Premium Ship Review: Florida

[LittleWhiteMouse]

♫ Florida man, Florida man... ♪
Guess the tune.

The following is a review of USS Florida, the tier VII American premium battleship.  I did not pay for this ship.  It was provided to me by Wargaming for evaluation purposes.  To the best of my knowledge, the statistics discussed in this review are current as of patch 0.9.9.  Please be aware that her performance may change in the future.

Quick Summary:  A tier VII, prototype version of the North Carolina-class battleship with twelve 356mm guns instead of nine 406mm guns.  She's highly accurate but her guns don't hit very hard, even for 356mm rounds.  On top of this, she's super squishy.

PROS

• Huge broadside of twelve 356mm guns.
• Solid rearward firing angles, well suited to kiting.
• Uses the improved battlecruiser dispersion instead of that of American battleships.
• Good range for a tier VII battleship, able to reach out to 21.6km with her APRM1 modification.
• Improved penetration on her AP shells for their calibre.
• Good anti-aircraft firepower, including access to Defensive AA Fire.
• Decent concealment.

CONS

• Small hit point pool for a tier VII battleship.
• Softer-skinned than contemporary battleships with 25mm extremities.
• Vulnerable, high-water citadel with as little as 285mm worth of armour.
• A 33.5 second reload.
• Anemic damage values on both her HE and AP rounds along with poor fire setting.
• Horrible rudder shift time of 15.4 seconds.
• Has one fewer Repair Party charges than most other battleships.

Overview

Skill Floor:  Simple / Casual / CHALLENGING / Difficult
Skill Ceiling:  Low / Moderate / HIGH / Difficult

New players beware.

As easy as border-humping battleships can be, Florida asks a bit more of players in order to get her to perform.  Neither her AP or HE shells are idiot proof, requiring players to be dynamic with their ammunition choices.  That's bad enough, but even when you have the right ammo loaded for the right target, her anemic shells leave a lot to be desired, especially with so long of a reload.  Even her good improved accuracy can be a bit of a turn off -- at least with bad dispersion even a poorly aimed shot might have something strike the target.  Finally, this ship just feels cumbersome with sloppy handling, a slow reload and sluggish turret traverse.

Her carry potential is limited.  While expert players can flex a lot of their in-game knowledge to get more out of Florida's potential, her defensive limitations thwart most attempts to push aggressively.  Her guns don't hit hard enough or fast enough and are foiled by even limited angling.  Still, she's a nice support ship.  If you want to play a more passive, supporting role, Florida works well, especially against CVs.

Options

Consumables

Florida's consumables are a little weird.  There are two items of note:

• Florida uses an American battleship version of her Damage Control Party.  This has a longer-than-usual active time compared to other battleships, repairing critical damage and preventing fires and flooding for 20 seconds instead of the usual 15 seconds.  It has unlimited charges and an 80 second reset timer.
• Her Repair Party is also standard for a battleship.  It queues up 50% of penetration damage, 10% of citadel damage and 100% of everything else. It heals back 0.5% of her health every second for 28 seconds.  Her consumable has an 80 second reset timer but only comes with three base charges instead of the usual four.
• Like the other new American battleships, Florida has access to Defensive AA Fire.  This is active for 40 seconds per charge with four charges base.  While active, this provides a 50% increase to sustained AA DPS and a 300% increase to flak damage.  It has an 80 second reset timer.
• Finally in the last slot, you have your choice between a Spotting Aircraft or Catapult Fighter.  The former comes with four charges and is active for 100 seconds, during which time main battery gun range is increased by 20%.  It has a 240 second reset timer.  Her fighter has the usual 60 second active period with three fighters patrolling around the ship.  This has a 90 second reset timer and comes with three charges base.

The big takeaways here are that Florida has access to Defensive AA Fire and her Repair Party has one fewer charge.

Upgrades

Florida's upgrade choices are pretty dull.

