In it, I provide an analysis of the ships, how they compare to each other and where their strengths and weaknesses are. There are chapters dealing with damage and range calculations, quick reference sheets of the fleets, formulas for the influence of the captains on the performance of the ships and overall hints using special systems such as smoke and radar, as well as tips for torpedo warfare. Finally, there is a chapter on the achievements in-game.

The guide assumes some familiarity with the game, especially the concepts shown in the game tutorials, but it should be readily understood with little preparation otherwise. In the creation of this guide I have perused the rulebook[www.mongoosepublishing.com] from the boardgame 'Victory at Sea' due to its excellent explanation of the rules involved in calculating damage as well as other aspects of the ships such as twin-linked turrets, armoured decks, etc. The numerical data used herein comes directly from the unmodded game itself (version 1.4).

My hope is that you find the data and tips herein useful in your conquests. During the data collection and analysis for this guide I have been surprised several times by some facts that are not explained prominently in-game, but are nevertheless quite important to understand (e.g. super-armour piercing shells, weak turrets, effect of night and bad weather, influence of captain level, etc.)

If you happen to have ideas for improvement, or find any mistakes or even misspellings, please let me know. I appreciate any comments and up-ratings if applicable.

When a ship aims its turrets at a target that is near, the gun is raised only by a small angle, so that the shell follows a low trajectory. If the shell hits the target's hull, it has a high chance to penetrate and cause damage because it impacts nearly perpendicularly upon it. To mitigate damage from such gunfire, warships have armoured hulls.

As the target is moved further away, the gun has to be raised more and more, so that the trajectory of the shell first goes very high and then plunges down toward the target at a steep angle. Obviously, such a shell would have a more devastating effect on the horizontal deck of the ship than the vertical hull of the ship. In order to protect the ship from this type of gunfire, some warships have armoured decks in addition to their armoured hulls.

This behaviour is simulated in Victory at Sea and plays an important role in battles. As shown below, a ship's firing range is divided into 3 distinct zones. The innermost is the 'normal' range, where shells have a low trajectory and damage is calculated normally. At 'long' and 'extreme' ranges, however, the damage gets a bonus to penetrate the target's armour, unless the target has an armoured deck. Based on the circles the ranges are:



The following graph illustrates the effect of plunging fire at long and extreme ranges for the case of a battleship, the USS Iowa. It has a maximum range of 43 km, and for the discussion at hand, the orange line is the pertinent one in that it nicely shows that, beyond a certain range, the potential damage increases significantly and remains that way. (The reason the lines show some extra variation at low range is due to the ship's secondary armament, which has a much shorter range and smaller firepower. When used against ships with weak armour, however, it can still add a lot of extra damage and overcompensate for the main turret's "weakness" at short range as shown in the blue line)


The following chapter applies the concepts presented here to the cases of battleships in order to quantify their effectiveness and find the 'best' battleship.

Up to the arrival of modern aircraft carriers, battleships, with nearly impenetrable armour, massive turrets and powerful engines were the undisputed kings of the sea. Due to their importance in Victory at Sea, this chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the battleships in game. Because battlecruisers are closer to battleships than cruisers really, I have decided to include them in the overview graphs.

In this first graph, all battleships are arrayed together to compare their hitpoints (x-axis) and their armour (y-axis). As discussed in the chapter on range and damage, armoured decks are only useful when deflecting shells shot at long and extreme ranges, but not at normal ranges. For this reason, ships with an armoured deck in addition to hull armour of 6 are placed at an effective armour rating of 6.66. The further a ship is placed to the upper right corner, the better. The Yamato and Iowa dominate this chart.


The following graph shows the battleships arranged by maximum turret range and ship speed. The larger the range and the faster the ship, the earlier it can usually enter the fray and do some damage. Vice versa, a fast enemy ship with large range will be a rapid threat to your ships. Again, the closer to the upper right corner, the better. Here, the Iowa dominates on speed, but the Littorio and Richelieu have the range advantage. Though the Yamato has good range, a first weakness becomes evident in its low speed.


Another important aspect of capital ships is their anti-air capability. In game this is represented by AA-range and AA-strength as shown below. Again, the top right corner denotes the best ships.
The American battleships, and especially the Iowa, outclass the rest by a sizable margin. It also becomes apparent that the French, German, Italian and even 2 British battleships are very susceptible to a sustained aerial assault due to their weak anti-air systems.



