Verblonde

Whilst not changing my earlier suggestions, it's worth continuing to T7 with the KM BBs (I understand the IJN will be your main focus), and keeping both the T6 and the T7, as they're very worthwhile for Ops. Even once you've knocked off the main rewards (several of them award you decent captains), it's often worth repeating the more fun of the various Ops - they're a good way of farming credits and xp.

The RN DDs are a good line, but not usually an ideal choice for a first DD line; I suspect you may not have had a suitable captain/build, which would have made life harder still - with a CE captain and cammo, my Icarus is showing as having a 1 km stealth torp window (although with stock torps, range and surface detection are the same), which isn't epic, but is more than enough to work with. It's worth taking the time to learn to shoot with guns with a more 'rainbow' arc, as they turn up rather frequently across the various trees and classes. When I first started playing, I struggled greatly with accurate gunnery, and relied heavily on torps; once I finally (sort of) learned to shoot, it made me massively more effective due to having a lot more options. I might suggest the American DDs as a good line for learning to DD with a heavy emphasis on guns, or perhaps the KM (with them you get smoke/hydro at T6 which is nice); with the US, you don't get a stealth torp window until the upgraded T7, which isn't as bad as it sounds, as it encourages you to learn to shoot, how to lay ambushes from behind cover, and how to make use of what concealment you have, and when to break it. As someone who started off very torp-centric, it took me a while to warm to the Russians; you can make a case that the Khaba line is perhaps the epitome of gunboat play - none of this wimpy hiding in smoke/behind islands; plenty of zooming around in the open with the fire button superglued down, and defying the enemy to hit you. There are definitely worse lines if you want to learn to shoot, although they tend to spoil you with very comfortable 'railgun' firing arcs. That said, if you follow the 'torp' line, you eventually get to Groz, which is perhaps one of the best hybrids in the game. I still tend to think of the IJN dakka line (T8-10) more as being small CLs - they're a bit big and lumbering compared to most other DDs. That said, if you can find somewhere to hide (very CL), the volume of fire you can rain down on the foe is ludicrous - they're magnificent for 'hit the enemy x times with main guns' missions BTW. I wouldn't fret too much about the single launcher - TRB makes it abundantly usable. I can dig that - I'm not generally a fan of lower tier BBs, mainly because they are so horribly slow at doing everything, and struggle to hit the side of a barn from the inside. I'm not rabidly keen on higher tier ones either, but they are at least a bit more tolerable. I'd suggest giving the IJN line a lash; they don't have the best armour, but they're an excellent primer for general BB play; also, the T6 and T7 are pretty worthwhile for Ops. I'm an inveterate DD main, but they're usually a sub-par choice in Ops (unless you're spectacularly good), so it's worth having a few BBs around as they tend to be better for a more typical player. BTW a good captain and build can help mitigate a lot of typical BBs' more exasperating foibles; getting some better captains for some of my BBs has made me warm to them at least somewhat.

At time of writing, you are showing only 69 (dude) battles; that's a very small amount in relation to how many it tends to take to fully get the hang of the game. So what? So, at this stage, I would suggest not getting too hung up on individual lines, and definitely not on individual T10s - the 'point' of the game is not to get to T10 as quickly as possible, but rather to enjoy playing as much as possible. I would strongly suggest playing as many different lines and classes as you can up to T4; this'll give you a good sense of the basics of each ship class and what they're trying to do to you, their vulnerabilities, and so on. Up to T4 also has the advantage of only seeing +1 tier MM, so you can refine your technique against more reasonable opposition. Once you've got the hang of the basics, then push on to T5 and beyond. If this sounds ghastly and boring, it isn't as bad as it might sound; there are actually a lot of highly entertaining ships at lower tiers, not to mention some interesting historical ones too. Lower tier games can often be hilariously frenetic affairs as well (things can get a lot more campy at high tiers). Even old lags will sometimes drop back to the low tiers, for the entertainment (the only real downside is that a lot of missions require T5 and above). The other reason to advance up the tiers at a more stately pace is that it allows you to gain more experienced captains; once you get into the more serious tiers, many of your opponents will have good captains (at least ten points, if not more) and you will be at a significant disadvantage if you don't at least have approximate parity in this regard. I don't write this to discourage you from playing IJN BBs (although I'm not a BB main, I do like the IJN ships - hurrah for pagodas!), but rather to encourage you to take a more relaxed approach to your initial development, as it'll make you a better player in the long run - develop the skill-set and you'll be a fearsome opponent when you eventually get Yamato; don't take the time, and mediocre players like me will have a lovely time farming you for xp etc.

