AndyHill

A good example of why a big gun ship can't go near carriers and another case of a relatively small, crippled force being obliterated by a massively superior one rather than a more or less even contest such as in WoWS. And although it would've probably been possible for planes to participate in the combat after the British fleet was in contact, did they actually do so?

CV class has been in the game for a long time, it was just so fundamentally incompatible and disruptive to the rest of the gameplay experience (=90% of the game or something like that) that WG decided to go for a difficult and expensive (as well as painful for CV players) rework. However, since the basic qualities that make carriers carriers didn't change, they are no better (if not worse) now than they were before. And although I can't prove it with calculations, I'm fairly convinced that there is no rework that can make them work. In reality they were extremely disruptive - making all other ship types just about pointless - and now we have two iterations of game implementations that have a strong negative impact on the game. I'd say it looks pretty bad for carriers. Or perhaps rather all the other classes.

One is a case of ships getting caught in port and massacred, the other is a blunder of epic proportions where escort carriers (not on anti-shipping duty and not prepared to face surface combatants) got ambushed by a major fleet due to Halsey chasing empty carriers and abandoning their guard position. The reason BB to BB combat didn't and couldn't happen was carriers. You are correct about WW2 being the war of carriers and planes, they did completely dominate the war. However, WoWS is not exactly a simulator and it is a game of surface fleets engaging in (pretty evenly matched) gun battles. And that didn't and couldn't happen in reality, because when carriers were present, surface fleets couldn't get close enough to each other to fire their guns. So, if you follow history you would have separate queues: one for surface gun ships (mostly at night) and another one for carrier groups (daytime). I'd be pretty fine with that.

How many times did carrier planes participate in battles where gun ships were shooting at each other during WW2?

Well 12.45 could be workable - after all does it have to be able to fight any ship on enemy team anyway if it can just outplay them by denying them the damage / kill in the safety of his friends. And who knows, there might be a Kawachi for him to fight later (it probably wouldn't make it far from spawn before the match is over on a T10 map). Then again something like an Umiaze would probably do much better than the slow gun ships. (Btw the argument about being able to fight the tanks of their own tier is actually commonly used in WoT where bottom tiers are in general far more screwed than in WoWS). Unfortunately none of this is really fun for me (or perhaps possibly because these options are significantly less fun than playing without carriers makes the difference feel like I'm not having fun at all). Not even in an AAA ship, since they all pretty much rely on concealment to make plays more involved than being a difficult target. (playing BB vs DD compared to a ship vs carrier) Well there are some things you can factor in. For example at least to me it seems that based on anecdotal stuff and somewhat quantifiable questionnaires we can conclude that carriers are not a well liked class in general, possibly (and in my view almost certainly) more so than any other class in the game. And as mentioned before, I believe the reason for that to be mostly the disruptive nature carriers have on the game and especially the asymmetric nature of ship-plane interaction where the former usually feels like a target (again, in my view, ´largely justifiably). There are comparable examples from other similar games, for example the artillery in WoT (that is far more limited in its abilities compared to carriers) is a universally hated thing because of its ability to engage other units from a safe distance. And that is actually problem of this thread, I'm afraid. To prove that carriers are fundamentally incompatible with surface gun ship battles, you'd have to prove that every single design fits the definition and that might be outright impossible. Intuitively I think that it's at least possibly or even likely true, but there's nothing really I can do to prove it, having actually tested two out of potentially nearly infinite number of variations. Again, all of this is pretty difficult to prove so I won't even bother to try. However, hypothetically, if you as a game designer figure out that one unit class in your game (let's say completely randomly for example that it's one out of four classes total) is not very popular in battles played and it is almost universally hated by the playerbase (let's say 60% strongly hated to somewhat hated vs. 20% strongly liked to somewhat liked, assume the numbers are balanced and correct) and considered a detriment to any game it participates in. Even if you can't come up with factual evidence to show that it is in fact harmful to the gameplay, can you afford to not act?

Well neither does a Khabarovsk (except if the single most important defining factor of a DD is speed). The Louis doesn't have much AAA, but its guns would probably do something to reds who get close enough and if it utilizes air cover and its friends protect it, it can even survive for a while. The amount of restrictions is a question of balance. You need to have some by definition (like for example in golf you can't just walk to the hole and drop the ball in, you have to whack it with clubs), and in WoWS carrier-free games are just fine and at least in my view much, much finer than when carriers are in play. Well how do I avoid unfun situations when I find playing against carriers unfun? Perhaps more importantly, I actually do find it fun when I'm shooting at stuff and getting shot at. Losing such a contest is less fun than winning it, but in total I've had fun nonetheless. In fact contest and competition is one of the main reasons for playing games of any sort to begin with. There are different levels of fun and unfun and I find it a big warning sign in game design if a game has significant amounts of the latter. Here's another difference in our views: I do. Depending on the circumstances I usually have at least some means of fighting it, the onlt no-win situation being when I need the kill to win an dthe DD can simply run away from me without ever getting spotted. With CVs the only competitive situation I am having fun is when I'm chasing him down with my guns blazing and he's trying to get me before I get him. But how does a team have fun when the individuals in it do not? Also to me, everything I do in a game is a teamplay move. Whenever it's an option, I always play for the win and everything I do is intended to help the team. If that means being more than 10km away from the nearest teammate at some point, that's fine to me, in fact it makes the game more exciting and opens up possibilities for making plays. It's not that I wouldn't trust your word on what happened, I was just somewhat curious to see what kind of a situation you considered to be so detrimental to the game.

