Viridem

While these messages can be unpleasant to receive, these are just words, at the end of the day. I won't tell you to get some thick skin like I have read a few times in the past, because even with a thick skin it's still something we'd rather have not to read. When I meet with unsavory people, I just block them. World-record stupidity in the chat? Mindless ping and voice command spam? Gratuitous agressivity? Block messages. It helped me improve too, as I get less and less chat banned (I can be fairly toxic sometimes, working on that...). Rather than letting these individuals get to me and spread salt myself in turn, I block and move on with a calm mind. "Online harrasment? Just turn off the computer!" kind of thing. More on topic: I'm pretty sure that it's against the TOS to make multiple accounts to begin with, or at the very least make them to avoid bans. I'm not sure how they would enforce this, though. Go with IP adress to find the main account? But what if this player uses a VPN? Banning the throaway account is useless, he can just make another one. Go via legal means, as such messages might be illegal? Yeah good luck with that. So unless you have definitive proof of who the main user is, forget it... (Also WG probably has little to no monetary incentive to precisely go against such behaviour, so there's little hope...) The only effective mean I can think of would be to block access to the chat behind a certain number of battles or a purchase (like they did in TF2 in an attempt to counter bots), but I'm not sure it's a good idea... This or putting an end to online anonymity, but it's a big NO from me.

I really like the look of these submarines. I have come to highlight positive things. And I'm already done. (I have no opinion on new domination. We'll see how it works, I guess ?)

The grey camos are historically accurate. Very few cruisers received anything different from that. It looks like Sasebo blue, which I like a lot. Myoukou did receive a camo, although the one in game is only similar to the real one, for some reason. Kiso and Tama got a camo for operation AL. And Atago's is similar to the one Takao received, I think. Some got white stripes to their funnel, although it might not have been to camouflage the ship... That's it. That's all the camos there were for cruisers. A couple of other ships received some, like Mutsuki or Haruna, but otherwise almost all capital ships were in a solid shade of grey. I think it's a step in the right direction. Some perma camos, and especially the nation-specific consumables are cringy eyesores. Good thing we can mod that away from the game. Gokase is extremely fun to play and an effective ship. Going 39 knots feels very nice. I don't know how you can judge Shimanto and Yodo, as you apparently don't own the ships. Agano is indeed a disaster, and Omono is very mediocre. I could forgive Agano, as it might not be easy to make a real-life bad design become good in game. I mean they could step away from historical accuracy, but I appreciate that they don't. There's no excuse for Omono. Notably they had no business nerfing the guns' dpm so hard. The tier VIII and above look like travesties, notably these main guns, but I prefer to get my hands on them first. At least Tokachi is a very nice premium. I don't mind the lack of gimmick. If anything, that's something expected from a Japanese line. Sure there's TRB on DDs, but it's only an option on the main line (a bad option for the average player), and the split line might have received a bit too much anyway... I'm disappointed however by the concealment and maneuvrability of these. That's something uncharacteristic. Let me dodge or choose to go dark ! I don't care if the ship has 60k hp, what am I gonna do with that if I can't properly avoid shells anyway ? Well, I'll see very soon, I guess.

Maya. Arguably, the plane ASW on low tier cruisers is so bad that ship-based might be better. It's one reason I prefer Yahagi over Agano. With Agano, it takes forever to sink a sub that is extremely close to you. With Yahagi it takes an instant to sink one that is under you. For example. Both ship are pretty terrible anyway.

Ok, but I thought the thing about this submarine was the main gun. I saw people describing an apocalypse of submarines guning down DDs left and right. Should I understand this is not part of the I-56 experience?

The majority of your damage was done against BBs two tiers lower. The greatest base earnings come from damage done to enemy ships. The rewards for damage is determined by the percentage of the target ship's hit points removed, not the amount of raw damage done. Removing 90% of a destroyer's HP will generate the same base earnings as removing 90% of a battleship's HP at the same tier. The rewards from damage scale depending on the tier disparity between ships. More is earned for damaging a higher tiered than a lower tiered ship. From the wiki. While you don't have bad results, it's nothing exceptional. And because the damage you dealt was basically worthless in terms of credit incomes, you earned very little. This in addition to all the points the others raised. Superships are supposed to be a credit sink, if you don't use blue or red credit boosters with premium time. But I agree with you, this is not good game design. Or at least, it's not good for the players.

