tocqueville8

For credits, yes. But afaik all one-use camos also come with xp bonuses, and you waste those if you use them on premium ships instead of a tech tree ship you're grinding.

Fair enough, but I am a paying customer: I have a decent amount of premiums, some permacamos, and maybe I'll buy premium time the next time there's a discount. Sure, there are whales who sink hundreds of dollars/Euros to get early access ships and the Missouri from Santa Crates or whatever, but considering it's a free-to-play game, I'm not the last person they should cater to.

Well if you use a camo on a premium you're basically wasting the permacamo...

I know about premium time, but as I said, I'd get it for the xp bonus, not the credit bonus. I can always play a bit better and not "need" the flags, but I could never play better enough to earn 65% more xp. Sure, but it's just unsustainable. I mean, you could just as well say that WG sells free xp for cash (1250 dubs for 4 Euros, 1 dub : 25 free xp if you have enough ship xp lying around ---> 2M free xp is around 250 Euros), but I'd never get it that way in a million years.

It's not as though they can only be purchased for doubloons, so it doesn't even work as a cash-grab imho. It just sucks when you have a great game and instead of that little positive reinforcement of receiving 20-50 flags for it, you get NOTHING. What's the point of achievements then, if they bring no reward whatsoever? I understand the argument that a decent player basically could always mount the most important flags, so I guess they could've reduced them to 5-8 per achievement, but the current system is just cheap and un-meritocratic, and the change was petty.

Hey there! Honestly, I would only buy detonation flags with the coupon, in case I want to play Ranked with a DD. Occasionally I'll mount some flags I get from dailies and weeklies, but mostly I'll just take my chances. I don't run premium (and if I did, it would be to speed up grinds, not to get more credits for flags) and I keep the previous ships in the tech tree for the snowflake/anniversary events, so I'm kind of always short on credits. It's Dreadnought flags that I miss the most, but since the removal of Dead Eye I've specced most BBs into Emergency Repair Expert, so I get more healing that way.

The Neustra is only 20% more expensive, but she's a lot more unique: - there are many long-range kiters in the game beside the Yoshino, such as Azuma, Ibuki, Zao, Henri IV, Venezia, Goliath, not to mention Conqueror... - there is only 1 DD with a superheal, smoke, Def AA and great concealment, basically the best survivability toolkit imaginable The only way the Yoshino is unique is her torps, which are nice (when they don't team-kill), but I wouldn't say they're the defining feature of the ship...

Imho the problem with AA builds is not that "if the CV wants you dead you're going to be dead". I mean, it's kind of true if you have crap AA and no heal, but if I can waste 10 minutes of the CV's time while also battling some surface combatants, I'm probably being a net positive for the team. No, the problem with AA builds is that CVs are too rare, or rather it's rare that they attack *you*. I mean, if the CV goes for my Halland/Smaland (god-tier AA) I might shoot down 30-60 planes, depending on fighter drops. Yet my average is 7-9 planes shot down per match, meaning most of the times I get almost no use out of that AA. The Marceau doesn't quite have the same reputation, so you'd expect CVs to go for me more often. Well, it's only 7 planes shot down on average per game, despite a record of 50. To some extent, yes, it's the ship's reputation, but for instance the Yamato has the worst AA of any T10 BB (I think), yet mine only shoots down fewer than 3 planes per match. Even with that reputation for weak AA, apparently most CVs would rather strike someone else, maybe a DD or an overextended cruiser. Basically, sustained plane attacks are distributed too unevenly between matches, especially if you're not the kind of player that regularly makes it until the end. With enough points, I'd definitely spec for AA only some mid-tier ships like the Queen Elizabeth: 1) higher chance for me to survive until the end of the match 2) higher chance of 2xCVs games That's about it.

If we go by "Tora! Tora! Tora!", there should be games with: - *six* T7-8 CV vs a bunch of T5-7 dreadnoughts - T3 DDs (USS Ward) shooting at midget submarines I'll pass.

So does free xp. By that standard, the only ships I got "for free" in this game are the St Louis when I joined, Strasbourg from the campaign and Tachibana+Yahagi from the dockyard.

