Procrastes

The main targets for submarines were usually cargo ships and transport ships. The odds of pulling off a successful submarine attack against an enemy warship - let alone a whole group of such - were very much dependant on what stage of the war we are talking about and what grade of anti-submarine weapons were available. Not that such attacks didn't happen - just think of the German submarine U-9 sinking the three armoured cruisers HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy on September 22, 1914. Or if we consider WW2, there was the instance on September 15, 1942, when the Japanese submarine I-19 sank the carrier USS Wasp and damaged both the battleship USS Carolina and the destroyer USS O'Brien, with a single salvo of torpedoes. But such remarkable submarine victories against surface warships were comparatively rare, as far as I know.

For one thing, submerged subs should not be able to spot for their team. It's quite all right for them to know about the hungry destroyer circling above, but they shouldn't be able to spot it for the rest of their team to shoot at. And not that it matters, but this would also fit in well with WW2-era radio technology, where submarines had to surface in order to be able to transmit radio signals.

Yeah, I did hear about that one. I even saw it performed on a Youtube video, which was... inspiring. Probably not too easy to pull off, though...

The Aloha Tower...? Can you bring up a picture?

So it is, but fortunately it's not a thankless one. That warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you round the peninsula and spot the enemy carrier on an intercepting course just 8 km distant, and you're loaded for bear... he launches planes and starts to turn away, but you both know they're just two token gestures before he goes down under a hail of shells and torpedoes... that warm and fuzzy feeling is hard to beat! I have to to confess to equal parts of ignorance and curiosity. What, exactly, is the "889 division setup"?

Most of us have learned to live with the new aircraft carriers. Moreover, we have learned how to sink them.

Adding submarines to the game is not very hard. Adding them without disrupting the game for every other ship class, however, is a bit of a challenge. I believe it can be done, but it would take some serious effort on behalf of Wargaming. Most importantly, as I see it, Wargaming should ditch the idea of making the submarine class noob-friendly to the exclusion of all other considerations. They took the noob-friendly path with the reworked carriers, and the fallout of that decision is still felt across the community. We do not need a repeat performance. I can see why Wargaming would want to make every new class easily accessible even to beginner players, but doing this at the cost of overall game balance is still the wrong choice in my opinion. In order for submarines to fit into the game, I believe they should be made rather challenging to master - rewarding careful play, but punishing mistakes. If you are going to introduce a stealth killer class in an arcade-style game, and retain the "stealth killer" part, you have to make the assassin in question very vulnerable to counter-attack. If you don't, you will almost inevitably turn the assassin into the new apex predator. This can be a lot of fun in single player games or simulations, but not in an online multiplayer PvP game such as WoWs. I won't presume to make a full list of relevant measures in order to build a balanced submarine class. But here are a few personal thoughts and suggestions, which should be considered in relation to how subs worked during the last public test. The "bobbing immunity" effect must be eliminated. Subs should not be able to switch between surface weapon/depth charge immunity by the simple expedient of hovering between 5.9 and 6.1 meters of depth. Not only is this disrupting to the game balance, it is also silly to the point of being immersion-breaking. All surface ships, and not just destroyers, carriers and some cruisers, should have access to anti-submarine weapons. Or if not, submarines should at least be unable to remain submerged indefinitely (perhaps by reintroducing oxygen as a finite resource?). Having an endless endgame with a couple of battleships slowly circling around waiting for death, is not fun for any of the involved parties. Surfaced submarines might need to be made more easy to hit by ship artillery. (Or, quite possibly, this might just be me sucking hard at gunnery. Again. ) That weird underwater ballet, which consisted of sub vs. sub fights, should be replaced with something a little less, well, weird. It was like being in a slow-motion version of one of those Top Gun movies of the 80's, but with the fighter jets replaced with submarines and the homing missiles replaced with ditto torpedoes. It was so different from what the rest of WoWs is like, that I felt like I had entered an entirely different game. This is what I can think of in a hurry. I will doubtless think of something else the moment I press the "submit" button, but there you go - I really have to get back to work. Happy incoming Halloween, everyone!

The Daring. Because the Daring can do just about anything that needs doing, and she can make a good contribution in almost any scenario. Nice idea for a forum thread, Sir!

I've found him to be frequently quite verbose about the reasons for his opinions, but as always it tends to boil down to preference and personal playstyle. He doesn't think very much of the HMAS Perth, for instance, which is a ship that I hold in high regard (and not just for her koalas). On the other hand, he can single-handedly and without much effort wipe out half the opposing fleet from the bridge of the Kléber, in which ship I tend to get humiliatingly spanked to death as soon as I'm spotted in her. Although that is of course mostly due to the extreme skill gap...

Indeed. Which is why I'm more interested in why he might consider it to be garbage.

The Nürnberg is very good at what she does best, which is pumping out 150 mm shells at a ridiculously fast rate while eating a ridiculous amount of damage from anything that ends up hitting her in return. So being able to control the opening engagement is kind of vital, to say the least. If she can't finish an opponent with her first two or three salvoes (which she may well be able to do), she's well advised to get out of the line of fire pretty fast. She's got some useful tools to accomplish this as well, given that her best firing position is while kiting away from the target (two out of her three 360° turning turrets are situated on the aft deck) and since she has a murderously strong short-range torpedo armament with which to handle any close-quarters mess-ups. By all accounts, the München has the same gratifying rate of fire as the Nürnberg. She's also quite a bit faster, if I've got it right. In view of this, my first two follow-up questions about the München would be: - Does she have 360° turning turrets? - Does she have good firing angles on her torpedo tubes?

