Ubertron_X

For me it is the bonus to captain & crew XP, not the silver income that lets me run prem time since 2011, but to each its own.

This. If you are sitting on a pile of doubloons because of ship compensation and cheap buys this is a good offer. Not going to spend any money before I got rid of my 36k doubloons that I can't spend elsewhere for like 1 year or even longer (aka I already have all the tech tree prems I want).

+1 for FDG. Last true BB of that line and really just a supersized Bismarck (don't try and play it like a Bismarck though). Always considered the GK an abomination with terrible handling and bad turret angles.

Actual footage of AA rework, ca. 1983, colourized:

Which is not entirely true. They are an odd mix of rewardship and premium ship once WG ruled them to be true IJN ships. And while they will not provide any substantial in-game bonus they count as premium ships as far as captains are concerned. This means that you could switch one captain through 9 different ARP ships and 9 daily wins without ever having to respec once.

As far I as I followed the topic last time it came up WG will probably not change the looks of the camo itself (because of the T&C's of the colaboration I guess). There was a suggestion to have the ARP camo provide the usual boni in-game boni instead (-3%, +4%) but I don't know how far this idea has progressed by now.

Next thing WG needs to look after is: Why the heck seems every single of my ships unable to hit stationary targets? Enemy beaches? All misses. Enemy stops in smoke and is radared? All misses. Enemy boldly stops in open water to throw of your aim? You wait until he is perfectly still....and all misses! And I am not talking about bow and stern misses because there was some monumentum left but port to starboard misses of whole on-target salvos...

Yes

Would also not go below 15 secs for DDs as this is the minimum reload of a typical BB gun and having Expert Loader spec'ed (which I kind of consider a reference value for this kind of things). Apart from that the reloads for the other classes are debatable. 20 secs is still not helping cruisers as they will not go invis in between shots (same as now), but 30 secs for BBs might be ok as this may limit their DPM if they want to maneuvre unseen and increase the amount of gun fire they might need to tank before going invis again. The current system is strange in the way that it may severly limit your DPM if fighting the "wrong" ship, e.g. Atago (15 secs reload) vs. Republique (20ish secs reload), where the Atago might end up with the same reload speed of the Republique because the later vanishes in between salvos.

Whats wrong with a little Böhmen und Mähren in your Empire, Lord Habsburg?

Whats wrong with the symbols? As far as I can see it is the coat of arms of Bohemia (front), Moravia (left), Silesia (right) and Slovakia (back or top), all of which where part of Czecho-Slovakia as it formed in 1918?

Use it on specialised DD-hunter DD's (e.g. Z-46) and some gun-DD's (Gearing). Don't use it on real gunbootes (Khaba, new IJN line) or the old IJN torp DD's. Why not the old IJN DD's you may ask? Because I don't want to telegraph my presence to enemy ships when I am about to close proximity torp them. And even potato BB captains with 1 intact brain cell eventually go on red alert and start to maneuvre (or usually retreat) once they notice that they are the nearest ship to an enemy destroyer.

"New" division window, which is 105% in the way all the time...

The thing is that all smoke or behind-island shooting is dependent on A) having a spotter and/or B) the enemy coming in your general direction and C) in case of smoke you also need to assure that no torps might be comming your way. If you have no spotter, the enemy is moving away from you and/or there still is the threat of torpedo soup you can often not do much. I have the Haragumo myself and I can very rarely use the guns to their full potential because I have to fullfill DD duties, aka no spotter, enemy is disengaging or there still is an enemy DD, waiting to smoke torp me. On the receiving end, pushing into an area without sufficient screening and if worst comes to worst into multiple hidden and shell-lobbing enemies this will get you killed very quickly. That is the reason why I don't like the current meta too much. All quishy ships hide in positions where they are hard to damage / dislodge - and rightfully so - which however prohibits dynamic gameplay and leads to ranged shoot-outs.

Hello dear fellow captains and WG staff, while pondering about buying some santa crates I re-noticed that while there is a huge number of premium BB's and a lot of more or less gimicky premium CL's our current premium ship selection is very limited when it comes to open-water heavy cruisers (Atago and clones, Prinz Eugen; not counting the Russians for obvious reasons). Some navies don't have CA's at all, not even in the tech tree. In the end I did not buy additional crates because I already have a large enough selection of premium BB's and I am tired of having to hide behind rocks or in smoke to be effective in a CL. So how about some more plain solid heavy cruisers in order to the strengthen the cruiser meta (and I am not talking about battlecruisers or large cruisers like Alaska)? If I would be allowed one wish for 2019 this would be one of them (along with restoring the old division window). What do you think?

You misspelled Mussouri. Or was it Missashi?

The thing is, do you balance ships on a competitive level (high skill ceiling possibly also high skill floor) or do you balance ships for the masses (low skill floor and possibly also low skill ceiling)? Usually you can't do both. Most competitive games balance their game pieces based on the performance of the top players (e.g. LoL), WoWs seems to balance their ships on the performance of the majority of the players. To be honest I am a little torn about wether approach is the better. Generally I do think the former is better, i.e. don't cater for the masses but balance based on unicum performance, however there are valid cases (e.g. CV's in WoWs) where I do think low skill floor and ceiling might be a better approach in order to eliminate skill gap.

Oh, dont get me wrong, any competent Z-52 player will get the initial cap. No discussion here. The question vs. a low visibility DD is, how may HP will you lose in the process of doing so (depending of cap location and size of course; e.g. Okinawa center cap for example will give Z a very hard time)? So if I encounter a Z in e.g. a Yugumo I will gladly lose the initial cap and trade his HP for some cap points, only to get the cap once he is either dead or crippled and can not even fight IJN gunpower anymore.

My best guess on this is the rather high visibility rate of 6.1km (considering she will meet a lot of 5.4 - 5.7km visibility enemy DDs). Surely you can bully every single DD out of any cap, if the enemy DD decides to put up a fight. Smart players however wont let you bully them and just out-spot you for team. You can always get the cap for free once the Z is dead. This is also the very reason why I rate the Z-46 over the Z-52.

If this thread had sound...

@OP If you don't like the Bismarck perhaps you like this better...

I think one possible approach could be to distinguish CA AP and CL HE better. CA AP - Fast shells, high range, flat arcs, slower reload, possibly add a "IFHE" skill for AP which e.g. is turning regular AP into sAP and give CA decent armor => open water cruisers CL HE - Slow shells, low range, rainbow arcs, faster reload, IFHE => out-of-line-of-sight cruisers

As with most BB`s best results should come in when you learn to master visibility and armor use. Riding the visibility line - especially early in battle - works best (at least for me) as you might be able to disengage for cooldowns, greatly adding to your life span. Obviously this requires Concealment Expert captains skill for full effect (~13.5km for Yamato). And as other already stated, never show broadside if possible. And always remember that incorrect angling can hurt as badly in Yamato as she has very juicy frontal port and starport weakspots...