Kartoffelmos

Met @159Hunter as well as his (yes, I did just assume ) division mate Lord_Shoggi. I was sailing my Amagi while they were using Izumo and Donskoi, respectively. The game was played out on Mountain Range and was pretty weird to be honest. After inflicting two BB AP penetrations on a Benson (so balanced!), I want to cap the centre point as that was obviously uncontested (my team mates on the east side of the map were too busy being passive at C) . On my way there, a Shimakaze started capping and revealed her position by popping smoke. My spotter plane detected her briefly while doing so, so that might have been the reason for the smoke usage. Anyhow, I dodged all her torpedoes bar one (I blame the recently replaced rudder shift upgrade) and at that point, I decided to abuse her reload time. While being shelled by the Shima and not using the repair party to put out the fire in the eventuality of more torpedoes, I charged her smoke and forced her to flee. Unfortunately, I didn't get any balanced AP penetrations (should have switched to HE) and my team didn't want to fire at her (still busy being way to passive at the C cap) and so she managed to reload and put two torps into my ship before finally going down. Naturally, I repaired the flooding from these and was now preparing to cap and use the repair party when that came off cooldown. At that point, the enemy Yamato dealt 13k damage to me from the other side of the map which destroyed my Amagi, despite clearly having more pressing issues. Oh well... A shoutout must be made to a "friendly" and overly salty Des Moines who raged hard at everybody on the opposing team after going down. Real classy behaviour! I mean, I can understand that he raged at the person who sunk him (the obviously-not-kill-securing Yamato who "shot him from across the map"), but the others who used the chat as well? Also, sorry for not greeting: I recognised the familiar name only after the game had ended.

Depends on the concealment and the general firepower of the top-tier destroyers. If they can use radar for early damage (by team mates) and then finish their unfortunate target without problems later, the lack of smoke won't make that much of a difference. If carriers were more popular, maybe, but as things are now? Who will spot you (other radar users aside as that applies to all DDs) when you neutralise the opposing destroyer with relative ease? As I wrote earlier, these things may end up like Z-52 but without the range/concealment disadvantage.

But... but... deep water torpedoes cannot counter smoke so the PA DDs definitely need both radar and US smoke duration. Who needs a line with weaknesses anyway? It's not like the Z-52 will be rendered obsolete or anything with these new features...

Indeed: The problem with the PA DDs is that their supposed weakness is countered by them being US clones. As such, they should be good in a DD-on-DD engagement and thus the only real drawback of the DW-torpedoes is the lack of anti-smoke (RN CLs excluded) utility.

Flags? All my rewards from the Yamamoto campaign (as well as the one I got from a "More flags and signals" SC at around the same time) yielded signal flags. The sad part? Most were BB-oriented flags of which I already have numerous: heal-flags, anti-fire-flags, another bundle of heal-flags, some other bundle (consumable reload?) and lastly, XP-flags (yay, one bundle which I actually needed). Why couldn't I at least get some of the usable special upgrades?

Yes, how dare WG/Sub_Octavian reward players who play the game? I have only one tier X (grinding multiple lines at the same time) and I think the rewards/gifts are quite good. Indeed. Anniversary celebrations are usually twofold in nature: one celebration for the game itself and one for the players who have enjoyed/played the game during said period.

Clearly Conqueror needs a buff to get better win rate!

Much lower spotting distance? Didn't DW torps originally have high damage, high flood chance and low concealment? Doesn't really change all that much though, at least in theory: you can still gun down enemy destroyers and a high flooding chance in addition to good torpedo concealment will make you effective against cruisers and battleships.

I think a developer confirmed that dual-purpose main guns fall under the main armament category and nothing else. I'll see if I can find the quote. EDIT: Found it: (Russian source) Luckily, secondaries and AA share the same module, so there are no potential issues in that regard.

To me, tier 6 is seal clubbing... More seriously though, I think the game in question happened when I grinded Neinberg (just checked, yes it was). I think that qualifies for an extra price of some sort .

Well, it's up now... and I'm not posting this because I'm smug for finally winning something .

When being shot with HE-shells, most tend to hit the deck, so I'm not too worried about the few that would have hit the torpedo belt (had it existed). Being higher in the water is another thing entirely though, as that makes you more vulnerable to AP shells. Having said that, I still think the tradeoff is decent, simply because the AA boost is so noteworthy. Jupp. The same goes for the Zao/Yamato zero damage penetrations: the shells penetrate the outer layer, bounces off the inner layer and detonate inside the spaced armour zone. This area has no hit box/armour model and thus will yield no damage. If the French ships didn't use this space for anything important (aka it was just empty space), the spaced armour is working as intended.

Regarding the squishiness: Atago's main weather deck (aka everything except the fore/aft decks) is 41 mm thick and her citadel deck (citadel roof) is 35/47 mm thick. What this means is that as long as you don't show a "flat nose" or give full broadside, a lot of incoming battleship shells will either bounce, overpenetrate or yield regular penetrations. Combine that with her repair party and you have one durable cruiser. Of course, not being shot in the first place is a better tactic and Atago's concealment makes this very viable.