I believe it means the OP was insufficiently patient when starting the game and bought a Graf Spee (with a current battle count of 9), with entirely unsurprising consequences... I just hope he/she reads the helpful comments already provided.

Pretty much what @MacArthur92 said. Also, bear in mind that you don't have to be in a cap itself to be doing something useful - if the enemy DD is capping, you may well be able to spot him, or at least spot his support (especially if they start firing at people - hopefully, not you). Any player that objects to you not suiciding at the start of the game is probably fairly safe to ignore anyway; so long as you aren't hiding on the map borders or anywhere where you can't see anything, you're probably okay. Most IJN DDs tend to reward more circumspect play though, even the dakka ones (which spend a lot of their time doing a reasonably convincing impression of a firework display); patience is always important with these ships, as you have to choose your moments to unmask carefully (when you get an isolated/gravely damaged opponent for instance). Incidentally, by 'unmask' I mean anything that gets you seen (guns, mainly) - torps can be used with comparative impunity, because they give less away in terms of your location. If you haven't already, it helps to make your minimap as large as possible, and keep an eye on the various detection indicators - early game, you'll want to be harassing people with torps rather than gunfire; this gives you the time to be watching your minimap for signs of what the enemy is up to, where the threats are, and where your detection radii are in relation to all this stuff. As a sneaky DD, one of the more useful things you can do is to make sure you wring every last advantage from the detection mechanics. I haven't looked at your stats; are you playing any of the other DD trees? If not, it might be worth giving some of the other ones a punt as well - in a smaller-scale version of the 'play BBs to understand their strengths/weaknesses' thing, learning to play other types of DDs will help you to get better in the rest. For example, the IJN guns often get used only occasionally, but they aren't actually bad; if you play more gun-orientated lines, your gunnery will improve, such that when you do unload in your IJN DDs you're more likely to get good hits and survive the encounter. And so on.

