RAHJAILARI

Naah... I already have 5 Spotting Aircraft mod 1's, so I don't necessarily need any more of those and besides, they should be a rarity item and as such not be commonly available for every high tier ship anyways.

ABSOLUTELY RIGHT THERE BUDDY. But since it would be quite awkward giving all lower tier ships longer ranges that their upper-tier counterparts. Perhaps better stealth is the only rational way to go in terms of giving them a better chance of survival at the least. Of course, we than have to tackle the problem of giving them a chance to do some damage also... That might be a tad tricky.

True dat Mr. nambr9 I do not mind taking my Fujin to tier 7 match either and usually do well in it (well, except for the occasional sh*t to the brain incident, of course). Cruisers and BB's will struggle tho, since they will have problem damaging the higher tier ships, which in return will be able to pen them with ease from almost any angle and they do not have even concealment going for them so they could hide. One does crave for the good old "stealth fire" ability in those situations, sigh! Well, some Cruisers can still do well, when VERY carefully played (passive gameplay, anyone?) since they are agile and maneuverable, unlike the BB's. A bottom-tier BB just screams out "LUNCH, coomangettiit!" to all the big boys in the game and tend to get focused early on. So something should probably be done to improve the situation. Perhaps a conditional stealth-fire rule in which the bottom-tier ships would get a small stealth buff for that game only to enable them to have a stealth fire margin of 1-2km? Or maybe revamp the stealth of all ships in such a way that lower tier ships would always have a stealth advantage over the higher tier ones going for them. This would at the least give them the "first strike" option, if nothing else. I agree that number of radars should be limited, but that may be hard or impossible to implement for the simple reason that radar is a consumable and not a ship class, so it may be that WG actually cannot know if any given player has chosen to have radar in his ship or not (they might have somewhat bungled there). But on the other hand, this single consumable actually has the effect of making an entire class of ships (the DD) utterly impotent for the duration and having several of them just extends this exclusion period that much further in the game, so I do not believe any claims, which state that it does not have significant impact on the game (of course, it may only reflect the fact that WG simply does not have any data on the matter). For example, 4 radar ships with 40 second radar duration in one team will (if they are smart and use them in turn) be able to exclude the opposing team's DD's from the game for a period of 160 second per game - With a premium and Superintendent skill this will be 4 charges per game, which equates to 160sec per ship -> 640 seconds = 10 minutes 40 sec., so basically the opposing DD will be rendered totally ineffective for most of the game. Now if the number of radar equipped ships would be limited to 2, for example, this would be totally fine, as their effect would be dispersed around the map and the DD could simply go operate in "safer" areas for the meantime, but with 3-5 Radar equipped ships in the same team this will be game-breaking, as no DD can counter it in any way (especially, since this is a kinda "super-duper-x-ray-radar", which can inexplicably "see" through islands too). This might be a solvable issue tho. If they would make it so that Radar could no longer see through islands, only smoke AND that if one wants to see behind an island, the Spotter Plane would be the correct tool to use. Of course, this would require that spotting aircraft mechanics be improved a bit but the principle is sound. Or maybe the DD should simply be equipped with "Chaff" instead to confuse the radar?

Naah! Not a Youtuber. No time for such hobbies yet but I do play WoWs a lot, mostly in a DD, however I have recently taken up the grind to learn to play Cruiser with varying degrees of success. So I keep up the DD-play just so my stats would not sink abysmally low and then play Cruisers to screw them up again. Learning though progress is slow but the occasional success is still great fun. Hehehe!

imendars - I am glad to hear that you decided to go with a Cruiser to begin with rather than the usual BB, like most others, this demonstrates healthy ability to think creatively, which is important to success in this game. A word of warning with the Kutuzov though. It is highly vulnerable but because of its smoke ability it will also be tempting to go closer than you necessarily have to be. You can support your team's DD just fine from your smoke 8-10 km away (out of torp range of many enemy DD's) so do not rush the cap, because the smoke, while handy to conceal yourself is not radar, bullet or torpedo-proof and in fact tends to act, as a torp magnet instead. This just came to mind, since I bumped into a division of 3 Kutuzov's last weekend (it wasn't you in there was it?), who all crowded right into B cap in the "Loop" map, well they did cap it handily to be fair BUT all 3 also got torp'd by myself (was in Shima) right into their own smokes soon after I had finished capping A right beside them. Position yourself so that the ship and your smokescreen is either out of direct torpedo lanes or so that you have a sliver of land between you and the opposition and do not get obsessed with staying put in that smoke (be sure to know when it is time to skedaddle and high-tail it out of there right quick) at all times. Kutuzov is also fast and agile with fast firing guns, so feel free to move around the map to maximize your damage output. Many players seem to be severely limited by a fixation on staying rigidly within their smokescreens and that can sometimes be to their own detriment.

