Chados

It happens A LOT with long range slowpedoes. You loose a spread, the bot jukes as soon as the torps hit the water, they sail off into oblivion, and 14km down the road :Borckenhagen: diddy-bops right into them. He wasn’t even in the general vicinity when you launched, of course. But in the several minutes that things developed, he skylarked right into them. I’ve seen players in PvE and Randoms do it too, usually because they’re zoomed in and don’t hear the alert. I’ve also seen griefers literally course-correct into an approaching spread. I watched a bonehead in a Pommern do that last night. He wanted the kill, and when he saw me launch right next to him (he was moving diagonally away from the torp track and the target), he threw his helm hard over to port and ate all four torps I’d just launched a couple seconds before from HSF Harekaze. He got his kill, and I got pinked for the next six drops.

That sounds like shilling from an insider that’s getting special treatment to defend the party line to the proletariat. How’s the Dom Perignon, Comrade? We proles are still standing in line for this month’s meat ration, and we don’t get that chauffeured Volga to ride to the special stores set aside for Party members. We’ve been begging for more Operations and an improved PvE experience for years. Instead, we get a commander jack-up that absolutely no one asked for, submarines with homing torpedoes that only a fraction of players want, new premium ships that can’t hold their own at dedicated tier unless helmed by a very experienced player (Leone and Yūdachi), removal of highly popular, effective premiums (Smolensk, Jean Bart, Massachusetts, etc.), removal of FXP ships that are accessible to mid-tier players (Nelson), paywall gating of new content (the dockyard events), the best content gated behind a grind that for any but the most dedicated only can be overcome with real money (the research bureau), retroactive nerfing of existing premiums (disclaimers abound on new-released ships and don’t forget the mega nerf of Massachusetts’ secondaries in the captain rebork), and a CV and AA change that even those who don’t like CVs hate. We get a special that costs big real dollars and delivers absolutely nothing-the Kong/Godzilla promotion is a bald-faced money grab that doesn’t even deliver the promised voiceovers. The “overall picture” clearly, plainly, obviously is to suck as much money from whales as possible and to focus on short term profit at the expense of long term growth and viability. I can’t remember one of these changes, other than the recent graphics update, that didn’t cause the player community to complain en masse. WG is badly out of touch with its player base, and it fires CCs that have the temerity to complain about it publicly (Flamu) so the rest of you get the heck in line. Sit down, please. You’re not helping.

They don’t care what we “want.” Enough griefers want submarines very badly that we’re going to get them whether the rest of us want them or not, and WG has too much invested not to release them and hope to get paid with lots of sales of premium pay-to-win submarines with magic torpedoes that track to target. I’m just glad we aren’t likely to see them in co-op in any great numbers. In my view, the most obnoxious mechanic about them is the homing torpedoes. If they just got rid of that and provided all the other ships with some form of counter-play, submarines wouldn’t be such a guaranteed unbalancing factor in the game. There is nothing that makes trolls happier and everyone else salty with rage than a mechanic that is a dead guarantee of the player not using it getting eliminated without any ability to dodge or counter whatsoever. Homing torpedoes are a troll mechanic that will drive players out of modes with human-controlled submarines. It’s the prime issue that players, especially DD players, have with CV rocket planes, which at higher tiers can one-shot IJN DDs with captains not running survivability expert, and IJN DDs as a rule have little or no AA. No one likes being an experience piñata for others, and the WG designers, who plainly do not play this game in Randoms, apparently just haven’t got a clue about that.

They’re keeping homing torpedoes and removing hydrophones from destroyers? Glad submarines won’t take over co-op.

Only if they drop Yūdachi’s torp concealment to something reasonable and decrease 127mm reload to something reasonable. It’s in a bad place right now with that 1.9km concealment and 9 sec gun reload on five guns, and 6.1 km best concealment at T7.

Please don’t feed the troll.

If you have the OG Harekaze try it with the 3x127mm guns before you spend the money. It’s not an optimum build. I always end up going back to the 100mm guns. They match Akizuki’s performance minus two guns if you take AFT over CE on a 10 point commander, and with the concealment module you still have 6km stealth.

