ScratxNeko

This has nothing to do with OP's issue. Might want to start a thread or look for another one that is about slow loading times. And yes, it IS ridiculous even I, with an SSD (!!!), sometimes don't make it into the match before the 30 seconds run out. WG really needs to rebuild the client's structure to reduce load times. It's absurd.

Replay or we have to assume there were actually smokescreens or islands between you and the target. Yes, it's not just range, it's also unobstructed line of sight.

What cruisers need is to be at least a bit more survivable, and able to recover from hard knocks. BBs have HP regen, shouldn't cruisers (and not just tier 9+ ones) also have something like that? Doesn't help if you get wrecked in a short time span but it at least gives you some more staying power. Alternatively, give cruisers something else. Especially at mid and high tiers. Look at the Atago, it was given HP regen and suddenly it doesn't seem to suck nearly as much as it used to. They really aren't balanced at the moment. They aren't too bad off in mid-tiers in general and you can compensate for it. At high tiers.... umm.... yeah. No.

This might be more interesting if the damage model was better at showing localised damage. As is, the only overt damage you can really see from a distance is primary turrets being alive or dead (and only on the bigger ships, realistically) and which sections of the ships aren't yet blackened from taking damage. That is not a lot of information to go by.

I think you need to read guides and get more experience under your belt before you try your hand at writing guides. Bolded sections, read them.

Actually, you can pen lower tier BBs just fine with AP, and plunging fire can score hits even on same tier. HE is just plain bad, though. Konig isn't a BB killer, nor is the Nurn. They can hammer them flat if the BBs ignore them, though it takes some time. Death of a thousand cuts.

They're probably giving it away to get metrics on them to see what they can do to balance them?

Dive bombers are dangerous particularly for the almost certain chance of setting the target on fire. Often on multiple locations.

Hell no, the Furutaka pre-buff was still much better than the Karlsruhe. Guns were very usable, decent armor, fast. Its main problems were hideous gun reload and bad turret traverse combined with pretty crap gun layout. If you adapted your playstyle to account for the turret traverse, though, you had a pretty mean ship that could score citadels left and right on fellow cruisers. 203mm at tier 5 is NOT something to sneeze at. The final killer for why so many people think the Furutaka is much worse than it really was is that it's a huge shock from the Kuma. Toss in bad torpedos and we've got every characteristic that actually matters in a ship described as being bad. Seriously, bad guns, bad armor, slow, made of glass and bad torpedos. What redeeming feature is there? I sense cognitive dissonance if you truly think these are "minor" problems and the ship truly is "usable". I suppose you could hop onto a freighter and try to ram everyone and it'd be "usable" too, under that definition...

For the love of god, don't jump straight to tier 8 if you've never been above tier 4 in _random battles_. You. Will. Get. Wrecked. Coop and Random battles are entirely different experiences. Work up at least to tier 6 first and get some real experience under your belt before you make the jump to tier 8. PS : Yes, this advice does include the Atago you bought. I'm sure you've noticed your performance is abysmal with it. 16k damage average per match? Yeah, you only have a high win rate with it right now because you played too few matches and you got carried. You. Need. More. Experience. Dock your Atago for a while and work up to the Aoba or Myoko. Then you'll be ready.

Kawachi's actually fun if you play to the ship's strengths and avoid the pitfalls... mainly that you have to close in so it's a brawler ship. Karlsruhe.... uh.... what strengths?

Karlsruhe desperately needs buffs to go anywhere. I can't even compare it to the pre-buff Furutaka because that ship actually had redeeming features and did well if you knew what you were doing. The Karl... ... even knowing what you're doing doesn't save you. Konigsberg is fineish, though. It's a glass cannon and must be played with that understanding. However, it's a really good cannon to glass ratio. Very high fire rate with awesome AP damage, at least decent penetration... look for those cruisers giving you their sides and hammer them. It's not a newbie ship, though. You HAVE to use AP on anything you have decent pen chance against, HE is just bad on pretty much all german cruisers. HE works vs DDs, though, so don't just pick AP and forget you have HE. And those torpedos, while situational, are quite usable and can be deadly. Don't forget you have them. Can't speak of Nurn and above though.