Up to now we have only discussed hitpoints, armour, range, speed and AA, but one of the major aspects of battleships is their unirivaled ability to inflict damage. In this chapter we take a look at how the battleships do against targets with varying levels of armour. As with all upcoming graphs and tables discussing damage, please keep in mind that the numbers are only to be used to compare ships within each group. The numbers themselves are not significant by themselves. (Especially because the to-hit probability is unknown and therefore not included in any calculations)

First, battleships against an armour rating of 2, which mostly covers destroyers and submarines.
No big surprises here, all battleships are almost equally excellent against weakly armoured targets. The Yamato stands out here somewhat.


Here are the graphs for AR 3,4 and 5, which mostly covers cruisers, battlecruisers and some battleships. While the Yamato retains its dominance, the other battleships remain close to each other.

Finally, we take a look at the most important cases, namely battleships fighting against heavily armoured other battleships, with an armour of 6 or even 6+armoured deck.

Suddenly, it appears that the Yamato and the US-ships Iowa, North Carolina and South Dakota significantly outperform the other battleships when it comes to heavily armoured targets. This is due to the super-armour piercing effect (+2) of the shells used by these ships which conveys a bonus to the damage. The other battleships use guns of a smaller calibre and are not as effective against heavy armour (although still armour piercing +1). As a redeeming quality, they also are less expensive, but it's important to keep in mind that under some circumstances the Iowa is 50% stronger and the Yamato is even 100% stronger in damage compared to a Bismarck for example.

Finally, I have compiled all the data discussed here into a matrix to show how a certain battleship (e.g. Iowa) would fare against another battleship (e.g. Bismarck). The proper way to read this matrix is to choose an attacker from the vertical column at the left and to choose a target in the horizontal row at the top. The numeric value found at the intersection there represents the maximum turret damage of the attacking ship against the target ship when its armour is considered divided by the hitpoints of the target ship. So, if an attacking ship does a lot of damage against a target ship with few hitpoints, the value will be very high (e.g. Yamato against Renown). If the attacking ship has weak guns and attacks a heavily armoured target, the value will be very low (e.g. Scharnhorst against Iowa).

As always the actual magnitude of the value is meaningless, but its relative value is very telling. Setting a Bismarck against the Hood for example will give you a value of 43 when the Bismarck is attacking the Hood, but a value of just 22 if the Hood attacks the Bismarck. It is probably safe to say that the Bismarck will be victorious more often than not in this scenario.
(click to enlarge)

This table can also be used to find ships that are unusually offensive damage-wise considering their armour and hitpoints if you pit a ship against itself. The British Renown Battlecruiser for example deals out a lot of damage considering its weak armour, therefore it has a high value of 65 in this matrix. The German Scharnhorst, by contrast, has rather weak turrets but excellent armour, so it would have a hard time sinking a ship of the same make. Therefore it has a low value of 9 in this matrix. The average value along the diagonal line (ship versus itself) is 37, so any value considerably above that could be considered an 'aggressive' ship and values appreciably below that a 'defensive' ship.

With this matrix, finally, one can answer the question of the 'best' battleship!
The ranking is as follows:
It means that, out of the 16 ships in this analysis, the Yamato would probably win against 15 (and reach a draw against itself of course). The Iowa is likely to win against 14 (but probably lose to a Yamato), the Bismarck would still have good chances to win against 9 other shiptypes (but almost certainly lose to a Yamato, Iowa, South Dakota, Richelieu, and still likely to a King George V and a Littorio). Finally, the Scharnhorst comes last, meaning it would likely lose to any other ship in this analysis.

To me, the biggest surprises of this ranking are the Italian Littorio and the French Richelieu, which are higher than I would have thought.

Apart from battleships, aircraft carriers can totally dominate a naval battle. While a carrier is good against any ship, it is especially valuable against enemy battleships, because it can attack from beyond the range of the targeted battleship and thus receive no damage itself. Furthermore, the torpedobombers and dive-bombers stationed on the carriers carry armour piercing weapons and thus are especially effective against ships with high armour rating.

Aircraft carriers will also almost always strike first, so they are excellent to soften up a fleet that would otherwise be unmanageable. Likewise, they are very useful to sink a ship that remains in the distance or is fleeing the battle faster than any of your own ships.

This chapter aims to compare the various aircraft carriers, based on their potential damage from aircraft alone. Due to different airplane models and a varying number of airplanes, the carriers differ greatly in offensive capability.

