ilhilh

Yep I realise that but... I still am doing it

Montana: I realise this only shows proportions but the Montana citadel is HUGE. And a quick wikipedia search says the Montana is very slightly longer (281m) than the Yamato (263m) Iowa and Izumo:

I get what you are saying but I already bought the Gremy, Warspite, Atago and Tirpitz and I also earned the Arkansas and Kamikaze so I have good ships and variety for earning potential. I don't play most of those often enough really so I will wait... I'm likely to buy any RN premium they care to offer me anyway.

I find it funny that people would think that hidden stats = bad player. Particularly at high tiers my assumption is the opposite - treat them with respect until they prove themselves to be bad. I hide mine specifically because of XVM. When XVM broke with 0.5.3 I unhid them again but a few weeks later I did some digging which made it clear it was still being developed and so I hid them again. I think I might put mine available via sig and put it in my forums sig - I'm not bothered about people looking at my stats but I don't want them handed to the enemy on a plate when they are in game. But, if we did a little XVM questionnaire my response would be: Are your stats hidden? Yes If you hide your stats would you unhide them if XVM didn't exist? Yes Do you want XVM in game? No. I would be perfectly happy if it didn't exist in WoWs Do you use XVM? Yes. It does exist so no point in pretending it doesn't. I find the information it provides useful in my decision making. Does that make me a hypocrite? Probably. I don't care if people think it does. As I say, it provides useful information and I will use it whilst it is there but I preferred it when it wasn't working.

You neglect to mention that the size of the citadel on the Montana is much bigger.

Think I'm going to skip it. I have the Arkansas (ok, so it is a BB but still) and I just don't think I'll get enough use out of it.

And 3x for first win. Didn't see any news of either? EDIT: In game event says St Patrick's day (still didn't see anything on the news page!)

I lost a game yesterday when our CV died with 2 seconds to go. We were ahead on points but then he sailed too close to the enemy - not the enemy sailed too close to him, as the enemy was capping and duking it out with a Fuso, but because he turned towards our cap and sailed at the guy despite 1) being a CV and 2) having a tiny amount of health. Despite me stating in chat fully 2 mins earlier that all we needed was for no one to die. 2. Seconds.

I use some but it is a fairly inconsistent approach. I think I need to start using prem repair more. I use prem heals/smokes to compensate for not using superintendent when I would rather run something else but that depends on the ship.

You discuss AS and strike loadouts saying the problem is that there are not balanced ones but there are balanced loadouts for all carriers are there not? I might be misremembering tier 4 but at other tiers there are 3 loadouts. I know this because it is always the option I pick. AS loadouts AS is a bad choice for randoms. It is the wrong choice. Fanboys of AS claim that they can protect the fleet but the fact is they cannot. I have fought against enough of them to know that I can still get my attacks through because they either cannot be everywhere or they cannot be where they needed in enough strength - and once I have hit just a few torpedoes I have done more damage than them. At tiers 4 and 5 it can be a bit harder due to the pitifully small hangar sizes but at 6 you are ok and at 7+ you would have to work really hard to lose all of your planes. As AS you cannot do any decisive damage and as such you rely on your team. The other big thing for AS fanboys is the spotting ability. But, if you are protecting the fleet (which you can't) then your ability to spot is limited and called off as soon as you have planes to shoot down. Your real time to do proper spotting is once the air war is won and at tiers 6+ that probably won't even happen. Strike loadouts No fighters (or 1 small squad of IJN fighters) is risky loadout. People can and do make it work but it is hard work against a mixed loadout and downright painful against an AS loadout. As soon as you see the enemy has a strike loadout you know 2 things: Your strike planes only need to worry about ship AA and can do as they please otherwise. Line up your attacks perfectly. Sit around waiting to start a fire after they repair. Nothing will stop you. Your fighters can aggressively hunt down their strike planes up to and including camping his CV (easier with AS, but doable as balanced IJN). Now, you should still be able to get some damage in if you are competent but you make things hard for yourself - you have to be very calculating and your frequency of attacks will suffer because of this. Also, USN strik loadouts only gain an extra DB squadron which is hardly the most useful type of plane squadron. Balanced loadout The best of both worlds... in my opinion. You get a fighters that can protect your strike planes and you can do decent damage to the enemy. I have won out in the air war Vs AS loadouts before but that is not likely... and not the point - as I have just said your fighters are there to protect your strike planes, not the fleet. If you are facing an AS loadout then you don't need to protect the fleet - the enemy CV isn't going to be in danger. If you are facing a strike loadout then you can make their life hard with relative impunity since they don't have any real fighter presence to stop them. If fighting another balanced then you get to do a little dance and try and gain the upper hand. Babykim comments about CVs being selfish and I will happily say damn right I am selfish in my CV but if you want me to influence the outcome then you need me to be selfish. CVs huge damage potential and ability to swing local battles decisively can have a drastic effect on whether you win or not. My fighters are there to a) keep me alive and b) protect my strike planes getting to their target. Protecting allied ships and spotting are things I will do but only if I don't need my planes to be doing either a) or b).

