KanColle Ship Guide

Destroyers:  The smallest ships in the game, you'll start out with these and keep playing with them for as long as you play KanColle.  They're tiny and fragile, and can't equip heavy weapons, recon planes,  or most radar.  But they're also highly mobile, cheap to operate, and can do far more damage than you think in night battles.  They're also one of the few classes in the game that can hit submarines, and there's a mission in the mid-game that requires a fleet of nothing but destroyers, which is often a stumbling block for admirals who put all their energy into raising fleet carriers and battleships.  You will need six destroyers at around level 30 to progress past stage 3-2.  If you find one you like, start raising it now!

• PRO: Cheap to operate.  The cheapest units in the game, after submarines.  In a game where resources are everything, this is a huge advantage.   
• PRO: Fast and agile. They're harder to hit than a battleship or a cruiser.
• PRO: Can hit submarines.  This is a huge advantage, because once submarines start showing up they're a giant nuisance.  Most of the more powerful ships can't even attack them, so you'll just have to sit and watch as they fire torpedo after torpedo at you.  If you don't have an adequately leveled destroyer or light cruiser when these guys start popping up, you'll regret it. 
• PRO:  Destroyers get a bonus at night, according to the official twitter.  The exact nature of this bonus is unknown, but it's thought to be to dodge, critical hit rate, and accuracy. 
• CON: Fragile. Outside of submarines, which have the advantage of being mostly untargetable, they have the lowest HP of any class in the game.  One unlucky hit can severely damage them.
• CON: Don't do much damage.  They can make up for this in night battles, to a degree, but they won't be your heavy damagers.

Destroyers to Watch Out For:  Shimakaze and Yukikaze are generally considered to be the strongest destroyers.  Yuudachi and Shigure, and to a lesser extent Ayanami are probably more powerful when fully upgraded, but that takes a long time (They have to reach level 55, level 60, and level 70 respectively.)  The Mutsuki series (Anything with "tsuki" in the name) is also ideal for expeditions, as they're extremely efficient.  Their stats kind of suck though, so don't bother leveling them unless you've taken a particular liking to one.

Light Cruiser:  Larger than destroyers, but smaller than everything else.  They can equip slightly better weapons, but are still fuel efficient.  They can take out and dish a bit more damage, and they can also attack submarines.  There aren't honestly a tremendous number of situations where you absolutely have to have one of these in your fleet, but if they can get the job done without requiring the use of a larger ship, they're excellent to have.  Some of them are also worth raising because they're highly specialized, and bring special equipment or upgrade to special classes.  Check the list below to see which ones are especially important.  

• PRO: Balanced.  They can do some damage, and they're not as fragile as destroyers, and not as expensive as heavy cruisers.  If you can get through a level by using them, you definitely should.  Remember: resources are everything in this game, so you should always be trying to use the most fuel-efficient fleet you can.
• PRO: Good at submarine hunting.  If you outfit them with the right equipment they can utterly annihilate a submarine in a single shot.  Yuubari in particular will absolutely murder a submarine, which is why she's so highly prized.  
• CON: Jack of all trades, masters of none (Except submarine hunting, which destroyers can do as well).  In more difficult stages they simply can't scratch powerful opponents like battleships..   

Light Cruisers to Watch Out For:  Kitakami and Ooi will upgrade into torpedo cruisers, which are devastatingly powerful, extremely cheap to operate, and quite possibly the best all-around ships in the game.  If you get one of them, put a heart lock on it immediately and start leveling it.  Kiso can also upgrade intwo a torpedo cruiser, but you'll have to take her to level 65 and she does slightly less damage.  See below for more details on torpedo cruisers.  Jintsuu and Sendai bring powerful equipment for night battles when you remodel them twice. It's worth the time it takes to level them.  Yuubari can equip 4 anti-submarine weapons like depth charges and sonars, which makes her the best ship in the game for attacking them.  

Heavy Cruiser: The workhorses of your fleet.  One step down from the big battleships, they can still pack a serious wallop.  They can use recon planes for artillery spotting, which gives a big damage bonus.  They've got the HP and armor to take hits from the bigger ships.  They have both torpedoes and guns, which means they'll have plenty of chances to attack . And if you can keep them around until a night battle, they'll do a ton of damage.  More efficient than battleships, less efficient than light cruisers.  They tend to not get a lot of attention, which is a shame.

• PRO: The queens of night battles.  If they enter a night battle at full health, nobody will leave standing. 
• PRO: Powerful and sturdy, they can face most foes down.  
• PRO: They can do artillery spotting, which gives a sizable damage bonus.
• CON: Not as powerful as a battleship, but still costs a lot of resources to operate.  (They generally cost about 1/2 as much to run as a battleship.)

Heavy Cruisers to Watch Out For:  Haguro and Maya both have excellent stats.  Haguro brings extremely rare and powerful equipment on her second upgrade.  Tone and Chikuma are also very strong, and upgrade into powerful aviation cruisers at level 75.  Takao and Atago may not have the absolute best stats for their class, but are very powerful, easy to find, and can be remodeled early. 

