deadly_if_swallowed

One more point: IJN can service their squads much faster than USN. On Zuiho, servicing a Torp Bomber squadron only takes 13 seconds (with modules/captaincy) So far I played USN up to T8 Lexington, and IJN up to T6 Ryujo. I started with Hosho but screwed up. Langley feels more comfortable to get used to CV gameplay as you quickly gain air supremacy over any Hosho, but your reserves are very low so take care of your planes ;) At the moment I surprisingly enjoy Zuiho a lot but Ryujo is giving me headaches. Due to having more and more squads you require more micromanagement and multitasking skills with IJN CVs than with USN. It is literally "aggressive gameplay" - you end up hitting a lot of buttons

I don't regard premium ships as a trade-off. One is a "proper" ship of your tech-tree that you progress with throughout the game, while a premium ship is a standalone addition to your port, useable for profits and captain xp. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Nonetheless, I second the idea of giving MK a radar consumable. Not because I want it to actually have it but to take away the smoke screen Invis HE spamming at 19 km with rather flat shell arcs is really some nuisance to BBs.

My experience so far is this; if the enemy fighters survive/dodge your strafe, they can attack your planes from behind while yours are still strafing and are defenseless for that moment. After strafing your planes need a moment (1-2 second or so) to regroup. Only after that timespan (the strafe itself and the regrouping) they are fit to engage the attacking planes. But by then you may have lost quite a few already so winning air combat may be near impossible. Strafing is good for chasing squads or crippling multiple squads, but should not be used as attack head on.

"Submerging" Just had the same thought

Pensacola useless? I beg to differ. T8 New Orleans vs Mogami may be a debate in favour of IJN. But I will always choose Pensacola over Myoko, no matter the conditions of battle.

After I played a couple of games in Tirpitz, I got used to switching back to AP after torping. But hello muscle memory, now I do the same with Farragut and Kiev

Off with their heads!

I do see a lot of German during games... Mostly when people get rekt they swear and curse a lot. Apparently, way too many Germans (or maybe Austrians?) have serious issues with suffering defeat, not only here but in all kinds of online games. But apart from that, I rarely see any other language than English, especially for small talk or tactical stuff. English is universal, almost everyone knows it at least a bit or is able to understand.

I got my few Die Hards mainly with Nagato, once against Murmansk and once against Myoko. But I also got one with a destroyer, I think it was Isokaze, by ramming another destroyer with less base hp and broken engine.

I recall Myoko being a pain but I cannot remember why. Was it the "start 300 fires" stuff?

Murmansk and North Carolina.

Getting 3 turrets knocked out means you had 3 or more turrets to begin with... just one word: Ognevoi.

Yorck's HE is not exactly better than AP but definitely easier to handle. The AP shell arc is very high at distances longer than 9 km, and the velocity is rather meh. Just spam HE on everything that moves and is not on fire yet or that could be more on fire If a cruiser (or even BB) appears within 9 km or less, AP becomes a valid choice.

"One such bomb [Type 99 Number 80 Mark 5, the converted 16" AP shell] went clear through Vestal at Pearl Harbor to explode on the harbor floor under the ship." Here we got our overpen

Haha, overpen would look great on that. The bomb penetrates the (more or less) armored deck, punches right through the ship's interiors and exits through the hull below. Minimum damage only Yeah, such bombs would be a nice option indeed. IJN even converted Nagato's 410mm AP shells into bombs for the attack on Pearl Harbor. If there is any way to have them well balanced, I would love to see them introduced into the game.

To be honest, I never got to understand how fighters and AA work in detail. But this guy here did: http://forum.worldofwarships.asia/index.php?/topic/10326-usn-fighters-vs-ijn-fighters-a-detailed-analysis/ Maybe you can find your answers there

I finished the Yorck grind yesterday and finally got me an Admiral Hipper. Sold the Yorck afterwards since I did not plan to play her anymore but I miss her already. HE spamming was quite fun, and Yorck was the only non-CV ship that gained me a Witherer award. She is not bad, really. Small and fairly agile for a heavy cruiser, can take some punishment, not much alpha damage but your fires will do their work.

Exactly. With IJN ships you have to do just that in most cases. Your shells will penetrate the bulge or sometimes even below (a brief fragment of a second after shell hit the water), your 410mm caliber just doesn't care. I see you have gotten used to Wyoming and New York. That threw off my aim pretty badly when I started playing USN battleships and overshot almost every enemy ship, slightly scratching their mast and funnel. Aim like you would with New York, then lower your aim by about a third of the hull's height Maybe that will do the trick

15 seconds average then fair enough

If only focussing one ship, it is better to separate your groups in most cases. If you are confident to kill the ship in one blow, you can send all at once but if the BB has much hp left, better send in 2 DB squads to set some serious fires on him so he hits the damage control consumable, then go in with the other DB and your TB to make use of lingering fire and flooding damage. Might as well use the other way around, torps and fire first to force repair, then finish off with more fires. Just keep in mind that damage control duration is quite long on a BB (15 seconds iirc).

Just don't treat her like a Kongo or Fuso. Her shell velocity is very different from 356mm guns so it takes some practice to get used to the new target lead. Her guns are more like Colorado, just much more accurate unless you fire while turning. Just in case someone checks my stats and finds only bad to mediocre results: set filter to my recent games with her, pls. I failed very hard in the beginning since I acutally started playing the game only to unlock her so she was among my first ships while my skills developed much slower than my tech tree

I enjoy most battles at mid-tier and have tons of fun. But the two most memorable games I played so far were high-tier, both getting my Yamato sunk in quite the embarrasing manner. 1. Map was Ice Islands. I was sailing Yamato through the northern islands, putting out some long range shots down south as it was still early and no other ships were in sight. Alas, a wild Shimakaze torp spread appears. It was already very wide and almost running out of range I guess, but I was still deemed to eat one of them. So I turned to port to face the torpedo with my belt... and detonated from that single torpedo. 2. That match gave me Taihou nightmares. Map was Two Brothers, I spawned on the north-east side. So I pushed down east with two cuisers as backup but they got spammed to death by Taihou, played by H3llcaster (great player, say hello whenever you meet him). Then he focused on good ol' Yamato. I think he did 3 bombing runs on me, ultimately burning and flooding me to death at the cost of only 8! planes. I lost all faith in Japanese AA capabilities that day.

I got mine just yesterday so I cannot confirm any noticeable changes. It feels a bit underwhelming though, and very sluggish in its stock config. Hope it gets better with upgrades lateron. MM was so screwed yesterday, I didn't have much chance to try her properly. I love the shell arc though. Might as well be personal bad luck in your case. We all have those phases when we cannot make our favourite ships work. Don't know how many times I "forgot how to Nagato"

Weekend madness. Today should be better

When I screwed up a mod, my ping became -35 ms at some times Of course, it was hardcore lag and eventually caused game to crash. I usually got about 25 to 50 ms. Back in the days when we had our LAN parties, everything below 300 ms was considered a superb ping, below 500 ms was still perfectly playable, and many games were still ok up to 1000 ms.