World of Warships

Anyone else in the closed beta for WoW? I just won a key in a twitch stream and I got all of spring break to play it. Only played 3 matches so far, but it seems better than WoT, and infinitely better than that warplanes garbage.

EDIT: Since it seems like no one else is in, I'll post my opinion on it when I've gotten more time with it, and maybe some gameplay since the NDA is lifted and I have been meaning to mess with Shadowplay.

 

David/Axe/Myrsky are on the EU server. Don't know if any one got in on the NA yet.

 

Damn, seems everyone I know is on the EU server. How are you guys enjoying it? I played for a few hours last night. Trading fire with other ships is very satisfying! Pretty much any ship besides a relatively lower tier destroyer can take a ton of punishment. Unlike in WoT where pretty much any penetrating hit will do a good chunk of damage, even a pen in WoW can do almost nothing when hitting a non-vital section. On the other side, a well placed shot can very nearly 1-shot someone if it hits their magazine or penetrates their citadel, and torpedoes can do a boatload (hehe) of damage.

Less invisible tanks and artillery 1-shotting you. Many more big boomy cannons,AA, and secondary batteries exchanging salvo after salvo. I like so far.

 

Hows the aiming work? Do you actually have to aim the elevation or does the game help you?

 

You do have to aim, and calculating the ballistics is one of my favorite things about WoW. When you zoom in in WoW, you get a sort of "Crows nest" elevated view about 100 feet above your ship zoomed in, with a periscope type optic.Holding alt down will tell you the distance your periscope is zeroed to and the time it will take your shots to land at the zeroed distance, and you need to calculate everything else yourself. Ballistics can be really tricky in a battleship from 20km out, when shots take 20+ seconds to reach the target.

 

Just applied for beta. Im guessing its 2 days at least to get an answer?

 

I somehow won a key in a twitch stream, so I'm not sure Lardaltef. Hopefully y'all can get in soon, there is a news article on the CBT server that says they're ramping up invites from Apr. 1st.

 

So its a bit like Naval Action except longer ranges and it tells you the range... currently in Naval Action, which is 'age of sail' wooden cannonball ship combat, you basically guess your elevation, fire one cannon, see where it lands, if you're hitting your unleash your barrage, if not fire off another test shot.

 

I haven't played Naval Action, but I use a similar tactic to range people in WoW. When battleship cannons have a 30+ second reload time, letting loose the full broadside and watching everything miss, or deflect, sucks. Ripple fire is where its at, unless the target is about to move out of range or something!

 

Pre-ordering one of the premium ship packs now gets you instant CBT access, if anyone is really chomping at the bit to get into WoWS.

 

I'm really curious how the carriers will work. I find it funny fot the packages that the destroyers are tier 5 and 7 while the cruiser is tier 4. I'm guessing machineguns in the game will be AI controlled since their purpose was AA.

 

Secondary guns and AA is passive, and some ships have a special Flak cloud ability they can use on cooldown that not only increases the DPM of the AA guns, but it also forces any bombers in range to drop in a large radius rather than small radius, so you're much less likely to get hit by multiple torpeoes/bombs.

Carriers are fun, I have a Saipan Tier 5 carrier right now. From a carrier's perspective, the game plays like an RTS; you pretty much set your own carrier itself on a waypoint path, then focus on controlling your flight groups with general RTS controls; 1 selects your carrier, 2 3 4 5 6 your fighter/bomber/dive bomber groups, and you left-click them around the map. Flight groups have 6 planes in them, each plane has its own little health bar, and your carrier carries a few backup planes to replenish any planes that get shot down during the mission. Fighters have limited ammo, bombers can drop once and must return to the carrier to replenish their armament. Bombers can drop their bombs automatically, or from a manual attack path. Manual attack paths are tough because both types of bombers require an approach vector and time to approach the enemy before they fire, so the enemy ship has a short time to respond to your planes, all the while his AA will be unloading on your planes too.

The resulting metagame for a carrier pilot requires a ton of situational awareness and thinking ahead of the battle, especially when fighting another carrier driver, because carriers like to go after each other so they can stop the flow of fighter harassment, not to mention carriers are pretty much sitting ducks to a torpedo run unless the carrier driver sees the bombers coming early.

 

If you've ever played World in Conflict, playing a carrier reminds me a lot of controlling an air group in World in Conflict.

 

I got in the beta through the first Beta Weekend event a couple of weeks ago.

I don't play too often (not like I play much of anything often, these days...), but I'm certainly enjoying the experience!

 

Warships 3.1 out today.... IJN Carriers and American Battleships are out now!

On the flip side kitakami now has smoke, God help us all....

 

Torpedoes.

Torpedoes, everywhere.

 

Still closed beta right?

 

Correct.

 

<3 Warspite.