So I decided to grind the naval tasks this year. I haven’t really touched naval since the split between blue water and coastal. It seems a lot of mechanics have been changed ever since. I wasn’t exactly the greatest player back then, but I had a rough idea on how to play. Now I’m feeling completely lost because of the changes, so maybe someone could help.
First of all, thanks to Gaijin’s restrictions on Rank (which are not completely arbitrary and ridiculous in any way, by the way), most of the vehicles I have on Rank III are coastal. I found that putting one Rank III/IV coastal together with a reserve destroyer works. So I’m staying at around the 3.3-3.7 range. Here are my questions.
First question is the most important. When you fight enemy ships, what are you supposed to aim for? Back in the day I remember you had to aim for different sectors of the enemy boat to deplete crew, unless you were lucky enough to hit something like ammo racks. Once a sector turned black it was considered destroyed and had no crew left. So generally you raked the enemy vessel with gunfire aimed at different sectors until it was destroyed. I’m not entirely certain this is the case anymore. I think it still is this way with smaller boats, but I have no idea how larger ships damage models work as I don’t see sections turning black. Are you supposed to be aiming for sections or directly for modules? Because even when I get the “hit” message I rarely see crew loss on the enemy, usually some small percentage like 1-4%, often just 0%, rarely bigger numbers. I see I’m dealing damage on modules like funnels, turrets or transmissions, but that doesn’t seem to do much as they get repaired. Do you have to directly aim for ammo racks to effectively finish off an enemy? Because, well, good luck hitting that from 8 kilometers (if you even know where it is) and when it is below the waterline. I usually spend literally the whole match lobbing shots at the enemy, getting “hit” after “hit”, damaging modules, causing fires every once in a while, but the enemy never goes down and I end being bombed or the match ends on tickets. I get tons of assists but few kills and leave with a very low score, so I have the feeling I’m doing something wrong.
Second, what type of ammo are you supposed to use on the larger ships? I was under the impression that using HE was effective for killing crew, with SAP/APHE being reserved for armored ships at higher tiers. Am I wrong? And if you’re meant to use armor-piercing, what about ships that only have HE shells? For example, I have the IJN Yuudachi from an old event and it only has HE ammo. To be honest I don’t notice a real difference when firing different types of ammo. Same about stuff like base-fuze HE shells.
Third, why is it that coastal boats don’t get aim markers for shells or splashes? Not even a simple lead marker? I mean, it’s kind of tricky to aim a 20-40mm shell to a moving target among a rain of tracers, smoke and tons of terrain obstructions, because every map for smaller ships is designed like a maze, while even a reserve destroyer gets aim assist and can blow you up in one shot.
Fourth. Is it just me or are BRs in this mode particularly questionable? It might be a massive skill issue on my part, but the BRs for coastal seem like Gaijin placed BRs at random. For example, I don’t get why the BMO (my top rank Russian boat) is at 3.0 when its armaments are so underwhelming. On the other hand you have boats like the Pr.226 (I believe it’s called) always at the top of the score just melting enemies at 4.3. No, seriously, what are you supposed to do when you have a WW2 era boat with a 40mm Bofors and the enemy has fast-firing post WW2 era guns? Or when all the enemies are destroyers that can blow up your hull in one shot and you don’t even have torpedoes?
It doesn’t help that, like in pretty much every other mode, you get uptiers 90% of the time. What makes it even more unpleasant is that the disparity between bottom BR and top BR seems much greater, as if in air battles you had jet fighters fighting biplanes on the same match all the time.
And lastly, this is also more of a rant than a question, what is it with the map design? A while ago I joined a match, spawned in and got torpedoed like five seconds after spawning. I have “join in progress” off, by the way. Other maps have direct line of sight between spawns. Last match I played I spawned with 6 destroyers like 7km away. Some maps are so full of islands or obstacles and more obstacles so that people just spend the whole game camping.
I’d appreciate some pointers. Maybe some links to tutorials if someone knows good ones. I’m asking because despite the flaws there are matches that have been actually pretty fun. I like the concept of big ship battles, I just feel I’m doing poorly because I have no idea how to play. Thanks in advance.