Verblonde

The approach I might take is to assess which resource you have less trouble acquiring: coal or free xp? If it's coal, then maybe save your free xp; if it's free xp, then research Moskva. Some other factors: If you research Moskva, you'll only be spending free xp (if WG are to be believed - check the final patch-notes); we're told that researching the ship is sufficient i.e. you don't have to actually have it in port, which'll save a lot of silver (plus you'll get the permaflage for free when it converts to semi-premium. The economy on Alaska (as a full-on premium) is somewhat better than Moskva most likely will be. Moskva (as a T10) will be probably be of more use for 'special' modes, such as Clans, Ranked etc. Which play style do you prefer - a ship you don't enjoy playing is of rather less utility. As far as I know, we don't yet know the coal price for the 'new' Moskva, but there's a good chance it'll effectively be higher than silver Moskva (depending on how you value the various resources relative to each other). Neither ship is vanishing (as far as we know) any time soon, so whichever you select, this isn't a 'last chance' thing....

Your tin foil hat restricting circulation? Being sensible, you're experiencing the same exasperation that I did (you'll note that I only have one battle this season of Ranked that isn't in a standard silver ship); the ability of the player base to fully embrace the tuber has been spectacular recently - it's probably due to all the new/occasional players that COVID has brought out of the woodwork. Although the potatoes are generally fairly evenly split between the teams, random clumping means that sometimes one or other team will get sufficient spuds to keep Walkers supplied for a year. You can mitigate this a bit though: Play Ranked at non-peak times; at more antisocial hours, only the most enthusiastic will be playing, which should reduce - slightly - the COVID crowd. Play in a division, if possible; all my games were solo this time, but having at least one other player on your side who knows what they're doing, and has your back, helps a lot. Take a break whenever you feel the red mist descending - when you're pi$$ed off, you're more likely to make mistakes yourself, so take time out to decompress. Try and get it done as soon as the previous measures permit; with every less idiotic player that ranks out, the pool of available players who aren't hopeless decreases. Other than that, unless you have a truly biblical level of carrying ability, it really is an exercise in persistence, unfortunately...

Many thanks to all those posting the codes - very much appreciated!

Says he with a *huge* sigh of relief...?

Almost everything can be good in the right hands; the trick is to find which line(s) gel with your preferences and abilities. That said, play all classes in the lower tiers to get a handle on their basic characteristics and abilities; you may well end up with a 'main' class (mine is DDs FWIW), but you'll do a lot better if you have a handle on what everyone can/can't do, and what they're trying to do to you. Suggest starting with IJN and US, as they're the original lines and are relatively low on weirdness and gimmicks. A couple of things to be aware/beware of: You have protected MM up to T4; T5 and above, you start to face +2 opposition. Don't go above T4 until you're ready (and have 'good enough' captains too, if possible). T4 CVs are a bloody menace (not to mention a wonderful illustration of the cognitive damage done by excess vodka); they will make your life miserable if/when you meet them - this provides a strong motive to get to T5/6 as quickly as possible, even if it isn't ideal for newer players. Don't rush up the tiers (same as WOT); yes, a higher tier ship will generally be more powerful, but be mindful that everyone else has one too. I'm sure you know this already though. Do you mean aircraft carriers (CVs)? CAs are heavy cruisers (light ones are CL). Anyway, CVs have had a very detrimental effect on the game for many people (IJN torp DD drivers especially), so much of the moaning is entirely justified - as you'll discover when you encounter the aforementioned T4 CV plague! I would pick one of US and IJN; the RN CVs are generally less good than the US/IJN equivalents. You need a CV meister to opine on the better choice from IJN/US (fwiw I marginally prefer IJN, but I don't play CVs much). Beware if you're being f2p though - CVs have a fairly tough economy. Whatever you take the time to get good with, in general. Be careful what you wish for; based on previous form, there is every chance that WG will mess the implementation up somehow and make the game unplayable for someone or other...

