Update 0.8.7
Developer Bulletin Developer Diaries News article.
Update 0.8.7 continues the cycle of updates focusing on French destroyers. Take part in the new Stage of the French event: research the French destroyer branch; gather the new collection; and obtain the new unique Commander, Philippe Auboyneau.
Aside from the new event Stage, we've prepared some significant changes to gameplay: a new progression system — the Research Bureau; an updated matchmaker; and improved mechanics for the priority AA sector.
Contents
French Destroyers Event: Part 2
Tier II–VIII French destroyers now become available for research in the Tech Tree. More details are available in a dedicated article.
Directives
Four Directives of 11 missions each are available to players. You can start progressing in the next Directive only after completing six missions from the previous one.
- Start: Thu. Aug. 22 4:00 AM PT
- End: Fri. Sep. 13 2:00 AM PT
Completing missions and Directives will bring you signals, expendable camouflage patterns, Legion of Honor containers, and a new temporary resource—French Tokens. Containers hold elements of the French collection and have a chance of dropping a combat mission for one of the following French ships: VI De Grasse, VI Aigle, VIII Gascogne, and VIII Le Terrible.
Directives are available for players with access to combat missions in their Service Record. Novice players will have to play 70 battles in any accessible battle type to unlock them.
French Tokens
A new section has been added to the Armory—"Legion of Honor"—together with a new temporary resource—French Tokens.
These Tokens can be exchanged in the Armory for the main reward of the event—the new unique Commander, Philippe Auboyneau.
French Tokens can be earned only in Update 0.8.7. With the release of Update 0.8.8, French Tokens will be available only in Legion of Honor Premium containers. With the release of Update 0.8.9, they will be converted into credits at a rate of 1 : 4,500.
Republic Tokens, the temporary resource of the first part of the French Destroyers event, can't be earned in Update 0.8.7, but you can exchange any remaining Tokens in the Armory. In Update 0.8.7, you can exchange them for credits, days of Warships Premium Account, and French Riviera camouflages. With the release of Update 0.8.8, Republic Tokens will be converted into credits at a rate of 1 : 12,000.
Research Bureau
Update 0.8.7 will introduce a new progression system—the Research Bureau. Its goal is to motivate players to spend more time in battle with their favorite ships across various tiers and earn unique rewards along the way.
Players will be able to earn a new resource—Research Points—and exchange them for valuable rewards. All that’s required is to reset researchable branches of ships and progress through them anew. Research Points can be exchanged for new ships, combat signals, and bundles containing Free XP under the Research Bureau tab in the Armory.
The new resource will occupy a place between the widely accessible Coal, and far more scarce Steel which is only available in competitive modes.
French cruiser X Colbert will be the first ship available in the Research Bureau.
X Colbert is a maneuverable light cruiser, armed with numerous rapid-firing main guns and powerful AA defenses.
Key features
- Sixteen 127 mm guns with a very high standard rate of fire. Their shell trajectory allows players to effectively use islands as cover while delivering fire.
- With the Engine Boost consumable activated and a Sierra Mike signal flag mounted, Colbert can reach speeds of up to 41.4 knots.
- The specific features of the Repair Party consumable will help the ship stay operational for longer. When the consumable is activated, it can restore up to 60% of casemate damage and up to 50% of any damage to the ship's citadel.
All ships available in the Research Bureau, if necessary, will be subject to individual balance changes, as applies to researchable ships in the Tech Tree.
Ranked Sprint
Prepare for a new season of Ranked Sprint! Join the fight on your Tier VI ships and win valuable prizes: credits, signals, and Coal.
Battles will be fought in a 7 vs. 7 format in Domination mode, with a limit of one aircraft carrier per team.
Just like in the previous seasons, there are 10 Ranks, but this time, they will all be united in a single league. Prepare your ships and fight alongside your friends in Divisions!
- Season starts: Thu. Sep. 05 9:00 AM PT
- Season ends: Sat. Sep. 14 3:00 AM PT
Game Mechanic Improvements
Matchmaker
We’re introducing strict limitations on the tiers of battles that you can be sent to. For each player, the matchmaker will take into account the number of battles they have played with ships of the same tier as theirs, as well as the number of ships one or two tiers higher.
After a short calibration period that will last up to 20 battles for each battle type and ship tier, the matchmaker will ensure that the percentage of battles with ships of the specified tier does not exceed the set limits. For example, for Tier VIII ships, the limits are expected to be 40% of battles with ships two tiers higher. This means that out of 20 battles you play with Tier VIII ships, a maximum of eight battles will include Tier X ships.
