AndyHill

Well the whole point of the post i was replying to was to make the carriers more vulnerable to fires. Which they can't, due to the wonderful way the whole thing is designed.

The problem with that is carriers being very easy to set on fire. Drop a few bombs on one and then race a squad of rocketeers in to make it stick. Personally I of course wouldn't mind, but this is one of the many issues with the current design.

Well he does have the right general idea.

Well there is the point that carriers don't share the burden of fire coming at your team. Doesn't exactly make them useless, but properly timed and done tanking can be a very valuable thing and carriers don't do much of it. In summary as far as stats go, carriers are Completely in a class of their own in Spotting (especially number of ships spotted per match is just wild compared to anything else) Defending caps Surviving Kills per death (combination of kills and survival) Very competitive in Damage Kills Bad at Capping Tanking (although not fragile, they just tend to stay safe) The main problem with carriers isn't how op they are, but as a whole their stats are frighteningly awesome with game breaking capability in some categories.

I don't know if comparing T9 BB with T8 CV is reasonable, but I think a triple or quadruple K/D ratio for the latter is a bit impressive, no?

I'm not strictly against nerfing premiums, but in practise it has been pretty difficult for WG to do so due to players being opposed to the changes. If they want to be able to actually nerf any of these ships should the need arise, a lot more clarity is required if they also want to avoid a community uproar. Also even though stuff like steel isn't available for real money (except that it was), it's probably more valuable to many because it's so hard to get. So far I'm not sure this system is clear enough to do its intended job (if that is to avoid community uproar in the face of "special ship" nerfs.

Well let's take a look then. Popularity seems to be heavily on the BB side, which is not a huge surprise and not really significant regarding combat influence. Frags are fairly similar, damagewise carriers are shightly behind, but not by a huge amount. Vladi and Lenin rival the best carrier in experience whereas the rest of the carriers are somewhat ahead of the rest of the battleships. Avg plane kills is irrelevant for somewhat obvious reasons. K/D-ratio is a massive win for the carriers, because while they are capable of getting equal amounts of frags per game, they are pretty much immortal compared to all the other classes. Spotting damage is completely missing, that would be a huge win for the carriers by a factor of two or three (I don't remember exactly how much spotting BBs did, I think carriers were about twice as good as DDs) and the number of ships spotted per match is stupidly in favor of carriers (although I don't know exactly how important that is). In cap control Carriers are roughly in the ballpark with cruisers (again not visible in this table), their pitiful capping is compensated by their unrivaled ability to decap. BBs are somewhat behind carriers and cruisers in this category with DDs well ahead of all others. Tanking would be massively in favor of BBs, because even though some carriers are capable of tanking quite a few hits when attacked, they usually simply don't get into harm's way like other classes do.

Why do the Halloween operations not count for daily missions? Surely they are considered "Random, Ranked, Co-op or Scenario Battles"?

That list is slightly weird. Somers is a special ship as well as Stalin and Bourg, but Black and Flint are not. Smolensk, Thunderer and Salem are special, but JeBa is not (and neither is Charleston?). With this kind of inconsistency in ships obtained by method X and their nerfability WG might have a hard time explaining things to disgruntled customers if they do decide to nerf some of them.

I still don't get the point. Your carrier is by far the best spotter / recon unit on the field, all you have to do to spot the Smolensk is to fly your planes close to it. Also you must understand that for every other ship spotting means the difference between being actually able to engage a target or not, not just a matter of convenience for finding targets of opportunity, right? Actually no, they are not the ammo, they are the actual unit. The carrier is just an entry point for the planes. Furthermore, carriers are not a long range unit, they are more of an omnipresent unit capable of spotting and engaging pretty much anytime anywhere. Lastly, the comparison was originally yours, I never claimed that the units were really comparable.

I still don't quite understand the point. All you had to do to spot him was to fly your planes close to him and spot him for yourself. As a carrier you are the absolutely dominant spotting force in the team, your teammates have to actually be near the ship, they are 6-8 times slower than your planes and they can't travel over terrain. If you didn't know where the Smolensk was (and needed to) it's on you, you didn't really need your temamates for anything there. Just counting additions as positive doesn't make sense really. If the game had ARP deathrays as regular equipment and they were then removed, wouldn't that be appreciated as an addition to realism? Or when WG removed the ability to stealth fire in open water, wasn't that kind of an appreciated addition to realism especially since it was also good for the gameplay? Yes of course they are different, the only common thing is that they are commonly hated. Artillery in WoT is a very specialized class with a specific role, carriers in WoWS are basically the dominant force with absolutely game changing spotting and first rate damage dealing abilities. Artillery doesn't lose its shells to anti-air guns, they are guaranteed lost when you fire them. Only the carrier has a chance to get its ammo back even after it has already done its job.

