Verblonde

Yup. Not sure about a 'point' as such, but it's always been this way - you can only have one 'collectable' collection enabled at once.

From my perspective, I can think of far worse choices - the lack of CVs should mean that more DD mains will come out of hiding, and Alaska is one of the more threatening things in the game if there isn't a CV in the vicinity...

Why are we getting excitable about Mainz? I haven't found her particularly troublesome so far, but then I mainly play DDs - perhaps she's more of an issue for tubbier ships?

Exactly - if it were bumped to a respectable level, a boost to the damage numbers might not be needed?

'Thinking' aloud here, but (from my 'Ops-orientated' perspective) a big bump to damage might not be necessary if the flood chance was solid? Being able to get a decent number of floods would make up for a lot....?

I'm curious what this has to do with which ships are a practical proposition in a game about warships from approximately the time of Dreadnoughts and since? By the same token, the Egyptians, the Mexicans (descendants of the Aztecs), and anyone else with an impressive ancient history should be noisily campaigning to get a tree in the game. If WG ever do an ancient period naval warfare game then Athens (from memory) should be one of the pre-eminent powers; however, WOWS isn't that game...

You can't, is the rather blunt answer: WG would like to persuade as many of us to buy one of the new shiny things as possible. (Predictably, I believe you need the T9 to complete all stages.) Edit: I'm assuming the drop chance of getting the necessary ship for free is vanishingly small. Edit 2: I'd forgotten - if you have a bunch of coal to hand, you're sorted too:

There might be some scope for doing something fun with Velos: she only has four main gun turrets, and a single torp launcher; on the other hand she does have three twin 76 mm AA guns. That combination could be used to come up with something substantially different to what we have already - heavy secondaries DD (if the twin 76 mm can be trained at surface targets) might be funny, or perhaps T8 semi-Halland (if you fancy AA monster), something along those lines? Pick whichever Ikea torps make her balanced...

I'd like to see her in the game - T3 premium seems about right. Other than that, I rather fear that - as said elsewhere - Greece doesn't bring much of interest to the game (essentially WW1 and beyond), despite what some rather vocal nationalists would like us to think. Impressive history does not an enormous modern(ish) navy make. Providing some interesting spice to the EU lines (I'm assuming there will be more in the future) would be a worthwhile calling. That said, I'd like to see Velos in the game too; you can never have too many Fletchers, and she has an interesting history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Charrette).

Darwin himself thought they were splendid - that's good enough for me!

Okay, I'm not a CV main (not even close!), but I've been messing about with EL in Ops (and one Coop game, to knock over a mission), and my feeling is that she's 'good enough' but there are better picks; early days, but I seem to be doing around 80-90%(ish) of typical Weser damage numbers with her: Rocket planes are rather splendid; I'd initially missed that they were superior to the silver ones (reading is hard), and was a bit puzzled that they seemed to be doing a lot more damage than the T6 silver ones. The slow torps aren't disastrous, at least not against slower targets; with the captain I was using, they run at a similar speed to my Furious ones (no TA there though); in Ops this is perhaps less crucial than against real people. The bombers are less useful for the current Op - and I'm pretty sure this is where I'm not doing the damage so far, compared to Weser - although the small aiming circle is very nice, and these perhaps may be of more use in Ops where the bots try to dodge more? Edit: these things are a slam dunk if you want to start fires (and if you can get them to do anywhere near their maximum damage, they're positively scary), but DoT seems to matter less in Ops... My initial impression is that if you want a premium CV for Ops, EL is sufficient, but Ark Royal is noticeably better/more suitable, despite the slow planes. If I'm entirely honest though, all EL really had to do for me was not royally suck, for one major reason: C'mon - Stukas! Yes, I'm a cetacean bimbo... (Edit: this is entirely about Ops; I'm completely, utterly, and entirely unqualified to comment on PvP.)

