World of Warships - It's Gonna Get Worse 

People who love ships will just come to a game with ships, be it hard or easy. I play this game because I love ships, but I'll soon have to find something else. It's getting hard to tolerate the shit they are doing to what I love :(

What if smoke just gave a concealment buff: DDs would be stealthed at 2km and 5-6km when firing but A bb is only stealthed at 8km and 12 km when firing

That moment when community contributors have 10 solutions for the problems of WG and WG doesn't want to listen...

I have always thought if a ship fires in smoke it should become visible for like 1/2 second from the gun flashes, you could make that variable based on caliber. - Lord_de_Seis

I was a Closed Beta tester, and all I can say about the game is that it was so much better then than it is now.

after playing and loving the game for so long, i had to recently let go. the balance got frustrating, and my happy place became my source of stress. So long world of warships. it was a lot of fun playing you.

I get what you are saying iChase, having most ship lines starting to become more gimmicky as time goes on isnt really healthy, for the game. Same with the dumbing down of mechanics. In my opinion, there are things that should be changed, like cruiser ranges for example. most cruisers have middle ranges, which allows them to be close to DDs when said DDs get spotted in order to kill them. but, if a cruiser chooses to shoot at that DD, they will be spotted and shot at by BBs that out range them by sometimes 8 km or more (depending if they have spotter up or not). This promotes cruisers wanting to hide behind islands as that is when they can maybe shoot at something. Then, since DDs can run around the map largely unopposed if the cruisers are too busy hiding behind BBs, shooting at destroyers at max range, this allows the destroyers to launch torps at any BB that attempts to push. That, along with focus firing from cruisers and enemy BBs, makes BB players want to stay back too. OF course, you have DDs that can go out and spot, but a spotted DD is a dead DD, so, they can use smoke to make themselves vanish if need be. However, the way smoke is delt with currently is a bit...silly in my opinion. In real life, any ship could make a smoke screen, as naval smoke is generating by putting fuel oil into the smokestack, which makes a cloud. This cloud does not poof out all around the ship in a circle, and it doesn't just sit still, and a ship cant just sit inside of it and fire out of it with impunity, as the ship can still be seen in most cases. While I understand the reasoning for its current implementation, i feel as if a better way to do it is to make it more of a way to save yourself from a bad situation, as well as mask yourself from planes. Rather than make your ship invisible, have smoke cause a dispersion nerf on ships shooting at you, as well as that same effect, perhaps give that nerf to allied ships for fire directed at them, assuming they are close enough to the smoke. I feel as if this could solve some of the issues with ships like the Belfast and Kutuzov, where they cant sit in smoke and rain down HE shells for a minute or two. Then, we have carriers, a ship meant to counter large surface vessels. as well as scouting roles. As you mentioned iChase, they lack flexibility. A CV player gets to choose from a few pre-selected load-outs, which, if the enemy CV is AS, and you are strike, there little you can do to save yourself with not only the enemy fighters, but the surface AA you'd need to deal with in order to attack a ship. SO, sure, a CV might be able to get one or two torps into an enemy ship, but they loose nearly all of their TBs in the strike. And then, there are the pretty much nation specific drop patterns, the unique drop patters for the Kaga, Enterprise, and the soon to be Graf Zeppelin. Then, there is the issue of plan load-outs. DBs only have HE, which most of them used Semi-AP as well as HE. HE often would be dropped first, set fires, knock out AA batteries, as well as stun the crew. then, Semi-AP would be used to piece the deck armor and deal the more serious damage. So, to conclude, the game has a lot of aspects that promote passive play, but the counters to said passive play aren't practical to be used. You push as a BB: get set on fire constantly and burn to death, or get torped by a DD that you cant see. try to push as a cruiser only to get deleted by a BB. try to spot as a DD for your ships to shoot at other ones, only for a DD with lower detection than you to be nearby and have most every enemy ship direct their attention at you. Along with the little incentive players have to support each other. which is what naval conflicts were all about. No single ship class should be able to carry an entire match. Cruisers need to be able to fire out farther. Sure, the arcs would be atrocious, but to hit something that inst moving, the time it takes for those shells to get there is irrelevant. This would at the least promote BBs to move around. add some form of incentive for team, like giving rewards for smoke cover, or shooting down planes attacking an ally. If anyone does read though this, please do reply. Id like to see others opinions as well. As well as criticisms others may have.

