Soylent_Red_Is_Tomato

1 - Bit of both, gun captains on the USN ships had a heavy arm wrap they used to wipe the mushroom face, to clear off any residue the air blast did not eject before the breech opened. Heating of the breech & breech face is actually one of the things that limits RoF for any type of gun (regardless of using either bagged or cased charges) to prevent a "cook-off" and was one of the bigger hurdles to the development of caseless ammo. 2 - For most navies it looked like a rifle cartridge. The vent tube has absolutely no difference in concept from the touch-hole friction primers used during the days of muzzle-loading black powder/brown prismatic powder cannons. Quite often the vent tube primer could be discharged both electrically (remotely from the gun director) or mechanically in local backup; most charges for modern tank and artillery guns tend to have a similar dual prime capability. 3 - Two main reasons; first was ready use ammo so the guns could get firing on target while the turret crews were just starting to send up shells & powder, and the second was to form a physical fire break where the elevators for cordite into that working chamber did not directly link to where the pass-through scuttles, where charges were sent into the barbette from the magazines, were located. Not having to make everything within the barbette able to rotate with the gunhouse assembly also played a part in older ship designs. All those interlocks in the video were a major problem with later UK turret designs in the aftermath of Jutland, being too close in tolerance due to a desire for maximum flash proofing when poor, hell absolutely improper, stowage was to blame. Earlier battleships tended to use a protection philosophy where the shells were stored in rooms similar to the charge magazines but below those, being just above the double bottom, having to do with keeping that kind of mass lower down in the ship for the sake of stability in those smaller examples as well as forming a kind of mine protection system due to the shallower waters most designs of that type tended to operate in compared to later blue water oriented ships. Stowing shells vertically on platforms within the barbette yet for the most part not on the rotating working platforms was a somewhat cleaner design but suffered from a machining to tolerance and thus a subsequent fitting out & working up time issue.

I did see it (once, for a tier VIII PvE) a few weeks ago, out of around two and a bit months of play. I guess moving a few islands around, adding underwater terrain that unpredictably snags surface ships, and throwing in a volcano or two counts as new map developments these days.

Dunno, I tried out Repulse and she was kind of marginal in the Aegis operation - more so in the one PvE match I tried. Server lag/desync may have played a factor, almost 14K folks were on yesterday, as the guns had range but liked to drop shells all over the place. As for Marlborough; 17 + 25 (Dreadnaught) + 30 + 34 + 38 + 42.5 (Repulse) + 47 + 50 [thousand] base XP = 284,000; meaning a minimum of around 284 matches* to earn 27 shipbuilding phases, followed by a purchase of at least 7500 doubloons for the last 5 phases. *Spit-balling say 1K base XP earned on average per match regardless of mode, and 5 to 15 minutes per match depending on mode, equals a range of 23.7 hours (1,420 minutes) to 71 hours (4,260 minutes) for a ship that almost no one can make work..... I think I ended up putting in around 14 hours towards earning the 42,500 base XP task that unlocked being "rewarded" the Repulse.

Luckily that was the case for this task yeah, and not having to get the fire damage as well; I don't even bother with signals for these, as I always have the same "fun & engaging RNG" experience in starting even less fires than normal. Tried using Atlanta, with a DE captain, just to get fires x3 out of I don't know how many hundreds of hits; even Budyonny, Lazo, Kirov, & Helena were a bust so I just started farming citadels instead. Mogami & Takao were suddenly so-so on fires as well as black ribbons, and with Carnot I hit my bot counterpart broadside for (8) pens of nine shells, and over 18K damage, yet no citadels.... and my match with Agir lasted just 3:38 minutes. Baltimore was okay until nothing wanted to be broadside in the >5 min matches, but surprisingly Hipper was the only ship garnering both types of ribbons with any reliability. I stayed up almost two hours past when I wanted as I got into the mid-80s on the task and suddenly was only getting none or one ribbons per match. With the DDs the defended ribbons were one hell of a lot faster, as finally I got a strange match with Gaede where the other four human destroyers and the bots left me alone at a cap to farm two bots for (29!) defended & one solo cap ribbon. Yet with all those tasks completed I'm barely one-third through the pair of XP based tasks.

