Aotearas

I have yet to see anyone seriously consider the DCP and Spotter Plane modifications to be desireable over the other upgrades. The DCP modification in particular only makes sense to use on aircraft carriers (longer fire immunity that allows you to land and launch aircraft under fire) but even there you give up the +10% aircraft AA dps upgrade for it and from tier VIII onwards with CVs getting defensive AA it's arguably not worth it (CVs can reliably defend themselves from cv strikes and if you're under fire from surface ships you're screwed anyway and a couple more seconds fire immuity is unlikely to change that). The Spotter Plane modification is entirely useless. You get a longer spotter plane duration ... said duration is already plenty long enough and anyone who knows how to play isn't going to have to need additional range for the vast majority of gameplay scenarios. And in the few cases were you might need the extra range, the standard duration is plenty enough. In addition to that, the switch in perspective makes aiming at ships within your normal firing range harder compared to the normal gunnery view. Nevermind that increased flight duration can be easily voided by just getting your spotter planes shot down ... "nice spotter plane you got there, would be a shame if something happened to it". The simple matter of fact is that compared with upgrades like the Surveillance Radar or Engine Boost modifcation, the DCP and Spotter Plane ones are so poorly thought-out that it's unfair to even put them on the same level. Everyone wants the Radar upgrade for their raddar ships, everyone wants the Engine Boost for their destroyers (and french cruisers and possibly the upcoming french BBs). Show me one, just ONE person who genuinely wants to have a DCP or Spotter Plane Modification over a Surveillance Radar or Engine Boost Modification. Imo until WG figured out how to make those upgrades worthwhile they should at the very least reduce the chances to get them compared to the already proven and desireable upgrades. Personally I had already pitched the idea that the DCP modification makes the DCP behave like the one on the Octobraskaya Revolutskaya (Gangut): if you mount the upgrade it switches the normal DCP consumable with its unlimited charges and standard cooldown into the DCP variant with limited charges, but vastly descreased cooldown. And the DCP modification ... quite frankly I don't think that is a good idea in the first place. Longer spotter plane duration means nothing if the spotter planes get shot down before one might possibly make use of the increased duration. The whole concept is inherently flawed!

USN AA was used to create area defence curtains. That mean that all AA guns were centrally coordinated to fill a designated space with as much ordnance as possible to turn it into a killzone. Any aircraft forced to enter that space during their attack approaches would have to survive hundreds of shrapnel bursts as the AA shells and their timed fuzes (later radar assisted proximity fuzes) literally put up a wall of lead. A coordinated fleet with its specialized air defence escorts (Atlanta or Cleveland class cruisers for example were purpose built for that role) could put up a coordinated area defence that resulted in quite effective AA defense (naturally with assistance of their own carrier launch fighters). That was also a reason why the IJN AA was so inefficient during the war as they lacked AA coordination aswell as having techical deficienies were their AA armament was concerned, the 25mm dealt too little damage even if it hit to reliably shoot down an aircraft (if they hit in the first place as they were entirely handcranked vs the powered mounts on USN ships), the IJN had no mid-caliber AA weapon like the 40mm Bofors (and the very few that were used in later stages were again handcranked). They also never employed a proximity fuze shell (and the USN was very careful not letting them have any to reverse engineer, not even using those proximity fuze shells if the Japanese could potentionally get their hands on them).

Something for the oldies:

I'll have you know that the "who the hell are those guys clan" is an officially by TTT recognized moniker for our clan. I find it quite charming myself. Everyone expects TTT, OMNI, OM and the other highly competitive clans to be troublesome opponents. But we are the fellows no one ever heard of, coming as a surprise out from left field catching people offguard ... "Scrubs eh? Can't be that good with a clan name like that." "How did we lose to those scrubs? Who the hell are those guys?!" "Guys, I checked their recruitment thread on the forum, it's all ponies, memes and nonsense!"

Stupid sexy @gr0pah got nothing to do with it. Just ran into a couple TTTwiddlies and decided to leave a friendly bump. Considering they were on page five it looked like they needed it anyway. Guys really need someone to take care of their thread. Poor thing must be all lonely. Besides, someone has to maintain proper relationships between the edited, dirty trick clan and us who the hell are those guys clan.

Since there was talk about anime recommendations a short while ago I thought I'd just check back and tell you lot that 'Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens' starts pretty neat and is worth a look if it wasn't already on your radar. And so I don't comment completely offtopic; Welp, just got to watch episode #2 of 'Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens' and the series definately one-upped the already neat start. This show is now definately on my must-see list for this season.

Met @trapshit_accurate and @svadilfari on our team. Was an easy win because the enemy team lemmingtrained hard. Didn't get to enjoy farming much thorugh, because as it turned out they lemmingtrained hard right into me. Svadilfari later joined our division trying to get a win on his Musashi, but we were hounded with speshul teams ... we even had an allied Shimakaze who went ballistic with hackusations against the enemy team. We got reported by him and his division mate after pointing out how ridiculous his cheating accusations are.

You know you can delete spelling mistakes with the backspace key right? You don't have to use ink killer on your display.

Naw, they'd have to be able to read in order to install and launch the game. It's even worse because those players evidently are simply willfully ignorant and could easily not do the stupid things if they ever bothered to learn, but they actively choose not to.

Naw, they'd have to be able to read in order to install and launch the game. It's even worse because those players evidently are simply willfully ignorant and could easily not do the stupid things if they ever bothered to learn, but they actively choose not to.

You know, I don't need a laptop. I'd settle for the game running stable.

