Blogging and Me

I've noticed a downtrend in my blogging even though my time in EVE is still about the same as it was previously. I'm still getting out in space and PvPing, building capitals, and now planning on building Astrahaus citadels. But my fervor for writing here has suffered lately.

Part of it is that the game has changed so much from when I was top of things that I no longer feel much like an expert in anything anymore. I barely recognize some of the null sec entities fighting over... whatever it is these days. And locally the war with Caldari Militia has died down to barely-there status. No pushes, no resistances to speak of.

So basically the only thing I feel qualified and invested in to speak of lately has been my small industrial business which is gearing up for citadel product but that is still over a month away.

So I'm going to briefly talk about other games I've been playing that require less time to sit down and enjoy than a good PvP session of EVE Online does.

World of Warships and Tanks

Two of my sons love World of Tanks and to a lesser extend World of Warships. The longevity of the former for our family is a simple truth: it doesn't change much in execution even as new tanks and functionality are added constantly. The basic premise of get-in-tank-and-drive is the same now as it was back in 2011 and still just as fun although not as deep as EVE's PvP.

I prefer the slower pace and big ships of World of Warships but don't mind getting in a division with my son when time permits.

Dominions 4

Been playing multiplayer with friends from work and single player at home. Very different game obviously but has the advantage of loading fast and letting me play a few turns in a few minutes, unlike something similar like CivV which takes all the same time to load.

This game is scratching an itch but no plans to delve into further than that.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (BETA)

I used to play Battlefleet Gothic on the tabletop back in the day before kids destroyed my free time so when I saw that a PC game was coming out I knew I had to sample that stuff. I was expecting an experience like World of Warships in space but I was mistaken, its incredibly just like the table top game where online play against other players is 1v1 with each having multiple ships in a fleet.

We'll have to see if this game is good enough for a long term investment but I'm enjoying it a lot right now.

Warship Wedensday - The Downward Side

My premium status ran out and I did not renew it.

Its not that the game isn't fun; I'm still enjoying it and always enjoy getting those citadel hits. But the drive to climb the tech tree has died down and my enjoyment of controlling aircraft carriers has fizzled as the USN tree has very few squadrons and replacements up to tier VI and while I still have fun games in the tier VIII IJN Shokaku carrier, I hate always seeing a Lexington on the other side and having to dodge two powerful fighter squadrons every time. Still love battleships though, lots of fun.

The big issue is that with my new computer I've been trying out lots of other games that my old PC couldn't handle. Some first person shooters like Call of Duty: Ghosts and Advanced Warfare and some big games like Civ V (my old PC could handle it, but was very slow).

I don't see me giving up World of Warships entirely, just right now I feel I've run my course and need a break.

Warship Wednesday -

Since the beginning of November I've been on a tear for improving my win rate going from a low of 50.86% on Oct 31 to a current high of 53.94% as of today.

I believe the drop from ~52% to under 51% was due running in the lower tiers with the new Russian destroyers and German cruisers where the quality of players can run the spectrum from excellent to horrible in random groups, and as I rose the ranks into the tier IV and V range the players are more experienced and the results of good play more consistent. Also, I found my grove in certain ships like the tier V Furataka cruiser which can be dominating in same tier play with its big 203mm guns and decent durability, plus I got all the upgrades for the Amagi and New Mexico battleships, both solid in their respective tiers. Also, I found that a second go around with the Bogue tier V carrier using the all damage strike pattern worked for me and I had some good success with that to close out the training for the Independence which I've just got yesterday.

On top of those factors, I also really adjusted my battleship play and have been trying to less aggressive with my big brawlers so I can avoid over-committing, which is a problem I tend to have in the early game, especially if I'm at the top tier in the match. This has improved my win rate in the Amagi to 54% over 35 battles.

So I mentioned I just got into the Independence after finally getting the Bogue under control. Its tier VI and starts with a balanced 1/1/1 loadout which is nice compared to the painful loadouts of the Bogue, but after having decent success with the strike loadout I might try the same thing in the Indy when the module is unlocked. I'm also starting up in the IJN Aoba tier VI cruiser, and still working on the Konigsberg at tier V. I haven't made much progress with the tier IV Izyaslav destroyer as I've been working the new long term missions and the destroyer mission required tier V destroyers of which I have none in port at the moment. 

Speaking of the missions, there are four of them, one for each ship type. I easily completed the battleship one since I have three battleships of tier V or higher, and the carrier one is almost done, just need about one torp hit on an opposing carrier to complete it. The Cruiser challenge requires 100 plane kills and I have about 51 and 4 days to do it using the three cruisers I have. Its gonna be a tough one.

Warship Wednesday - The Konigsberg

God, the tier IV KMS Karlsruhe is terrible.

The German ship has firepower only slightly better than the tier IV Russian destroyer, with a shell velocity measured around Atrocious speed so the flight time of salvos take forever, making it nearly impossible to even take on destroyers at any range beyond 6 kilometers.

I hate that ship. Fortunately, as bad as it is it leads to the deliciously wonderful tier V Konigsberg cruiser, a ship as awesome as the Karlsruhe is terrible.

I had a chance to test drive the Konigsberg prior to the release of the German cruiser line and I loved the ship then, and after a few battles I can report I'm still very pleased with it. Whereas the Karlsruhe could only sling 5 shells in a broadside in a high arc towards a target, the Konigsberg can bring all 9 barrels to bear and the shell velocity is so much better, allow me to cripple destroyers with ease. To complement the improved artillery, it sports twice as many torpedoes with a 6 km range and higher speed and damage.