The first moment i read a particular comment on reddit regarding the idea for the smoke changes I basically was like: Trollmontages incomming. But thats not the only thing. Just think about the statement they made regarding BB population. Back in the days they said that the BB population is on the border of getting too much. Since then we basically always got elements which made BBs even stronger. And the counter simply gets nerfed because it nearly performs as well as premium ships. Well, people didn#t pay for it so it should automatically perform worse then premiums. At least it looks like that this is the balance goal for wows. So yeah. here we are sitting with a game which breaks itself into thousand pieces with all those gimmicks. A shipline which can basically do everything soon. We only need a line with Radar BBs and we woN't need any other cruiser anymore Because we got the hydro BBs, the DefAA BBs, the Radar BBs. You only need a 3Man div with 3 Bbs and y got everything covered. Is this really the way to go? Just do every ship with a AA spec except the Hydro BB and you are fine. Nothing is there to counter you except other Bbs. The rest is just not strong enough. Thats at least how it looks like the way the game is heading to. Which is just sad.

16:00 Make Warships Great Again iChase for WoWS Community President 2017

As we've seen time and time again, WG can't do either subtle or admit when they are wrong. WoWs was fun in beta, then they broke carriers, the destroyers and then they focused really *only* on making premium boats the be all and end all. Remember that whole "Premium ships won't be flat out better than tech tree ones, just different?" Many things under the hood are broken. Range v penetration; how the server calculates fire chance; sailing physics; map border issues *still*. The more gimmicks WG come up with, the more people stop playing. Look at peak time server populations, when I started NA had the vastly higher pops over EU, consistantly, now it's hard to find even 15k playing on NA. Have Wargaming even looked to ask themselves why? Actually they might have and figured that they don't care, why bother about populations when they can simply milk more money from the few ocean whales scrambling to fill the WG coffers. Whomever are the chief game designers need to be sat down and read the riot act. We want skillful approaches to balancing issues, not 10Megaton sledgehammer blankets. If it keeps going down the path it's on, and if they do mess up what should be the jewel in the crown of WoWs - the Royal Navy battleship line - then I'll be done with the game. It's almost at the point of only play Soviet ships now anyways. Every ship line and nation needs to be relooked at, refocus on a historical balance at what the strengths and weaknesses of each were and make those reflected in game. Sorry for wall of text. Keep doing good work @iChaseGaming.

It's really sad for me, watching WG fuck up the game this badly. As a beta tester, I've watched the game grow, expand, and, until somewhat recently, improve. I still remember being actually excited for every new patch. Now, I dread new patches. It brings new problems. More IJN DD nerfs. More non-solutions for the Khab problem. More fuck ups and blatant money grabs. I mean, why the FUCK would you release 3 new CVs in a row when you FUCKING ADMITTED THAT CVS ARE A PROBLEM AND THAT THEY'RE NOT BALANCED. Meanwhile the problems that are in plain sight are not addressed. It's really disappointing, because I really want to see the game succeed. But I simply can't make a positive comment on the game in this state. I can just sit and hope that either WG gets their shit together or War Thunder ships, with their newly implemented destroyers, runs them out of business.

I think, as long as the Russian server doesn't complain, WG isn't going to listen. Maybe the Russian server is complaining and those bad balancing decisions come from suggestions or surveys from the Russian server. And making the game more complicated will drive players and therefore money away. People are stupid and they want something easy they can quickly play and get into. If WoWs was a simulator, not as many people would play it.

There's a simple fix for the smoke issue, make it give a bonus to concealability. That way a battleship entering smoke and firing gives it's position away and doesn't magically disappear in smoke. Similarly destroyers and cruisers remain less affected by the changes and can operate almost as they do now without allowing those annoying cases where you're almost point blank and a cruiser or three are setting light to your ass from 5km away and you still can't hit them because smoke = magic. This way you introduce more uses for concealment without returning to the old model (which can be irritating as all hell) and without killing off light cruisers or allowing more trollish behaviour.

It like this old saying: "If you are a hammer all problems suddenly start looking like nails."

