BruceRKF

Others have already mentioned that they will be renewed periodically and you cannot stockpile them, so just use them when you have enough resources and feel that you need/want something. In your screenshot you can see the time for the 50% signals coupons (which have been used) telling you when it will re renewed (will be the same for any you use). For the others you see at which date they will be replaced instead. Since ship coupons are renewed only about twice a year, it can be a good strategy to stockpile the resources over the months and use them just before they expire. Also, taking a look at what ships will be removed from the game soon and getting them with a coupon just before can make sense (right now that would be something like Haida or T-61, for example). Most important thing is: Do not feel pressured to use the coupons just because they will expire soon, even the ship ones! Get only what you need or really want, not something just because there is a coupon lying around.

For DDs: Clemson as a short range powerhouse with her double barrelled guns, Izyaslav as the first real gunboat in the Russian DD line which plays almost exactly like any of her higher tier counterparts, but also has plenty of torpedes to ambush anything. Cruisers: Kuma, the massively oversized destroyer. Strong HE, lots of torpedoes, fast. No armour, but that is a given for t4 cruisers. BB: Gangut. None of the tier 4 tech tree BBs is particularly exciting, so I might as well go with the strongest. Orion used to be that, but I think Gangut is even better. CVs: I don't care.

DDs I got two here, both torpedoboats with good concealment, but bad gunnery: Minekaze and T-22. Both can teach you how to use good concealment to get into capping or torpedo position, though with slightly different approaches: Minekaze is very fast, while T-22 is slow, but has the added versatility with hydro. For cruisers, the obvious answer would be Furutaka, possibly the strongest t5 cruiser, even including premiums. Only two real weaknesses: Low DPM and slow rudder, apart from that an all-round carefree package. However, I have a second one which is a must have for me: Émile Bertin. The ridiciculous speed catches so many people off guard regularly and you can even run down most DDs. DPM is quite bad and she is no armour to speak of, but that can also help sometimes, since you will get a lot of overpens instead of pens or citadels. Battleship: Kongo: Great speed which helps especially when being uptiered. Guns are few, but strong. Balanced by comparatively bad armour and bad concealment, as well as her size.

DD for me is Farragut, since she teaches you good habits about how to play around (relatively) bad concealment, short torpedo range and low health pool, as well as putting her high DPM to good use. For cruisers there are two for me: Pensacola for her considerable broadside, which is balanced with her poor concealment and survivability. High risk, high reward ship. Secondly. Budyonny: Low survivability again, as well as poor maneuverability, but excellent guns (DPM, ballistics, AP pen are all very good). Leander might be another consideration here, but I did not wnt to pick more than two and went for the more "conventional" ships. BB: Good old Fuso. Heavy broadside and good DPM, not too slow and excellent armour scheme + not much superstructure to shoot at, balanced by weak armour belt, huge silhouette and terrible concealment. Izmail is overall a stronger ship, but I like balanced ships. Couldn't care less about CVs.

Overall, I think the proposal is a fair solution. However, it would be great if WG could implement the option to exchange Friesland for Groningen. It would be nice for those that want to have an immediate captain trainer for the Dutch line, but cannot or don't want to spend another million fxp.

That is one of the "problems" with her as well, do you go AFT first, since the ballistics and accuracy are good enough to reliably hit stuff at range or do you go concealment to be somewhat competitive, but then lose out on her gunnery advantage (since DPM is lousy)? I tried both and have not come to a definitive conclusion. I guess with a 14 pointer you could take both, but I would want AR at 13 and could not be bothered to play her so often as to warrant a high point captain anyway. So for now, my current captain will go on to Maerker next patch and a ten pointer is sitting at 6 points spent and waiting for the CE/AFT answer on Z-31

Congratulations for finding the blueprints and being able to build this. Looks awsome already! How are you gonna paint her? Is she gonna be plain gray or are you gonna give her a camo scheme? Anyway, looking forward to see more!

I remember there used to be a mod that could put different flags on individual ships, so you had the Imperial German flag on the lower tier German ships and the Kriesgmarine flag on the rest (and even the Weimar Republic Reichsmarine flag on the A hull Königsberg!). You also had the options to choose between swastika and no swastika, as well as rising sun or "standard" Japanese flag. Unfortunately that mod was discontinued years ago and I have not find a proper replacement yet. If only WG would do for Germany what they did for Russia/USSR: Make a difference between Imperial and "post-Imperial" navy ensigns. Such an easy fix and a complete lack of reason as to why not.

First of all: little sister, ships are female ;) Secondly. More DPM, but cannot citadel all those low tier cruisers from any direction, so... probably around the same damage, but has to do more of it with HE.

Yorck with identity crisis: battleship, destroyer, cruiser, just does it all. Result: even more boom

From what I gather there is really not much of a difference between them, but I guess you can still argue that Minsk (Project 38) was a subclass of the Leningrad (Project 1) class. Two batches with three ships each. Maybe that's why.