• Start with Main Armaments Modification 1.  It's arguably the best choice in the first slot.  You can take the special upgrade Spotting Aircraft Modification 1 to increase the active time of her consumable from 100s to 130s but this doesn't exactly wow me.  This upgrade will cost you 17,000 from the Armory.  Unless you plan to hump the back-line regularly, you're better served increasing the survivability of your guns.
• Damage Control System Modification 1 is the best choice for slot two.  Again, if you feel the need, you can take another special upgrade.  This time, Defensive AA Fire Modification 1 is up for grabs at the same 17,000 cost in the Armory.  This increases the active time of her consumable from 40 seconds to 48 seconds and reduces the reset timer from 80 seconds to 72 seconds.
• In slot three, Artillery Plotting Room Modification 1 is really the only one worth considering.  This will up her main battery firing range from 18.62km to 21.6km (her secondaries get boosted from 5km to 5.25km).
• Finally, in slot four, fire damage mitigation is still your best option so Damage Control System Modification 2 is your best choice.  If you want to be a little more active in your dodging, then you can take Steering Gears Modification 1 instead.  This will reduce her rudder shift time from an appalling 15.4 seconds down to 12.32s.

Captain Skills

You're not reinventing the wheel with Florida.  Take the usual battleship survivability build.  It's boring but it works.  For variety's sake, you can swap out Priority Target and Expert Marksman for your tier 1 and tier 2 skills of choice.  Some good alternatives are Expert Loader, Jack of All Trades and High Alert.  Expert Loader in particular is a very good choice.

I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this graphic.  This speaks a lot to how badly the skill system needs to be reworked given how optimized skill choices have become.

Camouflage

Florida has access to two different camouflage patterns.  By default, she comes with Type 10 Camouflage.  However,

They provide the same bonuses and are merely a cosmetic swap.

• -3% surface detection
• +4% increased dispersion of enemy shells.
• -10% to post-battle service costs.
• +50% to experience gains.

Florida's default camo is alright.

I really don't like her alternative palette.  It's a dull, elephantine grey in unflattering patterns.

Florida's "Golden Eagle" camouflage has the same pin-up girl on her funnel as the camouflage made available for the new American tech tree battleships.  I'm surprised by how much I enjoy this camo, though that may simply be because I'm not big on the other two.

Firepower

Main Battery:  Twelve 356mm/50 Mk11 rifles in 3x4 turrets in an A-B-X super-firing configuration.
Secondary Battery:  Sixteen 127mm/38 guns in 6x2 turrets and 4x1 turrets.

Huh! Neat!

Let's start with Florida's secondaries, because they're kind of neat in a pointless, fun bit of trivia kind of way.

Her secondary armament is divided into two gun types.  The first is the twin 127mm/38 we're used to seeing on every American battleship.  But these are supplemented by four single 127mm/38 turrets akin to what you might find on an American destroyer like Benson or Sims.  This effectively gives her an eight-gun secondary broadside -- two fewer than you'll see on higher tiered American battleships like North Carolina, the SoDaks, the Iowa-sisters, etc, but it's right on par with California's battery.  However, Florida manages to have the equivalent broadside to a ten-gun secondary battery like the higher tiered ships because most American twin 127mm/38 guns have an artificially lowered rate of fire and the singles have a boosted one.  Check out this nonsense!

• Iowa & Missouri's secondary broadside: 10 guns with 6 second reload = 100rpm.
• North Carolina & Alabama's secondary broadside:  10 guns with 6 second reload = 100rpm.
• California's secondary broadside:  8 guns with 6 second reload = 80rpm.
• Florida's secondary broadside:  6 guns with 6 second reload + 2 guns with 3 second reload = 100rpm

So there you go!  Florida has a better secondary battery than California, equivalent to most of the other American battleships (but obviously excluding Massachusetts & company cuz theirs are souped up). Florida's secondaries are too short ranged to be worth specializing into.  They also lack the accuracy buff that makes Massachusetts and Georgia such units.  These twin factors are enough to discourage anyone from spending skills or upgrade slots on them, to say nothing of Florida's durability issues (which I will [edited] about at length below). 

Alright, that's enough fussing over what is little more than a curiosity.  Let's get onto the meat of the matter.

Big Guns Go Boom Make Squeaky-Toy Noises

I don't like Florida's guns.