The first graph displays the potential damage (again with arbitrary units) if the entire contingent of the carrier attacks a single ship in one flight. The second graph multiplies this value with the speed of the aircraft, respectively, in order to account for the faster attacks. I.e., faster aircraft will attack the ship faster, return faster to the carrier, restock on ammunition and attack again, so the second graph correlates more with sustained damage per time unit (DPS).


While the British Ark Royal Carrier appears to be almost as good as the USA's Essex and Yorktown and Japan's Shokaku in the first graph, the second graph shows that, in the long run, it is far poorer in sustained damage due to the Ark Royal's slow airplanes. This was one of many surprises I got while researching for this guide. Up to then, I relied heavily on the Ark Royal in my playthroughs, because I favoured the torpedobombers on it (it has 6), but it turns out that the Yorktown is the superior carrier both in damage and in price!

While the USS Yorktown and the USS Essex appear to do equal damage to ships, the Essex is twice as expensive. Partially because it has more hitpoints and more turrets, but also because it carries more fighter planes than the Yorktown. The next graph shows the total dogfight strength of all planes on a carrier (so, torpedobombers, dive-bombers and fighters combined). Here, it is clear that the USS Essex is best, followed by the IJN Shokaku and the USS Yorktown.

This chapter takes a brief look at the stats of the heavy cruisers, battlecruisers and pocket battleships. Some of the ships, such as the German Scharnhorst or HMS Hood almost enter into battleship territory in some aspects, so they can be worthy additions to your fleet, especially if they are set against 'regular' cruisers.

First the comparison based on hitpoints and armour. It clearly shows the special position of the Scharnhorst and Hood.

Secondly, turret range and speed. The unusually long range of the Scharnhorst might make it useful as a long range sniper, especially since it is one of the few German ships with Radar, which helps with accuracy. Unfortunately, the relatively high cost and rather low damage might make other alternatives more attractive.

Finally, anti-air capabilities. The remarkable feature of this graph has got to be the USS Baltimore class cruiser, which rivals and even outclasses most battleships, so if you need better protection against enemy carriers, but don't want to shell out $80,000,000 for an Iowa class battleship, $20,000,000 will buy you a Baltimore with excellent anti-air capability. (Alternatively, and preferentially, buy an aircraft carrier with fighters.)

This chapter presents a concise list of all ships of a nation. Its purpose is to serve as a quick reference of the available ships, providing details on some important stats that are not all shown in-game. Thus, you can quickly see which ships have radar, an armoured deck, a torpedo belt or twin linked turrets. Furthermore, the list gives a representation of the potential maximum damage coming from turrets, torpedoes and depth charges (per salvo, not damage per second). As such it is easy to find the 'best submarine killer' for example, or the ship 'with the greatest torpedo range', etc.

Click for full size image:

As you sink enemy ships, you and the other captains in your fleet will gain experience. Not only does experience unlock higher tier ships for you to buy, but the captain's experience level has a very direct effect on your ship's fighting power. Among other things, the ship's weapons reload faster with a more experienced captain. The following graph shows by how much the reload times are reduced as function of the captain's level. (Data was generated with turrets, torpedoes and depth charges. The effect is universal.)

As one can see, the reload times are decreased by around 2.5% per level of the captain, so that at level 10, the reload times are just 78% of the initial value at level 1. For destroyers, with their super-slow reloading torpedoes, this means a reduction of reload times from 2:40 to around 2:05! Submarines will reload their torpedoes in just 50 seconds at level 10 instead of 65s at level 1, and so forth.


The next graph shows the same data, but represented as increase in DPS (damage per second) rather than a reduction in reload times. Each level increases the sustained damage per time unit by more than 3%, so that at level 10 the captain does 28% more damage over time. This is a major improvement and good reason to put the highest level captains on your hardest hitters. Those will usually be your battleships, but it can also make sense to assign them to your sub-killers to clear out any submarines quickly. (I once had a cruiser that would one-shot submarines with a level 10 captain, then I moved him to another ship and replaced him with a level 1 captain. All of a sudden it took ages to finally kill a submarine, it was almost comical! This is most likely also due to a smaller spread of weapons with a more experienced captain, but I haven't performed any dedicated experiments to verify that yet.)


Other effects of more experienced captains are a perceived (unproven by experiment) better ability to evade incoming torpedoes and better targetting.

• Radar gives a bonus to hit at long and extreme ranges in good weather and allows your ship to spot enemy ships at long ranges during the night, in bad weather or obscuring smoke. Once spotted, it can be fired upon, though doing so will also reveal your position to the enemy.
  
• Without radar, ships cannot be attacked at extreme ranges in bad weather and need to be spotted first at long ranges. Furthermore, without radar, ships at long and extreme ranges cannot be attacked at night.
  
