Ship upgrades

Hi folks!

Today, we'll take a look at the ship upgrade system in World of Warships Blitz. There are two types, called "upgrades" and "equipment".

Equipment

Every ship has three slots for equipment that can be used to improve the ship's stats:
Equipment costs silver, and the price increases alongside the ship's purchase price - a single piece of equipment easily costs more than an entire ship on a lower tier.

There are several kinds of equipment - reducing gun reload times, improving turn time, turret rotation, reducing damage from torpedoes, increasing range and so on. New modifications unlock as you get to higher tiers.

So what should you choose? There are two main playstyles that largely affect that decision: aggressive manoeuvre play, and defensive tank play. I'd recommend using any new ship for a battle or two to get a feel for its strengths and weaknesses before deciding on which equipment to invest in.

Aggressive

The aggressive playstyle focuses on speed, quick turns and stealth, over damage resistance and defence. You'll be closing in on enemy ships quickly, dealing quick-firing main gun and deadly torpedo salvos. You'll expect to have to dodge enemy torpedoes, and your ship doesn't have much health or armour, so you need to be mobile and use cover. This playstyle is most suitable for destroyers and cruisers.

Depending on your initial ship stats, you want to invest in:

• turn time (as you can see in the screenshot above, I've decided to put two slots into that, boosting turn time by 25% in total)  
• acceleration and speed
• weapons reload time

Defensive

Your ship has very long range, strong armour, but isn't the fastest or most mobile. You'll expect to have to take hits rather than dodging them. This playstyle is most suitable for battleships (and, to some degree, carriers).

You might want to invest in:

• damage control, to reduce torpedo damage and keep fires and leaks down
• turret turn speed, since your ship is rather sluggish
• weapons reload times and carrier-specific plane improvements

Choose wisely, since you'll lose half the cost on equipment when you sell it again, and in higher tiers, that's substantial.

Upgrades

The second main area of ship improvements is "upgrades", for which you need an increasing amount of "blueprints", which you get as a result of battles or from crates (there is a silver cost as well, but it's negligible). Depending on your ship class, you can upgrade hulls, primary guns, secondary guns or torpedoes, dive bombers, torpedo bombers, fire control and AAA.

Gun upgrades increase damage, hull upgrades increase health etc. - you get the picture. Once you've got full upgrades, you can choose an "elite bonus" for your ship, further improving its stats.

As you can see from the stat bars on the right, upgrades make a considerable difference - the game even states that a fully upgraded ship is stronger than its tier.

So what's there to watch out for in upgrades? Blueprints are somewhat rare, and you're going to need a lot of them in higher tiers. There are five classes of blueprints in the game, one for each two tiers.

So one-star (gray) blueprints for tiers one and two, two-star (green) for tiers three and four, and so on. If you've got multiple ships in the same tier group, and upgrade them all at the same time, you'll be at it for a while till you get them to elite.

For example, let's say you've got a tier five destroyer, a tier five battleship, and a tier six carrier - they all compete for the same type of blueprint. There are some ways you can optimise this.

For once, consider skipping a tier. Especially in the lower ones, that's relatively cheap in terms of free XP, so it might be reasonable to go from tier four directly to tier six, thus preserving the blueprints for that tier group. Of course, the higher you get, the more expensive this becomes - skipping tier seven is a major undertaking.

Prioritise your upgrades - which is your favourite ship, that you're playing most? Do you have a carrier for some occasional tactical fun, but are mostly playing battleship? Maybe leave the hull and AAA upgrades out from the carrier, and focus on your battleship first.

In the end, it's about having fun, and so far you can't buy upgrades with gold, which is a blessing - even the best players have to compete for them, so it's still "play to win" instead of "pay to win".

How to deal with destroyers

Hi folks!

Today, I'll talk a bit about how to deal with destroyers, given how popular (and deadly) they are with many experienced players.

Most players will experience this scenario: Your battleship has all its main guns pointed at the target, you've got them clear in your sights. Suddenly, the lookout cries "torpedoes!", and before you can do anything, a full broadside of torpedoes crashes into you, sinking you to the bottom of the sea. What happened - you didn't even see him coming! Welcome to fighting against destroyers.

Destroyers already have low observability to start with, and it can be reinforced with visibility-reducing equipment (from tier 6 on) and camouflage. You can't shoot at ships you don't see. Even without these measures, they can hide behind islands, dash out and launch, just to disappear again.

Or how about this one. You're chasing a destroyer, they went behind an island, but they'll come right out again, so you've got your guns ready - just to have them peek out, launch their torpedoes at you, and move back again. Got to close? You're dead.