They're perfectly adequate -- I'm not here to tell you that they're broken, bugged, under-performing or what have you.  They're well balanced and put out the hurt reasonably well.  In fact, they've got a lot of good things going for them including good(ish) fire arcs, good range, decent AP penetration values and that sweet, sweet battlecruiser dispersion.  So what's my beef?

Well, its' two things gentle reader:

1. She has a slow rate of fire.
2. Her shells suck moose-balls.

The first element is symptomatic of American battleships as a whole, especially the new line of American battleships that Florida heralds.  At 33.5 seconds per volley, Florida's reload isn't as bad as some of the others in the new tech-tree, but let's not mince words:  It sucks to wait that long between trigger pulls.  I can stomach this if the results for waiting are particularly amusing, however Florida's gunnery is an exercise in frustration for me because of my second gripe:  Florida's shell hits are not satisfying.  Florida's shells, both AP and HE, don't hit especially hard.  Their damage values are lower than you might expect for a 356mm weapon.  In fact, Florida's damage output on her AP and HE shells is most closely matched by those off the sixteen-gun Lyon.  Lyon has only a 30 second reload, I remind you, 3.5 seconds faster than Florida with a four-gun advantage.  Compare:

• American 356mm/50 (Florida):  9,500 AP damage, 4,750 HE damage, 22% fire chance
• American 356mm/50 (New Mexico, California): 10,500 AP damage, 5,000 HE damage, 30% fire chance
• American 356mm/45 (Arizona, New York, Texas):  10,300 AP damage, 5,000 HE damage, 30% fire chance
• French 340mm/45 (Bretagne, Normandie, Lyon): 9,500 damage, 4,700 HE damage, 26% fire chance

Her individual hits just aren't doing as much damage as other American battleships.  While she still has better broadside weight than the ten-gun armed New York-class, she's well behind the other twelve-gun armed American standards despite having a better reload time than all of them.  This deficit in shell damage (combined with her slower reload) means that in terms of raw damage potential, Florida falls way behind, ending up in the bottom half of the DPM charts despite her large number of guns.

Take these values with a pinch of salt.  This is not accounting for such factors as accuracy, penetration, overmatch, normalization, etc.  In terms of raw DPM, yes, Florida lags behind.  She's also hurting when it comes to overmatching targets, especially when she's middle or bottom tier.  However, her penetration is decent and her accuracy is good, offsetting these factors somewhat but only against select targets.  More on this later.

Look at all of this negative space!  This is what happens when I scale the HE values to the same scale as the AP values.  The order of ships shuffles a bit with German HE shells being terrible and British and Japanese HE shells doing more damage than you might otherwise expect for their calibre.  Florida's HE performance remains unfortunate.  However, given the troubles with her AP shells, you'll still be reaching for them often.

Don't Trust DPM Charts

The problem with simply looking at DPM charts is that it assumes everything is not only 100% accurate, but also that all shells perform equally when they strike a target.  It patently ignores two crucial elements:

1. How easy it is to hit a target.
2. How likely your shells are to do damage if they do hit.

As Roma so painfully demonstrated, you can have gorgeous paper stats but if you simultaneously struggle to (a) hit a target and (b) get anything other than over-penetrations, then your experience is going to be hella inconsistent.  Florida has her own struggles, but at least she's very consistent when it comes to landing hits.  Florida uses battlecruiser dispersion -- the same found on ninja-accurate battleships like Thunderer.  Sadly, this isn't paired with a god-tier sigma value.  Florida has 1.7 sigma competed to 1.9 of Thunderer or 2.0 of Champagne, so she doesn't feel quite so accurate as some of the higher-tiered snipers.  The lower sigma means that the occasional shell will still fly wonky, though the smaller dispersion area means this won't be as wildly askew as other ships.  In short:  Florida's accuracy is good.  You should land more hits per volley than her contemporaries which should help mitigate some of her DPM issues -- not all of them, but some.

Florida (on the left) using a standard dispersion test.  This is 180 AP shells fired at a stationary Fuso bot.  Shots are coming in from the left to right (Fuso is bow-tanking).  California is on the right with the same parameters.  California uses American battleship dispersion with 1.9 sigma versus Florida's battlecruiser dispersion with 1.7 sigma.  Florida feels appreciably more accurate than most other American battleships, though her lower sigma value will make her feel only slightly better than ships like California or Arizona.

