Verblonde

Exactly. The problem with PR is that (IMO, of course) it's not *that* desirable - it's a nice projection of what the Alaskas could have evolved into, but it's not a real ship; it's also not essential to have for anything much, as far as I can see (and I have an almost pathological weakness for premium ships). For the WG model to work well, there needs to be something very worthwhile at the end, and I don't believe PR is. Leaving aside the spectacularly unprofessional conduct on reddit etc. what WG should have done is split the marketing effort in equal thirds between PR, the Italian premium, and all the other rewards, including the pretty artwork; they should also have managed expectations far better i.e. made it really clear from the off how hard getting PR would be. It's all a bit of a shame, really - the whole 'build a ship' thing is really quite a nice idea, and well implemented; far fewer people will make use of it, I suspect, than if WG had done a competent job with explaining the whole thing far enough in advance.

My original plan was to buy Gorizia, use her to make the earlier directives easier, and then do something fun with the doubloon compensation (T10 permaflage or something) with the ultimate aim of getting PR via a mixture of playing and being a whale; now that it seems there isn't much point in doing that, as I'm not prepared to put my entire life on hold for a T10 ship (of apparent dubious effectiveness) that wasn't even built. Depending on what actually arrives in the game tomorrow, I *may* try for the Gorizia, or just file that under 'knickers to it' as well. It would be a shame if so - crates were looking likely the only thing I would buy over Xmas...

If it is, they *really* have no idea a) how to do customer relations/service and/or b) how to damp down a fire when it breaks out...

There was an earlier thread (from the NA server?) - a week ago, maybe - that thought that most, if not all, missions for this could be done in Coop or Randoms; it's modes beyond that were a bit more varied vis-a-vis whether you could do the missions in them... We'll have to wait until tomorrow to be certain though.

Apparently so. Still, there is a positive to this: Assuming you don't want to simply throw money at the problem, PR is impractical for most players to get; so, we can stop worrying about it (shame all the - probably expensive - design/coding time for the port stuff is wasted), so planning playing time and spend over Xmas just got an awful lot easier. There were several things I fancied spending money on this Xmas; the list just got rather shorter, so saving me money for other stuff. Because I don't have to worry about specific conditions, with specific ships, I can just play for fun (yes, that does include trying to win!) rather than grind. So, yay for me; less yay for WG and their bank balance. The question now is how many players feel like this; a lot, or just we grumpy gits on the forum?

Wow, just wow! In any other industry that would be simple 'fired' territory - no matter how obnoxious your customers are being, you never lose the heid in public. Sure, call them every name under the sun in private, but the public face *always* has to maintain a modicum of calm and professionalism...

If that is accurate and typical of the magnitude of the tasks, then there is zero chance of me doing the grind, and I currently have quite a lot of spare time... I'd quite like PR, but not *that* much!

Thinking about the game pre-load screen, where you see the makeup of the two teams, and can compare how opposing ships compare with yours in a number of general areas. As I understand it, when the little circle icon is hollow, you're basically seeing 'stock' values, and once it's gone solid, you're seeing an accurate reflection of captain skills, upgrades etc. Is this correct? If it is, it looks like a *lot* of players are running sub-optimal DD builds e.g. in a recent game in my Kitakaze, I was showing as having better concealment than a Kagero! Is the pre-load screen wonky, or are lots of people in the game being daft when fitting out their ships?

Yes, but until tomorrow they vanish exactly as you describe. Supposedly the new patch will allow you to use weird cammo, whilst not seeing it.

There's usually one at both the start and the end of a Clans season; you normally need to have played at least one Clan battle to qualify. Such freebie resets occasionally happen for other reasons (major changes to captains skills with CV reework being one that I recall, for example). When one happens, it can be quite useful for testing out alternative builds you want to test (just remember to reset them to whatever your 'final' configuration - or zero assigned points - is before the promo ends).

I don't mind them, provided there is always the ability to switch them off (did I see that the new patch introduces the ability to get the bonus without seeing the disabled cammo too?). Personally, I leave them enabled: there aren't that many truly awful ones around, and it's not like the game is a 100% accurate sim or anything like that... (edited for brain-fart)

Many thanks, chaps! Gives me something to try and do when I play it next...

