Aotearas

Ye, was much fun and very engaging @MortenTardo, @Migulaitor and myself also ran into @Naatibus and @Owidel in the very next game. Naati was in a Mogami (poor sod, Ocean map, tier X MM obviously) on our team, Owidel in his Mogami (heh) on the red team. Had much fun in my Khabarovsk (made sure to use the Juliet Charlie signal flags ...) burning down BBs and bullying DDs. That one Kurfürst alone got me a Witherer

Only way to play such a setup anyway: rush B cyka blyat and just coordinate that dakka dakka to focus down one ship after another. Could even straight up rush opponents that aren't armed with torps with those 6km torps on the Khaba. A hyperaggressive Do or Die strategy: attack so fast and fiercely to give the enemy as little time as possible to adapt. Likely even flat out ignore the caps entirely and just rush to kill the enemy team. But that might run into problems with the 5 minute rule ...

InB47KhabarovskDivision.

The typical "never go full retard" picture? Right then, I get the distinct feeling you're not interested in genuine feedback, so I won't bother telling you how wrong your assumption on my experience in competitive multiplayer is. If you think my advice is nonsensical or otherwise not worth taking seriously, all the power to you.

Considering they won, I very much doubt they were idiots roaming around. Or conversely, if they were idiots roaming around and you still lost to them, what does that make you then? Pick whichever you fancy, I know what I'd put my money on (hint: the one calling cheats on an unorthodox/troll tactic gets the short stick). Such tactics (and yes, they're tactics no matter how much you don't like it) can prove to be surprisingly effective on opponents that can't deal with a sudden gameplay change, though they're typically beaten back rather easily by a more versatile team if they react properly as a 7 DD strategy has little to no endurance in a fight if they get forced into one. First step would be to not let them use their single most powerful advantage: their speed. Have your own team's DDs rush a cap (with cruiser support for muscling through a fight) and the rest (preferably with the radar ships since the DDs should spot the enemy DDs anyhow if they pick a fight or contest)) go for the other cap, force an engagement if necessary to cap it. After securing both caps (or securing one and blocking the other), hold. They can't afford to get into a trading fight and forcing a cap lead means they have to push to win. At that point you can split your radar cruisers if you have more than one (you should if possible) to ensure that they simply can't push into caps and from then on out it's just either waiting for the ticket bleed to end the game in your favour, or have them try and match your cruisers in a gunfight. With all the hydro being on cruisers everywhere, the chance to get torped ought to be incredibly slim and you can afford to manouver wildly since nothing can exploit a broadside.

A couple words on clan battles: We need ONE guy to call the strategy, not waste three minutes pitching ideas around. Doesn't mean no one else can do call-outs, but we need a solid strategy first and foremost. No useless chatter. No one is helped with "sh*t sh*t sh*t" and "I'll get him" isn't useful, only "I got him". Until something is positively dead, no one got it and everyone who can should keep shooting to make sure of it. After securing a cap lead, DON'T PUSH! We don't need it, we can let them take all the risks and let the ticket bleed work in our favour. No one should ever be alone. At minimum always two ships that can protect each other's flanks if they get pushed unexpectedly.

How is this a nerf to the Atlanta? Atlanta can still do huge amounts of damage to cruisers and the only ones tough enough to shrug off most hits are the higher tier ones (less so if you have IFHE on the captain as with that you can still damage the majority of tier VIII and some tier IX cruisers reliably with HE). Unless you relied exclusively on fires to do your damage, this change is minor at worst and outright negligible at best. So unless I missed something about fire duration also getting reduced for BBs, I don't see how the Atlanta were to be singled out as a negatively effected ship for a change that benefits all cruisers (and DDs, but fire damage is the least of their worries when they're getting shot at).

Ah, the N00bel-Prize. The greatest honour a n00b can award. I still fondly remember that time some nubcake in Battlefield 4 threatened to report me to BF4DB (shared banlist) for using a no recoil hack saying how he had record proof (with that he meant he was spectating me and also TOTALLY didn't give his other clanmate clues on what I was doing, my position and where I was looking (and he still got rekt)) ... the gun I was using at the time was the SAR-21 in case that rings a bell to anyone in here.

Stop citadeling yourself, stop citadeling yourself ...

Also more fun hearing your clanmate curse like a sailor each time you land a good hit on them.

