Aotearas

Met Egoleter.

So, this has been itching me a bit ever since I made the mistake to accept the very poorly worded pop-up from the game launcher about automatically installing updates, that being the Game Updater executable which puts itself into the OS startup programs and apparently refuses to bow down (even disabling it in my system config isn't doing anything, it's still running in hte background). Can see any way of uninstalling it. All I can do is delete the executable, but the game will automatically install it with every new update, with no discernable option to opt out of it. To make things short and crisp: I have zero need for any such background program and I would like it removed from my system as it is nothing but unnecessary clutter (and I like my system lean, thank you very much!). How can I go about it to remove that utility permanently?

Maybe you should tell everyone to go C on 'Faultline' But yeah, the current Karma system seems to be made to be abused and salty players and trolls alike have taken to that with gusto. Not that I'd be completely free of that shame as I do give out reports for bad play when I see something that's just unbelievably stupid (in particular maxrange borderhumping BBs tend to get a report for bad play because I'm utterly fed up with that crap) or botting (either obvious bots or matchlong AFKers). But I also try to compliment good play when I see someone is doing what is needed (even if it doesn't end with them getting topscore or whatnot, if it was crucial to do and they did it, they get a compliment) or in case of CVs if they simply do their job correctly (spotting ships, DDs in particular, whenever they can, trying to intercept enemy CV strikes, etc.) since sadly I see few CVs that actually bother to play for the team rather than try and wh*** damage for themselves with no care for their allies. I do check my Karma after almost every match though, just to see if I was complimented or more hilariously: got reported (since I typically don't flame in chat, reports are almost exclusively from salty losers), which I consider a mark of honour

I'd say most of the problems stem from this game having just a barebones introduction that hardly qualifies as a tutorial, is not mentioning available informations, being woefully obstuse in representing those it has and downright not informing players of a good number of different informations (crucial ones at that) that are unknowable unless players specifically seek them out (yet how would a player specifically seek them out if they never know they're missing them?). Plus the whole selling high(er) tier premium ships to people that have little to outright zero experience playing those ships, or the tier, or both, without any sort of requirement aside from opening your wallet, lesding to even more crushingly steep learning curves for the uninitiated that may in fact directly lead to teaching bad gameplay behaviour like Derpitz players charging ahead to try and get their torpedoes to work (because MUST use them), or other torpedo equipped ships to players that never as much learned that torpedoes have an actual maximum range (Derpitz players again, launching their 6km torpedoes at targets 10km and sailing away and woe be upon any allies in their path). Attracting a lot of potentionally not that much invested players to a f2p game is one thing and nothing that can be helped. But not giving those same players a constructive and comprehensive tutorial and the necessary informations on how the game works is just an open invitation to disaster. Or that may just me having grown up in the old days when big manual booklets were still a thing. But how many people invest enough time into a f2p game and actually browse the (dated) Wiki or the game forum for informations they don't know about in the first place? Sure, IF they come across any of that the effect may snowball, but that initial effort has to be made first and frankly from what I see many, MANY players doing ingame I scarce believe they'd have any such initiative, even when they're getting hammered by players that do understand the game better. And even then what we get is a good portion of people that don't come to the forum and ask for advice, but rather just to whine around how this or that is OP and waah waah and everyone should just sail broadside and not shoot backm etc. pp.. Or in short: The problem isn't as much the game or its balance as it's its utter failure to inspire a natural learning process and accompanying learning curve. And WG is making not only little effort to adress that issue, but instead they're actively making it WORSE: want to learn how to CV? Well, autodrops for tier IV and V only. Manual alt-attacks only when you get to the big boy tiers and oh what's that? Experienced CV players and Defensive AA cruisers everywhere? What, you haven't learned how to use manual alt-attacks yet? Well, sucks to be you, enjoy getting clobbered all the time!

Back from a short weekend visit to my family, onto sealclubbing with my Khabarovsk again (that ship is just ludicrously fun and still Stalin approved way stronk!).

