Procrastes

Same here. But then again I set out from the beginning with the intention to avoid grinding for a commander and then risk getting frustrated by only just missing him. 'Cause I ain't going to toss money after half-completed mission objectives, and that's one for the books.

In one of those three ships, you say... sneaky! Thanks for clearing that up! I must admit, I wouldn't have guessed for Wargaming to set things up so that you would not be encouraged to get hold of all three ships as quickly as possible!

That's what I thought, yeah. But there was no "Hearts of Oak" achievement after my last Cheshire win in Co-op, and I don't believe I got one after my win in her in a Random battle yesterday, either. Is this a bug? I avoid her dive bombers in any ship, but thanks for the advice! The dive bombers of the Enterprise are so fun and balanced, that even I can get regular multiple citadels when flying out in them... I can almost feel my karma melting.

I got the Cheshire and the initial impression is that she seems to work out fine. I have only played two battles in her so far, mind you, and one of those was in Co-op, so this is very much just a first impression. She will take huge amounts of damage from anything bigger than her that shoots at her, and she's a fairly easy target to hit - but then she can heal back an almost insultingly big part of the damage she took, even from citadel hits. It's like watching one of those Sin City protagonists of a Frank Miller yarn; they take an insane beating and then they just get back up and spit out a few teeth and go all, "That the best you got? Come on over an' I'll bleed on ya!" I don't mind not having a smoke screen as much as I thought I would, since those big guns would have made me visible even through smoke in many or perhaps even most engagements. Frankly, I'd rather have the range - and a range of 16,1 km isn't all that bad; we've just gotten used to longer ranges with all the French and German ships out there. One thing that puzzles me a bit, is that I haven't got any Royal Navy tokens for my wins in the Cheshire. I was under the impression that she was one of those ships that would grant me tokens, just like the London. I am at 490 tokens now and I don't really expect to get hold of Commander Cunningham - but every extra token helps. Have I understood this wrong? (It certainly wouldn't be the first time!)

All this is true. Even so, a cruiser captain that manages to corner the Haida is going to know that he's been in a fight. I got outmaneuvered in my Haida by a La Galissonière the other day, the Frenchman sailed out from behind a nearby island and took me completely by surprise. I could tell that he was very pleased with himself. He was less pleased half a minute later, lying as a broken and burnt wreck on the seabed - although it should be said that I had help; I was not alone on my side of the island. The Haida, to me, is kind of like an overconfident prize boxer - she will take all comers, and damn the odds. While this is not a lifestyle I would recommend, it makes for a good story!

The Ishizuchi should be played like a battlecruiser rather than a battleship. She has far better survivability than any cruiser, but she still can't tank damage like other battleships of her tier. And she should beware of planes, since to them she's just a big damage piñata. But her guns, and her HE damage potential in particular, can be truly frightening!

You are looking for a gunboat destroyer? Then you need look no further - let me recommend the HMCS Haida, the fightingest ship in the Royal Canadian Navy! Her guns deal a ton of HE damage and have a great turret disposition (3x2 turrets with two superfiring turrets on the foredeck). She' reasonably fast, she has a good amount of hit points, she has great concealment (5,7 km detection radius!), and she has a wonderful combination of creeping smoke and long-lasting (albeit short ranged) hydro that gives her a huge edge in DD vs. DD dogfights. Her one and only weakness is a limited torpedo armament with only a single quad-launcher - but even this gets a bit of added utility by allowing for single shots. The Haida is a great little gunboat, and one that is puzzlingly out of vogue as of late. I don't hesitate to give her my best endorsement!

I'm sorry if I appeared to be gloating about owning the GC; that was not my intention. It it's any consolation, the Pyotr Velikyi is also a very good tier V battleship. Not on par with the Guilio Cesare perhaps, but good enough to trade blows with her on an even basis!

I would expect it to be reasonably good, yes. The Giulio Cesare is widely considered to be the strongest tier V battleship currently in the game. Even I regularly do very well in her.

Not to take anything away from the most awesome Austro-Hungarian ship currently in the game, but that may be saying more about your skill as a player than about the ship in question. Just out of curiosity - and please feel free to not answer - what is your winrate (if any) with the Giulio Cesare?

For real? Is there a cap on the number of CV:s for each battle? Otherwise I see a scenario with fourteen carriers slowly bombing each other to death with invincible planes, and then circling each other to the 'Titanic' tune until the end screen rolls up...!

I played the first ranked battles Arms Race, which was set in tier IX. So no carriers were on stage, and I played every single battle in my newly acquired USS Black. I actually had a blast, doing well in most battles and having fun the whole way. I have only one tier X ship, namely the Smolensk. I have no idea how she's going to perform in ranked Arms Race, but since I will be sharing the locker room with carriers this time around, I am prepared for a lot of pain. I guess time will tell!

Sometimes being on the forum is kind of like a night out at the pub - old favourites get retold and improved in the retelling!

