Procrastes

"And they shall be flooded with the tears of their captains."

I wouldn't worry about the Hood being OP, if that's what concerns you! The Scharnhorst is a sweet combination of speed, almost cruiser-RoF guns with a punch, torpedoes, and battleship-grade armour. The Hood will most certainly not have all of that. Edit: And yes - I always remember the Scharny!

I hear you. A comparatively short range on the main guns pushes for more dynamic gameplay (as long as it's not too short, which pushes for more suicidal gameplay). 14 km seems about enough to drive up a sweat, I'd say! But then, you have twelve (12!) km range on the torpedoes? The temptation to stay out of sight and torp away will be there.

After watching a few videos on the Duca D'Aosta, my first impression is that she will probably be a fun ship to play! I doubt, however, that she'll be overpowered. She will almost certainly be nothing like the Belfast, with the latter's bag of James Bond-tricks up her chimney. As for Flamu's video in particular, it was, as usual, very informative - but Flamu's performance, in any ship, is really no general indication on that ship's performance without him at the helm. That bloody bastard incredibly skilled player could carry his team to victory in the Kon-Tiki.

The important thing is that different lines have different gameplay - diversity is good! British smoke knights vs. voyeuristic French voltigeurs will make for some fun and exciting engagements, don't you think?

"Moving out at last, an armoured Colossus, sister-ship to that other Titan that had destroyed the Hood with one single, savage blow - the Hood, the darling of the Royal Navy, the most powerful ship in the world - or so men had thought." _______________ Excerpt from H.M.S. Ulysses, by Alistair Maclean 1955

How nice to hear from you again, Captain Worcester! Let me take this opportunity to extend, to you and to all your countrymen, my hopes for continued good relations between our nations! (I'm Swedish, by the way.)

Special game mode: Pre-Dreadnought Battle! I would welcome more ships from the pre-dreadnought era into this game! The implementation, however, needs to be thought through. A lot of good ideas abound already in this thread, so I'll just add a few stray thoughts of my own. The current tiers probably shouldn't be shifted or modified. Game balance is an absolute key factor when it comes to basic functionality, and it must not be compromised. I'm thinking that a special game mode might be the best idea? Perhaps it could be called Pre-Dreadnought Battle! or something catchy like that? In this mode, players could only play a select bunch of ships on a hopefully expanding list. The Mikasa would obviously be on it, as would the Dresden and her sister ships. The Bogatyr and the Oleg would be there, of course, as would the Chester. And then we have the König Albert, the Nassau, the Kawachi etc etc... the list goes on. I guess there wouldn't be any aircraft carriers in this game mode. Unless perhaps one of those ships with a lighter-than-air balloon was introduced? I remember reading something about this in a post sent in by one of you knowledgeable shipsters out there. Or we could go totally Jules Verne, and introduce a fictional zeppelin carrier... this could be fun! Another question is, could and should there be any destroyers? I'm currently at work, so I'll drop this post off now and try to follow the thread. Happy sailing!

Akizuki: 5 Benson: 36Lo Yang (Mk. 15 mod. 0): 11Atago: 37Chapayev: 11Mikhail Kutuzov: 40Amagi: 1 - 3 = 0North Carolina: 25Tirpitz: 16Bismarck: 10 + 1 = 11. A great medium range brawler.Shokaku (2/2/2): 26

A friend of mine was offered to buy the Kamikaze (the less proliferate one, whichever that is). He didn't buy it...

But, why would they want to achieve that effect? Being spotted outside of your firing range even without having fired your guns can be a pain, sure. (König Albert, I'm looking at you!) Being spotted outside of your firing range after having fired your guns, however, is no problem at all. When I let loose a salvo from one of my battleships, I expect everyone to know about it. Or am I missing something here?* *Except for my targets, of course. I kinda suck at gunnery.

Are they planning to do away with the tier 4 limited MM? They only just introduced it...

