HaachamaShipping

Ark Royal is fine. Needs no buffs. For tips, the thread linked above already contains my thoughts and those of others.

Fun fact. Relative to others Hood got buffed recently, because while defAA across the board got nerfed to only +50% continuous and Stalingrad defAA moved from +50% to +25%, Hood still sits at +50%, just like before. Base AA on the ship is pretty lackluster, but at least long range adds even at closer ranges now and has always been the main AA of Hood since rework.

Yeah, and give Belfast a superheal while you're at it. She needs it... /s

Ark Royal gameplay-wise has two caveats: CV gameplay: Not everyone likes CVs, so obviously those that don't play CVs and find the post-rework gameplay uninteresting don't have to bother. Slow planes. It's hard to emphasise how slow these planes are. Like, really goddamn slow. It's the biggest drawback of the CV. What are the "fun" aspects of Ark Royal gameplay: Some subjective values like historical fame, liking the AL/KC versions, etc. People like to try drop Bismarck or DDs with this thing for a reason. Easy to use. This ship is very forgiving. Good restoration and very flexible drops you can adjust midway through and still get it aimed is good for beginners. And carpet bombers are easier to use than any dive bombers. Still great potential. The strengths of this ship are real and while you can absolutely play this ship for damage farming, do not underestimate the ability of Ark Royal to absolutely decimate important ships (e.g. DDs, CLs). Drops are memeworthy and while you don't get AP bombs like RJ, some island-camping cruiser will be not feel much better when you ruin their they with your 3-torp drop that arms almost immediatly. Salt-farming. Noone cares about your planes being slow on the enemy team. What they care about is that 3 waves of torps have a potential of 45k damage and decent flooding chance. The bombs on anything but BBs and T8 cruisers (or IJN cruisers) do a ton of damage, can basically not be evaded (Just Dodge intensifies) and whatever they don't wreck with damage they set on fire in 1-2 places. On stupid BBs that damecon your fires from the first wave, just drop them again. Otherwise, just drop folks who don't have damecon or who might need it because your team is engaging them. Asserting dominance in T8 games, demonstrating that the Swordfish is totally fine in T8 and that the Reeework is absolutely not broken. Absolutely screwing over T5s, when MM gives you those games. And even in games where you don't get much done due to slow planes, usually at least you ruined the game of one or two peeps. Laughing at the detailed results when you lost over 30 planes and still don't care. So far I had only one game where I felt I overdid it with plane losses, where i lost over 50. In short, this ship is perfect if you don't care about karma (but what CV does?) and enjoy the misery of enemies. Slow planes keep your potential from being blatantly OP, but I haven't seen so many insults in chat as in the days of my ark Royal adventures. 14 Euro (thanks coupon) well-invested. Would even buy for 20.

Yeah. Cannot carry team hard enough. Needs buff. Only cap we managed to hold was the one I defended after everyone at that flank just died.

Ark Royal vs T8... (a bit weeb) Yeah, this ship isn't really "struggling".

PEF AA is crap. It's mainly long range, so it is 3-5 flak buffs and the dps is a joke. Its AA was good when long range AA wasn't mainly dodgeable damage (so, pre-rework). At least it's better than before the overlapping AA was reintroduced, given then you just moved up close and AA would stop existing. But any CV that has trouble dealing with this piece of garbage will find it hard dealing with Warspite. and that's before we go into things like AP cits from DBs or ability to dodge torpedoes.

Bonus points if the DD is busy straightlining to evade first drop. A Hosho can fly successful attacks even against T10 BB. It just cannot sustain the losses. Ark Royal can sustain the losses it takes against T6-8s and the armament on these things are no joke.

Ryuujou.

Blixies got most damage with torps. The bomb counter is huge, but the individual bomb doesn't do much most of the time. He got about as much flooding damage as he did fire damage, but 45k torp damage vs 27k bomb damage. The torpedo is the main armament of the Ark Royal. Good bomb usage is however good to know, because I personally alternate between the two quite often, as I hate sending out squads that aren't full, due to long flight time. Good targets for bombs: DDs, especially fat DDs like Aigle, Russian and german DDs, Akizuki Cruisers that have no reinforced plating. Budyonny, Shchors, Pensacola, NO, Königsberg, Nürnberg all are pretty lackluster in AA department and you can do good damage there. Bonus points for Graf Spee for 45s fire duration. New York (19 mm all over) Any BB where you want to force a damage control because allies will set it on fire afterwards or where you think it has damage controlled because allies set it on fire. Usually, you aren't close enough to an enemy BB to abuse damage control by yourself, though obviously if you can, more power to you. If you do go for BBs, aim for superstructure pens, unless it is all on fire already and you just want it to burn a little bit more. Bad targets for bombs: BBs that aren't engaged with anyone and will just damecon your fires once you are gone. CVs with more than 19 mm deck plating T8 cruisers, IJN CAs, Yorck. These all have 25 or more mm of plating and cruiser damecon CD and fire duration. Targets who have no AA, you can bomb from stern to bow or bow to stern, targets with AA, bow to stern pass to minimise AA exposure.

