Procrastes

I must admit, that if Flamu had said that "in the future we are not really gonna be allowed to talk about the balance of ships until they are ready for release", I wouldn't have given it another thought. I'm feeling a bit sheepish, here.

And a week before release, everyone can say what they want? That's quite another matter then, and quite reasonable as I see it. Sometimes it feels good to be wrong...!

A choice between hydro and DFAA is no choice at all to me - I'd go for the hydro every time. Because A), your DFAA is wasted in any game without a CV, and B), it's seldom that much of a game-changer even when it does come into play. LWM seems to give the Ochakov a slightly better rap than Flamu, or so I've taken her very short summary in post 69 above to mean, anyway. But, like Flamu, I don't really see the need for another dedicated DD hunter in the game. And this is without me going into the whole sorry hypocrisy show of pushing a whole class of stealth radar ships into the game. I won't even hint, here, at how disgusted that made me feel when I first heard of it. I won't mention the astonished denial, the ensuing disappointment or the furniture-tossing incident. Others might harp on about the signs of growing Russian bias and a catering to certain questionable marketing strategies, but not me. I will take the moral high road, and suffer in silence.

I'm on much the same line as you, actually. I feel that the game is in a pretty sweet spot as it is, and that I'd be perfectly happy if WG just kept things rolling along with a new map here and a new scenario there, and didn't rock the boat too much (pun intended). But I guess that's just me being an old man. Resistance to change has been a constant factor since someone first suggested we get down from those trees, with most old fogeys (irrespective of actual age) objecting to scary new ideas such as toothpaste or personal hygiene, while a few fresh thinkers kept paying them no mind and got on with improving the world. And it's a good thing they did, or I'd be playing my World of Warships account from some dank cave in the Pyrenées, sitting on a piece of dead mammoth. Also, please enlighten the unenlightened: What is the "R8 revolver"?

The borderland between irony and insult is generally best left unexplored.

My feelings exactly. There was never really any doubt that Wargaming would at some time choose to implement submarines into the game. A multiplayer online PvP game such as WoWs must keep constantly evolving, or risk a slow death by stagnation. There is no way an entire ship class would be left unexploited for very long. My hope is that Wargaming will put the initial focus on making submarines fun to play against, rather than making them fun to play. Ideally they should be both, of course, but going all-out for a maximized gaming experience for the newly introduced ship class can easily have the effect of disrupting the gameplay for all other ship classes. This is what happened when they introduced the reworked carriers, and I think everyone (including Wargaming) can agree that that went over in a less than optimal way. The fact that subs won't hit the regular game modes right away, but will start out in a separate game mode, is testimony enough that Wargaming have learned their lesson in this regard. With this in mind, I am actually rather hopeful about how submarines will work out in the game. In the best possible world they will be tweaked, fine-tuned and balanced over time, so that they will eventually fit into the regular gameplay without disrupting it for the other ship classes. If this proves impossible to achieve, they can stay in a separate game mode as well as - or so I'm thinking - playing a major role in future PvE scenarios and other special events. So while many of us may await the arrival of the new submarines with a sinking feeling, I for one am hoping that Wargaming will rise to the occasion! I'll get my coat.

Does the Indianapolis have those special, USN superheavy AP shells?

Unless the bombs are given improved gravitational pull, like the ones on Ark Royal?

I played this ranked season, but I had less time than I would have liked to put aside for the purpose. So I only got to play nine ranked battles in all, and it got me as far as rank 6. Not as far down as I'd hoped, but farther than I expected, to be honest. During the 10th ranked season I had one loss after the other, some due at least in part to me and some where I played rather well but not enough to carry. So I got absolutely nowhere, and it put me off the whole thing. This 11th season was better; I had some annoying losses but a few satisfying wins as well. I think it was a good idea to allow ships from two tiers in the same battle. Having tier 9 and 10 play together works well overall, and gave some spread as to what ship one could expect to play against. Twelve players are four or five too many for arms race, I think. I prefer a smaller number of players, say seven or eight to a team. This kind of format, with a race for buff drops and the drive to quickly get to grips with the enemy, benefits from having smaller sized teams. You can make more of a difference as an individual, and you don't end up facing too many enemies at once if you get spotted, which encourages active and daring gameplay. A possible problem with having smaller teams, is that any carriers present will have an even more disproportional influence on the battle than would otherwise be the case. I suspect that this is one reason why Wargaming went for 12-player teams this ranked season, when they also allowed carriers. Personally, I think it would be a better idea to keep to smaller teams and to maintain a ban on carriers in ranked battles. So I have a suggestion, namely that you add the question of whether or not to have carriers in ranked, to the poll? While I am generally in favour of educational efforts, I'm not sure whether those players who haven't already picked up enough clues on how to play arms race, would benefit from further instruction. That said, I just tried to change my "No" on question 5 above to a "Yes", but I failed. I did not experience too much of camping, and no actual suicides, so I guess I was lucky in that regard. Then again, I played all my ranked battles in either my Daring or my Smolensk, which promoted an active and eyes to the front-sort of play style, so I can't say I kept much track of what my allies were doing at my back. I got fairly good fire support in most of my games, I'll say that much. Arms race, and ranked in general, does seem to attract the more active and engaged kind of players, which is a big part of why I generally enjoy these game modes. Nice poll!

I use Radio Location on my Daring and my Halland. I am thinking of switching around some points and use it on my American and German destroyers as well. On the Daring, it is useful for letting me either hunt or avoid enemy destroyers as circumstances dictate. On the Halland it is useful mainly to let me avoid getting ambushed by enemy destroyers, but I have also managed to use it to torpedo unspotted enemy ships on one or two occasions. And besides these rather obvious advantages, it provides other useful information as well. For instance, if it points towards a visible enemy ship, I can be reasonably certain that there is no unspotted enemy lurking closer by. An obvious disadvantage with having this captain skill is that an enemy player that knows he's being 'located', might be more inclined to take evasive maneuvers than he would otherwise have been. On the other hand, a player that is inclined to sail in straight lines to begin with probably wouldn't have the wits to take any additional information as a reason not to do so. There is also the psychological element, in that an enemy that knows he's being located might be spooked and inclined to play more cautiously, and therefore be potentially less useful to his team.

