Dutchy_2019

The bolded is indeed a valid point (and something which I occasionally am guilty of when playing DD myself. I try to support the rest of my team when playing DD. I think that the amount of times where I have run into Random team mates actually supporting me as a DD player and co-operate was - if I am lucky - about 10-15% of the time. And only ONCE it happened with a player (this time a cruiser) who asked me as a DD to help him out (which coindicentally ended with the both of us posting 2.3k + base XP games). I think I can count the amount of times when this (mutual support) happened with 3 or more ships is less than 5%.

Flanking has its place, on certain maps, in certain situations, but not always. But usually that flanking stuff leaves your others ships out to die in the middle, because you are in no position to support your team. And on Epicenter it is even laughable, as regularly it means that by the time the flanking BB's have decided to come in, they have lost all control over the cap and lose on points.

AGAIN: BB players do NOT need to remember ANY name of all kinds of ships. I think it is an extremely SAD day to expect that players who reach T8 can use the team line-up, and identify the T8 US, Soviet and UK-light cruiser (or above) from that, especially since they are fairly distinct from other nations. The simple fact that the Soviets do have strange names for their ships is already an identifiable feature on its own. Simply put, if you are not able to do so, you have rushed up the Tech Trees WAY too fast. Funny how you demand DD's asking the BB's to target certain ships when the speed of events they can get engaged in is often such that taking the time to demand that will be the difference between potentially living and dying. Yes, I can ask BB's to fire at DD's. ANY BB-shell hit on a DD can be massive, simply because of the minimal health pool of DD's. To even excuse BB's from avoiding shooting at BB's is a prime example of BB entitlement and why BB-drivers are by some described as non-team playing, self-entitled cry-babies. Of course, if you decide to hide behind islands and only 1 and 10 line it becomes a lot harder to shoot DD's from 15+ km away. O yeah, BB life depends upon hiding - while they have the BIGGEST health pool of the ships in game, HAVE heals, HAVE the biggest guns. Yet THEY should be concerned about their health pools, while ships that are MUCH more fragile and only have a FRACTION of the health pool are supposed to expose themselves to danger so the self-entitled BB's at the back end of the map get to farm easy damages. And subsequently, when their team mates have died due to lack of support, complain about getting torpedoed or burned to death by cruisers. While if they had actually supported their team mates, many of the ships farming them would have been finished off in the first place.

I agree with you there. That said: You never get better at hitting radar cruisers if you do not try in the first place. True, but even then you get plenty of idiots (in T10) who have no clue about the limitations of a ship. Funniest was a Hindy - firing the whole time from behind rocks - telling me (a Massachussetts) and a Bismarck off because we had just gone dark to heal up, and actually push, straight into a Tirpitz, Iowa, Republique, at least one DD, a Petropavlovsk (which was moving to a flanking position) and the enemy CV), "because we were in some of the tankiest ships in the game."

Frankly, I only partially agree with you there. - Yes, BB players do not necessarily need to memorize all the names that have radar (let alone radar ranges). But they should at least be intelligent enough to know - as rule of thumb - that ANY US, Soviet and possibly UK light cruiser of T8 or higher has radar. With the addition of T7 Atlanta and Indianapolis. That should NOT be too hard to memorize, and that should not be too hard to set as a priority. - Some communication can be better, but even when you light up high priority targets, ESPECIALLY BB's (but not only them) refuse to target them. Because they might only hit a single shell (or no shell at all) from a salvo. Much easier to target BB's (even if that single shell could well cripple the enemy DD). And even if you miss, you disrupt whatever that DD is doing (like lining up torps or targeting your teams DD). What I see rather a lot of is BB's hiding behind islands as if their life depended upon it, or sailing 1 and 10 lines, taking themselves completely out of the game. And more often than not, those are the top tier BB's.

My experience is that no matter the class you play, that is normal. And it is becoming "normal" in all tiers.

Of course it remains to be seen what the actual in game requirements are to get the grinds done. That said, the way I see it: Snowflakes: 9.12 and 10.0: Seems completely fine by me. Santa captains: 9.12 Fine if you like them. I would say, free captains at least. Separate campaign in 9.12 to get a T7 premium (worth 9500 - 10100 doubloons worth). I would NOT be surprised if you have to play French ships to get them (note to self - grind French cruisers up to T5). Dockyard campaign over 09.12 and 10.0: Minimum investment: 7800 doubloons Guaranteed reward (for completion of the campain): T2 Tachibana, T5 Yahagi (ca 4300 doubloons) and T9 Hizen (20,000 doubloons) So in other words, you can get 24k of doubloons worth of ships for less than 8000k investment. Or a 4000 doubloons worth of ship for free. Whatever drops from the Santa Container(s?) you get along the way. So my overall opinion: - In and by itself things do not seem too bad at all. At least there is something to focus on for for everyone, which IMHO is a good thing. - WG can still muck things up in the following ways: By making the Dockyard and Strasbourg grinds to be completely incompatible, so working on missions cannot be combined. By requiring an excessive collection of ships for each grinds, especially the Hizen grind. This was one of the biggest issues with the PR debacle last year. By requiring excessive amounts of grinding (like 10 million damage) for missions. By requiring an excessive amount of missions to be completed for each stage. Personally, I would like WG to prerelease the requirements for the Hizen grind, so people can judge what ships they need, and possibly have a chance to grind for them. I like that they did that with the Odin Dockyard.

