eliastion

No, he doesn't really have a point - imagine someone who has Kitakami and believes it to be the best ship evah. That one person could ensure the victory due to lack of people who saw (much less played) the ship to be able to downvote. But, more on point: Błyskawica: 22+1=23 She's a great ship that can do so much more than stealth-fire. She carried me to Rank 1 (against t8 ships!) in one season and to Rank 2 in another one (the only two seasons I seriously played). She's just extremely versatile - she can fight enemy DDs for caps in early game and (unlike many other gunboats) stay relevant even on extremely low health since she has a workable stealth firing buffer even with just CE (shell arcs make AFT a valid pick but stealth makes it an optional pick nonetheless). Oh, and there is the stealth torping option, even if torps aren't that great. She can do everything you would want from a DD - even if some roles aren't exactly her strong points.Belfast: 27Scharnhorst: 14-3=11 A great ship, that's for sure, but I had to pick something and Belfast just has so much utility it's freaky. I own neither and I'm pretty sure I'd love playing Scharnhorst more but - since I didn't - I rate how much I hate them as opponents. And Belfast is certainly the one. I hate her with passion, regardless of what I play when I meet her.

People create divisions to play with friends or siblings or whatever. It doesn't automatically mean they will be working together (especially for some ship configurations) just that they will end up in the same match, on the same side. They may work together or they might not - they could even have some small rivalry where one goes one side of the map, the other decides on the opposite flank and then they brag about how much more pro they are than they partner. Sure, they may waste some opportunities to utilize better communication and potential for teamwork but teamwork in general is often a welcome side-effect of divisioning, not the reason why people form divisions.

BBs not destroying everything just by virtue of being bigger ships that are harder to sink and carry more firepower is exactly the one thing that has to be done to let us play "with some ease and fun". We could do without repair, we could do without instant fire extinguishing and all the rest of this carp. We COULD NOT play with balance being completely broken in favor of BBs and their big guns.

Then, I take it, you want to bring into the game the "real" force of each class. The problem is that it wouldn't mean that BB players each get a BB and cruiser players each get a cruiser. No. They would need to account for price differences. Everyone who's not a BB or CV player would operate small - and in case of DDs perhaps not that small - fleets of their vessels. Sure, a close-range salvo from BB guns would probably take a cruiser out. The rest, in the meantime, would be picking the lone BB apart, however. Somehow BB players always cry about how unrealistic it is that any other ship can 1v1 face them on more-or-less equal terms but somehow they don't seem to mind that players of these ships are expected to do just that: face BBs without overwhelming numerical advantage they should be granted by the very fact that they decided to pick classes whose main advantage was that it was possible to field so much more of them easily.

You. Get. Random. Opponents. MM doesn't balance players against each other. It tries to balance ship tiers and ship classes to an extent. And that's it. And why should it really be any other way? To punish good players?

What's "not working" about getting random teammates and random enemies, exactly? Or do you say that the MM should be rigged in a way that ensures that everyone gets 50% winrate? Because that's what you seem to want: players distributed among teams in a way that makes sure that every team has the same average skill - which obviously requires good players to be burdened with potateoes and potatoes to be rewarded for their failings with good teammates to carry them.

The difference between CVs and BBs is that BBs don't risk anything when attacking - just some HP that has no impact on their performance and usually can be at least partially repaired! They almost never lose their main guns, they remain at their full battle effeciency until the game ends or until they sink. CVs, on the other hand, loses some planes every attack, unless they target an isolated DD. Why is it that CVs need to lose planes just to do what for braindead BB player is an expediture of gun cooldown and nothing else? BBs should have limited ammunition so they need to conserve their resources rather than shoot blindly because their shells never run out.

