Chados

All but 26 of mine are co-op. So over 1400,

Yup. AA is a needed thing now. Defensive AA may be a bigger thing. That’s not a bad thing.

Cruisers are dead as f’in fried chicken. DDs are still fun, though. Glad I have a couple.

The Admiral package also came with a number of signals, 2,000 doubloons, a bunch of silver, and a 10 point captain in addition to the 25 bonus missions, and 10 extra British tokens a day for your first win through the 9.1.1 update. I don’t play enough to unlock Andrew Cunningham for free and I don’t run randoms much at all, I’m a very casual player. I bought it the week the second directive opened, used the doubloons to buy Charles-Henri Honoré for my Aigle that I had got for coal, and while playing exclusively co-op with no scenarios or randoms, last night managed to unlock Andrew Cunningham along with getting 8,000 doubloons for London and the Victorian White camo it came with. Essentially, I earned the premium version of one of my favorite ships (Devonshire), got to play it early, and actually used real money to increase game enjoyment by buying a bunch of doubloons that’ll last me a good long while, extra silver, signals, XP missions, two legendary 10 point captains, and one regular 10 point captain for the money. Not a bad deal overall for a game I play a couple hours a night when I get home from work.

VI Aigle is my second most played ship with 95 drops. While those are co-op missions, in them I rely mostly on the 139mm guns. Maximize your fire chance. I use the demolition expert skill and take flags to increase my fire chance whenever possible. I also have enough points on my captain (10) to be able to get concealment expert as well. That allows my concealment rating to be about 6 1/2 km. It is important, in my view, to have the best concealment you can get with running a destroyer dependent on its guns. I like to close on the cap circle or area of the map where I think the enemy ships are going to be congregating, wait until he spotted ribbon pops, then turn to unmask my torpedoes and open fire just inside max range. Aigle is blessed with 12.8 km range on its guns and in my view, optimal range for a destroyers guns is between 10 and 12 km. When they’re close enough to see you and open fire on you, speed is life. Move laterally, because many large ships, particularly battleships, have trouble tracking a fast moving target. I try to save my speed boost skill for those moments. You are a high priority target, and especially in random battles the enemy will focus you to the exclusion of everyone else. Use torpedoes only in self-defense. Typically, when fast movers close to suicide range. Otherwise, they’ll dodge your fish, and blow you away.

The grind didn’t start getting easier til I bought VI London in one of the bundles and used the doubloons in the package to buy Charles-Henri Honoré for my VI Aigle I got for coal some time ago. I did that well into the event and still managed to obtain Admiral Cunningham and complete the event tonight. It also award doubloons in the amount for the ship and the Victorian White camo pattern, so there’s that. Decent event, on par with the Italian cruisers event for me. I did the whole event in co-op. What’s irony is that he’s now sharing space in my task force with his historical rival Luigi Sansonetti. I have four Italian cruisers (both Ducas, Trento, and Zara) and four British cruisers (Hawkins, Devonshire, Surrey, and London). I think that Sansonetti has better enhanced skills but Cunningham’s reload booster combined with his enhanced Jack of All Trades is powerful stuff. He announces activation of talent with a blue flare similar to Sansonetti’s green flares. His broad pennant is a huge Union Jack, which I found interesting as a choice.

About 1200 of my 1300-odd battles are in T5-T7. Because you can’t do events below T5.

(1) I main PvE. Why? No captains with more than 13 points. Out of 20 I’ve got one at 13 points, three more at 10 or 11, and three between 6 and 8. The rest are 6 and below. I rarely go into randoms right now simply because I don’t want to gimp myself or my team. That’s a personal choice. When I do try randoms in T5 I’m average even with a 3 or 6 point captain. I bring ARP Kōngō or ARP Hiei into randoms from time to time and if I have a decent team I hold my own because that class has good range on the 14” guns. But overall, it’s just not fun to be up against an opposing team full of 19 point captains when I’m at 3 or 6, and be wholly outclassed in every match like that. It’s worse in higher tiers, where you’re outclassed at 13 points. When I get Luigi or Charles-Henri (my only special captains) up to 19 points, and I can reliably contribute, expect to see me show up more often in randoms.

Well.... These ships probably depend on who is playing them for likes. I got V Hawkins and VI Devonshire in the last event. Liked Devonshire enough that I bought VI London, which has shorter range...but smoke. In co-op, all three are good fun. But then, my most-played ships are VII Duca degli Abruzzi and VI Aigle :) .

The commander XP part of the second directive was painful. The third is better because there are more ways to complete it. It isn’t as linear as the Italian directives were but it’s nowhere near as stupid as the Puerto Rico nonsense grind was. If you whale up and buy VI London a lot of it is easier. The Admiral package actually is a decent deal because it comes with all those signals, credits, doubloons, and a 10 point captain. Hoping for a doubloon infusion if I manage all four directives but for me the real grind is for the unique captain.

I have Hawkins, Devonshire, and London. I like them a lot and frankly I have enough free XP and ship XP on Devonshire to tier up to Surrey and have no interest in doing so. The County class are among my favorite historical cruisers.

Concealment Expert makes a huge difference on Aigle. I bought Charles-Henri Honoré in the Armory, and his Expert Marksman is outstanding. If you use the Main Battery Modification 2 along with it you get good rotation time on the 5.5” guns. Combined with Concealment Expert you drop your visibility to 6.8km and can shell from a distance in smoke. It gives you a lot more versatility. Aigle needs a 10 point or better captain to be good, with a 7 point captain and no concealment boost it was a much harder ship to play.

Not only do they split fire between ships, but their accuracy is God tier. I had a Sovietskiy Soyuz land a full salvo on me from max range, something like 18 km away while I was moving away at 30 knots. Knocked my Duca degli Abruzzi down from three quarters health to a sliver...thought I’d survived...and then two seconds later I spontaneously combusted. No fire, no flooding, nothing, just *poof.*

The one I like is how bot BBs maneuver like jet fighters. Watched a Queen Elizabeth literally pull a 9G turn to escape from six torpedoes I fired from 3 km out and successfully did so after one-shotting me. I can’t maneuver like that in a destroyer, much less a battleship!

And the all-red and all-blue ones don’t do the same thing? If that’s their excuse (and it’s not what they claimed to be the excuse when it was removed), that’s LAME. And the excuse they actually gave was that it was too fanciful. Which is even *more* lame in view of the Myōkō dragon ships, the ARP ships, the AL ships, and especially the Lunar New Year skins for the Pan Asian ships this year. I just enjoyed the heck out of it. Red is common. They all seem to have it except the French guy you have to accumulate 175,000 coal to get. I like the green flares (the French guy shoots blue ones) better than the fireworks some of the others seem to fire off when a skill activates. I miss shooting a 203mm broadside of Italian Justice at some bot in co-op, that’s all. It added a loltastic element to the game. It’s the same reason I have Yotaroh as the captain of an IJN DD. A teddy bear anime captain! That’s loltastic.