This is new to me, you couldn't see him with your planes before somebody spotted him for you? Since you mentioned the R-word, I'll just say that having carriers in fleet engagements isn't realistic, since it basically never happened. Other than that, long range units that don't have to risk anything to crab all over everyone else are generally a very dangerous design element. Also arty in WoT generally does fairly little damage, is useless in close combat and has basically no spotting ability. Range is also very relevant for every other class of ships with them having to take risks just to do damage and they are limited by terrain features.

Ask for advice. Good job so far. Understand the difference between statpadding and improving your stats by playing better. From the OP I understood this thread is about the latter, which is the correct approach. Make the minimap BIG and keep staring at it. This game is played on the minimap, the sniper view is purely for aiming - and you should spend more like 30s in total during the 20min match in sniper view, never in one go (except perhaps for some spammer ships and preferable never in those either. Make sure you have last known ship positions and ship names as well as relevant ranges such as spotting and radar enabled on the minimap, you find these setting by ctrl-clicking the cog icon on top of the (now huge) minimap. Don't rush the tiers, do play lots of different ships. Learn the more eccentric game mechanics after getting the hang of the basics. Watch videos from good players and such. Ask for more advice. Specifically if you have more specific questions. If something immensely op (other than a carrier) kills you, formulate the venting post into a question rather than a rant and you will learn something. Post replays for more experienced players to review. Never play carriers. You won't like them and if you do, you will become the kind of person who likes carriers.

Good point, it's exactly like a cruiser broadsiding a battleship. Except maybe for a few insignificant details, like the cruiser actually having to show broadside (except for a few really squishy ones), being actually spotted and in (effective) range of your guns and in the open without cover all at the same time. We can probably omit the slight and meaningless detail that to blab the cruiser the BB (or someone else) usually needs to be close enough to risk getting shot at in return. But since the ship in question is a Smolensk - which since its release has been nothing but favorite food for battleships - we can probably just assume that the BB in question had a leisurely risk-free stroll to the firing position. Just the tiny, insignificant and meaningless things WoWS is actually made of for all other ships except for carriers, jockeying for positions, taking actual risks and making plays.

Well I'm certainly not going to claim that it isn't.

This is a very good point. Carriers should be removed from battles and tiers where there is no meaningful AA.

I'm ok with directives and the Halloween event looks at least interesting, but unless daily missions (that apparently give you italian tokens) can be completed in the filth gathering thing it's way, way, waaayyyy overboard grindy.

Well that is of course true, but there is a definite reduction in the effectiveness of incoming fire compared to when you can actually target ships in the aiming view. You are also probably correct in that the best players will end up benefiting more from everyone having to resort to map dot aiming, but they would also probably be better shots in a normal shootout.

In randoms good BBs will blab cruisers just like in CW and good carriers will strike the important targets and spot just like in CW. Likewise, bad players will still be bad in CW. If a game design only works when there are bad players around, the design is inherently bad and failed. The game needs to be balanced for good players, especially when it will make things better for baddies as well, or at least not worse.

Well that is actually a good point. Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely for everything that diminishes the gigantic impact carriers have on the games they are in, it's never a bad thing. I am, however, baffled by the original post in this thread. The problem is the same in randoms as well as clan wars - and probably more pronounced in clan battles just like the original post implies. However, removing on-screen spotting will only reduce the amount of spotted damage the ships take, it will do little or nothing to ruining tactical moves in CWs or randoms. Which is what the original post is mostly about. And like you said, limiting this change to CWs is pretty odd, since in CWs people have the means to get over even complete removal of any form of automated spotting information. Of course even in Randoms you can just type "just dropped fighters in front of a flanking group of ships" in chat and although that's admittedly better than the current situation, it's not exactly a solution.

It's still the very same game at the core and a good game needs to work at least reasonably well in all skill brackets. Some lower end clans also seem to operate without voice comms or much practice, making their play not that different from randoms or especially high tier ranked where people generally know what the meta is and how they generally need to play. The fact that the number of BBs needs to be limited so heavily in competitive modes is at least interesting as far as balance is concerned and BBs are a very powerful class, but I can't really say anything certain about their balancing in general. Also if the max number of ships per class in a match is used as measurement it's not exactly great for carriers with one in high tier randoms (5 for BB) and zero in competitive (vs 1BB in CW and 2BB in KoTS).