I got the coal one, and gave him prev. maintenance, last stand, survivability expert, and AFT. On Harekaze it gives the 3x2 100mm guns 11.3km range and 16,500 hp, at 6km concealment. I’ll take it.

Yes, I saw that too. Shame they can’t be bought separately!

Met him once on a tour of Kidd in Baton Rouge. Real nice guy.

This right here. It is why I love my Yūdachi. Yes, I know, I speak heresy. But I really like having the TRB *and* smoke. Torp detection range doesn’t matter with bots, they know the instant you launch no matter what your detection is so you have to wait til they’re in your face before you let em go anyway. With Swift Fish they run 60 kt and that is slow but usable in close. And it reloads fast. I also use them to influence the bots to turn them into good paths for friendlies to shoot at. Harekaze with 100mm guns is a bullet hose. It’s a moneymaker in co-op.

It’s pricy, but it’s also a darn good DD. The only thing I would ask for, if WG was listening, is a range bump to 11.4 km on the main battery consistent with Atlanta. The three camos it comes with have increased bonuses, the OG HSF camo in gray and the Japanese military camo both are +100% FXP and the Isoruku kitty camo is +50% CXP, the only ship I own that matches that is Anshan at +100% FXP. “B” hull and “C” hull are decent AA platforms, better than most other IJN DDs. I haven’t made it past Akatsuki in the tech line and to Shiratsuyu in the other side of it so I can’t speak to Akizuki in that regard. Those who call the “A” hull a stock Kagerō appear to be right on.

I’d pick Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya over Kongō all day every day. It might be slow but it has a bad to the bone damage control team and those 12” guns hit like runaway trucks. And it has 12 of them, as opposed to Kongō’s eight. I have the Fleet of Fog Kongō and Hiei courtesy of the last anime promotion where you actually could earn ships, and I like both but the Octobrist holds up better in a fight, is impervious to HE from 152mm cruisers and DDs, and has deity-level dispersion. Kongō has the best range at T5 and good hitting power but only eight guns. However, its speed lets it control engagement distance and it outranges the Octobrist, so in a head to head with equal captains I do give the edge to Kongō. But God help it if it ever gets broadside to the Revolution inside 16km because it will get deleted with a quickness.

HSF Harekaze also comes with three camos-one, the “Isoroku” cat camo, gives +50% commander XP and the HSF and military type camos both give +100% free xp. The only other lolibote I have that has that kind of bonus is Anshan, a fantastic coal purchase. HSF Harekaze II has hydro and what it has over Yūdachi is that, better concealment, and faster guns. I own Yūdachi and I would not trade it for Harekaze II. I like the ability to use smoke and TRB both. Harekaze is a very good DD. The 3x127mm loadout is pretty good but the 100mm loadout is better overall. It’s got 31mm HE pen, and it’s a bullet hose. The 3x127mm loadout has 5 sec rotation for 180 degrees, a 4 sec reload, and a 9% fire chance so that’s your firestarter.

