Halland

Halland is the pinnacle of the pan-European destroyer line, offering an interesting take on the smoke-less torpedo-focused destroyer concept. It has all of the good characteristics of its lower tier predecessors, while also addressing several annoyances that essentially all the lower tier ships suffer from.

One of the main weaknesses about the pan-European destroyer line is that the torpedoes do very little damage, even though it's a torpedo-focused line. Halland is no different in this regard, but unlike most of the other ships in the line that also have few torpedo tubes for their respective tiers, the Halland finally gets ten torpedo tubes, which is on par with most other DD's. Additionally, it is the only ship in the entire pan-European destroyer line that has a reasonably fast turret traverse for a destroyer, which makes it much more comfortable to play.

As far as playstyle goes, Halland is not much different from the lower tier ships in the line - it's definitely a torpedo-focused ship. Still, the guns are actually very good - they put out a lot of damage with both HE and AP, and the HE has a relatively high chance of starting fires - but the extremely limited range makes them hard to use offensively, so they're mostly useful in defending the ship against other destroyers. As on the other ships in this line, the short gun range can sometimes be an advantage though, since it makes it very easy to get unspotted after an engagement, and it also makes it possible to use line-of-sight blockers such as smoke screens and islands in a rather unique way - it's easy to position in a way that puts enemy ships with line-of-sight out of range and thus unable to spot.

Compared to other torpedo boats, Halland stands out as trading some damage potential for more consistent performance. The torpedoes do little damage, but their exceptional speed and narrow spread makes it easier to consistently land hits. Halland is also less sensitive to the most common things that tend to get torpedo-focused destroyers sunk - gunboat destroyers, radar, and aircraft carriers - which further helps the consistent performance. Getting chased down by a gunboat destroyer is less threatening to Halland than to many other torpedo-focused destroyers, since the strong main battery and the Repair Party  make it very capable of holding its own in a fight against most other destroyers. Halland is also better equipped to deal with aircraft carriers than any other destroyer. Its anti-aircraft defenses are extremely strong, especially so when Defensive AA Fire  is used, making it very safe to play away from the team with aircraft carriers in the match. Finally, the exceptionally fast and long-ranged torpedoes offer the possibility to be effective from outside of radar range (although of course the torpedoes are easier to hit the closer one gets, as in any ship), which makes it less sensitive to the presence of radar-equipped ship.