I don't know about that. I'm no whale, but I have bought several premiums over the past couple of years and...well, they were pretty much all introduced before I started playing, or much earlier than when I actually got them, anyway. If I got a ship that had just been introduced, it was most likely a freemium (coal, steel, RB, free XP), at least partially (Odin from the dockyard). For example, I got the Asashio, the Hood, the Kaga, the Scharnhorst, the Aurora and the Graf Spee, all at least somewhat famous, but I didn't even consider the Tiger '59. And there's no way I'll ever buy a T9 for dubs instead of getting it for coal.

Huh? Coal and steel are also free...

Yoshino and Salem are not DDs...

That's it, I'm getting the Hayate!

But why? Lots of people started playing this game because of the historical appeal of WW1-WW2 era warships: you're diluiting that appeal by constantly introducing increasingly fake lines of paper ships. People join the game for the Iowa, not for the Drake... Also, you're increasing the skill floor for new players, as each new line has its gimmicks and you have to know them to do decently against them. Also, the more ships there are the more balancing becomes a nightmare. In particular, powercreep makes old premiums less appealing, which goes against WG's business interest.

The Germans barely built any CVs, which makes their CV tech tree a joke. They were fine with just the GZ as a premium. Soviet CVs will be even more of a joke. What's next, Italian CVs? A third Soviet cruiser line? South-American CVs? Dutch BBs? Seriously, it's okay to stop adding new lines after a while...

Honey, there's a reason...

Does that work ad infinitum? Can I just keep pumping bonuses every 3 months, and reap an even bigger reward later? Also, this is fine, but I'm already regrinding 3 lines and I should (barely) get the Ohio the old-fashioned way.

Well, sure. I have 2.6M free xp, and I'll be getting more with all those special signals that I'm saving up for the next time I'll have premium. Having said that, I'd rather spend 2M on a T10 premium ship right now and only use the rest for RB grinds, as I don't have the credits to purchase lots of T8-10 ships that quickly anyway.

Since they took Dead Eye away, I've respecced my Shiki into Emergency Repair Expert, which means I can tank a bit more HE spam. Therefore, I dropped Basics of Survivability in favor of the "+1 explosion, better sector reinforcement" skill. That's about it. The new BFT is kinda bad, and on most cruisers I'd rather take RPF or even the buffed Survivability Expert.

I do have Friesland, and a clone doesn't count. There are like 10 coal ships to choose among, but only Agir and Hayate for me regarding Free XP, which btw is now a lot easier to grind thanks to the weekly special flags containers.

Upcoming when? Patch 13.65411884? Can't they just give us a calendar?

Works okay for me: Don't get too hung up on the DPM: your accuracy is insane, you'll often get 4/4 AP pens on BB upper belts and 4/4 HE hits on DDs, occasionally 3-4 citadels on a broadsiding cruiser. The improved AP angles don't hurt, either. Beyond DD knife-fights, your effective DPM is maybe twice what you'd expect if you only looked at reload and shell damage. I've had multiple games with over 100k dmg and 2k base xp in this thing, and I'm nothing special.

Do we know for sure that no new ship (and that includes Napoli) will be for Free XP? I have over 2M left, and I've been holding on getting the Hayate for months...

I had a game in the Salem the other day where I bow-tanked a C. Colombo (15'' guns, and no HE...), then I ambushed a low-hp Vladivostok, then I melted a JB (again 15'' guns) with HE, all the while using Def AA to mitigate CV strikes. I didn't do anything too smart (well, a noob would've broadsided the Colombo...), in fact I might not even have been top on my team, but what I'm saying is I couldn't have done that in a Venezia or a Saint-Louis, for instance. Kiting cruisers (IJN, French, Italian) have troubles when they need to push against angled enemies, as they have weak bow armor and often unfavorable turret arrangement. They're strong in the early game, which is played more at range and in the open (too many enemies that can crossfire you if you get too close), but weak in the late game imho. Spamming cruisers (Wooster, Colbert, radar Mino) can be strong in the middle game, when the map has cleared a bit and it's easier to find good island cover, but again they have a hard time pushing, securing caps etc., with their flimsy armor and poor frontal firepower. If you need to carry in the late game, you want something with good bow plating (25 mm + icebreaker or 27 mm overall) and good DPM at the front, preferably at least 32mm HE pen to deal with BBs, as crossfiring is less of an issue and it often comes down to bowtanking duels. With a 27 mm bow (and 30 mm belt), 34 mm HE pen, 6 frontal guns with excellent rate of fire, a Salem, all other things being equal, can win a bowtanking duel against most cruisers, and even several BBs in her MM spread.