Essentially, you're asking how to play a DD, although I imagine you probably know much of the answer already (so apologies for any 'teaching grandmother to suck eggs'). Some pointers that may (or may not be of help): As a general rule, you usually don't want to be aggressively pushing caps too early; DDs get more valuable as the game progresses, so not dying is your key initial aim (more so than capping). This goes double with most of the IJN DDs; with the exception of the high tier dakka ships (which can be spotted from the moon, more or less), you don't really have the firepower to actively contest with most rival DDs. A lot will depend on what sort of spotting tools the enemy has (always check out the respective team compositions when the battles is loading); if there are CVs in the game, your play style will differ wildly from when there aren't. Also, be mindful of radars - for any ship that relies heavily on stealth, these are bad news. Essentially, the more spotting tools the enemy has available, the more conservative your play style will need to be. If there is no CV present, you are your side's eyes - spotting (and staying hidden, ideally) is more important than damage and caps if you're trying to win. Smoke is a mixed blessing at mid-high tiers (I actually run my Shiratsuyu with the TRB build and forgo smoke entirely); on the up-side it does all the nice vision control things (until someone fires up radar or hydro), but on the down-side it does block your own vision too if not well placed, and (as you say) is a torpedo magnet. FWIW I rarely hide in smoke, but rather mainly use it to break contact with the enemy, and shield my allies. It can also be useful as bait, encouraging the enemy to blow radar at a less than ideal moment, and to attract torps (just don't be in or behind it). Bear in mind also that a smoke screen tells the opposition exactly where your DD is (in strategic terms). The whole thing about your team not shooting at the right targets (to win) is pretty much par for the course in any game with random players present. As @Egoleter says, you can always request support from your allies, but don't expect too much. The most effective way to coordinate spotting and shooting is by being in a division, and ideally one using voice comms - it's a lot easier to speak the words 'please shoot that radar cruiser' than it is to type them whilst dodging incoming fire etc. If you are playing solo in randoms, it's worth keeping half an eye on what your team-mates are doing - try and work with the ones that look the least like they're clueless. Hopefully, some of that may vaguely be of use; I would also mention that if you want to be actively pushing caps in an aggressive manner, most of the IJN DDs are not the best choices for that sort of thing - they tend to be more about stealth and large volumes of torps (with the exception of the higher tier dakka ones, which are almost more like small cruisers in some respects). In general, better cap fighters tend to be those DDs with hydro, good guns, and excellent maneuverability, and you need to be very good to get away with that sort of thing early game; being stealthy helps too. For most players though, simply not trying for early caps is often the best policy (unless you can be shielded from enemy fire whilst doing so); spotting - and torp fire (because it doesn't break your stealth, besides telling people roughly where you were when you fired) - is usually the sensible thing to be doing early on. That's in general; occasionally, the opposition will go off their heads and give you an easy cap, in which case go for it, but that will be the exception...

At time of writing, you are showing as having played 9 battles - this is a mind-meltingly small amount. Basically, you still have to learn pretty much the entire game; there would be something rather wrong if you dropped into a T6 ship at that point and didn't stink (you also bought Graf Spee, which isn't idiot-proof either). Crucially, you haven't even unlocked a lot of key aspects of the game yet! Okay, on the off chance that you come back to this thread (and if you don't, others may find it helpful at some point): Most important: take your time, and play through the initial steps in the game in the order they're laid out (I believe you don't even get captains at 9 games?); so, play games in the basic silver ships, and don't worry about tearing up the tiers as quickly as possible (that would be unwise). You aren't competitive with other players, in terms of basic ship equipment etc., until you've unlocked all of ship upgrades, cammo, signals, and captains. This is a large part of why you got tonked in the game you shared a screen-shot from. Take note of MM: playing in ships up to Tier 4, you only see opponents one tier higher, at worst; T5 and up, you see +2 tier opponents (not to mention *much* more experienced players). You'll note in your screen-shot that several members of each team are in T8 ships. For your initial games, if you don't do something daft like play an unsuitable premium, you should get protected MM and only see people with a similarly low battle count. Once you've unlocked the key elements of the game (have a look at the progress bar at the top of your home screen - that'll tell you how many battles to play to unlock the various elements), join a clan, and preferably a teaching one - you'll learn a lot faster from more experienced players, plus many clans gain their members economic bonuses. Using voice comms will make learning a lot easier (says he who stupidly resisted using them for ages) - Discord seems to be the most common. Read up on aspects of the game in the wiki as you need to; don't try and take in the whole lot at once (you don't need to worry about radar, for example, until you're playing in T5 at the earliest), but rather look at stuff as you need it: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships Watch some tutorials on YouTube, but be mindful that carriers and AA are very fluid at the moment, and changed utterly several months back, so older videos may not be relevant any more. iChase's captain's academy series is a good starting point: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoRQa0D7yVpc05KETkgPsyZHIRZd980cO Be prepared for a steep learning curve - this isn't like dropping into a shooter and being able to pretty much play right off, if you've played similar things before. WOWS is an excellent game (on the whole), but it does require a bit of learning, especially of the basic game mechanics. That's a good start; if you come back and ask sensible questions (that aren't of the "this game is rubbish and needs changing because I didn't learn the basics" variety), you'll probably get a lot of useful responses. The WOWS community is pretty good about helping people learn and develop, but there is sometimes a dearth in the 'suffering fools gladly' department...