In my first Viribus Unitis game, I managed to corner an overextended Kongo against the map border. I kept pummeling him over and over until he keeled over and stayed down. It was protracted, painful and brutal; like watching Joe Pesci stabbing an unfortunate barfly with a pen and then kicking him to death against the counter (see below). Then I spent the remainder of the battle trying and failing to get within shooting range of any of the other enemy ships, but they kept their distance. I guess they'd seen what had happened to their Kongo buddy and didn't fancy to get more of the same, and I can't say I blame them. The Viribus Unitis packs a mean punch, but god-dang it she's slow and then some!

The Carrier in the Living Room In an online multiplayer PVP game like World of Warships, change is necessary in order to keep the game alive. If the game were to be frozen at a certain point, it would quickly stagnate and die. It is with this in mind that Wargaming keeps adding new material, such as carriers and submarines, to the game. So I agree with those who say that we, as players, have to learn to adapt to an ever-changing game environment. This does not, however, mean that we must accept all changes meekly and uncritically. On the contrary, we have an obligation (as I see it) to make our voices heard in order to keep the game fun and playable - for all ship classes. It takes no marketing genius to see that the CV rework has not been the unequivocal success that Wargaming was aiming for. But it is not a complete failure, either. If I would do a summing up of how well Wargaming have succeeded with the CV rework, it would look something like this. - Have they made carriers more easily accessible? - Yes, they have. Unlike how it was with the old RTS carriers, it is now possible for anyone, regardless of skill, to jump into a carrier and fly out to have a reasonably entertaining game. In this way, carriers are now equal with other ship types. - Have they made playing carriers into a fun experience? - A trickier question to answer, ultimately dependent on personal preferences. Personally, I find carrier gameplay to be mildly entertaining for a while but repetitive and unengaging in the long run. The lack off effective counterplay means that I can basically zoom around the map as I wish, making attacks on whatever target takes my fancy, and expect to remain afloat to the endgame irrespective of whether my team wins or loses. This is restful in a way, but it also means that the gameplay lacks much of the excitement and tension that is one of the main parts of what I like about this game. So this one ends on the fence, for me. But I readily concede that I do not have the personal skill to make the most out of carrier gameplay. - Have they made playing against carriers into a fun experience? - No, they have not. The lack of effective counterplay means that unless the enemy carrier screws up completely, you are stuck with him until the endgame. With dodging, tactical manoeuvring and judicious use of AA you can confound or blunt his attacks, and you can also (on a good day) hope to temporarily cripple his attack strength - but you can't stop him. One especially ironic aspect of this is that the only target a carrier can't attack effectively, is another carrier. I've heard that there is a good reason for this - namely to avoid having carriers routinely sniping each other at the outset of the battle and then leaving the winner free to feast on the tears of his enemies - but it also goes to show some of the inherent flaws in the whole carrier concept as it is currently implemented. All in all, I would say that carrier gameplay of today is in a working, but far from ideal, condition. The two biggest remaining problems, as I see it, are the overabundance of carriers at lower tiers, and the disproportional influence a truly skilled carrier player can have on higher tiers. The latter problem remains from the RTS days and is hard to do anything about (although to be fair, nerfing carrier damage output has gone some way to mitigate this). The former problem, however, can and should be addressed by the simple expedient of introducing a hard cap of max one carrier per team in random battles. I understand that this will mean a lot of extra queuing time for carrier players, and this is of course regrettable - but I still think it is a better alternative than to have the special game mode "Carriers and Sidekicks" appear on a regular basis as two or even three carriers turn up on each team at tiers 4 or 6. I recently did an experiment, playing a couple of tier 4 carrier games and going all-out for the destroyers with my rocket planes in the first half of the battle, and then ganging up on the battleships and cruisers for the aftermath. With two or three carriers on each side dividing up the map between them, occasionally joining forces to stamp out a particularly crafty or persistent foe, it was so one-sided as to be downright filthy. Please look upon these observations not as a whine-post, but as an effort to take part in a nuanced debate on the current and future development of the game. Cheers, gamers and captains all!

I played Operation Newport the other day. We broke the first two attack waves without loss or incident, and were completely obliterated by the third one... so I guess it's good to see that some things never change?

The problem with the Puerto Rico debacle wasn't the price in itself, it was the psychological entrapment mechanism by which it was presented to us. Putting the Småland on offer for 2 million free xp wouldn't be entrapment; it would just be a straight-up offer at an admittedly rather steep price. I have no problems with that. Whether I would actually buy the ship at such a price is of course another matter entirely. I don't even have 2 million free xp in the bank at the moment, and I can think of plenty of other things to do with that much accumulated gaming hours. Such as free-xp:ing my way a bit up the Swedish Pan-European destroyer line, for example. The Halland might even be a more interesting tier X ship than the Småland, for all I know - and then I'd have a smörgåsbord of other silver ships to choose from on the way, as well.

Since we already have a Drake, why not name the next one the Golden Behind? It would go well with the Victorian White camo if nothing else. I'll get my coat.

