u/solar_pilgrim

I've just finished leveling all my commanders for Soulkiller. Still haven't won an insane match, still playing loads of matches with teammates doing dumb stuff, so thought I'd offer my take on ideal strategy so we can start collecting some wins on insane. FYI this is specific to hard/insane difficulty, as easy/normal you can win without much trouble. Real gameplay strategy is at the end.

BB: Iron Gale
Fairly typical brawler BB gameplay. You are tanky, but can get easily deleted if showing your broadside to enemy BBs. When fighting enemy BBs at mid-close range, stay bow-in and don't over-maneuver trying to get that third turret firing. Only go broadside to cruisers. Don't bother shooting enemy DDs unless there's no other targets--your blue cruisers and DDs can shred them much more effectively, even if you're shooting HE. YOUR torpedoes have a fairly quick reload so pop them whenever you get a chance.

You should be pretty balanced between AP and HE--only use HE on bow-in targets, as even cruisers can ricochet most of your shells. Your HE still has great damage output.

Stay ahead of your cruisers, they are squishy. It's okay if a DD wants to get ahead of you, but don't let them get too far away. Your DDs don't have heals, so try to heal them whenever possible.

DODGE TORPS! Don't rely on your hydrophone to bust torpedoes--the cooldown is long and you can easily get hit with staggered waves of torpedoes. Dodge whenever possible and save hydrophone for emergencies. Don't ever pop it preemptively, as you should be able to guess when torps are coming by keeping an eye on enemy DDs.

Save your battle upgrades for heals as you'll most likely need them. Unless you catch some citadels, you shouldn't need any of them until at least the second half of the match.

Cruiser: Ether Tempest
Stay at range, behind your BBs. You're not a tank, you're not super maneuverable, and you have no smoke, so getting within 7km of an enemy cluster can be deadly, especially a red BB. You can tank enemy fire bow-in fairly well if you must, but you'll only be able to use half your guns.

Damage BBs by shooting superstructure. Damage cruisers by shooting broadside if you're close-mid range, but otherwise aim superstructure. You should have no problem killing DDs.

Like with BBs, try to dodge torps as much as possible, and keep an eye on red DDs to anticipate them. Save your hydrophone for emergencies only. Also, like with BBs, make an effort to keep your DDs healed when you can. Your torps are effective but don't have great angles or range, so you'll likely only be able to use them safely on ships coming out from behind an island—don't go broadside in the middle of a lane just to get torps away, unless if you have the torp range mod and can do so from long distance.

Like with BBs, save your battle upgrades for heals, unless you're at the final boss.

DD: Night Shard
This is the trickiest of ships to play and the most crucial. You have the most damage potential (based only on my experience) yet it's the easiest to whiff by firing torps at a ship which your teammates kill before they hit, or by just having your homing torps curve into a rock. Only send torps when you're confident they'll land: opt for sending one salvo at a ship instead of two, as it'll likely take damage from your teammates before they hit. Be aware of your teammates so you don't waste torps by hitting them, and of enemy ships who might die in the path of your torps.

Use your guns! Your guns will do serious damage on enemy cruisers and especially DDs. Your smoke has a fast reload, so your strategy for each wave should generally be to 1) get torps in the water, 2) smoke up (bonus points if you can conceal a friendly cruiser as well), 3) use your guns to kill any DDs or cruisers, or chip away at BB superstructures. Also don't forget your radar which is crucial if you smoke up ahead of all your teammates.

Don't get so far ahead of your teammates that they can't heal or support you. You're no use to your team if you die, or have to run away to the side of the map.

STRATEGY

First wave
One BB will have broadside angle on the incoming boss and cruisers--fire AP at them. The other BB should use its HE. Cruiser(s) should aim to take out the enemy cruisers and DDs, WITHOUT moving too far forward to be singled out by the enemy. DDs: you should be able to get torps off at capital ships while also smoking up and helping to clear enemy DDs, but your main goal here should just be to push as far forward so you can lead the charge into the second wave as soon as possible. Don't be caught far back or facing backwards once the first wave is cleared.

Middle waves
CRUCIALLY, your team needs to advance from both the left and the right after the first wave, ideally with a BB on each side, and without any teammate getting stuck alone. If everyone advances up one side, you'll run the risk of a red ship advancing the empty flank, and you'll have to spend time chasing them down before advancing to the next wave. This will also set you up for crossfires on the third wave.

