Ensign_Cthulhu

Russian cruiser event confirmed to begin in 0.9.4, but no firm details of whether you automatically get the replacement yet.

Smolensk is a "special" and by the rules of the game she is vulnerable to directed nerfs if necessary. JB is a premium which can be obtained directly for money, and since the Giulio Cesare fiasco a while back, WG seems to have adopted a hands-off policy to premiums. The only negative changes that can be made to them are as a result of global nerfs that affect all ships.

Finished off the grind for the Vasteras camo. I think I like this ship in co-op; it's finally starting to click. I put the captain (who normally drives the Blyskawica) away in reserve because I want to transfer him to this ship full-time, but playing him any more will push him up to 11 points and increase the retraining cost. Mixed fortunes in Randoms - just not my weekend - but co-op was a blast, including a bit of time spent at low tier, working on the T3 Italian cruiser (I have T5 to T8, but am determined to play them all). Last Random for the evening was a why-not in the Richelieu, which I haven't taken out in AGES due to her being in the shadow of her Tier 9 sister. Forgot I'd had her flagged up for something or other, and came home with a far nicer haul of XP than I had anticipated (not complaining!). We had a Petropavlovsk on our team, and although it was far over the other side of the map from me, the comments in chat indicated that it was doing great execution.

The Georgia does many of the same things, arguably just as well if not better. It's an individual thing. You still have one hell of a fine ship.

I occasionally caught myself singing the opening bars to a certain Sinatra song referring to a certain large US city while piloting a certain Tier 5 battleship...

Premium consumables are becoming free too. Now there will be only premium consumables, and they will behave like the current ones do. I think it's going to be a good time to be a co-op player.

My recollection is that he is ASSIGNED to that ship, but has to be retrained in the usual way. I have put my Blys captain into the Vasteras, and he is sitting there on his fat Polish backside until Wednesday. It will be interesting to see what happens. This was a nasty trap for people who left existing tech-tree captains in their pre-release ships in previous events, only to have to retrain them to the original ship when the line went live. Here the only pre-existing Euro ships are all premiums, and can take any captain of their nation without retraining anyway.

NP. Just that the post to which I replied said "I just got the Visby", which would account for my confusion.

This AND universal premium consumables. @AdmiralThunder take note!

You can't do the mission unless you have the ship. If you only just got the Visby, you ain't gettin' the Vasteras camo.

And she is never coming back. Note that regardless of the post title, Mouse is talking about the JB. If you were thinking about buying her for money or getting her for coal, now is the time; there will NEVER be another. Smolensk is also going (for how long or ever, I do not know). Black, Flint and Neustrashimy are going away for not less than six months, and then RETURNING AS COAL SHIPS.

Fun awaits anybody who gives the Italian T3 Taranto a go in co-ops. Her torp tubes on the A hull are only 1 per side, but they reload stupidly fast, and SAP ammunition does horrific things to the destroyers she meets. Maybe it's just luck, but I played a bunch of battles with her the other night and never saw carriers. T4 CV in co-op are almost zero threat anyway.

I've sometimes heard it said that "If you're in this Tier Z ship, you should have a Y point captain", and I thought of all the times that wasn't true for me. So, being the curious tentacle monster that I am, I sat down to do some calculations. I picked the Japanese cruiser line because it's not hard to get one's hands on a premium ship for free (the T4 Yubari), it doesn't have a formal line split (apart from the usual DD and BB branch points), and I could make the assumption that all retraining costs could be absorbed in her (eventually) by those who don't have the doubloons for retraining or a better premium ship. Those who in past years managed to grab themselves a Tachibana Lima or one of the ARP ships are of course in a better position. All data are from the WOWS Wiki. ASSUMPTIONS: 1) All grinds hit the exact mark to transition to the next ship, with none left over (to keep the maths easy). 2) The captain is clan-less with no flags used, so ship XP = Commander XP always. 3) Retraining costs are absorbed by use of a premium ship obtained for free and/or Commander XP or FXP earned through events, dailies, etc. (for the purpose of the exercise only; I would only use free XP for FXP ships). Note that this is not valid if the IJN cruisers are the person's very first line; then they must either buy the premium (but Tachibana is cheap) or be able to get dailies CXP with another ship line. 4) All grinds include every option (e.g. destroyers and battleships branching off the cruiser line); i.e. there is no mad rush to proceed to T10 at maximum rate through the hulls and ignore other things. Begin with the Hashidate; recruit a new captain for it. Zero XP, Zero captain XP. Getting to the Chikuma costs 350 XP. From Chikuma to Tenryu costs 3540XP (including unlocking the T2 DD Umikaze). Total 3890. First point. From Tenryu to Kuma costs 10,000 (including unlocking the T3 BB Kawachi). Total 13890. Captain now 3 points. From Kuma to Furutaka costs 14,400; total 28,290. Captain now 5 points. From Furutaka to Aoba is 46,000 XP; total;74,290. Captain now 7 points. From Aoba to Myoko is 92,000 XP; total 166,290. Captain now 9 points. From Myoko to Mogami is 155,400 XP; total 321,690. Captain now 11 points. From Mogami to Ibuki is 228,000 XP; total 549,690 XP. Captain now 13 points. From Ibuki to Zao is 322,000 XP; total 871090 XP. Captain now 15 points. So with all these basic assumptions, a Japanese cruiser captain who comes up through the ranks will be a 15 pointer when he hits Tier 10. The cumulative retraining cost is 218,000 Commander XP, if no doubloons are used. Now, the obvious modifiers: 1) Clans. A fully fleshed out clan can lift captain XP 10% above ship XP. This means the captain steps aboard the Myoko as either a freshly minted 10 pointer or becomes one very soon afterward, and steps into the Zao with 16 points. 2) Flags and camos. It's not hard to stack them in a way that makes captain XP three times the ship XP (including the clan bonuses). If we take this assumption all the way from the bottom (not possible for a new commander), he becomes a 10 pointer while still in the Furutaka and hits 19 as he steps onto the deck of the Ibuki for the first time. 3) Premium time doesn't change anything except the number of battles required to get to the next tier. These are of course theoretical extremes, and there's a multitude of realiities in between depending on how many flags you have, when you use them, etc. etc. etc. It's also distorted by the fact that a new player doesn't actually get captains until they hit account level 7, which means they're a few tiers in anyway, but the amount of XP required for even the B hulls of the higher tier ships is so much larger than the whole-ship grinds in the first few tiers that it doesn't change the broad picture very much. Be aware that the above figures also represent a worst case for the use of Free XP in the research bureau; it would be trimmed down significantly if you were purely grinding through the hulls to reacquire the ships.

Yes. I've only done it once, but as I remember it, if the steel is enough to make up for the coal deficit (1 steel = 10 coal), it will ask you whether you want to convert. Normally I would never suggest this, but for a ship as good as the JB which is just a couple of DAYS away from removal, I think it's worth it. Since I got the JB, my Richelieu has rotted in port, very rarely seeing the open water. If you like the Richelieu, you will love the JB; you will want to drag it up to the altar and marry it.

Update: it did it again! No CV this time, or at least not one that wasn't part of the faildiv, but there was a T4 faildiv ship and the MM added other T4 ships that would not otherwise have been in that MM spread. It looks like the co-op MM is "cleared" to select ships from inappropriately low tiers if there is even one human ship at that tier in the team.