World of Warships

torpedos can have a quite large damage range ...very large. I've had a series of torpedoes hit a bb before and seen the damage range from 8000 all the way up to 17,000 from the same spread depending where they hit etc.

Also, i am starting to get somewhat frustrated with the aircraft carriers right now. The way the manual drop mechanics work is allowing far too easily of a controlled manual drop of multiple squadrons right on top of each other. I got a strong feeling from what i'm seeing the stats are gonna make wargaming .... rebalance aircraft carrier play...in the near future. Meanwhile, i'm all set to start trying out the T5 jap carrier today until they do:) What i'm seeing at higher tier play from the carriers is just awful op. And contrary to the Female Doggo slappers on the official forums, it's largely undodgable once the carrier player(s) get some skill at it.

They just need to increase the arming time on the TB torps so that manual droppers can't put their fish practically on your foredeck and still have them explode.

Fuzzballx wrote:

Also, i am starting to get somewhat frustrated with the aircraft carriers right now. The way the manual drop mechanics work is allowing far too easily of a controlled manual drop of multiple squadrons right on top of each other. I got a strong feeling from what i'm seeing the stats are gonna make wargaming .... rebalance aircraft carrier play...in the near future. Meanwhile, i'm all set to start trying out the T5 jap carrier today until they do:) What i'm seeing at higher tier play from the carriers is just awful op. And contrary to the Female Doggo slappers on the official forums, it's largely undodgable once the carrier player(s) get some skill at it.

The problem with carriers is that they are perfectly ok when an average player drives them, which means that, naturally, they are well balanced for like 80% of the population. When a really good player drives them though, carriers are unstoppable and are capable of winning fights single-handed by destroying more than half of the enemy team all by themselves. Literally.

I've seen players that sink a ship or 2 with their every TB wave. I've seen players that stay on their carriers alone against 2 BBs, 1 cruiser and 1 DD (all at mostly full health) and manage a draw (with all enemies dead but 1 BB remaining at 20% when the timer ran out). I've seen carrier players so good with TBs, even a destroyer has no chance of evading them. It's rare but it happens.

This is a problem. No other ship class can be so OP in the right hands. IMO WG will get rid of the manual drop. Or should.

Lots of instability and general game weirdness as of late. See that Sampson on the right? Notice how I hit him once but didn't penetrate? That's one of my battleship HE shells bouncing off his face for no damage.
IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/630852440683916966/FA403060E985FC114BF4AC2A6836BCCE3D91A6B4/)
Also had several instances with kills not registering. I would kill a ship and end the match, but the match ends before I get credit for the kill and no it wasn't the timer running out. In other cases I destroyed ships with a full battleship broadside and someone else gets the credit.

In other news I made the jump to Tier IV today. I tried doing one last game in my tier IIIs to get that 1.5x bonus, I kind of wish I didn't. The matchmaking for tier III is BRUTAL right now, I maybe 1 out of 5 games I managed to get an opposing team composed of tier III and below. It also kept putting my crappy tier III ships against teams with a tier V carrier and no friendly carrier on our team. I ragequit for the night after a Kongo instakilled my Kawachi from behind a mountain at 14km, my crappy 9km firing range just can't compete.

It seems like the majority of players are long past tier III at this point, it's struggling to find people to fill these games. The matchmaker used to have 1000 people to pick from when beta started now it's more like 75, even at peak hours. In a couple of the matches where everything was Tier III and below we still had the odd tier I mixed in there.

OG_slinger wrote:

Just one more full damage torp hit would have been enough. That or getting RNG lucky and setting a couple of fires with post-torp run cannon fire.

Yeah I kind of goofed up that attack run. I came around the side of an island and put 6 torpedoes right into him. At that point I went "HAHA SUCKER, oh wait sh*t that didn't kill him!" and panicked a little. If I had planned the attack a bit better I would have immediately moved to bring my other torpedoes to bear just in case the first barrage didn't kill him, I started the turn way too late and took a bunch of damage from his secondaries at point blank range before I finished him off.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

They just need to increase the arming time on the TB torps so that manual droppers can't put their fish practically on your foredeck and still have them explode.

IIRC they already nerfed it once and it's still rather short. Late game BBs can't dodge torpedoes because they are far too fat and slow. Torpedo drop distance should scale to an ship's AA power IMO instead of cruisers having a special ability.

Also had several instances with kills not registering. I would kill a ship and end the match, but the match ends before I get credit for the kill and no it wasn't the timer running out. In other cases I destroyed ships with a full battleship broadside and someone else gets the credit.