The ship has a nice top speed of 32.9 knots and a decent rudder shift time, but it slows down a lot on the turns. On top of that, it has less than stellar AA capabilities, and it takes engine damage from strong language.

Overall it adds up to a more fragile and less damage-dealing Cleveland cruiser, which is not a bad thing. I will probably keep this ship in my port even after I unlock the tier VI Nurnberg.

In other news, I regretted giving up on the Bogue a couple weeks ago and decided to give it another try, this time in strike configuration (no fighters, 1 torp, 2 bombers). If it doesn't work out, I'll go back to ruining the life of other carriers with fighters. I just need to get to the Independence, only another 20K experience to go....

Warship Wednesday - Stats

While I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with my statistics in World of Warships, I definitely keep and eye on them and try to improve over time.

I've pointed you at the Warhshipstats.com website before, and it remains a constant site to visit because it keeps track of historical data so I can watch as my win percentage rate goes up and down. The statistics page on World of Warships' main site is also very useful because it has some more detailed stats and layout that makes it easier to compare ships of the same class, or the best results for certain ships.

I peaked in my win percentage at 52.27% on Sept 9 and stayed close to 52% until mid October. My average damage peaked in early October at just over 40K per game. Then in mid October both stats took a nosedive to around 51% for win rate where it has stabilized, and my average damage has fallen to over 38K per game. I say 'nosedive' but really both are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

I suspect I know the reasons for both drops. For one, my win rate and damage are still correcting from the sheer power of the pre-nerfed Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers who were dominating for me up until half way through my tier VII Hiyru. With 200 battles they have my best win rate of 55% and average damage 54K per game. Even in my tier VIII Shokaku which I never had pre-nerf I'm still doing 53% win rate and 60K avg damage per game.

But I've been playing my carrier less as I started up the Russian Destroyer and German Cruiser lines. In lower tier battles (I through to III) it doesn't often matter how well you do, sometimes people still learning the game on the other side of the map can lose it for you, so win rate suffers a bit. I've finally gotten to tier IV in both lines and I noticed an improvement in win rate as a result.

Average damage is a weird stat to cover overall as well. If you do nothing but carriers and battleships, as I did for a long time, average damage will be a lot higher than a captain focusing on cruiser or destroyer lines. Plus if start doing more low tier matches, average damage is lower as those ships just plan do less damage. Since I've started both working more on destroyers AND in low tiers, my average damage has dropped a lot and will continue to do so as I maintain a balanced approach.

All of this is to say I'm overall pretty happy with my statistics right now. I'm not the best player but I feel confident I'm middle of the road, solid and dependable most of the time.

My best ships based on ships I've used for more than 5 battles:
Win rate: IJN Tenryu cruiser (III), 87.5% over 8 battles
Average Experience: IJN Ryujo carrier (VI), 1796 over 46 battles (pre-nerf)
Average Damage: IJN Ryujo carrier (VI), 66,054 over 46 battles (pre-nerf)
Kill Death Ratio: IJN Ryujo carrier (VI), 5.69 over 46 battles (pre-nerf)
Ship Kill Rate: IJN Ryujo carrier (VI), 1.61 over 46 battles (pre-nerf)

Hmmm... ok, ignoring the pre-nerf carriers for those last four?
Average Experience: IJN Shokaku carrier (VI), 1771 over 15 battles
Average Damage: IJN Shokaku carrier (VI), 60,475 over 15 battles
Kill Death Ratio: IJN Shokaku carrier (VI), 5.00 over 15 battles
Ship Kill Rate: USN Omaha cruiser (IV), 1.40 over 25battles

I guess I'm just my best when I'm in my carrier!

Warship Wednesday - Losing

Over the past week my stats have taken a beating and I've been trying to determine why.

I think the main reason is that I've switched from a suite of ships I was quite comfortable with, the IJN Nagato, Hiryu, and Kuma and the USN New Mexico to a suite of ships that I'm still getting used to: The IJN Amagi, Skokaku, and Furutaka, as well as starting up the new German and Russian lines.

While my stats with the Amagi are comparable or better than the Nagato, the stock Shokaku and Furutaka suck badly; the former with tier VII planes was facing tier VIII and IX planes in some battles as well as tier VIII and IX ship based AA, while the latter just plain sucks compared to the upgraded Kuma with guns that rotate slow and had a 22 second reload (upgraded guns I just got and are better at 15 second reload). So those ships have hurt my stats as I get used to them.

For the new German cruisers, I've been performing well or extremely well in games (well above average according to warshipstats.com) but in the low tiers you have very little control over the success of the team as a lot of players just don't know what they are doing yet.

And of course, since I've been doing a lot of low tier Japanese and German and Soviet ships my average damage stat drops as I'm not doing high tier battleship and carrier damage as much.

In other words, I hope its all in good time that my winning percentage climbs back to the 52% and beyond mark, but really I don't care as long as I have fun.

Warship Wednesday - Ranked No More

After 45 battles and reaching a high of Rank 15 I have quit ranked battles and sold the Nagato and Hiryu to fund my tier VIII Shokaku carrier that I'm using along with my tier VIII Amagi battleship.

