Capra76

Genuine question, but why? She was about the same size and weight as the Iowa so it surely shouldn't be impossible to fashion a competitive T9 out of it and supercharges presumable weren't issued for maintenance reasons outside of wartime. I can see why she would be an attractive, maybe even OP T8, but from a historical point of view it would be a bit disappointing to have both T9 & T10 as fantasy/paper ships.

Reality check, WG can use any number of tricks to balance a ship to the tier, so in the end it's going to be a business decision where to place the ships. There's no shortage of options for lower tier RN BB but there's very little to come after KGV, so expect that at T8 to free up Vanguard as a T8 premium or T9.

Replace the Wyoming BB-32 with Wyoming SSBN-742 (Ohio class ballistic missile submarine).

Just a thought, but the USN 5/38 guns used semi fixed ammunition, i.e the propellant was contained in a brass case rather than a silk bag as was the case in BB and presumable some/many CA as well, presumably this would have substantially reduced the risk of a detonation by keeping the propellant isolated from any potential source of ignition. I know the RN DD also used fixed ammunition, I'm pretty sure the IJN still used bagged and I don't know about RU. Interestingly, if you look at the destroyers on that list of magazine explosions, for US/RN ships at least, when they do occur they tend to be non-catastrophic. USS Shaw was returned to service within 6-9 months, HMS Khartoum survived long enough to beach and suffered the loss of one life (and 3 injured) and for the rest it's not clear to me whether the magazine explosion was a significant factor in the loss or the consequence of catastrophic damage that had little real impact on the end result.

Firing from smoke is the other side of the mechanic that seriously hurts DD, namely spotted by one = spotted by all, I'm not sure why DD should be stopped from exploiting this mechanic when everyone else uses it against them. Personally I think firing from smoke is not worth it in a game where almost every cruiser has torpedoes and there are usually plenty of hidden DD about as well, against anything but a T6/7 USN CA you're just giving your position away and doing minimal damage in return.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the Mahan, but it's no match for what follows in the line and not a ship that most players are likely to keep once they get the XP to move on. I did actually re-buy it with the aim of using the 2.5x XP event to get a captain up to at least a reasonable level for ranked but that seems to be on hold indefinitely so that's several million silver up in smoke for a ship that's now rusting in port with a one skill captain. The problem I have is that, as you say, to be competitive in ranked with the Mahan you need a 5th skill captain, but the only way most players are going to get that is by using real world money to retrain a later ship captain and presumably the same again to send him back to Fletcher/Gearing once ranked is over. So essentially you're choices are spend real world money on buying the best ship for ranked, which is a premium, spend real world money on retraining a high skill captain on a mid-tier ship or play with something that is at a significant disadvantage in the ranked game mode. This is dangerously close to P2W.

Got to rank 15 (from 18) in about 12 games in the Kamikaze then gave up. The problem I have with the T6/7 ship requirement is that most of the T6/7 DD are pretty poor and not the kind of ships that committed DD players are going to keep, which means that I'm left with a choice of training an entirely new captain, spending real world money converting my Fletcher captain back to Mahan and then vice versa or playing as a BB T6, where I am at best very, very average.

I found a post on the US forum with a CV that got 1,300 XP (with win modifier) for T8 66 plane kills so about 15 XP each (before modifier). Real world, in most games where CV don't decide to park their planes over AA cruisers or attack BB 2 tiers higher than them, how many planes would you normally expect to shoot down?

Not unheard of? Wow, that sounds completely balanced to me, it's not unheard of for ships to occasionally get some xp/silver from CV if they are higher tier AA spec and CV player is stupid enough to keep feeding planes to him. But what you're not doing is damage to the CV, so he has the capacity to damage/kill you and all you get is meaningless automated plane kills. That was a response to your comment "Also, every other ship has the ability to sink you and stop you earning anything" so the CV survival rate is an entirely relevant response to your comment. [edited]

Ok, so how much of that XP/silver came from the planes and how much from the 150k damage? Any how many T9 CV captains are mad enough to park their entire aircraft supply over a T10 Des Moines cruiser?

