dasCKD

As things stands, not much. The problem with carriers in general however is that there is very little you can do to a formula whilst still keeping them balanced. A Zao and a Des Moines is more or less balanced. Whilst a Des Moines will rip a Zao to pieces at close ranges, a Zao can outrun a Des Moines easily and can also out conceal her. Carriers hold no such distinction. There are variations of what I could do to the USN carrier line to distinguish them from the IJN, but those are some of my more unpopular ideas. One idea was to lower the alpha damage of AP bombs and only allow for a carrier to carry 1 squad of dive bombers, but allow them to cause floods as they were able to in real life which would give a unique ability to the USN by allowing them to inflict extremely severe damage to enemy battleships using DoT with floods: something that few ships specialized against. Another would be to play around with the fighters. They could give the IJN shorter strafe boxes allowing them to recover from a misplaced strafe more often whilst giving the USN a longer strafe box that wastes far more ammunition but has a wider hit zone and causes more damage. There could also be changes made to point of no return boxes allowing for more precise drops i.e. the USN can correct their torpedo bomber squads with more extreme turns whilst the IJN dive bombers could have very little dive bomber delay time, allowing for extremely precise and nearly undodgable but much less damaging dive bomber hits whilst allowing the USN to retain their harder hitting but slower arming dive bombers that would make them more effective against larger and clumsier ships whilst maintaining their precision and ability to damage destroyers without having to depend on RNG. There's literally hundreds of options where tiny changes could make the carrier lines feel incredibly different and alive, but I believe in laying a strong foundation before any of that. What I suggested is indeed boring, but until we get the basics right we can't really get anywhere. It's all well and good to talk about building race cars and lorries for separate jobs, but not before the wheel has even been invented.

All carriers will have exactly one and only one setup. None of this strike and air superiority nonsense. All carriers will have 8 fighters by default, split over two squads. All carriers will have at least 2 torpedo bomber squads with no more than 5 planes per squad until a suitable replacement to the torpedo mechanic is found. The USN 1000 pounds bomb will be removed from the game. It is fine for the USN to have superior dive bombers than the Japanese, but dive bombers can't be alpha weapons for balance reasons. For the same balance reasons, AP bombs should be removed from all carriers both present and future. USN dive bombers will have the accuracy necessary to deal with destroyers. Closer to the IJN standard. USN carriers will have the squad cooldown and replacement times placed more in line with the IJN carriers. I am not inherently opposed to the idea of carriers having different setups. i.e. I am perfectly fine with Hakuryu running 3 torpedo and 3 bombers whilst the Midway could have 2 torpedo and 2 dive bombers. What CAN'T vary is how the fighters function. WG can twiddle their thumbs all they want, until the fighter capability of all carriers are more or less equal, there can't be balance between the carriers. I think there is no better exception to this than the Saipan. The speed of strike aircraft from tiers 7 to tier 9 isn't actually that big. It is uncommon for a Saipan to run more than 6 strikes in a game, whereas a Hiryu can expect to run 4 or 5. This meant that before the strafe out mechanic, the two weren't that imbalanced. In the present however, the Saipan is arguably the most overpowered ship in the game exceeding even the Imperator in my eyes thanks to the potency of fighters. When you have fighter disparity, you play by different rules. A Taiho's fighters that strafes out twice will probably need to be sent back to the carrier whereas a Essex's fighters that have strafed out twice has more than enough power to run down any strike squad from practically any angle. Until fighter parity is reached, WG's allegations that they are trying to balance the carriers rings hollow. The smaller and arguably less problematic issue is the issue with the idea of anti-battleship carriers. Most battleships are further back than destroyers. Destroyers can and often must get closer to the enemy fleet to do meaningful damage or contribute whilst battleships are at least distractions at the edge of the map. Say we have a perfect anti-destroyer and a perfect anti-battleship carrier with a 100% rate of success for their primary target and are literally useless against anything else. For a carrier to blow up a destroyer, they have to fly a shorter distance leaving less time for the enemy carrier to react and then leaving more time for the bombers to run to friendly AA. An anti-battleship carrier will have to fly into enemy AA and allow her planes to be spotted by enemy destroyers, leaving plenty of time for the enemy carrier to react and intercept the strike. Most carrier players are a bit rubbish, which means that the problem isn't as readily apparent. Against a decent carrier player however, playing an anti-battleship carrier feels like trying to squeeze blood from stone. Ultimately having duplicate carriers might be a bit dull, but it's something of a necessity until WG actually implements alternative mechanics. Working with the mechanics as they are now, there really isn't any simple solution. If there must be a difference in power, knock 3000alpha damage off the American torpedo bombers and dive bombers and give the Essex and Midway either their old loadout or a 5x2 torpedo bomber loadout.

