Verblonde

For me, there are a few reasons: You usually get back some benefit to balance the lack of smoke (although one might dispute if the trade is worth it) e.g. the Ikea heal, TRB etc. Smoke is a mixed blessing a lot of the time (perhaps except for the RN) and typical random teams often have no idea what to do with it e.g. parking in it broadside, just begging to be torped. Besides which, it telegraphs your approximate position (although you can use that as bait). If you're not careful, it risks blinding you and/or your team. The benefits are rather more often moot, given the prevalence of radar these days. That's not to say that it isn't often extremely helpful, but on at least some DDs I wouldn't rate it as 100% essential. Then again, I suck, so what do I know...?!

I was trying to work out if there are *any* that I can use, and had tentatively come to the same conclusion. I haven't checked - I assume these new permaflages have standard economic bonuses?

Just had a quick look at the bundles (thanks for the heads-up); I have to say, I'm similarly underwhelmed - if the EU equivalents are the same, they won't be terribly hard to resist, even for a whale such as myself...!

As I recall, the Cossack 'finishing payment' was about a quid.... (and Cossack was a pretty decent DD)

Well, we couldn't have too many decent German ships in the game, could we? WG: let it go - it's been 75 years, dammit! They ain't worf it, mate!

I don't - it's the spotting abilities of CVs that I find most troublesome; the bulk of CVs struggle to do unreasonable amounts of damage to even a below-par DD. How do BB players feel? I would hope they would feel duly chastised for making such poor life choices that brought them to this point (i.e. playing BBs)...?

Translation: make life almost laughably easier for DDs (apart from CVs). Whilst I would find such changes hilarious (DD main), there's about as much chance of it happening as there is of me voluntarily coating my joy department in raspberry jam and running neked through murder hornet territory wearing a big sign saying 'get it here'...

Aye. Looks like the PvE crowd are going to get descended on by hordes of folk trying to knock over the tasks that are easier in Coop too...

BTW the Dev Blog says " The main feature of Update 0.9.5 is the Hamburg Dockyard " - does this mean the Russian cruiser split isn't going to get the wall-to-wall coverage for two patches that other recent releases have got?

Thanks for the feedback, all; looks like it's not worth making extra effort for. That said, a quick glance through the directives (if they don't change) suggests they're doable with normal play, if one does enough of it...

There's a spreadsheet that allegedly shows the various directives here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CyuZZj7SMGpSur1-0p4SRO2nMaWMNLbY-YGueWc0PYg/htmlview?usp=sharing&pru=AAABchRz0d8*wr_6mZu0AqUrzSC8SJBCqA Presumably all WiP.

New Dev Blog (re: next dockyard event): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/17

BTW the Dev Blog appears to be up: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/17

I would say that - after the PR debacle - WG ought to have learned their lesson, and would make future events of this type a lot more transparent. *Ought* is the key word there, and given the recent Moskva thing, I think that view is over-optimistic. That said, let's wait and see what the details of the thing are; at least the 'pay real money' (kind of) bit seems to have been moved to the end - that was a key objection to the PR thing i.e. you could spend and still not get the ship at the end; this should avoid that. BTW can anyone who's been paying attention provide an opinion on whether Odin is actually any good these days?

No he didn't (whatever he showed you wasn't proof) - I have almost every premium in the game, and not once has any of them provided me with even a win streak into double figures... That's not to say there aren't any borderline OP things in the game - all of the ones I can think of largely removed from sale - but even then, none of them guarantees any meaningful win-streak. Edit: empirical evidence to the contrary: If buying Yamato's T9 sister *guaranteed* wins, then my WR in this thing wouldn't be 50%... Edit 2: obviously I'm not talking about Coop mode, as you actually have to make an effort to lose that most of the time...

I'm afraid to say that said guy is - As It Is Written - pulling your plonker...

Calm down - you'll hurt yourself. Orkan is basically a weird and less sneaky Lightning, and should be played as such. It does help to have a decent captain though, and to have played similar ships quite a bit beforehand...

Not all of it, but assuming Ranked works vaguely similarly to randoms: The bulk of games will be won/lost more or less regardless of what you do. The games that matter are the 'edge' cases, where how good a player is will nudge the result one way or the other (over a large enough data-set). As a result of these edge cases, better players will have higher overall WR, and the less good will see the reverse. For those of us who aren't unicums, the aim should be to - at least - not be a drag on the team, so as to allow any better players on your side more of a chance to do their thing. If you'll permit me to infer a few things from your current stats that might be helpful for the future: The above distribution pattern (for randoms) is an enormous flashing warning sign: you've effectively skipped all the 'learning' tiers and more or less gone straight to 8+ (as indicated by the average tier - 8.2). There are a number of down-sides to this, but they mostly relate to not having a chance to acquire the necessary skill-set to hold your own in higher tiers i.e. you're increasing the chances of your personal edge cases being defeats. The above information provides more flashing warning signs. As well as jumping straight to high tiers, you're (essentially) only playing one ship type - BBs - and from only one nation - KM. This is also unwise, if you want to maximise your chances of nudging over the line to a win (although I get the appeal of the KM - have a butchers at my own port; the only one I'm missing - I think - is Currywurst). Rather than just point out where you may be going wrong, please permit a few suggestions: Drop back a few tiers (probably to the 5-7 range, if you don't want to be mauled by the T4 CVs) for a while, and take the time to polish your skills, especially via-a-vis situational awareness and the vision mechanics (these areas IMO are what tend to win/lose more games than almost anything else). Diversify the nations and ship types that you play; if you get a decent number of games under your belt in things that aren't German battleships you'll become a far better player, mainly because you'll have a better understanding of what things other than your preferred ship type can/can't do, and what their aims are vis-a-vis defeating you. Try and division (preferably using voice comms) with other players who can offer you helpful feedback - they may well help you find stuff out that you might have been missing previously. Try and get involved with Clan Wars; it can be easier to learn high tiers there as (in theory) everyone on your team is vaguely coordinated, there are fewer enemy ships to keep track of, and (often) you have a unified strategy. Of course, most of this won't help you right now (except for the divisioning part); but it gives a few pointers for how to get better for the next round of Ranked and hopefully you'll have a less frustrating experience next time.

