RamirezKurita

Exactly, it would bring every cruiser up to their levels. If they won't fix the premiums themselves the only possible way to balance them outside of sweeping mechanics changes is to buff all others up to their standards. They would no longer be P2W if the regular ships got heals as they wouldn't be any better performing than regular ships (or at very least, not as overpoweringly P2W as they currently are).

Which is a pretty solid argument for giving all standard T8 cruisers the repair party consumable to bring them up to the standard of the Atago.

The thing here is that "easy to learn, hard to master" is one of the holy grails of good design. You want things to be accessible enough that players can somewhat get them to work quickly even just in a couple of games (skill floor), but that it takes a huge amount of experience and knowledge to get them to work well (skill ceiling). Usually, you will want to balance the game around the Unicums, as that shows the overall potential power of something. The last thing you want is for every single ranked game to be filled with the same ship over and over once you reach a certain point (particularly in E-Sports, nobody wants to watch the same matchup again and again when there's meant to be dozens of different options). However, the accessibility issue also needs to temper the balance, ensuring enough QoL mechanics are in place such that they are easy enough to pick up and play but without simplifying gameplay or providing additional power to the experts, overall maintaining both gameplay balance as well as the "easy to learn, hard to master" grail.

I miss the good ol' days when it was simply to shoot down 30 planes. I can kind of see why they changed it, as it was far too easy to get in the upper tiers and too hard in the lower tiers, but they really should have changed it to something like "shoot down 20 + 2T" where T is your tier.

The 155mm Mogami is one of the few actual choices in ship modules though, rather than making it a premium option I am waiting for us to some more similar choices in loadouts. Not just gun calibre changes, but there's a few refits here and there as well as proposed/planned ones that would offer a decent shift in gameplay on the same ship. I'm still somewhat bitter that the Gneisenau class doesn't have the option to use their original 283mm guns (particularly as they are already in the game, so they wouldn't even have to make any more assets!). More on topic, I'd love for the Hippers to get the option for the 4x3 150mm turrets that were originally planned for the last two members of the class. Similar to the Mogamis being technically CLs for the London Naval Treaty, the Kriegsmarine did have plans to fill out their light cruiser budget allotted to them by the Anglo-German Naval Treaty by creating ships that were heavy cruisers in all but calibre.

That's the thing that I don't get, they could have just made them decent all-rounders (which would make sense, as pretty much every other navy was copying their innovations until the 1930s rather than doing new things) that play like a cross between the KM and the USN battleships and everyone would have been happy. Not as strong AA as the USN battleships, not as armoured as the KM battleships, but respectable in all regards - the archetypal "jack of all trades, master of none". Instead, the design mess they have created means that there's a massive player base that isn't happy as they wanted battleships, not a pile of gimmicks welded together masquerading as battleships. If they wanted unique flavour, rather than mashing together every single gimmick available they could have added a "rapid salvo" consumable similar to the torpedo reload booster but for main batteries. This would give them the cool gimmick of burst damage as they could fire 2 salvos in 5 seconds (then back to 30s reload for 3-5 mins or so until the consumable is off cooldown), while also being a historical reference to the practices employed at Jutland to optimise RoF.

A lot of ships in the game, even historical blueprints and not just WG fantasies, don't have Wikipedia pages. Some of the designs it takes some serious trawling through the internet to find information about.

Which would further strip even more variation and strategy out of CV gameplay. The 2v2 CV games are among the most fun ones out there as you have a partner to work and coordinate with, not to mention how they actually make the AA specced cruisers actually useful. The recent changes to carrier matchmaking to restrict the upper tiers to 1 carrier per game are the reason why I'll be moving back down to T6 carriers once I elite my Shokaku, as I know I'll never get to relive those amazing games that saw me playing a supporting role against T9 and T10 carriers.

Things like displacement don't directly affect gameplay, so I don't think that they should appear on the port tabs as they are mostly pointless stats (except possibly length as I guess some players might find it useful). However, I would like to see a bit more in-game about the ships, such as the ability to click on a ships name in port and for it to bring a full screen of miscellaneous information that expands on the current ship background info you see when mousing over them, containing such information as displacement, ship dimensions, year of design, year of commissioning (if applicable), development names as well as bit of the design philosophy and political/economic/wartime climate that lead to such a design (which would also help keep WG honest about which ships are historical blueprints and which ones are pure fantasy). It would also be nice if we could educate people a bit more regarding ship classes, I get annoyed by people saying ships like the Kongo "play more like a battlecruiser" - yeah, that's probably because they are battlecruisers.

Which is why generally speaking they can't just nerf regular ships if there are premiums that offer similar performance as otherwise you end up with a balanced regular ship and an overpowered premium. They need to either buff up the rest of the regular ships up to the standards of the overpowered ones (and accept the power creep this introduces), or implement sweeping mechanics changes to fix the whole lot (and accept the major rebalancing headache this causes). It's also a really good argument for why premiums should ideally be slightly weaker than regular ships, particularly at launch. Making them weaker gives that bit of headroom for further balance changes on other ships and thereby preventing power creep or OP premiums if nearby ships get nerfed. To be honest, I don't see why they don't just "open beta" premiums by giving people who preorder them early access to them with the clear proviso that they are still a WiP, that way they could still implement nerfs for the first year or so of a premiums life until their official release without betraying player trust (which is something that WG seems to prioritise oddly, as most other freemium games have no issues whatsoever about nerfing paid-for content).

