eliastion

I'm happy for you but you might want to not talk about that. While I do understand your circumstances and the mission was ridiculous, it doesn't change the fact that what you did kinda constitutes match rigging - the attempt to strike a deal with opposing team to get... something. Since it was caused by this god-awful mission, I don't blame you personally in this specific case, but it's still against the rules and could potentially get you a disciplinary action.

Well, I beg to differ. Have you seen the new Fubuki/Hatsu with 6km torps? IJN DD with no capability for stealth torping - so much fun... In my humble opinion these things are Fuso-level of painful stock grind...

The whole mission was initially designed with a pretty staright-forward philosophy behind it: 1. You can get it all if you're a hardcore gamer willing to spend a lot of time in the right moment to get the mission done. 2. If you're not so hardcore, you can get more time by buying GS, initially with a big bundle, as time goes on - with increasingly cheaper ones. Basically, other than the things in the bundle, you pay for extra time to get your Santa Convoys mission done. You might not like this much but that's how it was designed - people who are working and can't really play all day long for a couple days are expected to pay for the possibility of finishing the mission. People (especially children younger players) with less money and more time to waste can get GS cheaper or for free later on - but it's going to cost them a lot of time spent for the game to rush through the second campaign. The mission was always of the "pay or play hard" variety, on all servers. What most EU people were angry about was that we were deprived of the "play hard" option and forced to just straight-up pay to get the exclusive content. The rewards in this mission are simply huge compared to normal missions - it was never designed so that average player who plays a couple matches a day could finish it without paying. It's basically "look at these cool things you can pay to get your hands on" with an additional special option "but if you really don't wanna pay, ok, here's a chance to get it for free but it won't be easy". You might not like it but it's not an oversight on their part. If you're neither up for some hard grind nor have money to spare, you're simply not a player this campaign is addressed to. Although you can still get the first stage or two done even by playing normally so, well, it's something.

But this statement is BS. Because the speed is not a constant it changes (often with people slowing down while deploying smoke). With extremely short smoke deployment time you actually have a situation where: 1. You're going too fast when you start smoking. You deploy your two puffs of smoke before you slow down enough to stop within the second one. 2. You're going just fast enough - you deploy your two puffs of smoke and come to a stop within the radius of the second one. 3. You're going TOO SLOW - you deploy your ONE puff of smoke and stop OUTSIDE. 4. You're going slow enough - you deploy your one puff of smoke and stop within it. It's ok to have scenarios 1,2 and 4 - nobody disputes that. If you're initially going too fast while smoking, you won't stop in time to remain concealed... and there's no problem with generating less smoke because you weren't moving around fast enough to cover larger area. THE SCENARIO #3 IS BS AND SHOULD BE FIXED It is NOT ok for someone to be unable to stop within smoke BECAUSE HE WAS GOING TOO SLOW TO GENERATE THE SECOND PUFF.

This. I mean, sure, a good captain gives some extra edge, but this edge generally has impact when players are on same-ish level. And at low tiers the difference between legit low tier player and a sealclubber is enormous - completely overshadowing differences between captain levels and even ship quality (well, unless someone embraces the challenge of playing Mikasa, that is )

Capping is all about securing the cap. If you keep taking damage, it clearly means the cap is NOT secured, right? To cap the point you need to a) get in there in a ship that will just remain unspotted because enemies are so far out of position b) get in the cap while being protected by other ships so that defending enemies can't spot and decap you c) get in the cap with enough ships that the enemy can't efficiently decap all of them (or can't do that without getting too close, spreading damage and ultimately dying) Damage re-setting the progress actually makes for some tactical variety in cap fights and gives smaller defending fleets a shot (see what I did there?) at defending a cap while otherwise there would be no contest whatsoever - getting into a cap would mean annihilation. Damage resetting caps = good thing.

