Hayashio

They're play buttons (I think).

Speaking of vanity items, here's the two camouflages for the CCT program overhaul Right one: Giveaway camouflage for subscribers/viewers/followers Left one: CCT exclusive (what a good design, I wonder who did that one )

Again, this is in direct connection with the tech tree releases. If it were a German Ship line, I am sure we'd have a German unique commander. Since these changes are pretty new, we've only had a French and an American commander so far.

If we go with what WG said during WGFest 2017, we can safely say that both the ships as well as special commanders/ports and events will be released together. They did, not part of this presentation. There should be a bigger announcement once WG is finalizing these changes!

that is not palpable information, you see.

not to my awareness. There's some info on some CCT swag, and like the aforementioned matchmaker. But nothing palpable on carriers

Congratulations to: IDevourer Thank you everyone for participating. I'll try my best to keep these coming in the future!

Congratulations to: IDevourer Ahoy Forum-goers! As you might be aware, most Contributors, Streamers or Youtubers, have had giveaways running for the new Space Camouflages. If you have no clue what I am talking about, below are some examples of the new Space Camouflages/Skins: I have one set to give away - that is 1 camouflage- as well, so here's how we're going to go about it. Since we don't have any fancy twitch raffle functions, We'll be using Google Forms: Click here to go to the Google Form How To Enter: You enter your name - not your real name, your username -, then you pick a ship from the radio buttons below, and press big blue "Submit" button. I will leave the raffle open for one week, and I'll pick a winner at random at the start of next week, So that's the 9th of April! Please be aware that if you try to use a fake username, and I cannot locate it on the EU server, I'll pick another winner. Keep it fair guys. The Ships you can choose from: Zao, Gearing, Minotaur, Moskva, Gr. Kurfürst, Z-52, Hakuryu, Des Moines, Replubique. Good Luck everyone!

CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. I WILL ANNOUNCE THE WINNER SHORTLY.

yes.

Update-Update: Kronshtadt, Asashio, Abruzzi. Hello fellow forum dwellers! I have a few updates for those of you that have been laying low for the past week. So news for some of you, not so much news for others! Right before Easter, Community Contributors got access to quite a few Test ships. I’m going to give a quick run-down of these ships, how they performed, and what the status on them is. Asashio NOT WIP Let’s get the, uh, bad news out of the way first. Asashio is now in her final form, and there were not too many changes, in fact, since the last test iteration, there have been no changes. She is no longer Work in Progress, and will likely be released in her current form. I am sorry to everyone who had hoped that there would be drastic changes to this ship, and while I was very vocal about how I don’t like the way this ship is developing, I have to accept that unfortunately, this is the way the ship is going to end up. How much influence this ship is going to have in the long run, I don’t know. Only time will tell. Abruzzi WIP Anyone remember this ship? It was in testing before, way back, 5 months perhaps? Well, she has returned, and while her Branding is still WiP, she’s a very solid performer. For those of you that paid attention the last time she was in testing, She was Duca D’Aosta’s bigger brother. Bigger, not having necessarily better armour adequate for her tier, but receiving little improvements, like an extra barrel at the front and aft, increased torpedo protection and somewhat more effective anti air. Like the D’Aosta, Abruzzi has access to both Hydro as Defensive AA. In addition however, Abruzzi receives a Repair Party consumable, allowing her to stay in the fight longer, and not being crippled by a single unlucky battleship salvo. Overall this change alone makes the Abruzzi an amazingly fun ship to play, and I thoroughly recommend getting her over the D’Aosta for that Regia Marina Cruiser captain training. The interesting thing to note about Abruzzi is the discrepancy in shell speeds. While the D’Aosta enjoys a much faster AP velocity, Abruzzi has a blisteringly fast 995m/s HE shell, making her perfect for IFHE spec’d captains, it is also the arguably better choice of ammo for consistency in damage output. So while killing ships in D’Aosta feels like it is taking centuries, Abruzzi, albeit not too fast himself, whittles down targets at an acceptable rate. Getting used to the difference in shell speed does take some time, but the overall flat trajectories and fire rate make playing her very satisfying! Kronshtadt WIP Hey it’s that russian supersized cruiser! He should probably be a Battleship, but being a cruiser does carry it’s own perks! Before I go on about that, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Yes. Kronshtadt does get lolpen’d by everything (battleships) in it’s matchmaking bracket. He does have decent citadel protection, but that’s not going to stop Missouris, Iowas and Yamatos absolutely destroying you from the front. His Armour is not enough to sustain HE fire from Cruisers or IFHE destroyers – Yes, even 155mm can hit you for ridiculous damage. The AA found on the Kronshtadt, is, unfortunately, not very good. It’s passable at most. On the Upside, he does boast a very good armour belt, and most cruisers will have a hard time penetrating that. he’s also the healthiest out of the cruisers. Considering her size, he’s also quite fast at 33.5 knots, and has a maximum concealment of 11.3km. This, combined with cruiser damage control perks as well as the Oktyabr’skaya’s limited fast cooldown damage control, do allow him to stay in the fight for quite some time. His survivability is a bit lacking when fighting Battleships, but then again, which cruiser at tier 9 can say that they can do this effectively? This, combined with the fact that he is bracketed as a cruiser, makes her to be a force to be reckoned with. If it weren’t for those, terrible guns… It’s not that they are bad from a damage perspective. 305mm guns that fire every 17 seconds are truly something nice to have, and while they don’t overmatch, when they do penetrate, they do significant damage. Unfortunately, that would require you to hit your target, and Kronshtadt tends to not be in the mood to do that. While this is intentional, and probably a balancing factor, Kronshtadt’s performance is so heavily dependent on RNG, that it’s hard for me to say that this ship is enjoyable to play at the moment. Luckily, she’s WiP, and subject to change in the upcoming tests. I am looking forward to see what will be made of her in future updates. Z-39 WIP Hmm, this is a strange one. She is identical to her last test, but this time she’s a tier lower. Virtually nothing changed, except for the fact that she is now a tier 7 ship. She retains the tier 8 consumable slot, allowing her to have 6.1km concealment, making her one of the sneakiest destroyers at the tier. She also has one of, if not the biggest health pool - just shy of 20k - at tier 7. All in all, you could consider this ship overpowered, but her DPM and torpedo performance do bring her down to reality again. Solid ship. A problem I am seeing right now is the fact that her Hydro is outright better than the one found on Maass, which is not a good thing (looking at you LoYang). Buffalo WIP I have to be honest, I am still grinding my way down the American Cruiser line, so I cannot go into detail about this one. First impressions of this ship, however, indicate that she’s a Baltimore that trades Concealment for DPM. Instead of 3x3 203mm guns, she receives 4x3 203mm guns, with a lowered reload of 12 seconds, but increased shells on target overall. No torpedoes, guys. All in all a pretty exciting test cycle. With Gems like Abruzzi coming towards the end of their tests. A bit of a shame with the Asashio. Z-39 might need some extra work, and Kronshtadt definitely does. Buffalo offered an interesting sneak peak into the new CA/CL split. Thoughts, Opinions?

