AndyHill

Well I already completed the mission before I got a new one, did it count?

The best thing about research bureau is that you don't have to reset the ships. It's entirely voluntary and if you don't care about the ships on offer, you should absolutely pass on the offer. Initially the problem was massive gameplay advantage you could gain by doing the resets, which meant that you'd have to do it to remain competitive. Luckily that's no longer the case and I have to give WG credit for doing the right thing at least this once - even if the original form of the idea should've never got as far as it did.

Also one point that just came to my mind; imagine having for example 3 submarines on both teams. What that means is that there will be a total of 6 less ships doing the dakka-dakka-shooty-shooty-boom-boom action thing that's so important to the game. Sure this is mainly a game of tactical positioning, but it's nice to have things to shoot at and to an extent nice to have someone shooting back at you. Makes things more exciting at least. With 3 subs and a carrier per side that leaves a grand total of 8 surface combatants per side ready to do the shooting thing. That's more like ranked or clan wars territory. Also of course those subs have exactly 0 anti-air capability, so guess who's going to have a field day among those 8 ships that are also fairly spread out on large maps. And, after that, with the poor subs that are out of oxygen late in the game. I'm also a bit sceptical about a submarine's ability to "radio locate" ships during deep dives or, presumably, get radio located themselves.

From what I've seen so far, subs don't seem to fit too well into random battles and I can't see any kind of changes that would make them a good fit. However, if they actually get a special game mode to fight in, that just might change things quite a bit. The Halloween special was ok and maybe some kind of a convoy hunt mode or something else like that could work just fine. The thing I fear the most is that subs are a lot like (action) carriers in the sense that it might be extremely difficult or outright impossible to balance them in a way that makes them relevant but not gloriously overpowered. However, most importantly subs can not under any circumstances be added into random battles before there is decent sub vs sub gameplay or it will just create a number of hilariously stupid end game scenarios.

oops

Not extremely impressed so far, to be honest, although I've only done a few quick tests and watched streams and videos. Most importantly, we don't need a class of ships that will slow down the meta even more and that's exactly what the submarines will be in the current form. The game also doesn't need more completely asymmetrical interactions without real counterplay - and although submarines aren't nearly as bad as carriers in this regard, their extreme concealment abilities do cause this to happen. Sub on sub action is just plain stupid and any game that ends with just subs alive is as much a tragedy as it's comedy. Realism is one thing, but many aspects of subs are just plain wrong and extremely counterintuitive Why the hell does my sub use active sonar every now and then just to scout the scenery? Not really a big deal but scares the ship out of me every time it happens, pings are supposed to be coming my way, not going out. Having to surface every few moments due to oxygen depletion is a good way to emulate an important limitation real subs had (although in reality they needed to recharge batteries). The extremely overbuffed mobility especially underwater changes the basic character of the class and is a sign of too much shoehorning. This is much more apparent now that we're not sailing steampunk ships and we're comparing them directly to regular ships. Hydro was designed and built to find submarines, it's extremely counterintuitive when it does not. Also, how is sound not a thing at all in submarine warfare? Acoustic torpedoes are borderline weird, but acceptable due to the flexible timeline in the game. However, aiming them by using active pings is just plain stupid and extremely counterintuitive. Also, why do other ships not have acoustic torps now? Why on earth can't subs launch torpedoes on surface? Most other classes have some resemblance and general characteristics of their actual real-life counterparts, but submarines are just completely wrong in most of their functional aspects (a lot like carriers - that are an extremely destructive class). Even in the extremely shoehorned form they at least initially feel like a dangerous addition to the game. It would be interesting to hear more about the designers' idea on how the subs are intended to integrate into the meta and how they are supposed to work so that we could better estimate if that's actually happening. Perhaps most importantly: Subs were at least initially supposed to have a game mode of their own, where is that? What we have now is the regular random game with subs in it. Maybe if we got to test the actual new mode we would be better able to estimate how they fit their intended purpose.

Also note that if you buy a ship from a discount event (which you should if credits mean anything to you) that is better or as good as the discount from the building (which they always are), the only thing you get from the building is the reduction to the selling price.

They're by far the best thing for farming damage, xp, achievements and whatever. When there was the very grindy achievement hoarding event earlier in the spring, I played carriers almost exclusively. It's also very relaxing since you have to screw up colossally to have a bad game. They are not that interesting to play, though, and playing carriers has massively reduced my interest in all other classes - and I guess that's the reason why I play carriers (when I do). When given the choice of being the prey or the apex predator, I'm inclined to choose the latter.

Has there been new info on the subject? Back when people were claiming that the rework is done purely to consolify the game mechanics I would've been ready to bet a decent amount of money on consoles never getting carriers*. If I was a developer I'd take one good look at carriers on PC, say NOPE to that and exploit my opportunity to steal some of the playerbase to the carrier-free platform. Have they made announcements recently or something? *Note that consoles not getting carriers does not necessarily mean that the motivation (or a motivation) for the rework wasn't potential consolification.

I've never understood exactly why many people seem to think that subs will be a counter for carriers. Historically that certainly wasn't the case and I don't see how they would be in the game either, at least if they work anything like the prototypes we've seen so far.

I hope you reset both branches at the same time and saved freexp on not having to research the low tier ships for the other branch.

