WoWS: Separating economic bonuses from visual customizations

Previously, we announced our plan to detach economic bonuses from visual customizations, as well as update the way economic bonuses are working. Now, we’re ready to share the details.

We realize that this is no small change and that you’ll likely have some questions, so we’ll be making another publication with answers soon after this one is published.

Almost 7 years have passed since the game’s release, and one of the most important components of World of Warships — the economy — has remained largely unchanged. Over time, we’ve drawn up a long list of things that could be improved or changed. When we started working on the popular idea of separating the economic bonuses from the visuals, we realized that this entailed many other changes.

We plan to release this update in late summer or early fall, but you can check out all the details now.

Below you will find:

  • The main goals of the update;
  • Key information;
  • Details of the change;
  • A conversion calculator to estimate how the transition will affect you;
  • Examples of the usage of bonuses and a battle rewards calculator to compare earnings before and after the change;
  • Conversion rules describing how the process works in detail;
  • Some explanations of other minor changes.

The main goals of the update

The basic principle is that, in total, your economic earnings will not be negatively affected — in some cases, you’ll even get more. The main goals of the update are the following:

  • Give the ability to select economic bonuses and camouflages independently of each other;
  • Simplify the management of economic bonuses;
  • Make the transition from the old system to the new one as comfortable as possible;
  • Keep the current state of the game’s economy with regard to costs and earnings.

Besides that, we’re improving the interface, bonus management, stock display, and more.

Key changes

This is a short list of key changes. If you’re interested in more details about these and others, you can find them in other sections below.

  • Economic bonuses from camouflages and signals become separate entities. Choosing a camouflage only affects visuals;
  • Bonus to XP does not affect Free XP and Commander XP. At the same time, however, all bonuses are increased accordingly;
  • Basic Free XP earnings are doubled;
  • Economic bonuses from permanent camouflages are purchased separately and are permanently active for a ship if present. Expendable bonuses can also now be added on top of permanent ones.
  • In order to simplify the system, only one economic bonus per resource (credits, Free XP, Commander XP, XP) can be used at a time (4 different bonuses in total). The values of the bonuses are designed in such a way that they can duplicate even the most profitable combinations from the current system;
  • Instead of lowering the service cost, permanent camouflages give a credit bonus that makes it so that the average income is either unchanged or increased;
  • The service cost for researchable Tier IX ships is reduced from 120,000 to 115,000 credits, for researchable Tier X ships — from 180,000 to 150,000 credits.
  • To account for the changes to bonuses that lower service cost, in Co-op battles, the current service cost will be additionally reduced by 6.7%, and credits earned increased by 12.5%;
  • All camouflages affect only a ship’s appearance;
  • In order to make camouflages an exclusively visual customization, their combat bonuses are also separated from them. The 3% detectability range by sea bonus previously present on all camouflages is now built into the default parameters of all ships. The 4% increase of dispersions of shells fired by enemies attacking your ship will be entirely removed;
  • Most of the expendable camouflages you have or will receive will also be purchasable for credits;
  • The number of expendable items in your inventory is displayed including those that are already mounted on ships.

Details of the change

Values of expendable bonuses

Depending on type, bonuses can have the following values:

Credits XP Commander XP Free XP
+20% +100% +100% +300%
+40% +200% +200% +600%
+160% +800% +800% +2400%
+320% +1600% +1600% +7200%

Bonuses from the last row will be especially rare. They can be compared to using all the available signals and best camouflages in the current system, and such bonuses to credits and XP were previously impossible and would be very rare to obtain.

Auto-resupply and auto-purchase

We separated these two concepts to make it more convenient to use large stocks of bonuses. Auto-resupply, i.e. the automatic assignment of the same bonus instead of the used one (if it is present), will always be enabled. Doubloons are not used in this case.

You can enable auto-replenishment at your will — the used bonuses of the first two values (e.g. +20% and +40% credits) and camouflages will be automatically purchased.

Economic bonuses

  • Economic bonuses from camouflages and signals become separate entities. Camouflages can be used separately from these bonuses;
  • Each bonus increases the income of only one resource (for example, only XP or only Commander XP);
  • Economic bonuses from permanent camouflages now work for a ship whenever you own it for that ship;
  • The permanent economic bonus is obtainable and works independently from the camouflage;
  • One expendable bonus of each type (credits, Free XP, Commander XP, XP) can be used at the same time as the permanent economic bonus;
  • The service cost reduction from expendable camouflages and signals was replaced by a temporary resource which is exchanged for other economic bonuses during several versions after the release of the change;
  • Service cost reduction from permanent camouflages is replaced with such a bonus to credits that the average income either won’t change or will become bigger.

