NobleRipper

Just to point out: not in the Japanese Navy (the cruisers had the scout planes as that was their assigned role for the fleet, carriers were for strikes); also not entirely in the US Navy (as their cruisers all had scout planes as well because the Pacific is a bit big). In the RN they used the mighty Swordfish for scouting among its various other roles, but they mainly used land-based photo-recon and Coastal Command planes (Catalinas/Sunderlands/Liberators), or else radar-equipped cruisers (Norfolk and Suffolk following Bismarck and Belfast shadowing Scharnhorst, as it was part of standing orders that all chase vessels must have the same last letters as their targets).

My average for Euro Destroyers 1 was around 30 tokens per container (including about three max-token drops), which judging by reports from a bunch of other people on the forum at the time was if anything a little more than average. Then again, that event had 30- and 40-token drops in the random bundles, so it was possible to just get more tokens more regularly. One other point: the highest possible token amount from a bundle was 140 (vs. 40 for next highest), not the frankly ludicrous 275 difference between highest and second here. Can only imagine that they've made 300-token drops much rarer in consequence (particularly as getting one would just give you the MiG straight away vs. 200 tokens for Visby last time), so I doubt it's worth counting on getting one...

You must be mistaken Comrade, Russian Balans is stronkest in world! I wouldn't say all the rest is 'fine' exactly; they're trying to stretch four ships out into six bundles (and only three of them are actually the early access ones), which makes it seem like they're not putting so much effort in as for the Ikea DDs.

Out of interest, how many people usually bother to go for the third container in a day? I tend to stop at two, possibly plus a couple of games if I've not finished the second daily mission yet (assuming I'm bothering with that one, which I find myself doing less and less).

It would be awesome to have fleets/task groups all commanded by a single player; however, I suspect that in order for it to work there should be scope for at least a few people to play together (I think the smallest game mode at the moment is playing an Op with a private division of four or five, so probably at least that) with an appropriate number of ships each to make up their own parts of the overall fleet. If that were the case, I would further suggest that there were broad types of task group which players could field, chosen at ship selection, in order to maintain a certain balance of the fleet (so a carrier group has a single CV and then cruisers and destroyers in the other slots; a battle squadron is mostly battleships with some cruiser and/or destroyer support etc.). Unfortunately it would seem that the cost in resources to WG for a mode like that might not be commensurate with the investment, particularly if only one or at best a handful of players are involved. As for RTS features that could be imported into WoWs as it currently stands, there are a couple that spring to mind which might ease the burden on the poor AI: waypoints and patrol routes for ships on autopilot; essentially holding down a key (classically in RTS games it's usually Control) allows the player to set multiple points that their ship will go to in turn, thus allowing them to choose their own route; add the options for the ship to go back along the same course in reverse or head back to the first waypoint and go around again, and you can create a patrol route. I'd suggest having aggressive/neutral/evasive AI modes for autopiloting ships, but a) it would only really benefit carriers and b) it would further encourage/legitimise botting and AFK behaviour, which the game has enough trouble with as is, unless it were heavily restricted (evasive makes the ship travel at full speed and zigzag whenever spotted, aggressive makes it try to keep the most guns on the enemy at once and so forth).

My favourite is basically any Kongo bot in a co-op battle. I've seen one (a friendly on that occasion) take a go at getting past a small island in its path, with no enemies (or friendlies even) within sight or shooting range or anything else to distract it; of course it crashed into the island. The best bit though was that it kept backing up and then charging straight forward for another go, four or five times over, like the island was a windmill and the captain of the Kongo was Don Quixote. The farce was finally ended when the last two enemy bots were obliging enough to feed themselves to the Kongo's guns one by one with plenty of time for him to finish each one off, despite starting out next to each other (after it had taken them literally five minutes to realise that if they went about 100 metres to their left, they could cap A). That's the worst one I've seen so far (outside of an Op. of course), but for some reason the Kongo bots (Bongos?) seem especially dense...

