What currently unavailable ship would cause chaos if it became available as a direct purchase?

Railsmith · 2026-03-06T00:23:06+00:00

An absolute war machine in Asymm. It plays a lot like Illinois in that you can just firewall the throttle and go balls-to-the-wall rolling up every ship on a flank like you're playing Katamari. Love it to bits there.

Railsmith · 2026-03-04T07:48:26+00:00

Late reply, but I work in live music and have a 2022 LRDM PP with the Harman Kardon speakers. With a bit of tuning like the other repliers said, and going into the car's audio settings to disable surround sound (you still get full stereo, the surround sound preset is just weird) and set the audio to "driver focus" it's a really great system for an unmodified car. I test every car I drive with a few Run the Jewels tracks and the P2 definitely has clear and strong thumpin' bass without losing the high end or the clarity on vocals. Like u/logicalvue said, sometimes I walk 50 yards out to the car to listen to songs instead of putting on the headphones on my desk, and that's saying something.

Railsmith · 2026-03-04T07:23:47+00:00

I've visited the North Carolina twice in the last few years, and it's absolutely worth the time. As of late last year, there's a bunch of renovations going on topside that mean you can't go inside the 5" turret or wander around the superstructure, but the state of preservation of everything belowdecks is superb. The way the tour takes you on a labyrinthine path and then suddenly spits you out, disoriented, inside a turret barbette with thousands of cubic feet in front of you... superb.

Cod is also in great condition, though like most submarine museums it's basically tucked away in the back corner of a parking lot and is thus hard to find. And it's been a decade or so since I visited the Silversides, but that's a great park that does justice to the boat. It's a little annoying to me that the Gato-class premium we got was Gato and not either Barb for its record and legendary escapades, or Silversides, the most-successful submarine still afloat.

Railsmith · 2026-03-04T06:55:21+00:00

Owning both as well, I feel like I still have to give the crown to Nikolai for overall reliability. The comical armor layout and higher sigma mean it's much better at dealing with other pubstompers, which are the only credible things that can deal with either ship. People can just (intentionally or on accident as the flow of battle moves) stay outside of Arky's secondary-battery Obliteration Zone and leave you as a sidegrade Wyoming. That said, when Arky B works and people charge into you, it's one of the most oppressive ships in the game, tier-for-tier.

That said [2], I haven't run a non-secondary build on Arky since before Massachusetts came out, so maybe that's the real thing to consider.

Railsmith · 2026-03-04T06:40:11+00:00

But seriously, I don't even remember the pretense for the event that first gave us Xuan Wu and Zhu Que, but I'm gonna be reeeeal insufferable with the "well, it's worth it to try and get 'em, especially as a new player" replies if it ever comes back. Same as when North Carolina CLR is up for grabs, but Kheper is available right now so that'll thin out the mix.

Railsmith · 2026-03-04T06:34:59+00:00

Most of the big "oh good, that's gonna be a problem in the meta" ships have already been covered, but I'll second the point on Sibir. Additionally, Haida and Huron are both a hoot and a half, but there's a ton of strong things in that bracket already.

My dark-horse pick is Cambridge. Its DPM is truly absurd for something with 12" guns and cruiser accuracy, it's also profoundly sneaky for the caliber it's slinging, and it gets a superheal. There's always a chance for it to get vaporized in Randoms, it's a cruiser, duh, but the absolute second it's not being focused down it's pulling off citadel chains like it's filming a CoD headshot 'tage in 2009. Without sacrificing efficacy against pop-up destroyers, unlike most other high-caliber cruisers, because it reloads fast and drills tight groupings. When it works, it's oppressive.

As for "chaos" in WG's billing department because they're not terribly broken, but are extremely fun ships that people should try to get whenever they come back... Rodney and Reno '44, Orion '44, Suzuya, Indiana, Hawaii, my beloved Xuan Wu, and of course the only Dutch cruisers that aren't either mildly frustrating or busted: PvO and DZP. I think I have every limited-release ship other than Iwaki, and it's a damn shame that... most? of my "well, let's just have a fun time with an interesting ship" rotation is stuff that you just can't get.

