Does Redwolf Airsoft Ship to California?

York Themprod · Thursday, February 24, 2022

Does Redwolf Airsoft Ship to California?

The following is a review of Dido, to tier VI premium British light cruiser, supported by my patrons on Patreon. To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are electric current as of patch 0.eleven.one. Delight be aware that her performance may change in the future.

The purpose of this review is to support the players, not the visitor behind the production.
Posting this review is non an endorsement of current goings on nor is it a argument virtually them.

It's been a while, and not for the lack of trying. I have a one-half-finished Giuseppe Verdi and Kearsarge reviews archived before I got distracted with mapping sustianed AA DPS (kinda important when talking near Kearsarge's planes). My AA project has ballooned out of control which I feared it might. I'm putting those reviews on hold to go a (relatively) faster one out.

Now Dido is a ship that players accept wanted for a long time. A quick forums search finds talk about these ships going all of the fashion back to the game's launch, with players eagerly looking forward to more "Atlanta-style" ships. This ship has definitely been one I've highly anticipated knowing how important it is to not simply Regal Navy enthusiasts but too players in the Republic nations where she might be used (with modifications) to represent HMNZS Bellona or HMNZS Black Prince. Wargaming seems to have developed allergies for rapid-burn down ships over the class of 2021 (to say nothing of AA specialists), with ships increasingly having longer and longer (and unfun) reloads and Dido's implementation obviously suffers from this new design direction. I was expecting Nürnberg levels of rapid-fire. Instead we got Dallas with much weaker guns.

The silver lining (supposedly) is that they gave her fume. So let's meet if reaching into the Box o' Gimmicks™ has saved the states from unfun design choices.

Quick Summary: A fragile British low-cal cruiser with ten, slow-firing destroyer-calibre guns. She'southward agile with good concealment and boasts a Brusque-Burst Smoke Generator.

PROS

Small-scale citadel.
Large battery of ten 133mm guns that fires both HE and AP.
360º traverse on rear turrets.
Powerful, single-fire torpedoes.
First-class acceleration and decent agility.
Practiced darkening.
She has smoke.

CONS

Tiny hitting signal pool.
Very thin citadel protection, vulnerable to fifty-fifty 203mm AP overmatching.
Uses cruiser dispersion instead of destroyer dispersion.
Deadening firing for such minor-calibre guns.
Low HE and AP penetration.
Impuissant primary-bombardment firing angles.
Bad anti-shipping firepower.
No access to Hydroacoustic Search.

Overview

Skill Floor: Elementary / CASUAL / Challenging / Difficult
Skill Ceiling: Low / Moderate / High / Farthermost

Dido has a nice, comfortable skill floor for inexperienced players. Park in smoke, apply HE to faces. Readapt. Rinse and repeat.

For veteran players, there's a lot to know. Map awareness, map positioning, proper smoke utilise habits, commander skill builds, ammunition juggling, using and abusing concealment, etc. They'll all serve you well here and help pad some of the ship'south obvious weaknesses. Dido'due south comport potential is somewhat express, all the same, by the issues with her penetration and damage output. She just doesn't hurt things quickly enough for bold plays barring a torpedo strike, and then this is a ship that requires patience, caution and even more than patience.

Options

The most variety you're going to find in optimized Dido builds comes from commander skill pick, and that's generally focused around whether or non to accept Inertial Fuse for HE Shells or to emphasize burn down setting instead. One of these is a bad idea.

Consumables

Dido's Impairment Control Party is standard for a cruiser. It comes with unlimited charges and a 60 2d reset timer. It is active for 5 seconds.
Her Defensive AA Fire consumable is standard for a non-American cruiser at this tier. Information technology starts with three charges and it has a 40 second agile flow and an eighty second reset timer. While active, it increases sustained damage past 50% and quadruples flak explosion damage.
Dido comes with a Short-Outburst Fume Generator reminiscent of that plant on Belfast '43 and British destroyers. Withal, it's very much its own animal with no direct clones that I could discover. Information technology starts with five charges and emits fume for fifteen seconds. However, the fume clouds but last for 35 seconds each (Belfast '43'southward fume lasts for 40) . Her reset timer is besides longer than her tier Viii cousin, with an 80 second wait time instead of 70 seconds.

Upgrades

Non much variety here.

Start with Principal Armaments Modification 1.
Next, take Engine Room Protection.
Aiming Systems Modification 1 is the merely upgrade worth because in slot three.
And finally, Steering Gears Modification 1 is likewise the just upgrade worth taking.