Because when you need just 3K more XP to finish a grind, yet fall over 1K short while using an equal speed plus a New Year Sky camo when the Op ends in just 9 1/2 minutes, that should always be perfectly acceptable for the (58% & 63% WR) player(s) to get in their run. Wait out the time or pay the penalty to play (hopefully) just one more match, or waste the Free XP.... so many choices. If it was only the occasional match, would there even be a problem in the first place; but nope, "Weimar" folks probably happen at least 1 in every 3-5 operations. Scrubs that should uninstall and leave the l33t in peace deserve everything they don't get, right. I hadn't noticed until now that you aren't making this suggestion to those solely seeking to farm Narai, which would be the better option for all concerned - but of course the folks exploiting won't be the ones who choose to do that, now will they. Even if they eventually ruin things for everyone by making WeeGee choose to remove this operation entirely; which is why I chose to call them griefers in the first place. Here's the thing; yeah, no one ever has to wait for the Narai operation to come back in rotation. As the mods repeatedly tell everyone who brings up occurrences of NPE (negative player experience) in this game anyone can just form a div to solve whatever problem they're having with whatever situation. But as you say the catch is that to 5 star Narai two ships still have to escort the convoy while another has to do the transports, all so the fourth can go North to the CV then make the final run. They merely have to swap roles each queue until they all farm what they want. However, excepting the rare two player div obviously almost none of the min-maxing folks (in short, the griefers) are willing to share even with each other despite all trying to do the exact same thing - and less players in the same operation would directly increase their individual final payouts even more than they're already sometimes earning. The turnaround time between queues would also be almost nonexistent (I'm sure competitive yet considerate players already do this, more power to them). That's the scary bit in all this, how so many are so utterly selfishly greedy over what in the end is tiny magnetic fields driving alphanumeric coding with no physical existence otherwise. More so that however many other bystanders are perfectly okay with being around people repeatedly acting in that manner. In either case, it doesn't say good things about the NA playerbase. And had it been a resident forum goer, deep purple Alpha/Beta/Supertester, CC, or accepted streamer bringing up that what is happening might not be a good thing for that same playerbase and maybe the company itself by now there would've been at least two pages of nothing more than meme pics, explosions of emojis, or upvote gifs - because the interwebz.

I went back through the screenshot folder and had screen grabs of my in port notifications for November 25th, having lost 6 of 8, and then December 22nd losing 5 of 6. I couldn't find the screen grab of the day where easily close to a dozen (if not more) losses occurred of those played, and another session almost as poor. I would think simple holidays server overload plus holidaze teams, but still, the frequency and duration of how bad on top of how often losses are occurring I cannot recall ever being the case prior to now. In mid November I was almost done grinding though Richelieu, which is a strong ship, and had been doing well (winning more than losing by far) both solo or divved. A few days later, it was like I'd not only never played that ship, but the game itself, along with everyone else also on green and not a few reds who seemed often to stumble upon a victory rather than eke one out. Switching ships or stopping to play the next day changed nothing, nor did swapping time of day where possible; after that I really hesitated to click Battle and queue into a Random, because things just wouldn't go back to normal from whatever the heck was going wonky.

Greed ; nothing more. They stay broadside, just unable to resist farming "free" damage before everyone else - and usually cannot be bothered to shoot at the Clemson before it eventually lets off it's twin racks of torps into the convoy. Same thing in Randoms, unless folks see the chance for a quick kill no one wants to bother whiffing on DDs when there are bigger & easier targets to farm. With Zara (or any cruiser), even if I spawn North of the convoy, I still begin angling away because more often than not the Wyoming will try to broadside a cruiser before it goes down; I even angle towards or away in a BB, as on occasion it can still get in a 5K lucky shot if too flat. Same thing with the first Emerald & Nicholas; too often most of the cruisers (if not multiple BBs .....) are already racing one another to CV or transports, while farming the Iron Duke, to kill those two ships before they stop & smoke in front of convoy prior to launching their torps. Inexcusable, but WoW NA playerbase at it's finest. (and yeah, I know your question was rhetorical) What is truly mind-blowing though is watching the same player name do the same ignorant thing later during the exact same part of the same Operation, sometimes even in the same ship. I think some of them are spamming the Op more than I've been while grinding multiple ships, and I'm probably over 50 plays already this week. Of course mention must be made of the truly special individuals, the ones who I think are trying to do some kind of run, whether from North or into the Southern end spawn, without bothering to make sure any stars get gathered along the way.... garnering just ordinary levels of payout equaling about what they probably would've gotten anyways on a typical everyone completes the Op run.

In that vein, I cannot be the only person who remembers the days of ships, particularly BBs, shooting right at start of match to hit an island/sign/hut, and when asked why seeing the response "To see if the guns are working or not." Early in November I got within 10 or less matches of being dead even 50%; I basically haven't won since beyond a very very few battles, whether solo or divved, and already got pushed back 25 or so matches - so I gave up on Randoms, less headache in PvE for two-three matches for that time to get the same rewards. Is it boring, and often frustrating with all of the DDs? Yeah, but at least I'm having an impact farming defended ribbons or otherwise putting shots/torps on target. The purple answer to everything, because for them yeah, it does work; outside Clan Battles or a similar mode they'll almost never face equal opposition.