I can see a few obvious problems with spreading ships out across multiple tiers: Firstly, the boredom factor. Do you really want to play a line that's several copies of the same ship over and over? It could get dull for certain ships just doing a ship for 2 tiers, but some ships could easily span 3 tiers and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a couple that could span 4 tiers. Secondly, there would be a complete lack of customisation, saying that a ship is ship X from Y year means that there's no option for players to choose modules to suit their playing style (admittedly, this aspect is lacking in-game though as there's currently very few sidegrade options for modules), every single ship would basically come "as is" rather than being tweakable to suit a player or to give a sense of progression. Thirdly, non-premiums in-game represent entire classes, not individual ships, so it would seem odd for a ship class to jump around in terms of name. Fourthly, having non-specific loadouts for ships gives WG a good amount of headroom for balancing as they can easily tweak things like AA guns without forum historians complaining too much. Fifthly, there's more than enough potential ships out there, both actually built as well as only blueprinted ones, to fill out multiple lines for each of the major nations such that we don't need to spread each ship class out across multiple tiers (which does beg the question as to why WG needs to create complete fantasy ships such as the Monarch when there's plenty of blueprinted ships that can fill gaps).

When did they change that? I know when CV mirroring first appeared it prioritised CV mirroring over every single other part of matchmaking, up to and including dragging entire divisions of undertiered ships into a game because of the carriers.

Ah, I remember the good ol' days back when people could division with anything except another carrier and so fail divisioning with a low tier carrier was the only "safe" way to fail division with a lower tier carrier. I remember when they first started carrier mirroring that someone had a game where the forced mirroring dragged a full T4 division into a T10 game because someone fail divisioned a Hosho with a Yamato.

The issue with the manual drops at T4 is that, although it is easier for carriers to learn how to do them at those tiers, it is far too easy for them to do the perfect drops. In the later tiers, ships have enough AA that you need to drop pretty sharpish and often have to accept a sub-par drop just so that you don't just lose all of your planes pointlessly, but in the lower tiers the planes can dance around ships practically indefinitely until they get the opportunity for a perfect drop that the ship can't avoid. Now, if AA in T3-5 was to be buffed significantly, including the addition of the AA defensive fire consumable for some cruisers in those tiers, then manual drops at T4-5 would be fine.

Firstly, rely on your teammate. You are T5 vs T6 and therefore aren't meant to really face them head-on unless you are a significantly better player than them. Either play a supporting role or find the enemy T5 to bully. Secondly, rely on the AA of your non-carrier friends a little, being in T6 means that you should have some AA defensive fire equipped cruisers around that can punish your T6 opponent for flying over them. Thirdly, perform evasive maneuvers and don't group up your bombers when there's enemy fighters around. A dodged strafe leaves the enemy fighters quite vulnerable to a counterattack and you don't need your own strafe to dodge.

The real issue I see isn't the ship itself, it's the fact that it's an AA cruiser at the tier when carriers begin to pretty much die out. I'd bet that if we could somehow filter the stats to only show games with either a T8+ carrier or two T7- carriers, the Atlanta would begin to perform quite admirably compared to other T7 ships. We should really wait until WG figure out how to bring carriers back into the game in a big way before worrying about the Atlanta, as they are pretty much tied into the same issue. If WG buff the Atlanta to be balanced without carriers, it would be absolutely monstrous once they start reappearing, which would then require a load of sweeping mechanics changes in an attempt to rebalance the Atlanta. WG's attitude regarding the nerfing of premiums means that they need to be absolutely sure that the ship itself is the source of the issues, and not the current gameplay environment or the players, as they can't simply revert the buffs.

There is definitely skill in dealing with aircraft, just not twitch last-second reaction skills. Dealing with aircraft is a matter of planning ahead and strategizing, by the time you have aircraft looming over you the situation is already decided.

It's not just the AA skills and modules though, I have attacked the same ship sailed by the same player in the same game and lost notably more aircraft in my second strike, despite the destruction of enemy AA guns on the ship. For the difference AA spec makes, I don't have a problem with people being able to customise their ships, but the issue for me is that carriers have no way of identifying what modifications a ship has without sacrificing large numbers of planes (which might then give a false reading due to RNG). It wouldn't be a problem if we could see on the HUD what a ship's AA is like at a glance, such as mousing over an enemy to show a DPS/distance graph or even being able to hold down a key to produce an overlay showing total enemy AA DPS on each location, which would then allow carriers to make informed decisions.

There's still hope for when they get around to making a branched line like the IJN and Soviet destroyers. That way, Monarch and the KGV can both be T8 (and hopefully Monarch eventually gets remade into the 15C that it is claimed to be rather than an unholy abomination made by fusing 15C's turrets onto a KGV hull).

