Verblonde

When the prices at Madam Olga’s House of Negotiable Affection and Refined Erythroxylaceae next increase, presumably… (Since we seem to be having fun with weird fonts today.)

This was why I didn't buy any AL captains this time: there are only a few specific ones that are of use to me, and the RNG mechanic made it unlikely that I would get them. I would think that WG would make more money if they did an offer more along the following lines: Specific captains for a set price (presumably, slightly more than equivalent 10 pointers cost in the Armory [sic]). Gamble boxes where each captain obtained is cheaper than the specific ones, but which one you get is random i.e. the present situation.

The single steel is from your clan base bonus (I get the same). You get a small amount of steel for completing the daily missions (also, the penultimate stage gets you another 20), at least at the moment: Besides that, I think you can get steel for playing Clans (although I don't recall the requirements); in the past, snowflake events have awarded a greater or lesser amount of steel as well (I think the next one is for the game's anniversary - August?), although we don't know yet if that will continue.

You could send customer service a ticket (you might even get a sensible response - weirder stuff has happened). I'm not a tech, so can't give you an informed response, but WOT is currently in the process of an update; if the two functions share resources, that might explain why WOWS is slow to download?

Oh well, so long as the Transformers visuals can be disabled - for those who aren't keen - I don't see any major problems with this. Just have to wait and see if anything is of interest to grumpy old gits like me...

You may be confusing the various types of xp? There's more in the wiki (https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Economy#Experience), but the short version is as follows: Ship XP: this is the 'standard' xp that gets assigned to the ship that earns it (the wiki details how the earning of it works); to see how much you have on any given ship, click on the equipment tab and you should see something like this: In this case, I have 45,565 Ship XP on my Kiev. If I didn't have all the modules unlocked and purchased, the xp needed to unlock missing ones would be shown; as it is, you can see that I need a total of 160K xp to unlock the T9. Ship XP can initially only be used to research modules on the ship that's earned it, or to research the next ship in the tree; once a ship has been 'elited' i.e. everything on it, and immediately leading from it, has been researched, the Ship XP becomes available for conversion to Free XP. Free XP is the most versatile xp in the game, as it can be used for pretty much anything that needs xp (research, captain training etc.); it is also earned every time you play, but at a lower rate than regular xp (although it can be boosted by signals and cammo). Your free xp pot is shown top right on the screen: Commander XP is to captains what Ship XP is to ships i.e. this is xp that is assigned specifically to the captain that earned it; as you get more of it, you can unlock captain skills. Elite Commander XP (often just Elite XP) is roughly to captains what free xp is to ships; the key difference is that Elite XP can only be used to boost captains, where Free XP can be used to boost ships and captains (as well). The whole 'captain' discussion is quite involved, but we're mainly interested in ships here. There is also one recent change to the game that is worth mentioning: it used to be the case that Ship XP was displayed next to the captain portrait in the port screen; in a recent patch, it was changed such that the captain portrait now always (I think) shows the captain xp. If you were used to the old display method, the change may well have introduced some confusion...

In general, I would avoid it, simply because it is expensive. If you must, try and do it when there is a 1:35 promotion on (I *think* there was one this last weekend, so it'll probably be a while before the next), as the conversion rate is less dreadful. It would be hypocritical of me to say not never, no way, no how - I do occasionally do it myself (most recently to get past the last bit of the grind to finish the damn T9 US CL, which I really didn't gel with) - but pick your spots. It's generally not a good idea to entirely skip ships, even if you hate them; this is especially important at lower tiers when each ship is usually teaching you something new and generally doesn't require many games to get past. It can be a good idea to research at least the more crucial upgrades for new ships, to avoid playing them entirely stock (more important against real people; you should win in Coop almost regardless, unless you're the only human player); this is one of the better uses for free xp. Free xp is one of several things that tend to get easier to accumulate the more you play (as @rnat alludes to), so the temptation to pay to convert is often stronger earlier in your playing career; I would urge patience as much as possible, but if your patience fails, moderate your free xp conversion as much as willpower permits - excessive paying to advance is a good way to end up as one of these idiots you periodically encounter in game with high tier ships that they don't have much idea what to do with.