Ooo, time to break out the Shakespearean Insults Generator...?

Correct. Smol is fairly straightforward to deal with, with a bit of practice, although it is extremely nasty in the right hands (luckily, most players that have her aren't the right hands, which definitely includes me). Yoshino (IMO) isn't that good, unless you're a super cruiser meister; she's a long-range HE spammer with Shima torps. Also, bear in mind that she gets the hexagonal(ish) citadel, making her much easier prey for bigger guns when angled. PR is worthwhile (despite flaky accuracy), again in the right hands; I get the impression that most owners may have just thrown money at it though - I would estimate that maybe 1 in 10 are at least tolerably good in the thing (I worry far more about DM, as the majority of people with her have played enough to get a T10)...

@TPyn_HA_PyCHAK IMO there isn't a hard and fast rule, as such; the way I would suggest approaching things might be something along the following lines: Catch up with some other lines to the upper limit of where you're actively good with your existing ships (so, tiers 6-7) across a range of types and nation (CVs optional, although playing one line will give an insight into them as a threat, if you aren't really a fan). Suggest not skipping anything (although free xping more essential modules will mean you have a nicer time); progressing through several tress in sequence will reinforce the various necessary game mechanics, in order. At least as importantly, this approach will allow you to focus on getting better at things like situational awareness - there are a number of things that come with experience; they're easier to work on at lower tiers, and matter more and more as you ascend the tiers. Concentrate on getting at least one good captain for each line you want to push on with - this means *at least* ten points, and generally significantly higher in the top tiers (most of my T10s have 19 pointers in these days, but that takes quite a long time to achieve); if you don't have good captains, you'll be at a disadvantage, as the bulk of players you face will do (with possible exceptions for some of the 'COVID crowd'). It's also important to make sure you pick sensible skills in an intelligent order - the wiki has suggestions for captain builds for most ships and/or you can ask on here. Also, be aware there isn't necessarily *a* right answer vis-a-vis captain builds (although there are certainly some wrong ones!). Once you've got that squared away, start to play the odd battle at T8, until your WR is at a level you're happy with; then, repeat for T9 and so on. Better players than me may well take issue with some of that, but that's not a bad way to go (it's also worth using PvE modes to get the hang of how newer ships handle and behave generally, but those modes won't help much with facing real people; they are good for practicing aiming etc. though). If you join a clan, or have friends that play, playing in divisions will help you with pushing up the tiers, as a cooperating division is usually harder to deal with than the same number of solo players. The 'practice more' is a bit dull, but it does make a positive difference; mainly this is because with all the firepower etc. available at higher tiers, mistakes are usually punished rather more than at lower tiers.

True, but I imagine @ForlornSailor may have been alluding to the smaller available xp pool in Coop - you'll struggle to consistently bag more than the easier couple of stages in that mode. As to your original suggestions, I have to agree with the naysayers: Naval Battles doesn't give anything important enough to significantly impact how people play; all you have to do is pick suitable ships and modes, and you should mop up the bulk of the available points (assuming you have a tolerably diverse port). Basically, I wouldn't change anything about the relevant game modes for Naval Battles - it doesn't matter enough to be needed.

In this chap's defence, his high tier rush is towards Moskva which is sort of understandable given the imminent switch to semi-premium. That said, you really shouldn't be playing as much as you are at top tiers (your two most played ships are Donskoi and Moskva, by miles); if you look at your stats, your WR craters at T8, whereas before that it's generally very good (certainly much better than mine!), especially since you only have 561 (at time of writing) random battles. I would also suggest that you play all the classes (you currently have zero battles in DDs and CVs); by diversifying the ships you play, you'll get a better understanding of what everything is trying to do, and can't do, and that'll help you avoid the situations you were originally complaining about. If you haven't found it yet, the wiki is a decent source of information on any game mechanics that you may be finding troublesome: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships Finally: join a clan. If you can find one that's happy to teach, you'll acquire any missing knowledge faster; besides that, a clan with a reasonably developed base will give you useful economic bonuses.

<plays 40 Halland battles in Sprint>

As a low league DD main, I wouldn't object to this, provided CVs were hardest of hard-capped at one. Frankly, for a DD, extra BBs are the very least of my worries...!