World of Warships

MoonDragon wrote:

I'm curious, from you guys with access, how is the server population? Is it easy to get a game going on? Or is the server a ghost town?

Since CBT started, I don't think I've seen less than 1500 players online at once. Most tiers that'll get you in a match pretty quick, although at the top end and bottom end it can take a bit longer.

It took awhile for people to understand tank roles in WoT and even 4 years later majority of people suck at their roles. WoWS is IMO a more complicated game in this area and I wonder how it's going to affect the gameplay.

This is why divisioning can be incredibly important. 3 people on the same page with good comp can absolutely sway a battle. It's nice when you get a team that works together, but I never expect it to happen.

I loved playing it yesterday. When you are watching videos the game seems to be slow paced but, in reality, when you are "driving" there are so many things to think about, so much stuff to do, the game *feels* very fast paced. Every class feels unique, even nations and ships within one class feel differently (e.g. IJN destroyers have better torpedoes while US destroyers have better artillery).

Yep, all the situational awareness things make a really fun game. What's really awesome is that there's variation even within a nation/class of ship to mix things up some. Granted, that'll go away eventually as more ships are added, but right now it's neat.

At the end I said to myself, "that's probably never going to happen again." Next game I tried to follow a BB to provide cover, but he went full speed and rammed himself into an island. So... variable.

Sadly, "window lickers" are a problem in pretty much any online multiplayer game. You get used to them.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

My first game out in the Yubari last night, I tried to screen our BB and shot down two enemy scout planes. Better yet, a DD hung out a little way in front and lay down smoke. We took practically no incoming fire, because I don't think anyone could see us.

At the end I said to myself, "that's probably never going to happen again." Next game I tried to follow a BB to provide cover, but he went full speed and rammed himself into an island. So... variable.

It feels glorious when things work out like that.

In my only fight in Yubari, I was hanging out by 2 BBs and managed to shot down 6 enemy torpedo planes. My friend was there in the Yubari as well. Those 2 BBs have never taken any damage from the planes despite 2 enemy carriers attacking them non stop. I forgot to check how effective Yubari's AA is compared to other Cruisers in her tier but it felt pretty effective in that fight.

There are lots of nuances in this game in regards to your spotting range, range from which you can be spotted and weapons' ranges. And it seems the dynamics between these is changing from tier to tier, from ship to ship forming a pretty complicated structure.

At tier 3, for example, BB's (Kawatchi) weapon range is shorter (9.8 km IIRC) than Cruisers' (Yubari is like 12 km IIRC). Both can be detected at about 10 km. At the same time the IJN destroyer can be detected at 6 km and has torpedo range of 7 km. It looks like a correct fleet composition should take these numbers into consideration.

IMO, similarly to WoT, spotting, ranges and cover (smoke or islands) will play crucial role in winning.

I gave this a whirl last night (after it downloaded for two hours). My impressions from driving the Erie and the Sims:

- No BBs for the US yet? WTF!

- I have to grind until Tier IX to get a Fletcher? WTF!

- The visuals are beautiful. The camera panning around your ship is awesome.

- Trying to engage enemy ships from long distance is awkward. You need to go into "binocular' mode to see them, you lose depth perception, and you lose situational awareness of the immediate area around your ship. There were several times I was hit by torps because I couldn't spot them or react in time. There is an audio clue to nearby torps but I'm not sure it is enough.

- Ships turn like the great waddling pigs that they are. I'm not sure this is a good thing. Manuevering is fairly difficult and requires some dedication to keeping the wheel hauled over (one way or the other). I saw a number of ships that just stopped in the water to engage targets.

- You can ram other ships. I saw a cruiser cut the bow off of a destroyer.

- The only real aiming you need to do is leading a target and controlling the traverse of your turrets. Elevation angle of attack doesn't seem to be that important.

I had fun but I think they need to tune up their mechanics a bit. I did get to play too much with torps and I didn't see any aircraft yet.

As a cruiser, do you have to aim and fire your AA guns or does it fire automatically?

Ships turn like the great waddling pigs that they are. I'm not sure this is a good thing. Manuevering is fairly difficult and requires some dedication to keeping the wheel hauled over (one way or the other). I saw a number of ships that just stopped in the water to engage targets.

