RAHJAILARI

Just tested the patch with my Atlanta... Well, it has become quite invulnerable again, blapped full flights of attack planes with my DefAA clean off the air multiple times so, eventhough I do not play CV myself, I must conclude that perhaps the AA is a bit too effective now. Ideal situation to me would be, where the AA ship would best come to its own, by escorting others and adding its long-range AA to theirs thus shielding friendlies from attack, but they should not be utterly invulnerable to counter by CV's. Though that said t should be said that if a CV decides to attack an AA ship he should expect higher plane casualties _ Also a joint attack by 2 CV's should have a good chance of damaging even a dedicated AA ship. Complete immunity from even for AA ships should not be the norm here. Also conversely those ships, which have a relatively weak AA (IJN Cruisers and many DD's for example) should also be considered, so that while th AA should not result in many plane kills, if correctly used and with a bit of maneuvering it should be able to disrupt the attack formation enough to enable the ship to mitigate damage from an air attack. Also, plane spotting effects on ships relying on concealment for their utility should be reconsidered. As the current system pretty much nullifies the effect of concealment all-together, since pretty much everyone anywhere near the aircraft's area of operations is spotted all the time. This just ain't right either. So how to "fix all this? Well, here's an idea anyhow. 1) Airplane HP should be returned to previous, stronger values so that CV's will not run out of planes so quickly and also to avoid situations where whole squadrons of planes will be killed by a single solo ship (well, if they fly into flak from several ships so be it, that is their own mistake then). 2) To compensate for this, the threshold, where the squadrons formation will be disrupted by AA could be lowered a bit. So that even those ships with a mediocre or relatively weak AA can evade by maneuver, if they focus their AA on incoming planes correctly. They would still take hits, but not necessarily so many or so devastating. 3) Change plane spotting rules so that only the actual Spotter Aircraft (as historically these were the ones able to direct gunfire, strike aircraft would not have been so equipped) would be able to spot and enable other ships to fire on those ships it has seen. Strike aircraft, fighters and bombers would still see the ships, of course in order to make their attack runs BUT the ships seen by strike aircraft would only be visible in the minimap, unless otherwise seen by nearby enemy ships. Using AA would not expose a ships, position to other ships unless she fires her main guns at another ship within spotting range, then normal rules would apply. 4) Each CV should have 1 Fighter squadron available, which could be controlled much like the firghters before so that the CV will be able to use them to intercept coming enemy planes and to escort selected friendly ships, which are under attack more effectively. The previously proposed spotting rules would apply tho these fighters also, so they could not be used to spot DD's or other ships though they could end up being shot down by one, if persistently hovering over it (these ships would still be visible to enemy on the minimap though). I know this may not be perfect proposal, but it is something and might be a good direction to explore, eh? Tell me what you think ...

Weeel, a good way might be to implement those notty Submarines ASAP and to make them spawn behind or on the near flanks of each opposing team's spawn points. Then just watch at them BB's rush with the team as fast as they are able. Problem solved.

Hehe, that's so right. Reminds me of the time I was in my Mogami going on to support our DD in B cap on "Warrior's Path" map and thinking to myself: "I should turn a bit left and go from behind the island in front of the cap, because if I go in front of it and get spotted - I'm dead." Oh well, immediately that I turned a bit to my right instead and headed straight in to the front of that infernal island - Got spotted (of course) before reaching B and plastered by Gazillion shots within the next few seconds. I was dead before I even hit the cap circle border. WOHOU! Should have listened to myself for once, but I am just such an unreliable master.

A penalty for that has already been implemented lad. They die, get no XP and have poor stats, what could be worse that that?

Been following the discussion with some interest and so it seems now is the right time to go back to my DD's again (took a short break in favor of rather unsportingly playing Full-AA-Specced-Atlanta until the worst of the to-be-expected CV-furor died down). Perhaps I'll start with the Sims and Kidd first, just to be on the safe side tho. Soo, a question for our esteemed colleague(s) (pingggg @NothingButTheRain, hehe). Any experience / tips yet concerning the new rocket evasion mechanics for DD's, as advertised in latest patch notes? And in practice, what is it really? Go head, on towards the planes, sideways, angled, wiggly-waggly or what-cha-ma-callit? Oh yeah, no need to mention "not mindlessly just rushing the cap", I've got that well and truly covered ever since radar ships entered the game, so no worries there.

Tut tut friend. Not that I disagree with the content itself BUT who you callin' Fat? The politic term nowadays is "Horizontally Gifted". And the 3 are definitely more gifted than anyone.

Personally I'd go for Sims and Kidd for the time being Because they have decent AA and are essentially gunboats so the most beneficial ship configuration and captain skills are largely much the same for both purposes (especially BFT, AFT). USN DD's generally also have very good and long lasting smoke, which will help your survival (but don't just sit in there for God's sakes).

Man has already gone to the Moon lad. Created internet linking hundreds of countries in several continents and thousands of languages to each other. Why would resolving small balancing issues with a couple of fictional ship lines or countries be impossible? If no ready solution exists then we / WG can just make up one, no problem. The current mess is merely a temporary hitch that's all.

