Combat/Battle Opening

Battle Opening Breakdown

Battle Opening is one of the daytime combat intermediary phases, taking place immediately before the First shelling starts. In this phase, allied and enemy fleets launch attacks with the intent to disable or remove enemy targets before the combat proper starts. This grants either fleet substantial advantages by possibly disabling key ships on the opposing side.

Battle Opening has the following structure:

• Opening ASW Shelling (OASW)
• Opening Torpedo Salvo

In case neither fleets meet the requirements, the sub-phase will be skipped.

Opening ASW Shelling (OASW)

Commonly referred to as OASW (opening ASW). All eligible ships will perform a regular ASW Shelling attack, following range order in the same fashion as the First Shelling Phase. As these opening attacks happen before the Opening Torpedo Salvo, they may disable or even sink enemy submarines before they have a chance to attack.

OASW has the following trigger conditions:

• Only ships listed below can trigger an OASW,
  • The ship is not required to be able to perform any ASW Shelling.
• They must meet their specific ASW stat threshold and requirements, listed below,

OASW Ship	ASW Stat Required	Equipment Required
Any DD, CL, CLT, CT, AO	100+ ASW	1 Sonar Equipped
Kai Ni Juu		+ Bomber / / / Sonar + Any Seaplane Bomber, or Rotorcraft, or Liaison Aircraft, or Dive Bomber, with 1+ ASW
		+ Bomber / / Sonar + Seaplane Bomber, or Rotorcraft, or Depth Charge
Any CVL		+ / / / Sonar + Any with 1+ ASW
	50+ ASW	+ / / Sonar + Any with 7+ ASW
	65+ ASW	/ / Any with 7+ ASW
Any DE	60+ ASW	1 Sonar Equipped
	75+ ASW	Total of 4+ ASW from equipment
Kai Ni D Fletcher-class John C. Butler-class Kai/Mk.II J-class Kai	Can OASW innately
Kai Ni Go	N/A	/ / / Any with 1+ ASW
	N/A	2 Autogyros -or- 1 Helicopter

See the list of Anti-submarine Weaponry and ASW Aircraft to better see what can help achieve OASW on a given ship.

Abyssals

Abyssal ships do not follow these rules. The following may perform OASW unconditionally:

• Destroyer Ha-Class Late Model Elite
• Destroyer Ni-Class Late Model Elite
• Light Cruiser Tsu-Class Flagship
• Light Carrier Nu-Class (Elite III, Elite IV, all Kai Elite, all Kai Flagship)
• Ancient Destroyer Princess II
• Seaplane Tender Water Princess (all variants)
• Abyssal Kuriles Princess (all variants)
• Destroyer Forest Princess (Damaged variants unconfirmed)
• American Destroyer Princess (most variants)

Other abyssals cannot perform OASW.

Opening Torpedo Salvo

Commonly referred to as oTorp (opening torpedo). Eligible ships will fire an Opening Torpedo attack. This attack behaves similarly to the Closing Torpedo attack, with the difference that it will be launched regardless of the ship's damage state.

Opening Torpedo salvo has the following trigger conditions:

• The ship is a Submarine (SS/SSV), at Lv.10 or higher.
  • While other Abyssal ships are Lv.1, all Abyssal Submarines are Lv.50,
  • Abyssal submarines have an additional requirement of being Elite or Flagship tier.
• The ship is equipped with a Minisub Midget Submarine.
  • Midget Submarines are the Type A Kouhyouteki, Type C Kouhyouteki, and Type D Kouhyouteki Kai (Kouryuu Kai).
  • The Abyssal Cuttlefish Torpedo count as such for Abyssals, with other Abyssal equipment such as High-speed Abyssal Torpedo mod.2, despite being classified as Midget Submarine, do not enable oTorp.

This phase follows the same rules as Closing Torpedo Salvo, with some exceptions:

• Ships at Moderate or Heavy damage can still fire torpedoes.
• If only submarines are left in the opposing fleet, torpedoes will randomly target them, never dealing damage, and always being displayed as "miss".

After the Opening Torpedo Salvo, the Day Battle Shelling starts (if there are any remaining ships on either side left).

Atoll Nodes

Ka-Tsu Animation
Ka-Tsu:
Ka-Tsu Kai:

Uniquely on "Atoll Nodes", it is possible to deploy the Ka-Tsu tanks
to trigger a special Opening Torpedo Salvo.

• On those nodes, regular oTorp will not work,
• This can only be deployed by SS, SSV, and the AV Mikuma Kai Ni Toku, Nisshin A, and Mizuho Kai fast,
  • They must carry at least one Ka-Tsu tank,
• On the "atoll node", ships meeting those requirements will carry out a special opening torpedo attack,
• In night battle, those ships will additionally trigger the same attack as a cutin,
  • This attack overrides regular Night Cut-ins attacks (e.g. if a ship is setuped for a TCI, it will still trigger the Ka-Tsu attack).
• Using several Ka-Tsu tanks on a same ship will make it carry out several of those attacks in a row (day and night),
  • It capped at 2 attacks per ship at night.
  • This attack utilizes a new special animation, with the tank climbing the atoll's soil.