asalonen

Concealment Expert is too strong to pass on most ships in game, and almost mandatory at 10 points for any DD. Possibly not Khabarovsk? I have Radio Location for French and German DD skippers with 19 points. They're ships that excel in hunting enemy DD's, so it suits them well. I also like the skill in the Baltimore-Buffalo-Des Moines line. But in general it's a very specialized skill for a high price. In randoms the benefits are easily wasted.

I'm confident that AFT is wasted in this build at least on Tirpitz. The dispersion to maximum secondary range (11.3 km on Tirpitz?) is so bad that you'll land very few hits. I would switch AFT to something else. In fact, my Kurfürst/Tirpitz build is the same except I have manual secondaries instead of AFT. The range is a bit less than 10 km, but the secondaries are VERY efficient when they start firing. In general, I've lately been leaning to the direction that maximising secondary range only makes sense with Massachusetts, Georgia and Ohio. Their great secondary dispersion allows them to get reliable hits up to 11 km.

I've played the Västerås, Skåne and Öland, and I like them. I've been going with a torpedo build with Torpedo Armament Expertise, and I use Vigilance to stay safe. Play style is loitering just outside concealment range to keep landing torpedo hits. If it happens that you're spotted by a red DD, the guns are very good at that range. They feel balanced. Öland has felt a bit more tricky than the tier 6-7's. On the other, Öland is quite safe from the average red CV due to DFAA. Like the French DD's, they don't feel like easy ships to play and possibly won't end up being very popular. But in general, i commend Wargaming for coming up with another DD line that has a unique play style.

It is possible with Shokaku. However it citadel is so difficult to hit that trying to pull it off is a waste of your bombers. Better use them against other targets. In general, the question should really be that which citadels are reasonably easy to hit.

Cleaning day, so can share... PC hidden under the desk has Core i5 something, Geforce 1060 something, one big SSD and 24 GB of RAM.

One of my favourites is Kaga, although I rarely have these camos:

Or just a used late-war Japanese carrier. In any reasonable scenario of Germany having a tier 10 level carrier, I think the war went very differently and the axis won. The Japanese could've ended up with a huge fleet of carriers parked in San Francisco bay... so why not sell one to the Reich. Unfortunately this is incompatible with the alternate history where Russia has a world-class Battleship fleet.

In the great what-if scenario of Germany having a tier 10 eligible carrier, I think it could just as well be a one of the Japanese designs -- under a German flag and using German aircraft. Think of a world more like The Man in the High Castle, meaning an axis victory. In any case, I wouldn't mind it any more than a purely fictional design or an up-scaled Graf Zeppelin. Or some of the Soviet battleships that we already got.

Many of the IJN premiums -- namely Ishizuchi, Mutsu, Ashitaka and Musashi -- have the same theme, that is an older version of a silver ship design one tier lower. They're ships with serious weaknesses but they come with amazing guns for their tier. I think they might have a highish skill floor in a class that's generally quite straight forward to play. But you find people praising all of the mentioned ships, so I would think they're strong enough?

It's not that easy to get a good hit on a DD with rocket planes. If the DD keeps the AA disabled, with most CV's you have to start the 5-second attack run without seeing the DD. The module for slot 3 that extends the attack run to 7 seconds makes it a bit easier. In general, the reason why in a DD you're not commonly attacked by the CV is exactly because it is not easy. It's easy harass the DD but not easy to deal damage. I can only guess that this is why the vast majority of CV players just go for bigger targets. If you look at the CV super unicums play, the one thing that most sets them apart is how aggressively they go after the DD's. And they most definitely do get them dead. This is exactly why such a high number of CV players have 70+ % win rates in the class, and some are even 80+ %.

If you look at DD's, for very good players they're the most efficient surface ships in terms of winning games. Only CV's are stronger. The interaction between CV's and DD's can be pretty harsh, but mostly in rare cases where very good CV players prey on bad to average DD players. Good DD players accept the situation and adapt their play. DD's have a high skill floor. DD's are also very popular among skilled players due to their great potential. This is why you can't really buff the class as they would then dominate many battles. CV's on the other hand have a very low skill floor. You can park near the border and do your own thing for the full duration of the battle. It may not be much, and possibly you're little more than a spectator to the battle, but I think this is the reason why most CV players are amazingly inefficient. Many skilled players find the CV gameplay dead boring. This is the reason why it's difficult to nerf the class, despite unicums being outrageously OP. Personally, as a small but efficient tweak, I would nerf the dispersion of all rocket salvos.

The important bit is highlighted. With a squadron with 3 attack flights is good exactly because it CAN allow 2 attacks if you choose your target well.There's a concrete reward for playing well. If the squadron had just 2 attack flights realistically you would almost always get that 1 essentially guaranteed attack. The second attack would almost always be lost against continuous AA during the turnaround -- like we mostly lose the third attack now.

