Verblonde

<introspective pause> I will, selflessly, volunteer to test that hypothesis - I'm willing to take one for the team...

I avoided using the thing early on as all the reports said it was buggy as hell. However, the ability to use multiple servers with a single install would be very useful (I play WOT on both the NA and EU servers, for a start) - does anyone know how the thing works, in terms of what actually gets installed? i.e. I currently have WOWS, plus two instances of WOT; with the new thing, would that drop to one of each, or would I get one of each, *plus* WOW (say)? Thanks in advance.

You mean I sacrificed all those goats for nothing? Bugger...

I'm fully aware of (much of) the history of slavery; you didn't answer my question though - I *think* you were trying to imply that African-Americans were somehow less civilised than (presumably) white Americans. Not that you've presented any evidence to support the claim (basically, because there isn't any; just socio-economic factors that heavily influence future behaviours), I'm curious how white behaviour is different to non-white behaviour. Also, you may wish to read up on things like the history of Benin etc. Just because they didn't come up with 'civilised' things like tanks and machine guns doesn't make Africans uncivilised (and I really hope I don't need to remind you of the ludicrously long history of civilisation in China/SE Asia). It's almost like all these non-white folk all over the place are basically just people the same as the rest of us... Note: the Daily Mail (linked to earlier) is a *really* bad source of information; it's a bit like Fox News - if you consume it, you'll end up dumber at the end of the process (and definitely more racist).

Not civilised? Delightful. Could you explain what you understand that word to mean? For example, would uprooting people from their home countries, and buying/selling them as chattels count as civilised? Would inventing concentration camps, and/or advocating dropping chemical weapons on remote villagers also count as civilised (that was us - the UK - by the way)... As to tribal behaviour, I might draw your attention to what happened in the former Yugoslavia during the break-up and subsequent events, not to mention how many Daily Mail readers behave in the UK today...

The stories coming out of Greece, in particular, have been horrifying...

Actually, there isn't - not even close! As I said before, *all* humanity alive today is the same sub-species already. We really are all *very* similar at a genetic level. You can actually make a semi-convincing argument that we should be classified as a type of chimp, given how similar we are genetically (I've seen Pan narrans - 'storytelling ape' - suggested, which isn't bad); personally, I don't buy it, as our behavioural differences (not to mention the degree of tool use) are significant enough to warrant being a distinct clade - just my view though, I may just be exhibiting human-centric bias. I should mention that defining when a sub-species is a sub-species has always been a bit problematic (did you know there is more than one species (*species*, not sub-species) of elephant in Africa, and they basically look the same - so much for visual differences), but generally you're looking for a decent difference, and for a creature being well on the way to forming distinct species. The different races of humanity aren't even close to that, and when you reach for the genes (the current approach), you get the same answer, only more so. Basically, race isn't really important biologically-speaking (although it does convey useful information, so to describe it as utterly irrelevant is perhaps unfair); where it matters - as someone said earlier - is in sociological/historical contexts etc. Technically, if you take the genome of a human (I assume you mean H. sapiens sapiens) and change it zero percent, he is an ape. To emphasise: we are already a type of ape, just a somewhat usual one.

For me, the main pressure was that a number of events require relatively (or actually) high tier ships e.g. Ranked needs T8, as a minimum. Also, the current Navy event progresses faster if you're playing at higher tiers. One of the more useful lessons a newer player can learn is that there will be other cool events along presently, and it isn't a disaster to miss out on the odd one when you're first starting out.

I've seen some of the satellite shots - much of Europe has turned brown! Reminds me a bit of 1976 (yes, I'm *that* old)... Over here, it's just known as 'summer' (although with AC everywhere, they're better equipped to cope here, and have a ludicrous carbon dioxide emissions per head number to boot).

Not really - all the evidence at the moment strongly indicates an African origin for humanity; the more interesting questions revolve around which sub-groupings left Africa, when, and to what degree did they subsequently co-mingle. For example, most of us have heard of Neanderthals (H. sapiens neanderthalensis, although some think they should be a distinct species); at the very least, they were a distinct sub-species, yet they interbred with modern man, to the degree that most Europeans have some Neanderthal DNA in them... You're right in one respect though: we will almost certainly not know exactly what happened (unless time travel turns out to be feasible). Ah, the 'aquatic ape' theory? Sadly, I gather that most scientists are a bit sniffy about it (shame, because it's rather fun)...