Although I don't really fear USN DDs in my Błyska either - she can kite them effectively and they either try to pursue (and then you punish them hard because you're just faster and have better shell trajectory AND are the kiting one) or break off... letting you try and continue the fight at a range that's more comfortable for you and less for them. Of course, chasing them if they try to kite is not a good idea either but you certainly have ways to make them miserable. Błyskawica is a great DD because she's just so damn versatile - she's a great gunboat with torps that, while nothing to write home about, allow stealth torping even without CE - the difference between having such torps and not having them is a big one, even if they're just an accessory rather than main weapon. As for stealth firing, my own opinion is that AFT seems better than it is. It gets significantly tougher to land hits at these ranges - I do practice stealth fire extensively in her (especially since I often lack a big chunk of my hp after initial DD engagements in the first phase of the battle) but I found myself becoming significantly more effective at that when I re-trained to get DE instead of AFT. With CE you have a wide enough stealth fire window and it's not that often that I miss that extended range. Sure, it's better to have more - especially if your target is sailing away rather than towards you - but the extra fire chance on her low caliber shells feels well worth the sacrifice.

Well, part of the reason why some skills got more expensive is that they were just so good that nothing else compared tier-for-tier! Think about it - you still want these skills despite them being more expensive. You want them so much that you consider them your core build at increased cost. Seeing how the point of the new system (with all its failings and indirect nerf to everything capable of hurting BBs that's not a BB itself) is all about meaningful choices - doesn't it just mean that the new, higher cost better reflects the value of certain skill choices? Do you really think that, say, BFT had the utility anywhere in the same galaxy as Expert Loader? Now t1 skills are mostly trinkets (it's messed up for CVs but let's leave that special needs class aside for a moment). You choose from among skills of very limited utility - but isn't that the point of having low-cost skill tier in the first place? Then, some powerful skills got moved down the tree. Once again - doesn't it make sense that skills of great power are more expensive? The old system was deeply flawed because at every tier there were very powerful skill choices, making the position in the tree pretty arbitrary and ensuring some skills to be picked exactly never. All these nice and clean builds we had? We were abusing this flaw by picking the powerful - and much too cheap - skills at low skill tiers. Now at least some of this problem got fixed, forcing us to choose which powerful skills we pick because we can't benefit (well, not to the same extent at least) from some of them being severely underpriced to "catch them all". Now, of course the new system has several flaws. It has that awful radio skill (although I expect it to be much rarer than some people fear - it will kill organized team battles but the impact on Randoms and maybe even Ranked will be somewhat limited by the high cost and more directly juicy alternatives). Other than that the new tree still has some skills obviously under- or overpriced (or just plain useless). It has the radio skill. It nerfs non-BB performance against BBs (DE made weaker, AA bonus from BFT made stronger). And then there's the radio skill... Still, the fact that old builds - centered around the fact that some very powerful skills were much too cheap - now cost more isn't really a bad thing. It's just that (some) things that were broken got fixed - so one can't exploit those broken parts anymore. Now we need to actually make the choice between skills we truly want. As it should be with skill tree systems.

Although not in a long while - there were these teamkillers raging about getting pink because somebody teleported from nowhere to the path of their torps... and that one that torped a teammate purposefully for blocking his line of fire... OP is pretty funny but at least his reasoning behind the TK isn't completely pulled from his stern cargo hold - the desire to return fire is at least somewhat understandable. Doesn't exactly make it a good idea to act upon this desire and doesn't make much sense to go whining about it on the forum - but isn't just a bs excuse like explanations in some similar threads. PS: To OP. Forums don't take kindly to teamkillers. When a teamkiller goes to the forums to whine about how he was justified to teamkill... well, I have yet to see a similar thread with people agreeing with him and being nice and supportive to him. You make slightly more sense than most such cases and - believe it or not - the "trolls and bullies" actually do treat you much kinder than they do these morons. But if you want a pat on the back for killing a teammate, sorry, but you've come to a bad place for that.

