Verblonde

Small update: the pop-ups only seem to work when you go into the shop via the game; they don't work when you go via a browser... High-powered QA there, WG!

It looks like they don't all work (or it's a browser-specific thing); for example, I'm not seeing any indication of the nation here: https://eu.wargaming.net/shop/wows/main/sh_90/

Ah, you've found the blighter? Splendid!

Additional: I've just had a look at the shop entry; it looks like WG have had one of their 'communication' moments: I may be blind, but I don't see anything about the captains being nation-specific (which they are)...!

I believe each captain is assigned to a specific country (with the exception of the occasional dual-nation one); so for example, this chap is Japanese: So, you can put him on any IJN ship (with retraining, if it's a silver one), but not a ship of any other nation...

Screenshots: Should take you here: The ones on the left are in reserve, and the ones on the right are in ships...

Possibly not the most efficient, but still: Find a ship (ideally a premium, so mis-clicks don't matter) of the appropriate nationality. In the commander screen, select 'change commander' (or whatever it says), and you should get a list of all the available captains. I think they sort in descending points order; the column on the left is those not on a ship - the missing captain should be in there somewhere. If the captains that you can't find are for different nations, you'll have to repeat the process for each one.

Trouble is, submarines are back soon, and I just never seem to have enough reports... (I think my karma is currently around 100, although it'll probably crater with my expected imminent incompetence with the Italian DDs...)

Depends a bit on how good you are; this mediocre player's view is along the following lines: Marceau may be better in the hands of the skilled, as her sheer speed, and volume of fire make her pretty monstrous, especially in conjunction with a worthwhile load of torps. In the hands of someone like me, it's very easy to get yourself killed as all that speed makes over-extending quite simple, and you're spotted from miles away making it harder to get out of such mis-plays (no smoke or heal to get you out of trouble either). You can apply a great deal of damage to opponents, but it's very easy to mess up. Marceau is entirely glorious in Coop though; she may even be the perfect ship (or one of them) for this mode - fast, plenty of firepower, and who cares about being sneaky in that context? I haven't played FS much yet, but my initial impressions are that she's worthwhile, but won't be supplanting any of my favourites any time soon. The dakka is - of course - basically a DDOS attack on the server (which is a good thing), but the torps are rather limited in their utility, due to the appalling firing angles; an easy mistake to fall into with the latter is trying too hard to make use of them when you should be firing your guns. She's (painfully?) slow and lumbering, but does have US smoke, and hydro which can be useful. For want of a better expression, FS doesn't 'sparkle', but those guns really are nice to have, and can entirely ruin someone's day. The main thing I'm not keen on is that she isn't fast enough for the lairy 'drive it like you stole it' play that the French epitomise, and isn't sneaky/nippy enough to play DD assassin. If you're happy smoke spamming (and have someone to spot), she's certainly got the tools, but that feels a bit like a waste of a DD slot? If you're good (or rubbish and want to play Coop), perhaps get Marceau; if you're not (and want to play against real people) perhaps get Sherman? To repeat though, it's still early days for me with FS, so it may be that I'm just not doing it right yet...

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait....! <bounce, enthusiasm> (I *really* need to get out more...)

Majestic imagery, sir! I salute you!

Good lad - many thanks!

Jayzus! Definitely before my time though:

Which will still happen, just not for a couple of months. As it is we have options: Throw a load of money at the screen, and get everything. Play as much or as little as we fancy, and get some or maybe all of the freebies (per @Jvd2000), and/or pay something to get whatever extra things we want. File the whole thing under ' it!' and then behave as per normal for any new line in a couple of patches' time. Personally, I'll be taking option 2 for my main account (this one) i.e. a little light whaling (but I'm damned if I'm paying 20K doubloons for the T10), with a view to maybe getting the T8 in conjunction with my usual levels of playing. Secondary (NA) account will be freebies only.

I dunno: It provides a soft launch where you can avoid a bunch of T4 CVs by just playing other things (I think you can get the T7 for free?). Whales are given an opportunity to help pay to keep the lights on. Both of those provide some extra testing before the 'full release'. Basically, the ludicrously impatient can pay money, and everyone else gets the same stuff a couple of months later (unless they take the free early-access options, in which case it's a few days/weeks later, depending on the specific ship). I'd rather WG did this than the various 'paywall' alternatives we've occasionally seen in the past.

This - I tend to view them simply as part of the standard messaging indicating I just got sunk (again). Of course, having one's ship explode does provide a preceding hint that this state of affairs may in fact be the case... Of course, if they are intended as taunts, let's not mess about: Mind you, I don't really get all this in-game taunting business; I even recall having to Google 'teabagging' when a side-quest in Borderlands 2 (I think) called for it...

This. As a related aside, I'd point people to the Blackadder 4 episode that discusses the merits of facing an enemy armed with sharpened fruit slices, when one's own side has machine-guns...