According to the interwebs, heat stress in hamsters is a thing - perhaps the server ones are struggling in this regard...?

Still broken - I can now see the clan chat window, but no-one is showing online (needless to say, I can hear them on Discord)...

Here too...

I'd be quite interested in thoughts on this too. I've mainly been playing Clans and Coop lately (the latter because it's been the efficient way to get missions done), so my new French DDs haven't had a run out against real people yet; at the moment, I'm thinking in terms of of them sort of being really fast dakka cruisers i.e. make a nuisance of oneself with guns (and the occasional torp - 8 km is very usable) in short bursts (with MBRB when available) before breaking contact behind islands/other people's smoke etc. Late game maybe try some capping, but not before (unless the opposition do something silly). My initial impressions of the line were wildly unimpressed (no smoke etc.), but on further reflection, I think they could be fun, just not as a traditional DD. Of course, I could be all kinds of wrong, hence interest in other views/approaches.

Ah, the wholesome innocence of the WOWS community...!

At the risk of appearing a pathological pedant, I really hope you meant 'dodging'...?

I don't entirely understand the question, but the answer is probably in here: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Commander

In case anyone hasn't noticed. the 'do several daily missions' tasks reward basic French containers, so there are a few more chances to get the DD missions...

I don't think the French DDs are particularly easy to play (of the 'no smoke' crowd, I have T5, T6 and Terrible); my feeling is that it's helpful to get the hang of the more dakka play-style in other things first (perhaps US?) that are generally more forgiving. Of course, the USSR line is the classic dakka line, but they're rather high-vis, and generally lack longer-range torps at the 'learning' tiers. That said, the T5 French DD does have a rather cheeky stealth-torp window that seems to be very usable...

We had enough people available yesterday, having missed the previous one due to lack of personnel - I really enjoyed it. I'm liking the T8 a lot, although I'm guilty of breaking out the premiums (Cossack in my case); I think a sometimes overlooked reason to go for premiums, over and above them often being powerful, is that they'll take any captain - I was considering Lightning, but I don't have a 19-pointer for her, whereas Cossack will accept a better captain from higher up the silver tree. This might be another argument in favour of WG introducing a buyable way to make any fully researched silver ship (maybe put a tier limit on it, to help reduce seal-clubbing?) effectively premium - I'd be more likely to use non-premiums in competitive modes if my earnings and captain usage wasn't gimped compared to the premium ship options.

For me it depends a bit on which mode I'm playing: In any PvP mode, I tend to favour DDs, as I find them to be very varied, and a lot more exciting than the other classes (assuming the latter are played sensibly). I lack the patience for the more contemplative classes, which often gets me killed in short order. I like BBs especially in Ops and Coop, as you can build and play them in a far more manly way than is remotely sensible against real people, but which playstyle I find to be a lot more fun...

Nah - it's simply that anyone who's been around the game for any extended period of time has seen this all before. Several times. Because whining BB players are a recurring theme, a new one gets rather less sympathy than they might otherwise...

I play both WOWS and WOT (never bothered with planes) and had about a year's worth of combined premium left before the initial WOWS split, so I have about a year to go before I have to make a decision on what to do in future with regard to premium time. My suspicion is that I'll move to having premium time on whichever title I'm playing more, and play rather less on the title that doesn't have it, reducing my total playing time overall - I'm fairly sure this isn't WG's aim, if I'm not unique in this. From my perspective, the foolish thing that WG have done is not to split the premium accounts, but to entirely stop all promotional activity on the unified account (presumably, to keep things like the shop uncluttered, and to make coding simpler). So, say you want to buy a T8 premium bundled with some premium time (30 days is common), you now can't get the unified account, only title-specific; for me, this means I don't buy the bundle. Whilst I'm aware this is WG and their coders we're talking about, it can't be beyond the wit of man to have bundles etc. set up such that you could choose either unified, or title-specific premium time when you buy said bundles...?