You're right about the value of the heal factor. The Graf Spee and the Leander are probably my favourite ships for this operation, with the Leander especially able to deal huge amounts of damage if positioned correctly. The Graf Spee is more tanky but has less consistent guns, and the Leander's smoke screen is a great asset if deployed correctly. With that in mind, I'm thinking about trying out the London for this op, since her AP volleys can be deadly and her HE should be useful against the battleships. But she is nowhere near as manoeuvrable as the Leander, so it will be a tight thing to manage. Another ship that can pull a surprising amount of weight in this operation is the Aigle. She can spot and dodge, rain fiery HE down on opponents at fairly long ranges for a destroyer, and in a pinch her torps can let her make at least one yolo death charge if the situation calls for it. I still would say that almost any cruiser is better than a destroyer in Operations, but the Aigle is as close to being a mini-cruiser as it comes.

I kind of like the feeling of making a Heroic Last Stand, even if I get sunk while doing it (which, let's face it, is how the Newport operation usually ends). While my sense of realistic self-assessment tells me that I would cut a weak figure beside the likes of Gregory Peck or Sir Michael Caine, my sense of imaginary self-fulfilment points out that I have now grown a beard and that anyone with sideburns or a moustache (both of which can theoretically be said to be included in a beard) are perfectly entitled to make a Heroic Last Stand beside Gregory Peck and Sir Michael Caine.* I am now thinking about taking the Dunkerque into Operation Newport. I haven't had much luck with her in previous operations, but her commander, Jean-Jacques Honoré, does have a moustache. It's not the most manly-man of the many manly-men moustaches currently represented in the World of Warships, but when you're French, it doesn't have to be.** I will position myself initially near the front lines, and then, as the battle begins to go South - literally as well as metaphorically - I will slowly back into one of the repair zones. If the situation calls for it, I intend to jam one of the repair ships between me and the quayside and then look down with Occitanian disdain on anyone who points out the obvious moral shortcomings of such a stratagem.*** Cpn Jean-Jacques Honoré * Those are the Rules. Anyone who grew up with the war movies from the 60's and 70's will know what I'm talking about. ** Also in the Rules. *** This is not actually in the Rules.

A funny thing about this operation, is that when I played it last time and noticed how a heavily damaged enemy cruiser suddenly stopped and then started going into reverse, I assumed that it was a deliberately programmed AI response. In that situation it was absolutely the correct tactical thing to do, since it allowed the damaged cruiser to retreat while its comrades covered for it. It was only later when it occurred to me that it might be a bug instead.

Good point, and I do see the difference. I just felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the WG communicators, is all. As a matter of fact, all scenario battles could probably use some kind of overhaul to make them run properly - which, as I've understood it, was the ultimate aim for Wargaming when they made the now rescinded decision to put scenario battles on ice for an indefinite time. As it is, I guess we can now look forward to having the current roster of operations in circulation in a semi-workable state for the foreseeable future. Which is what a lot of us asked for, so this is not a whine post on my part. And just to be clear: None of my posts on this thread are intended as critique of those who have pointed out problems with Operation Newport. Problems should be acknowledged or the game maintenance will suffer. And if there is something I learned from James Cameron back in the 80's, it is that bizarre bot behaviour should not be tolerated under any circumstances!

WG decides to remove operation X in order to fix its malfuncioning AI, and also puts the entire scenario mode on hiatus for a general overhaul. All Hell breaks loose on the forum as players ask for operation X to be kept in circulation despite bizarre bot behaviour, and WG decides to keep operations up and running after all. WG puts operation Y up on the roster, with a malfunctioning AI. All Hell breaks loose on the forum, as players ask for it to be removed and fixed asap. WG:

I've found that a black - or at least slightly dark - sense of humour helps, when you try to make sense of the world these days. This is no less true when you sail out in a destroyer in the World of Warships.

Welcome back into the game, Captain @GeorgeMarsh! And if you will take my advice as a Destroyerman, don't give up the game just yet - rocket planes are not the end of the World of Warships! Destroyerman I look up and wonder why I can no longer see the sky? Every time I stop and stare, I see planes most everywhere. All around me, bombs are falling - someone writes in chat: "Quit stalling!" "Go and spot, and don't be yellow!" "Oh, and cap as well, good fellow!" I spot a target, aim and lock it - then I turn, to dodge a rocket. That was close! I press the 'P' to teach those planes to mess with me! As my AA guns start popping, I can hear my engines stopping. Turn away and hit 'Repair', then speed up - that was a scare! Slip away, and sneak attack - look! Those little planes are back! Once again in full retreat, dancing the Torpedo Beat. "That's enough - I'll fight the stinker! Find that carrier, and sink her!" "There she is! Now, it's my turn! I shall make that CV burn!" But alas! - those CV blighters carry magic fire fighters. And she's angled up as well, so I can't hit her citadel. I don't care - I boost my speed, charge ahead and take the lead! The guns roar out, the rigging sings Death flies in on metal wings. As my ship keels over, broken, I hear words of comfort spoken: "Don't give up, Destroyerman - fight your battles as you can." "First in line, and first to go - a rascal's life was ever so." "Hoist your flag with skull and bones - and raise a toast with Davy Jones!" ___________