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I thought Battleship shooting at close range was improved? Shot a DD at close range and the shots made nice little puddles around the ship, i was in a Fuso

How close? My South Carolina ended one at close range, 4km ish. HE, several hits, sunk. After 2 south Carolinas playing hunt the DD for nearly 5 minutes at longer range, and some ,80+ rounds each. Player was very good though, very hard to get a course or speed.

Dispersion does still suck.

At closer range a BB gets its Secondary batteries and its Main Batteries are also more accurate, though American guns are more accurate at shorter ranges and Japanese at longer ranges.

Personally I try to avoid getting within 8KM of a target, especially those armed with Torpedoes and I prefer to keep them at a range of at least 12KM as this allows me to pound them with little risk of return fire.

South Carolina despite what some say ive found not that bad. the T4 US im finding harder to get due to that rather odd turret layout placing most of my guns aft.

meeting a Kongo in a T3 battleship, well that hurts alot though. despite its thin armour it has a massive range and speed advantage.

19 vs 11.5 km range..... and it had 14 inch guns not my 12's.

Not too sure about this one; there are things that make me skeptical about the continued level of playability and long-term health of the game as a whole for those not into it as a hard core playstyle.
Or else those with some kind of potential masochistic streak that playing this outside of coop or low Tier satisfies for the time being.

Namely, a bit too much of it has turned out to be rather unfun.


I can accept micro-transaction as a basis for getting ahead, because after all WG has to pay for creating and upkeeping the game.
Or the folks who charge ahead and die right off, only to then spend the rest of the game complaining about how no one supported their unannounced maneuver, often followed by how no one else knows how to perfectly play a less than four month old public release.
A lot of that is just the nature of PvP gaming, and also due to the choice made by the designers to award XP points based on damage more than winning.


Some of the (I assume) deliberately designed ships you have to grind through seem more likely to drive folks away however instead of just being a paywall; you finally eke out enough XP for the next ship only to immediately end up playing the exact same thing all over again.

For the most part I'm talking about the Tier 4 & Tier 5 USNavy and German cruisers; I imagine sniper ships are probably a lot of fun for Beta testing folks who've played the game a year or more.
But for the general public, not so much, and not just for myself judging by the comments in game and on the official forums.

Problem is that these ships as implemented depend both on your ability to aim while dodging fire/capturing/whatnot as well as how the random number generator in the game engine trends for that match, not to mention whatever amount of ping/system lag/FPS bug may be occurring.
Watching shells impact, and doing no damage, then finding out in the after game report that you didn't actually hit at all as you thought is very off-putting.

The aptly named Phoenix is almost always instantly on fire after just one hit all game long, as well as the follow-on Omaha, just not as much.
You get out of the ''everybody shoot at this easy to kill yet all but ineffective'' Karlsruhe only to end up in the Königsberg, which is even more fragile if possible.

I mean literally, you're incredibly lucky if each hit isn't incapacitating the engine, steering, or magazines if not outright destroying a turret or making the ship go BOOM.
I looked over the WoWs forum and Beta testers noted all of these faults; yet here we are in public release with a ship that may not last the first few minutes of a battle simply to net that player a whopping 80 XP points (if that, as zero is also a possibility).
Experience necessary for the next ship (also a sniper type); 8K for Hull (B) upgrade path + 38K = 46,000 points, with a very good game probably netting you as much as 1,500 XP.

A good game might net the player of such a ship ~900 points, with a typical game usually in the 200 to 500 range.


Another problem is allowing one specific type of ship to be able to exploit (yes, I said exploit) how the game functions; by this I'm talking destroyers.
Starting at Tier 5, if you even see one in the first place you can't hardly hit it, and if you do hit it you'll usually just incapacitate it instead of doing any serious damage; which the DD captain then either instantly repairs or simply ignores with the appropriate skill.

