dasCKD

Weekends are nice, as they create situations where you can simply go around farming damage off cretins. You won't believe how many Atagos gives their broadsides to my Zao. If your winrate suffers, just division up.

Take dog-fighting expert ??? Profit.

She is extremely unforgiving and useless on certain maps. I'm just a sadistic git you see, so I like sitting behind islands and watching the battleships sail around in circles trying to avoid my shells like ants scrambling to avoid the focus point from a sun ray passing through a magnifying glass.

The Atlanta is fun. The Saipan is perfect for competitive. The Tirpitz is the one I play if I need to grind.

Well, probably not. CVs have gotten extremely rare as of late unless you catch them when there's a CV mandatory mission running. If you do want plane kills with an Atlanta you could probably find a newer carrier player somewhere who needs help with AA and would division up with you. It's the easiest way to get a carrier on the enemy team after all, and CV-AA CA divisions tends to be very successful. I'm not sure really. It's just another thing WG does for no real reason. Completely new players in high tier premium ships refusing to listen to more experiences players are a problem, yes. I still meet those players in tech tree ships however, and they aren't particularly more intelligent than the completely new players. What you are complaining about here is ultimately bad players, and you attribute the numbers of bad players to WG's push to sell premium ships even when many a tier 7 or 8 player could barely understand the game and they get into the kind of high tier and high stakes game at tiers 9 and 10. I don't particularly enjoy it when I finished using my first strike wing in a Taiho and half my team is already dead yet I routinely have to put up with it. I am frustrated by terrible players as well, but I don't think that simply refusing to create high tiered premium ships would solve the issue. I've met many a Shima player who would just sit at the A and 1 line and throw long lances at cruisers 12 km away from them and don't understand why I'm upset with them. Roon, like the Hipper, is really a brawling ship. She works best if you can loop around an occupied enemy and hammer them with the Roon's excellent DPM. The only issue with her is her speed really. I don't think that weaker armor is the issue here. I think that the penetration rolls and armor overmatching is the biggest issue. The rolls means that a cruiser doesn't know if a certain angle will result in a penetration and catastrophic damage to their ship or a harmless bounce. If they created a fixed penetration and angle bounds to a shell, then I think that aggressive plays would be more prevalent. Overmatching is also a silly mechanic. It should quite frankly be removed or significantly overhauled so a battleship can't citadel a similar tier cruiser through their bow armor. AA has been buffed to an extend where a single battleship can cause significant damage to a carrier's strike fleet. My feelings on this matter are mixed. On one hand, it means that battleship players can simply just go off alone and not worry too much about carriers unless its one of the monstrosities at tier 9 and 10. On the other hand, it means that players are more likely to play aggressively and attempt flanking maneuvers which were simply not possible if the carrier is guaranteed to be able to wipe them off the map regardless of what they did to counter the carrier. I've heard stories where a Montana, several Iowas, and other cruisers grouped up around an Essex to try to defend her against a Hakuryu in the early days and failing. It could be argued that the entire team working towards defending a single objective could be considered team play and demands player interaction, but it also removes the ability for squads of ships to pull flanking maneuvers and complex plays. I don't think that the current meta really uses communication at any tiers but the very highest, but I don't believe that is something that WG had caused by this patch. The problem has been developing for a while now. Well, I do agree that the lack of necessary experience is needed for higher tiers is killing the game at those tiers. The issue is that a lot of these new skills aren't that useful for a novice player but could be decisive for an experienced player especially if the enemy is laying ambushes. I ultimately don't think there's a way to make the higher tiers more punishing in such a way that it would solve the issue considering that a lot of the players I see are Shima players who sits at the back and expects the battleships to spot for them whilst they expect to hit ANYTHING at the ranges where they are throwing the torpedoes from. When I checked the player stats, those players are quite experienced surprisingly. Bad players are an issue, but I don't think that players who just free XPed their way up the tiers are a large enough segment of the playerbase to create the issues we are seeing right now.

I'm not sure if it helps with the smoke bug, but the smoke bug has never been a large issue for me. Even if it doesn't having a large screen means that you are less likely to just sail out of the screen and it's not like there's a tier 2 skill that the British cruisers really need.

