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Thanks for the clarification - to be honest I completely overlooked the Tier VII Myoko story - that is my bad. I totally agree with you that the ARP Mission to get a 16 skill point captain looks easier to complete than to grind a "normal" 16 skill point captain from XP. However once you have one ideally you would want to use it on ships that are important for you in playing in your style and of course supports competitive play such as RANKED OR TEAM battles. This is why I was a bit "sour" to learn that ARP is a separate nation as for me key competitive ships are Tier VIII and above. If the ARP nation will be developed in this respect is a question, but for the time being I'll keep an eye on the missions of course. I'm just a bit at discomfort that World of Warships is going into MANGA rather than establishing some kind of a more real world "tough guy" special nation in which ships look more serious for Naval enthusiasts. I may be recommending a PIRATE nation in which standard tech tree ships are tweaked a bit in terms of performance (i.e. engine power, secondary gun layout, etc...), their look is a bit more disguised but based on real world camo patterns and their Captains are famous Pirates :-) This would suit my taste much better than this surrealistically colored battle-wagons in current ARP.

Thanks! It's good to know - I haven't realized it until now. So after all having ARP ships (mostly Tier V) is good only on its own and I guess probably for grinding credits (and maybe XP if we consider converting to freeXP). I become particularly interested in the missions because of the 16 skillpoint captain, however I deem it useless after all as most competitions such as RANKED or TEAM are taking place above Tier V. Besides - getting the Hiei 16skill captain forces players into ships Tier VII and higher so it is not economical given the caliber of the prize. Nevertheless we can say that ARP missions are more or less automatically gets done if you play enough (sink ships, cause damage) therefore it cannot be considered as a special effort. There is one hope that I can speculate about ARP "nation": the time will come when ARP ships will be available in the high Tiers (either prem or competition prizes) and THEN it is a good thing to have well prepared captains in stock .

First of all thank you for this post that responded many of my questions for which I was looking answer in the forum related to these new missions. I appreciate the confirmation that missions are designed based on statistical data with doability check. It also implies that there are certain ship selections that gives more chance to succeed than others as well - it will be fun to discover these on the go. There is one point on which I'm not fully clear: suppose I complete the CAPTAIN EXTRACTION MISSION CHAIN and I get a 16skill point Hiei commander. It was said that this commander can be moved around in the other ARP ships quasi freely what I guess means no re-training is required. This is OK. My question is if this commander is transferable and re-trainable to other Japanese ships in any way - so for example could I make her to be a Yamato Captain?

