IanH755

[Submarines] - Honestly, if we were given a choice between No CV's or No Subs I'd pick No CV's every damn time. Getting spotted by a sub or CV is bad, but only a CV can keep attacking me almost none stop with rocket planes for 1/4 of my health per attack whilst my AA does virtually nothing in return. A sub is restricted to torpedo reload times, slowness of the torps etc making it more balanced to fight against. Anyway, enough anti-CV rambling - Despite being down to 1500hp within the first few minutes due to CV focus, once it moved over to the other flank and left me alone I could get a good game going. I died to the old 5.9/6.1m exploit which is rare but I was in a DD fight with the Farragut during my run in on the sub and couldn't tell it's depth and drove straight into it's torps at 100m or less, which is totally my mistake.

They should be banned - from orbit, it's the only way to be sure! Thats not even me joking. You've written some really good stuff there that WG will completely ignore but in the end CV's are just inherently un-balanceable. They have so many huge positives and so few real negatives that, as a ship class, they can not ever be "balanced" against other ship classes realistically. It has been, and will remain, WG's biggest mistake when they introduced the CV ship class to WoWS and, as they'll never remove them, the game will never be balanced.

Guy on Reddit posted his which he got in 2nd or 3rd crate opening. It's now just a reskinned Amagi, the testing was on the previous version with longer reload/better sigma etc - that ship got completely dumped and the direct copy/paste with just a new skin is what you have now.

I thought it might be that at first but I had a look at the 2016 formula using the Way Back Machine and it's unchanged - I wonder if something in the API data has shifted so, rather than the formula changing, the data lines the API uses have moved - it would also explain why so many people cant view their ships on the site if the API shifted? 2016 Formula page - https://web.archive.org/web/20160420101402/http://wows-numbers.com/personal/rating 2020 - https://wows-numbers.com/personal/rating

Yes, you effectively buying an extra 10 crates during 0.9.5 before the main collab starts in 0.9.6.

Sorry for the essay, didn't mean to ramble so much! Started March 2016. I only have a very minor passing interest in WW2 naval combat and it's from the historical side rather than games so my main reason was Phlydaily's Youtube channel - Just so much laughing at all the "Torpedus" hi-jinx made the game look fun and exciting so I picked the IJN DD line to continue the Torpedus and went from there. The gameplay style was fast paced (for boats) and arcadey, the graphics were adequate but the Art/3D model were fantastic, the basic game was fairly polished with no major bugs and, because I'd already watched a lot of Phly's videos, I already had a good understanding of the game so did better than average in most ships upto T6-ish and did very well in my "old skool" T8 Fubuki. However i mainly found the T5-6 Russian 180mm cruisers Kirov and Molotov to be where I found peak fun. All that changed in Sept 2016. You see prior to that the average MM was very cruiser heavy at T4-8 (where I liked to play most) so something like 0-1 CV, 1-3 BB (only USN/IJN BB's back then), 5-9 Cruisers and 2-3 DD per game and the games around those tiers were quite aggressive. Then in Sept 2016 the new German BB line was dropped, and suddenly the MM was flooded with 4-5 BB's per game, cruisers virtually disappeared over-night down to 1-3 per match at most, DD's jumped up to 3-5 and the "passive" meta took over (compared to previously). At that point playing a T5-6 "glass cannon" became an extremely negative experience so I moved upto T8-9-10 and the gameplay there was so different to the play-style I got used to a lower tiers that, whilst I was doing good damage I didn't enjoy the game, it was just long range sniping everywhere (a problem thats still here today) which didn't excite me at all. At that point I had to make a decision - quit or try to play more Co-Op. This was way back before economy changes, before the camos and signals with 1000000% FXP etc so moving to Co-Op was a very hard choice which had lots more negatives than it does now and, because of that, it wasn't very popular especially at high tiers (T8-T10 was almost empty and T10 would 95% of games lose credits!). So I still liked the basic core of the game enough that I moved to Co-Op after 1300+ PvP games. I missed the rewards of PvP but I rapidly re-found the game I'd lost - The meta was uber-aggressive, you brawled 2-3+ ships every match with secondaries, torps, main guns blasting at point blank range, you could play exactly how YOU wanted to play and, because you were virtually guaranteed a win, it didn't hurt anyone else's game. It became even better once PvE was announced and I took part in the initial testing (nothing like we have now) and testing "Co-Op Hard Mode" (dumped). Since that time Co-Op and PvE have become steadily worse. Directives "forced" large numbers of PvP players into Co-Op to complete "Play....and win" directive so games ended far more quickly with far less fun per game (you'd kill 1 ship per game, I was used to 2-4 ships per game). The CV-Rework killed off the best PvE operations and the new CV AI-Autopilot broke the rest. I think the game will continue as it is, I don't think it will grow much bigger or shrink until it fails. The game has been here nearly 5 years and yet the average daily player numbers across all servers are still fairly static (+/- 10%) no matter what WG do to the game, it's too niche to really grow to WoT levels but has no similar competition to worry about losing too many players. I don't think "subs will kill the game" in the same way I didn't the CV-Rework would, it'll just change the demographic of the players - Lots of older players will leave and lots of newer players will start and the overall number stays fairly similar. I'm not sure if WG have road-mapped a "5 year plan" or similar for what they WoWS to be. Almost everything the management decide to do, despite some of it taking over a year to complete, seems thrown together as if they're making things up on a weekly basis. I think the main thing still holding this game together is the absolutely fantastic work that the Art/3D Model department do, which gets missed an awful lot when WG's management anger the player-base every few months. As for me I'm still a Co-Op, PvE player who is getting tired of having to "grin and bear it" through the past 1.5 years of "bad" WG decisions which have negatively effected the modes I play. I still like the core game but I'm getting to the end of tether with WG as a company. For example I still want to help WG by testing the Subs for them but then I see WG floods the testing with worthless bots, or actively dissuading players from trying the test mode by making other events more rewardable and then we all know it'll just discard almost everything the testing actually brings up. This is an completely unfair metaphor I know but it's how I feel - I feel like a battered housewife who keeps returning to her brutal husband because she still remembers the good times in the early years and thinks that, given enough time, the husband will become good again - I think that sounds overly harsh TBH but it's the best way I describe how I feel.