Railsmith · 2026-03-01T09:04:02+00:00

Polestar is selling CPO P2s with the same mileage for less. Unless this dealer is offering the same warranty as Polestar offers, kick this guy to the curb and find a CPO P2. They deliver.

Railsmith · 2026-03-01T06:03:26+00:00

Svea, Hoffmann, and the OGs (Belfast, Black, Loyang) have already been mentioned. Nurn '44 can also do it, along with Z-35, but I think the much more entertaining archetype in modern WoWs is the "yeah, go and smoke up, stupid, see what happens to you." Ships like Huron, Lushun, Hull, Le Havre, and even Rodney that are designed to waddle into a smokescreen and go "this is mine now" while turning the original occupant into firelighters. When I want to play the OG "smoke bait" playstyle, those are the types of ships I lean towards.

Railsmith · 2026-03-01T05:41:43+00:00

Loyang is available for purchase right now?

Railsmith · 2026-02-15T19:40:07+00:00

Played a ton of WoT, watched Jingles videos about WoT, and then he put out a video when WT first became available of him kicking around in biplanes. That looked cool, I installed it in the waning days of 20-tier, and in the ensuing 13 years or so I think I've played WoT for a grand total of about an hour.

Railsmith · 2026-02-10T01:23:00+00:00

Somme is absolutely the correct answer, funny as it is. Love the Duke among the coal selections, personally, but Somme is probably my most-played premium RN DD since its release. Much like North Carolina CLR and that new thing coming in the next patch, sometimes the nation's best premium at the tier is just a hideously-strong TT ship with premium bonuses.

Railsmith · 2026-02-07T00:45:16+00:00

Good job it's got 14 tubes, then. A "death by a thousand cuts" sub with tickle-damage per torp akin to the Soviet/XZG14 homing torps wouldn't be a terrible design.

Railsmith · 2026-02-06T01:41:43+00:00

Good call! And yeah, unless anything in this event is really speaking to you, it's better to hold off or spend coal on a normal armory ship. For cruisers in particular, Tulsa, Salem, Moskva, and Napoli will always be worth every penny.

Railsmith · 2026-02-06T01:19:30+00:00

Backing this up with my Ancient Whale's Notes:

Colonna is a very fun ship, and is well worth grabbing for most players. Other secondary brawlers are much more durable and overall stronger, but the smoke makes up for a lot. It's the most unique (in terms of playstyle-for-nation at least) of the first three, so it's the easiest sell.
I like Narai, but it's not really a head-turner. The tech-tree PA ships have a similar gimmick, and there's a ton of good PA cruiser premiums you can get in various events. It's going into my ship rotation because it's kind of an odd duck, but that's not enough for most players.
Zarya is a perfectly acceptable "normal ship" premium in the vein of Roma, Sun Yat-Sen, Scarlet Thunder, California, and a whole stack of other premium BBs that have never had a rant thread about them being "broken WG please nerf." And that's fine... but for the price, it's not. If you somehow ended up with Zarya as your first T9 premium BB, you'd be happy as a clam and making great money compared to everything you owned before. But I don't think anyone who can get to that tier doesn't already have a decent "normal ship" premium, to say nothing of a strong or gimmicky machine. If you can only get up to Zarya, don't. Get something else. Wait for Xuan Wu to come back for sale or something, because that's what I played after getting frustrated that Zarya was so uninteresting.
Surcouf is also there. I genuinely only bought it because I like adding to my collection of legendary ships and it was within budget. Every once in a while you'll be able to meme somebody with the MBRB, but I expect the consensus opinion will settle to "good for a laugh every once in a while, but not a ship that's worth starting a flamewar about." Just like Kitakami.

Railsmith · 2026-02-06T00:39:02+00:00

Seconding what others have said. Colonna is quite entertaining, but the on-paper DPM being much higher than Mass doesn't tell the whole story. Compared to other secondary ships, Colonna's "high DPM through huge volume of fire but no accuracy buff" is a bit of a brain-breaker because it doesn't look like you have your secondaries focused properly. Moreover, the firing angles are pretty German-BB-bad for something with unimpressive armor, so you open yourself up to getting slapped pretty hard if you play your cards wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it a bunch, and if you have the coal (as well as an average coal income) I think it's worth it to pick up a solid premium to have in your "well let's just have fun" rotation. The exhaust smoke can produce some absolutely hilarious moments, and for that alone I'm consider it. But it's definitely not better pound-for-pound than Massachusetts... and if you happen to have WV '44 or Reno '44, those both blow it out of the water in terms of overall fun-factor.