Does that need to apply to all ships on the enemy team? A St. Louis would still be able to harm the T3 in the red team at least and if he's snuggling his teammates the Gearing probably can't go for him (which is how the interaction between carriers and many ships goes even equal-tier). Also if the Louis is out of friends, the Gearing (who can basically dictate the terms of engagement by not having to fight if he doesn't want to) can kill him, but probably lose a bit of fighting effectiveness in the process - which is again pretty much what it's like for many ships when facing a carrier. Well the friend who admitted to playing carriers to TX (and in the process of grinding legendary modules) wasn't comparatively that bad in them, gaining generally above-average results. As a funny anecdote, having played over 10k battles and ground all T10 ships in the game, his all time damage record is still in a T9 carrier (and even the average is one of his highest and his carrier winrate is comparatively decent even though no-one of his friends would've platooned with him if he had admitted to playing carriers in the first place). I think this is the very heart of the issue at hand and probably the zenith of this conversation, since we've probably reached a point where the main differences between our views are just too big. I actually thought about only responding to this specific point, because the others are kind of fringe details compared to this. For me games being less restricted and more fun is the ultimate goal in game design and if there are two ships in a match that make it more restricted, less fun, less exciting and so on for 22 others, there is a significant design problem at hand with a somewhat obvious if also painful remedy. You could of course say that any enemy ship will limit your options, especially if they are in a class that is your counter, but it's not really quite like that. The whole game would be pointless without opponents anyway, and to me when I'm facing the worst possible counter to the ship I'm in I never feel as restricted or fun-deprived as when I'm in any ship in the game and facing a carrier. And I don't think I'm alone in thinking that way, which is shown for example in the polls mentioned earlier. And if restricting options and making the game less fun forces people to play more for the team (which I do not agree with, but it's a complicated thing to measure), is it actually worth it if it makes the game less fun? I'm not making money playing this game (writing reviews and other articles doesn't count, technically I don't get paid for the playing part), it has to be fun and interesting, which happens when a game is rich in outplay opportunities and inherently somewhat fair. I don't know if going deep into details of specific situations is very useful especially at this stage, but if you have a replay of that battle you mentioned I'd be somewhat interested in taking a look at how it played out.

(AAA ship sitting in a useful location to deny air activity) Yes, thankless and frankly very boring job compared to what the alternative is - and that's why there are no classe of or individual ships in the game I want to face carriers in. If I'm in a Minotaur or a Worcester my AAA crews might get to shoot down some planes while I try to babysit teammates (who also have a hard time making plays outside my sphere of influence). When there are no carriers I'm free to make high risk - high reward -plays, trying to bring my ungodly dpm to bear on the enemy fleet while trying to cope with a slight case of fragility. I think that Ideally there should be relatively few thankless jobs in a game that's supposed to be fun. Mostly. Well, make a diagram of maneuverability, firepower, concealment and durability with allowance for extra utility such as torps and radar and every ship in the game fits, except for some, special few. If you look at battles within ship classes they tend to be fairly similar; DD vs DD is a bit faster than a BB vs BB fight and they tend to happen at closer ranges, but the ships shoot at each other, try to angle and juke to mitigate damage, drop torps if they have some - while of course paying attention to what happens around them. When it comes to inter-class confrontations the relative strengths are so different it's usually better for a DD for example to avoud direct confrontation with a DD or a BB, but definitely not always. There are of course limits to how far different units can be from each other even if they fit on the same spectrum for the game to be enjoyable for both, and in some situations between some units in WoWS the limits are already perhaps stretching a bit, but all in all I feel the balance is pretty good. This is why I'm very worried about submarines, however, although that is probably a discussion for some other time. Carriers, however, feel like they're playing a different game entirely. And like I said earlier that's not necessarily a bad thing, but fitting such a different thing into a game is at the very least a major challenge. This of course requires the definition of a viable counterplay. A St. Louis for example could hide within his team to deny shots to bigger red ships and if he manages to find the red T3 they could have a real fight. I think a Louis could also at least give a Gearing a bloody nose if it came out to fight and more importantly it could spot the gearing (or at least let the team know there is something invisible spotting him) or its torps - basically taking an entire T10 ship out of the game. He could also spot a Yamato for his island hugging Worcester buddy. Of course if the team split up and he got run over by a Zao he would probably become points on the board with relatively little to show for it, but it's a team game so some teamplay is required anyway. I have...a friend who has played carriers enough to have all TXs in his port, didn't dislike the RTS although RTS games aren't really his thing, think the current version is a fairly relaxing and not very unfun way to spend time - but still thinks that carriers have a terrible influence on the game. Or perhaps especially because he has seen first hand what carriers can do to screw over players who are basically playing the game well and properly. If there was a carrier like the one with subs during Halloween, he would probably play it lots and enjoy it. I don't think balance would help (well it definitely would, but I mean not enough to make CVs a not largely hated class). Artillery in WoT is very similar, universally hated thing even though it's not actually that powerful. It has little in terms of firepower, no durability and zero spotting. Its only thing is the ability to lob shells almost anywhere on the map while staying safe behind the lines, which irritates players to no end. To me such universal dislike is, if nothing else, another huge warning sign for a developer.

But I do, or the interaction becomes rather one sided - which is one of the reasons so many people are so frustrated with carriers. (AAA ship being pushed into a useful location by possibly also attacking enemy fleet) It only really works if it's the only important place on the map nad the carrier has to go for you and can't for example find other targets. Besides that, the existence of the opposing enemy force and beating them is the source of fun, not having to contest the carrier as well (he may either try to strike you or simply stay away). And unless the carrier does attack me - which he shouldn't - I'm basically sitting there just to give AAA support, possibly not even getting to shoot at stuff, which can be a bit of a bummer. Well if it's objectively false, then there must be some quantifiable way to prove it. BB, DD and CA are not actually inherently that different. Only some of their attributes such as the aforementioned concealment are different (and some capabilities such as torps and radar). In some cases the capabilities of the classes are very close to each other or overlap, for example Khabarovsk's concealment is worse than a Minotaur's (in typical builds), likewise with Moskva and Conqueror. In the extremes, the capabilities and gameplay of DDs and BBs do differ greatly, but they are still on the same spectrum of possibilities. Carriers are the only real outlier when it comes to gameplay, making their implementation at least a significant design challenge (the results of which we are seeing right now), although absolutely not necessarily a design error. Another way of looking at the team balancing that's probably closer to the actual case than nuclear missiles is the matchmaker. If only team balance matters, there is no reason to not mix all tiers into the same battles as long as they are evenly spread. Little ships can at least stay near friendlies countering enemy ships' ability to attack them and they can even fight if they find their opposite number at some point in the battle. At the risk of going off topic just a small, irrelevant opinion since you mentioned this; I find the change to shooting over islands one of the few things the rework improved (even more so if it actually worked properly). Being able to shoot through landmass is one of the things that defy common sense, not just realism. The gameplay implications I'm not sure of, but at least the design is a bit more elegant now. Of course the problem was that it was very hard to figure out lines of fire from the overhead perspective, that would've needed some work. Another somewhat off-topicish thing came to my mind: why do you personally think questionnaires about carriers (I was inspired by the thread that popped up earlier today, but there are earlier ones as well as flamu's quick straw poll that was fairly negative) often end up so negative? Why do you think people dislike carriers' presence (not only playing them) so much?

