Verblonde

WG do have models etc. for about the same number of US and IJN CVs again - they used to be in the game as the odd-tier CVs, before the reework. Allegedly, they'll be brought back at some point, possibly with new/alternative/support mechanics; I wouldn't hold your breath though - reaction to the current CVs has been 'mixed', to put it mildly, and WG are probably too busy messing around with submarines to have extra CVs very high on their 'to do' list.

The xp needed to go up the CV trees isn't as insane as it looks at first glance - as others have said, it's because you're jumping tiers due to the lack of odd-tiered carriers. Some tips that may help somewhat: Don't worry about rushing up the tiers; try and enjoy the ships on the way. The 'point' of the game is not to get to T10 as quickly as possible. Take advantage of the fact that your T4s often face things with appalling AA; with the T4 CVs the expression "sometimes you're the bug; sometimes you're the windscreen" applies - when you face T5 AA, life might be troublesome, when you face less alarming AA make hay. Play things other than CVs; this will provide a couple of pluses - firstly, I find the non-CV economy more favourable (you'll earn the silver to buy the next CV faster etc.), and secondly, if you know what the other classes are trying to do to evade you/counter attack, you're more likely to get better results (and so, better rewards - both xp and silver). Whilst the best results are to be found in Randoms (in terms of earnings), when you get to T6 most of the Ops can be a worthwhile way to develop your CV; Narai is no good (obviously - T7), and Newport can be troublesome, but the rest in circulation at the moment are worthwhile (and provide good practice for aiming etc. against a less alarming enemy than Randoms). Try and avoid playing stock ships, if you can - Coop/Ops can be a good way to grind the modules, if you don't have free xp to Hand. As with all classes, CVs get the most rewards for damage; proportionate damage is what you're really after though - 10K hp knocked off something small like a DD will reward you more than the same damage knocked off a fatty. So, try and blow up DDs if you can, for maximum rewards. One of the most powerful things that CVs do is spot stuff (stealthy things especially); the problem is that spotting doesn't get rewarded much, so you may be tempted to always go for damage - the reason to strike more of a balance is that rewards are noticeably better on a win, and spotting will help you win. Learn the basics of the ships in your tier spread, at least in terms of which have good/bad AA; you'll maximise your rewards if you don't get your planes shredded due to attacking things with heavier AA (at least until your side have worked them over with HE a bit). The crucial thing though is to take the time to learn as much as you can; read the wiki; watch lots of YouTube tutorials, and keep asking for advice on here.

Just ran into @Profilus whilst out making a fool of myself in my Z-52; on the up-side, the usual meet-a-forumite-and-be-embarassingly-dead-in-thirty-seconds curse didn't strike me this time...

I'm afraid you may have to contact WG directly - this is the PC forum, and most of us don't use the console version, alas.

Besides what others have said - in theory - the special ships can be nerfed, whereas full premiums can't (at the moment anyway - see the conniptions over the proposed changes to GC). I imagine that the reaction would be, erm, a trifle negative if WG did nerf the specials (given the effort needed to get them via Coal etc.), but they don't have even the notional protection that premiums do.

Basically, if you play Ranked enough, besides going insane, you will end up with a reasonable idea of how good a player is overall (at least in the specific format of Ranked), with a side serving of persistence. I feel that the problem with Ranked is a mixture of it not being sure what it really wants to be, and many players having unrealistic expectations and/or not taking it seriously enough. The reason that it's more frustrating than Randoms is that in the latter you don't really need to string a chain of victories together. There are several conflicting pressures on Ranked: WG always want lots of people to play these modes, to keep the queue times manageable, and all that kind of thing; so, we get rewards, and the irreversible ranks, to keep people playing. You're always in a team picked randomly, and these teams are smaller than in Randoms, so the impact an individual player has (either good or bad) is potentially magnified. Obviously, overall, the idiots/unicums will average out equally both for and against you, but this matters less because of the need for strings of victories. If Ranked was seriously designed to provide a competitive metric of how good players were, we probably wouldn't have irreversible ranks, but then the population would plummet (I'd stop playing the mode, for one), and even then you'd still have higher ranks being occupied by both the very good and the very persistent. I personally don't care one jot for how good (or not) the Ranked mode thinks I am, but rather benchmark against WR (and other metrics) in Randoms as the sample size is much bigger, and the importance of winning (and saving a star) is reduced, so - I believe - giving a slightly more sensible measure of competence ('very little' in my case, but it's something to aim to improve on). For this reason, I don't view Ranked as a proper competitive mode, but just something to play until I hit Rank 10 (so getting the reduced servicing costs flag, and some other rewards), so keeping sanity intact.