Another advantage of this change is that series of battles will be reliably interrupted, because the matchmaker will analyze the last 20 battles each time. This means that when calibration is done, long series of battles with ships of higher tiers will not occur when repeatedly using a single ship tier.
Autopilot
We’ve also enhanced the autopilot. Now, it will take into account the ship's speed, maneuverability, and dimensions while setting the route, as well as autonomously change the ship's speed. This enhancement reduces the risk of colliding with islands, but even in the case of such a collision, the updated autopilot will make the required maneuvers by itself and return the ship to its original course. The ship's movement trajectory is now displayed as a route line on the Tactical Map and the Minimap.
AA Defense Changes
Priority Sector
The mechanics and visualization of the priority AA sector system have been updated. The goal is to make the efficiency of a ship’s AA defenses depend mostly on the player's actions, and also make the mechanics easier, clearer, and more effective to use.
Some players used to select the priority AA sector at the start of the battle, and then switch it just a couple of times during battle. As a result, many players didn’t notice the priority AA sector's effect on the outcome of conflicts with enemy aviation. It was also necessary to open the special interface menu in order to activate this mode.
Now, the priority AA sector is easier to use and also more effective. It will also require more actions and activity on the player's part.
It’s now very simple to activate AA sector reinforcement: you only need to point the battle camera in the desired direction and press the ~ (tilde) or letter О key.
Reinforcing the priority AA sector occurs in four phases:
- Upon activating the priority AA sector, the AA defenses will cause instantaneous damage to enemy squadrons within the ship’s AA defenses action zone, expressed as a percentage of their current HP, and try to shoot down as many aircraft as possible.
- A phase in which the ship's continuous AA damage within the selected sector gradually increases, during which the efficiency of the opposite sector's AA fire reduces.
- Having reached maximum efficiency, the reinforced AA sector deals damage to its full extent for a limited period of time.
- AA sector reinforcement is deactivated. To use AA sector reinforcement once again, you have to wait until the end of the cooldown period, during which the efficiency of the ship’s AA defenses returns to standard values.
In Update 0.8.7 the sector reinforcement parameters and its duration and cooldown time will depend on the ship’s type. AA sector reinforcement affects only the continuous damage by AA defenses, and has no impact on the damage caused within AA explosions.
You can keep track of the priority sector’s operation or the remaining reload time with the help of the updated compass in the game interface. The visuals of the compass for carriers’ squadrons have also been updated.
'Massive AA Fire' skill
Together with the priority AA sector, we’ve also reworked the "Manual Fire Control for AA Armament" Commander skill, which has been renamed to "Massive AA Fire." Now, this skill will increase instantaneous damage while completely neutralizing both the adverse and positive effects of AA sector reinforcement on continuous damage. At the same time, the cooldown period before the next possible activation of the priority AA sector will become longer than for those without this skill. This change will allow ships with weak AA defenses to defend themselves against enemy aviation, and cause significant instantaneous damage when their Commanders have the "Massive AA Fire" skill researched.
In relation to the changes made to the priority sector mechanics and "Massive AA Fire" skill, all players will be able to reset their Commanders' skills for free during the week following the Update's release.
The discount can be obtained until August 29.
AA Action Zones (Auras)
We’ve also changed how AA action zones operate, and improved the balance between aircraft HP pools and the strength of AA defenses.
In Update 0.8.0, the AA defenses in the game were divided into three zones without overlap (short, medium, and long range), in order to emphasize the unique features of the AA defenses of each ship. However, this approach sometimes resulted in some illogical situations.
In Update 0.8.7 we’ve changed the AA defense zones in such a way that now they overlap and complement each other. The short-range AA zone now cannot be less than 1.5 km, and the borderlines of the medium- and long-range zones now stretch from a point 100 m from the ship outwards to the same boundary as before, but at the same time they cannot be less than 2.5 km and 4 km, respectively. This will fix all the drawbacks of the old mechanics. To compensate for the increased continuous damage resulting from the AA defense zones overlapping, the damage that each separate zone deals is being reduced.
Flak
In addition to changing the AA defense zones themselves, we’ve also changed the radius of the effective area in which AA explosions can appear. They will start appearing at the outer border of the long-range AA zone, and will cease at a distance of 3.5 km from the ship. This will allow carrier Commanders to first focus on dodging explosions during their approach to target, and then switch their focus to aiming and choosing the correct lead to ensure a successful attack after crossing the 3.5 km line.
