Basic BB gameplay

By Aingeal

A guide to a better understanding of the core abilities of the BB gameplay in NavyField.


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-=Introduction=-
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This guide is first and furthermost addressed to players who have just gotten a BB, or feel they do not manage to extract the full results of their ships. It is meant as a vulgarization of the core ability a BB player should master before moving on more advanced tactics that, with work, will make them a force to be reckoned with in any gunship of any nation.


For simplicity sake, as I mentioned, I’ll divide this in three core abilities I feel once mastered makes you a fearsome BB player and give some advice at how to improve each of them. Note that this guide won’t help you if you do not choose to help yourself. My goal today is to help the player identify where he may lack a bit of training or be less efficient so he can, if he so wish, work on it to grow as a better player in the heart of the NF competition: BB fighting.


While blitz are mainly dominated by who got the best crew, once cap start hitting home, your game skill becomes much more important than the amount of vets on your gunners. You might have some people with more SD, more OH time, better rep. This is all helpful. But at the end of the day, it won’t save you if you do not know how to use a Battleship properly in NavyField.


Those core abilities I will focus on today are the following:

1- Accuracy
2-Dodging
3-Awareness


I’ll refer to them as ADA for the rest of the guide.


That may sound overly simple, but as I mentioned, this guide is NOT an advanced BB play one. An issue I tend to notice a lot in NF nowadays is that some people are trying to master advanced part of BB play while they heavily lack the basics. Some ships forgive players lacks better than others. But some don't. At all.


However I shall first enumerate the Basic Rules of The BBs. They shall guide you from your first BB1 throught your whole NF BB player career. No matter the nation. Think about them as the BBs Commandments. Safe I only wrote 6. 10 is so overused anyway!
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A- A blind BB is a dead BB if the situation isn’t corrected.
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B- Range is LIFE. You CANNOT use massive firepower if you cannot get it in range.
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C- If available, ALWAYS have a scout (so any BBs safe nelson). Do not count on other people to scout for you. Nobody knows better than you where you need visual at any moments of the game.
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D- NEVER use a BB you do not have a sufficient crew to handle. BO is the least important sailor on your ship. If you cannot get the right gun, or have similar performance to same tier ships, you are going to be a liability to your team. You shall run the lower level BB for a few extra levels if you must.
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E- Restorers on BBs are eventually going to be a dead weight. Your support will cap 900 SD without one eventually. If you still choose to level one, know it shall be nice at BB2-3 level maybe, then become a useless weight, and you’ll wish you had a rep or an engy instead.
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F- Always gather information on a nation’s BB line before making the crew. Some have special classing procedures, namely for AA gunners. Messing up a crew, and realizing it at BB1-2 just sucks, especially when lots of people are going to gladly give you the information if you ask. Redoing 60 levels just to correct something is annoying.
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If you are going to retain something of those, memorize A through D. Its crucial.


So now without further delay :


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-=1-ACCURACY=-
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Simple eh? You need to be accurate in your shots. But so many people do not know their angle past the 5 last angles it's ridiculous. YES BB fight at range. But NO it doesn’t mean at all you will never go under max.


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---Using Guidelines wisely and learning angles---
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First step is adjusting your guidelines by adding/removing sailors on the BO. Ideally your lines should end exactly at your max range. In no way it should ever be longer than that.


If your BO lines aint long enough to reach the max range, then you have to memorize the average length past them the shell falls to, and memorize the exact angle than marks your guidelines extremity. It’s quite playable, but it is an extra difficulty.


For mid-angles:

A good way to memorize them at first is memorizing exactly each multiple of 5. If you KNOW 5-10-15-20-25-30-35 it’s about 6 position to really have burned in your memory. Its not that many. That way, when looking at a ship, you’ll be able to narrow the possibilities to 2-3 angle max, and out of those, find the one that seems the more likely. If someone is halfway between 20 and 25, but maybe a bit toward the 25, you’ll shoot at 23.


There is absolutely no use at being a master of predicting an opponent behavior if you cannot aim correctly. In fact I’d say you cannot go more basic than that as far as requirement for half decent BB play goes.


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---Hang time and moving targets---
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Now, you trained your accuracy a bit, and you can with good success hit static target in your range and evaluate a the good angle quickly and accurately. The next step is to correctly evaluate the shell traveling while aiming at a moving target.

Many people seem often to put their lines at the “current” spot their target is in, and end up shooting behind it, or again overestimated their hang time and shoot way in front (that one is less common tough).


Again not EVERY ship has the same hang time. It’s a value that is heavily dependent on the gun used. You might even encounter a situation where you have 2 gun options for a given ship, and that it is one of the factor that could influence your decision.

In the meantime, I urge every player to understand both higher angle of 40-45 and the lower 30-40. I will not go into advantage and disadvantage of either today, but I will say neither are better, but they do impact a lot on a ship playstyle.

What you need to be aware, is that a longer hang time does mean from the moment you fire, to the moment the shell hit the target, more time passed.

It requires you to correctly estimate the future target position, and movement more than a lesser hangtime gun does.

It requires you to know if you are running after someone, since the air travel

Very good guide, and ty for the info. Also way to give a shout out to the KM :D, im currently grinding in my o pro and its a pain, but i cant wait for the bigger KM BBs and finally some range. BBs BEWARE.

Bump.

Updated Battle Awareness part, did some formating with the limited option I have.

I'd quite like some opinions tough. As said criticism are most welcomed, so long as they are constructive.

Nice guide. Recced'. However, if you have the spare time, you should get some pics and illustrate. That would be perfect and offer a good example.

Either way, keep up the awesome work

i recently got the north carolina and have fail horribyl at it. i saw ur guid and read thru it and saw some very key elements that i have missed. thank u so much for it. ADA is the way to learn

Recced.Nice to give back to community!

Thanks for the guide, I just got BB1, and I find the guide at least very usefull on an Conceptual level, to know what to expect and what to work for from now on, addapt tactics.

There are many factors in this game, it is definitelly not an arcade shoot em up ..lol but that is what makes it fun too :)

Don't restorers put out fires and increase the maximum repair rate as well? You make it sound like they only give defence... Which I didn't know they did lol