Commander Skills

Why haven't yous taken Heavy HE & SAP Shells nevertheless?

Y'all MUST Have HEAVY HE & SAP SHELLS for Dido. At that place's no reason non to. Take information technology now. NOW.
Have you washed it yet? Okay, good. Now we tin can talk. You're going to want to pair that with Inertial Fuse for HE Shells along with the usual lite-cruiser suspects of Darkening Skillful and Terminal Stand is too recommended. You've got some wiggle room after that. I highly value Priority Target and I wanted the extra charge of fume with Superintendent (though you're not e'er going to get to use information technology). With such every bit a small hitting point pool, the extra 2700 (or 11% total) striking points from Survivability Expert is worth taking, though y'all could trade one of the latter two for Adrenaline Rush if you wanted. Finally, I had a point leftover which I dropped into Grease the Gears.

Hither's some of the skills I'd consider but didn't accept room for in my current build:

Gun Feeder - On more than one occasion, I wish I had this skill when the flat broadside of a cruiser finally presented itself.
Demolition Good - Nice to have, but expensive at two points.
Adrenaline Rush - Mentioned in a higher place.
Radio Location - See Demolition Expert. This would be nice to have but information technology's too expensive given Dido's priorities.

Of course, if you're merely playing Co-Op and scenarios, than other than Heavy HE & SAP Shells, your choice of skills doesn't thing much.

Cover-up

If you lot unlock Dido through the Gibraltar Pillars issue, she comes with two cover-up options. Her Type ten and Atlantic camos are palette swaps of one another, providing the identical bonuses of:

-three% surface detection
+4% increased dispersion of enemy shells.
-x% to mail-battle service costsouthward.
+50% to feel gains.

This is Dido-southward standard Type 10 camouflage. If she'due south put on auction on the regular after, this is the paint scheme with which she'll come.

You can unlock this alternative palette for her Type 10 camouflage through completing a specific office of the Naval Aviation collection.

For early adopters, they as well received this Atlantic - Dido camouflage which is dainty and striking. My guess is nosotros'll see this as a purchasable option for and estimated 1,000 doubloons or six,000 customs-tokens for later on-comers if they go available separately.

Firepower

Chief Battery: X 133mm/50 guns in 5x2 turrets in an A-B-C-X-Y superfiring configuration.
Torpedoes: 6 tubes in 2x3 launchers on wing mounts straddling the rear funnel.

Dido barely survives a ram attempt from Kijkduin, using her powerful torpedoes to sink the cruiser just before impact. Dido has better rearward than frontwards torpedo arcs.

Torpedoes

Let's showtime with the fish!

Dido has surprisingly powerful fish for her tier. This is owing to her using the aforementioned torpedoes found on the tier Eight destroyer, Lightning, giving her quite a heavy punch. Their 8km range means yous're not stealth firing at anyone disallowment extreme kiting situations or using concealment to setup a torpedo assault. However, their private hits are devastating. A full broadside of her torpedoes will sink just almost any cruiser she comes across. Just (and I stress this merely!) iii torpedo hits aren't enough to take downward any of the battleships she faces short of Viribus Unitis, so don't suicide charge anything that's not already damaged. Like other British cruisers and destroyers, Dido can single fire her fish which is welcome.

Information technology's simply a shame these aren't a little longer ranged. Oh well, they're good at what they exercise when you are able to utilise them.

Those these may be destroyer calibre, they practise non have a destroyer's rate of fire.

Tech Tree versus Premium

I'thou honestly surprised Wargaming chose to release another premium with destroyer-calibre guns, to say nothing of a whole tech tree lined based on the armament, without first addressing actor concerns about their functioning.

Firepower wise, specialized cruisers are in a rough spot since the commander skill rework a couple of years back. Wargaming has made improvements, simply super-cruisers and cruisers with destroyer-calibre weapons had their efficiency severely reduced. Ostensibly, Dido'due south arrival long subsequently the rework (nevermind a full Pan Asian line dedicated to this armament choice) means that Wargaming has designed these ships with these deficits in mind. Ostensibly. Possibly they're couching their implementation with the promise of future fixes. I dunno. I can't agree their feet to the burn down like I used to. These teething troubles are still credible with Dido's gunnery and information technology takes a careful hand (and conscientious skill choices) to set these issues. She's not quite a comfortable gunnery platform -- she gets shut, but her weapons are far from the fun weapons of Atlanta and Smolensk, for example.

