Supertest: Soviet Freemium Tier X Battleship Slava 2.0 (Updated)
6 min readAs I promised, let’s have a look at the newly reworked Slava. We first thought that Wargaming fully scrapped that ship and it was even said, from what I remember, during an Anchors away event. In the end, she is coming back and received the same “Battlecruiser treatment” as Champagne and Borodino.
As for her background, the Slava is based on one of the later versions of the Project 24 of battleships from the Soviet Union. Unlike Kremlin that carries 457 mm guns, Slava is equipped with more… realistic 406 mm guns as even Stalin told the ship designers that 457 mm guns were out of the question.
In the end, when Stalin died in 1953, the project was completely abandoned.
In World of Warships, since Slava was reworked into a battlecruiser, she has much thinner armor than the Project 24 was initially meant to carry. She also has her own horizontal dispersion formula that leads to the dispersion increasing way less than for other ships over the distance. This is, however, at the cost of her close-range horizontal dispersion.
Slava’s horizontal dispersion formula = 5 x R (the range in kilometer) + 105
Now, the interesting bit about Slava is the vertical dispersion. We sadly don’t know the exact formula to calculate the vertical dispersion but the values linked to it for Slava are much lower than those of other battleships. This should lead to a much flatter spread of the shells.
As you know, everything presented here is a work in progress, anything is subject to changes so:
Hull | Engine | Gun Fire Control System | Main battery |
Slava | Propulsion: 280 000 hp | GFCS X mod. 1 | 406 mm/55 B-52 |
Tier | X |
Health | 91 800 HP |
Displacement | 82 149 tons |
Main Armament | |
Maximum Firing Range | 24. 680 km |
406 mm/55 B-52 | 3 x 3 406 mm |
Secondary Armament | |
Maximum Firing Range | 6.000 km |
130 mm/60 BL-110 | 8 x 2 130 mm |
Maximum speed | 29.5 knots |
Turning Circle Radius | 1 090 m |
Rudder Shift Time | 16.3 s |
Surface Detectability | 16.74 km |
Air Detectability | 13.68 km |
Detectability After Firing Main Guns in Smoke | 16.19 km |
3 x 3 406 mm/55 B-52 | |
Maximum Firing Range | 24.680 km |
Reloading Time | 33.5s (previously 32 s) |
180 Degree Turn Time | 45.0 s |
Optimal firing angles at the front | 30° |
Optimal firing angles at the rear | 30° |
Sigma | 1.90 sigma |
Maximum Dispersion | 229 m |
Shells | |
Type of Projectile | HE – 406 mm HE B-37 |
Alpha Damage | 5 800 HP |
Damage | 5 020 HP |
Penetration capacity | 68 mm |
Explosion size | 2.53 |
Fire chance | 40 % |
Projectile Speed | 870 m/s |
Air Drag | 0.2 (previously 0.22) |
Projectile Mass | 890 kg (previously 1 108 kg) |
Type of Projectile | AP – 406 mm AP B-37 |
Alpha Damage | 12 100 HP (previously 13 450 HP) |
Chance to Cause Fire | -0.5 % |
Projectile Speed | 870 m/s |
Air Drag | 0.2 (previously 0.237) |
Projectile Mass | 890 kg (previously 1 108 kg) |
Projectile Krupp | 2 890 (previously 2 430) |
Projectile Detonator | 0.033 s |
Detonator threshold | 68 mm |
8 x 2 130 mm/60 BL-110 | |
Maximum Firing Range | 6.000 km |
Reloading Time | 4.0 s |
Sigma | 1.00 sigma |
Shells | |
Type of Projectile | HE – HE-42 |
Alpha Damage | 1 800 HP |
Damage | 500 HP |
HE penetration | 22 mm |
Explosion Size | 0.43 |
Chance to Cause Fire | 8 % |
Projectile Speed | 950 m/s |
Air Drag | 0.291 |
Projectile Mass | 33.4 kg |
8 x 2 130 mm/60 BL-110 | |
Sector range | 0.1 km – 6.6 km |
Hit chance | 75 % |
Sector’s damage | 70 |
Sector’s damage frequency | 0.29 s |
Sector’s damage per second | 245 |
Flak clouds number | 10 |
Flak cloud damage | 1 820 |
12 x 4 57 mm ZIF-75 | |
Sector range | 0.1 km – 4.0 km |
Hit chance | 75 % |
Sector’s damage | 135 |
Sector’s damage frequency | 0.29 s |
Sector’s damage per second | 473 |
18 x 2 25 mm 2M-3 | |
Sector range | 0.1 km – 2.5 km |
Hit chance | 70 % |
Sector’s damage | 57 |
Sector’s damage frequency | 0.29 s |
Sector’s damage per second | 200 |
Slot 1 | Slot 2 |
Damage Control Party Work time: 15 s Cooldown: 80 s | Repair Party Number of charges: 3 Work time: 28 s Cooldown: 80 s HP regeneration time: 0.5% HP/s |
The armor
Unlike Kremlin, Slava has fairly weak armor protection for a tier X battleship. Just like Champagne and Borodino, her bow and stern are 25 mm thick for the most part. She also has a thinner armor belt with, at best, a 370 mm main belt under the turrets.
