When does camping become a problem?

[CaptainObese]

Lately I have been getting a lot of complains when playing island camping ships like Salem and Worcester. Apperently it is my fault that people die when they are the ones sailing in the open, bowtanking and getting HE spammed to death. This got me thinking. See, dealing damage without getting hit yourself is great. However the enemy team has one less ship too shoot, which means that other ships will sink sooner because of the more concentrated fire. (less ships being spotted = more concentraded fire on the ones being spotted). This effect only increases the more campers there are on one team. This problem poses the question: When does camping become a problem? Conserving HP for late game is good, there not being a late game because 3/4 of your team dies within the first 5 min of the match not so much. Is there anything I can do to help my teammates not die while playing ships requiring this type of playstyle? When I am getting called out for playing safe, I can't say anything back because the best way to survive is too not take damage at all but how do you explain to people that taking damage is not some sort of heoric self sacrifice but rather stupid? 

[ColonelPete]

It becomes a problem when you cannot support your team and the objectives.

As long as you can do that, you are fine.

[Itwastuesday]

I didn't read your post, but you're playing islandcamp ships so you islandcamp. It becomes a problem when everybody does it.

[DFens_666]

Its a problem, when ships that can tank are camping at islands, namely BBs.

Also there is no tanking for the team, since you cant force the enemy to shoot a specific ship. If several ships die within 4 mins, they made retarded mistakes by showing broadside. Nothing will prevent them from dying, because why would you shoot an angled BB, when you have a Cruiser showing broadside to you?

[Padds01]

1 hour ago, CaptainObese said:

 When does camping become a problem? 

 

not sure over a year ago for sure

[Hades_warrior]

2 hours ago, CaptainObese said:

Lately I have been getting a lot of complains when playing island camping ships like Salem and Worcester. Apperently it is my fault that people die when they are the ones sailing in the open, bowtanking and getting HE spammed to death. This got me thinking. See, dealing damage without getting hit yourself is great. However the enemy team has one less ship too shoot, which means that other ships will sink sooner because of the more concentrated fire. (less ships being spotted = more concentraded fire on the ones being spotted). This effect only increases the more campers there are on one team. This problem poses the question: When does camping become a problem? Conserving HP for late game is good, there not being a late game because 3/4 of your team dies within the first 5 min of the match not so much. Is there anything I can do to help my teammates not die while playing ships requiring this type of playstyle? When I am getting called out for playing safe, I can't say anything back because the best way to survive is too not take damage at all but how do you explain to people that taking damage is not some sort of heoric self sacrifice but rather stupid? 

Teams are dying within first 5 minutes of the match because there is too many campers in the game that are afraid of scratching paint on their camos so they camp in the back in believe that running away from battle (and away from giving support to team mates) is a good play.

[Deckeru_Maiku]

2 hours ago, CaptainObese said:

When does camping become a problem?

Usually as soon it is started.

[Mad_Dog_Dante]

1 hour ago, DFens_666 said:

Its a problem, when ships that can tank are camping at islands, namely BBs.

Also there is no tanking for the team, since you cant force the enemy to shoot a specific ship. If several ships die within 4 mins, they made retarded mistakes by showing broadside. Nothing will prevent them from dying, because why would you shoot an angled BB, when you have a Cruiser showing broadside to you?

I had it this moring: a DM took a defensive island corner position, which was fine. Then 3 BBs sat behind him. After I capped and pushed forward in my DD I was forced to return to these , due to lack of support and weight behind my attack, which gave the enemy room to push. Later our other 2 BBs joined the inert blob which resulted in absolutely nothing except a excruciating loss. 

[Captain_Newman]

If someone accuses you of camping in something like a GK, you're probably too far away. If they do it while you're locking down a cap behind an island in your DM, or burning down the enemy from long range in an Azuma, then they just lack understanding on how these ships are played and should be ignored. You should play the ships in the way that suits them best, not yolo and die because some 42%er idiot that doesn't understand the game doesn't want you to "camp".

[Camperdown]

Camping is mainly a problem with BBs. When DDs stay back and do not spot, it is a similar problem, but is usually not called camping. 