Thinking a bit about what I read there are 3 main points on which I would like to relfect 1. Direct Plane Control The more we exchange about it the more I see how difficult it may be to implement such a change into the game mechanism. I offer a different perspective to show why I'm a bit overly obsessed about this concept. There was one Youtube video made by iChasegaming who seems to be a very knowledgeable WoWs player (and SuperTester) in which he stated that the main issue in these days with WoWs is that there are too many things that are decided by randomness and formulas and not player actions, decisions. He was not talking about carriers specifically more so about the RNG issue with the salvo hits, the fire and flood damage and the repair module concept. BUT what he said is very very true for carriers, even more than other ship classes. If you think about carrier play, basically all elements except the direct torp run decision is AI and formula based: The AA concept of the game is entirely statistical: there is a sphere over ships that cause X damage per second. This can be altered by certain modules and skills but overall it remains statistical. Does not matter how the ship is positioned vs. the planes (i.e. coming from a side typcially more AA guns are in range than from stern and bow...). Fighter plane dogfight statistical as well (except strafe run feature). Plane squads are flying mostly by AI - with huge irregularities vs. rationale. Best example is if you decide that one squadron is stationed over a certain friendly ship (a cruiser for example to provide AA support), but the planes are flying so much far out that they leave the cruiser's AA aura). Bomb hits - statistical, torp hits mostly statistical (i.e. stern hits usually do not disable steering or props). Planes limited to one role, i.e. a bomber squad after making the bomb drop can't fight as fighter even if a less efficient one than a normal fighter..., Plane rear gunners' activity? statistical! So. Right or wrong but my suggestion of taking direct control of the planes is trying to bring back the idea that a player can become involved in the activity / action. Even if we accept the fact that intention is to have RTS style carrier play, the player must have more ways to influence the outcome of fights with its own decisions. I played a lot of RTS starting from Starcraft and even there there is a huge impact as how the player uses the assets, how it gets positioned, moved, grouped, etc... WoWs carrier planes are no more than some "intelligent" ballistic rocket artillery shells. This is what I suggest to change 2. Carrier Tech tree and features I made my recommendation for carrier tech tree and we seem to agree on the idea that there is a need to allow players to immediately try carrier play style instead of the normal ship experience. I would do a full 10 tier tech tree starting with a Tier I carrier unit that is practically a half-cruiser (even retain some main guns) and one squad of bombers. Tier II could be a seaplane tender like Tier I but with 1.5 squad: one bomb squad and one scout plane to introduce complexity. Tier III could be a pre WW2 carrier with 2 full squads and then we arrive to Tier IV. Features: while I agree that the fixed plane mix of the current US and Jap tech tree meant to distinguish the units to avoid "photocopy effect", I find it too short viewed to make it so rigid in terms of squad mix. The difference between Japanese and US carrier "stlye" should not rely only on asymmetric squad setup. It should be more strategical: like the Japanese ZERO fighter's ability to maneuver, take hits (that was a lightly armored plane) vs. the american Wildcat. Just like in the DD ship class US and Jap are very different and the difference does not lie in the number of turrets or torps. It lies in the operational characteristic of the units. (view range, firing range, speed, etc...). But this goes back somehow to the previous point: IF every aspect of the carrier play is statistical random controlled, there are limited ways to distinguish nations and that creates a problem that is solved in this rigid way that is way too restrictive - but maintains the "image" of difference. 3. Plane types and payload variations This is really something that may be fitting even the current game implementation. Selecting HE vs. AP bombs BEFORE launching a squad is a must. Also should be an option for fighters to take on some light HE bomb load that they can drop and then gain back their full fighter capabilities. Furthermore if planes could get a maximum RANGE they can fly that is not unlimited on the map, could come the idea and great dilemma of fuel extension packs to gain range but reduce fighting capabilities. Could be suitable for all 3 types of planes! Well this is for now - I give some more thinking to the stories later.... Cheers

I suggest to study this topic related to carriers. It explains extensively at the beginning the issues with the carrier ship class and makes points why a sudden premium carrier especially at high tier is not a good idea at al. http://http://forum.worldofwarships.eu/index.php?/topic/43214-aircraft-carriers-need-an-overhaul/page__fromsearch__1 On my side I made a recommendation to implement a fully scaled carrier tech tree (Tier I to Tier X) and MAYBE offer a Tier II simple carrier as premium but even this rather through advertisements and codes than a crapto buy for everyone.

Hey glad to see you back. I read through your new posts and need to think over a bit before responding. As for your Kamikaze R story, it is interesting as I had a very similar 1st battle than you - quick death. Unfortunately for me I failed to realize how different Japanese DDs are from US and I tried to play it as a Sims, not to mention an administration mistake that resulted my poor carrier captain taking the helm of the brand new Kamikaze R instead of my experienced and trustworthy DD captain (who in the meantime was wasting his time in port on Tachibana) so lack of specialized skills added to the trouble and I paid the price of course. But to be a bit on topic, I took a second battle with my Tier V Zuiho carrier and I was again facing an enemy Bogue. Taking the theory into practice I started to implement the defense strategy against the two enemy overpowered fighter squads and I started to be successful, until the devastating moment when a Kamikaze R suddenly showed up near my carrier... ...needless to say that despite any effort of my flight squads I got sunk soon, so my flight squad experience against the Bogue become very limited... ...life is life... PS: regarding the Zuiho fighters there is an experience I find strange: during my Zuiho battle I managed to make a fighter strafe fire run against the Bogue fighter squadrons. (on my side the fighter planes were the upgraded ones, and I had the skills and ship upgrades that increases survival and performance of fighters. The strafe was not ideal as one enemy fighter squad flew towards me (head on) entering the strafe box at the far end, the other one was entering the strafe box at the start of my run from the side (mid) and left it soon. My results were that only two enemy fighters were destroyed altogether. After the strafe run of course the two enemy fighter squads jumped on my lone fighters squad and chewed it up in no time. Bottom line is I thought that strafe runs should have been more effective...

