tenacious_torps

The lower tiers are pretty abysmal. I don't see how posting results from tier 7 upwards is a counter argument really. But alright... if the intention was to keep inexperienced players away from the line, then yes, I guess that worked out.

Why should Fujin and Leningrad differ in price, when they don't differ in mm?

Not sure if I recall this correctly, but wasn't there a nerf to the Minekaze's torp angles too after the introduction of Fujin and Kamikaze? That might actually be a reason to buy, come to think of it... Hm... Can anybody confirm?

I suspect DD captains just are the most likely candidates to make RN cruisers work, so a lot of them will be grinding the line right now. If you know how to gunboat, you are halfway there and DD captains are used to getting insta-deleted a lot, so better suited to stand the frustrations that come with trying to make it through the lower tier exhibits of the line. Well, probably just coincidence, but it makes some sort of sense to me.

Got a lot better for me once I switched to carousel view. Maybe just coincidence, but give it a try.

Considering that I highly doubt people would have worked on with shells flying above their heads: yes.

Just lost one by running out of time because the one surviving BB a) managed to sail right into the north-eastern corner and b) decided to pick up the three zirkasas from back spawn without going into the circle ever. WTF? Is there some superstition among BB players that playing the objectives makes your genitals shrink? I had to get out the weights and do some benching to let off steam after that one. What the friggin' fornication is wrong with these people?

WG should go flat earth. "Your ship just fell off the rim of the world.", maybe some nice space animations or something. Then remove ship from harbor and replace with that nations entry tier BB.

Get a used SSD from Ebay or somesuch. Even first generation with small capacity will help with loading times a lot, really shouldn't cost all that much and putting it into your computer is very easy. I am sure whatever your native language is youtube will provide all the instructions you'll ever need. Don't bother installing your OS to it, just the game will do. While you're at it maybe also get some more RAM, in case your computer is slowed down by swapping. hth

Seems to need another update. Also, did anybody try this under Wine/PoL?

The Bismarck is a blessing. A BB that only really works, when played with a very active attitude. Can I have a Hallelujah?

In the end maybe this isn't all that much about MM, but the question "How do we get better battles out of this mess?". I highly suspect all the tinkering with the darn MM in the world won't get us there. For one thing, this game is about communication and tactics, the aiming and firing your big guns and torps comes second to that. Now, of course, if you're stuck with mates who can't hit a barn door from inside the barn, you're screwed no matter what, but assuming very roughly similar skill levels in that regard it already evens out enough to make the better approach, may it be achieved purely by chance or by actual planning and communication, more relevant. This is the case for all game modes, so tinkering with them will not change all that much neither. So, given that, does the game actually give us much to work with? It's just a bit of pinging on the minimap and calling for support or focus fire on a particular enemy. Maybe that is not enough to get teams really play together. A battle last a fair amount of time, if one side doesn't steamroller the other, so putting some extra time into preparation for the battle should be acceptable to anyone, who is willing to invest the time for the battle, shouldn't it? How about a mandatory planning phase before the battle actually commences, aided by some more tools given to the player? I for one would certainly enjoy to draw up a battle plan and discuss it with my team. Too much to ask from random battles? Maybe. But maybe not, so worth a shot? It can't be that hard to code some tools for that. Or I could get another coffee, that might work too.

There is max range and then there is effective range. As others have already pointed out: use terrain to disengage.Also don't chase what you can't catch. But I suspect that's not the real problem here. Are you sure your repair strategy is up to spec? Cruiser at range shoot HE at BBs, you can heal 100% of that damage, so never repair a single fire. Two is generally considered the magic number. Hm... it says Beta Tester under your nick, am I making a fool out of myself here? But this is the newcomer section, so if not for you, it will not hurt to point it out for others who might read. Frankly, I don't see how a single cruiser can sink a BB at max range in reasonable time, if you follow that guideline. Not at the start of a battle, when you must have equal tiered cruisers on your team who can take care of it. I mean... just spam F7 and F3 on him until somebody makes himself a more urgent problem to that cruiser and that's that. Even at the speed of the Wyoming, how does long does it take to run for the next island? Two minutes max? You should be able to buy that time. Anyway, you shouldn't struggle that much in the Wyoming, I'd say she's actually the strongest BB on her tier.

