Mythbusting the metas of KanColle

Last updated: 13-10-2019

Countless times, I've seen people use setups which makes me raise my eyebrows. When I questioned them as to why they chose such setups, they replied to me with either that they thought this was the meta, it looks cool, or they simply felt that it performed better. The people who knows me will obviously predict my endless flaming and lecturing to what they're doing wrong.

This blog is a collection of my encounters with such occurrences, and it serves as a reminder to people that they should not be fooled by false meta or meme setups that have no scientific explanation backing them up as to why they are good. The subject will be listed here and I will offer you my insight on why it's either good or bad and what you could have done better instead.

Keep in mind that this blog serves to help you further optimize your fleet. If your plan was to create a meme fleet all along, then the majority of the comments here obviously don't apply to you. Template:Toclimit

Format

Each subject will go through several phases:

• The claim: An elaboration on a subject as to what it actually means.
• Investigation: An investigation will be carried out by me with the help of other people to find more information surrounding this, which in turn helps to provide us a conclusion and a verdict.
• Verdict: Based on the investigations, a certain score will be given depending on what I discovered during my investigation:
  • FALSE: Completely false or outdated/deprecated meta.
  • QUESTIONABLE: There's a merit of truth, but there's usually better alternatives or the cost is too high for what you get in return.
  • OK: Might actually be useful in some scenarios, it got a bad reputation because it was applied in a bad way or the original meta changed somehow to what it is now.
    • If the samples and evidence used are not strong enough to tie all loose ends, the verdict will be given an (INCONCLUSIVE) as well, to signify that this will be re-checked in the future if more info is obtained. This also means that the current verdict might not be final and that you should take the verdict with a grain of salt, until more research has been done.
• Reason: More information and explanation as to why this verdict has been given.

The List

Keep in mind that I only know what I know. While my investigations tries to eliminate as much subjectivity as possible, there are some cases where it is unrealistic to through all the possible cases just to draw a verdict. The amount of time I'm willing to research on a topic is not infinite, hence I try to draw a general consensus here by comparing the major points. In case I'm missing something in which you find it worthy to be added to the list or if you disagree with my conclusion, feel free to message me and I will hear you out/start an investigation.

Without further ado, enjoy!

The Skilled Lookouts equipment works like any other cut-in booster

The claim

Like Star Shell and Searchlight, the Skilled Lookouts will help boost the cut-in chances of the ship the same way the other equipment does.

Investigation

With the cut-in model now solved due to the breakthrough of having access to the vitacolle dump files, it is clear that the Skilled Lookouts does not give a luck bonus at all, but directly increases your cut-in chances similarly to how the other equipment works. The data of vitacolle has also been supplemented with actual tests from the browser version, further cementing the theory that it does adopt the same model.

The only downside is the fact that it only boosts the cut-in rate of the ship it is equipped on, unlike the other equipment which buffs the whole fleet. When used for torpedo cut-ins, the boost it gives is roughly 4.10% on top of your existing chances.

Verdict

OK

Reason

The myth in which the Skilled Lookouts would only provide a luck bonus is completely busted, its efficiency is the same whether the ship's luck is around 20s or the 50s. While it does not boost the whole fleet the same way as the other equipment does and is indeed inferior, the use of Skilled Lookouts is definitely not as useless as people initially thought.

Always put TCI ship on last slot

The claim

You should always put the ship who is performing the torpedo cut-in on the last slot of the fleet.

Investigation

This is actually a known recommendation by most veterans. The theory basically is that the weaker ships could either help clean up the escorts or help deal scratch damage against a high HP target. Since scratch damage deals proportional damage to a target's current HP, having a weak ship do scratch damage is usually advantageous.

After the escorts are cleaned up or if the boss is weakened enough, the ships loaded with torpedo cut-in setups are there to finish off the boss. In case there are still escorts alive, this setup still gives the last ship the best amount of chances to hit the boss.

While there is generally no problem with this, this strategy however, assumes that your TCI ship is indeed the strongest attacker. When you are using weaker ships like Hatsushimo and Ushio, you will obviously not do more damage than other stronger DDs with TCI setup as well, like Ayanami. There's also consideration of other ship classes which deals far more damage, even with a double attack, like Kitakami and Ooi.

Verdict

OK

Reason

The real reason as to why people recommend you to put TCI ships on the last slot, is because the ship with TCI is usually your strongest attacker. The reason is not because the ship is using TCI, its because the ship deals the most potential damage. With that said, even though I gave this an OK verdict, you still shouldn't mindlessly put all TCI ships to the end without first checking out what the damage potential is of your fleet. You should also definitely consider the possibility of flagshipping your TCI ship instead, which grants a bonus to your cut-in chances.

Abyssal ships can AACI

The claim

Abyssal ships can perform AACI.

