The Video
In response to some of the comments on my recent post I wanted to keep the conversation going and clear a few things up.
A few people made fair points and I want to show that even though I often use AI to help with my writing I do put a lot of thought and effort into the research behind it.
I am dyslexic and AI is a tool that helps me turn my usual long rambling notes into something readable.
My last article talked about kill stealing in Naval and how the reward system works.
In this follow up I want to explain where I got my information from, admit where the first post was not fully right, and tighten up what I actually meant.
Here is the main source I started from
https://store.steampowered.com/news/posts/?appids=236390&enddate=1530314746&utm_source=chatgpt.com
This is an old article on early naval trophies and rewards.
It was written back when fleets were first being tested.
I used it as a base and then compared it with what I saw happening in my own matches.
That article explains the original design of naval rewards.
Every ship has a Silver Lions and Research Points reward value.
That value is split mostly according to how much damage you do to the enemy crew.
The final hit gives an extra bonus but that bonus is meant to be small.
The examples in the article show players earning rewards roughly in proportion to the damage they do with the player who gets the kill earning a bit more.
So it does support the idea that rewards are largely damage based and not a pure last hit system.
The problem is that it is from 2018.
It does not include battleships, the compartment system, ammo rack detonations, shell room explosions and other newer mechanics.
I should have been clearer that I was talking about design intent and not claiming that nothing has changed since then.
The third link I used in the original post does not prove that kill stealing is a myth.
It is actually players showing that ammo rack kills, shell room kills and some compartment situations lean too far toward rewarding the last hit and that this needs a rework.
After reading it again I agree that my conclusion was too long, not clear enough and too confident.
So my updated view is this
The naval reward system is partly damage based but there are edge cases that need fixing.
Most of the time damage still matters a lot, but some specific types of kills give far too much to the last player who hits the target.
To explain this a bit more
Silver Lions and Research Points are the in game rewards you get for actions in battle.
Each ship has a set value.
The compartment system is a newer mechanic where the ship is divided into separate sections that can be damaged and destroyed.
An ammo rack detonation is when the ammunition storage explodes and deletes the ship in one go.
When I first wrote about kill stealing I said that naval rewards are damage based and that kill stealing is mostly a myth.
That was too absolute.
In standard crew kill situations the system still behaves more or less like the 2018 description.
You do damage, other players do damage, and the rewards are shared with a small extra bit for whoever gets the final blow.
But in some situations the last hit can take nearly all the reward.
This is especially true for ammo rack and shell room detonations and some compartment kills.
Players have tested this and Gaijin has responded by saying it is not a bug.
So the system is not just damage based.
It is a mix of damage based payouts and last hit bonuses and in those edge cases the last hit part is too strong.
There is also something I did not talk about enough in the first article.
Even if Silver Lions and Research Points are mostly based on damage, kills still matter for daily tasks, battle pass challenges, orders, medals and personal stats like kill to death ratio.
From the player point of view losing a kill can still feel like being robbed even if the raw income is not terrible.
That frustration is real and I should have recognised it more.
So now I would phrase it like this
Naval rewards were designed to be mostly damage based with a smaller last hit bonus and in many normal crew kill situations that is still roughly true.
However players have found clear edge cases such as magazine explosions, shell room kills and some bot interactions where the last shot gets far too much credit and this is currently treated as intended.
There are real mechanical problems here.
Shell room or ammo rack detonations and some compartment kills can give almost the entire reward to the last shell even if someone else did most of the work.
That is what many of the recent forum threads and bug reports are about and I agree that this part of the system needs a rework.
On top of that many daily tasks and battle pass challenges are kill based and not damage based.
So losing kills does slow down progression and that makes people even more sensitive to it.
Where I still stand by my original post is on the social side.
A large part of the drama around kill stealing comes from normal focus fire where several players are shooting the same high priority target.
In those cases no one really owns the ship and the game is working as intended.
But at the same time I now see that there are real mechanical issues with ammo racks, compartments and bots that deserve attention.
One last topic from the comments is friendly fire.
I originally warned against team killing but I did not explain the current rules very clearly.
In naval realistic and arcade you generally cannot damage allied ships with your main guns and many torpedoes.
However according to the official information you can still cause team damage in ground and naval modes with bombs and artillery and similar indirect weapons.
That means floatplanes and catapult planes you launch from your ship can still kill friendly ships with bombs or torpedoes.
You can also kill yourself with your own bombs if you drop too low or sit in your own blast and artillery can still land on team mates.
The direct gunfire between ships is mostly disabled but the big explosive things are still fully lethal to both teams.
So my advice is simple.
Do not grief over a stolen kill.
Naval still has friendly fire from bombs and artillery including from your own floatplanes and self kills are absolutely possible.
If you try to get revenge you will just end up fined or banned and you will not help your team at all.
Thanks to everyone who challenged the first post.
The feedback helped me sharpen what I was trying to say and I will keep updating my view as the game changes.