Every bit a premium version of Rahmat, the tier VI Pan Asian tech-tree vessel, information technology'southward natural to desire to compare her and Dido. There'due south a lot of give and take between the two ships.

Dido has better range than Rahmat, with a reach of fourteen.1km to Rahmat's 12.496km. This is a huge improvement.
Rahmat has better fire angles on her Y-turret with a 270º arc compared to Dido's 268º. Minor, but still.
Rahmat has the better rate of burn down, reloading in just 7.five seconds to Dido's 8.5 seconds. This is pretty big.
Dido's shells accept less drag and thus better ballistics. This is important.
The reduced elevate gives Dido's AP shells better penetration also. This is non and then important, as nosotros'll cover.
Dido's AP shells have longer fuse timers of 0.033s instead of 0.025s. This is more of academic involvement than applied.

This all translates to Dido beingness a more comfortable platform to engage targets at a distance, which is good, but yous pay for it with overall impairment output. Of course, besting Rahmat'south range is like bragging that your ship is faster than New Mexico. Information technology's a pretty damn depression bar to hurdle. Dido is brusque ranged, make no mistake, only she is the longest-ranged of whatever of the smoke-begetting cruisers at this tier barring Trento. Between having to choose between range and rate of burn down, I'll take the range, specially when paired with Dido's improved ballistics. I'm non happy well-nigh Dido'south rate of fire, especially when paired with her penetration woes. This isn't a cruiser that kills things quickly.

Dido'south DPM is middling. Her lack of penetration makes it very difficult to realize these numbers, nevertheless. Information technology should exist noted that Dido (and Rahmat) can boost these listed numbers by ten% past taking the Heavy HE and SAP shells commander skill, which they totally should. This bumps upward Dido's AP DPM from 180,000 to 198,000 and her HE DPM from 134,118 to 147,530. With her guns being only 133mm in calibre, she doesn't suffer the accompanying darkening penalty normally associated with this skill.

Dido's improved ballistics ways that her AP penetration is lightly improve than Rahmat'due south, even though they're using the same guns. This ballistic difference translates into Rahmat's shells taking 10.63 seconds to reach 12.5km. Dido's cover the same altitude in 9.46 seconds and doesn't experience the same kind of floaty arc as Rahmat until a range of 13.47km. These arcs allow Dido to make good use of terrain cover to lob shells over islands.

Dido's penetration isn't good. Her AP penetration is amidst the worst for cruisers at tier VI. Landing citadel hits against cruisers requires not only the enemy ships to provide a broadside to shoot at, but too specific armour thresholds. While something soft and squishy like Pensacola's 76mm chugalug over her machine spaces can be contested in excess of 12km, the 102mm plating over her magazines is proof until you get into sub-10km ranges. Dido's AP works well against lower-tiered and very light and scout cruisers but information technology's nowhere near reliable against higher tiered ships. The long fuse timer on her shells likewise makes overpenetrations more likely against soft parts like battleship superstructures.

Her HE penetration doesn't get much better. Certain, the 22mm she starts with is enough to contest all destroyers and most (just not all) tier V, 6 and Vii cruisers she might face up. This is also enough to hurt the extremities of tier V battleships and the superstructures of the remaining vessels. Taking Inertial Fuse for HE Shells profoundly expands the targets she tin straight hurt, being able to smouldering HE holes into any cruiser she might come beyond besides as opening up the extremities of tier Half dozen and Seven battleships too. Pair this with the Heavy HE and SAP Shells commander skills and Dido's DPM starts to wait respectable. This comes at the expense of setting fires, of course, only Dido'south non a neat burn starter to begin with. Even with a deep build into fire setting, she barely gets shut to the stock-values of the 152mm armed ships.

And then I stress once more: Accept Inertial Fuse for HE Shells and Heavy HE and SAP Shells on your commanders or Dido'southward gunnery performance suffers.

I'm not happy with this solution. It means that in order to exist competitive, destroyer-calibre armed ships similar Dido must pay a commander skill tax. If skills similar these are so game-irresolute as to become mandatory, that's bad for the histrion-base. Players are punished if they don't take them.

Dido is only e'er a modest fire-setter. You can dump skills and consumables into trying to improve it, merely you're only ever going to exist equally good as a stock Makarov. It's better to seize with teeth the bullet, have IFHE and get from there.

