Unintentional_submarine

Having Jürgen Prochnow as a German skipper would be awesome. They could even have him age like the seagull. Heck, today he looks ever more the tough commander. It's probably that weatherbeaten face of his. Imagine him at the helm of your Bismarck. And his lines... Yeah I would totally be happy with that. Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure I would like the eventual storm of requests for other faces to be added. I mean I might like them, but it would just seem like a screw without end.

And not a single one on your team... wow. I can just imagine the disappointment on the enemy team. Especially from the Kutuzovs, if they, like me, take them out in order to meet other Soviet ships (btw, that tactic appears to not work terribly well).

No, the most common tier for them is T6 followed by T7, so playing T8 should generate the most encounters. Except, even when I take my own Chapayev out, I rarely see any. Last four battles have seen my side having the only Soviet ships, and the one time I did see enemies (and got a kill YEAH!!!) broke up another streak. So MrConway's suggestion to play the Soviet ships in order to see them more... well, can't honestly agree with it that much. Sure, it would make sense if there were a lot of other people taking their own Soviet ships out in order to meet them, but it seems not (the MM is likely to spread the nationalities to both teams, but when I'm the only one...).

The entire idea of 'Kill X ships from nation Y' is flawed. But if you really have to do it, then it should be balanced, as otherwise it simply becomes a matter of the least popular nation. Does the number of kills achieved against the Germans, US or Japanese matter to any of us at this point? Not really. I'm sure there are few that lack a few Germans when they are finished with the Japanese and Americans, but overall these nations don't matter one bit. They could just as well have been left out for all the impact they had. Given the need to make this such a mission, they should have made the list be Japanese, American, German and everyone else. Then it would probably have been a bit more balanced, if still inherently crap. It is amusing to play in a Soviet cruiser at T8 now, for me, seeing how the enemies beeline towards you, shells and planes drop all around you, and watch them losing the battle, watching me sail away with a good amount of damage and kills (there are few things as annoying as a Soviet cruiser kiting away). But it is stressful and not a small bit demanding. It isn't something I do much for that reason, and I'm sure most people simply find it a chore to play the Soviet ships at all (and so stop playing them, or at least play them less, like I do). That's plain old bad for gameplay, that has nothing to do with the mission progress (which is itself an issue). And it is something that is totally foreseeable. How many of us didn't see this coming (yes people were caught up in the Takao debacle, but almost at once there were posts about this too)? How did the planners not see this coming? Or maybe the pertinent question is 'why did they go ahead with this mission despite knowing the issues it would cause'?

Yes it is indeed interesting. In fact your comment prompted me to look into it, and what I found was that you could assign Akizuki's ensign to either place. What struck me the most was the fact that there are a few more pictures with normal stern mounted ensigns (the pole is even there on the game model), but most of the drawings and other post-war iconography of her class has the ensign on the rear mast. That's rather confusing, but maybe professionals have access to more pictures that form a wider time span than I do? In fact they likely do. Still, it seems odd to pick the mast over the flagpole when we know the flagpole was in fact used. What is more, it seems this practice of mast mounted ensigns wasn't confined to the Akizuki class, so why just her?

It is quite frustrating to take your own Soviet ship in the tier requirements out, only to find that in three battles played, the only Soviet ships were on your side (3-2-2 actually, which made me rather pissed).

Nothing so exotic actually. It was Captain Ernst Lindemann who in an address to his officers said that they should stop using the feminine article, as a ship of Bismarck's capabilities could only be male. The man relating this story was the senior surviving officer, and he added that while he had since her sinking, tried to stick with the wishes of his late captain, but had at times slipped (using feminine article). A clear indication that it was both unusual, as well as not well accepted by the crew in general. In reverse, Captain Topp, while serving on Tirpitz quite clearly used the feminine article of her. So Lindemann's position was quite clearly one of a very small minority.

