Encounter and Cerberus are both great ships. They have a fun play style where you can into bad situations all of a sudden, but the guns can often get you out of it. They wreck destroyers, cruisers and bbs.
Yeh the Italians at least have that option so they can somewht spot for themselves that's a little bit of a problem at times with smoke cruisers in general
You almost got deleted twice....first you beach broadside to Slava, just barely make it in time, then you broadside again against concealed Ohio. Not saying you did bad, good game, but sooo lucky....