Ayleward2

@RedShirtTrekkie @rewguy79 should be along to give you an invite; welcome back! Ayleward2

Hey @Sixguns55, glad to see you join the site; are you looking for an invite to DHO, or more CW/tier 10 action and an invite to DHO-X? Welcome! Ayle

So how far above $100 mil are you now Mykk? Congrats on the tier X's Grimm!

Okay, updated the top link, this link should work.... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10oqKgyRwoLbC3Pe4GgEizFrf6XF5k8zkCTJk5PZ2olY/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10oqKgyRwoLbC3Pe4GgEizFrf6XF5k8zkCTJk5PZ2olY Someone check if that link works? If not will fix it tonight. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Reminder@joebelka to put your numbers in the spreadsheet! Y’all expect me to do work in this? My role is to sit back and laugh at the scores and the trash talk.... I should really find another absolutely terrible tank/ship and make a contest for best score.... Ayle Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Derp guns only, but use AP/HE/HEAT as you like. Will update the first post later on. Ayle Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Okay, at a desktop and not 'working'... Wall o' text, and I might ping Dakar about a semi regular blog post on this stuff. Keep in mind, I have only built 1 computer to date, but it still works well enough though modern games now are pretty much low settings only. (GTX 650Ti, Intel 3770) A lot of this is going to be personal preference, with some placeholders of 'fill in here what you want'. This also targets roughly $1000 as a budget, including the OS. Starting from the top- how much space do you want this thing to take up, and do you want it to glow in the dark with RGB or silent, stealthy, deadly but never seen? That will set your case. I have been told by the Boss that another full tower case is right out, so I am going for a mid tower size case. I am going to make this more of a show piece, so it needs a side window, and going with white, because I can. So that is the case sorted. I would order the case first to see exactly in person what I am working with, and might throw a couple of RGB fans in the case to improve airflow, or do that later down the line. Case done, motherboard next- but that means we have to figure out a CPU. I am going to argue strongly for an AMD CPU at this point. A 9th gen 9900k or 9700k is the best gaming CPU right now, but price for what you are getting is generally considered sub-par. I would go with a Ryzen CPU or APU. Right now my placeholder chip is a Ryzen 2600, but I might drop as far as an Athlon 200GE or the 240GE when that is released. Another alternative would be the 2200G Ryzen APU. So this means we are getting an AM4 socket motherboard. The reason for this is that the AM4 socket is supposed to be THE AMD socket through 2020 (Ryzen gen 4), so you could keep the motherboard and have your CPU upgraded if you wanted to do so. For that, most reviews I have seen like the B450 chipset as a good chipset without breaking the bank on an X470 board. Based on several YT videos, I would probably pick the MSI Tomahawk or MSI Mortar B450 board (ATX and mATX form factors respectively). Both are supposed to be solid boards with good VRAM cooling. My memory is that B450 also allows overclocking your CPU if you wanted to do that. CPU to place into our motherboard selection.... We touched on this when picking out a motherboard, where I stated that I would go AMD, not Intel. That is because I 'know' the socket is supposed to be good through 2020, and a lot of the rumors on Zen 2 next year indicate that those chips may be very, very competitive chips. That means my CPU now is a choice of waiting with a 'good enough' chip until maybe April next year, or going with a good chip and upgrading maybe in 2020 with the intention of getting an additional 5 year life at that point. If I bridge the gap, I probably go with a 2200G. That allows me in good conscience to upgrade next year to the Ryzen 3xxx series and get the new Ryzen 5 replacement for the 2600. With my bridge APU I then build a small ITX computer that can live to do light gaming or act as an internet access machine for my wife. Or I turn around and Ebay the chip/sell to a friend who wants to build a cheap computer that with a dedicated GPU wouldn't be a bad gaming machine. The Athlon chips come in if I have a GPU just outside of my financial limit that they would bring inside my budget. One thing to note, if you go above 1080P gaming, to 1440P or 4K, your GPU will set maximum performance. At 1080P now with most modern cards you will see a CPU bottleneck, and the large number of cores (Threadripper/2700X) are not yet well optimized by Windows 10. RAM - 16GB is pretty much the baseline for everyone doing gaming now, and because I chose Ryzen a faster kit with lower latency leads to better performance. That means DDR4, probably for me around 3200 as a price/performance compromise. Because of the RGB I want to add, I may spend a little extra here for white RGB RAM to match the case. PCPartpicker has some parametric filters to get you the best kit for your needs cheapest if you go the build route (or to tell you if you are getting taken on the price of a pre-built machine). On to the hard drive. Any choice other than an SSD or M.2 drive as a boot drive is silly at this point. The time to boot, and responsiveness just cannot be beat, and the prices now are low enough that it is hard to justify a hybrid or HDD. For staying in a budget, I have a 500GB base drive, and probably will pull the old HDD out of my current machine as a second drive. Eventually though a second SSD of 1TB will get added and the HDD cloned to that drive. I have not added any CD/DVD drives to my build; this may be a consideration if you want to be able to play music off of CDs or watch DVDs or Blu-Ray movies. Additionally, no sound card or other expansion cards. Now to the meat- a graphics card. This probably will be more expensive than any other component, and might give any 2 other components combined a run for overall money spent. In my personal build, I am trying to get to a GTX 1070; there may be an argument for an RX580, or maybe the RX590 once we see that card released. I personally have not had good luck with AMD cards, and the 1070 or (be still my beating heart) 1070Ti should out perform the 580 by enough to notice. The problem is the 580 would be around $225, with a GTX 1060 running roughly $260. The 1070 really starts around $380, and a Ti is $400-425. So that is still very much a tussle over what I can get versus what do I need. I am not a 60FPS minimum guy, and I like high settings, but if I can get 'good enough' in both FPS and looks, maybe I save the money. Heck the 1050Ti isn't off the table entirely either for me, an FTW edition EVGA card is only $200, and I have been running a 650Ti for 5 years now. Moving on to power, my current build is rated at 330 watts. I want a fully modular power supply, preferably Gold rated or higher in efficiency, and 500 watts or so is plenty of room on the power side if I do any upgrades. Again, pick what you want as far as features/color/size, and if you are doing a pre-built, you may want to configure the machine in PC part picker to make sure that you aren't getting taken on a power supply that is too large or too small for any needs you might have. Ayle