If only WG would listen to you :(

I love the idea or concept behind this game but WG really isnt the best gaming engine for this man. Anyone agrees?

talks about teamplay, removes DDs main way of supporting a fleet. GG

So obviously WG can't handle what to do with smoke. PROBLEM: They don't want players sitting in smoke. SOLUTIONS: - add radar to everything - add radar seeing though islands - dissipate smoke faster - add laser, infrared, drone etc that can get through smoke Smoke is a must have for DDs and some cruiser lines. That is a FEATURE that can't be taken away, you have to LIVE with it. Nobody can complain about DDs in smoke, period. You think players are idiots then? If somebody sees a smokescreen one should know there is something there. it is a FEATURE of the game that EVERYBODY understands. If you want to continue this way, offer only Ocean map, because otherwise somebody can use an island and sit behind it??? LIVE with the fact that there are defensive and aggressive players. You need BOTH types.

to be honest I used to be a fan of the premium ships all being slightly under tuned in comparison to their tech tree counterparts and each having a gimmick to keep them interesting it felt fair and it felt like you were getting something unique, now they have flip flopped and are making entire tech trees of ships based on gimmicks that are under tuned compared to premiums and it feels like that just fucks everyone

i can't even get into the ranked games. What ships do i have to use?

Firing from inside the smoke should make the ship temporarily visible. Duration of visibility is based on the caliber of the guns and the number of guns fired. Perhabs something like everything below 200 mm will only be visible for 0.5 seconds per gun firing. Between 200 and 300 mm, it will be 1 second per gun firing. Above 300 mm, it will be 1,2 seconds per gun firing. This way: 1) Smoke will still block line of sight to ships not firing. 2) Ships not firing will still be hidden inside the smoke. 3) Bigger ships will likely have to change position inside the smoke after firing, to avoid the majority of the return fire. 4) Smaller ships(fewer/smaller guns) can still fire from smoke fairly effective, due to relative low "spottet" duration. They usually also have better acceleration and turning and thus can change position inside the smoke more reliably. Because of this, Smokescreens will revert to being more of a defensive or disruptive tool, rather than an aggressive one. They can still give cover to battleships that attempt to disengage and might give a slight advantage to ships firing from smoke compared to one that does not.

Well spoken! The game is bumbling along and just gravitating towards a plain shooter. I hope that they listen to you.....

But Chase didnt you know that heavy handed is easy. Fine tuning requires a lot of attention and time to get it right and you cant do this in 2 weeks between patches.

I appreciate how you're not just saying that these things are a bad idea but also suggesting solutions. Pointing out flaws doesn't fix the problem

Or make it so that BBs get spotted if they fire from within smoke ...

I think this should all be started by getting rid of rng factors so that every action made in game isn't just you rolling a dice to see if you die or they do.

Wow, a smoke nerf. Now you can't even play a ship that under performs thinking it is safe from nerfs, since this crap will even nerf the Atlanta.

The smoke camper solution is actually quite easy to fix - if you fire out of smoke with guns 175-250mm you lose concealment for 2 seconds, with guns 250mm+ you lose concealment for 5 seconds. DDs and Brit cruisers keep their smoke benefits while the heavy cruisers and BBs don't.

How to zoom out like that? Is that camera mod? That definitely not "shift" key right? Pliss tell me, thanks

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Personally I'm most disappointed with the direction WG is going, and how much further from reality they are moving. The game has so much potential and the graphics are (mostly) so beautiful, it is a shame WG are making such bizarre decisions which are so frustrating. I regret spending money on this game now and rarely play it. It takes so much time and effort to attain higher tier ships, and then WG makes over night changes which affect ships so much that they become very frustrating to play instead of enjoyable.

I just hate how running away is the meta BC the chased have such a huge advantage, so nobody ever stands up and fights.

I agree that smoke needs tweaking. If in smoke your visibility goes down.. just like it does in a hurricane. If enemy ships can't see into the smoke, you shouldn't be able to see out. I think being in smoke should effect the range you can successfully target another ship.. Just like it does in a hurricane situation.

