invicta2012

I'd love to see the *actual* French heavy cruisers in the game, although I don't think WG knows what to do with these ones, really. You've only really got a Tier V (Duquesne), VI (Suffren) and VII-at-a-pinch (Dupleix) and they're very lightly armoured. French DD split? Well, WG seems to be recycling French hulls all over the place (ZF-6, FR25). I would like the Le Hardi / L'Adroit DDs in the game, but it's the post war ones which are most interesting, and if we can have Forrest Sherman as a Tier X then T-47 is a possibility.

While production was important, fuel was more important. Had the Nazi forces achieved their 1942/1943 objectives in the Caucasus region and seized the Soviet oilfields there, there would have been precious little for the Soviet Army to run tanks on. --- The problem with superships is that they're silly fantasies. "What if..." ships which ignore the fact that by 1945 it was impossible to make a battleship capable of independent operations and surviving late-war weapons (especially glider bombs and submarines) without being so big it couldn't get through the Panama/Suez canals and having to build yourself a whole new super-massive dry dock (which takes about five years). No-one had the time, money or inclination to do this. The Yamato remains the finest expression of the Battleship and there shouldn't be anything in the game to top it.

It is always possible the player had just bought it from the shop without ever playing a CV before, and just wanted to concentrate on that side of things. A Random game (and I'm presuming it was a Random game) probably isn't the place for that, though. You do need to be able to concentrate to play Ise, though - it's quite easy to get in completely the wrong location by focusing on a plane attack across the map.

There is an IJN Tier V - Yahagi - but don't waste your money. She promises much but does not deliver. I am currently re-playing some cruiser lines and have Furutaka and Konigsberg in port. Celebes was enjoyable, too. I'd also give another upvote for Exeter (and Krasny Krym) from the Premium Shop. The Chungking, from the Pan-Asian line, might also be fun - she's Huang He at a more suitable tier, and keeps a lot of the British cruiser flavour - that's not a bad thing at all, a sort of "little Leander".

I've always liked Murmansk, personally. Better gun range, spotter, much more useable 8k torps which hit hard. She's the original "Soviet bias" boat.

Been there, done that, it's bad behaviour and in my case it was being done because I was clueless - didn't understand the mechanics or what needed to be done. I think it's very easy to get frustrated with lower/mid tier cruisers, though. The light ones have tinfoil armour, none of them can stand up to a prolonged engagement with anything with BB calibre guns and you should be very, very afraid of anything with 380mm+ guns, because that's overmatch territory. The only thing about climbing the tiers is that there are some more durable cruisers at higher levels - things like Alaska, Congress, Carnot are more "light battleships" than relations of Omaha, etc. With BBs, the key thing is to get your equipment and captain skills right. If fires are becoming vexing they you need to use those to reduce the duration and number of fires. If you don't have a reasonably well skilled skipper (10-12pts) then you're going to suffer - and it will get worse as you go up the tiers. You can get 10pt captains from the Armory for 1500 doubloons - that might be a better investment than a high tier Premium. You 100% need to understand it to play cruisers. To an extent you can bumble through with BBs on the basis of "don't show broadside" and on DDs you can dodge. But with Cruisers it's absolutely critical. Try the "How It Works" videos on the WoWs channel. Emile B and La Gal are very good starter cruisers. I know I found La Gal one of the first cruisers which actually made sense to me. I think the Japanese ones are probably worthwhile, too - just don't get too hung up on their torpedoes, and especially never try to use them unless you know your broadside is safe.

I thought that was going to be the role of Commonwealth DDs. UK designs (mostly) so WG don't have to make too many new models, just add the option to lose a gun or set of torp tubes for a forward firing ASW mortar. (It won't happen, though. The last thing WG is ever going to do is to bring out an effective counter to their new pet class. We must suffer).

DD? Minekaze is a good silver alternative if you don't have Kami. Podvoisky has the speed to run the IJN ships down, T-22 might work, with the hydro. German DDs always seem to do quite well in small team matches. Cruisers? Raimondo, Exeter, Emerald, Emmy Bertin, Konigsberg. Probably the last two. Konigsberg can be a right pest. BBs? For the memes, Oklahoma or VU. But you'd need team mates who would wait for you. Otherwise GC or one of the Kongo sisters.

Thanks to WG for putting it behind a tedious grind rather than just putting it in the shop. See also: Rahmat being in early access before Dido's released. What is the German word for Someone Who Milks a Whale? It should be the name of the next Tier IX Premium. I agree about the German BCs, but I have low expectations - I haven't enjoyed many of the recent line releases. Slow American BBs? Dutch cruisers? Italian BBs? Not much fun there. I didn't care for the Mackensen much (all the problems of PEF with none of the solutions, or the economy) but it looks like a line I might actually complete. Unless... the Tier VIII is not much good, in which case I will probably just play the excellent Tier VIII German BBs I already have. And this is the thing, really. WG has been pumping out ship lines and dockyard events and premium ships without seeming to realise that the ships are only worth having if the gameplay is fun. And it's getting stale, tbh. New maps, ops, scenarios, AI fixes, bug fixes are all urgently needed before new ships. But they don't generate cash, do they?