British ships are notorious for having bad fire angles. Dido'southward frontwards fire angles are practiced for four out of her v turrets, merely Y-turret sucks. Her rearward fire angles are pretty bad, though. There are two practiced points though: Her X-turret has astounding fire arcs and both it and Y-turret have a 360º traverse arc.

Gun Handling & Accuracy

Dido keeps upwardly with the British tradition of cramming their guns in and then tightly to their superstructures that it impedes their gunnery arcs. Her burn arcs are bad, with her Y-turret beingness especially awful. Yous tin can mostly ignore this when firing forward, with four guns capable of addressing very accute fire angles. Information technology's just Y-turret that's nigh-impossible to bear without flashing your full broadside. Unfortunately, things are worse rearward, with her forward turrets having bad arcs. At least her turret traverse isn't painfully slow and her rear turrets tin rotate 360º. So you're not going to be able to fire all five guns safely without cover. Being out in the open is just request for trouble with Dido anyway, so use the crummy arcs as a bit of a reminder to go back into cover ASAP.

Special mention should be made almost her dispersion. Dido, like Rahmat, uses cruiser horizontal dispersion formulas; namely: dispersion in meters = {[(range in km) x 6.9]+33 } as opposed to the more than accurate destroyer dispersion formula {[(range in km) x 7.v] + xv }. Wargaming has never been consistent with when it applies one formula or the other. Bogatyr and Krasny Krym, for example, use cruiser dispersion while ships like Atlanta, Flint and Smolensk use the destroyer version. The difference isn't huge, but it is noticeable -- especially with destroyer calibre guns that fire as slowly as Dido's practice.

Summary

Equally a weapon platform, Dido is okay, but only okay. There's nothing novel virtually her gunnery. She's not like Atlanta or Smolensk or Colbert where a smaller calibre weapon brings the hope of a greater rate of fire. This is a shame, because spamming small calibre shells is a lot of fun. Instead, information technology's better to call back of Dido as analogous to a 152mm-armed ship but with nerfed AP and HE performance. Her shells are bad; they tin be made functional with the correct commander skill build, just that'due south more of a bandaid solution than a true ready. You can bring them up to a state of usability but they're never going to cross that threshold into existence truly competitive. The same goes for her fish. They hit like trucks (which is awesome), only having only three isn't enough to make them a truthful trump carte du jour. Furthermore, her 8km range is only ever going to be okay and not great. She'd need another 2km onto their range to go something that could be used on the regular and another 2km beyond that to become a mainstay weapon.

VERDICT: Very meh. Functional, merely very meh.

Durability
Hit Points: 23,600
Bow & stern/superstructure/upper-hull/deck: 13mm / 10mm / 89mm / 25mm
Maximum Citadel Protection: 89mm belt
Torpedo Damage Reduction: 4%

That'south not a lot of wellness.

I don't call back anyone was expecting Dido to be annihilation but squishy. She's non a heavily armoured cruiser and equally far as tonnage goes; she'due south quite small compared to her contemporaries. The only question I had was whether or not she would get access to a Repair Party consumable to pad these vulnerabilities and the respond is decisively: "Very no". Equally it stands, it takes every bit little as a pair of 381mm citadel hits to transport her to the bottom. Fun!

I'k not going to tell you that "Akchooally, dis is gud," cuz it's not. This sucks. This sucks moose balls. This sucks and so much that it makes Survivability Expert non only a feasible skill pick, but arguably a necessary i. The commander skill-taxation on patching Dido'south flagging performance gets more and more than expensive (for those keeping runway, we're upwardly to 10 mandatory skill points).

The only decent thing well-nigh Dido is the size of her citadel. It's a pocket-sized target and in my playtesting, its pocket-sized size has kept me alive just a little longer equally players overestimate it's scope. So catastrophic ends, while still possible, are a little less likely owing to this small target. Of grade, one time word gets out and familiarity with this transport jumps upwardly with exposure, this reward volition mean less and less. Most of us now know how to blow apart an Omaha-class or an Emerald, for case, despite their citadels being smaller than college-tiered cruisers. That same kind of baseline knowledge will somewhen disseminate down to Dido besides and she'll popular every bit readily as the rest of them.

