Verblonde

The spectacularly unhelpful answer is 'it depends'; things will vary a lot with individual games, and how they unfold, and what the opposition is. This is why more established players keep going on about experience, as there isn't much substitute for simply playing (and messing up in many and varied ways), and even that doesn't automatically result in being a good player - my WR is dreadful for example! If we're talking about not getting zapped by DDs, though, some examples may help with building up a decision-making tree; if we're *only* concerned with DDs: 'Turbo YOLO' French DDs are stupidly fast (50 kts+); if you assume you are safe outside 8 km, you are vulnerable to being rushed and torped, as they can close the distance alarmingly fast when they want to. No smoke though, so they have to pick their spots to break stealth (and they aren't very sneaky to start with). Cossack and Lightning are both fairly sneaky (5.5 km from memory), but have longer ranged torps (10 km) than the French; they are however much slower, especially Lightning which doesn't get speed boost, and Cossack gets only a half load of torps. British DDs also need to use their guns sometimes to get their damage totals up, which obviously blows their stealth. As a BB, you will be hard to torp outside 10 km, even allowing for some closing of the distance. Asashio is a specialised BB (and CV) hunter; if the captain has TA, he can hit you from 16 km away (20 km if not); she's also sneaky - the best-in-class 5.4 km that all the Kagero 'sisters' get. You probably don't want to be within 10 km of an Asashio unless you're actively dodging. Also gets TRB without having to give up smoke - can dish out very large 'walls of skill' with that. Beware anything else that can run TRB; this mainly means some IJN torp boats, although they *usually* (not always) have to give up smoke to get it, plus the T7+ 'dakka' DDs (no smoke loss T8+, but half the torp launchers). This doesn't impact 'safe' distances, but can dramtically increase how often you need to be taking care/evading. Many Russians, and lower tier US DDs have short range torps, so you're safe outside - say - 7 km +/-. A number of DDs have different torp options, for example Shima usually runs either 20 km or 12 km torps (there is a faster, but shorter ranged option, but only experts really make use of them), Gearing can take 16.5 km or 10.5 km options, and Loyang can either take 9.2 km slow torps, or sub-7 km faster ones. This means you have to observe the behaviour of the ship in question for a bit to determine which option they're running, and associated safe distances. The thing is, even if you know all this sort of stuff (and there is more than just the above examples), there still isn't a simple answer as DDs are rarely the only thing you're having to think about, and even if they are, you may well be facing more than one, with different characteristics. Also, don't forget that some cruisers (and even the odd BB) have torps, which can further complicate things. The BB meisters tend to advise a 'starter for ten' of being around your surface detection distance from the opposition; that way, it's easier to go dark when you need to. The trouble is that the opposition know this, and will be trying to get sneaky ships close enough to prevent you going dark (and maybe torp you if they're suitably equipped). Equally, your side will know this as well, and so your radar ships should be trying to light up any such sneaky buggers. Rather than a simple 'always be this far from the enemy' rule, I might suggest thinking in terms of comparative risk/reward i.e. what is trying to kill you, and how close is it (relative to its effective range), versus what you can do to the enemy by being in a given position (closer BB = more likely to burn/flood/explode, but more likely to do damage in return and tank for its team; reverse being true in both aspects). It's more than just distance though; the relative position of the enemy to you matters too, in terms of the risk they present e.g. BBs are hard to kill bow-on, often vulnerable from the flank, and vary a lot when attacking from the rear; so, a torp boat a long way to your rear is almost no threat (you can out-run his fish), is less of a threat direct front (you're kind of pre-dodged, and just need to slot between his fish), and more likely to get you from the flank. I try and visualise a load of overlapping circles of things like spotting distance, gun/torp ranges, radar range and so on; if you're within only one or two, you're probably okay (depending on detail), but lots of them may be a problem - you may find yourself in either situation at widely varying distances from the enemy. Sorry this is very wordy, but there isn't really a quick way of expanding on 'it depends'...!