• Fighting during the night (-1) or in bad weather (-1) gives a cumulative penalty to hit, in addition to the penalty from long (-1) and extreme ranges (-2), so be ready for a protracted battle. In such averse conditions it might especially pay off to have invested in some ships with the twin-linked turret feature, since it allows to re-roll the attack if it misses (see quick reference chapter to see which ships have it).
  
• When fighting an enemy without radar capability, you can attempt to sneak close to his ships undetected at night and position your ships in an advantageous position as long as you don't fire your turrets. Alternatively, you could send out a fast 'decoy' ship that purposely announces its position by firing its turrets to lure the enemy (or even worse, part of the enemy fleet) in the wrong direction.
  
• For these reasons, take note when the sun goes up and down, based on the map you are playing and the date (summer has longer days, winter shorter days). There were several occasions where I would wait for morning to get accurate readings on a fleet that was visible but of unknown composition at night. The same counts for attacking ports.
  
• The smoke screen is a powerful tool when fighting ships without radar, or port defenses (which never have radar), because it obscures any ship behind it and makes it very hard to hit. Use it to help damaged ships retreat (for example a quick pass from a smoking destroyer across the line of fire to save a damaged battleship from further damage), or use it to obscure cargo ships that need to be protected. You can also use it to help landing craft make it to the shore, or set up a torpedo boat attack etc.

• Torpedoes arm themselves after travelling a distance of 1.75 km (a little less than one square on the tactical map). Before that, they do no damage and count as duds.
  
• While the torpedoes on all submarines have a range of 10 km, some destroyers, especially of the Japanese kind, have impressive torpedo ranges of 20 km! (The E & F type destroyers of Britain have ranges of 15 km). These long ranges can be useful as a first salvo from great distance right into the thick of the enemy fleet and hope that something hits while they are still gathered close together. Then apply hit and run tactics as needed.
  
• In addition to superior range, the Japanese torpedoes also have especially damaging warheads and are super-armour piercing. Beware their potential for devastating critical hits!
  
• The spreading cone of torpedo salvos can be adjusted by rightclicking and targeting close to your ship for a wide spread or targeting far away from your ship for a narrow spread. For fast and agile targets, such as destroyers which might only need a single hit to sink, a wide spread might be better, but for ponderously moving high-value targets such as battleships and carriers, I prefer a narrow spread to increase the chance of multiple hits.
  
• Torpedo boats are not worth it in my opinion because they can be driven off very easily by auxiliary fire from any ship. Unless they are assisted by a smoke screen from another ship, they are simply too vulnerable and are a liability regarding repair and recommission costs. I consider their use a desperate measure if you have to defend a port against a strong fleet and have less than 5,000,000 warbonds in leftover money. That said, I have never tried using them en masse, perhaps the dynamics change somewhat in this case.
  
• When submarines deep dive, they are much harder to detect by destroyers, but cannot fire torpedoes anymore. Furthermore, after 30s at depth, the submarine may retreat from the battlefield! Useful for a daring first strike, dive deep and retreat from battle.
  
• Once you have crippled a submarine with depth charges, it will surface. At this point it cannot be further harmed by depth charges, but it becomes susceptible to torpedoes and gunfire. If you manually control your sub-hunters but leave the rest of the fleet on auto, as I frequently do, run away from the surfaced crippled sub as fast as you possibly can! As soon as it surfaces, every ship nearby will rain hellfire on it and if you are still nearby, you might get hit by friendly fire.
  
• The same applies if you have several inbound squadrons of torpedobombers from a carrier. Don't try to cozy up to the enemy ship to maximize your contribution from secondary weaponry in such a case, in a few seconds the sea will churn and boil with dozens of deadly torpedoes that don't care about friend or foe. (Ask me how I know :)
  
• Make sure to utilize all torpedoes on your submarine or destroyer by switching front and back or port and starboard sides. Both destroyers and submarines are quite agile and don't take long to come around while the first salvo is being reloaded.
  
• As for sub-hunters, I am partial to the USS Atlanta class cruiser and consider it the best sub-killer in practice due to its high number of depth charges, many hitpoints and better armour compared to any destroyer. This allows it to eat a torpedo or some gunfire every now and then without immediately sinking like many destroyers do. In addition, it has decent turrets and good air defense. On paper, the HMS Flower Corvette with its special hedgehog charges is far more deadly to submarines, but I find its low speed too constricting in offensive use. I can see myself using it as a purely defensive craft, for example to protect some cargo ships, but prefer the more active role of fast destroyers or cruisers.
  