I've never made the effort of blacklisting anyone. Or I don't think I have.

I jumped onto WoWs last night to find wolfgeweher asking if I wanted to be in a Yamato platoon. You can't say no to an offer like that. So we started some games and got some great MM - I think in 1 game their highest BB was tier 8. Ooof. Anyway, in the first game we came up against Blue_Bug in his Moskva. My first salvo got 1 hit - a citadel - but I didn't see much of him otherwise but he tried to be aggressive, got C and then headed towards B but without support he ended up being somewhere he didn't really want to be and died pretty quickly for his troubles. In the end it was a pretty 1 sided affair with me wasting my time chasing after a Gearing in my Yamato!

I met my first Moskva just then. Fired 1 broadside at it. Hit only 1 shell. Citadel.

I had 8 citadels on the mid right of screen yesterday (i.e. I was collecting them faster than the time out for it to sit on the top of the screen) when shooting a furutaka in my Nicholas. I don't think he had figured out what the initial 3 did to him before the next 2 hit him and then 2 after that and he ceased to exist.

Is it actually unbearable for you?

Another sensationalist style complaint from Tvrdi, and of course with little evidence to back it up. Just because you did not get a citadel doesn't mean it cannot be citadelled. There have been countless times I have expected a citadel on a broadside CA whilst in a BB and never been rewarded with one. RNG. I have just finished watching Flamu's commentary of the Moskva and it does looks like it will be an interesting ship... but one that will a) punish any mistakes made and b) definitely can get citadeled - hell he citadels another Moskva essentially from stern on. You also have to keep in mind that he is obviously going to show you a good game in order to show you what the ship is capable of as opposed to one where he dies in the first few minutes but he does comment on the fact that it has taken him some games to adjust. And of course he is an excellent player.

I wanted to keep a tier 9 ship and only had a choice of BBs - sold the Iowa... kept the Izumo. My performance in the Izumo was far better than the Iowa.

I assume they will collect stats on completion rates. ...there is also a small chance they will learn from it!

Oh please let us know how that goes if you do make the request.

The CV one is easy to do (providing you have a CV) as they are not class specific but I expect that will be the only one I complete. I'm not making any real effort to complete them but if it looks like I'm close next week I might change my mind

Or you could buy a flexible fleet? MK/Atago Tirp Lo Yang ...and I happen to know you already have the CVs EDIT: I have the NC, Tirp, Atago, Mogami and Fubuki currently although both the Fubuki and Mogami are less than a week old and not even fully unlocked. My plan is to eventually end up with at least the Tirp + Atago + Benson and then either Lex/Shokaku (currently have both tier 7 CVs).

Saw quite a few forumites last night. First I think we saw __deadpool__ on our team in an iowa. He smashed up the enemy Yamato and nearly turned a defeat into a win but was somewhat let down by our Kagero who was the only other guy left. Then we saw a platoon with both Sake78 and Black0rchid in it. Opposite teams and they were a tier 7 platoon whilst we were a tier 8 platoon. They spawned NW and we spawned SE so we didn't really see each other but it was a relatively comfortable win for us which I guess comes from being top tier... but their platoon did have the top 2 players on their team. Think there was someone else but my memory sucks.

I am in the largest group for all questions - perhaps I should be the face of WoWs? EDIT: 34, live with my other half, no kids and a full time job

Thanks for the patronising reply - my turn. Let's go back to the beginning and quote your OP: So, your claim is essentially that everyone at tier 6 has a level 5 skilled captain. Because having that happen 20 games in a row suggests you think it is everyone with that skill except poor little you. I finished grinding the Independence about 1 week ago and I saw precisely zero players with the level 5 skill. 18 games and 0 had it (only took 18 games to elite it so I have no bigger sample size). Are you seriously trying to tell me you see it all of the time? In fact I have played over 150 games at tier 7 and I have seen at most 5 games (and that is being generous) where the enemy had the level 5 skill and that is a tier higher. It just isn't a problem like you claim it is. Now let's look at your options for moving your captain around: You pay 500 dubloons - not many people going to spend real money retraining their CV captain to a lower level - particularly as the tier 6 CVs are not exactly renowned for being OP. You retrain your captain for 200k silver and then have to grind something in the region of 60k experience to get your skills back working - at your rate of experience gain that is about 60+ games without your skills working properly. No point bothering with a free retraining as that just doubles the grind with a non-functioning captain. Perhaps they all just went to tier 6 and then played something like 500+ games in your CV to unlock the 5th skill. So I don't understand exactly what you think is going on here - but do any of those scenarios seem likely? So likely that every opponent you meet is running it? And as I said above I didn't see a single one so how come you see it in most of your games? Since you seemed to argue with my first post I have explained myself even further and now I would like to call bulls***. Again.

I don't believe you. You are not going to find people with level 5 air supremacy on Ryujo in most of your games because the fact is most people will be on a tier 8 CV before they possibly earn enough EXP to get a 5th skill - not tier 6!. You may come across a very occasional one who has decided to seal club tier 6 (although god knows why you would pick that tier) but it isn't going to be every one of the last 20 games - hell it won't even be 1 in 20!