Changes to carriers and aircraft
To compensate for the resulting loss of aircraft caused by all the AA defense improvements, we’ve lowered the safe altitude which aircraft need to climb to in order to avoid taking damage from enemy AA defenses after having performed an attack. Thus, the number of aircraft returning to the carrier should be greater. However, the altitude which planes must climb to before players can press the F key to send them back to the carrier remains unchanged. This will prevent players from exploiting these mechanics.
We’ve also changed the number of aircraft per squadron in some Tier IV–VIII aircraft carriers:
- British aircraft carrier IV Hermes:
- The number of bombers in a squadron has been increased from 3 to 4
- The number of torpedo bombers in a squadron has been increased from 3 to 4
- The number of torpedo bombers and bombers on the deck has been increased from 5 to 6
- British aircraft carrier VI Furious:
- The number of stock bombers in a squadron has been increased from 4 to 6
- The number of researchable bombers in a squadron has been increased from 4 to 6
- The total number of bombers on the deck has been increased from 6 to 9
- Japanese aircraft carrier IV Hōshō:
- The number of torpedo bombers in a squadron has been increased from 3 to 6
- The size of an attacking torpedo bomber flight has been increased from 1 to 2
- The number of torpedo bombers on the deck has been increased from 5 to 9
- Japanese aircraft carrier VI Ryūjō:
- The total number of torpedo bombers in a squadron has been increased from 6 to 8
- The total number of bombers in a squadron has been increased from 6 to 8
- The total number of torpedo bombers on the deck has been increased from 9 to 12
- The total number of bombers on the deck has been increased from 9 to 12
- Japanese aircraft carrier VIII Shōkaku:
- The number of stock torpedo bombers in a squadron has been increased from 6 to 8
- The number of researchable torpedo bombers in a squadron has been increased from 8 to 10
- The number of stock bombers in a squadron has been increased from 6 to 9
- The size of the attacking flight of stock bombers has been increased from 2 to 3
- The number of researchable torpedo bombers on the deck has been decreased from 16 to 15
- The number of stock bombers on the deck has been increased from 9 to 14
- US aircraft carrier IV Langley:
- The number of torpedo bombers in a squadron has been increased from 3 to 6
- The size of an attacking torpedo bomber flight has been increased from 1 to 2
- The number of torpedo bombers on the deck has been increased from 5 to 9
- US aircraft carrier VI Ranger:
- The number of researchable torpedo bomber in a squadron has been increased from 6 to 8
- The number of stock bombers in a squadron has been increased from 6 to 8
- The number of stock attack aircraft in a squadron has been increased from 6 to 8
- The number of researchable attack aircraft in a squadron has been increased from 6 to 8
- The size of an attacking flight of stock attack aircraft has been decreased from 3 to 2
- The number of researchable torpedo bombers on the deck has been increased from 9 to 12
- The number of stock bombers on the deck has been increased from 9 to 12
- The total number of attack aircraft on the deck has been increased from 9 to 12
Additionally, we’ve enhanced the Sight Stabilization skill:
- Aiming speed for attack aircraft and torpedo bombers: +7.5%
- Aiming speed for bombers: +15%
We’ve updated the progression of the characteristics of aviation and AA defenses as the ships’ tiers increase. Now, the HP pools of aircraft and damage dealt by the AA defenses of Tier IV–X ships will change from tier to tier in a more gradual manner. Thus, your game experience (whether you’re playing on carriers or countering enemy aviation attacks) won't depend so much on the difference in ship tiers. This change will also slightly reduce the gap between the efficiencies that ships with weak or powerful AA armament demonstrate.
Defensive AA Fire Consumable
Along with changing the progression of AA defenses and overlap of AA zones, we’ve also changed the parameters of the Defensive AA Fire consumable for all ship types. The continuous damage bonus is now the same—50% instead of 100% and 200%—but the damage caused within explosions has been increased from 100%–200% to 300%. For cruiser Stalingrad, the continuous damage bonus is now 25% because the consumable action time is 60 seconds, in contrast to the standard 40 seconds. The continuous damage bonus has been reduced due to the new mechanics of the AA defenses and the resulting summing up of all the damage dealt by the AA defenses of a single ship. If we had kept the old values, this increase would have been too effective and made it very unlikely that a squadron could reach their target or retreat to safety. The values for the consumable mounted on destroyers has been made equivalent to the values of other ship types. This is because after making the changes to progression, the AA defense characteristics of ships with weak AA configurations were strengthened, and the efficiency of destroyers with decent AA defenses and AA Defensive Fire activated exceeded that of even the AA defenses of cruisers and battleships in terms of firepower. To compensate for the reduction of the continuous damage bonus, we’ve increased the damage that explosions deal. Now, when an aircraft moves inside an AA explosion of a shell fired from a ship with the Defensive AA Fire consumable activated, the odds are high that such a plane will be destroyed.