Do they have to be spotted or can you just set the drop on an area where you think/know the ship is just as you can send torpedoes in the direction you want no matter whether the enemy is spotted? I honestly would like to know, because that would indeed be a point against the air drop.

I agree with you there and also think that the outrage about the new air drop is a bit overblown. Still enough time for "balancing" the damage output. However, the one major difference between the air drop and torpedoes (for which the air drop seems to be a substitute) is that torpedoes need line of sight to hit camping targets. When they are next to an island it is getting difficult. Air drops do not have that problem. They can hit targets anywhere in range. That is my major gripe with the new mechanic.

Yeah, I figured as much. From the top of my head those that are sister ships and therefore not included would be: Anshan/Fushun (Gnevny), Shinonome (Fubuki), Vampire (V-class/Valkyrie), Monaghan (Farragut), Vampire (Daring), Loyang (Benson), Haida (Cossack) plus three Fletchers. I probably forgot some, but that is already quite a lot.

Indeed. Previously we had a pretty historical Z-23 which got replaced by some kind of 1936A hull with fictional armamament. In the new line we have a historical ship in a configuration she never had, followed by a paper ship. There are so many options to have more actual historical ships in the game. They could just have left Z-23 with her 5 guns, given her some armour and make her the new t8. Then make a copy of Z-35 for the 128 mm armed line, call it Z-36 or Z-43 or whatever and you have historical ships at t7 (with a 4x1 Z-31) and t8 in both lines. If they wanted the numbering to go up consistently, they could have Z-23 with her 4x1 configuration at t7, Z-31 with her five-gun config at t8 and still Z-36 or Z-43 or whatever in the old line with 5x1 128 mm. As I said before, I plead laziness.

Z-31 never had the configuration we have in the game. WG just used the Z-39 model. Z-31 originally four single 150 mm guns, than the front one was replaced by the double turret (so five guns, like old Z-23). Later the front turret was damage and replaced by a 105 mm gun. So, if they wanted Z-31 in the game with four 150 mm guns why not use the historical configuration? There also would be consistency in the line: Geade has 4x1, Maerker has 5x1. It should not have been too much work either, since the hull and all the guns and things already existed. They just had to rearrange them and put a single turret up front. My guess would be laziness. Edit: Did not read @Astolfo_Is_My_Waifu's post before answering. Could have saved my time XD

Yep. Just unfortunate that the Z-31 in the game is not actually Z-31 either :(

My opinion about the Italian BBs (I am at tier 9 and grind them only because I have no other line to grind right now, if I had I would prefer any other over them): I don't find anything past tier 6 very appealing at all (gameplay-wise that is, appearance-wise they rank from pretty to gorgeous). All of them have the problem of being useless against DDs, and I find SAP to be less reliable than HE against angled targets and the damage done is not too much better than you would get with AP if aiming properly anyway. That is my experience so far. Short brakedown by tier: Alighieri and Cavour are decent (especially the trolly armour), but won't be played much because of the tier. Doria is quite good. Caracciolo and Veneto I did not like at all. Unreliable guns and long reload is a disastrous combination, imo. Lepanto is a bit better, but still nothing stellar. Because of that, I am doing the grind very slowly, without using any Dragon Flags, and normally only playing until I get the daily win bonus (so rarely more than one or two games). I just don't want to play them more. That is pretty damning for a line.

I guess you can argue for the Duquesne class at tier 5, since they had almost no armour at all (like Émile Bertin). Problem are the 8 guns. You would have to give them really long reload. Like Genova, actually, to go back to the topic ;) It could work. Suffrens still have bad armour (as you said even worse than Pensacola), but have at least some. So, Duquesne at 5, Suffren at 6 would work with balancing via reload and concealment (HP would be quite high due to their displacement, both classes heavier than Pensacola).

One of the Duquesne or Suffren class ships would make for a nice tier 6, somewhat like Pensacola, with strong alpha damage, but weak armour. Would be great if you could bring it up with those in charge.

Great update once again! Got a question concerning Furutaka: I have seen some photos of her having white stripes on her funnel (already in her refitted 3x2 gun configuration). Any chance for a camo with the stripes?

They wanted to have the Dutch cruiser to have a torpedo replacement, I get that, but they have way overdone it, it seems. Of course, it can still be properly nerfed, but with WG's track record, I am not hopeful. Seriously, was it necessary to introduce another gimmick? Why not let them have good armour as their gimmick? It would have been enough, imo.

Izumo only has 9 main guns and they are all at the front. The turrets at the rear are smaller secondary guns that will fire automatically when enemies get close enough. Honestly, by tier 9 you should know the difference between main and secondary guns. And having "only" 9 guns at tier 9 is nothing rare. Alone from the tech tree ships, Lion, Iowa, Soyuz have 9 guns as well.

Carracciolo does not have smoke. All she has really going for her is the decent armour scheme. Guns have great pen, but are unreliable, speed and concealment are okay, but nothing special.

Playing tier 6 ships mostly...