EsaTuunanen

Everyone has more or less occasionally fail teams usually happening in weekend... And way more than just two in row. Better players just make upward thousand and even more XP in those matches. Along with sometimes being the highest scorer in the match despite winning enemy team getting +50% to their XP. And they happen because of team getting lots of players who've never bothered/wanted to learn how to play and are just screwing around or rushing forward in tiers... With yesterday evening's damage and hit ratio in Phoenix your performance was exactly at their level. Bottom tier ship doing damage to higher tier ships just gets more XP reward inflating number for comparing contribution to higher tier team mates. Tier 4 ended that protected new player sandbox match making along with firepower and gun range getting major increase changing gameplay.In sandbox MM Tier 3 St. Louis can take lots of hits and survive closer to enemy, while shorter engagement ranges also make hitting enemies easier. At Tier 4 taking cruiser to similar distance to competent enemy gets it sinked, unless enemy has been first softened by 10+ km range shelling. And AP shell salvoes from skilled enemy can turn advantage fast the other way when making mistake. So in durability Tier 4 Phoenix is actually major step down from St. Louis and along with MM change needing entirely different game play: Using maneuverability to be harder target. Never attacking alone against multiple enemies other than destroyers. Need to hit above destroyer size ships reliably from over 10km range for: Supporting own team destroyers against enemy cruisers. Escorting own team battleships for adding fast reload firepower to battleship's slow fire rate. (+protecting them from enemy destroyers) Or alternately doing "cruiser wolfpack" which can attack and burn down lonely battleship. Ideally good size group of ships would attack in relatively small formation focusing fire to closest or weakest enemy... While themselves sharing incoming fire to keep as many ships alive for as long as possible. Instead of ships hiding behind each others and most staying at their max range (not really hitting anything) leading to first ship in line getting sinked in seconds before enemy focuses to next ship.

Up to Tier 3 new players have separate match making pool so I would suggest playing some more at those tiers to get better at gunnery. At least you should play Phoenix in Co-op for some time to get better at 10+ km range gunnery and for getting enough XP for ship upgrades giving lot more firepower. Because of small size and fast speed for cruiser fully upgraded Phoenix can be major annoyance to higher tier ships. Even without these weekend potato special teams you're not going to enjoy facing more experienced players unless you properly learn game basics. Without learning gunnery and some basics you'll just get eventually your butt handed to you by destroyer in gun duel...

If you play at tier where there are HAS/radar capable ships and their positions aren't known and out of range assume someone uses those when seeing smoke. And like said Tier 8 and above ships can use that Target Acquisition upgrade module which increases assured detection range 50% from standard. (from 2 to 3km) If there's torpedo equipped ship near enough also assume it always fires torps into your smoke...

By your own words it's tough luck for you if it happens that other randomly chosen carrier won't cooperate (or know how to play) while both randomly chosen enemy carriers are good ones and actually start cooperating. All other class ships already have that chance their team mate (or two) in same class ship or supporting/complementing class are potatoes while corresponding enemies are competent.But in those cases rest of the team can at least try to compensate for that. Just like carrier player can try to compensate facing two good carriers. Again if both carriers are potatoes vs two good and cooperating carriers there's lot less for team to do for compensating that "Great Marianas Turkey shoot". Sure there are ships at top tiers which have crazy AA... But that doesn't help if team's destroyers can't cap and spot enemy destroyers, or when trying that get nuked by enemy carriers and team... Before those carriers start nibling that main group which also starts to take fire from map controlling enemy team and torps from destroyers. At Tiers from 4 to 6 (or so) there again aren't that much of strong AA ships. (except for bad CV player still finding that lonely Cleveland...) And without some kind skill checking and matching for CV division mirroring chance of total carrier player disparity between teams can only increase. Because of divisions likely having roughly similar skill players... So you just want to move your own "tough luck" chance to shoulders of others on top of their own chances. Maybe except for drunk secondary gunners destroyer torps are the most unreliably hitting weapons of this game Mr. WMDs in Iraq Bush. They rely entirely on enemies making one continuous mistake, because of basically half minute class travel time before hit for stealth torping. Neither can destroyer fly in seconds to better launch angle if target changed course during aproach to launch position. And because of that long travel time of torps simply preventively course and speed changing battleship can avoid dozens of torps. Which can be also spotted and negated by CV planes or catapult fighter/spotter/HAS. Only way for guaranteedly high torpedo hit rate is to banzai charge to close range. And even then skilled enemy player can be extremely hard to torpedo. While destroyer is in major risk of getting sinked without killing enemy. (sometimes detonating from first hit or second) Also destroyer can't control whole map. With main punch weapon having usually very limited range compared to map size with slow travel time making controlling even small part of it hard. Plus moving from one flank to other taking anything between 5 to 10 minutes. Neither can destroyer push flank ahead if enemy plays properly and without support destroyer can't even keep well playing enemies from attacking.