Yeah, think of it this way. The magazine detonation chance is roughly once every 80 games on average so for the remaining 79 games it is totally useless and will benefit you nothing. HOWEVER, you will be using your main armament and torps and such in every game and WHEN that gets disabled or damaged, the game is gonna git that much suckier instantly. Without it, you will spend many a game with some of your guns or torp tubes disabled and your firepower reduced. And that reduces you from this:to this:

Yeah; Herr Dr_Strangefruit I agree with everyone here. Magazine mod 1 is unnecessary, main armaments working at all times is much more essential to your gameplay, so it is totally worth the occasional detonation and I can say that being the proud recipient of 127 detonations and 257 of those Juliet Charlies signals that prove it.

Soo, no Graf Zeppelin or RN BB-Mark 2 type episodes to be expected then? Djääm, I so enjoy a good soap-drama from time to time...

Soo, is it as OP, as advertised?

True dat... In the beginning I tried hard to sell ships and skip tiers to git to tier 10 as quickly as possible only to hit the same problem... So I had to go back and repurchase my lower tier ships, so i could grind some cash to afford to play the higher tiers. Currently I have returned all of my old ships back to port and happy about it too. 500+M Credits and 800K FreeXP, so no more issues (I have almost exclusively "Silver" ships and only a few premiums, mostly reward ships). Just remember to play lower tiers often and well and you will have no such complications. I also find that mid-tier games tend to be much more fun, so nothing lost there.

The Samurai will not stand for this!

I like this idea, yeah, why not? There is already this Yamamoto task of spotting 300 torps, so I know it is doable. So easy to make it a ribbon and some XP to reward the plucky Cruisers for their sterling service.

Yeah, the CE skill is seriously flawed. Since when was it so much easier to conceal a huge BB(-14%) than a small DD(-10%). It should be either the same -10% for all OR (and even better) -10% for DD, -8% for Cruisers, -6% for CV and -4% for BB or some such, you know... The entire concept of "Stealth BB" is quite ridiculous to be honest. DD and Cruisers are the most vulnerable ships in the game, so they need to be able to "fade" into stealth, when in tight spot. BB's have the endurance, armor and guns to deal with such things and CV's - Well they should not even be so close to action, as to be spotted directly in the first place.

In principle, I might feel inclined to agree BUT I do not think they really could do that. In all honesty a BB should be able to punish a Cruiser, who comes too close. They are the kings of the battlefield after all, so that cannot be taken away. What they could probably do instead, might be to further develop the aiming and hit mechanics, so that Cruisers would be a tad harder to hit from a distance (10km+ or so) and would instead be more likely to receive "Near hits" and "Near misses", which would also cause damage though not as heavy, as a direct Citadel hit. This could perhaps be done via specific "Cruiser camo's" that would simply give Cruisers a -6% chance of less hits instead of the standard -4% - Just an example...

Hhehe!wot_chikor Welcome to tier 10 dude! Sadly Shima has been quite nerfed throughout, so it actually cannot perform at all as a stock version so it will be hard to get all the modules and upgrades you need. You will also need a minimum of 10+ point captain, but I assume you already have one by this time. It will get better, but only slightly. Shima is a very situational DD, you can have awesome games in it sure, but it all depends on the opposition. Get a team of potatoes, who screw up and do not know how to play and you can punish them hard and shine - Get one, who actually have situational awareness and know how to dodge torps and you will be lucky to land one hit in a game because unfortunately your torps can be spotted almost 2km away, so there's plenty of time to get out of the way. Also, you will end up in games with 3 or more radars in the opposing team, who will keep you lit up like a X-mas tree for the entire time and though the guns are fairly decent (by the much vaunted Japanese standards) they are no match for any of the others and you do not have the best concealment to compensate. It will be a challenge. That said, I got my Shima a year ago and despite of all its shortcoming I'm still keepin' it and worse - Playing it too. But then, I've always been a masochist contrarian at heart.

And so they are actually though I'll never admit it (don't want to encourage those who still claim that BB's are "too vulnerable" which is just not true), I mean in order to be any good at them you really have shine in terms of situational awareness, personal courage and tactical sense (which too many BB players seem to lack), this is also due to the large impact that they can have on the team's success or failure overall only CV's can top that.

I'm surrounded by HERETICS!

SPOTTED! aAAND THAT'S YOUR MISTAKE RIGHT THERE! Think, Pffth! Outrageous - Who does a thing that anyway? You silly thing you. Just keep holding those impossibly high standards.

Pffth, that's nothing dude! It could always be worse, I once got reported by quite a few teammates, in my Fubuki, when in 2 Brothers map, i went around the islands, capped all the caps once (4 cappingss solo), torp'ed 2 ships along the way and we still lost apparently solely because I rather unsportingly and being the sole survivor of our team and an utter coward refused to engage in a gun-duel with 4 enemy ships and wimpily tried skulking and torping them instead. You know, unlike all the true men in our team, who just died instead. I had, until then been under the delusion that I had done rather well under the circumstance. I deeply regret my delinquency. All my fault then. My karma fell -4 points after that match...