I will add more later, but in the $1000 range this is probably in the neighborhood of what I would build. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qJ3nMZ Ayle Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I like the modern, in part because the red outline makes the DHO pop a bit more than the blue/orange. Ayle Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Grant got it I think. Probably an M60 A3, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60_Patton#/media/File:American_M60A3_tank_Lake_Charles,_Louisiana_April_2005.jpg . Not a lot of Pattons stateside I seem to recall, though there is an M48 nearby to me. Ayle

Getting the announcement out early; Derpsgiving is coming to World of Tanks again this year! If there are additional people that want to throw in prizes and come up with competition terms, reach out to me (@Ayleward2) either here on the forums or on Discord. The current prize will be a $10 item out of the World of Tanks shop, prize to be determined by winner based on what is available in the shop when the competition closes. Contest will start November 1, and end at midnight EST November 30th. Entries will be closed at that time and winner(s) announced that weekend on Dec 1st. Winners can reach out to determine prize selection to be delivered as soon afterward as possible. Contest 1: Most HE damage delivered in a game using a 'derp' (howitzer) armed tank at tier 5! The winner will be determined as the person who delivers the most damage in a random battle using any tier 5 howitzer armed tank. This means a 105mm M4 game counts, using the 76mm gun with HE does not count Post a screenshot of your game on the Discord server or here on the forums notifying @Ayleward2 Along with your screenshot, fill out the appropriate spreadsheet tab in the link below, with your player name, amount of damage, and the tank used. Spreadsheet link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10oqKgyRwoLbC3Pe4GgEizFrf6XF5k8zkCTJk5PZ2olY/edit?usp=sharing Reminder, this will start November 1st, so you have some time to work on crews, tanks and strategies! Ayle

Getting the announcement out early; Derpsgiving is coming to World of Warships as well this year! If there are additional people that want to throw in prizes and come up with competition terms, reach out to me (@Ayleward2) either here on the forums or on Discord. The current prize will be a $10 item out of the World of Warships shop, prize to be determined by winner based on what is available in the shop when the competition closes. Contest will start November 1, and end at midnight EST November 30th. Entries will be closed at that time and winner(s) announced that weekend on Dec 1st. Winners can reach out to determine prize selection to be delivered as soon afterward as possible. Contest 1: Most fire damage delivered in a game. Get out your fire spammers, it is getting hot in the kitchen! The winner will be determined as the person who delivers the most fire damage in a random battle using any tier 5 ship. Post a screenshot of your game on the Discord server or here on the forums notifying @Ayleward2 Along with your screenshot, fill out the appropriate spreadsheet tab in the link below, with your player name, amount of damage, and the ship used. Spreadsheet link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10oqKgyRwoLbC3Pe4GgEizFrf6XF5k8zkCTJk5PZ2olY/edit?usp=sharing Reminder, this will start November 1st, so you have some time to work on captains, ships and strategies! Ayle

