Verblonde

Essentially this. It's worth playing ships that are elited/premium though, from an xp perspective - although the xp itself is only useful if you want to spend money (doubloons), that xp earned is mirrored in captain xp. Firstly, this helps develop your captains, and then - secondly - when your captain reaches 19 points, that same captain xp can be applied to any other captain, speeding their development.

For anyone who doesn't entirely understand the credit economy yet (or has forgotten, like I periodically do), the wiki includes a fairly decent explanation; basically, one key aspect of a ship's profitability is its servicing costs, and those are dramatically lower for premium/semi-premium ships: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Economy#Operating_Cost The following graphic (stolen from Reddit) may be of use as well (you'll note it mentions that premiums' built-in increased credit modifier is hidden, so we don't know how much different premiums drive the top line, rather than the known service cost reduction further down the P&L): (Source) So, T10 semi-premiums apparently don't drive the top line more than a regular T10 would, *but* their built-in service cost is half that of a silver equivalent, *and* they come with permaflage automatically, which also halves the service cost. From a purely economic standpoint, T10 semi-premiums are most certainly worth getting, but it isn't because they earn more than a silver ship of the same tier would, but because they cost so much less to run, so their overall profitability is much higher. It's perhaps worth noting that a regular silver T10 is pretty profitable with permaflage on (due to the 50% service cost reduction), but said cammo is expensive and there is the risk that WG will nerf the ship it's on from under you (or pull a 'Moskva'); my feeling is that T10 permaflage can still be worth buying *but* only if you're confident that you'll get your money's worth in less time than WG could pull a fast one (and how long that is varies from player to player, depending on factors such as how much/often can you play, and how much money you have in the first place/the value you place on it).

I don't understand the problem; I run the vanilla game (with 294 ships, if the counter is working) and it's very quick and easy to narrow my view down to whatever I fancy playing. Selecting 'Hide unsuitable Ships' is the crucial step for managing a large ship collection (seeing the 'unselected' ships, greyed out, is a bit distracting). Edit: I actually prefer the filtering in WOWS compared to WOT, for what it's worth...

This a) may be a bit niche, and b) I may have misread: if I read the blurb correctly though, the Santa's Gift crates that can be got in the 'summer sale' have exactly the same contents as they did last winter (at least as far as ships are concerned). I mention this as a few of us may well have all the premium options that these crates can drop (I do), in which case there is no chance of getting a ship this time as nothing appears to have been added. This isn't a whinge, but rather drawing this to the attention of any whales in the vicinity who might possibly have missed it.

The 'standard' so far has been T10s, so most are fully upgraded by default, and no cammo (presumably, the feeling may be that the cammo is offset by the advantage of being able to put any captain on them, which you can't on a normal T10). You can mount upgrades on them, and those get demounted for free at the end of the patch that the event is in (so far, anyway). I haven't checked what happens with T10s that have extra researchable modules - it's been a very long time since I needed them. I would think that rentals at other tiers would want to be fully researched, else you'd be *really* gimped (the closest parallel is WOT where they do rentals for Frontline at T8, but those are all* premiums so the same situation as WOWS T10s). *Edit - thinking about it, in some of the early Frontlines (like more than a year ago, maybe two years) they did do T8 rentals, I think; my vague recollection is that they were indeed fully upgraded.

My perspective (sub-average DD main): Marceau is more fun - she's vaguely like a fast tiny Colbert with torps (and no citadel). She's entirely glorious for Coop, although I'm struggling a bit with her against real people, although that's mainly a L2P issue, I think (no smoke and mediocre stealth, *and* no heal do not produce an 'easy mode' ship). I find most BBs terribly dull (exceptions are generally the manly ones), but it is functionally useful to have some of them around - missions and whatnot - and Thunderer is generally felt to be one of the better ones; I don't usually think "yay - I get to play Thunderer!", but she gets the job done. Given that Thunderer seems to be very popular, I too think it more likely that she'll be removed first (and - so far - T10s have yet to return as gambling box bait). FWIW I bought Thunderer first, although for 'functional' reasons rather than fun, whereas Marceau is the exact opposite for me (at least until I learn to play her properly).