I think you want H. sapiens sapiens (only the specific name is capitalised); the second 'sapiens' denotes sub-species. *All* of us are the same sub-species - anything below that is basically irrelevant, and just human vanity. The striking visual differences between the different 'races' don't signify much of scientific interest really.

I'd be surprised if a sale at this time of year was especially magnificent; despite gamers' collective reputation for being parents'-basement-dwelling agoraphobes, who only venture out into daylight for fresh supplies of Cheetos, it is generally warm and sunny at this time of year, enough to encourage at least some outdoors things - WG will get better results from heroic sales events once it's got cold + wet again... Personally, happy to be saving money - hurrah! (now watch the buggers release something new and shiny tomorrow)

That's most likely - since we ultimately originated in Africa, it makes sense to be protected from UV rays (you tend to have fewer offspring if you're too busy dying from some gross skin cancer or other). Presumably, the root of racism lies within humanity's hard-wiring to fear the new/different/other (from memory, when contemplating having babies, we're supposed to make a bee-line for people at around cousin levels of relatedness - maximum continuation of genes, with a tolerable level of inbreeding, and shy away from others); as you say, the way to counter this is education (and not reading the Daily Mail etc.).

Dunno about the left, but it's scientific consensus that humanity is a 'bottleneck' species i.e. it's quite remarkable how similar we all are, regardless of ethnic origin; I think I read somewhere that a typical extended family group of chimps can exhibit greater genetic variability than the entirety of humanity. On a related note, the recent discovery that the 'oldest Briton' was black (the skin lightening exhibited by pasty Europeans is quite recent) resulted in some hilarious 'heads exploding' from Daily Mail readers...

<rushes out to sacrifice assorted goats, chickens, etc. to the gods, in the hope of this coming to pass>

Excellent form - many thanks, OP!

I think it's a good event: at its most fundamental, it's extra coal (and other free stuff) for playing much as I normally would. With the addition of the Arsenal, coal is an extremely worthwhile thing to accumulate (at the very least, the special upgrades are extremely helpful in some cases).

On the up-side, if by some miracle the British DDs end up not being a ghastly rat-f*ck, we'll all be delirious with joy - in the manner of half a dozen Christmases all at once...

The simple tweak I would like is for any ships that aren't filtered for to vanish altogether (rather than still show but 'greyed out'); basically, similar filter functionality to that found in WOT. That would make finding the right ship much faster. Wot also includes a filter for things that have the daily double (or whatever) still to get, which is also helpful.

Exactly. My suggestion would be to have the reload timer vary, depending on how many torps needed reloading, with precise times set according to balance requirements. (I think 'F' may be the default key to reload single-fire launchers at the moment, but I could be wrong - a little letter pops up over your torp icon after you've fired at least one, from memory)

Can't the Brits already do that, in single fire mode? I'm sure there's a button that starts a reload if you haven't emptied your launcher. So, something like that, but with variable reload times, depending on how many torps were expended?

WG could look at a mechanic similar to that on the main gun of the higher tier Italian tanks in WOT: you fire one round, and it reloads relatively quickly; fire more, and they take rather longer to reload. In WOWS terms, if applied to torps, you would have to choose between a large spread (and waiting for ages to reload), and firing one (or few) with a much higher rate of fire.

This. At the moment, the impression I'm getting is that they're designed to lurk around your team's fat lads, and be torpedo pickets; that may be the wrong impression, but it does sound rather tedious. I'm not sure what I was hoping for, but it probably wasn't far off being something like a cross between the RN cruisers and Haida i.e. quite difficult to play, but glorious and exciting when got right...

Presumably, the 20 km torp option is taken by people who don't want to buy Asashio? As I've said previously, I vaguely considered running the 20 km torps on Shima, but was persuaded otherwise; realistically, you'll hit almost nothing except the odd dopey BB, and Asashio does that a lot better (and wreaks far more havoc with each hit). My only T10s are Shima and Groz at the moment; I'm finding the latter far better in the current meta - Shima almost certainly needs something doing to it, and running into sneaky anti-DD UK DDs probably isn't it...?

Google 'sharks claspers' - you should be fairly safe with that...! (Majestic Sea Flap-Flaps are similarly equipped too)