Objectively false, The V25 for example has 6 mm of armor. I was not aware that this was ever decided. I don't encounter carriers in my Atlanta much, but I don't encounter many carriers in any of my ships. It's a perception thing really. If there's an expectation of something (e.g. I am an Atlanta, I will shoot down the CV's planes) then it becomes much more obvious when the expectation is not met. MM places people in a match as soon as they could, to imply that Atlantas have special MM where they get no carriers is unsubstantiated at best. It doesn't. AP has several characteristics, to the best of my knowledge, that the shell operates on. The shell velocity, the shell weight, the shell caliber, the angle of impact, and shell normalization. This is why AP is so good at penetrating targets at close ranges despite the fact that AP would be hitting far thinner armor if they engaged at maximum ranges. AP therefore depends on using the shell correctly. HE has a static penetration value, normally 1/6 of the HE shell caliber. If the shell hits armor below the penetration value, it penetrates. If it hits something above the penetration value, it doesn't. Angle, speed, and shell weight simply does not matter for HE. If you hit an area below a certain thickness, the shell penetrates. An HE shell fired from 20 km has the same penetration as one fired from 200 m. That is why HE shells need a lower penetration value than AP in most circumstances. It also doesn't matter that the Akizuki's HE penetration value was changed. On paper it is a nerf, but in game it changes nothing. 17 mm of HE penetration sits in the exact same bracket as 19 mm of HE penetration. Neither shell can penetrate 19 mm of ship armor. In game, nothing has changed for the Akizuki. If there was a carrier in play or a proactive destroyer player on the enemy team, it would suck for you instead. By grouping the Roon and the Hipper in here, I assume that you are implying that the Roon and the Hipper are weak ships. Really? The Roon? The ship with a gun velocity superior to the Zao and a turret rotation superior to some destroyers? You bought HER up as an example of a bad ship? Those USN DD players are bad players. The USN destroyers have very formidable torpedoes and are more than capable of eliminating careless battleships from tier 7 and up. Their guns, in my mind at least, are reserved for other destroyers and ships who are far to close to my smoke screen. Cruisers are the most versatile class in the game and the only reason that ships at the higher tiers gravitates towards the meta they do is because of the overperformance of battleships right now. Personally, the way that the cruisers play in my mind can't be any more different. Kill enemy destroyers ASAP. Break enemy flank. Deploy wide air support and exploit fleet AA to foil enemy carrier attacks. Chain DOT. Deploy sweep net over most recent location of enemy ships. Push up to strategic position and use the team as a shield. No tactics. Sure.

That said, can we have a premium Fiji? I want to keep the Fiji, but I also need to move my captains up the tree towards the British Atlanta.

Fresh off the presses!

Not really. People avoid Clevelands because of the defensive fire consumable, not raw AA DPS. Without the defensive fire, a Cleveland is a relatively easy target for a similar tier carrier as long as they handle the attack well. A Kirov is fundamentally poorly suited to combat carriers.

It's benefit and loss. If the average CV player can snipe a Minekaze, Nicholas, or Gnevny, they probably would. You're basically guaranteed to lose no planes (which low tier CVs have very few of) and the rewards are the same as nuking a Kongo. The Kirov however has cruiser HP and is about as easy to bomb as a battleship. She's a carrier's perfect prey.

As long as it stays in game, it stays on my Zao. No other skill I particularly value on her that I don't already have. If given the choice however, I would still want it removed. I consider it an unfair skill. I'm just not good enough of a person to refuse to use it on principal.

That's not I wanted a premium version of Fiji for. I wanted her because I want to be able to use a high tier captain on a tier 7 premium ship I like.

They are exceptions. 8 BBs and 1 CA on the enemy team when I'm in a Zao means I don't have to worry about any fast raiders with accurate and fast firing guns to worry about

It appears that my wording didn't fit my intentions. What I meant is that the rapid reload consumable would mean that the French cruisers would bring variety to the game. The cruisers themselves should stay consistent to a theme, much like the British ships. I, in fact, defended the importance of following a theme in my opening post. The main issue with that is that the kind of ship you are describing would be fine at the end of the line, but that would risk creating the line like the Germans. Whilst it could be argued that the German cruisers are coherent because of their large torpedo arcs, strong AP, and slow ships, the ships are so wildly different across the tiers that they could barely be considered the same line. Unless the French cruisers were heavy cruisers almost all the way through like the Japanese, they would simply not be consistent enough to be called the same ship line.

