invicta2012

No Ark Royal? Go back, do again. And Hermes at Tier IV? Well, I'm looking forwards to some Low Tier vs Harrier action...

Jianwei. No need to bring half a destroyer.

9.2 inch guns? How old would those be, exactly? Something tells me that the RN were up to their old recycling tricks again... Why commission something new when you've got stuff lying around? WG is going to have to embrace the branch line in their Tech Trees, there are plenty of lines going up to Tier VIII not yet implemented and there's more interest in real ships than there is in paper designs and gimmicks...

French cruisers and some premiums.

Well... you're going to have more success being low tiered in a battleship or destroyer, really. Taking out a Tier VIII light cruiser is not going to be too much fun if you play random games solo and aren't a top drawer player: the low game stats for the French cruisers at Tiers VIII/IX and the sudden dearth of Clevelands shows that. Lots of people will play at lower tiers if they find the game play fun and the skill level a good fit. It's also possible to make it more challenging through your choice of ship and get better at playing, in a more forgiving environment.

It's a little off to give everyone pre release access to a bugged version of an essential consumable, especially when it makes the ships appear better than they will be.

I don't mind my Gallant having AA which consists of a man waving a flag that says "Would you mind awfully not doing that old chap" but it could be done better overall...

They're still going to have plenty of non AA ships to target at Tier VI....

3x2 4"+ 1x3" AA gun would a compromise, ending up between Haida and Sims, but I take the point about wanting the actual ship.!

It sounds like it needs to be a Tier VIII activity to allow people to progress without constantly being lowtier and matched against Tier X ships. It also sounds very gimmicky and like the Halloween events and their kind, I don't really bother with that sort of thing unless there's something really valuable to be obtained from it.

Does that mean we can have Bogue as an RN or RCN carrier? PS Did I see a nerf to RN DDs already in the News section for the next patch? Looks as if the cooldown of their default smoke generator just went up by 15 seconds.

Sounds good. I bought Monaghan recently and the dual configuration thing is quite fun. If they could give Blyskawica the opportunity to mount either her 1938 or 1942 guns that would be excellent. Although she probably needs a tweak to her rudder shift, as well.

They could just tweak Blyska to make her more of a fun purchase, of course. Been a bit power crept, she has.

A fair point. But with 203mm/8 inch cruisers coming earlier in the line, you have less need for IFHE in order to be effective. This means the line is more powerful without investment in high-skill captains, so less likely to be used for seal clubbing or to be a dead end for players with lower-skilled captains (newer ones!). IFHE is available later on in the line if you need it and easier to obtain through the extended grinds of Tiers VII and VIII. We also only have one 203mm cruiser at Tier V (Furutaka) and few other CA choices at that Tier, so a Tier V County class is a good addition. It also solves the problem of what you put at V in a Commonwealth CL line. Some tarted up D-Class? Not liking the sound of that, tbh. I'd give the Commonwealth Cruisers slightly worse concealment than the Brits, but better gun range and RN DD short duration/rapid reload smoke to allow disengagement. We have high-skill / high-impact CLs from the RN, USN and Russia... time for something a little more forgiving... these ships would be like Achilles baiting Graf Spee, able to dodge and weave.

That's a fairly recent choice, though - previously you had to go from Cleveland to Pensacola and everyone coped, much as you still have to go from Konisgberg and Nurnberg to Yorck and Hipper. They're smaller ships than the Town, Neptune or Minotaur classes, give them the ability to use extra concealment and slip away and you'd have worthwhile ships.

I'd go with better range than other CLs and RN DD short duration smoke screens to enable players to attack and disengage, provided that they're savvy enough to know their concealment numbers! Most recent CLs are made for short range ambushing where DPM is vital, these ones should be made to play a bit more like the Russians/KM CLs and have the ability to harass from range. Good choices too, there's plenty of things they could add... I'd hope they would, tbh. It's not too much of a stretch to get two complete lines out of those ships without making them cut and paste versions of the RN tree, so why look past it?

The problem everyone faces is that there are no RN heavy cruiser designs above Tier VIII, where you might be able to place the Surrey class, so it won't be possible to make a whole Heavy cruiser line. Personally I'd be happy enough to make the change between types within a line... Does it jar to go from Omaha to Pensacola? Not too much. As for balancing... The thing about the RN ships is that they're all quite high concept, AP only cruisers, DDs with lots of short duration smoke, etc and that gives an opportunity to reuse the ship designs in a different way. HE and standard AP, Perth/Haida smoke, changes in AA and Torp armament... All perfectly possible without making ships up or adding a Box O'Gimmicks.

All done in Random or Scenario battles. Never really thought about co-op mode, tbh, although it might be less painful to grind ships in that mode, you're going to end up with a high tier ship you can only play on co-op mode.