Apart from the armour and torpedo protection, the drawbacks are rather negligible (1,7 vs. 1,8 sigma, 1 second longer reload, etc.). As such, you trade general survivability for much better AA and torpedoes. If you ask me, that seems rather balanced. I would have liked the AA to be less silly (that goes for new BBs in general nowadays), but I guess the weaker torpedo belt balances it out in late-game situations. I'm not a fan of giving the torpedoes better range (too much overlap with IJN CAs). As for the comparison with Tirpitz, the Kii has better guns so I'm not sure if she needs to be better in the torpedo department.

Actually, why was the IFHE changes cancelled? As you obviously know, the skill dramatically changes the performance of certain guns and most of these do not really need it. In addition, I believe skills like the old Advanced Firing Training and Basic Firing Training were changed because they had too much of an impact on ship characteristics. Why is IFHE (and Air Supremacy for that matter) allowed to stay as they are since they also fall under that category?

No, the green camouflage was (according to WG at least) applied in order to conceal the ships when anchored near islands. Tirpitz received the same treatment when she was "hiding" in the various fjords of Norway. The "house-camouflage" (as seen above) is one example of this, while tree/vegetation usage and "IJN-treatment" are other examples: Note that the port side of the hull is not painted since that side was facing the shore .

Make (German) BBs great again!

I wonder, are they thinking about (countermeasures to) sniping battleships or are they thinking about gold ammunition? The statement will have two distinct meanings depending on what the developer is referring to .

First Blood! Wait, what? I didn't know that this was even possible but it seems like I managed to citadel a cruiser to death at the very same moment that Mahan's torpedoes found their target.

To add to the general consensus: read the actual changes/numbers instead of relying on WG's seemingly random ratings. Apart from Clemson, New Orleans also has a similar feature: when upgrading the guns, you gain a measly two point in artillery rating, but the reduction in reload time means that your damage output is increased by 25%!

Met a lot of imbeciles today... as well as some forum members . No matter what I did though, it seemed that the teams would not let me win more than half of the time. I mean, after carrying one game, I got placed in a match where two destroyers, one top-tier battleship and a RN cruiser decided that it was a good idea to rush the strait in Two Brothers. Their reason? "You don't know if it will fail, it might work". Naturally, it didn't work. As for forum users, I met @loppantorkel (unlucky with your team mates :< ), @aboomination (I think?) and @Unintentional_submarine. Didn't see much to the abominable pony (only at the post-game result), while Submarine capped his team to victory whilst also sinking one of our destroyers. Unfortunately, that was our good one, since the remaining DD on our side didn't want to cap or support the team. Despite my best effort to cap with my Yorck (best DD), we didn't manage to sink enough ships and the game ended in defeat. Not sure why I was the only one remotely interested in punishing their Belfast, but I guess such supreme tactics is too hard to grasp for your average player...

Not sure if it is just me or if it has been mentioned already, but it seems like the Graf Cykalin has been pulled from the store. In addition, I like how the store pages (when they were up, that is) stated nothing about the performance of the ship... @Admiral_noodle, you forking ninja!

Git gut, you @aboomination scrub! Carry harder! This just happened in my Neinberg and I took it as a sign that I shouldn't play more 'ships today: Here's the replay if anyone is interested .

On the contrary. If a recently added (or in this case, made available) ship performs outrageously well (despite having decent player numbers), it is much more likely to be removed than an older semi-OP premium ship. The older ship has been deemed acceptable by WG/Lesta (since it hasn't been removed already) while the newer one is still collecting data and may turn out to be too strong.

That would be fine if detonations were not the only feature to be made irrelevant with the usage of a flag. All other counter-measures works either by reducing the chance of an effect happening or reducing the impact of said effect. Detonations? You either get them or you don't. That's also part of the issue I have with the feature: I can argue why it is bad (thus the need for anti-detonation flags), but even if there exist a compelling argument for keeping them in the game (like that they increase the tension), the flags will work against that argument. Again, if it is so positive and/or adds something to the game, why do we receive flags as a compensation? As for player expectations, I played a lot of D&D-based computer games where saving throws played an important part and I would not argue against those as they fit the games and are an important part of the difficulty curve/progression. They also had a habit of evening out: you could either be unlucky or lucky with your dice rolls, but that also held true for the enemy. In contrast, WoWs has a lot of "rigid" rules (auto-bounce angles, overmatch, concealment, etc.) with minor RNG involved (for instance, at certain impact angles, there is a chance of a shell bouncing off) and I feel that detonations do not fit into this due to their high-impact/low-chance nature. One might argue that this also holds true for triple BB shell citadels, but in this case, luck favoured one player while the other one had done something wrong (positioning or lack of situational awareness). Lastly, the mechanic hurts the class that is most vulnerable to gunfire to begin with. Destroyers, due to their low HP-pool cannot withstand much incoming fire and having an increased chance of receiving a detonation is just adding insult to injury. What I'm trying to say is: I can see a lot of reasons as to why detonations are bad, but except for historical accuracy (which is largely negated in many other aspects of the game), I find little reasons for detonations to exist. Oh well, it is what it is.