bathoz

I usually do the 10k credit option for new captains. Those first few skills go very, very quickly.
Another reason you'll want to focus on a single captain for a line is that when they reach 19 points, any further XP they earn becomes "Free Captain XP", and can be applied to any captain (including for retraining use).

Can someone indirectly non-link me to some not non-illegal mods?

10 Personal Missions that each give you 10 flags (mostly good ones)
https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfWarships/comments/7x0yv5/bonus_codes_from_naval_legends/

The sad fact is that you can't do 300k+ if your team is competent.

The sad fact is that you can't do 300k+ if your team is competent.

For Tier 8 dubloons there really aren't that many choices.
Alabama, Tirpitz, Atago, Prince Eugen and Enterprise. Oooh, Lo Yang.
Now, there's one indifferent ship and some good ones in that bunch, but I'd suggest none of them.
From your commentary, the Tirpitz is what one would suggest. Except you've got a Scharnhorst, so don't really need the doubling up. Don't get me wrong, Tirpitz is fun and good. But it's not as fun or good as the Scharnhorst.
This isn't World of tanks, and tier 8 isn't the magic tier where all the fun and happiness exists. In WoWS that tier is currently tier 7.
Anyway, enough waffling and some suggestions:
If this is about grinding cash, get a Missouri. It shits credits. It's a good ship. It's a different line for you to have a trainer in. If this is about grinding cash, and you have patience, sit on the doubloons and buy tier X perma-camo for whichever tier X you get to first. Wait for the Kidd to hit the tech tree and get that. 

There was a 1 Montana 6 Khaba tactic we faced. It was weirdly effective.

We are having database corruption which affects just some of the accounts. We are working on resolving this. I'm sorry about the inconvenience this causes.

Six kill Kraken as an Edinburgh in a tier X game.
 

 
 

I tested it and it actually does work, I was able to see ships to my full 32.4km range and beyond. That said using a bot CV and I was able to reliably citadel a Bismark at 32.2km. Useless for ingame but fun none the less

Yeah. At the moment the stats that stat sites can record are nice but not telling. Solo win rate is damn fine measure though.
Also, you can learn a lot from your stats – even the ones we have. Things like survival rate can be telling (hint, mine is dogshit).

Fuck Ships?
 
Wait, that's Kan-Colle, right?

They dropped the gun calibre because of treaty obligations.

The Orion is absurdly overpowered. Just disgustingly broken for its tier.

St. Louis has a ridiculously low skill floor, but the skill ceiling isn't very high either. Most of the tier three cruisers and destroyers are better then it when they are played by an experienced player with functioning brain cells.
 

After playing both I think that the tier 4 D-T (delerium tremens?) is the keeper. 152mm guns and 15km range at tier 4!

Yamato:  20
Montana: 21
Großer Kurfürst : 25
Zao: 23
Des Moines: 21 - Because it's real.
Hindenburg: 25
Moskva: 19
Minotaur: 20
Shimakaze: 19 
Grozovoi: 14
Khabarovsk: 16 - Because it isn't.
Hakuryu: 17

That makes no sense at all, what the fuck are you even saying? The Dunkerque is one of, if not the most inaccurate battleships at tier six. Gun layout and bracketing have nothing to do with it.

The way I've discussed it earlier is like so:
Gun stats tend to exist on something of a linear distribution. DPM on one side, accuracy/reliability on the other. In tier six this is easy to see. One one side you have the Fuso, and on the other you have the Warspite.
Except, here's the Dunkerque, with both bottom of tier DPM AND near bottom of tier accuracy. Heck, the guns good points actually work against it, as the high shell speed increase verticle dispersion and the huge pen (combined with flat arcs) mean that you over penetrate many more ships than you'd expect.

The way I've discussed it earlier is like so:
Gun stats tend to exist on something of a linear distribution. DPM on one side, accuracy/reliability on the other. In tier six this is easy to see. One one side you have the Fuso, and on the other you have the Warspite.
Except, here's the Dunkerque, with both bottom of tier DPM AND near bottom of tier accuracy. Heck, the guns good points actually work against it, as the high shell speed increase verticle dispersion and the huge pen (combined with flat arcs) mean that you over penetrate many more ships than you'd expect.

The St Louis is not representative of playing cruisers. It is slow and incredibly tanky. After tier 3, that is true of zero cruisers.
I bring this up because you mention "stay in the fight" as a reason to play them. Most cruisers require very careful control of space, line of sight, terrain, timing (between shots etc) and the like to keep alive. In return they get good to great DPM and piles of utility gadgets.
In fact, there's a tendency to describe destroyers as "like light tanks in WoT". But really, unless you're just bush spotting, cruisers are the light tanks / light mediums.
To get a more representative feeling of what playing high tier cruisers will be like, without going halfway up the trees, I'd suggest playing the tier 3/4 French cruisers, or the 3/4 IJN cruisers.


Eh.. eeeeh. BBs are the most forgiving. DDs (particularly japanese ones) allow people who are bad at managing threats to feel like they're in the game for long periods of time. Cruisers carry just as hard (if not harder), but aren't as easy to do instantly well in.
Ironically, this is a changed belief. In the early days of WoWS before the noobs got to fairly average level of aim, BBs were considered the 'skilled' ship, while every idiot and his boy were derping around in Clevelands firing a million shells per minute - just because the weight of fire (and fire set) made up for the bad aim.

So I was trying out the 128s on the Gaede in ranked today, as I realized that the advantage the 150s give me, doesn't usually help in ranked (not enough cruisers around in most cases). The match was fairly derpy, as not only did it take me a while to get used to the 128's ballistics, but also because the match started with a close-range 3 on 1 between a Leander, my Gaede and a Fubuki against an enemy Leander, which only I survived despite no involvement of outside forces whatsoever (omg, those people...). In the end, it came down to a one on one between a well-played Fuso and a derpy-played Graf Spee:

Close call, eh? What do you think who won?

What is the mindset of these people? Why do they even bother? What do they think they can achieve by, what I can only consider intentionally, harming others?

It's not about the Ryujo. I mean, yes, it's better than the independence, but that's not what counts. Carriers are so binary that it becomes a completely personal decision. Are you going to be the better carrier player more often than you're not? Go for it. Because as soon as you're not, you're actively hurting your own chances.
I'm also starting lowish – I reckon I'll play the Dunkerque to start with, just because it'll be fun ships and I won't be able to play it once things get serious.

It's not about the Ryujo. I mean, yes, it's better than the independence, but that's not what counts. Carriers are so binary that it becomes a completely personal decision. Are you going to be the better carrier player more often than you're not? Go for it. Because as soon as you're not, you're actively hurting your own chances.
I'm also starting lowish – I reckon I'll play the Dunkerque to start with, just because it'll be fun ships and I won't be able to play it once things get serious.