Well, here's what I'd do.... Tier II - HMAS Encounter (Protected Cruiser, think a more lightly armoured St Louis): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Encounter_(1902) Tier III - HMAS Adelaide - Town Class cruiser, similar to Weymouth / Caledon but with modern AA/Fire control Tier IV - HMNZS Dunedin / HMS Diomede - Danae Class Cruiser Tier V - HMAS Canberra (Kent type County Class Heavy Cruiser, original design, 8" guns and torpedoes but very little armour or AA) Tier VI - HMAS Australia (Kent type County Class Heavy Cruiser with improved armour belt, available in either 1943 mode (low AA, torpedoes) or 1945 mode (Pensacola type AA, no torps) Tier VII - HMAS Shropshire (London type County Class Heavy Cruiser, available in either 1943 mode (low AA, torpedoes) or 1945 mode (high AA, no torps) / Premium HMNZS Royalist (Dido Class Light Cruiser/AA Cruiser, Radar Equipped) Tier VIII - HMCS Quebec (Improved Crown Colony Class Light Cruiser) Tier IX - HMCS Ontario (1943 Minotaur Class Light Cruiser) Tier X - HMAS Tiger (Tiger Class Light Cruiser, 1945 design, with 9 x N5 auto 6 inch guns and the completely ludicrous QF 3in Mark N1 3" Anti-AA/secondaries) They'd all have HE and standard AP, along with a choice of radar/smoke from VII Premium and VIII, IX, X Silver. That's three new designs (County CA, Dido CL, Tiger CL) with a playstyle which sits happily between the RN and US Cruiser lines. In existing ship terms, it goes... St Louis - Bogatyr - Danae - New! - Pensacola - New Orleans/Atlanta - Belfast - Neptune - Minotaur For Destroyers, I'd go... Tier II - HMAS Anzac - RN Parker Class Destroyer Leader Tier III - HMCS Niagara - Wickes Class USN DD Tier IV - HMAS Stuart - RN Scott Class Destroyer Leader Tier V - HMCS Restigouche - C Class RN DD Tier VI - HMAS Quadrant - Q Class RN DD or HMCS Ottawa - G Class RN Destroyer Tier VII - HMCS Crusader - Cl Class RN DD or HMAS Napier - N Class RN DD Tier VIII - HMCS Athabaskan II - Tribal Class RN DD Tier IX - HMAS Tobruk, Battle Class RN DD Tier X - HMAS Duchess - Daring Class RN DD All of which can be balanced, again, with the same RN/US crossover flavour.

I've enjoyed it, got a good ship (Gallant) and plenty of other decent rewards. I like the manageable marathon format.

Well, I hope to learn by experience, as I did in other Tiers. But I did have a "What is a Krondstaht" moment recently, and those weird premium IJN BBs which you don't see much of are a great cause of confusion. Generally that's moot, though, it's more "does this destroyer have hydro" and "what is the spotting range of X destroyer". There's a lot of it. Much more than there was when I started playing, and quite often "oh I didn't know it had that" means instadeath. The other thing I would be doing if I were WG (and for the good of the game generally) is to be shifting Training off to more distinct intro Tiers and only then allowing new players into the game... this would help the classic WW1 BB era Tiers be more enjoyable and less about flaky team play and people learning (or not) on the job.

Rubbish. WG 's videos are considerably more up to date (and much better written) than most community contributors and while it's great that they did them, they are long, long overdue. Things like spotting mechanics and shell penetration are not simple or clear and they need proper explanation which the community can't give. There's also stuff which is just left out... when I started playing things like activating secondaries and AA weren't explained at all - I had to ask in game the first time I saw a CV - and I'm sure there are a lot of people in the same boat. As for complexity - I still get those moments when I get uptiered into matches with Tier IX and X ships. Because I don't play those Tiers much I have no idea what ships do what, and I am really supposed to know the ins and out of fifteen lines of ships, which ones have radar, which hydro, what the torp range on a Neptune is, etc? Who knows. We'll work it out as we go. With regards to CVs and defensive AA - one of the things I find most annoying about CV play is when they get to buzz around a ship, changing their lines, flying from side to side with no regard to defensive AA. This, I think, is one of the most annoying things a CV can do - it's basically showboating - and is one of the things which generates most hostility to the class. Destroyers don't get to do this - why should planes? As I think that rebalancing ship AA is the key to the CV reboot and whether it works, I would float the idea of a Target Lock / stacking buff for AA damage rather than the flat values we have now - AA increases over time based on the defending player's aim and the time the attacking planes are within the AA range of a ship. It needs to be made so that even low AA value ships have a chance of knocking planes out of the sky if the CV player takes too long to focus their attack, and that high AA value ships don't become instant no fly zones, even if the ship player isn't paying any more attention than hitting Defensive AA. A CV player really should be able to damage a Cleveland without getting shredded if the ship player is asleep or otherwise occupied.

Cats?

Earned a Gallant through Sovereigns today - nice boat, definitely worth the grind, and means more rewards from The Event. Next stop Warspite.... I'm not sure quite why I got rid of Acasta, tbh! Jervis and Lightning are the drops I really want as it takes a while to grind up to Tiers VII and VIII, at Tier VI I already have a few favourite / Premium DDs to play (Fubuki, Gaede, Monaghan, Aigle and now Gallant) so Icarus was always going to be a spare.

Best sales pitch for Sims ever, I suspect....