Probability for a streak of five wins or losses is 6.25% if you are a 50% player. Enough matches and it's basically guaranteed to happen - and the number required is not that big. Even the best players can't carry every match and for a 60%+ player loss streaks are less common and for a 40% player more common, but everyone gets streaks. Try a neutral coin toss program (computer based RNGs are often a bit questionable, but for our purposes for example this should suffice: http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Coin/) to get some kind of a feel for completely random series'. I threw a set of 1000 coins and basically instantly got a streak of 10 tails. Streaks are basically completely normal even when something is completely random and when you count in the human factors like playing when totally tilt, they become even more common. This is of course not proof that WG isn't tampering with the games, but to prove otherwise you'd need a huge amount of data to prove that patterns exist.

How about it, WG, let's see a "reset EVERYTHING" to get double research points for all trees at once -challenge for people who have all the T10 tech tree ships? You have my permission, go for it.

Ok WG, I'm giving you one more chance to be a proper gaming company and take up the challenge of the superwhales! You can take a few days to set it up, but I suggest announcing the feature already todayor I'll start doing boring, mundane non-cataclysmic regular resets.

Probably not and that's exactly the problem with carriers. You made good plays and the red team screwed up. You deserved the results as did they. With carriers in play opportunities like this either don't exist or depend on pure luck so that the red carrier doesn't take interest in your doings.

Is it going to be a total disaster? Do we really need something akin to a super stealthy and slow torp destroyer with no guns - or alternatively something that doesn't even remotely resemble real-life subs? Will this be the next carrier rework or will WG actually manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat and make it work? Will there be world peace and cure for cancer later this year?

Do note that if you pick combinations like khaba/grozo, shima/haru or woost/moines from that list and reset both at the same time, you will save FXP by not having to freexp your way through the lower tiers twice to get two tier 10s.

You ducking muppet, you just had to go there didn't you?

I liked the Halloween thing, the audiovisual stuffs were nice and the gameplay was pretty hectic and entertaining. However, that's not the part I'm worried about. Playing a super sneaky ambush hunter class can be made entertaining (if it's powerful enough to be relevant), no doubt about that. The problem is that playing against such a class (if it's powerful enough to be relevant) might very well not be. Getting both sides of the equation right at the same time is going to be very difficult when one side is going to be at such extremes of the spectrum in concealment and speed. And recently WG not only has bad track record in designing the carrier rework but also in pushing it through regardless of how bad state it was (and still is) in. That's just not very promising.

I don't see how subs could possibly reduce camping or speed up the meta, when in reality, because of their fundamental attributes, they were only able to engage forces that basically ran into them i.e. pushed and got punished for it by a ship class designed for camping ambush-style tactics. If the subs' main role and playing style are even remotely like the real deal they will be the ultimate campers and push-stoppers with exactly zero ability to push or up the pace of battle. Which doesn't sound very nice, fun or good for the meta, to be honest. And if they have nothing like a remote resemblance to the real deal, why bother in the first place?

...and once you manage to make submarines fun, the real challenge begins. Silent Hunter and other submarine games are a lot of fun (as long as you have time compression), it's actually quite entertaining to try to ambush convoys and so on. However, hunting submarines has only ever been interesting in some pretty hard core games that model complicated modern equipment to the level that makes using them interesting. Otherwise it's just a mix of boring and frustrating.

It's going to be interesting to see how WG actually attempt to implement submarines into the game. They are going to have to buff some characteristics massively to make them relevant in any way. Let's take a look at the actual characteristics of a Type VIIC U-boat - probably a mid to mid-high tier ship in the game: Mass: 769 tonnes (about 1/3 to 1/4 of a DD -> should translate to extremely low hp pool) Speed: 17.7knots surfaced, 7.6 submerged (if they double the surface speed it's still not a fast ship and if submerged speed is tripled, it's still probably the slowest boat in the tiers). Weapons: typically 4 torps forward, 1 aft, some ships had less (and these are smaller torps with less damage and range than typical DD torps, more akin to aerial weapons), 1 88mm dual purpose secondary gun AA: every crewmember must attend meetings after a combat patrol concealment: god-tier, especially when submerged below periscope depth How do you turn this into something fun while still trying to maintain some kind of resemblance to the original thing?

Submarines are kind of opposite to carriers in that whereas carriers completely dominated any surface combat ships, submarines weren't much use in typical naval combat until homing torp... oh ship.

The thing that bothers me most about submarines is that they don't really bring anything new into the game. For all practical purposes they have been in the game since the start, because basically the only thing they did in reality was to provide ambush torpedoes appearing out of nowhere and something for escorts to hunt. With the spotting mechanics and the DD implementation in game we've had both since the start - in a fun and fast paced format. If you take the special concealment thing away (which is what happens in the game since DDs can already easily torp from stealth), submarines are basically slow and weak DDs with meh torps and no guns. At least one of those attributes needs to be buffed completely out of whack to make the class relevant in any way. Thus, we again come back to the question why have subs in the first place if they are nothing at all like the real thing - unless you really think we need new lines of ultra-stealth torp boats. However, unlike with carriers, I believe there's still a small chance that WG have figured out something fantastic and actually made them somehow fun to play as well as play against. The latter part is something just about every game outside the most hardcore wargames have failed at and that's what worries me the most.

Submarines in real life were extremely slow and that was a very important part of how they fought. Is there point in having a class in the game if it doesn't even remotely resemble actual submarines? In any case WG will simply never make them actually fast compared to DDs, so the slow part will almost certainly apply.