Not as close as possible - that way lies over-extension a lot of the time - but rather close enough to zap cruisers (and tank some damage), whilst still being able to escape behind an island and/or go dark when the situation calls for it. There are more options available than 'border/backline camp' and 'go full manly and give the enemy a face full of heid'...

Why not HMS Spiffing too? Okay, not *strictly* according to historical naming convention, but it would be terribly British (I do feel that HMS Cucumber Sandwiches might be going too far though)...?

I'd suggest this approach is often overly cautious; also, bear in mind that the further back you are, the harder it is to hit stuff - too far back and your only likely targets are other BBs, which isn't very helpful, especially early game - if BBs can blap enemy cruisers early (especially radar ones), it gives their DDs a significant advantage, but you'll struggle to do that from too far away. Also, when the game is loading (or press tab when it's underway), have a look at the teams' make-up - this will tell you which ships each side has, and allow initial characterisation into categories such as 'priority target', 'threat', 'divisions' (*may* be more competent), and so on. If you're worried about DDs, look to see which ones your opponents have (and your side too, to see who counters who) e.g. Kagero is a very sneaky and has 10 km torps, so you can't be hit until you're within 10 km (closer if you know about WASD); Gearing can hit you out to 16.5 km, but isn't hugely sneaky (unless it's running the LU); most of the T7-8 US DDs have a 9.2 km range (and very slow torps); a lot of Russian DDs have much shorter ranged torps, but learn which ones don't (Groz can hit out to 10 km for example), and so on. Assume the worst, so a Shima *may* be able to reach 20 km (16 km with TA), but 12 km is more likely with better players, and so on. Incidentally, this is one reason to play all classes - it's a lot easier to remember this stuff if you've played the ships you're facing.

This. I`m a DD main, and I spend a lot of my time looking for idiots, as it were: whilst it`s desirable to remove the biggest threats you face - where possible - it`s helpful to knock over `easy` wins as well (even a clueless BB player can be an effective damage sponge for their team, for example, or manage to hit something eventually), as `removing guns from the game` quickly is a good way to start a steamroll, exactly as in WOT. As such, ships (especially those that spend a lot of time being sneaky) will be on the lookout for anyone doing something that signals `easy meat`; as others said, we`re looking for people that fix the first fire immediately, we`re looking for people that are sailing in a straight line at a constant speed (players that apply WASD hacks are much harder to torpedo), we`re looking for people that use daft ammo choices consistently, and so on. The other reason to avoid being seen fixing fires (flooding too, come to that) is that it tells watching opponents that your DCP is now on cooldown; so, after a suitable period of meditation (to let your immunity lapse), any kind of DoT will stand a good chance of doing maximum damage - yes, that damage may be healable, but it`ll still lower your HP enough that someone firing AP etc. may finish you off. Incidentally, if you`re wondering how DDs (say) know so much about what you`re up to (assuming someone has you spotted): Fires are easy - you have flames billowing out of whichever location is burning (fire also makes you more visible). Floods require a bit more thought (less if it was torps you fired yourself as you get the flooding ribbon), but speed is an indicator - a flood slows a ship down, so a drop in speed, followed by a sudden increase *can* indicate a fixed flood (some players will `spoof` this though - WASD hacks). WASD hacks can often be detected visually (i.e. Mk1 Eyeball), but torp aim indicators provide very helpful information in this regard: torp DDs will spend much of their time with torps enabled (even when they aren`t loaded) - one reason is the PT skill; if a potential target has that, they know how many ships` main guns are aiming at them, and if that number drops by one it may be that a DD has switched to torps (get ready to dodge); if the DD has torps selected to start with, then no such warning. Another key reason is the information it gives you about the target`s behaviour over time (speed changes etc.). Watching the mini-map: the ship you have targeted has a vector indication on the minimap; if you keep an eye on that, you can easily see which way the ship is pointing and if it`s changing course etc. RL (Radio Location, also known as RPF): four point captain skill, which provides the ship with a heading towards the nearest opponent, detected or not; unless you're being especially manly, this will most usually be of concern to DDs and cruisers, as they tend to be nearer the front (and often trying to be sneaky), but it can sometimes matter to BBs as well. So, be aware of how opponents are tracking your activities, and learn how to give them the wrong impression; also be aware that they`re trying to fool you similarly as well. The classic DD example is to target a BB with your guns (PT lights up), then switch to torps for a few seconds (don`t fire), then back to guns again; this may make the BB think that torps are incoming when they aren`t and how they react gives a lot of information (no evasive action: BB may be an idiot and/or doesn`t have PT; evasive action: BB is awake/has PT/may be a harder target etc.).