I'm inclined to think that this needs to be very situational (as in every class has a situation where it shines) and the big picture needs to be perfectly balanced or the designer has failed, at least to a degree. I think the reason I have a hard time thinking of surface ship vs carrier interactions as counterplay is because of lack of aggressive options. If you're annoyed by someone nose tanking, you can push at him. It's not always a great option, but sometimes it is and it's almost always available. Even though losing planes does hurt the carrier's ability to influence the game (eventually), but with the exception of a few special ships, it's impossible to make any form of aggressive moves against the carrier. Parking an AAA monster in a useful location on the map is the closest thing I can think of, but if it's a really useful location it's almost by necessity also an aggressive move against the enemy gun ships as well. I simply disagree with this view, for me the contestants of this game are (typically) 24 people playing a match (clan wars is a bit different and the dynamic is a bit different in ranked). Team of course wins or loses, but all the matchups that occur during the game need to be at least somewhat fair - or to a large degree your fault. The way I see it (see the lack of aggressive option I mentioned above), any interactions between carriers and surface ships tend to be "unfair". If you look at teams as a whole, intercontinental missiles would be balanced if both had them (and it's hard to think of a more balanced game than one that always ends in a draw). True enough, but then the question is should there be a class that isn't (or can't be, as per the original title of the thread) balanced in many vs many matchmaking. Again, I see this as another warning sign of something that is potentially wrong with the basic design. If any other class can be balanced and fine 5v5 or 4v4, there needs to be a very good special reason for also including a class that can really only exist 1v1 (which in my view it can't). You could also replace "can" and "can't" with "has to" and "doesn't have to" to get the other side of the argument. With WoWS being largely an area control game, the carriers' inability to participate in it is another warning sign of it being possibly rather detached from and external to the main gameplay mechanics rather than a refreshing addition of variety. Of course that's not a death sentence to the class in itself, but the way I see it, the warning signs are piling up. If the hull is so useless and hardly part of the game (I don't really disagree with this, at least not completely, my impalatable seems to have about 5% capping and 22% defense per game), why have one at all? Why can't the planes just arrive from off-map (which would probably be the less unrealistic option anyway)? I don't know really if this would be a better option, but it's definitely a design decision to think about - especially if you're heck-bent beyond all reason to make sure you can't control the hull simulataneously with planes (or rather at all, %#"&%¤ the %&&#"%#ng autopilot)? What was WG after there? But did it? I have to admit that I've never really paid that much attention to bow tanking in the first place, but I didn't notice a marked difference between carrier and non-carrier games (during RTS era). Also if eventually is acceptable, a DD will eventually get there if the tanker isn't dead by then from other means. Also I don't know (and choose to not care) if this is bad form or not, but in another discussion you mentioned that when sailing some other sort of a ship having a good carrier player on the red team makes you "miserable", which was a somewhat surprisingly strong expression. I'd be curious to know which aspect of the action-carriers specifically makes you feel so strongly about it?

(BB vs DD) This is of course entirely situational, even if you don't take into account other ships that might affect the confrontation much of the time. There are plenty of situations where the battleship can for example push a cap and force the DD out, at least if he can dodge a set or two of fish soup. You can pick and choose situations where each has an advantage or even a guaranteed win - and probably on the whole they will tilt in the DD's favor, but that's about the maximum difference between classesand I don't think it's that badly tilted in DD's favor on average (which is of course I can't prove with actual numbers). However, there is no reason for diversity to cost equality - it is likely to (since everyone being exactly the same would be pretty equal) - but in theory you can equalize different units and even if they're not exactly perfect at it, WG at least seem to try to do it as well. Well the capping example was actually yours (related to it being a good move to split up and go to a cap alone) so I don't think we have a lot of disagreement there, it is somewhat situational. Carriers aren't usually armored monsters nor are they extremely agile, but the risk of getting shot at is business as usual for any other mobile AAA battery and since this would likely be happening in the later stages of a game, the carrier would probably have a hitpoint advantage and intact AAA because at least it wouldn't have gotten shot at during the rest of the game like other ships do. Unless you take into account the fairness towards the other 22 or 20 ships that do risk becoming points on the board. I think this is at least somewhat contradictory. How can something be easy if it takes too much time and effort to bother removing an extremely powerful enemy unit from the game? The skill cap would be much less of an issue if it was 4v4 or 5v5 and the ship type balanced accordingly. In this case carriers could also have much more interaction between each other, since it wouldn't be so bad if one got completely shut out or even outright sunk. It still happens that one team's DDs, BBs or CA/Ls are just much worse than the other's and that causes problems (especially if your DDs are terrible), but at least it gives the laws of probability a chance to even thing up a little bit. 1 vs 1 is literally a coin toss and especially with RTS carriers, an immense amount of power put into one set of hands if his opponent is a potato. I don't think the comparison between ship hulls and planes is reasonable in the first place, they are entirely different things with pretty much nothing in common. At best I think you could compare them to a regular ship that has vulnerable turrets (only when they are firing) and a mostly immortal hull. The idea of replenishing planes is an interesting design decision, its validity depends pretty much entirely on the rate of resupply and the amount of original reserves. If you're ready to do a full strike (on an RTS carrier) that's pretty fast, but the DD strike could be even faster if he's alredy in a good position. Current carriers can be on station pretty fast every time, but for RTS carriers the need to spend some minutes recovering and preparing another strike was one of the balancing factors, so they might not be that fast to react either.