WG has had this issue of over fix even back in world of Tanks. the 8,6 arty nerf, OMG that was bad. and yeah the bow on mechanic goes agaisnt how these ships were desiogned. in WW2 broadside was the IDEAL psotion not the worst yet in thsi game it is the worse. they really need to revamp that.

as someone relatively new to the game: the whole smoke fire camping style feels odd. Given how targeting worked back then in WW2, I would heavily penalize firing from smoke. Will this most likely screw over RN cruisers? Sure, it will...But I'd rather see them (WG) rebalancing a single cruiser line while getting rid of that stupid smoke camping style, then trying to half assed light approach like smoke dissipating faster depending on the calibre of the guns shooting out of it. Would also be better for the RN in the long run, because that whole "smoke camping" playstyle will suffer anyway if the start to hand out radar to more upcoming ships like candy to kids.

World of tanks and now boats. I saw this starting to happen last winter and i stopped playinng then. Ive been keeping up with news and stuff and i can see that it really is getting worse. WG says they take time to get tech tree ships right and here they are with a premium ship coming out at lest once or twice a month, either garbage or broken op. Im impressed with gaijin. They're going the opposite direction. I have high hopes for naval forces because if wg keeps up with this and people realize its no longer a balanced and fun game and rather its just a cash grab then world of warships will die. I regret spending money on wargaming. It was fun while it lasted. Im still subbed to chase because i want to see how far wg takes this before he quits.

That moment when the game was more fun in closed beta then it is rn......

July says "It's gonna get worse". This is September saying "You have no idea."

Hey Chase, would you mind uploading your outro? I'd like to use it for my phone alarm. Thanks

I am completely and totally against the idea of altering smoke at all. If you take away smoke from these passive players we will only end up with more and more ships firing from behind islands. At least I can shoot torpedoes or guns into smoke or use Radar/Hydro to see into it and engage the enemy. The amount of island hugging players seems to be on the rise and I hate it. I get that this is not a historically accurate game but the idea of ships hiding behind islands and popping out to engage is ridiculous. Why even play with ships if we end fighting like tanks. Altering the smoke is just a bad idea.

i was against the idea of the smoke gimmick my self but after a single sims DD destroying my bismarck with HE spam with out me been able to fire a single shot or do anything about it changed my mind .sitting in smoke is a gimmick being that's being abused

Smoke needs to allow a ship to break contact and immediately enter concealment provided it is outside of detection range. If you are in detection range it would quadruple dispersion of shots against you. In no case are you invisible to a ship you can see, smoke must stop being a magical cloaking device. Since I want it to change into a means to break contact it needs to recycle faster and have more charges. This would allow ALL ships to have smoke like they did in the wars which they used to run and break contact

One super legit question that I've been having for quite a while..What is the name of the outtro music?:3

My other grandfather once saw a Royal Navy ship. He also knew what a smoke screen was I think. He died before this game was even made. Kind of invalidates your point, doesn't it? Or does it? Really makes you think.

Now that it's a year later, what are your thoughts?

If you are afraid of BBs trolling Cruisers by shooting away their smoke, then your supposed change, with the reduced accuracy is just the same thing mirrored with DDs and CLs being able to troll BBs.

I always think of Pacific Storm, this old PC strategy game. Ships in that had three different stats tracking the port, starboard, bow, and stern list as well as how low it sat in the water. If a ship took enough hits to the port side it would start to flood and begin listing to port. If it listed too much it would capsize and sink. However, if it took hits on the starboard it would start to flood there and balance out; of course then it was in danger of settling too low and sinking anyway. I think it was pretty interesting and encouraged you to maneuver your ships to prevent them from taking too much fire in a certain area of the ship.

wanna fix smoke? when a ship is in smoke, its gun range is reduced by 5% and its dispersion is increased by 5%.

On the smoke, I posted on more than one location about the possibility of having muzzle flash momentarily silhouette ships in a smoke screen. Larger caliber, more pronounced silhouette for slightly longer duration. I like the idea of greater dispersion, too. That could work.

Great video again. :) I think that a simple way to fix smoke is, let it work like it does now for the ship deploying it. But for every other ship it gives a dispersion penalty when you shoot it. just like some of the camo's have right now. Base this on the ship class, so the bigger the ship the lower the penalty. Simple and it makes the smoke work like is was designed to be, a defence option not offence. my 2 cents. what do you think ?

what if smoke modifies detection range/spotting range instead of being treated the same as a solid object (proximity spotting only)

they could start with the other visibility mechanics first: 1. radar and hydro not going through islands 2. planes having full visibility and not capped to 11km 3. actual control of your own spotter and fighter plane for CA/BB ships that have them 4. smoke having a drastically reduced timer in a cyclone !!!! 5. speed boost inflating detection range again the only problem with smoke is that it is static. there should be a mechanic that moves the smoke cloud or rather changes the boundaries due to wind conditions. in this way, smokescreen expert would be a viable skill and you cannot sit still in a smoke anymore, you have to watch how it moves and adapt. You have to keep in mind that the more variables you introduce, the more static the game becomes simply because people will have to make sure that more conditions are in their favor in order to attack ...