After north of 7K games, you should know about the snowball effect, surely? Anyway, take a break, and see how you feel in 0.5-1 year's time or so...

Speaking of Raptor - what's that 2D 'cartoon' boat that appears at the end? I've tried shooting it, on general principles, but shells don't seem to do anything to it...

Is that all battle types or randoms? I have Ark Royal (it's the Ark Royal, after all), but mine lives more or less entirely in Ops (or the occasional Coop) as a) she's pretty good for that, and b) I'm bl00dy awful with CVs in proper battles.

Oh dear gods, we aren't going to have to mingle with <shudder> Americans, are we?!

The answer to the second part, as others have said, is probably CVs, and more specifically, Enterprise. I suck with CVs though, the answer to the first part will be to start off trying with some sort of DD, probably Kidd, due to the heal (and ability to defend against planes, provided they aren't being driven by someone competent). A lot will depend on the actual frequency of CVs - lots of them will probably make DDs non-viable; fewer of them, the reverse. Something like Atago might be worth a lash - heal, reasonable guns, and a (small) stealth torp window. The trouble with cruisers is that I often do especially poorly against BBs, and there will almost certainly be a lot of them about. Even though I suck in BBs, if the CV population is high, I suspect I'll end up using something like MA/Tirpitz/Bismarck (probably the first two, as I have 19 point captains available for both). I must say, I'm not entirely convinced by 1 v 1 if CVs are included though...

Aye, you'll get them eventually; apart from the excellent economy *if you fit permaflage* having T10s is mostly useful as it unlocks some useful rewards (anniversaries) and allows you to use properly equipped ships in T10 Ranked/Clans (as opposed to rentals). Bear in mind that a lot of the trees' highlights aren't necessarily the T10 (PA being an excellent example). Of course, if you focus on just one line, you can get to T10 pretty quickly - especially if you make a lot of use of boosting signals/cammo; as has been pointed out in numerous other threads, you generally want to diversify your efforts; besides being less likely to get bored, you avoid the danger of getting to high tiers without the necessary skill-set.

The solemn and noble tradition of me being absolutely terrible whenever a forum member is present continues - just ran into @Blixies and received a Tory-MP-on-a-night-out-in-Soho level spanking...! I was playing Fat Freddy though, which might explain some of it. I was spectacularly bad even so.

A minor plus point to Alaska is that she was actually built, if you care about such things...

It did, although I don't know how bad it is in practical terms yet for a mediocre player (i.e. me; the better players had a fit when it happened - the general consensus seemed to be that either the dakka nerf, or torps nerf would have been sufficient to start with, not both) - I should unlock/buy mine over the next few playing days. Apart from T10s = containers at Xmas/anniversaries, I quite like the history behind YY - she's a Sumner, rather than a Gearing, and had quite a distinguished career (and eventually ended up as an artificial reef, apparently). I tend to like 'real' T10s, even if they have been over-nerfed. That said, the T7 is one of the best DDs in the game tier-for-tier, and the T9 is glorious; I find the DWT make them interesting to play as well, even if you can't hit DDs with them.

He'd be nice to have, but 175K coal - jayzus!? That's more or less a T10 coal premium, if you use a voucher; I'm reasonably sure I know which I'd get more use out of...

Anshan is pretty decent; I would suggest sharing a captain between her and Fushun, as they're very similar, making the later captain skills (after the first 'standard DD' ten points) overlap well. There are worse things to be running a non-CE (yet - it should still be your first four pointer, IMO) captain in too - it's basically a Russian gunboat, only with usable torps, so you'll probably spend a lot of time with your guns firing (so blowing stealth), although you'll be out-spotted by a lot of equivalent opponents until you get CE (and sometimes even then - most Russian boats aren't the sneakiest)...

This. The last Dev Blog update (a couple of days ago) gave the distinct impression that a lot of aspects needed re-doing too...

I went for the IJN torp line DDs (twice), partly because I hadn't played them for ages - CVs - and partly because Shima is the silver T10 that I miss having access to the least, by quite a large margin...! I think there is something to be said for not resetting lines that you hate; despite the availability of high xp boosting cammo and signals, you're still going to have to play them quite a bit (unless you break out a lot of free xp). (edited for stupidity)