Things were ok up until I got into the mid tier in ranked battles. You see, they grouped the players into three tiers, lowest tier from 25-21, mid tier at 20-11, and highest tier at 10-1. As soon as I got into the mid tier I found I had significantly longer waits on getting into matches and as time went on the waits became longer. Now, I have sporadic short times when I can jump on to play and wasting 5 minutes or more in queue is not acceptable for me. It got to the point where I could only confidently get into ranked battles quickly on weekends. The last straw was Monday night where I waited for 10 minutes and still wasn't in a match. Frustrated, I sold the Nagato and Hiryu and didn't look back.

Unfortunately, laying out over 20 million credits for two tier VIII ships has drained the account dry and even though I recently unlocked the tier V IJN Furataka cruiser and tier VI IJN Hatsuharu tier VI Mutsuki destroyer, I've put off purchasing them until I rebuild my wallet. This also means I'll probably have to put off the tier VI USN New Mexico battleship that I'm one battle from unlocking.

IJN Amagi

On the upside, the Amagi is amazing, its like the Nagato (apparently overpowered at tier VII) on sterioids and I've been having lots of fun with it. I've only had a couple battles in the Shokaku and its planes are getting ripped up pretty bad, but I've yet to unlock the upgraded planes so I'm hopeful.

In other news, I got lucky Monday night and got four kills in a battle with my IJN Kuma cruiser (an amazing ship BTW) and got rewarded with a Sea Trial with the German Kreigsmarine Koinsberg tier V cruiser. Basically I get to try out the ship for free until the 19th when the cruiser line and Russian destroyer line is released.

KMS Koinsberg

I really like the ship. Its fast in a straight line and while the guns may not do a lot of damage they certainly are accurate and fast rate of fire. Its like a mini-Cleveland. I'll definitely be running up the line when it is released next week.

Warship Wednesday: Sea Maps

Last week I promised to talk about all the maps in World of Warships so since I have not got a new ship yet (unlocked the Shokaku but still a few battles from the Amagi) I guess I'll do what I said I would do.

Islands

Only seen in tier 1 to 3 matches, this map is small but very interesting with three domination points running down the middle from north to south. For the early battleships, this map is nice as it provides lots of cover to advance (slowly) behind and then open up on the overconfident cruisers.








Ocean

Some people hate this map because of its lack of terrain but I personally love it. Its all about positioning and reacting properly to enemy movements, as opposed to utilizing terrain to your advantage. I wouldn't want to play it all the time but its a nice change.

Destroyers and cruisers tend to have the hardest time on this map where aircraft can see for miles and battleship range comes into play. Try not to get too far from friendlies or you will simply get pounded into dust.


Big Race

Only seen in lower tiers, I really don't like this map. A quarter of the map is the large island in the south west which makes it only playable by aircraft carrier planes. The alley right beside that island is death for anyone but destroyers and lucky cruisers, and even if a battleship wanted to go that way, it effectively removes him from the rest of the battle due to tight sight lines. So a lot of fighting of big ships happens up in the north east corner. Occasionally the middle sees action but unless a majority of your team goes with you, its a deathtrap. Most of the time the battle boils down to who wins the north east as the dessies in the south west usually cancel each other out. Just yuck.

New Dawn

A nice big map for lower-mid level tiers, I like this map a lot. Lots of options for all the ship classes to try out, battles can play out very differently, long sight lines for battleships to reach out and participate but still lots of islands for destroyers and cruisers to duck behind. Always fun. Could use an encounter mode to go with domination and standard modes.






Fault Line

You're going to see this map a lot. Used in low mid and high mid tier games, typically in 3-point domination or standard-domination (where the standard flags are replaced by domination points) this is a nice map overall with lots of variation, but long range battleship fire is tough to pull off and destroyers love all the little islands with tight straits to fill with torpedoes. Beware the C point on the east side, it can be a death trap to the unwary. I usually avoid it.






North

I like to think of this map as Fault Line's big brother as they share a similar DNA. Typically uses 4-point domination mode, but IIRC sometimes standard-domination mode, its a map where once you commit to either extreme you have given up on influencing the other extreme and leave it to your teammates to handle. Battleships typcially like going to A point in the west because its wide open and harder for destroyers to be evil, while in turn dessies love B and C for their ambush points on both sides. D is other spot that in some games no one goes for at all because committing to it means you will never see A or B and its hard to support C without going through an extremely dangerous strait.

Bees to Honey, AKA Hotspot

The wiki claims its called Bees to Honey but I never have see it called anything put Hotspot. In closed Beta this map was the devil because it splits the teams up, half in one corner and half in the other corner, and spread 5 domination points around (or one encounter flag in the middle). Since going live, it still does the evil split but does a 3-point or 5 point domination which seems to encourage less ganging up on a single enemy flank. Not sure why. For carriers, this map sucks because there is no place to hide or run away too. Battleships have some lines of sight but there is also a lot of islands for smaller ships to take cover. Not my favourite map but I don't hate it either.

Islands of Ice

Only seen in the highest tier matches, this massive map is a lot of fun and a lot of frustration. Either played in four point domination (with point A in the north west and down to point D in the south east in a diagonal line) or encounter with flag in middle, this map has two large open areas for the biggest of the big ships to duel it out, yet still plenty of icebergs and islands to sneak about. Can be tough on lower tier ships pulled into these matches, especially low tier carriers with slower planes that can have large distances to travel. One of my favourite maps in a battleship though.



