RAHJAILARI

Resolution: Always play Cruiser, never wait for it for longer that 20-30 sec if by then no match, change ship&tier, mind your time of day and play high&low tiers only during peak times, check the queue - Choose the ship type which is least popular for yourself - If you spot CV and don't want to risk it, stop queuing and wait for a couple of more minutes before trying it again. Of course, you may still be out of luck at times but a lot less often.

Weel, basically I have kept nearly all Japanese DD's and Cruisers (IJN fanboy), which were actually built in real life (no paper ships). BB's from Kongo onwards except for Izumo and Amagi (since they were never actually put to service). I also have some German, US, Russian and French ships I liked or which are of historical interest to me - Such as Emile Bertin, Algerie, Hipper, Kirov and so on. In principle I have made sure to keep 1 DD, 1 Cruiser and 1 BB for every tier (Hashidate for tier 1) just so I will be able to join in no matter what my mates might fancy playing with (some of them are just beginners in WoWs). I have now expanded this a bit so I tend to have 4 DD's and Cruisers for each tier from 5-8, but only the "real" ships, still no paper ships. These are what i play the most, though I do have quite a few BB's "just for the collection" and just 1 CV (Hiryu). in addition to this I do have some random premiums I've gotten as reward ships or from containers and have not had the heart to dispose of, eventhough I am not necessarily too keen to play them at the moment. maybe some day.

Oh yeah, you're right on that one lad... Had a game on the "Sleeping Giant" map yesterday, where we had a 2 DD division going in front of us to A cap (the isolated one). I did have a bad feeling (was in Mogami myself) about it from the start - Some purely superstitious cr*ap about sk. "Potato DD-divisions" suddenly just popped to mind - But went ahead to support them anyways, at around the regular spot just at the entrance to cap, sure enough we bumped into an enemy Z-46, who somehow surprised and promptly killed both of them in just under a minute. I get in 2 salvos and some desultory hits, but not enough to kill him. They both immediately popped smoke with Shima just sitting there and rather unsurprisingly getting torp'd in it and while the other one in Daring was driving around in a circle (and outside of smoke) shooting furiously at something unseen and getting hit by another stray torp in the end. I dodged the enemy torps, launched my own getting 1 hit on one of their supporting Cruisers and then disengaged following our 2 BB's who, seeing the debacle had already drawn their conclusions and turned around. Since we were facing 2 DD's, 2 CA and 2 BB on that side, I did not fancy my chances going against them solo and also hightailed it out of there as fast as I could. Well, so far fair enough a bit of bad luck that's all and our team was now down to only 1 DD at D cap with our flank trying to make a fighting withdrawal, when one of the "Speshul" DD players starts ripping in chat about how we just "abandoned" the cap to the enemy. The enemy Z-46, who killed them both was already at A, capping it with the other enemy DD (a Khaba) keeping us perma-spotted and crispy and the remaining 4 ships duly occupying the access point to cap. Oh well, after an intense running battle to rejoin rest of the team and to defend B cap I managed to finally kill the pesky Khaha, but of course their BB's then killed me in return. Our BB's managed to retreat and rejoin the team while this DD guy kept on his bitc*hing in team chat. So once I was dead also I finally broke my No1 rule "to just ignore those things" and told him: "Well you 2 already fu*cked it up right in the beginning, so you should probably just shut the fu*ck up"... I admit, not the smartest thing to do but it had to be said. Predictably, I lost 2 karma for that caper, but oh well, it was worth it I guess, since the guy actually DID shut up. Our team obviously lost the game though we (barely but anyway) did manage to hold on to B and D caps until the end.