Why are you replying to me? You post doesn't have much bearing on what I said. Anyway, you mentioned it. Minekaze will not retain her present day torps. Simple as that. And having that extra stealth doesn't really matter that much if you are still 'detected', and you will be at those ranges (what other ship will be closer?). In any case, it is less of a problem for those ships as they are nimble and fast. It will however be an issue for the bigger and slower DDs. But, my point really was, while those DDs are hurt the most of any single type of ship, the biggest loser is playing mindgames. Dropping off detection to change tacks? Running away from faster enemies in end game? Sneaking around for flank attacks? Sitting in ambush around the corner of an island? Pushing into a cap at the start of the match? All these situations apply to all types of ships, some more than others of course, but all are about managing your stealth until such a time to start the engagement on your terms. And all these situations will be highly affected by this... I was about to call it a skill, but this really isn't related to skill at all. Suddenly you will see DD jostling to be the second closest ship to a target, and battleships refusing to even get within 10km of a cap because the indicator says something is in there. Gameplay is going to suffer from this. It doesn't matter that I don't need it, nor want it. It matter that it will be effective for a lot of people who can't be assed to actually learn when and where to expect enemies. But instead of having a feeling where they are, they will KNOW it.

I have stopped commenting on controversial subject as of late, or at least tried. This time I have to say something. Keen Intuition's main problem isn't that it is a particularly hard hit to slower DDs that rely on torpedoes. I agree, they are the most hurt ships, but the biggest loser would be gameplay in general. Too many situations would be affected outside those pertaining to a destroyer seeking to surprise a target with torpedoes. It would take away a lot of the psychological chess, and that would be a great shame.

Here it is.

Take a look again. The tube itself is in the way of much rotation. It can't launch torps in a very wide arc. Still, quite useful for charges and DD knife fights.

It really does look like we have a case of 'well it can't be me that's at fault, I mean it's me after all, and everyone knows that I'm very good so it must be the fault of the game.' Experience is not everything in this game, but it is a huge part of it. The gameplay changes, and it changes a lot as the tiers go up. Few people are able to jump into a high tier game and not get utterly wrecked. The question that should be asked is: "What makes you think that you are able to avoid that?" And once it is painfully obvious that you can't: "Why is it not your own lack of experience that is the problem, rather than the game (in this case torpedos)?" Thousands of people manage perfectly fine every day, some are even exceptionally good at avoiding torpedos. Take a pointer from them instead of blaming the game. At least there weren't any of the otherwise usual hackusations.

I considered that possibility as they were the first DDs to become operational after that debacle, but it was so soon after that I didn't think the British would have considered them replacements (seeing as they must have deducted that the ships had been designed and under construction long before that). Instead I looked at the operational history of the first ships, and it really seemed like the first good location to be identified was in Narvik (though Brest is also a possibility). But if you know it positively, then I thank you for that reveal. I couldn't find anything other than off-handed comments that didn't really say much that could be considered firm.

I believe he is pointing to the 'unofficial' names for the T5 (Elbing) and the T8 (Narvik). But the main problem with using those names, as I have already pointed out once here, is that they were not even German names. Those were names the Allies gave to them because the official German names were perhaps too confusing in rapid and common parlance. Elbing was the name of the city where the Schichau shipyard, that constructed the class, was located. Why the Allies decided to call the Type 1936A class 'Narvik' I haven't been able to determine, but I can imagine Narvik was the location where the first ship was positively identified. By the way, I figured out where WG got that surprising rounded bridge on Ernst Gaede. It appears that the first Type 1934s had that bridge for a time. The best picture of it is of Max Schultz. But I found pictures of it on a few more, including Leberecht Maass. As it turned out, I should just have looked at the stock hull of LM, and the design should have been obvious to me. But it only occurred to me that I hadn't checked the stock hulls, after I had figured it out by finding pictures. Gloriously wasted effort. Anyway, the rounded bridge is perfectly fine.

Yamato does what Yamato should. It wasn't exactly a great battle in terms of my damage, or even the target selection (it should be noted that it was a DD-light battle on Okinawa), but damn me if I didn't top the team with my tanking. 4.8 million potential damage is a personal best so far. I took nearly 100 hits from the Neptune, 25 from a GK and around 40 from a Zao. And still they didn't kill me. Heck I even had a heal left over in the end, though I would never have been able to use it as I was dead in another 20 seconds or so (so focus, much rain of shells).