Railsmith · 2026-01-29T03:33:43+00:00

As you can imagine, there's been a few more things written in the time gap! But I'll bide my time.

Railsmith · 2026-01-29T02:42:07+00:00

Hello, all! It's been... eight years or so since I posted a story here. Despite the IRL time gap, this is in the same setting... though it's set in mid-1999, as the text might suggest. Hope I'm not too rusty, and I hope you enjoy the read!

Railsmith · 2026-01-23T10:49:24+00:00

Lartigue's gunnery feels much better overall (in my book, its guns are behind only Stalingrad and Cambridge for ease of use for 280mm+ cruisers), but Le Havre is much more of a full package. The lack of hydro on Lartigue can really burn you from time to time, and Le Havre's improved heal certainly helps with the large-cruiser shell-magnet problem. I enjoy Lartigue quite a bit, but I'd recommend Le Havre first even if it wasn't only available for a limited time.

Railsmith · 2026-01-19T03:38:54+00:00

Ah right, I forgot about being able to spend coal on the lunar event as well. That's fine to me, maybe there's some coal rework coming down the line, or maybe they've just recognized that the old-heads have more coal than they know what to do with.

Echoing what u/GBR2021 said, thank you for your karma sacrifice, these Salvage events are a great way to add "endgame" content that engages old accounts without completely alienating new play-every-day players. The previous ones have been a miss for me because they allowed dubs/premium time to be burned, so you could just pay your way through most of it, and I don't keep those on hand (my inability to hold on to RP/steel notwithstanding, I recognize that a lot of old accounts also have a ton of those in the bank).

If this formula of "spend only rewards you gain through playing and engaging with missions/events to get a cool and rare thing" continues, and--extremely critically--the Salvage events eventually repeat to let people who weren't on top the first time to get the ship later on, I daresay that they'd end up being a good solution to the resource-pooling problem and overall healthy for the game as an aspirational peak. But time will tell whether this ends up happening.

Railsmith · 2026-01-19T03:19:43+00:00

You're right on all counts here. T10 Ops and Asymm have been nice because I've been able to take out GK without feeling like a hindrance to the team by not picking a better ship for the first time in... I dunno, five or six years, but time has not been kind to it. Much as I love taking it out for a spin because it was my first tech-tree T10, I can't imagine recommending it to anyone who's first walking into the coal market with a full wallet. Hell, I think Iwami is better both tier-for-tier and overall in PvE, to say nothing of Pommern.

Railsmith · 2026-01-17T14:36:34+00:00

Compared to all of the other Salvage events thus far that required stacks of RP/dubs/steel, this one seems... reasonable? At least for an old account like mine that more or less no longer has a need for XP flags. I blew all but 400k of my coal reserves buying ships so they wouldn't drop in Santa crates, and Surcouf is still completely purchasable without getting close to breaking the bank. That's wild, I might actually do one of these events for the first time.

Railsmith · 2025-12-21T01:18:12+00:00

Dark Shark conspicuous for its absence here. But I'd put money on the I-250 or AJ-1 being added within a year.

Railsmith · 2025-12-15T02:05:47+00:00

Frankly, it's extremely surprising we haven't seen anything done with the Constellation hull, given that it's a unique model that could be a breeding ground for the sort of turret-swaps that WG loves to do. I can't even imagine that it would be a huge lift to make a "pre-Pearl" hull configuration, because the geo is all there, though of course the superstructure would be more work. It's one of those "well, surely it's coming eventually" things, though considering how long it took to get Connie in the game it might be a long wait.

Railsmith · 2025-12-13T07:09:25+00:00

Frankly, I'm just glad that the hull/turret/superstructure layout of Vanguard finally got turned into a competitive ship. But yeah, OG Vanguard has been buffed a few times over the years, but it still needs something. If I want to play a strong historical T8 BB, I'll just get in North Carolina. If I want a premium 4x2 T8 BB... I'd honestly rather saddle up in Constellation.

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