They can limit me more or less with the same tools I can use against him. He has concealment, better torps and a speed/maneuverability advantage (BB vs DD), whereas I have superior guns, colossal amount of hitpoints and armor. We're playing the same game. Depending on the situation I'm more or less disadvantaged, but this is the worst case scenario for me - it's literally rock vs. paper - but I still have a fighting chance. And the first mistake the DD does, he's risking relatively fast deletion. Having to spec for AAA with captain skills and modules at the expense of other options is bad game design, I think that can be taken as a fact. Depending on pure luck you could have wasted a massive amount of important resources on stuff that is completely irrelevant for the match at hand. I could understand that in competitive modes (where you can pretty much guarantee a carrier), but not for randoms. Even if the hull itself isn't the main element it doesn't mean that it's a powerful and in my view unfair advantage to almost (never) be in risk of losing the hull. Like you said in the above example, even a completely deplaned carrier can still cap if necessary or act as a powerful mobile AAA battery. At the very worst you're not 100 points (I actually don't remember carrier's point value but it's probably in the ballpark) points difference on the board. Plane kills don't even give you points in the scoring for the match. Also if you consider planes to be the main element, I think most carriers (I think at least the TX ones, probably not all the others) could go for maximum fail and fully wipe all of his squadrons at the start of them game, but still make a comeback with another set of full squads (or at least close to it). No other ship has such survivability Some ships can restore quite a bit of their hitpoints, but if their max fail inevitably and instantly turns them into points on the board. The fact that carriers are basically immune to other carriers (and any kind of dot with detonations on top) isn't just poor, kludgy design, it's basically a full admission from the designers that they just can't make the system work and they've stopped caring a while ago. If the tanker doesn't have support (and even if they do, they are usually immobile enough to be easy targets), a DD can in many cases just outright delete him. But that's of course entirely situationaland I don't know if much can be gained by analyzing a bunch of such cases with and without carriers present.

I really don't see it that way. I've never been bothered by a huge number of any kind of ship on the enemy team, if there are for example lots of DDs when I'm in a BB. By controlling their firing lanes and trying to figure out where they might be I can minimize or avoid taking damage from them. They don't stand a chance against me in a gunfight (well most of the time), so they really need to get lots of torp hits into me or I can even push them out of caps (with some amount of success. I'm not even overly bothered by a whole bunch of radars, at least if they're somewhat evenly spread in the teams. They're again ships on the ocean with different strengths and weaknesses, but more or less on the same battlefield. If I for example skirt their detection range I can keep them spotted, which few radar ships like very much. Of course there are better and worse team compositions, if I had an Asashio I might want to see 11 BBs in the teams rather than 11 Worcesters. I'm pretty much game for any kind of a setup as long as there isn't that one (or two) special ships in the game. (About the example of going for a distant cap in the late game) Assuming of course that the CV is still alive or understands to go there, but more importantly I still don't think carriers there should be an exception for carriers being able to operate on their own if fleet operations are enforced for everyone else. Yeah for me it's not a thing, I try to avoid doing it myself unless I get caught overextending and in CW (in the mud leagues) we try to find bow camping ships and then just farm them to death. But perhaps the relevant thing for this discussion is that (at least an RTS) carrier would have trouble deleting a bow camper as well if he's supported - and if he's not, he's pretty screwed against surface ships as well. Holy crab, I already knew the rework was basically built out of kludges, but it's like a gift that just keeps giving, I guess. Historicity and realism are one thing in a game like this, defying common sense is a whole other ballgame.

Except if it's the clan leader moving stuff to himself, he knows best.

(This was basically response to "Many if not most of the moves you can make are basically off the table and if you don't get support for a maneuver you know you need to make separate of a particularly bad case of the lemmings, your chances of success go from already low to basically flat zero if carriers are involved.") The point there was that the presence of carriers removes a lot of options from me and again I cant objectively quantify such a thing off the top of my head, except perhaps for some anecdotes. It's a fact that the playerbase is of varied skill levels, ideally you need to have some ability to compensate even when you get the short stick in the team lottery. Of course the reduction in ability to make plays applies to good teams as well, perhaps even more so, since getting caught at a bad time is even more dangerous. I think that by this definition most of the plays or moves I consider plays or moves would then not be qualify individual plays, since they are inevitably influenced by previous actions of my teammates in direct (or oblivious but beneficial) support - and always intended to improve my team's chances of winning, which usually means some for of support for my teammates. I don't know if it means anything, but I think we are kind of on the same page there. However, I tend to think that there are many times when it's beneficial to go alone, sometimes you for example need to run to the distant cap to stop reds from getting points even if that means splitting up and moving far away from your friends. This happens a lot especially in the late stages of the game when the carrier rework thing is at its most brainless and going alone is simply not feasible (Above was in response to a question about multiple carriers) I don't know what the original intent for carriers was, but at least in the wild early days WG didn't consider them special enough to even match evenly. To me the one on one -matchmaking sounds like a bit frightening thing balance-wise, even in WoT you can have something like three arties (the special class in that game) per side. Also with several carriers in one game (like in Farazelleth's competitions) there should even be lots of opportunities for teamplay in the air as well, so maybe that would be a good thing (if carriers were balanced accordingly). I actually remember one RTS carrier match from a long time ago where I was playing maybe a T6 carrier (or 7 or 8 possibly , I think it was a thing at even those tiers at some point) in a 2 vs 2 carrier match. My partner in crime used his fighters in escort mode so I had my hands full fending off attacks from two carriers with my fighters. The guy knew how to avoid AAA and he wasn't terrible at setting up strikes, so I just made my strike planes follow his flight and focused on the fighters when I saw that he was close to striking, I would quickly switch my attention to the bombers and did my own strike. Only later I realized that was probably the most [edited] move I've ever done in WoWS. The targets probably really appreciated getting double struck every time, but I also happened to steal all of my buddy's kills while his planes took all the AAA (since they were a little ahead of mine). Bow tanking is a good thing to do in many situations and if there's a bow tanking heavy in a good location the damage has basically been done, your team should've stopped him from getting there. I haven't personally seen that as a major issue, however. IDepending on the situation I often find it relatively relaxing to spam stationary targets, I can almost see my hit% go up and a few times I've had lots of fun with bow tankers in my RN torpedo ships (which requires pretty careful concealment play, which have less chance of success if there's carrier spotting available). Well off the top of my head I can't remember seeing any suggestions from you that wouldn't improve the RTS gameplay in some way. However, for me carriers would become a neutral entity a tthe point when they are completely blind and unable to do damage, at which point the situation would be the same as without carriers (except perhaps 11 v 11 or 10 v 10, which is not optimal). And that wouldn't even begin to make them a benefit to the game. So I strongly feel that your suggestions would've been great improvements, but not enough of a change to make me not dislike carriers. Just one more (almost) completely unrelated thing; in games with two carriers I've sometimes tried to coordinate my strikes with my teammate in hopes of reducing AAA effect on my (or his) planes, but at least so far it's always felt like there's little difference in the amount of puffs I'm dodging or damage I'm taking. That can of course be just my perception, since I haven't played carriers enough to really have a good eye on such things - and you can't really expect the kind of effect we had in RTS mode, where one squad could take the brunt of the AAA while others got off much easier. How exactly does the modern implementation work when there are multiple squadrons in its range at the same time?