I haven't kept track, but it is not uncommon for a destroyer at those Tiers to be in one of the top three for XP each battle on each team, if not in the number one position.
One noticeable instance of this happened just last night on the Straits map; a Farragut was able to chase down and all but destroy a Königsberg; which managed to hit the DD at least once right in the bow within >3KM from both aft (triple 15 cm) turrets yet hardly even scratched the paint.

That destroyer's XP points fort the battle; 2,100-odd, which is not atypical at those tiers for those ship types.


Eventually I hope to grind up to a cruiser tougher than an equal Tier destroyer; in the mean time I'll be playing sniper whilst a single DD takes out four or more of the team in quick succession at a capture point.
What a division (3+) of such ships can do in one place should be pretty obvious.

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Phoenix, I have found her very good, once you get b hull, anti fire perk. Faster rotating guns etc. Becomes a large destroyer.

Using her speed I have got 150k credits, 3 kills + max2400 XP, normally get 600 out a battle.

It's basicly a large destroyer with lots of guns, it plays nothing like the St Louis battle cruiser.

It's dangerous, just got to play quite a few games to master her.

Kongo plays more like a Cruiser than a BB, it can be fun, though people bitch loudly when you don't snipe and carry instead.

Kongo packs a real wallop though, and speed wise is unmatched. Just don,t brawl close up with a Wyoming! Kongo did not like it.

Not many ships useless, just got to play right.

 jhe90 wrote:
Kongo packs a real wallop though, and speed wise is unmatched. Just don,t brawl close up with a Wyoming! Kongo did not like it.

I've brawled it against a New Mexico and won. What did you do that the Wyoming killed you?

 jhe90 wrote:
[..] Not many ships useless, just got to play right.

I might call Bravo Sierra on that; how many folks are going to bother finding a guide or video online to figure out a better strategy instead of just giving up on a ship that is an endless source of frustration rather than fun.
Case in point being the Königsberg, as earlier I gave one most of two HE broadsides with a Kongo from inside a capture circle yet it didn't blow, just module hits; which is completely contrary to every time I've played that ship where the health simply evaporates if you don't BOOM.

One big potential problem is that the beta test folks who are probably getting to some point of burn out by now aren't going to keep the game financed either if other folks lose interest, as seems to be happening with World of Warplanes.
Community-wise, the only thing of major annoyance I've seen so far is carrier-fever, especially when the folks who go haring off after it in a battle don't manage to actually kill it, even more so if they all get slaughtered whilst trying to find/reach it.


The Kongo seems okay even with just the speed upgrade, if it would stop getting sunk by phantom torpedoes on and off - where you apparently don't actually see the entire spread or whatnot until in the end of game report.
Cleveland can be fun, despite still having trouble fighting DDs as well as the huge bulls-eye you paint on yourself, apart from not really having anywhere to go from then on with the XP except to yet another light cruiser variation.

For the USNavy BBs, I think it is a mistake including the Montana as Tier-10 instead of being a premium, Iowa should have been fine to allow more variation in the tech tree than going from the Wyoming to the almost identical New York.
Something folks might have liked to play was the Lexington-class battlecruiser and the WG folks certainly don't have any problems using paper designs.

USN cruisers should probably have gone Erie -> Chester -> St. Louis -> Omaha -> Pensacola -> Cleveland -> (New Orleans/Brooklyn/something else) -> Baltimore -> Des Moines -> Alaska as well for more variety, and because the Orleans/Northampton seems a bit pointless in both the tech tree and its Tier.
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 BaronIveagh wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Kongo packs a real wallop though, and speed wise is unmatched. Just don,t brawl close up with a Wyoming! Kongo did not like it.

I've brawled it against a New Mexico and won. What did you do that the Wyoming killed you?

Caught the kongo with its guns facing the wrong way, had AP loaded and was close enough that the accuracy was OK on usn guns. Must have been doing as large turn before I rounded corner.

Normally die horribley at range. But close up could not use speed as well, and with some luck and I think there mistakes, I sunk her. Why you put a fast agile warship in close qauters islands?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Got to go , leave a extended and worthy reply when I can

 jhe90 wrote:
Why you put a fast agile warship in close quarters islands?