Withal, you might be able to pull off the occasional troll manoeuvre. Line-fishing in Dido is generally a bad idea as fifty-fifty 203mm AP shells can overmatch her bow and blow her motorcar spaces apart (incidentally 203mm AP can overmatch much of her citadel roof too, so dueling with American heavy cruisers is generally a stupid idea). Remember that at ranges less than 8km, it'south better to show a full broadside to about enemy battleships than to try and bending against them, trusting that their AP shells don't have sufficient time to arm inside your ship. This doesn't work for shorter-fuse timers from AP shells, such every bit the 305mm rounds on König, Scharnhorst's 283mm or Yukon's 381mm guns, but go basics on trying it out against other battleships. Just remember: flat broadside. Any kind of angle and you take a chance giving enough room for those shells to pop yous good.

Given Dido'south short range, High german secondaries ended up beingness something I dreaded facing. HE of simply about any calibre hurt and it's of import to go along a respectable distance away from anything bristling with functional (or semi-functional) secondaries. This dittos for HE spam from gunship destroyers, but they tended to proceed a healthy distance from Dido's guns for the most function.

So, yeah. Dido's durability sucks. No surprises there, though, and so don't get striking.

Dido is made of squish.

Dido's citadel is much smaller than players might call back. You have to aim below her funnels to score citadel hits. Otherwise, you lot're very likely to overpenetrate. Dido's citadel is shown here in yellow. Her magazines exercise not count as office of the citadel and are featured here in night red. This prototype comes from Gamemodels3d.com..

VERDICT: Bad just non like, meme-worthy bad (which would exist kind of redeemable).

Shooting beneath Dido's turrets may disable them or even knock them out, merely you're not getting citadel hits if you lot aim at that place. You can try baiting shots hither past offering up a full broadside at very shut ranges, trusting her sparse armour to prompt overpenetrations from battleship calibre guns.

Agility
Elevation Speed: 32.3 knots
Turning Radius: 580 meters
Rudder Shift Fourth dimension: 6.five seconds
4/4 Engine Speed Charge per unit of Turn: 6.9º/southward at 25.8kts
Main Battery Traverse Rate: x.0º/s

Dido does not accept all of improved agility characteristics as other British light cruisers do.

All the same, Dido has some pretty good agility according to her in port stats. She has a tiny turning circle radius and a good rudder shift fourth dimension. However, the tech tree British low-cal cruisers and destroyers accept improved engine performance, given them much better handling than their stats alone would otherwise indicate. Dido gets a half-measure of this bonus. She accelerates much faster than normal ships. All the same, she doesn't get the improved energy retention in a turn, decelerating to the normal lxxx% of maximum speed when she comes well-nigh instead of retaining 97.v% to 98.v%.

You tin meet this here in the time it takes the tier Half-dozen cruisers to each 30 knots. The percentage in brackets is how much 30 knots is relative to their top speed, with the idea beingness that the closer this is to a ship's maximum speed, the longer it volition take them to advance.

ten.0 seconds Dido (92.nine%)
ten.5 seconds Perth (92.3%)
x.8 seconds Leander (92.3%)
11.3 seconds Mysore (94.9%)
22.9 seconds Dallas (92%)
23.eight seconds Molotov (83.three%)
24.3 seconds Budyonny (85.5%)
24.5 seconds Duca d'Aosta (82.0%)
24.9 seconds Trento (85.five%)
26.v seconds Aoba (85.5%)
27.0 seconds De Grasse (89.6%)
27.v seconds London (92.half dozen%)
27.9 seconds Huanghe (90.6%)
28.8 seconds Pensacola (92%)
29.8 seconds Kijkduin (90.vi%)
xxx.8 seconds Canarias (ninety.6%)
32.one seconds La Galissonniere (96.8%)
32.1 seconds Nurnberg (93.8%)
32.ane seconds Makarov (93.eight%)
35.5 seconds Devonshire (95.v%)

It's obvious looking at this that Dido, along with Perth, Leander and Mysore, has much improved dispatch over their peers. She's striking 30 knots while they're struggling to make 10. Even when her rivals are equipped with Propulsion Modification i, their dispatch but doesn't compare. Here'due south a few examples of the same examination, but this time equipped with the upgrade:

Dallas: twenty.eight seconds (2.1s faster)
Budyonny: 19.2s (five.1s faster)
Nurnberg: 26.9s (5.2s faster)
Duca d'Aosta: 19.4s (five.1s faster)

(Note: There'due south something weird going on with Dallas).