Two Brothers

I love this map because its so different. Instead of having a sparse middle like all the other maps, this one has two huge islands in the middle with a small pass between them (which someone almost always tries to run for the surprise factor to the point where someone always sits and waits for the fool to appear). The end result is both teams usually splitting into two forces and each trying to win, although sometimes you will get one team giving up a flank and going all in on the other side. Both approaches have pros and cons and I like the chances either way.



Newest maps not on wiki:

Solomon Islands

I'm still forming an opinion on this map. See it a lot on low to mid tiers, runs standard or three point domination modes, the large open areas are good for cruisers and battleships, not so friendly to destroyers. The C point in the north east seems to be pivotal, more so than the A point in the south west.








The Strait

I hate hate HATE this map. Like Hotspot, it splits the fleet so that one side has a part of the fleet in the north west corner and part in the south west corner, and the enemy has their fleet split into the east corners. Except the fleet is divided unevenly and your smaller split is facing against the enemy larger split. Gah. So it boils down to who's stronger force can win against the weaker force faster for the most part. Not much fun, not much variation, and not interesting. I wish they would rework this map to be very different, perhaps have the dominaiton points running diagonally and have the fleets start in opposite corners.

Warship Wednesday - Grinding Pattern

There are two ways to grind experience in the World Of X games: you either pick one or two ships/tanks/planes and constantly play them in matches until you get the next version and then upgrade and use them instead; or you grab a wide selection of vehicles across multiple tech tree lines and play them all equally, or at least occasionally.

With World of Tanks I did mostly the former, running up the German tank destroyer and heavy tank lines exclusively at first, and then when I reached a plateau I started up the light and medium tank lines, etc.

In World of Warships, because I got in on the Humble Bundle Bungle and have so many port slots open, I decided to cast my fleet net wide and have lots of ships from both tech trees. While it means I level up my main ship lines (the IJN battleships and carriers) more slowly I still get experienced with what the other lines and nations are capable of and I tend to make a lot more credits as the big money makers tend to be lower-mid tier ships and not the higher tier ones.

IJN Nagato

All of that to say that I'm still on the same ships for the past couple weeks for the most part: tier VII IJN Nagato battleship and Hiryu carrier which are my primary go-to-first ships, along with USN ships New York battleship (tier V), Cleveland cruiser (VI), Bogue aircraft carrier (V) and IJN ships Kuma cruiser (IV) and Minekaze destroyer (V). The only core line I'm not currently running up is the USN destroyer line and mainly because I don't do very well in destroyers. I also periodically take out the premium KM

With the Russian destroyer line and German cruiser line coming, I plan to add them to the rotation... sigh, and I might as well get the American destroyer line going.

As the grind goes, having lots of ships with different play styles to choose from has kept the game fresh for me. Taking the Nagato in a battle with experience players is very different "clubbing seals" in a battle with newbies with my Kuma (an amazing little ship BTW). Still, I'm getting closer with the main two, both the Nagato and Hiryu are around 100K experience racked up and the tier VIII ships are ~132K required. I estimate getting to them in another 15-20 games each which should take a couple weeks. The good news is that I have all the credits required for one of them straight up without selling anything.

I had the tier VIII Amagi in closed beta and remember enjoying it, and I feel I'm a better battleship captain now than I was then, so all indications point to that being the ship I purchase, and I'll probably use free experience to get out of the stock hull. In World of Tanks, the gun was often the delimiting factor to success, but in Warships I find the hull is.

Whether I get the IJN Shokaku is up in the air and depends on how the ranked battles continue to play out. You see, you can only use tier VI or VII ships in the ranked battles and to get both the Amagi and Shokaku would require my selling of the Nagato and Hiryu, my main ships for ranked battles. I'm hesitant to do that because I've been enjoying the ranked battles and the Shokaku doesn't have any major selling points over the Hiryu; sure, better planes but also in higher tier battles.

Speaking of ranked battles, I've been having lots of fun in them. Since the teams are smaller (seven per side instead of 12) and the composition more tightly defined (only tiers VI and VII, max one carrier per side) AND the battles are domination mode with a cap of 800 instead of 1000, I find the battles tighter and bloodier since you pretty much have to take a cap or find yourself outscored too fast. In regular random battles, you have time and lots of dumb targets to keep the score close without jumping on the caps.

I've done 32 ranked battles and have a 62.5% win rate, helping me up to a modest rank 18 (lowest starting rank is 25, highest possible rank is 1) . I'm far more dangerous in my Hiryu (11 battles and 9 wins) compared to the Nagato (19 battles, 9 wins) and I think that is due to the far fewer number of cruisers (typically 1 or 2, rarely 3) so less AA and only one opposing carrier so unless its a Air Superiority Ranger or Hiyru I know I have fighter parity or superiority, and even when I don't I find the holes in the air defense to drop some torpedoes and bombs.

The only downside to ranked battles is that the wait in line can be longer due to a smaller pool of players to select from with more strict team composition rules. When I run into a wait longer than a couple minutes, I just jump into a random battle instead and run with the plebes :)

Next week I'm going to take a review of all the current maps and thoughts on them.

Warship Wednesday - Battleships

The situation had gotten dire.

