Source: Reddit, Sub_Octavian
Q: Are there any mods that you guys are considering adding to the base game? The ones I appreciate the most are ship names on the minimap and ship names next to player names in chat. A:Yes there are, including ship names on minimap. Watch the news!
Q: Any updates on replay functionality?
A: It is not low priority – it is planned and even worked on. But it won’t come very soon, as we aim at quite rich functionality of replays.
Q: Question regarding Radar mechanics.
A: With the exception of Missouri, Radar is purely cruiser option. We don’t want to add cruiser – DD counter. That would be cruiser nerf, which is currently not desirable.
Q: Question regarding performance of German destroyers.
A: It is too early to make conclusions, but our preliminary opinion: they are fine. Not as peculiar as RN CLs. Not as straight-powerful as KM BBs. This is a fine line, seems more or less balanced, but perhaps it lacks “wow!!!”. We will continue observing it. The stats on mid and high tier are not settled yet.
Q: […] Are there plans to extend this to other cruisers in order to make them more forgiving to play […] ?
A: There are no such plans now. This heal is a part of unique gameplay style, specific to RN. Other lines have their own features. We’d rather not make them all the same.
Q 1: Does Adrenaline Rush reduce loading time by 0.1% for each 1% hp missing or is it 0.2%? PTS2 had it at 0.2%
A 1: 0.2%. Typo here
Q 2: Does Adrenaline Rush affect ALL armament of the ship? Such as Secondaries, Torpedoes and AA as well as Primary battery? If not, exactly what armament gets affected by it?
A 2: Torpedoes and Primary for now. No AA. No Secondaries (we plan to add secondaries soon, though).
Q 3: Adrenaline Rush bonuses only care about missing HP, right? So if I heal with Repair Party, I will be losing some of the Adrenaline Rush bonuses?
A 3: Correct.
Q: Question (rather complaint) regarding Bastion mode.
A: Bastion chance is currently reduced, and in 0.6.1 the mode will be tweaked. We would like to make it more enjoyable instead of removing it.
Q 1: The destroyer damage build is somewhat weaker than pre-patch (e.g. DE power level reduction) and survivability has been indirectly nerfed through the implementation of new tools (e.g. RPF) to hunt DDs. Is there a plan to offset this power level reduction elsewhere?
A 1: The choice is here not only for DD captains. We wanted to make BB builds more specific with Aux guns, AA and Survival as main directions. General purpose builds are still viable, but we expect them to be less efficient. We would like to see more diversity in BB gameplay with these changes.
Q 2: On a related note, as someone who enjoys DDs, CL/CAs, and BBs, I’m a little nervous about the direction of BBs right now. Is there any thought about the power level of BBs and what might be necessary to bring CL/CAs back to the fore a bit?
A 2: We’re nervous about BB population growth, too. I have to say, I reviewed this last week. The growth is slowing down (which is good), but not that fast, so It is hard to tell right now whether we will see some healthy (for the meta) decline a bit later. Actually, we hope 0.6.0 will contribute here in a positive way. We also have some options in testing, if this tendency does not change.
Q 1: Question regarding changes to Expert loader
A 1: We did not change anything here, it worked as it did before. I guess there is typo, because “will now work” clearly implies that something changed.
Q 2: Question about Emergency Takeoff being rather expensive.
A 2: The penalty applies only when you’re on fire. If you are not on fire, you have standard cooldown. And without this skill, you won’t be able to launch anything while on fire anyways. It is useful if you play in close formation and often take damage.
Q 3: Inertia Fuse for HE Shells: Does the 50% penalty during retraining only affect the better penetration of the HE shells or does it also affect the reduced chance for fire?
A 3: Only the better penetration (it should, I will double check that tomorrow)
Q 4: Inertia Fuse for HE Shells: Will you add an explanaition in the game how caliber vs armor works, so people can actually make a choice with that knowledge in mind?
A 4: Hopefully, we will do it sometime.