It's probably bad form to go back to old things, but I had some time to think (funnily enough, playing futsal - I sucked, got tired and banged up, but we won so it was ok I guess) and I believe I didn't elaborate on this point enough, because it's very important to me in the way I see the game and carriers in it. The thing is, creating the crossfires (and other positional plays) are not actually that easy, because the enemy is doing the exact same thing and trying to stop you by using the exact same tools as you. Of course there is some variety between ships, but that just makes it more interesting as you have to try to play to your strengths and try to mitigate your opponent's. Everything you can do, your opponent can do (approximately), you just have to play the game better and beat him. Find an option, figure out an opening, think oustide the box and do something unorthodox to beat your opponent in the game of ships. to me, this is the very core of WoWS (and other comparable games). When carriers are in play, this changes completely. Many if not most of the moves you can make are basically off the table and if you don't get support for a maneuver you know you need to make separate of a particularly bad case of the lemmings, your chances of success go from already low to basically flat zero if carriers are involved. So sorry again for digging up old stuff, but to me this is really the key to the frustration I feel in carrier games. But can't just about anything that happens in any game be considered indipendent action by that definition? I may have received the ball in a good position as a result of team effort, but the job of kicking it in the goal is me and me alone, nobody can (unfortunately) move my feet for me to ensure probably significantly higher odds of success. And although it is rare, individuals do manage to make epic moves in team sports and those tend to actually become the most cherished moments people remember half a century or more after they happened. I actually don't think I would ever bother to play a game where there was no room for making individual moves. Ideally you'd need to be good to make them happen, but that's the goal anyway. Just one thing almost kind of related; how do you feel when you're in a battle with two carriers per side? Can you extrapolate that to three or four per side if that was possible? Would that open up much more opportunities for teamplay and make it more fun for the carriers (and leave more matches carrier free for me as a bonus)? I don't know if it's a good idea to go into individual, specific cases, but in this one I'd say if your contribution as a DD is to drop a few torps on a flank and run away, you would've been much better off in a different sort of a ship, probably doing much more dpm for your team. My experience in carriers and especially my success in them is limited, but I have managed to screw some people over really hard - for trying to do the right thing. I'm not exactly the best carrierist, but I do know a bit about the game so the best thing to do to not get spotted and struck by me in the early game is to not do what you're supposed to do. And I can't help but think that this is just highly questionable game design and the DD (or cruiser or battleship) I find and screw over trying to do the right thing would've been much better off if there weren't carriers in play - but so would've the one that stuck to his team mates and didn't even try to make a play knowing I was coming for him. To me that's just lose-lose. I don't see bow tanking as too much of an issue, it's highly situational and in a straight up fight a stationary bow tanker will lose to a ship that's moving about freely in the open. To me bow tanking is a thing that happens in very specific spots on maps or when you overextend and don't have better options. In these cases again you just need to find the room to make a move and either make the tanker useless by limiting his firing lanes (many good bow tanking positions are next to islands), flank him or something. To me bow tanking isn't much of a problem, I try to avoid it as much as possible and when I see somebody bowtanking it's usually just an opportunity to farm him or do something else. Just out of curiosity, how would you prevent nose tanking with RTS carriers (assuming AP bombs don't exist), especially if the tanker has at least decent amount of anti-air support(but perhaps let's not go too deep into specifics, this discussion is already getting a bit significant in scale)? Also I'm doing my best to try to keep things not biblically long and somewhat to the point, so if you feel like I've bypassed something relevant, let me know and I'll get back to it. Also as a clarification, I don't like the rework, it's a total fail, but I absolutely did not like the RTS carriers either. I originally got into this discussion, because I think the OP's point about carriers being fundamentally incompatible with surface gun ship gameplay is an interesting one and I think it probably has merit, but I can't prove it (and being able to prove such a thing would be a great feat for game design studies in general, but I don't really expect to be able to since I'm not that good). The thing that scares me most about the rework is that to a large part due to not being a big fan of RTS games in general (meaning that they can be great games, just not for me) the new carriers are actually more fun to play and I'm not alone. If WG is actually successful in significantly increasing the number of carriers in battles, it could well be enough to drive me away from the game I've enjoyed quite a bit for years.

