NewHorizons_1

I suppose the equation is more like (Hybrid_AirCraft_Dmg - Hybrid_Gun_Dmg) + Hybrid_TeamSpotting_Dmg No guarantee the last term will make up for the difference in the first two, although when it does it could have game changing consequences (eg blapping a DD)

When I see that camo I always think there's some poor sod with a rag & a tin of Brasso who's been ordered to polish the ship.

Oh boy - I've around 90 port screenies. I wonder if I could DDoS the forum. But, here's some screenies of my fave co-op ships. T10 USS Des Moines in Fjords. Great fun shooting excellent HE & AP shells at a high rate of fire. Halsey (or Doe bros) downs the ammo switch time to ~1.3 sec. T8 HMS Lightning on the Thames. Excellent agility (though not that fast in a straight line) and excellent gun handling as all turrets turn through 360° means she's great at close quarters knife fights with bot DDs. Just remember to pop the long duration (but short range) hydro to give you advanced warning of torps. T9 Kitakaze looking like she's part of a Jules Verne fantasy.

I found T6 Andrea Dorio OK, not great but OK. But from T7 onwards their gun accuracy is trash and the slow reload frustrating. Seems like the tail of that tech tree line is designed as a FreeXP sink. Yup, the new(ish) BCs were OK. I found them much nicer to play than T8 Monarch and T9 Lion (one of my least favourite ships). Yup, one of reasons this co-op main didn't get on with them. T6 & 7 French BBs are good, if a little odd with their turret layout. 16 gun broadside at T7 never gets old. IJN BBs I initially found frustrating with T6 Fuso rarely giving reliable results as the shells tended to bounce or overpen. Afterwards though they settle down to be solid performers. Many have bad memories of T9 Izumo, but by the time I got round to it the ship had been buffed to be OK. Yup, original USN BB line gets off to a very slow start, but once you reach T8 N. Cal its great. The battlesail line (Kansas -> Vermont) I found extremely tedious to grind though. They were OK too ... if you can stand looking at T8 Zieten Russian BBs were a bit of a love/hate affair. I got T6 Izmail as a freebie not long after starting WoWS and the grind upto and through SinOP was fun. But afterwards the T8 & 9 never clicked with me.

I seemed to do OK out of the New Year Battles, which rewarded Festive Finery crates which can drop a T6, 7 or 8 perma bonus. IIRC I got a few T6 (mounted on Dallas, Rahmat, Normandie), two T7s (Jervis, Helena) and one T8 (Hsienyang)

Nice catch. I don't have Odin myself, but she sounded like Scharnhorst's big sister. Scharny is one of my fave BBs in co-op so she could be OK. Probably a good pick for operations too, after having a quick look at the wiki.

... and slightly related to the above is this old bug. Special/Unique/Legendary commanders just have a rank description of "Ship Commander" that doesn't change with rank, except for Isoroku Yamamoto. Yamamoto with his localized, and correct, rank description of "Gensui Kaigun Taisho" Every other commander (Cunningham, Sansonetti, Lutjens, etc, etc) just has a generic description of "Ship Commander" Eg, Halsey's rank description should be "Fleet Admiral"

Looks like a localization slip-up for Soviet commanders of rank 8, 9 & 10 whose rank descriptions use the Cyrillic alphabet even when your own locale (EN-GB) uses the Latin-1 alphabet Rank 8 Rank 9 Rank 10 Whereas a rank 14 commander has a Russian description (Kontr-Admiral) in the Latin-1 alphabet

Probably my location.

Nor can they help to clear up their own mess ... Maybe if fighter spotting was constrained to the mini-map and hybrids could drop patrol fighters there would be wider acceptance of this new branch.

CV : Auto dam com Me :

Do they do anything functionally different to the smoke timer the (vanilla) game displays anyway?

* Mid-tier Russian destroyers look on with envy *

The AFK penalties changed last year so that, after a period of inactivity, your XP & credit earnings are zero. Not sure it affects your BaseXP score though. Hence, why I theorized the OP could have done quite a bit at the start, but didn't appear to be active towards the end. I'm not sure this system is the best as there's a few situations where someone could get penalized, unfairly, when being inactive is the correct thing to do. Eg : your team is up on points, victory is in the bag but your the only one left on low health. So all you have to do is not die hence you clear off to a remote part of the map and hide behind a rock. Now you could get an AFK penalty as you did nothing for >5mins while running the clock down to win on points.

I'd rather the devs make smaller incremental changes than large ones that could radically change (for the worse) how the match plays out.