The difference in penetration performance between California and Florida is manifold.  Their shells have different masses (555kg for Florida vs 680.4kg for California), different shell velocities due to different drag coefficients (0.271 for Florida vs 0.331 for California) and different Krupp values (2,945 for Florida vs 2,545 for California).

AP penetration is more of a contentious issue for Florida.

There's a stigma against lower-calibre guns for having poor penetration performance and this is largely undeserved.  American 356mm AP shells, for example, have very good penetration and Florida's is improved even beyond this.  She is capable, for example, of penetrating upwards of 400mm worth of plate at 15km.  She has more than enough punch to land citadel hits against just about any broadside target, including some of the softer-skinned battleships up to ranges of 20km.  So you don't need to worry about Florida not having enough teeth to citadel an Iowa in most encounters, should the opportunity arise.  I stress the word opportunity, however. 

As nice as the raw penetration values are on Florida, she doesn't have a lot to spare once you aim at battleships in excess of 15km out.  Using the usual tricks of aiming for softer sections of the hull can help, especially given Florida's reasonably tight dispersion to ensure good groupings.  This helps somewhat, but again, angling is very effective against Florida's guns because she doesn't overmatch a whole lot of armour.

Her 356mm AP rounds overmatch a maximum of 24mm worth of plate and there's a whole lot of structural steel within her matchmaking that's 25mm or thicker. Tier VI+ battleships, tier VIII+ cruisers all have a minimum of 25mm worth of structural armour.  But that 25mm+ threshold crops up in other places, such as the decks and amidship hulls of tier VI and VII heavy cruisers and the decks of tier VI and VII lights. Having a working knowledge of which ships you can still punish when they angle helps immeasurably, but Florida is very often forced to rely on either aiming for over-penetrations through superstructures or resorting to her HE rounds.
 

Ouch.  I don't know why Wargaming decided to neuter Florida's fire setting so badly.  I guess this will encourage players to reach for AP whenever possible.  Keep in mind that these values do not include the fire resistance of their opponents nor the ship's accuracy.   Fire resistance values against the opponents Florida usually faces is anywhere between 30% to 45% or so.  So if you're managing to hit with 1/3 of Florida's shells against a tier VIII target, then instead of 4 fires and change, you're more likely going to see one per minute.  Maybe.

Sadly, Florida's HE are lacking.  Their modest damage per-shell and slow reload might not be such a bad handicap if their fire chance was better, but her fire chance per shell is horrible.  The 22% value she's shackled with is downright painful for such a slow rate of fire.  Getting one permanent fire to burn is a feat, never mind doubling up.  Her HE performance is so bad that I would happily recommend sticking with AP spam if it weren't for the aforementioned issue with angled and higher-tiered targets.  It's stupid-important to be patient with your shots.  Look for opportune targets where you can maximize her AP efficiency.  You don't want to have to start spamming HE.  Similarly, you don't want to force encounters where this is your sole option.  Florida doesn't have the armour or hit points to facilitate trades against same-tier (or even tier VI) opponents.  Blapping a full broadside of HE into an enterprising lolibote is hilarious, don't get me wrong -- her improved accuracy means that she easily can land four to six shells (or more!) against a destroyer at stupid-close ranges.  But against any other target, her HE is just found wanting.

If given the opportunity to fire nothing but AP, Florida does really well.  Frankly, this is only going to happen if your opponents are idiots.  You have to remain flexible with her ammunition choices.  Keep the Expert Loader skill in mind.  It's very handy for this ship if you're going to build a dedicated Florida captain.

Enough Facts, Gimme the Feels

I hate these guns.

Lemme stress:  They're fine. And I mean that in the same way I tell my significant other that "it's fine" when things are clearly not.  It's all of the little things which add up to a bad experience for me.  If you asked me to point at the one thing that bugs me the most about them, I'd probably tell you it's the 4º/s gun traverse, which seems stupid to complain about given all of the other issues.  However, I think that this quibble illustrates my beef with Florida's gunnery as a whole.  Her slow turret traverse is just that "one more thing" that feels off about this ship.  No matter her advantages, there's always a big ol' butt attached.

