NobleRipper

Issues are still constant for me as well. When are the Armoury, News, Dockyard, Inventory etc. going to be fixed?

Translated from the original Brazilian Portuguese, presumably? ;) Ooh, fingers crossed for event ship; can't wait to get my hands on her without sacrificing beer tokens!

Is there a reason we can't hit the 'respec all' button from the client, or from a newspost inside the client (if News is ever accessible again)?

I've clearly been reading too many shipwreck books lately, as I've gotten around to thinking that it would be cool to have an underwater 'port' for the game client. Essentially it would be some kind of sea-bottom location (lots of variation around the world so plenty of choice for the devs), with ships showing up as if they had sunk and settled in the seabed so they'd be still, like in Fjords etc. and effectively buried up to the usual waterline for convenience's sake; it would be rather resource-intensive to give each and every ship a 'sunken wreck' appearance just for the one port, but I imagine that a lot could be done with the lighting engine with shifting colours and shadows to evoke the right atmosphere; the port could have a day-night cycle where the ambient light from above gets dimmer but the various flora and fauna on the seafloor start to show off their bioluminescence, as a neat extra touch. There are already ports with distinctive lighting schemes, so it presumably shouldn't be too hard to come up with something interesting. As far as flag animations etc. go, I imagine that it could be fudged to appear as if they're simply swaying in the currents; the flags still flap in the Spaceport so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch. And yes, it would seem incongruous for apparently intact ships to be sitting on the seabed, but there are already various fantastical and/or stylistic ports around, so why not? It would be no stranger than seeing Bismarck moored next to London Bridge really, and in any case if subs are eventually going to make it into the game (although WG seem a bit vague on the timetabling there at the moment), it would be good for them to have a port to show them in their natural element. Plus singing lobster, obviously.

Hope noone minds the self-bump, but the thought occurs that having shifting light/current conditions which can alternately hide and reveal different wrecks (instead of the usual small boats/planes buzzing about) would be a cool feature, and add a little mystery ;) Also, in terms of real-world places that would be strong candidates, Ironbottom Sound would be a natural.

Getting the Strasbourg stages done has been easier than I thought it might be; the main annoyance has been just how slow, sticky and generally irritating the Campaigns interface is in-game. Given that they made such a song and dance of revamping and consolidating Combat Missions recently, surely WG could get rid of the clunky Campaigns tab and just fold it in with the other missions? That way we could even check progress on all of them at the same time...

No idea if it's the case or not, but I could easily see something having gone wrong with the rental ship system that removes a port slot by mistake at the end of the rental period if there's one free (or perhaps puts the ship into an available slot rather than adding one specifically for it, before removing ship and slot together at the end); presumably there's no issue if someone doesn't have a slot free to begin with, just if they have open ones available.

As is delineating between heavy and light cruisers, or torpedo- and gunboats for destroyers (given that again they're being differentiated based on a single attribute). Separating geographically would at least be a break from the norm, and allow for a little more national character in the different lines of the Euro tree. Don't forget as well that it's WG that sets the stats, so regardless of what ships were like in real life they can be made to provide a smooth progression in the game's tech tree (the Euro destroyers tree already being an example; it's not like Tatra and Visby had anything really in common historically). This is my point: the way the game is designed and run makes it difficult or impossible to introduce lines which don't follow the same progression as the others, ie. tier 2-10 for cruisers etc. Personally I prefer T5/6 most of the time, and horizontally branching tech trees would be great, but I can't see WG going for it anytime soon unfortunately; higher tiers are much more profitable for them.

I wasn't entirely sure, but it did seem a short while ago that I lost a slot I should have had; and I've just had a rental of Prinz Eugen, so...

Definitely wouldn't want to annoy the French Germans French Germans French ;)

Yes, love it! Maybe for festive occasions they could have an incendiary or two going off every now and again ;) Well now, if we're going for infamous disappearances, can't go wrong with Surcouf...

Just like the Graf Zep. was in the process of being fitted out with all those planes you mean? ;)

Yep, just like mould ;) Always liked that one! Anyone else know any really interesting wrecks they could include? :)

Flat tops, but full and shapely curved bottoms ;) *Ahem* Was also thinking there could be some other shipwrecks around the place, for scenery: HMS Victoria would be an interesting one.

About this well ;) https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/soundings-underwater-airship-180957786/

Had the Bismarck one in mind when I was writing it (as that's the one that can be got from the collection, which I'll soon have completed). Also if WG picks it up, would be interesting to see it work with my other big idea of introducing airships to the game; sunken Zeppelins anyone?

