Verblonde

I don't; I find the extra reach is more important at higher tiers where you usually need to be worrying about radar. FWIW I do run TA sometimes; the obvious example (for me) being my Fubuki/Asashio captain - who's basically built for the latter.

@Estaca_de_Bares - sorry I missed you; I was a couple of glasses of wine's worth of dopey! Knocking off snowflakes myself as well...

This. It's helpful to have multiple ships suitable for Ops for this reason - paying the silver to unlock your ship for another run-through rather defeats one of the objects of Ops i.e. earning silver.

Firstly, it's a good idea to do your first few run-throughs in a division, ideally with voice comms, with an experienced player - they'll be able to give you pointers as to what you should be doing and when. To get the most from Ops, it's helpful to know in advance roughly what's going to happen and when (examples being things like the CV and transports in Narai, or the Hosho in Raptor Rescue). I might suggest not going full-on with signals etc. in your first few goes (unless you have a surfeit); you'll maximise your returns - in terms of silver/xp - when you're a bit more practiced. Of course, you only get the 'star' rewards once (free captains etc.), so repeat plays are only really about xp/silver in terms of rewards. Some missions/directives can be done in Ops; where this is the case, they can be a very efficient way of doing them. FWIW I usually run a more or less full load of signals in most Ops, but some people prefer to play, as it were, entirely neked. You ideally want a fully upgraded ship, although most Ops can be got away with a lot of the time stock (Ops are often a quicker way of earning upgrade modules than Coop, due to the better rewards), although less so if you happen to get a team with stupid ship choices and/or less good players. I find Ops to be a useful way of getting T6 ships to T7, and T7s to T8 (the latter via Narai only). Sadly, the T8 Ops - and Dynamo - have been removed and WG are too busy with subs/things like the PR (!) to bring them back. Some ships are better than others in the various Ops; to maximise results, pick something that you do best in, but that may not necessarily be the same ship as you do well with in Randoms. e.g. I'm pretty poor in BBs against real people, but they're usually my ship choice for Ops (along with anything else that has a heal). Some may disagree, but unless you're very good, the more robust a ship is the better for Ops, although you do get healing circles in a couple of the Ops (although they force you to sit in a set spot while you heal, which healing potions don't; healing circles do heal everything though, unlike potions, which don't heal all citadel damage of course). Once you get the hang of them, and have knocked off the five star rewards, Ops mainly become a useful tool for either grinding silver ships or making lots of silver - for the latter, premiums are especially good (Ashitaka with the Kobayashi cammo is absurd in Narai, for example) if you have access to some. Also, everything that @Panocek said!

I got her from a container too - on the basis of the first play, she feels vaguely like a sort-of T5 Yubari. Like Yubari, I ran a 'dakka' DD captain, and that seemed to work okay. Don't expect greatness though - she's still a very squishy T5 CL...!

Communication has always been an issue for WG; I think some of it may be differences between markets (perhaps being rude is more acceptable in Easter Europe/Russia than it is in Western Europe/NA?), and some of it may be to do with language capabilities - one of the pitfalls of using second languages can be that nuance/courtesy can be lost/missed. This is the difference between "give me a glass of water" and "please may I have a glass of water?". Some of their people are pretty good (the 'regulars' we usually see on this forum), and some are less so; as I've said elsewhere, a good start would be to only allow those that can communicate effectively with the EU market to do so. WG also need people who know how to write copy that, while still being interesting/exciting, is also - as much as possible - loophole/misunderstanding free (e.g. the recurring problems with the Black Friday ship missions). This Xmas' event is (IMO) pretty good, objectively speaking; the crucial problem is that poor comms made a pig's ear of everyone's expectations...

Suggest being careful what you wish for - WOT used to go in for this a lot (they might still do - haven't looked); it didn't make the standard of play any better, but it did make you more frustrated when a muppet team threw away a victory where you'd personally made the mission requirements...

Excellent form - many thanks!

