Verblonde

True, but you might get ones of these ships in a container or something - it's nice to have aesthetic options if/when that happens. A bit weak, I know...

At time of writing, 72.93% of my Random battles are in DDs - is that a sufficiency? (My original post mainly was thinking in terms of for use in Ops)

I got my first one yesterday, with fairly normal playing - I would actually say that WG largely managed not to mess this one up. I missed the original ARP thing, as it was just before I started playing, so I'm pretty happy about the new edition.

Scroll zoom (I believe) can't be entirely deactivated (this is a good thing though, as subtle tweaks to zoom can sometimes be useful). For the 'instant' zoom/unzoom ('Artillery Camera), the default key is Shift; to map to something different, click on the button to the right of that marked 'Shift' (blank by default) and then press/click whatever you want the new key to be. For example, I have my secondary key for AA sector reinforcement mapped to a spare button on my mouse. BTW, unless I absolutely have to change the main button binding, I usually leave it alone, so I can see what the default is, which occasionally comes in handy...

I may be wrong, but isn't it usually the 'instant' zoom in/out that gets reassigned to a more convenient key? The aim is usually to eliminate the 'scroll zoom' from one's gameplay, as it slows down the transition, which can be detrimental to one's effectiveness.

I'm afraid this is somewhat inaccurate, if you pick a premium ship sensibly. Boise, say, will be just as effective as Helena will be with the same captain, in terms of game-play, and there are plenty of other examples where the premium gels very well with the silver line captains (KM BBs, and US DDs, to name just two). Clearly, a silver ship with a 19-pointer will be more effective than an equivalent premium with a 3-pointer, but that's a statement of the bleedin' obvious. Premium ships have several possible uses (which can overlap): Train captains and/or grind elite xp - better than equivalent premium ship due to boosted xp earning (plus, don't forget taking advantage of more than one daily win bonus if you play the captain in both the premium and the silver ship they're assigned to). Win games and/or earn silver - for this you want the best captain available, but that can quite easily be one of your silver captains e.g. my best Sims captain is my 19-pointer from Gearing, and my best Tirpitz captain is the one from Fat Freddy. You're still either earning captain xp or elite xp. To only be concerned with one of those sets of objectives is to rather waste a premium in some respects. MA is a classic example: to get the most out of her, you really do want a specialised captain, but unless that captain is a 19-pointer, your gameplay is less efficient than it could be (in terms of progress, for which good captains are very important) - recall that many players don't have many/any 19 point captains, after all. If you want to maximise WR and still train captains, you need a 19-point captain (preferably several), and - ideally - more than one ship to play him in, to maximise use of daily win bonuses. Many people can't do that, so the most effective second best (to get 19-pointers, or at least 'good enough' captains) is to use a mix of silver ships and premiums, for which premiums are - no surprise - a key part. Premium ships are (mostly) excellent trainers, in fact, compared to their silver equivalents for a given captain, simply because they earn xp faster (a few high end cammos excepted). (BTW in case anyone thinks I'm being paid by WG to shill for premiums - I'm not - you can do all this with freebies e.g. coal, the current ARP things etc. etc.)

+1 for Boise; besides being a good trainer, and a decent ship in her own right (the heal is very nice), she's excellent in Narai.

FWIW I went with the biggest HE rounds I could find, fired at the squishiest available targets, and all in Coop. Shooting enough DDs with almost anything will probably get it done as well...

Despite my original question, I'm not sure it would be. That said, as mentioned earlier, you can only play one CV at once; also, the massive issue seems to be with T4 CVs and seal-clubbing (which isn't to say that's by any means the only issue), rather than at T6. I'm personally biased though, as I quite like Ops in CVs, but rarely (extremely rarely) play them against real people. For me, an economically improved cammo for the existing T6 CVs would be just as good. I'm just quietly hoping for extra options for Ops, and that's probably a rather niche requirement.

This can be a good approach in some cases; the KM BBs spring to mind - they're glorious when focused on secondaries, but a more prosaic tank build is usually felt to be optimal, if your primary aim is to win.

Not entirely - it can often be a captain that doesn't get used for anything else. The captain will still retain whatever silver ship specialisation they had most recently though. In my case, my MA captain (that also gets used in Georgia) technically 'belongs' to Gearing; I just reset his skill points during a previous reset when a similarly skilled Ovenchicken became available for Gearing, and rebuilt him for MA. You can reassign a captain to a premium, but it's a waste of resources...

I believe so, but they can also meet T8s. This is my main problem with the new CVs - the alternating tiers thing makes them a bugger to balance (quite a few on here maintain it's impossible). FWIW I tend to think in terms of anything in the +1 MM bracket as being low tier; T5 or 6 to T7 as mid tier, and everything above that as high. Of course, that's entirely subjective, and you could just as easily make a case to the contrary...

FWIW I quite like the fact that you don't know which exit is going to pop up; it helps delay the Op getting stale - if it were exactly the same sequence, it might get dull sooner. That said, Narai doesn't vary much (at all?), and I still enjoy playing that, albeit in different ships...

T6 isn't really low tier, surely? Mid-tier, I would think. Incidentally, I still think there should be the hardest of hard caps in randoms on CVs at all levels (especially the T4s) - queue times be damned... Ooo, that sounds promising - another 'secondaries' CV would be a giggle...