Well I think I understand what you are saying. We can certainly agree on the fact that a premium ship may be a good idea. My worry is that "free codes" given out are going to dilute the player community and won't necessarily target the proper potential player base who are RTS minded. (too many people may get caught in the freebie tryout). What if I say that we mix your idea and mine, establish a full Tier I to Tier X carrier tech tree that eliminates the need to play non carrier type battles and also offer some low level Tier II carrier "free codes" for motivation for tryout? By doing this we do not dilute (degrade) the Tier IV - Tier VI battles with newbies...

Well this thread seems to sunk to Davy Jones, despite being interesting subject. At least for me it served as a trigger to get back to my Hosho carrier and do a few battles and develop myself into Tier V. That is done now, but I still suck at manual torp runs. Tier V is a very different experience so far given the very significant difference between the US and Jap CV capabilities. My first and only battle become a true disaster just like Midway was the Japanese in WW2.I practically got wiped off by the Bogue fighter squadrons in no time anyways just wanted to give a chance to this thread to develop...

Thanks MrConway, we can say at least that math was on my side regarding this, not to forget about the other fellow forum members suggesting similar ideas and trends. I wish my deduction and prediction capability could be at least this good when it comes to CV play and manual torp runs Well said and I agree wholeheartedly. WG did this very well and for me this was so far THE BEST event in the history of World of Warships. Period. If you look at other threads and posts for example Statistcs Galore from Crysantos you will see that the average player community (individual players playing WoWs) is 200,000 weekly. So basically Project R "rewarded" in some ways roughly 1 out of 10 active players. Which is to me generous!

If you allow some numerical speculation on the Kamikaze Rs: 1. MrConway said in another thread that the odds of winning from lottery was 1:6 that means 12,000 players got into the 150-259P range. With an average of 205P for these guys, they collected roughy 2.5million pearls, that leaves 7.5 million to speculate with 2. We need to assume how many players were BELOW 150P. My wild guess is that it should be more than who got at least up to 150. Say 20,000 players with an average of 80P so they contributed 1.6million pearls. Together with previous point this leaves us 5,9 million for the 260+ guys 3. What could be the the average P count in the top league? Some people reported 293P and some 263 to win with so I say we set it at 270. That gives us 21,800 players who got Kamikaze R 3.a even if we assume that the below 150 P guys delivered more that I calculated with, say the double of 1.6million P that is 3.2million (unprobable!) that still leaves us 4.3 million for the top guys that is 16,000 Kamikaze Rs Based on the fact that in NA there were 11,000 Kaikaze R distributed for 260P and knowing that their player base is HALF than the EU, statistically we can say that the 21,800 Kamikaze Rs in the EU is very probable.

+1 from me to try to convince WG management to allow releasing some figures, especially since on the NA forum the community manager himself announced that they credited approx 11,000 ships for players reaching the 260+ pearls --> it seems that there is no global confidentiality policy on this at company level. For me the event was great, despite the early issue about the prizes that got ultimately solved. If we assume that WG initially did not consider giving out huge number of guaranteed top prizes they went way beyond the original prize pool. This of course diluted a bit the Tier IV - Tier VI ship balance, but as I said earlier many people will get disappointed in the Kamikaze R simply because of lack of skills to drive it and the play balance will be restored. If you allow some numerical speculation on the Kamikaze Rs: 1. MrConway said in this thread that the odds of winning from lottery was 1:6 that means 12,000 players got into the 150-259P range. With an average of 205P for these guys, they collected roughy 2.5million pearls, that leaves 7.5 million to speculate with 2. We need to assume how many players were BELOW 150P. My wild guess is that it should be more than who got at least up to 150. Say 20,000 players with an average of 80P so they contributed 1.6million pearls. Together with previous point this leaves us 5,9 million for the 260+ guys 3. What could be the the average P count in the top league? Some people reported 293P and some 263 to win with so I say we set it at 270. That gives us 21,800 players who got Kamikaze R 3.a even if we assume that the below 150 P guys delivered more that I calculated with, say the double of 1.6million P that is 3.2million (unprobable!) that still leaves us 4.3 million for the top guys that is 16,000 Kamikaze Rs Based on the fact that in NA there were 11,000 Kaikaze R distributed for 260P and knowing that their player base is HALF than the EU, statistically we can say that the 21,800 Kamikaze Rs in the EU is very probable.

