Verblonde

Additionally, recall that the flight time of shells fired from range can be many seconds; if someone fired at you prior to you going dark (and didn't mess up their lead) you can have been unspotted for several seconds and still take hits. (FWIW I quite often make a sharp turn just after going dark to throw off any long-ranged shots, as well as people who are good at shooting at where you'd be if you'd kept on as you were when you vanished)

You're absolutely right. Bear in mind though: As you probably know, the thing that's spotting you isn't necessarily right in front of you, especially when you're playing a fat lad. It's worth revising what the various different 'spotted' icons look like (as that will inform your counters, and help you guess who can see you and if they're on the other side of an island). There are a number of sneaky tricks you can pull with blind fire that enable you to ding an unspotted enemy e.g. in the recent Sprint, I lost count of the number of blind torp hits I got by just lobbing a couple of spreads into the opposition buff circles, because it was predictable that people would be there. When you go unspotted, especially in something a bit ponderous, there is only so far you can go away from the 'last spotted' icon in a few seconds, and getting bushwacked when you come out from behind an island just needs the attacker to make an educated guess if they've been paying attention to what you've been up to prior to going dark. DD drivers, for example, have to get quite good at such educated guesses, as that's a lot of what getting decent results with torps is mostly about (apart from the occasional straight-lining idiot).

Not in the slightest. Of course, for the full effect we need a massive buff to DD AA across the board for a month or so, followed by a return to something less idiotic.

Do you doubt the shipbuilding prowess of the Rodina? I feel you may lack sufficient revolutionary zeal - to the gulag at once!

I think my wallet will remain closed for this event; at the very least, it's my minor protest against the shabby treatment of the Moskva permaflage owners (of which I'm not one). Besides which, the only one of the new cruisers that's even of slight interest to me is the T8, as it's not 100% made up...

Thanks for the reminder OP!

My equivalent to this was getting a Dreadnought in my Gearing...!

Ah - Bogue. I liked her a lot too, although not because I was even remotely any good in her. I keep hoping she'll be brought back in some form or other, but I'm not holding my breath... Despite all the CVs, the IJN torp line might be worth revisiting: T6 is quite good, T7 is okay (but has lousy concealment, comparatively speaking), and T8 is actively good (best concealment in the tier spread); that said, the dakka line has a lot going for it, not least the best torp boat (!) in the game tier-for-tier (T7) and being somewhat less food for CVs from around T8. All DDs are not easy mode with all the CVs (and radar, to a lesser extent) around though...

You mentioned earlier that you've been gone since 2018? The Pan-EU and Italian lines have been released since then (hence the ships were added automatically); I would guess the slots that became free are as a result of the removal of any odd-tiered CVs you may have had in port (I don't remember the details, but I think we kept the slots, along with getting silver and some sort of xp)... There have been other new lines and line splits etc. but I *think* these two lines are the only entirely new silver 'nations' while you've been away.

Presumably, that's one of the odd-tiered ones that got removed as part of the CV reework?

They're the T1 Italian and Pan-EU ships, I think - whenever a new line is released, you should get the T1...

Doubloons shouldn't expire once they're on your account. *However* be wary: a number of cammos and flags cost doubloons to replenish, and they default to being set to automatically use gold to replace if you don't have any in stock. It's a good idea to check whenever you play a ship for the first time each session that nothing is set to use gold to replenish (unless you actually want it to). The relevant tick boxes are in the 'exterior' tab; for example, this is the one for flags (my mouse pointer is indicating the tick box):

Nope. Flags will - technically (if they're performance ones, and not economic) - increase your chances slightly, but only slightly. Bear in mind though this is like a 120 kg fat bloke claiming the reason he can't cycle fast enough is because he only has Deore cranks, as opposed to XT, say. You don't have to pay to get fully upgraded ships, unless you're impatient - you just have to play, Ditto, fully upgraded captain; the vast majority that you pay money for are ten pointers - if you want higher pointers without playing, I'm afraid you can't generally pay for them - you have to earn them by playing. Basically, WOWS is not P2W, but rather 'pay to progress faster'; in fact, you could make a solid case that paying money can easily make you a worse player - look at the number of idiots you see in high tier premiums that they have no idea how to play. If your overall win rate is pants, it's all on you, I'm afraid. You can either accept that and do something about it (or try to, in my case), or keep being in denial and carry on as you are. Your choice.