XP

In the current system, the XP bonus increases the amount of both Free and Commander XP. This makes it difficult to calculate and decide which bonuses to use, so with the release of the change, the XP bonus will no longer have an effect on Free and Commander XP. To ensure that the maximum possible earnings of these resources are not changed, all economic bonuses in the new system are increased accordingly.

In addition, the base amount of Free XP gained is increased from 5% to 10%.

In the sections below you can see examples of how the profitability will change with the release of the change, and if you want, you can use the calculator to compare the current and new systems yourself.

Service cost reduction bonuses

The service cost reduction bonus is at its core a bonus to credits, but its value depends greatly on the Tier of the ship it is used on. For example, the India Bravo Terrathree signal reduces the service cost by 10% and can be sold in the Inventory for 3,000 credits. The service cost for ships of Tiers lower than VII is less than 30,000 credits (for example, 23,000 for Tier VI), so instead of using this signal on these ships, it is actually more profitable to sell it. The necessity to check whether an economic bonus is worth using on a ship is a noticeable inconvenience of the current service cost reduction bonus. To simplify the system and increase the benefits for players, we decided to remove or replace this bonus.

Service cost reduction bonuses on permanent camouflages will be replaced by an equivalent bonus to credit earnings, and at Tiers below IX, it will be noticeably more profitable. Also, the service cost of Tier IX and X researchable ships will be reduced, and the credit earnings in Co-op will be slightly increased.

On average, earnings with a permanent bonus on Tier IX – X ships won’t change, and on ships of lower Tiers they will increase. At the same time, they are even higher when playing well in battle. This makes the new system friendlier both for new players and for those who have been playing World of Warships for a long time.

Exchange of “big” bonuses into “small” ones

During the conversion process, we’re trying to give more big bonuses, even though it may reduce the total number of them on the account compared to the number of signals and camouflages. However, if you prefer to use smaller bonuses more often instead of big bonuses, you will be able to exchange big bonuses for smaller ones in the Inventory for some time after the change is released. The exchange is happening in such a way that you will keep the total bonus value. For example +7,200% to free XP can be split into 3 +2,400%, each of them splits into 4 +600% bonuses and lastly each of these – into 2 +300% bonuses. Bonuses can be exchanged only into the values existing in the new system, so for example, +100% to XP can’t be split into two +50%.

Permanent camouflages and bonuses

After the release of the change, permanent camouflages and permanent economic bonuses can be purchased separately. The economic bonus will cost slightly less than the cost of permanent camouflage now. At the same time:

  • The first permanent camouflage that you will buy for a researchable ship in the “Exteriors” tab in port will be discounted;
  • The total cost of the bonus and the first permanent camouflage will be equal to the current cost of the permanent camouflage;
  • All subsequent permanent camouflages for the same ship will cost the same as they do now.

For example, if you have Yamato without any permanent camouflages or economic bonuses:

  • A permanent economic bonus will cost 4,800 doubloons;
  • The first permanent camouflage that you purchase in the “Exteriors” tab would be discounted by 4,800 doubloons. For example, Scorpioid will cost 3,200 doubloons and Type 20 – 200 doubloons;
  • The second and all subsequent permanent camouflages will have the same cost as they do now: Scorpioid will cost 8,000 doubloons, Type 20 – 5,000 doubloons.

The change will retain the value of the permanent camouflages and economic bonuses that players already have, and allow them to get their first permanent camouflage noticeably cheaper.

Conversion calculator

To show how the conversion system would work for you personally, we have prepared a calculator that you can use now.

  • Copy the table to make your changes.
  • On the first page, in the column highlighted in orange, enter the number of signals of the specified type.
  • On the second page, enter the number of camouflages of the specified types that you have.
  • The results of the conversion are shown on the first page in the “Total” column.

Keep in mind that this conversion will give you slightly more bonuses, because the signals and camouflages mounted on the ships will also be taken into account. In addition, to accommodate for possible inconveniences of the transition to the new system, you will get one bonus of each type and value irrespective of your total amount of bonuses, for a total of 16 extra bonuses.

