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Oh, well maybe I'll just stop playing completely then, been a while and I'm not missing it. I did enjoy a couple rounds with Des Monies but the luster faded quickly, and it only yet again enraged me at how stupid the limited firing ranges are.

The game never rewards pushing, that's why I stopped playing ranked real quick, it only got worse in that situation. Its no surprise people hide rampantly. At least in a normal round I don't actually feel like I need to worry about rushing with a destroyer at risk of dying.

This wouldn't be a problem if ships had realistic secondary batteries, aircraft made any sense, a 'historical' game didn't make steaming backwards in a magic immune to the front battleship advantageous, and map design was less based on vomiting islands to see what sticks, but none of that is ever going to change. If 'bastion' is how poorly they implement something as simple as a tower defense mode I also have no hope for better game modes ever.

So I got a chance to play vs some of the German BBs today.

This was T9/10 ships piloted by players who I regarded as decent (55+% winrate).

The German BBs fucking suck. They are brawlers larger than Yama who cant get into brawling range. They are HE spam magnets (thereby rendering their great secondaries useless as you lose half of them to HE spam before you get into range). Their health pool is low (sub T9 Iowa level). Their AA is even worse, cant stand up to a single cv snipe.

They got a torpedo belt half-weaker than Yama and a turning circle of over a km.

GG wargaming.

Although the community guys can't give opinions directly yet, Jingles' video of the German BBs stats communicated fairly clearly that the T9/10 were garbage (and the 10 is lolhueg), the T3/4 were quite fun, and the T5 fully upgraded is about as good as a stock Kongo.

I get the feeling that there's either going to be a significant round of changes before release, or one patch after.

Considering the shitstorm people are going to kick up over the Scharnhorst in current incarnation. They've buffed the Atlanta regularly and the Warspite recently, and the Warspite doesn't bounce shells off the nearly-flat side of an Omaha...

WG seems to be chronically unable to find a middle ground between "OP" or "sucks" when it comes to new ship releases.

They seem to have made it the actual size of H44, without bothering to give it the armament that would entail. Nor can their game engine cope with the armor that ship had, it was big enough to do things a smaller ship couldn't try, so its just one obviously contrived balance problem.

Thanas wrote:WG seems to be chronically unable to find a middle ground between "OP" or "sucks" when it comes to new ship releases.

In fairness, WG arguably has a much harder job than normal shooter balance teams. Call of Shooter #349 usually has one "tier", not frigging ten. And other than different guns, stat differences in those games are usually no more intensive than module/equipment/consumable choices.

WG would probably have phenomenal balance if you logged in and just picked between the Furutaka, Konigsberg, Omaha and Kirov. But then it would suck.

For what it's worth, Obsidian seems to do a tighter job with Armoured Warfare. Though Gaijun doesn't appear to try at all with WT.

Yes, that diminutive ship beside the Kurgfurst is what you think it is.

Well you have to hand it to the Germans...Plan Z was definitely ambitious.

Apparently War Thunder's naval mode is entering closed beta soon. Maybe competition will improve both?

Esquire wrote:Apparently War Thunder's naval mode is entering closed beta soon. Maybe competition will improve both?

It was hilarious to behold the reaction to WT announcing that it'll be based around PT boats though. For now, WG still holds the field.

I would be interested to see a more systems/crew management based wows, in that it would then mean that even gunnery might work based on a fire control mini game, but this turns the whole thing into a TRPG rather than an action game...

Esquire wrote:Apparently War Thunder's naval mode is entering closed beta soon. Maybe competition will improve both?

Steel Ocean has been out for months, with fully controllable secondaries and submarines, and it's still "that other ship game no one plays".

Yeah, I hadn't heard of it until just now. Hooray for information bubbles, I guess.

War Thunder is unlikely to make a dent in WoWS unless they manage to make it so much more fun that it immediately grabs the entire userbase forever and retains them.

"Internet Boats Game" is even more of a niche than "Internet Tanks Game" and it turns out that the peak number of Internet Tanks Games was actually one, despite the apparently huge playerbase. War Thunder Ground Forces never really took off and Armored Warfare's PvP is a howling wasteland, especially on NA (though AW can at least keep people by having the PvE which is at least a unique selling point).

