6 lat temu
The ship WG will introduce as the Roma, will be "Roma" in name only, mainly owing to the gun specs; she has the worst main battery range at tier VIII (inferior to some Tier V ships, in fact), yet, in reality, her guns had the longest range of any naval rifle ever floated on a battleship - roughly 4km more than Yamato, for example. The Littorio class was meant to be fought as long-range sniping ships, equipped with guns that the Italians knew would be capable of defeating British or French armor at extreme range. The Italians didn't care about a 45-second reload time1, because they knew that at extreme range, the M1934 was easily accurate enough to hit something as large and cumbersome as a BB2, and had more than enough punching power to possibly deliver a one-shot kill on almost anything that floated, at extreme ranges3.
Also, the possible retorts of "game balance" or historical accuracy are particularly questionable, as on one hand, WG chooses to reflect the "...historical accuracy..." of Roma's AAA limitations, but on the other, it chooses to ignore the historical accuracy of her firepower. How does such a selective application, or rejection, of historical data contribute to either "balance", or accuracy in the game? To keep Roma's weakness in the name of "accuracy", yet deny her her greatest strength, and actually, raison d'etre, is a practice I personally don't understand. If one decides to cite the truth as their defense for pointing out a weakness, one should do the same with a strength. If WG wanted to serve both balance and accuracy, it should have left Roma's ROF at 45 second reload, leave her shooting range second to none, and keep her hitting power at its relative historical level. Buffing ROF by 15 seconds in no way made up for the loss of range, and hitting power, compared to what the real guns had. By so modelling the Roma, WG has defeated the historical philosophy of the ship they are trying to introduce; a ship that sacrificed rate of fire for guaranteed heavy armor penetration at extreme range, and that had the excellent accuracy necessary to put the shells on target, to score the one-shot kills that such guns made possible.
I do not believe that "Roma" can be so named with the gunnery limitations that WG's offering has; this ship is an unremarkable T-VIII ship, as it is4. Give the guns a credible buff to reflect reality, and it might be closer to the truth.