El2aZeR

I remember an article about the CV rework where someone from WG said "You should be able to fight every ship, but you need the help from your teammates to fight other ships." To which I simply went Thing is if you do an asymmetric role distribution like in WoWs some classes will always be more influential than others simply because some can do things others can not. Especially when considering the dedicated damage dealing role doesn't exist since everyone is one. This is far from bad and things can still be balanced by simply ensuring that everything, including CVs, has viable counterplay options, but it defies the "everyone must be equal" option by default. Carriers also used to go down very fast to DoT even if properly angled etc. It was pretty much never worth the risk of losing massive amounts of points just to annoy the enemy CV a little. It is a fringe case to be sure and it could work from time to time, but when including these cases then you may as well say that DDs can sneak around the entire enemy team and snipe the CV, making DDs counter CVs or something like that. It is practically never a viable option. The contestants in this game are the two teams and point gain is team based. As such it has to be considered whether it is unfair to the team or not, which it is not. Surface ships have other advantages to make up for this particular demerit as previously touched upon. What I meant was that it is easy to deal damage to the enemy CV. But because you practically never have a straight path to him, need to cross the entire map and need multiple strikes just like you would against BBs it becomes extremely time consuming. In the meantime your team could get rekt by the enemy team and/or the enemy CV and you'd have done nothing to stop/trade it. If the enemy CV has already killed 4-5 of your teammates by the time you finally kill him, the damage is already dealt and it is very unlikely for you to be able to catch up to that. So sniping a CV is easy, doing it in a timely fashion is almost impossible. It'd be an entirely different game at that point since a ton of mechanics would have to be changed to accommodate this. It's an interesting thought to be sure, but chances are we wouldn't even be playing this game or be this invested if that was the case. I think it is a perfectly valid comparison because your hull is practically useless when it comes to influencing the game. Other ships can sacrifice their HP to gain something, be that damage, map control, etc., a CV can't. Planes are the primary interactive element and how you influence the battle, losing them all basically means you are dead. And so forth and so on. There are ofc some distinct differences as we've already touched upon but overall it is fine in my mind. Indeed, but the passive denial by a CV's presence alone should prevent that from ever happening in the first place. There isn't always a DD on station, a CV will eventually come and go for the kill.

The last time 4 ships attempted to rush me (full HP Z-52, half HP Roma, half HP Moskva, full HP Monty) I killed them all. And the only reason I died was because of the dumb auto-pilot. So yeah, whoever you killed was just simply bad.

