El2aZeR

Well, neither is having to jump between your squad and your ship technically speaking. To be honest I thoroughly expect WG to remove the carrier itself from the map and have squads fly in from the map border to solve this.

Currently via auto pilot on map only. Which everyone pretty much agrees is a horrible idea.

In a match with such strong AA opposition and being a bottom tier CV a well played BB is quite a bit more valuable than a well played CV, especially on a map where a single AA cruiser can easily shut down two caps. But then again the same could be said about 3/4ths of his team. So yeah, the game was unwinnable in the first place. Again, drop me in there with an Enterprise or Shokaku and I still would've lost horribly. And you can hardly tell me the opposing Shokaku did well. 7 minutes into the match your DD along with most of your team is practically suiciding into A cap with the enemy having AA cover over all three caps so a CV is pretty much useless in this scenario anyway. You lost three ships, one of which is the suiciding Lexington who, even if he had survived, was again pretty much useless as would've been any CV player in his position, skilled or not. Your team scored not a single kill, so practically speaking they only needed one more kill to win if your CV had not suicided which, considering the difference on the scoreboard, seems like a highly likely outcome. This is supposed to be an even match? Really? In all reality the suiciding Lexington ended the match faster, it didn't decide it. Your performance in these matches along with the impact of these specific CVs in the matches you've posted are up for debate. Not my stats, not your stats, not the fact that CVs overperform. The Neptune story is to illustrate that you were essentially rewarded for showing up in the second match and nothing more, much like almost everyone else on your team. Your specific examples do nothing to show the match impact of CVs because you were clearly outclassed anyway, thus would've lost no matter what. They do not show even match ups which were decided by CVs. And yet you blame everything on the CVs. You've put no blame on yourself, even tried to defend your sub par performance. You've put no blame on everyone else on your team apparently feeding themselves to the enemy team. No, everything rests solely on the CVs. This is the mindset of almost everyone that plays this game. If you lose in a CV match, it's only because of your own CV. If you win in a CV match, it's because your CV carried. To people like you there can literally be no other reason. For example it's never "lol my teammates all rushed into enemy positions and died", it's always "omg our CV didn't support our super push and lost us the match". People talk about the high toxicity in the game and yet apparently it is fine to always talk CV players and blame them for everything whether you win or lose. No worries though, it's behavior we're well used to.

Because objectively judging the scoreboard is surely beyond my ability. Or knowing what I could've done in such a match in a same tier CV. Wanna know something funny tho? There is apparently a match participation bonus of approximately 200 exp in this game with which you get rewarded if you load into a match in a timely manner. How do I know this? A Neptune once attempted to teamkill @Saiyko at the start of the match with torps and unsurprisingly blew himself up. He still got a little less than 250 exp out of it despite doing literally nothing else. So if you want to know one of the biggest reasons for losing the second match, look no further than the space between your chair and your monitor.

Quite frankly you were going to lose no matter what. In the first game you had three top tier ships that got below 500 exp, so basically they only got exp for participating in the battle and nothing else. Your own performance was sub par to say the least. None of you managed to reach 1k and the only ones that got close are ironically bottom tier ships. Even with a tomato CV on the other team you would've lost. Hard. In the second game you just got stomped. Sure, your Lex killed himself, but that could've happened with any other ship, like say, a BB rushing yolo into enemy lines. You apparently took no caps, scored no kills and lost the game by getting your score reduced to zero. No CV could've changed that. Considering they lost by getting their score reduced to zero the match was already decided. I do not condone the behavior of the Lexington but it had minimal impact, especially considering they're bottom tier with a ton of AA opposition. Drop me in there with my Enterprise and I would've still lost alongside that team. There are matches that are simply unwinnable. The single lesson I would draw out of that match is that suiciding should be punished much harder than it is now (is it even punished? I mean, even if you get pink, you should go straight to red imo. Suiciding by accident is practically impossible) To lay the blame solely at the feet of CVs is stupidity of the highest order.

Implying you ever had a chance of winning considering those scores lol.

This is a cool picture, but something seems off... Oh. Oh no. (I'm pretty sure Aurora is sitting fine in St. Petersburg tho?)