What do you mean "a bit more aggressive"? I totally potato'd that game. Although to my defense I was being rather effectively distracted by an unusually persistent hungry kitten hanging up my trouserleg at the time and so inadvertently made fatal wrong turn to B cap on the "Sleeping Giant" map, when I had originally envisioned going to C. Oh well, by the time I got my wits back I was already spotted so too late to double back though I did give it a desperate (and ultimately futile) try. A useful tip to fellow sufferers BTW: ALWAYS remember to feed or otherwise distract / dispose of... The pets, wife, kids, nearby relatives (in-laws especially) and any other predatory, alien and possibly rabid lifeforms in close vicinity before attempting to play. Hehe! Good going for you guys tho, totally did not notice you there due to the unfortunate menace clawing up the trouser and threatening my precious Jingles with grievous bodily harm.

There is no point. Some of the smaller capacity computers will take up to 30 sec (or longer, have not measured the time exactly) just to load the map before player will be able to move anywhere or do anything else, by which time the others will have moved quite far already. I know this for a fact, since some of my clanmates have just such computers and they typically only get started, when I'm already half-way to nearest cap (this may happen, even if we sit in the same room and are both connected to the same network with a cable). Can't be helped unless WG will be persuaded to gift every player a proper gaming laptop ASAP (I am, of course, not at all against this TBH). OFC, local network speed may also have some effect..

Uh oh then... I can already see myself stuck in a game with 6 CV's and no effective AA to speak of (Mogami, anyone?)... Oh well, it could always be worse I guess. Still remember one "speshul" game - though admittedly not with any particular kind of fondness, you understand - which I had with a Hipper and 23 battleships (guess who was the poor Sod in that Hipper).. On the positive note I did not have to suffer overly long tho, since my participation in that match turned out to be rather brief (it was my very first game in a shiny new Hipper - Yay!).

it takes a REAL MAN to drink Artichoke, I tell you - Vegetabilis Horribilis. ... The only bottle of booze, I have ever encountered, which you could leave unattended on shelf in a house full of deranged alcoholics and it would still be nearly full 6 months and many a grimace later. Undoubtedly one of the most unbelievably bitter and vile concoctions ever devised by man.

I heard in some countries pizza counts, as a vegetable? Hafta get on to planting those pizza-trees sometime soon, probably right next to them spaghetti-bushes.

Could be worse though. I have a colleague at work, who recently changed his last name TO: "Treetop"... Can't really blame him much tho, the original was "Embryo". - YUPP, TRUE STORY - NOT EVEN KIDDING... Sigh, they grow up so fast these days...

What exactly do you have against "Thunderstor M. Front" ? A perfectly respectable Glaswegan name I gather...

Hehe! Magic lad. But yeah, it is purely situational TBH. For example... Going to support a DD on "Warrior's Path" map, B cap... Going all the way to cap circle and bumping into an enemy Cleve / Mino who comes up from behind an island there... 2 salvos, 7 Citadels, dead Mino (of course, I'm not talking broadsides here, always best to go in head first, bow on and so forth or else you'll soon be the dead duck in this exchange). But yeah, you will not be using it very often, only in such rare situations and IF you were lucky enough to have foreseen that happening and had already loaded the AP, since after the first salvo or by the latest after the second enemy ship will start turning and you'll have to switch back to HE. But yeeah, it is funny and full of LoLs, when it happens tho. I typically load AP for the first salvo or 2 if expecting a possible close encounter with an enemy Cruiser - When carefully applied, occasionally using AP can indeed give you a brief upper hand since virtually No-one ever expects you to actually use it.

It is all a matter of distance lad. For 155mm guns, AP only works at close quarters, so 8km or under and even then it should be used against CL only. Works on Cleveland, Mino and the likes. For CA... Well if you get to within 6-5km then you can give it a try, but still not against the higher tier ones. If you want to use AP at any longer ranges make sure to upgrade to 203mm guns ASAP and even then 10-12km max. 155mm Mogami is a purebred HE spammer extraordinaire, so take IFHE and git on spamming.