Currently visiting my family so only very little time to play (let alone with friends as usual) so I decided to casually grind the frenchies a bit, Not that I'm looking to actually grind the line as it stands so far (still got other eggs in the basket) but I have to say me like'y the tier IV so far. Even thinking that if I'd ever reach tier X with the HIV, I'd probably go with a wank-build (IFHE on those 240mm guns for glorious 52mm HE penetration). Bit disappointed with the meager base XP: thought I actually did a better job that just over 1300 base XP, ... damn lowtier XP deflation

Sailed across YoshiEU and Niibler, game was rather comprehensively won

Welp, since I'm going to visit my family over the weekend I'll only have time for some light gaming everyone now and then and will probably use it to grind the low tier Frenchies. Guess I'll see how this pans out, not holding my breath though since I essentially have little to no interest in actually grinding the line over the other cruiser lines at this time.

Also, you can be planespotted without spotting the offending airplane in return.

My mates and me ran across creamgravy today

You must've been spotted by something. Possibly radar (Chapayev at tier VIII has 11.7km range radar for example) if he was uptiered into a tier VIII or IX game. You always get notified when you're spotted by a yellow/orange exclamation mark symbol (with a little radio tower symbol if you're spotted by radar or hydro). It's impossibly for someone to actually cheat and spot you that way, since that information is handled serverside.

That may or may not have to do with how DDs are supposed to be a counter to BBs. As for the inexpectedly low damage, some of your shells probably impacted modules like torpedo launchers or gun turrets. Those still count as penetrating hits, but sometimes they only hit the modules and not a part of the actual hull so they deal no HP damage and just knock out a module. 6k damage with BB HE sounds like you got three hull hits with damage and three hits that only deal module damage.

Sounds exactly like my problem, absolutely random crashes when clicking on different stuff in port and upon loading the game (almost never actually ingame crashes during a match thankfully). And no, unless you have a different issue than I do, it's not the mods because I've tried everything including a clean reinstall without mods and I've kept crashing. Todays crash count was 4 ...

That lucky bastard Morten got not one but two (!!!) Solo Warriors today as he was playing with Reaper and me. Both times we had a lead on points despite the rest of the team dying left and right thanks to early cap advantages (which we secured, duh) and then he/we won on pointslead after gameclock time-out. First time we where even raged at in chat for being a "scum clan" or "sh** clan" by a particularily salty FdG that couldn't take a loss, he proceeded to dump all his reports between Morten, Reaper and myself Second time (after Reaper left) again essentially the same thing though it was a bit more work around since he actually had to contest the last cap against a (low health) Neptune to keep the points lead. No reports that time though A productive day of stet peddingeding

So, been playing a couple rounds with the now new Khabarovsk and its increased ruddershift time. It is noticably less manouverable as before (duh, who da thunk it) but it still reacts nicely to turns, just a wee bit slower now. It's still just as rape'y against everything. Had a couple times of being ambushed by a Gearing and Z-52 respectively, but the same standard procedure of swinging around, kiting and unloading muh dee-pee-emm proved just as effectively destructive as before (whilst suffering just as little return damage). I can see high AP dpm ships being able to exploit the now longer turn duration for two or three solid AP volleys into the side which may prove catastrophic for the Khabarovsk of they get a nice number of normal penetrations into it, but other than that even with the reduced ruddershift the Khabarovsk simply has to turn around and kite to essentially get a free win. So far I wouldn't even trade the concealment upgrade for the steering gears mod.3 to bring the ruddershift closer to the original swift timing because I don't think it's a significant disadvantage even when caught at ~6km range (spotting distances for high stealth DDs). Or at least I heven't encountered something that might make me think I would've done better had I a faster ruddershift ...

Ah okay, I misunderstood your statement then, apologies.

