World of Warships: General Quarters!

[Brother Oni]

Hmmm, I must have been playing the Mutsuki so long that I've become blind to her faults, much like a battered spouse suffering from PTSD.

When they hand out the Kamikazes, I'll try it out again as that's pretty much a Minekaze (slightly slower but faster rudder shift time) as I don't have enough port slots to rebuy the Minekaze alas.

As for biggest disappointments, barring moving from the pre-fix Minekaze to the Mutsuki, it must have been moving from the Tenryu to the Kawachi. While I was expecting a change, I wasn't expecting THAT much of a change - it's like comparing a fast, nimble, lightweight MMA fighter at his prime to an over-the-hill, overweight, half-blind heavyweight boxer.

[Storm Bringer]

I think I have finally got the hang of playing my Warspite.

having brought her as a birthday gift to myself (and out of patriotic duty) it took me forever to start winning in it, but the last three or four games have gone really well. I think one of the key discoveries was that a kongo trying to hide at the edge of my range was, in fact, really easy to citadel. I have repeatedly got into 15-16km gunnery duels with them, and routinely come out on top, and often score repeated citadel hits to boot. its good to see that battlecruisers really do have to be careful around proper battleships, and that if they don't play to their strengths, they will get hammered.

she is quite quick to turn as well, though the rudder is slow, once it gets over, she turns quickly. her guns are very slow turning, which is a pig (cant manuver too hard or they just wander off target), but she can take a pounding, and give it out just as well as a New Mex can.

[mangosta71]

New commander skill trees and skill resets. After initially being quite upset about Last Stand not being there any more, I noticed that it's now a tier 2 skill instead of 4, which is quite awesome. I've been weighing the merits of Torpedo Acceleration - +5 knots is nice, but the range reduction... I'm thinking it might be worth it once I get my Fubuki upgraded, and I might grab it for my Soviet DD captain just because he has to get to point-blank range to launch torps anyway, but my USN DD captain might give it a pass until he's high enough level to get Concealment Expert, too.

While the extra range on my Nurnberg's guns was nice in theory, in practice it never really did much good. With that air time, almost everyone maneuvered at some point enough to make them all miss anyway, even when I had a good estimate for the lead and didn't get screwed by the dispersion mechanic. Not that big a deal. Even with the nerf, the skill is still great for AA. And doesn't affect my USN and Russian DDs at all. I might even take it for my IJN DDs, since there's not really anything else at that tier for them now that Last Stand is at 2.

[Storm Bringer]

ok, now that play grounders have had a bit of time to play with the new skill trees, what would people recommend for level 4 for a Cleveland captain? Its really a toss off between the "range increase for secondry and AA" skill, and the new "manual control for AA" skill. I plan to get both, eventually, but that's a while away, so which would be best to get first?

[mangosta71]

I would probably prioritize the increased range over manual control, simply because it allows you to cover your allies from farther away. The way I see it, as long as the airstrike is disrupted you've done your job; you don't have to kill the planes as long as they miss.

On an unrelated note, considering the hoops I had to jump through to unlock the Tachibana, I was really expecting it to be good. The thing is pure garbage. Slower than the Umikaze, worse guns, worse torps...

[Storm Bringer]

for those of you still paying attention to this thread, HMS Warspite is back on sale for next week,

I got one the last time she was available back in October. She is actually a really good ship. she needs the rudder mod, but once you get that, she can turn almost like a cruiser, and much faster than players expect a BB too. She also has a surprisingly effective secondary battery, which has netted me a few kills (with secondary guns mod and skills, it can reach out to 7.6km, which scares the hell out of DDs trying to get a torp run on ya). Also, Her 15 inch guns are sodding powerful for tier 6, and can poke holes in most ships she meets. her biggest drawbacks are shortish range (16KM, longer than the New Mex but shorter than the Fuso, painfully slow turret traverse, and the mediocre AA suite (its fine in conjuction with others, but against t6 or t7 carriers you can be alpha striked into oblivion pretty quickly).