No shiplist in Co-Op or Random for me and, more strangely, my Random PR figure has gone up by 250 points which is odd seen as I stopped playing Random in October 2016!

September is the 5th Anniversary of WoWS so there's going to be discounts/sales around that time. It also could be the Submarine "release to PvP" date too, based on my guesswork (3 patches to test then release on 4th).

Love the Kirov and have played it a lot but for the general playerbase the Murmansk is probably "better" in more situations despite the Kirov still being very good (for me), and it's the same with the Kirov vs Molotov. The Molotov is my most played "PvP" ship overall, and the Kirov was second most played ship, but of the two I'd still pick Molotov.

Hit 250 today though I was doing pretty good until I read - Oh sweet baby Jesus, there's at least another 80 ships out there!!!!!!!!

[Submarines] - Some teams you just have to grab by the scruff of the neck and drag over the finish line! And sometimes even that just isn't enough - 2 human Subs left and they can't kill 2 ships (1 Bot) who don't have ANY ability to kill them, so we lost - WTF!!!!!!!!! What a waste of a Quacken! [Ship Content] - Bit of an odd milestone I suppose but with the release of the Odin and Agir I now have over 250 ships (3 are "loan" subs so 251) and I think I've played at least 1 game in every single one. I could go back and re-buy the earlier T1-3 ships to get over 300 but there doesn't seem to be any point spending credits like that to me. One thing I did notice is that I don't play the French Cruiser line, where I stopped at T3, so that's something I could look at I suppose.

The premium shop has been updated with a similar look to the new Armoury - Currently everything works as it should for me as of 1 minute ago. If it's still bad for you it could just be WG's servers slowly catching up.

Situational Awareness skill was One point - removed way back July 2016

[Submarines] - So close to a Quaken again. Sank all 3 subs from full health which was a nice XP bump and had a really good fight with the last two subs who both tried the 5.9m/6.1m trick. However both stood absolutely no chance against someone like me who "knows that exploit" and knows how to fight against it very easily, although the last guy was hoping that the HE firing Bot Devonshire might friendly kill me instead with his 12km shot which hit me for almost 2k hp (good programming there WG) as I parked over the Sub.

I went back and worked out how much steel I got in 2018 purely as a whale/grinding and NOT playing any clan stuff - Paid IRL money for Steel Monsters Campaign - 4000 Steel Bought P.E.F Ship to complete Directive - 2019 Steel Grinded F2P directives - 2019 Steel 2018 Snowflakes - 50 steel per T9 Tech Tree ship, 100 for each T10 Tech tree ship and 200 steel for each T8-10 Premium ship - Approx 5000 steel (can't be exact, no idea which ships I had back then compared to now). Total Approx 13000 steel - then bought Flint 11600 - left with approx 1400 steel. I'm now on 8k steel so in 2019 I've added approx 6500 steel though Dockyard, events, SC's etc so I'd need approx 3 years at 6.5 steel per year (+ the 8k I have now) to get 25k Steel for the cheapest Steel ship. I believe that we will be given the opportunity to collect Steel in the daily containers instead of coal in an upcoming patch which would speed things up a little, almost halving the time taken down to 1.5 years.

