Xevious_Red

This. I enjoyed playing the rework CV's. I had fun. More than I did with the RTS ones. The AA is totally borked atm in high tiers on the PTS, but I expect that to change. The concealment changes shift around how things like radar on cruisers applies, giving a greater window between spotting and radar range. The AA changes will change the meta as to which skills are the optimal choice. It also will change the decision between hydro and DFAA due to change in number of CV vs how DF now works. This has knock on effects to DD. The catapult fighter has changed vastly - while the AA isnt currently very effective, the fighters are (at least against a CV that doesnt manage to cheese them). This affects all sorts of things - from DD not having a 6 minute fighter circling, to build changes: a zao that takes fighters to protect from CV wont be using spotter planes. This changes things like engagement ranges, and firing into smoke. In the case of the Des Moines this is now a choice between fighters and radar. Planes cant spot torps, this affects how planes will impact DD. It WILL be chaos to start with. Things WILL be broken to start with. Weirdly Im looking forward to it, it'll be a shake up to the meta.

I play asashio (its one of my favourite ships), and my assessment of how you play it is that you arent really using it to it's strengths. When I play it, I spend the majority of my time in a cap. Literally just in there either taking it, or passively contesting it so the enemy dont get it. During this time you can be happily churning out torps at BB, all the while spotting. Ideally you want to quickly (while in a cap) kill or do significant damage to an enemy BB. This gives you several advantages; -It puts your team up on points. -It makes your own cruisers less likely to be lol deleted -It makes your own cruisers more bold and likely to advance up where you need them -It makes the enemy cruisers more scared and likely to run away/not support their DD -It removes the temptation for your team to waste ages shooting a stupid BB, and therefore they might actually shoot something useful. It is a team dependent ship, so you have to effeciently give your team targets, make them feel safe, and remove BB threats to them. It also involves a lot of knowledge of how to keep an enemy spotted and you safe, how to bait and drag enemy ships into your friendlies, and trading your very limited HP to achieve these.

In before they implement a system where theres flak bursts for you to avoid (like rework is atm) AND you get hit guaranteed by a certain number of bursts (probably tied to an RNG chance) by having them appear right where your planes are

Suddenly Yamato having 9 charges of plane consumable looks useful (as they launch 6 planes per consumable). Also catapult fighter Des Moines now something other than a meme?

I didnt know it either. Conversely I dont spend a huge amount of time with my AFT towards people in the yamato, but interesting nonetheless

A brief history of SHIPS; At some point, someone discovered you could build something that floated, and thus the ship was invented. Its most obviously use was to transport a bunch of angry people to a neighbouring country you didnt like very much, beat them up, and take their stuff. Quickly growing tired of being beaten up and having their stuff taken, they decided the best answer was to build some ships of their own and sink the ships full of angry people before they turned up at your shore. Thus ship combat was borne. The initial most popular option was to fill your ship with even angrier people, get alongside their ship, then get all your angry people to climb onto their ship and stab them in the face. Then set fire to their ship so it sank. Another popular option was simply to crash your ship into theirs. Soon realising that this required you to have a larger supply of angry people than them, the next popular choice was setting them on fire from a distance, sinking their ship before they could get close enough to stab you in the face. Thus the idea of ranged ship combat was borne. This went on for a while, with new and more exciting options of how to set them on fire from a distance. Then someone invented gunpowder and the new best way for sinking ships from a distance was to put lots of cannons on your ship. Unfortuantely someone else invented making your ship out of steel, and cannon balls werent very good against that. Luckily there were bigger and better guns, so those could go on ships and now ships could sink other ships from really far away. This went on for a while, with lots of different options - big guns, lots of guns, lots of big guns. Then someone remembered a great way to make other ships sink is to put a big hole in their underside. Someone invented the torpedo so they could do this. This blowing up other ships from long way away was getting popular now, so someone decided that since it was a pain trying to hit things that far away it would be much easier if you could just steer your shots in. Similarly torpedoes would hit a lot more if you could just drop them in the water right next to the enemy. Since someone had invented the plane, the new great idea in long range ship sinking other ships was to put a bunch of planes on your ship and have them fly the ammo in instead of trying to fire it a really long way. This proved a very good option, with the added bonus that ships werent that great at shooting planes, planes were pretty cheap compared to ships, and you could park your aircraft covered ship a really long way away. The other ships quickly realised that if they didnt want to get blown up they should put as many guns as possible on to shoot the planes down. So aircraft carriers are just the latest (in the time period this game covers) way of getting your ship to blow up their ship from a long way away.

