Uglesett

Prinz Eugen != Prinz Eitel Friedrich

I have both the Kidd and the Enterprise, what I don't have is any particular free time. Ask me again mid february, the missus is planning on leaving for a week for a family birthday and taking the kid with her. EDIT: Actually, maybe next Thursday if she has game night. Nice thing about the kid being fussy about bottle feeding is that she ends up taking the little urchin with her.

Oh for goodness' sake. Right, let's go back to where it started: Now, all I'm wondering is: what does "used correctly" mean in this regard, and what is it everyone else is apparently doing wrong (aside from not meeting CVs that eat all the flak).

Speaking of Jim ing Sterling, son, I think it was he who did a video on how stuff like this works up to a point, where you suddenly get a massive backlash. I mean, people were saying the same thing about loot boxes in EA games ("people still buy them, so they have no reason not to keep it up"), and they kept slowly tightening the screws, offering less and less for more and figuring they could keep getting away with it. But then Battlefront 2 happened and apparently found the breaking point, and EA found themselves in a storm of biblical proportions.

I like the PEF, but I can understand how she's not everybody's cup of tea. She feels a lot like a downtiered version of pre-"buff" Hood, which I also enjoyed (not that I don't enjoy her with regular AP fuses as well, but she's lost a bit of her character). They're both ships that capture a lot of that battle cruiser "feel", decent mobility, fairly good at kiting, reward angling and positioning.

Why, though? I don't even particularly like CV gameplay. What I'm wondering about is this supposed technique for making AA work.

I'm not talking about smoking up in the first few minutes of the game. Any time a DD uses a smoke to avoid CV attacks, that's a smoke that they can't use to avoid surface ships. And unless they're lucky with the timing, it's a smoke they can't use effectively to shoot from. Suddenly it's on cooldown, and they have to play more cautiously for a while because an important escape tool is unavailable. By being close enough to make you react. If you turn away from a cap because there are aircraft coming towards you, that's time lost for you. If you hold further back than you'd like to, that's reduced effectiveness of your weapons. If a CV gets enough of an indication of where you are (from a torpedo salvo, for example), spends 30 seconds sending a squadron in your general direction and makes you react, then chances are they've wasted far more of your time than you've wasted of theirs. I mean, the point is that without effective AA, a DDs best defense against CVs is to reduce their own effectiveness. Again, though, you're mostly talking about how not to be seen. Remember that this whole sub-discussion started with the implication that there's some kind of "right" way to use AA that actually makes it effective. Not needing to use your AA is another subject entirely.

All that said, there's a huge difference between making oneself tricky to damage, and actually managing to shoot down strikes. I'm still curious as to how you're supposed to make DD AA magically effective, because if you don't eat flak like popcorn then even the Kidd is fairly easy to strike, and the AA of a lot of the IJN DDs basically consists of the XO with a megaphone using harsh language.

Often you don't even have to do damage. A smoke wasted on avoiding a squadron of rocket planes that then goes on to dish out some damage on a cruiser is a smoke wasted. A DD that turns around and then has to spend a minute getting back into position is also an asset denied. Well, yes. But the thing is, it doesn't take that much to make an otherwise dangerous DD waste their time either, and often the CV isn't really wasting theirs. Just potentially doing marginally less than the optimal amount of damage. If you can take 20-30 seconds every now and then to basically zone out a DD so they never get to effectively use their torps, then it doesn't really matter if you kill them or not. Especially not if you can get some meaningful damage done on other targets as well. Of course, Enterprise attack planes are pretty hard to miss even the most evasive DD with, so you can have your cake and eat it too

And there's no real difference between doing that in a 1v1 scenario and a multiplayer scenario. The main limitation is still your map presence. In a multiplayer match you may have less because AA from other ships limits your ability to be everywhere, but it's augmented by the presence of allied ships. Eh. Even if you don't do significant damage, just making the DD react to your planes is often significant enough. You don't have to kill someone to make them useless. When you start to limit yourself to situations where you can't be shot at by the enemy team, but the enemy team is still limited by the presence of friendly AA, you're starting to seriously restrict your own positioning. I'm not saying you can't make yourself difficult to kill for a CV, but doing that while simultaneously being much use to your team is a different matter.

But on the other hand, when there are other ships around, the CV suddenly isn't the only one who can spot the DD. A CV is often the biggest threat when you're concentrating on evading fire from other ships, because your attention is already taxed. And the CV can keep you spotted when you otherwise would have gone unspotted. That "all your reserves" can be thrown against the DD in a 1v1 scenario is a bit of a moot point in reworked CV since you're only controlling one squadron anyway.

This, I presume?

Regarding baiting other DDs into overcommitting, I suspect the Asashio does this a little better than her near sisters. I have the impression that other DDs are just that little bit more eager to chase after her than others. She's probably viewed as easy pickings since her torps can't hurt them, and then suddenly you've chased her further than you thought you'd need and you're getting [edited]-slapped by a cruiser.

Meh. I really hate this forum software some times. Tried to edit and it messed it up. Well, i already mentioned that you're a bit screwed against the French and Russian speed demons. The best thing you can often hope do achieve is to bait them into chasing you, make them overcommit and hope your team is on the ball. The point isn't that the IJN torp DDs are some kind of amazing allrounders, just that their guns are more effective and a bigger threat than their raw DPM values suggest. Maybe not to win, but in a similar engagement to what I described the skilled Benson player will often realize he's in an unfavourable engagement and disengage rather than overcommit and risk getting smacked by your teammates.

Eh. Not really, but it depends on the engagement. If you get jumped by someone who manages to negate your concealment advantage, sure, you're screwed. Heck, if you get surprised it's going to take forever to get your guns pointed in the right direction. If you have enough time to react and start turning away before the other guy starts shooting (e.g. you're going at least partially parallell or perpendicular to them and your concealment advantage gives you time to react and start turning away), even at shorter ranges it's fairly easy to juke slower shells and out-trade your opponent. Heck, often I've managed to do that with only the two aft turrets. When I'm sailing something Kagero-ish and encounter an enemy DD (not railgun type), it often follows the pattern of; I spot them first and start turning away and open fire while I'm still unspotted. If they're smart, they're just going to disengage. If they shoot but keep their course, I can get some long range shots in while taking minimal damage in return. If they start chasing me... well, I'll usually have managed to open the distance enough to make myself tricky to hit, and I can keep smacking them with the rear turrets until they regret their decision. Heck, even if they kill me it's usually a pyrrhic victory.

Or just have an evening with the missus and offspring out of the house.

Yes, but having premium time active when I don't have time to play is a bit of a waste.

DD duels involve far too much variability in terms of number of hits actually scored for DPM to be a particularly valuable metric. The Kagero et. al. are never going to be great gunboats, but the nice thing about those guns is that you can fairly reliably score hits in situations where floaty USN and RN shells are fairly easy to dodge. If you're being chased down, or even if both DDs just trade shots while disengaging, it's often easy to out-damage your opponent simply by virtue of actually hitting the majority of your shots. Against someone like the Frenchies or Russians who combine good ballistics with high speed, you're pretty much screwed though.

I'll often hold on to containers that are guaranteed to or have high probability of containing premium time.

Enlighten us, Senpai. What is the correct way to use AA?

HANS! Bring ze flammenwerfer!

Isn't that basically the same as either this or this article? Because both of those are clear: The two daily mission chains will give tokens between Jan. 17th and Feb 5th. The three monthly chains will give signals and port slots as normal, no tokens.

Erm. Tokens are a reward for the daily missions, I can't find any information that the long term missions are supposed to drop tokens. Where did you see this?