They're still better than any other class tier-for-tier; bear in mind that there is quite a lot of technique involved in tanking effectively - it's not a case of just sitting there and getting pounded. If you aren't tanking at least a bit in your BB, you simply aren't doing your job properly. Yes, you'll see lots of BBs of all tiers humping the borders and/or sniping from extreme range; generally though, such people will be outsmarted by their own underpants and will have a WR that reflects that. Thus illustrating the point about technique; any class with a citadel (so, effectively BBs and cruisers) needs to pretty much always be mindful of avoiding giving broadside to people, and if they have to, it's about choosing the least bad option (this is why better players make the effort to try and arrange cross-fire, where possible). Doing this right depends on good situational awareness, which means never losing sight of your mini-map (make sure you have 'last known position' enabled); this stuff takes practice though and being rusty is a likely consequence of returning from a layoff. On a related note, crafty torp use can sometimes force a target to turn in a way that exposes their broadside to the opposition; beware of this when dodging incoming fish. Sometimes, the scattergun effect of BBs can work in their favour; this means you will sometimes take absurd hits in a DD. You can mitigate things though, a lot: DDs are very nimble - keep an eye on the BBs and where their shells are; your aim is to try and be elsewhere when they arrive (obviously). Don't drive in straight lines at a constant speed; alter both to throw off long range fire (course, especially, in my view); change direction hard the moment a BB fires at you from range (by the time the shells turn up, you'll be elsewhere); if you're running away, it's sometimes possible to wiggle between the incoming shells; try and assess how the BB adjusts fire to hit you when you dodge and don't dodge the same way in sequence - be unpredictable. Never lose track of where islands are; jinking behind one can often ruin a BB's shot at you. This stuff all takes practice though, and switching between zoom and unzoom display modes (unzoomed makes tracking incoming fire a lot easier). It's 'just' a practice thing - give it time.

The most common place to use Isoroku is in IJN BBs (I think that's where mine is, although I'm only at T8 - BBs aren't really my thing), mainly because of the upgrade to the EM skill; if you use your BB properly and do some tanking, the PM upgrade should be useful too. If you feel the urge, I suppose you could make use of him in a DD, although you'd probably be wasting the EM (unless you fancy an eccentric gunboat build on Shima); First Blood is quite common in DDs, especially torp-heavy ones, and if you're good (I'm not), the heal activated by Kraken would probably come in handy. Basically though, he's a Yamato captain in waiting.... As to the actual question about which IJN lines are good (a sub-par DD main's perspective): BBs: less dull than some, due to generally being a bit faster and with guns that seem to somewhat go a little bit less distant to where you aimed them. Plus, you get Yamato at the end, which is an honest-to-goodness naval icon. Armour flaky at some tiers though. Cruisers: some of my favourites in the game, mainly because they're a nice mixture of decent guns, worthwhile torps, and the armour isn't entirely worthless - some of the time. CVs: they're CVs; torps are a strong point, but you really need a CV meister for a sensible viewpoint on these. Torp DDs: used to be really rather splendid (pre-reework), even after the nerfs that made their torps visible from neighbouring star systems. Still quite worthwhile, but you're probably all kinds of boned if an opposing CV takes an interest in you, if only because you rely heavily on stealth. Dakka DDs: eccentrically, have one of the best torp boats (tier-for-tier) in the game at T7; T8+ are pretty much the embodiment of DD dakka and are almost perfect for making people who get upset by HE spam cry (I believe it's also the cheapest line to research, which may be relevant if you have any truck with the RB thing). Suffer less from the attentions of average CV drivers than most DDs. If you're researching a line mainly to use Isoroku, I would probably go BB though....

<wanders by out of academic interest> I'll be scarred for life. <starts rocking in the foetal position>

Slightly eccentric results: Rank 1 in rather fewer battles than last time, apparently, but with a noticeably lower WR...! Done with the following ships:

What @Hanse77SWE said. Something to bear in mind, even when you're a bit rusty: many folk on chat (and sometimes the more vocal ones) are either blithering idiots, or weren't paying enough attention to your bit of the map, amongst other things. This means that a lot of the 'advice' you'll get in game is, erm, not exactly helpful and/or correct, so take such input with a large bucket of salt (unless you have reason to suspect the player in question knows of what they speak). I'm a DD main, so no good with BBs, but I have heard it suggested that the 'default' distance to be from the enemy is usually approximately your surface detection distance (keep an eye on this on your mini-map); the idea is that you can easily go dark when you need to (to skulk off and heal, or reposition), whilst still being close enough to hit reasonably frequently - recall that no BB is full-on accurate, by design - and draw at least some fire (a key role for BBs is to tank damage for their weaker team-mates, especially cruisers). If you're actually after a true 'sniper' (such as you might find in WOT, say) BBs aren't really it (some are more accurate than others though) - given that they're flinging shells around that are about the size of a Volkswagen, some inaccuracy is needed to avoid them being laughably OP. If you want something which has shells that tend to go where you aimed them a bit more frequently, the Russian cruisers might be worth a look (their 'railguns' are notorious). If your gunnery is rusty in general, I might suggest taking something with lots of dakka that you enjoy into either Coop or Ops for a bit of gunnery practice (lots of dakka, as the faster reload allows faster assessment of your fire, and corrections)...

