jss78

Even before the upcoming range buffs, the Artillery Plotting Room mod has IMO been of dubious value. You really shouldn't be fighting that far out... I've been using it on the New York, as the ~15 km it gets without has been borderline painful. I'll be replacing with AA Mod 2 first thing when the patch arrives. Colorado/New Mexico get a spotter plane for those early-game potshots, so I've never felt the need anyway.

Here: https://eu.wargaming.net/shop/redeem/

This post is a shameless humblebrag, and I apologize ... but oh my: As far as this, I kind of agree. Though I must say having spent a week with the ship, I'm slowly learning to appreciate those 8.2 km torps. The thing is, while they're weak, the problem with the 5.5 km Omaha torps is that they force you to fight much closer then you'd want to be, as far as your guns are concerned. So I ended up very rarely using the torps. With Marblehead torps I can hit ships as far out as 10 km if they're moving towards me, and that's basically where I want to be anyway to reliably pound in my HE salvos. They don't do to much, but those occasional floodings are very useful in forcing the enemy to hit R. The best thing however is that I can play "an Omaha", in a general sense, without needing to dedicate a captain. The Marblehead works wonders with my 15-18 point USN CL/BB captains.

I have to ask: What's up with all the park benches on the aft decks? Were they really there? Or are they some whimsical joke by WG?

Well I agree with your basic sentiment. I'll say though that in my experience the web forums for all online games tend to have a similar psychology. Basically they're the places for the most active and engaged 1-5% (just a guess) of the players, so they view things from a specific angle. You always see some parochialism and elitism, and there's always that perception of most players in the game being awful. There's always a rich jargon reserved for those players perceived as inferior -- the specific words vary between games, but the sentiment is the same. On top of that there's the well-entrenched culture that "it's the internet", i.e. it's acceptable to say stuff you'd never say face-to-face. I think it's unfortunate but I've all but given up. In short, people -- when they are on the Internet -- tend to not be better than this.

There's no one right answer to this. One thing is how much you want to carry your team. Most players find they perform somewhat worse in higher tiers, and just how high you want your performance to be is a personal choice. What I'd personally recommend though, is don't "skip ahead" by buying high-tier Premiums, but recommend going down the tree one ship at a time. Two reasons. First, as you go through the tree, you'll gradually learn the playstyle at each tier, and will get naturally prepared for the high tiers. Second, the regular free-to-play ship at each tier is generally a good indication of what the premium ship plays like. So you won't be wasting your money buying an unknown quantity. What I generally do in a specific tree branch (say US BB's), is take my first captain, and go down the tree one ship at a time, taking the captain to each new ship. Then, if I liked some ship along the way, I might keep that one too (with a new captain). Alternatively, I might buy a premium if I liked the general play style at that tier. So my primary captain will end up in the highest-tier ship, but I might end up keeping some ships along the way.

I think this is a good idea. I agree I'm not sure how I should manage with the Bogue in T5-7 games without manual attacks, with a fat total of 2 squadrons at my disposal. I think it's sufficient to give a one-tier "kiddie pool" with those Tier-4 1920s carriers -- no-one's forcing you to progress to T5 unless you feel ready. Also the Langley and Hosho have nice, balanced plane loadouts, making them a good learning tier.

Stealth fire -- I'm not a fundamentalist on the issue, but I just feel the balance was getting where it was used by too many ships, too often. It's just not a whole lot of fun. I have a few ships that'll be hurt by this too, but having spent a lot of time in light gunboats with NO stealth fire, I'm not compelled it's a necessary game mechanism. You just WASD like a madman -- it doesn't work all the time, but a lot of the time it does. The skill floor will go up though, and this might unfortunately further increase the BB population. T4/5 CV's -- I think this is OK. It'll achieve a couple good things. First, beginning CV guys have a place to learn. Second, it removes the massive imbalance created by an experienced CV captain in low tiers. It's just really ugly when a great CV captain goes to T4/5, the opposing CV does ~nothing to stop him, and he just plows torps into those nice, long Myokos, Kongos et al. with impunity, with no opposition from either fighters or AA. It avoids the REAL issue which is the incredibly sensitivity of the game to the 1-on-1 CV match-making, but short of skill-based MM I'm not sure what to do about this. Also new CV guys are still in for a hard time at T6. But still I think this probably improves the game.

I play PvE quite frequently, just for relaxation. Especially if I'm feeling very tired but want to play. Also there're some ship types (e.g. torpedo DD's) I'm a total scrub in, but rather enjoy playing nonetheless, and PvE is nice for that. My hunch is I'm far from the only experienced player doing this. If you enter in a relatively high-tier ship, the queues are still short, and you see people with what seem like fully tricked out ships, and they clearly know what they're doing.

I just take the signal container every time. It'll always give me something I can use. Even picking the signal container, I've actually got 5 SC's, including some of the awesome ones with 50k FreeXP or hundreds of signals. The last SC gave me one of those modifications, so for sure I don't want to be "lucky" again. I'd rather have a handful of useful signals.

Well I gave in and bought the Marblehead. Mainly to free up my Omaha captain for other tasks. WG should pay the OP commission or something for his hard work. A couple initial thoughts. First -- based on a few games I still feel it could use a little something. Comparing to Omaha-B, you could just view it as an alternative torp loadout (very similar, but you choose between long-range-and-weak or short-range-and-strong torps) -- but then Omaha-B gets much improved AA too. Though it's not really a massive difference, and the Marblehead is worth it to me, for giving me an Omaha which doesn't require a captain. Second -- what on earth is up with all those wires and rigging? They make me want to order the crew to have a laundry day.