This is probably related to fire/flooding damage. One ship would put fire on the enemy, another hits him for a lot, leaving him at like 0.1%, the next second the fire ticks and kills the enemy and the "owner" of the fire gets the credit. Happened to me a few times as well.

Definitely having more fun with Tier IV. With the exception of the Miyogi, the thing is garbage. Half the guns of the USN Battleship at the same tier and most of them are at the back. The game has a lot of these paper ships that were the engineering equivalent of bar napkin sketches, I can only imagine the German tree is going to be full of them if they want to fill out 10 tiers.

The TIV US Destroyer is pretty good, direct upgrade from the previous one and I haven't even gotten the double gun upgrade yet. This screenshot might not look like much at first glance but have a close look at the minimap.
IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/630852732952353431/107B5C539080AC39AF4F4051CAE1856ADB5DF6E2/)
Yup, dead carriers. I managed to assassinate both of them after dashing down the middle of the map. Needless to say our victory was assured.
IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/630852732952353833/3C018898DD52E5E93C40FD4CFAD4FBC533923D73/)
IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/630852732952353939/F0EB650FCA3DE8906D72E731C79EDB6D5AAEC6C8/)

Tamren wrote:

The TIV US Destroyer is pretty good, direct upgrade from the previous one and I haven't even gotten the double gun upgrade yet. This screenshot might not look like much at first glance but have a close look at the minimap.

I've been playing DDs a lot lately and pretty much do the same thing. Every game my goal is either to sneak through the front lines and take down the CVs or go elephant hunting and ambush some poor BB.

I like the American DDs, but I've absolutely fallen in love with my Japanese Tier V Minekaze. It's small, fast, deadly, maneuverable, and crazy undetectable.

Its guns, however, are absolute poop.

On paper they're pretty good. They do more damage than the American guns, though they have a slightly slower reload rate.

Where they absolutely suck is in their turret traverse rate. It's like triple the American guns. The guns are so bad that they're effectively useless if you're trying to hit a close range target when both of you are maneuvering (which is going to happen all the time when you encounter an enemy DD).

What makes the Minekaze great, though, are its torpedoes. The stock torps fast and have a range of 7 km, which is 1.1 km further than the ship's detection range. Its upgraded torps are slower, but have a crazy 10 km range. I've launched unaimed spreads at choke points and gotten hits minutes later.

I've actually loaded my Minekaze with the camo that decreases detection range. It only knocks it down to 5.7 km, but those extra 0.2 km come in so handy when you're stalking enemy formations. Every 30 seconds or so you're going to make them maneuver like crazy or you're going to score a hit on some BB or CA/CL driver who's heads down and blasting away with their guns.

Just bought a Miyogi. Holy sh*t this thing is TERRIBLE. No redeeming features whatsoever. Sure it can go 30 knots but that doesn't matter because you can't kill anything.

I'm really struggling with the Langley. It seems like they have slowed progression (over a lot of ships but especially carriers) and having only two active squadrons really makes it ineffective.

If you hit a BB with a torp strike, by the time your planes get back, reload, and are back on target, the BB has already healed using Repair Party. And the single fighter squadron means you have to play a continuous game of cat and mouse to stay relevant.

I'm really looking forward to the next carrier.

I'm having a hard time liking the US DDs, I'm up to the Wickes, and struggle to have a good game in it.

The tier 3 IJN, otoh, I am LOVING (Wakatake?). I consistently do well with it.

I'm not sure if I'm just too hung up on: "DD = torps," and having the detection range larger than your torp-range makes using them... trickier.

US DDs have a terrible slump. Nicholas, Farragut, and Mahan all have terribly short range torps (we are talking 4.5km at their worst). They MUST have good guns or else they would be completely useless.

DDs got nerfed, by reducing the smoke duration. Smoke used to last much longer in Closed beta. Minekaze was one of the most deadly ships in the game. Especially with its smoke generator. I'm still trying to figure out how much it got nerfed with smoke changes. I also believe they increased the turret traverse as a nerf. I don't recall it being so slow in CB.

Tamren wrote:

Just bought a Miyogi. Holy sh*t this thing is TERRIBLE. No redeeming features whatsoever. Sure it can go 30 knots but that doesn't matter because you can't kill anything.

It's only got two things going for it: crazy range - wait till you get the spotter plane - and decent AA when fully upgraded. I ended up hiding behind other ships, helping protect them from aircraft and supporting their fire, using my range to try and ensure a kill even if it had skated out of my buddy's range. It's got enough speed to dodge torpedoes but it's so frickin' fat and having to hang with the other battleships makes the speed all but useless.

there's nothing more satisfying than weaving through multiple torpedo spreads in a BB. wish i had been recording!

