Verblonde

You'll go blind.

Cossack, Atlanta, Kaga, and JB, from memory...?

Black Cossack; the rest I'm not hugely bothered about one way or the other...

Besides knowing what the 'new' Black ships will be (probably), there hasn't - at time of writing - been anything else. However, as I recall, this accords with what happened last year. You *might* get a 'teaser' news item before, but most likely everything will pop up in the shop on the day itself. I have to admit that I'm surprised that WG don't make more noise about this stuff in advance, but I guess they don't want people to stop spending in advance of Black Friday (which tends to happen in other 'sellers of stuff' industries). (BTW if one is impatient, and a WOT player, the 'annual service' - or whatever they're called - rewards go live in Tanks tomorrow, apparently. Free premium tanks and everything, if you've been around a while.)

They are, for the most part, pretty fearsome (T4 CVs have the ability to make almost anything they meet, with the exception of some of the T5s, regret hitting 'battle' - Hosho, for example, is one of the most notorious seal-clubbers in the game); you do need to develop an entirely new skill-set though. Whilst you probably really want input from a proper CV player (they're not really my thing, except in PvE), the following might be worth thinking about: Learn to dodge flak clouds; with a bit of skill, you can render the flak element of AA almost irrelevant. This gets more important as you go up the tiers too. Understand that much of your influence is not about damage - the reason that (especially) DD players like me get so upset with CVs is that they can spot you easily anywhere. Make sure you spot for your team (and do so in areas where your team will shoot at what you spot), and don't focus wholly on doing damage. Don't get too hung up on quantity of damage; quality of damage is often more important - kill the enemy DDs first and there's a good chance you'll win (and you'll get just as good rewards - 50% off a DD's hp gives the you same reward as 50% off a BB, say). Understand the nuances of the various plane types and how they vary with nationality. Torp planes are pretty universal tools against fatties; bear in mind though that the KM silver ones don't hit as hard, but do go faster than others - these are arguably your most viable anti-DD weapon. Rocket planes are mostly fearsome anti-DD weapons (and other squishy targets, plus AA gun strippers/fire starters against fatties), with the main exception of the KM ones (as @ColonelPete alludes to) - the latter use AP rockets, so your primary target is usually cruisers; you're aiming to get citadels where possible, so need to aim as you would an AP shell with the same intent i.e. as close to perpendicular to the target's long axis as possible (and hit near the waterline, generally in the middle-ish - have a look at the armour viewer to see where citadels actually are, if you don't know already). Ops are a good place to practice using the KM rocket planes, as you get plenty of cruiser targets and a lot of them go in straight lines, so allowing easy aiming practice. Bombers vary between carpet bombers (the RN) and dive-bombers (everyone else). The RN planes drop lots of HE bombs over quite a large area; US bombers use HE in a dive-bombing attack pattern; the IJN and KM both use AP dive-bombers. Anything HE is about starting fires and stripping off AA guns and/or damaging squishy targets, whereas AP bombs are more about precise hits on armoured targets (the KM, especially, can be very effective citadel farmers against BBs). Generally, keep your hull (the actual carrier) out of harm's way, but - ideally - close enough to the action to cycle through your attacks faster (minimum transit time); KM CVs actually have surprisingly good secondaries, but only an idiot actively tries to make use of them (think 'weapon of last resort') outside of some PvE hilarity (playing GZ, say, in a manly way is a hoot against bots, but is almost always entirely stupid against real people). That's all very 'bang the rocks together, guys!' simple level, and excludes a lot of the (especially premium ship) eccentrics e.g. the T6 KM premium has laughably slow torps (forget hitting much that's more nimble than an island), HE dive-bombers that hit like dump-trucks, and T8 rocket planes, and so on. Also, a lot of the better CV players have all manner of nasty tricks they can apply beyond the former basics e.g. HE bombers can ruin a DD's day, if you can hit him, but it requires skill to do so.

I don't believe I've seen it definitively stated anywhere, but I'm assuming it'll be T10 in the first instance. Cautiously optimistic (despite the inevitability of CVs and small maps making it a lot worse than it needs to be), in that I tend to quite like Sprints much more than the existing regular Ranked set-up; that said, it's too soon to tell, as there is a lot of detail still to see...

'We'? I didn't know royalty played WOWS... (I finished mine before the last directive - or whatever they're called - opened.)

I'd suggest you start with this overview video: It dates from just after the new carriers were released, but the broad brushes are still relevant.

