Ubertron_X

The difference being that the Dasha ones are clearly photographs whereas the other ones are however well done computer art. So again this comes down to preference. If you prefer a photorealistic captain Dasha the current versions work better, if you don't mind having captain Dasha depicted in Yamamoto, Halsey or Jingles style and with a major emphasis on the correct captains attire, then computer generated potraits probably work better.

1. Keep your hands off Dasha! ;) 2. In my personal opinion they managed to match her general appearance and clothing style to the time period and each individual nation quite nicely. 3. Probably easier to do they shooting while simply using old style clothing rather than to try to find or tailormake at least semi-historical uniforms for each nation or to photoshop those onto Dasha. However I surely woudn't mind if they provided "proper" Captain Dashas in addition to or separate to what we have now.

I for once am waiting for a german ship line that can call in a squadron of Do 217 using Fritz X glide bombs. Totally historical and balanced, comrade.

1. Being bottom tier in this WG title is by far better than in other WG titles (WoT *cough cough*), as your guns and torps can still damage everything you fight against. 2. Bottom tier play experience is very dependent on ship class and level range. In a battleship I usually dont mind being bottom tier at all (unless you have to get in the face of BBs whose guns easily overmatch your bow and stern), in a cruiser you are screwed almost every single time and destroyers are somewhere in between. 3. That having said your influence on the battle at hand will most of the time certainly be lower while being bottom tier, however it is not plain zero and every single ship can make a huge contribution to the overall effort.

T7 is a bad place for premium heavy cruisers, still waiting for an Algerie clone or similar decent ship. Gorizia works for me, however it is currently not available. At T8 both Atago and Price Eugen are decent. Atago can double up as semi-DD due to low concealment and good torps as well as having a very good alpha strike with its guns. PE is some kind of swiss army knife cruiser that while lacking in the DPM department can easily outlast many opponents due to workable armor and heal. It has a 6km German hydro that is great for detecting torps and surprising out of position DDs or smoke cruisers, decent AA (in comparison to Atago and as far as any AA can be decent at all) and a double set of close range torps. Playstyles in between those two are are wildly different due to concealment, range, number of guns and preferred type of ammo. Atago has the higher alpha strike and damage potential (HE + fire + long range torps) while PE is a little easier to play (range, armor).

Apologies if this topic has been raised before but the new ranked season made me remember that since a couple of patches I have a flag displayed that I do not own and consequently can not mount. And while this might be a case of mild irritation triggered by OCD may I ask why this is the case and especially if this has been done on purpose, why is not not grayed out or similar to indicate that the flag is not owned? @TheWarJaC

Forget this rambling, I should read complete sentences...

But perhaps we are all wrong and it will be more like...

Dont forget dem Ise's in addition to the CVs...

Looks more like a black and white version of an already mostly black and white flag and therefore is very hard to see. "Grayed out" for me is when the whole thing is shaded in light grey, not just colours turned off black & white style. However I understand that this is indeed a preview feature, so thanks for your heads up!

Yes, but we are 5th season now, this is for 3rd season and I never ever played even one battle since the new ranked format went live. Edit: Got confused about the seasons due to the ongoing sprints. Right now we are in the 3rd season until 5th of August, so this is just a preview feature?

Hi Guys! Trying to upload a gif, however it is quite big (27MB) and fails to load. Is there a single file restriction in addition to the 50MB total, and if so, what is the maximum single file size? Thanks!

Totally agree, however this issue being the question of what BB players consider as their 'standard' ammuntion. BB reload takes 30 seconds without any special skill, so you usually shoot what you have. HE is very effective versus destroyers, often effective versus cruisers (most of the time AP is better) and still effective versus BB, regardless of angle. AP is not especially effective versus destroyers, very effective versus cruisers and moderately (depending on angle) effective against battleships. Which means that I can imagine that many BB players will start having HE loaded as it is the ammunition type that is 'always' yielding results, especially when initial distances are high and the enemy is very likely still angled (aka start of the battle). And if you start using HE and potentially already got some fires going and/or DCP spent you really have to consider continuing using HE for continuous damage versus the chance of a potentially lethal damage spike using AP. And it seems not many players are experienced or bold enough to take that risk.

Apart from those times when HE is arguably better even against broadside targets. Looking at you, light cruisers...

The question being, are they really less effective? Obviously if you are broadside in your BB with AP loading and the enemy also broadside BB uses HE throughout, congratulations. However combined volume of fire using HE can easily overwhelm the DCP as well as the Repair party of any enemy BB and can be very effective even if the HE is not comming from ships like Thunderer or Conqueror. The obvious lack of HE shells became very obvious to me while grinding the Italian BB line and - considering an enemy that is not commiting any major mistakes - I often was not able to contribute to the pressure on enemy cooldowns created by friendly cruisers or destroyers. HE and its associated fire mechanics do enjoy an intrinsic force multiplier and I often find myself using HE in BBs, especially if paired with a good fire starting cruiser or destroyer in the first place.

If any of us is worthy to lift the almighty speadsheet it ought to be @ColonelPete !!!

Met @Aerroon in his Yugumo during a Grand Battle in my Hannover, we even were in the same team, however the luck of battle was not meant to be on our side and we clearly lost that one.