Well the teamwork claus kind of applies to the carrier example too, if you consider placing AAA ships in the necesasry positions and sticking close enough to them teamwork. And if teamwork is considered, being denied by enemy cations can mean being shot at from outside your effective range while not being able to retaliate, if for example a DD is keeping you spotted (and DDs and their spotting are often the area denial weapon of choice). Thankfully it's not often that effective, but then again it's your ship in jeopardy, not just your ability to strike someone (for the moment). You can make educated guesses as to what a carrier is doing, but he can still move about the map with about five times the speed of regular ships. And although RTS carriers got really, really bad only after they gained air superiority, they still had lots of squadrons they could use to spot large areas. Can you elaborate a bit on your view? Also I think it would be useful to define "independent action", since in the case of carriers being 10km from nearest support on a map that is much, much larger than that can be considered independent enough for blabbage. Anyway, in many team based games (think football, hockey etc.) there's at least one guy further back from the action playing somewhat independently. In basketball and volleyball the teams move more as a unit, but I don't think that makes them more team games. Also, there was and still kind of is one ship type that is excempt from this rule; should carriers also be discouraged from being separate from the team? To an extent it's of course beneficial to stay near the action, but in the RTS days there wasn't and still isn't any real danger for carriers who want to stay even 15-20km away from the nearest teammates. Even in the very late game when this happens often due to thinning of the herd, solitary carriers are still fairly safe. Also, should the carriers' ability to strike be somehow limited by team efforts (your own team that is)? How about for example you can't fly to an area not spotted by a teammate or your own ship (this of course doesn't make any sense if you think about realism, but a mechanism like this is implied if you categorically want to deny individual action in a team game. This is actually quite straightforward: the enemy can always do the same. That's actually what usually happens (in non-CV games as well or especially in them if you ask me) in WoWS matches, both team jockeying for positions depending on their skill levels and game sense. Sometimes one team gets the upper hand easily (and this is where you are very much dependent on your team entirely without carriers as well), sometimes it's a closely fought game that requires a good play (which can, to an extent, be an individual effort) to open up and turn around. That's WoWS at its most fun for me, actually and that's what I look forward to when I press battle. My view on independent action is that in a game like this everything you do is by necessity a team thing or at least it has an effect on your team (going AFK or suiciding). You can't run off the map, you're bound by the limits and every action you take has an effect on your team's chance of winning. Sometimes it's useful to split up (for example late game to try to stop / get caps and especially when you form a plan and communicate it with your teammates, that's as much teamplay as play can be (in my view of course), more so than just sticking enough ships close together to have some AAA deterrent (which is often the only thing you can (try) to do in the late game with the current carrier implementation).

However, this was entirely dependent on the ship and there were few single ships that could go alone and expect to have a reasonable chance of not getting blabbed. Nowadays there are pretty much none, however, so I suppose WG fixed that. Being denied by enemy action is a thing for all ship classes, you could even say that when that happens to a regular ship it's even more annoying since there's a good chance of going back to port instead of just losing planes or simply an opportunity to strike. The way I see it, concealment is the only thing in the game that allows people to make plays. If every ship was spotted all the time you could still try to limit firing arcs with islands, but other than that I think the game would become a stale and boring campfest where the team with better shots tends to win. And as I mentioned earlier I really don't feel that carriers make concealment plays more exciting. I can try to estimate enemy ship positions and try to position my own ship accordingly, sometimes finding really clever and useful positions by taking risks with not getting spotted at a dangerous moment. More often than not I get it right and that's exciting for me (well it can get quite exciting when you get it wrong as well). However, when carriers are in play it's nearly impossible to try to estimate your spottability for more than about 30sec to a minute at a time and you can be certain that if the enemy really needs to spot you, they will. When a match starts and I try to figure out my options, I can literally feel my "game sense" go nope-nope-nope on a good number of them every time there's a carrier in play. Funnily enough, that happens a lot when I'm playing a Mino or a Wooster. Those are really powerful ambush predators that rely on concealment to really work. It might be an unpleasant experience to run your planes into a Minotaur and losing some of them, but if the Mino was making a risky play to get into a position you might not have to worry about him for the rest of the match and at best a few people on your team will be changing their plans considering themselves lucky to have dodged a bullet (or rather very, very many of them). It's extremely hard to make calculated concealment plays when there's a unit in play that can fly closer to 200kt and go over any form of islands. In that sense, yes (although it's still not really something people would be missing in a non-CV game). I understand why the fighter duel thing was removed, since the ability of one carrier to completely dominate the other was horrific for the team on the receiving end. I don't know if it's much better now when all carriers always have an unhindered ability to strike, though. There will never be a match where you are not dependent on your teammates, so that's not really an issue. The presence of carriers only makes it worse by reducing the amount of tactical options you have when trying to do anything independently gets punished much harder. This I simply can't agree with. I don't care about economic rewards, I only play for wins (or some stupid missions sometimes). Also there is no such thing for me as abandoning my team, every action I take is intended (but not guaranteed to actually) increase my team's chances to win. Simply sailing some distance away from the main body is absolutely not abandoning the team, for example DDs are supposed to use their concealment to gather information and push for useful locations ahead of the team and battleships are at their most dangerous when they are spread out a bit to provide crossfires. The way I see it, the presence of carriers makes the rather silly blobbing up tactic more viable (though not quite necessary, except perhaps in the late stages of the game) by giving the blobbing team's carrier more opportunities to strike ships that are otherwise more sensibly positioned.

