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I didn't consider it an issue myself in low tiers as no one did it. When literally every other CV and roughly two normal ships every other game do it in high tiers you might be annoyed at some point yourself. I'm welcoming you to find out for yourself. I'll be admiring your patience if you're not annoyed by it at some point. Correct. Isn't that pretty much what I've been saying? As is, the border does very little to limit a player's ability to maneuver. On the other hand, you'd be surprised just how much this limits your ability to cut off a target you're pursuing. Neither do bad players. The difference between someone like me, who actively avoids hugging the border, and some person with no situational awareness driving into the border is marginal at best. It's the supposedly good players that concern me. a) It affects three out of four classes almost equally because they have limited gun arcs on their armament. CVs are easily the worst offenders of abusing this mechanic. BBs and CAs do it sometimes and DDs virtually never do it as it cuts down on their ability to run. b) Fair enough. Speaking from personal observations, the general playerbase rarely interacts with the border and if they do, they sail broadside-on, meaning that they're still punished if they do it. These are not the people we're talking about in this topic. Furthermore, putting a change like this off as "low priority" doesn't do it any good as the population of this game increases. The repercussions would indubitably be much larger if they put it off and a larger amount of people reaches high tiers where this tactic is prevalent.

Correct. This is my opinion. Turns out that quite a lot of people seem to agree with me about something being off. It's not entirely made up. You WILL come across this situation - not necessarily against a CV but it'll happen. This is what currently happens. Two ships, put against each other with one humping the border. I'm not expecting a broadside. I'm expecting a non-minimal crosssection (indicated by the dotted line). I'm expecting someone who willingly puts himself up against the border to suffer from more disadvantages than just losing one degree of motional freedom. Non-minimal crosssections would happen if humping the border had any downside associated with it. It'd lead to this (ship driving parallel to border instead of straight up to it) or this [ship crashes into border, gets stopped as a result of it (v = 0)] I don't see how it'd work in my advantage given that I'm supposed to work with the same limitations. The reasons for me to complain about this mechanic are that a) it doesn't affect all classes of ships equally and b) this contributes significantly enough to my high tier draw rate. Draws are not satisfying at all when you've clawed your way through your opposition, only to find the last opposing enemy pull this crap to force yet another draw.

Without CVs you don't have to stick with these idiots and can at least attempt an aggressive play as you're not reliant on the AA of three ships to bring down a single squad of planes in time, let alone a full strike. This goes for BBs more than it does for CAs as those can handle themselves even with CVs around.

If the border was done properly the target would either stand still and wouldn't be able to turn to use all of its guns or it'd be exposing its broadside. That's not enough, no. Picture yourself in a situation where the only viable play that doesn't lead to a draw is killing the enemy CV. The only way to efficiently kill a high tier CV is to have the broadside, as they tend to have enormous health buffers and HE isn't going to kill them in time if only two to three shells per salvo hit. Current border mechanics allow them to never expose their broadside as they can maneuver while humping it. Just your typical situation in high tiers. This garbage literally made me quit the game for the night.

The alternative without DDs would be two fleets circling each other. BBs try to pick those off that get spotted by planes, CAs try desperately to protect as many targets as possible and CVs are somewhere in the back, flinging poop at each other. Great fun.

Not surprised at all about that outcome. If I was to hazard an educated guess, I'd say that CVs didn't even need to launch a single plane for it to happen. Everyone balls up because not balling up is too much of a risk and a combined push with the whole team exposes you to a combination of DDs and CVs: CVs force you to ball up, limiting your maneuverability. DDs take advantage of that by carpet-torping from 12ish km. In that sense, CVs act a lot like artillery in WoT: They punish aggressive plays because those plays are usually done by individuals. Edit: ...and yes, I've had similar experiences with my Baltimore.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Never under any circumstance give an enemy the opportunity to shoot your unangled side if you can avoid it. This is true for every ship and is especially important if you want to engage BBs with a cruiser. You should have learned that on Phoenix and Omaha already, as those have huge citadels. Cleveland has one of the smallest citadels in the game and isn't as effected by that. Nevertheless, properly angled, your durability will increase by a lot - unless the enemy shoots HE, in which case you angle to limit your crosssection. As far as the guns go, Cleveland does need some getting used to. You cannot really go close against BBs. As a result, you're limited to firing HE from a distance. IJN CAs will beat you at long range just because they can actually hit you. For those you'll probably need to go reasonably close.

Nah, mate. It's a bit too much for a variety of reasons, most of which I've discussed in this thread of mine. I'd consider Pensacola balanced, New Orleans underpowered and Baltimore fine.

I'm fairly vocal when it comes to balance issues regarding CVs and even I'd consider AA in the form of Cleveland to be a tad too strong relative to the ships that follow it up and the ships that're supposed to fight it.

Baltimore definitely does have good AA if it gets attacked.

It depends on the ship. If you're driving a USN CA and you're not picking every AA-related upgrade, you're doing it wrong, though.