• Florida has good AP penetration she has overmatch issues.
• Florida has good dispersion her sigma value is subpar.
• Florida has a huge broadside her shell damage is artificially low.
• Florida has decent fire arcs her turret traverse is slow.
• Florida can land a lot of hits with her HE shells she's terrible at starting fires.

It goes on and on like this.  Yes, yes, yes, this is all in the name of BALANS™, tovarish, and Florida's gunnery is balanced.  I just don't like it.

Florida's fire angles are decent.  They're not good -- good is a 300º fire arc or more, but she's not as appalling as some of the ships I've dealt with recently.  I just wish her turret traverse was better.

Summary

• Big broadside, wussy shells.
• Guns are very accurate.
• You have to be dynamic with shell choice.

VERDICT:  You would think that for a sniper-battleship, her guns would be fun.  But they're not fun.  I didn't have fun at all with these weapons (except for maybe paddling a lolibote or two at very close range.

Defence

Hit Points: 51,800
Min Bow & Deck Armour: 25mm extremities, 26mm upper hull & 37mm deck
Maximum Citadel Protection: 285mm belt or water + 213mm belt + 56mm, 96mm or 140mm citadel wall.
Torpedo Damage Reduction: 26%

Short Version

Florida is pretty much a normal tier VII battleship with an exposed, vulnerable citadel and weak Repair Party.

Florida's citadel layout tells you all you really need to know about this ship's durability.  The TL:DR is that her citadel abuts against the exterior of her hull and it sits above the waterline.  With only 285mm worth of belt protection, this exposed "T-section" of her citadel is stupid-easy to bullseye for waterline-aimed shots from enemy battleships.  For 380mm+ AP shells aimed at her bows, her transverse bulkhead is almost as vulnerable.

 

Irrelevant trivia time.  There is a 16mm hidden plate dividing the upper and lower parts of Florida's citadel.  The line of it can be found between her 285mm upper belt the 213mm of her lower belt

Long Version

The most pressing thing to worry about when playing Florida is her citadel.  Unlike the other "sniper" battleships like Slava and Champagne, the "softness" of Florida's hull is barely a concern.  The 25mm extremities which damn her higher tiered cousins do not apparently have a lower-tier equivalency.  I was expecting Florida to appear with 19mm of extremity armour but she instead clones the higher tiered ship weakness with 25mm instead.  Given that all of the other tier VI and VII battleships are rocking 26mm worth of extremity plate, the loss of a single millimeter is not that much of a drawback.  At most, this makes Florida slightly more vulnerable to HE shells from small and medium caliber guns -- specifically 152mm HE shells from tiers VII and below do not need to reach for Inertial Fuse for HE Shells in order to stack direct damage against Florida as they would against her tier-mates.  Similarly, Florida is vulnerable to 120mm HE shells with Inertial Fuse for HE Shells.  That's really the extent this soft skin provides in terms of vulnerability.  Otherwise her superstructure, upper hull and amidships deck all conform to normal parameters for a tier VII battleship.

If you swapped out Florida's 25mm bow and stern for 26mm versions, she'd be a perfectly normal tier VII battleship.

Florida's artificial fragility instead comes from three sources.  The most influential of these is her citadel placement and geometry.  Any battleship with her citadel sitting high over the waterline and abutting against the ship's exterior has a big ol' weakspot that's pretty easy to exploit.  That, in of itself, isn't enough to damn a ship.  For example, Soviet battleships all share this weak point, but many (if not most) of them are considered super-tanky.  Therein lies Florida's second weakness:  she lacks any form of extended armour to assist with shattering HE shells and ricocheting incoming AP rounds.  While her amidships deck is a respectable 37mm, her butt, snoot and upper hull are all highly vulnerable.  25mm and 26mm armour are easily over-matched by the oh-so commonplace 380mm+ AP shells found at this tier.  This armour similarly doesn't hold up against HE spam from cruisers and some destroyers.  Thus Florida is much more limited when it comes to tanking incoming rounds.  She can bounce 356mm armed battleships throwing AP in her face for days but angle improperly or test your luck against larger caliber guns and she goes down in a hurry.

