Aerroon

I just played a game in my Yamato. It was me and an Iowa sailing together. We shot down 5 out of 6 torpedo bombers from a Lexington before torpedos even hit water. All dive bombers died too. Then Shoukaku came with her torpedo bombers and I don't think any even hit the water.

So let me get this straight, you think CVs are OP, because you do well in matches where everyone is going around in super slow BBs with little AA that are low tier? Are you serious?

I don't think this is viable. I think DDs might actually have the highest upkeep cost - sinking in a Shimakaze costs something like 180k credits but I also used 90k credits worth of ammo in that match. And this can be even higher. The thing with CVs is that cruisers and panic don't really matter. BBs themselves have such strong AA that panic is just a minor nuisance - you go in, have the CV pop the panic mode, pull back and then wait a bit and go in again. It has a minor effect on gameplay unless coordinated by teams who pop panic ability one by one. But then they could just have 2-3 Iowas sailing next to one another and they will shoot down all planes before anything hits. The limiting factor for BB damage output in this game is their mobility - once the targets in that sector are dead you just don't have much else to do but sail around for a while until you find new targets. If most people were sitting in higher tier BBs they would be dealing even more damage in an average game. The issue with BBs is this: they have all the cards. For them to die they have to mess up (eg sail into torps, not evade planes etc). For almost all the other classes against BB they have to take advantage of the BB's mistakes. So this means that the best BB player will just wipe the floor with all the other classes. If BBs were as fast as the low tier US BBs then you could play around it - it would be interesting, since they would really have to choose wisely where they go, but that gameplay would be so goddamn boring that I wouldn't wish it upon the BB players.

Sure, except you get nothing out of it. There is no point in winning early either. It's all about damage. If you don't deal damage you're not getting exp. The thing with wanting naval warfare is that in real naval warfare you didn't have this many Battleships with so few Cruisers and Destroyers.

Funny story, you can get citadel hits with HE in cruiser vs cruiser battles. I tend to only fire HE in my cruisers and it deals a whole bunch of damage. Sometimes I hit even battleships for like 10k with an HE volley.

As long as I have played this game it has always been +1 fighter, +1 dive bomber.

But they aren't microwars. There is no micro involved with playing fighters. It's just point and click. You can't even micro fighters because of their huge turning circles. And I agree that removing fighters would make stuff better but they aren't going to do it. We already know that. The only reason in random battles to pick fighter heavy loadout is that you want to troll the enemy carrier. (Or you're a Lexington.) PS about the people posting large CV scores: remember, very few CAs and DDs are around. Almost everyone plays a BB right now and they are the prime targets. When the game starts becoming more balanced on other class tiers you won't be getting such high scores anymore. On top of that the high tier US BBs (Iowa) have such ridiculous AA that the old AA was peanuts compared to this.

Well, the first one in my Essex I did have 2x TB. And yes, I have the commander skill that gives +1 fighter and bomber on both US and IJN CV commanders. As someone who also plays DDs once in a while (most played class) I don't know, it doesn't really seem to matter. The only thing I dislike fighting in my DDs is other DDs, unless I'm in my Fletcher. In my Shimakaze I dislike other destroyers because often the fights boil down to luck (who kills the other player's engines twice in a row or similar).

Really? 12 torpedo bombers now kill an Amagi? That's news to me. Also have you run into Iowas yet? You know, the ones that shoot down an entire squadron before torpedos even hit water?

Yes, but it's meatshield that lasts 10 seconds. This means they have to engage enemy fighters in the battleship/cruiser AA zone which makes your fighters lose even harder. Fighters just die way too quickly to one another for this to really matter. Not to mention bombers take just as long to die as fighters really so it's not like it makes a difference. I just can't see the gameplay part of air superiority layout - it seems to be a bad choice and makes it all a diceroll on matchmaking.

I have a question: what are you supposed to be doing (in the eyes of developers) when you are in a bomber setup and meet somebody with air superiority setup? And another one: what are you supposed to be doing (in the eyes of developers) when you are in an air superiority setup and enemy team doesn't have a carrier? Sharana said that bomber setup is "suicide setup" and that balanced setup is for most people, but how? If you meet air superiority setup in an IJN carrier then you are going to lose regardless of whether you're balanced or bomber setup. The fighters can in no way compete with an air superiority layout. So this either means that you gamble on a bomber setup or you gamble on an air superiority setup. If you lose the gamble you might as well just leave the game outright (which I believe will start happening soon enough) because your contribution is the same anyway. The problem with air superiority setup is that at best you neutralize the enemy carrier, and at worst you don't do anything. You can't actually shape the way the battle itself goes. The entire thing with fighters is pretty BS - I understand that it is there for historical reasons but from a gameplay perspective air superiority just takes the fun out of playing carriers because you're just rolling the dice on matchmaking. I've had plenty of games postpatch and I go bomber setup because I know that going balanced is useless - I will still lose in fighter vs fighter on my Shoukaku vs a Ranger. A Lexington and Essex will kill all my other planes too because their fighters are just that strong. When I run into an enemy carrier with air superiority setup I have exactly one chance - I either kill him in my first strike before he knows where I am or I might as well quit the game, because my influence on the rest of the game is going to be close to 0. Sure, it won't be quite zero, but almost close to it. So is this intended? Is the intended game play supposed to be that if you get a bad matchup you're just supposed to quit the game or go AFK? Because that's about as much as you get done. Also, you don't actually have to worry about the enemy carrier's effect either - since they don't have torpedo bombers their influence on the match is also going to be zero. And that last one is essentially the issue with air superiority setups - at best you equalize your spot on the team. At worst you are simply dead weight. PS A Lexington kills a Shoukaku's fighters in 10 seconds - there is nothing you can get accomplished with planes in that time window.

