World of Warships

[Imperial528]

Carriers are in such a sorry state right now, it's sad.

In addition to what you said, American carriers also suffer greatly in that if the enemy team has the next tier's American carrier, then you are absolutely fucked. Your fighters will die in droves to theirs, they will have more planes to replace what you might manage to kill, and any bombers you have will be wiped out before your fighters can even respawn. This makes the low tier carriers a special kind of hell.

[Nephtys]

Cleveland... you have so much firepower, good range and deadly AA... yet why are your shells so low velocity?

[Elheru Aran]

Fuck yeah St Louis!

[Elheru Aran]

Fuck yeah St Louis!

Continuing the above: Survived my first match (a good sign). Haven't died yet in... 4 matches, I think, and managed to upgrade everything but the engines. I approve of this trend. Please tell me later cruisers are just as good? Battleships?

[Skywalker_T-65]

Can't speak on American cruisers as I haven't done that line yet.

BBs though...I'd certainly call the South Carolina a downgrade, IMO. You're slower, less maneuverable, and your guns are manned by drunken monkeys. The dispersion on those things is horrible.

[Nephtys]

Fuck yeah St Louis!

Continuing the above: Survived my first match (a good sign). Haven't died yet in... 4 matches, I think, and managed to upgrade everything but the engines. I approve of this trend. Please tell me later cruisers are just as good? Battleships?

The St. Louis is a wall of fireballs. So that's good.
Phoenix is 50% faster, which is amazing. But it starts only with 3 guns, but upgrades give it more (and with longer range than St. Louis)
Omaha is great, being a buffed up Phoenix with more torpedos and more guns.
Cleveland is like a fixed Super St. Louis, with the same number of guns, but larger (I think) and a wall of death for planes.

[Simon_Jester]

Fuck yeah St Louis!

Continuing the above: Survived my first match (a good sign). Haven't died yet in... 4 matches, I think, and managed to upgrade everything but the engines. I approve of this trend. Please tell me later cruisers are just as good? Battleships?

The St. Louis is a wall of fireballs. So that's good.
Phoenix is 50% faster, which is amazing. But it starts only with 3 guns, but upgrades give it more (and with longer range than St. Louis)

...Wait. Historically the Brooklyn-class cruisers had five triple 6" turrets- fifteen guns.

How do they translate that as three guns?

[Skywalker_T-65]

The St. Louis is a wall of fireballs. So that's good.
Phoenix is 50% faster, which is amazing. But it starts only with 3 guns, but upgrades give it more (and with longer range than St. Louis)

...Wait. Historically the Brooklyn-class cruisers had five triple 6" turrets- fifteen guns.

How do they translate that as three guns?

Different Phoenix. Let's see here...



The one in-game is a sort of paper ship prototype/predecessor of the Omaha, IIRC.

[Sea Skimmer]

Its fictional, but not vastly dissimilar to some of the scout cruiser studies. None was ever so weakly armed as its starting six gun main battery though. Its just the game's way of adapting to the fact that a large number of Japanese and British cruisers of similar vintage only had 4-6 main battery guns themselves, an Omaha was very heavily armed when new in real life. France-Germany-Russia weren't building anything meanwhile but via historical trend would have made ships looking more like the British/Japan then an Omaha, so lookout for a lot more fiction and mutant paper designs to fill those in when they appear.

Loving the Omaha myself right now.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Personally, I'm really digging the Wyoming right now. I loved it in the CBT, and that hasn't changed much. Sure, it's slow and the guns aren't the biggest. But the armor is great for the tier it's at, the upgraded hull has at least decent AA coverage, and the six turrets make it a lot easier to get hits at range. And pity the poor schmuck who gets up close in anything but another BB.

I'd say it's a keeper.

[Borgholio]

Just bit the shell and dived into the game myself. Still tooling around in an Erie, and the game is remarkably entertaining. Graphics are beautiful. Have to get better on target identification though. To borrow a quote from Sink the Bismarck, "Those aren't cruisers...they're battleships!" Yeah...whoops!

Question, is there any form of auto-targeting in the game? It seems like they automatically handle gun elevation for you, but you're still required to manually lead your target to adjust for speed.

[White Haven]

...Yes, they make you actually practice some form of gunnery. Do you want your food chewed for you too?

In other words, no, you have to learn to shoot on your own. Proper shot locations really DO matter; the first time you see a good citadel hit or two absolutely skullfuck an enemy warship you will know this.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I'm still somewhat bad at getting citadel's myself.

But when they do happen...damn if they don't hurt. Seeing a good half- or more -an enemy's hp go down the drain in one hit never gets old.

[AniThyng]

And target identification is trivial with the alt key and just knowing the icons...

Also, lest you not realize it, you can accidentally sink allies with your torpedoes. Aim responsibly :p. Also there is lead computation for torpedoes and you can toggle the shot spread by pressing 3 again.