Later, in a second publication about this change, we plan to publish a portal version of the calculator which pulls the data about your belongings directly from your account.

Changes in rewards

This change and the addition of a new entity entails a change to all rewards in the game: in combat missions, campaigns, operations, and collections, economic and special signals are replaced by bonuses, and camouflages will be supplemented by boosters.

The contents of all containers that had signals or camouflages in them will also change.

Examples and rewards calculator

You can try out different combinations of economic bonuses yourself and compare the current and new system in the calculator.

  • Copy the table to make changes.
  • In the “Input” blocks, you can specify which bonuses you use.

All examples below, for simplicity, are calculated for a battle in which you get 100,000 credits and 1,000 base experience. Permanent bonuses and premium accounts are not considered.

No economic bonuses

Without using bonuses you will get twice as much free experience in the new system

XP Commander XP Free XP Credits
Current system 1 000 1 000 50 100 000
New system 1 000 1 000 100 100 000

Economic signals, simple camouflage

If you use Equal Speed Charlie London, Papa Papa, Zulu Hotel and Zulu signals, and Sci-Fi Space camouflage in the current system, they will be converted to the following bonuses:

  • XP: +200%;
  • Commander XP: +200%, +800%;
  • Free XP: +300%, +600%
  • Credits: +40%.

If you use the best of these bonuses, you will gain more credits and all types of experience in the new system. In addition, you will still have bonuses of +200% to commander XP and +300% to free XP to be used in another battle.

XP Commander XP Free XP Credits
Current system:

Equal Speed Charlie London, Papa Papa, Zulu Hotel and Zulu signals + Sci-Fi Space camouflage

2 500 4 000 500 120 000
New system:

+200% XP, +800% Commander XP, +600% Free XP, +40% credits

3 000 9 000 700 140 000

Full set of economic and special signals, simple camouflage

If you use all economical and special signals and Sci-Fi Space camouflage in the current system, they will be converted to the following bonuses:

  • XP: +200%, +800%;
  • Commander XP: +800%, +1600%;
  • Free XP: +300%, +7200%
  • Credits: +160%.

If you use the best of these bonuses, you will gain more credits and all types of experience in the new system. In addition, you will still have bonuses of +200% to XP, +300% to free XP and +800% to commander XP to be used in another battle.

XP Commander XP Free XP Credits
Current system:

All economic and special signals + Sci-Fi Space camouflage

5 750 15 580 4 678 245 000
New system:

+800% XP, +1600% Commander XP, +7200% Free XP, +160% credits

9 000 17 000 7 300 260 000

Full set of economic and special signals, Mosaic camouflage

If you use all economic and special signals and Mosaic camouflage in the current system, they will be converted to the following bonuses:

  • XP: two +800%;
  • Commander XP: +800%, +1600%;
  • Free XP: +2400%, +7200%
  • Credits: +160%.

If you use the best of these bonuses, you will gain more credits and all types of experience in the new system except Commander XP. However, you will still have bonuses of +800% to XP, +2400% to free XP and +800% to commander XP to be used in another battle.

XP Commander XP Free XP Credits
Current system:

All economic and special signals + Mosaic camouflage

8 750 17 580 7 118 245 000
New system:

+800% XP, +1600% Commander XP, +7200% Free XP, +160% credits

9 000 17 000 7 300 260 000

Detailed conversion rules

You can read more about how your items will be converted into new bonuses below.

Conversion rules

With the release of the change, economic bonuses from camouflages and signals become separate entities. The rules are slightly different for permanent camouflages, expendable camouflages, and signals.

Permanent Camouflages.

When the change comes out, you will get permanent bonuses with the best available values of your permanent camouflages for a particular ship.

  • Any bonuses worse than the standard ones for a Tier are upgraded to them.
  • Post-battle service cost reduction bonus is replaced with credits bonus: for each 2% of the service cost reduction you get +1% credits instead.
  • If a camouflage did not have a bonus to free XP, or commander XP, but had a bonus to XP, then you will receive not only a bonus to XP, but also bonuses to other types of XP. This is done for the reason that now bonuses to different XP types are not related to each other.
  • Permanent camouflage for superships is a special case: it will give +200% XP, +200% commander XP and +100% Free XP.