I was in my Tirpitz battleship sitting around half health. A friendly Tirpitz and North Carolina battleship had gone towards the enemy capture point but had gone in separately and were now sunk. The remainder of the fleet, a cruiser and carrier, was way off on the west side of the map. A hostile Tirpitz battleship, New Orleans and Pensacola cruisers, and a Hatsuhara destroyer were ahead of me. Four to one odds.

My allies had softened up the cruisers down to less than 20% health, and all but the Pensacola were on the other side of a point. The Pensacola was running away from me, about 15 klicks off and growing, hoping to open up range while his allies moved into position. I could not let him get away and distract me. I fired and my aim was true and the cruisers foundered. I swung my guns back to the starboard side and turned the rudder hard port, knowing the Hatsuhara would be aiming torps right around the point. I predicted correctly and as I came around the point the destroyer and cruiser were close and bearing down on my position. The torpedoes missed me and I turned my guns on the New Orleans and sent her down to the bottom of the see. Down to two to one.

The enemy Tirpitz was farther back and the Hatsuhara pulled range from my secondaries. I swung my rudder back to the starboard to turn my fire on the enemy battleship and start to approach to try and use my own torpedoes. We started exchanging fire and while hid health points were higher than mine, my armour angling reduced the incoming damage while he was taking big hits from my guns. We were pulling even in HPs when I saw him start to turn to try and fire his torps into me, so I pulled port hard again and fired my torps in a tight spread. I ate one of his torps fired in a wide spread, but my torps slammed into him and he sunk.

As I turned to finally deal with the ineffective Hatsuhara, the game ended on points in our favour.

I told this story not because I look awesome in it (although it helps) but because it highlights a lot of subtleties in commanding a battleship that neophytes might not realize coming into the class: angling armour, pre-turning to avoid torps, picking targets, etc. It also highlights nicely the sheer staying power and hitting power of battleships, something no other class has in such a combination.

Today's post I'm going to give a short list of tips about commanding Battleships.

1) Don't let the South Carolina and Kawachi get you down. The first battleships you run into in the tech tree at tier III are horrible. They have the hit points and long load times characteristic of battleships, but combined with incredibly short range main weapons and dismal slow speed. They are shorted ranged and slower than same tier cruisers and thus can be burned to the ground without ever getting in range if the enemy is smart enough. Worst of all, they have no AA defense and sometimes are in battles with tier IV carriers whose torpedoes can be a pain in the ass. Good news is that you can push through it pretty fast and things start to get better with upgraded Myogi and Wyoming.

2) Learn to turn. Going in a straight line for any length of time makes you a perfect predictable target. Torpedoes from destroyers love battleships that continue in a straight line, and so do Torpedo bombers. Just doing constant half turns is often enough to throw a shot off enough to miss, and if you even suspect a destroyer or torpedo bomber is coming your way you should be turning hard to one side, preferably towards the incoming torps but not necessary.

3) Learn to aim. You have to make your shots count in a battleship since you only get to fire twice a minute (or less!). This take practice to get the long range shots to hit, but under ten klicks you need to be nailing every target. And just hitting anywhere is not enough, you need to know where to hit. Check out this guide from the forums. This means using AP ammo against everything except destroyers (with occasional exceptions) and trying to get those juicy juicy citadels which can cripple enemy ships very quickly.

4) Angle your armour. When facing enemy battleships, you need to avoid as much as possible presenting your entire broadside as it gives the enemy shells the best chance to penetrate your citadel. I realize you need to turn to your broadside to fire your own guns, so I try to weaving approach where I alternate half turns through my firing cycle, coming far enough to one side to fire and then turning back to try and bounce the return fire. If you do this, and your opponent does not, you can make him pay.

5) Be conservative with damage control ability, liberal with repair. Don't use your damage control party on the first fire to start on your decks, because sure enough as you put it out they'll start another and you just have to watch it burn. Try to save it until you are low in hit points or have multiple fires going on. Or, if you suspect you are going to take a torpedo any time soon, save it for that because flooding lasts longer, slows you down, and does a lot of damage over time. Conversely, the repair ability should be used as soon as its reasonable, i.e. after you have taken a significant amount of light and moderate damage. Hitpoints don't get wasted if you use it early and it will be ready sooner that way for next time. Be warned, make sure you use it after you've taken significant damage or you might end up only repairing a bit. I aim for 75%, 50%, and 25% health point totals to activate it.

6) Don't go alone. Try your hardest to get a cruiser or two to come with you early in the battle, or if not turn around and follow them. While I've been able to kill destroyers with my battleship in the past, its bloody hard and even a success can mean eating a handful of torpedoes in the process. Cruisers, on the other hand, eat destroyers like no body's business. Plus, while your own AA is constantly getting better as you go up the tiers, its always good to have more AA to protect you from bombing runs as much as possible.

7) Constantly evaluate the situation. Your long gun reload times can be seen as a boon if you take the time to look around and see what's going on. Count the DDs on the minimap so you know how many could be near you, see what enemy is approaching in case you want to angle your armour differently, see what the flight squadrons of the carriers are doing, pick your next target. Use the Shift key to switch from zoomed in to zoomed out views, look around, be aware. Too often I see battleship captains focused too much on the nearest target that they miss what's happening around them.

Whatever you do, have fun! Remember its only a game.

