Procrastes

I had a telling encounter with a Neptune yesterday. I was sailing along in my Tirpitz, trying my best to shoot up targets while not sailing in straight lines, when this little actually rather big British cruiser sails into view no more than ten kilometres away. I fire off a salvo, with a bit to much lead since I overestimate the speed of the Neptune. I land a hit or two, enough to make the Neptune captain pop smoke. Since I am not stupid (this time at least), I leave that smoke cloud alone for the time being and make a tour around to the East. Upon my return, the smoke cloud has dissipated and the Neptune is back in my sights. I loose another salvo, again with too much lead, but I still score at least one citadel hit. and this time I press on. This leads, rather predictably, to me sinking the Neptune and shortly thereafter eating a faceful of torpedoes. When I got sunk under fire from every battleship and cruiser captain in sight a few minutes later, it was mainly due to the efforts of that Neptune captain. I think he got the better out of that engagement, damage-dealing wise - although if I'd have aimed just a bitt better, it would have ended very differently. The moral of the story? The ability to get close enough to make a torpedo run before getting sunk, is not to be underestimated!

Thanks for telling me! And since the new camo looks pretty good as well, I think it's time for a paint job!

The Leander seems like a nice ship, though I struggle to do well in her. I'm doing far better in the Belfast, and this makes me curious as to how I'll perform in the Fiji. Is it all down to the HE? The Perth is somewhere in between the two; a Leander but with HE shells. I am having more fun in the Perth than in the Leander, but I still do no where near as much damage in the Perth as in the Belfast. The heal on the British cruiser line has so far proved to be a disappointment; I can't ever heal up more than a fraction of the damage I take. The access to good torpedoes is something I must learn to utilize properly. My take on this line, so far: From tier VI and onwards, it is rewarding for those who can master it. And even if the majority of the players will stay with those cruisers that carry HE shells, there are enough people doing well in the British cruiser line for it to bring diversity to the game. This is good!

But, doesn't the "original" Tirpitz camo pattern give the same benefits as the new one?

Leberecht Maass: 18 Shiratsuyu: 14 Mahan: 19Sims (BL Mk. 7 mod. 2B): 9 - 3 = 6. No reason to play the Sims when you can play the Blyskawica. Leningrad: 24 Blyskawica: 33 Myoko: 14 Flint: 23 Atlanta: 12 Fiji: 22 Belfast: 32Gneisenau:13 + 1 = 14. A Scharnhorst but with more punch in her guns. She can trade salvoes with the big boys. The low number of guns is not such a handicap as could be imagined. Scharnhorst: 38 Hiryu (2/2/2): 19 Saipan (Torpedo Bombers): 14

The Scharnhorst is easily one of my favourite ships. I have played her a lot lately, and I have been following a lot of threads on this forum, in order to come to grips with my main question regarding this awesome ship: Just how am I supposed to handle her guns? When do I use AP, and when do I use HE? I was in a shoot-out with a Bismarck and a Hipper this very morning, and kept switching between ammunition types, and after the battle I looked at the result screen. On the Bismarck: 23 hits with HE for 11 000 damage, 7 hits with AP for 7000 damage. On the Hipper: I don't recall the exact numbers, but the AP damage was surprisingly low compared to that of the HE shells. Possibly due to some overpenetrations, I guess, but still. This is more or less typical for how my battles in the Scharnhorst tend to turn out. Unless I can get some AP citadel hits on cruisers, there is no real consistency in how much damage is done with AP and HE respectively. I have had some success with lobbing HE right and left and hoping for fires, but then again, there have been those games where a few good AP salvoes have made the big difference. Quite simply, I don't see a pattern and I have no basis for a clear ammunition choice. I am tempted to try shooting AP only for a dozen games or so, trust to RNG as the great equalizer, and see how that turns out. Meanwhile I am starting this thread; although the matter has been discussed before, with lots of good advice from many forumites, I feel that it deserves a recap. The ship has been in play for quite a while now, and there must be a lot of accumulated experience to tap from!

Thanks for good advice, guys! I am already putting it to use!

I like my König! She's a solid performer, easily outclassing a Kongo except at long range, and she can handle most situations she gets herself into. Good or at least decent stats overall. She's even got decent AA for a tier V battleship. But as always, it's a matter of personal preference!

I got the Gneisenau today, and had a blast of a first game. My very first salvo landed a citadel in a poor little Brit cruiser, and my last salvo landed a citadel in a North Carolina, thereby gaining me a Confederate award. What went between those two salvoes was pure Naval Warfare Poetry.

