Revision as of 18:01, 29 September 2020

Developer Bulletin.
News Article

Update 0.9.9. U.S. Battleships in Early Access

U.S. Battleships: Part 1 ● The Dockyard and "Strong-Willed" Campaign ● Clan Battles: "Northern Waters" Season ● Mercenaries ● Research Bureau ● Changes to Game Mechanics ● Visual Improvements ● Technical Changes and Improvements ● Content additions and changes ● Other Changes

U.S. Battleships: Part 1

American battleships VIII Kansas and IX Minnesota have arrived in Early Access!

VIII Kansas can be obtained by completing all the Directives, while IX Minnesota can be obtained from random bundles that are available in the Armory in exchange for doubloons.

American Tokens: a new temporary resource that can be earned by progressing through Directives of the event and by completing special chains of combat missions. They will also be available for Recruitment Points in the Armory, and via random bundles that will be available in exchange for doubloons.

Rewards available in exchange for American Tokens: sequentially available bundles and other rewards that can be found in the Armory.

Rewards from the sequentially available bundles: signals; expendable camouflages; Gold Eagle permanent camouflages for VIII Kansas, IX Minnesota, and X Vermont; VII Florida with a Gold Eagle permanent camouflage and commemorative flag; days of Premium Account; and Coal. Features of the New Branch

Numerous main battery guns with a solid salvo weight and firing range, which come at the expense of longer gun reloading times.
Great maneuverability for the ship type and good anti-torpedo protection, but they are rather slow.
Decent AA defenses, additionally reinforced by access to the Defensive AA Fire consumable.

When Update 0.9.11 goes live, VIII Kansas, IX Minnesota, and X Vermont will be available for all players to research.

Read more>>> The Dockyard and "Strong-Willed" Campaign

Any remaining Dockyard Directives will be available for completion until October 26. Complete all the shipbuilding phases in time to get a brand-new U.S. cruiser—VIII Anchorage!

Read more>>>

Update 0.9.9 brings an end to the "Strong-Willed" temporary Campaign, which kicked off with the release of Update 0.9.3. Hurry to obtain the unique historical Commander, Jerzy Świrski, and other rewards!

End date and time: Fri. Oct. 09 4:00 AM PT / your local time: Fri. Oct. 09 6:00 AM

Read more>>> Clan Battles: "Northern Waters" Season

Starts: Wed. Oct. 07 4:30 AM PT / your local time: Wed. Oct. 07 6:30 AM Ends: Sun. Nov. 22 9:30 PM PT / your local time: Sun. Nov. 22 10:30 PM

Format: 7 vs. 7 playing Tier X ships Restrictions: up to two battleships, or one battleship and one aircraft carrier per team Rewards: up to 11,000 Steel and many other rewards Maps: Islands of Ice, Sleeping Giant, Warrior's Path, North, Greece, and Northern Waters, in Domination mode Season features: in the new Season, all maps may feature a cyclone

The cyclone settles over the sea at the very start of a battle. Players should choose the most appropriate tactics in response to the conditions.
Cyclones reduce the viewing radius of aircraft to 8 km.
At the fourth minute of a battle, the viewing radius of ships starts to shrink, too. After 30 seconds, it gets reduced to 14 km.
After 15 and a half minutes of battle, the cyclone will start to fade away. Its effects will vanish completely after a further 30 seconds.

Essentially, the cyclone is designed to reduce the reconnaissance potential of aircraft carriers in Clan Battles. The option to add a maximum of two battleships or replace one of them with one carrier will make team lineups and battle tactics in the upcoming Season more diverse. For example, it's possible that destroyers might prove to be a popular choice.

Full details of the Season will be released in a dedicated article. Mercenaries

Division Commanders now have the option to invite "mercenaries," i.e. players from outside their Clan or from other Clans, to join their Divisions for Clan Battles.