Warship Wednesday - On a Thursday Because Screw You

World of Warships is officially Live which besides adding the Tirpitz to the shop means very little as we're basically still using the 0.4.1 patch which nerfed carriers hard.

On the upside, the beautiful Tirpitz:

So Pretty....

One last comment on carriers in the post 0.4.1 patch world and next week I'll delve into making Battleships work.

I've been working hard on getting my tier VII Hyiru to work adequately in the fire frenzy of fighters and cruiser AA now and I'm starting to get the hang of it after some very disappointing initial games. I'm continuing the 2/2/2 strike loadout and typically only send my torpedo and dive bombers after battleships whereas pre-patch I felt comfortable lining up the occasional destroyer and cruiser. But the 33% fewer torps per run and the increase in hostile air traffic means its harder to get sufficient damage for that to work.

On top of that, I've had to work a lot harder at multi-tasking three different groups instead of two. I found myself leaving planes landed or just circling nothing a few times but I've developed strategies to deal with that and the last few games have paid dividends. For a while I was down to only 4-6 torp hits a game but lately I'm back up to 8-12.

On the other side of the coin, I'm up to a fully upgraded tier V Bogue USN carrier and I've fit it out for fighter domination. With its two deadly fighter squadrons I've made life difficult for a few Hosho and Bogue carriers recently, but as noted everywhere the rewards for such gameplay are pathetic. I can get over 1400 base exp for a win with my IJN carrier, but lucky to break a 1000 with the USN counterpart. One dive bomber actually causing damage is frustrating. Fortunately the squeaky wheels on the forums are on the case and I'm hopeful a little more reward balance is coming soon.

Next week: my ranked battles experience and Battleships!

Warship Wednesday - Warship Stats

There is a player run site call WarshipStats that compiles searchable warship stats from publicly available sources and allows some research into various ships, leaderboards, and players. Once a player is searched on the site, they upload all the stats for that player and continue tracking them. They also provide a new little signature banner you can use.

Up to date.

It also allows an easier way to analyze your own stats in handy graphs and charts. For example, my performance per ship class:

As you can see, my performance in carriers has far outstripped my ability in the other classes, a result of the imbalance that was just recently corrected in the 0.4.1 update as I've discussed last week. BTW, my predictions were correct and there are a lot more fighters in the sky these days as even some IJN carriers are taking the fighter loadout over damage. I'm still trying to make the 2/2/2 for my Hiryu work and having some success and some fail. I suspect that chart above will slowly see the carriers come in line as the result of that patch continue to be felt.

I have some quibbles about the site. I'd like the individual ship statistic section to include some filters so I could look at some of my ships for comparison instead of all (I really don't care about that one battle I did in the Erie), but its a work in progress.

If you're playing World of Warships, check it out!

Warship Wednesday - IJN Carriers Update

Last week I talked about how powerful Imperial Japanese Carriers were in World of Warships and rumours of the incoming nerf in the next path. Well, the patch arrived today:

Zuiho: changed the composition of the Type 5 mod. 1 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Zuiho: changed the composition of the Type 5 mod. 2 flight control to contain 2 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 0 fighter squadrons
Ryujo: changed the composition of the Type 6 mod. 1 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Ryujo: changed the composition of the Type 6 mod. 2 flight control to contain 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 0 fighter squadrons
Ryujo: changed the composition of the Type 6 mod. 3 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 3 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Hiryu: changed the composition of the Type 7 mod. 2 flight control to contain 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 2 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 3 bomber and 0 fighter squadrons
Hiryu: changed the composition of the Type 7 mod. 3 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 3 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 2 fighter squadrons
Shokaku: changed the composition of the Type 8 mod. 2 flight control to contain 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 2 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 3 bomber and 0 fighter squadrons
Shokaku: changed the composition of the Type 8 mod. 3 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 3 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Taiho: changed the composition of the Type 9 mod. 2 flight control to contain 3 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 3 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Hakuryu: changed the composition of the Type 10 mod. 2 flight control to contain 3 torpedo bomber, 3 bomber and 2 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 4 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons

Yeah, that's a terrible wall fo text to me too. The new loadouts in chart form (old in brackets):

Tier	Name	Stock	Damage Mod	Fighter Mod
IV	Hosho	1/2/0
V	Zuiho	1/1/2 (1/2/1)	1/2/1 (0/3/1)
VI	Ryujo	1/1/2 (1/2/1)	1/2/2 (0/3/2)	3/1/1 (1/2/2)
VII	Hiryu	1/2/2	2/2/2 (0/3/3)	3/1/2 (2/2/2)
VIII	Shokaku	1/2/2	2/2/2 (0/3/3)	3/1/2 (2/2/2)
IX	Taiho	2/2/2	1/3/2 (1/3/3)	3/2/2
X	Hakuryu	2/3/2	2/3/3 (1/3/4)	4/2/2

So instead of having three torp squadrons at tier V you don't see them until tier IX, and instead of adding dive bombers, which I thought was the approach, they went with adding fighters to the mix. Interesting, if the new fighter ability for area barrage and smoother power curve between tiers makes a difference.

Life for carrier pilots it definitely going to be a lot harder on both sides with the dramatic increase in fighters from carriers, especially with Japanese carriers having the option of a 3 fighter squadron loadout starting at tier VI.

Warship Wednesday - IJN Carriers

During my vacation I still found the occasional time to play World of Warships and continued my march up the Imperial Japanese Navy line of carriers, getting recently to the Tier VII Hiryu.