MM aside, having a I0/20/30 game losing streak in a mode isn't necessarily you or a particular ship, it's more this time of year starting the second or third week of November then continuing into mid or late January; WG doles out or otherwise makes available so many premiums at all tiers, especially higher tiers, that there is a massive influx of actual new players alongside folks who literally cannot play past say V or VI regardless of mode. Add on top of that all the endless, overlapping, and massive grind of the Dockyard/New Year/etc etc etc campaigns and what good sense far too much of the rest of the playerbase had to actually bother playing well has been completely disincentivized by WeeGee themselves. By the time the new/can only be bothered to selfishly grind for just one more [ship/captain/camo/collection] they won't ever use/foolish/other questionable meme folks go away or manage to start playing in a non-counterproductive way the cycle starts anew.

Oh, eventually WG will close the commander XP/credit farming loophole if not just do away with Narai entirely because of losing out on micro-transactions, but then of course the griefers/elitists will just find something else to exploit because it's what they do in every single "team" game they play; they really just cannot help themselves. And it's your fault, not the fault of those players, for not being in complete agreement with what they're doing & how they're doing it, especially when it's at your expense but requiring your participation so they can pull it off. I'll maybe play out the rest of this week, and then think about just using free XP to finish off Heinrich and Zara then never bother with Narai in the future; Colo & Nagato are just gonna have to get put aside because exploiting being the norm more than the exception is getting beyond asinine. Everyone else can spam their Lutjens without me; especially those players just selling off accounts on the NA server.

Translation; - Because I'm a resident forum feature & a high WN8 player, sit down and eat the crapsandwich without quibble because your reality isn't reality since I said otherwise. or maybe, - Anyone foolishly bothering to grind a tech tree ship should go off and screw themselves so the haves can earn more they don't need, because the haves deserve it more & WG agrees; just go micro-transaction more signals & camo then maybe try again loser. What you're missing, or are unwilling to admit, is that when enough "regular" players are driven off from bothering to queue for Narai the folks solely intending to do a run with Wiemar/Lazo/Atlanta/Fiji/etc etc for credits/epeen/Lutjens/whatnot are going to end up more often than not having to compete with each other directly instead of being alone in the match, losing out on getting the majority if not all of the rewards - just like what is happening to everyone else right now that isn't supposed to matter because exploiting & min-maxing hurts no one.

Fiji I think is the only other ship I've seen push the 3K base XP mark like Weimar can do; it's actually amusing to watch a couple of Fijis and a Weimar (or two...) try to get there ahead of each other either down from North or into the South crossfire spot. Other than occasional grinding, for credits I queue Strasbourg/Scharnhost or Lazo, otherwise Caracciolo or Helena just to support a team; I'm not going to keep Heinrich but it does okay too, Zara so so as it struggles with the secondary tasks if folks get sunk early. Played earlier and a Heinrich got a whole 58 base XP, that's really truly awful play - haven't seen too many Nagatos either. I don't usually bother queuing Atlanta or Nachi. With all of the Ops it's rare that I see any DD do well, let alone survive the match, yet folks still keep bringing them.

If folks ask at the start of match if the Weimar player is going to do a run, it would be fine if everyone else went back to port and queued another ship for a different match with better rewards for the time, signals, and camo right? Seems like the Weimar should be able to do the entire Op solo for those kind of rewards, onto a premium ship which would have to convert the XP anyways, excepting credits and any commander or free XP. But the Weimar needs the team to get 5 stars, to maximize "their earnings", yet their earnings are at the complete expense of the team....

Yet the company cannot be bothered to do anything about situations they cause, like everyone else losing signals & camo in Narai when some jackhole does a Weimar, with or without the Weimar. Because they bought it, then exploiting with it is okay? /shrug Typical WeeGee, inconsistency all around. ...judas priest...

The divving trick, like Lightning or some other low conceal DD with say a Fiji, does work; still took around ~15 battles though plus what I managed on my own last night, because folks rushing forward ruin it quite a lot, as do CVs. Absurd amount of matches just for a task clear if you don't play CV or want to spend days in a BB farming potential; I've only had this week because I cannot go to work, having tested Covid positive Tuesday - otherwise I wouldn't have had the time, period. Doubloon paywall, pure and simple; at this point I'm losing what interest I had in the Repulse, and already never had any intention of completing the entire Dockyard.