@RC_8015 one skin to give away! I'll update the info shortly. Small update: Please don't enter yourself multiple times, if I haven't been specific enough about this, please, don't do it. I don't want to disqualify anyone, and I'll only take one name for each person. Don't make my life more difficult for me. Also: I need your username. If you enter yourself without a name I cannot pick you, for obvious reasons.

Since Ships will be credited directly to the player's account, no one is able to participate with fake accounts. As well as that, I have an overview of all participants, and can remove doubles.

after some fighting with the forum formatting, the giveaway is now a-go!

VMF Kronshtadt - sort of Russian sort of Cruiser Hey guys, another one of these "early" previews. I have some nice screenshots, as well of the ship as of it's armour, a quick summary of all the stats at the moment. Be aware that due to the nature of this PTS preview, everything is subject to change! So if you missed the whole Kronshtadt talk, she's basically a Russian version of the Gneisenau (or Scharnhorst, depending on which side you're on) class Battlecruisers, but was to be stronger, faster, and better armed. 2 of these "проекта 69" (Projekt 69) type ships were planned but cancelled due to the outbreak of the Second World War. The unusual characteristics of the ship in game is the fact that it is classed as a cruiser, despite it's armament being that of a battleship. Stats-Table HEALTH 59800 hitpoints ARMOUR 15-330mm TORPEDO REDUCTION 34% WEAPONRY - MAIN BATTERY 3x305mm RELOAD 20s TRAVERSE TIME 35.3s for 180 MAX DISPERSION 242m HE DMG 4200 HE VELOCITY 920m/s FIRE CHANCE 24% AP DMG 9000 AP VELOCITY 900m/s FIRE RANGE 18.2km SECONDARY BATTERIES 4x100mm, 4x152mm @ 5km AA - SHORT RANGE 31dps @ 1.2km MID RANGE 85dps @ 3.5km LONG RANGE DP 59dps @ 5.0km MANEUVERABILITY - MAX SPEED 33.5kn TURN CIRCLE 840m RUDDER SHIFT 14.9s CONCEALMENT 14.3km Sea, 13.0km Air, 11.4km upon firing from smoke GALLERY AND ARMOUR LAYOUT ARMOUR KEY CONSUMABLES: Borrowed from the Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya. Same Amount of uses, same cooldown, same active time. Seems to be about average in comparison to other cruiser heals. All in all she looks like a tier 9 Scharnhorst with a lot of consumables, namely the Russian limited damacon, as well as a choice of hydro/defAA a spotter plane and a heal. She has slightly more hitpoints, and is classed as a cruiser. She also has those interesting 305mm guns, making her unique as a cruiser. I'm not sure what WG has planned for this quite peculiar ship - whether it'll be a reward ship, or perhaps one people can purchase for free xp/money -, but we will most likely find out in the upcoming updates!