You can't change DPM versus HP pool ratio alone, or at least you would need to be very careful what you wish for. 50-percent DPM nerf would change the game massively. Any mistakes in positioning would be punished much less. The game would likely feel dumbed-down and less exciting for any old-timer. Also, with the current parameters, the clan battles already have very protracted engagements. It's difficult to kill players that don't allow easy damage. Very bad players would still manage to throw it away, but you would just need to look at it longer. For more average players, the game would be more forgiving, but that is already available in BB and CV gameplay, as well as the lower tiers?

With skilled captains, I think three Klébers is still very, very strong. The so-called "Kléber push" was a real balance problem in the clan battles last autumn. They're such fast boats that the division teamplay is not easy. However, if they run into a DD, the DD is dead very soon. They can farm any BB to death very quickly, and even cruiser guns will have a hard time killing them. They can control all engagements with their superior speed. Mogador, Fantasque and Terrible would likely work equally well. Vauquelin and below are quite a bit slower, so at least the special flavour would be lost.

For me Alsace is absolutely on par with Jean Bart, but they play totally different. Alsace is fun and strong in a secondary build. In a competitive environment it would be suicidal, but in the mayhem of randoms it seems to work very well.

As you wish... Doesn't change the fact that Russians are about 25 % of the global player base, American's perhaps 15 % and for example Germans definitely less than 10 %.

Yes, as evident in the graph. Only the EU server has higher population, but it's a great mix of nationalities. The RU server is most likely 80+ % Russian.

The most important takeaway is that Russians have always been and still are the biggest nationality of the Warships player base. Americans are second and might overtake the Russians in the future, although I'm not sure what percentage of NA server population are Americans. ...and this being the case, even if the company was Chinese or French, we would still have more Russian ships than what might be historically appropriate.

Chapayev can already get concealment down to 10.2 km and it carries the 12 km radar. I don't see it being a fan favourite or dominating the battles? It's definitely good but tricky to play. Of the coming ships, I see four that can stealth radar with a concealment build: the tier 8's Tallin, Ochakov and Bagration by a comfortable margin, and the tier 10 Alexander Nevsky by a tiny margin. ...so I think you're getting too excited.

In general, if a light cruiser faces a heavy cruiser in a symmetrical situation, the light cruiser out-DPM's and wins. Dealing huge damage wins games. The flip side of the coin is that the light cruiser must choose the engagements wisely.

Ranger is good, and in terms of average damage on par with Ryujo for me. Ranger is easier to play, but the damage from Ryujo's AP bombs can be more valuable than anything the Ranger can dish out. Furious feels extremely underwhelming for me, compared to Ryujo and Ranger. There's nothing exciting about how it plays, and it's not as strong as the others. And what I hear about Implacable and Audacious the line doesn't get any better, so I haven't bothered. The premium Ark Royal is strong, however, on par with Ryujo and Ranger. Going to tier 8 and 10, the Japanese and American lines remain fundamentally the same. Shokaku feels like a strong Ryujo, Lexington plays like Ranger on steroids. Hakuryu and Midway are the same story again. In general, the American and Japanese CV lines are well balanced, and pleasantly different from each other. The British line, at least for me, is just unnecessary.

Couldn't find a topic dedicated to these, so let's create one! I bought the Musashi model by the Polish company Cobi. They are like Legos, and fully compatible with Legos. Quality seems very good: bricks fit nice and tight, instructions are very clear, nothing was missing. The Mushi has 2500 bricks and took about 8 to 10 hours to build. It's about 90 cm long and weighs 3.5 kilos. I might get the Enterprise in same scale when it becomes available later this winter -- hopefully they can coexist peacefully!

If it takes away the fun for you, then don't use it... I imagine there's a reason why WG hasn't put it in the game. Like @Lepi_Mija above, I like the additional intel about the enemy. It allows me to adapt my tactics. It adds a layer of depth to the game and makes it more interesting.

Yeah, indeed. I play on an ultrawide (21:9 aspect ratio), and it's fantastic for Warships for this exact reason.

Have you tried making the minimap bigger? I keep mine at the maximum size for good, quick readability. I feel that I watch it as much as the main display, and I would feel completely blind without it. The information you get is so valuable that once you learn to use it you really, really don't want to give it away. This includes last known locations and ship names -- or do you really want to give that advantage to enemy DD's for example? Or do you really have such good memory and concentration that you don't need that information? The option has been removed, I believe when the minimap was reworked some patches ago. Possibly it's a bit patronizing move from WG, but I tend to agree with it.