u/panzerblitzer

I love the Soulkiller mode, and it really clears up why the Blue Team always seems to lose. I'm running up an average 300-400K games in Night Shard and will still sometimes lose on Normal because teammates lack all situational awareness. Ships running over each other trying to get "the kill". Ships running across homing torpedoes that can literally only miss if they are intercepted by friendly forces or terrain. The other DD sailing around aimlessly. BB still sitting in the back. Ether Tempests sailing broadside to BBs. Picking DPS boost instead of healing yourself. No threat recognition on targets (again going to the "get the kill" mentality). It's the whole Blue Team experience in a microcosm! I finished hard in the first few hours of release (presumably when the better players were going through it). Now, Insane mode is most groups dying on the first Soul ship. Zeiten? Why should we worry about that? Let's just let it get inside everyone so it can crush the light ships with secondaries. High comedy in a nice themed event.

Since there are so many AL commanders in the store right now, wouldn't it make sense to allow players to design their own bundle? Something along the lines of buy 4 get a 5th free? With the ship/commander packs, there is almost inevitably a combination you simply don't want, so it reduces the impact of any doubloon savings. I'd be more inclined to grab a bunch of the AL commanders from years past if they gave you a bulk break instead of 5000 per. Mentally, I'd like to feel like I was getting some sort of a discount with multiple purchases.

I generally don't play BBs. Still, Indiana has a great deal of historical weight, so I went through the campaign for her. This season's ranked at T8 seemed like the ideal place to try the ship out.

As I said, I don't play BBs, so I don't have much of an investment. I brought Lee up to 12, used Hipper and AL Nelson as inspirations, bought a secondary mod and the damage control mod. Not quite vanilla, but pretty close. I took all the secondary perks with Lee plus Running w/Scissors.

10km secondaries with sub-24 reload time on MB. Indiana is surprisingly mobile. Not quite like the Odin/Scharnhorst Germans, but much better than your standard plodding BB. Fairly easy for me to have good games with her. In ranked, virtually all engagements kick off at 12 kmish, so my secondaries are in play almost immediately. The 406s are good enough, and you are adroit enough in the waves to be able to ram a ship if needed. DDs and cruisers don't like being around Indiana - it takes a brutal toll on them, and the sonar suite helps vs the torpedo BBs you always see in Ranked.

In every match, I feel like I'm properly armed to face whatever is coming. Genuinely a fun ship to play. I don't think I'll take it out much in Standard due to Legendary MM, but in modes like this or War Tales, this ship is worth bringing out of port. I'm pleasantly surprised.

Playing in Omono, I shot down 29 planes and was still sunk by the CV. Although I don't have an exact damage breakdown of my 32,200 HPs, I'd estimate 80% we taken off by the CV. It's not that CVs shouldn't be in the game - it's that when you mount a hail of AA fire, you still get sunk. That's nonsense. A CV can't have endless respawning planes. Shooting down planes has to mean something. If one CL shot down 29 dive bombers in real life, it would be a catastrophe for the CV. Plane regeneration has to be looked at.

One of my favorite parts of the Bureau is reading about what went into the building of the ship. I was therefore disappointed in the Kleber project. 4 segments are devoted to AA batteries and 3 to artillery mounts. I'm sorry, but this is just lazy. Two segments are more than sufficient to cover each. I'm reading 3 segments of fluff here that could have been used to fill out the design notes of the ship. Even theoretical ships don't need 4 segments describing AA batteries.