Being second to market against an established product means you need a serious competitive edge.

Sea Skimmer wrote:They seem to have made it the actual size of H44, without bothering to give it the armament that would entail. Nor can their game engine cope with the armor that ship had, it was big enough to do things a smaller ship couldn't try, so its just one obviously contrived balance problem.

Can you elaborate a bit more on what made the armor scheme of the H44 so singular that the game engine cannot handle it?

RN Cruiser tree announced on wows eu; only light cruisers. Belfast will be a tier 8 premium. No Hawkins for me, but the Neptune and Minotaur projects will bei Tier 9 and 10 respectively.

Thanas wrote: Can you elaborate a bit more on what made the armor scheme of the H44 so singular that the game engine cannot handle it?

Doesn't seem to handle multi layer armor interactions worth a shit, if it even tries, and she's absurdly complex on that in ways that make her vulnerable to gunfire a more sane ship wouldn't be, and yet totally immune in so many other cases. But this is because her armor was the best design they could think up to stop it appears, 2000-4000lb caliber, aerial bombing, with only the requirement that she not be worse protected against gunfire then the prior design, which was H-43 and oh like 40,000 tons lighter. Thus still only having a 38cm belt for example, yet not going full on for a proper double belt system, and no underwater ballistic armor.

The problem her designers didn't expect and would have needed further revisions to counter was Tallboy. Once you built bombs that big you could physically wreck ships structures in a single hit without penetrating the armor. So an H-45 was badly needed... be interesting though of H-44 conning tower or magazine protection diagrams exist anywhere.

Thank you for that explanation, I agree with it. For reference, here is how the game models the armor:

http://worldofwarships.eu/en/content/up ... notes-059/

(scroll down for a graphic).

Well at least the announcement trailer was pretty sweet.



That being said apparently T3-8 are great, with Bayern being much stronger than Warspite, Arizona, New Mexico and Fuso. Similarly, Bismarck is almost OP for her tier. T9 and 10 need a bit of a rework though.

Case in point of Bismarck being OP:

Thanas wrote:Thank you for that explanation, I agree with it. For reference, here is how the game models the armor:

http://worldofwarships.eu/en/content/up ... notes-059/

(scroll down for a graphic).

Weird that there seems to be no capturing of multi-layered or spaced armour at all. World of Tanks does it in detail (fucking T26E4 scrublords).

Also, someone likes the Scharny...

"Best ship in the game."

She seems to be really great in the hands of people who know how to drive high-tier cruisers and suck in the hands of people who do not. She really seems a lot like the Hindenburg according to all accounts.

Raesene wrote:RN Cruiser tree announced on wows eu; only light cruisers. Belfast will be a tier 8 premium. No Hawkins for me, but the Neptune and Minotaur projects will bei Tier 9 and 10 respectively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrUpEpgbos0

Jingles got some test screenshots, and runs down the (real) stats. No in-game release date or stats just yet, but they are very pretty.

Venator wrote:

Raesene wrote:RN Cruiser tree announced on wows eu; only light cruisers. Belfast will be a tier 8 premium. No Hawkins for me, but the Neptune and Minotaur projects will bei Tier 9 and 10 respectively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrUpEpgbos0

Jingles got some test screenshots, and runs down the (real) stats. No in-game release date or stats just yet, but they are very pretty.

Ghetto edit. Thought GE&C had an edit funtion...

- 6"/152mm guns all the way up to at least Tier 8, possibly up to Tier 10. Expect accuracy, fast traverse, and fast fire speed to make up for the anaemic caliber. So... basically, the WoT British heavy tanks all over again.

- Murderous AA and secondary capabilities. Scads of 4" guns, and dual-purpose main battery all the way up to Tier 10.

- Torpedoes from tier 3 up. Twelve tubes on the HMS Danae at Tier 4.

Jingles points out that the Brits only ever built 3 classes of heavy cruisers. So, we're either getting a second cruiser line of Battlecruisers (unlikely, since all existing BCs have ended up as BBs in-game), or we can expect at least one British CA as a tier 7-8 premium.

I wouldn't mind an Admiral class battlecruiser. Then you could recreate the historic Bismarck vs Hood engagement.