NobleRipper

Have to admit, I'm so disinterested in the different flavours of Disappointment Crates this time around that I didn't even bother to see what they allegedly drop; I have plenty of camos already...

Don't forget submarines!

We're only picking one for the ship we have currently chosen as there is no other way to see any part of the Reserve any longer. The old Reserve page didn't require a specific ship to be selected. Not more clear, so it's now unclear compared to before; or was that supposed to say now instead of not? Again, while selecting commanders for a given ship that may be the case (although there was the same functionality in the previous system, just in a box that didn't take up so much space on the screen), but then that is not the only purpose having a separate Reserve screen fulfils. Unless you have no free port slots; or alternatively, if: ...Unless you've been given them from, say, events with Commander rewards, or any of the other sources your 'probably' refers to. I did notice that neither of those factions you mentioned had a Santa, but is that always going to be the case for all events going forward? If so, that seems like it would be rather prejudicial against the people who have ships from those factions, if they never get special Commanders as rewards just because people without those ships can't get rid of those Commanders. Ultimately, it seems pretty clear that we have actually lost functionality in a definite way from this update, not gained it. Are there any plans to bring the Reserve screen back again in future to add that functionality that we lost back in?

@TheWarJaC @YabbaCoe Apologies if this has been answered already (the thread is up to page 11 and this is my first time visiting, so I didn't go through all the replies so far) but how do I get to the Commander Reserve page to show all my commanders at once (like we had before the rework)? I'd like to be able to see commanders even if I have no ships of that faction, in case I want to spec them up with a forthcoming purchase in mind or else get rid of them to free up the Reserve slot (and get back the Elite XP from dismissal). I mean, presumably it's possible; the devs wouldn't have just removed a pretty basic part of functionality like that, right?

The first part I wholeheartedly endorse, but I question the second: Emergency Repair Expert Action time of the Damage Control Party consumable +10% Number of Damage Control Party consumable charges +1 Repair Party consumable action time +10% Number of Repair Party consumable charges +1 Spot the problem; WG apparently didn't. Either that, or they've rather revolutionised a certain branch of mathematics...

A cut-down Fiji for T6 Ops sounds brilliant (I find myself hardly using torps in Ops most of the time), but if WG have failed to give her a decent DPM that's pretty tragic. Oh well, at least the wallet's safe with this one...

I may well be late on this, but has the UI just been changed in port? I just did a reinstall to try and fix the Armoury/News inaccessibility bug (of course it didn't work, and given that it took three days I won't be doing another) and now all the UI boxes have a horribly ugly grey background rather than the blurry semi-transparent background they had since that update a while ago. The semi-transparency was bad enough, and nowhere near as good as the clear background it replaced, but now the game just looks like some drab business database system is trying to invade.

Less excitement is good for the health. I've actually found an even better way so far: currently reinstalling to try and fix the bug with not being able to access News or the Armoury, and for the nearly-a-day it's take to get less than halfway I've not had any stressful in-game moments at all. It's very zen. I mean hey, the size and poor management of the download are wasting premium time, but that just means there'll be less time pressure when if I come back. Hail the Omnissiah! So you're saying that because of the update you're technically trying to play more carriers? Working as intended!

Wow, the Steam updates must be pretty glacial then; doing it through the WGC takes ages already. My sympathies. I tried un/reinstalling because of the News/Armoury inaccessibility bug, it's been about 21 hours of constant downloading so far and it's only listing 39% (even though that's wrong for the amount downloaded already compared to the total, should show more like 45% by now). Bugs within the solution to previous bugs. That and the 40-gig install apparently needed 90 gigs of free space, because of course it did. My NA account has some premium time on it which this is wasting. To be honest, if it's not done with by tonight (hahaha) tomorrow morning I'm debating whether to just get rid of WoWs altogether, and at least get my 90 gigs back.

If only they had something like, say, a mode in the game that they could keep creating content for using different tiers, types and combinations of ships, with definitively codified objectives and a decent element of challenge, that people could play to have a different experience to the usual Random or Co-op battles. They could (for example) base unique scenarios on historical battles, or play around with different terrain, objectives, weather etc. to create their own. Maybe even have a system of grading team performances based on, say, stars. That would give them pretty much an infinite capacity for new content. And then they could take Newport out of this totally hypothetical mode, and it would be perfect

Subs feel like change for its own sake, not a natural addition to the game. Same with how hard the CV rework was crammed down people's throats, it just seems like WG wanted something shiny and new for the publicity value and didn't overly care about the gameplay value. Then again, I'm not really convinced that we'll see them any time soon given how the development and testing have been dragging on for so long; It's actually kind of a shame, because they could arguably fit in better than carriers if they were just treated as extra-stealthy destroyers that are even more reliant on torpedoes, and had their ability to completely disappear balanced by not being able to see or attack anything when they do it.

