Pappus

What I meant with my last remark is that I was simply curious if there was something I was doing wrong and could therefor be improved to see AP getting good results. The question was answered in a nice fashion, but you came in here with a smirky remark as if I was demanding them to work. I switched from AP to HE for battleships with mixed results, they work wonderfully on longer range where I can hit the deck clean due to arc, but since the cleveland has no torpedos I am majorly screwed once the bb gets closer, because it isn't so easy for me to not hit the hull or belt with 10 shots. In my books the question has been answered sufficently and I shall work my way to the OP AA ship steadily with those little 1k xp matches at a time.

Are you mentally inapt? Maybe you should re-read what I wrote and ask yourself where I said that AP were supposed to work. Actually you will get inside a tank with a rock there are enough openings if you are close enough and less armored parts also exist so I asked the simple question if there are places I need to aim specifically to make AP work. That is a big difference to what you wrote.

23 ap hits for a total of 8k damage including citadel hits 93 HE hits for a total of 29k damage. 311 average damage per HE hit Set a total of 3 fires for 11k damage so maybe you see what I am referring to when I mean problems. Especially I tried hitting the superstructure with HE and I couldn't notice any different in fire rates.

I want to be countered by skill in any form other than being present in the battle. I want there for CVs to be a strong reason to be alongside their BBs instead of somewhere alone, which makes for dumb gameplay. Your argument is that the CV is somewhere hard to get to, while I deliver the solution to get the CVs closer to action, reachable. Cruisers in a battle are a dime a dozen so no I don't think a dime a dozen should each have the ability to negate the CVs attack. Air superiority role as far as I understand a huge part of the CV job and not a single high tier cruisers in the middle of a bunch of BBs.

The belt is the outside of the ship right so if I want more fire and "crits" I am to get the HE explode "on deck"?

I wasn't expecting anything I was just wondering if my aiming was bad and me dealing little damage to BBs was my fault. If it isn't possible then I understand and shoot HE although it has so little effect. Also the fire chance is a flat out lie. I have 4 main batteries that are listed as 12% fire chance that would mean that I am to expect a fire every second full salvo when reality is more like 4-5 salvos per fire. Is there something I can do to increase my chances at lighting up my targets?

I didn't see any regular damage at all. Flat out nothing and as fire doesn't wear them out nearly fast enough I guess I will resort to running away for now. Edit: To clarify I did good damage above 10km compared to HE spam. like a solid hit would deal 2k but that is when the arc of the shells was higher

50x He didn't even do 5k damage so I am not too sure right now what the point is. Should I just not fight BBs? I am a genuine cruiser beginner so I don't know what to do with the cleve.

The only citadels I get are against other cruisers so does BB really mean going for HE? Because I battled a fuso hitting 90x HE and it didn't even cut him in half.

I doubt that you can kill any good essex player regardless of your setup as a IJN carrier. Essex is fast enough to add a nice amount of seconds to your torpedo runners which will then be shot down before launching as they pop heavily. Even if you hit through a bit it is damage dealt but unlikely to be 60k and debuffs will be cleared intelligently. Even without fighters I have never even be pressured by any other single CV and I don't see why it would be different for the IJN.

