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Here's my thoughts on the Kii: If she was, in fact, identical to the Amagi then I would buy her. Not at that price, but I would be willing to spend a good 35 - 40 euros on that. The Amagi was an excellent ship, and I would like to have something I can stick my Yamato's captain in. She however isn't. She's different to the extent where I don't know if I like her, and she's not different enough that she's a novelty that I just need to have like the Atlanta. She's just a bit dull, and I don't see why I would prefer her over something like an Alabama.

[5D] had a quite successful night of farming oil on the server. No word from the clan management as of yet of what would be done about the of salt we have also harvested.

Well, I did draw an image, to the right of the second file, of her without school dresses.

Okay, controversial statement will require full disclosure from me. I am not a good destroyer player. I've never been, unless said destroyer is basically a cruiser. That said, I will still say that the Shimakaze is the worst destroyer I ever had the displeasure of playing. In terms of general competitiveness, I actually consider her to be below the Yuugumo in terms of raw effectiveness. In fact, I would consider the Yuugumo a superior tier X if she was given the better speed of the Shimakaze. The thing with the Yuugumo is that she has one less torpedo per turret than the Shimakaze, which is actually surprisingly an advantage most of the time. I run the Yuugumo with the F3 torpedoes, which meant that the Yuugumo put torpedoes into the water far more often than the Shimakaze does. That, combined with her concealment, meant that you could take risks and get closer in a Yuugumo than in a Shimakaze. I'm just tredding old ground now, so I'll stop. The Shimakaze is built and balanced around being the sniping version of destroyers which is completely unbalanced. Give her good torpedoes: she'll be utterly overpowered. Give her poor torpedoes, she'll be inadequate. Whilst certainly a novelty, I can't help but, more and more, think that the Shima doesn't have a place in the game. The problem is relatively simple: why does a Shimakaze need 15 torpedoes? To kill a ship? The problem with Japanese torpedoes was never firepower, I find it rare that it would take more than 3-4 torpedoes from a Yuugumo to put down anything that's not a Yamato. The only thing that the 15 torpedoes used to offer was the possibility of blanketing a segment of the map and stopping anything from passing through. The Fletcher can one-shot battleships with the same ease ad Japanese destroyers whilst preserving far superior utility and maneuverability. In a Shima, you loose the concealment advantage even to the Fletcher. The Yuugumo can out-conceal a Fletcher, catching her on a back foot with her excellent (for a destroyer) shells that could cut a Fletcher to ribbons and drop a smoke screen before the Fletcher even gets a proper gun bearing. You can't do that with a Shima. No, the Japanese torpedo boats aren't terrible. In general though, I just feel like they really have no place in the game.

You expected degenerate weebs; but it was me, Moderator!

I could have probably chosen better shaders with a blue background and blue hair and clothes. I just tried to make her look a little scruffier than the cleaner look I have to Henrietta and Minotaur which has the look of a teacher and a student (and therefore will have parents to neaten her clothes) whilst I went for the look of a city girl who just threw on a jacket for a night out, so her clothes would be creased and not quite as well fitting. Ship girls technically wear uniform, but I tried to bring out the personality with the clothes which was also why I gave her the collar for a more adventurous look. I didn't go for a camouflage look though, I modeled her mannerisms after domestic cats and not wild cats though to be fair that could be used for a strong image in a future character. Oh don't worry, I burn through pen nibs regardless of what I;m drawing. Sometimes, I wonder if my hobbies would cost less if I just switched to crack cocaine or underground cockfighting. Well, the American cruisers are basically designed for trolling.

