Verblonde

Not in the least, given that the alternative is beer. I spend less on ships than I did on beer, and all I had after drinking said beer is a hangover and well-used kidneys. WOWS and spend thereon is pure 'entertainment' spend i.e. entirely wasted, but it gives me pleasure. Bonus points if it annoys people who want to try and tell me what I should or shouldn't spend my dosh on...

Oh dear - some frightful blighter appears to have removed the knobbly tyres, bouncy forks, sensible handlebars etc. from your steed. I'm so sorry - much sympathy!

Not at all, but that's not why I buy premium ships etc. I'm rubbish at the game, and probably always will be; so long as I'm not a liability (and generally improving over time), I'm usually content. The ships I buy are usually one or other of interesting or historical; the premiums I don't have yet are generally neither. For example, I picked up Hornet when she first came out; I don't even play CVs against real people (in general), but she's got some decent history to her, and I have fun with CVs in Coop/Ops. Heh! When I used to work in the cycle industry, this kind of thought occurred to me on pretty much a daily basis...

LOL! Keep the number of PvP games to a sensible level; the 'play until you run out of reports for submarines' approach provides a decent limiter... It also helps that I'm probably as bad as a lot of the folk who drive many forum folk nuts; it may be less painful when you are nowhere near unicum status.

Quite possibly, but I'm not naive enough to think that stopping my cetacean behaviour will have any impact on WG's trajectory; I mainly think in terms of the likelihood of getting my money's worth before WG things up irretrievably. The docs have told me to lay off the booze, so WG is about the only 'stupid' expenditure I maintain these days (and it does have the merit of not giving me a hangover). Whilst I have the utmost respect for those with more willpower than me who can turn the taps off entirely, that isn't me.

Besides what has been said already: Join a clan, preferably one that uses voice comms and in whatever language is your native tongue (or at least one that you're fully fluent in). Playing in battles with others who can critique what you're doing in real time is very helpful. When/if you get sunk, stay in the battle until the end, and watch what others are doing (although bear in mind that many players will provide an object lesson in what not to do). Learn what the various ships you'll meet at each tier can do; the wiki (https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships) is perhaps the best primary source. Learn how the various game mechanics work (especially the vision mechanics); again, the wiki is a good place to start. WG also produce some 'how it works' videos that are worth a watch. Don't - generally - rush up the tiers; the game does a reasonable job of introducing stuff in stages, giving you the opportunity to learn in stages, rather than having to deal with all possible threats all at once. The possible exception to this advice is that it can be helpful to get past the Tier 4 CV plague as fast as possible (although you then run into T6 submarines). The most important thing to learn though is arguably patience: there is a temptation to just jump to high tiers (most often via buying premiums, or early access ships); whilst doing this for Coop games probably doesn't do much harm, you'll probably get hammered if you try it for PvP - yes, you'll have a (possibly) powerful high tier ship, but then so does everyone else, and a lot of them will have more experience and better captains than you do. So, take your time, and learn.

You appear to have rather less in the way of self-control issues than I do: (No Arkansas in there, alas, although that number does include submarine rentals.)

I'm clearly unusual: I often use ships in both Coop and PvP, and almost never use one-use signals/boosters for the former, and pretty much always use them for the latter. It's not a big thing, but I would very much appreciate regaining the ability to not automatically re-mount one-use signals/boosters after a battle. Each incidence of adding/removing the things is quick, but the time spent does mount up over time (and it's easy to forget, so wasting signals/boosters; I suspect this may be deliberate though, to remove heat from the economy?).

Is not an original thought, but WG's Tortured + Artistic types have been hard carrying everyone else for years...

You might as well nab her back as well, next time you can - snowflakes at the very least. It's not like port slots are hard to come by these days (which used to be the only semi-sensible reason to sell a premium).

FWIW I focused on the big ones, then - when I ran out of tokens - the second tier...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage Some of the history buffs like some of the more eccentric camouflages; anyway, as things stand, you can do whatever you want.

No functional reason. They're now basically purely aesthetic skins, much like many other games include.

This. I'm afraid I need a much bigger bribe than this to play superships*, at least for the moment. *or my clan asking me to play my Yamagiri; that'll do it as well.

I'm not surprised there is a bit of confusion here: as I recall, the dispersion benefits that cammo used to give you have been removed.

BTW it's still worth checking - I wouldn't be surprised if one or two got missed in all the kerfuffle...

The 'best case' concealment remains the same - the reduction from the cammo is now baked into the ships' values. For example, I just checked a couple of Kagero sisters - they're all still 5.4 km, which is where they should be. 5.6 km - from memory - was Shima's best case concealment before the changes...

I'm thinking that I'll sell the bulk of mine (and won't buy any more): the majority of my ships have permaflage, so I only need pretties for where I hate the permaflage (yay, my Shokek no longer looks hideous, plus a few others afflicted with Waterworld permaflage, or whatever it's called). I'll keep a few that I like around, but that's it...

I hadn't noticed, but now I look I see them too. No idea what they're for though...

At least it's only Coop, I suppose...?

I've just noticed something slightly odd: Because I'm an idiot, I've nabbed Duncan on EA, and got the relevant permaflage as well. You'll see that I'm still seeing the 'first permaflage' discount too; I didn't think this was supposed to happen i.e. you got fleeced if you had any sort of permaflage already. I'm not complaining in the least, but WG would probably make more money if this general approach were more universal. Edit: this may be to do with EA - I'm not seeing the same thing on the recent French heavy cruisers...

It appears that something similar happened with the anniversary permaflages (from collections, I think): for example, I had one on the Famous + Historical RN T8 BB (whatever that's called - Monarch?) which now seems to give superior bonuses, compared to before?

I think it's reasonable to praise the changes so far: on the whole, they're good. But... ...this will be the crucial thing. As I've mentioned elsewhere, WG have said the changes that went live today (on EU) are only the beginning; there is still plenty of time for things to go entirely pear-shaped. That said, applauding WG when they don't screw up doesn't seem unreasonable, unless we *always* want to be negative regardless, pre-empting whatever WG mess up next?