Whilst it's a personal taste thing, the standard cammo she's equipped with doesn't look bad...

I did say *an* aim....!

FWIW I would like to see RNG completely eliminated from early access, and replaced with definite missions resulting in definite rewards. If someone puts in the effort, then they should get rewards in proportion to that effort. It shouldn't be too hard to design missions/mission chains that allow the drip-feeding of whatever new release we're talking about next, to avoid MM being overwhelmed (I assume that's an aim of the whole early release thing); there would also be plenty of scope for boosting progress via spending, so keeping WG's Madam Olga's fund nicely topped up.

Yes, but they need work for 'small map' game modes at the very least.

Whilst out for a constitutional in Yuki, I saw @MadBadDave giving his Balti a run-out; I somehow avoided my 'curse of the forumites' and didn't die until quite late in the game, and felt a bit sorry for MBD - almost uniquely, in my recent experience, my side actually seemed prepared to shoot at the opposition radars. I think I need a lie-down to get over the shock...

On the one hand, yay! On the other, do I have to stop being sniffy about other less historical stuff if I don't object to this?

I suppose, if we're being sensible, the 'naval' version was quite a late Stuka, and they'd taken the sirens off by then....?

<bursts into floods of very undignified tears, plus a modicum of foot stamping>

I can't speak for the other classes, but when playing DDs, the problem is not the power of the CVs, but rather the fact that they spot me - which leaves me wide open for surface fire, and messes up whatever sneaky thing I was trying to do. I don't believe that tinkering with the relative tiers of CVs in small map modes would help with this, sadly...

Whilst I'll never object to new free stuff (well, probably never), the current coal ships aren't a bad selection (if you don't have them all already), plus there's some new stuff in the pipeline, including the former steel options. As @Panocek points out too, most new stuff is likely to end up for cash sale, as you can't feed the server hamsters and/or go on a bender at Madam Olga's for coal...

Dev Blog - mostly about Transformers, but also Mid-Autumn Festival and T10 Ranked in September: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/59

Daily Bounce Slava review: https://thedailybounce.net/world-of-warships/final-review-soviet-tier-x-reward-ship-slava/

I have an idle notion to - at some point - rebuild one of mine for maximum dakka; I'm pretty confident it would be sub-optimal, but it might be fun to see what would happen. You couldn't go as full dakka as you could with a Shima, due to the lack of upgrade slots, but Main Battery Mod 2, plus BFT, EM, and maybe AFT captain might be a giggle...

Besides it being a very small data-set, I do agree that Asashio is probably a bit harder to play now than it used to be, although I've not played mine much recently. I suspect a couple of factors are in play: More people know about her now; this is the main factor, I think. Unless you're spectacularly new, you'll probably know about the thing and her key peculiarities; the strength of Asashio - for me anyway - was the ability to take out enemy BBs early in the game, so reducing the opposition's available firepower (and tanking capacity) early enough to matter. It feels like there may be fewer straightlining BBs (when they see an Asashio facing them) now than there used to be; to get the early kills you need multiple hits, rather than just to 'wing' someone.. CVs (especially) and radar: there are plenty of these around and they make life harder for anything that relies on stealth; Asashio is especially impacted due to the reduced target set requiring it to be in more predictable locations, if it wants to strike them. Lack of practice (for some): I hadn't played my Asashios for months, and took one out for a run a few weeks ago; it did not go well. I have been playing other Kagero variants, but to be effective in Asashio does require a specific approach and practicing helps. I imagine that results would improve with a longer run of games? Possible better torp dodging abilities: we've had the Ikea DDs (with their rocket-propelled torps) in the game for a while now; to avoid getting peppered with squeaky toys, players' ability to evade faster torps should have got better, and this might be making life harder for Asashio too. It's worth noting though that Asashio was never 'easy mode' if you wanted to have a meaningful influence on the battle, although it was easy to get decent rewards from a battle, as you only needed a few hits to do a lot of damage...