The new feature will allow Clan leaders to test candidates who want to join their Clans in real combat scenarios, or fill roster gaps without having to actually accept new players into the Clan. Rules

To add a mercenary to the team, simply invite them to join your Division. You can search for players via the "Divisions" tab in the game client.
After a battle, the mercenary receives rewards based on the current league of the Clan they went into battle with.
The mercenary may also receive achievements and emblems for Clan Battles, based on the current league of the Clan they went into battle with.
However, the mercenary will not receive the associated economic bonuses of the Clan they fought for.
A mercenary from a different Clan will be able to enter battle during the Prime Time of the inviting Clan. The selected Prime Time of the Clan that the mercenary belongs to will not change.

During the "Northern Waters" Season of Clan Battles, only one mercenary can be invited to a Division. Research Bureau

We've added a victory bonus of 200 Research Points for Tier V ships.
The following achievements have been added: Junior Shipbuilder, Senior Shipbuilder, Shipbuilding Inspector, and Chief Shipbuilding Inspector. The achievements will be issued for 10/50/100/150 ship branches that you have reset.

Only ship branches that you reset after Update 0.9.9 goes live will count towards your progress for the new achievements and the bonus for Tier V ships.

More details about the Research Bureau will appear in a dedicated article. Changes to Game Mechanics

We've updated the mechanics behind the interactions between shells and main battery barbettes / turrets.

Previously, when a shell hit the main battery turret, damage was dealt only to the module itself, and the player received a "Penetration" ribbon without any actual damage having been dealt to the enemy ship. Now, hitting the main battery turret also entails a reduction in the ship's hit points.

The change will significantly reduce the number of no-damage penetrations.

Any damage dealt to a main battery turret also entails damage to the ship in the amount of 1/10 of the maximum damage of the shell.
The amount of damage dealt to the main battery turret modules in case of a penetration has been reduced 3.3 times.
The number of hit points for main battery turret modules has been reduced by half.
Damage affecting a ship's HP from a shell hitting any of the ship's main battery turrets can be restored completely using the Repair Party and Specialized Repair Teams consumables.
The barbette models have been updated.

Visual Improvements

We've improved the sea rendering quality for all graphics settings. Sun glare on the water's surface now looks more realistic; the horizon is now rendered at a higher quality; and water will now appear in a range of different shades, depending on the map. This change will improve game client performance. The changes will be most visible at low and medium graphics quality settings.
The Spaceport has been updated to accommodate the new lighting model and enhanced HDR technology.
We've changed the visual appearance of the aiming reticles for carrier squadrons, and also reworked the aircraft camera performance. This change will affect only the visual component of a squadron's interface, making it easier to aim with all types of armament without affecting gameplay.
Aircraft aiming reticles will no longer adjust to changes in the terrain of islands. A special indicator will notify you that your armament is about to hit terrain, and the reticle will become slightly more transparent. The new feature will also help prevent scenarios when a player is fully aimed at a target ship, but there are still terrain obstacles in the path of the payload release trajectory.
Aircraft operating as part of a squadron will now change positions in a smoother way; the trajectory of bombers moving in on a target will change slightly, and any damage taken by the aircraft in the process will cause it to shake.
The visibility of aircraft aiming reticles on sunlight-reflecting water has been improved.

Technical Changes and Improvements

With the release of Update 0.9.9, players will be able to play on all World of Warships servers within a single game client, without the need to install separate game instances for each region. The game server will be determined by the currently selected account in the Wargaming Game Center.

We recommend that you delete all additional game instances installed on your computer before the release of Update 0.9.9. Please note: you will still need a separate game client for Public Tests.

We've seen drops in game client performance and aiming reticle distortions on devices with graphics cards that don't support DirectX 11 features. For this reason, we are discontinuing support for graphics cards that don't meet the minimum system requirements.

Support for the macOS operating system will cease with the release of Update 0.10.0. We made this decision due to the low popularity of this OS among our players. Supporting macOS restrains our ability to improve the visuals of the game and its overall performance.