Not always - the on summon fighters have weird targeting priorities - I've had them chase a totally different squad. Also side note - with some of the faster planes (rockets) you can actually simply outrun the fighters by boosting in a straight line away from them. They eventually give up and go back to their patrol, or in the case of catapult fighters, go away entirely because their 30 seconds has run out (18 seconds if you took the tier 1 skill for +1 plane and -40% active time)

That plane was clearly highly important. Without it he would have *checks notes* respawned a new one 60 secs later anyway

So myself and @El2aZeR just tried it in training room (my thanks to them for providing a competent CV player). I took a gearing and worcester and basically sailed around ocean being attacked until I was dead to see how many planes I would kill. Both ships were as full AA as I could make them (every AA skill, every AA module, AA flag). I would try to recieve each attack as well as possible, and keep his planes as much as possible in the dominant sector. Worcester even had last stand skill so I could remain active. Grand results vs Midway before they got blown up: Gearing: Zero planes. Worcester: 1 plane.

I didnt want to include annoying voice as a lack of credibility, but yes agreed here. Something I did find from a bit of testing is that manual AA may not be as crap as it seems. I wanted to try this out more fully, but the PTS gave me GAMES WITH NO CARRIERS, and the training room you cant set an AI to be a CV so this was hard to do. All the other AA skills increase the damage of the bursts (which is useless if they dont actually hit). Manual AA is the only one that increases the number of bursts (making it more likely to actually hit something). Further its not a flat 20% I had expected a cruiser (25% reinforcement) with manual AA (20%) to get 145%. It doesnt, it gets 150%, because it gives 20% more of 125. This means a DD (50% reinforcement) with manual AA gets 180% - it almost doubles the number of bursts. The DD DFAA is also stronger too - it gives +100% damage to bursts. With all the AA skills (yeah I had to not take concealment!) You can get the gearing up to 5k a burst. With DFAA this becomes 10k a burst. What I dont know is does this get applied to a single plane, or the "squad" health? If theres 10 planes with 2k health each (so the HP pool shows 20k), and I hit them with a 10k burst, do I kill 5 planes in one go, or kill 1 plane really well?

The IFHE DM is just generally the easiest way to sum up why people dont hugely take Notser seriously. Saying the wrong thing is fine. We all have a slip of the tongue, or get a bit muddled. When a bunch of people present you info on why you're wrong, sticking to your guns and argueing that your "feeling" is more real than actual numbers is generally a bad sign of someone to get info from. When you do a video that states that if you want to get good you shouldnt listen to good players, and that good players are no good at teaching you how to be good (and that you should instead listen to notser) then your credibility (in my eyes) slips further. When your best known "feature" is that you crash into islands, that doesnt make me want to take him seriously. Why would I value your opinion on how ships function when you cant even steer? I wouldn't take driving lessons from an instructor who "hilariously" kept crashing into the pavement. Watch his video about the daring. Just prior to release he was insisting that IFHE was a waste of points (without it the HE cant pen DD armour), because you could just shoot AP into broadsides. In his commentary he claimed you might want to maybe take it at some point later if the meta shifted. Roll foward a week and he releases a video insisting that IFHE is mandatory, because most DD you meet are either nose in (AP bounces) or running away (AP also bounces). In his words "The player base has learned in record time!" No it was just crap advice in the first place. Same with the AA videos. My overwhelming take away from it is that he managed from choosing the wrong side constantly to have less AA than if he had just not touched it.

Oh I agree - I dont think its strong enough. Ive bombed Des Moines with little to no losses. Its also compounded by planes that are damaged dont retain that damage when they return (they all become full health again), and planes that return after bombing/being recalled whiz up into the sky and therefore stop taking damage after a second or two - there's no losses on the return trip. Compounded further is that just about all the AA buffs (DFAA, AA flag, AFT, 3m module) simply up the damage of a burst, which is worthless if the burst doesnt hit anything. Particularly a problem on ships that have a very low number of bursts. Compounded even further is on ships with a low number of bursts, the sectors have no benefits. Having 25% extra bursts is fine if you have 4. 25% extra gives you 5. If however you have 1, what benefit does +25% give? It's not like you can have 1.25 bursts, they are by definition something that can only have whole numbers

I played 1 game in the Worc with no additional AA (beyond the +2 bursts equipment), got 25 plane kills even though wasnt hugely attacked. Saw a video of flamu playing where his team's worc had 91 Plane kills (against 4 CV, so more planes in the sky)

Post from Sub_Octavian regarding AA:

This is something that should be mentioned: The reworked carriers dont have infinite planes. They have a starting amount, and if its less than full they "regrow" some new ones. Now these regrow at a set rate. At tier 4 this may as well be infinite - regrowing a plane every 11 seconds means you could potentially "regrow" 109 rocket planes in 20 mins. However at the higher tiers this is drastically reduced - the midway (with all buffs to respawn speed) regrows a rocket plane every minute. Which means at maximum they get +20 rocket planes in a whole match. Realistically less, because if you take off with torps/DB first then you arent regrowing rockets, and gaining a plane when the clock has 1 sec left is mildly redundant. The main issue is the AA doesnt do enough atm to put a heavy dent into the CV reserves (the opposing CV AA and CAP fighters do, but other ships dont), so you get too many planes returning and not enough dying.