Yesterday, if you were in the game where I took mine out (not to mention the disastrous Halland game I just had a moment ago) - since she got the heal, she's a good pick if there are CVs about.

Leaving aside the fact that you're still hilariously complaining about the exact same thing DDs have had to deal with for the past year or so, and have had nothing done for them, besides being offered the immortal advice to 'just dodge'. I suspect you are showing symptoms of having to deal with not having *everything* your own way, with regard to CVs - possibly for the first time - and you now have to rely on your team a bit. I've been playing a lot of Halland games in Ranked recently, and even against CVs, more than one on a side is not some massive advantage, unless the opposition is asleep; we get no smoke, we're easy to kill with surface fire, and we lack the massive alpha of a more conventional torp boat or hybrid - the CV just needs to make a nuisance of itself elsewhere, until the rest of the team has dealt with the Halland; this is a team game, after all. Much as I would love to be able to reduce CVs' effectiveness by half - as you suggest - it simply isn't possible, unless the CV is a klutz. Incidentally, I seem to have almost the same effect on CVs with my Groz (essentially the same captain build), and no-one seems to be complaining about them...?

If you'll forgive a complete lack of tact: How is this any different to the sort of situation any DD with poor AA (i.e. the majority) faces when facing CVs?

For the most part, I'm actually quite enjoying this season, with a couple of enormous caveats: I don't think anyone in 'my' clan would disagree when I say we aren't very good overall (we have a few good players, but most of us are average at best); this means we basically never face good CV players, so we rarely see our games entirely ruined by CVs. Another corollary of being in lower leagues is that often our opposition don't have a CV available to them, so we don't get hit by planes every battle. I've been playing Halland (BFT captain), so I'm as CV-resistant as a DD main can be; shredding entire wings of less-than-competent CV's planes is hilarious. I'm a bad person. All the radar that's been around matters a lot less if you're driving something that's (allegedly) balanced around not having smoke. As a DD main, I essentially have two viable DD choices - Halland and Groz; this isn't great for variety. For completeness, we've been playing the BB option, as we haven't had anyone with a T10 CV available.

Google translate (this is the English language forum, if you didn't realise) gives me "I made an account to play with my friends in World of Warships, but it turns out they are on a different server. Is there any way I can play with them?" For each major server (NA, CIS, EU etc.) you need a separate account on that server; each account will be an entirely separate entity though, so you can't transfer ships, say, between them...

Excellent form @Jethro_Grey - many thanks!

As others have said, it's difficult to get into specifics without more information; that said, some pointers (beyond what helpful folk have already said): As was the case when you previously played, the wiki is a good source of information (https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships); the three 'surface combat' sections should be of most help regarding your specific enquiry. The key thing (with guns) to get the hang of is which bits of the ships to shoot, and with which ammo - others have already outlined the essentials. I would also suggest joining a clan, and ideally one with people who are happy to critique what you're doing (via voice comms, ideally). It'll also get you some decent economic bonuses too. Keep asking questions though, and keep them as specific as possible - there are usually plenty of helpful folk around who're happy to help.

Knocking off three DDs should make a positive difference, but it would unlikely to be of the level to warrant all caps, especially when the surviving DD is a Gadjah, and said killed DDs are bottom/mid tier for the team. Although I can only guess, it rather looks like the Scharn and NOLA knew their business, so not killing them may explain a lot of why your team lost; also, bear in mind that there are many players about at the moment who are nowhere near your level of experience (you have 9K and change battles), especially pottering about in T5-6. As frustrating as this sort of battle is, they just sometimes happen; all you can do is maximise your own rewards, try not to have an aneurysm, and move onto the next battle...

The 'very good team' bit might partly explain poor returns: to get xp/silver, you need to do plenty of damage, and when you're in a good team there is often less to go around - the better players will blow up the targets before you get a chance to. This effect should be magnified if you take an Ikea into Ops: they're all about doing DoT (and blowing up planes) and you often don't get a chance to do that, due to targets getting destroyed in short order if your team is semi-competent. I've played the Ikeas quite a bit recently (Halland has been working fairly well for me in Ranked, and I played T5 and up enough to get the permaflages during early access) and they don't seem to be noticeably adrift from typical DDs for rewards - provided you stay alive long enough to stack up the DoT effects...

Just checked my campaigns: both of Halsey and Isoruku show as 15 pointers...

This might be of interest (although it's a bit dated now): Edit: completely ignore the captain skills bit at the end - it's for an older iteration of the game (ditto the 'cross dropping' thing).