Oh yes, that's always a pain. One of the three in my above example was a König that was about ten seconds away from a steady diet of my own tin fish ;)

Figured this was worth a new post: just played a Domination game on Trident that ended after 3:45 with three enemy ships still basically untouched, one of which was a destroyer. Hoping this is just an outlier rather than a return to prior form.

The problem is as well that AI is hard to code and developing interesting and compelling narrative experiences (like Ops) also requires a lot of individual talent and creativity; you can't just get any old coder to do them. I'm not saying that making arena maps and ship models requires no skill at all, but it's the kind of thing that any dev can do without having to be a specialist (particularly if there are already 3D modelling/art tools available). To hire on more folks who would be good at making more Ops would cost a fair bit more than just having a small team to put out new ships regularly and the odd map now and again, as well as some occasional camos, with everything balanced by spreadsheet for PvP. See also any multiplayer-focused FPS or similar of recent years where the singleplayer campaign is obviously a vestigial tacked-on afterthought. Also, the thought occurs that all that lucrative E-sports attention isn't going to be too interested in watching a team of seven play through an Op. when it could be busy promoting ten or more 'athletes' fighting each other to the virtual death...

Like I said, 'move close to Raptor' is exactly to do with the autopilot for the repair ship. Either that, or the repair ship has orders to 'go to this point on the map', and doesn't know what to do if Raptor is not there. Either way, there's a fix needed with the AI if it can't find the Raptor, when we know bots are capable of knowing at least the direction if not exact position of ships they can't even 'see' by the usual visibility mechanics. And apart from anything else if 'something' happened, like maybe the skybox turning green (which actually wouldn't have anything to do with the autopilot), I'd still ask WG to fix it anyway. All according to plan, Comrade

If the AI can't reacquire another ship just because it's moved a bit, that's still a bug with the AI; by the nature of the Op, people bump into friendlies in Raptor all the time (particularly if they're actually screening the carrier like they're supposed to) which should be taken into account automatically by the devs. I'm somewhat inclined to agree, since we know that the Free XP levels were to blame for the bugs in Narai perhaps WG will decide that it's all those interfering players that are to blame for the problems in the other Ops (because Narai is fixed now), and kick us out for good Much sturdier games such as, for example, World of Tanks... Also, even if the PvE community were quite small, the fact that the game does have PvE (and not just Co-op but Ops as well, which are much more advanced than the usual arena team-deathmatch) is surely enough of a unique selling point that its worth having for marketing reasons alone? Aside from anything else, if a new player wants to get into Ops straight away on starting, they basically have to get a premium or two if they've not yet ground their way up to T6/7.

Except keep them permanently spotted, or watch as their guns and torpedoes are laughably ineffective because they took a full-AA build, or...

Seems like yet another event where no particular effort was expended, I can only imagine that just like for April Fools the majority of development resources are still being concentrated on subs and kept away from 'non-essentials'. Shame, because WoWs events used to be pretty impressive things (thinking about the Halloween Ops and so forth particularly)...

Have to admit, it's annoying in Co-op when playing destroyers that the enemy carrier knows exactly where to vector planes regardless of visibility. Then again, there are so many issues with AI in general and carrier AI in particular that it probably barely rates on the scale...

There's a lot of potential for Ops and new Co-op game modes, both of which are things that set WoWs apart from the common herd of online arena games. Really would love to see more attention and creativity put into PvE. Right now though, the resources are being put into subs and PvP content, so we might have to wait a while...

