invicta2012

I think the American Tier VI should be Wasp. You have to bear in mind that the other Tier VI CVs are from very much the early part of World War 2, and Independence feels a little too new to be a contemporary of Ryujo, Furious and Ark Royal. I'd love her to have some of more famous US Carrier planes of WW2 like Avengers and Dauntlesses - small squads for balance, of course - as I think it's a bit of shame the planes that did most of the heavy lifting in the Pacific War are just stock on the Tier VIIIs and are usually replaced. Historic ship + notable planes = as far as I'm concerned (Ark Royal's Swordfish, Lowenhardt's Stukas....)

Bismarck had a much greater impact, largely because the Royal Navy learned how few of their capital ships were capable of coping in combat with a relatively modern battleship design, and the scale of resources that were needed to chase such a raiding ship down if it got loose. However by 1943 almost everyone - including Hitler - had realised that the Tirpitz was much more effective as a threat than an actual combat weapon. The humiliation of the KM's forces during the Battle of the Barents Sea in late '42 was the end of the surface fleet as a viable force. Seconded re suggestions for Enterprise, Campbeltown and the ships of the Kido Butai. Difficult to look beyond them, really.

We discussed this back when the line was first mooted, and we came up with two lines - a Northern European line (Swedish, Polish, Dutch) and a Southern European one (Spain, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Yugoslavia). The thing is, though, that WG's pan-Swedish line of DDs is consistent and pretty well balanced in terms of weaponry and gameplay style. You can make a nationally diverse line of ships but with that comes a lot of hopping around in the character of the ships which, like the pan-Asians, makes them quite difficult to balance and quite complicated to master.

There is already a thread for this, comrade.

Well... there aren't so many "above the average" premiums. They tend to get withdrawn. Quite a lot of them are quirky ships with a particular "thing" that they do - and that actually makes them more complicated to learn, as you have to master the basics of that class' playstyle and then that ship's particular skill. If you mostly play low-mid tiers then I wouldn't recommend jumping into Tier VIII. You might get some mileage from a Boise - a US cruiser whose selling point is extra health - as a learning tool for higher tier cruiser play. Otherwise buy and enjoy many of the excellent mid Tier premiums - Murmansk will teach you how to kite and dodge, Dunkerque or Hood give you an idea of fast battleship play, Warspite and WV will hit things very hard, Aigle, De Grasse and London are all solid ships of their type that you can get plenty of enjoyable mileage from in Operations. (and if you have to go all in and get a Tier VIII, go for Odin, it has all the tools).

For cash/doubloons? Massachusetts, T-61, Ark Royal.

It's no worse than any other operation or random game, provided that everyone knows the order of events and doesn't overextend. A little angle on the onrushing ships goes a very long way, and bringing a German CV - with its ability to blap cruisers and brawl if needs be - is helpful.

Presumably WG had to be nice to Hasbro so that they could get their Battleships tie-in. I mean they kind of have to, don't they...? Other than that, I'd be very happy with a Minecraft WoWS. It would probably look like the ships I drew when I was a kid.

Newport Week! (we lost)

There's lots of reasons. Their tax policies, employment policies, pricing policies, the cumulative impact of their business practices on the diversity of the local business environment (essentially they price smaller shops out of business, reducing overall employment and concentrating wealth), their policies towards small sellers on their marketplace (encouraging dependency and then hiking fees and costs), their inability to notice that their review section and star system is riddled with fake reviews and fradulent promotions of poor quality generic products, etc etc. Personally I don't like the Prime related offers because they're trying to make Prime membership the default position for their site, and that the bundling of goods and services under the Prime banner (such as linking Prime, Twitch and WG accounts) means there's a huge amount of data sharing going on, which is not a good thing.

Doesn't it still have SAP, though? Eight shells of that landing on a red team DD is going to hurt.

