YouSatInGum

Maybe periscope spotting should be minimap only.... on the surface would work like surface ships. I'm ok with faster than historical speeds but only the surface. Radar should be able to spot periscopes (historically they did). One idea with hydro could be it's range is based on sub speed. For example, hydro would have full range on subs traveling at full speed.... 3/4 speed gives 3/4 range, 1/2 or less reverts back to what we have now.

Hey WG... I fixed it for you...

It sort of is unbalanced.... but that mainly has to do with the implementation. For example, the attackers knowing the EXACT route of the transports is an advantage the attackers should not have. You're right in that many players often don't understand the win conditions of the mode or they at least play far to similarly to a normal random game. That said, I've seen game with good players on both sides who have adjusted their play to the different win conditions, and in those games the attackers definitely have an advantage. As is often of late, a lot of the problem has to do with spotting. Especially when there is a CV in the game, it's is too easy to simply spot the transports and good teams with focus fire can quickly dispatch a whole group of transports. Even if a DD must yolo in to get the spots it is a no brainer trade off.... and you are starting to see players bring specific DDs in mind to do exactly that.... Marceau is a great example.... do a hit and run spot and torp dump and disengage to try again until all transports are dead. While the transports do have smoke, they are still too slow, too predictable, and too dumb. The fact of the matter is that it's easier to defend than to push and contrary to the stated positions of the teams at the start, the roles get flipped as attackers can simply position towards the end of the routes, thereby forcing the "defenders" to push into their positions. It's not hard to create this condition and it is another reason it's silly for the attackers to know the routes. I do wish WG would release the actual Win loss stats at the end but I'm not expecting it. Even so, it's easy see some the changes that should be made. 1st thing is the exact routes should not be know to attackers. In fact, I think there should be 2 or 3 different bot path scenarios for each map so that even with experience an attack will not know where to camp/ambush. 2nd thing is something more should be done to reduce CV spotting. This has less clear cut solutions but maybe even something like giving the transports Ragnar like AA would go far to reduce CV's permaspotting the transports. We'll see if WG will finally make some of the needed changes to the mode....

On that nice review of parenthood....I'll add this.... Adding up how much money you've spent on your kids over the years and realizing you could have retired rich 5 years ago ...

I'm sorry but your argument rings a bit hollow. For starter most clans at the storm level, the player don't just bring whatever they feel like playing. It's not very conducive to any kind of strategy since a real strategy will concentrate on the strengths and weaknesses of particular ships and how to work that into a particular map. In my clan and any of the last few I've been in before, the caller usually asks for particular ships in preparation for how he plans to call a game. As players you don't have to have every ship as you can switch around between players on the team often based on who's comfortable playing what, but what the caller needs is the order of the day. Basically the only exceptions to this is maybe the last battle of the night after having a good run or towards the end of the season when we are not really playing to win. Basically the additional restrictions really don't add any real restrictions to the mainstream Storm and up teams as we are already used to restricted, play what's needed environment. Anybody who has played competitive for any length of time is pretty much aware of what I just said above. So, anybody who is pulling a Cartman and taking his toys home, either has not be playing competitive for very long or is only splashing around in the shallow of end Squall or, later in the season, Gale pools. While I wish it was easier for clans who are just starting up in competitive, it is not uncommon for squall level clans to have difficulty filling out teams (which is why there was a rental system for a while). Saying the reason for this is the restrictions on ships really is disingenuous as the real reasons are usually because of smaller clans and players who are newer to the game and competitive in general. While it would be nice if WG could cater to both segments of competitive, they do have to settle on one set rules for a season and the fact of the matter is that CB has been bordering on getting stale after numerous seasons with near identical rules. This season was their attempt to mix things up a bit. While I'm critical of WG when I see bad logic in their decisions, I will also applaud good decision. I think this season is definitely the later.

big nerf to operations. ....AND maybe even a nerf to PvP base XP recently....gotta finish number crunching but remember to changes to spotting and such a patch ago? Well, some of my prelim numbers say it has been noticeable nerf in several ship types.

Not really. Wooster can open water very well at long range because of shell float. Vallejo shells are similar to Mainz or Chappy in ballistics and trick spotter plane give 18km range even with reload. If you have ever wanted a tier 9 Mainz with a heal....Vallejo is the closest thing to that.

I would consider Z-42 as a slightly better Z52. It's better at DD fights but a little worse at torping BBs and BB farming, but DD contesting usually has more battle impact. Still....I'd rate it as being more worthy as a coal ship than steel. I bought it since there was nothing else for me to buy...and still have enough for another... I actually like Vallejo, but I still think it's a tragedy that it's reload it's 5.5 sec or less.... and one of the reasons that it got nerf was that USN DD smoke comps with Vallejo ran it's numbers way up during testing and got it nerfed. For all the utility it gave up....it really should have overwhelming DPM.... That said.... it still has the best combination of DPM, range, and ballistics of any T9 cruiser....but that's also partially because T9 is sort of a crap cruiser tier.... But it is the king of kite.... even a DM would be foolish to push into one. No comment on Gato except that it is Ebola incarnate.

