invicta2012

Increase the base gun reload by 75% and give it MBRB (you could improve the torpedoes as well if you wished, up to the level of a standard US DD, or perhaps the Sims patent Sea Mines?). So what you'd get is a Tier IX DD with the smoke/radar combo which is situationally very strong but which could be baited by good counterplay or have its advantages wasted by bad player choices.

The new Pan-American BB Atlantico is a really interesting one. It looks like a cross between a British Super-Dreadnought like Warspite and a pre-dreadnought, as it has Heavy Cruiser calibre secondary guns (9.2 inch). This sort of mixed battery was always problem in the Dreadnought era because the Gunnery Officers couldn't tell the difference between the shell splashes of a 9.2 inch gun and a 12 inch main battery gun. But if you had a ship with that type of armament but more modern fire control, maybe that problem would go away? South American navies had Dreadnought era ships into the late 40s and 50s, long after the British and US ones had been worn out by war service, so maybe a refitted version with radar directed fire control on all guns? I'm interested to see how that one pans out. I was thinking it would be the Super SoDak. Basically Massachusetts with Georgia's main guns / reload time / accuracy boosts, a slightly enlarged displacement which is invested in armour (rather than in speed like the Iowas), so she gets that 38mm midsection that Georgia has. 30 knots, 18 inch guns with American BB AP, long main battery range, strong secondaries and AA. Small health pool for Tier X, though, even with the improved Repair Party. Turtleback is good, spaced armour is also good, as is an internal armour belt - as long as the citadel doesn't sit directly against the ship's sides or have steps and shell traps you should probably be OK.

There's not so many of them and they do have slightly inconsistent behaviour. Absolutely, it's like a line of Gneisenaus, and since the buffs to normal German BB gunnery it works OK. But I've been grinding through Mackensen this weekend in Aegis and the ship does feel considerably better at taking damage than it does at dishing it out. All of the bot BBs in that match are much harder hitting.

Do they? Nothing wrong with the BB line these days. Cruisers are good, the new and reworked DDs are good, the carriers are good, lots of decent premiums.... and a few rubbish ones (have you noticed how Karl van Wotsit has been hidden down at the bottom of the Ships tab in the Premium Shop below Smith and Tachibana?). But no sign of bias, just lots of buffs. The BC line feels a bit undergunned, like you're not getting value for your shell hits, and you've probably put your finger on the cause. But that seems acceptable with the overall package.

Change the Harbour? I like the Rotterdam music, it's a kind of Hans Zimmer / Interstellar / Einaudi homage.

Nah. It's normally a trainee CV and two BBs who can't handle the early HE spam and so hide behind an island for most of the game. Even the best cruiser players can die if they're not supported, it happens *quite a lot*.

Dear old Tigger. In her real world matchmaking, there were no battleships, land based jet fighters would make CV bombers cry, and her only real opposition was the Kutusov and a selection of Soviet destroyers and Submarines. She makes (a lot) of sense, there.

British battleships are always boringly squishy. They're always the size of East Anglia, covered in 32mm plating, melt under HE fire and have a citadel which goes from Land's End to Dover. A more interesting Tier IX would have been an actual design, which would have been a better armoured KGV/Iowa analogue; smaller and more nimble than Lion, with fast firing 16 inch guns and strong secondaries.

Honestly? Save your money. The Boxes have shifted emphasis from "Win Rare Ships!!!" to "Complete Your Collection!!!" and you probably will end up with a Poltava, Ochakov or Hyuga, things that you probably wouldn't have bought for £30 in the cash shop. If you have an itch to spend some money on WoWs then buy doubloons and use the upcoming discount coupon for something you're actually interested in.

Yes. It's the plot of the next James Bond movie, "No Time To Duck", in which SPECTRE attempt to float a nuclear bomb up the Thames concealed in a large yellow bath toy.

Lots of flags and camos and a Hyuga. Is OK. I prefer the Black Friday or things like the German BB containers, they seem to give more of what I want.

I think they could happily put VU, Genova, Siroco, KK and PEF in the Armory for Coal. You can have fun with any of the ships in your list but those have something different to offer. Siroco, KK and PEF are quite good, too!