Please note: AA explosions have a red glow when a ship has the Defensive AA Fire consumable activated.
These comprehensive changes are intended to improve the balance of AA defenses, taking all the revisions made in previous Updates into account; as well as to make it easier for ships with a tier difference of one or two tiers to counter each other, and easier in general for those players who enter battle with ships of lower tiers than other players (when playing either against or on aircraft carriers).
UI Improvements
Battle Chat
Players will be introduced to an updated battle chat system. The reworked system has simpler settings options and reduces the scope of undesirable information incoming from other players.
- We’ve improved the arrangement of the battle UI elements and added new functions.
- Players will be able to block tactical commands and text messages from specific players.
- Players will be able to enable or disable battle chat via the Game Settings menu.
Additionally, a system limiting the number of uses for the "Attention to Square" command within a short period of time will be added into the game.
Port Interface
We regularly add new ships and entire branches to the game. Because of that, the Tech Trees of some nations have perhaps become too extensive and many players have hundreds of ships in their Ports. That's why we decided to update the Tech Tree and the ship carousel in the Port. Now players will be able to find any desired ships more easily.
Tech Tree
- Updated the design and layout of interface elements.
- Added a background with the flag of the nation that you're currently viewing.
- Added the ability to scroll the Tech Tree both horizontally and vertically.
Carousel
Updated the design of ship cards in the Port. Improved the filter menu: a filter becomes inactive if there are no ships that fit its parameters.
Changed the display of victory bonuses on the ship cards in the Port. If a ship has several bonuses active, only one of them will be displayed.
Armory
New Ships
X Smolensk
Soviet cruiser X Smolensk is available for 244,000 Coal.
X Smolensk is a post-war project of a Soviet small light cruiser (MLK-16 × 130), its main feature being a very powerful main battery for a ship of her displacement, comprising 16 all-new 130 mm dual purpose guns.
Key features
- Sixteen main battery guns with comfortable ballistics and a good rate of fire, but a rather short standard range. At various combat distances, Smolensk can attack enemy ships with HE and AP shells alike, the latter being quite good for guns of her caliber.
- Torpedo armament that’s quite good for a Soviet cruiser: one quintuple-tube launcher on either side of the ship. Torpedo range—8 km.
- A good speed of 35 knots and nice handling make it possible to promptly respond to ever-changing combat situations.
- The Repair Party and Smoke Generator consumables on board, as well as concealment that’s quite good for a ship of her type and tier, compensate for the ship's poor armor protection and tiny pool of HP.
- The option to choose between the Defensive AA Fire and Hydroacoustic Search consumables to counter carriers or destroyers, respectively.
X Somers
U.S. destroyer X Somers can be exchanged for 25,000 Steel.
X Somers is an American Navy destroyer flotilla leader. She was the lead ship of the Somers-class of destroyer leaders, and was used to hunt down German transports. She took part in the escort of Atlantic convoys, and provided gun fire support for landings in the south of France. Her primary advantages come in the form of three quadruple-tube torpedo launchers, nice concealment and her reasonably good speed.
Key features
- As many as eight 127 mm main battery guns.
- Good torpedo armament: 12 torpedoes; range—16.5 km.
- Her decent top speed of 38.6 knots can be increased using the Engine Boost consumable.
- Good concealment for her tier: her detectability range by sea can be further reduced to 5.8 km. Apart from that, Somers is equipped with the trademark American Smoke Generator. It takes more than two minutes for her smoke screens to disperse.
Patches
The Armory has new patches available; previously they could only be obtained from daily containers. If you don't like to rely on blind luck, you can now simply purchase the patch you want.
Patches are available for Coal and doubloons.
Content Additions and Changes
Crawler Smoke Generator
The Smoke Generator consumable on VI Perth, VII Haida, and VI Huanghe has been renamed to “Crawler Smoke Generator.”
The new name reflects the distinctive features of this consumable: the long action time of the generator and quickly dissipating smoke. Screens like these are ideally suited to ships moving inside them at slow speeds.
European Nation
A new nation — Europe — has been introduced into the game. It consolidates a number of European countries that had just a few ships represented in our game.
Poland will become part of the new European nation, bringing its Tier VII destroyer, VII Błyskawica. Later, you can expect other ships to join.
