'Item-up' Your Battleship

As the title suggest you have a maximum of 6 item slots on every ship you own and once you unlock them, you may feel obliged to purchase items continually to improve how your ship plays.

Each ship you will want to equip with slightly different items to boost a key advantage that ship has over others. For a battleship you obviously won't be loading up on torpedo items. However if you are looking for a well balanced ship then check out the first setup.

For all ships you will always want the boiler upgrade. For light and heavy cruisers you will be better served by reload rather than accuracy items.

Armour is best kept for battleships and CA's

Balanced Battleship Setup

It is my firm belief that you should always have the boiler item on your battleship. This can have the effect of increasing your speed and off-setting the speed reduction of all the other items you equip.

Bear in mind that if you are a non-premium player. The boiler item will only afford you +5% speed. Which means if you equip five other items that do -2% to speed you will always be running at -5% speed when using all six item slots.

For non-premium players a good balance setup is:

1x boiler   +5% speed

1x repair   +50dp/s

2x acc/reload items

The logic here is that overall you will have only lost -1% speed for gaining repair and accuracy or reload ability.

Alternatives are to forego the repair, reload/accuracy for armour or a mixture of any of them. But to only have 3 other items used beyond the boiler so that you loss of speed is fractional.

If you are not too bothered about losing some speed or having more repair, then go for any mixture of armour and weapon enhancements you desire.

For premium players the premium items are much more helpful. They are effectively twice as good for their advantages and half as bad in the downsides when compared to the non-premium equivalents.

The boiler item is a must and grants your ship a healthy +10% speed bonus. Couple with the fact that all other premium items affect your ship speed by -1% each you will always be up by +5% speed with a full compliment of 6 premium items.

Armoured Setups (AW BB/CA)

The logic here is to focus on armouring up your ship with 5 armour slots + the standard boiler upgrade.

For non-premium players you can have the boiler upgrade + 2  armour stacks before you lose any speed. If you don't mind losing a knot or two then you can go for filling the other 5 stacks with armour.

Bear in mind that all tier V armour stacks except bulkhead (never use bulkhead anyway) reduce ship speed by 1.8% each 

For premium users you will use the boiler upgrade for +10%, but will lose 9% of that speed if you then load up the rest of your 5 item slots with armour stacks. Which is a pretty good balance.

Speed Setups

For a speed focused setup you will only be using the boiler enhancement item to gain the +5% or +10% speed advantage.

Speed setups are great for all ships. They can really assist already quick ships ( destroyers and light cruisers), or speed up inherently slower ships (like ss, carriers and battleships [particularly the fast tier XI ones])

Plus they are also a cheap alternative, because you will only be spending credit or gold on 1 item per purchase instead of 6.

Armour only setups

If you want to have 6 stacks of armour on your ship then this setup is just for you. Actually this can be an effective setup for the majority of matchmaking games because most engagements take place at mid and close range. And most players are in the frame of mind to close down on you.

Try this setup in a tier 5-8 BB and you will have bunches of fun especially with the higher dps using secondary guns.

However, players will quickly learn that their shells are not doing much damage to you and switch to Armour Piercing. You will be extremely slow. Bear this in mind if the map is very open. Also you may be susceptible to torpedo attacks from subs or dive bombers, there will always be some weakness you have.

If you intend on getting very close to the enemy team a good strategy is to have more belt armour. maybe 4 stacks of belt with 2 stacks of bulge to counter destroyers and submarines. Again you are exposed to high angle shells and dive bombers.

Or you could go for an all round 2/2/2 bulge belt deck setup. The better options seem to be focus on what range you are going to engage. If its med-long range take deck armour and some bulge,  if its low-angle range, then more belt and bulge.

Store and Items

There are several types of items that can be purchased in game in the store. Some of the items alter your ship abilities while others can increase your credit and experience earnings.

Current items include: officers, premium officers, aides, premium aides, armour and ship enhancements, planes, camouflage skins etc....

While standard items can be bought with credits, premium items can be bought with gold, which costs real money.

Officers

Officers are the bread and butter of your crew. Only with a full officer crew can your ship perform correctly, to it's full potential.

Every officer starts at level 1 and can go up to the maximum level of 100. At every level your officer is granted a point to spend on a specialisation. These points increase the way your officer 'performs' ship duties. Basically the more points you spend in one area, the greater it will perform.

Premium officers have a higher percentage ability rating and start with 30 specialization points for you to spend.

An additional, and more complicated, mechanism behind officers' ability beyond the points earned per level, is Morale. Morale is represented by a meter that changes based on wins and losses. Initially this starts at 100% with the maximum at 120%. This can later be extended to 200%

To unlock the full morale beyond 120% right up to 200%, you need to purchase morale items. This can be the most tricky, and expensive aspect of navy field 2.

Aides

Aides are an additional type of officer that increase your credit and experience intake. The non-premium aides cost credits, last for 2 days, and increase credit or exp earned by 5%. Premium aides do the same but increase credits or exp by 15%, depending on which one you select.

Item Info

Items can be added to your ship to improve different aspects of how your ship will function in battle. Quicker repairing, quicker speed, better armour, faster reloading, Items incur a bonus but are offset with with a slight speed penalty.

Each ship starts with one item slot. You can buy 5 more item slots with credits. Each new slot is slightly more expensive than the last. Each ship has a maximum number of 6 item slots in total.

 In addition, a separate camouflage slot is available to make your ship look awesome. Camouflage items are only cosmetic and do not incur any advantage or disadvantage when equipped.

While most items can only have only one of them equipped onboard at any one time.

You can add Multiple types of the same item can be added onto a ship. IE: armour items at once.

Some items are limited to one per ship. Weapons, boiler and repair items all have this limitation. You can only have one of each type on board your ship, never two or more of the same.

Armour items have varying degrees of enhancement. For instance, a tier V armour stack will provide greater defence than a tier II armour stack. Note that armour increases ship weight and decreases ship speed.

Cost

Items are relatively expensive early on in the game when you have less credits. With the shelf life of items for their cost you will want to be getting enough out of those items for the price you've put in. Especially for armour which is probably the most popularly used items right now.

Weapon items cost 1620, basic repair crew costs 2430 and the boiler enhancement cost 2020, all in game credits.

For non-premium users the credit prices are pretty good if you want to get a slight increase for general matchmaking games. However it is advised that when harbour assaults or serious matches come along using fleets, you will want to be loading up on premium items. For a more detailed look at the different item combinations look here.

Shelf Life

All items have a shelf life. Some items last for 7 days. The time begins when you equip the item on a ship. Think before you equip it, are you going to get the full use out of it over those seven days.

This is even more important for aides, which only last for 2 days.

Avoid testing out theories before knowing enough information. Items are relatively expensive early on in the game. Read up about the best items for your ship before buying them.

Remember you can only have one of any item on board at once. Only armour items can be duplicated onbaord.