Nada so far (including the fifth - unpurchased - bundle). Still, I did get the T6 from a paid bundle (one of several)...

HE is (usually) just a mild annoyance to a BB, if you've taken the steps outlined by others; there is a reason most better BB players usually reach for AP if given the chance! If you burn a BB almost down to the waterline, he'll just bugger off behind an island (or go dark) and heal - all that damage will have been for naught. On the other hand, if you introduce some AP rounds to his citadel, that's a *lot* harder to come back from. The point of having both types of round in the game is that they're supposed to be a trade-off: HE does healable damage, but works from any angle, and can set fires. AP doesn't set fires, and often doesn't work against angled targets, but it's utterly lethal if you can get a solid pen, and especially a citadel.

It's worth emphasising: the 'point' of the game is not to get to T10 as quickly as possible. If you rush up the tiers, you'll be a liability to your team, and you'll have a lot less fun. Besides the lack of experience/skill-set, a crucial aspect is captains. You currently have just north of 500 battles; unless you've spent a lot of money (and possibly not even then) it is highly unlikely your captains are good enough for high tiers yet. So what? So, a large chunk of your opponents at higher tier will have noticeably more capable captains than you do, and most of them will be more experienced players to boot - this will usually not end well for you. Good captains matter a lot; for example, this discussion has already mentioned how much more flame-resistant a higher point captain can be; they can also make you harder to see, turn your guns onto target faster, reload consumables faster, and so on and so forth. My personal view is that for an average player (I'm sub-average FWIW), you want *at least* a ten point captain when you get into the +2 MM bracket (so you're in a T5 or higher), and ideally a lot more as you go higher. As a starting point for thought, here's my Fat Freddy captain (and Bismarck before); it is wildly sub-optimal, but may help illustrate the trade-offs etc.: I think of this build as 'semi-manly'; the idea is for the ship to work well at close range, assuming you make it to close range (see below), to be moderately fire-resistant, and - most important - to be fun. If you primarily want to win, don't use this build! It is missing CE (four points); this means I get spotted from the moon, which makes me vulnerable to long-range spam. I have FP - as discussed, helps a lot against fires - and AFT - to buff secondaries - and I would have had to give one up to get CE. I'm missing BoS, to get extra dakka on the secondaries (BFT) and SI (extra heal, mainly). You'll also note that I don't have PT, which is also arguably idiotic (in DDs/cruisers, this is always my first pick). Anyway, that's a 19 point captain, and I've still had to make a lot of compromises in the name of fun; I'm also at a disadvantage against someone who built their captain more sensibly (mainly because I put 7 points into manliness, over survivability). The point is that even a 10 point captain, say, will be at a disadvantage against my ludicrous build, so imagine what'll happen if you face someone who isn't an idiot... TL;DR stay at lower tiers until you have actively good captains, as you'll be at a significant disadvantage if you don't.