European ships will have their national ensigns and voice-overs preserved, and their Commanders will retain their uniforms, names, and ranks.
The looks of the Commanders of the new nation will correspond to the specific ship they are recruited for, but still you will be able to re-assign Commanders at your own discretion to any other ships of the European nation.
Camouflage Patterns
The “Type 3 – Ranked” camouflage has been changed. It now includes the "+100% Commander XP" feature.
We've also added special permanent nation-styled camouflages for ships VI Admiral Graf Spee, VI Warspite, and VI Shinonome.
- −3% to the ship's detectability range by sea
- +4% to the dispersion of shells fired by the enemy at your ship
- −10% to the cost of the ship's post-battle service
- +100% XP per battle
- +35% credits per battle
We’ve added Dazzling permanent camouflages for ships VI Furious, VI La Galissonnière, VIII Le Terrible, and VI Fusō, which provide standard bonuses.
How you can obtain these camouflages will be announced later. Be sure to keep up to date with the news on our website.
ST Italian cruisers
The following ships have been added for testing by developers, supertesters, and community contributors: I Eritrea, II Nino Bixio , III Taranto, IV Alberto di Giussano, V Raimondo Montecuccoli, VI Trento, VII Zara, VIII Amalfi, IX Brindisi, X Venezia, V Genova, and X Paolo Emilio.
Other Changes and Improvements
- Increased the normalization from 8.5 to 10 degrees for AP shells of French destroyers armed with 139 mm main guns and French cruiser III Friant. This change will make the AP shell normalization consistent with the standard normalization for this caliber, and will slightly improve their armor-penetration capabilities.
- Updated the icons of shells, rockets, and bombs.
- Improved the performance of the in-game web browser through the use of hardware acceleration.
- Fixed the wrong caliber of Japanese cruiser X Yoshino's shells—it is now equal to 310 mm. This fix will result in a slight increase in the arming thickness and armor-penetrating capability of her AP shells.
- Fixed the visuals of VIII Z-23's armor for the "From the Bottom of the Ocean" camouflage.
- Small fixes to the geometry and textures for the following ships: IV Hermes, IV Imperator Nikolai I, X Yamato, VIII Alabama, VIII Alabama ST, VII Gneisenau, and VII Sinop.
- The Clan Base can now be viewed in full screen mode at resolutions higher than 2550x1440.
- Fixed an error which caused an incorrect shell trajectory when firing at close range.
- Fixed the appearance of camouflage on the main turrets of VI Fusō and X Großer Kurfürst.
- Fixed an error which caused the playing of sounds for the Q/E keys when you pressed the A/D keys while your ship was in an area of potential collision with terrain.
- Fixed an error which made the crate with Free XP visible through the model of some containers.
- Fixed an error which caused an incorrect message about the results of a Clan Battle to be sent to the Clan chat.
- Fixed an error which caused the scale showing the number of planes on an aircraft carrier’s deck to appear not as full while the deck was in fact full.
- Fixed an error of the collision prevention system which didn't allow players to set a straight course with Q and E keys.
- Fixed an error which caused the camera to move inside the ship when returning from the tactical map after a squadron was destroyed.
- Fixed the names of torpedo launcher modules on the following ships: V Kirov, IX Tashkent, and V Podvoisky
- Fixed an error which caused the camera to sometimes become unresponsive to mouse movements when playing on aircraft carriers.
- Fixed an error which caused the Commander tooltip to freeze when bringing up the context menu.
- Fixed an error which caused a large number of identical notifications about the selected prime time for Clan Battles.
- Fixed an error where a Clan that hadn’t constructed the first improvement for the Officers' Club could enter a Clan Battle with the Bravo rating.
- Fixed an error which caused the reticule of torpedo bombers to be displayed on the water after switching off the interface display.
- Fixed an error which caused a neutral Key Area to be displayed on the Minimap as captured when in Spectator Mode.
- Fixed an error which caused the voice message "Fighter/spotting aircraft destroyed" to be played at the end of a battle if you had used a fighter/spotting aircraft in that battle.
- Fixed an error which caused bombs to sometimes fall outside of the reticle area.
- Fixed the torpedo tube aiming angles for destroyer VIII Le Terrible.
- Fixed an error which caused allied ship models to disappear.
- Fixed an error which caused the portrait of Commander Friedrich Bonte to change in the Armory after a player had bought this Commander.
- Сommander's Dismissal time increased from 5 to 60 minutes.
- Now Fighters perform rush to the main group of planes instead of the attacking one, when possible.