Battleships: Your big guns.  Massive ships bristling with weaponry, extremely rare and extremely powerful.  They can equip guns whose barrels are almost half a meter wide, and they've got the thickest armor in the game.  Just having one in your fleet allows every ship to fire their guns twice, which can almost double your damage.  Their resource costs are horrendous, however, and if you try to haul around a fleet filled with nothing but battleships you'll run out of resources fast.  And if one of them gets damaged, you'd better hope you're well supplied with buckets and plenty of steel, because otherwise they'll be sitting in the dock for a long, long time.  

• PRO:  These girls can do more damage than most any ship in the game.  They're heavily armored.  When you absolutely need something blown up, and it has to go down right now, the battleships are your go-to girls.  
• PRO: Having a single battleship in your fleet allows your ships to fire twice during the shelling phase.  As you can imagine, this is very, very useful.  It can potentially double your damage output.  
• CON: They're pricey.  Oh, are they pricey.  A typical battleship will cost around twice to three times as much in fuel in ammo as a heavy cruiser.  A fully upgraded Yamato will cost something like 5 times as much.  And the repair costs and times are even worse.
• CON: They don't carry torpedoes.  This means they won't attack during the torpedo phase, and they won't be quite as useful at night.  If anything survives its onslaught until night, that is...

Battleships to Watch Out For: All of them.  No, seriously.  You're going to want every battleship you can get your hands on.  Fusou and Yamashiro are the first you'll get your hands on, probably, and though they're outmatched by the other ships you'll get later, they'll see you through the early stages.    The four fast battleship sisters, Kongou, Kirishima, Haruna, and Hiei, are powerful and fun.  And the rarer ships like Mutsu, Nagato, and Yamato are even stronger.  

Carriers:  Carriers operate by slightly different rules than the rest of the ships.  They launch planes, each type of which has a different effect.  There are scouts, fighters, torpedo bombers, and dive bombers.  The rules for these are rather involved, and I'll cover them elsewhere, but for now know that some form of air power is more or less essential.  Carriers are big and heavily armored, and hold tons of planes.  But they're almost as pricey to run as battleships, and if their planes get shot down, you'll need to pay bauxite to replenish them.  Bauxite is a hard-to-get resource; it regenerates at one third the rate of the other resources and is hard to get via expeditions. And since carriers have so many planes, they can chew through it at a terrifying rate.  

• PRO: Some form of air power is almost a necessity in many levels of the game, and carriers have a ton of it.  
• PRO: Carriers can launch an opening strike at the beginning of the battle, before any other ship has a chance to strike.  If you've got a lot of air power, you can overwhelm an enemy and knock them out of the fight before any of your ships even take a single scratch.
• CON: Carriers can't attack at night, and they'll just be sitting there doing nothing.
• CON: Carriers can't launch planes if they're at moderately damaged or worse. 
• CON: Carriers in particular are very expensive to operate.  You'll be amazed how quickly you run out of bauxite.

  Carriers to Watch Out For: This is another case where you'll want every carrier you can find.  They're probably the rarest of the common ship classes, with only 6 in the game at this point.  They're very hard to find, and expensive to build.  Particularly powerful carriers are Kaga, who has the most planes of anyone in the game, and Taihou, who is a special "armored carrier" that can attack when moderately damaged.  But like battleships, they're all worth finding and raising to a decent level.

Light Carriers: All the taste of a fleet carrier, with half the calories!  Light Carriers will give you decent air power without the immense costs of a full fleet carrier.  They're more fuel efficient, and because they carry less planes, if things go south you won't have to pay as much bauxite to get them back to full strength.  They're excellent choices for leveling, or stages where you don't need to bring all your planes to bear on an enemy.  They're also easier to find than carriers, which tend to be rather rare.

• PRO: Cheaper to operate than full-sized carriers, while still able to carry the same kinds of planes.
• CON: They have fewer planes and less armor than full-sized carriers, and so not suitable for fighting area bosses.

Light Carriers to Watch Out For:  Light Carriers are a unique class in that they're all different from one another.  Houshou isn't very strong, but is very cheap to operate.  Junyou and Hiyou have as many planes as a full-sized carrier, but less armor and very little dodging ability.  Ryuujou can be remodeled twice, and on her second remodel she brings unique planes with her.

Seaplane Tenders:  There are only two seaplane tenders, Chitose and Chiyoda, and their statistics are identical.  They start off mostly useless, but can be remodeled a total of five times, and by their fifth remodel they will become light carriers with excellent stats, almost as strong as a full carrier and much more fuel efficient..  And what's more, when you remodel them at level 12 they'll bring you the Type A Ko-Hyouteki, AKA midget subs.  These are absolutely critical items for any admiral to have, because they'll let you launch torpedoes at the enemy before they can start shooting back at  you.  You can remodel a Seaplane Tender to a light carrier at level 15, but it's very common not to do this, and instead let its powerful midget subs carry you until level 35, and then remodel it twice.

