invicta2012

OK... but bear in mind that you can do that with Luca Tarigo (and a permacamo, from this event) for nothing.

I don't have problems with the ship, dear Pete-Y. It's just not fun to play, when many other German BBs are.

It is, but that's largely because of the terrible main guns. It feels like a ship that's very hard to do anything in other than YOLO. And it's not too good at that, either.

That is the nub of it, really. Scharnhorst is better at Narai. Heinrich is too, with care. Hydro is a huge advantage for a ship looking to use Secondaries or Torpedoes. And in Gneis's MM spread, Zieten does the whole fast BB thing better, Repulse does the 6 gun BC better. All Gneisenau ever had going for it was the fact it provided a different playstyle from the traditional hulking monsters of the KM BB Tech Tree line and now with the BC line, that's no longer the novelty it was.

Chronologically it does, but in playstyle it's always been a bit odd and feels even stranger now that we have the KM BC line which does all the same things, but better. If I take out Zieten (one tier up) I have 406mm guns, better secondaries, better torps.... Gneisenau feels limp in comparison. A coal ship with Repulse-style gunnery would be ideal (BC Dispersion, Sigma 2.0). Balancing adjustments might be required as Gneis is a lot more durable than Repulse, but that's what I'm looking for. Just a straightforward fast battleship with good durability would be nice, and something more traditional in the Tech Tree line to replace it.

The problem is the drama, I think. I wish people were still excited about new additions to the game rather than hating on them all the time. I wish WG hadn't been so bullet-headed and careless with community feelings. It's tiring. Congratulations! Cat + laser pointer = best fun ever. Even WG couldn't spoil that.

Z-44 comes alive with the right set of captain skills. 10 torps on a 65 second reload is not to be sniffed at. We know her problem is vision control - no hydro, poor stealth - but she does at least have some punch. You can also say the same for Fen Yang - what it can hit, it hits *hard*. And it also has the only "Special" camo I like - the medieval Chinese village/Lunar Dragon camo looks *fabulous*. I also like Leone - she's a historical oddity rather than a valid DD template but plays fine. In terms of worst.... I'm not sure about Z-35 (and I'm not dropping coal to find out) but I think it's either Jurua (a lazy copy and paste job) or KvSchonberg, which somehow manages to be considerably worse than the big-gun version of Ernst Gaede which got removed from the Tech Tree.

The SAP is very effective and you can get decent numbers by gunboating. For PVE, though, you're going to have to play it a bit more crafty than usual - lots of secondary monster BBs about and their secondaries will probably outrange your MB. Tarigo's torps are good for about 5k per hit in her MM spread so you're not going to sink much with those, and the bots are great at dodging long range potshots. It gets worse the higher tier you go - not sure what the Attila is supposed to do against Superships with 125k+ health! It seems an odd set of design choice for the current game meta. YMMV, of course!

I wondered that too! It's supposed to reset every week so there should be a new set of missions available. Probably time to raise a bug report...

The guns are good, they hit hard, they set fires - although there will also be moments when you wish you had AP. I guess this is all to compensate for that fuel smoke, but at the moment the ships feel a bit weak. I would prefer something a bit more Russian / Paolo Emilio like, and these aren't anything like that. No, they haven't. Italy is shaping up to be the most mediocre nation in the game, to be honest. I can't see myself finishing any of their lines. There have been plenty of recent ships I've enjoyed and play regularly (Weser, Loewenhardt, Missouri, Wujing, Weimar, Odin, Zieten, Pommern, Dido, Carnot, Marco Polo, Rahmat, Fen Yang) bit overall the ship line thing is just getting a bit boring.