Leberecht Maass: 21 Shiratsuyu: 14 Mahan: 22 Sims (BL Mk. 7 mod. 2B): 15Sims (Mk 15 mod. 0): 5 - 3 = 2 Leningrad: 24 Blyskawica: 32 Myoko: 13 Flint: 23 Atlanta: 14 Fiji: 25 Belfast: 31Gneisenau: 12+1 = 13. Got her today, and had a blast of a first game. She plays like the Scharnhorst but with really dangerous guns. Scharnhorst: 36 Hiryu (2/2/2): 19 Saipan (Torpedo Bombers): 14

The Tirpitz and the Scharnhorst offer - in my opinion at least - rather different game experiences, mostly because of their respective main armament. The Tirpitz, with her eight 380 mm guns, can trade punches with the big boys on equal terms, but like any battleship, she must choose her targets with care. A completely missed salvo hurts. The Scharnhorst on the other hand, with her nine fast-loading and quick-turning 280 mm guns, is more of an opportunist fighter - she can drive around the battlesea, and blaze happily away at whatever enemy presents the best target. But se also scores a lot more bounces, due to her less heavy-calibred guns. Both of them are fun ships. And that is my main reason for sailing in any ship, premium or not - having fun!

They are selling randomly generated Gremlins and Czars...? Talk about an offering to both Hermes and Mammon. Well, congratulations to all of you who got lucky. They are awesome ships!

I'd say get the Tirpitz. You can't go wrong with the Tirpitz. Unless you prefer to fight at long range, in which case drop the whole battleship idea and get the Mikhail Kutuzov instead. The Tirpitz is for those captains who like to get up close and personal with the enemy. Without having actually played the Missouri, I would think that unless you have another 750 000 free XP stashed away, you can use those free XP more gainfully to unlock upgrades on regular ships.

I got the Graf Spee as a Christmas gift from a friend. Which makes it the second German battleship I've found beneath the tree, since I got the Tirpitz from my wife last Christmas. If I get another one next year, it will be a tradition!

Does it boost XP more than the regular, unique camo pattern for the Graf Spee? The one that comes with every premium, so far?

Yes, the dancing part was... controversial. I rather liked it, my best friend hated it, and my girlfriend back then loved watching me swing the gamepad around like a claymore as John Hawkins stumbled across the dance floor like a drunken monkey. The duel was much easier and far less scary. And I agree. I don't think Sid Meier's Pirates! will ever be surpassed.

I remember those battles! I was there, too. Although my favorite ship was the Sloop. Almost as quick and agile as the Pinnace, but with more guns, more crew members and more space for that sweet, sweet loot. And like the Pinnace, the Sloop couldn't run onto any reefs and wreck herself! I think that Sid Meier's Pirates! might actually be the best damned computer game there ever was. It's never been surpassed in its genre. No one has ever even come close.* *Except maybe with the release of Pirates! Gold a bunch of years ago. Better graphics, the same wonderful sand box adventure gameplay, and you could dance with the governors' daughters.

To be honest, I am far from certain that a removal of the ability to stealth fire will, of its own, be so very detrimental to destroyer gameplay. I am a bit miffed by the prospect, to be sure, not least since I only recently managed to push a couple of my gunboat destroyer captains up to the Advanced Firing Training Skill. The thought that this suddenly very comfortable stealth firing window might soon disappear again is a bit annoying. But when I think about it, I don't believe I spend so very much time firing from outside detection range in any given battle. Even if my target doesn't spot me, there's a good chance someone else will - a plane, perhaps, or a hitherto undisclosed nearby destroyer. The main advantage with the extra range is probably just that range in itself - I can fire at an enemy that would have otherwise been untouchable, and while I'm not exactly invisible to my target, chances are good that any shells lobbed back at me from 14 km away will miss even without an active dodge on my part. No, my main concern with this proposed stealth firing nerf is what it may herald. I worry that we are about to see the same kind of development for destroyers in WoWs, that happened to light tanks in WoT. And that would be a bad thing, in my opinion. Destroyers in WoWs, and light tanks in WoT, are, in effect scout vehicles. Being small, quick and hard to spot, they can move relatively freely around the game board, spotting enemies - or the absence of such - and report back to the team. They can start a cap, they can respond quickly to stop an enemy from capping, and they can sometimes slip through the lines and take out carriers or artillery respectively. Oh, and they can also be taken out of the game very quickly, on the slightest instance of misjudgement or bad luck on the part of their captains. Scout vehicles are inherently harder to master than other types of vehicles in this type of game. But once mastered, their gameplay can be very rewarding. Light tanks in WoT were once like this. But the gameplay was subtly changed over time, mainly through how the maps were laid out, so that it became less and less rewarding to play a small, fast but very lightly armed scout vehicle. During the last part of the period when I played WoT regularly, medium tanks had taken over much of the scouting role from light tanks. There is no immediate sign that any of this will actually happen in WoWs. For one thing, destroyers are far more versatile than light tanks, and can fill more varied roles. They are also far less dependent on map layout. And yet I can't help but to feel a vague sense of unease when I read about proposed changes to those game mechanics, such as stealth or fire, that directly affect the ability of smaller ships to take the fight to the battleships.