Yeah, the old Arado maneuver, they pulled that one in World of Warplanes as well. "Gladiator? You mean, as in Gloster Gladiator? The iconic in-between-the-wars biplane that fought in the Siege of Malta in 1940, giving rise to the myth of Faith, Hope and Charity and creating an enduring legend among historians and warplane aficionados of all ages and cultures? You're thinking of that as an obvious tier IV premium? - Nah, no one would want that in the game. We'll give them the Arado Ar 197 instead, and too bad we can't watch their faces when they see it."

When it comes to setting fires at least, it boils down to more or less the same thing. Or maybe be the meta has changed without me noticing; that has happened before. As I wrote above, I didn't know about the increased fire damage per tick!

And the increased fire damage per tick was another thing I didn't know about; thanks again! It just goes to show that one should not go overboard with complaints from an uniformed point of view (although I still think they could have made carriers a fair bit more susceptible to damage without upsetting the game balance).

Thanks for telling me about carriers not being immune to flooding; I have amended my post accordingly. I guess I just assumed they would have been made impervious to that as well. As for the immunity to fire, wouldn't it have been enough to just give them magical asbest planes that could take of and land on a burning deck? They even had a special commander skill for that, back in the olden days... I suppose it's a Darth Vader style of leadership thing, providing the right kind of motivation and encouragement...?

They are quoting historical accuracy as a reason for making carriers immune to going boom? Really? Leaving aside the thought that carriers presumably carried depots of bombs and torpedoes for their aircraft, which presumably could explode if hit by incoming bombs and torpedoes, I guess that puts another spin on their immunity to fire as well. Since no carriers were ever set on fire during the course of war...

Another funny thing: I just noted that the 'Juliet Charlie' signal, also known as the anti-detonation-flag, is crossed over - i.e., marked as not recommended - for CV:s. I can only take this to mean that carriers can't be detonated. If this is true, I'd really like to know the reasons for making them exempt from this fun and engaging mechanic...?

I've found that I probably shouldn't play ranked battles unless I am in my sorta-Zen, "there is no spoon"-state of mind. Unless I can press the 'battle' button without actually giving a hoot whether I win or loose, and just focus on doing my best and having a good time, I should play normal random battles. And on those occasions when I find myself overly annoyed from getting trashed in random battles, I fool around in 'Just Cause 3' instead.

This!

About damn time. The Graf Zeppelin should have been tier VI from the start, and I for one can't even look at those high-altitude-interceptors-turned-into-maladapted-divebombers without a feeling of having been cheated, again, of my Stukas. The Stukas that were present on the promotion picture that accompanied the sale, I might add. Does this mean we finally get some Stukas in the game?

Being a proud Halland owner and Swedish to boot, I really want to believe you - but I'm still waiting for @El2aZeR to appear and bash your hopeful statistics! Seriously though, and while I don't question your personal experience of the game, I find it hard to imagine that the presence of a Halland destroyer would regularly have this much of an effect on a CV-infested CV-involved game. It is certainly (and unfortunately) nothing I have ever experienced myself, when sailing out in my own Halland. But I very rarely play high-tier CV:s in random battles, so I can't really express an opinion from a CV point of view. It would be interesting to see some statistics, once the Swedish destroyers have been around for a year or so!

Assuming that this is not a troll thread, I shall endeavour to give a serious reply. There is no way that a Halland destroyer can dish out enough AA to make a carrier irrelevant in a given sector. He can decimate a squadron, or even - with a bit of flak burst love - wipe it from the sky, but as we all know, getting a plane squadron wiped out is no more than a passing annoyance to the CV captain. A new squad will be off the deck in seconds, armed with foreknowledge of exactly where to find or avoid the destroyer as its commander sees fit. A Halland that is spotted by planes in the cap zone, will be immediately targeted by any and all enemy ships that are within shooting distance. Unlike most other destroyers the Halland cannot hide in smoke, but can only hope to be able to dodge the rain of fire until such time as he has - hopefully - managed to shoot down the entire plane squadron. Retaining cap control under these circumstances is exciting, but somewhat challenging. In more general terms, I would say that games with CV:s in them will be decided by the skill levels of the respective CV players far more often than by the presence of a Halland destroyer, or indeed of any other ship with a strong AA armament. In other words, the real problem here is not what kind of influence an AA-strong ship may have on the outcome of a battle by countering the carrier, but the disproportional influence that carriers tend to have, as a ship class, in all battles where they appear.

The trick with keeping the Smolensk entertaining is to spend more time HE kiting in open water and dodging everything the enemy team throws at you, than hiding in smoke. But I agree that not having got the Smolensk is no reason to uninstall the game. Get the Colbert or the Marceau instead, and go to town in them!

They most certainly are not... and my implication was half made in jest, but I guess you already guessed that? I've got the Daring and she's a good enough ship that even I can do rather well in her, if the stars are aligned. She doesn't really need faster reload on her guns, since I'm hard pressed to keep them firing at full rate and accuracy as it is, but I could do with a faster reload on her torpedoes. Ah, well... I shall have to keep taking turns with playing the Halland, that's a fast torpedo reload and no mistake!

That won't happen unless those ships suddenly start being effective against carriers.

Funny thing: The in-game information text about CVs says, "Aircraft carriers are for fighting large surface ships, and aircraft and aircraft carriers."