I would love to see things like firing angles being affected by buoyancy, and ships listing to sides after torpedo hits. It would even be cool to have an option to manually flood a torpedo blister, like the USS Texas did, to increase firing range but maybe at a penalty to accuracy and maneuverability.

Ohh the irony of youtube suggesting this video(mainly tittle), after I just saw IChase's video about getting terminated as a CC.

I agree with you iChase. Miss going up with Nagato battling at close range, BB vs BB without Torps from BB.

I'm in full agreement here. The same thing happened in WOT, each new line had to have something special so people would play them. Eventually that leads to the original ships becoming obsolete. Here's hoping that doesn't happen with WOWS

Things wrong with WOW ships. 1. Invisible ships. 2. Lack of plunging fire due to range compression. 3. Infinite torpedoes. 4. Yamato monopoly on Overmatch Mechanic. 5. Overpen mechanic. BB shells doing no damage when they overpen a citadel on a lightly armored CA that is perpendicular to to them. 6. Every new premium ship is pay to win. 7. US BB line not having radar. 8. Everything involving planes and carriers is broken. 9. Not having a flooding bar. 10. Hitting a button to do something on a timer. Cool down management is not fun and engaging. (managing a resource is more fun than watching a clock.) 11. Losing credits in a match. Why do I play the game to go backwards? (MWO does this better) Anyways. I haven't Played in a month and the above reasons are why. Thanks for the awesome content Chase. I feel your frustration.

100% agree with what's said here. The game is too simplified at this point. I think crew count and protection could be a thing. Men die, repair and rof abilities could dip. Fighters should be able to strafe and kill crew. Guns could have variable ROF with penalties for overheated rifles. Spotting mechanics could have more variation. Partial spotting and firing solutions could potentially factor in nicely. Planes that hover over DD's should be easier to shoot down. Last known position and heading shown on the map. There are so many things that a good naval game should have and WG hasn't innovated much in the mechanics in a while. Would love to see them start exploring new ideas soon.

I have a suggestion: instead of reducing the smoke timer, a shadow appears to the enemy team. Not a full blown "detected target", but a shadow so that that the enemy team has an idea of who's firing from the smoke. The bigger the gun, the pronounce the shadow is.

Also WG could enable the gun turets to be grouped so you can use the front ones to engage other targets then the back ones or start roteting the back ones to the left side while shoting with the front ones to the right.

Here's an idea. Rather than spotted vs invisible, why not add a few steps in between? A ship fires in smoke, you get a vague shadow of its location within, no range or anything, just a vague shadow. How about detecting ships at range, but not being able to ID them? I.e. Hey, there's a ship here, DD's go ID that ship...oh, hey, that's a BB! Not just a BB, but Yamato!

This was a good argument for the up coming changes and the RN bb line. It's a lot better than Notsers come on video, which was just a frustrated rant, a structured argument and alternative is much better than a rant any day. Good job on the video, and I think the smoke screen suggestion would be acceptable generally compared to what their doing(although I never park my cruisers or battleships in a smokescreen, cause too often torps are on the way).

Nice vid Chase!!! I admit that the first time we had some stats about the british bbs they were an awesome mess: rudder shift for example was ridiculous. But now, I dont think they are so strange. One of the problems is KGV, yes it should be in tier 8, it is in tier 7 now, not that big of a problem. The heal? I dont find it op knowing that only the Lion and Conqueror have it but to balance theirs hp pull is very low. Def fire a problem? I dont think so, when they addedd it to the Hood noone said anything. The only issue is the radar and in fact, for a bb with so few hp is not such a big issue, because they are not gonna brawl at alll. Sorry for my english not my language really!

in want to know who won the match & did Ichase bet the guys score from the other team. I need closure damit ICASE

I disagree. I find ranked very frustrating

You should try out From the Depths!! Edit: though on a WoWs Point of view they need to start with making CBS have Secondary's that preform like main guns.