Investigation

This rumor actually became rather popular, after bombers sent against Kitanda or the enemy Tsu class mysteriously all drop like flies, as if they all had been shot down from an AACI. After the string of updates that happened before the Fall 2017 Event, this is now officially confirmed.

That's right. This topic initially started as a rumor which was quickly dismissed as a meme due to people constantly claiming without evidence and the actual evidence actually disproving their claims. However, this was changed somewhere before Fall 2017 Event when noratako discovered hints of AACI in 6-4 in his tests. The fact that abyssals can now AACI is further cemented after my personal tests confirming Kitanda of causing irregular shot-downs which should not be possible without AACI.

Verdict

OK

Reason

While there were no scenarios back then in which shows that abyssals could AACI, there is now. Keep in mind that the abyssals have to follow the same rules as we do when it comes equipment requirements for an AACI to trigger, so it's not like all Tsu-classes are suddenly capable of AACI.

Use TCI on Kitakami and Ooi

The claim

As using torpedo equipment on CLT benefits their daytime opening torpedo as well, they should always be using torpedo cut-in setups. After all, Kitakami has above average base luck and TCI deals huge amount of damages.

Investigation

The people claiming this aren't exactly wrong, but they did not consider the other factors that influences the way how damage works. To tackle this, you first need to know how damage calculation works.

During day, all your attacks are softcapped to 150, while shelling is capped to 180. In case your damage output goes over it, the remainder past the cap will get square rooted. There's generally no reason to go over the day cap, especially if its torpedo stats, since everything past it will come with heavily diminished returns.

One of the reasons people recommend using TCI on them, is because they claim that the torpedo equipment apparently also benefits the opening torpedo. Well, let's check it out.

Day Shelling

Both Kitakami and Ooi have 63 + 139 . Since the Minisub is a mandatory equipment on CLTs in almost all cases, you can add the 12 stats on top of the 139 and that value becomes 151, which is already above the day cap. Assume the Minisub/Quint/Quint setup if people insist on using TCIs anyway with this idea, that's 139 + 12 + 12 + 12 = 175. The remainder 25 that went over the softcap gets square rooted which makes the final number 155.

Considering how adding 2x Quint torpedoes only raised the damage by 4, it's obviously a blatant ripoff if you could optimize your setup in a better way. Instead, using 2x 20.3cm(3) raises your shelling power by 20 just fine, so that the torpedoes benefit your day shelling is obviously nonsense, if the guns do a better job in it. One might argue though that this helps improve your damage in case you roll a head-on or Red-T engagement, but consider either only happens 40% of the cases while it is pretty much useless on Parallel and Green-T, that is not a good reason to justify your use of TCI. There's also the reason that there is still room for improvements on shelling , which improves the ship in all engagement modifiers.

Night Battle

Night battle damage is basically + combined, which is further amplified by special attacks. Unlike artillery spotting, night special attacks are not post-cap, so it will be nerfed by the 300 damage cap during night. The DA gives you 2 attacks with a multiplier of 1.2x, while a TCI gives you 2 attacks with a multiplier of 1.5x. While the TCI looks like it is one strong attack, it is in reality 2 separate attacks that is shown as one.

Both Kitakami and Ooi have 63 + 139 = 202 night battle firepower.
Assume that Kitakami has a Minisub/20.3cm(3)/20.3cm(3) setup. This pushes her night battle firepower to 202 + 12 + 10 + 10 = 234.
Multiply it with the DA multiplier of 1.2 x 234 = 280.8

Now lets check the TCI setup, in which we assume the Minisub/Quint/Quint setup. The night battle firepower is 202 + 12 + 12 + 12 = 238.
Multiply it with the TCI multiplier of 1.5 x 238 = 357.
Since the total goes over the 300, the remainder gets square rooted, the final number being 307.5.

Luck factor

Now you must think be thinking: "There's a clear difference of 27 damage, obviously the TCI is better, right? and you wouldn't be wrong if that's the only thing. The difference between DA and TCI is that DA has a 99% chance to trigger, while TCI is completely luck based. Assuming Kitakami has a base luck of 30 and she's level 50, we see that her chance of triggering TCI is 40.98% So assuming a base Kitakami who is not luckmodded, is not the flagship and none of the things like Star Shell or Searchlight goes off, you only have 40.98% to successfully fire a TCI.
Now all of a sudden, the DA setup looks a lot more attractive then a RNG based attack which has 59% chance to fail. If Kitakami with 30 already has such low chance, I probably don't need to tell you how worse it is for Ooi who only has 13 .

