El2aZeR

Just let your armor and HP pool soak the damage. It's not gonna be better in a T3 BB that has AA guns because those do pretty much nothing, too. So having AA guns or not is actually irrelevant. It sounds stupid because it is stupid, but low tier CVs deal so little damage that you can just let your passive defenses deal with them. There is no interaction whatsoever. Hence why low tier CV design is garbage.

Last I remember someone proved that average player skill is actually falling. I'd be very surprised if CVs are exempt from that. Fact remains that a CV can blow a DD out of the water WAY faster than RTS CVs ever could. That potatoes can't do it is irrelevant because they couldn't do it in the RTS iteration either.

Not that I particularly disagree about handling low tier CVs differently but bringing up history is kind of a meh argument. In terms of mechanics the threat low tier CVs pose to their contemporaries is almost nonexistent, as such their counterplay options must be pretty much nonexistent. It's a natural development of how low tier CVs are designed. Ofc whether the inherent design of low tier CVs is bad is a different matter entirely. Spoiler alert: It is.

Probably because they tried precisely what you suggested. Rockets are used as a reliable finisher unless you're playing Enterprise or RN CVs, which means that once the damage is dealt you are certain to die. I believe the DD with the best high tier air concealment is the Cossack? Yeah, you still see those way before you can even remotely overshoot them with bombs. In fact you have to fly quite some time inside their air concealment before you can think about attacking and if you just mouse + WASD for a bit it is literally impossible to miss at least in terms of mechanics.

Which is why I can kill a DD in less than one and a half minutes into a match. Or how in my last match I killed all 4 enemy DDs after 7 minutes match time. To put this into perspective, a RTS CV needed 3-4 minutes to fly just a single attack. Again, whatever your experiences with potato CVs don't matter as you're comparing them to the capabilities of the top RTS CV players. When it comes to high level play reworked CVs are laughably more powerful it isn't even a contest.

Wrong, by simply letting planes close for a bit before hitting DFAA you could wipe all planes before they could retreat or attack you. There was literally nothing the enemy CV could do to counteract that beyond not attacking you. Ever. But then again that apparently required too much brainpower for the average player to comprehend. So now it doesn't matter whether you press DFAA or not, you die. On that note btw I've recently seen people waste DFAA on fighters. Yes. DFAA. On the on call fighters. Which would mean nothing has changed, aka the premise of this thread is full of . Or am I wrong?

Laughing manically as I simply push one button to delete all planes. And I still do on the Chinese server. Now it doesn't matter how many buttons I press, the CV gets to all over me if he's skilled enough. Good thing I no longer play surface ships and thus can no longer encounter such a scenario. But hey, if you consider this balanced: then there is no helping you I suppose. And before anyone says "OMG NOT EVERYONE CAN BE SO GOOD", RTS CVs were also only measured by their top players as is clearly evident in this thread. I don't see anyone here complaining about potatoes failing every auto drop as they get their planes wiped by the next best AA ship.

This is a contradiction in itself. Because the AA you get at low tiers is more or less equivalent to the power you face. If you want AA to the point of being capable of denying strikes like in higher tiers then low tier CVs have to be capable of causing more damage just like in high tiers. Fairness is a two way street.

If you were to give low tiers serious AA then low tier CVs would inevitably have to gain serious alpha strike. You sure you want that?

Not necessarily all but within the basic design scheme of this game. Unlike e.g. a Cleve a St. Louis provides no utility for their teammates that their class is supposed to have in a match. They cannot screen against DDs, provide consistent fire support nor provide AA cover against higher tier ships. Never meant to insinuate that. However we've seen no shortage of BB players complaining about e.g. HE spam ruining the game and saw their views confirmed in finding success in cruisers. Thankfully these seem to have mostly died out but they inevitably still exist. They always exist. The most successful PvP games are easily among the most restrictive. Freedom of choice etc. is something players love to preach - until they experience it for themselves and realize how bad of a game that makes. No, any successful PvP game locks players within its confines and punishes you for stepping out of it. This doesn't kill off creativity or excitement because there are (or should be) plenty of options to move within the boundaries, tread the edge or risk it all. The reason for that is very simple, it lets skill, not creativity, difficulty of play or sth else along those lines, decide the outcome of the match. The side that makes more mistakes loses, the one that doesn't wins. There is no widely successful PvP game that tries to afford its players as much freedom as possible. Such things are almost exclusively reserved for singleplayer experiences. A basic example of that in WoWs was the torpedo soup meta. There is no doubt in my mind that it should have been reigned in as it eventually was. Restricting it did actually make the game better at the expense of the ships that solely relied on it. Which ironically means CVs are working perfectly fine. You are not supposed to have fun when targeted by any mechanic. Unfun situations is something a player is supposed to avoid and are designed that way precisely for this purpose. Personally I don't feel any less fun when I'm hunted down by a DD in a BB than getting killed by a CV. Or getting caught via radar than being caught in a cross drop. Both means either I or my team has misplayed and I'm paying the price for it. Any negative feelings that arise in this matter are intentional so that you'll make the effort to avoid it next time. If it is supposed to be a team game, yes. It opens up other options that are fun as a team rather than having fun as an individual. Ofc if someone can only find fun in individual actions the game was probably never the right fit for them anyway. By your definition the fundamental concept of RTS CVs should be fine. They should have had plenty of options to be outplayed while themselves enabling new ways to outplay the opponent. Indeed they restricted certain paths of action as well, perhaps more so than any other mechanic we've seen since, but it was well within the premise that this is supposed to be a team game. We've ofc never seen that in execution but the potential was imo there. Sadly you'd have to wait for a week for that replay as I'm currently moving between places (typing this up on my phone). By that time it will have probably slipped our minds already. @Saiyko was with me in a div if you want to take his word on it tho, but then again his opinion on the bow camping meta reflects mine so not sure whether you'll want to trust in that.