• PRO: When they're fully upgraded, they're resource-efficient and very strong.  How much do you want these two?  The president of DMM.com, i.e. the man who owns KanColle, said in an interview that he had something like 4 pairs of Chitose and Chiyoda, all near the level cap.  The only other ship he had in that kind of quantity was torpedo cruisers.  
• PRO: Their midget subs are almost a necessity.  See the section on torpedo cruisers.
• PRO: Easy to find.  They're often the first carrier new admirals get. 
• CON: They kind of suck at the start.  

Torpedo Cruisers: Immensely, gloriously overpowered.  Certain light cruisers (Ooi, Kitakami, and Kiso) will upgrade into these.  If you give them a midget sub, which you can easily get by remodeling a Seaplane tender at level 12, they can fire off a torpedo before the shelling phase, right after the carriers launch their planes.  A torpedo from one of them is often enough to sink even a large ship.  It's difficult to understate how powerful they are.  Have you ever heard of the battleship Yamato?  The flagship of the Japanese fleet, and a symbol of its strength that's been the subject of countless books, movies, and TV shows.  If you've ever played Starcraft, you've probably fired the battleship's Yamato Cannon, which is capable of melting most units in the game with a single hit.  In this game, a remodeled and fully upgraded Yamato is the most expensive ship you can get.  It costs almost three times to run it as other battleships, and you're likely to burn tens of thousands of resources trying to get it.  Its firepower stat is 139.  Torpedo cruisers are (comparatively) easy to get, cheap to field, can attack before the battle even begins, and have a maximum torpedo stat of... 139.  Kiso will also turn into a torpedo cruiser at level 65, with slightly worse stats.  It's up to you whether you think it's worth it to sink the time into that, or if you feel Kitakami and Ooi are enough on their own.

• PRO: Can kill everything.
• PRO: Will kill everything.
• PRO: Will do it for less than the resource cost of a single heavy cruiser.
• CON: They're fragile.  A single hit from a good sized ship can take off most of their health bar.  

Submarines: Submarines are strange, strange beasts.  They're very rare, very difficult to acquire, and very fragile.  They're the cheapest ships in the game to operate, which makes them excellent for expeditions.  They can fire a torpedo at the beginning of the fight, just like torpedo cruisers.  Below level 10 you'll need to equip a midget sub on them to for this to happen, but after level 10 they'll do it on their own. Larger ships, like battleships or heavy cruisers, can't even attack them.  But they have very low HP and very low dodge stats, so stronger enemy destroyers and light cruisers can hurt them badly.  You can send them on expeditions due to their low resource costs, or send them through a stage like 2-3 to gain resources.  You can also use them for leveling other ships, because destroyers and light cruisers will be forced to attack them and leave the rest of your fleet alone.  Since they're so cheap to repair, you can save a lot of resources and time that way.  Note that when a submarine is remodeled, it doubles its repair time, so if you're using submarines to help you level, you may want to not remodel them.  

  

• PRO: Can't be targeted by heavy cruisers or battleships.  Carriers don't do much damage to them.
• PRO: Resource costs are almost non-existent.  
• PRO: Can fire a torpedo at the start of the fight, just like torpedo cruisers.
• CON: Fragile and easily damaged by destroyers and light cruisers.  
• CON: Very hard to find.  
• CON: They don't have any guns or anti-aircraft weapons, only torpedoes. 

Submarines to Watch Out For:  All of them, but they're hard to find.  I-168 and I-58 can be found in level 1-5 as soon as you unlock it, but you'll need to spend some time crafting sonars and depth charges to make it through.  I-19 can't be crafted, so you'll have to look for her at the boss nodes in 1-5, 2-5, and 5-4.  I-8 can be found in 1-5 as well.  Maruyu can be gained from large ship construction.  I-401 was an event reward and can't be acquired any more.

A Final Word on Ships: Fleet composition (i.e. what kind of ships you have in your fleet), equipment, and level are what's important, and not so much that you field only the ships with the absolutely best stats.  The ships recommended above are powerful, but none of them are so strong as to render the rest of their class useless.  Some ships are better than others, and some ships are rarer than others, but ultimately all ships in a class have roughly similar stats.  There is no ship in this game that you absolutely need to have, and any ship can be viable until the end game.  Do you really like gloomy old Fusou?  Bring her along.  Think Furutaka's weird eye-thing is really neat?  Level her up as high as you like.  Love having Fumitsuki around, or think that Inazuma's "Na no desu!" is the cutest?  Keep her.   Fumitsuki isn't nearly as strong as Shimakaze, but if you're willing to spend the time leveling her, she can serve in exactly the same role.  It might take you a while longer, and you might have a lower success rate, but you can do it, and if you want to, you should.