Then you might be thinking about just luckmodding them both, so that they could TCI properly right? If we assume that you even have that many Maruyus or Kaiboukans, the problem with luckmodding Kitakami and Ooi is that they do not benefit as much in comparison to the other combat ships like DDs and CLs. Both Kitakami and Ooi are already capable of dishing out high amount of damages through DA, and allowing them to TCI only increases their damage up by 27, while if you luckmod Yuudachi instead, the difference in power between her DA and TCI is nearly 100 damage! That's a lot.

Alternative scenario: Moderately damaged state

Ships in 中破 state suffers a 30% firepower penalty, but in turn, gains an increase in CI chances. Being in 中破 is obviously kind of bad, but can the risk of being in 中破 justify the use of TCI? Lets find out.
This is the damage potential in a healthy state:

• Assuming 2x 20.3cm(3).
  • Day shelling damage is 83
  • Day torpedo damage is 151
  • DA damage is 280.8 during night.
• Assuming 2x Quint.
  • Day shelling damage is 63
  • Day torpedo damage is 175 = 155
  • TCI damage is 307 during night.

This is the damage in 中破 state:

• Assuming 2x 20.3cm(3).
  • Day shelling damage is 83 = 58
  • Day torpedo damage is 151 = 105
  • DA damage is 280.8 = 196 during night.
• Assuming 2x Quint.
  • Day shelling damage is 63 = 44
  • Day torpedo damage is 175 = 122
  • TCI damage is 357 = 249 during night.
  • 55.73% trigger rate.

In case of a 中破, we're looking at a rough ~50 damage difference. Needless to say, this can indeed make a difference between a clear or a miserably memory where the boss is left with 1 hp. Keep the following in mind though:

• You are making the assumption your CLT will be 中破 when it turns night. If it turns out your CLT remains healthy, you will most likely wish you still had a 99% trigger rate attack setup instead of a cut-in.
• Luckmodding is a necessity to make this a viable option.
• The cut-in still has a pretty decent chance to fail.

TL;DR

Using torpedoes and thus, a TCI setup on Kitakami and Ooi will barely improve on your existing damage potential, whether it be day or night. Considering that you basically already hit day cap with only a minisub, you cannot justify with that reason that using a TCI setup is better than the DA setup. A healthy DA attack deals 280 damage, and this gap to the night cap gets closer as you keep improving the guns.

On the other hand, the use of TCI on either Kitakami/Ooi does have the possibility to improve your situation if they somehow end up in a 中破 state and you do need that extra damage over reliability. The costs though, is that you will be using Maruyus/Kaiboukans in preventive measures instead of improving other combat ships to effectively become boss killers themselves.

Why do you keep mentioning Kitakami or Ooi specifically?

The reason is simple, it's because this specific topic targets only Kitakami or Ooi, due to their abnormal high base stats. Aside from Kitakami or Ooi, we have Kiso, who is also a CLT, and Abukuma, who is actually classified as a CL, but functions exactly the same as a CLT.

A quick glance here shows us that Kiso and Abukuma have nowhere near the amount of stats as either Kitakami or Ooi. The whole basis of the argument is that using TCI also helps improve the torpedo during the other phases. The reason why it didn't work out for Kitakami and Ooi is that they already have an abnormal base stats of 139 + 12, including the minisub. Since both Kiso and Abukuma are nowhere near Kitakami when it comes to raw stats, all of the above reasoning do not apply to them either.

Verdict

QUESTIONABLE

Reason

With that said, nobody is stopping you from luckmodding Kitakami and Ooi anyway. I've only given you the best optimization advice, who am I to stop you from letting you play however you want? While that doesn't mean I'm telling you not to ever luckmod them, you should consider your priorities and luckmod those who benefits the most from being able to TCI. Luckmodding a ship takes a lot of investment, choose carefully on who to spend your Maruyus on.

Flagship can always perform AA, even without stats

The claim

The flagship of a fleet can always perform AA attacks and shoot down planes, even if they have 0 stats.

Investigation

The origins of this myth actually came from multiple locations, but the most recurring ones are people complaining how the enemy subs could still shoot down their planes on a CVL in 1-5 and how a full sub fleet could shoot down enemy planes. After all, since the subs have 0 stats, its impossible to explain how the planes gets shot down, unless the flagship by chance always performs AA attacks, right?

This is basically another case of people failing to understand the Aerial Combat mechanics, which caused the rumor to appear among the community. To understand the process, you need to understand how the planes gets shot down in each phase. For that, we will only look at the 1st phase of Aerial Combat, since its the most relevant to our topic.

1st Phase

All Fighters/Bombers participate in this phase to establish the air control, which can either be AI/AD/AP/AS/AS+. Since you would either have a sub fleet, or you would be fighting against subs, we will assume AS+ in all scenarios for the party with aircraft. Also, during the 1st phase, all planes are immune to fire. One might wonder then how in the world the plane gets shot down during the 1st phase.