OP, let me tell you a story. There is a game in the Internet called World Of Tanks. In that game the rules are different than in WoWs. In World of Tanks when you get... blue, I think - the color of a teamkiller - things get ugly. There are people who shoot at blue tanks right when the battle starts, for example. The whole atmosphere around teamkillers (sometimes accidental or doing so in self-defense like you) is EXTREMELY toxic. WoWs system works much, much, MUCH better. Despite there being torps that you can kill people accidentally with VERY easily, it's EXTREMELY rare to see a deliberate teamkill. The rules of pinkness (reduced damage to allies and reflected damage) explicitly DO NOT INCLUDE making a ship a viable target for allies. The rule is very, very simple: you never shoot at allies. Not in self defense. Not because you saw them kill an ally. NEVER. And it works wonders when I compare the level of toxicity here and there. Shooting allies is just not permitted, period - making people like you (making excuses for why them killing someone was ok) much less common. On the other hand if someone actually does kill an ally in self defense or by accident - the penalty (as long as you do it very rarely, not inviting an actual ban) is hardly noticeable - a pink player can still contribute to te team effort without the fear of being shot in the back solely because "he's a team killer, kill him". It works. And sure, there are extreme cases. But that's when you can actually take a couple screenshot and a replay file and go the process of submitting it to support - from what I heard there were cases of actual bans for obvious deliberate teamkilling. Overall, the system works. It just requires you to do one thing: not shoot at allies, no matter what. Is it really THAT unreasonable of a request?

While I see certain problems with the new skills, let me point out two things: 1. The approach of "I want the same skills" isn't really a good one. What you want is a working build. Some skills change, some new skills make an appearance, some skills that were never worth it can now actually find their way into some builds. Basically, it's a whole different environment and it's advised to re-evaluate all skill choices rather than just try and pursue your old build. 2. The new approach is to try and create a system where there are possibly few "mandatory" and "useless" skills. Basically, the whole idea is that people need to give up on some skills they want to get some skills they want more. If you're constrained by lack of points (whether by there being more skills you want or price changes of old skills you consider important) the same is true for everyone else - other BBs you're going to face (who cares about cruisers or DDs, really, when you have a BB ) are also going to have to choose. Also, having 11 points, you actually have access to all skills now rather than being restricted to just first 4 rows. So, while some skills you like got more expensive, now you can pick any skill in the tree much, much earlier. That's certainly worth something.

Not sure, but wouldn't a "buy" option be there if you had enough doublons? That's just a guess though, it's been so long since I've seen one of these (encountered a couple just after they appeared, but later - not really).

Sounds like a bug, I've never seen any info suggesting they should be exempt from 1st win bonus. And my own ARPs are never discriminated against in such manner.

Well, according to this post there is going to be some change to the re-specs as well. It also contains the aswer to OP's question stated in the thread title. Kandly, on 29 December 2016 - 10:05 AM, said: Captains, (...) What changes to gameplay should be expected?(...)3. With the release of this version, all players can reset their skills for free. Furthermore, new elite experience will allow continuing redistribution in the future, so that experimentation will not have to be paid for with doubloons. (...) Best, Kandly

#1 Did you test it so that you can say that? Because DE gives +3 (in new skill tree +2) percentage points. Would make sense for HEAP debuff to work in similar fashion...

The link doesn't work (and can't get into testing at TS at the moment) but if people got it right here http://shipcomrade.com/captcalc then you seem to be wrong. To get to rank 15 you need 738k, previously you needed slightly below 647k. There is an increase, but not a huge one. On the other hand, to get to rank 10 you need 183 k. And that's the point where you can get your first top-tier skill. Seeing how big of a difference some t5 skills made in the old system, I could argue that the new system actually is easier on people grinding new captains since they can get the most crucial skills (CE for DDs, for example, or AS for carriers) much, MUCH earlier. So you get your "basic" build in less than 1/3 XP required previously and then can expand it at your leisure without feeling hopelessly outclassed by people with higher level captains. Sounds like a good change to me, frankly. I'd give so much to have AS on my carriers much earlier... perhaps now I'll actually consider getting another carrier captain for some lower-than-my-max-tier CV, now that getting him to workable condition doesn't sound like quite as daunting of a task. The problem is with certain skills, but the changed XP level thresholds don't seem to be problematic, not with new - wider rather than deep - skill tree. And despite more XP being needed for up to 16 skill points (afterwards you need less), it seems to me that the new system actually closes rather than widens the game-breaking gap between low-level and high-level captains we have now. At least as far as DDs and CVs are concerned.

Yes, as far as I know, it is possible to complete GS and then complete SC campaign. Do note, however, that it takes some pretty extreme grind to get it all done.