DDs aren't that squishy. Barring running into a torpedo, catching an entire BB salvo or detonating DDs can weather being under fire until they get out of harms way (and smoking along with a full turn does wonders getting undetected very quickly), especially if they approached a cap prepared to leg it in the face of stiff opposition and wiggle that butt. You'll take damage, but getting outright sunk is incredibly rare for someone who has a rough idea of what he's doing and when to fold it. And even getting forced away from a cap due to overwhelming opposition is not boonless. If they could bring enough firepower to concentrate on a cap for you to nope the hell out of there, that's firepower they're lacking someplace else on the map. A DD can make the choice to relocate (especially easy for a DD since after the initial cap contestion brawl most enemy ships will have been spotted one way or the other so a good look on the minimap shows a quite accurate picture) to somewhere with less enemies, harass and slow with the enemy push with the threat of a DD's presence alone or relocate for a flanking position. Lots of enemy ships shooting at you also means a target rich environment after all. The first dash to the caps is always a cat and mouse game where you never quite know if you're the mouse or not, you just have to make an educated guess about the threat potential: What enemy DDs are there to compete against? Are they in divisions (expect them to back each other up)? Enemy radar cruisers? Which nearest cap makes the most sense to play into your ships strengths and which are playing into the enemies'? Etc. pp.. Obviously experience helps a great deal weighting those informations, but that experience has to come from somewhere. I personally recommend a more aggressive trial and error method. It's easier playing the objectives and failing to find out what doesn't work than playing around the objectives to find out how to make it work in safety. People make mistakes anyway, might aswell make the big ones first, scratch them off the list and then work yourself down until the only ideas left are those that are proven to work. By the time you have a working starting strategy for your ships and the different maps and spawns you also have enough experience to improvise on the fly without making too many mistakes, ... or at the very least you've gotten enough practice in running away frantically that you're unlikely to get instagibbed outside of having extremely bad luck.

Rest assured I have not missed the point. I understand what you're saying and agree with the fundamental sentiment 100%. What I'm less sure about is if you've told us the whole story or alternatively that people reporting you for not rushing into a cap recklessly are perhaps people who're asking you to do the right thing and you just think it's being reckless. As such refusing to do so and lowering your team's chances at victory is quite the trigger for people to become rapidly frustrated. I'll be candid if you don't mind and please don't understand this the wrong way because I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here: I've taken a glance over your profile and your play stats and you have very low average damage and survival rates in your ships. You're doing something wrong. Low damage and low survivabilty typically means that you in fact do rush in recklessly and then die before you can help much, but if I were to believe your original comment about not wanting to do so I'd rather guess that you are playing too passively where you can do little help and then end up getting hunted down as the match spirals into a defeat. Contesting capture zones at the start of a match is crucial. Not doing so an easy way to lose. What I'm trying to say here is that what you currently believe to be reckless may in fact not be for someone else. And that someone else sees you not doing what he thinks needs be done. You might in fact be wrong with your tactical judgement and he might be right. And as I said, you must be doing a couple things wrong or your stats would paint a different picture. Reflect, try different tactics. Watch some Youtube guides (they helped me a great deal!), iChaseGaming has a couple neat guides that cover the fundamentals. There's always going to be some idiots raging at you for no reason. But you'll find that you'll get a lot less raged at when you play well.

Did I say it wasn't?

Met @EsaTuunanen in his trusty Grim Reaper on the same team. The enemy crumbled hard, though I suppose it would be unfair for just our team to take all the credit. The enemy BBs were trying hard too

You want me to drop the sass? No way. Guess I won't be joining that group anytime soon.

I'd say only Engine Boost and Surveillane Radar counts. Defensive AA is also useful on a small, select number of ships (essentially all DDs with the Defensive AA consumable, gives a player more time to deter a CV strike and either flee towards friendly AA or give the allied CV more time to intercept the strike). Hydro is occupying the valuable second upgrade slot and quite frankly there's few situations where having a longer hydro duration is actually necessary or even wanted (I for example don't use the hydro mod on my german DDs because it would desync horribly with the smoke cooldown, nor would I want give up 20% AA range on my cruisers).

Except the topdown perspective makes shooting at targets within your standard range more difficult. If one could choose between normal gunnery view and the topdown perspective perhaps ... And I wasn't talking about the Surveillance Radar upgrade. I'd love to get that. If you have a spare one I'd trade you all my six Spotter Plane modifications for it.

Actually, it's the ship that's being anthropomorphized, not the crew. If you want to take offense to that, you're prerogative. But implying other people are disrespecting the dead because of that requires quite some mental gymnastics to sommersault at that conclusion. It's your choice to feel indignated, but trying to take that out on others who have nothing to do with your problem is overstepping your boundries and you aren't simply overstepping, you've backtracked for a sprinting start and took a leap. So calm your tits and fume in silence if you have to.

Without going any deeper, but I think you might have to work on your practical application of tactics yourself.

I can generally recommend the History of Wars channel. Has a good chunk of neat documentaries around and even though they're low-res (480p) they're surprisingly watchable unlike many other youtube videos of the same resolution (probably straight from source rips). Here for the DD players: For the masochists (cruisers): And last but not least the CVs:

We iz Scrubs, we kemp bush and have unfairest of planes!

Welp, they oughta have used the Magazine Modification to reduce the efficacy of those TTT hags™ by 70%.

@El2aZeR and a friend of his had the misfortune of facing a Scrub division in a battle of banter. They lost comprehensively and had to settle for a meager match victory as consolation prize.