ABDAfleet

Mouse handling seems to be broken - my left-handed setup (switching LMB and RMB at the OS level) is simply ignored. This makes the game unplayable - I can assign functions like "fire" to the RMB (which used to be done by Windows) but various game functions will of course still insist on using the "correct" button. Why they broke this now beats me - it has always worked.

Getting rid of all those "Dasha Perovas" that I had stupidly bought made it worth it though .... not to mention "Nelson", "Azuma" and their kin.

Lots of them were 3-pointers - but still yes, expensive

Actually my bad - I had run out of doubloons :-) This is an EXPENSIVE option ....

I just posted on the PT Commander Skills topic - I guess that is now obsolete so I'll share this with you here. To me the saving grace of the new 21-point ceiling was that you could salvage XPs from scrapped captains and use the to bring a few 19-pointers up to 21 points. When I started doing this (with lots of Xmas crate 10-pointers as the input) things went well for a while - but once I hit 32 captains on the input side the option to reclaim 100% in return for doubloons became unavailable! I can still use the "25% for credits" option but that is wasteful and I won't do it. WG, please tell me this is a bug and will be fixed .....

That's not all. The "efficiency" of a captain doesn't exist in isolation, it is relative to other captains he meets in battle. A 19-pointer will now meet 21-pointers - you want me to believe he will be just as "strong in battle"? Besides, a 19-ponter in the new scheme WILL be weaker than he is now - but again the nerf is global so relative to other 19-pointers I guess he will stay competitive. The REAL problem is that not all captains are 19-pointers - by putting multiple valuable skills on the same tier you have made it very difficult to train an effective 10-pointer - that's the REAL problem. Well, one of them - the other is the nerfing of important skills like DE - it started out at 3%, then went to 2% as part of the IFHE nerf, now it's 1% and most people won't even bother to take it. Congratulations, mission achieved I guess.

I believe Charles Dickens wrote a story about you, it was titled "Great Expectations"

Actually, almost all skills have been nerfed. In some cases it's a straight nerf (BFT from 10% to 5%), in other cases it's more difficult to spot. For example, torpedo acceleration SEEMS to have been improved - no longer any range penalty and the number is still "5". The problem is that where you used to gain 5 knots, you now gain 5 percent instead. A slow 50 knot torpedo used to gain 10% (50 + 5 knots) but now only gets 2.5 knots. On the other hand a ridiculously fast 80 knot torpedo gains 4 knots ... how silly is that? Similarly the turret traverse change benefits only those ships that had a fast traverse to start with. If your guns rotate at 10°/sec. (180° in 18 sec) they will now rotate at 11.5°/s for 180° in 15.6 seconds. Meanwhile a ship with slow traverse (say 5°/s) which used to gain 50% (5°+2.5° for a traverse rate of 7.5°/s) now only gains the 15% which equates to approximately 1 °/s. (for a traverse of 6.5°/s). I really don't think there is a coherent strategy behind these changes - I think they were simply drinking too much vodka ....

Well, as I said - it isn't WHAT skills you are offered, it's how they fit together. As far as I can see you need a minimum of 12 points for a DD captain ...

Out of curiosity - what skills would you give a 10 point DD captain? It is not sufficient to look at the skills individually (or at a 19/21 pointer), you have to apply them to a captain with fewer points - that's where their organisation becomes crucial. To a 10 pointer, "Pyro" (the old DE) would be MORE accessible as a 3-point skill than it is as a 2-point one, you have to take Last Stand at that tier. Priority Target is also at that same tier and therefore inaccessible to a 10-pointer.

It's been up since Christmas Day and it works at the moment (I just logged in) ...