[Storm Bringer]

I HAVE JUST HAD THE BEST ROUND EVER AND I NEED TO TELL SOMEBODY!!!!

in my warspite. with all the trimmings. got premium for the weekend. freaking 7.5 km secondrys just shredded the other team.


8100 XP, 350,000 creds. jesus, man, I;m still in shock.

[Yana]

You know you've done your job in a match when the enemy team accuses you of hacking.

The poor captain in question was sailing broadside to my Benson in a Nurnberg less than 6 km away. Even 127mm AP has no trouble going straight through the armor of a Nurnberg's citadel from that distance.

Still, blind torping a Tirpitz and soloing all three of the enemy team's DDs (two Fubuki and a Mutsuki who inexplicably thought that challenging a BENSON to CQC was a good idea) in addition to taking out the enemy Lexington was one hell of an exciting match and well worth the loss of karma for "Poor Play".

[Storm Bringer]

You know you've done your job in a match when the enemy team accuses you of hacking.

The poor captain in question was sailing broadside to my Benson in a Nurnberg less than 6 km away. Even 127mm AP has no trouble going straight through the armor of a Nurnberg's citadel from that distance.

Still, blind torping a Tirpitz and soloing all three of the enemy team's DDs (two Fubuki and a Mutsuki who inexplicably thought that challenging a BENSON to CQC was a good idea) in addition to taking out the enemy Lexington was one hell of an exciting match and well worth the loss of karma for "Poor Play".

yhea, the cry of "HAX!" is current internet slang for "your a better player, but I refuse to admit that".

in my case, it was the fact I was the last ship standing, vs 2 DD and a nurnberg, and the 2 DDs decided to go glory hound and snap up that juicy BB. they didn't co-ordinate, and I was able to deal with them one at a time, with a mix of secondary's and main guns. the Nurnberg cap was raging in the "all players" chat about how they threw their win away by not playing as a team, and he was right, as 1 on 1 he lasted about 2 salvos of AP.

clearly, none of them had ever seen a warspite properly handed, or had ever seen secondary guns do anything, and so thought approaching form my "blind" side while my turrets were turned the other way was safe. oh, how wrong he was.....

And, just to add to last night, this morning I had a another, almost as epic round in my Kamikaze. Only one kill, but 10 torp hits, all on BBs, added to three point caps, gave me a 7000 XP round (both these scores were prem ship, on prem account, with x2 daily win, by the way. and I never even fired my guns, in proper jap DD style!


karma being what it is, I must be doomed for a week of bad games, now.....

[Yana]

Karma is actually the term that I've heard used to describe the points system that denotes how many reports or compliments that you've received throughout your career.

[Storm Bringer]

Karma is actually the term that I've heard used to describe the points system that denotes how many reports or compliments that you've received throughout your career.

while I was using it in the more general sense, is their anyway you can check your reports/merits? I know I give them out every so often, but I don't know if I ever got any

[Yana]

In your ingame profile, the tab that shows your profile level has a number next to your name like an exponent in math. That is the sum of your Karma.

[Carl]

So had this game yesterday. So sad :(.

Still that much base XP on the losing team, you know you did well.

[Storm Bringer]

random question for your pondering:

why are cruisers so popular?

while the MM can sometimes mask this, when one is looking at the queues population, I have noticed that cruisers are almost always at least 50% of the total players queuing, and I've seen it rise as high as almost 80% of thw queue pop. why is it that cruisers are that much more popular? am I missing something? I happen to enjoy and play well in all three surface combatant ship types, and while I like cruisers, I don't think them inherently better than battleships or destroyers. its notable that their are currently 4 different cruiser trees, to 3 destroyer trees and just 2 battleship and carrier trees.

so, what am I missing here? why is the mid range ship so much more popular than its bigger or smaller cousins?