Wasn't this in some form on the test server some patches back? My connection is just too crappy to waste bandwidth on those, but I think I read something about making coop more interesting and offering different modes there. Something along that lines anyway.

By ruining everybody else's? Not funny. Not if "just want to have fun" is just a lazy excuse for a general unwillingness to learn. I'm quite sure life in general offers more than enough opportunities to get that out of people's systems.

God knows I too struggled with that ship. I made my start in the game playing primarily Japanese DDs and... well, guess my nick says enough, doesn't it? I got real good at torpedo prediction really early on, but thought my guns were basically something for the sailors to hang their laundry on. When I switched to US gunboats I got good at evading close range shots from BBs and yoloing in. Up until the Nicholas you can get away with that, actually the launchers on each side make it feel even somewhat viable. You can do a lot of damage in a very short time... which is usually all you got in any given match with that approach. Can't say I cared, basically I was optimizing XP per minute, not win rate. And then came the Farragut. Boy, was I abysmal with that ship... I ended up free XPing my way to the Mahan, just to get access to another torp launcher and some range on them. Ironically the Mahan was the ship that made me learn how to gun-boat then. Well, apart from the knife-fighting, it's really not that much different. There was some event (can't recall which one) and one requirement was to set a quadrillion ships on fire with a tier 7 or higher ship. Since I had only the Mahan and the Japanese DDs in my port at that tier at the time... Easy choice. It all comes down to learning the offensive uses of smoke (premium is worth the investment). Positioning and situational awareness are key. Short list of things to keep in mind before you drop a screen: - Do I have enough and proper targets to shoot at? Don't laugh, you don't have that much range (AFT is questionable, at the increased range even BBs can evade, especially if they have nothing else to worry about and the rudder shift module installed.) and don't want to waste precious smoke time. - Are my targets spotted by somebody else, who will not loose line of sight due to the smoke? You can't shoot at what you can't see. Worse, nobody can and I've seen more than one US DD captain smoke up and do the opposition a favor. So think about it before you hit 'T'. - Are enemies in the vicinity who can negate the smoke? Cruisers have hydro (these days also German BBs at highter tiers) and some also radar. You'll want to memorize who gets what and also duration and range of the consumables. There is no easier target than a DD sitting around motionless in smoke and suddenly getting lit up. So make sure, they are sufficiently far away from you, before you pop smoke. If you can arrange for a BB behind you to deter them from coming at you - all the better. - Smoke is a torp magnet. Keep moving and don't sit broadside on, especially not to Japanese cruisers and their nasty long range torps. Keep track of enemy DDs. How many are still in the game, are they spotted? If not, what was their last known position? (Remember to turn that on in minimap settings...) Can they sneak up to you in your smoke and drop torps? In other words: be aware and prepared. Now, with that taken care of, you can pepper whatever ships you have in range from relative safety and set fires a plenty. It's the best way to get used to the ballistic arcs on those US catapults. Don't neglect your duties over it, you still have to contest caps and bully other nations' DDs, but when there's nothing else to do, then smoke up and start the target practice. Soon enough your damage numbers will go up and even more BB captains will appear in this very forum and complain about the nasty DDs who burned down their manly bloatboats. Which is nice, but don't turn down opportunities to show cruisers, that broadside on their citadels aren't exactly safe from your AP. See the bit above re: smoke is a torp magnet. German and Russian cruisers have to show their broadsides to drop at ranges where you can easily harvest citadels like crazy. Of course, if they have hydro available at the time, you're screwed. But if they do, they'll come at you bow in, so you can easily tell by their behavior well in advance and retreat. hth

It is, but also quite disorientating on the first matches. Needed to adjust my sights quite a bit.

It's not hard to get 160k+ damage in a cruiser. Just try to keep as much ships as possible burning. Winning is a completely different story though, didn't manage up until now. So cudos to you, LilJumpa.

Don't really see the issues for torpedo aiming, all relevant information is displayed in multiple ways in game, so taking away just one of them shouldn't be much of an issue. It's worth a try, since smoke in current state certainly can break immersion. It really is annoying how it disappears when zooming in. Also hydro and radar shouldn't completely negate smoke, it should still be somewhat harder to maintain good aim on a smoked up ship. Not by much, but there should be some notable difference. The way it is now it's just another case of rock and paper. Evolution of the game should lead to some more refined mechanics than that simplicity.