I have explained in detail in the past how a limited MM that had a skill component comparison to it could work and not increase wait times and without a doubt improve matchups on average. You are right in the sense that on certain games there would be bad matchups. Maybe you are now a much better player than your 47% WR implies so your team would be stronger in general. But what Form is saying and I also believe is that even if the modified MM only improved a few matches, that would be better than what we have now. ....and what we have now are matches where it's not that uncommon to have half the team have an about average 50+% WR facing a team of taters where most have less than 1k total games and a 47%WR. When the difference between two teams averages WR is 4% or more (Keep in mind 3 or 4% is a full std. deviation in this game) you know who will win 90% of the time. This is not just B$ that I pull from my [edited]. I've done 300+ game sample size comparisions in the past. I don't know the exact reason our host is so again even experimenting with such tools, but it's easy to imagine that since their past behavior seems to emphasize shorter games.... that could be a strong motivator....match quality be dąmned.

When we got 3 new ops a while back, not only did we get a lot more plane and AA action, but a whole host of other changes as well. Among regular operations players some the these changes have been regarded as good (or at least not bad), while others.... well, not so much. After the thin veneer of WG's "This change is great" was dissolved with a drops of logical thinking, it became clear that a good portion of the change was designed to reduce player rewards. The assumption here is that if players accumulate less in game resources with play, then they are more likely to spend actual money to acquire in game merchandise. I know this small tangent here...but please keep with me for a moment.... One of the changes to operations was a reduction is final amount of base experience able to be earned by players. This is a separate reduction from the "25%" penalty for being able to choose the operation. To my knowledge, this earnings nerf was never reported in the change notes, but as a person who used a play a lot of ops, this nerf definitely happened. In fact, in past conversations, CM's have alluded that in general all operation have total pool of XP available for the team to obtain giving each game ceiling of possible earnings. The would also explain why in some operations like Killer Whale, I have to do much less damage compared to another op like Newport where I routinely run up 450k in damage for the same earnings in the end. When the ops were going through testing or around the time of their first, one bug from the new ops was discovered. It was found that planes which has originated in a way other than bot controlled CV's were not giving players any earnings for AA damage against those planes. I brought this up when ops had just launched, and it was reported as being a known issue. The end result of this I fear is like other bugs such as the 10% citadel repair bug on Hector where the bug was changed to being a "feature" .... probably due to convenience. In the case of Hermes with AA, planes are such a heavy element of that op, that I bet the devs would be afraid of those scores that players could potentially get if they were fairly compensated for the AA damage that they did. This would "break" the maximum XP ceiling of what players could earning (what ever that amount it). The problem here is that the op appears to have been designed in part for planes to be a significant challenge for players. As a consequence, I've noticed that the total team base XP on Hermes tends to be a few hundred base XP lower than other operations even on 5 star runs with a clean sweep of bots. The other unfair part of this is that unlike other ops, bot planes are a significant threat to killing a player or greatly damaging him. If you play more aggressively in an attempt to do more damage to bot surface units, you are likely to catch the focus of both planes which often will lead to taking a lot of damage that is very difficult to avoid. (see my screenshot) In other game modes, players have the option of building into AA, usually at the cost of other attributes for defense or offense against surface opponents. But if you do so and draw an op such as Hermes, this sacrifice is not rewarded in any way. I have tried this and rolled up impressive AA numbers like over 400K damage to planes, but it had zero effect on my score that I could tell. This perversion of risk and reward is rather blatant and has been successfully swept under the rug since operations tend to be less popular. Also, the scoring mechanics at play are less than obvious even though it can mean 3 or even 4 digit shortfall in BXP. That said, this "bug" is going on 2 years and should be addressed in a way that doesn't shaft players. Another small bug..... apparently plane damage doesn't count in the damage total?? ....maybe a related bug to the damage not being counted in the final BXP...

Nothing wrong with wanted to earn money, it's still a head scratcher that they want that much money for a such a mediocre ship (at best), but more likely is a below average cruiser. As others have said.... if you want a smoke heavy cruiser, Rochester is better, cheaper, more available, and you don't have to gamble to get it. If WG really wanted our money they'd give us something we don't have yet, like a USN heavy cruiser with a heal. Secondly, if they really wanted our money, they give us a way to obtain it without having to gamble on the final price we pay. I take serious issue with the idea that price of something is completely open ended to be determine by some RNG formula that I have little information about. I know I'm not the only one seriously put off by this sort of pricing, so WG is greatly reducing the number of potential customers by this sort of marketing.

Understand. A month ago I would have said to think twice as the Ragnar is the most likely candidate to get pulled for being too strong. Now, however, with Gdansk coming.... prob not. In fact, Ragnar is one of the few DDs that can handle that ship.

Everybody always forgets the Division part for some reason. In fact, Divisions are prioritized before ship tier and type as the MM is not allowed to make changes to divisions.

Don't confuse Ragnar with Friesland/Groningen. They don't have much in common other than being the same nation and being DDs with 2 twin turrets. Fries relies on high DPM DD caliber guns, smoke, and hydro to do it's things. Ragnar on the other hand relies on cruiser style guns, best in game accuracy, armor/heal, and radar to be a DD bully and accurate long range farmer. In terms of carry potential Ragnar is probably the among if not the highest of steel ships currently on sale.

It's still a choice of how they spend their disposable time.... and in some sense, that's even more important than spending money. Speaking of money.... I wonder if WG counts that as a win if players that used spend money... don't spend like they used to.... ....it makes me wonder.... all these recent events that are ever more aggressive in monetization.... like charging for Youtube like some college kid bloggers do.... ....it must be a coincidence that is happening at the same time as falling activity on the servers.... I'm sure there's no problem meeting revenue goals ....