I only have a pedestrian 58% W/L in the Warspite, but I'm not sure it needs extra range. I feel like a l lot of the time that extra range is a trap as it's really not in your best interest to be that far out anyway. I put in the wonderful Aiming Systems Modification 1, and get close, about 9-12 km, where those main battery shells start to fall in a nice, nifty package. I do put in a scout plane for those early-game pot shots, but they really achieve little on the whole. Which to me consolidates the point that the ship has all the range it really needs. Shamelessly cherry-picked, but the ship does OK:

I went for good AA and secondaries with BFT+AFT. I'm not really sure it's objectively worth it -- a tank build would probably be more universally useful. But I find strong AA and secondaries hilarious, so what can I do. So first ten points: Preventine Maintenance Expert Marksman Basic Firing Training Advanced Firing Training After that: Concealment Expert (highly recommended for North Carolina) Superintendent (for +1 heal) Jack of all Trades (quicker heals)

Sometimes strange stuff just happens. If your baseline win rate is 50%, just all things being equal there's a 0.2% chance you get 9 losses in a row. If it's a ship you do bad in, and only win 40% in the long term, that chance becomes a full 1%. So it's rare but not like winning a lottery. I don't recall lose streak that long, but I remember one Sunday I won 11 games in a row in my New Mexico. Made me feel all weird. At least personally, sometimes I get these awful days when my mind just isn't in it. Poor positioning, bad calls, and I just tend to lose a lot more, and significantly due to my own fault. If it's one of those days ... yeah, just take a break.

I would honestly love it if someone could sell me on the Marblehead. I've had the Omaha in my port since first researching it, and have a good captain there I'd gladly free up. What I truly love about the Omaha is that the B and C hulls give two very different but useful configurations. It's the only ship where I switch back-and-forth between hulls. But either way the Marblehead just seems inferior: Omaha B, much like Marblehead, but IMO more useful torps (lower range but vastly superior punch), better AA Omaha C, not really comparable as it really becomes a dedicated gunboat. Much better AA.

I prefer 5-7 in principle, that's where the basic style of gameplay is most enjoyable to me. However I find myself playing T4 quite a lot because of the far more pleasant MM. Especially if I'm feeling tired which is often the case when I play. T2-3 are kinda fun, but I dislike the lack of diversity in ship types.

Dude asked an honest, simple question. How about you guys answer it without the snarky elitism, and without stat-shaming? Ty.

I honestly can't wait for these to land. Since giving up on Karlsruhe, I'm in the market for a fun T4 CL, and the Duguay-Trouin looks like it might fit the bill. It looks quite a lot like Kuma in general concept, and that's a good thing.

I think technically it's always your fault if a friendly runs into your torp. If he's in a position where he theoretically could manoeuvre into your torp -- your fault if he does. A bit like hitting someone from behind in traffic, your job to be prepared for everything. However, in practice you always do some thinking about where you THINK the friendly is going, and figure it's safe to launch -- and very occasionally this bites you in the [edited]. This is what I call an honest mistake and will accept an apology if it happens to me. What I'll say though is sometimes the recipients of friendly fire are ridiculous. I always give a genuine, honest "sorry", but occasionally this is just not enough and they go into this ludicrous hissy fit. By the time they are five minutes into their temper tantrum -- have to say, I'm damn near glad I did it.

I was confused about the same thing, I think some of the promo art showed the Soviet ensign. But the actual in-game model does actually have the Imperial Russian ensign (shot from my port below). Maybe they changed for the model which actually went on sale. It's a pretty hilarious ship. LittleWhiteMouse's review said it pretty well, it's like someone saw a Russian DD and told a fish story about it, how many guns/torpedo tubes it had etc. It's like a warship equivalent of Spaceball One.

Looking at Warships Today stats, the lowest global TH%'s tend to be in cruisers with long-range torpedoes. Myoko/Atago/Zao are all at 4%. So 3% is definitely low but depending on ship possibly not exceptional. Of course, much higher percentages are achievable with proper skill.

I always liked the stiff-upper-lip "penetration CONFIRMED!". Imagine the guy shouting that while doing the nudge-nudge-wink-wink, and it gets a real Monty Python vibe. It cracks me up every time.

I appreciate the sentiment, the US cruiser tree was the first I worked down, and I always liked the Omaha. Any T5 ship is kind of tough because of the current MM, I feel like T5 has it worst of all tiers, and it's not the fault of the ships as such. I'll much rather go against T10's in my North Carolina than against T7's in any T5 ship. Tiers 5-7 have close to the peak population of all tiers, so they could easily sustain only two-tier spread in MM. I flat out don't get it why WG does it like this. I've never played the Marblehead or Murmansk, but really my favourite Omaha is the ... Nicholas. Maybe that's a weird thing to say, but it's really rather similar. You get those same torps and nice enough guns, but you also get DD-level concealment, a bit of extra mobility, and even defensive fire for your AA. It really plays like an ultralight CL rather than a stereotypical DD, but it's MUCH more comfortable going against T7's.

The formula is definitely off. I'd argue it's a bit too easy to farm in mid tiers (I get it every few games in the Bogue, and that's NOT with 2/0/1 but with 1/1/0). But then the "and at least 50%" clause makes it too difficult in high tiers. I'd experiment with taking the >=50% requirement down significantly, until the challenge is reasonable in high tiers,, but then take the minimum absolute # of planes up to 32-35 to maintain reasonable difficulty in mid-tier CV's.

Yup, I sometimes put one of those special XP bonus camos on a premium ship, and forget to replace the original afterwards. Especially for tier VI-VII premiums for which the benefits of the premium camo are pretty meager. (As far as ship genders -- in Finnish all nouns are genderless, so ships are simply "it". Actually even men/boys and women/girls are genderless, and are only referred to with a single, gender-neutral pronoun which replaces both "he" and "she". Sometimes you can discuss some third person for a long time, and you only learn his/her gender when you actually see him/her.)