She has very good AA for a Tier IV BB - table from ShipTool.st shows the longest AA range of all Tier IVs, plus double the amount of flak.

Well, other than the fact I've put Konigsberg rather than Karlsruhe (d'oh) the picks are Guissano and De Ruyter. They have decent AA, flak bursts and fighter consumables.

Planes travel through your AA zones when they attack you. Flak will do major damage, but can be dodged. Continuous damage applies to a plane depending on which AA zone it is in both on the entry and exit of its attack run. If you look at the excellent Shiptool.st and compare AA values for Tier IV cruisers you can see how it will work: Only Konigsberg and Di Giussano have long range AA which starts damaging incoming planes at 4.6km (and they are also the only Tier IV cruisers with a flak burst, FWIW). De Ruyter's medium range AA is strong enough to damage incoming planes but it won't stop a strike (Hosho's upgraded torp planes have around 1400 HP and an attack run will take far less than the 13 seconds of continuous damage needed to shoot a plane down). Danae's mid AA looks impressive but the range is so short that planes spend far less time in the AA zone and take far less damage. You won't get much success with that one. NB There is also jiggery-pokery around how continuous damage is distributed between attacking planes - but that bit I can't remember as they've changed it a few times.

RTS CVs weren't all that, either. I actually do think WG's latest attempts at CVs have had some good things going for them and the re-emergence of a slower CV gameplay, proper fighter defence and some consideration given to spotting are all moves in the right direction.

Pommern, Marco, Carnot, Tulsa.

Of course, it's HE and SAP. I must read these things more closely.... It's very similar to Krasny Krym (and I have a KK with both Heavy HE and IFHE, god help me). I think increasing the base pen is definitely worth it.... without it you'll struggle to pen the decks of BBs and Cruisers at your own Tier (hello Spee....), let alone anything else.

I think she will get the same reload as the PA Dido (Rahmat). You can benefit from some captain skills to get extra DPM (unlike most CLs, Dido can boost her DPM with Heavy HE and AP shells without a concealment penalty being applied) so it's not too bad.

Really? She still has significantly better gunnery than Devonshire or London - 20% faster reload, extended range and strong AP penetration. I think they should consider giving her HE for extra utility, though.

One extra turret and 2km on the torpedoes. Myoko is more comfortable at mid ranges and can get more guns on target at finer angles. Maya is a bit more like a German cruiser - you have to get closer than you might like to use the torps - and you'll have to show broadside to get all of those guns on target and get max benefit from MBRB - risky in a ship with a long, above water citadel. A heal won't save you if you mistime that manoeuvre. Looks great fun, tbh, although my port is getting a bit full of this type of cruiser.

Maya looks great. That type of ship is exactly where the PVE meta is as the moment - you can't move for Weimar type ships - and with that heavy torpedo load and MBRB there'll be plenty of opportunity to do damage. As for the CVs - I don't mind a "Supership" carrier with some early jets. We have 1950s destroyers in the game, after all (Hello Halland) and jet aircraft were a part of the real-world aviation conflict from 1943/44. But I don't see that the game's setting should go much later than the Korean War era.

They are, for various reasons (volume, RoF and significant armour pen advantages, but also the poor performance of the 203mm guns compared to other IJN ships).

I like this idea. The mix of islands and open water is a nice touch and gives a "Battle of Narvik" type feel - you could extend that idea by having a number of possible Red forces which could emerge from a side channel during the main attack, perhaps a flotilla of DDs, E-boats or even a submarine or two? This could open up a wider range of ships for the player team, with defensive vision control (radar and hydro) /smoke becoming just as important as dakka. Then perhaps the possibility (Aegis style) of some serious opposition emerging at the last moment if the player team has taken too long over the initial phases (FdG/Preussen/Schelieffen/Pommern emerging, willing to close to secondary range in concert with a Hipper or two...)

It's to do with DDs feeling more fragile since WG inadvertendly broke and tried to pretend it was intentional changed Survivability Expert.

They're both fun ships, tbh. Bearn's skip bombers do all kinds of horrid things to Destroyers and mid-tier light Cruisers, and KVS is more than viable for Ops and the like, esp. if you go all-in for AP damage with Captain skills. With Extra-Heavy Ammo you can get around 4k damage per AP shell, and that's quite scary at Tier VI.

But I already *have*a perfectly good Dasha Perova captain on one of my ships. She's up there with Jingles and Angry Pink Japanese Teddy as my favourite voice overs.

Sprinkling a few 76mm guns about the place is hardly ahistorical - Orion has an AA loadout like that and no-one bats an eyelid.