More details are available in this article. Content additions and changes

Armory

The following ships will become available in the Armory with the release of the Update:

X Franklin D. Roosevelt—available in exchange for 33,000 Steel. A Midway-class aircraft carrier that can boast of having solid armor protection. The extensive HP pools of her aircraft and large squadron size allow her to carry out continuous powerful attacks, even when her aircraft, which lack the Repair consumable, fall under heavy AA enemy fire.

IX Paolo Emilio—available in exchange for 43,000 Research Points. This destroyer was initially designed as light cruiser intended for use in reconnaissance operations of the Italian Navy. She's fast, and equipped with good artillery that's capable of firing SAP and HE shells, all at the cost of a long reload time. The ship's powerful torpedo armament, coupled with access to the Emergency Engine Power and Exhaust Smoke Generator consumables, make her ideal for lightning-fast attacks at short ranges.

Other changes

We're continuing our work on enhancing the Daily Shipments: two new options will be added in Update 0.9.9. We'll test the new mechanics as the Update goes live. To ensure that we get credible test results, some players will collect their rewards via the "old" version of Daily Shipments, while others will receive the new ones. This research will also require a random reference group, which is why certain players will unfortunately not have access to Daily Shipments during this Update.

A "Gothic" permanent camouflage for VIII Bismarck has been added to the game. Details on how to get it will follow a bit later.

VIII Mainz has been added to the Tech Tree, and will be available for 11,000 doubloons.

VIII Tirpitz has temporarily been removed from the Tech Tree. However, she will still be available via the Armory.

The following ships have been added for testing by developers, supertesters, and community contributors: IX Hizen, IX Z-44, VII Strasbourg, X Plymouth, and VI Mysore.

Other Changes

Improvements to the Combat Mission Interface

We've re-enabled the option to jump to the Combat Missions section by clicking on the icon of a combat mission that drops from a container.
A list of combat missions that you've scrolled down will now automatically scroll back up when switching between tabs.
A combat mission hint that pops up on the post-battle results screen will now show the progress you've made towards the conditions of that mission in a battle.
When navigating to the Directives tab, the currently active Directive will be selected by default.

Game balance changes

In Update 0.9.9, 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. Tier V British cruiser Hawkins

Main battery reload time reduced from 12.6 to 12.1 s

Tier VIII U.K. aircraft carrier Implacable

Changes to HE bomb characteristics:

Maximum damage increased from 4,700 to 4,900
Chance to cause fire on a target increased from 27% to 28%

Tier X Soviet cruiser Petropavlovsk

Detectability range by sea increased from 14.9 to 15.4 km. Other detectability values have been increased accordingly

Tier IX Soviet cruiser Riga

Main battery reload time reduced from 15.0 to 14.5 s
Detectability range by sea increased from 14.74 to 15.04 km. Other detectability values were increased accordingly

Engine Boost Modification 1 upgrade

Bonus to the action time of the Engine Boost and Emergency Engine Power consumables reduced from +40% to +30%

Other changes and improvements

• Fixed a mistake in the description of Task 6 of Mission 4 in the "Five Epochs of the Navy" Campaign.
• Fixed a bug in the autopilot voiceovers for the following Commanders: Kaguya, Chang'e, and Hou Yi.
• The names of modules of attack aircraft now contain an HE or AP designation for their rockets.
• Reduced the frequency of a situation that caused the game client to crash during authorization.
• Reduced the frequency of a situation that caused a ship with autopilot enabled to leave her charted course.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Expert Marksman skill to provide incorrect bonuses to the traverse speed of main battery guns.
• Fixed an issue that caused the game client to crash after navigating to the Dockyard before the ship being built appeared.
• Fixed an issue that, in certain cases, made it impossible to authorize in the game after minimizing the client window and then maximizing it again.

Other improvements and changes. For a complete list, please refer to Player Support.

[transmission ends]