I would have created a proper thread, but I can't be bothered to. So I came here to complain. The Emerald is regarded as one of the worst ships ever. Despite being the only cruiser at tier 5 with a heal consumable and the first RN cruiser with a smoke screen, the community despises the ship. The performance of the Emerald on the EU server lists her as literally the worst ship in terms of average damage per game, above only the Furutaka in damage, and is (unsurprisingly) the cruiser with the lowest survivability at her tier. To add insult to injury, every last one of the aforementioned stats places her below the Krasny Krym in terms of performance. Speaking from a personal capacity, I simply can't find reason to argue with them on this matter. The question though, is why. The Leander, her successor, is very highly regarded despite being very similar to the Emerald in a large number of regards. Compared to the Leander, the Emerald has significantly superior turret rotation and similar volume of broadside. The ships have identical reload speeds and shell performance and similar shell dispersion whilst the Emerald actually has slightly superior range. The torpedoes have identical reload speeds but the Emerald, whilst having poorer torpedoes, has double the density of broadside. So what is it about the Emerald that makes her such a bad ship? The first idea that comes to mind in concealment. The Emerald, despite being a tier 5 ship, has a surface detection range of 11.5 whilst the Leander has a very respectable 10 km detection range. Another could be her size. Whilst I can't compare sizes directly, her higher SDR would imply that she is a larger ship, so it could be that her large silhouette is the primary cause of the Emerald imploding at random points. Would these two simple points really entirely account for the legendary awfulness of the Emerald though? So I'll put this to you, why does the Emerald suck? I'll add your responses to the poll so others can vote for your answers as well.

At least this time it's not just WG EU being cretins eh?

It's probably because she'll most likely be given a radar along with the new SN DD line. She'll be completely broken if not for the low gun density and poor ship survivability. As it is, she would be a very tempting addition to clan wars and ranked battles.

I voted no for a skill that counters incoming AA DPS. WG currently has a bad habit of balancing ships around a stated assumption that a certain skill, e.g. AFT for SN DDs and the Akizuki, WILL be taken. The ship then becomes nigh-unsuable if that skill isn;t taken. The idea is to stop a ship from being completely broken thanks to the skill (i.e. Khaba with better range than some of the cruisers she fights), but if a skill can make a ship broken then the issue should be addressed from the ship and not the skill. It's for that same reason that I disapprove of skills that boosts AA firepower/resilience against AA. Skills should be an option for a ship's captain to take if they so desire so they can play the ship in a certain way (e.g. do I want my Bismark to be a sneaky pseudo-cruiser or a close ranged secondary brawler?) and not a skill that WILL ALWAYS be taken and needs to be balanced around (Do I actually want my planes to be able to inflict damage on enemy ships?). For this reason, I think that all AA and plane health mods and skills needs to be removed and the AA to plane interaction should be handled from there onward.

Well, that would probably at least make things interesting and fun for us. Besides, whatever they come up with couldn't possibly be worse than RDF.

So the shell would act like an AP shell in its penetration roll with regards to angle and velocity, and if it fails its roll then it switches to an HE caliber for armor compare?

A single unified ammunition type that both citadels you and sets fires would be hilarious. Not sure how you could possibly balance something like that though.

It's justification for my concepts. I needed to first outline how unconventional ships have brought new life to the game (British cruisers) and why it might be necessary for a line like the French cruisers which I originally thought would work well as a light cruiser line. Then I needed to justify why I thought that having an anti-battleship cruiser was something that should be considered in the current game climate seeing as how anti-battleship destroyers have lost much of their effectiveness as of late. I don't know much about French cruisers either, or any ship really. Most of my knowledge revolves around operating them in game. The rapid reload idea is probably not that suited for an anti-battleship role considering that the French cruisers are mostly light cruisers, but I nevertheless think that it would bring variety to the French ships. Well, the numbers I gave were entirely conceptual. The actual longevity values would probably be best determined through supertesting.

They're allowed to hate us, BBs aren't

Because some people are masochists.