I definitely get that point of view; I just figured that as the skill was essentially there to improve me rather than the ship, if I just learned to git gud I could save myself the point for something else ;)

Have to confess that I never use any of the situational awareness skills, I prefer things that come with hard stat increases for the ship. For what it's worth though, I suppose on balance I'd say if I didn't think it was worth one point, it's less worth two...

First impressions: feels like the game now comes with homework. It's good that they recognised skills should have more variety (and ships should have more than one useful build in a lot of cases), but this doesn't seem to address that. I suppose the one captain-four skillsets feature is nice for folks who use their captains in more than one ship, but I can't see a use for it personally and presumably people are used to using those captains in similar ships so it doesn't seem like much of an advantage overall. It actually feels to me like a move made by devs who've lost touch with the core of their game: the reason that battleships/cruisers/destroyers work against each other (in theory at least) is that they're all using the same movement, concealment, shooting and penetration mechanics; it should be the case that they can all work effectively from the same pool of skills. Carriers need their own set of skills because they have different mechanics (which is one of the main reasons they don't fit the game, in my humble one), but if the core three have variation then it seems less like adding options and more like adding complications that wouldn't be needed if the game was balanced properly.

Spee is the only one I've played, but I'd echo the points made above that she's a better investment as you can play most Ops in her as well, which adds some variety and nice rewards to the Co-op grind while still involving combat against (slightly more capable) bots.

Got Strasbourg the hard way, unlocked up to Visby in the Chips and Dip campaign (I wasn't ever planning on going past that to be honest). I was prepared to give up at Hawkins as I only got it with 19 hours left to go, but some glorious simple Summer child put in the 'get any 150 ribbons' for a Visby star so about fifteen games later in Bayern and Helena I had all eleven stars (I know I didn't have enough games to complete the 'top 5 on your team 8 times' objective twice and it's hard not to make top 5 of 9 in a Co-op game)... Chuffed overall, as I really like the the Strasbourg event camo and the T5 ones aren't too bad either (had three of the four ships I unlocked already). On course to score the Yahagi as soon as I get a bit more base XP and some more kills or something, but there's a month to do it so I'm in no hurry...

The functionality has increased a lot (not really difficult, the old skills interface was pretty basic), but I have to say that the new icons just look ugly to me. I wasn't a fan of the looks of the new Equipment tab, and this seems to be taking things even more into Dark-Drab-and-Bland Land.

@MrConway @Crysantos @YabbaCoe Does WG have an official statement responding to this, out of interest?

Normally yes, but there wasn't the option this time as the Play button was greyed out.

I'm not a competitive player, I just get one commander per ship and then let them train up as they will while I play (which I suspect is less often than most). I'll probably just get everyone reset and then go through them as and when I decide to take the ship out, picking what looks good after a bit of consideration. Seems like a homework assignment to me, so I want to try and avoid any headaches of over-information, statistical analyses etc. Looking forward to the extra doubloons though ;)

Not sure how your schedule works, but I have a certain limited amount of time to play. If an amount of this is taken up with downloads, then that means I cannot play during that time. Why, have you been playing non-stop since Friday?

Annoying that there's no option any more to play instead of pre-downloading. Particularly when there are time-sensitive campaigns that end with this patch, and a chunk of that remaining time is taken up with a three-gig download...

Agreed. When considering if something is working as intended, always try to imagine what the intention actually was in the first place!

The lack of British and German WWI-era battlecruisers continues to be a disappointment, they seem to be the most obvious omissions from the game at the moment; however, as mentioned they would be too low-tier to attract much attention from WG's marketing department (even T6 would be a bit of a stretch). Another issue is that those two navies were the only ones really to go in for battlecruisers in a big way; there were plans for them in other countries, even one or two turning up in the steel (the Kongo class as originally built for example), but other than that WG would have to put paper ships in every other tech tree in addition to all the higher-tier ones they would need to include anyhow, which wouldn't do much for their historically accurate credibility (however much that happens to be prioritised). I've said it before, but my personal view is still that for a naval wargame with many different factions they really picked the wrong period to emphasise: starting from around 1890, using the WWI ships as the mid tiers (around 5-7) and then interwar and WW2 designs right at the top would have given them a lot more breadth of shipping to choose from. Plus it would keep carriers out of all but the highest tiers, of course...

Just to let you know, then, the same problems are still occurring. Sometimes it seems like I can access the Armoury or Dockyard every few tries or so, sometimes I just can't get in to them or the News/Inventory/etc.