Muppeteer

Really enjoyed it in test. The torps dont hit very hard but the sheer volume you can put in the water means you will be getting a whole lot of floods, especially if you spec for that. Also best in class concealment means you should be able to stay out of trouble as long as you are paying attention. The 150mm guns are a bit meh but still usable, and if you have access to Jerzy Swirski then you can get the torp reload down from already fast to stupidly fast. Issue is the "wall of bundles" in the way but is certainly one I would like in port depending on how the mission chains look.

Your already questionable credibility is getting more battered with every post im afraid. Halford gets 2 plane squads that reload one after the other so you can have 2 separate flights of planes ready to go if you wait the requisite amount of time, which honestly isnt a bad plan since you should probably be doing DD things and using the planes when you really need them. As previously mentioned, the planes being spotted is just because thats how planes work - just like CV planes they get seen from very long range. Never even once did I get shot when launching planes in many games played in this ship although I did have to immediately recall them a few times when my torp warning flashed up after I put them in the air. The planes are on your position for literally a second or less. You are not in danger when launching them unless you were already spotted. Edit: Really must apologise to the @EireannGamingNetwork. Halford for literally the whole of test had two separate flights of missile planes which loaded sequentially but they evidently changed this before release. It was even advertised as having this feature (at least in early blogposts etc about it) but they plainly made a last minute change. Sorry again.

Yeah absolutely. Same as in any of the fattleships - really have to be planning several minutes ahead. Still isnt a terrible BB :)

The Steam summer sale is certainly quite a draw - Wasteland 3 for £7 has been eating quite a lot of my time :) Congratz on your weekend performance.

Certainly nothing wrong with how you performed in that one. Weekend teams are often like this so all you can do is make as much of a contribution as you can. If you are top spot then you played your part - the enemy just played better as a whole. Regarding your "show your weekend performance" thing in the OP - played a few yesterday to complete my naval battle tries and this weekend has been fine personally.

Yeah absolutely. It will likely be a good pick when in a division or playing limited modes like CB and its influence tends to increase the longer the game goes on. It never hurts to have competent teammates who actually pay attention to your spotting and when you have forced a DCP from an opponent etc. Really took me a while to get to grips with it and I maybe had a head start since im a huge fan of Tone. Time will tell as to how it performs now its released anyway but its definitely too early to be asking for buffs (or nerfs).

Having tried playing it as a normal USN BB, its honestly horrible at longer range. When you spec for secondarys and slowly trundle towards the front lines its a completely different ship - suddenly the main guns are landing hits and the secondarys are chewing up anything foolish enough to be nearby. The slow speed means you really have to be planning ahead and using cover to break detection at times is a must, but personally I found it to be pretty fun and surprisingly dangerous. If you are close enough to a flag for the secs to be in range then you are a huge threat to anything that is trying to cap.

Why? While there has been some powercreep with hybrids in general (newer ones have barely noticeable drawbacks compared to Ise and Tone) you should still be giving up some quite substantial utility to have access to a tool like controllable planes. Not sure it would be that helpful in terms of balance to actually make it a good DD that also happens to be a hybrid as opposed to a pretty mediocre one with such a potentially powerful gimmick. Has to be said that its not an easy ship to play to its maximum potential. I suspect that in the right hands it will be very nasty indeed when people actually get used to playing it.

As mentioned, you are one of only 2 ships in the game that has access to RPF and controllable planes. If you are lucky enough to have a competent CV who is keeping track of all the enemy DDs then fair enough but lets be honest - thats a rarity, plus you have much better intel than they do.

Yep sort of fair enough, although you also dont want to be too close to DDs that potentially outstealth you and have likely thrown torps in your direction. Using RPF and plane spotting can be very effective and is often the best way to deal with your most direct threat. You also wont be landing many (if any) hits with those missile planes on DDs but completely agree you dont want to be spending extended periods of time in the planes. Spotting the DD then striking some bow taking cruiser just behind it is generally more effective. Its a bad idea to get into a "must play like this" mindset with a ship of this sort. You really have to play to the situation.

Ah thank you. Its been some time since I played the thing :) In its earliest versions it had way worse stealth than it does now but this got changed due to how it performed I guess. 6.1km isnt too bad and is at least semi competitive but theres still a whole lot of DDs in its MM spread you wouldnt want to be getting into a dual with so cautious play and spotting with planes to take out DDs is still probably the way to go.

Part of the OPs problem is his shifting narrative when people who actually know what they are talking about try and explain things to him. The fact we went from "im spotted when I launch the planes" to "people blind fire me on the planes position when I launch them" is a great example. I honestly dont believe this blind fire thing has happened to the OP since much like @DerKleine I have played this DD a whole lot more than him (NDA is off so happy to share my thoughts on the ship) and this never happened to me in all the matches I played in it. The reasons are quite simple and were thoroughly explained by others but just to reiterate - the planes will be on your position for literally under a second. By the time anyone has even noticed them (and realised they are Halford attack planes instead of CV planes, fighters or whatever) they will be several KM away from your hull. You are certainly telegraphing "theres a Halford somewhere in this general vicinity" to people who are paying attention but the chance of anyone actually acting on this and successfully landing hits based on the planes is incredibly low. Would request a replay of this magical event happening if you wish to stick with this claim. The ship itself gives up a lot for the gimmick. With a stealth build you are still a fair amount less stealthy than comparable USN DDs (gets down to something like 6.3km? Probably misremembering the exact number) and lose a fair amount of firepower for the gimmick, particularly with the one rack of torps. The selling point is this is one of only two ships in the game to have access to RPF and controllable planes. You can easily keep track of enemy DD locations and when the planes are available go and spot them for your teammates. Firing some torps via RPF beforehand can be valuable since they will often smoke up or turn when they see the planes coming so you can force mistakes. When the enemy DDs are dealt with due to the planes spotting the Halfords shortcomings become less of a problem since you will now be the stealthiest thing on your flank and can do "normal" DD things. You obviously have to be careful with what you are doing when in "plane mode" but there isnt some hard and fast rule for what you should leave your hull doing - it will completely depend on enemy positions and whats happening at the time. I would agree that smoking just to use the planes is a horrible waste of a consumable a lot of the time.