Yes, bad carrier players can't directly hurt well played destroyers, except when RNGesus decides that maneuvering DD takes more laser guided bomb hits than straight sailing fat and slow BB. But good IJN carrier player can make hard to dodge cross torping. And while RNGesus might occasionally decide that bombs will miss even stationary BB well done manual drops can still give consistent hits to DDs. There's just huge difference to effect of carriers depending on player's skills... With that bad player even managing to lose nearly all planes to only strong AA ship in enemy team. (like Bogue in Tier 5 match to Cleveland) Being no doubt major reason for carriers being hard to balance in relation to other classes.

One other thing about crosshair scale is that it might work differently depending on screen resolution: Game should render fixed horizontal field of view angle image (per zoom setting) regardless of resolution... But if crosshair is of fixed pixel size (instead of scaled vector image) it covers different amount of that viewing angle at different resolution. So that needs experience/some own testing. For me (2560x1600 monitor) every crosshair "tick" would seem to roughly correspond to lead per one second of shell flight time for 15 knot target. Meaning 20 knot (USN) BB needs about 1/3 of more ticks than seconds for lead, 30 knot ship twice the ticks etc. Also at short ranges counting those crosshair ticks probably doesn't work. Unfortunately WG hasn't been clear about how that crosshair should work. I myself just learned to lead by that shell flight time and experience/gut feeling during closed beta. That's how I get these lovely citadel hits: This is the kind of consistency which can be gained with enough experience. Though in case of cruisers it's also about "reading" player's mind about coming turns: I didn't think that cruiser player would ground himself and missed some of those salvoes because of that.

Compromise: Remove damage to victim. Keep current style credit/XP penalty and eventual damage mirroring like if damage was still done. (+ of course various bans if continuing/clearly showing no intention to play properly)

I like torturing cruisers more. They're (mostly) lot softer targets than BBs and lot easier to sink if they fail to use WASD hack to be harder to hit.

It sure flags accidental teamkillers/damagers easily... But never saw it actually trying to detect these deliberate team killers who should get the fastest and most severe punishment. It really shouldn't be that hard to do. It would only need to check: Time from start of the match. (/first reload for higher tiers) Firing range.

In the form of keelhauling.

Your logic limps more than elephant which stepped on antitank mine: Allowing two CVs in division can (and will) only increase chances of two good cooperating CVs vs two random CV players situations. And two good CVs vs two bad ones gives results like 4 ships + 45 planes vs 9 planes: http://wowreplays.com/Replays/images/249c9a9571554449a6c3b0ac39d4557e.jpg Even MM forcing enemy carriers to be in division wouldn't guarantee them actually knowing port from starboard. Though it would definitely force lot longer waiting times for those CV players.