Taken from http://wikiwiki.jp/wobships/?Hiryu

There's been a lot of talk on the forums on how overpowered carriers are right now in the meta, but really what the people have most issue with is the power of the tier V-VII IJN carriers, the Zuiho, Ryujo, and Hiryu.

There is good reason for this outcry. First, the stats from the Asian server were released and it was glaringly obvious that the damage done and experience gains for those carriers were much higher than other classes which matches my experience in the ships. Secondly, these carriers are seen in battles with a lot of ships from lower tiers where Anti aircraft fire is pathetic. Battleships don't start getting reasonable AA until tier VII and higher, and escorting cruisers are not a concern until tier VI. Even if your side has a couple high tier cruisers, that's a lot of wiggle room around them to find juicy battleships and cruisers with poor awareness or rudder shift speeds to be zotted by a manual drop.

The weird thing is that IJN carriers really are their most powerful in terms of damage delivered at tier V in the Zuiho. This is because all torpedo bombers have torpedoes that do ~8600 damage each (except the stock Hosho) and starting at the Zuiho they all have 3 squadrons. As you increase in tiers they get more dive bombers using the damage plane squadron loadout but the torpedo damage potential remains constant.

Tier	Name	Stock	Damage Mod	Fighter Mod	Est Dam using Damage loadout 1
IV	Hosho	1/2/0			17134
V	Zuiho	1/2/1	0/3/1		30301
VI	Ryujo	1/2/1	0/3/2	1/2/2	34901
VII	Hiryu	1/2/2	0/3/3	2/2/2	39501
VIII	Shokaku	1/2/2	0/3/3	2/2/2	39501
IX	Taiho	2/2/2	1/3/3	3/2/2	39501
X	Hakuryu	2/3/2	1/3/4	4/2/2	44101

1 - estimate based on one hit per squadron out of four bombs/torpedoes which might be a little high for dive bombers, and a little low for torpedo bombers, but I feel is in the ballpark for my personal performance

What I found personally is that the Zuiho is godly in its power in matches unless the enemy has a very good USN carrier captain or two, and even then I'm confident I can top the damage chart for my team. As I climbed into the Ryujo and then Hiryu, I still felt very powerful but increasingly less so as more AA appears in higher tier ships.

Strangely, IJN carriers in higher tiers start to get more fighter heavy instead of damage heavy with the Shokaku and Taiho both sporting the same damage potential as the Hiryu.

The rumour mill has it that the 0.4.1 patch coming soon will have changes to address this domination by the IJN carriers. In the developer bulletin it says "[m]any Japanese and American ships have been rebalanced - detailed information coming soon!" and forum rumours have the Zuiho, Ryujo, and Hiryu all losing a torpedo bomber squadron, presumably being replaced on those loadouts with something else (my predictions: Zuiho and Ryujo get Dive Bomber for a 0/2/2 and 0/2/3 respectively while Hiryu gets a fighter squadron for a 1/2/3 loadout).

We'll see how the Hiryu feels once 0.4.1 lands, I'm hoping it still feels as fun as it does right now.

Warship Wednesday - Hidden Stats

Or: How The Fuso Battleship Went From Horrible to Awesome!

Last week I said goodbye to the stellar tier V IJN Kongo battleship and moved into the tier VI Fuso battleship... and was promptly left aghast. In my first battle I looked at a target in binocular mode and was floored when I saw my range of my artillery was only 13 km. This was a huge shock after the Kongo with its almost 20km range plus the boost from a scout plane to get me to around 24 km.

Turns out the stock Fuso has range worse than the tier IV Myogi.

If you look at the ship's modules and hover over the Fire Control System, you see its firing range is 13.2 km, and if you work your way up to the second Fire Control System, it gets a slight improvement to 14.5 km.

I resigned myself to being a short range brawler and started working on the experience for the second hull of the Fuso and last night I got. I strapped myself in, got in a match, and WHOA! Almost 19km range?!?! HOW?!

Turns out, there are some hidden stats that you need to dig for. Under the modules the second hull of the Fuso looks like this:

It gives a +9 rating improvement to artillery over the stock hull but doesn't say why. However, if you look at the right side where you can view specifics of the weapons and modules on your ship we see this for the stock hull:

If you hover over the module for the upgraded hull on the left side of the screen while having the Artillery section expanded on the right side you see the hidden stat increase:

See that? The upgraded hull gives an additional 6.6 km to the main battery firing range (probably for the badass super structure upgrade), and that's without the second fire control system's 10% bonus which might be another 2 km on top of that. Plus the spotting plane. MUHAHAHAHA

Warship Wednesday - Goodbye Zuiho, Hello Ryujo

Click for weirdness.

I've been motoring along on my tier V Battleship (Kongo) and Carrier (Zuiho) and earning experience to the point where today I was finally able to unlock the tier VI Ryujo, a carrier I have fond memories of from Closed Beta.

I moved the captain up and demounted the one upgrade I had on the Zuiho so I could install it on the Ryujo, then sold the carrier that did me very well over the past few weeks.

The Zuiho has easily been my best ship since I purchased it. I was in 27 battles, 63% victory rate which is exceptionally high, and 43 warships destroyed. My next best, the Kongo, destroyed 35 ships in 38 battles. Experience wise it was always a big earner with an average of 1630 pts and a high score of 2909, my second best after an amazing game I had once in my Isokaze destroyer where I got over 3000.

