Verblonde

Surely, the correct answer to this is to have your butler watch it, and present you with a summary the following morning, along with your (freshly ironed) morning paper - on a silver platter, naturally?

Dev Blog apropos the results of Clans season 9 (now with added CVs): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/40 One key extract: "Battles in Squall, Gale, and Storm leagues included the best elements of past seasons, but with the addition of aircraft carriers. The participating clans tried various tactics and lineups using all available ship classes, which had a good influence on the total number of participants, as well as their overall impressions. While the current global situation led to an overall higher player count, the season turned out to be more popular not just in general numbers but also in relative numbers than previous seasons. The dynamic of these battles came close to what we ultimately want to achieve: clans are not limited in their choice of setups, can choose any ships, and apply various tactics; and the basis for victory is a carefully planned strategy and team skills. Despite the results of battles in the Squall, Gale, and Storm leagues, no less important are the results in the Typhoon and Hurricane leagues—and they cannot boast the same results. A number of factors, including the impact of the quick and efficient spotting potential from aircraft carriers, the prevalence of very specific ship lineups, and the fact that in many battles just one wrong move could spell defeat—all in all—lead to frustration. The current state of battles with Tier X ships in high leagues is therefore not satisfactory to us and requires changes for the better."

This, although be mindful that only the T10s really have a significant economic impact (with the T9s being okay) - most lower tier permaflage gives poorer bonuses than the bulk of one-use ones (that most players seem to have no shortage of). Also, it's wise to only buy permaflage (T10 especially, as it's the most expensive) for things you *know* that you'll play a lot in the next month or three - one of the dangers of permaflage is that the ship it's for can be nerfed from under you (it remains to be seen if the Moskva thing becomes a regular occurrence or was a one-off).. Don't forget that permaflage doesn't give the premium ability to accept any same-nation captain without training either. (I have permaflage on - probably - 90% of my ships that can mount it, so that isn't to say don't do it, but rather do so with a full understanding of how this stuff works and the potential down-sides)

This. I was under the impression that the French were a strong candidate for highest skill floor of all DDs; I'm a little puzzled how one would only realise this at the T10 - the T8 is giving me enough trouble (and I won't go into how badly I messed up the first couple of games in Marceau)..!

I would assume it's Italian BBs, unless they already count as announced - weren't they next in line? It would make sense: BBs are apparently the most played ship type in the game, and we haven't had a new BB tech tree since the (deeply historical) Russians, as far as I recall. Honestly, I'll be happy so long as it isn't bleedin' submarines (I would actively like some more DDs, but given how recent the Ikeas are, I'm assuming it isn't that likely)...

From the Daily Bounce - new T10 Russian freemium DD in ST: https://thedailybounce.net/world-of-warships/supertest-soviet-freemium-tier-x-destroyer-r-10/

A bit late to the party, but FWIW: 1) Remove CVs entirely from any 'small map' game mode in their current form; I'm realistic enough to understand that the class isn't going anywhere, but any negative impact is most keenly felt on smaller maps. 2) Wider range of tiers, especially odd-tiers so as to side-step the CV issue for a while (giving you guys time to come up with a solution, perhaps). Not SSs! 3) Ship caps, to avoid almost entire teams being the same 'optimal' ship - perhaps two maximum per side?

That was pretty much what I did with CO - as far as I remember, I haven't touched her since I unlocked the T8! I only kept her because I have some sort of permaflage on her, and I'm an inveterate collector...

You don't even need to do that (until/unless you unlock the next ship, and want to keep the existing one) - the captain from NM can be dropped into MA without any cost/loss (and the reverse as well), as the latter is a premium. BTW if you do keep NM, one approach is to not worry about recruiting a particularly good captain, and just play the thing in T6 Ops for as long as it takes to get the captain to a sensible level (Ops, IMO, don't really *require* the highest end captains), which has a reasonable chance of being faster than doing it in Coop. Yup. The general consensus from the BB meisters seems to be that a survival build is most likely to win you games in MA, whereas a secondary build is more fun. My BBs mainly live in Coop (unless I mess up and press the wrong button, which has happened), so my MA/GA usually get used with a semi-manly captain; however, if I ever need to play one or t'other against real people, I can just drop in my survival build Halsey from - currently - NC.