As far as I am aware, it wasn't anything to do with balance. It was quite literally because of the player perception; how there's a surprising number of players who will look at the line, see a 14 inch gun at T8 and immediately abandon the line while conveniently ignoring the rest of the ship's advantages. Even before the line was announced, even before the RN cruisers were announced long ago, every single thread about the KGVs was a massive argument between "basically T8+ in all respects except main battery, with armour exceeding all but the T10s" and "but 14 inch guns!".

The problem with such a fixed mechanic is that destroyers, which rely largely upon their small size, would end up being hit every single time by a bomb or two, unless the pattern is spaced far enough that it can't hit destroyers which would instead create the opposite problem. Other ships, however, could easily shrug off the consistent damage. I agree that something should be done about the dispersion, but I don't think that a fixed pattern would be the answer. A suggestion that I have seen before is for DBs to lower in dispersion the longer they travel in a straight line. This would reward forward planning for CVs as they would ideally have to predict which direction a ship will be heading in and plan their bomber movements accordingly, meanwhile players would have the option of throwing them off more by maneuvering as the CV would then have to choose between the accuracy penalty for changing course and hitting the ship at the wrong angle. I agree that we need ammo changing in-game sooner rather than later, but I'd go further than simply AP and HE bombs. Historically, bombers had options for HE, AP and SAP bombs, but also the options for multiple smaller bombs or pairs of bombs, all of which could easily be implemented in the game. Even most of the TBs historically could instead load up on regular bombs, which could allow them to function as regular bombers (albeit inaccurate ones as they don't dive to drop their bombs, but instead drop them from altitude). Fighters, historically, could usually load up on a small collection of bombs, which could be implemented in game as an ammunition switch changing them into sub-par bombers (thematically it would involve them sacrificing their main gun ammunition for performance and bomb capacity); such a mechanic could also let fighter bombers actually function as both. Giving every single type of aircraft the option to change loadout would diversify their gameplay, which also introducing more meaningful decisions to their gameplay style without simply cluttering gameplay with more APM clickfest mechanics. I don't see the need to force a duration penalty on switching ammo types though, carrier reload times in the upper tiers are already pretty punishing and all the penalty would do is prevent ammo switching from being a useful mechanic. Just make it reset loading times, the real carrier choice should always be about which ammunition to use rather than punishing them for trying to use the correct tool for the job. I agree on the AA damage, the current RNG mechanics are kind of ridiculous how sometimes you will lose an entire squadron in seconds to a lone ship while other times an identical ship won't even scratch your bombers. To make matters worse, it makes fighter dogfights in mirror matches very random yet incredibly swingy, as losing a plane causes you to lose firepower while also making each of your planes take more damage, meanwhile your opponent effectively still has a pristine squadron; you would expect a battle between mirrored squadrons to end in a close match, but normally the victor is unlucky to lose more than 2 planes. I also feel the priority targeting for AA could do with a bit of a rework as currently it makes absolutely no sense.

There's not just the cut down AA suite and the terrible bow plating, but the ship has also been shafted in terms of secondary battery by giving it the same range as the USN's little pop guns and extremely poor damage considering their calibre (they deal less damage than the IJN 127mm guns, despite having bursting charges almost twice as large) as well as WG conveniently forgetting that Anson's secondary battery was upgraded to the RP10 standard as used on HMS Vanguard. I would have thought that having guns intermediate between the Bismarck class's 150mm guns and their 7km range and the normal 127mm guns and their 5km range would at least justify a 6 km base range, particularly with the improved fire directors on the RP10 models.

That's pretty much how 99% of matchmakers do it, they basically make the standard unranked games into ranked games that hide your ranks. The mechanics all go on in the background as your elo or matchmaking ratings rise and fall based on your performance, but it's all hidden from view. They wouldn't even need to restrict the players based on league, as long as the teams are both equal in expected performance.

Not sure if my sarcasam radar is picking up a false positive here, but generally speaking games should be balanced around highly skilled players, as that shows the maximum potential of a ship's capabilities. However, this should also not be confused with gameplay accessibility, which gives the performance under suboptimal play (or alternatively, the ease of approaching reasonably optimised play). Win rates of the top players gives a ship's power, win rates of the bottom players tells us how accessible a ship is. Use the top players for balance, use the bottom players for QoL changes and optimisations.

More mechanics in general is good, they diversify the game a bit more and give a greater set of permutations to play with. However, when people talk about gimmicks, they generally aren't on about fancy new mechanics that add extra depth to the game, they are on about things that are thrown in just to be different. People get annoyed by new lines, not simply because they are new lines, but because WG seems to have this urge to make them weird and crazy rather than letting historical precedent define their gimmicks. For example, the RN cruisers don't have access to HE for no good reason, which requires them to then have a plethora of extra consumables added - these are gimmicks for the sake of gimmicks and to make things as different as possible rather than trying to create a cohesive whole. To make matters worse, they take historically typical ships and throw gimmicks at them until they become unwieldy troglodytes, when if they wanted gimmicks there are a full plethora of historically gimmicky ships.