Horin728

I think what they meant by the deff AA part is that the parameters of the bigger eclipse don't change, that means the bigger eclipse stays as big as it is right now (when under def AA)

These are only the first loadouts to be tested out, I think there might be one with TBs too, but we shall see, the paulinas were already able to citadel even USN BBs and the (now even more) improved penetration should make them more reliable at that. While all of this is true I still think that CVs should be able to pick a bomb type in battle, depending on the circumstance (while the bombers are landed obviously). I think that WG just wants to have hard data on all the options before they make the final decision and this provides quite an unique (and awesome) opportunity to test out their more wild ideas in controlled enviroment with greater sample size than the supertest provides...

More info from the GZ Facebook group: Greetings, captains! We are pleased to announce that the first phase of Graf Zeppelin testing starts on September 14. All test participants will receive two aircraft carriers. Each of them will have AP bombs, differing by their settings of drop ellipse, bomb fall time and other settings. Please, find further information below. As you might have known, originally AP bombs used to have the following characteristics: Dispersion ellipse of the bombs was 54 х 270 meters; The ellipse narrowed when ALT-attack was used – -50% to dispersion; Under defensive fire dispersion increased on 40%; The speed of bomb falling was 345 m/s; The bomb fall time was 6.0 sec. Now we present you two updated versions of bombers with AP bombs: The first version: Dispersion ellipse of the bombs has been narrowed to 54 х 210 meters; When ALT-attack is used or under defensive fire ellipse changes stay the same; The speed of bomb falling has been increased to 375 m/s; The bomb fall time has been reduced to 3.8 sec. Aircraft take-off time has been cut twice; The tier of fighters has been reduced to 7 without changes in their battle performance. In general, the first version is designed for players with a high skill in playing on aircraft carriers. Such performance characteristics of bombers will provide good accuracy, however, one must be alert – it is necessary to choose target lead accurately and to anticipate maneuver of the enemy ship. Reducing squadron take-off time will provide a pleasant bonus of a few seconds for the air group in a mass takeoff. This will give a slight advantage at the beginning of the battle and will allow your fighters to be one of the first over the strategic points of the battlefield; We have reduced bomb fall time and narrowed dispersion ellipse of the bombs. A delay of 3.8 seconds still gives the target ship a chance to lay an evasive maneuver down, but it will allow bombers hit maneuvering targets more efficiently and hit camping targets or targets that do not change their course; Increasing the speed of bomb falling will increase the value of armor penetration and give more opportunities for consistent damage to armored ships; Reducing the tier of fighters without changes in their battle performance will give a pleasant bonus when using the "Dogfighting Expert" skill. The second version: Drop ellipse has been changed, now it is a circle of 120 х 120 meters; The circle narrows when ALT-attack is used – -20% to dispersion; Under defensive fire dispersion increases on 100% when using auto-attack, and on 50% when using ALT-attack; The speed of bomb falling has been increased to 375 m/s; The bomb fall time has been reduced to 1.0 sec. In this version, the fighters have no changes comparing to the original version. The second version is designed for all players and does not require special skills in playing on aircraft carriers, although the performance of this version may be lower, it will allow the beginners to achieve more stable results. Bombs fall with a delay close to the standard, but the drop area will prevent from consistently hitting the target with all bombs, while the probability of hitting cruisers and other narrow targets has been significantly reduced. The task for testers will be given a bit later. Please keep in mind that we will test other options as well, but for now, we would like you to concentrate on the two suggested loadouts. Thanks for reading, and see you soon! In the comments, we have learned that more testing will follow, these are just first two changes to be tried out and that the GZ will probably end up with 2-3 loadout option to choose from.

Is there any way to obtain higher resolution pictures of those than those that are ingame? I am asking because I'd love to make a bit more detailed versions of these (including some heroic achievemnts hopefully).