So what do you do about these pesky fellows?

Enemy fleet composition

Before you even start the battle, take a look at the enemy fleet composition on the loading screen. How many destroyers do they have? Are they commanded by computer players, or real ones? Computer players are hugely less dangerous. They play destroyers like light cruisers - they'll go mostly on straight course, using their main guns a fair bit, and only fire torpedoes if they've got a sure shot. Human players on the other hand often have some more elaborate tricks up their sleeves.

Scout

At the opening of the battle, be aware that destroyers are going to be the first enemy ships you'll encounter, on account of their speed, so be ready. The key is to spot them before they get into kill range. There are several good ways of doing this:

• let your fleet's destroyers do it - they will be the first one to spot them
• if you have a carrier in your fleet, it can scout ahead with planes (computer players are bad at this, they wait until targets are spotted before launching)
• if the battle you're playing includes areas of control, watch for enemy units taking neutral maps - these are usually destroyers (again, due to being fastest). Given the importance of control areas, human players will most likely go for them
• Some higher-level German cruisers have a "sonar" special ability, which can be used early on to extend their detection range

Destroyer vs destroyer

Once you've scouted the enemy destroyers, the next steps depend quite a bit on what class of ship you're running. If you've got a destroyer yourself, you can tangle with the enemy, which can be great fun and exciting, but it's also dangerous and often time-consuming. You'll need to get a close-range shot off without being hit yourself - close range, because destroyers are very mobile, and without being hit, because torpedoes can easily one-shot you. 

A lot comes down to island / cover play and prediction. If you can successfully predict your enemy's next move, you've got a good chance to win. Are they sailing parallel and suddenly turning? They most likely just launched their torpedoes. Go into full reverse immediately, don't wait until you can spot them. Expect turns, so don't shoot at where the guidance system points you at - they most likely won't stay on course. Shoot at where they will be after the turn - but again, torpedoes move slow, so you've got to shoot close-range. Also keep in mind reload times, they take quite a while, and whoever misses their shot first is going to be rather defenceless for a bit. Fan your torpedo shots, don't send them all down the same lane. This makes them much harder to dodge, and you don't need many hits to take out a destroyer.

Lastly, use your guns, with AP shells - destroyers have thin armour, and you can do some decent damage while torpedoes are reloading. Keep dodging.

Cruiser vs destroyer

You're your fleet's designated destroyer hunter. You're fast, your guns have great range and fire quickly. You've got enough health and armour to take some glancing torpedo salvos. It's your job to take out enemy destroyers before they can wreak havoc on your heavies. Especially light cruisers are well-suited for this job.

The most important part to remember is to keep your distance. You don't want to get closer than 5km to the enemy destroyers, or you'll find yourself dodging torpedoes. Often, it's a good idea to run ahead with your own vanguard, and then go into reverse once destroyers are spotted, keeping them at a good firing range. Definitely use your AP ammo, since your guns can tear through their weak armour quickly. For example, a tier 6 German "Nürnberg" class light cruiser can sink most destroyers of same or even slightly higher tier with three good salvos from her main guns.

They will try to dodge once they've been shelled, so be prepared to do some predicting - at longer range, your shells take a bit of time to get there. If they manage to slip away, you can give chase (beware of ambushes), or switch to a more promising target if there are others around.

If your cruiser has torpedoes, save them for close-range encounters. I've sunk many destroyers who thought they could ambush me behind an island, only to find me in full reverse and six torps coming their way on the other side.

Battleship vs destroyer

I'd treat them as target of opportunity. Your main guns will obviously do severe damage to them, but they take a long time to reload, and the last thing you want is a close-range encounter with destroyers. Trying to hit destroyers at long range is usually not a great use of your limited shots.

Carrier vs destroyer

With your low health and high score value for sinking, you're a primary target for enemy destroyers. Get your planes to scout them, and make sure to check those "back channels" - on some maps, the islands are positioned such that destroyers can sneak by on the side of the map and do a "carrier run", taking you out. Fighters can be used to keep an eye on these corners, if you suspect that someone may come a-sneakin'.

Dive bombers are quite good against destroyers, but they're small targets, so there's a chance all your bomb drops are going to miss. Hitting destroyers with torpedo bombers is quite difficult - they're turning quickly, so get your launches in as close as possible. Often it's better to use torpedoes against other targets and hit destroyers with bombers instead.