So they are going to remove stealth fire, because it can hurt battleships, who cannot themselves stealth fire. And I recently read something about an upcoming nerf to Demolition Expert? If so, this makes sense, since fire can also hurt battleships. (Even though fires are frequently started by HE shells fired from ships that are not themselves battleships. Such insolence!) I can help with this line of thought. Why not remove all islands from all the maps? Ships that are not battleships can reputedly lob shots over islands, thereby hurting (the feelings of) battleships on the other side of those islands, without the battleships being able to instantly one-shot these ships (in spite of them not being battleships). Like measures have been taken with good effect elsewhere, such as the great deforestation drive that removed the bush-based threat from light tanks to heavy tanks in a certain other game whose namn currently escapes me. In fact, why not remove the shells and torpedoes from all ships that are not battleships? They could still be useful as targets, and if that got boring they could always try to ram the battleships! I am tired and hungry and in a moving car. Please do not take this post too seriously.

Maybe if one could launch a really big balloon, that could be used to get a battleship airborne for a short amount of time? So it could skipjump over, say, a shoal of incoming torpedoes, and then land on top of the destroyer that launched them? This would get the BB Mafia on board with the idea, at least! Edtied: Seriously, though: More cool dreadnought and pre-dreadnought stuff would be most welcome!

I took a three week geekspeak course in October... and now that my diploma finally has arrived, it turns out I still cant understand noobspeech properly. I thought it was a subdialect, but it actually belongs to a separate linguistic group altogether. Bummer. Geeks and noobs still can't communicate properly, it seems. Maybe if we all try to employ nerdword...?

Zounds! You have the right of, Sir! An enemy cruiser must never be left umolested!!!

Well, now she's not just merely dead; she's really most sincerely dead. My last vote before going on vacation: Shiratsuyu: 16Mahan: 21 Sims (BL Mk. 7 mod. 2B): 15Sims (Mk 15 mod. 0): 8 Leningrad: 22 Blyskawica: 28 + 1 = 29. She's got the speed, she's got the fire power, and she definitely has the looks! Myoko: 13 Flint: 22Atlanta: 17 Shchors: 12 - 3 = 9Fiji: 20 Belfast: 28 Colorado: 11 Gneisenau: 17Scharnhorst: 32Hiryu (2/2/2): 18Hiryu (3/1/2) : 20Ranger (1/1/1): 5Ranger (0/1/3): 16Saipan (Torpedo Bombers): 22Saipan (Dive Bombers): 11

The Indianapolis has now been erased twice, see posts 128 and 136 above. What sorcery is this?

We have read about them - we have seen pictures of them - there have been youtube videos made about them! The Admiral Graf Spee, ruthless raider, scourge of the Atlantic and terror of the allied shipping! Every warship that could catch her, she could sink - and any ship that could fight her, she could run away from! A Teutonic Terror of mythical proportions, she feared nothing that moved on face of the ocean. Nothing, that is, except the mighty Dunkerque. Faster than the Graf Spee, boasting more and bigger guns than the Graf Spee, and cunningly constructed so that retreat was not an option, the French Fury was straining against her anchors, eager to do battle with her Aryan Adversary! But that battle never took place. The fickle gods of war decided otherwise, and the ships met their separate ends without ever having trained their rangefinders on each other. For decades, naval historians have debated on what would have happened, if such a momentous meeting had taken place. Who would have emerged victorious? It was impossible to say. It was impossible - but no longer! Thanks to recent developments in modern computer gaming technology, those great ships now sail again, and we will soon see it. We will soon see the outcome... ..the outcome of the Greatest Battle that Was Never Fought! What do YOU think will happen?