- in my Helena - someone overextended in queue, BBs everywhere (no CVs) - bottom tier T_T - middle of the match, Bismarck lands a lucky citadel despite me angling at auto bounce - 7k HP left - almost entire enemy team pushing me, fade into concealment and retreat to our cap for survival - every other teammate on my flank is dead but for a lone Lyon that proceeds to push the enemy cap, somehow survives it - other flank demolishes the few enemy ships there, go for cap - I only need to delay, no need to take them all out - most of the enemy team leaves to defend their cap, left pushing me are a Hipper, an Eugen and a low HP KGV - they're closing in on our cap, realize that I can remain hidden no longer and open fire as soon as KGV has shot his salvo to elsewhere - catch Hipper with his guns turned the wrong way, set him ablaze bow to stern, quickly sinks, take only 1k HP damage in exchange because eurobeat intensifies - KGV gets in range, blows up in only a single salvo because 15 HE shells with IFHE are topkek - half HP Eugen left, now at below 10km - it, go for Taffy 3 - every salvo pretty much pinpoint accuracy, Eugen can't keep up the DPM race and gets drowned in HE shells - 3k HP left - enemies that tried to defend their cap all got killed by teammates - top of the scoreboard in a bottom tier cruiser with low range, no armor and a ton of BBs I ing love this ship. Pls WG, I need a waifu captain for her.

How about being able to buy personalized MM with money? WG if you want to hire me just send me a PM.

Inb4 return of Bastion gamemode, weeb edition. Seriously tho, wat.

BBs severely impact my enjoyment when playing cruisers. Please remove BBs.

Again, CVs weren't always unpopular. WG made them unpopular by ensuring there can only exist two kinds of CV players: Those that always fail and those that always excel. The middle ground was practically wiped out overnight by supreme glorious balans. Player retention was the problem, not the RTS interface. That could have and should have been addressed. Ofc now everything is far too late. At least two years too late to be exact. Even if the rework fails horribly, something that hopefully does not happen, I doubt we'll ever see RTS CV play ever again.

