Mono_De_Mantequilla

I play Yorck in co-op first battle every day. That gets me the first daily mission (earn 250 XP) quickly. Plus I really dislike Yorck in randoms, so I intend to grind through to Hipper just in co-op, where she seems to do much better.

I got the 5-6-7 in the crates. I have been doing much better in Acasta than in Icarus or Jervis. I was swapping the same 10-point commander (PT/LS/SE/CE) between all three. I have done a lot more damage in Acasta than Icarus (12 randoms each). I can do damage in Jervis but just don't seem to get the wins to follow...

I got Acasta, Icarus and Jervis. I also put my Jack Dunkirk onto the DDs without using any of his special skills, rotating him among the three. Now I am going to need three 10-point RN captains, ugh. I may end up buying Bert Dunkirk with my Sovereigns (instead of Warspite or Gallant) to get one, and I suppose I could move my 11-point QE captain over to one of the DDs (I also have a 7-point captain trained on QE that could stay with her).

If the torpedo bulges are going to take damage now, perhaps they need to be given some HP to be taken from?

I have only had good messages from folks post-battle. Usually it will be from a clan-mate who just wanted to say "hey, forgot to say hi in the battle" or something like that. One time it was from a Nelson driver who complimented me for my DD play in the battle. I was the only Western DD in my Gaede and I had been driven from the west cap by the enemy gunboat DDs and cruisers, and spent the rest of the battle ziz-zagging in front of a slow enemy push by a couple BBs, CLs and DDs, just spotting, throwing out torps, and smoking up when their DDs got too close. During the battle somebody else started raging about the "useless DDs" (our other two both charged to the east cap and eventually got sunk without taking it) and pinging me and the west cap. The Nelson driver spoke up in game chat to say that our DD on that side (me) was doing a good job. That made me feel very good since I did not get to do much damage in the match, which we did win. So when he PM'ed me after the battle to say he wished that I had gotten more XP for the spotting (I think I actually finished fifth on the team) it was an unexpected bonus.

I think you are vastly overestimating the captain progressions. It will require only about 80k XP to start from the Tier 1 cruiser and grind the line to research the Tier VI cruiser (including spending extra time at Tier II to research the DD and at Tier III to research the BB). Starting out with a 3-point captain you will need 175k CXP to get to 10-points, even assuming as you do using gold for immediate retrains when moving to a new ship. So unless you are non-stop using >100% extra commander XP signals/camos you will still not have a 10-point commander when you have researched your Tier VI ship.

My point is, that not being a ship collector (as I understand you are), I don't really need to go back down to play the Tier II-III-IV when I already have the V, VI, VII. I find that I now almost never play the low-tier tech-tree ships that I kept around because I enjoyed them on the way up (Kuma, Phoenix, Karlsruhe, Clemson, Tenryu). I sold off the V-170 because I needed the captain for Maass, and I sold off Orion after the nerf (and put her captain on KGV). Kuma may be the next sacrifice when I decide I want her 8-point captain for Myoko. Staffing the RN DDs I already got will become a problem when their quasi-premium status is over and I cannot rotate Jack Dunkirk through them. JD will have to stick on the highest-tier that I end up with, and I have a 7-pointer in reserve still unassigned, but I also have Edinburgh researched (though unpurchased) and those 3-pointers won't cut it.