You describe hugging an island in a cruiser. That is not a problem imo when you have a good line of fire to support your DD. If you cannot support your DD by firing at the enemy DD or an enemy cruiser that is attacking him, you are camping and it is a problem. There are exceptions to this, if supporting your DD would get you killed or badly damaged, say losing over half your HP in seconds. In that case your DD should be aware that he is overextended and cannot be supported.

BBs often camp by staying at long range when the tactical situation clearly requires them to push or tank. In that situation you see cruisers taking the damage which a BB should tank. It really irritates me when they combine that with spamming F7 

[Itwastuesday]

BTW, just in a match, Wooster leaves islandcamp in my view. Guess what happens?

 

Yup, 9 overpens!

 

But he still died.

[GarrusBrutus]

3 hours ago, CaptainObese said:

When does camping become a problem?

When your teams needs you to tank some damage and you stay hidden for the enemy team.

 

3 hours ago, CaptainObese said:

Is there anything I can do to help my teammates not die while playing ships requiring this type of playstyle?

Preferably try to find a DD that is able and willing to communicate with you. Having a DD teammate who understands the benefit of teamplay and the synergy it provides with light cruisers makes all the difference in the world. Sometimes a friendly DD providing smoke early game can be game changing by enabling you to get into aggressive positions. The best version of this is ofcourse a division mate who you are on comms with.

Also, do not play one single strategy on each map. For example a Worcester can be really strong on the flank, kiting a strong enemy force. Even a mino kiting on the flank can be a big nuisance for the enemy team.

4 hours ago, CaptainObese said:

When I am getting called out for playing safe, I can't say anything back because the best way to survive is too not take damage at all but how do you explain to people that taking damage is not some sort of heoric self sacrifice but rather stupid? 

Ofcourse its stupid to get yourself deleted early on. That would be a waste of your ship.

But look at it like a trade-off: If you have a low hp teammate under fire and you are still full hp behind a rock, it could be useful to present your own ship as a more juicy target for the enemies so that your teammate might get shot less and survive. Ofcourse this is risky business since you might just offer yourself on a silver platter as a second free kill for the enemies, but the message I am trying to convey here is that even light cruisers can tank using WASD-keys and they too can trade HP in a positive way. I've head matches in Worcester where I tanked more than 2 million potential damage by continiously kiting the enemies and using WASD. It is hard to master but most certainly possible.

Golden rule here is that your HP becomes more valuable the longer a match lasts. Trade some of it at the start to get an enemy DD killed? Great trade. Trade most of it to get an enemy DD lightly damaged? Bad trade.

[ForlornSailor]

3 hours ago, Itwastuesday said:

I didn't read your post, but you're playing islandcamp ships so you islandcamp. It becomes a problem when everybody does it.

 

I disagree with that. If everyone does it, you will profit from it if you do it better then everyone else.

 

IMO the truth is hidden here:

 

25 minutes ago, GarrusBrutus said:

When your teams needs you to tank some damage and you stay hidden for the enemy team.

 

And with the ships related to that. Some ships dont do well when tanking. If we stay on T10 and especially cruisers, Minotaur, Des Moines (thanks for oversaturation of 457+ mm BBs) and Smolensk come to mind. How could you help your team by drawing fire in those ships, when the enemy have a Stalingrad sitting bow in tanking your teams shots? And here is the problem: When you bring a ship, that isnt made for tanking, while the matchmaker puts a heavy-tanking cruiser against you (like Stalingrad or Puerto Rico) then the enemys are at an advantage in that category right away. There is nothing you can do about it and risking your ship doesnt make it better. What you need to do, is be more effective at dealing damage then the enemys. This way, you can win this race of tanking vs. damage dealing and turn the odds of winning in your favour. Now if the said ships are generally better at dealing damage then the tanky cruisers is ofc another question and a matter of balancing. And completly down to how your team plays it. If people cant read the line ups, dont understand the advantages and disadvantages given and play accordingly, you can think about your own playstyle and ship as much as you want, its not gonna help winning the game.

 

4 hours ago, CaptainObese said:

but how do you explain to people that taking damage is not some sort of heoric self sacrifice but rather stupid? 

 

See above - you dont, you cant. People asking squishy glass cannons to tank are a lost cause at that moment. And they wont listen to anything you can say to them in the short period of the game anyway. Ive tried many times and with the expection of 2 or 3 occasions, they will just get more angry at you.

