Verblonde

OP - this link might be of interest too: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/213359-ifhe-all-night-long/ It was LWM's overview of which things work effectively with IFHE after the rework; it's from back in March, so this may have been superseded here and there.

Good work, @black_falcon120 - excellent show!

Dev Blog (a couple of ship tweaks):https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/73

Ah, that's why I missed it - it's the one relating to FESTUM....

I haven't knowingly seen one - might it be buried in some random bit of the forum that no-one much visits?

Many thanks, OP!

I'm another vote for ships; the improvement the captains give you is generally quite marginal compared to the boost to your earning potential and options that an equivalent coal ship will generally provide. How good a player you are might slightly tilt the balance one way or the other though: a better player will probably get more value from a special captain as they are more likely to regularly trigger the special abilities; a more average player will probably trigger most of them less frequently (exceptions include whichever one it is that goes off when you've had most of your hp shot off!), so making the difference compared to a regular captain even less marked. Bear in mind that the relative value of the special captains *may* change with the current - very much WiP - captain skill overhaul; *if* the thing about being able to have effectively four sets of captain skills on each captain comes to pass, their value (mainly for premiums) will increase markedly. Caveat emptor though: we really don't know what the final captain skills will look like, and I'd still be surprised if the changes make any captain more useful for most players than an high tier premium ship...

Not yet, alas (might be something for a future Habakkuk?) - from what I read, skip bombing used conventional bombs, rather than Barnes Wallis' creations.

I'm not going to get my knickers in a twist until we see more information; on the positive side, at looks like the idea may be historical. This is the Wikipedia (Noted Source of Reliable Information) entry on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_bombing

You, of course, have my deepest, most heartfelt sympathy at this difficult time...

All done!

You aren't being useless if - by falling back - you stay alive; as long as you stay alive you have scope to influence the game. Plus, as @ColonelPete says, wasting the CV's time is always useful too; as long as the CV is messing about chasing you, he isn't interfering with your team-mates. BTW if a CV is after you, try and keep some hard cover between you and as much of the opposing surface fleet as possible; once you've achieved mastery of the ancient art of Just DodgeTM it will most commonly be fire from surface ships that scrags you as a result of the CV's spotting. Most CV drivers aren't that good (should you meet one of the ones that is, you're probably Doomed), so if you can avoid surface fire, they'll commonly take quite a long time to sink you themselves.

Many thanks - that saved me a bit of time with my alt.....

Thanks for the reminder - I'd forgotten about this due to them not popping up when you log in (plus, a side serving of idiocy on my part)...

FWIW I'm not worrying about it for the moment; I'll have a bit of a look once I've done with the current crop of snowflakes. Agree that it's a shame there isn't really anything for low tier premiums at the moment; oh well - at least the necessary ships cost peanuts to buy back... Edit (having actually had a bit more of a proper read): you can do three of the initial set of missions with low tier premiums; I was wrong, and withdraw my (minor) whinge.

Do you want data quickly, or more completely? i.e. the data I have now is for all my current T10s; nearer the end of the patch, I should have one or two more - would you prefer the latter were included, or to have what I have now right away?

You must be really bored; this will be why I cunningly concealed the initial build after "So, a tank build captain might look like this:" This following on from a short discussion of the pros/cons of tank versus manly builds, and the suggestion that - for the OP - a tank build was more sensible.

This is everything for the T10s I have at time of writing (there should be 1-2 more by the end of the patch): Rather happy with that: decent lot of coal and premium time, and enough doubloons to get the 3K boost for the new dockyard event, plus some change. Further rejoicing: no ramming flags and/or HMS Cheshire...!

You won't yet - the screen-grab is from the proposed new captain skills (WiP); there's a lot more discussion elsewhere, if you're interested. Essentially, with the change, the dispersion boost for higher tiers is nerfed, but the secondaries will fire on both sides and automatically too; you only get the bonus on whichever target you actively select though. Also, the boost for lower tiers gets significantly better.

Which is why I said " To reiterate though: this build is fun, but not even remotely optimal." I assume my dear readers can and do read...

Many thanks, OP!

It does, but the dispersion improvement for the targeted ship is less than it is presently for higher tier ships (it's much higher for the lower tier ones)...

To join in with the necromantic frenzy: We only have previous years to go on; WG might well change how things work for this year. As a general rule, how good the ship rewards are will depend at least in part on what you already have; you can't get duplicates (in general), so the ships you win are things you don't have already. As a result of this, the chances of getting one of the OP/discontinued things are higher if you have the bulk of the more prosaic ships already (one reason to *never* sell a premium ship, even a mediocre one). In previous years, the middle-sized containers have tended to provide the best return on spend, if you're after ships; of course, WG never provide odds, and they might well change that for this year - caveat emptor and all that. In my personal case, I've got most of my T9s from Xmas crates, not to mention Fujin and Belfast; that said, it's only because I had all the available less desirable ships already (and an early crate last year dropped VU, thus illustrating that you'll almost certainly get the dross first)...

Excellent for Ops (to echo others and excluding Newport as I avoid that one), but I'm not good enough to make use of her against real people. I'm a poor CV player and one thing I did find useful about EL (after a certain amount of bad language) is that she forces you to make more use of plane types that aren't TBs, as the TBs she gets are so dreadful. I don't know how universal this is, but I have found myself making too much use of torp planes on other CVs, and EL has helped me start to break that particular bad habit. I suspect most of us mainly got her for the Stukas though...

I fear you may have summarised my - unintentional - approach to many battles...