New ship review: the Fearsome

[ANGRY ABOUT ELVES]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2897045059
A heavy brawler similar to the Paladin or Gladiator, with an armament of 2 Sarmats and nothing else. This is a poor choice of guns as the 2-180 is strictly inferior to the 1-180, and the large amount of ammo boxes for a ship this size makes it a bit of a tinderbox. The positioning of the mere two FSS is out of range of the fuel tanks on the top of the ship, so if a fire gets started it won't be able to be extinguished. Finally, the Fearsome has possibly the most pointlessly unarmored bottom in the entire game; the only reason not to armor the bottom, as far as I can tell, is because it doesn't have enough clearance when landing. It's not a weight issue at all. Despite all these problems it's a very fixable ship, requiring no movement or addition of aluminum hull pieces to make decent.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2897045150
Swapping the Sarmats for two 1-180s and two 2A37s, removing the small ammo boxes, and moving the ammo boxes away from the edges of the ship ends up with this gun layout. The 1-180s can both fire on most upward angles as well as directly downwards, and at least one CIWS can fire along all angles. To reduce the risk of fire, the top set of fuel tanks have been moved downwards and replaced with small generators and crew quarters, and the FSS has been moved upwards and increased to three. The bottom of the ship has been armored up and the landing gear tweaked to give the ship enough clearance. The refit time is just over 32 hours on normal without any shipworks or repair part bonuses, making it relatively fast in practice.

[rammmaru]

pluses:
- reasonable price
- high survivability
- ergonomics and handling(mostly inherited)
cons:
- vulnerability to critical damage
- small reserve and high fuel consumption
- guns of the main caliber have large blind spots
Verdict: although the vanilla design had its drawbacks, the modification in its current state does not have such advantages over it to replace it. Intuitively, it seems to me that the design can be balanced towards 130 mm guns. 180 mm single turrets are most effective as part of a battery of 4/6/8 guns. On smaller ships, they are impractical. You can work with the separation and protection of ammunition. If autocannons are added, most (and possibly all) of the IRCM can be removed.

[Dwang Zhongson]

Originally posted by rammmaru:

pluses:
- high survivability

Definitely not, fires say hello and that's the most AP sensitive frigate I ever played -- maybe after Jaguar.