1) Some form of offensive capability is a given. If I was designing the class I would give them three types of offensive aircraft. One specialist (like an anti submarine bomber), one slow/hard hitting (single flight of torps or bombers, for self-defence or a determined attempt to take down an enemy, could be "stun" bombs), one "everyday" attack. 2) I play CVs because I like Naval Aviation and I play Support Classes in lots of other games because I like to help mitigate the badness of random teams, which always tend to consist of glass cannon DPS types or wannabe tanks who can't take a punch. You can do *so* much to prop those groups up with a bit of support work. We all grumble about bad teams, one-sided games... a good support class could even that up. 3) Super-specialised CVs is not a good idea. Support ships need to be smaller, less good at dealing out damage than "traditional" CVs. So here's how I'd do it... Tier V - HMS Avenger 1) Swordfish - Specialist Wing: anti Submarine Bombers (smaller drop circle, damage as per depth charges to a depth of 10m) 2) Swordfish - 1 x 3 Torpedo Bombers 3) Swordfish - 2 x 3 Level Bombers CAP - Sea Hurricanes (flight of 5) - can be deployed by any of 1,2 or 3 above. NB these planes do not attack other fighters, nor do they provide spotting 4) Scout - calls in a Short Sunderland flying boat to patrol an area of the map (5k diameter) for a period of 90 seconds. Plane can be destroyed but has high HP. Cooldown is around 180 seconds. 5) Smoke Screen - calls in a medium bomber (Wellington?) to drop a smoke screen on an indicated area of the map (Smoke Screen properties follow national parameters, RN SCV has a larger number of short duration smokescreens). Can be deployed on the SCV. Cooldown is 90-240 seconds depending on nation. Plane has moderate HP and can be destroyed (if smoke screen is dropped on top of an enemy ship). 6) DCP/Heal - calls in a Transport Plane (Dakota? Catalina? Walrus?) and creates a buff circle on the map - any ship entering this zone receives either a) an additional charge of Repair Party or, if without Repair Party b) an instant heal proportionate to its Tier (effect similar to SE captain skill, restoring approx 250-300 HP per Tier). Buff is consumed on first use. Cooldown is 150-240 seconds. 4,5,6 have a limited number of initial charges. After these are used, the support planes must regenerate (cooldown time + 45 seconds min). Plus: Class Boost (modules which can be equipped in port). Offensive: Stun: Bombers have a % chance per bomb (based on accuracy) to debuff target (select as appropriate) a) -50% to Captain Skills for 30/60/90 seconds based on class (does not stack, can be removed with DCP), or b) disable ship consumables for 10/20/30 seconds (based on ship class) Defensive: Improves ally Plane Regeneration by -10% (if a 2CV game) or provides a +5% boost to team spotting range when Scout is active. That sort of thing, anyway. Add various Premiums (Vindictive, cruiser/CV with support CV planes only, Unicorn, with +50% heal and Regen buff boost, but no specialist attack wing)., national flavours, etc.

I have the Tier VII (Luca Tarigo) now and she works better as a gun boat, with the six gun salvo - if you can get a decent SAP broadside on an onrushing DD then you can make quick work of it. However her torpedoes are weak and it's even more noticeable in a tier where BBs have decent torpedo belts - you just won't sink an undamaged BB, in fact you won't even get them down to half health even if you land a full salvo. I suspect a good few cruisers might survive a full set, too.

Bearn was fine, but not really a "support" CV, given that she only has one support function with her fighters. We have mentioned some *positive* things a supporting CV could do. Who knows whether WG will take them up? I suspect that "stun" bombs will just become lower damage HE bombs with a debuff of some kind (increased module damage? reduction of captain skills? lots of opportunities).