It could be a good idea to have firing while in smoke reveal your position for a certain time. So for example all guns of a caliber lower than 152mm or so won't be revealed, all guns between 153mm and 255mm will be revealed for 2 seconds after firing, all guns between 255 and 355 will be revealed for 5 seconds after firing. And all guns greater than 355mm will be revealed for 10 seconds. Something along those lines

I chase why didnt u make a video on mc5 tier 9 weapon

couldn't have said it any better..good vid

Oh btw how difficult can it be to fix the mm for tier 6 cvs? tier 4 and 5 Cv are so borring and the reward is bad mm against 3 Nc on tier 8.

Just make it so that the higher the calibre of your guns the greater the distance you can be seen from when firing in smoke?

My idea was to change it so a ship in a smoke cloud only has its detection range when firing reduced by 75% or so. That way another ship near the cloud can still spot them if they fire.

I liked the learning curve in WoW. When someone is good, it’s because they learned, experienced and experimented. Not because they have a bigger bank account or had too much time in their hand that allows them to grind for hours a day.

My idea for the smoke camping would be to change visibilty mechanics -> 1. Not make ships simply "invisible" when they are in smoke, but instead reduce their detection (by Sea) to (for example) 2,5km 2. Introduce a formula for "Firing debuff when shooting from smoke". Could be something like 2,5km * caliber of guns in m. For a BB with 406mm guns this would mean that when firing from smoke their Detection range goes out to 2 * 4,06 = 10,15 km. For a CL with 152mm guns, the detection would increase to just ~3,8km, for DDs with 128mm it would just be ~3,2km, for a CA with 203s it would be ~5km. I think this would be an elegant way to keep smoke still useful for everyone, not punish DDs and CLs that might depend on their smoke. Smoking up teammates to save them would still be very useful. BBs have by far the largets caliber guns and would be way more affected by this formula than the other classes, which I consider a big plus given how powerful BBs are right now. And it adds a new mechanic to the game, where a DD can actually actively try and prevent smoke camping by spotting a BBs that's firing from smoke. For a BB in smoke it then becomes a calculated risk to fire. I only gave this 5 Minutes of thought, so there are certainly a lot of things that could be tweaked with my idea, but in general I think the concept could actually work.

Buy belfast to play random battles with friends, enjoy the hell out of it throughout winter... and then comes spring and a series of sledgehammer "fixes" that indirectly nerfes it left and right, shit, thanks WG, ill be real careful buying premiums from now on.

From a fluid dynamics perspective, firing a bullet (or shell) causes a vortex. If you fire through smoke there should be some sort of in-game effect. Maybe you only see part of the ship, or maybe you see the entire ship until the vortex dissipates. Changing the smoke mechanic would have an incredible impact on the way the game is played. You would be able to shoot torps the same way as before (since they are under the smoke) would still be able to hide in or behind the plume, but firing from the smoke would reveal the ship. I don't know how WG would balance the effect this change would have on ships.

The trouble with smoke is that everything in the bubble has the same effective coverage, 100%. Leave the DDs unchanged but make the cruisers and BBs and carriers have a diminishing benefit from the smoke related to their inherent detectability. So a BB with a high detectability in smoke, would not gain the same as a BB with a lower detectability. Similarly with Cruisers. High detectability would equal lower gains from hiding in smoke. To make it even simpler, just a straight up percentage .... (just throwing out numbers) Destroyer - 100% concealment Cruiser - ~70% concealment Battleship - ~50% concealment Carrier - ~60% concealment Further, Concealment expert can add ~5% to this equation. No change to the smoke itself or DDs (maybe tweek that rate cruiser that does it's own smoke) As far as complexity, advocating for adding complexity for it's own sake is not a route any game should go towards. You will never be able to make a game play as intended with a mass of players playing as they see fit. Player thinks it is better to hide behind a rock, the player will do exactly that. All that can be done is remove the rock. HELLO OCEAN MAP. WoWS already has the following for basic diversity ..... Speed, turn radius, rudder shift, citadel dimensions, acceleration, main gun alpha damage, muzzle velocity, armor piercing, ship armor, detectability air & sea, AA capability, secondary armament alpha, hit points, various gun ranges .... on and on. I am sure I am missing a lot more. The British navy has a HUGE selection of ships to use as prototypes and not just variant of a hull but whole different designs. WG are likely looking at the great selection of ships to use and seeing a second BB line and are trying to make room in balancing to add that second line. Here is a list of distinct British Dreadnaughts built between 1906 and 1915 .... Dreadnaught Bellerophon St Vincent Neptune Colossus Orion King George V Iron Duke Queen Elizabeth Revenge/Royal Sovereign Erin Agincourt Canada I don't believe any of these would be higher than tier V or VI. Based on Royal Navy standards, these are 13 distinct classes of ship. Even though some are evolutions of previous designs, that is the first half of two lines of battle ships to consider. WG is thinking further into the future than just one single British Battle ship line. And these are all REAL ships. Not fictions like Friedrich der Große or Montana. I don't believe the French or Italian lines have ever built enough battleships to complete a REAL line of battle ships.