The last piece of her squishy puzzle is her effective health pool.  Florida's hit point pool is small for a tier VII battleship.  Heck, it would be on the low end for a tier VI battleship.  This isn't enough to damn her in of itself -- she's not so low that she's on Viribus Unitis levels of parody.  But a smaller hit point pool means that she heals less penetrating damage with her Repair Party.  While this has no impact on fire and flooding damage (as their damage amount scales with the starting hit points of the ship), 10,000 damage worth of penetrations hurts Florida more than other tier VII battleships.  But there's more.  Florida comes with one fewer charges of her Repair Party, so this deficit is felt even more. 

I wanna gloat like a happy teaboo, but Florida's health is just too appallingly low for me for me to brag with good conscience.  Her lacking an entire Repair Party charge just feels mean.

I have felt these three combined weaknesses acutely with Florida.  I don't feel that they're enough to damn the ship, but they are very obviously weaknesses.  Unlike the higher tiered sniper-battleships, Florida finds herself more often in claustrophobic maps where she cannot rely on simply out-ranging targets.  She's asked to tank a lot more more than say, Champagne.  Even when she does appear on larger maps, this comes with the threat of higher-tiered opponents and more overmatching guns so it's catch 22.  Knowing which opponents you can face tank and which you can't are important.  But so very often I was forced to show my cute butt and kite away when the pressure was on.  Florida's not-good(ish) forward fire angles meant that firing all three turrets forward was just asking to have shells rammed into her stepped citadel.  It was far safer to fight, firing over her shoulder with her forward turrets slinging shells to her rear. 

Being far more limited in what aggressive plays this ship can make hurts her carrying ability.  Turning to fight will often just get you killed.  It limits what decisive actions she can take.  It's hard to be heroic if you're constantly forced to follow Sir Robin's playbook. 

VERDICT:  She's squishy -- squishier than the usual tier VII battleship and they struggle a lot with durability. Florida struggles even more.  Don't brawl.  You'll die.

Agility

Top Speed: 27 knots
Turning Radius:  760m
Rudder Shift Time: 15.4 seconds
4/4 Engine Speed Rate of Turn:  4.1º/s

If Florida was a battleship from any other nation, there would be very little worth noting here.

• Her top speed of 27 knots is completely acceptable for a tier VII battleship.
• Her turning radius of 760m is decent.  It's not amazing, but it's alright.
• Her rotation rate of 4.1º/s is again, pretty average.
• Her rudder shift time of 15.4s is the most remarkable thing about her and not in a good way.  It's slow.

Her 27 knot top speed has the illusion of meaning something only because she's an American battleship.  All other American battleships from tier VII and below cap out around 21 knots as their top speed.  With the nerfing to American Standard-type battleship agility with patch 0.9.6 Florida's speed advantage is even more pronounced.  Were she a battleship from any other nation, her 27 knot top speed would be unremarkable.  So yes, Florida is faster than Colorado or California.  Big deal.  So is everything else at this tier. Focus instead on her sloppy rudder shift time.  She doesn't feel like she handles well because of it.  Add on her modest turret traverse rate and she feels like a chunk-lord.

Ships with stars have been changed or added since patch 0.9.6.

VERDICT:  Not as nimble as you might expect.  Good enough, I suppose, but definitely not one of her strengths.

Anti-Aircraft Defence

Flak Bursts: 5 explosions for 1400 damage per blast at 3.5km to 5.8km.
Long Ranged (up to 5.8km):   157.5dps at 75% accuracy
Medium Ranged (up to 4.0km):  269.5dps at 75% accuracy
Short Ranged (up to 2.0km): 318.5dps at 70% accuracy

I've sorted these by the formula of [ AA dps x { range - 1km} ].  It's not a perfect system but it does weight heavier, longer-ranged firepower over masses of short-ranged defence. 
I admit a terrible reluctance to call any battleship's AA firepower "good".  This said, when a pristine Florida activates her Defensive AA Fire and doubles her DPS, she has good AA firepower.