The department head is leaving me alone and idle for now, so I thought I might as well get a little writing done. No images on this one either, I'm making it a habit now. Inertia fuse high explosives, torpedo acceleration, advanced firing training, and survivability expert should be ship upgrades. Basic firing training, expert marksman, smoke screen expert, demolition expert, and aircraft servicing expert should probably receive the same treatment. Air supremacy should be removed (honestly, why hasn't that skill been removed yet?). One of the things that have always bothered me was WG's tendency to base so much of their balancing around the captain tree. In many ways, a ship isn't even fully upgraded until they have a 14 or 15 point captain. I think that the most obvious are ships like the Khabarovsk or the Akizuki. Without AFT, the Khabarovsk is well within the secondary ranges of some of the most common battleships in the entire game. Without IFHE, the Akizuki's HE can't even hope to hurt the softest part of the battleships she routinely has to face. Carriers need torpedo acceleration and air supremacy, light cruisers need IFHE, destroyers (the real destroyers) need concealment expert, and just about everyone needs superintendent. With some consideration, I think I always will be against skills that modify the combat effectiveness of a ship. Seal clubbing is a thing. A very big thing. Lower tiered premium ships allows players from the higher tiers to enter the lower tiers and, with night impunity, exploit ships that are inherently superior to the ships of the competition. Destroyers that might as well have an extra hull and gun upgrades. Cruisers that can ambush ships identical to them using far superior concealment. Battleships have far better effective health and can recover from fires and floods far faster. Seal clubbing is fun, but I'm certain that those of us who are here are more than capable of seal clubbing without needing inherent advantages over the already inexperienced new players. There are issues with both sides of this. On one hand, a fully upgraded ship (with a high point captain) is nearly untouchable by a fair few things, the obvious example is aircraft. On the other hand, a ship without an optimum captain setup will be utterly at the mercy of the enemy team. I personally have been humiliated by being a Neptune captain who struggled to shoot down the planes of a Ranger. A RANGER. Arguably, premium consumables and flags also causes this issue. I am fine with those however, as they are accessible to just about any player by the time they reach tier 4 or 5. For a ship to even reach optimum performance, players probably need to get to tier 7. This is a far smaller problem for me, as with a fleet of tier X ships and 19 point captain I know I could personally have a 14 point captain virtually on command, but the same can't be said about a new player with 3 tier 5 ships and a tier 7. The game should be set up to help these new players where they can, not burden them with ridiculous disadvantages that they have through no fault of their own. I think, as soon as reasonable, War Gaming should start phasing out performance enhancing captain skills. I think that the only captain skills that should be in the game are the skills that a captain would have. Skills that would provide extra information, acquisition range, evasive abilities, or otherwise improve the quality of life. It shouldn't give tangible advantages, especially not to the experienced and well positioned players who need it the least. Even the detestable RDF skill doesn't actually alter the performance of the ship. Manual AA is a bit different, but a crew with better aim would indeed perform better with their AA and so I'm somewhat OK with said skill. No matter how good you are as a captain however, you can't force a shell to explode harder, set more fires, or cut through more armor. Skills like that should be reserved for ship upgrades, not captain skills. There are various reasons that this upgrade system for the mentioned skills are better than the current system. Less need for captain grinding. For the Akizuki, IFHE is nearly mandatory to deal any meaningful damage to any battleship captain who is not literally brain dead. Before IFHE however, you probably need concealment expert. You are a destroyer after all. Superintendent is basically mandatory, and BFT is probably needed as well considering that you are basically a light cruiser without defensive AA and every carrier within an ocean's radius will be coming over to have a piece of that. This allows for a ship to reach maximum combat efficiency the moment that the ship is fully upgraded. This arrangement is far better than the current arrangement where the captain basically has to have 15 points before the ship could even be called fully upgraded. More value for premium ships. There are light cruisers like the Belfast or the MK which are placed inside of a tree that either simply does not need or will eventually grow out of al la Moskva. There are also ships that grows into certain skills like the Gearing and arguably the Shima with torpedo acceleration. This means that the captains higher tiered ships have far less application in lower tiered premium ships which usually mandates a specialized captain for said premiums, something that causes its own issues. If ships that specifically need those skills i.e torpedo acceleration and IFHE then those traits could be simply attached to the ships where those modifications are relevant. It also makes it possible for a player to maintain fewer captains. Less advantages for seal clubbers. Whilst seal clubbing is fun, I think that we all feel at least a little bit guilty after partaking. It would be far better if skills were limited towards simply getting more information which is already a big advantage. By having a more even playing ground, lower skilled and less experienced players will stand a better fighting chance instead of perpetuating a cycle of newbie bullying that is currently a part of the game right now. More potential for balance. Currently, every single skill has to be balanced around the potential that it could potentially be taken by any ship in the game. If each upgrade is specific to the ships they are on, then it is much easier to balance ships around the performance that they need. An Akizuki could for example get a -2% penalty for her shells, whilst a Chappayev could get a -5% to correspond to the larger shell caliber. A Gearing could get -20% range reduction, whilst a Shimakaze could get -10% instead to correspond to the shorter torpedo ranges. It also makes it possible to tune the range of ships like the Khabarovsk to the optimum level without requiring unneeded global buffs or nerfs to the skill tree or extensive class or shell caliber specific skills. This also makes it possible to limit the power of ships like the Belfast or Kutuzov by increasing the fire chance penalty on IFHE, or balancing ships like the Khabarovsk by giving the health granted by the survivability expert upgrade a smaller increase compared to the other destroyers. The ideas suggested here are quite vague and nascent, but ultimately I think it could improve the health and longevity of the game whilst at the same time making it possible to keep the game competitive for all players, and not just those with game numbers approaching the tens of thousands.

