Revision as of 15:52, 15 April 2021

Developer Bulletin Public Test News article

Update 0.10.3 – German Destroyers: Part 1

04/14/2021

Italian Battleships ● Hamburg Dockyard: ZF-6 ● German Destroyers: Part 1 ● Daily Rewards ● Armory ● Visual Improvements ● Commander Skills Window Interface ● Naval Battle ● Content Additions and Changes ● Game Balance Changes ● Changes to modules ● Other changes and improvements

Italian Battleships

When Update 0.10.3 goes live, Italian battleships IV Dante Alighieri, V Conte di Cavour, VI Andrea Doria, VII Francesco Caracciolo, VIII Vittorio Veneto, IX Lepanto, and X Cristoforo Colombo will become available for all players to research.

Features of the Ship Branch

• Semi-armor-piercing shells instead of HE shells. These shells deal significant damage to weakly and moderately protected targets and vulnerable ship parts, but they do not cause fires.
• A large number of guns with relatively short firing ranges and not the greatest accuracy.
• Decent maneuverability and armor protection.
• Tier VIII–X ships have the Exhaust Smoke Generator consumable, which allows them to hide from the enemy without having to reduce their speed. Shooting from within the smoke screen isn't recommended while retreating because battleships have high detectability when using their main battery guns while in smoke.

Hamburg Dockyard: ZF-6

Players will be able to return to the updated Hamburg Dockyard, where a new German destroyer, IX ZF-6, can be built. The ship has decent concealment; AP shells that can inflict significant damage and have enhanced ricochet angles; and the Engine Boost, Smoke Generator, and Defensive AA Fire consumables. When countering destroyers, the ship can take advantage of the Main Battery Reload Booster consumable. When it comes to heavily armored targets, her fast torpedoes that can inflict heavy damage and have a decent reload time, but also quite high detectability, may come in handy.

The rules of the event are similar to those of the previous Dockyards, but the number of shipbuilding phases and rewards are different.

• The construction process at the Dockyard comprises 22 phases.
• The shipbuilding phases can be completed by progressing through the Dockyard combat missions or by spending 2,200 to pass through each phase.
• If you want to complete shipbuilding phases at a discount, you can purchase Starter Packs: eight shipbuilding phases in exchange for 8,950 or three shipbuilding phases in exchange for 5,000.
• The combat missions of the Dockyard will span two updates — 0.10.3 and 0.10.4. Players will be able to complete shipbuilding phases in exchange for Doubloons until the end of Update 0.10.5.
• In total, you can pass through 19 out of 22 shipbuilding phases by progressing through Dockyard combat missions.
• For completing shipbuilding phases, you can earn Coal, Premium Account time, Elite Commander XP, and other rewards.
• Upon completing the 22nd shipbuilding phase, you'll receive IX ZF-6 in the War Paint camouflage, a Commander with 10 skill points, a Port slot, and a commemorative flag.

The first four shipbuilding phases involve the creation of IX ZF-6's design drawings. Then, the building of the ship begins.

If you complete the construction of IX ZF-6 by spending Doubloons, make sure to keep progressing through the Dockyard combat missions — completing each phase will bring you 3,000 Coal and 200 Steel.

German Destroyers: Part 1

Update 0.10.3 kicks off an event that places the new German Tier VII–IX destroyers right in the spotlight!

Features of the Ship Branch

• Accurate main battery guns with a large caliber for this ship type — 150 mm.
• Powerful AP shells with decent penetration, damage, and enhanced shell ricochet angles. They are capable of dealing significant damage to cruisers.
• Good armor for their type, which effectively protects against the HE shells of most destroyers (unless they have mastered the Inertia Fuse for HE Shells skill), and large HP pools. Combined with effective artillery, this results in special game play for the new German destroyers. They are essentially agile ships with powerful AP shells that primarily focus on lone targets — light cruisers particularly.
• The low damage per minute of their HE shells and their high detectability means that these new ships are quite ineffective when fighting for control of Key Areas.
• The Smoke Generator consumable improves the already good survivability of the new ships even further. Starting from Tier IX, German destroyers have the Defensive AA Fire consumable, which allows them to confront enemy squadrons with greater confidence.
• Their torpedoes deal heavy damage and have good range and a reload time that is quite standard for most destroyers, but they are rather slow.