Cruisers are hitting like trucks themself and they aren't just destroying the odd destroyer. I can deal the same health/damage ratio in a cleveland after like 4 rounds with it compared to my essex (which is 3 times my health on average). Their AA also isn't weak by any means as I said the Essex skilled for aircraft survivability loses planes QUICKLY 1.5 squares away against a des moines. There is no justification for this at all as the cruiser has to do nothing for it. The Baltimore doesn't do it on 1.5 squares but if you get close you pay in squads and if you want AA to be that effective it should not be passive, but something you do actively. Navyfield was a great example anti air was done manually for most parts and if that were the system I wouldn't care if all my planes drop dead out of the sky, because I was beaten. However if I am 8 km away from a des moines and lose the sturdiest planes there are at a very steady rate, then something is massively at odds. See the cruiser just checks for the bb and rides alongside him while trying to lay the hurt on other ships with their long range (cleveland matches warspite as an example in range and to be honest I don't see lots of shots hitting at over 16km anyway so that bigger range of other BBs is largely negated by that fact). Additionally nobody really cares if the cruiser dies due to being in that position. The match will be largely unaffected anyway. So the last part established: Low Risk - High Reward. We could end the discussion here, if people were suspectible to logic. Now we can talk about the cruiser panic ability. The cooldown is so short that if we have e.g. a cleveland protecting 11 battleships as an exagerated example and I would decide to drop anyway instead of adding another 40s of downtime to my planes (flying away after I noticed it considering it is a cleveland I won't have massive losses but flying away takes time, waiting for the ability to run out, for me to notice and for me to go back in roughly 40s). So he pressed the button, I dropped and hit a couple and then my planes fly back. No big deal right? Next wave should be clear, but guess again no. Cleveland will have it ready again because the cooldown is 1:30 and strikes of a CV take longer than 2 minutes it might actually be able to press the ability once more for giggles and still have it back up in time. So what solutions would I have to get through that problem since my team might be so far out it cannot help: 1) I bait the ability, and wait 40s. This would work adequately in this example as there is only 1x CA and I can keep track of its cooldown useage. So instead of 3 minutes per run I need 3:40 now effectively taking out ~ 100k damage over the course of battle 2) Instead of one big group I try to attack constantly and launch planes as they are ready. This doesn't work well at the moment because the 11 bbs would still rip through my planes especially if it is a sole one approaching at a time. 3) Drop anyway and pray to kill the cruiser with 2 torps 4) Do nothing and cry in my corner. The reality is actually a lot worse, because there are 3-5 cruisers per match and I can't really tell who used his ability, maybe both at the same time, maybe one of them. I don't have that kind of information so I always need to go to option 3) and drop anyway, because if the next cruiser pops it too (and it won't be always clevelands mind you, if a baltimore presses it I have a squad less right there if not more) or maybe there are fighters inbound etc. So yeah most often then not I will do fine as a CV by avoiding cruiser protected targets alltogether because currently there is always a BB moron somewhere alone. Should that not be the case it would be a horrible round for me just because all ships have tremendous AA power except destroyers and cruisers have a lol button that they can just happily hammer everytime they see a plane.

The slow part obviously shouldn't, but if the dot of choice is alawys fire because it deals more damage it is a bit sad. It makes for poor gameplay if you always have to torp first and then pray to the gods that you get 2-3 fires, because flooding is not really that damaging (I think it is like 1.5x fires?) That way we could be more liberal in attack force useages on the CVs

Let me tell you what it means for CV players. It means we are not allowed to adjust our aim, because if the plane decides to circle the attack dies with it. So if the Iowa reacts early to the attack and points it nose towards it, then I will likely deal 0 damage, which is dumb.

The US BBs are also very short so that makes dodging even easier.

I also think that the BB airdefense is way out of line. I mean some BBs have better airdefense than my essex. On the other hand you have ships like de moines or however exactly it is called skilled completely into AA shooting your planes from almost 2 squares away EFFECTIVELY out of the sky. If an essex can't even reach a demoines (without panic mode) what are you supposed to do? Rollover and die? This is how I would approach the whole AA story: 1) Panic move for cruisers does not increase the spread of strikeforces anymore. You might think it is necessary, but with I think 8km range and 20s duration it only leads to try to attack x... oh a cruiser popped it, go somewhere else, next one pops it and so on. It should only icnrease their AA prowess and that is it. Additionally if your target is further out there is a possibility that a single cruiser can almost do it back to back against you if you decide to drop despite the panic mode to get at least 2-4 torpedos in. 2) BB should effectively have AA like destroyers. Meaningless, they are either protected or meat for CV to increase the role of cruisers outside of salvobait. 3) Maybe remove fighters alltogether to increase the involvement of CVs or make sure the MM takes into consideration that you have fighters and doesn't throw you into a game without an opposing CV. 4) While cruisers should have effective AA it shouldn't be as crazy as the Des Moines. That is simply too much I mean if an essex struggles to get a single torpedo through, then what are lower tier CVs supposed to do? My planes are already enhanced with 20% survivability and the best there are. If they can't reach a target that means we don't have air protection, but immunity. Especially given that AA is completely passive at the moment and there is no skill involved you shouldn't be that rewarded. The primary defense should still be dodging accordingly or having several cruisers in a region. 5) Massively increase CV AA guns. They should be shooting them down 1.5-2 squares away and move with the BBs if those BB are to be save from aircraft. For a CV to deny a zone by presence it is acceptable since there aren't that many around and it fits the fleet combat better than having CVs hug the end of the map,but adjust their concealment too. As a CV player I would love to be able to go with the fleet, but most of the time I have to be so far away that my 5km guns can't even help to shoot down incoming bombers which feels very strange. As an example how it currently is: You have 4 bbs and a cruiser and one opposing CV. All the cruiser has to do is sit between the BBs and with their strong AA + ability + cruiser AA all 5 of them are well covered in a fashion that cannot be countered by your team in the first 10 minutes. Sure you can always try to get those that somewhere made an error, but CVs should be playable outside of someone not caring and being alone + sitting in a BB.