Frankly I don't expect Wargaming to pay much attention to our feedback - but still. For me, the minimum viable DD build has always been a 10-pointer with PT, LS, DE (BFT or TAE in rare cases) and CE. This makes up exactly 10 points (1+2+3+4). In the new skills structure the PT/LS/DE/CE build costs FOURTEEN points! Not because the overall price has gone up, it remains 10 points. The problem is that by making PT more expensive and DE less expensive they have placed three of these 4 skills (PT, LS, DE) at the same tier, they are now all 2-pointers. Since a 10-point captain can only pick one skill from each tier he can only pick one of these three skills - which basically means Last Stand because you can't do without it. At 12 points you can add either PT or DE, since DE has been nerfed by 50% I guess that choice is easy - I'd take PT (I know there is a school of thought that DDs can just assume everyone is firing at them - but I want my PT). In fact I'm not sure I'll bother with DE ("Pyro") even at 14 points, ONE bloody percentage point seems hardly worth it. I wish they had left it a 3-pointer and not nerfed it (and PT a 1-pointer) ... I expect I'll be giving most of my DDs IFHE without Pyro and just punching holes in cruisers. Apart from the Germans (who don't need it) and the tier 9/10 Brits (who don't benefit) the only high-tier DDs I will NOT be giving IFHE are the Jap 100 mm boats - they can already punch through everything other than BBs anyway. It's funny that those seem to be the only DDs Wargaming think DO need IFHE judging by their recommended builds (and the anemic stock fire chance on those boats). I'd be curious to know if I am alone in thinking that even for DDs, PT is better than PM - which Wargaming seem to think is the favoured low tier DD skill.

Well, the way I see it both BFT (MAS) and AFT (MAX) were simply nerfed by 50% (as was DE). The theme of all this is "you give us more money and we will give you less value". Seems legit to me ....

My 2 cents‘ worth: 1 Restore the names “Expert Marksman” and “Expert Loader”. 2 Change “Liquidator” to “Torpedo Specialist”, “Swift Fish” to “Torpedo Acceleration” and “Fill the Tubes” to “Torpedo Expert”. 3 Move “Last Stand” to tier 1 (maybe exchange it with “Gear Specialist”) so people can choose either PM or LS – and add Priority Target if they so choose. 4 Alternatively simply make PT a “baked-in” skill like you did “Situation Awareness” earlier. 5 Give us back the percentage point you removed from Demolition Expert (“Pyrotechnician”) – going from 3% to 2% was bad enough. I suspect people will simply stop bothering with “Pyro” … 3 “Grease the Gears” (hopefully renamed back to EM) is too anemic – it should be 1.25 for DDs/CCs and 1.4 for BBs. 4 “Main Battery and AA Gun Specialist/Expert” is too much of a mouthful, just name them “Gun Specialist” and “Gun Expert” – people can figure out for themselves that Secondaries are not affected. Also undo the 50% nerf to both please 😊. 5 Since you seem to have developed a theme where a lower tier version is a “specialist” and a higher-tier one an “expert” – why not use that for the “gear” skills – make “Gear Enhancements” “Gear Expert” (I would prefer “equipment” over “gear” but …). 6 Whatever you do, please realize that people will use abbreviations, try not to come up with names that would logically be abbreviated to the same sequence of letters (“Demolition Expert” for cruisers and “Dead Eye” for battleships is an example – hopefully you will rename that cruiser skill anyway – it is NOT Demolition Expert after all!). And finally - the 20th point should cost 345 thousand and the 21st 394 thousand - the XP prices you are charging are simply a money grab. Similarly, one should be able to recycle captains for their elite points without any loss and without additional cost - they have already been paid for once (through either cash or grinding).

I just checked out the new skills on the test server. Apart from the REALLY stupid names (couldn't they have had someone who speaks English come up with them) the biggest problem I saw was that the core functionality for, say, a DD that depends on IFHE (PT, LS, DE, IFHE, CE), is more expensive than it used to be. In one configuration I found I had to give up AR. Besides, IFHE has been nerfed again by further nerfing DE - it has become a pretty definite choice between pens and fires. Both DDs and light cruisers suffer. Would anyone REALLY want to sail in a 152mm cruiser that can't pen battleship bows/sterns? My hunch is that you will need the two extra points just to break even compared to the old skills. The stupidest part of all is where they simply ignored the existing progression curve and slapped an arbitrary number on the 20th and 21st points - thus adding some 400,000 XPs to the cost. Then there's the added silliness that you can't actually assign skills unless the captain is located in a ship of the particular category - if you want a captain who can do (premium) DDs, CCs, BBs and CVs, you need to go through the drudgery of transferring him to a ship of each type before you are allowed to assign the skill points for that category. Not exactly user-friendly. I can understand Wargaming wanting to maximise their profits during the COVID crisis (where people are locked up with their computers) but I suspect there will be a day of reckoning when the pandemic is beaten.

