The Dreadnought joins the line
The naval theater shipped with two hulls — the nimble Tachi destroyer and the Bastion cruiser. A two-class roster is a duel, not a fleet. So here's the third corner of the triangle: the Dreadnought battleship, slow and ponderous, wrapped in armor that laughs at cruiser shells, with main guns that hit like the wrath of God and reload at their leisure.
Armor, not hit points
The battleship isn't just a cruiser with a bigger health bar. What makes her a battleship is her belt armor. The naval damage model already makes armor-piercing shells shatter on plate they can't crack — and the Dreadnought's belt is more than three times a cruiser's. Hammer her with cruiser AP and the shells splash off harmlessly. To hurt a battleship you have to change the way you fight: load HE to chip her down and start fires, or close in with a destroyer's torpedoes and flood her. That's the whole World-of-Warships rock-paper-scissors in one hull — and it falls out of the existing armor model, no new damage code required.
Her own guns sit at the other extreme: a slow-training, slow-loading main battery throwing shells that punch through anything and devastate a citadel. Show her your broadside and you'll regret it; the price of all that hitting power is a long wait between salvos, so a miss really costs.
Sailing a heavyweight
She handles like her tonnage. The engine telegraph spools up slowly and the rudder is glacial, so a Dreadnought captain has to think a long way ahead — you commit to a heading and live with it. And she keeps no secrets: her spotting range is enormous, so everyone sees her coming. A battleship is a statement, not an ambush. She has no torpedoes; her job is to anchor the line and trade citadels, while destroyers screen and scout ahead.
How it sits in the engine
The whole class is pure configuration — one more entry in the naval hull roster, with its armor, handling, and gun figures. No protocol change, no new server code: the warship stepper, the armor-and-fire damage model, the spotting cull, the lobby card, and the AI patrol all already work per-hull-type, so the Dreadnought slots straight in. The blocky model — broad hull, superfiring and after turrets, a pagoda bridge and twin funnels — is the only handwork. The AI fleets cycle one into each side, so you'll meet Dreadnoughts at sea on day one.
Pick your hull on the warship lobby and put to sea: scout in a destroyer, skirmish in a cruiser, or anchor the line in a battleship and dare them to come into range.