I'm pretty sure the good-value-for-money of the 1st battle pass was deliberate. Bait the player-base with something big, fat & juicy and then put the rewards on a diet to see who'll still bite. For example, when the first BP was announced, did anyone think that all subsequent premium BPs would have a premium T7 ship as a final reward? It was kinda fishy from the start.

Could be, but I suspect that AFK penalty must have been imposed after the OP had done some significant damage (to come top/middle of the score table). Maybe ALT-TAB'ing after clearing his flank, sailing towards the other flank (with remaining reds) in a straight line (or as you say autopilot) and taking a while (IIRC >5mins?) to get there without doing any keyboard input. Kinda sucks if the map has tall mountains in the way (Two Brothers) so that you don't have a clear shot to the other flank. I suppose it could also happen if the co-op bots all run away from you to the other side map - which they do from time to time. @Admiral_H_Nelson, I don't suppose you took screenie's of the PERSONAL SCORE after any of those matches? That would tell you that you earned zero credits/XP because of a penalty.

I don't think it's the right question to ask. The value of each of the three battle passes has varied from one to the next. With a general downward trend. Instead, players should closely examine the value of each BP on its own. For example the 1st BP was very good value with a final reward of a T7 light cruiser that does well in co-op. The subsequent ones I've given a wide berth. I suppose one could argue that the current BP maybe of value to co-op players, as it provides a way of avoiding playing Colorado to unlock Nebraska. But, given the dubious development decisions over the past year, I'm reluctant to hand over any dubs for a temporary BP and for something that can (eventually) be done for free (or FreeXP).

Is it coincidence that the hybrid BBs branch off at one of the ... let's say ... "less popular" ships and then WG introduce a pay-to-skip option? The balancing act for me here is:- Do I play Colorado in co-op ? Do I begrudgingly** give WG cash ? Do I skip with FreeXP? I might do the former (as I have the Independence Day perma camo + 50% XP perma-bonuses) so hopefully the grind won't be quite so tedious as the initial grind to N. Cal. If I'm feeling particularly daft I could load it up with signals & expendable bonuses and take it into ops. But, like many of the early access ships (Italian BBs & DDs, high tier Dutch CAs, German heavy DDs) I suspect large amounts of FreeXP will be involved. ** I'm mainly F2P now after some of the more dubious development decisions that have been made lately.

I think this bit of advice is very sound and the value of one battle pass, to an individual player, will vary from season to season. Players should also very carefully examine what the current BP offers, and not assume that it contains what was included before. There's already someone who assumed that all battle passes always included free module dismounts and was somewhat disappointed when the current one didn't. Checking the comparative value of other goodies (steel, coal, eco bonuses etc) to previous BPs is also informative as someone else has noticed they seem to have been reduced.

As mentioned in a couple of other threads, there is a strong suspicion that the first battle pass was deliberately generous to attract as much positive attention as possible. 2500 dubs (~£7) + grind (that you may normally do anyway) = T7 premium CL (normally ~£24) + other goodies. I remember myself, and other forum members, at that time wondering if subsequent BPs would be of comparable value for money. I bought a couple of quid's worth of dubs to make up the shortfall for the first BP, so a T7 premium for ~10% of the regular price seemed a fairly good deal. Since then we've had a paid licence for Santa crate gambling and now early access to a tech tree ship**. I've not bothered with a premium BP since the first. Only time will tell what value BPs remain in the future, but given the initial trend ... it's not looking promising. ** On the other hand, some players (without shed loads of FreeXP) might see 2500 dubs as good value for money to avoid grinding with Colorado.

The German tech tree also has the premium ships (Agir, Munchen, Tirptiz) clipped off in a similar manner.

The new hybrid BB line has shifted everything over to the right, so the CV branch gets clipped down the middle... On a 2560 x 1440 screen :- ... but you can already just drag the screen to the left.

Yes & no :- kinda depends when you bought the BP. I bought it near the end (I think I got lucky with dubs from an SC) so I got Tokachi shortly after obtaining the BP. Yes, there was a grind involved but I had already done most of that, as a side-effect of just playing my game normally, plus there were also other goodies too. So all in all, the first BP was suspiciously good value.

A T7 premium cruiser for 2500 doubloons (~ £7) was well below the normal asking price (~£24). So I'm inclined to agree with @Zuihou_Kai_Ni - it did get my attention and I thought, at the time, "I wonder how long this value will last?". I spent a couple of quid to make up the doubloon shortfall for the first Battle pass as £2 for a T7 premium cruiser + goodies was a good deal. But that last one was a paid licence to gamble on Santa crates and this one is paying to get early access to a tech tree ship. So a no-brainer to give both BPs a big wide swerve away.