Unless you take into account limited range of guns, terrain obstacles and the inability to scout for yourself if there are any visibility limitations in play. This is actually the core of the gameplay for all the other classes: working around the limitations of spotting and limiting firing arcs so that you can engage a limited number of enemies at one time (hopefully without getting spotted altogether) with a lot of friends while the enemy can only engage you with minimal forces. Of course carriers have some limitations (smoke, massive AAA blobs), but no other ship has (or had) such control over vision and ability to ignore (or in the current iteration even exploit) obstacles. Carriers may lose an excessive amount of planes or be completely unable to get a strike through to a tight group of ships other ships might be able to engage, but they can get to targets that are behind cover or out of reach (for example going dark to heal) or who would otherwise be well protected by superior firepower from potential approach angles. This is actually one of my main gripes with the carriers in WoWS, all the ways for "normal" ships to make plays (staying concealed by range, islands, finding crossfires and limiting enemy shooting angles and such stuff) are replaced by trying to limit the carrier's ability to play by blobbing up. This is tactically a much less rich game experience for the vast majority of participants in the match. I don't know if it's funny or sad, but when I next spotted the ships there was a Monty, Yammy and a Wooster basically hugging the carrier behind the island. I don't have enough experience with the Midway to estimate how I could have dealt with that, but my Implacable seemed to have trouble doing meaningful damage to that (I think the cleve was possibly dead at that point). True, but the point was that whatever interaction there is between a gun ship and a carrier - no matter how hectic, involved and maybe even fun in some way - if it doesn't include equal risk to both ships' hulls, it's one sided for the benefit of the carrier. Either one is fine by me, for the purpose of the discussion (with a great risk of straying way beyond the madness horizon) I'm open to any theoretical implementation that includes carriers that at least somewhat resemble their historical counterpart. In this aspect I feel that carriers do way too much of it. It's perfectly fine to not know exactly where all the enemy ships are most of the time, that's kind of exciting. Especially if the enemy doesn't know my location and intentions either. That's where skill comes into play in this game and where opportunities for making plays arise. Well air cover isn't really necessary if there is no air opposition (the original question was what carriers bring to the game for the rest of the ships involved (I think, at least it was supposed to be)). About the brain cells I don't really agree, since carriers being present kind of reduce all tactical options to "stick together". I'm basically talking about both forms of carrier implementations (and hypothetical ones as well), I do realize there are some differences between them, but the effect carriers have is similar: massive changes to spotting and feasible tactics as well as the occasional aircraft or two pooping on you without a chance to hit back. I don't really see the difference in this aspect either, even without carriers you need to play for the team or you lose - and to me that's punishment enough. In a way carriers make you more dependent of your teammates, I think that's true. But I don't think it's a very good thing, because it does that by reducing the options you have available for making plays, especially if the teammates you have to rely on are complete potatoes. Which is known to happen from time to time. I've noticed that that when I'm carriering against a bad team, my first victims are usually the better players who are desperate to make at least some kind of a play to win the game. But that would imply that there is no incentive to play for the team or support each other when there are no carriers in play, which I don't feel is the case at all. And if you feel that without carriers the game doesn't punish hard enough for any mistakes you make, there are other ways to fix that, like for example removing 50% of hitpoints from all the ships. I have to admit that this discussion about carriers and their gameplay effects is far more interesting for me than the usual "they were historically there" (which they were not) that tends to be offered as a reason for their inclusion.

I think a big part of the problem is the one-sidedness of the interaction. If you make a decision matrix for the carrier and the target (<-note the purposefully chosen confrontational choice of term), it's massively one sided. Basically, the best any ship can hope for is a draw (or maybe ending up slightly on top) by killing all the planes or otherwise avoiding taking damage. The best case scenario for the target ship is to take no damage whereas the best case scenario for the carrier is to completely kill the enemy ship without taking any losses. That is simply an almost completely one sided situation, compounded by the fact that depending on the situation the target is more or less screwed anyway due to being spotted. even if you had a full AAA simulator included for shooting down planes, that would still be a completely defensive stance to take. You'd have to settle to being happy for not taking (a lot of) damage, whereas the carrier would get the opportunity to annihilate (or do a lot of damage) to a ship. Losing planes does hurt (eventually), but it's nowhere near the same as losing the whole ship. And you get to lose a lot of planes before you're completely out, whereas ships don't get that kind of retry options. Also who outplays who, if by positioning yourself to accommodate for the existence of carriers you put yourself into a relatively poor position? The image below is not a brilliant example, since it shows a reather irrational case of implacaplophobia, but even if I was a Midway, I would be pretty much outplayed. However, the red team does not win despite having pretty much all of their hitpoints intact, because they positioned themselves in an ultra-defensive posture after losing their little triangle ships (in which I had a not-zero-but-not-that-relevant role). I did pretty much nothing in this example (like I usually don't), but I can't help thinking that I had a small part in herding the reds by spotting and harrassing everyone who was in an even slightly vulnerable position. I really don't see why we need a class that can attack or spot pretty much anywhere anytime, from complete safety. Maybe that's where my point of view could be expanded, though, so maybe someone who likes to have carriers in the game could tell me what the 20-22 dudes in the other ships gain from having carriers in the match?

Just to make one thing clear that I forgot to mention earlier; for me the carriers before rework were horrible and after the rework they are terrible. You are correct in that before the rework it was possible to have some concealment play if the carriers were evenly matched (and interested in covering the team, bombing competitions between good players weren't that fun back then, either. Still the situation was pretty bad most of the time and especially when one carrier dominated the other, one team had total damage AND spotting advantage, which was rather awful. With the rework it's like every carrier is a left-click Lexington. Yet, I don't want any other ship class removed from the game when I'm playing any of the other classes. In any other matchup I feel like I'm playing the game against someone, when I'm facing a carrier I feel that I'm nothing but a target and he's removing options from me without me having a say in it. When I'm playing a carrier I see nothing but targets, some are more difficult to hit than others, but nobody is a real threat. I might lose planes if I fail, sure, but if I make similar mistakes in any other ship, I'm back in port. And that's from someone who sucks bass as a carrier player. But it kind of does: not every match has carriers in it and every time I get to play a carrier-free game it's just so much better. Sure, I get bottom tier games with terrible teammates and that sucks, but even that feels like I lost playing a game and I feel like I gained something from it. When there are carriers around doing their stuff, they are such a disruptive presence that they change the game completely. Especially if faced with a competent carrier on the enemy team the games can be such boring waste of time that I end up thinking the time would've been better spent finally cleaning up the house. Which it probably would've in most cases, but that's beside the point. Ok need to go play clanwars now, this is an interesting topic for sure, but I don't know if I have much more to say about things I haven't said a few times already. To an extent game design aspects can seem like a very personal and opinionated thing, but to a large degree that's because it's hard to measure most of them. I would like to go deeper into game design perspectives, because it's close to my heart (I've been involved in game design and I write game reviews and articles as sort-of-profession), but I don't know if this is the time and place for it. And the clan is waiting, so write to you later perhaps if the discussion is still going on when I return.