Two things to remedy this. Use Q instead of A and E instead of D. Also, if you hit M for your overview map, you can shift-click navigation waypoints.

I have to grind until Tier IX to get a Fletcher? WTF!

Just like every other similar game, they've tiered ships by age; newer ships are higher tier.

Trying to engage enemy ships from long distance is awkward. You need to go into "binocular' mode to see them, you lose depth perception, and you lose situational awareness of the immediate area around your ship. There were several times I was hit by torps because I couldn't spot them or react in time. There is an audio clue to nearby torps but I'm not sure it is enough.

Once you've got them ranged properly, you can zoom out and generally be OK. Also, if you right click, it'll take you out of sniper/bino mode and allow you to get a short close in sweep without bringing your guns about. For torpedos, there's also a visual indicator of where they are relative to your heading. It can be hard to pay attention to when you're in the thick of things, but getting a handle on that is the real key. Blowing up your minimap and keeping an eye on that also helps in getting an idea of when you might have to deal with torpedos.

I had fun but I think they need to tune up their mechanics a bit. I did get to play too much with torps and I didn't see any aircraft yet.

Carriers start at Tier 4, so you won't see any until then outside of scout aircraft.

As a cruiser, do you have to aim and fire your AA guns or does it fire automatically?

AAA is automatically handled, however it's far better to manually focus fire on squadrons. Ctrl+click to do that.

Thanks for the tips. I look forward to diving in again.

No problem. Post up in here if you're interested in divisioning, I can always buy down a few tiers to run with folks.

I would be if my schedule allowed it. The boy and the wife have this silly notion that they want to spend time with me. That's actually why games like this are so good for me, I drop for a quick match, get my fix, die, and then I can resume "quality time". Unfortunately it makes hooking up with people to stomp pubbies troublesome.

Nevin73 wrote:

- No BBs for the US yet? WTF!

No carriers for the IJN either yet although they are supposedly coming in the next patch or so.

- Trying to engage enemy ships from long distance is awkward. You need to go into "binocular' mode to see them, you lose depth perception, and you lose situational awareness of the immediate area around your ship. There were several times I was hit by torps because I couldn't spot them or react in time. There is an audio clue to nearby torps but I'm not sure it is enough.

That's the point - if you want to shoot and hit (especially long distance), you want to be aiming through the binoculars. If you want to keep your Situational Awareness, you want to be looking around. Both are important. It's a fairly standard trade off in games (including WoT) - accuracy (or rather rate of fire) vs SA.

That's why, as a Destroyer, you want to engage enemies who are already engaged in shooting - more chances they will not notice you, miss your approach and not one-shot you. And then maybe you will one-shot them.

- Ships turn like the great waddling pigs that they are. I'm not sure this is a good thing. Maneuvering is fairly difficult and requires some dedication to keeping the wheel hauled over (one way or the other). I saw a number of ships that just stopped in the water to engage targets.

Q and E keys have already been mentioned. Also you need to plan your movement (unless you are in a Destroyer, those are very nimble). These ships are huge behemoths, you are not going to be zipping around in a battleship or a carrier. You also need to be changing direction constantly or you will get a nice load of torpedoes in your side. I need to try using map and auto pilot for that.

SA, Planning, Maneuvering and Teamwork are IMO the most important things in the game. Actual shooting is a distant forth.

Or and NEVER stop to shoot. You are pretty much dead if you do unless your enemies are completely clueless. That's why you also don't want to be hitting beaches - if the enemies see you, you will be dead VERY quickly. It's because shooting (especially torpedoes) at a stationary target is so trivial and allows you to target vulnerable spots (like Citadel) much much easier.

- You can ram other ships. I saw a cruiser cut the bow off of a destroyer.

Not that good of an idea as both ships take very heavy damage. That cruiser could have easily killed that destroyer with artillery and live to shoot many more enemies.

Ramming a BB on your destroyer might be worth it though, depending on a situation.

- The only real aiming you need to do is leading a target and controlling the traverse of your turrets. Elevation angle of attack doesn't seem to be that important.