Quite frankly no you don't simply because this game can be won without firing a single shot. Standard, Domination and even Epicenter have alternative win conditions which will be much faster and more easily achieved by the DD than by you in a BB. It isn't close to an equal fight and as long as DDs are faster and have better concealment than a BB it never will be. Diversity and asymmetry inevitably come at the cost of equality. Except said hull is also incapable of playing the objective directly. Capping in a CV is practically unheard of if your enemy isn't completely (which to be fair is more often the case than not in randoms, which is why you'll find me capping in CVs very often) and using your CV as an AA platform inevitably puts you at severe risk. Both are options that are on the same level as "a DD could just rush down the middle of a map in standard and cap the enemy base". It's a stupid thing to do when your enemies do not consist of braindead potatoes. Thus in any relevant scenario a deplaned CV no longer poses any real threat to neither objectives nor anything else unless the enemy is in a winning position already or said CV wants to basically suicide. Sure, you don't lose points. The enemy doesn't lose points either by virtue of the enemy CV. I never understood this argument tbh, it is literally mirroring, aka it doesn't get any more fair than this. CVs are also worth a lot of points, more than any other class. If one does get caught, you'll get an incredible advantage in accordance to how difficult it usually is to kill one. CVs are actually pretty easy to snipe nowadays. It just takes a lot of time and is thus practically never worth the effort. They're far from immune however, just a single attack wing of TBs will make it through their AA easily and attack well before CAP aggros. Likewise immunity to DoT and auto consumables is a symptom of not giving CVs manual hull control which is hilariously sad. Back in the RTS iteration this was more of an issue with the skill gap rather than anything else. Any CV worth his salt knew how to defend himself if the enemy CV makes the stupid decision to snipe, average CVs often didn't. By making the CVs more capable of defending themselves against air strikes it would narrow down the skill gap which was an acceptable trade and a perfectly fine direction to take the class in my view. Except a full flight of planes does not represent 100% HP. The entirety of the reserves represents 100% HP, a strike is only a part of that. It is thus completely wrong to compare getting a strike wiped with getting your HP reduced to 0. It's more like taking a citadel hit or two. You'll take a pretty substantial blow, but you're not out of the match (yet). This gives CVs one inherent advantage: They cannot be oneshot unlike surface ships. In the RTS iteration however that advantage was traded off very well by CVs always having to face opposition when attacked in addition to other disadvantages previously brought up. You basically had a varying chance (depending on the target) to deplete the HP of your main guns every time you pull the trigger until they are destroyed. If it was the wrong ship no shells would reach the enemy and your guns would get disabled to boot. No other class faces such an issue. You can dodge shell fire and torps, you can use island cover, the enemy may just not pay attention to you and so on. AA meanwhile automatically engaged planes as soon as they were in range regardless of terrain or enemy action (assuming it isn't shut off for whatever reason) and depending on the ship it would inevitably take its toll. In addition getting your squads wiped also meant a far longer reload, potential trouble in lategame stages and/or the enemy CV winning air superiority. It was far from inconsequential as most people believe. Reworked CVs are obviously much different, although I actually like the respawning planes feature for the simple reason that it limits skilled CV players while throwing less skilled ones a bone. If I could I would spam DBs in Midway all day, fixed reserves would enable me to do that and cause hilarious damage. I think this could've been adapted to the RTS iteration in a way as well to the same effect. A DD needs several minutes to even get into a good firing position. A CV does not. I think this is a perfect case to present my point of view on the bow camping meta and how RTS CVs limited it tbh.

Aha, so trying to hunt down an enemy that - you need to push through the entire enemy team or put yourself in utterly worthless positions to even try to get to - is practically immune to long-mid range AP fire - is practically immune to DoT - is just as fast as, if not faster than you - has a large health pool - dispenses BB caliber alpha strike per attack that you cannot dodge - dispenses tons of DoT - gets immensely more lethal the closer you get sure sounds like a smart move. /s

Which is fair counterplay and depending on the method chosen more or less risky. Still means they can limit you in such terms. The same should and kinda did (as in sometimes because of WG's failure to balance plane/AA interaction in any reasonable way) apply to RTS CVs. Counterplay options did exist, they were just not abundant enough due to various factors. E.g. the worst offense was being forced to take an AA build, forsaking anything else you might wanna have or build towards, even in an AA ship to reliably counter CVs. But it did counter them, showing that this is a viable counterplay option. It was now only a question of redistributing AA towards base values and away from specialized builds to make this more widely available. Meanwhile the rework has actually made it worse because even with a full AA build you're not completely safe from air strikes. Go figure. Again, the RTS iteration wasn't, however you must understand that the primary interactive element for a CV is not the hull but their planes. As such they needed their team to e.g. kill AA ships etc. as previously explained. And the hull itself couldn't be left completely unattended either. A CV that doesn't move with the team is at best ineffective, at worst dead. As such their hull wasn't necessarily the exception to the rule either depending on how well their team was doing. This still remains true even in the rework where CV survivability has been buffed because "LOL AUTO CONSUMABLES!" It's still gonna take some substantial time to clear him out (assuming proper DCP, repair and cover management) which wouldn't be the case if a CV could just alpha strike him for 3/4 of his health to punish his dumb play. He will eventually go down, but he has plenty of time to make his adversaries pay, or even worse actually get his team into an advantageous position despite making an utterly braindead decision that should see him receive a quick and unrewarding return to port.

Yes please. Do that so I can kill you even faster. Also spotter is worthless thanks to glorious armored flight deck.

Oh god stage 4 boss is Lily White. Why am I doing this? Someone pls stop me.