Well unlocked my Kansas on EU through Co-op today. I have to say, If I get the 500k missions for her done I will consider that a bigger achievement that actually getting her.

I have unlocked my two Kansae yesterday and today. I have started playing them to maximize the amount of tokens I can get. Bot they are soooooo incredibly atrociously boring and aggravating to play. Slow, even slower reload, no secondaries which means you basically cannot react to ANYTHING that happens in game at a glacial pace in slow motion, let alone faster. I often disagree with Mr Gibbins' assessment of ships during his streams, but he could not be more correct with this line. I will probably only use this section of the US BB line for wins for rewards and specific missions, but for the rest of it they will be port queens. Even worse: back line camping BB's are already overabundant in this game, and these will only add to an already serious in-game problem.

If you actually read my response, YOU know that I was actually responding to your complaint: DD's taking damage away from BB's (boohoo, I used kills rather than damage). PLEASE expain to me HOW if the DD's are 'stealing' damage away from BB's at the rate YOU are claiming (especially at high tier) I am able to maintain the average damage per battle in the ships I listed - with 5 high tier BB's averaging OVER 90k damage per game. Including one with over 100k AVERAGE damage in almost 550 battles? The simple fact is, IF the problem is as bad as you claim it to be, there is NO way in hell such averages can be maintained. If the problem was as bad as you think it is, you would have seen a lot more complaining about this issue - which there has not been.

Accomplishments: - Getting sufficient Dockyard missions done on EU and NA to have both Anchorage and the research bureau unlocked on both servers (I bought three stages for each dockyard). - On NA getting the US BB directives done to the point where I have unlocked Kansas. I did that mostly in Co-op. The final game that got me the Kansas, was a good one with me as only human player, results below (setting my Co-op overall damage record on both EU and NA):

I kind of beg to differ from what I have seen - unless you think bots trying to torp THROUGH an island is an accident (assuming for bots there is a difference between 'deliberate' and 'accidental'), which happened to me today.

Many of the high tier Co-op games (T8 and up) do have you end up with Benhams, Shimakazes and such. Smolensk is also a regular. So maybe play T8 Co-op rather than T10 Co-op might be part of the solution to your problems.

A few things based on the OP: - Please leave out the use of diseases. Now as for his game-related issues: BB's kills being stolen by DD's. Yeah, this happens, but it is no less annoying then being in the game with a fire spammer like Smokensk or Woucester. If DD's are torping away everything in front of you, how the hell am I able to maintain a the following averages: JB (NA, 540 games) 103k; Pommern (EU, 50 games) 99k, Georgia (NA, 40 games) 95k, JB (EU, 196 games) 93k, Missouri (EU, 77 games) 90k, Odin (NA, 46 games) 86k and Ägir (EU, 67 games) 80k. Just today in Pommern I have had a 230k game, in JB a 305k game. I think I completed the final mission of the 3rd directive, as well as the complete 4th directive for the Kansas today in 25 games or so AT THE MOST (and probably about 20). So frankly, choose your targets wisely. Yeah, and sometimes you do have the a-hole DD's. But generally, the worst BB games I have had (and yeah, I have had 20k damage games in these BB's) is either the bots going to the other side of the map, or me being stupid and running into Bot torps.

Well, you are flat out wrong here. Bots tend to team torp just as much if not worse than human players.

To a considerable extent I can follow you here. On the other hand, if we were to use that standard, then - for one - half the words in the German dictionary ought to be banned due to their use in the 1933-1945 time period. Following a line of thinking like that, the game Axis and Allies should be banned as well. Mind you, the primary meaning of the word AXIS is still NOT that of the three countries you refer to, but like the once we know from maths. Then, even if you were to agree with the premise that this clan name should be taken out of the game, the method by which it is done is highly questionable: - The name has been around for YEARS, without WG taking ANY action; to now just use the hammer (and especially including suspensions of individual players) seemingly without fair warning is IMHO a gross violation of fair practice. - Similar just as openly offensive or at least TOS violating clan names are still around. Others are slightly more obscure, but the full tag or clan slogan is obvious enough. No action taken. Same goes with the names of individual players in game, some of them openly political and/or religious. And NOTHING is done about that either.

