nan0bytez

I'll try to be as brief as I can here but knowing myself that's probably not gonna happen, So, I gotta be honest here; getting 17 aircraft kills with the Scharnhorst's rather mediocre AA feels great but the way I got them? Most of those kills were instant squadron wipes. I could see them dodge and weave to avoid my long range AA wall of death only to clump up just as they enter attack mode and whoosh, squadron no more. Seriously, something needs to be done there. I've been on the receiving end of that in my Kaga as well across multiple games whereas I got my dive bombers in close with merely a scratch only for the entire squadron to get obliterated the moment I enter attack mode and I was left blinking at the screen, trying and failing to process what just happened. Wasn't even a dedicated AA cruiser what did it but a bloody Amagi. Not quite alone but not a single cruiser within 8km, just a North Carolina trailing behind him at about 5-6 km. Torpedo bombers and attack craft aren't quite as bad because you don't have to be well within 1km to start your attack run but having to start your attack run 6km out just to avoid the clump of doom still means you lose a lot of bombers along the way because of your diminished ability to dodge the frag wall and your need to fly straight for a few seconds just to drop your torps in a nice line and be able to hit with more than just one of them. Frankly, it's an absolute joke. Carriers went from being the game makers to struggling not to get placed last on the team. Then there is the little issue that you actually want your entire squadron to die anyway because once they dropped their payload they're out of your control and just fly in a straight line back to you, creating a nice trail of breadcrumbs for anyone with a brain to accurately pinpoint your position. The automatic fighter consumable for your carrier itself is next to useless because you tend to get spotted by the enemy carrier relatively early on since, while everyone is still hugging together for maximum AA coverage you don't have a lot else to do as carrier but zap around spotting everything. At that early stage there's not much reason to actually go for the enemy carrier in earnest, so you spot them, they automatically pop their fighters and then.. there's fighters on the board that pretty much do nothing for 10 minutes other than try to look menacingly at enemy bombers well out of reach. The manual fighter consumable for your squadrons is not much better. A glorified area of denial which you can't even make to follow your teammates. Not that they need the added support anyway. Carriers are so laughably nonthreatening that I stopped fiddling with AA sector control after just two games and only bother with token maneuvering against same- or lower tier bombers in my cruisers and battleships. They're just as useless as a dedicated interception method. Even if you catch an enemy squadron right in the centre of its aoe, by the time your fighters start engaging anything the enemy is long gone. My advice for carrier players? Don't bother with cruisers or battleships until they start to threaten you directly. Even the ones with mediocre AA can still devastate your squadrons if your timing is just a second off. Go for DDs instead. Keep them spotted, spam attack craft and dive bombers at them. They tend to be far from any help and most DDs can't do a thing against continuous rocket salvos unless they got the defensive AA consumable but even then - it's not like you got a lack of aircraft to throw away. Hell, you don't WANT any of them to get out of there alive if at all possible. Anyone returning intact functions as a free radio location perk for the entire enemy team. Then there's carrier control itself. In order to have any degree of fine control over your ship you got to release your currently controlled squadron entirely. the only thing you can do while controlling the squadron is setting way points at FULL SPEED(!!!) via the map. There are times I don't wanna go full speed. Especially while trailing my team at a reasonable distance but in order to control the speed settings for my carrier I have to either wait till my current squadron is wiped out or empty or have them return prematurely. Wanna launch your squadrons and send them off in the general direction of the enemy while you manually park your ship in a cozy bay, sail it around an island or maneuver to avoid torps? Well, you're fresh out of luck. Apparently the captain is now also the CAG, which would explain why he can only command one squadron at a time. Fockin' hell, I'm angry if you couldn't tell by now. Yes, carriers, as they used to be, could absolutely ruin your day if they were captained by a competent RTS player on the enemy team but this is just insulting and even though I was by no means good with carriers before it could still be incredibly rewarding whenever I managed to pull off a coordinated strike with multiple squadrons. The new mechanics are advertised as being more accessible for a broader range of players but they end up being extremely finicky while at the same time also taking control away from the player in areas where it certainly wasn't necessary. Every time you enter attack mode you roll the dice, hoping the enemy doesn't instantly frag your clumped-up aircraft to bits in those few seconds you don't have any control over them. This is really, really bad and needs fixing. You don't need to revert it back to how it was. In fact, carriers needed change but as it stands right now there are just too many little things wrong with the update. --- I'll try to give a basic rundown of how to improve the current system in order of priority: 1. Aircraft clumping up, presenting easy targets for AA clouds, needs to be addressed. As a short-term fix a 1-2 second invulnerability while switching over to attack mode could do the trick. The clumping-up accounts for most aircraft kills right now it seems which makes it hard to tell whether or not the actual intended AA damage output across the board is fine. it might be but there is just no way to tell until this particular issue is fixed. 2. There needs to be an "idle" or "cruise" mode for the currently controlled squadron in order for you to be able to fine-control your boat's speed and heading without having the squadron outright returning. Alternatively let us map speed and rudder controls for the carrier independently from squadron control (arrow keys, for example) This ties in with point 3; 3. We need the ability to set AA sector control with individual keys for non-carriers (left/right arrow keys, up for neutral as an example). Currently it's less fiddly than CTRL+Click used to be but it's far from ideal. 4. Something, and I honestly don't know what, needs to be done about empty aircraft automatically detaching from your squadron after their attack run, leading the enemy right to your position. Early on it isn't much of an issue but at the later stages of the match it can easily spell your doom. 5. Carrier consumables don't need to be automatic. Trust in your players to be able to decide for themselves when to use them. 6. The Squadron Fighter Consumable needs a targeted "follow" option so you can actually support your teammates. As of right now they're next to useless unless you happen to be in the right place at the right time and pop them right above a friendly ship just before the enemy CV starts its attack run. But even then he still got time to abort with most if not all of the squadron intact if he got the presence of mind because the fighters have such a long wind-up. --- This all being said, I still think this is a step in the right direction and has the potential to be fun and engaging for inexperienced players while still providing a high enough skill ceiling to encourage players to "get gud". There were certainly moments where it looked and 'felt' amazing, notably the final approach on an attack run with torpedo bombers, clouds of AA frag detonating left right and centre while you desperately try to weave your way through it all, tracers criss-crossing from the targeted battleship, the engines of your aircraft whining as you push them to the limit to get as close as possible before you finally drop that payload. It also does feel more natural from the perspective of the target ship since aircraft now behave in an overall more believable manner. So yes, to end on a positive note, it looks and feels impressive. As a carrier captain you are certainly more involved and closer to the action, which I genuinely like. The old RTS controls certainly weren't in any way bad, they certainly added a whole different dimension to the game and did maybe reflect more accurately what actual carrier operation would be like but the skill ceiling was just through the roof, causing competent players to often singlehandedly win the battle, so kudos for taking the right steps in that regard. You just, by accident I assume, took it a couple steps too far. Cheers!