Uncle_Lou

24 games in with Soyuz, averaging 95k damage but only a 45% WR. The WR may be due in part to the fact that I play late at night due to my work schedule, when every team seems to be of weekend quality. I disliked Vlad - only played 2 games and hated it enough that I sold it. Probably should have given Vlad more of a chance, but my first maybe 10 games in Soyuz were great - had fun, did lots of damage, won a bunch. Since then its been much more of a slog for whatever reason. I am close to unlocking Kremlin though. Soyuz seems inconsistent to me and I can't put my finger on why. I've had games where RNJesus smiles on me and every salvo does big chunks of damage, and other games where I hit only one shell out of 9 fired at a Musashi <6km away. Any 6" cruiser with IFHE will ruin your day in a hurry, and there are a ton of them in Soyuz' bracket. Her armor seems strong, but I've eaten citadels at angles that have surprised me... guess I have to be more aware of angling enough. I figure I've got maybe another 5-6 games in Soyuz before I unlock Kremlin... would like to really figure out Soyuz before I move up though; get her to perform more consistently.

Hmm. April 1st isn't all that far away...

I was thinking the wingtips and vertical stabilizer geometry, and the canopy configuration looked more like the A6M; plus if you look closely in the video you can see the engine cowling is black and it has the 'meatball' painted on the side of the fuselage. However I know that since so few Zeros survived the war, many T-6's were converted to resemble the Zero for airshows; this may be one such example. Very distinct engine sound either way.

You sure those are T-6's? The wing and tail geometry don't look quite right to me, but it's been some time since I last saw one.

PEBKAC

Most likely someone who has gotten good at firing into smoke. If you don't move around in smoke, they can use your last reported position on the minimap to target; or if you are firing out of your smoke they will target the origin point of your shells. I have deleted many cruisers this way, and flushed DDs fairly regularly. If you have a spotter plane it becomes even easier. The other possibility is that your smoke firing penalty caused you to be detected, but if that were the case your Priority Target should have alerted you.

I had a rough time in Neptune - the floaty shells, mediocre concealment, and everything-thats-not-superstructure-is-citadel in combination just made her frustrating to play for me. YMMV.

I really like her so far; though a small sample size, through 13 games I am averaging over 90k in damage including one Kraken. The SHS and improved autobounce angles mean you can get away with some stuff using AP that you just can't with other ships. I've gotten multi-cit dev strikes on cruisers that probably thought they were far enough away and angled well enough to be safe. I also see random unexpected citadels now and then; scored one to kill a Kron last night that was about 17km away and angled at 75-80 degrees away from me. A very happy surprise. Alaska's guns are terrific IMO; I find myself using probably 75% AP give or take, and looking for angles and opportunities. I will echo what was said earlier about cautious aggression; if you overextend you are gonna get hurt, no two ways about it. Conversely if you hang back too far you will be functionally useless. The upside is that even if you overextend, you are tanky enough that the enemy will have to work for it; there is a chance you can survive long enough for your teammates to pull your jimmies out of the fire. Bottom line for me is to never forget Alaska is still a cruiser, play her as such. Look for flanks and angles, windows of opportunity, and exploit the piss out of them. Smart play can be extremely rewarding with Alaska.

I haven't paid any attention to HoF or the rules; is it possible that the leaderboard is not updated in real time? If it is only updated periodically the actual top score could have been much higher than shown at the time you logged off.

1. Port UI lag, for sure 2. IFHE and the fire mechanic... both seem a wee bit strong right now and could use a minor adjustment IMO 3. Ship carousel in port randomly moving; i.e. I am looking at a tier 10 ship and suddenly the carousel is showing me tier 5-6 4. Need an option to preview Arsenal camo's. Not going to buy them if I can't see them first. 5. Additional maps are always welcome - maybe moreso than new ships now and then. Maybe engage the community in a map design contest?

It was indeed a loss, though a very winnable game. Unfortunately a couple of our BBs played extremely passively until much too late, and 4 of the survivors got caught up chasing two low health DDs instead of capping. I died trying to facetank the Arizona while the Edinburgh chipped away at me. Seconds after I died, a friendly finished the AZ and the Edin disengaged and vanished while friendlies secured an additional cap. By that point we still had a pretty serious points deficit and needed to kill everyone to win before time ran out. Even so, the Edin was spotted with a little less than 2 minutes left but was able to smoke before anyone could land any significant hits, and he hid in his smoke until time expired. I'll have to review the replay a few times to see if there was anything more I could have done to alter the outcome. Pretty frustrating!

I have the same problem. I haven't tried intentionally locking one target then shooting another, but when it happens inadvertently I find that my aim is all wonky and the shells wind up nowhere near my point of aim. Might play around with this some more though to see if I can get some results. Part of me wonders if there is a confirmation bias or maybe just coincidental decent dispersion for people who shoot targets other than the ones they have locked.

I am fairly certain that in all my time fighting French BBs at all tiers, I can likely count the number of citadels on one hand. Even ships that have unusually high penetration (i.e. Roma or Kron) can't seem to do it with any regularity at any range. I know they have turtleback armor similar to the Germans; is it just dumb luck to score a citadel on a higher tier French BB, or is there a more reliable way? Or am I better off just going upper belt and going for large numbers of regular pens? Looking at the armor viewer for Alsace and Republiqe for example, they appear to not only have the turtleback but a rather stout transverse bulkhead at the fore/aft end of the citadel, which means face punching them will be tricky as well. Any tips/tricks? I get annoyed fighting them because proper aim doesn't reward citadels the way it would on other ships. TIA!

A half a kilometer in game is nothing. You or the DD could accidentally close that far in a few seconds. It really doesn't change much from the Roma's perspective, and if you were relying on 500m more of stealth to save you you're probably doing it wrong.

Had this game earlier tonight. I actually like Wichita so far. Not blowing me out of the water, but the first few games left a very good impression (very small sample size though).