Doing such a thing certainly wouldn't be impossible; in the specific case of the 3v3 sprint, it would be highly undesirable though: You are at a significant disadvantage in a rental (assuming the usual clans etc. model is followed) due to a) no cammo and b) no experience (in general). In larger teams this is perhaps less important as you are a smaller percentage of your team, so playing gimped is less harmful. It wouldn't matter in 1v1 either, as the only person you'd be harming is yourself. In 3v3 though, entering battle in a rental would result - most of the time - in a third of your team being gimped (the exact degree depending on the individual player e.g. a Feltcher meister would be much less of a liability in a rental Gearing than they would be in a rental Khaba, say); the result of battles then has a significant risk of being simply about who has the fewest rentals.

I managed to get a citadel with Georgia on one of the KM BBs during the sprint (just one), and still don't know how I did it. I read a while ago that it's possible if you shoot them in the right spot from the right angle, but I couldn't replicate it when I set up a training room to try...

Sadly, it's a common malady amongst many of the players; I suspect it's a mixture of not understanding how DDs work, and over-confidence in one's own knowledge/abilities. Also, in the specific case of Odin, I would image that a not insignificant number of them in game are their owners' first (or at least very early) T8, with all the issues that brings. DD players will all be familiar with team-mates failing to sink radar ships/DDs, and farming meaningless damage from BBs instead. Of course, as DD players, it's worth occasionally reminding ourselves that - as egregious as the idea may seem - everyone else doesn't exist solely to support us. On the other hand, it would be nice if happened at least for the more glaringly obvious moments. I suppose the trouble is that, to be good at this sort of thing, one needs to learn quite a lot about the game and the various ships in it; many players don't seem to have the time or inclination, and just want to shoot stuff with enormous naval artillery...

Unusually for me, I didn't spend anything on the alleged sale; I think I got cammo or something from the container I got with my freebie tokens - whatever it was, it wasn't memorable, but that's not hugely surprising as I have most of the available good stuff already. Nothing to grumble about though - free stuff!

Thanks chaps - all becomes clear!

Wonder why (unless I'm missing something) Mysore doesn't get torps? According to Wikipedia (!) she should have a couple of triple launchers...

Very early days, but Strasbourg, Mysore, and maybe Zed look rather interesting to me; they're all historical for a start (even if Zed got blown up before being finished)...

Dev Blog on the new ships (as per other thread): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/65

According to Wikipedia (noted source of accurate information), her Indian service wasn't entirely uneventful either:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INS_Mysore_(C60) Perhaps ramming flags might be added to the bundle when WG get around to releasing her? Either way, it'll be nice to have something else to use Perth's captain with (assuming the skills at least vaguely align)...

Ooo, a new DD? Yay! Hope they don't pull another 'Z-35' though. BTW 10 points for the person who comes up with the most entertaining finishing word for 'Mysore...' (because I'm feeling a bit puerile this afternoon).

If you're going to do monthly patches that run between the same days of the week (Thursday in WOWS case), then four a year need to be five weeks' duration, to give four quarters of thirteen weeks each...

This. Sorry to be a sourpuss, but 3v3 (at least in the current form) makes too many ships irrelevant IMO; definitely worth bringing it back for occasional events though.

Ranked matches is [sic] unbalanced? Nah - there were just (as with many modes) some far better ship choices than others; I had a hell of a time ranking out, but that was my own bloody silly fault for not realising sooner that the DDs I was picking were wildy sub-optimal for the mode. I feel that it's probably healthy to have an occasional 'odd' mode like this that forces some of us (e.g. me!) outside of our comfort zone, especially when that odd mode is something like a sprint that - as is mentioned earlier - doesn't really matter that much. (I should mention that I do have Pommern, but - predictably - I only picked it up yesterday long after ranking out.)

