The Tempest: a prize at the top of the ladder
The naval unlock ladder needed a summit — something to chase once you've earned the battleship. So meet the Tempest: a premium heavy cruiser with autoloading guns, modeled on the real USS Des Moines, whose autoloaders let her eight-inch rifles fire continuously instead of one deliberate salvo at a time.
What makes her special
Every other hull in the game reloads its main battery on a deliberate timer — three and a half seconds for the Bastion cruiser, a full eight for the Dreadnought's big rifles. The Tempest's autoloaders cut that to barely over a second. The alpha of each shell is smaller than a normal heavy cruiser's, but she throws them so fast that her sustained damage — and her rate of starting fires with HE — is the highest in the fleet. She's a damage-over-time machine: hold the trigger and walk a storm of shells onto a target until it's ablaze.
The trade is that she's a cruiser, not a battleship. Heavy-cruiser belt armor and a big, bright hull mean a battleship's AP will citadel her if she's caught broadside, and she carries no torpedoes — she's a pure gun line. She rewards captains who can keep the range open and the guns bearing, not brawlers.
A reward, not a regular
The Tempest sits at the top of the unlock ladder: forty ships sunk, well past the battleship. And she's premium in a specific sense — the bots never sail her. The enemy fleet stays the familiar destroyer / cruiser / battleship mix, so you'll only ever see a Tempest in another human captain's hands. Earn her, and the storm is yours.
How she plays
The Tempest is all about tempo. Where a Dreadnought captain fires, waits, and fires again, you never really stop — you pick a target, settle the guns, and pour it on. Fire is her signature: HE walked across a destroyer sets it ablaze faster than anything else afloat, and a burning ship is a ship that isn't shooting straight. Keep the range open, keep the turrets bearing, and let the storm do the work. Earn her, and it's yours.