For example. if you have the Type 17 permanent camouflage (Post-Battle Service Cost -10%; XP per battle +50%; Free XP +50%) for Gadjah Mada, you will receive the following permanent bonus for the ship:

+5% credits;
+50% commander XP;
+50% XP;
+50% free XP

Expendable camouflages

Camouflages will remain on accounts and will influence only the visuals, and:

  • Combat bonuses will be removed;
  • Base detectability of all ships by sea will be reduced by 3%;
  • Bonus that increases enemy shells’ dispersion by 4% will be removed;
  • Economic bonuses will become separate entities.

What bonuses you get depends on the specific camouflage. That said, the general rules are as follows:

  • The XP per battle bonus is converted to either the same or the nearest larger one. For example, +100% will become a +100% bonus, and a +125% bonus will become +200%;
  • Final bonuses to Commander XP are calculated from the direct bonuses to that type of XP, as well as from standard XP bonuses. For example, if camouflage gives +50% XP per battle and +100% Commander XP, it gives +150% Commander XP in the current system. The closest bonus in the new system is +200% Commander XP, so that would be the bonus given.
  • The bonuses to free XP are also calculated from the direct bonuses to this type of XP and standard XP, taking into account the fact that basically free XP will be given twice as much.
  • If a camouflage did not have a bonus to free XP, or commander XP, but had a bonus to XP, then you will receive not only a bonus to XP, but also bonuses to other types of XP. This is done for the reason that now bonuses to different XP types are not related to each other.
  • The bonus to credits is converted to either the same or the nearest larger one. For example, +30% to credits will become a +40% bonus.

Signals

In the current system, you can use several expendable bonuses of the same type at the same time, and the new system allows you to use only one for simplicity’s sake. To retain the ability to reach high bonus values, the conversion will be done as follows:

1. First, the player’s account is checked for the maximum possible bonuses of a particular type. For example, a complete “set” of signals for credits are Scylla, Leviathan, Basilisk, Wyvern and Zulu.

Signals set Old bonuses New bonus
Free XP

Scylla, Leviathan, Red Dragon, Hydra, Basilisk, Equal Speed Charlie London, Papa Papa, Ouroboros

+375% XP, +1527% Free XP +7200% Free XP
Commander XP

Scylla, Leviathan, Red Dragon, Hydra, Basilisk, Equal Speed Charlie London, Zulu Hotel, Dragon

+375% XP, +883% Commander XP +1600% Commander XP
XP

Scylla, Leviathan, Red Dragon, Hydra, Basilisk, Equal Speed Charlie London

+375% XP +800% XP
Credits

Scylla, Leviathan, Basilisk, Wyvern, Zulu

+145% credits +160% credits

2. One signal can participate in several such sets. For example, Hydra gives a bonus to all types of experience. In this case, we count in what number of which sets the player’s signals participate in. The number of each type of received bonuses is equal to the minimum number of signals required for the bonus. For example, if you have 100 Scylla, Leviathan, Basilisk, and Wyvern each, but 80 Zulu, you will get 80 bonuses to credits.

3. The number of signals is reduced by only one value — by the smallest number of bonuses you receive that require signals of that type. For example, if you have to get 200 bonuses of each type except for credits and 100 bonuses to credits, the number of Scyllas will be reduced by 100.

4. After counting the number of bonuses for the signals sets, the remaining signals are converted into bonuses according to the following table

Signal Old bonuses XP Commander XP Free XP1 Credits
Zulu +20% credits +20%
Equal Speed Charlie London2 +50% XP +100%
Papa Papa +300% Free XP +200%
Zulu Hotel2 +50% commander XP +100%
Dragon +333% commander XP +400%
Wyvern +50% credits +50%
Red Dragon +100% XP, +100% commander XP +100% +200% +100%
Ouroboros +777% free XP +400%
Hydra +50% XP, +150% commander XP, +250% Free XP +100% +200% +200%
Basilisk +75% XP, +30% credits +100% +100% +40%
Scylla +50% XP, +150% commander XP, +25% credits +100% +200% +40%
Leviathan +50% XP, +100% commander XP, +200% Free XP, +20% credits +100% +200% +200% +20%

1 – The free XP bonus is given taking into account the XP bonus and the doubling in free XP earnings with the release of the changes.

