Jinan is a gem of game design

Good against battleships specifically, while not being toxic against other classes, strong identity, and decent but not overpowered. I want more ships like this.

Starting with the armor, the plating is mostly very thin, as well as the citadel, making it vulnerable against other cruisers and destroyers more so than other cruisers, but it's also very prone to being overpenned by battleships, the 32mm plate screws over a lot of battleships but not most cruisers, and the decent maneuverability lets you dodge infrequent long range salvos, like from battleships

The guns are super cool, the bad shell arcs means it's actually not all that toxic against destroyers, also because it doesn't have consumables made to bully destroyers, and the low pen on the guns makes it kind of ineffective against most cruisers, but against slow moving battleships and their large superstructures, that's where they shine, especially with also having the highest fires per minute in the whole game (even better than jacksonville) which means yeah she can burn down battleships

The smokes are nice too, they let you safely farm battleships, and while countered by radar and torpedoes, the ship class least associated with those threats is battleships, and that's good to have something like that which battleships aren't always the best against

The torpedoes are really funny, you have a ton of them, they hit hard and are stealthy, and you get a reload booster for them, which makes them really good at flooding the sea with to get lots of floods which pairs well with the high fires per minute, as well as to butcher any battleship that has the audacity to push into you, and it's really neat that they're deepwaters so they don't just torpedo soup random destroyers which would be toxic, and most cruisers have hydro so it's not super toxic against cruisers either, so it really is mostly to fuck battleships and that's nice to have in the game

The boat does have a few problems, first being the vulnerability to SAP citadels which is a stupid mechanic, the citadel plate should be increased to 97mm from 95mm just so colombo can't citadel it, this changes almost no other interactions, but 115mm would be even better so it's also immune to affondatore and lauria but maybe that's asking too much

Also for some reason she's absolutely awful against subs, with no consumables to spot them or their torps, no plane asw, and for no reason at all, even the ship based asw has really low damage for no reason, that's kind of stupid i think she should get plane asw (if ultralight cruisers aren't allowed to have plane asw then neither should hawaii)

The biggest insult is that her DFAA was removed so now she's no longer a decent AA ship very sad so now CVs get to bully her which is kind of a problem for her playstyle, but at least she has good torps so the new consumable isn't completely useless