Maybe they should be asking why randoms aren’t fun for those spending a lot of time in co-op. Here’s a partial list. * Power-crept, pay-to-win ships restricted to the few who live the game. The research bureau and dockyard are the glaring examples. One cannot even access the RB until they max out four lines, and the grind at higher tiers is more work than it is fun, unless you have a lot of 21 point captains and a lot of resources lying around. Paolo Emilio (RB only), Ohio (RB only), ZF-6 (dockyard) are some of the stronger ships around, restricted to the few who must either spend eight hours a day playing or an awful lot of real money. * Another feature of the power-creep is the horrible matchmaking that puts ships like T6 London, T6 Leone, T7 Yūdachi, in 1930s configurations, routinely up against T8-T9 ships in late war configurations with faster guns, better concealment, more protection, better detection (i.e. the radar consumable) driven by players with maxed out captains. I put seven of eight 610mm Japanese fish from Yūdachi into a fresh Georgia last night at point blank range and did not sink it. Not even close. Leone has four weaker tubes and it is slower, I’ve had bots in Amagis literally chase me down while I was desperately trying to jink and hide long enough for my tubes to reload, after an ambush where all four fish into it didn’t take it down. A human player with a 21 point captain on an Amagi would have obliterated me immediately after that and I’d never have got that far. At least the bot (:Borckenhagen:) made it interesting before it blapped me, and I had a chance to put two more fish into it and still not sink it. * Inexplicable nerfs of popular features such as IFHE and secondaries on German BBs and Massachusetts, and adding griefer-enhancing features like Deadeye and the torpedo protection skill that makes weak torpedoes, prevalent on a lot of ships that are built around torpedoes, even more weak. * The commander skill rework, which leaves only the most dedicated whales and full time players with lots of resources with 21 point captains, the rest of us filthy casuals can’t compete with that, and high tier random matches seem to be dominated by those players. Also, the meta in Randoms is hiding and sniping and that is boring to do for full length matches. * The prevalence of CVs, which a lot of ships can’t counter at all. AA on many T5+ ships is virtually nonexistent (most DDs, especially Japanese premiums, and Viribus Unitis are good examples). In co-op you never see more than one, and often, none. It’s not fun for a DD or small cruiser with no AA to speak of to get hassled to the death of a thousand cuts by aircraft it can’t defend against. Rocket planes from a T8 Lexington will rip away half the health of a T7 Shiratsuyu or Akatsuki in one shot, and the DDs can’t effectively fight back. And Akatsuki has some of the best AA on a Japanese mid tier DD. * The impending release of submarines, speaking of things you can’t counter. WG’s design team doesn’t seem to realize that people just don’t like to be experience piñatas for others, especially others they can’t even shoot back at. It isn’t fun. The truth is that in our own head canon, each one of us wants to be an invincible hero. That’s why games and movies featuring one great hero cleaning up Gotham or a small town in 1870s New Mexico are so popular. Everyone wants to be Clint Eastwood in the “Dollars” trilogy or for us gals, Sharon Stone in “The Quick and the Dead.” Games that facilitate that are popular. The reality is that most of us actually are the ones on the *other side* of that snake-handled Peacemaker. And we don’t like to be reminded of that every single time we hit the “commit” button to start a match. * The completely inane decision to remove popular Operation scenarios and not ever rework or replace them. PvE is always going to be popular, and WG could monetize that even more effectively than they can randomize the PvP modes, it’s just more work for them because of the AI necessary to do it. PvP is easy, because then you have no need for AI. But in reality, a lot of us...a lot of us who spend money too...just won’t ever be powerful enough to be competitive in Randoms or Ranked or whatever other gladiator mode is the flavor of the month at WG no matter how high the rewards are for sticking your toe in the water. The only ships I will take into a random match are big, T8 battleships and I own two, Ignis Purgatio and Massachusetts. WG wiped out Massachusetts formerly dominating secondaries and left it in a place where it can shoot 200 rounds of 5” and land 20 hits even with manual secondaries activated. IP is a good boat but it was power crept AA-wise from jump and suffers from a battlecruiser armor scheme that makes it meat for T10 heavyweights like Yamato and T9 bruisers like Georgia that can outrange it and have better guns and better armor. Yeah, I’m a co-op main. But nearly all of the 30 ships I own are premiums. Granted, a lot of coal ships and lucky container drops are in that mix. I don’t whale, but I do spend from time to time. WG isn’t interested in keeping my attention. I’ve been in the game since 2015, I think, and I have zero 21 point captains. Not one. My top three are 18, 16, and 13. I’ve mastered no tech tree lines; I’ve made one as far as T9, and two others to T7. Three quarters of the matches I’ve played are in T5-T7, and 90% are in co-op and operations. WG won’t put resources into co-op modes. They’re too busy putting out OP dockyard ships and promoting B-movie tie-ins that need real money to experience the content, but are focused on the same old same old under the flashy skin. The ships they’re promoting in the Kong v. Godzilla promo aren’t even ships I own, or ever have owned. Unless you have ground them out, you’re effectively locked out of the content. That’s a lot of work for content most players will only see in the hands of a few CCs in YouTube videos.