The reason I am doing so well in the Zuiho is a number of factors. First off, I practiced the crap out of manual torpedo drops in Closed Beta and I've become pretty good at it now such that I'll manually drop on cruisers and destroyers and feel confident of a hit and/or kill. (Related note, manually dropping drops is fearsome deadly and probably should be scaled back a bit.) Secondly, at tier IV most captains are still not used to facing carriers and what they should do to protect themselves, i.e. remaining situationally aware and turning hard as soon as the planes are spotted heading your way. Thirdly, AA is terri-bad all over at tier IV, only marginally better at tier V. Its not until tier VI that cruisers start to shred planes... IF they are in the right position or the carrier commander is not careful.

Combined... yeah, its been seal clubbing. For example, in the last battle in my Zuiho there was an enemy Zuiho and we both went after each other right away as luck would have it. He did auto drop torps and got a couple hits which I easily survived. I manual dropped and sunk him with 5 hits. Practice that manual drop.

On the battleship side of things, I've been doing well in the Kongo and I've got about 2-3 more battles to go before I have the 47000 experience for unlocking the fearsome Fuso. I'll miss the Kongo, its a nice vessel overall and performs well with decent speed and AA.

Warship Wednesday - Captain's Skills

Once you get to a certain point in your early World of Warships career you can start training your ship captains to have have certain abilities.

The abilities are categorized into 5 levels and you can't select an ability in a level until you have one ability in the previous level (excepting level 1 obviously). The abilities cost a number of skill points per their level (i.e. level 1 abilities cost 1 point, level 2 cost 2 pts, etc) and your captains earn points via experience gained in battles and each subsequent point requires more experience than the last.

What this all means is that its an ever increasing requirement of experience to get the next point, and skills in higher levels need so many points to open up skills in lower levels in order to make them even available. In other words, even in Closed Beta with its increased rewards to speed progression I never got and level 5 skills.

There are two extreme approaches you could take to gaining skills. The first approach is breadth first where you use your incoming skills to get all the level 1 skills, then all level 2 skills, etc. The second approach is depth first where you get one level 1 skill, then one level 2 skill, then one level 3 skill, etc. The advantage of the former is that you get lots of skills more quickly, but it means it will take you even longer to get to the higher level skills since each skill point takes more and more battles to earn. Another issue is that not all skills are very useful or even apply to every ship class, or even every ship in the class line. For example, while early USN cruisers have torpedo tubes later ones starting at tier VI do not so taking skills that work on torpedo loading would be wasted.

Oh, I should mention that you can move captains from ship to ship and retrain them to the new ship either instantly using Doubloons (i.e. gold) or after getting so many experience points (the number depending on the number of skills he currently has) during which the skills' effectiveness are 50%. This allows your captain to develop and grow with more skill abilities as he progressed up the tech tree with you.

I tried both depth first and breadth first training in the Closed Beta while I was learning things and decided that I would concentrate on depth first to get the best skills and back fill later on.

(If you make major mistakes you can pay gold to re-allocate all the skill points, the more points to re-allocate the more gold it takes).

Whew! Got all that?

As I am working up four lines (IJN Battleships, Carriers, and Destroyers along with USN Cruisers) I have been working on the same four captains. The cruiser and battleship captains were with me at the start while I picked up new captains for the carrier and destroyer when they became unlocked. I'm going to go over the skills I've picked for my four captains and the reasons.

Battleship

The level one skill is to get the most out of my secondary batteries for fending off destroyers, torpedo bombers, and getting extra damage on enemy cruisers and battleships.

Second level skill I went with faster turret rotation, even though its only 0.7 degrees/sec more for the big guns, every bit helps with those suckers and makes it more possible to be 1/2 turning and still track.

I had some debates on level 3, but went with the extra repair for more hit points back in a pitched battle. 

And since my captain is close to have four points to spend, I've already picked my level four skill out:

This will work nicely with my level 1 skill to further power up my secondary batteries and AA defenses.

Cruiser

I just recently got my Omaha tier V cruiser, so the captain is still retraining.

Again, no other skill but improving the secondaries and AA guns appealed for the cruiser, and...

... Same with level 2. The turrets track really fast on the Phoenix and Omaha with this skill and make for excellent Destroyer hunting.

I didn't see a level 3 that would pay off in the long run for a cruiser captain in the USN line, maybe the extra consumables, but I decided to go for faster reload of the Damage Control party as the cruiser tends to get smacked around a lot in my experience.

Overall, not happy and *might* respec this captain later.

Destroyer

My Destroyer captain only has 2 skills, getting close for his third though.

I find this extremely helpful for telling me when to start turning and looking for cover or getting out of range. Destroyers are dead if targeted too long.

For a ship designed around delivered torpedoes, this skill comes in very handy.

Carrier

My tier V Zuiho carrier has some very different requirements!

First off he uses the Expert Rear Gunner to give torpedo and dive bombers some extra defense against fighters. I've killed a few over time and it helps keep them alive longer.

Again, torpedoes are key for carriers so reloading faster seems like the best option.

I agonized over the level 3 choice because I'm in a IJN carrier and they tend to be seen mostly without fighters and concentrate on damage and avoiding enemy planes, but there was not another skill in the level that appealed.

So there you have it! My current captains.