Early Access

German Tokens are a new temporary resource. You can earn them by completing weekly chains of combat missions. They can also be obtained from random bundles available for Doubloons, free daily bundles, and bundles in exchange for Recruitment Points in the Armory.

Rewards for German Tokens: German destroyers VII Z-31 and VIII Gustav Julius Maerker; Iron Cross permanent camouflages for the new destroyers; and other rewards that can be found in sequentially available bundles.

Rewards from the random bundles available for Doubloons: IX Felix Schultz with a 10-skill-point Commander and Port slot, German Tokens, Hunter and "Black, White, Red" expendable camouflages, and special signals.

When Update 0.10.5 goes live, the new German destroyers will become available for all players to research.

The Port of Hamburg has been updated.

Daily Rewards

To allow more players to receive daily rewards, we've updated the Daily Shipments section.

• The section has been renamed "Daily Reward" and its interface has been updated.

• It's now available in the player menu in the Port from the first day of each month and offers 24 rewards. The section will become available on May 1.
• If a player has collected all 24 rewards and the month is not over yet, then, upon entering the game on each subsequent day until the end of the month, the player will receive an additional reward — 750 Free XP.

If the player hasn't clicked the Collect Reward button, then the reward is collected automatically at the start of a new 24-hour period, and the next reward will become available to obtain.

Armory

X Max Immelmann

With the release of the Update, German aircraft carrier X Max Immelmann will become available in the Armory. Max Immelmann is a heavy aircraft carrier project with good armor protection and a powerful secondary battery. She can deploy a new squadron type — skip bombers — that bounce their bombs off the water's surface. The ship has two types of aircraft—torpedo bombers and skip bombers. The HE bombs of the latter have high chances of causing fire and can inflict significant damage to ships they strike. Her squadrons are fast but have small HP pools. You can obtain the ship in exchange for 264,000 Coal.

X Vampire II

Commonwealth destroyer X Vampire II — the Daring-class destroyer — will become available in the Research Bureau from April 23. She is one of the largest and most powerful warships built in Australia. The ship is the most dangerous for the enemy in artillery duels thanks to her efficient main battery guns, as well as the Crawling Smoke Generator and Hydroacoustic Search consumables. The ship will be available in exchange for 55,000 Research Points.

Japanese Commanders

Two new Japanese Commanders Raizō Suzuki in exchange for 1,500 and Takeo Suzuki in exchange for 35,000 will become available from April 29. The Commanders have the following enhanced skills:

• for cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft carriers: Survivability Expert
• for battleships: Emergency Repair Specialist

etc.

We've added the Legion of Honor containers, which can be purchased for 1,000.

Visual Improvements

We continue to work on improving and optimizing the visual component. In this Update, we've made the following improvements to make the game more enjoyable:

• Fixed torpedo trail: it's now larger, brighter, and longer.

• Improved brightness of tracers and corrected map parameters for their display.

• Sizes of shells have been changed: the visual differences between flying HE and AP shells are now more obvious.
• Improved the blizzard effect in local weather: it will be more comfortable to play during a blizzard.
• The shot rendering distance has been changed: now the smoke from a salvo will be visible from a greater distance.
• The frequency of the visual effect of the Hydroacoustic Search consumable has become less frequent: 36 seconds instead of 20 seconds. This will allow players to better focus on a battle.
• Fixed a bug that caused the shake effect to be missing when taking damage.
• We've reduced the speed of the flow of waves to reduce the discomfort for some players.
• The visibility of ships' torpedo aiming cones has been improved on the map Strait.
• The effects rendering system has been optimized to improve performance.
• Elements of the underwater world have been added for some maps.
• We've changed the lighting settings and reduced the smoke screen effect.

Commander Skills Window Interface

The Commander Skills window interface has been updated to improve navigation and make it more informative.