DD(s) should lead the charge, and should be far enough forward to get torps on the second boss before it moves behind the island. Smoke up after firing torps and start shooting enemy DDs, then cruisers. BBs should be close behind or next to DDs.

Positioning is everything. If your team is distributed well across both flanks, you should be able to advance to the final wave without any blue ships getting singled out and destroyed. It's very easy to lose a match by running out of time, so keep advancing as quickly as possible without getting separated from your team.

Final boss
If you have any battle upgrades remaining and you aren't about to die, now is the time to upgrade damage/reload. You may only have 2-3 minutes to kill the final boss, so you need to be putting out as much damage as possible. THIS ESPECIALLY APPLIES TO DDs, and this is where having a surviving DD can completely make or break your match. A single DD with fully upgraded damage/reload can drain half the final boss' health in 1-2 minutes. You only have to kill the boss, so ignore any red ships unless they're getting too close to you—enemy ships WILL ram you.

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Alright that's it. I drafted this pretty quickly and tried to keep it as brief as possible, but will likely keep refining it or adding any suggestions y'all throw out. Let's complete some challenges.

I think we can all agree the current event has some problems, especially with transparency in factions' participation and progress toward earning points. Here's what I think could make the faction v faction structure work better in a future event:

- Regular ships. The modern era ships are neat but they get old fast. Don't think we need a special ship type for an event like this

- PvP points. Have players earn most of their event points by playing PvP battles, where you are only ever teamed with your own faction. Whichever side wins the match earns a point for their faction. I'd be happy to keep the missions as well which can be completed in any game mode, but completing weekly missions should only award as many points as maybe 5-10 wins.

- Faction differences and perks. Divide all nations into the two factions (or three?). When playing event PvP you can only play as a ship from your faction. Give players a reason to pick one side over the other, beyond silly camos. Reward could be picking a premium ship from your faction nations at the end of the event if you participate enough, regardless of if your side wins.

- Stats/transparency. Right now the event just feels a little flat, with no way to gauge how much your individual participation matters. We should be able to see at least how many players are in each faction, and a timeline of how each faction is accruing points.

Hey all, been a little over a month since I played last but gonna get back into it this week. I haven't been keeping up, so just curious what's changed? I know there's been a couple updates--any new tanks, commanders, modules/upgrades, nerfs/buffs? Is the player base any bigger now, or am I still stuck playing 90% bots after midnight?

1- Of course the game type needs some type of balancing, otherwise whichever team with more players is simply going to sweep every round.

2- Many players like myself only play a few days out of the week. Why is it so hard to believe that lots of people jumped in at the very end to participate before the round closed.

3- People who seem to think that WG intentionally screwed Accord players, or don't have any incentive to be transparent in the scoring system: if most people chose Accord, what incentive does WG have to make the majority of their players lose?

4- Y'all constantly moan about WG lack of innovation. Then they release this super experimental new game mode with new ship types and everything, and y'all just moan about not getting your handful of boosters and camos. If I were an indie dev running this game, I'd just shut the servers off for a week out of spite

https://preview.redd.it/nzg1ca7v1phh1.png?width=2559&format=png&auto=webp&s=af8009755b9f1211a6505e382c2ed261ad5174b9

OGs will recognize this map instantly

Which ship/commander pairings are y'all using for Modern Era PVP?

So far I've only really played Burke and now getting into Sovremenny.

I figured Rojas was the clear choice for Sovremenny given the SAP shell buffs. But after sinking credits into leveling her up, I notice all her secondary battery buffs have no effect on the Sov. I guess because they aren't secondary "guns" but missiles.

I was very much looking forward to +50% range on the cruise missiles :(

I've been shooting recurve for over ten years. While I had my fair share of elbow bruises due to bad form early on, I've never once had anything close to "string slap". I've only shot a handful of different bows in my entire life, mostly between 25-50#. Have I just been lucky with the particular bows I've shot? Maybe I have weird form?

I think carriers should be reworked to focus more on utility than damage. It could make CVs much less annoying, AND add some extra skill to playing CV. Few parts to this idea:

1. Bring back plane spotting. But not regular spotting--plane spotting. Spotted ships are visible, but can only be targeted if they're stationary. The main point would be flushing out ships hiding behind islands, or a DD sitting in the edge of a cap, and letting your team get a couple salvos off on them before they start moving. And "blind fire" could still be effective if they're moving slowly. Doesn't feel overpowered, but could be enough to tip the scale on a flank.