This seems rather extreme, and not necessary at all (remember a fairly popular boardgame called Axis and Allies)? Note how the basic terms of service about admissable usernames is rather vague (not offensive, or otherwise against Terms of Service - nice and vague here), but that those generally tend to include political and religious references (as per a number of CC's). Yet somehow usernames that are BLATANTLY political and religious are not dealt with at all. For a while (at least) there is a gem out there named Malvinas not Falklands (talk about openly political statement), and - on NA more so than NA - outright religious statements are quite normal (like ***** for Christ, or clear Bible references of the type John xx:xx). So yeah, unless this clan got caught for outright flaunting Nazi symbolism, or similar stuff, I do not get this ban either (as well as the inconsistency in the enforcement of the rule). Note how (a) the clan has apparently been out there for years, (b) has been involved in numerous WG sponsoredn and WG broadcasted competitive tournaments and (c) there apparently was no warning to the clan that the name had to be changed I seriously wonder what WG rationale behind this decision is.

I do not have screen shots, but I had a single game over the weekend that exhibited actual team play and co-operation by more than two random players on the same flank. It was 5 ships (GK, JB, Donskoi, Cleveland, Benson) on my side vs Montana, Massachussetts, Sovietsky Soyuz, Kitakaze, Hipper, Mogami Things spotted: Benson smoking up fellow team mates in a smart position, then focus on actually spotting the enemy ships (and not hiding in the smoke) and staying alive. Donskoi actually moving into a forward position (using said smoke for cover) and using radar in communication with fellow team mates. Grosse Kürfurst actually taking over tanking duties to let me (in JB) heal up. Cleveland actually also moving forward in support, and covering flank at the same time. When we had finished off the enemy BB's and cruisers, we in co-operation capped, pushed the enemy DD, with eventually Donskoi and Benson taking up pursuit (protecting our flank) while the rest moved up across the map in support of the team on the other flank (which was having a hard time). Four out of five ships ended top of the team, I wish the Benson had finished up higher as well (he deserved it).

Well, some stuff from the past week, starting with some Co-op results: On NA, the Minekaze was part of some "get torpedo hits" mission. So that game helped a lot. On EU, the Massachussetts B is my current Co-op damage record for the Massa on both servers. On NA, the Dallas is my Co-op damage record for that ship on both servers. In Operations, I set my damage record with Scharnhorst B. My biggest frustration is that TWO players managed to mess up the destruction of the merchants to the point where a third player could not recover the disaster. In Randoms on NA I set my overall damage record for both server playing JB. What helped was the Pommern and Sovietsky Soyuz parking themselves in a straight between two islands, and me controlling the exit at both ends (and they had to come out broad side). The Iowa who ended up second decided to kill the AFK Riga while the enemy Kitakaze and nearly full health Pommern and Sov Soy were unspotted. Also, managed to get all 8 KOTS crates for this cycle on EU and NA. Surprised that I got the 'end in top 5 of your team' mission done as easily as I did (13 games on NA, 14 on EU).

No screenshot, but yesterday I got my first ever Confederate, did it playing Atago B. Also completed a campaign today that did drag on for a while:

Well I ran into this in Co-op. The Asashio - on the mini-map at the start of the game immediately smoked himself, followed by a launch of a set of torps to his left (in front of my bow), turned round, launched the second set (two torps you see in the screen) and completed a full circle. The first set of torps had to be evaded by the BB to my left by changing his speed. The Asashio hardly moved further forward during the game. I rarely report a Co-op player, but I actually considered sending in every single potential report I could. Later in the game I did spot torpedos coming in from the rear which - again - looked suspiciously like Asashio torps.

I play mostly Co-op, generally advance with my BB, but if the human DD's play like OP describes, and they are there, your damage total often is f-ed from the very start. Because it will be YOU who has to take out the DD's (and slow your advance) to avoid getting torped to (nearly) death. While the hiding human DD players wait until the DD has been killed (regularly actually stealing the kill) and then move in for the juicy targets. And yes, I am saying this as a Co-op BB player who considers in higher tiers a game with less than 90-100k damage a bad game (I think my Co-op record stands at 270k (on NA)).

Well, this is one of those two sides to the issue problems: Side of the OP: - DD's hiding behind islands, or at least do NOTHING to aid in taking out the DD (or multiple DD's) leaving that to the BB's and cruisers. - When BB or cruiser has (nearly) eliminated DD, do-nothing DD pops up, kills the DD, and torp rushes the enemy cruiser and/or BB. Result: BB takes the risks, might take heavy damage (including getting killed if he is confronted with multiple DD's) and the DD reaps the rewards: Side of some DD players (and apparently those attacking OP): - DD advances, takes the risks and is supposed to take out DD - Cruisers and BB's give little support, and pretty much wait for DD to get killed. - When DD is eliminated they advance, and with a little luck they will also do everything to block torp lines of DD's (or make sure that they are in the line if torp misses target) hoping the DD will hold his torps as a result. I have seen PLENTY of both types of behaviour in Co-op, playing all kinds of classes myself.

- The players who actually try to win tend NOT to be the ones saving their star. - Players take damage farming ships rather than ship killing ships into the game. Because damage farming helps you save the star more easily than ship anything else.

You know you can repeat tasks you have completed to collect the stars? That is how I am doing mine.