[Itwastuesday]

13 minutes ago, ForlornSailor said:

 

I disagree with that. If everyone does it, you will profit from it if you do it better then everyone else.

Huh? How do you profit from it when your team sees nothing and can't do anything while you also have an islandcamp ship and all the cap zones are red?

[CaptainObese]

1 hour ago, GarrusBrutus said:

kiting a strong enemy force. Even a mino kiting on the flank can be a big nuisance for the enemy team.

I tried this, I am not disappointed with the result. If only my team could get some use out of my work and actually help me. 

2 mil potential dmg at the time of dying. (1.5M after the first 8 min). I turned in because I thought I had support from these people and then all of a sudden they are all waiting behind the island, all of them more then half HP. Most of them over 3/4 of their HP.

They could easy kill that moskva since he has no where to go.

They could kill the carrier that is running away.

Yet they decide to stay, turning me into a sitting duck since I cannot turn out because of the massa infront of me.

Oh how the tables have turned.

 

[mjasinsk]

smolensk is a crap, mistake and together wiyth Kremllin Petropavlowsk and Nevsky drea about never existed power of russian fleet. It is pitiful. Smolensk have range like a heavy cruiser, smoke like two dd's together and speed like cv..... It is so funny....

 

[GarrusBrutus]

1 hour ago, CaptainObese said:

I tried this, I am not disappointed with the result. If only my team could get some use out of my work and actually help me.

In the screenshot I see three teammates without clantags, which most likely means they've never even heard of the word "teamplay".

Besides, your team already has two caps, so no need to push for a third at the time of dying (which means your team had a points advantage).

At that point there was no need for you to tank damage but you could go back to the classic camp & spam playstyle.

In this instance I would have tried to get into a firing position behind that island, let my teammates tank and spot so I could farm damage.

The enemies were down on points and had to push at some point.

 

[ForlornSailor]

2 hours ago, Itwastuesday said:

Huh? How do you profit from it when your team sees nothing and can't do anything while you also have an islandcamp ship and all the cap zones are red?

 

Thats an interesting, super skewed view. For what reason exactly would the red team have all caps when the innitial situation was both teams camping at islands? And how come they see me behind my island while I dont see them behind their island? How come my team cant do anything while the enemy team can/could? Super weird. Anyway my point stays: Heavy camping matches I dont care. They are easy to win and controled in your favour. Reason how to do it and way is explained above perfectly from my friend @GarrusBrutus with the edit on the screenshot.

[HMS_Kilinowski]

18 hours ago, CaptainObese said:

Lately I have been getting a lot of complains when playing island camping ships like Salem and Worcester. Apperently it is my fault that people die when they are the ones sailing in the open, bowtanking and getting HE spammed to death. This got me thinking. See, dealing damage without getting hit yourself is great. However the enemy team has one less ship too shoot, which means that other ships will sink sooner because of the more concentrated fire. (less ships being spotted = more concentraded fire on the ones being spotted). This effect only increases the more campers there are on one team. This problem poses the question: When does camping become a problem? 

 

Camping becomes a problem if it prevents a player from exerting influence on his part of the map, specifically the cap area he is closest to.

 

I do not claim the following theory perfectly describes reality. It's more of a mathematical concept:

 

A good way of thinking is that every ship is a force that keeps enemies away from himself and others.

This force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between respective ships. In plain english: The further away you are, the less you are a force in the sense that you are a threat, and not by a small amount but distance has a huge impact.

If you think of a Großer Kurfürst, this thing practically chews all smaller ships to pieces at close range, so it's a huge no-go-zone. If this ship is close to a cap, it will require a lot of enemy presence to push it away.

Compare that to a Thunderer camping at maximum distance. It plays it safe ... safe for himself, not for others. It may light fires, yes, but most cruisers can do that, too. While it is back there, enemy ships can push into the cap zone. Friendly DDs cannot stay and defend as there is no muscle behind them. The friendly team needs to fall back and loses control over an area of the map, where the enemy team can dig in and create crossfires. This is the first step to a loss.

 

So how does the camping cruiser fit into this? By "crossing the T". Strange way of puting it I admit, but essentially it's just that. Crossing the T - as an abstract construct - means to arrange your ship's ideal fighting distance with the other ships on your part of the map, so everyone can shoot the same target at the same time as it comes into range.