Keep an eye for enemy ships trying to break through your lines. If they're making a run for you, hit reverse gear to increase the distance. Don't underestimate the flexibility of light carriers - if destroyers get close, you can turn and make a run for it, while getting the bombers out frequently. Also, use your main guns (with AP ammo), destroyers often forget about those. 

Still, your best defence against a destroyer is not to be near one.

Battle tactics

Hi folks!

After some live-battle last time, today, I'll elaborate more on some common and effective tactics for World of Warships Blitz.

It's a good idea to understand the style you like to play, practice it, and outfit your ships accordingly. Equipment and modifications can make a huge difference in supporting the way you battle.

Distance

Consider the range of your weapons. A destroyer will have some mid-range main guns, but its primary, devastating weapon is the torpedo. Those aren't really effective at long range, even though Japanese torpedoes run for about 8km - hitting anything at that range requires the enemy to either stand still or strictly stay on course, which, inconveniently, they usually do not do.

So torpedo attacks happen at much closer ranges. This means for the destroyer captain that they need to get into a favourable position to launch, especially that it takes about 30s to reload, so once you've launched, you better not stay right next to a cruiser or battleship. While destroyers have the natural advantages of low observability and high speeds, they require a playstyle matching these strengths to be effective.

On the other side of the spectrum, we've got cruisers, battleships and especially carriers who usually have very little desire to be anywhere near their targets. Their main guns usually have a range of 10km and more, and for carriers, their planes can really go anywhere on the battlefield. Cruisers, being the jack-of-all-trades, are often more in the thick of it (especially if they carry torpedoes).

Cover

All maps have islands on them, which act as natural cover. They shield you from view, as well as enemy shells, making them the obvious ally of destroyers and light cruisers. Ambush torpedo attacks are deadly, as you can get close without being spotted (and subsequently shot at), giving you the element of surprise, and the enemy very little time to react. Imagine 9 torpedoes crashing into your side, doing 3000 damage each.

Now, you're not playing destroyer, so why should you care? You've got to be prepared for those kind of attacks, and avoid them. Keep track of enemy destroyers. The game tells you how many there are, so make sure you have an idea where they are. And generally try to stay clear of cover, since you want to spot destroyers while they're still too far to hit you.

Don't sail in a straight line

This is one of the most common mistakes. You've got an enemy ship in your sights, you're zoomed in with your binoculars, just waiting for the guns to reload for that next, devastating broadside - and boom, you're getting hit by a battleship, and off you go to Davy Jones' Locker.

How did that happen? You've stayed in a straight line, sailing forward at full speed, giving that enemy battleship a clear and stable target.

Consider the time it takes for shells to fly some kilometres. True, much less than it takes torpedoes to swim that far, but your ship still moves a considerable amount between shot fired and shells landing. So if you're looking at long-range, indirect artillery, you've got to range and lead your shot - you've got to aim at the point the enemy target will be by the time the shells land, not where it is right now. The further you shoot, the further the target can sail.

Now if the target sails in a straight line, that's fairly easy - you'll get a feel for how much you have to lead your shots pretty quickly. But if they sail unpredictably - varying their speed, turning here and there, they easily dodge most or all of your shells.

So if you're being shot at, don't sail in a straight line. If you're the one doing the shooting, try to predict your target's movement. The closer you get, the easier it is to hit - but don't forget about the torpedoes.

That's it for today, more coming up next time.

Let's battle

Hi folks,

today, let's go through a battle, and I'll explain a bit about my playstyle.

Ship

I'm going to use the German navy tier 6 light cruiser "Nürnberg". This is currently my favourite ship, for a variety of reasons. It's fast, very agile, and carries a massive punch for its size. Let's look at some stats:

We've got a max speed above 30 knots, so she can almost keep up with fast destroyers. The turn time is ridiculous at just above 5s. 

She carries three turrets with 150mm calibre triple-guns. Usually, they'd be on the weak side for this tier, but you can see they're doing 600+ damage with AP shells, so unlike e.g. the Soviet Budyonny-class, you can actually use them against battleships of similar tier and still get some decent damage in.

They reload extremely quickly in under 8s, and three good salvos will take out any destroyer. Combined with the range of over 10km and the special abilities of sonar (extended target discovery) and precise aiming (concentrates fire), she can usually shred enemy destroyers without ever coming into torpedo range.

While the AP shells do have a tendency to bounce off battleships' heavy armour, the secondary torpedoes can do massive amounts of damage against them quickly. The range is decent with over 5km, and she's got six tubes on each side. You'll see them in action later.