Kongo, with upgrades and skills, has a secondary damage bubble that rivals her main guns dps that extends out to about 6km. Also, the 'agile' part means that you can maneuver in close and screen with the islands. It sounds like he plain did not know you were there until it was too late.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Why you put a fast agile warship in close quarters islands?

Kongo, with upgrades and skills, has a secondary damage bubble that rivals her main guns dps that extends out to about 6km. Also, the 'agile' part means that you can maneuver in close and screen with the islands. It sounds like he plain did not know you were there until it was too late.

True. Though I have seen some pretty high scoring kongo players stay abit further out, using the extra range and speep to rapidly move between islands, not the smaller gaps but wider ones and using the sheer pace to get round, shoot and be gone before they can turn
there guns.

I mainly usn warships so i have got used to the paper thin cruisers and slow but tough battleships.
Never quite mastered torps. A ijn key skill.

 jhe90 wrote:

Never quite mastered torps. A ijn key skill.

Key skill for most lines. Including German BBs. It's not called 'Torpitz' in the forums for no reason.

That said, yeah, ijn revolves around torps. I used the Iwaki Alpha to get a lot of practice in, but that's not really available anymore. I'd use low tier IJN cruisers to practice. Most are DD leads so they play like bigger upgunned DDs.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:

Never quite mastered torps. A ijn key skill.

Key skill for most lines. Including German BBs. It's not called 'Torpitz' in the forums for no reason.

That said, yeah, ijn revolves around torps. I used the Iwaki Alpha to get a lot of practice in, but that's not really available anymore. I'd use low tier IJN cruisers to practice. Most are DD leads so they play like bigger upgunned DDs.

Thanks, il try and work up to a t3 ijn, should be a good ship to learn on without excessive grinding to get 4-5

Usn cruisers mostly, so I've been using as more a sting in tail or to mess with persuers.
Tried a soviet destroyer. That was just suicidal with 3km torps or somthing...fasst but, that's inside secondary range...

 jhe90 wrote:
[..]Tried a soviet destroyer. That was just suicidal with 3km torps or something...fast but, that's inside secondary range...

My read on the Russian DDs, and what I've seen online that mentions them while looking at something else, is that they're more like a hunter of other destroyers than a torpedo hauler.

IIRC, at Tier5 the (Gevny?) gets 130mm guns, as compared to most everything else of the DD type having ~105mm guns until much higher in their own national tiers, if ever.

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I usually use ap on other cruisers while they spam me with hp, usually citadel them a few times and they quickly turn away.

There really aren't many actually useless ships. They just require different skills. I've played a wide range too, such as both Jap and US BB Lines to some extent, and most of the maligned US Destroyers.

The key is to know how to aim for battleships, and not to judge them based on the T3s, which are deliberately awful to prevent you from coming to the conclusion that BBs are solo-pwn-mobiles.

T4 Wyoming and Myogi are perfectly servicible ships and teach lessons about armor angling and proper shot placement.

For cruisers, learning the damage models is huge. Landing HE on deck will damage battleships, as will shooting up the superstructure UNTIL the superstructure section runs out of HP. Then further hits won't do anything for a while.

Randomly as well, I put 5$ into the secret santa promo. Got a Tirpitz out of it! Now that thing can really work wonders.

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If you really want to learn advanced gameplay while still having a good time, master the T5 US Cruiser, Omaha. You'll have a good mix of learning how to citadel enemy cruisers with AP, do opportunistic torpedoing, and engaging both DDs and enemy BBs with HE rounds, while maneuvering to hide your vulnerable midships and dodge fire.

Battleships only suffer the awful shot spread, even at close range the shots are pretty inaccurate.i fired 12 rounds that hit infrint, behind and around a destroyer.....

One shot would have wrecked it, 12 missed

The key thing is not always aiming but pre turning guns, thinking your moves further ahead so when you do turn or roate, you are ready when the goliath bulk starts moving round.