I don't play CV's myself anymore, but have a couple of hundred games behind me just to "know the enemy". CV's do have a place in this game and it should be a central role. After all what would all those batteries of AA and DP guns guns be doing otherwise? They might as well be removed then. There is a role for the AA ship, for which it is possible to meaningfully exist ONLY if there are lots of planes in the game. Same with different ship configuration choices, module options and Captain skills - Considerations which make the game even more interesting. However, the CV's have currently (and I daresay were even before) been quite ineptly implemented and remain imbalanced against the other ships so that needs to be addressed ASAP. In short, much work still needs to be done.

They also did not have most of the tier 9 or 10 ships in it. Yet strangely we have them here, don't we? Clan battles is the correct, intended game mode for Clans to play together. If you wish to have the team size in them increased, go ahead and make the suggestion. Randoms are the wrong platform for that. However, I suspect that WG might not be too eager to do that either, because they HAVE tested that and it is sometimes exceedingly difficult to come up with even 2 teams of 7 people (well because it is just fair to do it this way isn't it?), who all have the time and inclination to play any game regularly at the same time, so I think the Clan wars might be in trouble if the team sizes would be substantially increased.

3) Uhh-oh. That is an even more horrible idea. So basically all of the sudden, when you are in a middle of being plastered to bits by a Worchester or dodging incoming torps the game would just drop off and ask you to start typing in Captchas? 4) Your claim is obviously quite baseless. I have been in many games myself, where our team was initially losing the game at the start but then either by luck or skill managed to turn things around. This kinda thing would only perpetuate sheer idiocy and kill the game. 5) Also nuclear missiles are untested in this game. Besides there are already dozens or more whining threads in this here forum about 2 or 3 men divisions being OP. Therefore it is quite clear this would never work, hence there is no need to test it any further, as the idea is quite stillborn, as is. The game mode is called "Random" for a good reason and that is specifically intended to give random individual players a fair chance to play against each other. Again Clan battles are the intended playground for clans, stick with them, if you like and that will bother no-one.

All righty then, my humble take on these @MistaBoo 1) No working profanity filter has been invented yet. If ever anyone does, I'm all for it but frankly I do not see WG investing massive resources into developing one. Just use the reporting feature to get the protagonist(s) chat banned for the time being. 2) Nope, that would be way too short a time to accomplish anything except rushing the cap in a do-or-die bot slogging match. We already have Coops for this kind of thing. 3) It would just cause delays and extra queuing time for no apparent benefit and the idiot players that you are mistaking for bots would still get in. 4) Nopes, this would just ensure that your team would never be able to recover and turn the game around by playing well, hence again only making the games a boring rush to cap without any semblance of skill or tactics. 5) Again nopes, even 2 player divisions can decidedly influence the outcome, as it is and 3 player divisions are definitely the upper limit. This is necessary in fairness to the opposition, which might not have any divisions at all. Having all players from one clan in one team and the other only a collection of random individuals would only result in a one-sided massacre that would be no fun for anybody. Unless of course the clan is looking to statpad themselves at the expense of others. BESIDES, WE ALREADY HAVE CLAN BATTLES FOR THAT.

I do not see spotting itself to be the main problem. Issue is the recent "fix" to detection, which ensured, that even after breaking contact and becoming un-spotted, your detection range STILL remains at maximum for 20 seconds (previously it would reset back to normal, if contact is broken allowing you to return to action quicker). This makes it quite impossible to maneuver aggressively in any ship, which relies on stealth, as its main form of protection (so not only DD issue, also problem for Cruisers). Of course, this will also mean, that once spotted and with the maximum spotting range in effect, planes with their warp speed will have no trouble finding you again at any time.In my opinion WG should revert the detection mechanic back to as it was before it was so ineptly "Fixed" and this would surely go long way to address the DD spotting as well as slew of other problematic gameplay issues (mainly helping to rid us of overwhelming passivity by enabling more aggressive gameplay in general).

But they did that already. We had then with a April Fool's Day even the other year. See:

Hmmmh, that reminds me. When ARE we going to see the famous HMS Outrageous, Curious or Spurious in this game (in their glorious original BattleCruiser configuration(s) of course)? "So far we've narrowed the choice of names down to either Fearnaught or HMS Arsekicker."