It'd be not my preferred MM for the ship (as with any T6), but it'd be my preferred ship for the MM.

There is opinions and there is certain hard stats and facts. I prefer to not go into the muddling territory that gave rise to "alternative facts", which is why I compared for example torpedo bombers, where it is clearly visible what Ark Royal does vs Furious, in contrast to the more nuanced interpretation of the level bombers. As shown with torp bombers, which are on both the most reliably armament for heavy alpha, Furious only leads in the short time between its bombers getting a drop and Ark Royal getting one and only up to like the third drop, when Ark builds an advantage that is no longer surmountable by a single wave. Looking at the damage difference per bomb is like the most nonsensical argument about these bombs. That argument just has so many issues with it. Most important are number of bombs and penetration of bombs. Ark Royal drops more bombs, which have less pen (assuming all bombs hit and pen, the Furious has 1.2k more alpha per wave, or about 300 more damage, as HE hardly ever citadels). When dropping T6-7 BBs that haven't got reinforced decks, Ark Royal does less raw damage, but more reliably sets fires. Neither is good alpha damage, because if you want alpha on BBs, you take a torpedo bomber. Most often these bombers are used to molest smaller ships or to set ships on fire. For both, Ark Royal does the job just fine. While Furious does more alpha on BBs, Ark gets more reliable results on DDs and cruisers, where Furious often enough can just throw all 12 bombs into the water or get 1 or maybe 2 hits, especially when you bomb from the side. While Ark Royal wants to bomb along the length of the ship too, bombing from the side has far less severe consequences due to how you saturate an area with bombs. Against BBs with reinforced decks, both CVs are equally forced to hit superstructure to get raw damage in and Ark isn't really at a disadvantage. Same thing applies not to torpedoes. Furious and Ark Royal use the exact same torpedo with 5.2k alpha per torp. Just Ark has 9 planes with attack waves of 3, Furious has 6 planes with attack waves of 2. In a torp damage race, Ark can do that way better and longer than the Furious. And just as a reminder, this is mostly to point out why the Ark Royal isn't worse off than others when uptiered (as you claimed). It is the Furious that runs into trouble, because good, high hp, slow restore planes are most useful when plane losses are low and you can capitalise on the better performance per plane and not worry about plane losses forcing you into sub-optimal plays midgame, because the plane type you actually want to use is depleted. When the high hp might even save planes from dying to the crappy low-tier AA. T6 CVs in general can do still ok vs T8, but Ark Royal certainly does not have a harder time.

Nothing. I play Yoshino with spotter plane, hydro, accuracy and reload mod, no AA skill. Press o, because that's free. Otherwise, I just trust in the incompetence of the player base. AA build is a joke and basically useless. defAA is nice on ships where you don't get alternatives (defAA BB, USN CLs, Stalingrad...)

You know what is the best target at the start of the game? DDs. You know what doesn't have AA that just shreds your planes (except maybe Kidd)? DDs. You can happily fly 2-3 waves over DDs in this matchmaking and the DDs will remember it. The rocket planes of the Ark Royal are barely worse than the ones of the Furious (but restock faster, so even if you need to kill a Kidd, you are more likely to eventually get there with a AR, while a Furious will run out of rocket fighters) and the bomber Swordfish is miles better in anti-DD than the Furious one, because Furious basically is just an RNG fiesta against DD-sized targets while Ark Royal is practically undodgeable if you don't mess up. But let's consider the necessity to kill with a high AA target like a T8 BB not named Amagi. Furious gets more damage early in, but a half dead BB is still far from a useless BB and when it comes to finishing the job, the Ark Royal just has the much better tools for it. You can lose 40 planes in short order on the Ark Royal and still go on and do useful stuff afterwards. The Furious cannot. It can eventually recover, maybe, but it will feel the losses. 3 waves of Ark Royal do 225% of the torp damage a Furious do. To do the damage Ark Royal does in 3 waves, you'd need at least 5 waves in Furious, which means if we assume that one wave gets shredded underway, Furious arrives earlier and pulls ahead by having any damage (4 torps) while Ark Royal has nil, but falls back when Ark Royal arrives and outdoes the damage (4 torps vs 6 torps), Furious claws back with the 2nd wave (8 torps vs 6 torps), while AR moves up again, but once AR strikes yet again, even a third Furious attack wouldn't be able to outdo that (8 torps vs 12 torps). So after just three waves, Ark has already outdone your Furious. Obviously, this gets holds true even if it's just one strike either of them gets in, because Ark Royal just throws 50% more planes in and it gets them back faster, so if they all die to T8 BB AA, Ark Royal can keep doing this, Furious cannot. Carpet bombers are hard to compare, because they are too different in their qualities. Furious does more to (some) BBs and T8 cruisers in raw pen, Ark Royal does more to DDs, T7- cruisers and sets more fires. 1,710 vs 2,180. SE exists and has to be considered. (Technically also boost speed is 135 vs 159.) Given this works with absolute values, the gap shrinks quite a bit. And the whole squadron of an Ark Royal has 15,390 hp, Furious has 13,080. If AA deals like 7k AA damage to it, Ark Royal loses 4 planes, Furious loses 3. Ark Royal will have 5 planes left, Furious has 3. Ark Royal gets those 4 planes back way faster than Furious gets its 3. Against high-AA, you don't want high-hp, long restoration planes, you want something that cares the least if planes go on a one-way trip. Why do you think that the high-time of T8 AA killed Saipan, but Enterprise and Kaga with their spam qualities were still fine? One reason why Ark Royal might even be worth it is because even if AA goes up again across the board, this will be the T6 CV least impacted.