From memory, WOWS Numbers thinks I'm 'below average' (which is a bit more polite than the 'bl00dy awful' that I would go with). So, in that context... I've done the first Directive, knocking snowflakes off in Coop; that, combined with daily missions and whatnot, has got me the second (of eight) freebie boosters - on top of the one that everyone got. As things stand, the thing says I'll get to stage 19 if I do nothing else. I'll almost certainly complete Directive 2, and have a reasonable chance of doing Directive 3; that should get me at least one more freebie booster, so I guess I'll finish up somewhere in the mid twenties... I'm only really interested in the 'intermediate' rewards though, so this comes under the heading of 'all good'...

Out of your list, MA is probably the most fun, although for maximum hilarity you probably want a specialised captain for her.

Be careful with this - there have been some missions in the past where premiums were compensated with silver (quite a lot, admittedly).

My personal view is that a ten point captain is pretty much the minimum standard for any tiers in the +2 MM bracket (so T5 and up), entirely because of CE. That's not to say you're certainly Doomed if you put out without one, but you will probably be at a significant disadvantage, for the reasons @ollonborre mentions. For example, it took me a while to get my Blysk captain up to 10 points (no 19 pointers at the time, and no other ships to train the captain in, again at the time); while I was getting there, I got my donkey handed to me repeatedly, but the moment I got CE, the ship almost transformed just because of the modest reduction in detection radius. Basically though, the higher the tier, the more important good captains become; at T5, you may well get away with it, much less so at T10... If you're short of good captains, make sure you keep an eye on Ops, and get at least 4 stars on any that award a captain (I think it's 4 that gives the captain); for a newer player getting enough decent captains should be a key goal and this is one easy route. As an example, the current Op gives a ten point IJN captain with the first 4+ star victory. The longer term goal is to acquire 19 point captains, as the xp they earn goes straight into the elite xp pot and can be used on any captain; the first one will probably take you months to develop, but the second will be faster (assuming you play the first one a lot), and so on. It helps if your first (especially, but others too) one can switch between a silver ship and at least one premium so as to take advantage of as many daily first win bonuses as possible. This approach is also highly effective for developing lower point captains too.

I voted 'yes' although 'probably' would be more accurate/likely; with the PR fiasco, and now the apparent return of RB combat buffs, WG do seem really keen to turn people off the game, and even I'm starting to be affected...

Why not? Because that would be a sensible and reasonable compromise (and it really looks like WG are hell-bent on forcing RB ships buffs on us, despite assurances to the contrary)...

I'm still a bit dopey after some anaesthetic, but am I reading this right? Are WG, having backed off from certain buffs being only available through the RB (which was an eminently sensible decision BTW), now really going to try and do the exact same thing again - given that a few LUs are already flat-out buffs, and I'm guessing that the trailed reworks are not going to make anything weaker? If WG really wants people to play more with other tier ships, it really isn't that hard - just give us ship-specific missions/campaigns, and bring back the damned Operations that are still missiing. That's assuming that the RB isn't just a shameless cash-grab... One is moved to enquire if Prague (or wherever) has seen a spate of really nasty & unfortunate head injuries recently...?

I'm afraid I'm rather flaky when it comes to playing BBs against real people (I do it occasionally, but it often doesn't end well, and I prefer manly brawlers) - BB-meisters, assemble - the man needs spiritual guidance! Playing against the things, I don't worry about long range sniping Yamatos much - they often don't hit anything; it seems to be medium range where they get more alarming. I'm slightly less unfamiliar with Musashi, and that certainly starts doing some fairly terrifying damage around medium range... Sorry that isn't very helpful. BTW re: the Yamashi citadel; although everyone on here knows about shooting the 'cheeks', I'm less certain the average player does...

