Verblonde

Thank you all for posting these codes!

<bursts into tears>

BTW @pulpgamer_zd - have you been doing the RN missions? If so, you should have built up a fair number of Sovereigns (temporary currency); if you haven't spent them on something else, getting either Warspite (if you like BBs) or Gallant will bag you a decent credit earner...

Besides the excellent advice people have already given, I would also suggest joining a clan: as mentioned elsewhere, coal ships are all good credit earners (as far as I know; I haven't seen consistent information for Salem), and a lot of clans will have selected buildings that increase the rate at which you earn coal - not by epic amounts, but it is a noticeable increase. I haven't looked at your stats, but if you're good enough to earn steel, the same thing applies there. If you aren't mad keen on Clan battles etc. just join a clan that exists for the bonuses...

Did I hear rumour of French DDs at some point soon(ish) too? Presumably, there is material for Italian cruiser and BB lines too, but I imagine they wouldn't happen all at once.

Clearly my brains were in my bottom last night: I bought five. Three were camos, one was free xp, and the fifth was the permanent CV steampunk camo (whatever it's called). Free xp is always useful (in the process of getting my third 19-point captain), and I suppose the CV camo may be useful if the CV rework pans out (at the moment, it's worthless to me)...

If they don't nerf the bejazus out of the thing during testing, I might be tempted, although it would probably spend much of its time messing about in Coop, and Ops - my cruiser play is pretty poor (even by my low standards), and that's where most of my other premium cruisers spend their time as a result... It looks like it might be something different to play, although whether that translates as 'good' is an entirely different kettle of piranhas.

I must admit, I got bored with the earlier elements of this - did anyone ever work out if this cryptic stuff leads anywhere interesting?

TRB too? Might be fun...

That, right there, is the right answer - you won't regret doing this.

I *may* buy five pumpkins, I guess, gut that'll be my limit; I'm usually a sucker for these things, but only when the rewards are worthwhile. Again: WG - give us the odds of each element being dropped (they do in WOWS Blitz), and I might reconsider, assuming the odds aren't stupid...

The impact of this shouldn't be underestimated: ROFLstomps can be expected to happen a *lot* of the time, due to every ship sunk taking a set of guns out of the game, and allowing the other side to focus fire more efficiently, and so on (the whole topic gets done to death every few months on the WOT fora). One advantage of WOWS: the slower pace means that a landslide happens rather more slowly, giving better players more of a chance to turn the tide. I have nothing against people who 'play for fun'; it's their prerogative. If you are a player that doesn't care/try to win though, be under no allusions you are quite probably buggering up the enjoyment of all the people on your team at least - that strikes me as rather selfish/antisocial....

That isn't automatically the same thing as doing well in them; most people on this forum will be approaching a problem like radar (say) from the perspective of how to avoid getting deleted after it spots you, and/or how to still do well in a radar-heavy environment. If it's just you (in a similar tier DD) versus that Atlanta, there is some merit in that approach. That said, I would be strongly tempted to have a go at the bugger anyway, especially one-on-one: you will almost certainly out-spot him (unless/until he fires up his radar, which on Atlanta is quite short-ranged, and not terribly long duration - many non-Russian DDs should be able to get within a torp strike's range of Atlanta without being spotted (and be able to get out of radar range if it gets fired up). Atlanta has a lot of guns, but they are essentially DD guns i.e. short-ranged (and his torps only have a range of 4.5 km from memory) - Atlanta is an excellent DD hunter in the right hands, but it isn't pant-soilingly terrifying if you exercise a little caution. The advice to go to the other side of the map won't be so much to do with the Atlanta alone, but more to do with his mates who might use the radar to delete you; you may find richer pickings (and fun) in other map quadrants. When avoiding the radar ships entirely isn't an option, you then need to apply the mid-high tier DD skills, such as baiting radar, and coordinating with team-mates to blow the radar ships out of the water (better players will already know to do this; BB players sniping at other BBs and ignoring cruisers, not so much)

To answer the specific question, it's T7, and they're all premiums: Belfast (basically no longer available), plus Atlanta and Indy. Besides them, it's T8 and up (the wiki includes all this sort of info: http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships). I would suggest though that the real problem isn't radar as such, but rather that you have only just started encountering it, and so have yet to develop the relevant strategies needed to deal with it; you can still play aggressively in a radar game, but you need to pick your spots/moments (and ignore cretins who want you to sail straight into the middle of the 'bullseye' maps before the enemy radar has been located at least). DDs remain glorious (for the most part) all the way to T10, but you do need to develop the additional tool-set necessary to counter it.