Aiming can get pretty tricky as is when you are shooting a moving target that changes directions all the time, especially if it's something nimble like a destroyer. Especially when you are in a BB and have to reload for 30+ seconds.

I had fun but I think they need to tune up their mechanics a bit. I did get to play too much with torps and I didn't see any aircraft yet.

Oh certainly, it's not a release ready version yet but I think the foundation is extremely solid.

Torps are lots of fun. When you are not on the receiving side that is. Although the moments when successfully avoid a bunch of torps you feel so badass.

As a cruiser, do you have to aim and fire your AA guns or does it fire automatically?

AA guns fire automatically but you can focus their fire on specific targets with Ctrl-click. You can also disable them completely (with P) if you want to be stealthy. Not only cruisers have AA btw, it's just cruisers usually have better AA at higher tiers Low tiers cruisers suck at AA almost as much as everyone else, except for the Yubari.

I am still playing this every day since I got it, which is a good sign, especially for a beta.

I got all lines to tier 6 and US/IJN cruisers to tier 6. Haven't seen any lemons yet, all ships so far have had their uses, pretty unique gameplay and are fun to play.

The one ship I am not feeling so far is the prem Yubari (one of the pre-order ships that give you access to beta) - her guns are so weak, which makes for a pretty weird cruiser. Nice AA, torps and mobility though, making her a great DD hunter/BB support cruiser. Certainly requires a bit more skill to play effectively than your regular cruisers.

The game is lots of fun. Next big patch is coming within a week or two (supposedly) and, judging by the preliminary patch notes, it should bring some very nice improvements as well as new stuff to play with.

My only concern so far is slow start of the battle. Nothing really happens for the first 5 minutes or so, sometimes longer, you are just going in some direction. It allows to separate the ships a bit, which allows for sneak attacks and flanking, etc. but I am not sure how it will be accepted by our modern, mostly ADD affected (including myself) gaming crowd.

Conversely, I really like my Yubari. The guns are a bit disappointing, because there's only two pairs, but I mostly play it as in an escort role and it's very satisfying when the enemy can't touch your biggest BB because they can't get planes on it. My last game of last night I shot down 21 aircraft in the round, all but one of which were either scouts or bombers, and it can really neuter the other team. Especially if your CV is being successful at the same time.

I don't know that I have a favourite ship yet... I enjoy CV play, but I haven't done too much of it in PVP. I like the St. Louis for its ridiculous collection of guns and the Kawachi is awful, but can be fun in that game where you get down-tiered and you're the biggest, slowest fish in the pond.

I've also really started to like the Minekaze. It took me a long time to be anything other than dreadful at using the DDs and it either sort of works or goes horrifically wrong, but I've started to get multiple torp hits throughout a round now. Knocking off that 15 torp hit mission in a few rounds with the Minekaze felt good.

Yeah, I like St. Louis too, I even left it permanently in my port to play it from time to time for fun. Later on, we have more US cruisers kinda like St. Louis, for example, Cleveland is a lot of fun with its 4x3 guns.

When playing CVs, remember to use manual torp drop activated with Alt. Personally, I agree with others who said manual torp drop is OP and should be removed from the game - after some practice, it becomes extremely deadly. The only remedy against it is the captain's 3rd line talent that becomes available on cruisers starting from tier 6. Before tier 6 (or if a BB lost his escort), BBs can do pretty much nothing against manual torp drops but die.

DDs are very hard to play but I kinda like that "high risk, high reward" gameplay. It feels extremely satisfying to sink a BB, David vs. Goliath, hehe. However, it's harder to be a mediocre DD. Mediocre BB, CA or CV are still useful , at least they can distract the enemy for some time. Mediocre DD just dies quickly. A very good DD can win entire battles though. Probably, more than any other class, DDs require some dedicated practicing. Which is kinda cool too.

I remember this feeling from when I was in WoT beta - I wish the game would get released, the progress through tiers would get slowed down a bit and I would get to play for real and keep my ships.

I had a domination round where I sank three ships and it ended up as enemy BB, CA and DD against my Minekaze. I was trying to use speed to cap the furthest point so we'd keep two points to their one and then I sank their DD in the middle cap and it was a lot of fun, being this small pesky bee flitting about.