Having that zone is what people are referring to when they talk about the ability to stealth torp; for example, Kagero gets about a 4.6 km window, whereas some ships have only a few metres (and things like Asashio get more than 10 km, even with TA). BTW all those numbers assume a 'standard' 10 point DD captain (so, including CE) and a mounted concealment module). Which reminds me: make sure you have all the useful 'distance' markers showing on your mini-map - hold down ctrl and click the cogwheels by the top corner of the mini-map to show options - I find it a lot easier to keep things at the right distances with most/all of those circles enabled. BTW you have to do it to each ship individually - it isn't set globally. It also often shows why the 'p' key is so essential for DD drivers to know about!

Firstly, don't beat yourself up too much about this; you're showing 304 battles at time of writing - this really isn't that many, and DDs take quite a lot of learning (I still am, and look at my battle count). DDs are also very diverse, in terms of play style, so rather than a single 'do a, do b, then do c' it's more a case of learning a number of general principles and applying them, based on which DD you're playing and its strengths/weaknesses. The key aspects of most DDs that it helps to be mindful of are guns, torps, and stealth (with a case to be made for speed as well), as well as whatever gimmicks they have, and how they mesh together. Guns are usually easier to get hits with (although there is much variability in terms of ballistics/range etc.), but they telegraph your position out to your maximum gun range; torps do a lot more damage, but take longer to get to the target at a given range and are harder to get hits with; your stealth informs how close you can get to the enemy undetected, if you don't fire your guns, and so on. How these factors all mesh together in turn informs which 'DD jobs' you're best suited for, and other priorities. The trick with DDs is working out which ones are best for which jobs and playstyles, and which suit your personal preferences. The specifics of all this are where clans, divisions, YouTube and all that good stuff come into their own.

It will be enormously useful (economy-wise, you'll more or less have a premium Yamato, and won't have to spend thousands of doubloons), provided you get on with the ship; don't focus too much on Yamato yet though, for the usual "don't rush up the tiers" reasons, plus there are some excellent ships lower down the tree that it'd be a shame to rush through (with the possible exception of the T9, although it did recently get a buff)...

Sorry I missed you; I haven't been checking this thread unless I get some sort of notification. I see you're sorted though. For anyone else interested, please reply to one of my posts, or DM me if you prefer.

I would suggest that your first port of call should be the recruitment section on here: https://forum.worldofwarships.eu/forum/508-clan-recruitment/ Most people that post will provide an outline of the clan, including any requirements. They'll also tend to give an indication of the sort of person they're after (although it may be simply "don't be a Richard"), plus sometimes language(s) that they mainly communicate in. Generally, in the English section, English will usually be a lingua franca (for example, the clan I'm in includes people from at least three continents) though. Also, voice comms are very helpful in coordinated play, so some clans will need you to have that (if so, they'll generally say which one is used - mostly Discord or TS, from what I can see), or at least prefer you to have that.

You absolutely should, for a couple of reasons: Ready source of people to division with; you tend to do better if at least one other player has your back. Economic bonuses - assuming they have a developed base, being in a clan gets you bonuses to things like coal, silver etc. If you can find one that's happy to teach, you can speed up your learning, as they can provide useful pointers and critique your play. There are a lot of clans out there; if you're new, you'll probably need to start off with a teaching or casual clan (the most competitive usually want certain levels of stats and ships), but don't worry - you can change clans when you need to (although I think there is a two-day cooldown time between leaving one and joining another)...