[AdmiralCheez]

Cruisers are more or less the "well-rounded" combat ship. Destroyers are fast but weak, while battleships are strong but slow. Cruisers kinda fit in the middle with decent firepower, decent armor, and decent speed. I'd guess that that's why they seem to be so popular. They're just a good overall ship type.

[Carl]

Probably because at low to mid tiers a well played cruiser is easily the best and there are now 4 cruiser lines to 2 bb and carrier lines and 3 dd lines. And dd's are hard mode. Of course occasionally tings go wrong, like they did for that poor atago that i delted in one salvo in my new mex a little while ago. I felt so bad about that one.

[mangosta71]

Cruisers tend to do the most damage because they have the least shell dispersion and highest rate of fire. DDs (especially at high tiers) suffer from really long reload times on their primary weapons, and then those weapons are really easy to dodge unless you get to point blank range (which you won't survive unless you manage a successful ambush). DDs also get their engines/rudders knocked out pretty much any time a shell lands within half a mile of the ship. Also, once you get to mid-tier, DDs are only 1-2 knots faster than cruisers, and you lose that speed advantage if you're weaving to try to dodge fire.

BBs are big and don't generally turn very quickly, so they tend to be easy targets for people to gang up on and blast to oblivion.

Cruisers are my favorite targets when I'm driving a BB, and I do everything I can to avoid them as a DD. There's also the little matter of the mismatch in mid-to-mid-high tier cruisers in the USN line: if balance were taken into consideration, the Pensacola would be t6, New Orleans would be t7, and Cleveland would be t8 (as evidence, consider that the Mikhail Kutuzov is, for all intents and purposes, a Cleveland). At t6, the Cleveland gets fantastic matchmaking, so it's probably the single most popular ship in the game.

[Carl]

Whilst i agree the cleveland is a bit undertiered at it's current stats it isn't really equal to the MK, the latter has way better HP, range, and shell arcs. The cleveland would need some serious buffage to keep up at T8 IMO.

[Yana]

Finally got my first t10 ship, the USN Des Moines. It's... interesting to say the least. The sheer firepower that its 203 mm guns can output is terrifying, especially once you get the right lead on your targets. The AA on this cruiser is probably the best in the game, with multiple twin 76 mm cannons that have an absurd amount of dps against planes with the same range that the 127 mm secondary batteries have. Thanks to the addition of the radar consumable, it can see ANYTHING within 10 km for a good 40 seconds, which is ample time to put an unwary DD into the watery depths. As my concealment loadout brings its detection range down to a meager 10.6 km.

With situation awareness (which is a skill I suggest that all ships get, including BBs just for the additional information), I know when I've been spotted if I'm not firing and consequently know when the optimal time to use that radar is.

The downsides are pretty painful to work with though. It has flimsy armor if you're not bow on (and even then, most BBs will citadel you if they can hit you directly), so you rarely get to use all three of your guns. Speaking of the guns, the shell arc and velocity is high and low respectively, which makes it hard to hit targets at the max range of the ship. That range being a pathetic 15.8 km. At t10. You pretty much have to fork over the additional 3 million credits to extend that range if you want to compete with the Moskova, Hindenburg, or Zao.

That being said, I've had a blast with it. The last game I played with it saw me deal 180k damage (pretty evenly broken up between AP, HE, and fire) and obtain 3.3k base xp. As I'm running premium currently, that got bumped up to nearly 8k along with 550k credits.

Oh, and there's an event going on that makes USN cruisers easier to purchase and they earn more credits, so there's no better time to take them out for a spin.

And I also managed to appear on someone else's youtube vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyQZ7dzoHN0

[Carl]

Cool. The DM is considered the worst of the T10 cruisers for all the reasons you've listed though.

[mangosta71]

The event lasts for 2 weeks, which, given the amount of time I'm able to play, may allow me to unlock the New Orleans. (I managed to get the Nagato a day or two before the IJN BB event ended. I also just unlocked the Kirov, Kiev, and Yorck, but those aren't related to events.)