YOU FREAK! BUT I MEAN THAT IN A GOOD WAY, OF COURSE...

I prefer to think of it more as a Leper than a stepchild...

Yes, the MM is always to blame. It is rigged against me personally... I had proof too, but the dog ate it. Sadly, I had inadvertently attached all my irrefutable documentary evidence to a pound of meatloaf...

I have said this before but here we go again (copy-paste from another recent thread - I plagiarize myself, sad but true)..: "Let's just face it, the BB's, especially premiums are the cash-cows at the moment, so that's what they have to cater for. Most players, including myself as Noob, will immediately go for the mighty Battleship as their first ship of choice, that is a given and their expectation will not change. Only later on, since BB play is kinda slow-paced, do players begin to seek out and try other, more action packed options. So in practice you end up with a player pool, where the more skilled players are the ones playing Cruiser or DD against generally less skilled pool of BB players (now now, before you fly off the hinges - I mean on average guys, I know there are also many BB players, who are very good) and that is what they are balancing for. This is why you will notice, that there are less average skilled players specializing or Cruisers or DD's. Simply put, all this was quite unavoidable and entirely foreseeable to begin with. No-one starts playing WoWs because they are absolutely aching to play DD or some Cruiser or another. They come to play the Mighty Yamato or Montana, Hood or Bismarck. Personally, I only started because I really really wanted Fuso and perhaps Nagato a bit (I did NOT go: Wohou! I can get Kuma! - Though now I absolutely love that ship). Now, rather bizarrely I specialize on DD's mostly with some dabbling with Cruisers and hardly touch a BB anymore, but that was only an afterthought, since I already got my Fuso and sucked, my deluded dreams of a mighty BB cruising through the map smashing all before it slowly evaporated and so I began looking for a ship class I could actually become good at or at the least suck less in and have fun while doing it. With this in mind, I see no way WG could possibly "fix" this problem, they will be damned, if they do and pretty much equally or even more damned, if they do. " So we might be stuck with BB overpopulation indefinitely, unless WG introduces some team limits like for CV's and that "solution" itself would definitely cause other problems... OR UNLESS they (WG) will introduce some kind of a skill-based progression model for players. So basically, you'd be stuck playing DD, Cruiser OR a particular tier until such time that you reach the minimum skill-level required to progress to the next. This, of course would require some kind of a reliable player monitoring system and would probably also negatively impact premium ship sales (supposing they would only become available, once the player has qualified for the tier). yeeah, i know it's impossible, but one can dream...

Unless, of course.. It is a division with 3 bad players in it (and I've seen some)...

Oh yes, my friend RamirezKurita That is absolutely true, BUT fixing problems behind large numbers of BB's may not be possible. You see, this plaque (BB overpopulation) is due to the fact that many, who play BB's are not actually very skilled players themselves and WG, since it cannot possibly force anyone to magically improve has decided to address the "problem" of BB's dying too easily by providing gimmicks and nerfs to those, who might pose a threat to them. And let's face it, the BB's, especially premiums are the cash-cows at the moment, so that's what they have to cater for. Most players, including myself as Noob, will immediately go for the mighty Battleship as their first ship of choice, that is a given and their expectation will not change. Only later on, since BB play is kinda slow-paced, do players begin to seek out and try other, more action packed options. So in practice you end up with a player pool, where the more skilled players are the ones playing Cruiser or DD against generally less skilled pool of BB players (now now, before you fly off the hinges - I mean on average guys, I know there are also many BB players, who are very good) and that is what they are balancing for. This is why you will notice, that there are less average skilled players specializing or Cruisers or DD's (because it is consequently that much harder simply to survive, let alone achieve good results in them). Simply put, all this was quite unavoidable and entirely foreseeable to begin with. No-one starts playing WoWs because they are absolutely aching to play DD or some Cruiser or another. They come to play the Mighty Yamato or Montana, Hood or Bismarck. Personally, I only started because I really really wanted Fuso and perhaps Nagato a bit (I did NOT go: Wohou! I can get Kuma! - Though now I absolutely love that ship). Now, rather bizarrely I specialize on DD's mostly with some dabbling with Cruisers and hardly touch a BB anymore, but that was only an afterthought, since I already got my Fuso and sucked, my deluded dreams of a mighty BB cruising through the map smashing all before it slowly evaporated and so I began looking for a ship class I could actually become good at or at the least suck less in and have fun while doing it. With this in mind, I see no way WG could possibly "fix" this problem, they will be damned, if they do and pretty much equally or even more damned, if they do.