Mono_De_Mantequilla

If only we could have a mod that turns off the fog of war... ;-)

I had a hard time winning in Ognevoi as well. One might compare her concealment to stablemate Kiev and think she is pretty stealthy. “I can torpedoboat in this thing!” Then you realize no, more than half it the Tier VIII destroyers outspot her...

My wife an I are vacationing in India right now, and I bought a poppy from a Catholic Church in Kolkata to wear on my traveling hat.

Not a mod. The mini map shows only green and red but if you look at the ships themselves there are little colored dots by the name icons.

I got the Raimondo mission in my first-opened container from Directive 1. None of the other 7 so-far-obtained containers from the Directives and Daily Shipments held a mission. I am almost through playing Raimondo enough (in co-op) to finish off her 15k mission to get additional tokens. I do not like playing her, certainly not interested in her perma-camo, and will not even need to play her enough to research the Tier VI because... I used tokens to buy ten of the Italian containers in the Armory, and the tenth held the Trento mission. So now another day of playing to get the required XP to drop Trento into my port, and just a couple more Raimondo battles to finish her off. I won't have a whole lot of time with Trento to see if she will be a keeper, since I am going away on vacation next Tuesday for 3 weeks. I won't be able to complete Directive 4, so my Italian token earning will be curtailed soon. I have 670 now, plus a couple of nearly-completed elements from the early directives, and the, what 100? tokens coming from finishing up Raimondo. I could spam them on more Italian crates to see if the Tier VII or VIII missions drop (given that it took 17 containers after Raimondo dropped to get Trento, it will not be likely to get the rarer ones with just 10 more) or buy either the VI+VII or the VIII camo on spec. Or I could just hold the tokens and get a few days of Premium Time when I come back from vacation with the Warships withdrawal jitters... ;-)

I suppose part of my dislike for Raimondo stems from the fact that I have only the 3-point commander she came with to helm her (5-points now!). Not having CE, not having AR ( I took EM as my 2-pointer), it is hard to hide her flaws.

My first go was a Successful Raid!

Seriously, this all shows that the likelihood of T5 ships being stuck in higher tier matches is due to the distribution of players at the *higher* tiers. How would you expect this to change if T4 could see T6? Those T4s still cannot be put into the T7 matches you are complaining about, so your T5 ship will still have to play there. All I can see from your proposed elimination of T4 "protected" matchmaking might be that if T4 ships are dragged into new T6-5-4 matches *in place of* T5 ships, then there could potentially be more T5-4 matches for those T5s in place of them participating in the T6-5 match. But no reduction in T5 being stuck into T7 matches.

I do not understand why you think that just because Tier IV ships cannot be put into Tier VI matches, that makes Tier V ships "always" get stuck into Tier VII matches.

Minsk is among my favorite destroyers. She is the only DD for whom the skipper does not have the Last Stand skill. One of the Znamensky brothers captains her, and I use his "enhanced" skills of Preventative Maintenance to make it less likely to lose the engine or rudder, and High Alert to make it more likely that damacon is off cooldown should it happen. I got that also, but for that very reason I made Kiev my second-researched DD from Minsk. I had enough Minsk XP to research one Tier VIII when the 8.0 CV rework dropped and WG allowed us to move around captains for free. I took that opportunity to research Ognevoi and slide in a no-cost-retrain captain into her right then, knowing that I had an already-trained-for-Kiev 10-pointer waiting in the dorms. I really liked playing Ognevoi in Co-op while I was grinding the modules, but I could not get into a proper groove with her in Randoms. One might think Og is stealthy when just comparing against her stablemate Kiev, but no, 2/3 of the DDs at Tier VIII will outspot you. But then I have not had much success in any true torpedoboat besides Mutsuki...

I would say “that blows!” But, well, I guess it does not.

Almost unfathomable how you can have a carrier at just 31 battles. WG did make all the Tier I to Tier V grinds a lot easier last year, and carriers branch off differently now, but still...

I would say not even Yorck, she seems to lose her engine easily. I actually felt I had to re-spec her commander to get PM and LS.

Akagi also had a port side island.

I am not really enjoying the Raimondo (I got lucky with the Tier V unlock in my first crate from Directive 1) so I am not planning on keeping her and thus no need for the perma camo. I hope to get another unlock to at least try out one of the Tier VI-VIII to see if I might find a keeper. Absent that, I cannot see shelling out for a camo on a ship I may not keep beyond the grind. Alas, I am going to miss the whole of Directive 4 while away on vacation, so less chance of getting lucky...