Erm? So you make the kind of mistakes that BBs are "totally unforgiving", ergo punish you the hardest for. But that somehow means that cruisers (high tier cruisers at least) are forgiving? Based on what, the mistakes you don't make because you make worse mistakes? Or how am I to understand that comment because right now I don't see a relation between those two points. Wording mistake perhaps? Becuase what you just wrote doesn't make much sense.

Erm ... Khabarovsk doesn't care if it's spotted, it's going to be once it fires its guns anyway and Khabarovsk wants to be firing its guns nonstop, ergo be spotted nonstop regardless of DDs spotting it or not. Torpedoing a Khabarovsk? If you manage to ambush a Khabarovsk at virtually point blank range and can saturate the immediate vicinity with torps that might perhaps work (moreso after the ruddershift nerf now) but that still requires you to get suicidally close to a Khabarovsk, or conversely for the Khabarovsk to come suicidally close to places where it could be ambushed as opposed to just continueing to blitz around in open water and pew pewing everything. Very, very situational counter. Use your guns depending on HP and ship? At what point is the HP difference sufficient? As for cruisers, nope, the guns don't work just fine. That 50mm armour plating is a massive troll plating and will completely negate heavy cruiser HE just as much as it does 120/127/128/130mm DD HE. In the example I gave you a Zao didn't do more than 2k damage per volley because the majority of his shells shattered against that 50mm plating or missed due to the low target profile I gave whilst I was kiting away (starting at 6,5 km so it's not like I was out at 12-13 km at the edge of my own firing range). And as I've said, the moment the Khabarovsk is taking more damage than he feels comfortable to trade, all he has to do is stop firing and speed his way out of the dangerzone, but that's not countering the Khabarovsk, that's just scaring it away to harass somewhere else all the same. You will never melt a Khabarovsk like you can any other DD where you can dish out 5-8k salvoes and instantly take off roughly half their health with one salvo! I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing a viable counter here, just patch aid measures and highly situational opportunities. To me a counter is something that I can consistently use that puts me at an advantage great enough to overwhelm the target or force an advantageous fight and I plain don't see that happening against a Khabarovsk. Best thing people can do right now is focus fire and chip away at its health, but as that happens the sheer damage potential of the Khabarovsk isn't going to simply disappear and it takes a loooong time to bring a Khabarovsk to its knees if the player knows how to play her decently.

And this is the point where I introduce you to the wonderful overmatch mechanic, which states that any AP caliber 14,3 times larger than the armour thickness at the point of impact will automatically skip the bounce check, go straight to the penetration check, which in terms of cruiser armour means it WILL penetrate and if there's a citadel hitbox anywhere in the shells path after the ensued penetration will more often than not also penetrate, resulting in a citadel hit. *Ka-ching* The irony here is that actually showing a bit of your side is safer than angling too steeply as it might entice an inexperienced BB player to aim for the center of the ship where the actual citadel belt armour can't be overmatched and thus bounce shells if it's angled just enough rather than just lolpenning through the bow or aft hull armour of the ship (which a more experienced BB player will do anyway since he knows he can just lolpen through the bow or aft and hit the citadel that way ...). *faint whistling in the distance* Hear that? That's your argument keeping on flying after it missed the target. Speaking of which and in terms you're more likely to understand: There's also an easy solution to not getting set on fire for BBs. It's called "don't get shot at". Many a BB player has adopted that mentality and is hiding at their maxrange far away from those evil, evil HE shells. Sounds like that might be just the recipe for your success. Be sure to thank me later!