Enabling continuous "Alt-key" mode doesn't change gun sights in any way unlike static vs dynamic, so if you don't look flight time there's no difference. But that shell flight time would be key to being able to estimate lead better by not thinking distance but shell flight time: If 5s flight time needs x amount of lead 10s travel time needs 2x the lead for that same particular target. Different class ships of course move at different speeds so they need different amount of lead for same flight time... But once learning flight time vs lead relation you could jump from ship to ship without needing major relearning of aiming to hit targets. Looking individual ships looks like you have most accuracy problems in German cruisers: http://worldofwarships.eu/en/community/accounts/505725270-DB2212/!/pvp/ships/ Because of those needing mostly playing from longer ranges learning to lead by shell flight time would be good. Basically straightline sailing broadside battleships (at least slow USN) should be quite easy target to get some hits from salvo up to 10 second trajectory. (with cruisers up to 8s) That what I myself can do with (four) Soviet 130mm guns. That flight time (+experience) based leading is how I got this barely alive Omaha. I basically knew second salvo was waste already when firing it: Though I'm not sure if WG might have tested any different settings in server. Had 3TB Seagate in RAID1 go totally bonkers in last Friday and have been in middle of whole array swap to 5TB WD Reds and hence haven't played in week. (no problems in keeping older clients... )

RNGesus giveth, RNGesus taketh... Or the other way, depending on which end of trajectory you are. Missing... missing... missing and kaboom: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5zlkav94kwd774i/shot-16.01.21_15.04.26-0217.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ohjv2rh2mi2cjuo/shot-16.01.21_15.04.37-0075.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/inbj9dc5hpb4agm/shot-16.01.21_15.04.48-0092.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/i8fnbk33lhbqzbc/shot-16.01.21_15.05.05-0634.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/n7ejippapkkg4dk/shot-16.01.21_15.08.22-0955.jpg?dl=0 No hits: https://www.dropbox.com/s/10xejq2jn68ccl1/shot-15.10.11_12.33.18-0045.jpg?dl=0

I'll be away/fully occupied in between Thu 28 - Sun 31, but in other days could take part as practise target... Got good practise in various evasions couple weeks ago in fail team with enemy carrier (or two) + closing cruiser (or was it two) concentrating on me for last couple minutes. At least there was Saipan in enemy team, don't remember about else... At one time there might have been torps from three different drops in water and there was at least one tight cross drop from some carrier or did they cooperate? Started to be little hard to keep track of surrounding events... Though had 3TB Seagate in RAID1 go totally nuts in last Friday and need to make new RAID1 array with 5TB WD Reds distracting normal hobby time until I've gotten over the hassle. (no problems in keeping back up of older clients...)

I would say you didn't have hitting problems in that match... Do you more hitting problems in some ships than others? Have you enabled that "Alternate Battle Interface Mode" in settings so that you have shell flight time to aiming point always visible? Different guns have different shell flight times so without that information you might hit well in one ship but keep missing lot in other ship.

Don't know what ships you've been playing lately, but your cruisers seem to have not so high damage to carry matches with "substandard" teams. And USN cruisers have not so great survival rate. (not dying too early helps to do more damage) Try to remember that most cruisers don't have that much of armor and are food also for destroyers:

Murmansk would be good for first premium ship. Basically Omaha with: Almost DD class fast rudder shift. Good max range for guns. Original better AP penetration. And 8km 55kts 14400 damage torps for occasional heavier punch without need to get close.

Don't ever by Sims... Its "upgraded" torps are basically Tier 3 Wakatake's torps.

16" super heavy AP of Iowa/Montana penetrates in class of 600mm of vertical armor from 10km range rising to 800+mm at zero range so lighter angling of even BB armor won't help at point blank ranges. And naturally cruiser citadel armor gets penetrated basically until auto-bounce mechanic angle. In which case BB AP overmatches bow plating of almost all cruisers and penetrates citadel's forward bulkhead. Even 203mm gunned cruiser have chances for that against lightly armored cruisers: For Baltimore/Des Moines super heavy 8" AP penetration of vertical armor was in class of 200mm at 14km and 250mm at 9km and probably easily over 300mm at point blank range. So very lightly or unarmored targets would be easily overpenned also by cruiser AP. As for DD AP at close range you want to hit enough armor or angled enough ship to avoid overpens: Unarmored areas like superstructure or bow/stern will get overpenned from perfect broadside angle. In case of Cleveland with its almost completely submerged citadel most of the ship gives overpens. Buffed Kirov is now almost similar. Sure USN DDs suffer because of mortar's bad trajectory beyond 7km fast making hitting angle bad for penetration... But until that they have lot better shell penetration value (like Murmansk over Omaha) compensating for lighter and slower shell: Notably faster and heavier Soviet 130mm AP has 60% higher muzzle energy... And is ballistically better retaining that energy/speed better citadelling lightest armored cruisers up to 10km range from straight broadside. Somewhat armored cruisers like Omaha are citadelled up to 9km: Few km below max citadelling range penetration angle increases: At short ranges you want to hit that citadel to avoid 250 damage per shell overpens: And don't care about smaller angling: At point blank range citadel and armor missing shells overpenetrate from even bigger angle, check minimap: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1parmmlfw53ql0k/Kuma%20Citadelled.jpg?dl=0 (next salvo aim was better with three citadel hits for kill) Also already burning/immune all or nothing armored BBs are valid targets for DD AP: Just aim at upper decks above heavy waterline belt armor and it's easy to do even 3km damage per salvo. New Mexico has nice big upper decks for that. Some BBs like Colorado actually have enough armor in lot places to negate DD caliber HE making AP better if angle and range are good for penetration.