2 – Since the new system will not have +50% bonuses to different experience types, Equal Speed Charlie London gives +100% bonus to experience, but no bonus to commander experience. The Zulu Hotel bonus is also doubled to account for Equal Speed Charlie London’s lack of a bonus to commander experience.

Merging bonuses

To take into account the combinations of several signals from the old system, unaccounted by the full sets, after conversion there is a merging of bonuses received at the last step on the following table. There is a rounding up: if there are not enough bonuses, for example, there are only 2 bonuses +200% to XP, 1 +800% bonus will be given.

Bonuses for sets are not combined.

Bonus type Before merging Amount before merging After merging (amount is 1 bonus)
XP +100% 2 +200%
+200% 4 +800%
+400% 2 +800%
Commander XP +100% 2 +200%
+200% 4 +800%
+250% 3 +800%
+400% 2 +800%
+800% 2 +1600%
Free XP +100% 3 +300%
+200% 3 +600%
+400% 6 +2400%
+800% 3 +2400%
+2400% 3 +7200%
Credits +20% 2 +40%
+40% 4 +160%
+50% 3 +160%

Besides that, you will also get one bonus of each type and value, 16 extra bonuses in total.

Service cost reduction

Expendable service cost reduction bonuses from signals or camouflages will be replaced by a temporary resource that can be exchanged at the Armory for various other bonuses. Bonuses from the first row (e.g. +20% credits) are planned to cost 3 tokens, second row – 6 tokens, third row – 24 tokens. After a couple of updates, these tokens will be automatically converted to credits.

Flags

A small number of flags, mainly for members of various volunteer programs and for winners of the King of the Sea tournament have economic bonuses. In the new system, these bonuses are not tied to the flags used and are always active if present on the account.

There are a total of three such “global” bonuses. The best bonus is always active.

Bonus level XP Commander XP Credits
1 +5% +10% +5%
2 +10% +20% +10%
3 +15% +50% +15%
  • King of the Sea winners will get a level 3 bonus;
  • Those who have just one flag with economic bonuses besides the KotS one, will get a level 1 bonus;
  • Those who have more than one flag with economic bonuses except the KotS one, will get a level 2 bonus.

Other

Clan Base Bonuses

Because of the “detachment” of bonuses to free XP and commander XP from XP, War college gives a bonus to XP only, so it is necessary to make changes to the structures of the Clan base:

  • Bonuses to the free experience of all levels of the Design Bureau is doubled. A completely built building will give +50% free experience for Tier I – X ships instead of +25%;
  • Bonus to commander XP for each level of the Academy increased by 1%. Fully constructed building will give +15% commander experience instead of +10%.

Premium account

Premium account will give a bonus to all experience types and credits in the same way as before the changes, with the exception that bonuses to overall experience do not affect free experience and commander experience.

As in the current system, the premium account increases the values of base experience and credits: all other values of economic bonuses are applied after the bonus from the premium account.

Premium account type Before the change After the change
Warships premium х1.65 XP
х1.5 credits
х1.65 XP
х1.65 free XP
х1.65 commander XP
х1.5 credits
Wargaming premium х1.5 XP
х1.5 credits
х1.5 XP
х1.5 free XP
х1.5 commander XP
х1.5 credits

First victory of the day

The bonus for the first victory of the day will give +50% XP, +50% free XP and +50% commander XP.

Combat signals

Combat signals will be controlled from the Equipment tab.

Missouri

For ease of tracking bonuses, all owners of a special Missouri combat mission will instead receive an improved permanent bonus for credits: instead of +10% to credits they will have +40%.

3 thoughts on “WoWS: Separating economic bonuses from visual customizations

  1. The current system has its flaws but the new one looks like it will introduce more problems than it solves. Removing combat bonuses from camo makes literally no sense, it completely defeats the entire real world and in-game purpose of having camo. I am also dubious about what this will do to permanent camo.

  2. 1) I have spent a FORTUNE on camos to get bonuses….WTF?!.

    2) Can someone who has a spare 7 hours, please read this and abridge it?.

    3) What will happen to super duper extra special credit bonus camos like Kobayashi?.

    4) I have been saving my signals up since closed alpha….what will happen to my THOUSANDS of signals I have stockpiled?!.

    5) WTF WG???.

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