We puddled across @ThePurpleSmurf on the red team today. He was sailing his Saint-Louis (which I just unlocked today, though I'm waiting a while before buying it, maybe a discount will come soon™) and I figured he's going to need all the HE shells he can get ... so I lend him some of mine. Would've liked to say it was a pitched battle until the better team won, but it really came down to whose team was the least incompetent (as it does so often these days). Our toptier BBs took the longest possible route towards the red base then hid a while next to an island, whilst my Donskoy was engaged by multiple ships near and ultimately IN our own base trying to delay the enemy. It certainly didn't help that RNG wasn't on my side either (206 HE shell hits ... 3 fires, naturally all of which were instantly put out). And as if it wasn't enough already, that cowardly Yamato and Conqueror probably hogged all the good RNG for themselves and got enough lucky salvoes on target to get topscores (despite having done zero in the way to actually help decide the game, on our favour that is as their passivity certainly helped Smurf's team plenty) whilst our division with @MortenTardo and @TomBombardil who tried our damnedest to give our team at least a chance at victory got placed smackdab middle of the scoreboard. Because playing the objective and to win simply isn't rewarded with XP and credits, but egoistical gameplay that borderline sabotages your team's chances at winning just rake in the damage numbers and thus credits and XP.

Love that video series. From all I've heard/seen/read about Cold Waters, I doubt I'd have much fun playing it, watching Jingles' commentaries are very enjoyable and interesting. Why I linked this video instead of the first of the series? Because the ending is simply amazing. Watch the video, no skipping parts (you need the context to really appreciate the climax!) and enjoy.

The same moment they're going to implement a reporting system with human operators handling tickets instead of relying on a superficial, automated system. Or in short: never.

Hadn't seen anything like that yet, but I'll take your word for it.

Don't think so. any cruiser without a heal (i.e.: everyone cruiser below tier IX excluding the Atago/Takao and Graf Spee) was disproportionally hurt by fires without a means to recoup some of those lost HP and that has been like this since what .. start of the game? Though maybe it just took WG an entire line of super-HE spewing BBs to finally get that kick up their arses to do something about it. Still doesn't change the problem with knocked out modules though. Catch a HE volley from a Conquerer and that's essentially all your small AA, half your secondaries/DP AA and any torps you might've had gone. Just like that *poof*. Plus the knocked out engine and/or rudder. And I'm not even talking about the direct HE damage ...

I somehow doubt that considering I don't see Ganguts everywhere. One or two per team, the rest is still the usual RN and KM BBs. If this were a typical rush, I'd expect to see a lot more Ganguts ingame. And let's not forget the other tiers. Whenever I enter the queue, I see the MM pool like this 0-3 CVs, 60+ BBs, 6-10 CA/CLs, 6-10 DDs. Then again, those BB numbers are nothing new (and I still haven't seen WG adress the BB overpopulation despite their promises and placative words) and BB AP vs DDs isn't THE cause, but part of the complete fool-resistant package that makes BBs so appealling to play for everyone (but especially the potatoes that need their precious powercreeped crutches). Imho BB AP should never arm on DDs (exception would be the Khaba with its 50mm plate). Overpens alone do more than enough damage with a decent hit anyway, shaving off a quarter or more of their health.

Well, that's the kind of players that WG desperately wants. Stupid, prone to kneejerk reactions and easy to impress. Perfect cow for milking with premiums and stuff. I can already see it effecting the average gameplay quality. The last couple months the standard is getting worse and worse. It used to be just the weekends with sketchy "I play for fun" players rushing through the channel on Two Brothers or whatnot shenanigans, but lately it's everyday chockfull of people like that. More and more competent players leave the game (or simply not play nearly as much as they used to) and get replaced by more and more potatoes that have fun (or whatever it is that drives those sub 45% 20k average damage potatoes) playing powercreeped ships that let them get away with blatant mistakes like showing broadside all day.

The funny thing is if it happens, it's almost always incidental. The times we get plenty people playing at once and feel like queueing together we fully expect to face one another. And barring rare exceptions, we do in fact end up facing another if we get thrown into the same game. Even with choosing different classes (which should theoretically maximize the chances to have the MM put people together as no single class is overrepresented). As it stands, MM actually does a fairly decent job juggling divisions around. In fact I'd argue that not queueing up together makes for a less fair game. A triple division of skilled players getting matched against a random division is just as (if not more) likely to result in skewed balances if the latter is a bunch of potatoes. But two divisions of skilled players that know another facing each other makes for a much more balanced fight between both teams. At least that's my experience with playing with my pals and how MM seems to behave. Take that for what it is.