A number of our team actually stayed behind in spectator mode and were cheering as I got lucky with the battleship's rounds splashing either side and when my torps cracked open the DD.

Ultimately, once the other team recognised it was just me left and that I was a Japanese DD, (6.5km gun range.. woo!), they just zig zagged everywhere so I couldn't land torp hits and eventually my smokescreen luck ran out and I got crushed by a solid hit from the BB.

It was a real adrenaline rush while it lasted though.

Minekaze is the only ship I kept. And I play it every time I have a need to feel empowered. I'm tier 6 across the board otherwise, except tier 7 IJN DD. I'm close to dumping Cleveland too, for Pensacola.

Speaking of which, I really hate it how people pumped up both St. Louis and Cleveland. Everybody claims they are great, but I had nothing but misery in both. I suspect it was the early rushers that kept playing as top tiers in their matches. Cleveland is godly against tier 4s. But against tier 8s? Not so much. Every salvo blows up my turrets. About 30% chance to permanently explode them. No other ship I have played ever lost a turret completely in the first salvo. Cleveland does it like every third game. A single shot from across the map, out of my range, from Pensacola, in the first 5 mins of the game, knocks out 25% of my firepower. More than once. Also, I looked up my post game stats from one of the tier 8 games I was in. I fired 512 rounds. 70 something of which hit. Average damage about 200 damage per hit. I received a number of hits, averaging 2000 damage per hit. So like yeah... Cleveland can go die in a fire. Which it does. Often.

My login is the same as in WoT: moondrgn
Please friend me up and maybe we can division.

I forgot to mention before... Alt key is your friend. I push the Alt key at least once every 10 seconds. Once you get into long distance engagements (e.g. Kongo+), you'll use Alt in binocular mode to range your shot as the lead will be so much you can't eyeball your crosshairs.

I'll tell you, I'd pay to simply watch this engine recreate WW2 naval battles to see things from each ship's perspective. Once you die, being able to switch from ship to ship and then being able to change your perspective around the ship you are viewing is awesome.

About Cleveland. IIRC tier 7 and 8 is where armor starts playing a bigger role and where Cleveland's main battery's caliber (152 IIRC) doesn't cut it anymore. He can still pepper the higher tier enemies with HE and be a huge nuisance causing fire and exploding their modules but, let's face it, AP is much more fun. Unfortunately, Cleveland's AP rounds have very hard time penetrating higher tier enemies, especially BBs, cruisers are still ok.

Cleveland is still very awesome against DDs and AA and lower level everything. I still enjoy it and will probably keep it after I reach tier 7 in US cruisers.

Additionally, the devs are still balancing out HE vs. AP. One of the things they mentioned they are looking to fix is how vulnerable guns are against HE. Removal of the Aim Assist mod in 3.1 should also help.

Cleveland at bottom tier is where you really can't allow yourself to be a target for BBs; they will absolutely destroy you. However, even with 152s it's still a very potent anti-CA/DD vessel, even against higher tier US CAs due to its high HP/armor. I absolutely loved it, moreso than the Pensacola I've been in for a while now.

Yea, forget about this part.

I've been playing a lot of carriers (currently on the Saipan). It is fun but it almost seems like easy mode compared to captaining a line vessel.

The Cleveland is my next CA. It is the first "modern" looking ship I've seen and does look pretty badass. I can't wait to get her in my stable.

You see I definitely prefer Pensacola to Cleveland now that I have it. Every so often there is a Cleveland player that will somehow score hit after hit into my citadel, but for the most part I eat Clevelands for breakfast and bathe in their tears.

Well, patch 3.1 is live boys n girls.

I decided to celebrate with a massive victory this morning:)

Note the achievements now live:) Got 2x achievements for killing a ship with a single salvo doing more than 50% of the total ships combat capability (life). That particular one doesn't reward a signal flag, but those are live now too and come from some other achievements:)

Along with US battleships and Jap carriers now having most of those in game. Some ships moved around.

Rebalanced and more detailed damage modeling and shells. etc etc.

Good stuff so far!