Carriers are mirrored for a reason: the need for carrier parity. This is the longest running issue with WG and it is the reason why we should and could not have a difference in air power. Now: about your proposal. There CAN'T be a fighter disparity. Fighter disparity is what is causing the problems we see right now. The Ranger, Lexington, and Essex won't get so consistently crushed against their IJN counterparts if not for fighter disparity. It simply is impossible to allow for disparity in the power of the carrier's air defense without also causing the issue. This proposal just transfer the problem from the USN line to the IJN. Here's the thing. USN carriers fundamentally have superior planes to the IJN. At every tier that matters, their bombs and torpedoes do more damage. Cloning the IJN setup onto the USN line would just mean that the USN would have a superior variant of the IJN carrier line leading to the exact same problem we have right now. The Midway setup could conceivably work, the proposal for the Ranger, Lexington, and Essex will just move the problem.

Whilst you highlighted a legitimate issue, your analysis of what causes the issue is entirely off. Quite frankly, the USN and IJN balance revolves around 3 issues: Lack of fighter homogenity Carrier rigidity Anti-destroyer potency Dive bombers are inherently an unbalancable mechanic, much like the AOE torpedoes of the Shiratsuyu and the former Shimakaze. The randomness that needs to be inputted in order to make the bombs look even slightly balanced to WG's bean counters alone makes the line a miserable one to play. USN carriers will literally have to be able to nuke every battleship they are up against in a single salvo before they ever have a chance of matching the IJN carriers and even so, they'll still be outstripped by the IJN in competitive. The simple fact is that the way the game works makes it so that an anti-battleship carrier line will inherently be inferior to a generalist carrier line and the fact that the community sees ships like the Enterprise as a good step forwards is quite frankly depressing. Anti-battleship cruisers like the French could work but carriers aren't compatible. A carrier needs to punch through far more defensive layers before they can have their way with the enemy fleet, eating up stamina, time, and planes and the USN line, as things stands, will always have that looming over their heads.

I really like the Hindenburg for how well she does overall against anything except carriers (I run a full hydroacoustics build) and the Khabarovsk when I just need some stress free gameplay where I spend the entire game aggravating the enemy.

People looked at Kaga's drop pattern and underestimated the power of the accelerated torpedoes. Without that speed, Kaga would be another Enterprise with a nigh-useless (comparatively) torpedo salvo. This isn't comparable. We have precedent for dive bomber based carriers and their effectiveness in game and the Graf is essentially a gimped variant of them.

The thing that carriers need is symmetrical fighter capabilities and fixed load outs, what they do not need is targeted weapons that inherently limit their capabilities against certain enemies whilst entirely overplaying their effectiveness against others.

If the gun is thin enough to be destroyed at all, AP due to having superior penetration at the correct angles and better alpha damage. Still not an advisable tactic however due to the RNG you already mentioned.

The RN BB's Achilles heel is their vulnerability to cruiser HE which isn't necessarily a bad thing if those things weren't able to ambush more than half of the tier X cruisers. The main issue I take with the RN battleships is their concealment. Their heal is pretty ridiculous, but it's not anywhere nearly as egregious as being able to out-conceal a ship half their size.

The 'I swear officer, she said she was legal!' squad.