Guys, I fell like in a Kindergarten. People are all so over excited about if they get the ship or not - but a week ago and two when the discussion was about the NA server situation and the fact that it took 3 days to get the prize ship has been fallen out of the minds. This is childish. You need to give a break for the WG Community and Marketing team to get things in motion. As for me it appears that since the 260P guaranteed Kamikaze Prize WG stood behind all statements and promises. WHY the whining? Instead of that please let's remember again for those who were here at the beginning and helped the entire community to shape the rules and get the Kamikaze-R guaranteed top prize. I for myself salute them first!

Well I have to stand corrected as I predicted that another Monday reset will take place before Project R is over - however the last weekend pearl collection was heavy. To be honest I did not calculate with the Friday front page article motivating late comers to join Project R at the last moment (with the teaser that all achieved milestone awards will be available for them). Anyways. Congrats to all of us and do not forget the early community members who helped all of us to make a guaranteed Kamikaze R during the early days. And for those kids who are here to claim their ship and do not read the thread back - you will probably not get it for 3-5 days! as it will be manually credited to the accounts one by one. (but this was discussed here before in detail)

Gosh / and those 11 thousand US Kamikazes are for those who hit 260P, the lottery will follow that for the additional 1000.... if you look at the math, those 11,000 players generated AT LEAST 2.8million Pearls (11,000 x 260P), so it seems that most of the players joined Project R reached the target there...? also knowing that the US average weekly playerbase is 100,000, it seems that roughly 10% was able to achieve the TOP Target, that is a very good performance. Looking forward to see the EU statistic... Well, as far as I see it the event is pretty much an activity booster - 6 different tasks requires different kind of playstyles and of course some time investment. All this for a Tier II DD as main prize. I mentioned before a few times that as long as you look at the prize as a confirmation of achievement like most US people do it is a good event. However my fear is that EU community will look at it from the prize's value point of view (Tier II DD has minimal value) and they will not like the event that much... Main problem with "activity booster" events that they can easily turn into a huge "Grinding" effort for many players, and they fail to find and recognize the good entertainment value in the game, they become over stressed and eventually disappointed either in the prize or being unsuccessful or both... This is game that should bring fun and joy, and very few events can deliver this in these days in WoWs...

This thread worth some psychological study. I'm a bit lost firs of all about the purpose lately. 1. First this thread was about to communicate community feedback about the guaranteed top prize for EU that was granted by WG around the end of the first week of Project R 2. After that the main story was the speculation as how and IF we are going to reach the 10mill mark or not and what chances players will have to meet the 150P and 260P limits 3. Then came the progress monitoring and speculations as if the TOTAL P count is manipulated or not and that the weekly resets are done as expected. 4. Recently I see some worries and hopes as there will be one more set of weekly missions available for individuals to reach the 260P (or 150P) mark or we finish during the weekend (my personal bet is there WILL BE ONE MORE RESET) 5. Last posts started a new theme that is criticizing the Kamikaze R ship and start worrying about the number of ships that will appear in the game. This is pointless and to be honest not fair. It is already decided and managed by WG so why worry about it? Maybe for a week or 2 Tier IV-VI battles will be flooded by Kamikaze Rs but it will die out fast: as some players pointed out the problem with gift ships is that you do not necessarily know how to use them. So many players will be quickly disappointed and leave them behind in the port... The ones capable of really enjoying it will be far less and tolerable on the long run.