 

If you can do that, be in this line, then you can camp and it will not cause any problems. So the trick is to find a piece of cover that is as close as possible to that ideal line. Of course, specifically as a radar cruiser you need to be able to push in a bit - ideally unseen - to radar the cap. But you will do that with your camping position in mind, so you can fall back into cover or run, if needed.

 

Quote

Conserving HP for late game is good, there not being a late game because 3/4 of your team dies within the first 5 min of the match not so much. Is there anything I can do to help my teammates not die while playing ships requiring this type of playstyle? When I am getting called out for playing safe, I can't say anything back because the best way to survive is too not take damage at all but how do you explain to people that taking damage is not some sort of heoric self sacrifice but rather stupid? 

 

This idea is not as absolute as you think it is. Taking damage often is a zero sum game. In every game some ships will be spotted and shot at at every moment. You are right, taking damage is not about a heroic self-sacrifice, it is a calculus. Like in a real-time strategy game, you will not expose a single unit to focussed fire. Your enemy player will try to focus a unit and you will retreat it to a position where the enemy units expose if they follow it, so they let it go. Then you will try to heal that unit, while other units take over the frontal position and tank damage. In RTS, the player who can distribute the firepower of his opponent over as many units as possible, while decimating the enemy units sequentially, will win the battle. Same goes for WoWs.

 

The reason why teams die fast is that players are stupid or selfish - also a kind of stupid. If you are selfish, you need to realize that every player could operate under the same rules. What will happen if every player is selfish? As soon as he gets shot, he will start retreating, so others tank for him while he can farm damage from a safe position. So now the next ships gets focussed and starts running selfishly. It's a vicious circle that turns into a racing retreat on a complete flank. One can see it quite often, especially on red teams.

Pretty much the same happens, when every player is overly brave, so he pushes in ahead of his team. You can see that often when weak sides do not realize they are weak, so they get greedy and try to be first to farm damage, basically feeding themselves to the enemy team one after another like villains in a Bud Spencer movie.

 

So you, as everyone, need to realize that there is no such thing as absolute survival. It's about maintaining a balance of aggression of the enemy team. Even a small squishy cruiser can pose as a weak target for a moment, so a Yamato stops firing at a heavily damaged team mate. By the time he got his turrets on you, you go dark. Even weak ships can take a hit or two, the mentioned Salem can even take a lot of damage for a cruiser. I have seen Smolensks abusing their weakness and the hate the playerbase feels towards it to bait a huge volume of potential damage, relieving their team mates and thus keeping them alive until late game.

There is no point conserving your ship, if you practically don't exist for the enemy team, if all their aggression remains focussed on your team mates. So you gotta keep that in mind and strike a balance between surviving and drawing attention.

 

And no, you cannot explain that concept to other players during battle. Either they know or they will not understand it anyway, not during a battle. Discussing during a battle takes away attention from where it belongs, on the map and on the enemy. WoWs is not designed to have discussions. You could have them back in port, but (a) most players are not interested in discussion anyway and (b) the in-battle discussion is just a pretense to blaming others for an anticipated loss instead of oneself, no epiphany will arise from a fixed point of view.

[Bindolaf_Werebane]

8 hours ago, Itwastuesday said:

BTW, just in a match, Wooster leaves islandcamp in my view. Guess what happens?

 

Yup, 9 overpens!

 

But he still died.

Play Petro next time for avoid capitalist overpens.

[Ubertron_X]

The "problem" with ships that rely on "camping" as part of their game mechanics is that being dependent on cover those ships usually excel in a defensive role (ships that carry mobile cover aka smoke can usually be more active of course), while not providing much teamplay apart from additional firepower (but usually a lot of it). They often do not provide spotting (stealth radar behind islands can be a game changer though), usually need a spotter themselves and are not at all helping in sharing the load of incomming fire which means that friendly ships in the open might be overwhelmed unnecessarily.

 

My biggest gripes with this kind of ships however is the kind of gameplay they enforce on the enemy team.