Not to sound overly condescending but the in game F1 help is quite comprehensive for what it is...

[Borgholio]

...Yes, they make you actually practice some form of gunnery. Do you want your food chewed for you too?

har har

I'm actually quite good at gunnery, I just didn't know how far they took the automation.

Proper shot locations really DO matter; the first time you see a good citadel hit or two absolutely skullfuck an enemy warship you will know this.

Yeah when engaging a battleship with a cruiser, using HE rounds against the superstructure is actually surprisingly effective.

And target identification is trivial with the alt key and just knowing the icons...

Figured that part out later. Now when I see a BB I just go the other way until one of my own team's battleships engages, then I dart in and take potshots.

[Dominus Atheos]

For those that have not figured it out, the game has a heavy element of rock-paper-scissors to it: Battleships kick the shit out of cruisers, but can't hit destroyers due to their long reload times and relatively few guns; Cruisers can't pen battleships (but can do at least some HE damage to them), but can kill destroyers, due to the way their large number of fast firing guns can pepper an area, ensuring at least some hits; Destroyer's guns are nearly (but not completely) useless, making their speed, stealth, and torpedos their main strengths which they should use to close in to and sink Battleships.

[Borgholio]

How do secondaries work? They seem to be automated, similar to AA guns.

[Jub]

How do secondaries work? They seem to be automated, similar to AA guns.

You've got it, secondaries are automated and fire at visible enemies within a certain range.

[Anacronian]

How do secondaries work? They seem to be automated, similar to AA guns.

You've got it, secondaries are automated and fire at visible enemies within a certain range.

You can chose who they are going to fire on by holding down CTRL and click on the desired enemy with your mouse (In case there are multiple enemies).

[Temjin]

For those that have not figured it out, the game has a heavy element of rock-paper-scissors to it: Battleships kick the shit out of cruisers, but can't hit destroyers due to their long reload times and relatively few guns; Cruisers can't pen battleships (but can do at least some HE damage to them), but can kill destroyers, due to the way their large number of fast firing guns can pepper an area, ensuring at least some hits; Destroyer's guns are nearly (but not completely) useless, making their speed, stealth, and torpedos their main strengths which they should use to close in to and sink Battleships.

While you are correct somewhat, these are not set in stone.

A cruiser or two can really fuck up a battleship, especially if they keep range and do their best to dodge incoming fire. While BB's have the higher alpha, they are inaccurate and generally only fire twice a minute. Cruisers have a higher dpm. Even if a battleship hits a cruiser, unless it's a citadel hit, there's a chance of doing only minimal damage, followed by another 30 second reload. Meanwhile the cruiser(s) is continuing to set you on fire.

While it's generally a bit harder to get a successful torp run against a cruiser, it's not all that rare. And when you get that torp run in, you are making sure that cruiser is hurt majorly, if not dead.

A battleship can easily one shot a destroyer with HE. This is a lot more rare, though, since any battleship driver worth his salt always has AP loaded (which will do laughable damage to a destroyer), and no one wants to waste a salvo (and the 30 second reload) on a small tin can.

[Elheru Aran]

From personal experience of being the one torpedoed-- it's easier for a DD to blast a cruiser with torpedoes when the cruiser is being distracted against other targets and staying in gunsight view.

*ahem* not that I've ever had that happen... (more than four or five times)

[Elheru Aran]

Well, finally picked up a South Carolina. That's gonna be interesting. I look forward to super-firing

What else? Oh yeah. What do the Commanders do for you? Besides give you a few fringe benefits, I can definitely see how cutting down your recovery time might be useful...

[Jub]

Well, finally picked up a South Carolina. That's gonna be interesting. I look forward to super-firing

What else? Oh yeah. What do the Commanders do for you? Besides give you a few fringe benefits, I can definitely see how cutting down your recovery time might be useful...

I think that's all commanders do, but most of those benefits are huge advantages that you won't want to sail without.

[Simon_Jester]

The game's still in beta; if World of Tanks is any guide, they'll probably introduce more interesting features for ship commanders or officers or whatever as the marks roll on.

[Sea Skimmer]

The commander skill points get pretty potent when used to suit the ship and game play style you have. You just have to make sure you don't end up with a guy with buffed torpedo stats on a ship with no torpedoes ect.

Sounds like for the moment the designers are more concerned with getting more weather and terrain effects into the game though they did just add a new special ability for cruisers to locate torpedoes and ships through smoke at close range which has so far proven completely useless for me; but I wouldn't rule it out as dumb. I just really wonder if it will last or be modified. Cruisers evade surface ship torpedoes awful easy as it is.

Dive bombing remains completely useless on the lower tiers, and from what I see being talked about its just always amazingly bad. Really nice eye candy to what other people be surrounded by splashes and barely damaged by it though.