I'm reasonably happy with this year's snowflakes as well; the only thing bugging me is that the 'balancing' things to make up for the lost steel are hidden behind parts of the (frankly insane) PR grind.

My original intention was to buy Gorizia to do the missions with, but having seen what unreasonable conditions apply to the various directives the ship needs to stand up on its own merits. Since she seems to be a flaky version of Zara, sans torps, I don't really care if I get her or not. The only real upside to getting her now is that it prevents me getting her in next year's Xmas crates (assuming WG haven't done something even more egregious before then to drive me away)...

Also, with a TA captain, she may well have potential...? (trying to console myself - I got one too)

Me too (at least on my alt account)...

Drat - just broken again...

Well, I appear to be back in - let's see how long it lasts...

Still not letting me in over here...

I haven't looked yet (too busy plodding through the first of many snowflakes); have you looked in a relevant ship's permanent cammo section with filters on? Of course, I could be wrong about the mechanic being introduced this patch - can anyone confirm?

Because I'm an idiot, I put my whaling trousers on, after going through the four freebies, plus what I got for my T10s; the following is a swift spreadsheet I did, showing what I got, from what, and in what order. I have a lot of premiums, so you'll note that all of the ships came from SCs; you'll also note that it wasn't the T5 dross first (although there was plenty of T5 dross). I've specifically tagged the cammo, as that's the only content I consider mainly worthless - the rest is useful to a greater or lesser extent.

You're probably right, but I suspect *really clear* explainers beforehand might have mitigated things at least a bit. I don't think they helped themselves much with the numbers that got disseminated from the PT server either - I get that it needed to be a lot easier than the 'live' version (to get data in a useful time-scale), but I suspect that the jump between PT and live without sufficient warning has really not helped. Managing expectations... Whilst one can carp about the detail of the freebies, objectively, this Xmas stuff is pretty decent (objectively speaking); although harder to get than in previous years, the T7 premium is vaguely on par too (personally, I'm not hugely interested, as I gather it's a bit meh); the insanely hard PR grind doesn't need to be a problem (I think most of us get that a free T10 should be difficult to get), if it's explained properly. You're right though, if WG actually wanted anyone to participate in the PR grind, it should have been over a much longer timescale (a la the existing campaigns)...

I would suggest that there are rather more options available than a binary choice between banal PR-speak and the rudeness shown by SO; it is possible to communicate in a reasonably 'characterful' way without insulting a large chunk of your customer base. You do it all the time, for example. I'm serious though: SO has form in this area - keep him away from the English communications; you and your colleagues that we usually see on here are pretty good at this stuff, and then you wouldn't have to be fixing his mess. As I said elsewhere, this Xmas event should have been a highlight of the year (the content is good enough); as it is, it's now verging on a disaster that you guys are now stuck with tidying up. (Incidentally, I hope you'll agree, I haven't insulted anyone!)

More importantly, @Rukenshia - I salute you!

And so it begins: Also, @Bics93 has it right...!

I tend to agree with you - if WG hadn't spectacularly mishandled the whole 'grind'/PR aspect of the Xmas event, this probably would have been a highlight of the year (if not *the* highlight)...

Reminds me of that scene in Trainspotting - you know the one...!

Haven't been able to connect to the store yet (nor to the 'news'); I'm guessing enough of Europe has logged in to overwhelm bits of the servers? Will update if/when I actually get the containers...!

I find this apparent lack of understanding of a western European market breath-taking; in future, WG should just not allow the chap on any English-speaking platform - get someone who speaks 'customer' to do it instead (in general, the people who usually appear on here from WG are excellent, for example). By messing up the advance marketing of the Xmas event (too much emphasis - visually, especially - on the port/PR, not enough emphasis on the other rewards and how hard PR would be to get i.e. not managing expectations effectively), and with SO's appalling interventions, WG now have a spectacular PR mess to sort out, when they should have the highlight of the year...