Yeah, as a frequent DD player, I admit this is indeed the standard reaction to bumping into an enemy DD quite often (not always tho, depends which DD I'm at). If a gunboat, then I try to kite, shoot and delay smoking for a while (until I lose enough HP to justify escape), this will also give supporting ships time to get a few salvos in. IF in IJN DD tho, I try not to shoot, so I can escape detection quickly, just kite away, while keeping the other guy spotted. However this only works a short while if he made the mistake of shooting at me, but if the enemy DD had the same plan he will soon disappear from sight also which will necessitate myself turning around and returning back to the scene of the crime for a re-run. If supporting ships are a bit to the side and not right behind me it is possible to pop smoke without obscuring their line of sight to the target tho and in any case, one has to watch what the enemy DD does, if he pops smoke, then typically you may not necessarily need to, unless under fire from their supporting Cruiser(s), who still retain contact. This is of course, ideal every time but admittedly the smoke reflex is rather strong, especially if you take some immediate heavy fire. It must also be admitted, that I came up with these practices only AFTER I began playing more with Cruisers myself and discovered how utterly frustrating and futile it is to try and provide fire support, when you can't see a da*mn thing from all the blasted smoke... Until then I had been quite happy to pop smoke immediately, kite safely away outside of spotting range and later complain about not getting any fire support while trying to cap (totally my bad lads, sorry about that - I have since come to realize the error of my ways).

Hmmmh... Well airplanes are fast right? So why just leave your planes to hover right on top of an obviously angry smokescreen long enough for them all to get shot down, I wonder? It should be simple enough to move them somewhat further away, where that won't happen, they could be of more use and perhaps also do some damage to the enemy too instead of just taking it in. Just a thought.

Hhehe! Yeah, had a similar-ish support experience during X-mas myself. Opened a ticket with replay to report some feller who quite obviously threw a game because his clanmate was on the other side by just driving around map edge all game not firing his guns and then just sat in the corner until the game ended. Oh well, got the same copy-paste reply with a statement that this is how you deal with AFK players. Of course, if they'd actually bothered to watch any second of the attached replay they would have known he was NOT AFK in the first place. Guess I will not be wasting any more time opening tickets to WG, too much wasted effort and annoyance involved, you know. And all I actually expected / wanted to begin with is just some confirmation that someone had actually bothered to watch any part of the friggin' replay (well, since I bothered with all the malarkey of opening ticket and attaching it, that seemed only fair, don't you think?).

Aaaa Fair enough then my bad and anyway any CV functions in a Cruiser would indeed be quite daft and probably suicidal too.

Dude... What attack squadron be you talking about? Having both fighter and Spotter plane consumables IS exactly what I am talking about...

Weel, I still have an old game called "People's General", whereby spotting is affected by recon units so that any own units behind a direct line-of-sight from the recon unit have their spotting radius reduced, so enemy will not be able to see them so easily and likewise the recon unit itself has improved spotting radius when compared to others, though the unit itself gets no special concealment bonus as such (but of course they tend to be rather steathy-ish anyway), unless, of course covered by another friendly recon unit in turn. Therefore some such arrangement should be doable (well obviously, since it has already been done in another game, duh), how it would affect the game balance and so on, i have no idea. But it is an interesting thought.

Weel, I hope we will finally see it. I would go for what it was actually designed for and that is a Floatplane Operations / Scout Cruiser. So it should have both: The Catapult Fighter and Spotting Aircraft consumables paired with alternatively either DefAA or Hydro (selectable choice). It also had better armor and smaller citadel when compared to Mogami, so perhaps that could also be reflected in game?

Hhehehe! Welcome to the club fellows. Did the exact same thing in a MIKASA of all ships in a tier 3 game during this X-mas break. Since it is too slow for any fancy maneuvering and stuff, I decided just to steam in directly through middle of the map (the "Arhipelago") and straight into enemy base - So I proceeded to do so quite UNMOLESTED and unexpectedly capped it while in full view of the opposing team the whole time (well it ain't exactly the stealthiest of ships either). Other that that I did not do much, due to diabolically inaccurate main guns - Mikasa is not well-suited for sniping either, so a few desultory rounds and even fewer hits scored on my way, then ran over their only base defender - A tier 1 on my way (quite literally, I rammed him) - So there must have been a sk. "Fail Division" in there somewhere also. Game over in roughly 6 minutes and it lasted for that long only because Mikasa is so dar*ed slow.... Well TBH I did not ragequit, BUT I did laugh myself silly, does that count?