1st of all, do we know when RU DD line split happens? Probably not with new Ranked season or during it but it's a possibility that can't be completely discarded. That might change how your Kiev works. Now. The general meta of previous Ranked seasons was that DDs needed to be able to fight for caps first and torp things/smoke allies second. Also 15 skillpoint captains were pretty much mandatory but then new skill system came and CE is now reachable with as few as 10 points - that's a big change. So. From the DDs you have the general ranking should be: 1. Mahan. It's a US DD. You can win caps with it, the smoke is US smoke and with 14-skillpoint captain you should be able to collect all the most crucial skills. 2. Shiratsuyu. Stealthy. The guns are nothing to write home about but it can stealth-fire in a pinch, it is dangerous to gunboats if they want to give chase, it has - as mentioned - decent stealth and the potential for 16-torp wall of skill is nothing to disregard. Shiratsuyu would be, in fact, my personal first pick because I just don't like USN DDs with their shell arcs that much. 3. Kiev. Unfortunately, Kiev just doesn't work well for Ranked. If it goes for caps, it will be spotted first and nuked due to low hp and big profile. Its torps are knifefight self-defence, not an offensive weapon. In some match-ups Kiev can shine - if there are many DDs in the match, Kiev can stay back (avoiding spotting) and then help dispatch spotted enemy DDs with powerful artillery with flat firing arcs. It's too situational, however - if there are few DDs, you need to do the DD job and Kiev is just too big and has too short torps for that. To sum it up. Mahan should probably be your best bet. If you really enjoy Shiratsuyu or don't like US DDs (seeing how you sold Mahan in spite of having a trained captain for her it might be the case), you can give the IJN beauty a shot - she has her advantages. I would definitely pass on the Kiev, though. She's a nice ship. But she's just overspecialized as a gunboat and Rankeds demand at least some level versatility.

It has recently struck me. There are some really great premium ships that don't have any corresponding silver line. They're not viable as captain trainers since there are no captains to train on them. They can be used to grind credits, some - to grind freeXP. And that's about all. Or is it. The new captain skill system came with the addition of elite commander XP. If you REALLY like your premium ship, you can just grind the captain all the way to the maximum level... and suddenly he starts accumulating XP that can then be used to instantly re-train any captain in any line. Is this going to change the way we see these "orphaned" premiums? Or, perhaps, is it enough of an end-game thing that people won't really consider it much of a factor? After all, grinding to the max level takes A LOT of time in that one single ship. Hundreds of battles. Is it even worth it thinking like that? "Well, I can't train captains on this but I'll be able to accumulate elite XP and use that to train them"? I myself do have a captain like that on Blyska (lots of games for fun plus two Ranked seasons played to Rank 1 and Rank 2...) but that seems like a special case...

And see shouldn't be calm etc. We're talking game here, not weather. Also, in case you just wanted to display your displeasure at the very idea of fixing some problem with CVs... the problem discussed here mostly concerns problems with providing AA protection with fighters. It's "why can't my fighters engage enemy planes properly in Cyclone", not "why can't I nuke ships". Nuking ships actually might be easier since you can navigate planes with minimap, they benefit from less visibility too, they can't be effectively intercepted by enemy fighters and, well, the distance where you spot the enemy is still long enough to order the drop at unprepared victim. There are somedrawbacks too, but it's the fighter play that really suffers, not bomber play.

Do you honestly claim that - seeing a "reduces fire chance by 1/10th" you'd think that it might completely remove fire chance of something that has 10% fire chance?

Well, in this case it would be really easy... "reduces the fire chance by 1/10". And voila, the confusion between percent points (what DE and flags grant) and actual percents (what FP works with) and resulting ambiguity about what this perk does to fire chance disappears.

Damn, where can I get these carriers capable of getting all their planes anywhere near the enemy fleet into the air within first minute?

Yes and no, AFAIK. Yes - it works like that for the guns the skill affects. The rest, however, work as usual - they fire at whatever possible if there's no designated target and/or if designated target is out of their reach. So yes, if you have problems with always picking what they should shoot at, Manual AA might not be the best option.

BB player shows a loading screen 5v4 DDs 5v4 BBs "please, limit DDs"

The important thing you're missing is that the additional AA damage is added to the most relevant guns (the longest range ones). You see, CVs (I play them, I should know) generally avoid Minotaurs - they're more likely to blunder into the edge of your deathbubble than to fly through the middle of it. Minotaur might not be the most benefiting from manual AA (most of his firepower is too low caliber) but if you want to be a menace? I wouldn't pass on manual AA. If you need SI and CE and so lack points for Manual AA, discard BFT instead. BFT gives +20% AA. I'm pretty sure these bonuses are calculated from base ship values so it doesn't stack with other bonuses (someone correct me if I'm wrong). This means that you get roughly +99 DPS from BFT when ALL your guns reach the target. Manual AA doubles your furthest-reaching guns for a +118 DPS improvement that works as long as ANY of your guns reach the selected target. Basically, if your driving goal is to get as strong AA as possible, and assuming you're good at clicking on planes to get your guns working on them properly - you're gonna get more pure DPS out of Manual AA then out of BFT. For the record, however, I don't know what's the reason for building tX cruiser as dedicated AA with the amount of CVs sailing around (well, now the weekly mission distorts that a bit, but normally I rarely see CVs at high tiers unless I'm in one myself).

