Final Review: Pan-Asian Tier X Cruiser Jinan

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Pan-Asian cruisers are about to enter the early access stage and so it’s the time to see if it’s worth grinding for them or not.

Historical background

The Jinan is based on an AA cruiser preliminary design (S-511-66: “5”/54 Cal. Cruiser – Scheme “C”). This design was calling for an 8 550 tons light cruiser armed with new 127 mm/54 guns in twin turrets equipped with a new auto-loading system and was the basis for the CL-154 class. It was, however, abandoned in March 1945.

Jinan herself has the 4th turret replaced with an additional 76.2 mm AA mount. This could mean that she is also taking elements from the 5″/54 Cal. D.P. Cruiser – Design Study “A”.

On top of that, the ship carries no less than four quintuple torpedo launchers.

The ship is named after the capital of Shandong province in Eastern China.

The Good and the Bad

The Good

• High rate of fire on the main battery
• Very good firing angles
• Two quintuple torpedo launchers on each side
• Torpedoes with high damage and long firing range
• Deep-water torpedoes with a low detection range
• Torpedo Reload Booster allowing you to drop 20 torpedoes from each side in a short time.
• Strong anti-air
• Smoke generator with a relatively short cooldown
• 32 mm side armor on the middle section
• Low detectability range allowing her to sneak around easily

The Bad

• Short main battery firing range
• Terrible ballistics making it hard to land shots at range
• Torpedoes are unable to hit destroyers
• Low HP pool
• 16 mm deck, bow and stern
• Thinly protected and above water citadel
• No Hydroacoustic Search consumable available

The camouflage

The permanent camouflage of the Jinan provides the classic bonuses for tier X ships:

• -3% to surface detectability range
• +4% to maximum dispersion of shells fired by the enemy at your ship
• -50% to the cost of ship’s post-battle service
• +20% credits earned in the battle.
• +100% to experience earned in the battle

Modules

Hull	Engine	Gun Fire Control System	Main battery	Torpedoes
Jinan	Propulsion: 110 000 HP	‎‎Mk 10 mod. 1	127 mm/54 Mk.18 in a turret	Mk17

General Characteristics and Playstyle

Consumables
Slot 1	Slot 2	Slot 3	Slot 4	Slot 5
Damage Control Party Work time: 5 s Cooldown: 60 s	Smoke Generator Number of charges: 3 Work time: 30 s Cooldown: 110 s Smoke radius: 450 m Smoke duration: 70 s	Defensive AA Fire Number of charges: 3 Work time: 40 s Cooldown: 80 s Damage from continuous DPS: +50% Damage from flak explosions: +300%	Torpedo Reload Booster Number of charges: 2 Work time: 1 s Cooldown: 300 s Torpedo reload time: 8 s	Repair Party Number of charges: 3 Work time: 40 s Cooldown: 80 s HP regeneration: 0.5%/s Casemate damage regeneration: 50% Citadel damage regeneration: 50%

In terms of playstyle, Jinan is a bit split between an HE spammer similar to Smolensk or Colbert and a torpedo cruiser. Thanks to her Smoke Generator and her capacity to saturate an area with torpedoes, she is an amazing cruiser for kiting and delaying the enemy when they try to push.
Her concealment allows her to stay relatively close unless a destroyer forces her out and she can happily spam torpedoes as well as smoke up and rain HE on enemy ships. Honestly, a single Jinan can straight-up ruin the day of a group of ships trying to push a flank unless they have Hydroacoustic Search running most of the time.

The problem is that while she is amazing at kiting, whenever she is forced into a situation where the enemy is running away and she needs to push, Jinan quickly shows her limitations.
With the combination of her lack of survivability, she can’t just push the enemy with all guns blazing in the open. The 32 mm side armor helps her but she remains very fragile. The short firing range and poor ballistics also are a pain when dealing with enemy ships kiting away and while her concealment is good, she will struggle to get close enough for her torpedoes to be brought into action if the enemy runs away.

In the end, this ship’s effectiveness badly depends on the enemy playing the way you want them to.

If you want to see the ship in action, here is a replay of one of my games:

The video has the “Work in Progress” logo because, in the replay, the ship is still missing the last nerf to her Smoke Generator that increased its cooldown from 100 seconds to 110 seconds. Considering how the game went, that nerf made no difference whatsoever.

