OVanBruce

At least from a historical point of view(?). All the changes Midway has received in her aircraft complement have made her so. Just to put a bit of perspective for those who weren't around when Midway was first introduced the planes she acomodated were: - McDonnell F2H Banshee as her fighter planes (JETS FTW!) - Douglas BTD Destroyer as torpedo bombers - Kaiser XBTK-1 as dive bombers Then WG decided that it was "conspicuously out of WWII era" to have jets in the game so they changed the faster than the japanese counterpart jets for the one we had until recently, the much loved Grumman F8F Bearcat. Then, they released Moskva. These 3 planes taking into account their development and introduction schedules would have been perfectly fine together from a historical point of view, wether it would have been the Banshee or the Bearcat. Anyway, just recently they changed Midway's planes again which has resulted in a rather comical state of affairs when it comes to the period those planes were developed and built. So now we have: - Vought F4U-4 Corsair as fighters. A development of a plane that was put into service in the middle of the war. - Grumman TBF Avenger as torpedo bomber. A plane introduced just when the war started and that was in production before it. - Kaiser XBTK-1 as dive bombers. A plane that got its first prototype flight as late as April 1945 and that never entered production. It makes you feel like giving a good slap on the heads of the guys back at ordnance.

How many times have this same thread been done already? I'm kinda tired of explaining again and again what is happening t CVs. Furthermore, current GZ test seems to be the last (?) so the expertise showed in the ideas put into GZ make me quite depressed about the future carrier rework.

I complained profusely about some of the changes on USN loadouts in the feedback thread for PTS and it was completely ignored. Overall I the only ship that is receiving a real buff is the Midway, the rest are the same or worse as they have been until now. Independence remains practically the same in its matchup against Ryuujou with its 111 setup. Ryuujou overall remains the better CV and now it will never meet a 201 independence again so in reality it is a buff to Ryuujou. Ranger gets another dive bomber squad in exchange of not ever having a chance at air control. Saipan, Kaga and Hiryuu will allways have better air control while your own strike, while potent, it is slow and against any competent CV captain it will be blocked with relative ease. This was like this before the changes but hey, at least you can claim it is a buff since you get a fighter in a Ranger strike setup lite. Lexington gets to have the new shiny AP bombs for the USN CV silver line and with then comes the terribly polarizing gameplay in which you can be utterly useless or a God in the battlefield. It will remain to be seen how it performs because it can't be comparable to Enterprise's 222. Essex, now this is the worst part, they have practically made a worse Essex than the previous one and the main reason are its downtiered fighters + downtiered torpedo bomber. The downtiered fighters greatly limit your own offensive capabilities because the combination of Taihou's better fighters and the overall murderous AA of the ships means that you lose your ability to bruteforce some engagements thanks to your superior damage and healthpool. The difference bettwen yours and enemy fighters' is greatly reduced. Your single torpedo bomber squad becomes mostly useless thanks to its lower healthpool and because you cannot perform crossdrops. Your only liability are your DB squads but even so they have never been special and the AP bombs are pretty much crap against enemy BBs if they are tier X. Overall this changes bring good things to the USN line but it doesn't compensate at all for the differences bettwen USN and IJN .

It is still an engaging and challenging experience to play CVs, it's just that it has become much more difficult and sometimes frustrating to play CVs. You can still get called Sky Cancer by the potatoes like the old days though.

Is... is this thread for real? I've seen some real [edited] being written in the last posts so I'll refrain from commenting on then. I'll just focus on your doubts being written on the OP since I don't want to put to much time on this. why in the name of god , would the enemy carrier player ( most of the freaking games ) spend his ENTIRE bloody game chacing after my planes killing them and not doing anything but that . Because a big part of your role in a battle is preventing enemy strikes as much as possible. Now there are limits about how much can you actually block and your capabilities range from none to high. This is determined by how many fighter squads and how many planes have your squads. Now if you are playing the tier VI IJN CV, the Ryuujou, it depends on the flight control setup you have in your CV. Ryuujou can have the following setups: - 1 fighter squad (4-5 planes per squad), 2 torpedo bomber squad (4 p.p.s.) and 2 dive bomber squad (4-5 p.p.s.). - 3 fighter squads (4-5 p.p.s), 1 torpedo squad (4 p.p.s) and 1 dive bomber squad (4-5 p.p.s.) Now you can see that you trade one thing for another depending on which setup you pick. Now the important thing to take into account is what is more important in randoms? Sinking enemy ships! This is why the good CV players prefer having a good strike capability over good air control. A sunken ship is a ship that won't sink your ships, it is as simple as that. Now how can you strike with your planes if you've got an enemy carrier with better air control? - Actively scout with your fighter and dive bomber squads and use your minimap! You've got to spot isolated enemy ships and try striking the uncovered sections of the map. - Practice makes perfect. You'll have to learn how to strike as eficiently and quick as possible because your strike planes have limited time to drop their load before they are caught by the enemy fighters - Use friendly AA to your advantage. Although a good CV captain will allways know how to keep air control without being baited most CV captains usually overextend their fighters and lose plenty of planes to enemy AA. In order to achieve that you have to know which ships have good or bad AA. It will be your job to memorize which ships have good AA and which don't so you know when to engage in a seemingly bad fighter balance. - Finally, learn how to strafe. You have finally reached the first CV of the IJN line that can use manual attacks. Pressing Alt now gives you access to new more precise attacks for your attack planes and strafing attacks for your fighter squads. An Strafing attack is a "locked" attack in a line in which your fighter squads use a significant part of your ammo reserves to make the front of your fighters receive increased damage for the duration of the strafe. Strafing can also be used to get out of a bad situation fo your fighters by strafing out of a dogfight (locked fighter battle) at the cost of losing one fighter plane. Finally, please, there are very few exceptions where you don't want to upgrade your hull so allways upgrade.