High level bombers would be good - a combination of Airstrike and Carpet Bombing. Whatever it is, the CV shouldn't be doing it and perma-spotting another map area at the same time. You may be right about that. The entitlement is strong in these ones. CV smoke! DD go spot! Bring me my slippers! etc etc Why not? They could put little flotation devices on Dutch parachute bombs, perhaps disguise them as an armada of yellow rubber ducks. Or perhaps just one, really large exploding Duck?) (It's realistic - see below, the USS Iowa showing excellent evasion skills)

We all would, but she's not easy to get hold of. My picks? Queen Elizabeth and Normandie. QE has excellent range with her spotter, is just fast enough to keep up with the action (unlike the Americans: Arizona and WV41 hit very hard but they are just too slow....), her HE will set many fires and her AP is punchy. Build for Fire Prevention, though - the QE's burn like matchwood. Normandie is quick, has worthwhile secondaries and has a 12 gun broadside with the same flaky dispersion as Dunkerque's eight guns. So you can see how that plays out. Premiums? PEF is worth it for the secondary LOLs, Mutsu's torpedoes can be very fun. Other classes? Leander, Aigle, Ryujo, La Gal, Weser, Kijkduin, Makarov/Nurnberg

It's a pretty weak ship - all the usual RN BB problems. Props to the person who bought one first up this morning, though - I was aiming at it thinking I was on the PTS. They've put a few doubloons down on that one...

Baltimore, Mogami, Bagration. Atago is a recent acquisition and looks good, Eugen is a better Hipper and I like Hipper so that should be good too.

It's not about Marlborough in Wiltshire, though. (Lovely town, btw). The ship is named after the Duke of Marlborough (Blenheim Palace, the Spencer-Churchills and the Marquiss of Blandford).

Without wanting to be too nice to WG, they have been consistent with regard to DP main battery guns on Destroyers. It works that way for the British DDs and their analogues - Acasta, Icarus, Gallant, Jervis, Haida, Jurua, Cossack - no DP guns (max elevation 40 degrees, apart from Haida's 4 inch turret), until you get to Lightning and Orkan. The French don't have any DP main guns, most of the IJN 127mm guns aren't DP, or the Soviets until Tier VIII. Until you get a modern mount for the guns, they're not much good in AA terms. No, it was back when they introduced the line split. They were picked up on it at the time but I guess they didn't care for the fuss.

The Christmas Dockyard event is an excellent way of ensuring that no goodwill is carried over into the New Year. I'm a bit off the Dockyard, TBH. I got Hizen and DZP., I didn't like them. Odin is good, Anchorage OK. I didn't have time for Puerto Rico and ZF-6. It's not a good hit rate and the signs for Marlborough - fragile shotgun - don't look good either. Repulse might be fun but it's a crowded market at Tier VI and those guns have to hit mighty hard for the ship to be worthwhile.

DZP was awful. It was like playing a torpedo-less Leander with a bad Airstrike gimmick. It lacked firepower, range, radar/hydro - ridiculous to see a 1950s ship with a bedstead radar on the foremast lacking any form of detection system. The airstrike gimmick forced you to get into ranges where the ship was a lame duck if detected because it couldn't outrun or outgun anything it could meet. Haarlem fares a little better because it's more durable but it's still outgunned by Tier VI CAs and the Airstrikes still suck.

Hello hello Patch notes bring news of improvements: Changes to Co-op Battles and bot behavior We've updated the templates for the matchmaker and the behavior of AI-controlled bots in Co-op Battles. The matchmaker start template used for battles of Tier VI and above includes a maximum of three battleships and three destroyers per team. If the waiting time of the first player in the queue for battle exceeds 25 seconds, the maximum allowed number of battleships and destroyers per team changes to four. We have excluded the possibility of matching battles with five battleships or five destroyers per team for all battle tiers. Bots will now fire at targets more accurately.

They're very hard to use. You're best off playing the ships as gun cruisers with a special skill to winkle out ships from cover.

This was a fulfilling game. Two salvos. Two salvos. I want to like the Florida, but it's doing my head in a bit. It either over pens (if you fire AP) or doesn't pen (if you fire HE) and by the time you've got the ammo choice sorted you might as well have rammed something.

French ships often are. Bayard and the 1/5 HE pen rule, for example. Bearn looks very much like an attempt to bring back some of the concepts from RTS CVs which were lost in the re-work. Back then you could actually use fighters to defend other ships and completely prevent strikes, rather than just mitigating them. It also seems like a test-bed for reduced CV spotting. With regard to Ark Royal, she's a good ship, very good at punishing the slow battleships you find in her MMs spread. Other Tier VI CVs are probably better and more versatile - Ryujo and Loewenhardt certainly are, in my view.

That's where the "Mediterranean" Pan-Euro tree comes in. It seems much more logical to put the Turkish Navy in with other nations (Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Austria- Hungary) from the same geo-political region. It also makes quite a nice DD tree.