Main Armament

5 x 2 127 mm/54 Mk.18 in a turret
Maximum Firing Range	14.500 km
Reloading Time	3.5 s
180 Degree Turn Time	4.5 s
Optimal firing angles at the front	24°
Optimal firing angles at the rear	31°
Sigma	2.05 sigma
Maximum Dispersion	134 m
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 127 mm HE Mk.41
Alpha Damage	1 800
Penetration capacity	21 mm
Explosion size	0.44
Fire chance	9 %
Projectile Speed	808 m/s
Air Drag	0.347
Projectile Mass	31.75 kg
Type of Projectile	AP – 127 mm AP/SC Mk38 Mod 2
Alpha Damage	2 100
Projectile Speed	808 m/s
Air Drag	0.347
Projectile Mass	31.75 kg
Projectile Krupp	1 720
Projectile Detonator	0.01 s
Detonator threshold	21 mm
Ricochet Angles	45° – 60°

While the rate of fire of Jinan is impressive, don’t expect it to be the same DPM machine as Smolensk. First and foremost, her ballistics makes it significantly harder to land shots at range. Also, compared to Smolensk, she only has the cruiser dispersion formula instead of destroyer dispersion.
She is also well behind Colbert because of the coupled lower number of guns, longer reload and lower shell damage.

Now, overall, her firepower is definitely nice but she remains behind the notorious HE spammers that you can find at tier X. While this main battery will be effective when the enemy is coming at you, if you are the one pushing or you have to go for a fleeing target, it will be quite disappointing.

Torpedo Armament

We are looking here at Jinan’s main selling point, shared with Sejong at tier IX, the torpedoes. In total, she is able to drop 40 of them in a single run, making her basically a Pan-Asian Kitakami but that won’t get deleted by anything looking at her and that won’t be outgunned by everything.

This torpedo armament makes her an absolute monster when she is on the kiting side. Unless you happen to deal with a triple division of Schlieffen pushing with Hydroacoustic Search, you are pretty much guaranteed to do big numbers on the enemy team. But again, it all comes down to being on the kiting side. This ship isn’t a destroyer and you will never be able to get anywhere near as close as a torpedo focused destroyer to drop your payload. If you are forced to push, unless it’s about rushing something anchored behind an island, those sweet metal fishes will be far less useful to you.

Due to her incredibly potent torpedo armament, I went with a full torpedo build and I have to say, the results were quite nasty because of the truckload of torpedoes I was able to dump at the enemy every 96 seconds or less coupled with the high damage per hit (20 585) and the speed of 76 knots.

Anti-air Armament

Jinan’s anti-air is nothing to laugh at. The DPS provided both by the long and the mid-range auras are solid and while she doesn’t reach the Holy number of 10 flak explosions per salvo, she isn’t far behind with 8 flak explosions that also deal high damage to planes.

However, she retains the same problem as her sister Austin. Her main DPS is generated by just 7 AA mounts that are all fairly close to each other and fairly big. A few HE salvos will do short numbers of this anti-air.

The Armor

Another gimmick of the high-tier Pan-Asian cruisers is their armor protection. The sides are protected with 32 mm of armor which allows them to not get overmatched to oblivion by anything with 234 mm guns or bigger.

Otherwise, she remains a small light cruiser with a thinly protected citadel so consider that any cruiser or battleship can demolish you with AP.

External armor protection:

Front and rear armor protection of the middle section:

Citadel armor protection:

Turrets armor protection:

Final Opinion

Jinan is overall a two-sided mess. If she is on the side where the enemies push, she is brilliant and incredibly thrilling to play. If she is the one forced to push, it turns into a really frustrating and unfun experience.

It is honestly hard to rate this ship properly but personally, I don’t like ships that are so situational and literally “All of nothing”. I prefer far more to see consistent results.

Recommended Build

For the Jinan, I recommend the following commander build and upgrades:

Alternatively, if you feel like playing more around her respectable firepower, you can go with this build:

This build is also more recommended for the Pan-Asian tech-tree cruisers from Tier V to VIII due to them having a far weaker torpedo armament.

In both cases, I heavily recommend using one of the Róng brothers for the improved Survivability Expert and, in the case of the gun-focused build, the improved Demolition Expert.

This concludes my review of the Jinan. Thank you for reading this article!

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Have a good one and see you soon!

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Yuzorah

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