Afraid I have to agree with the folk who imply your foil hat may be on too tight; it's almost certainly just down to the 'clumping' that occurs in any random distribution. Also, I'd leave MM Monitor alone - as in WOT, you gain very little in the way of meaningful advantage from knowing who is/isn't rubbish, and are always running the risk of self-fulfilling prophesies in the way of 'my team is rubbish, therefore it is inevitable that we'll lose'. (Plus, I thought every serious English scholar knows: it's 'worserer'! )

I'm assuming you're not a reroll; if that's correct, you're a very new player, and your diversity of experience in different ship types and nations is - not surprisingly - very limited. This isn't a bad thing, but it does inform the following suggested thought process: The most sensible thing to buy is premium time (as already suggested), for the simple reason that it works on every battle you play, with every ship. So, best return on your spend. Buy the largest amount that you are confident that you'll use; the longer the period of premium time you buy, the better the value, *but* there's not much point in buying six months' worth if you get bored in a few weeks. After that, there is a lot to be said for holding off for a while; use the time to play a more diverse selection of ship types and nationalities, to establish what your favourites will likely be longer-term (you also avoid the classic pitfall of buying a premium that's of too high a tier for your current skill-set/experience/available captains). In terms of which premiums to buy, it largely depends on which ship types and nations you prefer to play; for earlier premium ships especially, you want to aim for things you won't get bored with easily - to get the most value from them, you need to play them a lot, and that's more likely if they're fun. It also helps if said premiums gel with captains from your silver ships - one of the more valuable peculiarities of premiums is that you can use to them to accelerate the training of your captains without penalty (this can be especially helpful if you're transferring captains between silver ships and want to avoid spending doubloons. IMPORTANT: make really sure that you check every single ship and deactivate the tick boxes that replenish cammo and/or signals for doubloons. WG have been stinkers here: the tick boxes default to enabled, and re-enable when you remount relevant cammo/signals; this means it's very easy to pi$$ away doubloons when you don't want to. You will almost certainly forget now and again, but try not to as it's a waste of money (and very poor by WG to have it set up this way; at least you now get a text box warning you - you didn't used to even get that). It's not a bad idea to avoid buying premium ships that are significantly higher tier than whatever tier you're comfortable playing your existing silver ships at; for example, if you're at T6 with the IJN BBs, I perhaps wouldn't go higher than one of Mutsu or Ashitaka (T6 and 7, respectively, and both useful for Ops, the T6 especially). If you do entirely ignore this and get something too high tier, you can always play the thing in Coop while you wait for your skills/captains to catch up. Keep an eye on your coupons and their expiry date; every so often, you'll get a 25% off coupon for use in the Armory [sic] - if you're going to buy premiums, you may as well use these coupons, and you can maximise your savings by relating premium purchases to coupon renewal dates. Finally, read/watch reviews (Little White Mouse is a good starting point) before buying anything (ask on here too); ideally, you want multiple viewpoints, and to try and find people whose views tend to coincide with your own tastes and preferences. If you really dig BBs, for example, a reviewer who thinks the type smells is not likely to be as helpful to you as someone who is a BB aficionado...

I dislike the mode too, but I'm not sure the issue is inherent to the mode itself, but rather to the fact that an awful lot of people (especially at the weekends, it feels like, and - in all honesty - probably including me) don't seem to know what they're doing. Epicentre *should* make the game more interesting; I'm not sure if there is a practical fix for the apparent gap in player knowledge though...

The current Belfast, at least, lacks a heal:

By most people's standards, 'everything' would probably be the most honest answer; recently though, I are be mainly sucking royally in Seattle - it was with an enormous sigh of relief (and a certain amount of free xp) that I got Worcester yesterday, and assigned the Seattle to 'never touch again except for snowflakes' list. Whilst I'm pretty lousy at cruisers generally, I just couldn't make her work reliably for me at all...