On the surface, it seems as if the idea is supposed to be 'Player A takes a ship into a battle that cannot rack up damage (no guns) or realistically contest a cap against any kind of opposition (no armour), is unable to spot (too slow, at least based on historical examples) and will be a sitting target for any carrier group that happens by (no AA)'. How, given that all the usual sources have been eliminated, is Player A ever going to make any XP or credits? Then again, introducing aux/support ships means we can bug Wargaming to introduce Russia's mightiest ever naval vessel, the Kamchatka. Anything that gets us closer towards that admirable goal is to be pursued at all costs (and I do mean all: society's laws and common decency be damned, it's the Kamchatka). Therefore, although admittedly it's still pretty unlikely, what about making the support ships something like carriers? By that I mean, effectively they could be tenders for motorboats/launches or squadrons thereof (as has been mentioned already) but each squadron has a specific role like a carrier's planes, albeit support based: One squadron could be general stores/workshop boats that heal a specific friendly ship that they head over to and select as their 'target', until their duration timer is finished and/or their 'supplies are used up' akin to carrier planes (presumably they could move from one friendly to another as long as they still have supplies); another squadron type could ammo resupply boats, and effectively give their targeted ship quicker reload for the duration; a bunch of the usual consumables could be adapted, and the exact combination available on a given ship could be a means of distinguishing the different countries' lines. There could even be the squadron of emergency-support boats (firefighting etc.) that could decrease the duration of fire/flood/module damage aboard their target ship. Then, simply award XP for every HP healed (presumably the most common squadron type) on a par with the usual ratio for damage dealt; a percentage of damage done by the target ship while under the effect of any offensive buffs; a percentage of damage taken by the target ship while under any defensive buff, etc. Worst case, they'd be less generally unpopular than carriers due to not making life difficult without the means to properly reply; they'd effectively be anti-carriers, even. Never go full broadside!

It's always nice to have more historical information, and it would be good to know about ships that were in process of building but for whatever reason never made it into service. Then again, it would probably be pretty embarrassing if WG were obliged to be specific about 'this design was scribbled on the back of a napkin' or even 'we just made this one up completely'...

Presumably the majority of their coding resources are still focused on subs ;)

Thanks, but enabling the trackers doesn't seem to make a difference; I think I'll just give up at this point. As I say though, it let me input the first three codes just fine, I think I even tried the fourth one later the same day after inputting the third and I've certainly not made any changes to my comp myself in that time...

A quick wiki'ing of the first three ships as they appear on the combat missions screen (Implacable, Alabama and DOY) shows that they were in the wrong theatre at the time as all three had been transferred to the Pacific before VE Day. Apparently, Aigle had already been sunk. To be honest, as a co--op player I'm not inclined to commit to multiple grinds that require 60k Commander XP as the first stage, with two further stages after that (all to be done in a week), to get camos ships that I don't actually own or really want (grinding towards New Orleans at the minute but that's about it); I imagine I'll just content myself with whatever odd camos come my way as a result of my regular play.

The Modules tab uses spaces as separators; so do the ships stats box and the doubloons/credits/FXP counters in top right of the port screen. Not having separators elsewhere isn't just lazy, it's pretty inconsistent as well.

Thanks for the tip both; unfortunately it doesn't work in the Firefox equivalent, and I really can't be bothered to download a whole new browser just for the WG website. Unfortunately it seems that I'll have to just miss out on the codes from here on (and after the first three worked without any problems)...

Good points, but I'm not going to take anything as final until I see it in the game client. The communications surrounding PR were too misleading for me to accept pre-release hype at face value at this point. That's not to say that I'm not at all prepared to be impressed by this event, just that I want to be sure before I make judgement. As for not offering doubloons to those who already have Graf Spee, it makes sense for essentially the reason you mentioned: people would get a sizeable discount on the Odin entirely for free if they already have a GS in their port, which would somewhat defeat the purpose of charging for Odin in the first place.

The dockyard animations themselves were a really interesting and impressive part of the PR event and I'm glad to hear that the feature will be making a return. The punishing-to-impossible directives, predatory marketing practices and generally contemptuous communications to the playerbase were what ruined the event, so let's hope they aren't brought back as well. As with other recent events though, I'm going to delay judgement until I see the finalised directives list in the actual game client on the day of release, and treat everything before then (including all promotional messages, thanks to PR) as WIP. Because hey, wouldn't turn down a free Graf Spee if the grind to get her is at all reasonable...

They should be irrespective of launchers as they work through your WG account directly. Or not, in my case still... Edit: it's tomorrow, and I still can't access the code redemption webpage. @MrConway @Crysantos Is there another URL I can use? Have been using https://eu.wargaming.net/shop/redeem so far, both typed and from the account dropdown menu in the top right of the window.