In case you haven't seen it, this is from the LWM review: "Missouri's biggest claim to fame is her credit earning coefficient which is, frankly, off the charts. Thanks to help from within the community, I collected pages upon pages upon pages of Missouri results screens to analyze her credit earning compared to Musashi's. While the sample size from the latter was admittedly smaller, being donated only by fellow CCs and Supertesters, it did give me a glimpse into the earning differences between them. Musashi earns approximately 75% of the credits Missouri earns. Musashi earns approximately 12.5% more than a tier VIII premium. Note I am speaking only of the base credits earned. This doesn't include expenses, premium camouflage or any other bonus. This number was very difficult to isolate and, if truth be told, I'm not sure I nailed it exactly. After analyzing a few hundred results screens from Tirpitz, Roma, Musashi and Missouri, my eyes are ready to fall out of my head. I did learn a few things -- namely that experience and credits are not directly linked, so credit gains differ from experience gains. It should be noted that both Kii and Roma with their Makoto Kobayashi camouflage will have higher credit earning totals than Musashi does. To best them you would need to equip a camouflage with an increased credit earning bonus like the Gamescom 2016. Musashi does earn bank -- never doubt it. She can't threaten Missouri for top spot, however."

That's mean...!

I have zero; admittedly, I suck, but I do have several of whatever the 'surviving fire' one is called, and (for me) quite a few Liquidators. This, I feel, is suggestive that (for a muppet, at least) surviving fire is much easier than killing someone with fire; for DDs at least, it is also suggestive that the real threat they pose is not through fire, but rather flooding. This won't be a surprise to many people though...

That's very wise; you may well return to BBs afterwards, but you'll be a much better player for the experience. Of the two you suggest, I might go with the KM line, although they're quite fragile, the guns are nicely accurate, you get hydro, and they also have worthwhile torps in the tiers you'll initially be interested in. As someone else said earlier, the IJN line is good as well - Furry Taco (at T5) is one of the better ships in the game, with excellent torps, and the guns will feel familiar to a BB player (they are less dakka than a lot of cruisers, but quite hefty), although you do get T5 MM (!). I find the US lines quite hard work, but I'm still learning the correct way to gun cruiser. If you want to learn how radar works, and its various nuances, you do need to play US or Russian cruisers, but you would need to get to T8 (which might be more time than you want to invest, unless you get the Chapy mission from a container), assuming you don't want to buy a premium (definitely don't buy Indie - Sharkbait - whilst she gets radar, the rest of the package is rather meh). Don't discount DDs as a useful learning tool (okay, I'm biased here): because most of them are utterly reliant on stealth, they are a good way to discover (quite brutally at times) the various ways that the vision mechanics operate. The IJN line is all about stealth and torps (until the T8 gunboat); the Brits are mainly about stealth and guns; meanwhile, the Russian gunboats are all about guns and almost no stealth whatsoever, but rather high speeds and (metaphorically) screaming at the enemy "is that all you've got - come at me bro!"...

Your OP kind of did! I get that it gets frustrating (believe me, I do!); if you want sensible feedback/advice from forum denizens though, it helps to avoid just ranting. That goes double when the particular rant is prone to showing up every couple of months - 'fire is broke' is a classic of the genre, particularly from BB-only players.

You exaggerate, but it does have quite a steep (and long) learning curve. Upside: the game keeps its appeal for a lot longer, as it takes ages to discover all aspects of it, and there is a lot of variety to help stave off boredom. You also get a certain amount of sadistic joy when your superior understanding of the game sends an opponent back to the port (that may just be me though - I'm a bad person)! Downside: it's a bugger to get the hang of, so can be quite painful early on. With 1.6K battles, you're starting to get a sense of the variety on offer, but a lot of it requires a bit of study, rather than being something you can simply work out from playing (at least in a reasonable time-frame). BTW keep asking questions on here, and you'll always find people happy to help (just avoid the 'the game is broke' type phrasing)...