The amount of warbonds you get from sinking enemy ships is 13.5% of the ship's worth, so sinking a Bismarck worth 60,000,000, when bought new, will net you 8,100,000 of warbonds. Sinking destroyers that cost 5,000,000 will gain you 675,000 and so on. As a rule of thumb, sinking 7-10 enemy ships of a type will provide you with sufficient warbonds to buy a ship of the same type yourself.

While on 'normal' difficulty level, ship repairs are performed for free in your ports, on 'hard' and 'expert' levels the port has a limited 'supply' with which repairs can be performed. Once this supply has been exhausted, you cannot repair or buy ships until it has been restocked with more supplies. If you need to repair or buy ships you can facilitate faster resupply by making sure that the shipping lanes to this port are free from enemy activity, or visit another port on the map (current supply levels are shown as a green bar under the port name).

Repairing ships using port supplies does not take away from your warbonds, so in effect it is 'free'. If you have to recommission a ship, however, because it was sunk, then the cost is deducted from your warbonds and the port supplies are diminished as well. Therefore it is imperative to avoid having your ships sunk. If they can make it to port with even just a sliver of life left (see image below), you do not have to spend any of your warbonds on recommissions, especially since that can get very expensive if you have several battleships to bring back from the bottom of the sea.


If you are in dire straits and absolutely must repair your battleship or carrier right now, but the port has no more supplies to repair them, you can sell a less vital part of your fleet (some captured destroyer, or some outdated ship from early in the campaign or similar) and the port will gain some resources.

This chapter serves as a repository to collect tips and ideas on how to improve ones efficiency on the battlefield, but also to play around with unusual approaches. Here I will also give my impressions of which ship I found especially useful and which I tend to avoid, but this most likely depends on the style of the player, so everyone's experience might be different.

In my playthroughs I usually preferred the obvious choices of battleships and carriers, supplemented by a few destroyers or cruisers as sub-hunters. One ship that I completely overlooked, due to its apparently high cost and average stats was the French Richelieu. The interesting things about this ship is its reliance on 2x4 forward facing turrets alone, there is no stern turret. This also means that there is no point in orienting the ship broadside to the target though! One idea that I'd like to try, is to use this characteristical forward focus, combined with the excellent range of the Richelieu to 'kite' attacking ships by putting the ship in full reverse and increase the time in which I can hit them, but they can't hit back (unless they have carriers). Unfortunately the Richelieu does not have Radar, so this will only work during good weather during daytime (or with spotting aircraft otherwise), but still, it might be fun.

The achievements in Victory at Sea are mostly self explanatory and not too hard to obtain, although there are 3 which are purely random (Covert Intelligence, Captured Captain, Captured Enemy Operative), so one has no influence over them. With a base probability of 0.5% per battle, you need this many battles to get this achievement with a probability higher than:


As random events go, I got 2 of the 3 random achievements early in my first campaign, but the third one still didn't pop even after 4 full campaigns, so be prepared. As reference, at the end of the 5 campaigns I played at the time of writing, I had sunk 862, 1196, 1197, 704 and 574 ships, so more than 4500 in total. If a battle on average had 6-10 enemy ships, that's 450-750 battles total, which is in line with the probability table provided above.

Here's what Ben, a developer, had to say about it in the discussion forums:

Originally posted by Ben (developer) 21 Sep 2016@ 5:37pm:

I am afraid it is a matter of random chance whether you will retrieve an enemy operative or covert intelligence at the end of a battle. Specifically, it's half a percent chance of either of them being found upon winning a battle, so it is a matter of winning fights and luck.

The only other factor is that if you have another "bonus", such as a captured captain, that you have not yet turned in for a reward, you won't get another! Plus, they will not show up upon capturing ports, as the port is the prize.

and

Originally posted by Ben (developer) 23 Nov, 2015 @ 11:59am:

There is basically a flat percentage chance after each victorious battle (where enemies were destroyed) of capturing one of these characters or items - in the case of the agents, it is a 0.5% chance. The chances aren't affected by difficulty or what ship, fleet type etc he is in. However, there is only one "slot" for holding spare parts, captured characters, or loot. So it won't accumulate, and you'll have to drop what you have off to a base before you can find anything new.

So, check with your HQ often whether you captured anything or anyone and when you do choose to attack a port, do so directly, without having many battles on sea beforehand, since any captured object or person will be 'overwritten' by your new prize, the port.