Verblonde

Most fun will be one of the more ridiculous premiums e.g. Atlanta, Okhotnik (sp?), or something else that permits lots of dakka (and/or absurd torp salvoes) and zooming about (usually followed by being horribly exploded, if you're me). Most fun sensible ship will be one of the RN or KM cruisers: nice balance of guns/torps/maneouvre. That said, I'm rather enjoying the Furry Taco at the moment too... Least fun: the low tier battleships, which are slow, take ages to reload, and you die of old age waiting for the turrets to turn...

Ah, I see - when I installed, I used the stand-alone thing; I'm avoiding Game Centre until it's out of Beta...

It's illuminating that there isn't a straight correlation between DD damage and WR...

I wonder to what (if any) degree Tirpitz, and the other premiums, have had their results pulled down by newbies like me?

What a wonderful turn of phrase!

Is that screen-grab current (I can't read the clock)? If it is, what's that 'Beta' doing top-left? Are you trying to use an old installation package?

Are you trying to install from Steam? If not, you could try that approach; that might make a difference. (that assumes there are no down-sides to using the Steam version - anyone?) Edit: if you *are* trying to install from Steam, try the other version?

OP: get yer [edited]to YouTube, and the newcomers section of this forum - in my own newbie flailings, I'm finding both to be very useful. WOWS will require both of us to play a *lot* more games before we start getting the hang of it...

This bit is important: WG have arranged the logic of the boxes, apparently, such that you don't get duplicates (if you get a ship) until you already have every eligible premium. If you have very few premiums already, ships like Kutuzov are extremely rare...

OP: I'm afraid you're knackered on this one; the only reason you can see many of these ships (crucially, the unavailable ones) is because of mods. You'll note you can also see the T10 'Test Ship' at the bottom of your screen-shot. To avoid this sort of thing in future, I would suggest ditching the mod in question, and getting your ship info via a second screen (or you can tab between your WOWS window and a browser). I sometimes have my iPad open next to me when playing, with the wiki page open, in the event I'm having a blonde moment, and can't remember what the ship name I'm facing actually is...

Precisely why the solution is to make it clearer to new players how to get better, and to give them the tools to do so. CVs would be of much less interest if they lost a key (and historical, for what that's worth) part of their purpose, so far better for the game to try and even up the skill differential...

I only got my first CVs this weekend past, so most of my experience is fighting against CVs (and I don't have a huge amount of that either); that said, I don't think killing off fighters is the answer. As a complete newbie CV driver, I would like the interface to be a bit more intuitive, and for there to be more (and better) tutorial material available. It needs to be made a lot more obvious that the manual options (strafe and drop) are there, and it needs to be easier to see how to access them. I think there is something to be said for not dumbing-down their use though - developing skills through practice and study makes the game more interesting...

Thank you again to the OP for organising this, and to everyone else who donated prizes - bloody good show all! @lup3s - hope you recover fully soon!

Isn't that pasta with spinach added to it?

I find the 'ho ho ho' a bit annoying, but the horns themselves aren't too bad; I suspect this is mainly because I haven't seen them being used excessively, but I may be just lucky in that respect...

Many thanks Toby - good effort! Mine seems to have worked - I'll see what I got once the ghastly indignity of having to work finishes for the day...

Thank you - much appreciated! What is the aim, once people get to Rank 1? I thought that was it...

Might I ask: can you actually reach rank 1 in T8 ships? I'd got the impression that the top levels required T10s...? It's a bit academic as my chances of getting that high are zero, but I'm curious to know.

If we accept that a flood of newbies in premiums is inevitable (although that may not be correct), something else WG (or public-spirited CCs) could do would be to put together a list of the least idiotic premiums for newbies to use, and some articles on *how* to use them. There's been some great stuff on this forum (I hate to think how much worse I would have been myself without these tips), but only a minority look here - so, this stuff would want to be in-game. Looking at my own stats (specfically WR), newbies should not play cruisers (small data-set, but it does agree with what I was told on the forum), and BBs seem to be the way to go, especially more survivable ones - that way, even if you aren't doing anything dynamic, you can be acting as a damage sponge, so reducing the fire going towards better players. It's also worth emphasising another piece of advice I was given: play as few ships as possible, as you'll learn faster that way, and can focus on sucking less on one or two ships, which will happen faster than if you're playing a dozen. DDs matter a lot, but they are harder for newbies to play well (my Loyang stats are worse than those of my Tirpitz). Anyway, stick a bunch of stuff like that in some articles; link to some suitable YouTube videos, and you might reduce the negative impact of we newbies?

Speaking as one of these inexperienced players, I refer you to my earlier suggestion about having more than one 'set' of Ranked battles (and gating each somehow). Ranked is something new and interesting, so of course newbies are going to play it, regardless of the inadvisability of doing so; if you don't have the right silver ships (and even if you do, they might be the 'wrong' one or ones), the simple solution is to buy a premium. Although I'm learning a lot in Ranked at T8, I would rather be playing in T6s, so as to be less of a liability. I suspect that if a T6 option were available, you would see fewer of we newbies at T8 (although you probably wouldn't eliminate the problem altogether)...? Note: people do improve with practice though: at the moment, I appear to be at a bloody awful 42.86% WR in Ranked; last time I looked, it was an even more dreadful 40%.

I was underestimating earlier: I've had 8 detonations ever (must have missed some very early in my playing career, before I knew what was going on), versus 1,514 battles. That's roughly 0.53% of battles. That really is nothing to get upset about, especially since I mostly play fairly fragile classes...

Isn't this the case in quite a few premium ships, especially the quirkier ones? I don't have the experience yet to have this being a significant factor for me, although the equivalent does have an impact for me in WOT...

Aren't detonations pretty rare? I only had my first one about a week or so ago, and I think I've had no more than one or two more since...

LWM seems to think she does: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/145394-premium-ship-review-admiral-makarov/

Being British, bashing the French is (of course) practically required, nay, a calling; however, I do think a lot of us would benefit from reading more history - for example, some of the heroism demonstrated by the French defending the retreat from Dunkirk was jaw-dropping...