Akizuki: 5 Benson: 36Lo Yang (Mk. 15 mod. 0): 11Atago: 36 + 1 = 37. She was good back then. She's still good now.Chapayev: 11Mikhail Kutuzov: 40Amagi: 4 - 3 = 1. Clearing the list.North Carolina: 24Tirpitz: 16Bismarck: 13Shokaku (2/2/2): 26

So, do I get this right: My Arkansas Beta is going to get a free range increase? From 10.9 to 14.3 km? For real? Man, that's seriously weird. She's the ship where I got my first, y'know, Kraken Unleashed. She don't need no range buff; she just rides right up to the enemy, close and comfy as whatnot, and deletes the bugger with that handy sixpack of mean ol' double-barrelled shotguns of hers. I guess the only right an' proper thing to say here, is: Yee-haw...!!!

I think we may safely infer a little something about humanity, as a species, from the order in which your search results appeared on that Google page.

I do believe I can play the Blyskawica, or indeed any other destroyer, without stealth fire. It's not this single game mechanic change as such, that worries me, but the possibility of an ongoing trend where small, lightly armoured scout vehicles are continuously nerfed over time up to the point where their very gameplay has been downgraded to the edge of unplayability. I'm not saying that I believe this is going to happen in WoWs. What I'm saying is, I hope it won't.

My favourite flag is the red one, with the letters "CBT" on it in bold. My wife informs me that this is the internationally accepted acronym for C0ck and Ball Torture. I fly it on all my ships.

Akizuki: 13 - 3 = 10, Look at all those bouncesBenson: 35Lo Yang (Mk. 15 mod. 0): 14Atago: 35 + 1 = 36 Chapayev: 11Mikhail Kutuzov: 39Amagi: 7 - 3 = 4North Carolina: 23Tirpitz: 15 + 1 = 16Bismarck: 16Shokaku (2/2/2): 26

And this is why I love my HMAS Perth. Put ut smoke, send up the little Walrus, and fire away from the safety of the comfy chair. Tea and cookies while we watch the show! _________ Captain Koala

A not uncommon fate for ships who take the fight to the Royal Navy. It's not when you end up at the bottom, but how you get there, that counts. The German light cruiser SMS Emden conducted her legendary operations during WW1 during a period of less than three months, but if there is any single naval vessel in the course of modern* military history that has achieved more well-deserved fame than she, I honestly don't know which one that would be! I write "modern", since I might otherwise have to give the prize to Sir Francis Drake's flagship, the Golden Hind.

It might perhaps be argued that sinking the Hood, and driving off the Prince of Wales, could be seen as a greater and more useful achievement than "getting kekked upon by a Biplane"? Personally, I would argue that the achievement of fame rests not mainly upon achievement as such, but rather upon random and popular circumstance. Some examples from history: General George Armstrong Custer achieved fame, by mismanaging a military operation and getting himself and his regiment butchered at Little Big Horn in 1876. Salomon August Andrée achieved fame, by conceiving and going through with the completely ridiculous idea to try to travel to the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon, and got himself and the two other members of the Arctic Balloon Expedition killed in 1897. Robert Falcon Scott, an Arctic explorer who prided himself on taking advice from no man, conceived the almost but not quite as ridiculous idea to travel to the South Pole with motor vehicles and horses, and got himself and the rest of his expedition killed on the Terra Nova expedition 1910-1912. (To be fair, Scott was already famous for the successful Discovery Expedition 1901-1904, but it would probably be safe to assume that the lion's share of his enduring fame is due to the fate of his last and failed expedition.) I don't think it would be overly cynical to say that the sort of fame that will inspire the enthusiasts of posterity, does not rest solely, or even mainly, upon achievement. It was the 9th and 617th* squadrons of the RAF that sank the Tirpitz, but it's the ship itself that is more widely known today, even among enthusiasts. Because that's how legends work. *Incidentally, the squadron that had previously achieved lasting fame for itself as the Dambusters. Which was indeed an achievement!

Your Geek Fu is stronger than mine!* I don't really know what a gyroangle is - but I do believe that torpedoes that couldn't be aimed at all, might prove somewhat tricky to use in the game... *I mean this as a compliment, btw!

