Verblonde

I still think Black is very good, but she isn't idiot-proof due to the torps and having no healing potion, not to mention (as pointed out above) her not being terribly fast. The trick seems to be to know how to maximise the effectiveness of the radar, and the smoke (which - being the US variety - is quite easy to blind your entire team with, if your kung fu in this area isn't strong). Knowing what to do with the sea mines helps, and can take some adjustment if you've been playing - say - Halland a lot recently...

I assume people are mostly talking about this: This, on the other hand, is entirely worthless (which is why I don't have it selected) on RN DDs: Those are obviously for Cunningham; the Dunkirks get this:

Cossack(s) too, come to that. That said, I tend to largely agree with the OP; with the captain rework, some of the 'magic' captains had their boosts moved to some pretty sub-optimal locations.

One advantage of being rubbish with cruisers is that mine often tend to live in PvE modes; for that, a 10 pointer is usually sufficient to start with. I've just checked: I have enough spares to go 'full weeb' with an entire line of IJN CLs...! Not entirely sure if that's a good thing or not.

As you've probably seen, San Diego got another nerfing; this resulted in this thread on NA: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/254404-more-san-diego-nerfs/ Presumably, the Americans care more about this sort of thing because SD is historical, as well as being - y'know - American? Anyway, the reason I mention this (besides it perhaps being of mild interest generally) is that it's interesting to note the - IMO - over-reaction of the WG staff person that locked the thread at the end. Whilst we may not always agree with the people running the EU forum, they generally don't try and flat-out stamp on topics of discussion where WG aren't covering themselves in glory (with trying to lose criticism of CVs etc. in endlessly long single threads to be taken into consideration)...

Source: https://worldofwarships.com/en/news/general-news/waterline-roadmap-update-spring-2022/#fall-2022 I think that's the American news site, but it's the first hit I got with Google (probably because of where I live)...

Presumably, there'll be a line split for the Germans at some point...? Also, isn't there an IJN CL line split upcoming too?

Hadn't seen that Oatmeal before - quality!

Mein Luftkissenboot ist voller Aale.

Apologies for mild necro, but Daily Bounce has a review on San Diego up now: https://thedailybounce.net/world-of-warships/world-of-warships-final-review-u-s-tier-viii-premium-cruiser-san-diego/ Sounds quite promising after all that; mind you, I'm looking at her from the perspective of Coop play, and - possibly/hopefully - the return of the T8 Ops...

Balls to 'em! The bulk of the battles you've played have been in Coop; anyone who gets their knickers in a twist over that mode needs to get out in the fresh air more! I (slightly) understand people getting a bit excitable over PvP, but even then there is no excuse for not being at least vaguely civil. (From a half-century old whippersnapper.)

I don't believe so - he's vanilla, apart from the aesthetics, isn't he?

Quite apart from anything else, it looks cool...

I filed the thing under " it!" - all that work for a 6 point captain?! If there was something else going on, I might have got him by 'just playing', but I've been dialling it back the last several days (although that's partly due to not being able to get into the Armory [sic] etc. still)... Did you mess with yours? In my mission blurb, mine looks like this:

It ought to be 1.7 million silver (half the purchase price below):

Presumably, the modules (hull etc.) will add a few million on as well; I got mine ages ago, so can't remember the detail. <pause> it - I'll check on my NA account (it's almost home time anyway): Hull B is 6.9 million. Fire Control is 3.9 million. What's that, 26.7 million (no clan discount etc. on my NA account)? Kremlin: The various upgrades cost the same for both, so I guess the T10 T9 (thanks, @tocqueville8 - I was clearly having a blonde moment) is more expensive, if you get all the modules/upgrades. I don't believe I've ever really thought about this before. To answer the OP's question: "because they can" probably...

Depends a lot, I imagine, on how you define your terms; you also have the difficulty of distinguishing multiple accounts from the same person. For example, am I one player, two, or three, according to the statistics: This is posted from my main account (EU), where most of my activity resides. I have a secondary EU account that gets very little use most of the time, but still has over 1K battles (I think) on it, if you include Coop. Finally, I have a newer NA account (mainly so I can play in the time-zone I live in, if I wish to) with several hundred battles on it, and growing. Clearly, I'm only one player, but how does one determine that from looking at my accounts? The primary and NA accounts use the same handle/email, so WG can easily tell both are me; my secondary EU account could probably be connected to the others using WG's data, but not from the 'public facing' side of things.