BBs and slow reloading cruiser should always fire first what they have loaded (or almost loaded) instead of waiting long time for full reload of shell type switch. After that firing (=chance for some fast damage) double tapping wanted shell type key forces reloading that type. Anyway BB APs have so high max damage that handfull of just overpens will hurt DDs badly. And from bow or stern direction BB APs overmatch "armor" of DD instead of bouncing and do normal penetration damage which is higher than HE hit damage. Of course if having no other targets then switching to HE before hand is good to do. Otherwise BBs should use almost exclusively AP. Also with good enough accuracy/hit count also cruiser AP works fine against DDs if that's what is loaded:

Not wood, but frozen mix of water and wood pulp.

Yeah, probably whole captain skill selection handling code is built around demanding one previous level/tier skill before allowing having next level skill. Might throw a "mild tantrum" with level 1 skill being removed. So probably full skill reset would be only other option for auto-selecting BFT if there's no other (than SA) skill selected.

Actually don't forget those fails, you need to learn from them to avoid doing same mistake(s) again. That applies to any ship. Just like also fails to good players. While some times asked to put also their bad games to Youtube those wouldn't really give much. Because those would have those same mistakes: Sailing in straight line for too long... Showing broadside to wrong direction... Taking wrong turns... Going too far without support in wrong ship type... Difference is just that good players do those mistakes less often. Can't check what DDs you've played, but for one thing it's conflicting ship with a bits of about everything. But for start try planning ahead like you were driving BB... Cap, sneak around, ninja backstab and torpedo anything like DD. Think (especially) broadside showing cruisers as food like in BB. (+do as much total damage during the time match lasts) While raining HE(ll) on every possible enemy like some stealth cruiser if having nothing better to do. And don't forget using AP against already burning/immune "all or nothing" armored BBs showing side below medium range. And maybe five first videos will give some idea: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=aetam+gremyashchy (that first one is low damage match)

Automatic free SA could help new players get into game if they can be just taught it's meaning... As in "incoming fire at any moment" and need for evasive maneuvering or angling armor and ship to be harder target. Not much of change to smoke except that now laying smoke should keep you undetected (after initial 5s delay/penalty) when moving at slow speed.

Big easily "visible" citadel does that for Omaha. If penetration is enough it's very easy to citadel consistently by hitting just above water line. That's why I challenged Omaha openly to gun duel in this: Those Kirov kills were from before the buff. Now consistent finding of its citadel with DD guns needs short range like near end of this kill, though that improves penetration angles. Also Furry (have citadelled it up to ~8km) feels harder to citadel in its recently gotten C hull and was always mostly enough armored against DD caliber HEs. So while suffering in fire rate and turret traverse angled Furrytaco is actually very nasty gun duel opponent for destroyer: AP bounces/fails to pen belt armor and DD caliber HE doesn't do damage to most of the ship. Königsberg again takes citadel hits up to 10km, but citadel is clearly harder to hit than in Omaha. So ranked for toughness against DD guns I would put Tier 5 cruisers into this order from best to worst: 1 Furutaka by big margin 2 Kirov 3½ Königsberg 4,2 Omaha Ironically isn't that about the opposite compared to how good they're considered as DD hunters?