invicta2012

I suppose because getting torpedoes closer to the sweet spot of 65 knots is more important than having super fast fish which are difficult to dodge even without the module. And as for over the top - if WG's balancing department* can't see that chucking out a torp buff to Kamikaze and Fujin isn't a bad idea, then I really don't know what they think they're doing. * I know, what balancing department....

Have they gone? I played her in Aegis this afternoon. Had a fun game - that AP punches lots of holes in Japanese cruisers. Bit slow and short ranged for some, but other cruisers are available.

I've only played Albemarle in randoms (and then not intentionally) but you can play as support from range - use that spotter and HE to annoy and wither enemy BBs - and the ship has a nice sway about it when it comes to dodging incoming salvos. I burned down a Kremlin, on the Tears of the Cruisers map, which came as a nice surprise.

I think the TTM1 mod is great for DDs that have lower speed torpedoes; it's way over the top for ships whose torps were already quick, and I think I'd like to see a reload nerf effect for torps with a base torp speed of over 61 knots if this module is loaded. I also think they should remove the torpedo traverse from Aiming Systems 1, make it improve AA, and do away with AA Guns Mod 1 - that is a bit of waste of time, tbh.

It's considerably better than none, and it allows you to be more aggressive against larger ships. You can chance your arm and come back from a mistake or if RNGesus smiles on the opponent. It's a nice blend.

Premium consumables and Superintendent skills? In any case, being able to get citadelled for 35k damage and immediately get 16k back is not a bad skill to have even one charge of....

No. During Early Access the ship unlocks as a Premium, with all upgrades available. When it moves into the Tech Tree is becomes a silver ship - if you had it from Early Access you keep all the upgraded modules, but you might have to retrain the skipper. When it's the Tech Tree line you can get it from the bundles but it will be a Silver ship, so you will need to pay to upgrade.

I think Hawkins is a bit undergunned but Albemarle and London are just fine (and quite similar, too). Workable armour, decent HE, AP which can hit hard when used right, torpedoes which are nasty, hydro, spotter, heals... I think they can be used quite aggressively at close ranges than people are comfortable with, and that heal gives you the ability to take massive damage and come back from it.

Albemarle is good. I like Hawkins and London, too. Albemarle is very reminiscent of KGV, if she had torpedoes. London plays very similiarly (and I'm not convinced about her smoke) It's not. Do you mean Surrey?

Torp mod is now installed on my Monaghan, Fubuki, Yudachi and TRB Shira. I might go back to AA on the first one but I think she'll benefit from the faster torps. Yudachi certainly will. It's such a tinkering ship, that one. Never needed so many different flags and modules and skills.

50000 Free XP from the first, 1000 doubloons from the second. 'S alright, innit?

They're OK. You can see WG have realised that perma directives are making people forget about regular random gameplay and using co-op and scenarios to farm through the silly grind tasks, they're trying to spice it all up a bit. I guess it's difficult to make it work for a diverse player base, some of whom will have the ships to make it e-z mode and others who will find it all a bit of a stretch.

It's doing the same to my PC. It's running about 10 degrees C hotter than yesterday. What did you do, WG?

They are like seagulls on a Cornish harbour front in the summertime, waiting to swoop down on unsuspecting ice creams, held by people who were, until that point, having a nice day. I admire their skill and audacity, but I wish they could do something else.

Odd, isn't it? Every MMO I play has three main groups of players. PVP, PVE, and the Raiding community. The latter are normally some of the best and most dedicated players in any game, and usually the most dedicated farmers, too. Other games use them as a tool to keep the rest of the playerbase on their toes: if you want the best rewards you need to reliably master the more difficult content. Wows seems to be more worried about player numbers and making people play randoms, where the chief frustration is not the player's own performance, but everyone elses. I enjoy playing Ops because they don't have CVs and because I can use a wider variety of ships than in randoms. Those ugly duckling boats like Trento, Huang He, Gorizia... I can have fun with those. And of course that makes me keen to pick up ships from events. I don't need four ARP Kongo clones, but ARP Myoko was worth going the extra mile because I knew what I would do with it. Bit of a shame for the London event, then, as that is now just another Tier VI cruiser (I have lots, and better ones) with no great purpose. So I hope Ops come back, with a bit more finesse, and a dev team that realises what it is they're for and why people play them (even if they're not the most popular mode).

Guilty as charged! Narai has that Nelsonian feel to it.. a raid on the enemy base, which needs to be conducted with skill and some individual vigour for best results. And it generally unites the players, too, who know what needs to be done and want to succeed. It would be disappointing if that sort of fun is discontinued and replaced with people grinding currencies - be it XP, coal, or whatever - just to get the latest OP boat and the maximum benefit before the nerf hammer falls.

Annoying to be 5 away from an Albemarle, though...

In the distance the sound of mourning from a thousand German battleships. From Wilhemshaven to Wolfsburg - what will I use my torpedoes on, now? Ignore the destroyers, the pink Teddy Japanese cruiser with enough torpedoes to sink a fleet, by itself - the Scharnhorst goes forward boldly against the Missouri. Somewhere, there is a point being made. At the rear fat Nelse paddles like a duck that has sighted a bakery. Soon there will be buns. Soon there will be fire. Burn them. Burn them all. A Colorado moons and wishes for a tow. Fiji lurks in the smoke. On the flank comes Shhhchors, they ship they couldn't spell. Who will go for the transports now? No reply.

Disappointing news. I'm not surprised that Operations are becoming less popular, since there now are fewer of them and they are of less utility to the players. But Randoms remain dull and full of CVs, so they're still less interesting. Not even the "whoops, we've put you in a random game" bug is going to make me come back. Ah well. Time to grind some XP on Zara while there's the chance of doing it and having fun at the same time....

Indeed, and this is where that 18k range becomes a millstone. Firing from outside of smoke is inadvisable. But that's potato balancing, isn't it? We're all fed up with ships which are both easy to fail and easy to over perform in, depending on the skill of the player. In this case, anyone with a brain (or a mate in a DD) will just use that very low smoke firing penalty to their advantage instead, and they will wreck anything in their range, Co op style.

Those ships were actually built and were called that at the time. Unless someone at WG has a plan from the archives calling the ship Riga, it's a modern choice which could be seen as insensitive. Do keep up.

It was... but the Tigers were Crown Colony class size hulls, around 11000 tons (as opposed to 15,000 for Minotaur and 18,000 for Neptune). They put on what could fit.

The main and secondary armament....

Special flags, Lyon, KGV, Scharnhorst, Narai. I think I hit 20k Captain XP per game at one point. Ditto for potential damage.... get in there and brawl!

I think a ship becomes real at the point at which it is laid down... WG have tweaked the specs of many ships for game play reasons, but the fact is that an actual HMS Audacious was laid down as a CV (and as the lead ship of her class).... that's a real ship. The next level of reality is being a fully designed ship - not a design study, but actual constructors' blueprints, as exists for the Lion class, and Neptune, and Minotaur, Montana, etc. In any case, the frustration is that WG are taking Soviet design studies and giving them all the tools, stats and gimmicks that reality denied the ships that people actually tried to build. Perhaps WG see these lines as an opportunity to be a little more outrageous, try a few more ideas out... but they really need to have more self-awareness and run these ships through some basic credibility testing before announcing them to the world, because announcing ideas like this looks very very bad to the public.