As is mentioned elsewhere, judicious use of premium consumables can allow you to survive for a sufficiently longer time that you earn the extra back through doing damage, assuming you understand the basics of how to BB. So, your problem becomes how to ensure a decent silver income; some pointers: Judicious use of premium consumables means pick your spots; personally, I run premium DCP on just about everything, almost regardless of mode - for the simple reason that it has the reduced cooldown. After that, the use you'll get from premium consumables varies a lot e.g. for Coop you probably don't need premium anything; Randoms and competitive will want a much heavier load-out of premium (but be mindful of what you'll be facing - anything without CVs won't need any premium AA kit, for example). Also, favour ships that need fewer consumables if you want to run premium versions (a BB with DCP and Heal will clearly cost less to equip than a cruiser with four or five of the buggers). Play ships and tiers where you can consistently do well (at time of writing, a little north of 500 battles isn't many; you'll probably do better at relatively lower tiers); 'better' essentially means win as much as possible, and do as much damage as possible. For the latter, be mindful that what you really get rewarded for is relative damage, not absolute i.e. if you do, say, 10K damage to something small like a DD/CL you'll get better rewards than if you do identical damage to something tubby like a BB. Don't die! Although a statement of the obvious, the longer you survive, the more scope you have to do damage; I note you play a lot of KM BBs - these tend to encourage manliness, which is fun and the Correct way to play (obviously), but is very easy to get yourself killed quickly doing it, so use caution if it means you survive longer to do more damage. Play Ops (perhaps not Newport): they're an easy way to rake in substantial amounts of silver, once you've learned what tends to happen and when (and what to do about it). Use premium ships if you can e.g. your Scharn is glorious for Narai, and Warspite will do the job for everything else - premium ships tend to earn more silver than their regular tree counterparts. Use earning booster flags, but pick your spots e.g. Coop is generally a waste, but an Op that you have dialled in is likely to reap good returns. The basic economic flags turn up very regularly (you can take the signals containers if you're horribly short, but I still think 'more resources' is better in the long run, for the coal). 'Dragon' flags (some of which boost silver earnings, others xp) are much rarer, so *really* pick your spots with them. Play in a division: whilst not directly impacting your earnings, you're more likely to do well if at least one other player on your side is looking out for you! Focus on maximising your silver income (and minimising your expenditure), and you'll be able to easily afford all the good stuff that everyone else has already mentioned that requires silver. BTW as others have said, there are several captain skills that help dramatically as well (FP is disproportionately good, as it has a much greater impact than the 25% reduction in fire locations would suggest - it combines the middle two locations into one, and most players shoot centre mass, so the bulk of hits you take can only start one fire a lot of the time. Obviously a better player will know this, and 'walk' their HE rounds along the length of your ship, but such players are comparatively rare); to get good captains, follow similar basic principles as you would for maximising silver earnings - only without having to worry about expenditure - and the captain xp will build up as well.

FWIW I got the T6 out of a doubloon package (yes, I'm an idiot); besides looking rather pretty, and being actually real etc., I think I may have a new favourite for Ops - although it's a little early to be definitive - solid enough (+ healing potion) to not get entirely vapourised the first time I come over all blonde, worthwhile guns (albeit short ranged, but who cares against bots), and hydro to avoid stupidity against torps. An actual competent player will have different priorities, but that's a muppet's perspective.

It's a little early for Absinthe, surely? Being sensible, I would love to get my paws on the ARP ships - mainly because I have a nasty case of collectoritis, rather than anything else (I hadn't been persuaded to play yet when they were released originally)....

<pauses to look, and reach for Google translate> Bwahahahaha!

Whilst I don't disagree with the general complaint that higher tier play is often painfully passive, it's worth recalling that a few DDs need to spam from smoke to get sensible damage numbers - ideally not from *too* far back - the obvious example being the IJN dakka DDs. Such behaviour may just be incompetence too, of course; if you spend too much time parked in smoke, you're asking to be radared and/or torpedoed.

You need a separate install of the client for each region you want to use an account from; it's fairly easy to organise via the Game Centre, but I agree that not being able to run several regions from one install is irritating. Presumably, there are some subtle differences between, say, the NA and EU versions of the game (and we all know about China - ? - with the continued survival of the RTS CVs).

Doh! Having a blonde moment there - thanks for pointing that out!