You're right: I think that the dockyard unlocks when you've got your account to a higher level (although I don't recall which one - I *think* it's after you've unlocked the more crucial stuff like upgrades, captains, cammo etc.); although we all moan about the lack of tutorials etc. WOWS isn't completely awful at introducing the various game elements in a semi-logical sequence. As others have said though, don't worry about PR - it's out of reach for most players, unless they spend a lot of money (and you can make a solid case that the ship itself isn't even worth the aggravation - there are far better T10s). It's worth starting off the dockyard as soon as you can though (when you've unlocked it), as there are some worthwhile rewards earlier in the thing's run. BTW did you use a code when you started your WOWS account? If you didn't (and haven't played a lot of games yet), use one - it'll get you some useful rewards as you progress. I've sent you a PM including one, but it would be ideal if you can get one from a mate, as they'll get minor rewards from you using it too. For a new player, there are far better rewards to aim at than PR (for existing players too, come to that!); you can get free premiums via the acquisition of coal (look in the armory [sic] when it unlocks) which include some more newbie-friendly lower-mid tiers. You're familiar with WOT; much of WOWS is very different, but there are some transferable skills (e.g. angling is much like side-scraping, and you probably have a sense of how a lot of vision control works etc.) which may help you get the hang of the game a bit sooner than some - I mention this as you may get more use from mid-tiers and up in the medium-long term. That said, never sell a premium, even the lowest tier ones; besides some of them being fun, it stops you getting the same ship again in rewards (you'll get doubloons or silver instead, which are more useful). When you unlock them, join a clan too; besides all the usual 'helping you to learn' and 'ready source of division-mates' reasons, a clan with a reasonably developed base will result in you getting some economic bonuses, including more coal/xp/steel etc.

The unhelpful answer is 'it depends' - basically, if you're really good at the game, then you can probably manage without premium account; most mortals need premium to consistently make a profit from T8 (and up) though. This is very deliberate, of course - WG want you to spend money on the game. It's for this reason that people who ask 'what is the best thing to buy in WOWS?' (probably expecting a premium ship answer) tend to get told 'premium time'. There are a few things you can focus on to maximise your silver income and minimise expenditure (apologies for any repetition of earlier posts): The usual first piece of advice is 'git gud'; this isn't people just being smartdonkeys - the key driver of rewards is damage, but more than that it's relative damage i.e. a BB has a lot more hitpoints than a DD does; if you do - say - 10,000 points of damage to both, you might knock off 2/3 of the DD's hp total (depending on tier), whilst barely inconveniencing the BB. In this case, you'll be rewarded a lot more for zapping the DD as you knocked off a much higher proportion of his hp. Part of gitting gud is being able to do the damage needed for maximum rewards, combined with the skill-set to stay alive for long enough to do said damage. Play randoms, but at tiers you are comfortable with, and can consistently do well with - that's not to say you shouldn't ever play at the higher tiers in your range (you should, as part of the quest for gudness), but rather (at this stage) view the higher tier matches as something you may need to spend silver on, and the lower tier ones as where you make the silver back (plus extra to buy new ships etc.). A higher tier random battle where you're dead in two minutes is less help to your economy than a lower tier one where you last to the end and (hopefully) scrag lots of enemy ships. Don't forget Ops (especially Narai); with the possible exception of the nasty defence one (Newport?), it's fairly straightforward to get consistently good results from Ops, especially if you're playing in a division - quite a few players (including me) use Ops as convenient silver grinders, not to mention painless ways to get T6 and T7 ships finished (no T8 Ops at the moment, alas). Choose your consumables wisely i.e. which to pick premium versions of, and which to go standard with. For example, I pretty much always run premium DCP (even in Coop), as the faster cooldown (and extra charge for the Russians) tends to help keep me alive for long enough to do more than enough extra damage to pay for the silver cost. Are you in a mode without planes - if so, you don't need premium fighter (probably - they can spot too), and definitely not DefAA. Shorter game modes may not need premium healing potion (although beware longer cooldown), and so on. First game of the day in any ship (and whenever you change modes), sense-check the loadout of anything that costs silver (consumables, signals, cammo) and/or anything that you don't want to waste on less demanding modes (dragon flags and top-end cammo especially) - ditch anything you don't need. It's a pain to do consistently, but it will save you a lot of silver. Play premium ships (that you can do well in); they don't need to be paid for with money - as you know, there are a bunch available for coal/free xp/missions etc. If you are going to spend money, premium time should still be your first stop, but a few well-chosen premium ships can make a significant difference (read reviews first, of course). Besides captain training, the key plus of premiums is that they generate more silver. Consider permaflage on any silver T10s that you eventually get - they'll turn the economy of the relevant ship into effectively a premium. The down-side is that they are horribly expensive (doubloons); it's very much worth it to try and pick up any freebies that come along via missions etc. even if you don't have the ship yet. Lower tier permaflage can be helpful too (although usually nothing like the T10 ones), if only because it means you don't have to use consumable cammo, possibly saving you silver. On the subject of cammo, if you ever get the chance to pick up a Kobayashi cammo for something, do so (again, it'll probably cost you money though) - it'll turn the ship it's for into a ridiculously effective silver earner. There's other stuff, but you get the general idea! If you're going to focus on one thing though, it's doing maximum damage...

