Citadel Hits (By Syanda)

Ever been oneshot by an enemy ship, or seen a massive chunk of your hitpoints suddenly disappear in a single salvo? You probably had your citadel zone wrecked. Here's a quick guide on how to do it back to other people.

<-Boring historical section->

Quick-and-dirty explanation: As naval designers started building larger ships to handle the bigger guns going out to see, they began to realize that they couldn't afford to fit armour everywhere. As such, the decision was made to only armour up the critical zones that were absolutely necessary for the ship's survival. Most, if not all of the armour was concentrated to form a "citadel" around a ship's engines and magazine spaces - so long as these citadel zones remained intact, a ship could still survive. Conversely, if these citadels were breached by gunfire, it would suffer critical damage.

If you'd like more information about warship protection, look up "all-or-nothing" armour and various articles on the sort.

<-/Boring historical section->

Locating the citadel

Now, where are the citadel zones on a ship? These are typically buried in the bowels of the ship and under the most amount of protection. Cruisers and Battleships are the ships who have citadel construction in place. Destroyers are virtually unarmoured everywhere, and don't really have a citadel to hit - any HE shot to their sides will knock out their engines

Note that different ships will have different locations for their citadels, but as a general rule, they're located under the ship's funnels and under their turrets.

Hitting the citadel

Striking the citadel zone requires penetration of the most protected part of the ship, and thus requires proper shell selection, good aiming, and a healthy amount of luck.

First things first - Both HE and AP shells are capable of getting Citadel Hits. However, hitting the citadels require penetrating a ship at the right place and angle. Therefore, you'll want to be using AP shells in order to get citadel hits.

As a general rule, in order to get citadel hits, your shells must land as close to the waterline on the target ship as possible, and impact under the funnels or the turrets. Therefore, match your aim marker to the same area where the target ship's hull meets the waterline. If you manage to hit the citadel, you'll see this pop up instead of the standard hit ribbon:

If you're in a battleship, you are capable of hitting other battleships' citadels with AP at all ranges, and cruiser citadels with AP at all ranges (or HE if they're lightly armoured enough). If you're in a cruiser, you are capable of hitting other cruisers' citadels with AP. It is possible, just unlikely, to manage to citadel a battleship as a cruiser - your guns may not have enough penetration to break through a battleship's side armour. If you're in a destroyer, don't bother trying to citadel a battleship - your AP shells will likely just bounce. It's possible, but very unlikely that you can manage to citadel a cruiser in a destroyer - it typically happens when you're firing at a very close range. However, note that when your torpedoes breach the citadel zones, it might be possible to deal extremely massive damage to your target and kill them in 1-2 torpedo hits. Note that it's possible to get citadel hits at very long range due to plunging fire. When shells are striking at near their maximum range, they fall almost vertically impact on a ship's deck instead of its sides. If AP shells land on a ships (usually more thinly armoured) deck, they may penetrate the citadel zones if they hit juuuuuust right. It's really difficult to actually actively seek these, but its always worth it to shell targets at long range in the hopes of getting it.