The Des Moines. This one, I had a little more fun with. Shading manga shorthands proved to be difficult though. Just the Moskva to go for the tier X cruisers.

Ah yes, that was fun. Your Taiho really had it out for me, and I really shouldn't have isolated myself with a Taiho in play. I would have preferred to stay a little longer to play. Maybe next time.

Here's the Minotaur. I was less than happy with this one, I prefered how the Henri turned out. Nevertheless, there's no reason to dwell. I need to move on to the Moskva and Des Moines.

Because, with the exception of the tier X, the German destroyers need to expose themselves for kilometers between their concealment and combat range. Between being spotted and laying smoke and hydro, they're ships with very mediocre guns and a gigantic silhouette that takes full battleship AP damage whereas the USN destroyers are functionally some of the best destroyers in game with excellent RoF, DPM, turret mechanization, and a relatively tiny sillouhette. You can easily run away from any non-Z-52 KM destroyer and their hydroacoustic search. The same can't be said about a radar suite on American destroyers.

That's the model for the new tier X Russian battleship, hence why it's on "Tears of the Cruisers"

Henri IV. Took far too long, but that was time wasted on the bike mostly.

They did WHAT?

I got two weeks of premium out of the second batch. Not a terrible haul. I did want a premium tier 8, but I can't ask for too much. Most people would have been overjoyed by just the Blyskawica.

Me and @Teob_VG had some fun on Okinawa. The rest of the team was uncooperative, and we lost on points when the clock ran down.

I got myself a Blysawica, which was nice even though I would probably never actually play her. I wanted an Enterprise though, but I wasn't that lucky. Yet. Hopefully.

I'll be honest, camping battleships have gotten a lot less annoying since I got myself a Moskva. I can just camp along with the enemy battleships, and they will get sick of it looong before I will.

Touché.

Well, tbf I did already make Hindy. She's still my favorite after all, which is why I find her standing design to be so plain. https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=manga&illust_id=63458530 I'm thinking of binning this current design and going back to the drawing board, but I'm not sure where to start. I might do it after I finish with the tier X cruiser collection.

Excuse me, but what do you think these are? Certified 240, 220, and 203 respectively. I'll have to see. I guess it's really the little things that creates the nuances of the personality. What would you suggest for this 4?

I do need some consultation. I'm still working on the tier X cruiser girls right now, and quite frankly the Hindenburg design I have right now is a little dull. Here's what I have so far, what do you think I should do to make them look a bit more interesting? Input will be appreciated.

...I have to play the Shima?

The problem I have with a lot of Japanese "waifu games" is that the personality needs to be muted enough to appeal to the maximum to people. It's why I don't like the original personality of the girls too much, they're just rather bland. I very much prefer the borderline psychological issues that the fan made comics tend to invoke. Though I guess it doesn't say good things about me when I find "cute" to be irritating and bland whereas I find "crazy" to be far more compelling and attractive.

V = Kamikaze VI = Gaede VII = Atlanta VIII = Benson/old Fubuki IX = Z-46 X = Minotaur