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/g4CZkrI.png)

MoonDragon wrote:

You see I definitely prefer Pensacola to Cleveland now that I have it. Every so often there is a Cleveland player that will somehow score hit after hit into my citadel, but for the most part I eat Clevelands for breakfast and bathe in their tears.

I've started looking at the Pensacola now that I'm getting close to earning one. Either the game designers need to fix their rating systems or they don't really mean what I think they mean because the Cleveland beats the Pensacola in every single category. Either that or the category ratings change with each tier which would be silly.

I'm excited to try the new patch.

As of this morning the game could be retitled "World of American Battleships." I've flipped from seeing almost no BBs, to being the only Cruiser in a round.

The IJN carriers will probably balance things out.

You only get two CVs a side though. The last round I played, there was an Isokaze, my St. Louis, four IJN Carriers and then everything else was an American BB.

No complaints at all, I'm just amused I've gone a week of struggling to find a BB and now when I hit random battle it tells me the queue is 8DD, 4CA, 54BB.

It's a great time to be grinding IJN destroyers, cause there's lots of slow ass low tier american BB's out there:)

Nevin73 wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:

You see I definitely prefer Pensacola to Cleveland now that I have it. Every so often there is a Cleveland player that will somehow score hit after hit into my citadel, but for the most part I eat Clevelands for breakfast and bathe in their tears.

I've started looking at the Pensacola now that I'm getting close to earning one. Either the game designers need to fix their rating systems or they don't really mean what I think they mean because the Cleveland beats the Pensacola in every single category. Either that or the category ratings change with each tier which would be silly.

I'm excited to try the new patch.

If I'm not mistaken, Pensacola has higher caliber guns. They are also more accurate and have greater range I believe. Also, when you upgrade Pensacola, its upper turrets become 3x guns rather than 2x guns. So in total it has 10 cannons, rather than 8.

Nevin73 wrote:
MoonDragon wrote:

You see I definitely prefer Pensacola to Cleveland now that I have it. Every so often there is a Cleveland player that will somehow score hit after hit into my citadel, but for the most part I eat Clevelands for breakfast and bathe in their tears.

I've started looking at the Pensacola now that I'm getting close to earning one. Either the game designers need to fix their rating systems or they don't really mean what I think they mean because the Cleveland beats the Pensacola in every single category. Either that or the category ratings change with each tier which would be silly.

This is probably because you are comparing a fully upgraded Cleveland to a stock Pensacola. The ratings change when you upgrade modules. I'll try to compare ratings when both are fully upgraded when I get home.

Does the aim assist mod still work? I wonder if the devs disabled it.

Nobody's really updated in a while in here i see.

No the aim assist mod was killed and it's obvious these days, you don't get citidel shot so much as before. people actually miss, especially when yer dodging, quite a bit.

The game is rocking along. Keeps getting improved, can't wait for the next big patch and whatever comes, but i'm still having a blast with it.

I'm on T 10 jab destroyer, shimakaze and i love it. I'm also on the T9 US cruiser and really lookin foward to the T10 which fires a volley eevery 6 seconds...heh.

I havn't been doing much outside of destroyers and a few cruiser battles lately though. I havn't dug into the battleships yet beyond T5 nor the carriers beyond T6 and that was before the latest version.

I've started trying to level the US DD's mainly now.

Most of my ships are now at tier 8 (IGN BB at 7, and USN BB at 6), but I decided I don't like carrier game play so I gave up on them for now.

My main problem at this point is that my premium time expired, and many of the games I do now actually lose money. Every once in a while I'll have a great game that makes up the losses, but that means that overall I'm not really making much extra cash. This means that I won't be able to afford tier 10 ships. I think I have like 13mil saved up on the bank, but that'll melt away easily once I get into tier 9s. And I'm guessing tier 9s will be even more expensive to run than tier 8s. I really don't understand why the slot allocation is so stingy.

I'm finding that selling older ships gives me a nice dose of cash.

The carrier game definitely gets more difficult as cruisers become better and better at shooting down aircraft. You have to play a lot smarter.

I'm loving the BBs though. I find that you need to plan out an autopilot route for your BB so that you can bring your broadsides to bear and focus on gunnery. BBs aren't for capping, they are for raining down hell on anyone who is foolish enough to get in range.