Verblonde

BTW @Please_stop_rng_im_sore - I see you have a LoYang; she's a pretty good 'conventional' DD - given MM at the moment, if you take her out in randoms a few times, you've got a good chance of someone playing a Khaba against you, if you want to see what they're like to play against for real.

I don't have Khaba (I went with Grozo instead), but playing against them suggests that they're lethal, provided you don't act like a conventional DD: the Correct approach seems to involve zooming around at longer ranges (you can be spotted from orbit), with your fire button more or less superglued down. The crucial thing seems to be to use other people as your eyes; if I'm trying to deal with a Khaba in a more 'usual' DD, I'll be relying on stealth to get close enough to it to get spots, so allowing my support (pffft, snigger - well, you never know) to get a few salvos off, and maybe get lucky with torps myself. Basically, it's the same basic methodology as one might use against a (very) fast light cruiser i.e. stay hidden, because if you don't, the Khaba's dakka will turn you into smoking boots in a matter of moments. Khaba has better armour than other DDs; this is a good thing when fighting most other DDs, but you have to watch for bigger AP rounds, as your armour is sufficient for them to get full pen AP damage... Khaba is a very serious threat to play against, so I don't believe it needs much (if any) buffing; if you want a more conventional DD experience, one of the other lines might be superior.

I'm rather looking forward to T5 ranked - it'll make a nice change from the recent focus on high tiers; plus, it'll be fun to play some rather neglected ships with same-tier MM. I'm fully expecting to be roundly seal-clubbed by the experienced players though. On the up-side, it gives me an excuse to try and work out how to play Gremy (I tend to be quite rubbish with Russian gunboats)...

This is a continual source of distress to me...

(emphasis added) I would suggest a little empathy might be in order here: I personally agree that the *main* 'point' of the whole thing is really to get a ludicrously cheap T8 premium (or gold, in my case - I bought her day one), but that's not to say that the rewards locked behind the RN DD wall are not worthwhile for a lot of people. The sporting thing for WG to do would have been to have a 'grind' element to the thing in the first week that would have gifted you whichever DD was sufficient to do all of the RN missions (T7 as it stands, but it could be dropped to T5 - see next point), or possibly to have messed with the probabilities such that the chance of getting said appropriate DD was 100% if you did all the other missions that awarded crates. Without having checked the conditions, I would have set the week 1 missions (at least) to needing the T5 DD only - people would then have the motivation to keep playing, to get crates and so (hopefully) higher tier freebies; alternatively, keep the proposed 'grind' model, and jump up a tier each week, and move the mission barrier accordingly.

My eyes, my eyes...!

The wiki has this to say on the subject: http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Detonation BTW I see that I'm wrong - you get the Detonation achievement every time you get exploded (it's just the reward flags you only get once per day), so the percentage I gave earlier was actually correct.

I can't recall the exact mechanic, but I think it's something like there is a chance if you ding the magazine of going bang; because DDs are tiny, it's quite easy to hit an explody bit (or rather, have it within the blast radius of your HE shell). Larger boats have more spread out vulnerable bits (and usually a lot more armour to protect them), so are less likely to go bang as a result.

As a matter of interest, where can one find stats for one's total number of detonations; obviously, you can look at the number of awards (I currently have 36, over 2,459 random battles i.e. 1.46%), but you can be detonated more frequently than you get the award? I play mostly DDs (by a large margin - 64.5% of games so far), so I should be at the higher end of detonations happening - less than one in fifty (probably) games doesn't strike me as a big problem...

Perhaps we've found the reward for a sub-set of the mooted collectors club....? Obviously, for serious wallet warriors only. My pleasure, WG - my consultancy fees are most reasonable...

Perhaps being crowned Emperor would be suitable, presumably wearing a robe fashioned from the hides of a hundred F2P players...?

Which is what triggered this thread in the first place, I imagine. I was looking for something prior to that, to see if we'd just been blind up until now...

It looks like typical WG comms to me i.e. distinctly lacking in clarity! They did say "Please note that the Royal Navy category and the ability to use Sovereigns to obtain its contents will stay available in Update 0.7.10, so you'll have plenty of time to choose the items you want. With the release of Update 0.7.11, each Sovereign in your possession will be exchanged for 25,000 credits." here (about 3/4 of the way down). They also said this "Please note that this section in the Arsenal and the opportunity to exchange Sovereigns will be available until Update 0.7.11 is released. Because of this, you can take your time choosing and purchasing in-game items with their help. With the release of Update 0.7.11, Sovereigns will be removed from the game, and each Sovereign you held will be exchanged for credits." here (about 1/4 of the way down). Whilst I haven't taken a huge amount of time looking, I don't believe we've been told for how long Sovereigns can be obtained for free (the ones from premium containers are apparently available for longer than the freebies are, but I could be wrong about that)...

'Selfish' may be being a little harsh - given how poisonous Ranked tends to be, doing whatever is required to get it done and finished as soon as possible sounds rather sensible. Perhaps 'pragmatic' might be a suitable word...? If I had the chance to rattle off Rank 1, and reap the rewards, without having to spend *too* long in the mode, I would take it. Sadly (for me), there isn't a 'no skill' option that provides that...

A far more sensible suggestion (and, I think, vaguely historical): Let us equip our ships with braziers on which to heat actual doubloons. These heated doubloons can be dispensed to the ghastly proletariat. Each one accepted would start a fire on the ship in question, but the player would get to keep the doubloon. I am a genius...!

Isn't it a little early in the day to be this caned...?

I think you may be being a bit optimistic here, especially given the number of players I hit beyond 10 km with torpedo strikes. Many forum folk probably have the stats memorised (I don't though), but the wider player base probably don't as much. As to the original suggestion, it's a good thought, but I fear (besides being too complicated for most to understand and/or make use of - look at current CV play) it would be rather hard to balance: even if you go with just a couple of options, rather than a range of them, you potentially increase the power of a ship dramatically - imagine (say) a Lo Yang that could switch at will between its long-range and YOLO torp options; it would be a monster...

So there are lots of DDs about at the moment? Who cares?! It'll be back to normal in a week or two; in the meantime, don't play Asashio, or anything too dependent on torps, and enjoy the change of scenery. I'm sure we'll be back to the usual BBs camping on the borders soon enough...

I really don't mind detonation being in the game, even when it happens to me (quite a lot - I play mainly DDs after all) - it's one of the shreds of historical accuracy in the game after all. @OlFson's suggestion above is a good one though: if you got ten anti-det flags every time you were exploded, rather than just once per day, it would take the edge off for those who have somehow offended RNGeezus...

Most likely, this: https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/game-updates/royal-navy/

That's pretty spectacular - my Monaghan record is a piddly 58...!

Hold on - my 50% is broken; I'm only on 47.91% at time of writing - outrageous!