Shhhhhhhh. It's all good now. Let her rest in peace. (Or come to the Chinese server to revive her lol)

Bombs are not your weapon of choice against DDs in an Audacious. Yes. True up to a certain point. Past that however higher individual plane durability is more valuable. Also we don't talk about Haku. That CV no longer exists.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub Does this perhaps sound familiar to you?

Audacious has the most durable and fastest strike planes of her tier. If you fail to retain planes with Audacious you will fail even harder with any other T10 CV. Git gud.

Thing is in my mind it is not my job to babysit my teammates. It is my job to set up at strategic locations where I can both deny the enemy CV and let my guns work on the enemy. It is the job of my teammates to recognize that and keep close, supporting me and in turn letting me support them. If my teammates don't recognize the situation then the match was probably lost from the very beginning anyway. This is ofc also dependent on the map, but I've seen enemies pull that against me even on Tears of the Desert. Indeed. One that WG thoroughly failed in both the RTS iteration by neglecting it and the rework by building it upon completely flawed ideas. Still, while the RTS iteration was far from flawless the fundamentals the class was built upon were actually pretty okay imo. It's just the execution that left a ton to be desired. A reaction to severely mitigate, deny or outright punish enemy action. Due to her inherent toolkit a St. Louis player would simply be unable to do any of that in most scenarios in a high tier match. There are some edge cases where he might be useful for the team but those are far and few in between. When compared with high tier ships within or even outside of her class she only garners disadvantages even against ships that her class is supposed to counter. As a basic example a T8 BB can still make a T10 cruiser miserable, just not as much as a T10 BB could. A T3 cruiser will get shrekt by T10 DDs or CVs in all but the most extreme scenarios. There are probably quite a few BB players who played DDs and saw their biased vision confirmed about how they are OP or otherwise bad for the game. Such cases are bound to exist. Again, CVs are going to stay a universally despised class no matter what you do (unless it suddenly garners a huge portion playerbase but that is something to be avoided due to how CVs were and still are designed) due to the way PvP games work. It's why most players in CS despise AWPers, most players in StarCraft despise cheesers and so forth and so on. It doesn't matter at all how easy it is to counter these mechanics, as long as they aren't widely used by the majority of the playerbase and/or considered cheap they're going to be hated. And quite honestly if you got screwed over by a RTS CV you're not playing the game well and properly. You've either lost your teammates (and thus probably the match) already or you've misplayed. Due to the inherent nature of how they were designed there was no other possibility (except maybe RNGesus saying no to plane losses but I've practically never had that happen). What is good play in non-CV matches may not be so in CV matches. Comparing them doesn't make sense. And ofc you're always going to find non-CV matches less restrictive and more fun etc. due to reasons already stated, but CVs actually made this a better game precisely by restricting certain actions. I actually had to find that out the hard way. I used to despise CVs just like everyone else until I eventually started playing them when WG was practically finished with the process of killing them off. I hated that I couldn't just bow camp my way to victory in BBs or how I was reliant on cruisers for air cover. DDs ofc loved that CVs got killed off which is why we got the amazing torp soup meta until WG hit IJN DDs with the nerf hammer so hard they never recovered. I didn't realize CVs actually kept the game flow going instead of just letting almost every match degenerate into a giant campfest where everyone can just sit in one spot and damage farm. It made the game objective driven rather than having people break off left and right regardless of whether it benefits the team or not. Just yesterday about half my team took over 5 minutes to clear out a single bow camping BB and that was only after I turned my attention on him as my team's CV. In a way he played the situation correctly, he angled (aka bow camped), managed DCP/repair correctly and used cover. DDs would've never gotten to him without putting themselves at severe risk due to the position he held. And since he was near an objective and we would've had to expose broadside to him so we couldn't just ignore him either. The only way for my teammates to clear him out without me was to put themselves at risk and charge him to flush him out. And this is far from an isolated occasion, I've done it myself aplenty. Why should one guy playing an incredibly braindead playstyle that requires little to no effort be capable of stalling half the enemy team. Or even worse, potentially net profit out of it as the enemy ships have no choice but to put their focus on him and make risky plays to flush him out? Without a CV there is nothing to discourage dumb like this.

