

For example, Roma has notoriously fast AP shells, with normal fuse timing. Yes, you can overpen a citadel and do reduced damage, if your shell is fast enough and your target flimsy enough. Only if your AP shell detonates inside the citadel. So hitting a citadel with AP always does increased damage? It takes a third of the hits - thus time - to kill a ship through citadel hits than it does through normal penetrations. That's why you should care about citadels. In short, a citadel hit does three times the damage of a normal penetrating hit and ten times the damage of an overpen. This is a normal pen.Ī shell that goes in one side of the ship, then into the citadel and detonates, does 100% damage. This is an overpen.Ī shell that goes in one side of the ship and then detonates does 33% damage. In short, magazines and citadels are two related but separate entities.Ī shell that goes in one side of the ship and flies out the other without detonating does 10% damage. Many ships keep their magazines inside their citadel, especially bigger ships at higher tiers, but a great many ships have their magazines outside the citadel and thus can be detonated without getting hit in the citadel.Īlso, magazines are much smaller than citadels, so even if a ship keeps its magazines in its citadel, hitting the citadel doesn't automatically mean a magazine hit. What about magazines? Is any magazine hit automatically a citadel hit, or vice versa? You can get hit in a barbette without getting citadeled. The citadel extends to include the barbettes lengthwise, but the barbettes project above the citadel and are not part of the citadel. Barbettes are the round, armored structures that house a turret's ammo hoists, machinery, etc. This is where all the vital machinery is kept that keeps the ship functioning.

As you can see, it stretches from #1 barbette all through the length of the ship to just aft of the #3 barbette. In short, a citadel is where a ship keeps its vital organs.