No, that's not it. I mean, it's part of it, but there are two aspects and this one is actually less important of the two. Yes, ship with low skill floor perform well (and, more importantly: consistently) but that alone doesn't make them OP. A ship needs to also have a considerable skill ceiling. Basically: - if a ship lets you perform well despite not being too good of a player, it's an easy ship: usually it means being forgiving, letting you make mistakes and live to make some more - if a ship in skilled hands is the harbringer of doom, it's a really powerful ship A truly OP ship is one that combines the second quality with some measure of the first one. A ship that lets you perform miracles might appear OP from time to time but only performs consistently in the best hands (and usually can be outplayed by equally or more skilled opponent since it just has weaknesses to exploit). If, however, such powerful vessel happens to be not only powerful but also relatively easy? Then you have yourself a serious balancing problem... Oh, and then there is one other related category - a noobstomper. Noobstomper doesn't really need to be very powerful or exceedingly easy - it needs to be very effective against less skilled players. Countering such a ship might be relatively easy - the thing is: it's a low-tier ship that rarely encounters experienced players who know what to do. That's what got Kamikaze "banned" from sales. It's a great ship, certainly, but when played by skilled players against skilled players it wouldn't really count as significantly OP... problem is: it's not played against skilled players. Being relatively low tier, Kamikaze encounters many newer players who are still learning the game. And then our dear Kamikaze becomes a monster. Inexperienced opponents, inherently susceptible to torps + Kamikaze = carnage. I myself very rarely have problems with Kamikazes when paying lower tiers. They don't really scare me personally when they appear. But boy, have I seen some matches where they dominated the other team so hard it wasn't even funny.

The day wasn't going all that bad. Then I got disconnected. Still, I just reconnected because I still had ships to grab that +200% XP for! Well. That was a mistake. My Yugumo is NOT going to get a win, is she? Damn

Well, that part (Graf Spee requirement) was always there - the campaign from the get-go was geared towards people who either bought GS or were pretty hardcore players (to complete the campaign in very limited timeframe left after getting GS for free).

Well, while I generally agree that Flamu doing good in them doesn't mean that they are good ships, mtm78 was answering a pretty bold claim: You said "noone seems to have figured it out". A claim that NOBODY can play them right and get good results can be refuted by posting a single example to the contrary

It's not that surprising, Yugumo is a good and flexible DD (I personally do a lot of shooting with it while my torps reload - this thing has some good invisishooting potential), I personally prefer her over both old Kagero and old Fubuki (somehow never managed to get the latter to work despite her supposedly being the highlight of the tree). Still, as for the requirements, I don't really feel that bad about existence of some hardcore-only missions as long as they are not disruptive to gameplay - and these are not, they "only" require an awesome match in a DD (and yes, they are DD-centric but, once again, it's not a bad thing to have some missions geared towards particular class). As long as the rewards aren't some exclusive content that people will feel seriously bad about not getting... what's the problem? It's not like these are missions of the "kill 10 Polish ships" or "spot enemy CV in BB" variety.

US carriers have great potential for ruining the fun of opposing carrier (their air superiority set-ups feel like griefing) but they are hardly effective. The thing is: as long as the enemy (especially IJN carrier that has some fighters of his own) isn't braindead, he can still land a couple strikes per battle. And that will be more than AS USN carrier can do with a bunch of puny bombers. The latter still has spotting advantage (since he can spot and deny parts of the map to the enemy) but in the end - after long and frustrating battle - IJN carrier usually comes out having contributed more to the team. I play IJN carriers. I do understand your frustration because there aren't many things as infuriating for CV captain as a competent AS USN carrier on the other side. But this doesn't change the fact, that IJN carriers are objectively significantly superior to USN ones.

Yeah. You literally lose to bots in them...

Damage saturation - a known mechanics that has some merit (shooting again and again the same spot ends with less and less things to destroy there) but also one huge problem: its absolute nature. The fact that - at some point - you literally can't do anything to particular section of the ship leads to some... peculiar effects. Hits on fully saturated modules REALLY should do at least SOME damage. It might be as little as 5% but even that would prevent some complete absurdities...