I'm afraid they won't let us do this... I mean, they might offer an option of converting captain XP on dismissal but if they ever do that, it would probably be at the normal price of locked->free XP conversion. Which isn't much of a deal, I'd say, since, well, I have literally millions of ship XP I could convert - and I imagine the situation where people are willing to spend Doublons for conversion but lack the XP to convert is pretty rare.

Well, I wouldn't say "at any case", there are plenty situations where I use 1-click attacks. To make a somewhat hypothetical case for that: imagine IJN dive bombers going after friendly beached DD. Strafe (from the front) will kill a couple from each squadron. Attaching your fighters to the squadron means that chances of direct hit start to look like chances for detonation. There are many less obvious uses, too. Auto attack slows attacked planes down. And it can't be dodged/messed up by clunky Interface. Strafe is a no-bainer when there's a lot planes all bundled up and ripe for harvest, but situations where basic attack is preferable happen too.

...great, so it's not even a noob trap skill. It's a micro-management-intensive skill that hinders you by default BUT can be abused for stealthier attacks as well as to counter newbie players that can't strafe effectively and rely on point-and-click attacks of their fighters?... Damn. And I thought expert CV players were too overwhelming for less experienced opponents as it was...

These are some very good points (well, maybe especially the earlier ones about AA I didn't quote ;) ) Although they kinda point towards another problem: are most of these mods even attractive outside some special circumstances (Perth could actually benefit a lot from the smoke)? Ok, maybe speedboost boost will see some use (especially for people who use it not only as "emergency knots" button but find themselves in need of speed for getting places - something the consumable isn't that great for precisely because it doesn't last very long).

Wouldn't the problem be completely eliminated by doing one - relatively easy - change to the mechanic? Just guarantee that - as the smoke generator finishes its job - it generates one last a puff of smoke regardless of how far you are from the previous one and whatever other considerations normally govern the thing. This way you get the holy grail of such mechanics: predictability. You KNOW that if you manage to stop before your smoke generator ends, you WILL be safely concealed. No "ohgodletthesecondpuffappear" as you see yourself sailing slowly out of the first one with no clue whether the game mechanics dictate that you're going to end up in second puff of smoke or - perhaps - that you're about to become target practice for everyone and their mother on the enemy team (even beached ships don't get as much attention as a RN cruiser standing still outside smoke).

Yes. Yes it does. Although, admittedly, 1. the last batch of weekly missions is heavily CV-focused AND is actually one of the best chains yet (with no complete BS missions in the middle like 20k flooding damage) 2. defensive AA fire is mostly a thing for cruisers and a self-defense tool of some DDs. Also, unless you meet complete potatoes, you rarely have to worry about how long AA fire lasts. Basically it goes up when you're in a position where you still drop (despite hellish dispersion) because pulling out doesn't really save that many planes - so you can wait until the consumable runs out but then you need to perform the whole attack again, with already half-depleted squadrons... you won't do much more than by just dropping what you had earlier - and you'll lose more planes, not to mention time. The one real potential benefactor here is the DDs. They are the one target that CV is actually likely to retreat from when their AA goes crazy - it's still weak enough to save most your planes and wait it out in preparation for another raid later. The real problem of CVs is that BBs have too much AA (and possibly some cruisers too much AA range - it's insane how far some drop-scattering bubbles of death reach). But frankly, I'm not sure how it SHOULD be handled. I mean, the problem with BBs is that - if alone - they are still easy prey for high-tier CVs (it will cost planes but the damage that can still be delivered is still going to be massive)... but, on the other hand, if ships group up a bit, planes go down like flies. That makes for a really strange situation and serious balancing problems. Perhaps BB AA ranges should just be significantly reduced (and made stronger to compensate) with teammate-covering AA reserved for cruisers and DDs... but that would be pretty strange, very game-y AND impossible to balance without some rework as to how dive bombers interact with ship AA.

Today I played a couple matches and mostly I got terrible 1st wins because enemies were getting obliterated too fast to let me get a decent result. Maybe some of you were on these teams

Bad question. It really depends on how many DDs there are and - frankly - on where THEY go. And cruiser support. The BB will most likely adjust since either he's a potato that's gonna by scared to be on the first line (and if nobody goes to shield him, going his way is bound to make him first line) or he's not and then he'll probably consider it better to adjust to idiots than to end up alone.