I have a rather different view on the subject. In my view a game designer's job is to make your experience fun and engaging (not in the sarcastic sense), not miserable. It is true that it's more fun to pwn someone than it is to get pwned, but in a good game the experience must be net positive. Why would people other than the very best player in the world even bother with it otherwise? It's difficult to make it fun to be a target of mechanics intended to do harm, but the developer needs to try. And especially to keep things fair and balanced, just as you said - and this is where carriers come in. I can't prove it by suitable measurements and theories (and it would be kind of trying to prove a negative), but I'm beginning to think that asymmetrical stuff such as carriers in WoWS and artillery in WoT are simply categorically bad design without redeeming features. Of these I consider carriers the worse offender, because while having the ability to strike anywhere without danger of retaliation (and no, losing planes is not retaliation, this is where the historical argument is actually relevant since this is the thing that made carriers so OP in reality) they also have the ability to remove concealment. In WoT the terrains are much more varied, and you can actually position yourself in a way that makes you fairly safe from artillery. In WoWS the map is more fluid (kind of fitting when you think of it) and the positioning of red and green ships is relatively much more important than where static map features are located. This makes concealment the most important single factor in the design of the game. Everything in the game revolves around concealment. Didn't see that BB 12km away on your broadside when you try to turn? Blab. Didn't see that DD on your flank? Blab. Did see that DD on your flank? Blab DD. Didn't spot that mino before your DD is deep in its radar range? Blab. Carriers remove concealment completely. Not because every ship is spotted all the time, but because they can be anywhere on the map at a moment's notice. When you try to make a sneaky play you have to find an opening where you can do so unspotted - at least until it's too late. Get that wrong, blab. Get it right, blab reds. Everybody makes miscalculations, that's the thrill of the game, but get this part right often enough and you're a good player. However, when carriers are present, it all becomes more of a dice throwing thing than a calculation based on experience and game sense. You might get spotted at a bad time if you try to make a move, then again you might not. The carrier - with the speed of its planes - is an unknowable entity in the battle you just can't factor into your calculations. Whether or not the play you are thinking of making is good or not is not a matter of your skill anymore, but rather dependent on what the carrier chooses to do next. Get it wrong, blab. Get it right often enough, you're a lucky player (well skill will still show in statistically relevant number of matches, but the element of luck is higher). WoWS is not a game of 360 no-scope headshots, it's a game of positioning. And carriers take that away. Of course, there's always the fact that a carrier can crab all over you without fear of retaliation, which is immensely frustrating, even if they're nerfed enough to not make them very powerful at all. The least annoying option is for them to make 0 damage, which is the best case scenario for annoyance (unless you factor in the carrier player, who might be slightly annoyed). But the real damage is the destruction of concealment. Unfortunately, concealment can probably be made to look ok in statistics. Nerf plane spotting enough and DD survivability will probably go up. However, it will be entirely a matter of luck and highly situational. When your DD does get spotted, you're screwed and immensely frustrated. When the carrier doesn't manage to spot you, he gets frustrated, because it's his job to try to spot you regardless of how hard it is. Yet, on average, numbers might look deceptively good. Carriers' role in WoWS is a somewhat complicated matter, but of all things I disagree most with the idea that game designers' job is to frustrate players. Imagine for example the entirely hypothetical case of your game crashing randomly at the start of the game, leaving you without the chance to participate and your team with one less ship. Not great design, I would think? Ideally fun would be had by all, perhaps a bit more for those who win. I'm somewhat competitive and I really like to win, but when I play footie, tennis, floorball, WoWS or anything like that and lose (like I often do), I usually feel like it was still better to have played and lost than to not have played at all. Carriers change that. I'm completely fine with any other shiptype when playing any other shiptype, they are still on the same spectrum of mobility, firepower, protection and concealment. Not so with carriers. They just come and go (nowadays especially) as they please, do damage to you if they can and completely disrupt any concealment plays (=majority of plays you can make in the first place), more like a force of nature than an opponent playing the same game.

And the reason there were so few major surface battles in WW2 even though there were huge fleets around, is carriers. When fleet carriers are present, surface combat only happens when planes can't fly (at night) or when one party is literally suicidally desperate (Leyte Gulf). I have been interested in history and especially naval aviation for a while, but still it was kind of a revelation to me when I read somewhere (I think it was Tin Can Sailors or a review on the book or something) that carrier planes never really participated in battles where surface ships where shooting at each other. I, too, had had the romanticised image of planes diving in to a loud melee of gigantic ships almost hidden in gun smoke. But it turns out that's pure hollywood and just about impossible in real life. The point of historical realism in a game like WoWS is of course, let's say, flexible. However, it often comes up when people try to come up with reasons why carriers should be included in random battles: "they were there historically". When actually they were not. In reality the only reason to have them is if they have a gameplay purpose and they make the games better when they're around (which in my opinion they absolutely do not). That changes the discussion at least to some extent.

Battleships sought battle between each other. It happened a few times (at least if you count in battlecruisers) and it happened a bit more if you consider WW1 as well, which is a time period somewhat well represented in WoWS. If you look at fleet carriers only, their planes never engaged in battles where surface gunships shot at each other, because their core nature prevented it from happening. Without a colossal blunder carriers would never allow enemy surface forces to get near themselves or each other, because their ability to spot and strike everything at massive ranges simply prevents it from happening. We could of course say that in a game like WoWS that doesn't matter so much and because it makes for interesting gameplay and everything, we can just assume that in every battle a fleet carrier gets caught with its pants down and it needs to fight for its life. However, since the carriers are so completely unhistorical to be almost unrecognizable in the way they operate, any argument for having carriers in the game tha is based on historical factors is completely null and void. And for some reason those are the ones I most often keep getting when I ask people why carriers should be in the game in the first place (in random battles).

Well he does still have a valid point. The only time ( to the best of my knowledge) carrier planes engaged in a battle where surface gunships were fighting each other was the result of a colossal bludner and exceptional circumstances. Other than that, no surface ship could really hope to get close enough to other surface ships while carriers were operating in the area. And it's not due to "not the policy at the time", but rather due to the inherent ability of carriers to spot and kill anything in range before they get close enough to shoot back.