In this context, while it is strictly true it's not RNG, it definitely feels like it. Why? Because it's so random. Sometimes people turn, sometimes they don't, sometimes they dodge the right way, sometimes they'll dodge right into all the torpedos... Seriously, there's far more luck than skill involved. Which is why certain DDs past the Minekaze are utter crap, because with crap reload times and relatively few launchers it's incredibly frustrating to make any sort of launch then see your target not even come anywhere close to them... and you're stuck for a long time reloading. Sigh, the Minekaze's 3x2 scheme is ridiculously superior to 2x3 too, just because you can actually control your spread a lot better. Not just the reload time. There's a reason I didn't buy the Hatsuharu yet, though I've got it unlocked... I feel it's likely to be more of the crapsandwich I already got a mouthful of and I don't really feel it's worth the trouble. Fubuki looks like it might be nice, but... worth dealing with Hatsuharu?.....

It also depends on the light of venus whether the shots will actually be targeted at the ship or the island itself, or so it seems a lot of the time, if your aim reticle is on the island and not the water behind it.

I think the Konig is a lemon. I'm hoping it's the lemon ship of the German Cruiser line. I'll drop in the lines I used on IRC to describe it... Seriously, Kuma's got comparable, if not better, armor. I cannot recommend this ship because it's way too fragile.

You'd need a game mode designed for that. I don't really think standard battle or even domination with more points are suited for it. That said, you'd also need new and much bigger maps. Game would get too crowded otherwise.

It's a preview of the tech tree cruiser, so yes, it's not going to remain premium. Sadness, I know.

..... 165810 files under \res\ , with 28335 folders. What the f... Yeah, you're spot on. Anything short of SSD just isn't going to cut it, the seek times for opening all those tiny small files alone ensures you're not going to load fast enough. Wargaming, you really need to do something about this.

All guns on the same turret firing simultaneously is a design decision. Think as "You're firing per turret" and not "per gun" and you're good to go. As for whether it'd be more accurate per barrel?... I do think historically warships did synch-fire often. Probably makes gunnery easier. About shell spread, that's a balancing mechanism both to simulate historical inaccuracy of naval fire and balance the relative power of ships to each other. There may be more reasons for it. Bear in mind that damage and penetration is largely non-random (I believe the only random factor involved there is when shells hit in an oblique angle that's not quite enough for automatic bounce but not far off it). Yeah, it kind of sucks... but then again, if it wasn't there you'd see veterans one-shotting battleships 20 kilometers away... gunnery isn't really all that hard in this game, so without the RNG.... yeah...

It will be available at a later date. Though I have to sort of second Troublemaker's thinking. You're nowhere near ready to go anywhere near tier 8. Your abysmal Atago scores prove it. Here's the problem... you have not the experience to make the leap to high tiers. Therefore you're basically food. You need to play through lower tier ships and get experience with them, and at the same time learn both the game mechanics and how every ship works, what ammunition to use and when, tactical and strategic awareness, etc. You can't buy any of this, and in high tier matches being a newbie means you get wrecked really really fast and take a large hit on your virtual wallet. Of course, I love finding premium ship newbies when I'm in my Tirpitz or Mogami... om nom nom feeeed me those XPs and credits~ But I imagine you don't want to be food.... In any case, we and WG thank you for supporting the game with your wallet. Tirpitz will be available eventually, keep an eye on the premium shop.

Type of camo to use depends on the ship and what you're doing with it. IJN DDs? Type 1 camo hands down, all the time. USN DDs? Probably Type 1, too, but Type 2 might be interesting too, since you're not going to be able to do attack runs while stealthed either way all that much. USN/IJN Cruisers? Probably Type 2 to make those shots miss more. Detectability won't help once you press the trigger unless you're in a rather stealthy ship to begin with and are stacking stealth mods/skills, at which point Type 1 probably is a dang good idea. Battleships? .... I can't think of one that Type 1 camo is useful at. Maybe the Tirpitz to help get in close? Even then, making the enemy miss more might be more useful. Carriers... Type 1 hands down to get the enemy to get closer to you before spotting.

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Which unfortunately doesn't deter serial teamkillers, especially with torpedos.

I'd like the option to cut those voice commands, too, or at least regulate their volume independently of the rest. They're way too easy to spam and they're very disruptive when they are.

This. Tirpitz bundled extras are a 50% markup. Warspite is a 150% markup. Way too far. I got the former because I could actually use the bundled stuff, the markup wasn't absolutely ridiculous, tier 8 battleship is definitely a good earner if you have a clue (I do) and I had a couple other reasons. Warspite... yeah, no. Just no.