Since in the next 5.3 version it was announced that certain ships will get permanent camo option it would be a nice "gesture" from WG if they can summarize here what they understood as community feedback and what and why they decided to change/not change the system in the 5.3 version. After all this supposed to be a two-way communication!

Guys, you are on the way with high speed to have this topic closed as some of you doesn't stop the personal attacks. My own personal experience is that this moderator who warned you closed topics for far less violation than is shown here. PLEASE GET BACK TO OBJECTIVE DISCUSSION NOW!

I love these speculations about the progress in the moment of today. Just read back this very thread and check what kind of statements were coming in from users at the beginning of the past weeks (Mon-Tue) and later on around the end of the weeks. Point is still that the "Pearl Collection System" has a capacity maximum threshold each week, that is the completion of the weekly missions. No matter how fast is the progress during the first few days of the week, the threshold will stop the progress at a given level - and this only depends on the number of players who signed up. Personally I still believe that we won't hit the 10mill before next Monday reset. About the progress tracking webpage: it is very strange for me as well to see and experience different pearl TOTALs from time to time - even sometimes dropping vs. previous one. It looks to me that it is a technical issue with browsers and the cashed data. For example at the beginning of Project R I bookmarked the mission tracking page. If I click on this bookmark (I use Chrome) the total pearl count gets stuck at 7.5million even today, DESPITE the fact that below I can see my fresh weekly missions completed. On the other hand if I click in Chrome on the World of Warships Project R page among the recently viewed pages after re-opening the browser I get a more or less up to date total pearl count, but yesterday it tricked me as a fellow forum member commented my yesterday's post. I saw 8.2 mill, he saw few minutes later 8.8 mill. My only sure way to get to the real actual pearl count if I start from www.worldofwarships.eu and click on the Join Project R icon on the right sidebar.

I'm not so sure about WG manipulating the figures. There has been a reasonable progress week by week so far considering dynamics of the game. In one thread somewhere on the forum it was said that Week 1 ended around 3.2 million P Week 2 ended around 5.3 million P Week 3 ended at 7.6million P (last week) and now we are today around 8.2 million P. Apart from week one it is roughly 2million P increase that is disturbed by the completion of the one time missions (hardcore players did it during 1st week) and eventual late comers. Based on server statistics we know that EU has approx 200,000 players weekly, out of which 30,000-35,000 can be considered as "Regulars" playing more than 50 battles per week. With the assumptions that regulars are mostly signed up for Project R, say 30,000 of them it gives a base "weekly pearl delivery capacity" of 1.7 million P (30,000 x 57P). So the 2.2 million weekly increase can be considered normal assuming some non-hardcore players has signed up as well. We know that Mondays were always strong in pearl growth, many forum members came here panicking that with the Monday growth rate the 10mill will be reached in a few days, but history proved otherwise. Based on all this my estimation is that by the end of this week we will reach around 9.7 - 9.8 million P, but we won't hit 10mill before the next Monday reset.

