Verblonde

Support appear to be wrong; this is the countdown still running on my email as of a few seconds ago: I smell a screwup...

I think this is what I actually got, despite having received the email that I clipped some bits out of for the OP...

BTW the email doesn't include any small print, so either WG are deliberately lying, or the setup of the freebies is bugged this time around...

Not sure - I've not played a battle on mine for months, although I have logged in to pick up an occasional freebie (without playing)...

OG Belfast: notorious monster, but I struggle with her; mind you, at least some of that will be down to my more general inability to cruiser...

Nice to see the correct spelling. I salute you!

This. In principle, I have no objections to simplifying the system (this is one bit of dumbing down I can live with!); as already said, the proof of the pudding...etc. My main concern is that whilst WG assure us that we'll be no worse off, I can't help but recall the business with MO, where the initial iterations of the mission were decidedly worse than what had gone before, and it took hard work by the community (LWM particularly) before WG acknowledged they'd messed up and fixed it. This new system will be harder to check, to make sure WG are being honest (not their strongest suit, it has to be said)... I wonder if this will make any real difference, at least to the average farty? Might be nice for anyone who can shoot straight...?

In case anyone doesn't know by now, it appears that server transfers are now possible: https://eu.wargaming.net/support/en/products/wows/hot-issues/34987/

Besides the above, it's often worth holding on to anything that can accept a permaflage: every time there's a 'snowflake' event, T5+ ships get a reward of varying sorts...

Welcome, one and all!

Quality! This sort of thing is a clear sign that you're Doing It Right...

Ah, I've identified another of your many and various problems: you appear not to know what the ships you face can/cannot do. The OP is referencing Lightning; it may help you to know that the RN DDs in general are lousy smoke campers, mainly due to having very short duration smoke. With a surface detection of 5.5 km, Lightning tends to use her short smokes to break visual contact and/or hide from planes; sitting in smoke and firing guns is usually a poor strategy for her for a number of reasons.

I'd had a very similar thought, except mine was "this is a lot like the 'bad old days' before WG realised - allegedly - that systematically going out of your way to anger the customers is poor business"...

Being sensible, most of us could see this coming from adjacent star systems: during testing, WG gave the things to every Tom, Richard, and Harriet - no wonder the performance was weaker than now (when you need at least three existing T10s to get a supership)...

You're spectacularly missing the point: If WG had just 'zeroed' everyone's captains, active player or not, there would be no problem. It might take a few returning players a game or two to realise that they need to set-up their captains again (the big pop-up that warns you're about to enter a battle unskilled being a bit of a clue, one would hope), but no-one is being held to ransom. As it is, a returning player has a poor captain set-up through no fault of their own, and has to pay money to fix what is clearly a mistake by WG. As @EgyptOverseer points out, you are actively discouraging returning players here; especially given that anything Russian is not exactly flavour of the month at the moment, that strikes me as a foolish approach to business...

Which bit of 'not playing at the right time' caused confusion? I was playing at the right time, and - whilst clearly a blatant cash-grab* - I was able to work with things as they were, without trouble. What you are trying to justify is not far from being ransomware: A (paying, possibly) customer has an account with content that they - at a minimum - spent time developing (helping WG by populating the servers, at least). Said customer steps back from the game for a few months (not unreasonable). They return, and discover that their captains are bollixed, and they have to pay money (doubloons) to fix them before they can play effectively again. If I were in this situation, I'd be bloody livid! *Before you take issue with 'blatant cash-grab': the free re-sets were short-term things (and 'hidden' in news articles, rather than being automatic), and - as I recall - didn't give nearly enough time to explore suitable builds adequately; combine the inevitable mistakes made because of that with people like the OP, and the whole thing was clearly engineered to generate spend. Cash-grab.

I have zero skin in this particular game, but this is a Richard move. You (i.e. WG) could have just re-set everyone's captains and left the skill points un-allocated; instead you chose to shaft anyone who happened not to be playing at the right times... Very poor.

I'm down to only 45 now, alas. Mind you, if I add in the various credit-boosting cammos, I have enough to make Yamagiri my most played ship (not that I have any intention of doing that...).

The Mitchells are 'consumable' planes (like on Ise, and Tone) - when they get shot down, or drop their weapons, don't you get returned to the Hornet automatically? The behaviour isn't the same as regular CV planes... (I've played Hornet several times, but not extensively, and haven't seen any unusual behaviour so far...) Edit: I'm wrong; Hornet's B-25 bombers behave like regular planes, in terms of 'returning to the ship': (I didn't sink that Atlantico, incidentally; I just made a bit of a mess - the torps you can see finished him off.)

Easy: because then plenty of people would pay up, not realising there were alternatives...

Early days, and (of course) I suck: Similarly to you, I've only played the lower tiers in Coop; my impression of them is that they'll be hard work against real people - the gun range is very manly (short), and they aren't terribly sneaky. They do have basic versions of the smoke + YOLO methodology seen on YOLO Emilio, but the engine boost duration is too short to make much use of. I've given the T9 a bit more of a proper run-out, although I'm still in single figures battles against real people. She's fun, but wouldn't be my first pick against real people; the engine boost duration (with coal mod) is sufficient for a reasonably convincing YOLO attack, although you seem to be better off playing a bit more conservatively most of the time. Stealth isn't great, so you get out-spotted by the obvious sneaks; dakka and torps are useful though. When you get into the less-short duration engine boosts part of the tree, the YOLO play style is fun, even if you don't get to use it that often against real people (assuming you're being sensible). The cynic in me is wondering if the mid-tiers have been deliberately designed so as to be hard work against real people to encourage free xping to the point where the line gets more worthwhile? Overall (so far; early days as said previously), they seem to be fun, but are unlikely to - IMO - displace too many people's go-to ships for 'serious' play. Competent players may be able to do rather more with them than I can though!

Yup. There are three basic possibilities: I'm running away, in which case you'll struggle to close the distance; equally, if I'm running away, then you open the distance between us, or manoeuvre to draw me into competent anti-DD allies, if you can't do it yourself. The more distance between you and me, the harder it is for me to land torps (assuming you know about WASD). I'm approximately moving across your course, in which case 20 kts is probably enough. I'm heading towards you, in which case you'll see me in moments anyway. Most of the time, it'll actually be some combination of these three; exactly what I'll be doing (speaking personally) will depend a lot on what you've been doing before now. For example, if you tend to drive in a straight line and at a constant speed, I'll fancy my chances and try and finish you off; an opponent that looks like they don't understand how to deal with a sneaky torp boats is an easy kill.

Then charge him: you'll be nose-in (making it harder to hit you with torps), and you'll take him to the cleaners if you can close the distance by 0.4 km (worst case). What are you doing in the meantime? If I launch in a torp boat, I give away my bearing, and fully expect to get attacked, if my opponent isn't foolish. If you're just fannying around for the length of a Shima reload just waiting to be attacked again, you're asking for trouble.

Not even remotely; any one of those done right can be sufficient. Sneaky torp DDs are only murderous against the incompetent.

What works against me: Aerial spotting. Radar. Hydro. WASD hacks (*before* you detect the torps). Map awareness (make sure last known position is enabled).