• The All Skills button has been replaced with the button next to the header of the skill table.
• The skills tooltips now have a block with the consumables the skill applies to.
• In tooltips for skills that have permanent and activated effects, an explanatory header has been added to the permanent one.
• The "You have redistributed the maximum number of skill points" line has been added instead of the counter of free skill points for fully trained Commanders.
• Tooltips for Commanders with talents and personalizations show talents and personalizations first, and then the skills below them.
• The skill point counter has been removed from Commander portraits in the Commander Skills window.
• The indicator of available Commander skill points has been moved below the Commander portrait.
• When recruiting, dismissing, or performing other actions with Commanders, the last selected variant is preserved.
• Tooltips for personalizations and talents have been unified with those for skills.
• Added missing sounds for Commander-related window operations.
• Fixed a bug that caused the ship carousel to not be displayed in the Commander Skills window.

The Skills in Detail window interface has also been updated.

• The ship type tabs in the Skills in Detail screen are now titled with text instead of ship icons.
• Added a hint about the need to assign a Commander to a ship of a certain type to master skills.
• Icons for skills that haven't been mastered are now significantly darker.
• Removed the indicators of the number of skills that have not been mastered.

Naval Battle

The following changes have been made to Naval Battle to diversify the gaming experience:

• Players now have the possibility to earn additional attempts in the "Naval Battle" competition, depending on their activity during the Preparation stage.
• Players now have the possibility to view the results of their opponents during the Engagement stage.

For the convenience of players, all time intervals in the calendar will be shown in local time. The start time of each round will be shifted by 20 minutes — the round now starts at 06:20 UTC.

The Naval Battle banner has been updated in the Port.

Content Addition and Changes

Godzirra v. Kong

As part of our cooperation with Legendary & Toho, new content has been added to the game:

• Heat Ray permanent camouflage for VIII Amagi and Primal permanent camouflage for VIII North Carolina
• Ultimate Guardian and Ultimate Titan expendable camouflages
• Commanders Godzilla and Kong with special voiceovers
• The "Two titans — One king" container
• Themed patches and flags

HSF

To mark a new stage of our cooperation with High School Fleet, the following items have been added to the game:

• Destroyer VIII HSF Harekaze II and battleship V HSF Hiei
• Permanent camouflages for X Yamato and IX Musashi

Leroy Jenkins

A new Commander, Leroy Jenkins, has been added to the game. You can obtain him by completing one of two chains of combat missions. The chains will be available on our website. Details will be announced later.

&c.

The General Quarters patch has been added to the game.

Details on how to get these new items will be announced later.

Kronstadt Port has been updated for the Victory Day.

New Year decorations have been removed in the Port of Kure.

The following ships have been added for testing by developers, supertesters, and community contributors: VIII Constellation, X Druid, X Napoli, and VII Yukon.

Game Balance Changes

In Update 0.10.3, we've made changes to the parameters of several ships based on our analysis of their combat efficiency and feedback from players. These changes were required in order to carefully adjust the balance of selected warships. Further changes may follow in future updates, should they be required.

British battleship Thunderer

Main battery firing range reduced from 24.3 to 23 km.

Soviet cruiser Stalingrad

The action time of the Surveillance Radar consumable reduced from 30 to 25 s.

Italian battleship Dante Alighieri

Sigma parameter reduced from 1.6 to 1.5.

Italian battleship Conte di Cavour

Main battery reload time reduced from 33 to 31.5 s.

Italian battleship Andrea Doria

Maximum SAP shell damage increased from 9,100 to 9,500.

Changes to Modules

To make the process of researching ships simpler, the following changes have been made:

• VIII Mogami, V König, and VI Ryūjō: Hull A has been removed; Hulls B and C have been renamed A and B, respectively.
• V Furutaka, VII Myōkō, IX Izumo, IX Iowa: Hulls A and B have been removed; Hull C has been renamed B. A new standard hull has been made based on Hull C with a modified set of AA defenses.
• V Omaha: Hulls A and C have been removed; Hull B has been renamed A. A new researchable Hull B has been made based on old Hull B with a modified set of AA defenses.

The standard hulls of the following ships have been replaced with new ones based on researchable hulls with a modified set of AA defenses: V Émile Bertin, V New York, VI New Mexico, VII Colorado, VIII North Carolina, VI Bayern, VI Ranger, IX Fletcher, VII Minsk, VIII Kiev, VIII Ognevoi, IX Tashkent, and IX Udaloi. The purpose of this is to make game play on these ships in their standard hull configurations more comfortable.

