Verblonde

FWIW this is the quote from the development blog on facebook: "A new format for ranked battles has been added to the game – Sprint. During the first two seasons of this format players can participate using ships tier V in 6x6 and 8x8 battles relatively. There are 10 ranks available. It’s allowed to enter the battle in a division of two players. The duration of this season will be significantly shorter than the usual one’s. League of Seawolves is turned off. This format is more suitable for beginners but everybody can participate." It doesn't say if this replaces the existing format, or is as well as it...

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out (assuming it makes it through testing) - it's not just GC; there are all the Kamikazes running around out there too, not to mention Gremy (although the latter is somewhat less scary with the smoke nerfs)...

I more or less gave up at Rank 15 (I absolutely am not good enough to get to Rank 1, and don't have time/patience to fail that high), so I'm not exactly well informed, but the fact that the next Ranked season (currently being tested) will be a lot shorter, and use Tier 5 ships is rather suggestive that the current season isn't working ('working' defined as having lots of people playing it)...?

OP: I might also make the observation that it's fairly easy to stay at least tolerably arty-safe in WOT - it's just a matter of practice.

The thought occurs that WG might have been better served by having some sort of 'grind' mission to get early access to the T7 (if that's the threshold they want for missions), especially given the short life-span of each main stage of the RN arc (only a week) - the way they've done it just pi$$es off anyone who isn't lucky with the containers. I get encouraging people to spend money, but is the extra profit worth the ill will they'll have generated in certain quarters?

Note: you have to be logged in to see it though (and, yesterday at least, it was only visible in the online version of the premium shop, not the in-game version).

When I have time, it might be fun to build a full-AA captain just for Sims (and perhaps Kidd/Atlanta) then; at the moment, she gets my Gearing captain, so spending the points on ManAA (at least) seems a bit of a waste. Edit: CVs don't upset me that much (yet), so full-on monstrous AA builds will keep a bit...

General question for people: playing this particular version of les buggeures risible, I've been contemplating various possible Sims builds, and their advisability (or otherwise) for sensible gaming (randoms, mainly). At the moment, I'm not running a 'full' AA build, but rather going with the Moar AA mod, BFT, and AA flag, and that's it. For randoms (rather than trying to beat my record in Dynamo), I don't see much value for a DD captain with AFT or Manual AA at the moment - does anyone disagree (at least until the CV rework)?

Another WOT player here (20K ish battles across servers); I don't think WOWS is *better* than WOT as such, but it certainly is different, and has a number of advantages: No premium ammo; I don't believe this ruins WOT, but I prefer the AP/HE approach that WOWS has. Being up-tiered is (usually) less of a disaster than in WOT - I played one game on WOT yesterday, in my premium Firefly; first thing I encountered was a 252U; you can imagine how that went. That kind of stuff is less prevalent here. I don't believe MM is any better in WOWS; now that lots of people have T10 ships, and with the emphasis on playing high tier ships, the MM for T8s is about as bad as it is in WOT. That said, because of the previous point, it matters less. For the moment at least, the in-game environment appears to be less toxic; you still get abusive tossers, but there seem to be fewer of them. Although they're an extremely long way from being perfect, the team running WOWS seems to be rather less bad than that running WOT at things like customer engagement/communications etc. Different pace - WOWS is generally more contemplative, and less frenetic than WOT; which is better will depend on your mood/preferences. I play both, and which I pick depends on my mood, and how burned out I am with one or the other; lately, I've been mostly playing WOWS though - largely because of the better balance between tiers (I'll jump back into WOT if/when they reintroduce FL mode again)...

New record for me: 86 planes downed; needless to say, it was in Sims. Other than that, I have a rather poor 18, and 17, in Mahan and Blysk, respectively...

I essentially gave up on Ranked when I got to 15 - the key problem with the mode is that it punishes good players excessively if they get someone like me on their side. As I've said elsewhere, a new way to advance needs to be found that purely rewards good play, and doesn't require that your team-mates can find their bottoms with both hands and a map... The difficulty is devising such a method, such that it rewards skill and not just sheer persistence (assuming that is what is wanted from the mode).

Can confirm (looking from Canada): the much cheapness for ten Guineas is visible in the online premium store (when I'm logged in), but not in the in-game store.

Got the T7 earlier - I have to say, I'm not terribly keen so far, but I may be doing it wrong. You have time to read a short book before your shells arrive, although we're used to that from the US DDs; the acceleration and turning are pretty decent; where I'm really underwhelmed is the torps - 7 km range at T7 (with a mighty 700 m stealth window with a CE captain) is pretty pi$$ poor; 8 km would be more suitable IMO. Quite liking the T5 & 6, although there are several far better things at both tiers; haven't got the T8 mission yet, and not really expecting to (given that I got the other three). Like Cossack though, she's fun, although I prefer Haida (for fun value)...