Well, if you check out this table, you will notice that even in the best possible air control, you face a proportional shot down of 7/256～15/256 that is actually caused by the air control itself. That's right, whether there is an opposing fleet or not is irrelevant, your plane will magically get shot down out of nowhere by a game mechanic that decides the air status.

This basically means that even if you face an opposing fleet who has no stats, any plane slot count that is 18 or higher is still at risk of being shot down. Of course on AS+, the loss is at most 1 or 2 planes, but it gets progressively worse on worse air states. This is also another reason why you're recommended to achieve the highest possible air state you can manage, to lessen the amount of planes lost from a proportional shot down out of nowhere.

Is there a way to prevent that from happening in 1-5?

Of course there is. Since submarines have no stats, it means that none of your planes are at risk of being wiped out from a fixed shot down fire during the 2nd phase. You also have to understand that a plane slot size is not a relevant factor as to how much damage you deal against a submarine. Only stats apply, and that is not scaled by a plane slot size.

1 or 2 plane loss is really small though, but if you insist on wanting to save , avoid using bombers on plane slots of 18 or higher in the future and instead, use either a plane that cannot be shot down like the Saiun or replace it with a non-plane equipment.

2nd Phase

So we now know what happens during the first phase, but why does it happen during the 2nd phase as well? This is caused by a luxury we all have dubbed as the kanmusu bonus, something which only the player's fleet will enjoy.

The kanmusu bonus is a fail-safe mechanic which guarantees that your fleet will always shoot down at least 1 enemy bomber per slot, in case an AACI does not activate. The kanmusu bonus functions similarly like an AACI and will always occur, unless your fleet triggered an AACI instead.

Verdict

FALSE

Reason

Well, I've mentioned it before and I honestly don't blame anyone for not understanding how the Aerial Combat works, but you can see how easy it is for false rumors to appear when this is not fully understood by people.

AP shells effect applies even when in a support expedition

The claim

grants a damage bonus, even if the AP Shell is equipped on a ship in the support expedition.

Investigation

This rumor started to appear around the time when the received a buff, which allows it to grant a post-cap damage multiplier bonus against certain enemies, when equipped on battleships. Of course as this works during sorties, people were also speculating that it might also work on support expeditions.

The tests actually has been carried out long ago to verify whether this even works or not, this one being an example not long ago, and this one even dates back to 2015.
Regarding support expeditions, the following is known:

• Artillery Spotting does not work.
• Overweight and fit mechanics does not apply.
• Improvements do not work.
• Aircraft Proficiency does not work.
• AP Shell modifiers does not work.
• Installation modifiers does not work. (Just in case someone stupidly tells people to use Type 3 Shell in your support fleet.)

Literally almost everything that does work in regular sorties will not work when used in support expeditions, which includes AP shell modifiers.

Verdict

FALSE

Reason

AP shell modifiers do not work in support expeditions at all, except of the base stats it gives. It's almost as if people accepted this rumor as truth, even though it was never confirmed at all whether it works or not. The myth was already busted around 2015 or probably even earlier, and it is rather ironic that some people are still advising others to use AP shells on support expeditions to this day anyway.

The Vanguard formation is useful against aerial nodes

The claim

Instead of picking the Diamond formation in aerial nodes, using Vanguard is also an option due to the post-cap evasion it gives.

Investigation

As is known to people, the vanguard is an event-exclusive formation that behaves a little differently than the traditional formations. Due to the way it gives post-cap evasion, this formation is a popular choice for nodes where you might not have the necessary firepower and survival is prioritized. Considering that you can't even shoot back in aerial nodes, using Vanguard naturally comes as an attractive option to some people.

I have personally done some analysis on the use of Vanguard around 2018 and I came to the following conclusion:

• The AA modifier of Vanguard is 110%, which is inferior to the Diamond's modifier of 160%.
• No evasion bonus is observed. None at all.
• However, the aggro effect is still applied.

The idea of using Vanguard on air nodes for the evasion bonus is thus out of the water. With that said however, we might see usage of the Vanguard on air nodes for a completely different reason instead, one that we all might not have expected.

Verdict

QUESTIONABLE

Reason

As the post-cap evasion doesn't get applied, there stands little reason to use Vanguard on aerial nodes. However, there exists unorthodox strategies in which people put the heaviest ships or ships equipped with RosaK2 in the aggro slots, to draw all the potential fire from airstrikes. This naturally comes with high development costs in RosaK2s and the obvious problem is that not every situation allows you to put ships capable of barraging or tanky ships in the aggro slots. There's also the important question whether this unorthodox strategy is actually even better than just sticking with Diamond, since your AA modifier is also lower in Vanguard.

You are free to experiment with this strategy under your own discretion, but you really can't go wrong by just sticking with the Diamond formation.