You have a very good point saying that once we accept the fact that Carrier play-style is very different from other ship classes in WoWs, it is a bit "silly" to expect that a player (individual) interested in the RTS type game will grind through the first 4 Tiers to unlock the first carrier. This is an absolute limitation as it assumes that carrier players are somewhat comfortable with the action type game mode. This does not need to be like that. Carriers would need a separate tech tree starting from Tier I. Your alternative to have a Tier IV premium, is not too promising for me as it assumes that carrier players are paying for the game that we know is only true for 20-25% of the community so you immediately lock out a good chunk of the potential interested population. Question is would it be possible to integrate carrier gameplay into the low tiers? My answer is: of course! Although Tier IV carriers are rather basic compared to higher tiers a revision of the carrier tech tree is possible and maybe the good thing is to adjust the entire Tier span from I to X. If you remember my earlier comments on this it is evident that by changing the damage model and game logic the developer could revise the entire structure on the high end as well! Based on the historical development of the carriers in real life (pre WW2) my recommendation for low tiers would be to introduce very basic carriers that were essentially seaplane tender ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Chitose#/media/File:Japanese_seaplane_carrier_Chitose.jpg) that practically stored float-planes, put them on water for launch and took them back once they landed next to the ship. This could serve as Tier I and Tier II and won't upset the balance of the game - however the concept of low tier AA (the lack of!) may have to be revised. Tier III could have a mid-step development between real carriers and seaplane tenders such as this converted cruiser ennsylvania_(Armored_Cruiser_4),_starboard_stern_quarter_with_Eugene_P._Ely_landing_plane_on_flight_deck,_01-18-1911_-_NARA_-_520791.tif">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Pennsylvania_(ACR-4)#/media/Fileennsylvania_(Armored_Cruiser_4),_starboard_stern_quarter_with_Eugene_P._Ely_landing_plane_on_flight_deck,_01-18-1911_-_NARA_-_520791.tif From Tier IV we could start seeing the early pre WW2 carriers as it is displayed in the game now with a bit different plane setup, configuration. By doing this WoWs could have a quasi standalone RTS game module that is accessible for all users interested in this game style. Then could come the advertising and promo codes to attract the potential new player-base.

The reason I was asking is simple: I wanted to make a point that certain players have no difficulties completing the weekly missions quickly, while others do not. I wanted to see his stats to see what kind of ships he is playing and in what Tier and if he has Premium or not. See, the weekly missions are "easy" for example in the case when you have high tier ships or premium and you can compete for example in RANKED. The most amount of pearls are given for gaining XP in some ways (28P out of 57P) and for that while it is not fully clear what multipliers count the strong players have very good chance. I tend to agree that the rest of the Ps can be earned rather easily. So when somebody is very "proud" of his achievement I wanted to qualify this person in which player type he belongs to? Was it an easy thing or was it something more remarkable. I do not know about XVM and why somebody would hide his stats because of it. After all you are who you are. No hiding can change that.

Wow... topic developed a lot during weekend First you are right to ignore a bit the SUBS subject - after all this topic as about carriers, so I take no offense if we move it somewhere else to discuss. (just keep in mind that in my "ecosystem" concept the SUBs topic impacts carriers as well) It was very interesting to see your points regarding the ideas I raised and kudos for you to go out an actually watch Battlestations videos. Thanks for putting so much effort into it. On Point A I confirm that I played a bit of carriers so I'm familiar with the possibilities in WoWs - I wouldn't dare to say an opinion otherwise , so I know how to watch plane strikes by pressing SHIFT Obviously the direct control of the planes would shake up balance and player skills a lot - I do not deny that. However the main element would be to say that manual control of dive bomb or torp runs (or actually fighter plane dogfight) is not mandatory: It should be an option! This was the case in the Battlestations series as well. The entire point is that carriers should still have the RTS style gameplay capability with the good AI, but an option to finish off something by your hands IF YOU WANT... So the whole idea is to present the "agonizing" decision to the player as where to put his/her own personal direct effort. "Should I stay on the map screen an line up my fighters and bombers or should I go in and finish this torp run as the situation is critical there...?" It could bring more interactivity and options. On Point B - ideally the interactive approach may address Boredom and Impatience - as it brings you the choice to enjoy those long minutes between strikes - or as a huge debate fired up in Battlestations, allow players to act as kamikazes and drive planes into ships. In the first Battlestations game it gave you no actual benefit (i.e. ship damage was not recognized), however in the second game certain planes had the ability to do kamikaze runs and destroy or burn ships... What is interesting is your last point: the late introduction of the carriers in the tech tree. Mind you that BBs are available only from Tier III, so it seems UNLIKE World of Tanks that for ships the narrow tree is a kind of developer concept. Just like you I do not find it a good idea either. There would be nothing against to introduce full scale tech trees for BBs and carriers as well. (Does anybody remember those tiny World of Tanks Tier II Artilerry or Tank Destroyer units...) ===== Overall while I understand that you seek for a fair rationalization of the CARRIER unit and it's airgroup capabilities and you see gaining popularity by achieving that, I'm more on the side to turn carrier class into something more interactive and hope that "average joes" will have more desire to try and play something that offers immersion and adrenaline game. Do not get me wrong - I do like RTS style games as well. But what we have here in WoWs for carriers is a bad "midland": it is too simple and painful to be a good RTS experience and it is not enough entertainment for interesting gameplay as an action item. It is a bad mix of "RTS on short time span". If it HAS to be RTS style then my suggestion would be to reform the platform entirely. Stop restraining carrier captains to pre-configured air-wing sets, put more emphasis on strategy: look at planes like "ammo" and allow the player to configure the flight deck as they want X fighter, Y bomber Z torp planes. Also recognize that fighters can be bombers or extended range fighters with fuel expansion packs, so allow not only plane but payload configurations. Then allow player to determine air wing size (how many planes) so they are more free to organize the groups for the various duties (CAP - Combat Air Patrol, Strike Force, Strike Force Defense, Scouting) Another idea would be to allow the Carrier captain to have control over the team's Cruiser and Battleship aircraft. (i.e. cruiser scout planes). By this the carrier captain(s) can become true Team Admirals. Things like that. Last but not least - my port: Well so far I was mainly focusing on the Japanese BB line as my ultimate first objective was to get Yamato. This is done now, so I'm exploring other tech trees as well. I kept in port Fuso, Nagato, Amagi. I have Sims as a VII DD for playing mostly in Ranked, and I also developing the German cruiser line, currently at Tier VI. I have the small prem ships Tier II, favorite being Tachibana DD. And I own a Tirp as credit / XP booster. Last but not least my dear Hosho carrier with which I had a nice game recently - started to play it again mostly due to Project R. I still suck at manual torp runs but keep trying.