I do occasionally wonder if whoever is DD 'champion' at WG didn't get caught in bed with someone important's daughter/wife et al - first we got the reework to stomp all over our DDs, and now (possibly) a torp nerf, at least when trying to scrag BBs... Not going to get too excitable yet though, at least until we see what actually goes live...

That's interesting, although a lot of useful coal upgrades sit in slot 3...

Coincidentally, I picked up Thunderer this morning, but only one run-out in Coop so far (almost got sunk due to unsuitably manly play) - I suspect mine will mainly stay in Coop, as more 'sniper' playstyles don't really appeal to me most of the time...

We now know what the premium boosters for the PR build will cost: https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/general-news/new-year-2020-event/ At the prices I'm seeing, that's of the order of 69 UKP, with a few doubloons left over (14.5K + 10K bundles). What isn't clear yet is if they're enough on their own to get the ship, if activated early enough... (I might be missing something, of course)

I must say I find myself rather looking forward to them, although I'm spectacularly bad in cruisers. I rather like the torp/gun combination of the IJN, and this looks vaguely similar, plus you get the single fire torps (albeit with floaty gun arcs, but I play US DDs quite a bit, so am vaguely used to that). If I remember correctly, you get a healing potion from T8 too, which *might* help with the horrible survival quotient that T8 cruisers often have (due to regularly meeting T10). Plus, they're RN - as a Brit, it would be rude not to...

I get that, but I imagine few people get up at four in the morning to play WOWS (some shift workers excepted); for the bulk of the player base, two/three in the morning is just the (late) end of the day before. So, WG should publish that the event ends - say - at close of play Sunday, even though it technically ends horribly early on Monday. If you're going to confuse people, it's always better to confuse people in a way that has a lower risk of annoying them.

I rather feel that this whole 'end dates' thing is a cast-iron example of blithering idiocy from WG (sorry, but that's as polite as I can manage): we forum folk know perfectly well that in terms of playing days, you generally (always?) knock a day off whatever WG tell us for end dates, but we are a minority. How dense do you have to be to risk annoying a significant chunk of your customers every time you have a time-limited event?! The fix is easy: say something like 'event ends at close of play after x-date'. For example, in the current system, something that ended last night would have had an end date published of the 13th, as - technically - it did end on the 13th; far better to say 'event ends at close of play after the 12th' as that would make it much clearer that the 12th was the last playing day. (free advice there WG to avoid pi$$ing off your whales customers - no thanks necessary)

I too did think about getting another year of premium time, but also elected not to; I currently have 271 days of premium, plus will probably win a few more in the next year, so I'm not about to run out soon. On the whole, I'm pretty happy with the game as it stands (yes, even with the reework); however, the whole business with the PR is fresh in my mind, and I don't trust WG to not bugger up the game with the addition of submarines. As a result, I think it unwise to 'commit' to WOWS for much longer than my existing premium time, at least until I see if the game will continue to be as fun as it is now...

As has been observed elsewhere, much of the whole Xmas thing has been really good (snowflakes, Gorizia, free crates and other stuff, the visuals of the dockyard etc.); taken in isolation, this should have made the event a heroic success for WG, with much rejoicing all round. The only reason that there has been such bad feeling about the Xmas events - basically - was the difference between the marketing blurb that preceded it and the reality of the PR grind, made even worse by the tone-deaf response of a number of WG employees (although - for clarity - the ones who tend to frequent this forum didn't drop any clangers that I saw). In summary, I've enjoyed this Xmas event, and got some useful stuff out of it; a lot of that is due to my having realised the impossibility/idiocy of the PR grind in its entirety and not spent any money on it though...

I'm not sure it is entirely - I have the dubious pleasure of being able to play consistently seven days a week (if I want), and my - highly subjective - impression is that the tendency of teams to have a higher proportion of idiots goes up noticeably as you transition to the weekend (on Friday evening, EU time). That's not to say you never get good teams at the weekend and/or hopeless ones in the week...