Well, enlighten me then. Because assuming I'd sit in any DD that isn't a Khabarovsk, the only way to deal with a Khabarovsk is to never engage it in a gunfight unless you have a ridiculous HP advantage. And if you're in a cruiser, you'll have to make sure not to aim for the center of the hull because even 203mm HE shells will simply shatter harmlessly (maybe setting a fire or two, but Khabarovsk now has heal and as such doesn't care much about fires) or in case of AP shells bounce unless it's showing a neat broadside. Which in turn basically means that unless the Khabarovsk is stupid and is making himself a cooperative target instead of just kiting away and actively dodging (or simply disengaging entirely with its superiour speed and detectability compared to cruisers), you'll never get a fight on your terms for considerably longer than 20 seconds. That might scare a Khabarovsk away, but it's not something that I'd call a counter, since a scared away Khabarovsk will simply use it's 48-7 knots topspeed and relocate to a slightly less scary position and just start hammering someone else. If I may intersect an anecdote at this point, just two days ago I was playing my own Khabarovsk and engaged a Zao at roughly 8km distance as I wanted to cap (I knew the Zao was there, I simply didn't care though, game was already won anyway). As soon as we spotted another, I simply turned away and started shooting him, so did he. You'd think a Zao at 8km 6.5km would have no trouble dealing with a Khabarovsk, but for each salvo he put into me for around 3-4k ~2k damage (as solid chunk of his HE just shattered on my 50mm armour) every ~12 seconds, I poured 5-6k 3-4k into him in return in the same timeframe. And in a BB, tough luck hitting a Khabarovsk. Only class that can stomp on a it are CVs. If there's any good counter tactics to the Khabarovsk, I'd love to hear them because frankly I can't think of many that are actually favourable unless the Khabarovsk is already quite dented and I certainly haven't met any effective counters whilst playing her myself so far (though I only recently unlocked it and as such didn't accrue too many games in her for a comprehensive experience yet). edit:// Just checked the replay and corrected my numbers.

The argument that the protected MM including tier IV is good for new players is BS. It only means the baby gloves come off one tier later. The performance gap between tier IV and VI ships is not significantly bigger than tier V and VII ships so lower tier ships don't get off any better and whether new players get roflstomped by toptier ships beginning at tier IV or V makes around 30k XP difference. Same as the recent lowtier CV changes. New CV players are being overwhelmed by too much to learn with alt-attacks etc. and experienced players can sealclub with little difficulty? Welp, let's just remove all alt-attacks so even if they wanted to learn they can't and with being dependent on auto-attacks and simply clicking your fighters at another squadron (which btw is essentially a certain loss scenario for IJN fighters vs US fighters when beforehand one could attempt to even the odds with strafing) they also inadvertedly reduced their performance ... oh and that also totally didn't mean that the sealclubbing tier simply switched from tier IV and V to tier VI when already top-/higher tier CVs (inherent advantage) now also can alt-attack with impunity whereas any unlucky tier V CV getting stuck in a double CV match against another tier VI CV can essentially only hope the higher tier CVs duke it out themselves, completely ignore the lower tier CVs and that his allied CV wins so the enemy higher tier CV never gets the chance to just roflstomp him just a bit later. Such fair, much seal protection, wow. Neither are solutions, they simply took an offending roadblock and placed it a couple meters from its original place where it's still being a hindrance. Even remotely thinking of that as a viable solution makes me doubt the mental acuity of the balance team and if Octavian really just brushed it off (haven't seen the interview myself) it's just emphasizing my already incredibly jaded opinion of his and the entire team's competency.

I had once argued that the Manual Secondaries captain perk could've been served better as a consumable, maybe tied to a specific upgrade to choose over the concealment upgrade. But at this point, anything that even remotely buffs BBs is a no in my books. Reducing AA for some time is no effective drawback. Equal and higher tier CVs can simply stomp all over a BB if they really want it and the BB is not escorted by a ship with Defensive AA to spread the drops. The CV will lose planes, possibly lots of them if they go for a US BB, but the attack will go through and do a good chunk of damage and particularily hightier CVs have the reserves to spare. Lower tier CVs in return wouldn't be able to benefit much unless the debuff on the AA nearly cripples the AA dps down a couple tiers worth since they have comparatively squishy airplanes that even a slightly weakened AA can shoot down and typically smaller reserves so any loss hits them harder.

That's a very good point. This also leads to another good point: is the BB oversaturation just a EU thing (too many germans playing KM BBs on the EU cluster mayhaps)? I'm not quite up-to-date on cross-server statistics ...