Hhehehe, you are probably unfortunately right there... Just had a very odd game on the "Mountain Range" map with my Shima, where I went for the B cap... Oh well, found an enemy Z-52 there, who got so exited after spotting me kiting away that he tunnel-visioned and ran in straight line and right into my torps. Oh well, so far, so good, I turned back and tried again but nope, a wild enemy Gearing appeared charging in with all guns blazing. Oh well, coincidentally, the same thing happened. Oh well 3rd time's the charm right? Well, an enemy Kitakaze had also decided that he will do better at it than his 2 colleagues, but nope, Unfortunately I had still had 1 reload left and sure enough the same thing happened. I finally capped the blasted B, utterly baffled as to what had just happened here. 3 gunboats against any of whom I should have rightfully gotten thoroughly plastered in rather quick order (while all this was going on, my Cruiser backup had somehow mysteriously vanished). The last remaining enemy DD apparently thought better of it and did not show up though I must admit I was by now utterly baffled at what had happened and half expected him to try and rush the cap too. The funniest thing about it all was probably that all 3 of them (no, they were not in division either) actually repeated the exact same pattern... Entering the cap hell-for-leather from the direction of C cap at almost the same point from next to the islands there, then raced across the B cap full speed in a straight line furiously firing at my hiney until having an unfortunate encounter with a rather unsportsmanlike torpedo at pretty much the exact the same spot near the island in-between B and A caps. I was in Discord with my division mates at the time, wish there was a recording because we could not believe what was happening there and our incredulous commentary apparently completely foiled a couple of other Clanmates games, who were at the time listening-in since they got distracted for laughing too hard (yeah, they transferred to another chat after that)... I only lost 1/3 of my HP during the whole affair and went on to pester enemy BB's after that, as I had originally envisioned doing. Curiously though they did a MUCH better job at dodging my torps and frustrating nearly every effort at getting some more juicy hits than their DD's had done. That was a weird game indeed. After it was won, I reckoned I had just about exhausted my pool of luck for the day in Shima and changed to play a Cruiser instead, you know - Just in case.

YOU MUST BUILD A WALL !!!

Fixed it, thanks for the heads up guys.

I had the dubious pleasure of being in the same team with our dearest Fiend(s) @Ysterpyp and @xXx_Blogis_xXx (lost the replay so I could not check the name, sorry lad - Totally my bad). Well, it went well for us, as would have been expected with 2 such distinguished gentlemen in our midst. CV work was most excellent and the accompanying BB did not do too shabby either. Sadly the game ended just when I had skillfully beached myself (was playing Mogami) on the opposite side of a very shallow beach from an enemy Des Moines, who had likewise beached himself across the island and was presumably about to pepper me to teeny bits from 1,5km away, except that he kept on using AP on my bridge while I had rather more cunningly chosen IFHE... 1 more salvo and surely I would have prevailed (or not, lacking replay I have no idea, who was about to die). Oh well, better luck next time I guess. Thanks for an awesome win guys, you heroically saved my day, hope to have the pleasure sometime again (and I mean it, because otherwise it was a rather a horrible potato mash all day - AIEEE!)

I trust you have heard of something called "HE", according to WG this is the correct shell to use in order to defend against DD's, so therefore this change is reasonable and long in the making. With a little known commander skill called "Expert Loader" it is possible to switch shells in 15 seconds or less. Of course assuming that you haven't just blithely blundered into a torpedo ambush, in which case no kind of shell is going to save you anyway. Of course, the Expert loader skill could be buffed a bit more to make it more viable...