After the last several games this evening (horribly early in the morning, EU time), I've concluded that it isn't too easy - dear gods, the earlier games I played were luxury by comparison; there was even a one-star game earlier!! It's probably just as well team damage is switched off - there is some Olympic-standard stupidity going on on that front!

I'd get her for that level of ludicrous cheapness; don't expect greatness though - Perth is better!

For the full effect, we should have got Austin Powers as a special captain... Groovy, baby...!

Update: up to a marginally less embarrassing 60 now, with Sims - BFT only, and no manual AA (don't have a full AA captain anywhere yet)...

Ah, that was you? Nicely done! Whilst I play WOT on both NA and EU servers (the former, mainly), the chap who persuaded me to give boats a go plays exclusively on EU, plus I have a couple of other friends from RL there too, so the frightful Americans are spared my presence for the moment...

In case anyone is interested and/or hasn't seen, LWM has done a Cossack review: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/170684-premium-ship-review-110-cossack/

They behave as premiums at the moment; they 'revert' to being standard silver ships when the tech tree is formally released in its entirety.

At the moment, it doesn't seem excessively hard, but then most people have been running their crazy AA build Sims etc., plus I suspect it's been mostly more experienced players so far. I'm going to reserve judgement until after the weekend - let's see how it is when over-run with more 'typical' players (points for spotting players who explode in the minefields)...

Rather better than average, to judge from a quick glance...

It should do - at the very least, you'll have someone playing with you who can provide support (and is more motivated to do so); for most people WR tends to increase when they play in platoons (the relevant expression is 'division' in WOWS, when you're trying to find the right thing to click). Re: ratio of silver to premium, I would guess it's about 3:2, although I could be wrong; I suspect it's partly because there are fewer fully developed trees in WOWS compared to WOT (thinking about my NA garage, it's not like we're short of premiums in WOT!), and WG want to keep a solid representation of money makers in the game... Which ships you gel with will vary from person to person; I do suggest you play a bit more at lower tiers, across all classes (apart from CVs) though - you'll get a better feel for how all the classes behave, and which you like the most (before committing time and resource too much). Bear in mind that MM gets horrible (well, +2) when you hit T5; if you want to practice against real people, T4 isn't a bad place to spend some time. Leningrad and Kidd are both great fun, although bear in mind that they both see +2 opponents (and lots of radar, which takes a bit of finesse to deal with - we don't really have a direct equivalent in WOT), and Kidd is *very* team-play orientated, as she's missing a set of torp tubes (so reducing her damage output, although if you ever meet planes, the results can be glorious, and the heal is great too). Whilst you catch up with your silver ships, I would be strongly tempted to play these premiums mainly/entirely in PvE. Since you have these premiums, there are definitely worse regular trees to grind than the Russian and US DDs, although if you like torps the non-premium Russians are horribly short-ranged until around T8 (?), and the US gets their first stealth fire window at T7. If you want to play DDs, a decent (at least 10-point) captain is pretty much essential from the mid tiers at least; in your Kidd, especially, stealth is very important (even fully tooled-up for it, the IJN DDs will out-spot you) as pretty much all your opponents will have it, and you'll suffer without (BTW keep an eye on the Ops, and campaigns - several of them will give you a free 10-point+ captain for a decent performance). To give an analogy: the Type 64 is a pretty decent Light, that will out-spot most things it meets; however, if you don't put cammo on it, and/or get a well-trained cammo crew, you will almost always be at a disadvantage against other Lights - same thing with DDs and concealment builds. It's worth noting though that some of the Russian gunboats especially eschew concealment in favour of pure speed and prodigious dakka (and making insulting gestures at everyone who spots them), so this isn't 100% universal, but applies in most cases.

I'll be interested to see how Cossack does this evening; I'm basically expecting Haida, but with Moar Gunz...

Whilst I agree with the general sentiment (I'm a follower of the Tao Of Bill & Ted - "be excellent to each other"), the forum sees this type of thing so often, it's not surprising that people are inclined not to react positively to less well-expressed opinions. Generally, what I usually see is that most people on here react very positively and helpfully to sensibly-phrased questions; it does take quite a strong mind to not bite when provoked though - the statement earlier that WOWS is a lot easier than WOT is so clearly poorly informed that I'm actually surprised the reaction wasn't even more derision...