There is difference between a skilled drop and relying on others to make mistake and while I can make the GZ work quite well for me, the main issue is with the UI - you have no indication of the time to drop and most importantly - if you loose a plane after it "should" have dropped the bomb (the delay time) the bomb gets deleted too.

New info regarding the Graf Zeppelin from the FB page: Greetings! We would like to thank all Graf Zeppelin owners for very high level of engagement: 92,7% of those who got an invitation have already accepted it. To make sure no one is left behind, today we're re-sending the invitations to those GZ owners who did not give us any reply: this is the last call, so if you're interested, please log in to the game and decide whether you want to participate. We plan to start testing phase 1 next week: two test copies of GZ with two different AP bomb loadouts will be credited, and detailed information about test length and goals will be published here. Thanks, and have a nice weekend! (Personal note: Almost 93%? Wow!)

I agree with the ability to change between AP and HE bombs, that should have been in since their introduction. I disagree with the longer delay for planes, since "thematicaly" they are being re armed anyway and from a gameplay standpoint - waiting a minute and a half for your DBs on the Midway is not fun. What we also need is a system that lets us cancel take off - when you accidentaly queue your squadrons in the wrong order, you can't change it, even though they have not begun their take off procedure (it could be simply bound to the F key...). To the AA... I am not happy that each line that comes out seems to have stronger and stronger AA. The whole poin of the US line was to have good AA. Now look at british CAs and BBs and to some extend other trees (Hindy, Grozovoi etc.). If the clan wars are truly to come at TX CVs will be completely useless, except for scouting, since here is the list of ships that don't carry defensive fire of don't have great AA: Shima, Khaba, Z-52, Yama and to some extend Grosser Kurfurst. This is what scares me, since every other ship can rip your squadrons (especially the single USN TB one) from the sky easily.

Ichases info and testing of spaced armor:

With the release of british BBs and the preview of KII, I am starting to be really worried about the AA situation ingame, especially in tier X (where the clan wars are rumored to be). Let us recap the ships who don't have outstarnding AA or don't carry the defensive fire consumable: Shimikaze, Z-52, Khaba (who is a hard target for the single USN TB squadron anyway), Yamato and (somewhat) Grosser Kurfurst. With every other ship shredding planes as soon as they enter their AA bubble. Now I was alright with Des Moines and Monty being the AA powerhouses that they are, since that was the USN lines "thing" but with the introduction of british ships (and the WIP Kii), it seems that they get eclipsed even in AA. This not only steals the USN flavor even more (heck their AA was the reason I grinded the Des Moines first back in CBT) but makes the life of a CV player quite damning, especially if faced with the infamous AA divison (something like a Haku+ a combinaton of DM+Mino). Are there any plans to revamp the AA throughout nations and classes? Or any info on the CV rework? Thank you!

Info from the Facebook group, regarding Graf Zeppelin. Good day, everyone! We're sending in-game test invitations to all Graf Zeppelin owners. The invitation will pop up as soon as you log in and enter the port. You need to accept it if you want to be included in all future Graf Zeppelin tests. If you missed (closed) the invitation, we will send you one more a bit later - just in case you did it accidentally. If you don't want to participate in the test, please open and specifically decline the invite: we won't bother you anymore. Thanks, and see you soon! I can confirm that the invitations were sent and first round of testing can/may/should happen even before 6.11 lands.

Laughs in CVs, who can't choose HE or AP bombs when their aircraft are landed.

I am not arguing that the UI is fine, it most certainly is not, I still get the buggy "mouse thinks it's over random friendly ship" I definitely agree that bombers being shot down after they performed a drop and thus removing a bomb is crappy. The Big E has AP bombs, but with worse drop pattern and worse penetration, that is suplemented by the TBs. With GZs DBs you can delete BBs of other nations other than german. Once again I am not arguing that the state of GZ is fine or good, I am arguing that she is a ship which can be worked with. While my number of battles in her is quite low (20 ish) since it's the working days, I find her quite fun. Mainly because your team does not expect anything from you, and when you start doing (if not well then ok-ish) everyone goes whaaat? A picture says it better than a thousand words... I usually alternate between AP and HE bombs from battle to battle to try her out as much as I can. To the Farra vs Fem debate, I have never seen them square off with each other, so I won't comment.

