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Feel free to try "spamming HE at BBs" when your 203mm HE regularly deals 0 damage to Iowas, Montanas and Yamatos. It cannot. You get that slot at tier 9.

You can work around this by temporarily putting that captain into another ship, retraining him for free, returning him to the ship you want to have him on and then retraining him for money. It's clunky but it should work.

Been having the same argument in the ingame chat. I really wish they'd reset all three missions every day.

Someone's going to tell you that cruisers are not supposed to shoot down planes. They're there to panic them. Unfortunately, said panic doesn't really pay. Edit: Cleveland is a much, MUCH more competent ship than Aoba at tier 6. It has incredible DPM with its main battery, incredible AA DPS relative to the planes it is supposed to meet, incredible durability thanks to a tiny citadel and above average speed and maneuverability. In fact, the only balancing factor is its shell arc. That's literally the only downside to that ship.

In any case, the issue with CVs not paying repairs to the same extent as other classes of ships has been addressed. If it's still too little you can bet your behind that Wargaming will be on top of that. They usually don't like it too much when people can easily farm a crapload of credits as it does tend to mess with their premium ship sales.

They're doing it wrong if they allow you to shoot their broadside.

Pretty sure they did it at some point in WoT. Alternatively, some replay service did an analysis like that. I'm absolutely certain I've seen heatmaps for WoT. In any case, screw border humpers. Don't really care if it's currently legal and I won't do it to others. It's not like Wargaming can condemn it until they find a solution for it.

Imagine Wargaming releasing heatmaps showing off the ship density on each map. I bet it'd be hilarious to see the highest density at the borders.

I don't actually disagree with your argument overall. I tried to address an inconsistency in your post. Their "ammo" cost is significantly higher than that of normal ships. Wargaming changed that at some point in CBT as far as I know. Whether or not that makes up for the reduction in proper average repair cost I don't know. That's something Wargaming will have to figure out.

You get that upgrade if you deem your turret rotation speed crippling. IJN DDs are a prime example for that.

Again, this is not really the case. Carriers are fairly similar to BBs in that they virtually always lose combat efficiency during engagements. Since reserves act as a healthpool of sorts, CVs effectively always take damage - even though the ship itself is untouched. Normal ships trade health, carriers trade reserves for damage. This has some repercussions in the late game but the logic is sound.

Super fun times! Their Zuiho even complained about "ridiculous CV matchmaking".

This is factually incorrect. A CV without planes is a CV without damage potential. As long as the game doesn't purely revolve around dealing damage, you'll always be able to do more even without planes, be it capping or forcing the draw if you can't cap. You also provide AA and a meatshield if needed. CVs are the only class of ships that can still influence the battle despite losing their damage dealing potential.

This is something I'd like to expand upon as it fundamentally constitutes carriers as a low risk class of ships. I'm going to leave out the risk posed by other carriers as having a class of ships only be at risk from its own class is terrible design. Jezna is somewhat wrong in claiming that a CV doesn't risk its hitpoints when it attacks. Planes act a lot like hitpoints. Whenever a CV makes an attack run, it's effectively trading a portion of its planes away - much like a normal ship would do in a direct engagement. In fact, this is completely unavoidable at high tiers. You'll always lose some planes, whereas a normal ship can attack from stealth, bounce or shoot a distracted target (which in theory means trading a teammate's health). The main difference is in the screw-up potential. In high tiers, screwing up in a CV means losing up to 32% of your reserves in the case of Hakuryu or 22ish % with Midway. This is probably never going to occur as it's highly unlikely to lose every single plane of any given attack run. Now compare this loss of reserves to the potential loss of hitpoints upon screwing up in a normal ship. DDs, if the screw up, die immediately. CAs, if they screw up, die immediately or lose the vast majority of their hitpoints. BBs, if they mess up, lose a whole lot of hitpoints. This potential loss of hitpoints diminishes the effectiveness (ignoring the permanent loss of turrets and AA) of a ship and it's inversely proportional to the risk at hand: Low health DDs can still work just fine if they survive. Low health cruisers can still work - albeit less efficiently due to the way they deal damage. Low health BBs - unless at extreme range - are pretty much useless as they really cannot avoid incoming damage and need to trade efficiently. Comparing this rather hefty price you pay for mistakes in DDs, CAs and BBs to CVs, which, at most, lose 32% of their "health" strikes me as odd as a CV without "health" is still a much more useful ship than any other ship that has expended all of its hitpoints. This is fundamentally what makes high tier CVs low risk. In low tiers it's virtually impossible to lose your planes as AA is terrible, leaving you with the same result. Only mid tiers offer a situation where AA is strong enough to actually deter CV attacks due to their relatively low reserve counts and the resulting high risk of combat ineffectiveness. This is why Cleveland can be considered too strong while Baltimore, albeit having the same relative AA performance as per this little thread of mine, is just 'fine'. If CVs were to run out of planes at a rate similar to the survival rate of normal ships I'd consider them on a relatively equal playing field in terms of the risk involved. As is, apart from mid tiers, this is not the case.