First of all, CVs do not necessarily need multiple players to counter. Like pretty much all ships, CVs have a distinct nemesis they can never really touch (lets assume for a moment that broken AP bombs do not exist. We certainly didn't ask for them). The problem with AA cruisers however is that like CVs, they have become more rare over time, getting bodied by BB overpopulation and the lack of CVs in this game. And like all surface ships, AA cruisers need a plethora of AA skills, upgrades and DFAA to be effective. This ties in with my point about consistency. Likewise CVs being superior in terms of game influence should also have a more broad list of counters to deal with. This is perhaps embodied best by the second most influential class, likely to become the most influential (and the most whined about) class after the rework: DDs. DDs need to deal with aircraft spotting, radar, hydro and themselves, whereas CVs only need to deal with the opposite CV, usually made easy by the current skill gap, one subset of one class which needs to specialize into that counter, and AA blobs, which we all know rarely ever happen and if they do, 90% of the time they're sailing to the map border. To solve this I would introduce soft caps for BBs and DDs while making all cruisers that can meet CVs at least capable of disrupting strikes heavily. As to why it is balanced that multiple players are needed to counter one when a dedicated counter is not available, well, this is a counter based system with inherently different classes that all perform different roles. Wanting them to be equal is an impossibility because it inevitably destroys diversity. All ship classes are damage dealers, but some provide utility that others simply do not. And since no healers exist, information gathering becomes the most critical asset. This is why CVs are so dominant and why their damage dealing capability can be literally reduced to zero. Thus CV striking is balanced due to the ease with which it can be countered. The more powerful a damage dealing ability is, the more easy it has to be to counter it. This is why HE has far weaker alpha strike potential than AP for example, or why torpedoes deal such high damage. I have further elaborated on that below. Basically speaking attacking, say, a bunch of BBs in low tiers should yield the same result as in high tiers. CV damage dealing capabilities along with the ability to counter it should remain roughly the same across all tiers. Thus three TB squads of the Haku should only deal slightly more damage to a lone Yamato than two squads of a Hosho attacking a lone Myogi. Likewise attacking a cruiser in T4 should yield roughly the same result as in T10, it should be unsuccessful with fairly heavy aircraft losses. To compensate for this newfound vulnerability of low tier CVs I would increase their reserve capacity. Currently low tier CVs can practically attack almost everything but the entire enemy team gathered in one spot almost without casualties. Low tier losses should still be lower than in high tiers to make the entrance more friendly for newcomers, but you shouldn't be practically invulnerable either. To achieve this not only needs adjustments in AA capability and plane health/reserves but the removal of most, if not all AA skills and upgrades. A Fletcher for example without AA specialization is a nuisance, while a Fletcher with AA specialization is a no fly zone much like AA cruisers. I would first incorporate BFT, AFT and AA range into all ships, remove all other AA skills and upgrades then balance it out from there. DFAA too needs rebalancing, it is an archaic consumable that is made to counter aircraft that are no longer found in the game. With AA balanced around base values, I would reduce the damage multiplier to as low as a 50% increase which should be sufficient, if not remove it all together and have it only there for the spread. I would then proceed to give all cruisers T4+ the adjusted DFAA consumable in a separate slot for free to increase AA coverage for surface vessels. Also AA deterioration by enemy fire needs a hard look and adjustment. One solution I liked is that an AA mount only gets temporarily disabled but then resumes function at slightly diminished efficiency. It should not be possible to permanently strip e.g. an Iowa of all her mid and low range defensive capabilities in only a single salvo from a Conqueror. And finally, as I said before, balancing AA across 5 tiers no matter the adjustments is a near impossiblity. I would either make MM globally +/-1 or have preferential +/- 1 MM for CVs only, depending on the popularity of CVs after adjustments. Thus even if CVs remain a fairly rare sight, you will always have options to counter them and don't need an entirely different specialization that you will likely not have due to the rarity of CVs. I would remove auto drop. I know it's the more noob friendly of the two, but let me explain my reasoning. Games by definition are about interaction and deriving fun from it. Just clicking on a target to blow it up is literally the most minimal interaction you can have in a game. It requires no skill or decision making nor does it provide much room for counterplay options. Manual drop on the other hand requires no more skill than aiming your guns in a surface ships, needing roughly similar skills of timing and prediction. I thoroughly believe that everyone, even the most players around, can learn how to manual drop in a short period of time. As for the loss of players, I have a couple of friends who never bothered with CVs because they thought just auto dropping all the time was literally the most boring game experience ever. I believe that by winning back those who thought auto drop was all there was to CV play will mitigate or even completely negate the loss of players that believe manual drop is too difficult especially when given adequate instruction, something else WG failed completely at. Operations could've been the perfect platform for instructing new players in using their selected class, why they were never used that way is mind boggling to me. This ties in with one of the biggest complaints about CVs: The perceived skill gap. For example I played the Ranger for a total of three games before I gave up completely and free-exp'd to Lex. In one of them I got thoroughly done in by an enemy Hiryu who I could've given much more resistance had I played a Hiryu myself. My teammates thus thought I was a red tomato (and made that thoroughly known in chat) when I am actually one of the best CV players on this server (narcissism not intended). Now you can only imagine what happens when I would've played a Hiryu and a much more mediocre player plays a Ranger. It's not a contest because it can never be one, Hiryu practically wins that fight every time, thus matches will always be inherently unbalanced. This needs to be addressed and it should've happened a long time ago. If you take a closer look at WoWs you will realize that weapons in this game aren't balanced against each other but as single individual entities. Alpha strike, rate of fire, accuracy, DoT potential and the ease with which it can be countered along with the RPS scheme that the classes are balanced with (and WG has disregarded more and more over the years) are all determined individually. Torpedoes for example have incredibly low accuracy, rate of fire and can be countered easily with WASD. This is offset by their high DoT potential and alpha strike, both of which can easily doom a ship outright. Aircraft have one of the easiest counters, if not arguably the most easy counter, around and the lowest rate of fire in the game. This is balanced out by the highest accuracy in the game and high combined alpha strike with modest DoT potential tacked on. The problem with aircraft however is that their counter, while incredibly easy, is not consistent due to a high number of factors already explained. This is what would hopefully be eliminated with the changes above. In hindsight I should've spoilered large sections of this post. Oh well, I'm too lazy to do it now so deal with it. All of this is hardly news to anyone. For the past 3 years we've suggested ways for WG to address the core issues in CV play, only to be ignored. And now everything gets thrown on its head by the rework because WG never even tried in that long time span, citing problems that could've been solved if not by themselves, then by listening to us, the guys that actually know how to play CVs.