FWIW, I might look at the following: Destroyers: T6 - only one choice, really - T-61; T7 - I love Haida, but you can make a good case for Z-39 (for similar reasons to T-61, and she gets the concealment module); T8 is trickier, and comes down to preferences - maybe consider Loyang, Cossack, and perhaps Kidd (if you hate CVs and/or want a heal). Cruisers: T6 - besides things like Perth/Huanghe, I would look at Graf Spee, if only because she's so useful for Ops; T7 - I'm a big fan of Boise (great for Narai and gets a heal), although heed words by others apropos IFHE; T8 - you have quite a few good options, but my personal bias is towards heals (no kidding!), so Atago, and perhaps Prinz Eugen? Battleships: T6 is a bit meh (assuming everyone has Warspite by now), but I quite like Arizona, because she's good for Ops, and perhaps Mutsu for similar reasons; T7 starts to get interesting - it's hard to see past Scharn, but Ashitaka is worth a look (especially if you have the Kobayashi cammo) - both are good for Narai; T8 sees more options than you can shake a stick at - although it's unimaginative, Tirpitz is a hoot, and MA is glorious - perhaps take a punt on Kii (Kobayashi option as well) although the torps will frequently get you killed...! CVs (sigh): if you really must - trouble is there aren't really enough of the buggers to provide much choice. My suggestions here spectacularly badly informed (so listen to proper CV players, rather than me), but my favourite premiums are Ark Royal (good for - all together now - Ops), and maybe Graf Zep (awful, but the secondaries are funny occasionally). I would exercise much caution with premium CVs are they're almost all a bit weird one way or the other (which can make them interesting, but isn't really 'bread and butter' premium territory). The other thing I would mention is that (IMO) captain training options are a very significant part of the value of premiums (although not necessarily the fun), and can add/subtract to the usefulness of a premium ship. For example, for the T8 BB options, Tirpitz is a better trainer than MA, as Tirpitz can be effectively driven by pretty much any T7+ German BB captain (ditto Scharn), whilst MA really wants a more manly captain than the regular line BBs call for. T-61 is a great trainer for the KM DDs, whereas Haida is pretty much the only thing you can run her captain with, and so on.

Well, you've already done the crucial first things: realised you still have stuff to learn, and found the forum - sensible questions will generally get good answers from the better players on here (so, not me - I suck). Don't worry too much about 'getting to tier whatever', excepting that you usually need T5+ to do missions (and T6/T7 for the current set of Ops); just play as much as you can, in as many ships as you can, whilst trying to learn as much as possible. If you play all the classes, you gain a better understanding of strengths/weaknesses, which will help you in whatever you tend to end up playing most. I would also suggest joining a clan, ideally one with people who are happy to teach - playing in divisions (ideally with Discord, or other voice comms) can be very helpful to one's learning. You'll also get a bunch of economic benefits if they have a reasonably developed base...

I've just finished with Colorado (like, literally five minutes ago, thanks to a game where I sank a Musashi - admittedly, a lot of the work was done by an excellent Kron though); to me, she feels fine i.e. as dreadful as all the 'standard' BBs that have come before, but no worse. As others have said, my main whinge is their speed (or total lack of); in other respects, they're fine, albeit boring (well, they *are* BBs after all). If you want to make getting through Colorado relatively painless, play it heavily in Narai (load up with xp signals/cammo) - the armour and guns are excellent for that, and the lack of speed doesn't really matter, as it's enough to keep up, and you know what's going to appear, and when, so no surprises that call for significant flexing about the map.