There's a never-ending debate over whether to go for coal ships first or coal captains first, and I'm the one who advocates for ships. Here's why: "Special commanders should be rotated around your premiums and one tech-tree ship." This is all very well, but first you have to have the premium ships. If you're a paying customer, this isn't a problem. If you can't afford it, choose not to spend, or are in a cool-off period just after starting while you wait to find out if you like the game enough to commit money (which is where I was for the first nine months), coal is the only game in town for the beginner to get themselves premiums. Events can't be relied on, as they may or may not offer no-cost premiums and those may or may not be suitable for a beginner. There are six categories of special captain available without paying money: 1) Those with no special talents or enhanced skills. Example: Federica Estival (swimsuit captain, Pan-America; 35K coal). 2) Special commander with enhanced skills for a fixed price. Example: John Doe (US), Quan Rong (Pan-Asia), Klaas Janssen (Dutch), Takeo Suzuki (Japan), all 35K coal. 3) Special commanders available through collections via coal crates: Jean-Jacques Honore, Jack Dunkirk. 4) Unique commanders available for a fixed price of 175,000 coal. Examples: Kuznetsov, Lutjens, Auboyneau. 5) Unique commanders available through collections via coal crates. Examples: Sansonetti, the new Pan-Am commander Lisbao in the 9th anniversary event. 6) Commanders available through campaigns: Yamamoto and Halsey. These two require no resources but require an extensive grind at Tier 8 or higher, and are thus inaccessible to newer players. If you are going to advise new players not to rush to high tiers, you are also locking them out of access to these commanders for a while. If you're not going to open the wallet and you're not a CC or other WG entity who gets given free stuff, you have to think about the availability of free ships at a tier appropriate to your skills. Coal premiums at low mid (5-6) tier (for accessibility to missions and chains) are available to US, UK, USSR, Pan-Am, Pan-Asia and France for direct purchase, and to Italy via coal crates through the collection that gives the Leone. Tier 7 offers more choices, including Blyskawica as a freemium for EU. Japan's only coal ship below Tier 10 is at Tier 4 and locked out from most daily events (Yubari). To get an eligible mid-tier Japanese freemium requires you to have access to Tier 8 for the Shinonome campaign, and I think the CCs should advocate to WG for something to be made available in this regard, however mediocre (e.g. Mutsu or Ashitaka). The same can be said for Germany, which has NO coal premiums below Tier 9 and at least two candidates that come to mind, even if they aren't great ships; PEF and Schonberg. Either that or create an Ernst Gaede clone as a generic German T6 coal DD. (Yes, Leipzig is there for the winning in the current dockyard, but that won't always be so.) So I think the first thing a new user should do is look to a nation that has Tier 5/6 premiums AND a coal commander available and start working with those nations first. (They are probably going to outgrow the Yubari, Campbeltown and Charleston too quickly.) Take the US as the easiest example. Spam coal containers, grab the Marblehead or the Hill, then grab John Doe, and start working him up... oh, let's say the US heavy cruiser line. If you grab the ship first, it's available to retrain all of the OTHER commanders the player is moving up the other lines too. If you grab John Doe first, what's he going to retrain with if the player is FTP? By the time you've got your hands on the allied mid-tier coal ships and their corresponding category 2 and 3 commanders, you've probably got yourself enough breadth of ships and experience to start pushing up for the Category Six big boys. By the time you have Yamamoto, you're arguably ready for high tier ships, you've hopefully been accumulating a large coal reserve, and your choices really start opening up. In fact, in the bigger picture it may be worth deferring certain nations entirely until you have T5+ freemiums to support retraining in the grind and a special commander to take up the lines. This is also the point at which you have to start thinking seriously, based on which ships you play the most, about who your first 21 pointer is going to be, and start making compromises and ship-selection choices to concentrate on their promotion. Obviously this approach takes VERY long-term planning, discipline and self-restraint ("But I want the Yamato YESTERDAY!!!"), and can be modified radically if you're willing to cough up a few well-chosen doubloons to have mid-tier training ships available early or you luck out and grab yourself a premium ship at the half-way point of a dockyard or in a container of some sort. But I think you get the idea of where I'm headed.
Yeah you've always been very detailed in your decision making process (as witnessed above lol). I agree having ONE premium ship in a nation with a special commander is a huge help, and if you don't have that, coal is a great option. After that first ship, diminishing returns start, especially if it's the same class of ship. For example, I had a Marblehead and Arkansas Beta when I first started playing. This was before the current commander system, so often putting a cruiser built captain to a battleship didn't work, which meant ideally you wanted one premium of each class for each nation. The rework has simplified this so much!
Great content for the more casual or newer players among is. I did the basically the same exact thing back when WG changed the commander system: Opened up Excel + imported all relevant data and then planed how to distribute the commanders in the best way to create synergies between special ones, their boosted skills (and talents in terms of Halsey&co) and which special/premium ships I want to swap them around. In my case I also did take CB into account... A few of them have been shuffled around after new releases and introduction of superships, but the bulk of them is still where I put them 3 years ago. Also some like the Suzuki brothers haven't been fully optimized yet, due to the fact that they were released after the commanders rework and that time I already had a 21 commander on Haru and enough of my other unique commanders hadn't been maxed out yet, so it wasn't worth shuffling them around and boosting them. I may consider swap around Yamamoto around. But only in case that WG hands out another free respec, because shuffling him onto another ship and resetting some of his skills isn't worth the investment in regards to gained efficiency. Now, Kuznetzov sits on Udaloi, due to the fact that I reset RU DDs as often if not more so than Haru line for RB...
