If things go bad in one game, you can always grab another one of the ships in your personal fleet and dive into a different match in a different role. A carrier captain is practically playing an RTS game in the middle of the battle. A destroyer is all about reflexes and nerve as you race through enemy-infested waters, firing torpedoes as fast as you can, twisting out the way of return fire, and escaping to safety while your allies open fire on the targets you scouted. Naval AcademyLearning to play each of these roles is a long and interesting process because they’re all completely different. Battleships will lay a course taking them across a vital section of the map so that they can rain death on anyone their teammates find, while carriers chase off enemy air attacks with automated fighters and send in bombers to exploit opportunities and weaknesses.

Cruisers will range out ahead of the battleships to intercept enemy destroyers and locate the main enemy force, or they will play rearguard and keep the carriers safe from harassment. When you're on a good team you'll see destroyers setting smoke screens to conceal the direction and location of your fleet, then start scouting and blind-firing torpedoes down likely avenues of enemy approach. “For a team to succeed in Warships, these classes have to work together, and it's a thing of beauty when they do. Torpedo ships like destroyers and light cruisers also have to make these calculations as they try to make their slow-moving torpedoes hit home against an enemy that sees them coming. An enemy warship can cover an awful lot of ground in that time, and it can maneuver to avoid incoming fire, so you have to not only figure out where your shots will land in relation to the enemy vessel, but also read what the enemy captain is going to do when he sees you fire. Meanwhile, those shots can take something like five to 10 seconds to reach their target. The biggest warships hit hard, but their mighty guns can only fire a few times each minute, meaning that a missed shot leaves your opponent’s guns fully operational and you exposed for an eternity.

But by the time you're playing around with your first battleships, gunnery requires a mix of aim, mathematics, geometry, and attempted telepathy. “Early warships are deceptively simple, as they shoot each other from a few kilometers apart, and it often seems like combat boils down to simply leading you target a little bit and pulling the trigger.

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