Right there is Siliwangi's problem generally... Thanks for reminding me that she exists though, OP - I should go and check that I gave mine the zoomy torps mod; it's been a long time since I took her out.

This is true, strictly-speaking; I would mention though that metas do change, so having more than one option is potentially desirable. I doubt there will be a situation where glorious and historical Soviet BBs will ever be rubbish, but one never knows; it could come to pass that - for some reason - another class, say, is more optimal.

It wasn't about skill, but rather about available ships/captains - if you had all the US silver BBs up to - say - T10, then there would be a good chance of having a 'good enough' captain for MA. I would suggest running your 'tank' captain on MA/GA; quite apart from anything else, this is generally felt to be optimal ('optimal' in this case meaning most likely to win). Get that captain to 19 points, and then use the elite xp thus generated to develop a second 'fun' captain for your secondary monsters. This is a bit of a medium-long term project, of course, but will probably be a happier experience than trying to do well in a T8 with a sub-10 point captain. BTW I talk above about 'a' 19 point captain; depending a bit on how patient you are, building specialist captains (such as for MA/GA, or anything else weird e.g. 'no silver line' premiums like Perth, Haida etc. or things that need an oddball build) is *much* easier if you have multiple 19 pointers, so what I would actually advise is using your first 19 pointer to get a second, and use those to get a third (19 point captains tend to snowball, for obvious reasons); when you have several of them, assess how fast you're earning elite xp, and maybe then switch to building more eccentric captains. Incidentally, keep an eye out for (sadly, rarer than they used to be) free captain respecs; my 19 point MA/GA captain technically belongs to Gearing (!) - I did a free respec and built him as a semi-manly oddball for those two ships, and dropped the 19 point Ovenchicken that I'd be working on into Gearing instead. The point being that if you wait for these events, you sometimes have scope for some major reshuffles like this (although you'll need to spend doubloons if you aren't moving the captain to a premium ship).

Extremely good idea. From an entirely selfish standpoint, I would really like to know which ship(s) are pointless trying to communicate with (I'm still labouring under the delusion that at least some modicum of team play is desirable in the game, which tends to periodically require a bit more nuance than f-keys can produce).

I would say it features often enough for it to be worth having at least a couple of options available to you (preferably with decent captains) that you're comfortable playing and actually enjoy playing. The 'classic' tier for these sorts of modes has tended to be T10 (WG 'encouraging' us to grind more lines) of late, but I guess that enough people complained to get WG to provide a bit more variety - at one point, it felt like *everything* was geared towards T10. If you're taking a more long-term view, it might be worth reviewing the conditions for the permanent/semi-permanent campaigns too - some of them require high tier ships to complete, and it might be worthwhile to dovetail those requirements - if possible - with what you're doing in the way of T8s. It's a pity the T8 Ops got the chop (Richard move, WG!) - they were another motivation to maintain a number of T8s if you weren't keen on PvP...

I might suggest giving the thing a thrashing in Coop - that'll get you a few points at least, without having to commit a ridiculous amount of time to the endeavour. I haven't looked at your stats; if MA is your first US BB, then I would also suggest playing through the regular tree a bit (although the silver ones are all about the main guns, rather than MA's secondaries) - besides getting you a better captain at a more reasonable tier, it'll give you a better sense of how the US BBs play before you start facing T10s in your MA. BTW although MA is the classic secondary monster, the optimal captain for PvP is (I believe) still felt to be a classic tank build, and the broad strokes of 'how to' do have a lot of similarities. Double check with the BB meisters though...

If you'll forgive a moment of pedantry, Sharkbait, Atlanta, and Belfast might take a slightly different view.

I agree that having some way to access which options given ships have from in the game is a good idea (as it stands, I just use Win-D and open the wiki, if I'm having a brain fart apropos some ship or other), but I would leave the loading screen alone. Obviously, we're talking about radar here, but that isn't by any means the only thing that will impact how you approach an opposing ship, and I absolutely do think telling people exactly what configuration an opposing ship has is unacceptable dumbing down. Some illustrative examples, to support the idea that some sort of 'mini wiki' would be useful in game, rather than something that focuses on a single specific thing (radar in this case): Torp options: a Shima say, is a very different proposition depending on which of the three torp options it's got. Which hull/gun options are mounted matter (speed, range and so on). Hydro versus DefAA is a common choice; which one a ship picked matters a lot to how you'll approach it. In a similar vein, Engine Boost versus DefAA on some DDs. Besides modules/upgrades, there's also the impact of captain skills too... Of course, we do have the 'hover' pop-up in the loading screen - it might be useful to have more information about how that works or doesn't (e.g. the difference between a 'loaded' player and one that has yet to do so), and how to interpret the information. Old lags know about this, but newer players may well not - you're actually given quite a lot of information here to infer at least a bit about the builds your opponents have (we all know about looking for BBs with SE, or sneaky DDs that didn't go with a concealment build), and it would be sporting to make it easier for newcomers to read these particular entrails...?

