WoWS Q&A- 17th June 2016

Thanks to Babykim, Carnotzet.

According to this post, British ships are coming this year, tentatively in Fall. Nothing else can be said though. 

The most interesting news is that supertesters will get the German battleships for testing in update 0.5.8, i.e. in several weeks. The main feature of German battleships is their superior survivability. The Gneisenau gets 380mm guns.

Answer by Sub_Octavian

Regarding why giving compensations is a complex issue / why we decided not to dismount all modules. We also thought about dismounting all modules and sell them automatically. However, we considered that players having to buy and install all of their modules on all of their ships wasn’t very user-friendly. After all, not every player will change his ships setups and not all modules were changed. Moreover, there’s the risk that some players wouldn’t be aware of the fact we removed modules, would lose credits [to rebuy them I guess] and then, after realizing changes were made, would get upset. Therefore, we came up with a complex compensation/replacement system that will only affect modules that were changed in the patch. It is rather fair.

Regarding secondaries batteries and their nerf. I’d like to explain the situation since there are a lot of questions about it in this thread.

Firstly, for high-tier ships, taking into consideration the removal of secondary batteries mod 2, and the improvement of secondary batteries mod 3, secondary batteries build will be stronger in 0.5.7.

In details,

Before the patch: +20% range, -20% dispersion, -20% reload time;

After the patch: +25% range, -20% dispersion, –25% reload time. In addition, you also get -7% main batteries dispersion;

Secondly, regarding secondary batteries at all tiers, the changes made to the game logic in 0.5.6. and found in the patch notes weren’t there just for decoration. With the patch, secondary batteries effectiveness was considerably improved in comparison to the situation prior of patch 0.5.6., which led to secondary batteries being much more effective on all ships.

If we calculate the delta damage before and after the patch, secondary batteries effectiveness on BB improved a lot, and by a lot, I mean it doubled.

Here are concrete examples representing the difference in damage between the week before and the week after the patch.

delta damage HE shells % delta damage AP shells %
Fuso 132,8 133,8
Nagato 124,8 113,5
Amagi 154,0 167,2
New Mexico 132,6
Colorado 116,1
North Carolina 158,1

Don’t forget that changes made to secondaries logic in patch 0.5.6. affected all players, not only those who focused on secondaries builds since the changes affected the base mechanics of these armaments. Moreover, let us not forget about the improvements made to the firing range of North Carolina’s, Iowa’s and Montana’s secondaries in patch 0.5.6.

Where am I driving at ? To the fact that if you want to understand the core of the problem, in this case the changes made to modules affecting secondaries, you have to examine the situation not only in the context of patches 0.5.6 to 0.5.7., but also in the context of patches x.x.x to 0.5.6 to 0.5.7.

TL/DR

Secondaries on tier 9-10 BB’s will be stronger compared to 0.5.6. : faster reload, more range and a dispersion bonus for main batteries.

Secondaries on all other BB’s will be weaker compared to 0.5.6., but will remain stronger compared to 0.5.5. Compared to 0.5.6., they will also get a dispersion bonus on their main guns.

We don’t aim to make secondaries globally weaker, and we also encourage secondaries builds at high tiers.

A little news regarding the removal of standard mode at tier 9-10.

  • Standard mode was removed at tier 9-10 because they considered matches lasted too long. According to their research, the ideal time for a battle is 14-15 min. At the same time, 28% of standard battles ended because of the time limit (20min). Players played much too defensively in their opinion, which impacted negatively on the game dynamic and most players’ fun.

News from the stream with JamesWhite (12 June). Source. Babykim already talked briefly about this.

  • In patch 0.5.8, German BB’s will be made available to supertesters, and thus, players will be able to see these ships in battles and examine their models in port.
  • German BB’s particularity will be higher survivability (more HP, better torpedo belts, higher fire resistance). EDIT. On the other hand, they won’t have torpedoes (as some players thought they would), their guns will have worse ballistics and be of smaller caliber (similar to Tirpitz).
  • Gneisenau will be equipped with 380 mm guns.
  • Regarding the questions asked about Admiral Graf Spee (which were first asked in the European Q&A), JamesWhite refused to give any details.
  • It is hard to say anything about the Geman CV line. However, there will certainly be a premium German CV (tier 8). No release date though.
  • Atlanta is a bit too difficult to play for below average players, but good players can achieve excellent results with her (better than with the standard ships). Thus it is planned to buff her, but so as she won’t be overpowered in good hands. They still don’t really know how they will achieve that though.
  • South Dakota and Hood are planned to be implemented in the game, however, work hasn’t yet started on them, they aren’t even modeled.
  • If Indianapolis happens to not break balance, they will certainly add radar to other tier 6-7 cruisers.