I certainly didn't miss the fact that they have single torps in the front. In fact I have, along with others, talked about their firing arcs (which are incredibly limited). The single launch option I find rather unlikely given what has been datamined about the reloads. The single launchers have half the reload time of the doubles. That wouldn't make much sense if the doubles could fire single torps.

Wait a moment... didn't some people report getting credits. What gives? So why some but not all?

It's a feature of all three of the first ships. What it means is anyone's guess, some think it is a forced wide spread, others, like you, think it might mean single fire option. But it really can't be known for certain just yet. However, if you look at the T4 in the official shots, it is firing it's torps and it looks like the second torp is in fact coming out at a wide angle to the other one.

At present both Ernst Gaede and Z-23 appear to have the 150mm detection increase in both A and B hulls, while the 128mm armed ships have detection increase fitting those guns. Which is all sorts of stupid honestly. I am at present quite wary of the 150s. I have noticed that they do have an increased HE performance, in fact they are quite similar to the later tiers of Japanese DD HE (and these appears to be in for a hefty nerf), but with better fire chance and lower shell speed, otherwise very similar (rate of fire, turret traverse and damage per shell)

Not even unofficial, both the Elbing and Narvik names were the Allied names for them. It would be quite inappropriate to use those names. I'm glad that WG understood that. The Ernst Gaede issue... yeah. Really does look like a modified TA43. Seems WG took the TA43 and applied the 150mm guns. Which is honestly a little weird when they could have picked Großes Torpedoboot 1916 if that was their thing. But I guess that would have clashed with T-22, which in turn would have been hard to cram into T6. So they picked T-22 and then had to find something for T6. Just weird they went for the 150mm guns for that one, though I guess it would make more sense if more than one tier had access to it.

Very limited traverse. 12ish degrees. Which is practically fixed. [EDIT] LOL, that was for the T4, the T2 has 7 degrees of traverse there.

Yup and they reload differently too. It will be scary how they will be able to keep up a constant barrage of torps. Fast reload plus different reload times means torps flying all the time.

Might as well post it in the already 4 pages of talk about it. http://forum.worldofwarships.eu/index.php?/topic/66023-will-just-leave-this-here-graff-spee/

The torps appear to be fairly good. Reasonably fast and ranges up to 10.5km for the T10, with 8.5km common after T5. But damage appears to be somewhat weak, similar to the upgraded Tashkent torps. Another problem with the 150mm guns is the fact that the firing penalty is tied to the hull, not the actual gun module. So either the 150mm guns act like the smaller guns in penalty, or you are screwed and will have 150mm detection penalty even if you don't pick those guns. Right now it looks like they retain the lower caliber detection penalty, but it could just as well just be unfinished. Oh, and I assume this will please some folk, the Flottentorpedoboot 1939 (also known as Elbing class in Allied documents) is present in the form of T-22 at T5. At a quick glance she looks rather unimpressive, but she does have two triple launchers with up to 7.5km torps. She might very well be among the most interesting ships. By the way, Graf Spee's turret arcs are less than impressive. At 37-38 degrees off the centerline for frontal arcs she will struggle when trying to angle (it is somewhat better if she tries to angle away instead). Especially considering her poor rudder shift (it is even worse than Budyonny by a few seconds). She will need those heals, and lets not forget that the heals are cruiser heals, so she has 2 (3 with prem, 4 with prem and SI).

Looking at the datamined ones at GM3D they will be highly interesting. However, the 150mm guns look rather meh, as I expected. The HE looks very bad, the AP great. That makes them poor at fighting other DDs (inless they get the same treatment as the British cruisers, but since they have HE, I sort of doubt it), and cruisers can just angle against their few guns. Even worse, the range is poor, at less than 11km for both the T6 and T8 versions, and with no AFT to buff that up to more acceptable ranges, or good EM to buff the paltry turret traverse rate, and detection being standard ranges I fail to see how these guns will have any role (it should be said that some of the stats appear highly placeholder-like, including the range). Otherwise the German DDs look a lot like a line of Błyskawicas. Similar rudder shift (that is slow), similar detection, similar torp range, similar turning radius.