Equipment

The "Nürnberg" is classified as a light cruiser, and she's definitely not a "ship of the line" - with 20000 HP, she's slightly sturdier than a destroyer, but still very vulnerable against heavy guns. Battleships cause massive damage, and even heavy cruisers can't be engaged in broadsides. She really plays more like a gunned-up destroyer.

So when it comes to equipment, there are two choices.
Either try to compensate for her weaknesses, or play to her strengths. I'm usually going with the latter. Yes, we could go for faster turret traverse, improved damage control against fire, flooding and torpedoes, but we can't sail in a straight line anyway, and large calibre guns do enough damage that fire or flooding really aren't our main concern.

So she carries my typical destroyer package, geared towards maximum manoeuvrability and fire rate.

Opening of the battle

So we're off to battle, and the first decision is based on information we're getting from the loading screen. Who are our enemies? What ships make up the other fleet? Our own fleet setup doesn't really matter that much - we're a hunter, tank or protective duties aren't suitable anyway.

The enemy fleet has a good mix: One carrier, one battleship, two cruisers and three destroyers. Take a close look at the names: The ones beginning with colons are computer players, who are generally not as strong as human players. We've got humans on the battleship, one of the cruisers and one of the destroyers. The carrier is computer-controlled, so much less dangerous, since they can't aim their torpedoes if their life depends on it (which it usually does).

This means we can mostly ignore dodging airplanes. We're likely to see the destroyers first, since they're fastest, so the human destroyer captain should be our first target. We can use AP against all targets (I'd only consider using high-ex rounds if we'd be mostly up against battleships).

First moves

My initial moves are:

• set engines to full ahead
• greet my fleet
• switch guns to AP
• plot course I'm planning to take

Take a look at the battle map in the top left corner. We've got three areas to control, and a fair amount of small islands, a.k.a. cover, scattered all around. Since we're starting on the left flank, we'll take area C. 

This means we'll mostly get enemies on our right side, so first thing I do is align the gun turrets to that side. Starting around tier five, most ships don't have broadside-style single gun emplacements, but rotating turrets. This has the advantage that all guns can be brought to bear in a volley, but the downside that it takes a while to rotate them from one side to the other. To compensate, I usually make up my mind at the start, and stick with it as long as possible.

Depending on the opposition we're going to encounter, I can then do a turn towards the centre area, or keep heading straight for the carrier.

Ready to engage

About 30s into the battle, I've got my bearings: heading straight for the area of control, guns aligned to the right.

If we're facing destroyers, which is likely, they should be close to the other side of the area of control, so this is a good time to fire up the sonar and extend our detection range. I can easily turn left to get a full salvo in, while maintaining my distance - you don't want to get into close-range fights against a destroyer.

Unless, of course, you're steering one yourself. Given that destroyers can mostly outmanoeuvre my ship by a slight margin, and I've got a massive range advantage, it's all about finding them and killing them from a distance.

We've got a big one

In this battle, I did in fact dispatch of the enemy destroyer vanguard pretty quickly. It was a computer player, and they're very poor with torpedoes, so you can take a slightly more risky course and give them a good broadside. Don't try this with even a half-decent human player.

Then things get more interesting - the battleship is heading straight for us, and it's a human player. We're not alone, though, together with our battleship right on the heels, we have superior firepower, so he can't go for open battle.

Ambush

Using the island as cover, I'm getting a good torpedo shot at close range off. He's seen me, and got some good hits in, too. I've come in at full health, so I can trade that for a torpedo hit, and he's less likely to dodge when he's got me in his sights. 

The other human player has shown up as well, engaging our battleship, so it's balanced out, and this will decide the outcome of the whole battle.

My cruiser has the somewhat unusual layout of having two aft turrets, so while I turn and "run", I can still get shots from most of my quick-firing guns in.

The battleship is heading past behind the island, while having most of my torpedoes hitting their mark. I suspect he thinks I'm out (as a destroyer would be), and tries to get into close range to finish me off. I can dodge most of his shots at ranges of 7km and above, while still laying fire on him with my rear turrets. But I still have the torpedo tubes on my other side loaded and ready.

Battle won

Our battleship has taken out the enemy cruiser, and I've completed the turn, getting the second torpedo salvo on target after ambushing him again behind the island. Those six hits finished him off, and I was still able to take out the carrier as well.

There are many different tactics and playstyles. To be successful, you've got to both find your own style, and work together with your fleet, concentrating your firepower. I'll be going through some of the things I use frequently and observe in other players in more detail in future posts.