She is not using auto drops and she is one of the best CV players out there and while on NA people are much more oblivious to the planes and donn't spec for AA as much (since the CV pop there is basically zero), she still does quite well at predicting the enemy movements.

May I suggest taking a look a this https://www.twitch.tv/videos/170751805 It's Femenenly playing the GZ with AP bombs, starts around the 2:52 mark. And quite successfully.

To be honest CV already have to remeber AA values and with the additon of AP bombs even some armor ones :D

This is the only part I disagree with, I'd make the autodrop a captain skill point - let's call it standing orders. What it allows you to have is a last chance at sinking the enemy after you die - you might think of it as a shell in flight for other classes... A CV should be able to kill a DD outright, but it should have to use up a lot of its resources to do so. BBs fire salvos that might delete a DD every 30 (ish) seconds, Cruisers more often. A CV need about 2-3 minutes to perform a strike, it should be rewarded properly, or the sortie speed would have to be increased dramatically (which would lead to faster plane depletion). I really agree with the AA power creep, it seems that every ship released nowdays has god tier AA, especially in TX(Looking at Mino and Conqueror especially). Lets do a recap of TX ships that have weak-ish AA or don't carry the def AA... So we have... Yamato, Kurfurst, Shima, Khaba (which is a pain to hit) and maybe the Z-52.. A rather short list, isn't it... I think that divisions are already capped at +-1 tier?

I have nothing against challenge, hell I play USN CVs and I enjoy them, but the Graf in her released state was utterly unusable - you'd either need psychic powers to predict for 9 seconds or be content with super low HE damage.

Q&A from this (German) stream 1) (08:37) Italians scheduled for end of next year 2) (08:45) It's unlikely that there'll be a crew / crew management like the one in WoT, but Ev1n would like to expand the captain system with a second crew member that represents the whole crew of a ship. Thus you'd have a commander and a crew, the latter would be bound to the ship. That's what it could (!) look like, but we'll have to see. 3) (09:39) Q about GZ which is no news here, will probably get TBs with deep water torps if they proof suitable. 4) (10:05) IFHE and smoke nerf will probably come at the same time. 5) (10:11) Roma's model is being worked on. 6) (10:45) On the question whether they will rework the captain skill system or if they're satisfied, Ev1n says they're never satisfied with anything. They're always looking into ways to improve the game. 7) (11:28) RPF is still a controversial topic but it doesn't have too much influence on the game. Competitive might be an exception since it may be a must have skill there for DDs. But we'll see. If it prooves too detrimental for the game it'll be removed or changed like IFHE. 8) (12:02) Kitakami might come back for events for example. Regarding PvP: "Erm..... I'd rather not." 9) (12:47) MM +/-1 is heavily dependent on number of players, so if WoWs does have the number of players WoT has today then maybe one day in the distant future. 10) (13:54) Submarines. We don't see a feasible way to include them into the game, since they're very very slow. But we are thinking about different possibilites. One of the many ideas was to have submarines players spawn behind the enemy spawn instead of their own team's spawn. That way you'd have a similar effect as in PUBG where you have that blue border pushing you in. That might be a similar effect. Whether or not that'll work... your guess is as good as mine. That's pre-design / concept, so don't expect anything anytime soon. 11) (15:40) Convois are still alive. The concept still lives on, it's just not really neccessary for the game as it is right now. It's still on our minds and may be we'll find some other application for them. 12) (17:28) It doesn't seem to be very appealing if you had to fight a Yamato with one of those scenario torpedoboats / Schnellboote. Those ships were initially the class we considered an additional class for the game, together with submarines. But you'd have controlled them in a similar way as you control CV squadrons, so you'd have a group of them and controll all of them as one squadrons. However, since we still have issues with CVs as it is, there's no point in trying to adapt that concept for those torpedoboats. 13) (18:43) Half the dev team are navyfield veterans. Initially the CVs had a kind of artillery view so they played relatively similar to the other ships and there, the CV concept worked out because of this. Balance was fairly ok back then, but we had no really good idea how to rework the CV concept for the new top down view. We maybe have an idea where you could control your planes the same way you follow your shells, but here you could actually control the panes, which would enable a sort of skill shot. Well, it's but one idea. 14) (20:39) Wargaming has it's own event in Russia and thus doesn't attend Igromir any more. 15) (21:08) He thinks that there'll be a BB tech tree each year. Ev1n makes it clear that for him there should be an European tech tree release each gamescom. German lines are in the game already, strong "nein nein nein" for German CV line. 16) (21:43) There'll be alternate trees for Germans, Americans, Japan and the British, at some point, in the distant future. 17) (22:37) New weapon type we tested were missiles. They were really really great, but not for this game. You'd have followed a single shot missile and steered it into the target. It was super fun, but it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too strong. It's just not a feature that is suitable for this game. We also tried an unguided variant, but that was just boring, it was just like normal shooting but slower with more damage. 18) (25:00) Next CV tech tree will be British, but no comment on when they'll come. We still need to rework the CV gameplay before that anyway. IJN Tone is also tied to this rework, as are other hybrid vessels, meaning they'll certainly not come before the CV rework is done. 19) (26:27) We tested mines in Operation Dynamo and they worked pretty well. Question now is how we could include them into PvP games, if we were to include them at all. 20) (29:45) New map every two-three updates. 21) (29:56) Yes, there'll be a German premium DD. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfWarships/comments/6wbxox/tldw_of_a_brief_qa_with_ev1n/