The only difference between clan battles and randoms is the amount of coordination and funnily enough, the amount of coordination in clan battles is the ideal the game design needs to strive towards in randoms so how exactly is this not a direct admission as to just how bad the CVs are for the game in general?

Oh my actual lord is that even for real? It is, isn't it? First they say that carriers provide too much information and then they go on to state that the fix they're trying is to only show the ships on the minimap. Do the designers never look at the minimap or how do they think that's going to help? Also it's the exact same ducking thing in randoms, just the scale of the impact may be less. At least they finally admit that carriers are making the game worse and just maybe this is finally the beginning of the end for this fiasco.

So, aircraft carriers are giving too much information for your team or as you put it "the ability of aircraft carriers to effectively give their team information about the location of the enemy has too much influence on the outcome of clan battles". The suggested fix is "Ships detected by the aircraft carrier player will be visible to them in the game world and on the minimap, but their allies will see the enemy only on the minimap." I can tell you right now that this won't work well, because at some point above the bottom of Squall 3, most players in clan battles actually have a minimap on the screen and they can thus easily get the location of the enemy from there. Interestingly you also admitted that carriers break concealment and interesting plays. This is also a fact, good job. Although in team modes the signifigance of such plays and concealment is somewhat bigger, it's the exact same thing in randoms as well so good job finally admitting how devastating carriers are for the game. And just giving the information on the minimap will not help much in randoms either, since most of the above let's say 43% players actually do look at the map from time to time.

Earlier you said about the situation where the SMG dude gets eventually killed by the sniper: (in a situation where the SMG dude mitigates damage by dodging a few shots but eventually dies). So does mitigating some damage (SMG dude in the open dodging a few shots before dying) before dying count as a counterplay or not? I'm having a really hard time following the definitions of counterplay and counters, since they seem to be all over the place and somewhat situational, which is why I'd like to get some kind of a general definition from you on what you would consider as counterplay. Maybe I can try to approach the situation from another angle; do you agree with this definition of counterplay: "1. a positive or aggressive action by the defending side, esp in chess. verb (intransitive) 2. to make an opposing or positive action from a position of defence."? That is exactly what they are. In a situation where you turn back to your team, WASD to make hitting harder and activate defAA to only take 10% of your hitpoints in damage as opposed to 15% you'd otherwise have taken, the situation ends with you losing 10% hitpoints (and possibly AA making you more vulnerable for follow-on attacks), spotted and in a tactically worse position whereas the carrier has lost nothing of importance except some time to farm - and due to his ability to re-engage extremely quickly you have also probably lost more influence by turning back to your team for AA help or just by getting spotted and having to go defensive. Every action you took in that situation was purely defensive, carrier was completely in control of the engagement and, depending somewhat on the general situation, had full ability to choose the engagement at will. In that example you were the SMG dude in the open getting smacked by the sniper and the best you could possibly hope for is to maybe make him miss a few shots. And the reason people are raging about snipers and artillery is because they are classes that can get into favorable situations where there is little to no counterplay. And compared to carriers in WoWS they are not that special. Maps are designed to allow counterplay to snipers - mostly by using cover and rushing him with superior close range firepower, maps are also designed to limit their lines of fire and make their weaponry situational. In WoWS the map least advantageous to carriers is ocean and you can't get much more even than that. In WoT the artillery generally has not that great damage, zero spotting, almost zero ability to defend themselves when rushed and they are somewhat often under threat of getting spotted and rushed down by fast units relatively early on in the game. There is also much, much more actual cover available for their targets. Yet they are universally hated due to their ability to poop all over everyone else from relative safety and relative lack of counterplay. Yet that cruiser can still shoot back. An open water shootout is usually not in favor of the cruiser but he can shoot back. Possibly he can also utilize concealment to choose his engagements, drop torps, find cover and re-engage if he's not a HIV or something like that in a good kiting position, where he can even challenge the BB into a straight shootout. Those are counterplays. They are all dangerous, interesting and skill-dependent actions and even if the situation isn't favorable to you, in this game scissors can crack the rock with some skill and luck. That is positive and aggressive action by the defending party. When you're facing a carrier, the only question is how much damage you take from him and his teammates through the carrier's spotting and how badly your sneaky plans get foiled when you get spotted trying to make a play. Even if you shake a fist and curse at the pigeon pooping on you, you're still getting pooped on.