The other thing that will be interesting will be seeing which CV becomes the meta. The midway can farm some silly damage numbers due to high pen HE rockets/High alpha HE bombs, and crazy fire chance. (As demomstrated by El2azer). However its not great at killing enemy Hak/midway - the armoured deck means rockets and HE bombs shatter, and with carriers only burning for 5 secs means fire doesnt do much either. The remainig option (torps) the midway has weaker torps, that are prone to spreading if under fire (not sure if bug or feature). Conversely the Hak has some good choices against CV - AP DB to punch through that armoured deck, and torps that do 10k each. With the right build these can be stealth dropped - at best undetected, at worst cutting out some of the AA you take (CV AA is pretty strong). The hak though isnt as good at farming the other classes -AP DB do nothing against DD, and the torps have a long activation making them not great against DD/CA either.

I had the same experience as him though - no problem bombing people, no problem not dying to CV either. So either everyone I attacked was useless (probable) or everyone who attacked me was equally useless (equally likely). Its one of the reasons Id like to try it on live, see what results are like attacking/being attacked by people I know are reasonably good.

One of the Hak torp squads takes 99 secs per plane. So the full squad of 12 is nearly 20 minutes

One of the oft quoted reasons was that skilled players (or average players if facing bad ones) could not only have a large impact (spotting, striking), but they could also remove their opponents ability to do so (by strafing their planes). The rework CV Skilled captains can still do a large amount (spotting/killing) but their ability to prevent opponents has been reduced

Its is a bit of a random censorship. I mean I dont agree with either of your points - from playing both I find the sector switching incredibly easy (I remapped from O to spacebar), and attacking requires both hands and more finesse than just clicking, but both opinions of how easy/hard something is are equally valid. Perhaps the censorship was due to what you suggested they were doing with the other hand. Possibly repost but change to "eating soup" and see if it gets censored again

Its fairly commonly asked for (I press the wrong key all the time). Main issue with them each having their own key is there are quite a few; -DCP -Repair -Smoke -Speed boost -DF -Hydro -Radar -Spotter plane -Fighter plane -Torp reload -Main battery reload So currently you would need 11 keys if they were all to have a unique key. Given WG's love of gimmics Im sure we'll get more.

I found AA to be better in the PTS (as compared to test 1/2/3) - my first game in a fuso (no AA skills taken, no catapult fighter, only AA equipment is the +2 bursts) I had 25 plane kills. That was against a tier 6 ranger and a tier 8 shok. Similarly with pensacola I had 23 kills. (Against shok and ryujo). The addition of the continuous damage for long/mid as well as the bursts adds up when there are several ships - I tried flying over whole fleets to see how long it would take for them to die. Reasonably quickly. DF however isnt that great - because it just increases the damage of a burst, so it only helps if they hit one. Its therefore mostly useful on ships that have a large number of bursts (as the CV is more likely to hit one). It would be better IMO if it added more bursts to make it more likely to hit.

Worth noting with concealment/IJN torps is even if you're not trying to drop from stealth (only Hak has long enough torps to do this), then the concealment affects AA. Normally against a worcester you get a wall of flak greeting you at 6.9km. With conceal you get spotted at 6.1, at which point the flak starts firing. The actual bursts dont appear till around 5.5km at which point youare nearly starting your attack run. Its rather sub optimal IMO but its not a bad choice if you arent good at dodging flak

The PTS has some comedy MM. 7v7 with 4 CV per team. Hopefully live will have some kind of limit.

No, thats not how it works. You start with 100% AA to either side. You can choose to re-enforce one side. This is a set value that adds to one side (and deducts from the other). E.g. +50% will give you 150% on one side and 50% on the other. This takes a set time. The time varies depending on class. For DD its something like 5 secs. For a BB, 15 secs. It takes the same amount of time to reset back to 100/100. Instead you can switch sectors (swapping the 150% from the left to the right). This takes slightly longer (DD is 8 secs). These values changes during tests 1/2/3 - they generally got quicker. Its unknown what the "final" values will be. Switching sectors was purely optional - it was a benefit if you werent the target (could support more), or if you could keep them in one sector for a longer time.