The Kronshtadt definitely isn't in a good position the way she sits now. While we can speculate about stats, I am going to withhold my comments on her in detail before I've tested her. A Scharnhorst at tier 9 is a gamble. Here it doesn't matter whether it's marked down as a cruiser, or a BB. Health, armour, and gun performance are still relevant. Nevertheless, I'd wait to give her a spin before my final verdict. Right now she looks like a BB at the wrong tier, but there might be something more to her than the raw stats imply.

I stand corrected.

25mm all-round No turtleback @BartholomewKuma

Oh, I thought that was implied, I mean, a cruiser with good, strong armour? ;) I'll check the exact armour after the CB sessions.

A Scharnhorst at tier 9, but as a cruiser!

Asashio – Back Again Asashio is still WiP, therefore information presented here is subject to change. Asashio has gone through some pretty drastic changes in the past few test iterations. Not so much this time. In short, the torpedoes lost out on concealment, and the guns have been buffed. Torpedoes lost 200m concealment. Are now at 900m instead of 700m Guns have been buffed. Reload and traverse speed is now identical to Kagerou, that is 7 seconds on the reload with a turret traverse of 8.9 degrees per second. As for my opinion on these changes: 1. Torpedoes They have not been addressed. I’ve said this many times, but this is probably the first time anyone will be reading about this. These little nerfs to parts of the ship account for very little. They’re still deep water torpedoes. The reaction time still doesn’t allow the grand majority – if not all - of the Battleships to turn the rudder even to half before impact, and keep in mind that the ship actually needs to start turning as well. To put it into perspective, here are some calculations LWM ran on how long the new reaction time is: 72kn 67kn Old reaction time 3.62 @ 3.89s New reaction time 4.65 @ 5s Which equates to it being completely, and utterly, disregard-able. And I do apologize for the brash tone, but if a BB doesn’t expect these torpedoes, and if he has not got sonar, planes, or any kind of spotting in between him and Asashio, he will not be able to evade these torpedoes REGARDLESS. The range is, eh… Still 20km - I wish this would be addressed. The range isn’t really needed and would leave her over tuned if there was to be any other improvements to the ship, but more of that in the conclusion… 2. Guns Asashio Received a gun buff that provides her with a 7 second reload like Kagerou, the same goes for the traverse speed. She is now identical to Kagerou in these aspects. I really like this improvement, although it would be nice to have an even better reload than this, as she cannot effectively engage destroyers or cruisers because of the selective torpedo ability, and the fact that she is still outclassed by most of the ships in her matchmaking bracket. 3. Conclusion We’re moving in the right direction with this ship, but she is far from a good premium. I would undo the nerf to the torpedoes. It doesn’t do anything, other than bringing them up to Pan Asia standards – which by the way- I should mention have a far superior torpedo-boat with DWT, Chung Mu. Not only can she spew out more torpedoes than Asashio, she does so without TRB. And Chung Mu has superior guns, as well as great AA! Sure, you can argue that Chung Mu is tier 9, and therefore naturally has a stronger armament than a tier 8 ship, but one mustn’t forget that We’re looking at a ship whose sole existence is to fire torpedoes from concealment. It has otherwise no redeeming factors: You cannot hit 50% of the ship classes You’re outgunned by everything you meet You don’t have the AA to defend yourself from aerial attacks That leads me right on to my next point. Carriers hard counter Japanese destroyers in a way that is almost uncanny. And boy, does Asashio suffer from this. While I can completely understand that Carriers are very much a broken concept at the moment, I cannot FATHOM, how this: Could’ve possibly been considered a good idea. I can understand how we can be provided with Japanese destroyers at mid or low tier with bad AA. Kamikaze and it’s clones are one of the most fun ships to play at mid tier if you are in for some torpedo action. But this isn’t low tier. And 10dps doesn’t cut it at this tier. What this basically means, is if a carrier were to spot you at any given moment, he’d be able to park a squad above you for the rest of the match without EVER running the chance of that squad being taken out. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Kagerou is in a great spot either. But even she is running FOUR TIMES the amount of dps of Asashio. What we have here, is a ship that is ineffective against 3 of 4 classes - carriers, cruisers and destroyers, that can only hit 2 of these 4 classes - battleships and carriers. She will mostly not be in a position to hit 1 out of these 2, because she is hard countered by this class. What I’d change with her, is give her a 6.2 second reload, a little more in the direction of Yuugumo (she seems to share ingame gun models with her), give her late war AA, and dual purpose main guns. While this will never be enough AA for her to use it offensively, it would at least prevent carrier planes from sitting on top of her the entire match. Then I’d go on to her torpedoes, and nerf the range. 12-16km range would be completely fine, without torpedo acceleration, that is. I enjoy the gun buff, I had a blast fighting it out against other destroyers that outgunned me, I like a good challenge. Japanese guns are on of the most satisfying guns to use on any type of destroyer, and the fact that they seem to be completely ignored for the sake of a playstyle that has been consistently ninja-nerfed by addition of new consumables, and is practically dead by now, is such is a shame. That is however, a discussion for another day. What's missing from Asashio right now is flexibility. I don't like being shoehorned. And Asashio shoehorns me on multiple levels. I cannot torp what I want to torp, and I cannot choose how I play her. There is only one way to play this ship, and it is to completely ignore any engagement with 50% of surface vessels, and hunt capital ships. I find it to be a shame, since I know that there are alternatives. If we moved away from the one-trick pony nature of this ship, it could have a lot of potential. While one can argue something complex that offers too much choice can be detrimental, I can't help but look at how successful Harekaze is.