From my perspective, the two aims aren't necessarily 100% complimentary; also, I'm a DD main, so I'm biased: For DDs, it's possible to earn a lot of silver with Asashio (that's why it's - or was - my most played ship), but you do need to face - and hit repeatedly - plenty of BBs. Your torps can also hit CVs, but you're less likely to be in a position to hit them. She's perhaps not the best trainer though, as - IMO - the optimum captain skills don't overlap 100% with the regular silver line (Asashio works well with TA, many of the silver ones not so much, especially with plenty of 12 km radar about). Also, bear in mind CVs - your AA is pretty risible, and your stealth is key to doing well with this ship. As others say though, do get Harekaze if she ever becomes available again; she's probably the best higher tier IJN premium DD. Atago (and variations thereon) is one of the few cruisers that I actually like; good torps (with nice arcs that broadcast your imminent firing a lot less than the silver ones tend to), decent guns, and you get a heal - unusual for T8. She even looks pretty too! Excellent captain trainer (maybe less so for the T8 silver - if you take the smaller guns + IFHE) too. How good an earner she'll be is entirely dependent on your ability to do damage, of course, especially to things - like DDs - with smaller hp pools. For CVs you have a mighty choice of <pauses to count, and double check> one. Kaga is nice in that she's good and historical, but she is a CV i.e. unless you are a CV-god, you'll struggle to do enough damage to reach the substantial earnings you can get from other classes. BBs - of course - smell and their mothers dress them funny; I only really heavily use the class in Ops and Coop myself. That said, Kii *might* be worth a look if you're after a serious earner - she has the option of (expensive) Kobayashi cammo, which makes her earning potential verge on indecent. The torps can be a giggle, but trying too hard to make use of them is a good way to get sunk in short order. Ashitaka is good for Narai (although I haven't played that Op since the earnings nerf), and also has a Kobayashi cammo for even more betterer earning potential. The best premium BB, as others also say, is Musashi though, which is now only sold as bait to get people to buy Xmas boxes. My feeling is that a lot of the IJN premiums that you can get easily have a slight tendency towards being a bit 'meh' (there is a theory that certain insecure games designers haven't forgiven the Japanese for making Russia look silly in 1905 and so object to too many truly excellent IJN premiums), but there are at least a few that are worthwhile. BTW if you ever get a chance, pick up the T5 Kami/Fujin - they are obscenely good fun, and arguably OP in the right hands; that said, anyone who plays them regularly is almost certainly going to hell!

My usual approach is to assume the worst, until I get solid evidence to the contrary (e.g. the silly bugger Shima I met yesterday, I think, in my Halland, who I was outspotting - when I got to visual range I saw no cammo!); in randoms, it's also not a bad bet that the consumable build ill be whatever the defaults are...

If I'm not grinding anything in particular, I usually focus on things with a heal, and things that can step in to other 'roles' as I usually play entirely random, and you can usually rely on someone to potate in spectacular fashion and their job will need doing. Premiums are good for the extra earnings, especially since the returns got nerfed. Boise (NdJ is the same ship, but you're less likely to have a decent captain for her): excellent heal, and high volume of fire; lacks torps, of course, but the guns make you excellent for scragging anything that isn't heavily armoured. I haven't tried her since the IFHE changes though. Scharn: it's almost as if Narai was built for this ship; high (for a BB) volumes of fire and anything you can't penetrate will probably be within torp range fairly soon; you're also fast and (almost) nimble enough to step into the cruiser role when your team-mates embrace the tuber. Ashitaka (with Kobayashi cammo): since the buffs it got a while ago, this is a pretty decent BB for Narai; if you have the cammo, it makes your earnings substantially better (if you lack the cammo, there are better choices). Nelson: great heal, and having the ludicrous HE means you're effective against any target in the Op; all the guns firing (sort of) forwards is nice, but you need to carefully avoid getting your citadel hit - it's the size of a modest continent. Premium Myoko clones: although these lack a heal, they're still pretty decent, if played with care; if you husband your hp, you can have a significant impact, and do it with a premium economy. As with the T6 Ops, I don't usually take DDs, due to the lack of heal, but I think I may try the new T7 Ikea when I have a minute and see if that works okay...

You're absolutely right; the main reason I view the inevitable RU cruiser plague with mild trepidation (although my current guess is that I'll do no worse than I usually do, but I could be wrong) is that it won't be only those ships. Were I a cruiser driver, I might think in terms of using the short duration radar to find the DDs in the first place, and then the longer duration radars on other ships to nail them down once you know if your radar is being baited etc. Of course, that requires people to cooperate, so it probably won't be an issue in normal randoms, but a competent division might be able to do some serious damage that way...? Plus, as you say, it still might be worth taking hydro instead anyway.