I have only seen CVs ever take 4 fires

Yes I thought it would stack too giving a torpedo salvo and seeing like 4x flooding, but it doesn't. You can tell that there is no indication for you how much you are flooding yourself for example. With fire you can see exactly if it is 1,2 or 3 but flooding is just a single icon without any numerical indications. Hence you know flooding is just a debuff. Fire works strange in the same way you cannot ignite someone that is already burning. The fire needs to go out first before you can refresh the fire as far as I can tell.

That is why you take the north or the south, the mountains are high enough to block the shots and end of the day if they are shooting you, then your same tiered ships are shooting them without return fire. It ain't perfect and sometimes if both corners randomly go for your quadrant it is tough but it ain't unplayable if you take the poles.

My voice might not be the most experienced as I am a new admiral, but I logged around 200-250 battle as CV and here is my insight and you might take it as you will: At first obvously I started out with fighters and made good use of them, but after roughly 20 matches I was wondering what their point really way. The only thing I would do with them was send my fighters against the opposing CV fighters. If I was a Tier higher, then I would also get to hunt other planes afterwards with a bit of ammunition left, if we were the same tier, then the outcome was determined by the naval AA in the area - if ther ewas none it was pretty much a draw with the victor being decided by pressing rightclick first for most cases and finally if my planes were a tier lower, then they vaporized in seconds but hopefully living long enough to allow my torpedo strike. We don't even need to talk about how useful those fighters were if I was fighting 2 CVs or none. Meanwhile I only had little other squads, since the fighter(s) blocked anything and the fighter gameplay itself was dull and meaningless. I could literally smoke a cigarette inbetween torpedo strikes as there was absolutely 0 going on between those. I am not sure if everyone is aware, but inbetween torpedo strikes (without hugging the map end) there are 3-4 minutes depending on where your last target was before your next one is ready. Yes their damage potential is high, but that doesn't change the fact that people want to do something. If you can do 2-3 strikes PER MATCH, then obviously people won't find that very attractive. Being fed up with all of it I switched to BB Warspite, but my aiming was too terrible so I went back to CV and simply cut out what was bothering me all along and it was the fighters. I am trying to spread the word about CVs being better off without fighters (especially true if no CV would bring them) but even if a CV brings them I am happy right now. I can't be out-tiered anymore as I drive the Essex since they took the 2x torpedo loadout from the lexington. So even if the enemy cvs have fighters I will be somewhat allright as long as I use my ship centrally as AA platform (if the map even allows, gg ocean) Now without fighters I am having a blast. Yes divebombers aren't that great, but the burn damage can accumulate massively and it is 5 squads that can shape the battle instead of 2. So ultimately I see two improvement possibilities: 1) Remove fighters from the game, which is unlikely to happen as it requires bold developers unlikely to be found here as they would have to throw away the work they already put into them 2) Massively reduce the HP of fighters and AA capabilities of non-fighters. This would lead to the effect that fighters can effectively be driven off by naval forces, which they cannot at the moment. It would help the outiered cvs to hide their planes above a cruiser, because if you do that right now and the cruiser doesn't happen to be a des moines, then the fighters will simply destroy the opposing planes and mostly live to tell the tale. This might be a problem for non-essex ships as they don't have that many squads.

I have 3x Sniper as a daily now and I don't even have a slot left to get a torpedo ship so you can figure that they are already there for days and I have no way of finishing them without selling a ship I actually like to play. How are others feeling about the dailies?

At first I thought the same thing, but given that I played my CV rather close to the battlefield on purpose anyway I like that map. Just go for either North or South and you simply have to defeat what comes your way.

The fact that turning negates the drop is the biggest issue. You can't curve the bomb at all, while with torps you can angle it. The outer white circle is also way too far away for proper drops on defending targets, I also actually get more fires with automatic drops compared to manual even if the manual drop is as perfect as can be.

The better alternative is to simply take out fighters. Simply bombers and torpers - lovely.

That is blasphemy. That would suggest I think the enemy CVs are as capable as I am! Probably more likely to block like 70k damage total. Fighters are allright if you know you are up against very good cvs, maybe but then you also could just always go bombers/torpers and make it a dps race in the food pond. Especially since you can't even guarantee to fight against an enemy CV if you play the fighter loadout at which point you are pretty screwed.

I don't know why US CVs would even take fighters. It doesn't make sense to me lets say I take fighters and shut down 2x IJN CV, which technically obviously I couldn't then I would count the HP of those 2 cvs to "my" damage. roughly 100k HP of the enemy fleet was taken out by my fighters because those 100k HP couldnt do anything. If I take the normal loadout I likely deal more than 100k in damage unless the enemy has lots of fighters so taking fighters for me is losing out on potential for my team