So other than that, in that location's nothing also surprising going on hither. Dido's non especially fast (she's not slow either). She has a good rate of plough, but not outstanding. Her turning circle radius is nice and tight, which is great. She doesn't get top marks in this category (Perth and Leander are a thing), simply she's pretty damn good.

Dido combines the small turning circle radius of Huanghe and Rahmat with the improved dispatch of Mysore, Leander and Perth. She does not have the improved energy preservation of the latter two, though, which would have spiked her rate of turn from vi.9º/southward up to 8.4º/s!

VERDICT: On a scale of one to awesome, Dido is super-great.

Anti-Aircraft Defence
Flak Bursts: two+0 explosions for i,260 damage per smash at 3.5km to 5.2km
Long Ranged (up to 5.2km): 63 dps at xc% accuracy (56.7 dps)
Medium Ranged (up to 2.5km): 63 dps at xc% accuracy (56.7 dps)
Short Ranged (up to 2km): 94.5 dps at 85% accuracy (80.325dps)

DPS Aura Ranges

Total DPS by Range

Constructive Damage vs 186.2knot Aircraft

Dido's AA firepower stinks worse than unwiped monkey butts. And I have outcome with this.

Dido'southward 133mm simply take a 5.2km range and this makes me grumpy. 'What's the large deal?' you lot might justifiably ask. Later on all, the dual purpose guns on the KGV-grade, Famous & Historical Monarch and Yukon all share the same range. Information technology's that consistency which is bothering me. You see, Rahmat, using the same guns, gets a 5.8km range. Yes! No consistency there. In the Pan Asian cruiser'due south case, I imagine information technology's to make the 133mm guns feel similar a 100% upgrade over her 113mm weapons. Tin't have the upgraded guns making her AA worse at present can we?

I besides have exception to Wargaming's game blueprint in regards to big calibre anti-aircraft firepower. Information technology'south been troublesome and disrepair since the rework back in 2019 and no iteration has worked sufficiently to my liking. It nerfed the Hell out of Hood'south defensive AA rockets. It made Atlanta's AA ability become from top tier to bottom. It makes Dido's AA power terrible in game, despite having a proficient track record historically. This is not the beginning ahistoric gameplay element to marr Globe of Warships but given the sorry state of surface ship to aircraft interaction, it's infuriating to me that Wargaming even so hasn't ressurected the AA-spotter transport function that has been gone since patch 0.8.0. Dido was a risk to amend this and they didn't take information technology. I'm not surprised they didn't. The whole CV rework reeks of incompetence three years on.

Dido's AA, when paired with Defensive AA Burn will shoot downward a plane or ii and then long her small-scale and medium calibre AA guns are nevertheless intact (these volition pause as before long as you get striking by HE). She doesn't do enough damage, nor does she spit out enough flak bursts for any specialization into this role to be worthwhile. So don't carp.

A few HE rounds betwixt the funnels will strip her of near of her small and medium calibre AA and at that place's aught you tin can realistically do about information technology.

VERDICT: Ahistorical and laughably bad.

Vision Control
Base of operations/Minimum Surface Detection: 10.54km / 9.2km
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 5.78km / five.2km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 4.43km
Maximum Firing Range: xiv.1km

In that location'due south good and bad here.

THE GOOD

Low surface detection
Upgraded aerial detection matches her long-range AA battery range
Smoke!

THE BAD

Cannot stealth-burn torpedoes
No access to Hydroacoustic Search
Each smoke deject only lasts 35 seconds (a max of five salvos)

It's the lack of access to Hydroacoustic Search that stings the most. Particularly considering her Defensive AA Fire is so bloody useless when paired with her abysmal AA values. Parking in smoke out in open water is simply asking to get fish shoved up your butt, which is an embarrassing and carpy way to become out. I found myself prefering to proceed smoke on standby while using islands as my prefered fashion to continue out of sight. Using smoke if spotted past shipping or past an unseen vector became the meliorate play. I even used it to help flush out a destroyer in a Ranked Batlte which was much more useful than parking in it. If Dido did take hydro, she could make some ambitious plays on occasion and behave a little more than comfortably in open water, just it's not meant to be.

Overall, she'due south expert here. As limited every bit her Curt-Burst Fume Generator is, it's still very handy to have and it volition help you win games. I'm only beingness biting.

Islands make better waifus than smoke.