I would prefer that it, like the navigator, was built straight into the client. Regardless, it's not deemed to provide enough of an advantage to require banning.

Tell me then, how thick does a ship's armor have to be before it's considered a battleship? Where is the cutoff point where a ship definitively stops being a cruiser and starts becoming a battleship? If your citadel gets hit 3 times in a Scarnhorst then, for all practical purposes, you are already a foot in your grave. The thing that protects the Scarnhorst is her armor layout, but then by that logic the Hindenburg is also a battleship. Which matters exactly naught, because no matter how much armor she has she still plays like a cruiser. From a player perspective, she is effectively one. It's the same reason everyone calls the Khabarovsk a cruiser. She is, in her function in the game, a cruiser. For the same reason, the Scarnhorst is a cruiser. She handles like a cruiser, she plays like a cruiser. If you attempt to play a Scharnhorst like a true battleship or even a battlecruiser, you'll end up at the bottom of the ocean very quickly.

The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are incredibly different ships. Firstly of all, the Scharnhorst is quite significantly more maneuverable thanks to her smaller turning circle. Her guns tracks incredibly fast (German cruiser fast at 25 seconds by default as opposed to Gneisenau's 36) and she both fires her guns more often and has more shells per salvo. Unlike the Gneisenau, missed shots don't feel like nearly as much of a pain just because you don't miss as often and, when you do, you'll have your shells up far faster. Her improved DPM means that she can gun down battleships in very quick order at close ranges and her handling makes her as close to a knife fighter as a battleship could get. Her torpedo angles are also incredibly ergonomic which means that she mixes the handling of a cruiser with the toughness of a battleship. She is a superb ship and I could not recommend her more. You just should be aware of overmatching rules and which bows your AP shells will go through. As for captain skills, she needs the basic battleship pack with basics of survivability and superintendent and then you can spec her however you like. AFT and MS if you want to create something more similar to the Biscuit secondary build or concealment and EM if you want to create a hit and run super heavy cruiser and closed ranged fighter. Unlike every other battleship however, she doesn't even really need expert marksman. Her guns turns faster than most of the cruiser's guns.

They're saving that for the Commonwealth line which will totally not be a clone of the British line with HE shells and no smoke.

Waitwaitwaitwaitwait! Zao is better at killing battleships than the Hindenburg? Giant turning circles battlecruiser RoF is better at killing battleships than thermite HE, insane RoF, turtle-back troll armor Hindenburg? P.S. Please buff Hindy. Ideally give her the Henrietta's speed, 33 mm of bow armor, the RoF of the Des Moines, and good AP! She's already the best BB meta cruiser? What the hell are you on about?

Get a Scharnhorst. Despite what the game attempts to tell you, the Scharnhorst is in fact a cruiser. A very big one, but a cruiser nevertheless.

Ah yes, that. Our battleships found a comfy camping spot at the back line, leaving me to hold a base against a Kurfurst at point blank. Admittedly even if I lived, I'm not sure how much of an impact I would have had. The Des Moines is far from my best tier 10 cruiser.

Any references images for what you have in mind?

Well no. You literally can't dodge AP bombs, you can only steer out of the drop oval as the CV places the drop. Having the bombs drop faster only affects the penetration and not the likelihood of hitting a bomb. In all practical purposes, the bombs hits the target (or misses it) at the very second they launch.

Quick question by the way. I wanted to celebrate my new Des Moines using some art. What should she look and be like? I.e. what should her personality, stature, hair color, ballast tank size, etc. be?

What? A white character is Japanese media that doesn't have blonde hair? WHAT SORCERY IS THIS?

Premium Amagi? GIMME!

What? Responsible and sane balancing? Where do you get off with that nonsense?

It's completely silly. Suggest giving those heals to a Moskva, a Hindenburg, or even a Des Moines and it would be obvious to everyone how overpowered it would be. Give it to a ship with far better bow armor and at least 20k more health though, and apparently WG thinks it's completely balanced.

We absolutely need to include the greatest naval commander of all time: Fleet Admiral Skybuckflying!