How much XP and silver? You will note that I qualified the first statement with "close too"; I omitted this qualification from the second statement but hoped it was obvious from the first that I was aware there was a (very) small amount of silver awarded. How many planes do you need to shoot down to earn say 1,000 XP and 100,000 silver? With regard to points 3 and 4, what proportion of players do you think play the game to shoot down planes with a completely automated AA system rather than damage/sink other ships? There are players out there with 95% survival rates in CV, the average for T8-T10 is well over 70% and even the T4 ships have better survival rates than every other ship in the game at any tier. Also, I'd wager that the majority of those CV that do go down are either lost to other CV or at the end of a game that is well and truly lost already. So yes, in theory other ships can sink you, but in practice the only thing that's really going to stop you is another CV (or completely automated AA).

The problem with that theory is that: plane kills give (close to) zero XP; plane kills give zero silver; plane kills give zero damage; plane kills do not count as ships sunk; so in a game where progression is wholly dependent upon silver/XP and damage/sinking is at least important for pride/enjoyment, CV have the ability to stop you earning any of the above without giving you the opportunity to earn anything of consequence.

Is there any point in preparing a T5 for ranked so long as you already have a T5/6 to use during the first few levels? If you played in the last season of ranked you get a star for every level you achieved so you're likely starting at level 18 anyway, in which case you're only looking at going up 3 tiers until you hit another protected level at 15 at which point your T5 is no longer useable, is it really worth the effort?

Speaking as an outside observer, it strikes me that the fundamental problem is the rate at which AA and CV power progresses through the tiers, meaning that the outcome of any battle (assuming similar skill levels) depends almost entirely upon the respective tiers of the attacking/defending ships. It seems perverse, but would the game work better if, except for more damaging bombs/torps, T10 AA/CV were no more powerful than their T4 equivalent?

Just started a brand new captain in a new ship and have 2 games with him so this should be an good test, 1 skill point bought for silver, 3 points + 2,660 XP earned so I think this is 2. 1,300 3. 1,500 4. 2,100 5. 2,660 (part) So I make that 7,560 captain XP earned. The games were: 1. 312 (co-op defeat) 2. 3,874 (random victory) I can't see how that ties up, both games were played with premium time, does the 2.5 only apply to the base XP? Even then I can't make it work.

Isn't the PT server trialing 0.5.7 this weekend? Not the smartest move having these two running at the same time.

If we're talking CV v other ships can I repeat my earlier question, what does a balanced CV look like and what is it balanced against?

Today is the 6th is it not?

Couple of thoughts: 1. Keep the page open for a week or so after the missions have ended so that people can still spend their diamonds, otherwise you're going to have a lot of very unhappy people at 12.01 on Wednesday when they see their diamonds disapear without a trace. 2. Wouldn't some kind of commemorative flag be a good idea for all who took part, even if it doesn't actually do anything?

I'm curious as to what balance is in the context of a CV. How do you balance a ship that is fundamentally playing a completely separate game, cannot normally be directly harmed by other players, who's results depend entirely upon MM and who's implementation in game is so f***ed up it requires its own special mirrored MM? What does a balanced CV look like? What is it balanced against?

You have some pretty weird dreams, not the cow sounds obviously, but a good answer to a support ticket?

I'm likely splitting hairs here, but to me the phrase "hard counter" implies a place in rock-paper-scissors with CV ------> BB ------> CA ------> CV, but with mirrored MM CV looks more like a class apart that (depending on MM) counters everything and is countered by nothing except MM itself. The reason I think this is important is that "CV are BB hard counter" seems to be an argument used in support of nerfs to DD, but if BB are going to be balanced against DD/CA surely these classes need to be strong enough to bridge the gap.

Congrats WG, you've managed to invent an entirely new way of griefing, now the aim of the game is to sail into the pink ship, keep them pink for an extra game and reflect the damage back onto them.

Not really an answer is it?

The problem I think is that the islands around A tend to cut you off from the rest of the map, especially with a southern spawn.