Creating this as a new post, may try to go back and edit this so that all the information is in a single post not in replies below. For those reading this for the first time, we have an Alliance for Dads, and a separate channel on the Discord server for daily chats. IF you get a Captain America offer for 100 shards and want to spend that money it is probably the best start for a minimum amount of $. Now for those starting the game and wanting recommendations: 1) Spend power cores on energy refreshes, don't worry about refreshing nodes or stores 2) Characters to pursue: Wolverine is good as a starting character, you get 5 shards a day just for completing the daily tasks. Figure out if you want to go for any of characters that I will call 'event' characters - if that is what you want to pursue, that is going to set your priorities. Avoid minion characters as much as you can early on, focus on heroes and villains. Currently Star Lord, Iron Man, and Fury are all event characters, Guardians/Ravagers, Shield, and Kree Minions respectively are required to unlock them respectively (require all teams at a given star level to complete the level, characters unlock at 5*) 3)Mercenaries are necessary for the Payday event. Deadpool if his raids come around works, Bullseye and Korath, are currently the other villains you can use. Merc Riot Guard is easy to get from stores. Picking up another 1-2 of the minions will get you into that event for credits fairly quickly. 4) Hand characters - Catalyst events. Hand characters are used in the Catalyst flash event, so you probably again want a basic team at 3? stars or so just to get some additional resources when the event hits. However unless you luck out with Nobu, only Elektra is a villain and not a minion. 5) City Heroes (Defenders and Punisher?) new event coming, for ability materials. Defenders just got a re-work, so they may be a viable Blitz and Raid team as well. Other characters have been available through flash events (Storm, Rocket, Ms Marvel), so have a wide roster with decent power (10-12k power characters) can benefit you for those events. Starting teams: Villains: Yondu (Heroes 1-9), Hand Sorceress (Heroes 2-9), Bullseye (Heroes 2-6), Crossbones (Blitz store, Villains 4-9), Nebula (Heroes 4-9) or Elektra (Heroes 3-9) Heroes: Punisher (Heroes 1-6), Wolverine (daily objectives), Gamora (Blitz store), Quake (Arena store), Night Nurse (Shield Medic Heroes 2-3 until Villains 3-9), Drax/Luke Cage for a tank Arena: Gamora/Quake/Yondu/Crossbones and a fifth work well to start. Blitz: Try to grab a synergy team as soon as you can, but Arena team will work okay. Youtube is your friend for Blitz strategies to maximize your points Raid teams: Raid teams likely will start out being your arena team, with a healer in place of character #5. This is where Night Nurse shines. Participation in the raid means you get rewards, the amount of damage you do will set which rewards you get. If you get started early, raid currency might be best spent on raid character orbs, to increase the number of characters you have unlocked, while the blue/purple gear orbs build up your stash of gear. After a certain point you will want to stop buying the raid character orbs to grab specific gear pieces out of the store (Advanced Phosphates in my case) Currently I am running Ms Marvel and 4 Hero Brawlers (Gamora, Wolverine, Deadpool, Spiderman) as my primary raid team. There are other teams that you can find, you want some healing to minimize the use of raid packs, and maximum synergy. Other things to be added as I think of them. Other MSF players probably have several different options. Ayle

https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2018-09-06-amd-reimagines-everyday-computing-new-zen-based-athlon-desktop-processors At the link above there is the press release for the AMD Athlon replacements using Zen technology; I am not sure if this is Zen + (Ryzen 2xxx) or Zen (Ryzen 1xxx), though I suspect it is the former. So a question looms, which is I was planning a new Ryzen build with a discrete graphics card after tax returns in 2019. Because this is AM4 socket compatible, would it make sense to get an Athlon processor and then upgrade to a Zen 2 (Ryzen 3xxx) or Zen 2+ (Ryzen 4xxx) later? AM4 socket is supposed to be consistent through 2020, so I could go with the processor as a cost savings and get a better GPU now. Mostly I am not playing AAA games, WoT and WoWarships are my primary games, with 7 Days to Die as an alternate. Ayle