps. All have lots of hull volume to make installing the internals slightly easier. All have raised or superfiring turrets to get maximum down angle on sidemounts. The slower ships (baden and konig) make up for their lack of speed with deep armor belts and casemates. Some might not consider Bismarck a slugging ship, but battled with care it can still mess up the slower ships that can't run away.

Thoughts?

 

I am going to touch on an old post, because it is relevant to my current decision.
There is a specific class of boat that should be in this group, but isn’t. It has huge hull volume, clustered turrets for a wide variety of gun placement (haymaker), nice (one of the best) length/beam ratio. Good speed.
Of course I am talking about the American Standard Battleships. Why aren’t they on this list? …… Single rudder. Our rules give a HUGE advantage to a dual rudder ship. It was deliberate. We wrote it in. We wrote “ships with two or more rudders, may have 50% more total rudder surface area than the amount stated above.” What is unbelievable to me is that it is so obvious that this give a disadvantage to a single rudder boat.
Why hasn’t this been addressed?

Keith Maxwell

 

It has been brought up and even voted on, more than once too. Enough people like the rules as they are that it hasn't changed. Since most clubs memberships get to vote on rules there isn't much you can do except try to change people's opinion and get them to vote your way. (well there ARE some other options but those generally aren't helpful to the hobby.) That tends to be very hard to do especially when you want people to voluntarily give up an advantage they enjoy.

 

Yup,
That pretty much sums it up.
End result is that we just do not get as much variety of boats on the water. I would build the Tennnessee/West Virginia, but I won't. Why?
I won't give them the advantage that they want.
We just end up with a pond full of the same boats. :blink: See previous lists....

Keith

 

Unsurprisingly, we do see various ships other than the "elites" on the water. For instance, the Vanguard, once thought of as a doggy ship, has proved to be quite capable the last two years. I have no doubt that the Vanguards have earned far more respect in the hobby due to the captains that took the time to increase the performance of a single rudder ship.

I have no doubt that if someone actually worked to improve a single rudder ship, then they would loose the stigmata of being "bad" ships. Unfortunately, very few people want to do that and will try instead to change the rules (which could be more effort than improving the ship).

 

And by the way, we have seen successful Virginia's on the water that do rather well. Heh.

 

The WeeVee turns just fine, I can assure you of that. I have battled it many many many times.

 

Define that. Length to Width ration says that it should turn better than a Baden. Instead it is substantialy worse. I maintain that there is a reason that you are a "Death Baden" driver. not a WeeVee driver.
Keith

 

If you want to maximize every advantage you can get then dont build a single rudder ship.

If you only ever build the ship that gives you the greatest advantage then you're never going to see much variety. You dont get to have it both ways.

However as has been stated there have been a number of single rudder ships that were very effective. It might be a little harder for the captain or take more work to setup but they can still be competitive.