2. Torpedo spotting. Allow pilots to see the wake of unspotted torps in the water, and use a consumable that spots them for their team. Though this could be abused by people in a div with a mic, since the CV wouldn't have to use a consumable to tell their buddy about torps, so maybe needs more work. The alternative might just be continuous torp spotting within a range that you could spec into (no watching for wakes), but maybe that's OP. Either way, I would feel pretty heroic finding torps heading towards my BB that's nosing around an island, and swooping in to warn them. Also fwiw, WW2 planes could actually spot torps from the air pretty effectively.

3. Smoke consumable. Just drop a smokescreen beneath where your planes are flying--also actual WW2 thing. I could see this being interchangeable with torp spotting, and I think they're kinda similar: both might rarely be useful, but could be VERY useful once in a while.

4. Escort fighters. Be able to spawn patrol fighters that protect a specific friendly ship, not just sit at a point on the map. Idk how much of a difference this would make, but it feels cool.

5. Award more points to CVs for spotting. Idk what the numbers are, but I know DDs can get lots of points for spotting damage, and even lead the team while doing very little direct damage. CVs should get points for spotting time, not even just spotting damage. It's hugely useful for the team just getting updated minimap locations.

6. Nerf CV DPM. Longer plane recharge, less alpha damage, idk how or how much really. But it'll have to happen for these other things to be balanced.

This is free—no ads, no signup, etc. When you search a word, it appears in the middle of the map with synonyms, related words and the word's roots branching off of it. Words with a similar color, or that are closer to each other, are more closely related to one another, and words that are nearer to the center are more closely related to the target word. You can click any word or root to browse around, a bit like a Wikipedia game.

I'm just getting into leather tooling and am about to start the antiquing process for the first time. I haven't been able to find a solid resource explaining the purpose of resist in the antiquing process.

At first I thought it was something you would only apply to the raised parts of your tooled leather, but that seems so meticulous and prone to mistakes. I've seen some videos that seem to show people just applying resist everywhere, then applying antiquing everywhere, but I don't understand how that is supposed to work.

Does the antique work if applied on top of resist that's already in the crevices? Rather, does it just sit on top of the resist and not actually dye the leather? Or is the idea that you should only "loosely" apply resist so it doesn't fully fill the crevices, and whatever gaps are left allows the antique to penetrate and dye the areas around it? Also, is resist supposed to flake off or dissolve away on a wipe down, or do you need to carefully remove it after the antique process? FYI I'm using Fiebing's antique finish (doesn't say "gel") and Fiebing's pro resist. Gonna be trying it over both alcohol and oil dyes

I have the Fire shell for the M60A2 and have been enjoying it because burning enemy tanks is just so satisfying. I'm also using the XM1203 shells (+16.4% fire status) on the M3E1 but not sure I've ever actually started a fire with it. Now I'm considering getting the Blitzregen upgrade for Leo 1 (trapping shots create a fire area) but I'm really not sure how effective the fire starting strategy is in general, when players can sometimes just run away and extinguish.

What's y'all's take on fire builds? Any tips for playing them more effectively?

I've browsed the articles on the HEAT website but haven't found anything touching on these. Does anyone understand the meaning of:

- Hit data value
- Moving noise data
- Shot noise value
- Vehicle camouflage
- Aiming speed (is it like ADS speed?)
- Vehicle optics
- Aim data value

I'm looking at various vehicle upgrades that affect these and it's just impossible to decide what to spend tech points on when I'm not sure what these mean

I posted here last week about dendril.app, a (free, no ads) word explorer tool that let's you visualize relationships between synonyms and related words. Like a more intuitive thesaurus that you can just meander through. I mentioned my next step was going to be adding some etymology functionality, and... we did it!

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Searching a word shows all synonyms, related words, and word roots (here, \"pro\" and \"duco\"). Words that are nearer each other (similar color) are more similar to one another. Click any word on the map (or in the list on the left) to go there next.

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Just upgraded Reaper to lvl 4 but didn't receive a skill point. On the agents list he has a green dot next to him, but zero skill points :( Anyone had this happen? On Xbox.

For sake of simplification, let's say population of living species that could conceivably have speaking lines in LOTR books. Orcs and ents are in, wargs and ravens are out. I've found some stats that seem to indicate a very vague range, so I figured I should ask the experts here.

I'm also curious what the population dispersion is. Middle Earth seems to be mostly comprised of big cities, with not many random settlements (or suburbs, if you will) in between. Are any parts of the map truly barren? Which places have the densest population?