The answer will vary from person to person, and a bit with how much (if any) money you spend on the game. As previously mentioned, you only get half the silver back when you sell a ship (plus, if you need to demount equipment, that'll cost you a few doubloons), so in an ideal world it's no bad thing to keep everything from T5 and up. Realistically though, this isn't going to be doable for most people, at least until they've accumulated a lot of spare port slots. FWIW my feeling is that one should prioritise what to keep along the following lines if you can't keep everything: Keep anything which you find to be great fun to play, pretty much regardless - your 'keepers'. Never sell a premium of any sort; you'll get the same silver almost as quickly through playing them, and port slots are one of the cheaper things you can buy in the game (when on sale). Also, you'll get silver or doubloons for any such ship you earn via a mission that you have already; not to mention that you'll avoid getting said ship from things like Xmas boxes, if you go in for that kind of thing. Keep a few options that work really well for each of the Ops (so, T6 especially, and T7, at the moment; if some of the Ops that are on hiatus return, the options will expand a bit); if you want to play Ops solidly, three ships should be sufficient for each assuming you don't tend to die horribly/quickly, to avoid the silver charge for a quick re-start. The higher tier something is, the more reluctant you should be to sell it - simple economics: if you lose half a ship's value when you sell it, the hit gets much higher as you go up the tiers e.g. if you sell a T3 BB you'll lose less than 200K silver, whereas selling a T9 will lose you of the order of 6-7 million! That's just the basic cost prices for stock ships, of course. Snowflakes etc. the current French thing is a good example of this type of thing, often referred to as snowflakes as the first example (last Christmas) used snowflakes for its markers. Basically, all premiums, and silver ships from T5 earn you something worthwhile for the first win (coal, or French tokens at the moment, coal and steel last time, who knows what in future); if you kept eligible ships, you don't have to waste any silver re-buying them when such promos happen; generally, the rewards are greater for higher tier ships (and for premiums), so that tells you what to prioritise keeping with an eye to this kind of thing. Special/competitive modes: this means things like Clans, Ranked, and so on. In the recent past, this tended to mean variations on a theme of T10 only, but more recently there has been a welcome return to using more diverse tiers e.g. the recent Sprints were T7, and the next Clan and Ranked seasons will be T8 and T9, respectively. This obviously means that you want to hold onto some suitable ships for anything you want to participate in (and also keep a decent captain available for any such ships). All this assumes that one has a reasonable number of spare port slots (any time there is a decent offer on these buy some); if one is a new/f2p player then life is much harder earlier on, due to often being short of slots. Generally, I would urge the exercising of patience; I get the urge to get shiny newness as quickly as possible, but it is usually worth taking the time to grind the silver that makes selling too many ships unnecessary.

If you've been out for quite a while, I might suggest knocking the rust off at lower tiers; if you drop straight into T10, you'll have to master everything that's changed in one big lump, whereas starting a bit lower will allow you to assimilate each aspect in turn. Not strictly game-play, but it might be worth having a look through the various ways that missions and rewards have changed since you last played (anything connected with the 'armory' for example), not to mention the extended campaigns etc. If you have plenty of ships in your port, it might be worth giving the current 'Frenchwhaling' thing a look too - a good way to kick-start coal acquisition.

Well, I'm quietly hoping that the marine biologists discover a new species at some point: after Giant Squid and Colossal Squid, one wonders what manner of name they'll go with next. I'm hoping for the F*ck Me, That's Enormous Squid or similar... References for fans of massive molluscs: Giant Squid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid Colossal Squid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_squid

Absolutely! That is indubitably what I'm talking about (as I'm assured the Young People say)! Colossal Squid too, I hope?

Probably more realistic than the Russian BBs, so why not...? Presumably though, Spain will be subsumed into the European tree at some point.