Well yes, except for the fictional armament on Gneisenau, the inadequate armouring on the British battleships in general and a host of issues with Duke of York in particular. None of which detracts from (or adds to) their crap-but-ironic enjoyability, just as their in-game performances have nothing whatever to do with their real service histories. Then again, I don't collect paper ships in the first place, so I can't compare CBIE factor with (for example) the Russian and French tech tree equivalents.

Finished Stage 3 yesterday; have already unlocked the final task of the Furutaka stage in S&F (it's worth noting that you don't need Strasbourg to do several of the tasks and the final which you do need her for is 'play one battle'), so anticipating being able to get at least that done and then maybe T-22 and possibly Hawkins. Visby would be a bonus, but I already got the Trekroner permaflage from the oily excess event for her; the last two ships I don't have or have any interest in. As for Strasbourg herself, I'm actually kinda looking forward to adding her to my stable of crap-but-ironically-enjoyable T7 battleships, I already have lots of fun with Nelson, Duke of York and occasionally Gneisenau ;) The Strasbourg missions are time-sensitive, whereas the 5 Epochs ones aren't and the Hizen directives are around for a lot longer. If you're wanting to get hold of Strasbourg, you might want to make her a little more of a priority, otherwise you might miss your chance. Also, hard as it might be to believe, Newport week doesn't seem to be a complete waste any more as the Op. seems to have been altered to make it actually worthwhile to play now! :)

Looks like some very thoughtful work there OP, nice job! It seems like the Dutch would be a strong contender for the lion's share of a Euro cruiser line, which hopefully we'll see before too long; an idea I've heard which I quite like is splitting the Euro cruisers between North (Netherlands, Scandinavia, Poland etc.) and South (Mediterranean) countries. I think that the tiering system as it currently stands in the game has quite significantly gotten in the way of allowing (worthwhile) representation of smaller navies, but then the chosen period doesn't seem to have helped much either. If things started earlier, even just twenty years or so before the earliest ships we currently have, I get the impression that there would be a lot more material (notably Russian...) for WG to work with!

I would second the point mentioned above about getting a T6 instead of a T5. T5 is a) not great for battleships right now, b) not possessed of all that many really good premiums, c) not especially high-earning (so not much benefit of premium over regular ships) and d) frequently the tier used for reward ships which can be obtained for free in various ways, no cash required. If you go for T6, there's more choice of ships which tend to be better on average (although you will see T8 games on occasion), and you can play Operations which are a lot of fun and also have some pretty good rewards in terms of free XP, premium time and 10-point captains. Regarding T6 then: purely in terms of battleships, Warspite is very good and easily available for free (play a single T6 game in an account started with a new-starter code; if you haven't used one, just get your current account to the point where you can use the Recruitment Station and use the recruitment code from that account to start a new one). She's not quick, but the guns are accurate and hit pretty hard, and she can be pretty tough in the right circumstances. If you're talking ships in general, something a bit like a battleship is the Graf Spee which is a lot of fun; she has battleship-sized guns on a cruiser hull with torpedoes and a heal. There are numerous other premium cruisers at T6 which have varying playstyles so you could probably find one to suit you if that's your thing. A couple of resources that might be useful: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Premium_ships https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/210980-mouses-catalog-of-ship-reviews/

Seems like to help with the credibility of carriers in general (especially given that every ship will again of necessity be fictional, like the Germ Carriers) they'll need to be scrupulously balanced and reasonable, possibly even a little underpowered compared to older lines. To help with marketability in generally (especially on the Russian server) they'll need to be pretty (overly?) powerful or at least possessed of an impressive feature or two. Place your bets on which way WG will go... Either way, assuming they have another month-long two-event Early Access, that'll be a month I can happily take off from WoWs; paper ships, Russian ships and carriers is three big ticks on my no-no list.

Doesn't seem in danger of happening soon. However, it does seem (at least to me) as though there's been more of a rush for profits over satisfactory player experience for a little while now, could be that WG are trying to make what money they can in the time they anticipate having left. Kinda like when a corporation starts stripping away and selling the profitable bits of their business in an effort to save the rest, I think they call it 'streamlining' or some such.

That would be my assumption as well, and it would make sense given the number of battlecruisers and near-battlecruisers in the game that are already in as BBs. As I say though, if it's a split then it seems like it would have to go the other way around to the current norm, with the split starting at low level and re-joining around mid-tier somewhere. Given how WG normally promotes everything high-tier and largely disregards everything else, it seems like either they'll have to come up with a different way of doing things or else we won't be seeing battlecruisers for a while at least...

It would be great if every new line got something similar, definitely!

I still have problems reliably loading the Armoury, since that cockup in the Christmas update. News and Inventory still don't work at all...