If they came together in one package, the commander should be assigned to the premium by default (commanders bought on their own are usually - but not always - assigned to the T1 silver ship for the relevant nation); you then have to pay (doubloons or the relevant xp) to retrain them for a silver ship...

This current state of affairs is enormously frustrating for the discerning sub-par player too; I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...etc. When you suck (<waves>) you're very limited in scope to carry others noticeably, so you need a reasonable proportion of your team to be at least mediocre to have a chance. So, for example, the 39% WR Saipan I was unfortunate enough to have on my side last night - that did basically nothing, and didn't even move when the enemy team was bearing down on him - would have been hard for even a good player to counteract. The after effect of all this on my WR lately could be summarised thusly: Of course, over enough games, the effect ought to even out, but - dear gods - the last few days have been exasperating. Sorry. Just needed to vent (even though, most of the time, I'm probably a cause for venting in others)...

I do hope so - we might get Stukas?

I think it's the 'raffle' thing that's being referred to: https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/sales-and-events/v-e-day-event/ (another 'click to participate' thing)

If such a thing came to pass, I'd probably be persuaded (if it wasn't unutterably awful) - I only really play CVs in Ops, which means I always have a use for T6, especially if they're premium...

That would be of interest to me (I'm always potentially keen on enormously fat DDs). At least until it gets the usual treatment from the it's-German-so-it-must-be-nerfed-Comrade nerf bat...

It depends a bit on how good a DD player you are; I'm a trifle sub-par, and for what it's worth: T8 and T9 are IMO pretty decent (T9 is basically Fletcher), as they're essentially the equivalent US ships with DWT. T10 is (sort of) Gearing, but with DWT, and hammered with the nerf bat - it's often cited as the definitive reason not to buy permaflage. For premiums, you have Loyang and Silly; the former is excellent, the latter not so much. For me, T8 and T9 hold their own, and the T10 isn't a disaster - it's just that the 'full fat' Gearing is noticeably better. As to radar versus smoke, I tend to take smoke in randoms; radar is most useful for teamplay, and you don't see enough of that in randoms for it to be worth giving up the smoke for. I would consider taking the radar in things like Clans, or in a voice-coordinated division, but not otherwise.

In theory, it's a nice idea, but I can't see it working terribly well, for pretty much the exact reasons that @HMS_Kilinowski outlines. I can't see WG significantly improving the rewards methodology that already exists (it's not like the list of gripes with that isn't already extensive)... In a vaguely similar vein, I wouldn't mind pottering about in something like Rawalpindi...

I voted T8, but I suspect the answer is somewhere in the T7-8 range. It's very easy as a newbie to bag a T6 ship with very little time in the game (premiums cost noticeably less too, so you're more likely to say words to the effect of "f*kkit" and just buy one), so we should expect to see a lot of very inexperienced folk playing T6s; as such, I have quite a bit of sympathy for potatoes in T6s - it's very easy to get there without knowing any different. When you're in the T7-8 range, you should be pretty confident that you like the game, and have played enough to at least start to realise that just getting scarier ships doesn't make you win more often; also, the cost associated with premium ships is notably higher, which should make people at least pause before clicking buy (yes, I know - Tirpitz). So, it's around here - IMO - that it starts to become rather less acceptable to deliberately not bother to improve. I should point out though, that some people for whatever reason may well have a ceiling on how good they can get (slower old guy reflexes - me - for example; lost an arm in a tragic accident involving an anteater, and so on) - I have no problem with people that are trying not to potate, but may be inherently a bit tuberous through no fault of their own. So, I feel there is a significant difference between 'deliberately' playing really badly, and doing so through no fault of your own.

This. I would have most likely been recumbent waterfowl if they'd done that with this latest round of cammo...

I'd be slightly surprised if that would be massively effective - most are premiums and they all come with a permaflage with the same bonuses. The NOLA cammo that someone posted on another thread (I think it was from an anniversary collection or something) gives different bonuses to the usual (+50% captain and free xp, but no regular xp bonus, from memory) - I would think doing something like that might increase sales? Mind you, what do I know - I bought a couple of the 'dazzle' permaflages a while back, and I blatantly didn't need them...?

Many thanks! I got 24 hr premium from mine...