As promised here some additional feedback to Grand Battles, this time mostly using Hannover (and Shimakaze to get more tickets). Disclaimer: Due to a general disregard of the playstyle in regards to effectivity I am not a very experienced player of secondary battery focused ships at all, especially when it comes to 'random' battles (e.g. I normally complete any secondary hits missions in co-op), which means that a more experienced player might be able to capitalize more easily on the Hannover secondary ability. So I might simply lack the skills to be able to execute the tactics necessary for the Hannover to shine in Grand Battles which you should simply keep in mind while going through my individual statements. Going for a moderate ship and captain secondaries build (see below) and doing like half a dozen games in the Hannover I have to admit that I have not been able to close to what I would consider as 'effective secondary' range even once, mainly because one side/flank collapsed or retreated quickly as a result of the initial DD clashes. More often then not I found myself at the receiving end and had to turn tail (respectively go on the defensive) after my DD screen had been deleted early on, and pushing into enemy DDs is not very advisable, even when your Super-BB comes equipped with hydro. Nonetheless this review is not meant to become a multi page essay of how I think that upscaling of secondary battery mechanics does not work properly due to a multitude of reasons (triangle of firepower, maneouvrebility and protection for each individual ship; meta-changes based on concealment and firing ranges for the entire team; dependency on teamwork both in enabling you to use your secondary battery effectively as well as on capitalising on you using it), so I will focus on the new Hannover secondaries mechanics instead. As per my Satsuma review and the related gun mechanic the secondaries mechanic of the Hannover - while looking great on paper - was very hard to capitalize on in game, mainly because of the automatic trigger. Sometimes my target or I managed to slip behind hard cover when the ability triggered, sometimes the main gun salvo triggering the ability was the one that sank the only ship within effective secondaries range and sometimes there wasn't even one visible enemy within range, simply because I was doing things like trading long range fire with enemy capital ships while retreating from an unchecked enemy DD. During the few games that I managed to get somewhat close to effective range or the additional range of the ability enabled secondary battery fire in the first place I got respectable damage figures and/or some extra hits in, but in the end nothing to really write home about. Secondary focused ships are more difficult to play successfully because they heavily depend on circumstances (team composition and performance as well as map/terrain) and most importantly of all timing. As such the automatic trigger adds another layer of complexity to the already complex gameplay of secondary focused ships because in order to capitalize on the ability would require even more extraordinary timing. Which is to say it is extremely hard to trigger the ability when you really want it to trigger, which would either be at the start of you committing your ship to a brawl and/or in the middle of an ongoing brawl with a more or less healthy opponent, or when a low health enemy ship is trying to get out of your secondaries range. I know that the idea is that the ability triggers while ideally your Hannover is already brawling an enemy DD detected by your team (radar/planes) or your hydro, or an enemy CA that is not too close and/or having good torpedo armament, or an enemy BB that is not another Hannover, preferrably on a one-on-one basis, however I could not make that situation happen ingame. In my humble opinion both Satsuma and Hannover abilities should not trigger automatically but have an activation timer instead (say 1 Minute) during which the player can choose to activate the ability once the gauge has been maxed out. Once the timer has run out the gauge is then reset to zero wether the ability has been used or not. Any such approach would leave usage of said ability at least somewhat within the direct control of the player and could thus become another tool for skilled and smart gameplay.

Missed a couple of the "for doubloons" ones like, simply because I was unwilling to pay for them at that moment in time: Nikolai, Guilio Cesare, Belfast, Kutusov. Despite having most "free" ships including ARP Nachi I missed the Benham for obvious reasons. And then there are the ships that never quite made it on my "what to buy next with my special ressources" list, e.g. Black, mostly because I earned not enough coal or steel to buy them all.

In the end this is also a matter of attitude. For example I placed near minimum bets both times despite having a huge surplus on credits simply because while I could put the coal to use I am not in need of coal. As such I saw no need in further fueling the auction and draining ressources (mine and others) by placing a high bet.

Yes, that's what my impression was. One auction per update rather than more regularily.

Any idea for the flag? I noticed only last minute that you can bid credits this time and my minimum bid (5m) was not successful.

Can't say for sure yet, however as long as the price is going up (= more ressource drain) my best guess is that we will see them quite often (however not regularly).

While I do not agree to OPs argument regarding BB life and coincidence with the rocket plane rework, in general DDs seem to go out of their way to avoid each other nowadays. It's gotten so bad I sometimes found myself actively hunting enemy DDs, primarily using my Kagero's or Yugumo's guns while regrinding the line, even versus gunboats.

Some feedback on Grand Battles: 1) As expected this game mode seems to "lock out" cruisers by its very nature and thus often features an overabundance of destroyers and battleships (enclosed the 3 games I played yesterday, with a total of 4 cruisers out of 54 ships). While this kind of meta could be expected considering that the battle type is all about battleships with even bigger guns (and corresponding overmatch mechanics) future events should either "allow" equal participation for all classes or the "flavor of the month" classes for each event should be rotated, i.e. the next event should really center on cruisers. 2) The new Adjustment Fire mechanic seems unimpressive as it is triggered automatically. As much as I understand the incentive for battleships to keep shooting in order to increase your accuracy it never prevented me going dark when I really needed to, nor did it in any way interact with my shooting routine or target selection and I kept shooting targets that needed focus fire in order to overwhelm their defenses or took opportunistic shots at badly positioned enemies as I would have in any normal random game. Things might be different if I myself could decide when to use the extra accuracy, for example at times when I really wanted to hit difficult to hit targets (DD or CA at range, bow-in BB) or when going for extra juicy targets (broadside CA or BB). Note that is observation is mainly based on my experiences in Satsuma, will leave further feedback once I have tried Hannover.