St. Vincent

Tier X British battleship St. Vincent is the culmination of the gameplay developed over the line. She gains increased offensive capabilities with improvements to artillery and armor. With access to Engine Boost  and Specialized Repair Teams , St. Vincent is a formidable battleship.

Armament:

St. Vincent carries nine 457 mm guns housed in three twin turrets. These guns have a range of 20.5 km. Her AP shells have good alpha damage, and can overmatch up to 30 mm of armor, which is present on many cruisers in her matchmaking spread. Her AP shells have a shortened fuse time of 0.015 s, which is useful against cruisers. Her HE shells have a 63% fire chance, and 76mm of penetration.

St. Vincent’s guns are accurate, with good horizontal and vertical dispersion values. She uses the battlecruiser dispersion formula with a worse sigma value of 1.6. The guns have a good reload time of 26.4 seconds. Her turrets have a fast 180-degree turn time of 28.7 seconds.

St. Vincent carries two single-launch torpedo launchers on the sides of her hull, 1 per side. These torpedoes have a 45-second reload time, 10km range, and have a maximum damage of 29,367. The torpedoes are fixed, but have the torpedo turning mechanic. Immediately after launch, they will perform an S-turn to reach the selected heading, before arming and proceeding in a straight line. This allows her fixed launchers to fire at much wider angles, but the arming time and minimum arming distance are longer as a result. In addition, their traverse speed is half as fast as those of Rack-mounted launchers, which can cause issues at close range or during drive-bys.

Survivabillity:

St. Vincent’s hull is weakly armored, with her bow and stern covered with 25mm plating. This allows every ship with a gun caliber of 358mm or higher to overmatch it. Her deck armor is stronger, at 40mm, which will shatter most cruiser HE shells. St. Vincent’s citadel lies low on the waterline. While not impossible to be citadeled, St. Vincent can take risky turns without much threat of punishment.

St. Vincent gets access to the Specialized Repair Teams consumable found on the British battleship tech tree. It has a short action time of 20 seconds, heals 2% of the ship’s maximum HP per second, and heals 75% of non-citadel damage taken. As she only heals 10% of citadel damage (including damage dealt to her by torpedoes), it is vital to not take citadel hits and to avoid as many torpedoes as possible, in order to maximize the efficiency of her Repair party charges.

Her maximum concealment is good, at 13.1km. Her hull has an HP pool of 79,400, and a low 22.9% torpedo damage reduction. As a result, St. Vincent captains should play her at medium ranges.

Maneuverability:

St. Vincent is a fast battleship, with a top speed of 34.1 knots (with the Sierra Mike combat signal), that can further be increased with the Engine Boost consumable to 36.7 knots. Her rudder shift time of 13.6s is average, however her turning radius of 970m is quite poor. Due to her good speed, St. Vincent is a battleship that can change positions easily when needed.

St. Vincent’s Engine Boost consumable comes with 3 charges, provides an 8% increase to her top speed, lasts 120 seconds, and has a 120-second cooldown.

St. Vincent gets the same enhanced acceleration found on the RN destroyer and light cruiser lines, though consequently she cannot mount Propulsion Modification 1. This allows her to accelerate forward very quickly to high speeds, but as a result, cannot slow down quickly.

Anti-Aircraft:

St. Vincent’s AA DPS is relatively poor, with a very high mid-range AA DPS of 696.5. She has a low flak count of 5, and has access to the Defensive AA Fire consumable, which brings her mid-range DPS to 1044.8 . Her high mid-range DPS can shoot down planes, but cannot stop strikes entirely. Grouping with allied ships to overlap anti-aircraft auras is recommended in games with carriers.

St. Vincent only has 3 charges of Defensive AA Fire , and these should be used against torpedo bombers and AP dive bombers, as these armaments cause damage that cannot be fully healed.

Battle Performance:

St. Vincent is a mid-range battleship that likes to play on flanks and punish broadside enemies, much like the other tech tree British battlecruisers. Her good speed allows her to switch positions for better shots, and to react to the current battle situation. Her low concealment allows her to play closer to enemies, and provide crossfire on enemy battleships and cruisers. Because of her accurate guns and 30mm overmatch, players should mainly fire AP, while using HE on angled targets. Her torpedoes are best used for deterring suicide rushes, and when fighting targets at sub-10km.