A small addendum: for previous events, a very kind soul has built a webpage that allows you to track snowflakes very effectively; with a bit of luck they'll do it again for this next event. This is the link for the existing site: https://whaling.in.fkn.space/

The consensus re: maximum efficiency is to buy doubloons, and then use those to buy other stuff; this is especially pertinent for ships where you have the 25% discount coupon in place, and don't forget about the cap on the bonus amount. Also, doubloons don't have a 'use by' date, so you can keep doubloons bought now for things that may not arrive in the store until - say - Black Friday and/or Xmas. (This obviously makes no judgement pro/con spending money on the game as a general principle.)

I believe it's deliberate: if you already have the vanilla version of a ship, there is - for many - a rather reduced urge to buy a black version of the same thing; the doubloons missions are sweeteners to encourage existing owners to get the black version of a ship on top of the vanilla one they already own. It's effectively a rather convoluted variant on a standard BOGO promotion...

I think @_Teob_ may well be onto something; having something like that would have certainly been of use to me when I was first learning the game. If there is concern that people wouldn't be keen to keep writing an experience summary for every question that they answered, might there be an option for some sort of variation on the forum signature panel that could be set to include the crucial experience data, to avoid having to type it out each time? I know that if you don't have hidden stats, people can look you up, but I imagine making things easy is the main aim here, so something that you can quickly glance at might be more useful than data that requires a bit of concentration and is a few clicks away.

35 xp *to* gold is highly unlikely (WG make too much money from selling doubloons for that). Converting 35 xp to free xp *for* gold on the other hand will probably happen at some point over the Xmas period (using the term loosely); quite apart from anything else, they seem to turn up immediately before the removal of free xp ships...

+1 for more resources...

Coop is much easier than most other modes, so the rewards are proportionally less (although the costs are reduced too). Perhaps the most efficient way, depending on skill level, to make the T7-T8 jump is via the Narai Op; otherwise, the most efficient way to climb the tiers, especially the higher ones, is by playing (and doing plenty of damage in - damage is the key reward driver) Randoms.

I was just recalling the time when I was very new to the game, and asking for advice on here - it would have been helpful to have a sense of who's worth listening to, and who's somewhat less so. The quality poster thing has the potential to provide that information (assuming the tag was applied sensibly).

In randoms, mine is somewhere in low double figures I think; for example, I remember having an entirely torrid time doing part of the LU grind in YY...

I thought - in principle - this initiative was a very good idea; the obvious problem that struck me (if memory serves) was that it was too easy to rule people out due to minor past misbehaviour i.e. I believe that ever having got a forum ban (or was it just a warning?) ruled a person out of being a quality poster for ever and ever; whilst I get the logic, a lot of the experienced old lags (who might be of use to newbies) are probably excluded for this. I'd like to see it return, as it provides an easy way to see if someone is worth listening to; this would probably go double for people with hidden stats - at the moment, unless I recognise the name, I assume they don't know what they're talking about, which may well be being unfair to some of them.

That's why I was a bit surprised when the "you lucky, lucky, b*stard!" won-a-ship graphic turned up - I already had Sims B from the (I think) original set of Black Friday things a couple of years ago...

I'm not sure, but I recall last year's being set such that you couldn't get the same ship (and mission) twice; if you had all the ships already, you got one of the other rewards.

Most likely; I got one too, although they're last year's version (so no chance of this year's ships) - mine had a Sims B in it, so the mission I got was 1,500 doubloons (on top of 2,500 for having Sims B already).

Ah, it's that time again, is it? In a similar way to that in which the druids of old marked the winter solstice, we mark the passing of another year with the arrival of the latest crop of folk who didn't read WG's cunningly worded communications carefully enough... No doubt, we'll get a *lot* more when the actual crates go on sale (end of next week, presumably).

I'm not sure they will be (when word got out, sales might well drop), but I'll be quite surprised if the relative odds aren't tweaked between the two larger sizes; we all 'know' that the middle-sized boxes give the best return on spend, so it would be logical for WG to do something to try and encourage more purchases of the largest size...

I appear to be showing 319 ships in port in total, which includes 3 clan rentals and 3 ships for the Key Battle mode. I also have the following premiums and similar: No doubt, with Xmas boxes and Black Friday looming, the total will soon increase; quite apart from anything, I'm certain the Mockers Gods will soon 'bless' me with a Cheshire (this is inevitably what happens when you don't chuck sufficient virgins into sufficient volcanoes)... (Edit: this is for my main account; I haven't bothered counting the others.)