Oh yes, definitively. I learned how to use the planes better, especially on Tone, and the novelty died down for Ise. The planes are actually much better than I thought for Tone. Of course they're not as strong as on Ise, but they're a very good tool for putting pressure on ships, mostly DDs. You can't spot them through islands and smoke screen, and you can't use your planes and guns at the same time, but you don't have the time and range restriction you have with radar. With proper target selection, use of islands and smoke screen, you can occasionally deal some good damage to ships too. If the ships can easily shoot down planes and dodge, then use them in situation where they barely have time to shoot or dodge! The main difference in the end is in the guns. Tone's guns can be used when kiting away, similarly with how you use them on other cruisers. You can use them around islands quite effectively, too. You can actually let a small part of the bow poke out some islands and shoot without getting detected. In this case you might only be able to use two or three of your turrets, but it's better than nothing or taking return fire. Because you have the best concealment of cruisers of this tier and a good maneuvrability, alongside your planes and this weird gun placement, you can actually be a nice support for your DDs on caps. If you have proper island cover, that is. In the end she plays more differently from other cruisers than I thought. Meanwhile, Ise's guns are very restrictive. When shooting forward or perpendicular, they perform well. However when you need to shoot backwards, like when kiting away, it's a struggle. They might be accurate, but when you have only 4 guns available, you won't land many shells. This means you have to always carefully plan your approach and react well in advance to the situation. The planes might be much better, but the guns have a very frustrating aspect to them you don't find on Tone. Ise has more character. Ise plays like an Ise. But she's so frustrating to play! Plus she's a tier VI. I don't know about you, but I barely play this tier (anymore). Tone plays more like a regular cruiser, but still has her own flavour and is more reliable. She might have less guns than Atago, less favorable torpedo angles, and a thinner armour, but the utility her planes bring is very valuable. I wouldn't recommend seeing her as "Atago with planes", but trying to see her a different ship altogether, otherwise you might miss out on her potential. So if you want something truly different and wonky, Ise seems the better pick. I don't know how she compares to a Kearsarge, though.

Unfortunately I don't have Hood, so I can't really tell which one is better. However I can absolutely vouch for Hyuuga, she's a very good ship. Great guns that deal reliable damage. The ship relies a lot on the basics of BB play: positioning, angling, aiming and shell choice. If you master this, you'll have a good time. You're not carried by some gimmick like Soviet guns, Soviet armour etc... Yes there's MBRB as a gimmick, but it's more icing on the cake than a core element of the ship. She's slow, she can't really overmatch (lol just shoot HE), and she has poor AA. If these are important for you, Hood seems indeed the better pick.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas, and 2023 be a great year !

This player might be in your game, possibly even in your team (definitively, since he seems to be a coop player...). His ship might sail close to yours, maybe even touch! Think about it: maybe you'll sit next to him in the bus tomorrow! What I want to say is: stay safe out there, you never know what kind of people you might encounter in life...

Thanks for the drawings, but... I still have no idea what it is. It doesn't look like anything Japanese I ever saw, notably that superstructure is uncharacteristic. I think I can make out "6' GUN", which didn't exist as triple mounts, and I don't think the Japanese identified their guns this way. The whole drawing doesn't look like anything Japanese I ever saw. Where did you find that? Quite frankly I still have no idea on what project you are basing your proposal... I proposed a buffed-up Tone for tier IX, and I didn't know, but apparently there was a project for two improved Tone-class cruisers to complement the first two. I found some info there, and a design proposal there. Although the project might not have made it much farther than a five-minute talk at some meeting... As for the DDs, yes indeed there were the Super-Shimakaze and Super-Akizuki, but as you said we already have them in the game, so there is in fact nothing else to add. That was my point.

Right now the two classes not featured in the game are the Matsu-class, a very small destroyer with only three 127mm guns and one quadruple torpedo launcher, and the "Ayanami-class". The Matsu could either be a low tier ship, or a high tier one (it's a late war design with improved AA and ASW) if she were to receive all the gimmicks in the world (like radar, long-range hydro etc etc). Ayanami-class isn't really an official description. The Fubuki-class was designed by the Japanese as "Special type destroyer", with three sub-types: type I, the original ships of the class, type II featuring some improvements and starting with Ayanami, and type III being the four Akatsuki-class DDs. In the West, things have been made simpler, with the ship being either Fubuki-class or Akatsuki-class. The ships would be side-grades to either Fubuki or Akatsuki, with very little difference in their gameplay... To my knowledge, there were little to no differences between DDs of the same class, contrary to what happened with some cruisers (like the Kuma-class, Nagara-class or Mogami-class). I'm not aware of any canceled project left to add in the game either. So the Japanese DDs are pretty much done for. WG would have to add totally fictional ships, or side-grades to the ones we already have.