Agreed its not massively hard for PvP veterans but since you cant bring a division its certainly possible to lose if a few of your teammates get sunk cheap and early. Won all my attempts but in most of those people were bringing sensible choices of ships. In the one where they didnt there was a genuine chance of losing and it was only won because the bots werent intelligent enough to realise my 8k hp CV was sitting 4km from them hidden behind an island systematically deleting them as they tried to cap. I dont tend to touch coop but from what I remember AB is a bit more challenging than that and plenty of people seem to be enjoying the new mode.

Played a few matches last night on NA and its quite fun. Cant see me playing it loads but the rewards are actually not bad. Losses are apparently happening although the closest I came to one in my five games was when the other 4 on my team all went to the map border (and all got sunk) and left me to defend the flag versus 6 in my Malta. Luckily the bots are still not very bright so managed to win it as last man standing. Regarding the rewards, best I managed was around 1600xp from a 240k damage game in Schlieffen with about 200k profit in silver. The game lasted only 7 minutes so thats not a bad return. Cruiser players seem to be suffering most since being focussed down by 3-4 (or more) bots is not pleasant even when higher tier, and some people also seem to playing it as if it was normal coop and getting sunk quickly as a result.

They require it but dont force it. Obviously enemy subs go down quickly when there is a team effort but if the "friendly" sub is only interested in stealthing behind enemy lines to farm some cheap damage then they wont be contributing to that team effort. And this is all too common.

I personally dont subscribe to the opinion that subs are particularly OP although when being played by someone good they can be a huge threat, but honestly you could say that about any class and the actual good sub players are few and far between. The problem is they just arent particularly fun to play against, and even after sinking a sub it tends to be a case of "glad thats done with, now I can get on with the game" as opposed to any sort of satisfaction or feeling that you had a skill based encounter (clicking near to a water splash and hoping for the best isnt exactly high level gaming). Have to say I agree with @BM13_KatyushaEU with regard to subs teamplaying. Sadly the class is pretty much designed to play solo (in what should be a team game) so its hardly a surprise when they dont make any effort to support versus the opposing sub. The ones that do are always appreciated however. There are other problems with them as well but the most fundamental one to my mind is that its a game and games are supposed to be enjoyable and sadly subs are detracting from this. As others mentioned above, my clan has also seen a huge decline in active people of late and the ones that are still active are often only logging on for 1 or 2 games as opposed to an evening of it. Im sure I dont have to say what the most stated reason for that has been.

I had exactly this but with Dutch cruiser airstrikes a while ago. Unable to use them for literally the whole game with the same issue with the UI - targeting reticle orange despite them being loaded and ready. I submitted a replay with lengthy explanation as to what had occurred and received the stock "sorry you have encountered a problem, please contact us if you have issues in the future" as a reply. On the plus side this has only ever manifested itself once for me (and was fine in the match immediately after this happened) but really not ideal.

So in the two cherry picked examples we had a CV reversing in a straight line to the edge of the map and then an AFK cruiser. Hardly difficult targets. Any amount of angling and suddenly the rockets arent even remotely as dangerous. Even had exactly this (the first example) a few days ago when friendly Chaklov reversed from spawn. I warned him when I noticed the enemy Colossus's rocket planes approaching him on the map edge (this was maybe 40s-1min before he attacked) and the Chak continued to reverse in a straight line. Predictably he took around 30k from this first strike. Afterwards he actually made an effort to dodge, focussed AA and dropped fighters on his side and it took the enemy CV another 9 minutes or so to sink him as a result. If he had made any effort to steer before the first attack he probably wouldnt have been sunk at all. Not saying the rockets arent good but you really have to be aiding and abetting the enemy CV by making no effort to angle for them to land huge hits.

And those aforementioned people will be populating both teams in (on average) similar quantities. The maths seems quite straightforward.

Since on average you will have these so called "weekend monsters" on the enemy team as much as on yours, surely you should be doing fine as you are claiming to be superior to them? You would almost think that a good player would be doing even better at the weekend since the quality of the competition will be lower?

Another gem. I mean, how could he possibly predict that the DD would throw some torps at him? Surely all of us would have stayed sailing along at full speed in a straight line in this situation? The rage quit while his ship was still just about afloat was the icing on the cake. Posting vids like this is giving him some traffic on his YT channel (albeit not very much) so maybe thats the motivation for him uploading such comedically bad play. Could even be auditioning for WG for a series of "How not to" videos.

Would happily participate and regardless of whether this happens I will make a donation to the charity.

Was farming fires for that CV dockyard mission and Indom seemed a good choice. Sadly I would have done way better if the mission had asked for triggering DCPs and allowing my team to farm fire damage. Ah well. Our DD smoking me near end kept me just about alive as you lot won but gg well played :) Was actually in a match just previous to this one with @KillStealBoss and 2 more of your fellow THESO's which went a lot better. Sunk 3 in my Verdi versus T11s (and your clanmates on my team did great also). o7

To all those people who describe planes or subs or radar or whatever else in the game as this horrible disease - I hope you will have a long hard look at yourself after this and correct your behaviour. Mashum I salute you sir. Theres very little anyone can say apart from I am very sorry. Keep fighting on. o7

Yeah absolutely (as if this was even in doubt lol). I just really enjoyed the comical panning left and right when the BB went undetected as he frantically looked for where it had gone :)