WoWS: [Maintenance] Version 0.5.10

Please be informed that the World of Warships server will undergo brief maintenance to implement Version 0.5.10.

ASIA:


Maintenance Start: 18/08/2016 @ 06:00 UTC+8
Maintenance End: 18/08/2016 @ 08:00 UTC+8


NA:

The update happens August 17; preparation begins at 03:00 PT/ 06:00 ET until 05:00 PT/ 08:00 ET.

EU:

The patch is scheduled for 18 August and will be applied on the servers from 05:30 CEST until 07:30 CEST (UTC+2) during which the game server will be offline.

Please view the patch notes below for further information.

Patch Notes

German Battleships I Interface I Audio  I Maps and Locations I Alternative Colour Filters | Shell Normalization | Other Updates

German Battleships

The branch of German battleships from Tier III to Tier X was added to the game: Nassau, Kaiser, König, Bayern, Gneisenau, Bismarck, Friedrich Der Groβe, and Groβer Kurfürst. The German battleship branch is an excellent choice for close quarters combat. The following features inherent in the ships of this branch to different extents will help you play aggressively:

  • An inclined armoured deck (makes it harder to hit German battleships’ citadels at short distances)
  • High efficiency of secondary armament compared to other same-tier battleships
  • High rate of fire and traverse speed of main turrets
  • A decent amount of hit points
  • A large portion of the hull is protected by good belt armour
  • A Hydroacoustic Search consumable (available on Bismarck, Friedrich Der Groβe, and Groβer Kurfürst)

Interface

  • Added detailed information about ships the player destroyed in battle. Now, such info includes the ship type and how that ship was destroyed.
  • Added the Introductory Mission banner and Service Record banner in the Port. These banners will be displayed to novice players.
  • Improved the display of subsequent-tier ships in the tech tree of the Modules screen.
  • Increased the font size of the ships types in the Tech Tree tab.
  • Increased the size and revised the design of icons appearing above the target when modules are damaged. Now, it is much easier to distinguish incapacitated modules from destroyed ones.
  • The update button (for replacing a Daily Mission with a new random Daily Mission) was made more visible.
  • Added a placeholder for the in-game browser that will be displayed if YouTube cannot be accessed.
  • Events, Challenges and Missions UI elements design has been improved

 

Post Battle Statistics Screen

The post battle statistics screen now includes new data that helps evaluate the player’s performance, namely:

  • Damage the allies caused to enemies spotted by the player
  • Number of fires the allies caused to enemies spotted by the player
  • Potential damage that includes the following:
    • Potential maximum damage from shells, bombs and torpedoes that hit the player’s ship (with or without causing damage to her)
    • Potential damage from shells, bombs and torpedoes that were fired/launched by the enemy at the player’s ship but did not hit her
  • Number of enemy ships spotted by the player
  • Number of enemy squadrons spotted by the player
  • Number of enemy torpedoes spotted by the player
  • Capture points and defense points (earned by capturing/defending bases and key areas)
  • The player’s Profile now has statistics for individual ships

Please note that post-battle statistic changes listed above do not have any impact on the in-game economy as of this point. Currently, this information has been made available only to provide detailed information about the players’ statistics. Please send us your feedback in the forum! We plan to integrate this data with the in-game economy in future, after analysing the feedback we gather and the associated game statistics. The details will be announced separately.

Player’s Profile

Now, the player’s Profile includes the following new data:

  • Total damage the allies caused to enemies spotted by the player
  • Highest damage the allies caused to enemies spotted by the player in a single battle
  • Average damage the allies caused to enemies spotted by the player
  • Total number of enemy ships spotted by the player
  • Highest number of ships spotted by the player in a single battle
  • Average number of ships spotted per battle
  • Participation in capturing and defending key areas calculated as a percentage ratio (ratio of the points earned by the player to the points earned by the rest of their team)
  • Total potential damage
  • Highest potential damage received per battle
  • Average potential damage received per battle

Interface optimisation

Optimisation was done for the following interfaces in game:

  • Battle statistics in game, viewable by pressing [TAB]
  • Disclosure of full stats in port stats panel
  • Appearance of afterbattle screen at the end of the battle

Please note that using overlays (software modules that operate on top of the game client’s interface) can lead to incorrect behavior of the game interface.


Audio

  • Improved sounds for bomb explosions and fires
  • Reworked sounds for the Surveillance Radar and Hydroacoustic Search consumables
  • Improved ambient sounds for the “Ocean” Port
  • Improved the logic for playing enemy detection messages while in the Binocular View
  • Enhanced and reworked the distant sounds within the game’s soundstage

Maps and Locations

  • Improved the appearance of the “Zipangu” Port
  • Removed waterfalls on the “Estuary” map
  • Neighbors: the geometry of the island in the upper part of the map was changed due to balance considerations
  • The Atlantic: the island with the decorative air field on it was moved to another location on the map
  • Reworked the appearance of the “Fault Line” and “Two Brothers” maps. This was done to raise the aesthetic quality of these rather old maps to the quality level of our new maps.