VERDICT: Good relieve for lacking hydro

Anti-Submarine Warfare

ASW Armament Type: Depth charges
Number of Bombs per String: Five
Number of Strings Carried: Two (may exist increased to four with Depth Charges Modification one)
Reload Time per String: forty seconds
Drop Pattern: Rolled off rear deck in a line.
Maximum Bomb Damage: 5,000 (estimated 2,567 damage)
Fire Chance: 20%

At the fourth dimension of writing, submarines have been removed from public testing. I'chiliad merely recording the data as it exists. It may become relevant later. Without Hydroacoustic Search, taking on subs is going to be a bad idea with Dido.

Drop order of Dido's depth charges.

Final Evaluation

So Dido's good. Not peachy, but she's expert. She'due south a cruiser with smoke that exists in an surround that's not saturated with Surveillance Radar and claustrophobic maps with lots of islands to shoot over. She'd take to be pretty terrible across almost metrics not to do well. I'm non a fan of her given her lack of Hydroacoustic Search, mostly because I similar bold-ambitious plays at low and mid-tier matches and not having the tools to dig out lolibotes sours me to the whole experience. Go effigy, I don't have fun when my own idiocy gets me justifaibly blown out of the water for over-extending.

Her lack of AA performance also bothers me considerably more than it should, admittedly. I wasn't looking for her to exist god-tier when it came to shooting down planes. I just expected her to exist better than bloody Molotov and Leander for crying out loud. But such isn't meant to exist. Sucks to be me and have my preferences, I suppose. I admittedly haven't played her as much every bit I should, what with trying to get some Ranked Battle time in and poking at Canarias also. Still, the more than I played her, the better things were turning out. I'm very curious to encounter how the community receives her. I personally feel her tiering holds her back. Wargaming just isn't incentivizing playing mid-tiers enough and they really should. I call up information technology's a riot, but that's just me.

Speaking of preferences, London is the meliorate purchase when information technology comes to tier Six premium British cruisers. She'southward much more reliable and nasty.

In Closing

I desire to talk a fiddling about what goes into making one of these reviews and just how much of a time investment these are. This ane graphic demonstrates it quite well, I think. It takes me nigh two hours to put together one of these twirling graphics, assembling it through avails I make by manus with MS Paint and a calculator and so importing them over to photoshop to piece together in layers. That's already a lot of work, simply it's only scratching the surface.

There was no template for this. I had to make it. That took a lot of trial and fault and a lot of botched attempts. I listened to feedback from my readers and my peers on how to improve my earlier results until I could create something that would show with a reasonable level of accurateness, how private ships performed in a manner that cut through the obfuscation of in-port statistics. I'grand reasonably happy with how these turned out, though the number of ships at a given tier is making them also cluttered, and then I will take to pair them down to only the relevant ships.

But that even so doesn't speak to all of the piece of work that went into this, because at that place's all of the data collection that went into it also. Simply timing ships twirling isn't all of it either (as arduous a chore as it is keeping that database up to engagement). That ignores all of the testing and caput scratching and math that went into figuring out how the in-port stats were created in the first identify. This was further complicated by just how many ships had incorrect values listed in port too which created farther hurdles. I take over 100 hours of recorded twirling data in my archives. 100 hours spent watching ships twirl in circles. And this is just for i graphic, I remind y'all. This has been repeated for other elements as well, exist it detonations and module impairment, smoke emission and ship hitting boxes or god knows how much time I've lost trying to map dispersion. I'm non getting that time back short of using the data to share information.

And I'm just speaking near my own time invested in these. @Lert and @Chobittsu are right there abreast me, listening to me mumble. They provide feedback and suggestions, art and editing.

To be able to speak confidently near any ane aspect of a given ship's performance -- something I tin back with actual provable stats -- takes time. It takes more time than yous might assume from some throwaway DPM graphic or a funny little blurb about moose-testicles or an Aroused YouTuber "meh". These reviews stand up upon a a mountain of 'behind the scenes' work, an investment of a bunch of time about a video game that, let's exist honest, hasn't treated me well over the last couple of years. It'southward hard producing these reviews. It's a lot of hard piece of work that'southward congenital upon a lot of other work done in the past. Every new ship that's added to the game increases the workload. The last time I reviewed a tier Six cruiser, I didn't have to worry about Rahmat, Canarias, Dido or Kijkduin. Now I have to make sure those ships are covered too.

I say this all not to complain, merely to express my gratitude. The only thing that makes all of this time spent worthwhile is that you all see value in what I do here. For that, I am forever grateful. Thank you for reading.