Others have covered off the important stuff i.e. premium time, and premium ships (edit: that you do well in!). It's also worth taking a bit of time to understand how the game's economy works, and what tweaks you can apply to maximise your income (the wiki: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Economy). The crucial things: Don't die: the longer you stay alive, the more opportunities you have to do stuff that earns silver/xp. Damage is the key driver of rewards (both xp and silver); more or less anything that maximises the damage you do in a game is good, including not shooting early on (sometimes) if it means you survive to do even more damage later. Capping is not rewarded very well, so don't get sunk trying to cap (regardless of what people in chat say) if you don't have to. Returning to damage, it's more than just doing damage, but rather doing proportional damage: rewards scale with the % of an opponent's hp you take off them i.e. if you do 1K damage to a DD you'll get better rewards than if you do exactly the same damage to something like a BB. If you get uptiered, it can present an opportunity: you get better rewards - all things being equal - if you do damage to higher tiered opponents (the reverse is true for lower tiered ones too). When you're ready, play modes like ranked and clans - they often tend to generate plenty of silver.

I'm not sure that tinkering with MM would have a significant impact on the incidence of roflstomps (unless you can have some algorithm that can spot people that know to focus fire), as the tendency towards them is built into the fundamental nature of the game - whichever team can generate focused fire is more likely to trigger the snowball effect that results in a roflstomp. The only way to reliably eliminate (or maybe just reduce) roflstomps is probably to change the fundamental mechanics of the game, such as by introducing respawns, or battle royale type modes (there's one of the latter running in WOT at the moment)...

FWIW this is the Daily Bounce on the subject: https://thedailybounce.net/world-of-warships/final-review-german-tier-vi-premium-aircraft-carrier-erich-loewenhardt/ I more or less bought mine entirely for Ops (I'm too much of a liability to my team to play any CV against real people) and the above review seems there or thereabouts: Rocket planes great fun if there are cruisers to broadside. Dropping HE bombs on things is fun, and the fire chance is excellent (oddly, these are your fastest planes too). Torps are bloody awful, with essentially no redeeming features; only use if you've run out of the others. Stukas! Secondaries are - alas - a bit meh, so no hilarious GZ-stylee charging the enemy and engaging in manly secondary combat. It is a premium though, so you get all the associated advantages of that. My feeling is that - for Ops anyway - the US/IJN silver ships are better, and if you are going to buy just one premium, Ark Royal is better; however, she is fun, and sufficiently different to the alternatives to be interesting. If WG ever feel the urge to give the torps a bit of help (a boosted flood chance would be enough) she'd be excellent. All strictly IMO, of course..

I'm afraid your forum posts will still continue to exist, and will draw multitudes of of mocking forumites until the heat death of the universe; and lo, in future decades - when all of us here have retired to the 'WOWS Sunshine Mode for the Irretrievably Bewildered' (where games run at a tenth the normal speed and there are regular mid-game breaks for the lavatory) - school trips will come in their bus-loads to laugh and point. For I have seen the future...etc. Alternatively, get over it, learn from the experience and follow the advice given, and let the thread drop down the lists into oblivion. No-one will hold it against you in future...

<pedant> Sims' torps are only 10.5 km in range, although that's not too bad for the tier.</pedant> Agree that Sims isn't a bad choice though: all the nice features of the US DDs (decent dakka, relatively not bad AA, nimble, and - as you say - US smoke), and she's an exact match to the regular silver DDs' typical captain build. The only real snag is that the torps are very slow - 49 kts (although you do have the YOLO option - 65 kts, but only 0.4 km stealth torp window, assuming full concealment build). A minor nice aspect of Sims is that she apparently has a built-in base xp boost for some reason, which can make doing base xp missions (or star saving in T7 Ranked) a bit easier.

View in port (torp reload mod, but BFT on captain rather than torp repload): I'm getting the same 85 sec reload in game (Coop mode). (Vanilla - no mods) Edit: are you seeing 1 min and 20 secs, rather than 120 secs?