Sometimes real life gets in the way of things. Either way, this information was known beforehand anyway. It is much less about the nerf/buff, than it is about my 2 cents on how the ship looks/plays like at the moment - and in which direction it seems to be going.

Haha, that poor Missouri was suddenly stuck alone on the flank with me after you sank that Conqueror. I should've probably not bullied her with HE so much, but I couldn't help myself.

Z-39 - Tier 8 Very Work in Progress German Premium Destroyer Hi guys, I am back once again! Today, we've got something a little more different. Not a full preview as such, but rather an early sneak peak for an upcoming ship. Basically, a leak that isn't one! Up today is the Z-39. An upcoming T8 German premium destroyer. I'll be comparing her in the following table directly to the Z-23, since she is of the same class and they share similarities. Ship Z-23 Z-39 Survivability 19500 19600 Artillery 3x1 and 1x2 15cm OR [4x12,8cm] 4x 15cm Alpha, (Fire Chance) 2200 HE (12%), 3700 AP [1500 HE (6%), 3000 AP] 2200 HE (12%), 3700 AP Turn rate 22.5s for 180deg 22.5s for 180deg Reload 6.7s [4s] 7.5s Range 10.8km 11.8km Torpedoes 2x4 533mm 2x4 533mm Alpha 14400 14400 Range 9.5km 8.5km Speed 67kn 65kn Detectibility 1.4km 1.3km Reload 90s 90s AA-Defense 20mm and 37mm 20mm and 37mm Short-Range 41 dps @ 2.0km 20 dps @ 2.0km Mid-Range 31 dps @ 3.5km 61 dps @ 3.5km Maximum Speed 37kn 36kn Turn Circle 680m 670m Rudder Shift 4.5s 4.5s Concealment [ with Camo] by Sea 7.7km 7.5km by Air 4.4km 4.4km firing from Smoke 3.4km 3.3km Consumables DC, SMK, ENGBST, HYDR DC, SMK, ENGBST, HYDR I've went ahead and highlighted the improvements and the drawbacks of the current ship. As you can see, she's running Z-23 stock torpedoes, lost a single gun, and gained a little AA. She's also a tiny bit more stealthier (fully stealth oriented @ 6.1km instead of 6.2km for the Z-23). I think the loss of a gun for, pretty much mediocre still, AA was not a good trade. Fully AA oriented, she still can't compete with the Americans, Pan Asians and the Akizuki (and you'll likely lose out on other important skill points for her). She is also lacking torpedo range and speed. Overall the 100 extra hitpoints and 0.2km extra concealment do not really make up for these drawbacks. But she isn't lagging too far behind Z-23. A bit on the consumables. At the moment they are identical to the ones found on the Z-23. No changes there. Other than that, she doesn't look too bad. Is this perhaps and out of the box "not-quite-better-than-the-real-deal-premium"? Thoughts and opinions? Keep in mind, we're at an very, very early test stage at the moment. So things are subject to change.

Of course, your comment stands justified and valid. We can speculate, and (mind you, this is my personal opinion from now on) I think it will be buffed/something will be added to make it interesting, otherwise it'll likely be a waste of resources.