Okay, moving onto this next: you probably want to read up on vision mechanics (http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Detection). Short version: big stuff is more visible than small stuff (all things being equal), and things talk to each other. What this means in practice is that your BBs can be seen from the moon, especially when they fire (even in smoke), whereas DDs have to be much nearer before they're spotted - the Kagero sisters (fully tooled up for stealth) have to be within about 5.4 km of your Bismark (in open water) before you'll see them, unless they fire their guns. This distance drops to about 2 km in smoke. Line of sight also matters: broadly speaking, if any enemy ship can see you, they all can. So, a DD in smoke (or with smoke between you and it) may not be able to see you directly (when you fire your guns, they may be able to - look at your visibility when firing in smoke number for more), but if any other ship can, you can still be nailed by the DD from stealth. This is the 'things talk to each other' part. So, what do you do about it as a BB? Again, speaking as a DD player, several things work against me: radar is the obvious one; yes, I know you don't have it (although Bismark gets hydro), but your allies do - work and coordinate with your allies; when your radar ships (mainly cruisers) light up the DDs trying to hide/sneak up on you, be ready to blast them; don't wander off on your own; don't over-extend (you need to push as a KM BB, but don't do it alone). Learn to blind-fire: when anyone in smoke fires their guns, you can see roughly where they are (and if you know about the ship in question, the number of guns firing can give information about whether they're broadside or not) from the tracers; you can't lock on, but you can still hit them - one time when BB dispersion is less of a nuisance! Coordinate and work with your own side's DDs: we're as hard to see as the enemy ones are; we sometimes have hydro (perfect for bagging DDs etc. in smoke, and we can screen you against torps), and are often very good at counter-DD work. Edit: friendly DDs will be of a lot more use to you in your BB if you blast the enemy cruisers (especially radar ones), and anything else that's good at killing DDs. Basically, apply teamwork - the ultimate hack.

@Dolgorukov - I would also agree with the suggestion made earlier that you play some of the other classes, at least for a few hundred games: it'll give you a better handle on their capabilities, and what they're trying to do to your BBs.

Pretty much this. @Dolgorukov - First, a tip: if you don't want to be flamed (see what I did there?), it's generally wise to phrase one's forum posts in terms of "x is happening to me, please can people shed any light on why?", rather than "x is broken - the game should be changed" (your OP is rather more of the second type, which is probably why many reactions are less than sympathetic). Second, metal ships burn in combat. A lot. See: plenty of examples previously provided. As to what to do about fire in the game (emphasis on 'game', as opposed to 'simulation'): I note from your stats that you play almost nothing but BBs, and most of them are KM ones. The Germans (especially T7-8) are rather prone to getting set on fire as they have to close with the enemy to get the most out of them; for that reason, it's worth investing in the captain skills, consumables, flags, and modules to mitigate the problem. Whilst I'm a long way from being a BB-meister, fire is merely an annoyance to me - just follow the basic rules that feature in most BB 'how-to' guides (iChase is good for one) e.g. you rarely want to pop Damicon for the first fire - your opponents live for BB drivers that do that (it makes my day when I meet one!); all fire damage (*all* of it) can be healed, so you should only pop Damicon when you have 2-3 fires going (assuming you have the fire prevention captain skill, it might be 4 otherwise), go before that and your opponents will just start more, or torpedo you. As I understand it, managing DCP is one of *the* key BB skills - this is why. Speaking as someone who mainly drives things that try to kill BBs, fire rarely does much good against a competent BB driver; what I'm often hoping for is to start fires, which the BB driver puts out (hopefully too soon), followed by causing floods which will almost certainly kill you if you popped your DCP too early. The only time when fire is of much use to me (in a DD anyway) is if I've bagged a flood, and the BB popped DCP to fix that just before I started the fire(s). In summary, I would suggest studying the game mechanics a bit more (http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/World_of_Warships), and learning a bit more about managing your DCP, repair party, and hp.

BTW we appear to have a review from LWM: http://shipcomrade.com/?p=1802 ('Mehbote')