Wednesday, thursday, saturday and sunday from 21:00 to 00:00 UTC+2 ... is that a *Edited joke? WG does away with CVs because they're too hard to play to make it accessible to clans that don't have a solid CV player. WG limits the team sizes to seven players each to make it more accessible to smaller clans. WG rents out free tier X ships to make it accessible to players that don't own a tier X ship yet. But hey, let's just arbitrarily limit the clan wars to late-night three hour windows. It's not like people have to get up early in the morning to go to school/university/work. Or people who perhaps work late hours and only have freetime in the afternoon or perhaps the morning. Welp, it's a good thing I'm not even interested in playing this mess, because if I were I wouldn't even be able to thanks to those primetime restructions (I go to university, which means getting up early in the morning and I work over the weekends to pay my bills). Buh-rilliant! Just in case the image embedding is still screwed up: https://media.tenor.com/images/d8de3bbf03ad4a7e3744ff650517f662/tenor.gif I'm mildly interested in WG's reasoning for this ... like a bystander morbidly oggling a traffic incident scene. Best guess would be WG doesn't trust its own accessability measures to result in a servicable MM pool to draw from. I can understand trying to force an as cohesive environment as possible to force clans of different skill levels to meet one another (and avoid clans trying to exploit fringe hours to screw with the MM), but even for that limiting the allowed time-window to four days at three late-night hours each is hilariously restrictive. InB4PilotSeasonIsJustForTesting

Sneaky cabbage claims another victim!

Alright, I reread the whole WG explanations again. I hadn't caught that it also applies to ships not in a smoke screen the first time I read it (did they update the news article with that tidbit?). On my previous assumption that the smoke-detectability only applies to smoked ships, the change made some sense. But applying it to non-smoked ships (i.e.: removing a smoke's ability to block line-of-sight) is utterly retarded. No wonder people can now see everyone regardless of being in or behind a smoke ... though that still doesn't account for the experience the OP had (assuming he's telling it true). This stupid ...

Can't say I've heard about that one. If you want really weird (but still surprisingly good!) stuff however, I can recommend 'Hatoful Boyfriend'. Or if you're into Visual Novels in general 'Steins:Gate' is an amazing piece (also has an anime adaptation that's pretty good) that belongs into every (Steam-) library!

That's why the edited part said that something got screwed up. Smoke not breaking line-of-sight for ships inside the smoke firing is how it should be (according to their smoke detectability that is). That's what the mechanic change was intended for and what WG's explanations said. Smoke should still break line-of-sight if no one is within the smoke detectability debuff and smoke also should still act as a visual obstruction for anyone outside a smoke. Why that Yamato was getting spotted by the smoked-up Kutuzov (with no other ships in the training room to spot for him) clearly HAS to be an error with the spotting mechanics. Particularily since OP mentioned that other ships weren't spotted behind (not inside) smokes despite firing and being pretty close by, since if it were simply a matter of the game not distinguishing between smoked and non-smoked ships, the ships in OP's example should've been spotted too. WG done f*cked up again.

Still not nearly as hilarious a spawn than having your CV spawn directly in front of the enemy team at the start. Almost no strike group travel time ... if only those other ships weren't shooting first though ... ah, the good ole' days.

Without replay I'd say this is simple spotting mechanics. Thanks to that smoke, no one on your team had a line-of-sight on the Bismarck and Moskva. And as long as ships aren't inside the smoke screen it will continue to work as any other visual obstruction (smoke detactability only applies for ships inside the smoke). They however had someone to spot you or perhaps the Moskva used radar, ... or you were close enough for the Bismarck's hydro (4,44km range ... not that far off the 4,7km you mentioned and if either they or you moved closer, that gap is gone in a couple seconds). As for smoke mechanics: If you fire from outside a smoke, the standard detectability to maxrange debuff applies. But someone still has to have a direct line-of-sight to actually spot you. And smoke works as a visual obstruction. The new smoke mechanics only apply to ships inside a smoke. If you are inside a smoke and fire, the detectability in smoke applies and anyone with a direct line-of-sight (except aircraft) within the smoke detectability range will spot you. In short: if no one has a line-of-sight, you (or whomever else that applies to) won't get spotted and the smoke detectability debuff only applies for ships inside a smokescreen, not outside of it. ... just watched that linked video from Azalgor: WG somehow broke the spotting mechanics if that smoke Kutuzov can spot the Yamato. Makes it even more strange that OP couldn't see the other ships then. Also can't say I had seen such nonsensical stuff ingame myself yet (though I haven't played too many games since patchday yet as I'm working the weekend). What I wrote above is how it SHOULD work. But eh, wouldn't be WG without them screwing things up ...