...and here's what you earn if you play opportunistically while escorting if necessary: The Omaha and Pensacola games were quite exceptional, the Baltimore one wasn't. Those rewards include Premium. The bottom line is: Escorting is basically a lot like playing an air superiority CV. It pays badly and you run the risk of not contributing at all if the escorted ship isn't attacked. In mid tiers you can dive in and out of that role because BBs tend to be a lot slower than CLs and CAs. In high tiers, the speed difference is almost negligible, meaning that you really don't have the flexibility.

The difference is small? Since when is the difference between eating a salvo of AP to the side for 15k compared to eating a salvo of HE for 5k "small"?

If you do this with your division, I will find you and I will flame the everliving crap out of you. I don't care if I'll get reported for it. I don't care if I'll get a tempban for it. You're ruining your own game and, more importantly, you're ruining the game of those that're forced to play with you, you selfish c*nts. This is one of my biggest gripes with the game and it's not even directly related to the game. In WoT you can deal with this garbage because you can carry much harder in that game. In this game you're crap out of luck if you have a platoon like that. Edit: Very next game after that: A Myogi/Kongo/Cleveland division ended up on my team in a tier 9 game. They died within the first five minutes while not doing jack crap and complaining about "torpedo spam". Can't be arsed to make a screenshot out of that.

Wrong. It increases the range at which enemies are rendered. It's a useless upgrade for just about every ship in the game. Edit: This is actually what I was told in a thread in which I asked about its functionality.

The topic got vuked and nobody bothered to open a new one.

It basically goes like this for USN cruisers and BBs: Omaha vs New York? Sure thing, bring it on! Cleveland vs New Mexico? Easy going, no problem. Pensacola vs Colorado? Ehh, manageable. New Orleans vs North Carolina? Why would you even attempt that? Baltimore vs Iowa? lol. I'd expect DM to be slightly less terrible against Montana than Baltimore is against Iowa. We'll see when I get there.

Screenshots are a) stock, b) with hull upgrade and c) with hull and FCS upgrade. You don't. You either buckle up and throw 18k free exp at that thing or suffer through what can be considered one of the worst stock grinds of this game.

Nice necro. Fuso's hull upgrade gives it 6.6km additional range. 14.5 is what you have if you upgrade just the FCS. You're quoting a post from four months ago. Apart from that, high tier BBs are actually untouchable to equally tiered CAs.

I never argued that the C-hull had worse or on-par AA, did I? My point was that the AA is not great even with the C-hull. Low tier ships simply do not work well in escort roles. On the other hand, contrary to high tier ones, low tier cruisers can actually carry games and are not limited to support roles. The C-hull is the choice you go for if you wish to play support. If you wish to play support, you have to put up with potentially incompetent teammates. The chances of that happening are extremely high in low tiers. B-hull is much, MUCH better if you want to carry yourself. You're not as reliant on teammates and that's a great thing in low tiers.

Have you ever played normal ships? 3.5km is nothing in this game - not even in low tiers. It basically forces you to sniff a BB's farts. 3.5km AA is only workable - not "good" - in high tiers because you get upgrades and skills to boost it.

B-hull has 4 DPS @ 0.9km and 80 DPS @ 2.5km C-hull has 50 DPS @ 2.1km, 16 DPS @ 2.0km and 27 DPS @ 3.5km. Only the latter is in any way important and 3.5km is not enough without captain skills and equipment to enable you to escort. On the other hand, 80 DPS within 2.5km is plenty for self defense. This is basically the same situation you face in IJN DDs: The B-hull usually has shite AA and three turrets and the C-hull has slightly less shite AA and two turrets. The loss of one turret means you're extremely vulnerable to other DDs and will lose virtually all duels against them. The increase in AA won't deter CVs from plopping a fighter squad on your head. These C-hulls just aren't worth it.

Having played through Omaha rather successfully, I feel I can weigh in on why the C-hull really isn't worth it with more than just "HURPIDY DERP, IT'S A TURD!": If you have a look at the AA you receive over the B-hull, you'll notice that most of it is short range AA - Wargaming decided that even the 76.2mm cannons would have a range of 2km instead of the standard 5km for AA armament of such caliber. This means that even the C-hull Omaha is a woefully mediocre escort. Your AA envelope is too small to be useful for escorting. At the same time, CVs usually won't go for you unless pressuring them directly, in which case Omaha is maneuverable enough to outplay slow tier 4 and 5 planes. This makes the loss of one gun per side and one tube per launcher not worth it. Especially the latter can be a dealbreaker depending on your playstyle.

I can only really speak for US low to mid tier CVs (Langley, Booger and Independence) as I had those in CBT: They're boring as sh*t to play and they can put people off of playing that whole class of vehicles. They're also not particularly overpowered when you play against them. In fact, I wouldn't consider any USN CV until Essex "strong" for its tier, let alone "overpowered". IJN CVs are a different story entirely. Hiryu and Shokaku seem to be amazing for their tiers because AA is relatively weak. Zuiho and Ryujo, while strong offensively, have to face Cleveland and they'll lose trades against that class any day. This is coming from someone who's quite vocal about his dislike for CVs and their ridiculous influence on gameplay - particularly high tier gameplay.