The dominating mountain on the field, the battleship is the royalty of artillery firepower. I have spent a good deal of time instructing people to avoid firing on battleships until absolutely necessary, not because they aren’t valuable targets, but because they are difficult ones. Each battleship comprises a hefty percentage of a team’s firepower, and if one can be taken down with minimal effort then by all means proceed – however, their thick armor and big hit point reserve makes this a very challenging task. On top of this, their ability to repair damage sustained while in battle makes it very wasteful to abort an attack on one before it sinks.
As a battleship captain, your role is to dish out fire and act as the keystone around which your team’s maneuvers will pivot. Many inexperienced captains think their long range equates to a mandate that they sit back and snipe from range – this is a terrible mistake. Nose-on, a battleship can resist insane amounts of damage, and it is this ability to “tank” damage that your team needs desperately. By soaking up hits, you deprive the enemy of useful salvos that would otherwise go to weaker team members’ vessels, and in doing so you prolong the duration their guns can continue to fire. If you have the luxury of multiple battleships on your team, work out an arrangement where the lead ship can back down after taking 40% of its health in damage and escape the fight to repair this while another ship moves up to the tanking position. While healing your vessel can still fire at range, and hopefully you will be able to locate a reasonably safe position to fire from. If you are alone as a battleship, then your role is to maintain a mid-range profile, 13km-18km from the body of the enemy force, and provide a difficult target to hit while jinking and returning fire as best you’re able. If available, a DD might offer a smokescreen for you to park in and from which you can then launch salvos with relative safety.
It is also worthy of note that the open sea is your friend – sailing into an archipelago is hanging out a big invitation to every enemy DD and CA captain to pounce on you from around an island with a big bag of torpedoes, and it will end your game really rather quickly.
From a target decision perspective, you also will bend a few rules – as your reload is on the order of 30+ seconds, every shot you take is of consequence, and you can’t afford to waste them. That said, destroyers should probably only be your target if they are under 10km distance and you know you can hit them. Of course, that also means they are probably getting ready to launch, or already have launched, their torps at you.
Instead, your cruisers (or fighter planes) should be screening ahead of you at 2km-5km range, DDs ahead of them, and your primary targets should be enemy cruisers. Choose one for the fleet’s BBs, and every one of you hit it until it dies. Once all available cruisers are dealt with, start on the easiest-to-kill BB in sight, and repeat.
Early game, a battleship will spend most of its time approaching the chosen cap point and getting guns aligned. Some long-range bombardment will undoubtedly be needed, which might be aided by a spotter plane. You likely won’t be getting into brawling range at this stage, and the best description for what you’ll be doing here is “jockeying for position.”
Mid-game, you’ll begin to steadily advance against separated sections of the enemy fleet with cruisers in the lead, while keeping your captured points under the umbrella of your guns. By now your team has its target priorities set, and you’ll be working on mowing them down one after the other. Remember to always stay on the move, as a sneaky DD might be torping you from range or maneuvering for a suicide charge intended to take you out. As your secondary guns usually range 5km+ for lower-tier and 7km+ for upper-tier ships, don’t forget to use CTRL+Clicking on near targets to accelerate their demise.
End-game, if you are winning you’ll be keeping the cap point(s) secure and sailing around them – not pursuing enemy vessels into the nether reaches of the map. While you wait, if you see any enemy vessel exposing itself in an attempt to take your cap, then blow it a new set of doors.
If you are losing, you may be able to help other vessels in your fleet perform an assault – either by directly participating, or by drawing off enemy vessels in a vain pursuit. As I mentioned above, you shouldn’t go chasing someone off into a corner…but if you have some tunnel-visioned pursuers, you may very well be able to lead them away in a “kiting” maneuver away from the cap points. This may expose those caps to your friendlies, who can then take advantage and potentially turn the game around for you.