Sounds like a BBBaby whine to me. :) I'd feel more sympathetic if I didn't play destroyers so much and have to actively arrange every single build and captain skill set up to mitigate module damage. As far as I can see Stun Bombs are going to lock out consumables for a period of time, which is not quite the same as one salvo nuking your rudder, engine and setting the ship on fire (which happens if a DD gets hit by an HE Salvo), leading to an immediate and fiery doom if you haven't set your ship up to mitigate it. Really? Try taking a heavy hit. The game SFX simulates the impact, the post explosion daze, the ringing in the ears and the lowering of external sound levels caused by an explosion. Turrets get knocked out, and take 30-60 seconds to come back on line. A ship's systems being "stunned" and taking time to come back on line is *completely* realistic. Main things to consider before introducing this are... a) how often can the stun effect be applied b) what's the counterplay/counterbuild process and c) will it be overtaxed by the new attack? We can already see how DCP is getting overtaxed by all those sub pings as well as mitigating all the HE spammers. So if ships are going to be dealing with stuns as well, it looks as if there will have to be some new mitigation available. Otherwise it's going to be *another* vexation which reduces player agency, leading to frustration and resentment.

Yes. I stopped playing for a while back in January and ended up getting a set of "Research Week" missions, Premium Time, etc as a lure to come back.

Isn't the compensation the fact that the best credit earning ships in the game will now be able to boost their earnings further by damaging ships one Tier higher than usual? The StupidShips (sorry, SuperShips) aren't that OP and Tier IXs should be capable of holding their own, more so than any other when they're lowtiered.

Sounds reasonable. Which would mean they would be really quite ineffective against Capital ships from the WW2 era like we have in game. There's also the problem that most auto-fired munitions in this game (like secondaries) often aim at a particular spot on the ship... perhaps the player control element is on the vertical to allow some aiming for upper belts, superstructures, etc.

The Type 42 Sheffield was hit by one Exocet and was destroyed by fire. Two hit the Atlantic Conveyor and she was destroyed by fire. Glamorgan was hit and survived (although a County Class DD is a very big DD in WoWS terms... about the size of a Leander Class cruiser). I suppose the main thing to be learned from all those experiences is that the key to reacting to the missile was to a) detect the planes launching them and b) defensive manoeuvres. I'm also wondering what the armour penetration of an Exocet is...

Conscious as in "awake", yes. But humans have two (if not more) decision making systems in their brains - the first one is fast, learned and instinctive, the second is rational (ish) - but slow and *just as prone to error* as the first one. Once you understand the nature of human perception, how limited it is and how much of it is mediated by automated information processing systems that we are not conscious of, the less likely you'd be to believe in human existence as a matter of rational and conscious choice.

Well, they are fun now. What do you think Ise and Tone are? Gun ships with the occasional guided projectile attack. That's all that the first generation Ship-to-ship missile boats would be. I'm fine with that. (An Exocet in WoWs would be considerably less effective than a guided torpedo squadron - at worst you'd just have to take the HMS Glamorgan approach and manouevre to give an overpen.)

There aren't many. I'm allergic to high fantasy settings (or anything particularly linked to a film series), First Person Shooters aren't my thing and I keep seeing Jingles ripping the stuffing out of A List titles for the general laziness of their plots.

Yes, what actually happened to the AA suite of a ship. A stun/disable function is a pretty common game play mechanic - don't they have it in World of Tanks? It might be interesting, it might be a total PITA. Let's see rather than immediately jumping around shouting DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING (CAREFUL NOW). Support CVs need to be able to defend themselves so a proper damage attack is a must. I would also go for: * ability to drop consumables, especially DCP recharges (as we're all supposed to use these vs subs, extra supplies would be handy) * ability to create repair circles or other temporary buff zones * Bearn style fighters

Ships have that problem now. Try and hit a Mogador with Atlanta guns and see how far you get. Learning to hit an offscreen target is all part of the fun. :) (and I think WG and testers have Really Big Monitors, not 15" laptop screens)

Only if badly balanced. I certainly wouldn't want to see large scale minefields or permanent ones. It's more the brave, unexpected positioning of a hazard, the sort of thing which happened during the bombardent of the Dardanelles. I don't think it's a game-defining mechanism but as a way of adding additional playstyles to existing ships, I'm very much in favour. WG can't keep on adding ship lines to the game without additional permutations, variations and ways to play.

I quite like it. I think it's a nice potential counterplay to certain OP ships, and selecting bomb types to neutralise AA etc was certainly a real-world tactic.