There's been at least 4 other events, sales etc which gave Steel away for real world cash but the amount has always been fairly small compared to the amount needed for a Steel Ship. The 2018 Steel Xmas campaign gave the most and, combined with getting steel for Snowflakes for 2018 and all the other steel events you could do in 2017-2018 I managed to get the Flint (11600 steel). Since then I've slowly gone from 0 back to 8k steel with 2019 dockyard etc and this new 2020 dockyard would make 12500-ish and the cheapest ship is 25k steel for the Somers which would take another 3+ years to get at my current rate.

Although there's a panzerknacker video of a sub game with 3k base XP game, I'm pretty sure your game the highest base XP for a Sub that I've seen posted here!

Already sold both the Kirov and Moskva - I got about 10m credits back (still an overall loss vs the purchase prices) and it cost a total of 250-ish doubloons to demount everything from both ships. When 0.9.5 arrives I'll be given both ships back as "Premium" ships and then I can remount everything back onto them. Yes it's cost me 250-ish doubloons and buying the ships originally cost me 21m credits but I made 10m credits back which for some people is more important.

[Submarines] - After being so close so many times this week I finally got myself a Quaken I mean I had to kill-steal like a bugger to do it, with 4 kills having less than 1500hp left each (all 3 subs and the Fubuki) but we won't mention that. I also had the honour of killing two of the subs with guns as each surfaced right next to me trying to do the 5.9/6.1m exploit, then torp me as I passed, but each time I'd already hit the brakes and watched them surface next to me with my guns pointed at them, awesome!

@MrConway @Crysantos I really am trying to help WG by playing the Sub mode everyday but even a single celled organism can tell that filling teams with so many Bots per match is an absolute waste for any kind of testing, other than "does the game crash when we fill it with 16 bots". I know everyone is 'excited' (or was) to test Subs and the Sub queue is still over 100 strong, but without any incentive for human players to fill out the non-Sub ships then all you've ended up with is Co-Op with Subs added, which is virtually worthless to everyone as you get no human vs human interaction on which to base any of your results on as it's just human subs vs bots for the vast majority of the games. Plus you get no Class vs Class testing because Bot DD's/Cruisers can't drop depth charges and human subs far out-skill (or at least should do) bots who physically can't hurt them even if the ship is equipped with ways to do so (again, no depth charges dropped by AI). There's another 3 whole weeks of "testing" left and it's already virtually worthless after 1 so unless WG do something drastic to increase human numbers, then the whole of this 4 weeks of testing will have been an utter waste of time and something WG could have done internally. Will WG rise to the challenge and change anything to increase human numbers over the next few weeks or will WG do nothing and waste every opportunity given to them to do some real testing?

It's very obvious with the recent (2+ years) of map changes and new maps that WOT style "side-scraping" and corridor mechanics have taken over heavily with "HE from behind an Island" being the new side-scraping and corridors being, well corridors still TBH. The original maps from 4+ years ago were pretty good for diversity, from Ocean to Islands of Ice to Two brothers, all different an unique. Now all the new maps are simple "lots of tiny island around the caps and a few big islands further back which is mirrored on either spawn. It's just boring design forced upon the game because the core- ship-mechanics are so island hiding HE spam vs BB AP centric nowadays. Ocean is still my favourite map in this game because it high-lights perfectly the strengths and weaknesses of the current meta. There's too many BB's which means fewer cruisers, which means cruisers need to be stronger to hurt BB's, but then they're too strong against DD's, so you reduce the number of cruisers playing even further, but now there's too many DD's so we need to give cruisers radar, but there's not enough cruisers, so you give BB's and DD radar, but now BB's are hunting DD's with HE, so DD's need to be faster, stealthier or can shoot from further away with faster torps etc etc etc etc etc until the game is impossible to balance.

[Submarines] - My daily "Ego Boost" where I realise that my PvP skills haven't totally disappeared in the last 3 years of PvE. Fought and best 2 human DD's, fought a human Trento and 'just' missed out on a kill (he went stealthy with 1500hp left) and smacked a human Sub silly but died doing it. I really an enjoying the rewards this mode give though, quite nice after all that. I'd be a lot more lenient towards WG and their Sub testing if I though there was anyway that Subs would forever remain a separate mode and I think I'd return to this PvP/PvE mix-up full-time if it stayed like this, but alas we know that not to be true.

[Submarines] - More fun vs humans instead of Bots as this game only had 3 bots per side which is a miracle right now! Could have had a Kraken but the <800HP Aigle on the other side died about 0.5 seconds before my second salvo could hit him (bit of a kill steal attempt by myself there for the 5th kill).

There are not "many players still present" though. There are 70+ subs and less than 10 humans in Non-Subs in the queue right now, that is the issue, not enough human Non-Sub players.

Only at very low Tiers (T1-T2) and only for new players or when there are very few humans playing (4am etc).