I have to agree with this one... ...the Stukas were the selling point about the Löwenhardt for me as well. I've wanted to fly a Stuka ever since my dad brought one home from a trip to Hamburg when I was a kid back in the 80's,* but for some reason Wargaming seems to have had a policy against Stuka dive bombers in all their titles so far. They had them on the sales poster for the Graf Zeppelin (), but switched them for some half-imaginary high-altitude interceptors in the actual package (), and the one they put into World of Warplanes was a tank buster that didn't carry any bombs (). And I'm not the only one who's been asking for them either, so I was even more flummoxed when the new German silver line CV:s were conspicuously Stuka-free as well. I've been wondering about the reason for this bias against the iconic Stuka, but it's all been made clear now of course: WG has been keeping Stukas from the silver line CV:s in order to boost the sales of the new and eminently Stuka-equipped premium ship, the Löwenhardt. And it worked, too, since I just bought one. So I guess I have to hand it to them for a well played hand. Thanks for my new Stukas, WG! I would have taken them even if they had been put up for grabs together with a properly placed tier VI Graf Zeppelin, all those years ago... * Not a real one, but close enough - a really big and seriously cool plastic model that we built together and that I kept hanging from my bedroom ceiling for a number of years.

Premium shop is still off the grid. Hard drugs and hookers it is...

By that logic, I suppose we should remove not only the siren but also the Stuka itself, since the actual plane that was dropping the bomb was presumably the prime source of terror for the recipients? And by extension, we would then have to think about removing all WW2-related German (and Japanese and Italian) content as well. And the Russian/Soviet content would probably also have to go, since Stalinist Russia took part in the invasion and ensuing terror campaign against Poland in 1939 and onwards. I can express nothing but sympathy for your wish to distance yourself from the German reign of terror during the Nazi regime, and I'm not arguing for putting swastikas in the game. Nor do I want another flag debate. But as I've written before, I believe that we should allow ourselves to make a difference between the reasonably accurate portrayal of national forces in the light-hearted arcade game that is World of Warships, and the horrible reality that is actual war. I, for one, would not read a political message of terror into the inclusion of a "Stuka siren" sound effect in the game. Best regards!

Stronger than the Yubari? Even counting the Defensive AA consumable?

Is there any particular reason to suppose that the Thunderer is in fact going to be removed? Sure, she's a good ship by most accounts, but surely not an overpowered one on the level of the Smolensk...?

Captains @invicta2012 and @Sir_Sinksalot , between the two of them, pretty much say what needs to be said about the Anshan and the Aigle (and whether or not to get them for coal), in posts #5 and #7 above. Personally, I would choose the Aigle in Operations any day, since you typically have less use for concealment in scenario battles and her alpha strike power is simply that much greater. But the Anshan is probably the more versatile and comfortable ship to play in random battles, where the outright horrible firing angles of the Aigle can be a serious drawback. Best of luck, Captain @NobleSauvage! You have a choice where all alternatives are good, which is the best kind of choice!

The penalty for dying early in the game, is dying early in the game. This old song again.... seriously?

Self-knowledge is the first step towards real wisdom, young grasshopper.* What is weird, is that the option to open all available containers at once, doesn't appear until you have three containers or more. So if you have only two containers, you have to open them one at a time... * Please pardon this grasshopper for using Cranky Old Master speech. It just seemed appropriate.

Given that so many of the missions in the ongoing, time-limited "Strong-Willed" campaign can be completed in random battles only, Wargaming doesn't really seem to want to encourage us to play ranked battles.

The ship I have and that I find hardest to play well, is without a doubt the Kléber. I can see how the Kléber has all the tools she needs to perform well. I have seen her played to very great effect against solid opposition. The reason she won't perform that way with me at the helm, is entirely due to me not being a good enough captain to put her strengths to full use. I lack the skill and the instincts to know how to maneuver and when and how to make a push, I lack the level of map awareness needed to survive, and - moreover - I also lack the wits and reflexes that are required to run an ongoing fight in the Kléber without running her aground or otherwise end up in trouble. In short, the Kléber is a ship which will require me to improve my game and become a better WoWs player. And that is fine with me - it's the reason why I got her in the first place!

I suspect that what they mean is, that this is the last chance to obtain the Z-35 until it appears in the regular shop. I like the idea of German destroyers, with their combination of smoke and hydro (and good looks!). But at tier VIII the Cossack offers better gun power, and the Lo Yang better hydro, and both of them have better torpedoes and concealment... so I've had a hard time convincing myself that I would have any use for the poor little Z-35. If only she'd had 8 km torps, at least...!

I would have liked to have the Ocean Liner camo for the Normandie, it is easily the best-looking and most inspired "player-based" camo pattern that has so far been introduced. Unfortunately, I had no possibility of completing the missions to get it. I hope it will be made available for doubloons.

Just out of interest, what ship did you play?

The Bayern is tough as an old boot. I am not a solid enough shot to take full advantage of her guns, but I've sailed through enough gauntlets in her to recognize her for what she is, namely a brawler, a pugilist and a street fighter. The closest comparison at her tier is probably the Warspite, and I'd be hard pressed to say which one of them is the better brawler. The Warspite has more accurate guns, but I think the Bayern is probably tougher and has better secondaries. Victory would most likely go to the better player, with no particular advantage to either ship. The Warspite is my go-to battleship for Operations, though, in no small part due to the fact that she is captained by the inimitable Commander Mighty Jingles!