Short answer: yes (if you view any spend on the game at all as worthwhile). You're basically getting a T8 premium BB (and a bunch of coal for the penultimate stage) for much less money than a similar ship would cost, all things being equal. Just be mindful what you're getting ('fragile' T8 Scharn?), and that she seems to have a rather higher skill floor than the obvious 'competition' (Tirpitz); it's a shame we don't have T8 Ops - I suspect she'd be utterly glorious for that sort of thing.

Good show, OP - many thanks!

This, generally; I don't think I've got many/any others myself...

I suspect we need a proper ships buff for this. History Buffs, assemble! I'm not going to be getting excessively excitable about this though; compared to the below, whatever the various RN CLs look like can only be an improvement!

This isn't really my turf, but doesn't all the extra armour along Belfast's side make a significant visual difference?

From memory (because Google is hard), Belfast was one of only two ships in her sub-class (the other being Edinburgh); the rest of the class looked different to those two. Belfast's "that'll buff out" refit after the mine resulted in some visual differences compared to Edinburgh...

Thanks chaps - I saw something similar on one of my DDs (I think) the other day, and was idly wondering what they were too...

Many thanks to all who've been posting the codes - much appreciated. Excellent form!

My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I have a vague recollection that Belfast was actually unique (at least by the time-frame that we're talking about), due to a number of visible changes resulting from a rebuild she needed to fix the damage from hitting a mine?

I suspect much of the reason why you got a rather unsympathetic response is something along the following lines: History (nothing directly to do with you): the "waaaah - I turned pink because someone didn't get out of the way of my torps/drove into my torps and it is an egregious injustice! <stamps foot>" type of thread is a recurring thing on here and people are slightly prone to getting stroppy when the same thing keeps coming up over and over again. It's usually inexperienced players who have yet to understand that, fundamentally, *any* time your torps hit a friendly, it is your fault. Always. There is perhaps an instinctive feeling that sugar-coating it won't sink in, so a certain amount of bluntness can creep in. If the player firing the torps didn't do something stupid, it's very hard for friendlies to deliberately get hit: as far as I can recall, the only ships-torps combination where a ship is actually faster than torps is Black torps and T8+ French DDs with engine boost on (plus, occasional air-dropped torps, but they're so short-ranged as to be much less of a problem). So, what to do about this sort of thing: If you *ever* torp a friendly always say sorry. Basic etiquette. To be as risk-averse as possible, avoid firing torps if there is any physical chance of a friendly getting in the way; if you're very strict about this, it'll dramatically reduce your opportunities, especially with longer-ranged torps, but it's a good 'starter for ten' thought process to adopt. Make sure you're looking at range circles on your mini-map before firing. Be mindful of who's out there and what they can do e.g. French DDs can go over 50 kts; they can cover an awful lot of ground during a lot of torps' run-time, whereas something like a US 'Standard' BB isn't far away from being a (barely) mobile island, so has less scope for doing something wildly unpredictable. As a follow on, have a good understanding of things like your torps' run-times and range; overall, the faster and/or shorter ranged your torps are, the less chance you have of hitting a friendly, simply because there is much less time for an ally to do something unpredictable. Things like the slow US or Italian torps are especially prone to hitting allies, because they'll still be active multiple seconds after firing, when it's harder to predict where your allies will have got to. Once you have the hang of a risk-averse approach, you can start taking more risks, but do so in a calculated way. If you estimate there is, say, a 90% chance that your fish won't hit a friendly, you'll be more likely to get away with a shot than with a 50% chance of that shot not hitting a friendly. In general, situational awareness is one of the most important skills to develop to do well in the game; this includes where your side are, and what they're all doing, as well as what they are capable of (mainly in terms of how far they can get in what sort of time-frame). That all assumes randoms; when you're in a division with voice comms, you can take riskier shots - "Hey Barry, in a couple of seconds, I'll fire torps to your right - don't evade in that direction for a moment...." type stuff.

Do you not count the current AL ships? As far as I can tell, those don't come in a 'ship only' form?

This sounds like a capital suggestion: it's a frankly ghastly state of affairs that a young(ish) nobleman such as myself in my premiums should have to mix with <shudder> Common People in their silver ships... You would not believe the number of opportunities I miss due to having to type "get away from me, you frightful peasants!" - and similar - repeatedly in chat!