Florida's AA power is nice.  Taken on it's own merits, her AA power is pretty fearsome when it comes to personal defence.  In the support role, she's not bad either, with a sizable chunk of her AA power dedicated to long and medium range weapons.  When her Defensive AA Fire is active, she can wipe out full tier VIII squadrons -- it's not contest here.  A determined CV player will still be able to make a drop, but it will cost them everything.   Carriers must anticipate that she will always have Defensive AA Fire ready and it's best to bait its use by ducking in and out of her 5.8km bubble and then waiting it out, even if she's not your primary target.  Florida is effectively a no-fly zone for tier VI carriers because of this consumable and raw AA power combination which is a pretty impressive boast.  Add on a catapult fighter and Florida duplicates this for tier VIII carriers too, at least until she comes under sustained HE attack.

Most of her teeth come from her 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikons, barring a CV being gracious enough to face-plant into a flak-cloud.  These do not survive long under HE fire and even cursory smattering of HE rounds will quickly reduce the effectiveness of her AA and open her up to the potential of air-attack.

All hail Florida's lord & saviour.

VERDICT:  Honestly, some of the best AA defence we've seen in a long time.  I'm kinda shocked.

Refrigerator

Base/Minimum Surface Detection: 13.86km / 12.1km
Base/Minimum Air Detection Range: 10.08km/9.07km
Detection Range When Firing in Smoke: 12.01km
Maximum Firing Range:  Between 18.62km and 25.92km

Flordia's concealment values are pretty darned good.  She doesn't quite get into that magical sub-12km surface detection range which is quite impressive for a battleship, but at least she gets close.  Given her preferred engagement distance, it's pretty easy for this ship to drop off from detection range in typical encounters -- especially given her long reload.  If she had a bit more grunt in her engines, controlling the engagement through use of her stealth would be a lot more feasible, but her 27 knot top speed just isn't enough to kite away from all of the battleships she faces, to say nothing of cruisers and destroyers. 

Florida's great range (especially when upgraded and modified with her Spotter Aircraft consumable) can work against her here, especially with those enterprising shots in the early stages of a match as everyone's deploying.  While it can be super-tempting to try your luck against targets spotted early by your own lolibotes or Just Dodge™ simulators, you can all but guarantee you'll be spotted in return when you pull the trigger.  With nothing else to shoot at, you can bet that every battleship on the enemy team that can draw bead on you will take a shot and given Florida's super-squish citadel, bad things will happen if they've got the range.  Keep in mind that Florida's rudder is terrible so it's not like she dodges well.  This is definitely a risk-reward element at play here, so be careful.

VERDICT:  Pretty darned good for raw concealment values, though she struggles to spot stuff on her own.  It's too bad she doesn't have the agility to make better use of this trait.

Final Evaluation

When it comes to my battleships, I know what I like. Big, punchy guns are a must.  I prefer durability to agility, but I need one of those two elements to be present.   If a battleship can't manage these things, they've got a big, uphill battle to win my affections.  Some of them still manage it.  Scharnhorst, for example, doesn't have the main battery guns to wow me, but she still pulls off a win between her secondaries, fish and the combination of speed and tankiness.  I've tried to keep an open mind while play testing Florida, but good gravy, my time in her has not been pleasant.  I'm under no illusions that this is very clearly a me problem.  Florida herself is a well balanced ship.  I just hate her.  She doesn't have any one element of this trifecta that I enjoy in my battleships.

When Florida was first announced, I thought she would immediately obsolete California.  I tore California a new one a few months ago for being not worth the asking price.  While I do feel that Florida is a superior vessel to California, I don't feel that she's worth it either.  Frankly, you're better served picking up Arizona at tier VI or even Alabama at tier VIII instead of Florida.  Let me stress this:  I don't think Alabama is worth the asking price either, but I would definitely recommend her over Florida.  She's more reliable, if dull.  The best bang for your buck for American premium battleships is Massachusetts and she's been one of the best premiums you can buy if you're shopping for one.  Her primacy isn't challenged by Florida in the least.  With Black Friday a little over a month away, if you're in the market for Massachusetts, then you might want to wait a month and grab it when her Black version goes back on sale if you like the cosmetic difference.  I don't mean to try and sell you on other ships, my point is simply that there are a lot better choices for your time and money than investing in Florida.

In closing, I should stress again:  Florida is fine.  She's not broken.  There will be some people who really dig her sniper game play.   I'm not one of those people.  I like to have the option of getting in close and hitting people with my sword.  Florida doesn't let me do that.

