El2aZeR

Winning or losing doesn't really matter (unless ofc it's for daily/weekly missions). The amount of exp you get from PvP is what's important.

As close to 0 as possible. And that means they're rarely idle. Which is why you would lose. Attacking another ship with fighters means giving up air superiority by default. One of your roles in this game as a CV is to contest it. Giving up one of your inherent roles just to attack one ship is stupidity of the highest order.

It'd be an utter waste of resources. If you find your fighters idling with nothing to do you're doing something wrong.

Tbh Kamikaze has consistently let me down the last few battles I played with her. She's utterly incapable of dealing with a halfway competent player sailing one of the many torp boat hunters that now populate the game. She's a relic from a different time. A rusty screwdriver among new multi-tools. She does one job and one job only, which in the current state of the game is simply not enough anymore. On the bright side she used to fear CVs, but with the removal of manual drop at low tiers those have become an annoyance at best. Ofc she still excels against potatoes but so do other ships that are more versatile. Then again maybe multi-purpose DDs like Fletcher have just spoiled me too much.

OH GOD. IT'S SO BRIGHT. MY EYES! THE GOGGLES TO NOTHING!

Had this once. Game crashed shortly after. Tried to record and take screenshots of it but both the video and the image files were corrupted. If it happens I would suggest restarting the game immediately to save yourself some time.

Wha...... WAIT A SECOND.

Yuo see Ivan, when give super heal to one of strongest cruiser, will surely stay much balans! Xaxaxaxaxaxa!

...Wait a second, where have I seen this before? Oh. Is this a deliberate Fate reference?

Testing right now, will come back to that in an hour or so. EDIT: Nevermind, first salvo already confirmed your theory. I'll just continue to see where the best aimpoint is and what distance you require. EDIT2: Best aimpoint is (unsurprisingly) the waterline. I couldn't get any citadels at ~4km, but I got a few at 5km (though not very many). Therefore I would consider 5km the minimum distance required to make citadels through the stern work. Citadels became more reliable to get at around 8km, but I don't think such a distance is exactly viable in actual combat seeing as my Monty had a fair amount of difficulty hitting the small stern plate in a reliable fashion. Still have to test whether Yama has better chances thanks to overmatch. EDIT3: Yamato doesn't have any advantages in terms of distance, but she does have a wider margin of error to hit the citadel roof since she doesn't need to care about hitting the small stern plate. Both of these findings should be thoroughly unsurprising. Actually no, as HE will citadel regardless of angle. With AP you can get bounces if you angle correctly, even in a hilariously squishy ship like Mino. There is counterplay against AP, even if it's often a dodgy chance at best. There is however nothing you can do against HE. Sure, but how come there aren't any easy to play ships in other classes? (Rhetorical question, I know the answer. Sadly.) Interesting change, to be sure. It would also facilitate BB AP pens when angling (if Gearing is any indication).

Honestly I had no problems at all fighting Kaga in a Hiryu. Even halfway decent fighter micro will ensure you air superiority, at that point it's a cakewalk to deny strikes.

That's easy to answer. They can't hit cruisers. Which tbh surprises me a bit, seeing as it breaks WG's streak of [edited] over cruisers.

Currently comparing them in port. Gearing does seem to have a bit more beam. On the other hand Z-52 is a bit longer. What is critical though is the amount of target area above the waterline. Gearing is a far easier target than Z-52 will ever be. Maybe they should actually lower Gearing a bit further into the water.

Ah, now I get it. Still a question of whether or not that's actually possible to hit (a few degrees is after all still a few degrees short) but it would make for a tangible weakness that Conqueror currently lacks. I laughed really hard at this. Sorry. Volume of fire is still a thing. Also I highly doubt it's worse than how hard RNGesus is trolling my NC from time to time. Seeing as I'm a fairly experienced CV player I know the devastating effects a well timed air strike can have, so I prefer to add a bit of extra protection for me and my teammates. Even if the chance of meeting a high tier CV is somewhat low. Then again that's more of a problem with the whole "no AA skills = weak, all AA skills = no fly zone"-thing. I'd happily take FP if I wouldn't have to trade AA for it. Many cruiser barbettes and turret areas. That's actually a pretty big deal imo as it gives you a lot more surface area to work with, not to mention it can break main battery turrets. With HE. (Some KM BB deck/bow sections as well, though I wouldn't complain if they were the only ones who get shafted by this. They, too, have too many strengths anyway.) Also seeing my Mino disappear in one HE salvo isn't exactly funny either. And I do believe many low tier cruisers feel the same way. 1/4 HE penetration primarily [edited] over cruisers, I see no reason why RN BBs should have it when they already have high HE alpha and fire chance. It's like they added it just for the sake of being more gimmicky. And ofc their secret goal of removing cruisers from the game. I was actually referring to the anti AP capabilities of 32mm armor that some people here seem to love denying, which is also why I made the comparison to Monty. Yes, Conqueror will take more damage from HE spam, but as long as she has super heal that cannot be called a true weakness. Granted, if that were the only thing Conqueror would hardly be worth whining about, but that's just it, isn't it? It's not the only thing Conqueror is strong at. I'm not calling Conqueror overpowered on the basis of one trait, it's the combination that makes her far too strong. Every single supposed weakness she allegedly has is either not a weakness at all or compensated for by some stupid gimmick. Just like on KM BBs. That she is far too easy to play effectively while scaling just as well, if not better than the other BBs with skill just adds insult to injury. (And it's not my goal to remove every single one of these traits either. I realize that taking them all away would make RN BBs far too weak.) Quite frankly I've come to dread every single new BB line WG plans on adding. With every new one they seem to require less and less skill to play while getting more and more overpowered.