Didn't catch it at first either until MrConway pointed it out to me.

By killing the enemy. Air cover is a waste of time if it isn't on your way to your target.

Honestly I never was. If you have a perfect defense you gotta give up something and I was more than fine with that. Which is why caps exist. They're supposed to be focal points that draw confrontation. Well, if the CV doesn't come near you so your teammates stay safe that's your job done, no? It's a thankless job to be sure, but considering the reward system has always had an egoistical focus we should be used to that at this point. I disagree. In my eyes all classes are fundamentally different beyond the basic control scheme. Even within a class there are inherently different playstyles as you've pointed out yourself. Trying to play any of these classes or even sub-classes like any other will usually result in at least reduced efficiency, if not straight up failure. RTS CVs ofc didn't even have the basic control scheme in common so it was a bit more extreme. The issue here is if the tier spread is too high then counterplay options for bottom tier ships practically become none. Even nowadays it is extremely suspect at certain tiers to the point where I believe +/- 1 MM in general might be the better option. Again, viable counterplay options have to be retained. While it was thoroughly unrealistic I didn't particularly mind it even in a CV. Besides, the guy with AA active is going to get spotted so it's not like the game left you completely in the dark as to what is happening. That island block AA might be better from a design perspective but it is miserable from a gameplay one imo. Cruisers are among my favorite targets nowadays when they're behind islands simply because they die way faster than BBs and there is literally nothing they can do against it. It's a very simple thing tbh. CV players have always been a minority. Considering what I said previously about game design and PvP games and it is no wonder that most people do not like CVs. Doesn't mean reworked CVs are fine or sth but the result would be the same even if CVs were perfectly balanced.

When you've had nothing but teams all day and your team is once again dying for no reason without a single cap taken but you really don't wanna lose. Owari da mothers!

Thing is you don't need aggressive options because your defense was more than capable of denying enemy striking power 100% and a CV has no option but to be defended against if he wants to attack. Meanwhile a ship that takes aggressive action may not or sometimes can't be shot at. If aggressive options against CVs were to exist then your defensive options automatically have to be weaker. And? Even better, no? Which is just straight up objective false. Otherwise it would be unfair to the CV as well that he cannot attack certain targets or cap. Or how BBs have inferior concealment to DDs. Or how DDs aren't as tanky as BBs, etc. This is not a one way street. If you try to equalize inherently different classes you will inevitably fail. Instead the pinnacle of balance in such a system is to make the classes interdependent on each other as well as giving each one of them effective counterplay options against each other (which depending on the class of both your own and your enemy's choice are more or less risky/effective). In this sense yes, as long as ICBM equipped ships are somehow reliant on their other teammates and have viable and effective counterplay options it would in fact be balanced if you were to give them to both teams. I don't see why not. Again, as long as effective counterplay options exist it honestly doesn't matter how many enemies of one class are in the match. You are (or should be) given a fair chance to negate the influence of a CV on the match, if you don't take it that is human error and should be treated as such. This is simply one way CVs are made reliant on their teammates. CVs have inherently powerful abilities, as such they require suitable weaknesses and trade offs. Imo in terms of overall capabilities of what a CV can or cannot do they're actually fairly okay designed (as in for every strength RTS CVs had a suitable weakness). Room for improvement is there, but they are not a perpetually burning dumpster fire like reworked CVs. Ironically I actually suggested that. Sadly WG didn't listen. Yeah,. with reworked CVs it would ACTUALLY make sense to not have them on the map but fly in from the map border instead. It'd be a pretty good nerf to their striking capabilities by reducing their RoF. Well, at the beginning it did. Then WG killed the class off, so the meta developed without CVs. 1. There are no viable counterplay options to prevent me from being harassed to death eventually. RTS CVs had fixed reserves of which a large part were fighters, if an RTS CV would continuously attack me in a e.g. Worcester he'd get deplaned before I die. This is not the case with reworked CVs any more and necessarily so to accommodate their new playstyle. 2. Reworked CVs actually deny inherent playstyles of some of my favorite ships. E.g. I can no longer be behind cover and provide AA support to someone in front of said island. Heck in fact said island actually makes me a suitable target for CVs nowadays. To even have remotely a chance of punishing reworked CVs I am forced to sail out in the open. This is contradictory to how certain ships are supposed to be played. 3. The least affected class by the rework are BBs. Once again.

Player numbers have (regrettably) stayed stable all throughout the rework.

Smoke is not too op. You are just too bad at this game. Git gud.

Can you hear that guys? Ah, the sound of the glorious salt river flowing. It is music to my ears.