Why not, considering two of these actually existed. I'd put Ooyodo at tier VI. Omono already struggles at tier VII, and a gutted version would be just plain bad. Rather than a made-up Katsura, I'd put in the actual Mogami. Maybe name her Mogami '43, or rename the current Mogami to Mikuma. I'd make her tier VII, and use the 203s, as she had in real life. Chikuma would fit at tier VIII. Like they did with Agano and Yahagi, she would be a slightly tweaked version of the Tone. On what project do you base Kuji? You only give us a drawing for context, but with the text cropped out... No comment on the tier X, as it seems to come entirely out of thin air. Considering that two of the three cruisers equipped with improved aircraft facilities had 203s, I'd go with 203s on these ships rather than the 155mm guns or the fictional 150mm. For tier IX, it could be basically a buffed-up Tone, with better range, armour etc. For tier X, why not a redesigned Zaou, with three triple 203s on the front? One could imagine at tier V a Gokase but with her rear guns replaced by a flight deck. I hate CVs, and I don't want to see the American BBVs added to the game because of how broken their planes look. However, Tone's planes are so weak and take so long to "reload" (3 minutes!!!), that I find them acceptable in the game. The issue of plane spotting still exists, of course. So if the whole line gets planes of similar strength, why not.

I run AA build on all of my tier 7, 9 and 10 Japanese cruisers (except Tokachi). It's of varying efficacy depending on the ship, but the most recent addition, Omono, completely destroys tier 6 planes, and puts a good fight against tier 8. A good CV player should be able to play around your AA, sure. Russian CVs will still be a pain, as well as plane spotting. You won't be able to shoot down every plane before they attack every single time. And depending on the cruiser, you might have better skills to pick. Counterpoints: -"the average CV player is a potato" seems to be the global sentiment. -a good player will always manage to counter your ship (wether it's good angling, radar etc). -a good CV player will quickly realise that he'd better land 3 strikes with a squad against a cruiser with no AA, rather than 1 against one AA-built. -you can't complain AA builds can't make you immune to planes, and at the same time that planes are immune to AA. Sounds a lot like hypocrisy. No surface ship is immune to anything to begin with. -many cruiser work well with a dozen skill points. Past that, you can do as you please. This is randoms, not competitive. No need to be a slave to meta. Have some fun. -AA skills boost your ASW too. For plane spotting and russian CVs, I have nothing. These are total BS. Bottom line is that yes, AA builds should be better, yes it's not worth on many ships, and yes it's a pain to make all these sacrifices to counter ONE ship you're not even guaranteed to meet even if he's in the match. But let me ask you this: are you going to stay entirely defeated by CV players, on which I won't comment because I'd get banned from the forum, or are you gonna join me in my AA crusade and rise against one of the worst aspect of the game: CV players ? My AA builds give the middle finger to all planes in the sky. Sometimes they're too far, sometimes they laugh at it, sometimes they screech and melt and land in the sea. Every single time I still feel good. Even when it's a lost cause, I still fight for it. Eff them. Eff submarines too. I only regret picking defAA when there's a submarine nearby, because then I really could use hydro...

Thanks for the answer. I hope the ones in charge of this actually follow. It seems a pretty easy fix to me...

All of the premium Myoukou copies still have only one depth charge airstrike available. They should have two of them, like Myoukou in the tech tree, or every other tier VII cruiser... Please WG, this is something we have been poiting to you for several updates in a row! @YabbaCoe Can't something be done about this already??? You said it should be fixed this update. Still nothing... Speaking of which, both Tokachi and Omono only have ONE airstrike available too. Considering I saw nothing about this particularity in any of the official posts about the ships, I'll assume this is an oversight too. Submarine counterplay is already a thorny subject. Please AT LEAST give these ships the counterplay they're SUPPOSED TO HAVE. Thank you.