Does going fast or going slow make you turn faster? Specifically does greater speed increase your turning radius?

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

I'm not sure if I'm just too hung up on: "DD = torps," and having the detection range larger than your torp-range makes using them... trickier.

I do okay in my T III. You'll quickly find that it doesn't matter what your detection radius is if the enemy isn't paying attention.

ranalin wrote:

there's nothing more satisfying than weaving through multiple torpedo spreads in a BB. wish i had been recording!

I dodged a line of 10 torpedos in my destroyer once, weaved through a tiny space with a couple feet to spare. However in order to hit my screenshot key I would have to let go of WSAD and hit tilde, so I never get to save the truly action packed moments.

Re: turning radius
I find having an, initially, high speed, then cutting throttle - 3/4 or 1/2 - seems to give me the tightest turns.
Usually done as I'm just about to run aground... derp!

Re: Saving replays
I'll just leave this here, as I just found out today...

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Re: turning radius
I find having an, initially, high speed, then cutting throttle - 3/4 or 1/2 - seems to give me the tightest turns.
Usually done as I'm just about to run aground... derp!

Turn radius is dependent almost entirely on beam. Speed, particularly in larger ships, doesn't play much of a role.

so whats the trick with carriers? I cant seem to get my torps to work. Well at least not as well as others. I might get 1 torp hit in a fight. Rest of the time i'm dying faster than i do in my DD.

You need to master the art of manual torp release. Really good players got it to the point where the torps activate feet from the ship and then explode.

As far as movement, make sure to use the waypoint system to drive your ship away from where the enemy may show up.

Had a great game in my Myogi. This game was unusual (sadly) in that none of the enemy ships were above tier IV, and it helped that they didn't have any Wyomings.

IMAGE(http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/630853074757852259/A98DD7F3130166CCF4917945FC83372C314A6544/)

MoonDragon wrote:

You need to master the art of manual torp release. Really good players got it to the point where the torps activate feet from the ship and then explode.

As far as movement, make sure to use the waypoint system to drive your ship away from where the enemy may show up.

I know how to bring up the manual aim (alt), but still not sure how to rotate it around.

Tamren wrote:

Had a great game in my Myogi. This game was unusual (sadly) in that none of the enemy ships were above tier IV, and it helped that they didn't have any Wyomings.

My first game in my Wyoming was like that. Not been able to replicate it since

I just had one of those games in the Kawachi of all things. The best job I've found for the Kawachi is being on fire for a very long time to earn that achievement and get some signal flags.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/xhzVp7B.jpg)

In this battle I was left against a South Carolina, a Chester and two St. Louis. I basically spent the last five minutes constantly on fire. Fortunately my gunners found the secret laser-guidance unlock and everything I fired landed to take me from one kill to five. And the win. And the badge for being on fire.

For lower tier US BBs, I find that AP ammo, full broadside (double-click) works the best. I'll still load HE for DDs and cruisers tier 3 and less. But I do find, anecdotally, that full broadsides work better than chain fire (click and hold).

AnimeJ wrote:
Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

Re: turning radius
I find having an, initially, high speed, then cutting throttle - 3/4 or 1/2 - seems to give me the tightest turns.
Usually done as I'm just about to run aground... derp!

Turn radius is dependent almost entirely on beam. Speed, particularly in larger ships, doesn't play much of a role.

It used to be like this but they've changed it a patch or two ago and now lower throttle means tighter turns.

I've been paying attention to the turns since we started discussing this. There is definitely a concept of forward momentum. If your engines are at full speed ahead, you'll definitely be maintaining forward momentum a lot more than if you throttle back.

There is also the concept of drift as well. If you are going forward with great momentum, your rudder will "slip" a lot more than if you are going at a slower speed. In a DD, you can actually "drift" like a sports car. You'll be pointing in a certain direction with your throttle at full forward, but you'll still be moving sideways.

Do you know if there is a difference between all stop and full reverse? Throwing the throttle into reverse gear while you are moving forward is a crash stop where everything not tied down skids to the front of the ship. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference though.

There is supposedly a practice mode but it's disabled in an unmodded client because it takes up server time to run it. That would make it really easy to test these things.

Just test it in co-op mode. That seems to be filled with people who wouldn't notice if you drove your ship in a circle with your arse hanging out the conning tower.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

Just test it in co-op mode. That seems to be filled with people who wouldn't notice if you drove your ship in a circle with your arse hanging out the conning tower.

Almost sig-worthy!

I unlocked the Wyoming and sold my South Carolina this morning.

I feel as though a great weight has been lifted from me.