Please tell me you're not complaining about not being able to 1v4 a stacked group of ships, one of which was equally tiered and equipped with the single highest AA DPS in the game. How many people do you expect to bunch up for you to not attempt runs on them? Yes, because watching a Hakuryu yolo and eventually kill the Izumo you're trying to protect with your Baltimore after your skill runs out is totally fun.

This would have the faintest bit of credibility if it wasn't written by someone who boasts a sig with 100k average damage and 9 kpd while having 75% of his games in a CV.

Escorting can and does sometimes pay well. I can guarantee that this game would've been a loss if I hadn't supported our capitals. Instead, enemy CVs got to pull a draw out of their butts because, well, CVs gonna CV. 20150727_144314_PASC017-Baltimore-1944_20_NE_two_brothers.zip 2.98MB 20150727_144314_PASC017-Baltimore-1944_20_NE_two_brothers.zip

While Mr. Luckyio doesn't have the specifics right, the general gist of that part you quoted is. High tier BBs (NC, Iowa, Montana, Yamato) are virtually untouchable to 203mm guns. This nigh invincibility is one of the reasons why cruisers lose so much of their carry potential in these tiers. On topic: Right now you'll find a bunch of people who've started playing the game in OBT reach the tiers in which escorting makes sense. When you consider that most of these players have played WoT in some capacity and usually know nothing about naval warfare, you end up with people who're unwilling to escort because "Why would the medium tank equivalent in this game escort?" (or something along those lines).

Meanwhile, server status according to the WoWs main page claims that it's up and running with 37k players.

Pensacola is my second highest scoring ship in terms of average exp (2.2k with prem) right after Baltimore (2.4k with prem). I guess I'll provide some replays of relatively aggressive play on my part. Now, mind you, you'll see some very questionable matchmaking in those because I had the ship quite early after the wipe. The core principles still apply: AP is your friend. If you want to sling a lot of HE, you picked the wrong ship. Your AA is great against lower and equally tiered CVs. Against higher tiered CVs you'll struggle a lot. You can trade quite efficiently against equally tiered BBs. Abusing your excellent maneuverability is paramount. Treating Pensacola as a pure escort is a waste of potential. In my opinion, Pensacola does everything New Orleans can do. It is either on par (long range AA, maneuverability) or better (artillery) in virtually every respect that matters while being lower tiered, making it a much more competent ship. Even Baltimore is barely an upgrade in the artillery department while meeting some rather stiff competition. To date, Pensacola has been one of my favorite ships in the game just because I couldn't cope with Cleveland's ridiculous shell arc. Stock, Pensacola can be quite a mule to play with. Edit: Holy mother of necros. Didn't notice the date until it was too late. Pensacola.zip 8.42MB Pensacola.zip

Given that he dun goofed it himself by teaming up with the NM, I had no regrets shooting him in the side with AP for 10k per salvo.

This was probably the most messed up matchmaking I've had so far.

That's kind of the point of this discussion. No good CV player will let you catch up to him or corner him in the alotted time of 20 minutes. No amount of skill on your part will prevent that. You're at the whim of the CV sucking.

What's the highest tier CV you've faced? Tier 7? Omaha - the highest tier ship you've driven in OBT - outruns them all. Omaha is also one of the fastest ships you'll drive in that line. Try replicating that with any of the higher tiered CAs.

You'll never catch a CV - especially high tier IJN ones - in a CA. CAs go between 33 and 35 knots. CVs go - big shocker - between 33 and 35 knots. CVs, if they sniff you out, will force you to turn and maneuver, meaning that you literally cannot hope to catch them. In addition to that, a CV is much more likely to find you before you find the CV in a CA.