Greetings, faithful beta testers! We’ve got another update coming your way. Let’s dive straight into the update review presented by Danny Volkov, Development Director for World of Warships.

Server Stops: Thursday, June 18 at 04:00 PT (07:00 ET)
Server Starts: Thursday, June 18 at 05:30 PT (08:30 ET)

Update 0.3.1.5 Summary

Slim Client

This is for players that have a low internet speed. We’re offer a smaller sized game client that has only the ships and maps necessary for an early ships career. The initial download and installation of the game will be shorter now and the remaining download can be completed later.

Top Japanese Aircraft Carriers

After several weeks of testing, and the implementation of some balance fixes, we are ready to include the top aircraft carrier and make earnable by all players to gather additional statistics.

Air Squadron Changes

Everyone, by now, has probably experienced an aircraft carrier holding an enemy destroyer in visible sight for a really long time without fearing for its air groups. Similarly, battleships often become easy prey for aircraft carriers (especially at high tiers)since carriers can simply group their squadrons close to battleships with little fear losing planes, and wait for the right moment to land a crushing strike.

To level the playing field, we’ve made the following changes: the air defense effectiveness of 99mm caliber universal guns will increase by 50% on average.

This change will make the aircraft carriers’ lives a little harder, so they will need to play more carefully and to plan more thoughtfully due to the increased density of air defense.

Here’s a few sets of numbers that will hopefully illustrate the changes mentioned above:

Take Fletcher, which at the moment (0.3.1.4 version) needs around 140 seconds, on average, to shoot down one Lexington fighter with universal guns, or about 100 seconds if the squadron is set as a priority target. With the introduction of these changes, the Fletcher for the same Lexington fighter plane will need 100 seconds without the priority and 70 seconds with it. It won’t be able to immediately destroy the planes, but the aircraft carrier will need to be more careful.

In conjunction with the changes to the workings of the air defense above, the power of “Fire Support” gear will increase. This reinforces the move to protect against air attacks. Cruisers will become even more difficult targets for aircraft carriers.

This is not the only change to the air defense workings; not everything is a buff. The medium caliber air defense weapons (40mm) of the Iowa will be reduced, by up to 40% in some configurations. The battleship will still have the most powerful air defense at her tier, but will no longer punch down air groups like she used to. In some cases she was shooting down 80 enemy planes in one battle!

Cleveland will be having her medium caliber gun power reduced as well. However, her fire support ability will be extended from 20 seconds to 40 seconds to compensate.

We hope that the changes in air defenses will improve the surrounding aspects of gameplay, and, as usual, we are waiting for your feedback on this issue.

Pyromaniac Bug

As it turned out, over the past week (thanks to those who reported the issue), there was a problem with the game that dramatically increased the number of fires. If a commander had the ability “Pyromaniac” learned, and said commander was retrained to another ship, the pyromaniac ability instead of working with a 50% efficiency, worked with a 500% efficiency! This update will fix the error, and we will start to study the fire issue anew, simply because it had a negative impact on the general statistics.

Update 0.3.1.5 Notes

Tier IX and tier X (Taiho and Hakuryu) have been added to the Japanese aircraft carrier tree
Added Slim Client prototype for player testing
The Conquest game mode has been temporarily disabled while we enact some improvements
Increased the defensive power of AA guns over 99mm by 50%
Decreased the defensive power of AA guns at 40mm
- North Carolina decreased by 50% to 63% depending on configuration
- Iowa decreased by 50% depending on the configuration
- Montana decreased by 27.5% depending on configuration
- Cleveland decreased by 40%, but has its fire support ability is increased from 20 seconds to 40 seconds
Fixed a bug with the “Pyromaniac” Commander ability
Fixed a bug causing oddly shaped geometric artifacts to appear on ships
Increased the amount of time before the battle starts from 15 seconds to 30 seconds
Fixed the description of the Conquest game mode during the download screen
Network server settings have been updated, this should reduce lag issues
Fixed an issue causing a ship to be displayed as “In Battle” after the post battle survey
Fixed an issue preventing players from being able to press the Join the Battle from the squad screen