Agano is a disaster. Omono is ok. I love that AA though. Gokase and Tokachi are great ! Waiting patiently for the rest of the line in next update.

I have played her quite a bit. In short: unecessary to play her in random or operation if you have Amagi. An option for ranked, but not quite the best. She has the same guns as Amagi, which are already very good at tier VIII, but with less range, and no access to spotter (or fighter). The armour is way worse. Amagi's armour is nice at tier VIII, but Ashitaka's is fragile for her tier. Some differences here and there on AA, maneuvrability etc. They don't matter much. Comparatively to Amagi, when you are top tier (facing tier V), you are stronger than her. Having poor armour against these kittens doesn't matter much... When bottom tier however, against tier IX, you will struggle to stay afloat. The guns are still very effective, but you'll need to be extra careful. Amagi on the other hand can handle herself against tier X just fine. An Amagi that is an even bigger bully to bottom tier ships, but that can't tank anything when facing opponents her own size. I'm overall very positive with Japanese premiums, but this one is in my "mediocre" list.

Yeah I always mod the flags, but I saw that before modding, and they did look even uglier than usual. I should check things, mine look squished horizontally...

From 4 small and 3 mega containers, all obtained for free: De Grasse 3k doubloons 2 port slots 2 500 coal 100k commander XP I might "reinvest" the doubloons in the BP, if I get to the last level for free, to get 5 more mega containers, since it's "free" money. I'm not gonna buy any more than that. There are very few ships I'm interested in, and it seems (by my calculations) I have a 0.20% chance of getting one of them per mega container... At 3 euros per try, no way.

They're rare indeed. I encountered two of them today (and sunk both :p ). But they're here.

Holy moly 35 knots on the Daisen ! That's fast. (Edit: 40 knots with flag and captain skill. Yes, I would like to overtake some DDs in my BB thank you) Ship can't turn however. It fires the same shells as Izumo, but the guns are more accurate, reload and turn faster. It has the same torpedoes as Kagerou. 8 on each side, casemate. But it has 70k HP, with "poor armor". If it's to the level of Iwami, it should be ok. Otherwise... We'll see. 52% torpedo protection and improved heal though. Nice. Improved spotter too, I guess. Doesn't look bad, but I can't get too excited for yet another tier IX BB. Especially with the recent addition of submarines and superships...

Agano and Gokase are more cut to fire at cruisers and DDs, because of the balistics and poor range. Against BBs, especially tier VII and VIII, you'll generally shoot from cover at max range. With your poor balistics, you'll generally want to aim for the superstructure, which you can always pen. Trying to aim at specific parts, like extremities, is a bit difficult. So I rejoin in part Tocqueville in what he said. It could make sense on Agano, however I tried it over plenty of matches on Yahagi, which has the exact same guns, and I wouldn't recommend IFHE. On Gokase, it's even worse. No IFHE. I tried it at first, and removing it made things better. On Omono, absolutely, use it. The ship isn't a good fire starter to begin with, so if you can't properly damage BBs I don't know what you can do with her... On Shimanto, Takahashi and Yodo: I saw videos of the ships using IFHE against BBs, and I have to say that the damage was pretty brutal. It seems like a good option, but I'd have to test myself before giving a definite answer. For Tokachi, which is equipped with 127mm guns, you should pick IFHE. You go from 21mm to 26mm of penetration, which is particularly useful against higher tier cruisers, which have a lot of 25mm plating. Now the problem with picking IFHE is not only reducing your fire chances, but also investing 4 points on a ship that could really use these points elsewhere. You can pick the three skills for torpedoes, the AA skills work well starting Omono (I shred planes with an AA build), Surivavbility Expert is a very good pick until Shimanto, AR of course, Heavy HE is a must-have on Tokachi etc... Personally I plan on using it on Shimanto etc, but I saved enough captain exp to give each one a 20 points captain right as I get them... Finally, I wasn't aware that this doc existed, and I'll just say that I highly disagree with some recommendations... No double rudder on IJN CA? What are you doing??? "Applies to Tenryuu and Kuma", without Heavy HE? No. And a few more...

So you're throwing games on purpose when you think they'd take too much effort to carry? It's stupid, toxic and possibly against the TOS. Remember that you play with 13 other players in ranked. It's not all about you. Play Minecraft if you only want to care about yourself. (It's actually very good. You should try the Vault Hunters mod if you already have some experience, it's pretty neat!)