The Alpha NDA has been lifted.
Early versions of the game had actual long-range gunnery duels of the type you'd expect from a naval game; currently ranges on guns are compressed. This is the original Warships UI.
Note the overhead view with the line-and-CEP setup. Looks like it'd make things easy to hit, right?
At maximum range, your shell flight time was thirty seconds or more. With that kind of hang time, hitting a target meant guessing their maneuvers correctly; the only people who died easily were the people who didn't maneuver. The Russian fanbase, and a few vocal useful idiots on NA, decided however that zigzagging was hard, and this made the game too simple. (Or too complex, we got both arguments, often at the same time.)
Thus, in version 1.8, it was disposed of. Ranges were shortened to what we have now. Buoyancy, a separate hitpoint bar that tracked your torpedo and below the waterline damage, was removed, along with its unique effects. (You slowed down if you had less than 1/3 left.) They did not, however, and still have not, reworked the armor model; meaning that most ships are currently incapable of engaging from their immunity zone to their own guns.