You can usually still get hits in even when they have fighters and you have none even if you don't kill their carrier. And that's the reason why going fighters is a poor choice - at best it will equalize their spot vs yours. At worst they do nothing but have their 2 dive bombers.

Look at the stats - a Shoukaku's 2 fighter squadron (even with +1 fighter upgrade!!) will lose to a Ranger's 2 squadrons. That's tier 8 vs tier 7. A Lexington and Essex will completely wipe the floor with Shoukaku's squadrons. It depends on which tiers are against which tiers specifically as well, not just +1 tier or not because Shoukaku vs Hiryuu fighters gain almost nothing while Ryujou vs Hiryuu is a huge upgrade.

Because this is at high tiers where it shows an issue with balance. Also, did you really miss the fact that 11 of 19 and 14 of 20 BBs in the two games mentioned were in the game BEFORE 0.3.1 patch? Also I don't see it dying down at all.

One other issue I've noticed is that sometimes when you order a plane to do a drop it flies to the intended location and then starts flying in circles and just doesn't engage in the attack. And this behavior stays with that plane squadron until you force them to manually attack.

Except you do since you don't get more fighter squadrons than that. And if you look at individual plane stats then you'd see that on the same tier IJN fighters are way weaker and would get destroyed even if they had the same number of planes in a squadron. Even with the tier 5 talent that gives you +1 fighter a Shoukaku's fighters will still lose to a Ranger's fighters, but it's quite a bit more even. Still, a Lexington is going to absolutely wipe the floor with your fighters so it still isn't really worth getting them.

And what do you do when they have equivalently tiered battleships? You know, the ones that can shoot you from their spawn to your spawn. That has happened to me more than once - enough planes in the air to scout me and just get shelled by BBs.

Or fire could remain as strong as it is and these [edited]battleship whiners should stop [edited]whining and learn to play the [edited]game? They're ruining everything already - everyone's already playing battleships and they want to remove everything that can hurt them. Seriously, how can you people be this [edited]stupid?

Wait, so you\re being shot by 3 people and somehow think you should just shrug it off?

Just met an Iowa ingame with my Shoukaku. Yep, that's how it goes. The Iowa just shoots down all the planes without issues. Don't even have to focus fire really and it will kill 2 squadrons easily. Probably all 3 as well. At least the 3rd squadron should get torpedos into water though.

Oh, look, it happened AGAIN! 1 CV, 19 BBs, 3 CAs, 1 DD. This time we won though: Replay: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/89115692/wows/cvs/Shoukaku300kdmgWin.wowsreplay This is just crazy how many battleships there are, especially ones that seem to have no idea what they are doing.

Do you have the mod that lowers chance of you beings et on fire by 5%? Do you have the captain ability that lowers your chance to be set on fire by 7%? If not then perhaps you should get them? They are there for a reason.

Usually CAs do protect the BBs but I think that often it's pointless. The BB can take care of themselves and the CA could be elsewhere actually contributing or soaking up damage. Also, did they make torpedoes faster? I heard from some streamer that they did, but I could still race airdropped torpedoes in my Baltimore so I don't feel like they did. I do know that I tend to have an easier time actually hitting CAs with torpedoes. But it could just be luck. Oh yeah, if anyone's interested then here's the end screens of that match too: That's crazy. I hope he had lucky RNG and that isn't actually the norm.

I had a North Carolina shoot down an entire torpedo squadron during a drop. I think 1 torpedo hit the water. Yes, because these games are rare. Half the time you still get like an AA Ranger on the enemy team. Not to mention I do play other ship classes too. I think the reason why you see experienced players seem fine in CVs is that currently most games are full of easy targets. Relatively new players in slow ships with little AA. The number of Wyomings I saw in my Hiryuu was not 0. Even an unupgraded New Mexico has no AA. So on top of those you can do whatever maneuvers you want because they won't shoot down your planes at all. But once people get better at BBs I'm quite certain you'll start seeing CVs being less and less useful because AA is still as strong as it used to be.

Get the ship upgrade to lower chance of fires: -5% Get the commander skill to lower chance of fires: -7% Tada, destroyers can't set you on fire anymore! CAs have a super low chance of setting you on fire too!