Bacius, the guy who did brilliant stuff like this and now seems to spend his days making memes. (Which tbh I'm fine with either way. )

Definitely. You can outgun a Z-52 using only your front guns. It should however be noted that I play Gearing with full gun spec sans AFT. Give broadside though and a Z-52 will kill you with AP.

Z-52 is better thanks to smoke + hydro. Gearing can squeeze out a win if the Z-52 is alone and you are able to rush the smoke without taking any torps. That won't happen very often, though.

Meanwhile on my end...

Especially considering air dropped torps have worse concealment values than Shima 20km ones. Long range drops are really only an option against stationary targets. Or against CVs when trying to avoid DFAA (since CV maneuverability sucks you can usually catch them with long range drops after some practice).

Afaik he could wipe one of your squads even in a head on strafe pass, but if you're adept at dodging... Yeah, there is little he can do. Imo all T7+ USN CVs should've gotten an extra fighter squad but a reduction in squad size by one (needless to say it'd do away with the up/down-tiering nonsense, too). They should've also kept the unified deck DB heavy instead of down-tiering Essex/Midway TBs and giving the latter two of them. Basically Ranger/Lex - 2/1/2 Essex/Midway - 2/1/3 Then reduce service times a bit and make DBs a bit more skillful to use (earlier you lock = more accurate for example) and voila, problem solved. It's not like the 1000lb HE bombs lack damage after all. But I guess one less fighter but two squads would've encroached too much on Big E's territory, so they didn't go with it. Though that could've technically speaking been solved by giving E an extra fighter per squad. Or just straight up another fighter squad since she has the reserves to support it, making her the most hilarious CV tier for tier.

Likewise you cannot blame the CV then. Maybe the Missouri went to one end of the map alone and the CV wisely deemed to cover the other flank that has more ships and is thus more important. Maybe he went brawling with enemies which excludes him from air cover unless the enemy has pitiful AA defenses. Maybe he needed his fighters to spot something for his teammates and had unfortunate timing. Maybe he was forced to expend them in air to air combat. Maybe he didn't have enough ammo left to intercept. There is this hilarious misconception that a CV can be everywhere at any time, always in a position to help you. I can assure you that that isn't even remotely the case.

You honestly believe a shell can travel a third of the ship's length without exploding? Are you for real? I can assure you that aircraft only have a view range of 11km. It has been this way since... well, always. Look here for example: Although slightly outdated to say the least, it still lists 11km as the view range of aircraft. Unless there has been a patch I don't know about, that hasn't changed. And yes, it actually doesn't make sense to have an air detectability over 11km, something that has been pointed out very often over the course of development. WG seems comfy with it, however. Yes it is, because when you have a ship that can access the same potential as any other but at lower effort expended, why would you ever want to play any other ship? It's not like GK/Yama/Monty offer something with higher skill that Conqueror doesn't. What I meant is that Conqueror can happily spam HE while Monty will bite her nails out against Conq's armor. 32mm means any deck hit will result in bounces, while any belt hit will either bounce or shatter if Conq angles. Yama holds a slight advantage here thanks to overmatch, but RN HE will deal out damage in equal or superior manner. GK will be taking HE fire along the way that is far more accurate and devastating than her secondaries will be able to dish out. Not to mention Conqueror doesn't even need to take the fight if she doesn't want to. IJN doesn't have 1/4 penetration, Germans have pitiful HE alpha. It's not a single one aspect that makes RN BB HE overpowered, it's all of them combined. Though that'd be a fine trait to have if she didn't excel at everything else as well. Moot point. 32mm means protection against all but one ship firing AP when angling. HE spam gets nullified by super heal. But if you're arguing this way, why doesn't Monty get super heal? She deals with almost the same stuff that Conqueror has to deal with. Or to go the other way, I'd also be more than fine with Conqueror getting 38mm main deck/upper belt armor if that means she gets normal heal. Generally speaking RN BBs are far too overloaded with stupid gimmicks, a "normal" BB line with Warspite characteristics (60% AP heal, cruiser DCP cd, accurate guns and fairly heavy armor but exposed citadel) would've been more than unique enough.

As you have clearly demonstrated by ignoring literally everything anyone has said that is contrary to your incredibly biased, uninformed opinion. Sure. It's a dilemma I face with almost every cruiser, really. Only exceptions are radar ones and RN CLs. Which is why I am extremely [edited] off about DoY getting both hydro and DFAA. It's like WG wants to see cruisers removed from the game.

I went full AA sans the MAA skill. Maybe that's where we differ?

Meh, I usually don't even bother using DFAA unless there are 3 or more squadrons heading my way. in my experience she performs just fine without it against same tier CVs.