Dev Blog (changes to current Clans ship restrictions): https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/335 Edit: also some changes to test ships: https://blog.worldofwarships.com/blog/336

I'd be intrigued to know what the actual numbers are; I'm certainly avoiding Randoms at the moment, because of submarines (less concerned with superships, but I mainly play DDs which seem to be less knackered by them), but I assume I'm in a minority. If ever there comes a time when submarines are unavoidable (I'm assuming WG will never change them, to make them a worthwhile addition to the game), I'm increasingly thinking it'll be time to take an extended break from the game, sunk cost be damned... I suppose it's possible that, although WG will never admit to screwing up, there is enough anti-submarine sentiment to justify keeping at least one mode permanently submarine-free - I'm not holding my breath though.

I think we should have some sympathy for WG people here: they've obviously been moving at high speed lately, to get from the Russian offices to whichever un-sanctioned place they're moving to? Clearly, there has been time-dilation (or whatever it's called), such that they have experienced less time passing than we have (sitting at home and/or in our offices). It's the obvious rational explanation for the differences in 'soon' in this context...

Full disclosure: mine lives exclusively in Coop (so far anyway; I only torment real people with CVs if there is a mission I can't do any other way). I like Hornet, but it's mainly for the historical aspect, and - of course - the Mitchells. In terms of actual effectiveness, Daily Bounce had this to say, which seems to be there or thereabouts: https://thedailybounce.net/world-of-warships/world-of-warships-final-review-u-s-tier-viii-premium-aicraft-carrier-hornet/ Plus, she's quite pretty: If you're mainly concerned with performance, Chkalov is almost certainly more powerful, although she (like all the other profoundly historical Russian CVs) isn't as good at spotting as other CVs tend to be, due to all the planes you launch being used in each attack.

Yup: Source: https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/game-updates/update-0114-french-cruisers/

FWIW I tend to agree with you, but I can't see it happening: my suspicion is that WG make a lot more money from their current approach than they lose from the occasional disgruntled punter who can't return a purchase they discover they don't like. It is curious though that WOT makes fairly extensive use of rentals, although over there it isn't a blanket thing, but targeted vehicles (for example, I think I have an option to rent a Skorpion with the clown cammo at the moment - that's not a clunker, albeit not the newest toy). I wonder why the approach is felt to work for WOT, but not WOWS (at least apparently)?

If you're a weeb of some description, then they might be (personal choice thing and all that); if you aren't, they probably aren't. It's easy to get hold of 10 point captains for money (and sometimes for free as well). Recall that a lot of the 'interesting' captains, whether weeb, historical or whatever may well not come specialised for the silver ship you want them for (the default - outside things like AL - is for the T1 ship of the relevant nation. For example: This matters, as you have to spend resources to assign them to anything that isn't a premium/special ship. Of course, you can partially train them, and then finish the job with premium ships - if you have them available. If you're going to buy captains with doubloons it's often more efficient to do it through the ship's interface: ...then... That'll give you a 10 pointer assigned to whatever ship you did this with (note: note you can change the name and portrait, if you like); we're talking doing this with silver ships, of course - you can do the same with premiums too, but that's foolish, as you can use any captain (of the right nation) on a premium ship without retraining. In contrast, going through the Armory [sic] will cost you an extra 300 doubloons (or other resources) for conversion to the desired silver ship. For example: As with the cat above, he's specialised for the IJN T1. At time of writing, 1,500 doubloons costs a little over 4.2 UKP. Meanwhile, the huge bundles of AL captains costs 31,250 doubloons for 26 captains (and 50 x cammo, to make calculations like this harder) ; that's about 1,206 doubloons per captain. If you have to convert any with doubloons, that's another 300 a pop, bringing the average in at about the same as a captain bought through the ship interface (and you have to buy all 26 in one go, and may not need all of them). So, all in all, the value of the bundle is borderline, unless you are an enthusiastic weeb, in which case fill yer boots...

I think my first Wolfenstein was 'return to' quite a lot of years ago (I went straight to the original Doom way back). I tried The New Order recently, and that was pretty awesome, so getting a few more of a similar vintage seemed rather better value than any further dabbling with ruckus...!