For the love of God, don't release the Essex like it was in this PTS. The ship is worse than the previous 113 version. At least give it tier IX fighters.

No changes to the USN AP bombs. Essex is still the same with downtiered planes that make her a worse version of the one we currently have in the game. There is no point on playng this PTS.

As a CV you've got the tools to heavily influence the battle but your impact becomes truly big once the battle gets long because long battle = more strikes.

Indeed. I think Essex comes out worse with thischange thanks to downtiered fighter planes and downtiered torp bombers which have less chances to drop and hit thanks to not being able to crossdrop.

Yes, but more survability is still a welcome change over 0.1 less sygma. Sygma isn't the holy grail of accuracy. Yes, it will continue being the worse tier VII BB, which saddens me since I love the ship, but it is a buff nonetheless.

-Colorado Hitpoint on B Hull increased from 50100 to 59300, and no change to her Repair Party. Her main gun accuracy is adjusted to 1.9σ from 1.8σ (Hull A) and 2.0σ(Hull B), respectively. FINALLY. I mean, Colorado still needs more buffs but it is a welcome change for a highly powercreeped ship. And they are really considering the release of the USN CV changes with those crap AP bombs? Where is their supposed idea of making DB the main damage dealers of then? Nobody is going to pick those when HE DB+TB dot damage will be leagues better.

To be fair there is an emerging idea in taiwanese politics which are proposing the rennounce of claims in China and focusing on a fully endorsed Taiwanese identity outside of the Chinese one. So it's not so simple anymore in Taiwan.

Such are the normal issues when most of your marketing strategy focuses on the ultranationalistic or even jingoistic players. Gotta admire the japanese for not colectively making a fuss about the wrong IJN flag.

I'm hopeful we'll get a patch mid PTS to introduce new changes to the USN CVs, just like it happened with the 1k pound bomb during the last time USN CVs loadouts were changed. So if possible I think this would be good stuff to try out: - Introduce the new big bad american AP bomb for Essex and Midway to make AP at least something not utterly useless. - Decrease slightly the preparation time of planes, specially fighters to even the early game more with the IJN - Significantly decrease, either through a variation of Torpedo Reload Expertise or with a new Captain Skill the reload time of the dive bomber squads. Right now, with the tier VIII torpedo bombers, the proper drop order on an enemy BB is DB HE to destroy some AA and then torpedoes. The long preparation time of DB skews this order so it would be a greatly apreciated quality of life improvement if your squads could go out in a better order as soon as they are ready to be launched.

I'm willing to bet they don't dare to implement this out of fear of breaking the carrier UI even more than it already is.

Gotta love that my big, badass tier X bombers deal 11 hits and 8k damage to Yamato with the bombs that are supposed to be THE anti BB tools

Yeah, absolutely no point in taking the AP bombs. What an enourmous dissapointment.

No real advantage when your bombs can't citadel anything except KM BBs.

Weren't we promised an stronger, better AP bomb than Enterprise for Essex and Midway? You won't tell me now that Graf Zeppelin, at tier VIII, will have better AP bombs than Midway at tier X, right?

Penetration of AP bombs in Lex and Essex against certain BBs is still totally inadequate. There is no point of using then over HE

Erhm, it happened again. This time in the middle of a match, out of nowhere. UI worked, could see the numbers and icons of my squads being decimated. 3D video rendering just froze. You better fix this quick or properly testing the USN CVs will be impossible. This time when match was over and I could go back to port the game didn't even render anything

Description: The game video stoped once I got destroyed in my Essex. Game UI kept working and I could access menus it was just that the 3D rendering image was static with my burning wreck. Once I got back to port I was greeted by this redering of Essex. The flames were moving and the game heavily lagged. I could interact with the UI and menus but couldn't move the "model" at all. DxDiag.txt Edit: Looks like the same bug as above

Believe me they are most probably aware but a CV player have more meaningful priorities to attend than using one of his squads to spot.

Long story short: You expect CVs to be omnipresent beasts who's got to cover with 1 or 2 fighters the whole area of the map while defending their own strike planes, taking care of the enemy fighters, taking care of the enemy strike planes and spotting. I'm sorry but there is a limited amount of influence on the map a carrier player can have and although it may frustrate you lots of times your own inconveniences, looked from the perspective of a CV that has to fulfill all those roles, may not be on top priority in order to have a meaningful impact on the match. It's true that there are plenty of potato CV captains out there, thanks to WGs almost non existant info on how to play a CV, but that doesn't mean that you and your team mates can't do well by doing exactly what you'd do if this were a no CV match.

Underrated post.