Alternative Colour Filters

Added alternative colour filters for players with the corresponding colour vision deficiencies. To enable this mode, select the suitable option via the Settings screen. There are three available filters created for the corresponding deficiencies:

  • Deuteranopia (green blindness)
  • Protanopia (red blindness)
  • Tritanopia (blue blindness)


Shell Normalisation

In the game, shell normalisation is the number of degrees by which an armor piercing shell “turns” upon contact with armor in an attempt to reach the most advantageous angle for penetration—90 degrees. Earlier, this parameter was set up individually for each shell type depending on its ballistic and other properties. However, this approach turned out to not be entirely correct within the gameplay process and added more unclear aspects to the way the damage model works in the game. Starting with this update, the normalisation will be set up uniformly for all armour-piercing shell types and will depend only on the shell calibre:

  • Up to and including 139 mm—10 degrees
  • 140 to 152 mm—8.5 degrees
  • 153 to 240 mm—7 degrees
  • 241 mm and more—6 degrees

The change has been made in a systematic manner and will slightly increase the predictability of armor penetration. It is not aimed at drastically changing the efficiency of individual ships and will not have any excessive impact on gameplay. Note that shell normalization is applied only after checks are made for guaranteed penetration and ricochet off the armor. Consequently, the shell normalization will only affect the final penetration/non-penetration of the shell.


Other Updates

Division

To improve the balancing of teams and reduce the number of balance related issues, we have decided to limit the maximum difference between tiers of ships in a Division. For now, this difference is set to one tier. For example, a Division of two Tier V Kirov cruisers and one Tier VI battleship Fuso will be able to enter a battle. However if the Fuso player instead chooses Tier VII battleship Nagato then this Division will be blocked from entering a battle.


Cyclone

We made the following adjustments to Cyclone parameters so as to increase gameplay predictability for the Cyclone weather conditions:

Parameter 0.5.9 0.5.10
Cyclone Start Time 03:00 – 09:00 minute of the battle (start time was selected at random) 07:00 minute of the battle
Cyclone Duration 4-10 minutes (duration was selected at random) 5-7 minutes (duration is still selected at random)

Improvements for Novice Players

As part of our improvements to the game experience for novice players, we have made the following changes for all Tier I ships:

  • Only one shell type — practice shell — will now be available for ships of this tier. Its properties are exactly the same as the properties of HE shells
  • These ships will now encounter only ships of the same tier in battles
  • Removed researchable main battery modules and added researchable Gun Fire Control System modules
  • For ships characteristics scaling amount of HP and shell’s damage has been decreased by 50%

Permanent Camouflage

Added permanent camouflage schemes for Bismarck, North Carolina, Benson, and Chapayev:

  • Cost: 3,000 Doubloons
  • Battle performance bonuses: -3% to detectability range; +4% to maximum dispersion of shells fired by the enemy attacking the ship where this camouflage is mounted
  • Economy bonuses: -5% to the cost of the ship’s post-battle repair; +50% to XP earned in the battle

Domination Mode

In the Domination mode, the time required to capture a key area was increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds. In the game scenario with three key areas, the rate of scoring capture points was adjusted to three points every five seconds (previously: four points every six seconds). These changes are intended to reduce the number of battles where a team scores a quick win by points as well as decrease the somewhat excessive impact that combat for control of key areas has on the outcome of the battles.


Secondary Battery Mechanics

From now on, secondary guns will not cause any damage to allied ships.


Others

  • Prinz Eugen and ARP Nachi were added to the game client for testing by developers and supertesters. These ships are not available for purchase and research, but players may encounter them in battle.
  • Chapayev: fixed the catapult display
  • ARPEGGIO ships: fixed some effects for these ships
  • North Carolina: fixed the model of her navigation light and radars
  • Texas: fixed the look of the shadow cast by the radar stanchion
  • Dmitri Donskoi: fixed the visualisation of her bottom and added missing decorative objects
  • Wakatake: fixed dynamic rendering of shadows cast by her hull
  • Colorado: fixed the visual artifact at the junction of textures on her hull
  • Königsberg: improved models of the main turrets for her top configuration
  • Furutaka: fixed the visualisation of the range finder
  • Marblehead: fixed the visualisation of some decorative objects and rigging
  • New Orleans, Ibuki, Königsberg, Shokaku, Tashkent, Shchors, and Moskva: fixed the visualization of some decorative objects at low graphics quality settings
  • Svietlana: fixed the visualisation of the antennas
  • Bogatyr: fixed the visualisation of the ropes and ladder near her aft main turret
  • Kirov: fixed the radar model
  • Molotov: added animation for rotation of the Redut-K radar’s antenna
  • Admiral Hipper: fixed the visualisation of the shadow cast by the range finder
  • Nagato: fixed the positioning of the boat on her port side (the boat’s nose had previously been pointed astern)
  • Introduced the multicluster system in order to increase game stability and decrease server maintenance downtime
  • Compressed files for the “Two Brothers” and “Fault Line” maps, flags, and camouflages so as to optimise the size of the game client
  • Tashkent: added a new director model
  • Fixed the bug where the “Penetration” ribbon was displayed when a shell hit the torpedo protection but did not penetrate
  • Saipan: fixed the incorrect description of her peculiarities
  • Fixed the bug where the game client sometimes abnormally terminated when tracking an ally in the Spectator Mode
  • Fixed the error where long user names were incorrectly displayed in pop-up hints in the post battle statistics screen
  • Added a new start screen
  • Fixed the lighting issue that caused an excessive shininess effect for islands
  • Błyskawica: fixed the incorrect visualisation of the coat of arms for certain graphics settings
  • Fixed the bug where the Add to Contacts icon was displayed next to the player’s own user name
  • Countdown before battle start has been decreased from 60 to 45 seconds due to loading optimizations