At the very least, she's absolutely glorious for efficient mission farming in Coop, but you need to be pretty skilled to be effective against real people (I haven't been able to make her work yet myself). Another positive: she's mostly balanced around being spotted from low earth orbit, so the bloody stupid CV spotting thing mentioned earlier may have a lesser impact on her than more sneaky DDs...

May I refer you to my previous post on this general subject: premium account, doubloons/silver sales etc. Incidentally, "larger than usual ships"? Are you suggesting that the size of a warship in the game positively correlates with how enjoyable it is? Would I guess correctly that you don't know too many British folk? Sometimes I think that sarcasm constitutes about a third of British English communication...

Right now, there probably isn't any. I'm assuming that WG are thinking longer game here: when I first started playing, T8 premiums were the main thing that was actively sold, T9 premiums didn't exist yet - apart from MO - and T10 was a purely silver tier. Over-simplification, slightly, but you get what I mean. We all know where we are now, and WG have got us here by incremental steps: more T9 premiums, the various T10 specials; initially for in-game resources, then for real money, and so on. This has taken them several years. I'm assuming that the current goal with T11/superships at this stage is merely to get us used to the idea of them i.e. mostly fictitious ships that are ludicrously expensive to get and run (and removing some silver from the economy is a valuable bonus). At some stage, maybe in a year or two, I imagine 'special' versions of superships will eventually be introduced, to make their economies less punishing; perhaps they'll be for in-game resources initially (as per T9/T10 premiums). Following on from that, more stuff will be available for money, and possibly concurrently with the first 'testing' of T12, and so on.

My mistake - I'd missed that Eagle was real!

None of them are yet, as far as I know. My suspicion is that WG are trying to make people inured to entirely fictitious high-tier ships; if they can get away with the superships, then that opens up all manner of potentially lucrative avenues to push effective tiers even higher. It's not like we don't have plenty of fictitious things in the game already, but superships make an entire section of the game wholly made-up; that sets a precedent for an alternative history timeline where nations didn't stop making all-gun warships and/or capital ships in the early Cold War era (or whenever the actual last one was)...

I may be a small data-set, but what I've seen bears out my earlier assertion, even for these two: everyone competent knows they're a menace unchecked, so everyone with smoke-defeating consumables will zap them when possible, and supporting fire will demolish both in fairly short order. Note the word 'competent' in my posts though... Haragumo is nasty, certainly, when played right, but sitting in smoke is rather a waste of her capabilities (all you'll probably be doing is setting BBs on fire; whilst that's doing the gods' work, it isn't going to win you battles), especially since her being rather clumsy makes you a primary target for some torps launched into the smoke. Similar things can be said about Smol too, although most good players who have her don't seem to smoke-spam excessively either, if they're aiming to win.

FTFY With a bit of basic knowledge of the game, and some teamplay, it's remarkably easy to deal with 90% of smoke spammers. Given how much hydro and radar there is in the game, smoke spamming is rather a risky strategy, assuming the opposition is vaguely competent...

I generally avoid playing CVs against real people, for broadly similar reasons to those you gave. That said, I might take the following route: If you want to go back to first principles, the suggestion to practice in a training room is good (as is the suggestion to play the same CV over and over, to get used to each one's foibles e.g. KM torps behave very differently to RN ones, AP bombers are unlike HE ones, and so on). After that, I found Ops to be quite useful for practicing with CVs; I can't remember what it's called, but the one where you're trying to recapture a convoy is especially good for the inexperienced - the convoy escorts don't shoot back, and go in a straight line at a constant speed; this gives you an easy way to 'baseline' how your planes and their weapons behave, before trying to get the hang of shooting at things that shoot back and manouevre. As to Coop, as others have said, it's harder than you might expect for CVs, simply because the battles tend to be so short. Not deliberately, but the approach I took was to learn the mode in the normal classes, and then apply what I know to CVs; if you have a sense of what's likely to happen (i.e. what the AI tends to do), then it becomes easier to put your planes in the right place to do some useful damage. If you don't have it already from playing normal ships, it's also worth getting a handle on which ships have meaningful AA, and which don't; if you're struggling to consistently do any damage, then make sure your earlier attacks are against things less likely to shred you. A lot of CVs rarely move; this is often a mistake (although be mindful of risk) - as mentioned earlier, if you're closer to the target, you can cycle attacks a lot faster (someone also suggested 'shorting' your planes - do this too), increasing the chances of hitting by sheer numbers. Watch videos illustrating how to avoid flak clouds; one of the (several) things that is most irritating about CVs/AA is that a skilled player can largely avoid flak. I'm not convinced I'm doing this right, but if you can, it'll preserve your planes, again allowing larger numbers of attacks over the length of the game.