Now and again, yes, but it isn't that frequent (subjectively-speaking)...

Not personally. As others mention, it might be a way to make getting a Dreadnought easier; perhaps someone was trying to do the 'awards' mission that's been on over this weekend? Another possibility is someone testing their ship's actual behaviour when hit by a torp, if they don't know about training rooms? @waxx25's hypothesis is extremely likely though - the weekend does seem to bring out the, erm, 'unusual' in people...

I confess to being a bit conflicted about this: on the one hand, I do personally tend to like ships with heals, but on the other I fear that giving everything a heal risks homogenising the game and making it simpler/less interesting. This assumes that adding a heal to most ships would warrant compensatory nerfs elsewhere. To illustrate: I'm a DD main, so spend much of my time engaging with opposing DDs; there is quite a lot of variability in terms of the opposition, and how you approach any given ship, and the presence/absence of a heal plays into that. I play differently when faced with a ship where all damage sticks, compared to when facing one which can grow back bits that you shoot off; I feel that there is greater variation in the optimal approaches when not everything is the same (in terms of heals, in this case) and greater variation is normally good. That's DDs though; my favourite cruiser is Atago (with MRE a promising new arrival), and a lot of the that is due to the heal, as it allows a more interesting play style as there is at least the possibility of surviving at least some mis-plays. The same logic does apply though - making all cruisers 'healers' would reduce variety (even if I happen not to enjoy the 'no heal' cruiser play style as much myself, but that's mainly because I suck at it, and find it a bit dull).

Last time I checked, 48% WR is hardly 'hardcore' - radar information such as you propose would make my life much easier (3/4 of my randoms are in DDs), but the complexity/challenge of the game is a key plus point - for me anyway. There isn't exactly a shortage of games which give you everything on a plate and just require good reactions to be good at; I like that WOWS is a bit of an exception that calls for at least some use of one's brain. That's just me, of course.

I would oppose anything that told you definitively if things like RN CLs and PA DDs have radar or not; working out whether a particular one does or doesn't is an interesting part of the game. Removing that aspect would be simple dumbing down, which is rarely a good idea. Thinking about it, I'm rather of the view that newer players should be encouraged to learn more about the game (I'm assuming old lags all know what does/doesn't/may have radar already) and having even this radar information presented on a plate might well encourage people to skip this necessary step?

All but two of my battles this time were in Orkan; I was slightly surprised by how effective she was (for me anyway): Radar (as you say) is great for scragging opposing DDs, especially if they don't remember/know that you have it and smoke up in front of you (bonus points if said smoke prevents their side seeing your gunfire too). Healing potion; this used to be a key reason I often picked Kidd in the past. Solid dakka (she's more or less a Lightning after all), and fast torps squeaky toys (albeit only one launcher). Concealment and AA not entirely awful, so I was able to manage - kind of - most typical CV players. Mighty SecondaryTM Okay, that last one is actually useless! I suspect she'll lose effectiveness as more people get used to/learn about her too, but for the moment, she's pretty worthwhile.

I suspect you're on a bit of a hiding to nothing with this - for the mode to be a success, WG have to encourage as many people as possible to play, besides which, if you eliminated everyone under a 50% WR, queue times would probably become unreasonable after a day or two. Full disclosure: I'd be booted out according to your benchmark (48% overall WR in randoms, last I looked), so I'm not exactly neutral. You do rather have a point with this though...!

Kidd - IMO - still works if your team knows to shoot at stuff that you spot; plus, you have the heal, and decent AA, which helps given the presence of CVs. She's still one of the better 'teamplay' DDs at T8. All of which said, I used her for only one game this time - there are better choices for Sprint given how flaky random teams can be...