It wasn't impossible to win with bots, but it did start to push people back towards Random style timidity. What was quite nice about the mode was that people weren't just "playing the meta", there was a lot more aggression and focus to gameplay, with the added bonus that people weren't stressing over WR and stats. This happened with the Sub battles, too.

I liked it, but it works best when there aren't too many bots. Good to have reasons to play a wider range of ships, including all those nice Tier Vs.

I don't care about the new skill sets. I do care about the implementation of a patch which means I have to re-train 150 captains just to be able to continue to play the ships I have in port with anything near their current level of performance. It's difficult to bore me out of a game. That takes years of neglect, and disagreeable developer decisions, and a total lack of possibilities for interesting gameplay. But frustrating me out of one is much easier, and it usually involves asking me to spend hours when I could be playing mucking around with background stats just to make things work just as well as they did before. Sorry, WG, but you'll just have to leave this one alone.

Hmm. And quite situational, if those Italian cruisers are anything to go by. BB Smoke will lead to noob mistakes against radar, and SAP and AP is occasionally devastating and frequently infuriating, as you often end up with no effective ammunition type against well angled ships.

For GDPR purposes, it is. Anything which could make you personally identifiable is personal information, and that includes usernames (given that they are a means for identification within a community). https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/what-is-personal-data/what-are-identifiers-and-related-factors/

Jean Bart.

I'd get my Oleg back for that one. Very pretty ship. Completely hopeless in the game - although the real one served with some distinction - but very nice looking.

Vanguard was needed quickly more than anything else. She was a classic bitza, the RN used guns they had in reserve, and where they had spares and ammunition. Hood and Nelson aren't boring, really. And I like the Battlecruiser feel of KGV and Monarch. I think that somewhere down the line there is a Tier VIII Lion class premium with 16 inch guns and hard hitting AP for the Warspite fans (call it Temeraire, please WG), but other wise the line seems fine to me.

You get battle tokens 1 - by logging in each day and playing AS battles 2- by playing lower Tier ships. (You get 250 per battle for playing a Tier V). To play higher Tier ships you need to pay to play, with the Battle Tokens. It's all explained here: https://worldofwarships.eu/en/news/game-updates/update-098-wows-anniversary/#asymmetric-battles

I do find this sudden outbreak of love for Yorck long overdue. I've always liked that ship....

De Grasse and La Gal are good open water ships. They have enough range to be able to engage comfortably. The main problem with many mid-tier cruisers, is that in order to engage a BB, you need to get closer than you might like, given that so many BBs excel at around the 12k range. Hence the hit-and-run gameplay. Perth, by the way, has very good range if you use her spotter. People do just use her to camp in smoke and farm at range but that crawling smoke can also be used, if you're crafty, to move in and out of concealment and provide you with a better exit. It's a bit noobish in any of these ships to get caught in a bad position when your smoke ends, you should be looking to use it positively (took years to work that one out, myself). London brawls brilliantly if you can get her in close. 10k concealment, 203s, torps and hydro is a potent combination. Not so good at range where she tends to take heavy hits (Devonshire is better if you want to play that kind of role).

I quite like the ship but eight guns at Tier VII looks a bit on the light side - given that its competitors are Fiji (12), Helena/Boise/NdJ (15). I'm also a bit German'd out at the moment. Between the outbreak of German ships and very similar Soviet versions thereof it's all a bit similar. I'm also sure that Mecklenburg - a Soviet M-class war reparations ship with Shchors railguns on the Munich hull - will be around the corner soon, so I might wait for that.

Spotting and overall map control, but also the ability to dodge and move. Many Tier VIII BBs don't tank very well when they are being hit by HE spam from numerous destroyers and they can't defend against well directed torpedoes. A Tier VIII DD like Kidd or Orkan brings plenty of gun power, speed, a heal, torpedoes, stealth.... and in Orkan's case a very nasty surprise radar for anyone who thought they could camp smoke. Combine that with a Bismarck (hydro) and Massa (secondaries) and you have a powerful team.

Positioning, dodging, cover. And not getting spotted at any point above Tier VI.