Oh yeah, Uplay. That thing still exists. Totally forgot about that tbh. Now I am absolutely certain I won't buy those games. ^^

- Recently bought Metro Exodus and planned on playing it this weekend - Epic Launcher foils my plans by refusing to launch the game on my home computer for whatever reason - See Touhou FDF 2 on Steam - Bought and playing Touhou now instead Dunno what is a more frustrating experience. Not being able to play Metro or playing Touhou. ( Epic tho. Will never buy a product with this piece of again. Borderlands 3? Anno 1800? Division 2? NOPE. Literally lost all interest in those games.)

Maybe the first point should be separate for CV players and surface ships? Because ofc I'M having fun when playing glorious reworked CVs, though I'm sure the enemy team won't share my opinion. And depending on the skill of the enemy CV I either don't particularly care or am miserable when playing surface ships. Which is pretty much why I rarely if ever play surface ships anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pretty much never.

Thing is any class does, really. In a BB you can't just senselessly push when there are DDs around etc. (obviously a severe case of braindeadness in making such a play but hopefully you get my point). This goes back to one of my original points about game design. It is impossible to not take options away and make everyone happy by introducing another mechanic. Ironically in that specific case you wouldn't need to go at all. The CV can do it for you. Likewise if you really need the presence of a surface ship a CV can provide air cover. It is absolutely crucial for a class to be able to fight itself for this very reason, even more so when this is supposed to be a team game. CVs on one side can restrict individual action, however they can also enable them if absolutely necessary by fighting the enemy CV. One of the reasons as to why the rework is such a gigantic failure. Honestly the early days were such a mess in general (albeit a fun one) I don't think any discussion about it is worthwhile. In game design there are tons of "oh " moments where players figure out to do stuff that you couldn't have ever imagined. An example for that would be in StarCraft where high level players were able to dodge Lurker spines with their Marines and when the devs first saw that they thought "Holy you can do that?" Balance and meta are figured out as a game develops. That has been mitigated somewhat by big name developers having more and more resources at their disposal but it still holds true. I do not believe 2vs2 CVs was viable in the RTS iteration simply because of the way their counterplay worked. You focused one squad at a time, meaning a sufficient number of planes could technically speaking overwhelm any AA defense. Such numbers are unavailable to a single CV but multiple ones would be able to do it, making the fight unfair for a ship that is supposed to counter CVs. I guess this is simply where we'll have to agree to disagree. Personally I hate the bow camping meta and believe it to be one of the game's most glaring flaws. You obviously don't share my opinion. Nothing wrong about that. Which is good. I'm not aiming to make people suddenly like CVs since that is pretty much impossible anyway. Why even try? Isn't that right WG? ¬_¬ What I aim to do is to make the fight as fair as possible. Simply put it has no effect. DPS doesn't get split, flak doesn't get split, literally nothing changes in terms of mechanics. AA will act like you're the only squad in existence and apply flak and DPS accordingly.

That was ages ago before the game even went into alpha I believe. The initial plan of the game was very simulator heavy. I believe the early dev diaries on YT still talk about it and how it wouldn't be fun for the majority of players.

They aren't. That's still in progress last I checked and MM has actually made some strides. Yes, but that was at a time when they also said sea conditions will affect your gunnery and other simulator stuff last I checked (which to be fair was ages ago and is no longer possible as the dev blog is gone).

You remember when WG said the rework will address the issues with CVs?

Hm... let me check: RU BBs - all but Kreml have AA FR DDs - they don't even have smoke lol Anything Italian - if their premium counterparts are any indication their AA is gonna be as well PanEU tree - probably gonna be DDs so they're gonna get murdered