As someone who has just started playing, and is working their way up the British CL line, the proposed smoke nerf sounds enough to put me off the game all together. I was actually about to spend real money to help fund the purchase of the Neptune, so I'm glad I heard beforehand. I've played other ships but the tactical considerations of playing the British CLs is just fun for me. Loads to think about rather than angle and tank. As an alternative, I think iChase's idea is a good one. Maybe even no penalty for hiding in your own smoke?

Just increase dispersion when firing without direct LOS. That would fix the camping issues, fix smoke, fix silly citadels out of nowhere and make the game more mobile. Pretty realistic mechanism too.

It sounds in a way chase, like you want something like Navyfield and I 100% agree. More complicated, you can properly assign aircraft etc, and so many other benefits. It's so much more balanced and in a much better state with true skill required to be good.

iChase good job. I like your brainstorming. and yes I enjoyed ranked more this season. not having super gimmick ships is nice

Chase the other part of the problem is this: the majority of the playerbase is not really interested in complication and will boil down anything you do to the simplest they can get away with.

@iChaseGaming I was considering an idea of smoke that would allow it to be a more defensive measure for certain classes. Like battleships predominantly, and it would force them to use it only as a defensive measure. Essentially if a ship of that caliber were to enter smoke, they could see the ships being detected/spotted around them by friendlies, but ONLY on the minimap. Only allies would be visible in all cases, until they leave smoke and then normal vision is resumed. I say this because smoke was NEVER used for battleships for the purposes of direct attack, only evasion. As a battleship PRIMARY player, over 4/5ths my battles are in BBs, I felt like the whole smoke thing was a bit overpowered for all cases, not just DDs and CAs. Any thoughts?

Chase to be true the montana can just push out the neptun if the wants to troll right now, but your points stays true to a point

Chase, with regards to bow in game play, I seem to recall that the guns on BBs often did not fire forward because of the risk of structural damage to the ship. Wargaming could fix this by literally preventing guns from firing directly forward or reverse OR just say "ok you want to? Your ship's gonna take damage from it." Also, I'd agree with you that sometimes basic just works best. I'd love a line of royal navy ships that really do just play more like Warspite than the gimmicky Hood.

Reduce accuracy when bow-on. Turn all ships to shotguns when shooting over their bows. Only give normal accuracy when angling or broadside.

I think the answer to smokes and a lot of the problems is better maps. If there is more cover in the game, it allows ships to get closer and or disengage more easily. Since smokes are static, you just need to move to the closest cover so they cant hit. Then the ship in the smoke will either stay there until it runs out, or move since it cant shoot at anything. A lot of the high tier maps are just to wide open.

What about being unable to see to fire from inside smoke? Smoke would be used to mask ship/fleet movement or hide inside of only...more like how it was actually used - at least until the advent of radar directed gunfire.

I agree about the higher tier games cuz of same reason. once it get past tier 7 its like the game is completely different. let alone everyone is passive AF and always hidding in smoke. I tend to enjoy tier 6 gameplays.

Late here but nice to see someone else actually hit on some of the core problems. Funny part, there is a naval game named Steel Ocean that came out a few months after WoWS that got it right. Yes the modeling wasn't picture perfect, but it was good enough and the important part was that it was balanced and thus FUN. And they got that balance in large by leaving themselves all sorts of values that could be tweaked little bits and having very sound core mechanics. Its only downside is fewer players because so many people were caught up in the Wargaming hype that it got labeled a WoWS clone and thus mostly ignored.