I managed a Kraken Unleashed in my Svietlana (sent the replay to Jingles; he hasn't done a Svietlana video yet, and I don't expect to see a lot of better games in that ship). I started the match charging where I expected the enemy CV to be, killed a DD and a CL on the way, and when I emerged from the islands I found myself facing a trio of BBs. Fortunately I was in torp range and their guns were pointing the wrong direction to engage me, so I was able to sink two of them and get torps into the water (which killed the last of them) before they finished me off. Also got some damage on the CV, which was right where I had predicted it would be.

And that brings me to the biggest complaint I have about the game: torpedo reload time. It's pretty quick at low tiers, but at high tiers it's just ridiculous, especially given how easy torpedoes are to avoid when they're not fired from point-blank. BB players would rage if it took 2 minutes to reload their guns and then shells had a minute or more flight time, but that's what DD players have to deal with.

And, not a complaint but an observation of an oddity: the Soviet navy was not involved in a single notable surface action in WWII. The Russian navy was pretty much annihilated in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905, and it didn't get rebuilt until after WWII. The Soviets had a handful of old ships, and none of them saw action beyond shore bombardment. I have no idea why WG decided to put in two lines of mostly imaginary ships before the Royal Navy, which actually played a significant role in the war.

[Carl]

Heh yeah i sent the atlanta, Dirpitz and a Konigsberg game to Jedi the other day. The Konigsbergs more of a funny one. only did 60k, which is good but not spectacular in a konig. The funny part was the sheer dammed amount of cruiser torpedo kills by both teams in that game. Nearly everything on both teams died to the stuff. The chatbox in this image sums it up nicely.

[Storm Bringer]

And, not a complaint but an observation of an oddity: the Soviet navy was not involved in a single notable surface action in WWII. The Russian navy was pretty much annihilated in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905, and it didn't get rebuilt until after WWII. The Soviets had a handful of old ships, and none of them saw action beyond shore bombardment. I have no idea why WG decided to put in two lines of mostly imaginary ships before the Royal Navy, which actually played a significant role in the war.

In short, "politics",

Wargaming.net is a Russian based company, with a large Russian fanbase, form World of Tanks, that pays lots of money. Ergo, they need to keep their Russian fans happy and spending by giving them Russian warships to play with (just like they gave them lots of Russian tanks and Russian airplanes in their other two games).

plus, the Russians were in the process of building a new fleet in 1941, with several new capital ships on the slips being built, with others on planned after the war. I expect to see both of those classes introduced into the game at a later date.


thirdly, IIRC they mentioned in the new years video they are planning on introducing a second German line before they add the Royal navy, specifically, a German BB line, form SMS Nassau to bismark and on to H-39 and H-41 (with suitable names added, I assume)

[Carl]

Well bear in mind even the russian community is giving them grief over this. When asked they said they wanted more german and RN ships first. I suspect we got the RU cruisers in the place of RN ships. Apparently WG'ing is having issues getting at certain documents they need so they got pushed back an undisclosed amount. The first RN line was supposed to be before the second german one initially.

[Abemad]

I had a pretty awesome game in my Aoba the other day (one of my first games in it), while I failed to land a single torpedo hit, I still managed to do 107k damage

Spoiler

Show

I sent the replay to jingles (It felt like an interesting game)...

[mangosta71]

Every match I get into in the Nagato, I move up to try to support my team, but as soon as the guns start firing they all turn tail and leave me hanging. I hate people. So much.

[Carl]

I so know that feeling :). And by the time you realise, too late gg no re.

[AdmiralCheez]

It's like that old saying: "Last one to leave gets stuck with the check." Except instead of a bill, you get the full taste of the enemy fleet's guns.

[mangosta71]

Nagato is too slow; even if I try to start withdrawing at the same time it's too late. I have to bail out first to have any chance.

[Yana]

I managed to participate in a live stream yesterday and this video carries some of the highlights. In particular, pay attention to the last match on North. My team was out matched both in terms of DDs and BBs and yet.... well, you'll see.

https://youtu.be/M8n5vaZ9Sgo