I can and regularly do win click fights despite initial equal strength due to hidden fighter mechanics. The only thing that changes is the time invested in contesting air superiority. Strafing needs adjustments to be sure, but I'd rather see these adjustments tested before going to the radical step of removing it. For flooding, tweaking it to the detriment of every other class I would assume. How about no? Damage certainly needs to be adjusted so that it fits the tier. As for torps themselves, I wouldn't mind at all if the minimal drop range is extended and/or the spacing is increased, BUT only if the drop pattern is made converging. This would promote skilled play (dropping further away and hitting all torps vs dropping close and hitting only a few) and increase possibility of counterplay. - remove AP bombs - make it so that the earlier you lock in, the more accurate your drop is going to be Air spotting in itself needed an overhaul. Perhaps it would've been for the best to make fighters literally incapable of spotting ships that have their AA turned off. But alas, nothing you've written here hasn't been suggested already. And as always when it comes to CVs WG has turned a blind eye to it. They haven't listened for the past 3 years, they're certainly not going to start now.

The basic premise of needing to band together wouldn't change. That doesn't change in the rework either. I expect a lot of whine from this. The list of changes I would make, taken largely from the suggestions from others with a few of my own added in, is far too long for me to finish in a single post. Basically the idea is to make AA performance far more consistent across the board, largely eliminating the need to take a plethora of skills and upgrades which would for the most part no longer exist anyway, adjust CV power to their respective tiers (right now a Hosho has practically the same damage potential as a Shokaku, with the DB advantage a Shokaku has being negligible) and remove or adjust the mechanics that artificially raise the skill floor and makes CV play more difficult to get into than other classes such as auto drop. Even S_O said that using auto drop and using manual drop is practically playing two entirely different games, a totally accurate statement, but why the did you create it this way and never bothered to change it?! Also finally balance the two CV nations against each other, something WG has never truly bothered with either, and adjust the spotting mechanics (for example I would make planes visible from 9 or 10km out instead of 8 to give DDs more time to adjust their position along with making aircraft completely incapable of spotting torpedoes). And fix the god UI. But hey, remember when WG started releasing premium CVs again? They actually stated that the work they've done so far is sufficient enough for them to make money on it again. A time when the community let out a collective "What the utter are you guys on about?!" and could only stare in disbelief. The only notable work they did was swapping a few buttons around with the alternate control scheme and improving the UI reaction time very slightly at the expense of it being even more buggy than it was before, with many of these bugs persisting to this day. This is a reflection of WG's attitude to the current iteration of CV play for the past 3 years. Always half hearted at best, never bothering to address the core issues that plagued the class. That balancing AA across a total of 5 tiers was an impossibility in the first place, especially considering the huge power jumps both AA and CVs make at some tiers.

Because clearly we never put forward any ideas on solving that. Or have clearly seen that WG tried oh so hard to address the issue. When WG removed low tier alt attacks, we warned them of the consequences. Did they listen? When WG decided it was a good idea to keep mixing T5 and T6 CVs, did we not protest? When WG kept introducing change after change that alienated newcomers and only made skilled CV players stronger and stronger, didn't we warn them that the current situation is exactly how everything will play out? And yet WE are the problem? WE are the least likely to be helpful? Give me a ing break.

Honestly at this point it could be everything. Even plane reserves have gone out the window so the fact that she's a CVL instead of a fully fledged CV doesn't really matter anymore either. Though if they want to adhere to her current gimmick I would guess faster, more durable planes but lower numbers in a squad.

Nah, AA kills everything before it can drop with or without DFAA.

Funny, Kaga is one of the slowest CVs in the game. EDIT: Just saw that I'm already late to the party. Bugger.

Because we all know how great auto pilot already handles sailing forward. Seriously tho, I don't even want to imagine how bad it sails in reverse.

Stalingrad is pretty much a nerf to everything.

Remember, auto pilot can't reverse either. So if you're stuck on an island, you'll stay stuck on an island for the entire game. Honestly it's an impossibility to control a ship with only auto pilot.

Their rof and tendency to aim for your superstructure where most AA mounts are usually located negates this immediately. Besides, someone did a test on it quite some time back (don't remember who, I think it was @wilkatis_LV). The upgrade doesn't make any noticeable difference at all. Also 200 HP may well be an exaggeration (I will freely admit that I pulled that number out of my aft), I believe most guns have far less than that.

No, because that has already been suggested by the skilled CV playerbase.

The primary threat to AA guns isn't aircraft, it's HE shells. Three Conqueror shells are theoretically enough to strip an Iowa of her entire mid and short range AA suite. That happens regardless of the upgrade or not.