Evolution. It's the thing, doncher now?

Why not go all in and introduce actual currents? Now that would add some more depth to maps and make things a lot more interesting. Wind to, yeah why not... But I think moving smoke due to it is the more interesting bit there. Check wind direction, lay down smoke cloud in absolute safety and move with it right into your intended kill zone.

Nothing wrong with the ship, it's the matchmaking that needs to change. It's neither fun to fight ships two tiers above your own, nor below. Variety is increasingly less of an argument in favor of the current MM, less so with every new line of ships introduced.

Just adore the Clemson, most fun ship ever. A versatile bully. Slap a good captain on her and she's just a brutal seal-clubber. Try vigilance, superintendent, AFT and/or DE. CE is just unsporting. Ishizuchi is also seriously underrated, very fast for a BB at that tier, lots of secondaries, extremely good HE. DD-hunting in a battlecruiser anyone? Try it and low tiers can be so much fun (the salty tears of other BB captains you burned to crisps are a bonus, especially when accompanied by cries from your teammates "Shoot AP, Noob!"). To me low tiers are the laboratory of the game. Forgiving economy and general chaos allows to experiment with things you just can't get away with otherwise. And if it goes wrong... well nobody really notices, nobody expect people at those tiers to have the slightest idea what they're doing anyway.

I got both the Murmansk and Marblehead when they were on 50% offer, was barely more than you'd pay for just the Fujin right now. Talk about cost-effective... To my surprise both win% and earnings are better with the Marblehead for me. Reviews suggest quite the opposite, but there you go. Maybe it's because I'm just used to sailing close to enemy guns under the constant threat of instant elimination from playing gunboats a lot and for that reason also to switching ammo and from guns to torps all the time. Talking of torps, ridiculously short reload on the Marble. They are shite, truth be told, but a lot of shite thrown at the enemy... well, that actually was a valid tactic in medieval warfare, wasn't it? *g* If you want a bit of a challenge (the current MM certainly makes sure of that...) along with the earnings I can recommend both. But I wouldn't say it's necessary to buy premium ships to farm credits. All tier 4 DDs are excellent seal-clubbers, pick according to preferences. MM is on your side, they all cope well in tier 5 matches, which is the maximum you'll ever see and with a bit of practice earn very reliably. Including flags, which in turn help with earning more and/or reducing costs. DDs are especially good for getting the flags relevant for that. Minekaze and variants actually have good damage per salvo, the problem is the low rate of fire. Since concealment is on your side, you can choose engagements and get the first salvo in. Use terrain to quickly disengage, usually you take about as many salvos as you can deal out yourself. Rinse and repeat and voila, you can win gun duels against US DDs. If there is no suitable terrain, just don't engage. Sail around them and kill their unsuspecting support, who are very likely to sail blissfully unaware in straight lines, feeling safe behind their DDs. RU DDs suffer from comparatively slow rudders, so they are susceptible to a bit of stealth torping, and slow turret traverse, so you can ambush them with guns also. Just make sure theirs are pointing in the other direction. The above re: terrain applies, of course. Kievs will hunt you down, stay away from them, but Gnewny and Ognewoi do not pose a serous problem for the skilled kaze-captain. If you're comfortable with that, the Fujin on offer right now is a very reliable earner in whatever MM throws at her.

Actually the increased number of BBs could very well have something to do with that. A) BBs as a class are famously a lot more susceptible to RNG and B) BB players are... too often not playing the objectives. A fact implicitly acknowledged by WG, see tinkering meant to give more incentives to stop the friggin' camping and also the general design principles of the German BB line: at long range inaccurate guns, at short range highly efficient armor. Which may have even more unintended side-effects, since if players still sit at 20km range in their Bismarcks A) gets actually more pronounced. German BBs since their introduction are by far the most popular line, it appears. Take these factors together and you have an explanation of sorts, anything more precise will require stats-digging, which I'll not do unless being showered with real world money for having my living brain dipped in acid. /end of futile attempt of introducing rational thought to gaming for now