Changes to guns:

• VIII Z-23: the 150 mm/55 Tbts KC/36T guns on an LDrh LC/38 mount have been removed from the game. The main battery models have been updated.
• When Hull B is mounted, the artillery configuration will change: the fore turret will become twin-gun.

Removing the 150 mm guns will further emphasize the differences between the old and new branches of German destroyers. The ships of the old branch will have only 128 mm guns; the ships of the new branch will have 150 mm guns.

Compensation Rules

Removing hull modules:

• If you've already researched Hull B, you'll receive Ship XP equal to the cost of researching Hull B as compensation.
• If you've already researched Hull C, the new Hull B will be mounted on your ship instead. In other cases, new Hull A will be mounted on the ship.
• If you've already purchased a hull that is to be replaced, you'll receive compensation in the amount of Credits you paid for it.

Changes to VIII Z-23's guns

• If you've already researched the 150 mm/55 Tbts KC/36T guns on an LDrh LC/38 mount, you'll receive compensation in the amount of 15,000 Ship XP.
• If you've already purchased the guns that are to be replaced, you'll receive compensation in the amount of Credits you paid for them.

Other changes and Improvements

• Improved game performance when switching between ships, purchasing a ship, resetting branches, and other operations in the Port.
• Improved the process of loading and unloading for texture data, which allows for an optimized consumption of video memory.
• Brought back a separate key setting for selecting and launching squadrons. Now, mapping alternative keys for shell type selection does not influence the mappings of the air squadron keys.
• The Polygon Port is no longer available for selection in the game client.
• Fixed an error that caused the overview camera to work incorrectly when playing VIII Flandre.
• Fixed an error that reset the progress in previous Ranked Seasons.

From Player Support:

• Added a ship type icon for auxiliary ships in the Operations game mode.
• In temporary game modes, when selecting the alternative interface mode, you no longer need to press Alt to see the distance to a target.
• Added a new "Entertainment content" section to the additional content settings panel.
• Increased the number of spectators in a training room to 40.
• Fixed the smoke effect when the Engine Boost consumable is active on Henri IV with the Fossil permanent camouflage mounted.
• Fixed the lighting effects for the Space Port.
• Fixed graphical artifacts when viewing République's armor.
• Fixed the bow gun training angles for Salem and Des Moines — they are 149 degrees now.
• Fixed an error that caused incorrect shell traces colors to be displayed when using unique Commanders William Halsey and Philippe Auboyneau.
• Fixed an error that caused the game client to close after two clicks on the Login button on the loading screen.
• Fixed an error that caused the game client to close during the login process.
• Fixed an error that caused the intro video to be skipped when pressing such system keys as Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Tab, etc.
• Fixed an error that caused the rating on the post-battle statistics screen and Clan Battles tab to be displayed incorrectly.
• Fixed an error that prevented the free Commander retraining option from being available.
• Fixed an error that caused the camera to spontaneously move in battle.
• Fixed an error that opened the Consumables tab for a different ship and not the one selected in the carousel.
• Fixed an error that caused the interface to stop working when clicking on the Preview Ship button.
• Fixed an error that caused the camera to move uncontrollably when reconnecting to a battle in the spectator mode.
• Fixed an error that prevented bots from moving in some situations but allowed them to fire.
• Fixed an error that caused the Spotting Aircraft icon to lag behind the aircraft.
• Fixed an error that caused the FPS count to drop in the Port when the camera was in specific positions.
• Fixed an error that caused torpedo damage to be calculated incorrectly when the 'Proximity Fuze' skill was active.
• Fixed an error that caused torpedoes to inflict damage to Z-23 and Lion even if they had already passed by the ship or moved in the opposite direction.
• Fixed an error that made it impossible to view the armor layout of a ship in the Armory.
• Fixed an error that prevented the Battle! button from being blocked when selecting an unsuitable ship for a game mode.
• Fixed an error that caused incorrect calculation of damage caused by AP shells to destroyers when the 'Super-Heavy AP Shells' and 'Heavy AP Shells' skills were activated on a battleship or heavy cruiser, respectively.
• Other improvements and changes may appear in Player Support.

[transmission ends]