Generally, the sensible approach is to do something along the following lines: Have each commander assigned to a specific silver ship; play it as frequently as you wish - games will obviously contribute xp to that silver ship and to the captain in the usual way (so, developing both captain and ship at the same time). If you have one or more premiums available, play that captain in them as well to develop the captain alone, but at a faster rate than if you just played him in only the silver ship. If you are taking your silver ship captain up the tiers with you, and don't want to use doubloons, use either the free or silver transfer option to move ships, and then play the captain only in a premium until he is fully trained for the new ship (as mentioned above, part-trained captains don't work 100% in silver ships). Besides being able to play a wider range of ships, this approach has the merit of allowing you to take advantage of more than one daily win bonus per captain. This can be very valuable, especially when (as now) there is an increased daily win bonus in place. When you get your first 19 point captain, this approach starts to generate elite xp, which can then be used on any other captain that is still under development. It also helps if the premium ship in question works well with the same captain build as your silver ship. Some examples: Tirpitz and Scharn both work very well with silver KM captains from around T7 and up; you could in theory bag five+ daily win bonuses if (like me) you lack discipline and have all the main KM premium options, or even seven if you fell for the Black Friday thing...! T7+ US silver DD captains work perfectly on almost all the US premium DDs, so you can pull a similar stunt there, and there are many other similar cases across the various nations/classes, to a greater or lesser extent. Cossack is an excellent premium, but you have to be careful with higher tier silver captains - the T9-10 silver ships are generally felt to need IFHE, which Cossack doesn't. Personally, I think it's 'close enough', but you ideally want - say - a Lightning captain on Cossack for maximum effectiveness. Then you get things like MA: for maximum fun (albeit not maximum effectiveness) you want a captain that's almost nothing like the regular silver line, basically due to the secondaries. In this case, most people tend to go for a specialised captain, but it does illustrate why MA isn't the most sensible 'first premium' for most players.

I suppose WG could implement chaff in some form or other - perhaps working like smoke, only affecting radar alone? Goodness knows how hard it would be to code though.

FWIW the latest ST notes include some (very modest) buffs to *some* of the worst affected torps (not Black); it's mostly T8+ PA ships.

From Facebook: PT, balance changes. We continue to work on improving the balance in our game. The following balance changes will be made in Update 0.9.1: Japanese aircraft carrier Hakuryu. Tier X: - Fixed an error with the accuracy of the stock Attack Aircraft, which did not match the accuracy of the researchable Attack Aircraft. The accuracy of the stock fighters was lowered to the levels of the researchable ones; - Attack aircraft damage reduced from 3,450 to 3,350. British cruiser Neptune, Tier IX: - Main battery reload time reduced from 5 to 4.8 s. American destroyer Gearing, Tier X: - Stock torpedo tube reload time reduced from 106 to 103 s; - Researchable torpedo tube reload time reduced from 122 to 118 s. Soviet ships: Battleship Sinop, Tier VII: - Sigma parameter reduced from 1.6 to 1.55. Battleship Kremlin, Tier X: - Sigma parameter reduced from 1.9 to 1.85. Pan-Asian ships: Destroyer Yueyang, Tier X: - Torpedo speed increased from 68 to 69 knots; - Torpedo tube reload time reduced from 146 to 142 s. Destroyer Chung Mu, Tier IX: - Stock torpedo speed increased from 55 to 56 knots; - Stock torpedo tube reload time reduced from 122 to 119 s; - Researchable torpedoes speed increased from 66 to 67 knots; - Researchable torpedo tube reload time reduced from 122 to 119 s. Destroyer Hsienyang, Tier VIII: - Researchable torpedo speed increased from 55 to 56 knots; - Researchable torpedo tube reload time reduced from 122 to 119 s. Cruiser Irian, Tier VIII: - Torpedo speed increased from 68 to 69 knots; - Torpedo tube reload time reduced from 136 to 133 s. Cruiser Wukong, Tier VIII: - Torpedo speed increased from 63 to 64 knots; - Torpedo tube reload time reduced from 110 to 107 s. Destroyer Siliwangi, Tier VIII: - Torpedo speed increased from 61 to 62 knots; - Torpedo tube reload time reduced from 131 to 128 s. Aircraft: - Spotting range of aircraft carriers' squadrons, Patrol Fighters, Catapult Fighters, and Spotting Aircraft decreased from 20 to 19 km (This characteristic determines at what distance the aircraft is capable of spotting an enemy). Please note that the information in the Development Blog is preliminary and subject to change.

As others have alluded to, don't get too hung up on WR early on; to expand a bit, the fewer games you have under your belt, the easier it is to get large swings (in either direction) - streaks happen, and you really need to get a big data set before you can really tell very much. The down side of that is obvious: with a big data set, it's harder to shift your WR, if you worry about that sort of thing. Quite a few people use this site to keep track of this stuff (and more besides): https://wows-numbers.com/ Whilst I personally don't worry about WR excessively (I'll probably always be rubbish), I do find it useful to keep at least half an eye on some of the other metrics, as they can inform what's going on with your WR e.g. if your survival rate is very low then you're missing chances to damage/sink the opposition, which in turn increases the chances of a loss, and so on. You can also see how your performance varies across ships and classes, which can also be helpful.

I still find it very helpful to know how many people 'everyone' is though; after a lot of games with PM instead, I agree with those that think that information is more important than an increase in module survivability. There is a big difference between 'everyone' = 2, say, and 'everyone' = 5... That said, I try and take both, if I have a point spare, because I still think that PM is very useful as well.

+1 for keeping friendly fire - dumbing the game even further down contributes to increased levels of boredom. Personally, I like a game that requires me to at least vaguely engage brain...

Many thanks - that hadn't occurred to me!

I'm not seeing a question: if you want help, suggest actually asking a question, preferably not of the "I didn't learn the game properly yet, but I still demand the game be changed for me!" variety. This forum is very good at helping newbies (sub-400 battles is a newbie), but only when they ask sensible questions.

Bought 20 premiums (bundle), and got all three ships (plus special cammo for Silly) plus a few hundred doubloons and a couple of weeks of premium (plus the usual cammo and xp things). I'm pretty confident that I was lucky though...

It's 'Journey to the West' rather than referencing any particular year...