This is good. I am glad we made it clear enough that the GZ is not in releasable state in somewhat civil manner. I'd also want to thank @Kandly for reaching out to us and taking all the heat in her stride and the mods for "overlooking" the profanity in GZs reviews.

Will update the post as times go by. German port is coming to game, probably Hamburg, more unique camos with unique commanders, premium german DD coming. Source: WG EU stream: https://www.twitch.tv/wgeu @Kandly Sadly we didn't get a chance to ask questions about anything...

Not disagreeing per se, but you have to have the ability to attack other classes as well... Imagine being in a light cruiser that has a "special gimmick" - its guns can only fire HE and their penetration is not enough to penetrate any part of a BB and most parts of cruisers, because it is "specialised" for killing DDs... No... Just No.

@Kandly have a nice weekend and thank you for stepping in!

Precisely I might be ok with the 6 second travel time if I was guaranteed an epic damage if I lead that much correctly... Currently the AP bombs don't reward enough for the amount of work and skill you have to put into them.

@Kandly thank you for stepping in and clearing the water up, please understand that our displeasement is not directed on you, rather on the situation as a whole. The GZ is in a sorry state a really should not have been released like this. The info about AP bombs delay is not clearly marked ingame or in the store and most of the people don't know about it. Also the damage of these bombs seems.. Underwhelming when compared with the amount of skill (or precognition) that is needed for their use. Trying to hit anything other than a BB is nearly impossible... (I heard that the paulinas have better chance of citadeling a cruiser, but there are some critical problems with that - cruisers are inherently more manueverable and have generally better AA than BBs and DDs and good luck ever trying to hit a DD). I think the word underwhelming rather encompasses the GZ as a whole.. She has nothing going for her exept maybe secondaries... And quite frankly that is not enough for a CV...

Well they won't be taking it away... I think... But rework should be there... One more thing, WG EU might even not know that the Graf is out, since the majority of their staff is at gamescon probably...