Which goes back to the playerbase and has nothing to do with CVs if you cannot make a move without support. That's fine in my eyes. Human error is supposed to decide matches after all. If you've previously benefitted from a play of another whose direct intention was supporting you and can build upon it then that would no longer be an individual play in my book. Yes, people have managed to make epic moves on their own, however that usually comes down to the enemy misplaying the situation extremely hard. That can happen to and against CVs as well. I recently had this gem of a match up: I was thoroughly prepared for the inevitable loss, but we actually won. Extremely hard as well. That is mostly because the majority of the enemy team decided to lemming to one cap, enabling me to kill all enemy DDs but the Fletcher who intentionally sabotaged his own team by basically going afk ("OMG NO SUPPORT GG TEAM!"). In addition to that we caught the enemy CV still sitting on the flank we overran so he died as well. There was no recovery for them at that point. I don't believe this is particularly relevant as it was (or should have been) outside of the inherent design of RTS CVs. CVs should have been limited to one per team, at best two in the lowest tiers (but again low tiers should have been handled completely different). E.g. queue restrictions in MMORPGs also tend to limit the number of tanks and healers severely, likewise WoWs limits BBs to 5 and DDs to 4 unless queue time becomes too long. I see this as no different. As it stands right now CVs just on everything so any higher number of CVs just limits the number of targets and gets them killed much faster. The ideal number of CVs per team would thus be at best 1, if not just straight up 0. In a different ship you probably wouldn't be able to provide spotting information for your team. Unless your friendly CV has cleared out all enemy planes already his scouting potential is actually fairly limited if he wants to strike as well. Fighters will be busy keeping enemy planes in check, meaning they won't be necessarily available, and bombers could be rearming or otherwise elsewhere. Not to mention spotting denial by surface ships was a very real thing. It's a very specific example to be sure, but imo it demonstrates perfectly that there are ways to play around CVs. A RTS CV was far from omnipotent when it came to spotting. Which is much easier said than done. If it were just a single bow camper such options are often available. When everyone does it you'll just inevitably open yourself up to someone else doing the same thing somewhere different, sometimes even across the map. Your best option is thus to just statically sail around or bow camp yourself and trade fire. If what you said were true then we wouldn't have had a ton of complaints about how boring and static the meta is in high tiers even before the CV rework. Also the amount of damage a bow tanking BB can sustain before going down is incredible even when under focus fire. It's not exactly uncommon for you to take 3-5 minutes to remove just one of them assuming he managed DCP and repair well. If he's alone and not an AA ship it is pretty easy. A CV can fly around his cover and just attack him. If the CV wants to mitigate plane losses while doing so his team should do their best to HE spam the target to destroy AA mounts. I don't particularly care much about bow camping cruisers because they tend to die pretty quickly anyway (unless ofc they're pseudo BBs and even then most don't tend to hold up for too long). BBs are the worst offenders in this case because of their incredible sustain, creating a static situation until they have been removed. If he does have AA support then CVs can either keep him spotted if necessary - and that's pretty much it. If a CV wants to sacrifice planes for some potential gain long range torp drops are an option. But here the teamplay clause applies so there is nothing particularly wrong with it. What about the improvements to RTS CVs I suggested? I feel like getting your perspective on those would be pretty interesting.

Oh boy. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shrek-is-love-shrek-is-life Read at your own peril.

Collabs obviously. I always give weeb answers in hopes of inducing higher salt production within the community.

