[2022] 10/18/22 - New Player Captain’s Log: (Not So) King of the Skies

Greetings Captains,

Welcome to this week’s edition of the New Player Captain's Log! For those of you who aren't sure what this is or what it might do, feel free to check out the introductory post here.

With each topic I discuss, I also added a question at the end to see how y’all feel about things in comparison to how I feel. I just thought it would be an interesting way to get some discussion going!

Without further ado, let’s proceed with this week’s Log!

Accomplishments
Here’s a list of personal milestones that I hit during the week:

1. Progressed the US CV line to Tier VIII
Focus Points of the Week
Here’s a list of the focus points for this week:

1. Spend some time with/get better at CVs
2. Watch King of the Sea XIV to get a better idea of how competitive players succeed

US CVs
After paying close attention to Ahskance and Gaishu’s gameplay on the Community Stream this past Wednesday (as well as recently spending some IRL time on two different carriers), I was inspired to pick up CVs again and do a little line grinding this week. The only CV line I had begun was the US CVs, so that’s where I returned! A vast majority of my play was done in the Ranger, and I found her to be an interesting albeit somewhat frustrating ship to play. The thing that always catches my attention with her is that she does not drop a lot of ammo; she only drops 2 torpedos and 3 HE bombs per drop. She’s also pretty slow with high detectability and non-remarkable armor. That being said, I had quite a few moments of success with her, including my all-time best match in a Tier VI CV (80k-ish damage, 4 kills). I think the thing that I latched onto during this grind was when to use which kind of squadron. Since the three squads all drop ammo of various speeds, I tended to break it up into easy-to remember categories. The torpedoes are slowest, so I used them on BBs primarily while sprinkling in some Cruiser targets. Rockets move a bit faster, so I tried to save those for Cruisers with some BBs and DDs mixed in. Finally, the bombs drop fastest, so I would use those on enemy DDs primarily. I’m not sure if this is how they should be used normally, but it seemed to work for me! I was able to finally unlock the Lexington and while I didn’t get any matches in with her yet, I am excited to see what improvements she has over the Ranger.

Question: Which Tier VI tech tree CV do you find the most success with?

King of the Sea
This is a little bit of a different entry for the Captain’s Log. As opposed to talking about my actual play experience, I want to talk a little bit about my experience watching King of the Sea XIV this past weekend. After spending some time watching the Warships Masters Invitational this past summer, I realized that there is a lot to learn by watching competitive teams play each other. Thus far, KotS doesn’t seem to be any different! My main takeaway so far has been in the ships/matchups. I found myself asking questions about why I was seeing the ships I was seeing as well as the role they play in directly countering other popular choices. I often feel intimidated when playing WoWs because there are so many ships and thus so many different armor schemes, gun calibers, and so on. Seeing some competitive play surprisingly allowed me to simplify this in my head. Instead of trying to burden myself with memorizing numbers, I find it much easier to just learn matchups. “This ship over-matches this ship” or “This ship can’t match up to this ship” makes it a binary “yes or no” decision, and that takes some of the pressure off. I also tried to take notes on how players position themselves on the playing field, so I can better utilize my own position/consumables when playing my own matches. We’ll see if I make any noticeable improvements with this knowledge in hand!

Question: Do you enjoy watching competitive play in WoWs? If so, do you find that you learn anything from it?

I think that about covers it this week! I want to remind everyone that the New Player Captain’s Log is also designed to be a place for new players to reply with their experiences or seek advice as well, so feel free to join in on the conversation below!

See you next week for some more New Player musings. Fair winds and following seas!

Lol would love to see Ocean Map in the rotation.
But while there is some degree of "hurry up and wait," I found that the moment positions broke and calamity ensured to be a very informative experience.

With a few rare exceptions when I need to try something for work-related reasons, I tend to stick to this advice. Tech tree ships allow me to learn at my own pace and adjust. I feel like if I use a premium, I am expected to know how it works and perform adequately.

Yup, when a new ship is released, I always try to play at least a few matches (either in live or PTS) so I have at least a base understanding of what the ship offers to perform my job adequately. But in terms of my own personal growth in the game, I prefer to stick to tech tree so I feel a little more comfortable having growing pains.

Do either of you feel that if there were more analytical breakdowns of KotS matches after the fact (like a replay show or a "Sportscenter" type show but for competitive play), this would accomplish the same effect?

He can, yes, but he only plays on his personal account!

Yeah so it's actually kind of a mix of the two. When it comes to my personal growth in the game, I want to be able to play ship lines and things as any normal player would (I find some personal value in having this perspective, in comparison to @Boggzy, @Ahskance and @Gaishu_Isshoku who were all pros before joining WG), but I also get regular access to all new content through the methods described above. It's very, very important to me to have first-hand experience with new content (again, so I see and use this content as any player would).