Weel, at times I am convinced that the only way to win is to figure out the means to join the Red Team instead, some other times Greens will win, even if you were AFK the entire time. It's the remaining 1/3 of the games you have to watch out for, when your own performance actually matters. So my advise would be to activate your game replays (if not already done) and watch them afterwards, when you had a particularly bad or a good game to see what you could have done differently for a better result. It is also critical to observe what the rest of the team are doing at all times and "play along" with that, after all there are 11 other people in the team and if they all die, you can't really be expected to change the outcome all by yourself. You can also post you replay link here in the forum for critique and some playing tips. I know it can be brutal, but take it the right way and you will get invaluable "should-have-done tips" from the lads. Try to develop better situational awareness, by keeping one eye at the minimap (and make it large so you can see properly) so you will know where both your own team and the enemy is at all times, then make your play accordingly. In the beginning it is sometimes better to play defensively at first in order to gauge the situation before making your move, but leave it too late and while you may survive, the game will be lost. Learn how you should play each ship line by watching videos (Youtube) and going through WG site's Naval Academy, which will explain the basics. Not all ships should be played the same either, so while German BB's are brawlers and should be played at close quarters, Japanese ones tend to be snipers and should keep their distance, for example. Make sure you understand the difference then configure your ship and allocate the best Captain skills to support that particular playstyle. Of course you will need much more practice, that what you have now and any stats will be quite meaningless while you still have less than 1000 games under your belt so I would not worry about the winrate just yet. What you need most is just practice, practice, practice and then some more. It is recommendable to go slowly up the tiers, because it is easier to learn the basics and also to get some more comforting results in the low tiers than it is in high tiers (because high tier have somewhat larger number of experienced players, who can still outplay you at this point). So to avoid being unduly discouraged, take it slow and easy at first and just settle on trying to make sure you manage to do some damage, fulfill your role (DD scouting+torp, Cruiser-kill DD's+AA, BB fire support so the others can stay alive too -> because without them you soon won't be either) and most importantly try avoid being a burden to your team. So avoid Yolo'ing, Lemmings Border Humping or Camping or any other such counterproductive tactics as much as possible. Remain active, go with the team and learn to be in the right place at the right time as much as possible and that should pretty much do it.

Yupp, having a lot of the same problem trying to fix my secondaries onto target... Very annoying.

Hmmh... When I was still in the army, we used to have a particularly tight-fisted Master (Mess) Sergeant like that. When some of the lads asked for second helping on food. He swore that he had in his possession tables and charts, which could conclusively prove that they could not possibly still be hungry. Well. We never actually saw them, but began secretly carrying some contraband private rations afterwards.

True, they sure overdid the effect against DD's and all AA tends to be quite useless now. However with a bit of practice it can be overcome, got 56 planes in my Atlanta against a Shokaku last weekend by using fairly suicidal tactics. But yeeah, that was admittedly more of an exception, much more needs to be balanced out before it's gonna work out evenly for everyone again. They'll probably have to buff close range AA, reduce rocket damage and accuracy (and DD's plane spotting range) AND make it so the planes have to fire their rockets from within the effective area of close range AA. Or some such thingy or other.

Yeah well @MistaBoo, I do agree with you on that in the current meta playing DD has become quite a challenge due to CV's decimating the entire DD ship class (this is why I shelved my Shima for the time being and am sticking to Atlanta) BUT a couple of temporary solutions that might work do come to mind -> Harugumo, fully AA specced OR Gearing with DefAA.

Well, as we know from many previous (bad) experiences, only extensively testing stuff on test server is pretty much useless to check game balance. This is why they have to do testing on live server also, to better gauge the ship/player balance in real game against other players.

Lad... The Audacious can occasionally be seen in the game precisely because WG TEST PLAYERS are testing her now, before British CV's official release.

Weel, as for myself... I took DE for 1st and Superintendent for 2nd 3-point skill. Basically Superintendent because of the extra torp reload and speed boost but of course 1 more smoke can't exactly hurt you right? When combined with the Jack-of-all-Trades and the November Foxtrot signal they will all load 10% faster allowing me to use them up more consistently every game. Seems to keep me alive better than SE (yeah, I've tried that too but in the end decided to go with this one for the time being) and the extra torp reload boost certainly gives it more kick for the buck (the 1 extra torp salvo you will be able to fire with this arrangement has 83+K damage potential). As for BFT, well most DD gun engagements only last for short periods of time, so I figured a 0,3 sec faster reload time won't make any real difference. I had it, when stealth-fire was still a thing and you could just press LMB and let fly the entire game, but now MEH. It's 10-15 sec engagement, then disengage and hide, repeat so I figured CE, which increases the measly fire chance by 50% would be more high-impact (of course, it is also needed to compensate for IFHE anyways). But yeah, guess it's like many other things very much a matter of personal preference and playstyle too.

Full AA specced Atlanta or Cleveland work fine. Take AA Guns Modification 1 for the 3rd upgrade slot. Make sure your cap has AT LEAST both BFT and AFT. Ignore AA sectoring, keep both sectors at 100%, observe where the enemy planes are going or have been seen and go to that area. Charge directly towards incoming planes and activate your DefAA, just when they are approaching at about 2-3km from you. Then maneuver like mad to evade the bombs, shells and torps and whatever else the enemy throws at you. OR Glue yourself close to a ship(s) targeted by enemy air raids and buff the AA sector covering them, you can also use the Manual AA skill for some extra spunk if you want.

My preference are: Preventive Maintenance, Last Stand, Demolition Expert, Concealment Expert.... Then wait until you have 14 points and take IFHE. After that wait until 17 points and take Superintendent, then wait again until 19 points and take Jack of all Trades.... Mount the following signals combo, as often as you're able: And that should do it...