In Closing

Well, this accidentally turned into a much longer review than I had intended.  I was originally just going to line up Florida alongside California, compare the two and then pull a surprise-reveal that they both suck equally.  Instead, I learned last week that Ship Comrade, the site run by @Critter8 that has hosted my reviews since the first quarter of 2016 was going to close down.  Instead of working on how to cleverly cast shade on anyone that enjoyed either one of these tier VII American premium battleships, I spent the better part of two days going through years worth of archived jpegs and text, reflecting on the years I've spent writing for World of Warships and all of the help, support and encouragement Critter8 provided me.

I wouldn't be a Community Contributor (CC) if it weren't for Critter8.  I'm not sure the WGNA CC-program would have even existed if it weren't for him.  Back in 2015, before there was a Community Contributor program, content creators like myself worked unsupported by Wargaming in any capacity.  The predecessor to the NA-CC program was Club Wargaming which promised the world and delivered nothing but a booger-green title on the forums.  Club Wargaming included dozens of content creators which had sprung up during Closed and Open Beta, including some big names like @PhlyDaily.  All of us were paying out of pocket to produce content or having to rely on donations from fans to get access to the newest premium content.  Critter8 took exception to this.  He had made Ship Comrade -- a fan site whose best early features included tracking Rank Battle progress and had one of (if not THE) first Captain Skill calculator.  He took his fandom seriously and wanted a professional relationship with Wargaming to facilitate content production.

He approached me about my frustrations with Club Wargaming and he took an active leadership role among the various content creators to approach Wargaming about our complaints.  It was by his initiative that the WGNA CC-program took shape under NikoPower (of CorgiFleet fame).  From those conversations, @iChase, @NoZoupForYou, @Notser, @TitiuBlack, Critter8 and I became the first NA-CCs in early January of 2016.  While I could gush endlessly about everything NikoPower did for us, it was Critter8 who stands out as the leader we needed.  He brought the six of us would-be professionals (with integrity) together.

For me, Ship Comrade allowed me to greatly increase the quality of my reviews.  This long format, like you're seeing here with Florida, was facilitated entirely by having my content written for Ship Comrade.  Critter8 encouraged CCs like myself and @Aetam to host our content on his site.  As you can imagine, writing for a web-page is much more forgiving than writing for a forum post -- it didn't have to all be written in a single sitting, for example.  In going over Ship Comrade's archives, it was a treat to watch how my reviews grew in size and ambition.  My early reviews were usually written in an afternoon and seldom held more than four or five jpegs.  Florida's review has nearly thirty and has been written over the course of a week. 

I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity and help he provided for me.  For personal reasons, he had to step back from World of Warships.  As the CC program again got overhauled, Wargaming dropped his CC-status despite his continued efforts to host and support other CCs.  Sadly, Ship Comrade was never a profitable enterprise.  Donations helped keep the lights on for a time, but all things must come to an end.  He ran the site out of his own pocket for over five years.  I don't fault him in the least for retiring.

Thank you for everything.  And thank you all for reading.  I'm going to take some time sorting and organizing some of my older reviews over the next week or so.

[Wolfswetpaws]

[That WoT Player]

On 9/23/2023 at 10:29 AM, LittleWhiteMouse said:

I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this graphic.  This speaks a lot to how badly the skill system needs to be reworked given how optimized skill choices have become.

I feel like this comment has aged like milk. I’m sure there’s people who would say it’s aged like fine wine with how relevant it is after all these years, but I say it’s like milk because the situation stinks. 

On that subject, how often do you have to make a new commander skill template for BBs that isn’t the same ol’ standard survivability or secondary copy pasta? 

[BOBTHEBALL]

23 hours ago, That WoT Player said:

I feel like this comment has aged like milk. I’m sure there’s people who would say it’s aged like fine wine with how relevant it is after all these years, but I say it’s like milk because the situation stinks. 

On that subject, how often do you have to make a new commander skill template for BBs that isn’t the same ol’ standard survivability or secondary copy pasta? 

Well for BBs unless it's the Schileffen line you'd be better off with a standard tank build 90% of the time.