Fixed tubes? As in, un-aimable? In the game? Are you sure?

Perhaps we shouldn't throw in the towel yet, on that account? I notice that the Hood is termed a "Battlecruiser" and not a "Battleship", in the presentation picture. As has been amply demonstrated by, for instance, the Dunkerque, there are battleships, and then there are battleships... as long as WG keeps designing ships with varied and fun game performance, I don't care all that much on which branch in the tech trees they put them!

This is an interesting thread! I don't play carriers very often myself, but I have played this game for quite a long time. For what it's worth, here are my two cents on this subject! 1. Nuanced carrier gameplay is good for the game. When carriers are present, they bring a number of opportunities and challenges to the table. As a destroyer, you can relax somewhat in your duty to constantly play the role of scout. A good carrier ally can and will spot the enemy fleet much more efficiently than you do. This will leave you room to harass enemy ships with long range fire, or try a sneak torpedo run - not to mention that you will have much better opportunities to cap, and defend cap. Alternately, if you are in an AA-specced destroyer (especially one with the defensive AA consumable), you can work together with the carrier and help him fight the enemy planes. As a cruiser, you can back up the rest of the team with your (usually) rather strong AA capabilities. Your (usually) decent mobility lets you take the fight to those torpedo bombers with more confidence than the run-of-the-mill battleship. If you have the smoke consumable, you can work together with a scouting CV to burn down the enemy fleet from inside a smoke screen. As a battleship, you can avoid death by clever team work, or go it alone to a well-deserved watery grave. Battleship captains who complain about overpowered carriers, are simply those battleship captains who don't properly understand that this is a team-playing game. But if you are a team player, and have some luck with your positioning, you can farm a lot of plane kills from overeager enemy carrier captains. In short, although the absence of carriers in a battle means that I can in some ways relax if I'm in a ship with a weak AA suit, I usually like to see them in the lists. They make the game more varied, which is fun for everyone! 2. Carriers are not overpowered, at any tier. A carrier, using all its active squadrons, has the capability to potentially take out any full-health battleship with a single attack run. In order to accomplish this, the carrier captain must plan and execute his attack with great attention. This takes time, consumes resources (i.e. planes), and requires a high level of personal skill. In most cases, it also requires the enemy battleship captain to make some kind of mistake, such as sailing alone without backup and fail to take any kind of defensive measures. In the time it takes the carrier captain to perform such an attack run, the battleship captain can fire enough salvoes to sink the carrier many times over (providing, of course, that they hit). For some reason, few battleship captains seem to consider that this capability makes them overpowered in relation to the carrier. Sure, a well played carrier is a dangerous enemy. But so is any other class of ship, if played well. The reason why some people see carriers as especially threatening, is that they can make their attack without fear of immediate reprisal, since an optimal carrier attack is performed while the carrier is still out of sight of the target ship. What most people seem not to grasp, is that being out of reach is not only optimal for the carrier, but also vital to its survival. A carrier under fire will get sunk much faster than any other kind of ship, since it can typically - once engaged- neither fight nor run away effectively. In short, I have never been outplayed by a carrier captain without feeling that a) I could probably have avoided it if I'd played better myself, and so, b) I probably deserved it. 3. Removing manual drop for carriers, at any tier, sounds like a bad idea. I am a staunch opponent to any and all efforts to dumb this game down. This is my main reason for advocating the removal of the Radio Location skill, for instance, since this skill - when present - in no small measure supplants personal player skill with an automated game mechanic. That element of the game which consists of trying to outguess and outplay your opponent, is to a certain degree lost. Removing manual drop for carriers would take WoWs even further in this direction. An element which rewards personal player skill is lost, bringing the game that much closer to being just a click-and-play experience. This, to mind, would be a bad thing. In short, I don't think manual drops for carriers should be removed, at any tier. If there is a balance problem somewhere - which I, for my part, don't really see - there must be a better way to deal with it.