 

Counter tactics involve coordinated overrun attacks (if your flank already has the strength in numbers) in order to minimize the time that your team will be subject to said firepower, which however are almost impossible to pull off in random mode due to the sheer amount of coordination required. Thus the more typical counterplay in random games is trying to sort things out from afar, i.e. staying your distance so the "camping" ships impact is minimized, killing his supporting ships first (he can have all the cover he wants if all his spotters are dead) and dislodge and kill him once you have secured an overwhelming superiority in a ranged shootout. However in effect this means that you are now camping yourselves because the enemy ship and his cover are too strong to initiate aggressive action against.

 

Camping ship types are one (but not the only) major reason why, e.g. BBs tend to stay at range and not support their team properly, because even the most unattentive players will eventually learn that attacking an otherwise unassailable enemy will have them sunk pretty fast. So as far as I am concerned camping promotes (counter) camping.

 

 

[DFens_666]

1 hour ago, Ubertron_X said:

Camping ship types are one (but not the only) major reason why, e.g. BBs tend to stay at range and not support their team properly,

 

But i think, Camping comes from too many and too accurate BBs in the first place. Would you go with your Wooster on Ocean towards a cap so you can radar it? That essentially means, you are first in line & spotted, while being in range to pretty much all enemy BBs without cover. Chances are much higher, that you die instead of the enemy DD you try to radar.

Adding more and more 457mm guns on TX, which can pretty much overmatch any Cruiser doesnt help camping, as even CAs, which used to be able to bounce atleast some BBs, are faced with getting overmatched top to bottom. If they angle so they wont get citadelled, they most likely will get chunked by pens instead. And if you wanna dodge, you need to sit at 16+km aswell.

[Ubertron_X]

23 minutes ago, DFens_666 said:

But i think, Camping comes from too many and too accurate BBs in the first place. Would you go with your Wooster on Ocean towards a cap so you can radar it? That essentially means, you are first in line & spotted, while being in range to pretty much all enemy BBs without cover. Chances are much higher, that you die instead of the enemy DD you try to radar.

Adding more and more 457mm guns on TX, which can pretty much overmatch any Cruiser doesnt help camping, as even CAs, which used to be able to bounce atleast some BBs, are faced with getting overmatched top to bottom. If they angle so they wont get citadelled, they most likely will get chunked by pens instead. And if you wanna dodge, you need to sit at 16+km aswell.

This is of course correct and another major contributing factor to why camping happens in the first place. WoWs in general does a bad job in depicting the real life order of battle for various reasons (obviously balance), mostly because any ship type is expected to pose a danger to and be able to damage and sink every other ship type. For example in the battle of the Denmark strait cruiser Prinz Eugen was targeted first only by mistake (because even a heavy cruiser was not considered a major threat to a battleship) whereas in-game the cruiser would always be targeted first on purpose (because it is a more than credible threat to any battleship). However I fear that there may be no easy way out of this especially as cruisers within any given battle are likely to be outnumbered by the also present enemy battleships (another major deviation from the real life order of battle by the way) and their ever increasing gun calibers.

 

One possible countermeasure to lessen the impact of said overabundance of battleships on cruisers that I have had in my mind for some time now would be to radically change starting positions for each ship class.

 

* Each and every battleship start in a rather forward central map position

* All cruisers start on either flanks

* Destroyers keep their staring positions, i.e. center or either flank

 

This would hopefully a) eliminate the danger of battleship crossfire during the early stages of the battle and b) enable some cruiser on cruiser action on the flanks and c) enable some battleship on battleship action in the center (provided there is adequate spotting).

[LemonadeWarriorITA]

Camping becomes a problem when you don't contribute to the game. You win the game by having more points than the enemy when the timer runs out, when you reach 1,000 points or when the enemy reaches 0 points.

 

Why did you decide to open fire bow on? It is very risky and as you found out you got hard spotted in the end. Why didn't you take a more relaxing approach. Points were equal and you had plenty of time left. 
Camping is perfectly viable for any ship when you contribute to your objective. Just because you are a battleship doesn't mean you have to lose HP for no reason... ;)

PS: Look into the overmatch mechanic. Ships like Salem can be extremely tanky.

[Yedwy]

19 hours ago, CaptainObese said:

When does camping become a problem?

Camping is nearly always a problem, however what you describe with Desmo/Salem aint camping as such, it can be if you are static and dont go from cover to cover with the flow of the battle but it aint camping per se, these ships are made and balanced around using island cover and thats just how they are...