what I do not get my friend is that if you are showing off your great results here, why do you keep a private profile in the game...?

Very interesting thoughts. While I do not necessarily share all of these point, I fully agree that in the "big picture" these ideas are all valid and possible in a sense that if they were followed the gameplay could be better. 1. New Players - just like you I'm very surprised and sad to see that the best WG was able to figure out for "introductory missions" is to isolate out new players from the experienced ones in low tier. This is the worst they can do as I fully agree with many other commenters that it just delays the inevitable: facing a real experienced human player. Such institution (kind of "protected breeding of future talents") is getting popular in these days, but I don't really know why. It seems that suddenly gaming people are less patient to take the good learning curve? I remember the old days when started to play Counter Strike: went up to a public server, started the round and fell on the ground with a headshot in 30sec. But that was OK as I learned by experience as how to play WELL. Saw it in practice! What if I would have had only the chance to chase beginners like me? NO LEARNING CURVE AT ALL! I would have never had the chance to learn, improve and end up leading a team in a CAL league for a while... WG would need to think this over really... IMHO... A good alternative would be to develop an MM that considers player skills as well, so it not only balances the ships but the players as well! 2. Carriers - well I see you are also looking for ways to improve the game experience for CVs just like me, but you have a different approach to get rid of the RTS style GUI watching mode. Also we see that CV balancing is difficult and complex and have different solutions. A) You would give CVs different activities and profiles with different motivation (scoring), what I'm saying is that just give them more First Person action - as that may attract new players. If nothing else World of Warplanes fans may come and enjoy flying a plane (or squad) in WoWs from time to time...? B) I'm not sure about the idea of 1 CV limit per battle... You need to give some chance to CV captains for real cooperation and without another CV on the team it's not possible. Besides team battles are on us in 5.3 and I highly doubt that organized teams would go with 1 CV setup. (as for myself I would go with 2, one CV optimized on strikes one on defense) 3. Subs.- since I have seen good implementation of subs in similar games I have little doubt that it is possible. About the DDs role being now similar I agree, however Subs should be more "extreme" than DDs in a sense that being very fragile (killed by one depth charge) but could deal huge damage. You could argue that the game can be balanced without them, however in my opinion with them balancing all classes can be easier. It is like an ecosystem that lacks a sneaky predator... Or another example could be that your life can be good if you exclude one of your senses, but it is truly complete and balanced if all 5 used (see, hear, smell, touch, taste)...