I think WG should use a different set of ship missions if they really want to make this happen. I am certainly not in favor of free-XP'ing to the top of a line as soon as it is out, but for folks who do get one or more of the DDs via the missions, I can totally understand just grinding up the line from there. After all, not everyone was prescient enough (or willing to keep a Tier II cruiser in port long enough) to be in your situation with Weymouth. I think it would behoove WG to give out missions for the line-entry ship when they debut future lines. And not give missions for consecutive ships in the line, but rather every other ship. That way, players who got unlock missions for multiple ships would still have reason to play them all. I was very happy to get the Acasta mission about a week into this campaign. I had Jack Dunkirk sitting in reserve so I specc'ed him up for DD and started playing her. And a week later I got the Icarus mission in a crate, and Acasta suddenly felt kind of deflated. With the quasi-premium status that the UK DDs have right now I have been able to use the one commander on both DDs, so I am trying them both out, but when you realize that any XP earned on Acasta is now unnecessary, she only gets the Type 5 camo, no XP signals, and the urgency drops away. And to top it off, this weekend I got the Jervis mission, so the same thing now happens to Icarus. If instead of getting missions for consecutive ships in the line the crates gave out missions for say the even-tier ships, I would still want to play through all of them to at least research the next ship in the line, play them all, and see which I like the best to keep. Since I did not keep Weymouth around, I will be in the same position I was during the French BB arrival (since I was long past Friant in the French CL line). Given that I already had an entre into the line higher up, I had no desire to re-purchase a lower tier ship to grind for the first line ship, nor to free-XP into it. Especially since the tiers below which I had already would not be usable for any of the missions or events, and none were given must-have reviews. Many more of the lower-tier ships would be played had WG made the missions for the French BBs the tier III, V, VII (and for the UK tier II, IV, VI and VIII destroyers) instead.

Ah, just had this happen to me yesterday in my Fuso, on Haven map. Our team had the SE spawn, and I was the furthest west, so I decided I would head west to cover our DD going for the cap in the middle of those islands, and one CL came along. I figured I would get some good shots at whatever enemies were coming down along the large open area along the western map border. Fortunately, either the DD or the CV planes spotted what was coming down, and it was two BBs and two CAs. Our DD tucked into the islands going for the cap, and the CL went... somewhere I am not even sure. But I did not want to push alone against the four, so I needed to turn around. I should have turned starboard (north) which would have gotten me behind the islands and kept me closer to my team, but because my guns were all pointed starboard I decided to turn port (south) which would let me take a few salvos against the Charles Martel which was leading the enemy charge and was the only one who at that moment had line-of-sight on me. Greed is not good in this game, because while I did get a couple of hits and did force the Charles Martel to reverse course (briefly), it was only then that I saw the four enemy bomber squadrons that the red CV driver was sending on a snipe hunt down the western map edge. A lone bottom-tier Fuso is a most tempting target, so his two TB squadrons torped me and since of course it caused flooding I had to damage control. He lingered his DB squadrons just long enough to outlast the ridiculously short IJN BB damacon and then they set two fires, despite my having FP on the Fuso captain. I did not rage in chat at all, realizing that though my ally fighters were nowhere to be seen it was my own fault for sailing alone, and I had to let the fires burn. I really do not think FP is worth it, because as soon as they were out, the Charles Martel set two more. And then some HE spamming DD started lighting me up from a smokescreen in the cap (apparently our DD lost that engagement) and I did not last too long. Fuso and Colorado are the only ships for which I have taken FP as the 4-point captain skill, and so far I think I made the wrong call.

Yeah, California only took two torps, and would not have sunk at all had the ship not been completely opened up for an impending inspection.

I am thinking that WG should have made Maryland '44 the tech tree ship, with the differently-modernised WV'44 as the equivalent premium, and left the relatively unmodernised Colorado'41 open for the Tier VI premium. All in hindsight but the improvements made to Maryland post-Pearl would make her more competitive at Tier VII than the current Colorado.

Acasta the first week and Icarus this week, only standard containers.

Yeah, +/-1 matchmaking would tend to benefit even-tier ships and hurt odd-tier ships for just those reasons. Unless WG would commit to try to make as many all-Tier X games as possible, to dilute the top-of-the-line cap a bit. However, I think they do want to make the Tier X owners feel special to reward them for the grind. After all, they may question the point of getting to the pinnacle of the ship lines if it means you will fight all ships that are just as strong as yours.

I have a feeling those spikes are actually database glitches rather than anything you did to suddenly drop a hundred points in the space of a few games, only to rise back up to where you were previously in just as few.

Is that Colorado sigma of 1.9 really a "perk"? I think 1.8 is the sigma normally given to 10-gun battleships. Many of the 8-gun battleships (QE, Nagato, Republique) get 2.0 sigma. The fact that the Germans (and Richelieu) get 1.8 sigma seems an intentional nerf for "flavor" or balance reasons.