Interesting. I extrapolated the progression they have been using till now - that produced a trendline where the 20th point should cost 345,000 and the 21st 394,000. Since they are saying that they'll cost more, that leads me to believe they are steepening the entire progression - all points before 20 will also become slightly more expensive than they have been. Excel tells me the existing formula is y = 28.81x3 + 336.25x2 - 1150.3x +2946.9 where "y" is the XP required to go from point "x"-1 to point "x" (i.e. replace all the "x" values with the point you are interested in and the result is the XPs required to go from the previous point). I tested the formula and it doesn't (obviously) produce the rounded numbers they use - but it's close. For progressing from 9 to 10 points it predicts 53,.879 instead of 54,000 for example - for the 19th point it says 300,086 instead of 300,000. And 20 = 344,921 and 21 = 393,886. Here's the Excel cell definition - plug the desired level into a cell named "x" and paste this formula into the cell where you want the result to appear. =28.81*POWER(x;3)+336.25*POWER(x;2)-1150.3*x+2946.9 Note that this is the formula for the incremental XP cost (i.e. for each progression) but you can obviously also graph the cumulative cost ...

For fun I graphed the points progression up to 19 points, did a polynomial line match and extrapolated the formula (y=28.81x3 - 336.25x2 - 1150.3x + 2946.9 was a pretty exact match) to 21 points. The graph is attached (I have no idea if it will appear in-line or not). Long story short - the 20th point will cost approximately 345,000 XP, the 21st approximately 394,000 XP. Total to bring a 19-pointer back to elite status ca. 739,000 XP. Multiply by the number of 19 pointers you have and weep :-)

There were so many responses, some plain wrong, that I decided to simply weigh in - risking duplicating what someone else has already said. The "unified wargaming premium account" is far from dead. I dabble at both Tanks and Ships so I absolutely refuse to buy the game-specific premium (I'd either need to give up one of the games or pay twice) and instead go to the Airplanes site, which is the only one to still offer the "unified" version. Or so I thought - until I happened to press my "avatar" at the top left of the Game Center. Up popped an interesting screen which allows me to activate codes (I had always had to search high and low for that function) and, SURPRISE SURPRISE, purchase either game-specific OR unified premium time. The option you want is near the bottom of the screen "Purchase Wargaming Premium" You are welcome :-)

I actually only use Microsoft's built-in stuff (I stopped buying AV quite some time ago). I did try Malwarebytes but that thing IS too pernickety for me. The explanation I have been thinking might apply (because this is a fairly new problem) is that I switched to Microsoft's developmental ("insider") update cycle.

Windows seems to be getting more aggressive in its handling of threats. Even after I told them to ignore the Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.D!ml (which, scarily enough, Windows claims is embedded in mxstat) the program would disappear at reboot just as described by Johnny_Moneto. I have now specifically asked that mxstat.exe be left alone - we'll see how that goes. I know that it is difficult for "hobbyist" publishers to work around Windows security and I am fine with the notion of circumventing the generic warnings issued by anti-virus suites. When they claim to have found a specific threat it becomes a bit scarier.

Hi Max It seems I can't install the latest version without overriding a virus warning. If it were a generic one I might chance it - but they actually name the threat (as shown in the attached image). Any thoughts? Leifur

Maxim, I'm pretty sure rocket damage was being reported earlier - but it hasn't been for a while. It may indeed have disappeared when you fixed the AP bombs :-)

It's actually working again today! How do the log files get written - do you write them based on the replays or does the game write them?

Hi Maxim I just noticed that yesterday the game didn't write a .log file (to the logs directory) but DID write the corresponding replay files to the (now structured by version) replays directory. Any ideas? Leifur

Hi Maxim, I've been toying with CVs for the first time - and seem to have discovered a couple of bugs. First off, while HE bomb damage (US and UK carriers) is reported, AP bomb damage (JP carriers) doesn't seem to be. It is still included in the total damage, there just isn't a number in the "Bomb dmg" column. Second, while torpedo hits are reported (in the TH column, not a separate "Avia torp" one - which isn't needed anyway) the TF column is left blank. I think the TF and TH columns should be used for avia torps AND the "Torp dmg" column for the "avia torp" damage value, no need for a separate "Atorp dmg" column. No ship has both variants. Finally, it would be nice to have bombs dropped/hit (BD/BH) and rockets fired/hit (RF/RH) columns .... Cheers