Which is an inherent advantage/disadvantage to surface ships. I do not believe this is particularly unfair since CVs have to put their assets into harms way every single time they attack while surface ships can attack without retaliation. The good thing about your hull being in jeopardy is that you have staying power. If you play your cards right, you can stay in the area, keep applying pressure and contest objectives. Aircraft are a one off weapon, drop your ordinance once and your planes become largely harmless. The only thing they can do to keep pressure going is to keep spotting which is undoubtedly powerful but doesn't exactly sink ships. Imo planes hovering around being able to spot after dropping their ordinance should have been either highly limited or outright removed anyway. The current system actually does that pretty well, immunity altitude is a concept that could've been easily fitted to the RTS iteration. Likewise making torps invisible to aircraft was the right way to go. True, however there are also limits to his ability to move. If a CV doesn't know you're there, planes are extremely unlikely to be sent in your direction. The positioning of your teammates too plays a pretty big factor. And so forth and so on. If you e.g. want to flank an enemy in a DD to fire torps, you're taking a risk. However the enemy CV doesn't know that until either you've been unfortunately spotted or sees the torpedoes closing in on his allies. The biggest mistake I've seen pretty much everyone do at this point is that they stick around, inevitably getting found by the CV. You need to move back to friendly lines immediately after firing your torpedoes. I would define independent action as something an individual does. Considering this is a team game this should be next to impossible. E.g. if a single individual could just break through the entire enemy team (barring heavy misplays ofc) in a game of soccer and score a goal, that'd be pretty broken. Instead I'd like to see a squad mentality so to speak. Single AA ships should be pretty much completely safe from air strikes, but are needed to escort other ships, thus forming a small formation. 2-3 ship groups should be more than enough to retain tactical flexibility. Except they aren't, or rather aren't supposed to be. The hull is always reasonably safe, this is true. However CVs by design are (or rather were) a force multiplier, not a one-man-army. You need your teammates to contest objectives, take out AA ships, break up formations and weaken enemy AA. It was a mutually beneficial relationship even if most people never acknowledged it since teamplay FOR CVs was pretty much always done by default, whereas teamplay BY CVs was a rarity. That the CV hull is reasonably safe from retaliation was born from necessity more than anything as CV sniping went rampant. However a caught out CV would still die to enemy fire rather quickly, giving you incentive enough to at least move your CV with your team. Yes, and they were. Or were supposed to be as already elaborated. To me this is the most flawed and boring part of high tier battles. Too often does it devolve to gigantic bow on campfests. It is far too easy to just sit down or circle in a position without any real support whatsoever and statically trade fire with enemy ships for minutes on end which wouldn't be possible with an RTS CV in the match. Of course and splitting up should still be possible. Just not completely on your own, however not requiring 4-6 other ships to escort you either. And just for clarification I'm not debating for the rework. It is a broken mess and will continue to stay that way as it is fundamentally flawed.

Well, guess that might seem a bit drunk to you, but

Which was indeed an issue. The amount of AA ships capable of doing this was far too low, pretty much all focused around T9-10 and even they required massive investment to gain this capability. I would've liked to see this capability expanded to at least all cruisers instead of just a few (with the exception of low tiers but I would've handled low tiers completely different anyway). AA distribution, scaling and progression was horrible to the extreme. But you can never be denied completely. At the very least you'll usually be able to shoot back (unless teamwork is involved but then the teamgame clause applies). A CV was incapable of doing literally anything (which was fine). I actually found it rather easy since I know precisely how RTS CVs play and which positions I can take to deny or play around them. Could just be a difference in experience between us I suppose. With reworked CVs that is not a thing anymore indeed. Imo independent actions SHOULDN'T be successful in a team game (unless ofc the enemy misplays horribly) and CVs are there to enforce that. Ofc we don't think so. And we certainly do not do this, but the sad truth is that the economy encourages egoistical rather than teamplay which festers in the mind of most players. Just sailing some distance away is not abandoning the team, this is true, however imo you shouldn't be able to do so completely alone. Why should you be able to create an easy crossfire alone that the enemy team likely cannot deal with just as easily thanks to lovely mechanics such as bow camping? It is one of the reasons for the static meta we so despise, CVs do not eliminate that entirely but they at least prevent it from happening without any effort on part of the enemy. Again, this is a team game, moving alone should incur a serious level of risk. However you shouldn't require a gigantic blob either. Just one, at most two more ships to escort should be enough.

This thread has been dead for far too long.

The flak spawn is actually dead on (see last flak bursts at 10 secs). Wipe happens precisely where the wall supposedly is, which is why I theorized invis AA as the cause. I realize base flak can't wipe full HP planes, but DFAA in combination with all flak damage skills COULD maybe do it. 30% damage reduction would be negated by BFT + AA mod 2 and DFAA would boost DPS to way over a single plane's health. In addition to that planes are decelerating, meaning they'll spend more time in flak. I wouldn't know because I know how to DODGE! Actually I found that passing below flak bursts does actually still deal damage (unless they changed that? Don't think so tho). I think WG coded a minimum height for the visual flak so as to not obstruct sight of your target, but the actual damage dealing part will still hit your planes. Would make sense at least. Again, I don't know for sure what happened. I wouldn't be surprised if wipes like this were caused by some bug at all, but I've played quite a few matches yesterday and haven't had this happen in any of them.