A bb requires more pre thinking than the cruiser.

Cruisers need to know when to dodge, go agressive and when to bug out, your armours not always very good, and you cannot hang about under fire from a bb.

Destroyers, well that class I've never mastered. Closest is phoenix. Its tactic is closer to destroyer than cruiser. Its more a destroyer leader.

Straddling fire is a part of the game. It means you aimed right, but the dispersion just happened not to be on your side. That's OK.

Why? Because BB firepower for all their guns is actually absurd. If you get a full broadside against an enemy BB with say, 14 inchers, you're doing over 40k damage in a single volley even discounting any citadel penetrations for 3x that damage!

That's too much. And thanks to dispersion, damage numbers are more sensible in the 7-10k range per properly aimed volley.

Destroyers need a lot of skill in evasion, map reading, and planning an attack despite your speed. Rushing in will cause you to die. But a crafty approach that leads to last minute torps at 4km will lead to great results.

 Killionaire wrote:
Straddling fire is a part of the game. It means you aimed right, but the dispersion just happened not to be on your side. That's OK.

Why? Because BB firepower for all their guns is actually absurd. If you get a full broadside against an enemy BB with say, 14 inchers, you're doing over 40k damage in a single volley even discounting any citadel penetrations for 3x that damage!

That's too much. And thanks to dispersion, damage numbers are more sensible in the 7-10k range per properly aimed volley.

Destroyers need a lot of skill in evasion, map reading, and planning an attack despite your speed. Rushing in will cause you to die. But a crafty approach that leads to last minute torps at 4km will lead to great results.

True, or cruiser being shot right the moment they start engines and destroyed. Watching a st Louis in a Wyoming with 12 guns us kinda cruel already. The ap citadeled the doom turtle. Rare.

Though I stand by, best BB skill is forward planning, everything takes Time in a BB, you need to be moving and acting not reacting. Reacting meands often a dead BB .
I mean if you see the torps, its often too late, you need to moving to counter when you see the destroyer coming, if you can.

BB's take skill, planning and luck, i keep my nose pointed to enemy BB's as much as possible, but sometimes some BB at the other side of the map which is not visible to me citadel me, i go " where the hell did that come from"

One battle though i took on 3 BB's with skillful use of an island and nice shooting i killed them all, was my best moment in a BB yet

BB's do take a hell of a lot of skill but then again so do most ships. I do have to say that my Myogi's worst nightmare is an enemy carrier with Torpedo bombers. I can usually dodge most of the first spread. The second though?......

DDs propelled me to the First League this time. Will aim for the Jolly Rodger next.

Cruisers can be more forgiving, yes they take skill but used right can be very good and threats battleships.

Hydrstatic seach makes destroyers hiding in smoke hate you
Tripples detection range through it, its fun watching them see a pheonix burst out the smoke.

Btw: Błyskawica = a higher teir Gremyashchy

Just got the Omaha and was placed in a T3-5 match and one T2 destroyer and a cruiser I think, I do not know how it got there.

That was just unfair yet so much fun, 3 kills, 3600 xp, tons of credits.

The poor T2 finding a T5 round the island, it was well one aided to say the least. With USN gun obsession even worse.

Ita a very good ship, if yo want to have fun, tat and the pheonix are good fun credit makers used right.

Omaha and phoenix take skill they are easily citadelled

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Omaha and phoenix take skill they are easily citadelled

That is true they are easy to damage if your hit. Though regular turns, speed changing and taking advantage of its ability to peform quite rapid turns and pick up speed can mitigate it.

And don t be afraid to back off and move about when you see things not going your way. One game, a pair of Omaha, German and ijn T5 doing that managed to hold off a surprisingly powerful T6 group.

Worked with islands etc, and did abit of a relay race to throw off there guns. lost in end but we delayed them enough to win on points as a team. Working with the map, support and abit of teamwork they can hold there own very well.

I'd be more interested in a 17th century World of Warships...anyone has a recommendation for me?