Q 5: Dogfighting Expert: Why is it still saying that it improves average damage vs planes of different tier when we have mirror matchmaking for CVs for more than a year now?
A 5: On low tier there can be 2 CVs per team, so it still works there.
Q 6: Expert Rear Gunner: Why on earth was the point cost increased / doubled? Do you actually think it’s worth spending two skillpoints, even if the enemy Carrier captain did not know about strafing?
A 6: You would be surprised, but lots of players don’t use strafing because they haven’t mastered it yet.
Q 7: Evasive Maneuver Just to clarify: The moment I hit the ‘F’ button the planes will activate that skill? So if I choose to send them near my carrier manually without hitting that button, they will retain their normal behaviour (read: keep their speed and HP)?
A 7: Yes.
Q 8: Regarding the new captain XP curve, why did you make it harder for newer captains to advance in ranks while make it easier for higher ranked captains to advance in ranks? I would have assumed that you’d want to make it a tad easier for captains with less points, so they are not as much at a disatvantage versus players with more captain skills.
A 8: We do care about new players, but even with that, previous XP curve was way too unbalanced. You got new points like crazy in the first ranks, and then it got too tiresome.
Q 9: “Air Groups Modification 2” upgrade will now increase fighter ammunition count by 50%. Combine that with Dogfight expert and I can see US CVs with AS loadouts where the fighters will have to rearm very rarely. Is this intentional?
A 9: Yes.
Q 1: HEAP – Are we gonna see the penetration stats of different ships and shell types in future? So with HEAP, some Battleships might citadel cruisers like Edinburgh, etc. with HE right?
A 1: Hopefully it will be added to port information! As for now, HE peneatration is 1/6 of caliber, with the only exception is KM BB main caliber – there, it is 1/4. So HEAP is going to make sense for Akizuki (+penetrating DD plating), 127-130 mm guns (+penetrating mid tier BB plating and high tier Cruiser plating) and 150-180 mm guns (+penetrating high tier BB plating). It is almost useless on BBs (I would try it on KM BB for aux gun penetration, but this sacrifice of fire chance..I don’t know, really).
Q 2: Are you planning to bring an alternative line to IJN Torpedo boats? There are plenty ships with gunpower at DD class atm, i think what makes DDs interesting is torpeedos.
A 2: There will be other torpedo-capable DDs in the game, but currently, we consider both USN and KM DDs to be quite torpedo-capable, too. The most powerful torpedoes are likely to stay for IJN.
Q: Overall, are you guys happy with the current meta at all tiers, or would you like to push it in a specific direction or another?
A: We would like to limit or reduce the population of BBs on some regions/tiers. We also would like to fix CVs overall (sealclubbing on low tiers, very hard and challenging on high tiers). These are global challenges. Other than that, it is the matter of fine-tuning specific ships.
Q: Question regarding the state of stealth torpedo boats.
A: As for torpedo boats, we don’t consider them to be in a very weak state, as you said. The problem is that their state changed. Over months, stealth torpedo gameplay was transformed. Some players used to launch powerful and fast torpedoes over large ranges, easily, being undetected. With several balance changes we motivated them to be in closer contact and to endanger themselves, especially with radars and HAS around (or remain torp spammers, but with inefficient long torpedoes). IJN DD line split also brought more gun gameplay, so these ships are not 100% pure stealthy torpedoboats they used to be. Thus, such playstyle became more challenging. This is harsh for players, as they have to adapt and play differently. But now, we feel stealth torpedo gameplay is more balanced.
Q: What was the rationale behind giving (effectively all T5+ fighters) +50% ammo with AGM2? Poor performance of AS players? I am very concerned as this encourages clicking.
Also, this will make strike Ranger and Lex extremely hard to play (judging from ASIA server’s fighter control preference).
A: Buffing USN CVs, mostly. Especially the less skillful part of player base.
I am fully aware of general attitude of many skilled CV players towards AS gameplay, though. I hope the situation will get better for everyone after general CV improvements.