The bow section
The bow is for the biggest part covered with 25 mm of armor. The only exception is the extended belt. At first, it’s 100 mm thick but then it gets thinner with 32 mm. This means that if you want to overmatch her bow with any battleship that isn’t a Yamato-class, you need to aim higher than the waterline.
Inside the bow, just above the extended belt, Slava has a short 100 mm armored deck. It ends with a heavily angled 420 mm bulkhead. This means that overall, Slava is very hard to citadel through the bow. However, unlike other battleships that can angle to most AP shells, she is completely vulnerable against AP shells from battleships (except Odin) and Siegfried with her 380 mm guns.
For the protection of the middle section, the upper casemate is 150 mm thick while the lower part is a uniform 350 mm plating covering the citadel athwartship and the bulkheads around it.
The middle section
For the protection of the middle section, the deck is 32 mm thick. On the sides, the upper belt is 150 mm thick while the main belt is 370 mm thick under the turrets and 350 mm thick in the middle.
Finally, the torpedo bulge is 38 mm thick.
For the part of the citadel that is in spaced armor configuration (starting slightly below the waterline), it is 70 mm thick.
When it comes to the horizontal protection, outside of the 32 mm weather deck, she only has the 150 mm citadel main armor deck. This means that she is fairly easy to citadel with AP bombs. I would need to try but wouldn’t be surprised if even Enterprise’s AP bombs can citadel her.
The stern section
For the stern, the most part is covered with 25 mm of armor. The exceptions are the extended belt with 100 mm of armor and the steering gears protection with 300 mm of armor.
For the internal protection, there is an armored deck that is 100 mm thick except above the steering gears where it is 150 mm thick. She also has 2 bulkheads around the steering gears with the one closest to the end of the stern being 400 mm thick and the other, 100 mm thick.
For the protection of the middle section, there is the 150 mm upper casemate and then, a uniform 350 mm thick plating covering the citadel and the bulkheads around it.
The superstructure
The superstructure is for the biggest part 19 mm thick. The exceptions are the barbettes of her secondaries that are 50 mm thick and the conning towers with the front one having 500 mm of armor and the other 200 mm.
The turrets
Compared to the rest of the ship, the turrets on Slava have a hefty armor protection, at least at the front. The turret’s face is 550 mm thick and heavily sloped. For the rest, the sides and roof are 254 mm thick and the back is 508 mm thick.
For the barbettes, the upper part is 475 mm thick and the lower part is 150 mm thick.
Personal opinion
Unlike the standard Soviet battleships that are better at close to mid-range, the Slava, with her dispersion parameters, ballistic and penetration will be able to hit hard at basically any given range. However, she trades these fantastic gun parameters for a lack of tankiness with her armor being very vulnerable to HE spam and overmatch from other BBs.
Also, unlike, for example, Thunderer, she actually suffers from enemies angling against her since she has no meaningful overmatch at tier X and a fairly weak HE shell for battleship standards.
I know what people are going to say, they will cry that the ship is OP and such but first, take a look at Thunderer that has a fairly similar design but with the fast reload, thermo-nuclear HE, 30 mm overmatch, better concealment, presents a smaller target, etc. Don’t get me wrong, on paper, the Slava is definitely very strong but go easy on the Russian Bias stupidity and look a bit at the other ships.
As a side note, Champagne has pretty much the same guns at tier VIII but somehow, I never heard anyone crying about it yet.
Oh don’t worry, they still cryout OP on Slava because those railguns hurting their feelings, that subreddit has become much much worse since then, if anything not Soviet ships, no one would bat an eye on them.
Finally somebody wrote it as it really is with Slava! People are just whining because Slava can consistently punish stupid players that give broadside. Learn to angle.
why were 457mm guns out of the question? Did he see no use in them or couldnt they produce those guns?
Excessively large, heavy, and complex, for no perceived benefit.
same reason why 457mm Iowa(in-game georgia) and 457mm montana(in-game ohio) exist in paper and not in steel, ur way heavier and but the penetration increase is very negligiable when compared to the 406mm, and in USN’s instance, u lose one barrel worth of firepower per turret in order to keep ur ship fast enough while having sufficent armor as intended.