Your comment about firing in smoke by battleships gave me an idea about real naval gun fights. I understand that under normal circumstances, real fights involve the art of ranging ... as you keep firing at the same target, you get more and more accurate. Perhaps the way to resolve this is to let this be a default benefit to any battleship firing outside smokes - start relatively inaccurate, and then if you stick to aiming at the same ship, your accuracy goes up. Then the penalty for firing in smoke could just be 1) a penalty to accuracy, 2) no gains in accuracy for firing from smoke, 3) or both.

I have often wondered what the game would be like if they simply made it impossible to fire any weapon other than AA until a ship has 10 kmh or more of forward speed. It seems it would make the game more fluid and reduce a lot of the stealth firing that goes on. Das Bat

100% agree with you. As for CV's it appears that the manual bombing and torpedo release have been removed 😞

Here I will explain it for you. WarGaming: "Are we making money hand over fist? Yes? Then its not broken!"

You know what, all of this is the reason I've not touched WoWs since I left it. Everything you said. Love to have a chat with you on design, fundamental design. Figure it could help me clean up an idea or five.

There is something you didn't mention and I agree with your thoughts. It really bugs me that you can buy your way into success

The ways things are looking the BB ( read Big Boss ) intention is to ellegantly get rid of something not of his like without losing face. As "we did this and that but players kept quitting, so we had to foreclose, sorry"

Chase, I agree with what your saying completely - but can you clarify what you mean by the difference between a balancing variable and a gimmick?

theres also some rare cases that torpedoes that penetrates but fail to explode

How about nation specific captain skills

Actually, each nation did have some things that were unique to it alone, though only a few nations had something really major as to its possible effects on the enemy under various conditions. Japanese post-1928 AP shells in all of its cruisers and BBs, for example, were designed with extra-long base fuze delays so when the shells were set off on water impact (water is quite solid enough to set off most fuzes unless specifically designed otherwise) they could go a rather long distance underwater just below the surface to hit the enemy ship like a torpedo, below its main armor belt, being slowed by the water so much that the shell would not have enough energy to penetrate through the target steel hull support structures so it would blow up inside the targe4t just like it penetrated the waterline belt armor in a more standard hit. To make sure that this happened with higher probability, the shells had break-away noses, throwing off the tip of the AP cap (all BB-sized shells and the first, 1928 20cm cruiser AP shell) or the tip of the projectile nose (15.5cm and 20.34cm post-1931 AP design) to expose a tapered flat nose of half the area of the projectile diameter (0.69-caliber wide) which is optimum for preventing ricochet until very shallow angles, yet has low-enough drag to keep the projectile going nose-first for a very long distance before it slows down too much and sinks. If the shell hits with the optimum 17-25-degree angle of fall, it can move up to 200 calibers (92m for the 46cm YAYAMTO Type 91 AP shell) deep enough to be below the armor belt, but still above the circa-9m depth of the bottom of the typical large warship, The only ships to have special tapering lower belt armor deep down to stop this type of thing were the post-1930-rebuilt Japanese WWI-era BBs, the YAMATO Class, and the new US post-1935 BBs. All others were vulnerable below 3-4.5m from the waterline (the lower edge of the belt armor) -- the thin plating in the anti-torpedo protection could not stop such hits unless the shell was moving very slowly (most shells with dud fuzes and pointed noses that tumbled very quickly underwater due to extreme turbulence; the reciprocal underwater hits on BISMARCK and PoW during the fight where HOOD was sunk showing the lack of penetration due to water drag). Thus, Japanese cruiser and BB AP shells would have more oper-penetrations than other shells when hitting unarmored or lightly-armored portions of target (inert cannon balls), but a very much improved chance of Citadel hits at medium ranges against all but the above lower-belt-protected designs (which would still have some damage outside of the special protection in the anti-torpedo "bulges") when hitting the water short of the target. This would make the later Japanese cruisers and upgraded/new BBs more dangerous against most ships over a wide range -- in effect making most targets 2.5-3 times as wide for underwater Citadel and bow/stern hits when broadside-on. In this game, that would be significant, don''t you think?