If you don't get a second one off in the Ark Royal. And frankly, lolno. Unless you f*** up your approach, Ark Royal has maybe a bit more fragile planes compared to Furious, but 50% more of them in the squad and even if you lose 4, you still got 5 torps off. If you lost even just 3 in Furious or Ryuujou, you got 3 torps off. And Ark Royal gets those 4 planes back faster than Furious gets its 3. Compared to Ryuujou, there isn't even an hp advantage per plane. And while the Swordfish is slower than a B5N, you spend less time in AA before you get your second run off.

Because your Albacores or B5Ns survive for so much longer and do much more damage... oh wait. Unless you get a second wave off in other nations, you don't get better damage per attack and plane losses hurt far more than in Ark Royal that can lose planes all the time and still not care too much. Ark Royal is also the CV at T6 with worst concealment and one of the easiest to wreck when shot at. The higher the tier and the larger the map, the worse moving around becomes, because in T5-6 matches, camping some island to reduce the visibility and using the small map size to get decent cycling time works far better than trying to relocate in a T9 match, where you get spotted by some invisible DD or planes and suddenly some Izumo oneshots you across the map because it can, while a New York has a much harder time to pull that off. Being able to terrorise 1-2 targets is nice, but it basically limits the amount of influence you can have on a game, because if I camp with a Nürnberg behind an island and rain HE shells on anything with 16.5 km, I might also burn a couple ships down. Contrast to something like a Ryuujou, which struggles less against map size, but more against plane attrition.

Frankly, I doubt we'll see her anytime soon. What we usually get is the first ship design that wasn't built/finished in a line. That's why Monarch at T8 was chosen, while Izumo and FdG are for others (Amagi exists outside collab and would've been too old a design to fit the bill). And I'd guess they'd prefer keeping their ships from simply powercreeping older PR ships too hard.

I'd avoid that, just because it might put you on bigger maps, which is a pain to deal with in Ark Royal. Ark Royal is basically a struggle against map size and battle time, because Swordfish only do this much.

Properly played, Kaga and Ark Royal still can absolutely crap on ships two tiers higher. And I'd certainly take them for a game as bottom tier over something like a Pensacola or Hipper.

Planes are slow, but I'd take AR over Furious into T8 matches just because it hardly matters if you lose planes. DoY, T7 AA fortress shot down 33 planes. Didn't notice I lost this many till post-game results, because he died anyway and i still could just go on and help kill other things. Also, attacked one Budyonny and one Balti, which both sat in the water and I think they thought the torp planes would fly over them, not suddenly dive down at 3 km and start an attack run.

Ranked... Never forget, this is the original T7 armoured bias.

And then comes one squad of Enterprise rocket fighters that have a throwaway restoration time and takes out 1/3 of your Cleveland hp in one pass.

Correcting clan mates who think they play the T5 Soviet bias... Yes, Dunkerque eventually resorted to just firing HE at me.

In practice, against anything with decent AA, where you actually lose planes, half of C will die on the way in for attack run A, half of C dies in the turn, leaving you with a full boost bar on reapproach. also, it helps if you send like squads with 6-8 planes.

Last gasp triggers as soon as only as many planes are around as make up the last attack run. So, even if 6 planes die to AA, the 3 last ones suddenly get a full boost bar.