dasCKD

This nerf with the Khabarovsk annoys me, mostly because I like using the combination of guns and torpedoes to deny an area. This just turns the Khaba into more mindless HE spamming at max range which, to be fair is sort of what she was doing anyways. I guess I'd just go back to the Hindenburg, the one tier 10 cruiser that seems impervious to nerfs along with the Moskva.

I realized that I could choose everything, so I did. My real reason is that the Ryujo's strike configuration gets crapped on by AS even if you're about 20% the superior to the enemy Ryujo in WR, so I don't think I'd bother. What's wrong with tier 8 anyways?

I agree, the German cruisers should be given their destroyer's torpedoes. :P

It's another one of these. I wanted to do a missile cruiser thread, but WG has once again managed to top their achievement when it comes to terrible ideas. Once again, not a guide and not an update. DO NOT MOVE. I think my sense of creeping dread started as far back as the loathsome 1000 pound USN bombs. I will assume that this latest introduction of the AP bombs is WG's idea of balancing the USN and IJN lines, but this very idea should have been shot down the microsecond it was suggested. Whilst the AP bombs were received with mostly positive reception, the introduction of AP bombs shows WG's lack of comprehension of carriers. The introduction of the 1000 pound bombs indicates this already, the AP bomb solidifies the issue. Much like over-matching, AP bombs does nothing to address the core of the issue of battleships or the imbalance between the IJN and USN carriers and instead ops to hiding the problems behind a thin veneer of more or less equal damage numbers that would be a transparent ploy to anyone even vaguely familiar with the carrier class. AP bombs are the second incarnation of the over-match mechanic that continues to break the game beyond repair all the while failing to address the issue. Today I want to talk about the battleship overpopulation, why dive bombers are a terrible alpha mechanic, and why AP bombs will miserably fail at addressing it. "On average, a salvo from a high tiered cruiser should do around 15-45% of the total health pool of a destroyer." I think most people would agree that this statement is mostly reasonable, as would War Gaming from the looks of it. A direct hit from a counterclass (as if that term even has a meaning anymore) would do a fair bit of damage. WG appears to agree. What about this one? "On average. a salvo from a full salvo from a USN carrier will do 15-45% of the total health pool of a destroyer." WG appears to think that the second statement is equivalent to the first. I think that this, among other reasons, is the reason why USN carriers are inherently disadvantaged against IJN carriers and why a bomb focused alpha carrier line is an awful idea. USN dive bombers are terrible (for the game) War Gaming keeps promising to fix the carrier class, but they've shot themselves in the foot so often that they no longer even have a leg to stand on. Even if someone decides to step up and stand them on the bullet shredded bloody stumps that used to be their legs, they still insist on adding pointless gimmick that seemed like something straight out of alpha testing instead of something anyone wanted or even asked for. One of the most important parts of any tactical shooter is damage avoidance. There must be some type of mostly reliable way to avoiding or at least mitigating a certain amount of damage as long as the player has a good chance of avoiding damage if they do everything correctly. Even in a game with significant levels of RNG, better players will still be able to mitigate a large segment of damage compared to worse players. Angling is the most obvious one. Firstly, angling minimizes a ship's profile and makes it more difficult to hit her regardless of the weapon system being used. Even in a squishier ship, angling tends to lower the amount of damage that you would take from incoming shots. Dive bombers as an alpha mechanic are fundamentally a betrayal of this basic game design paradigm. Carrier "flavors" and roles IJN carriers excels at hunting down and killing destroyers thanks to their cross drops and the fact that their dive bombers have precision that even destroyers will fear if the drop is executed correctly. USN carriers excel at hunting down and killing battleships, OHKO-ing them in many cases. Whilst this would be perfectly fine as far as a cruiser or even a destroyer line goes, the intrinsic pace and role of carriers makes it impossible for just this to balance the two carrier branches. The balance of the USN and IJN carriers are broken down to the core. The introduction of the AP bombs might be glittery and glamorous from afar, but it's nothing more than changing the turpentine layer that is covering the massive garbage dump that is the carrier balance right now. Tacking on slight modifications to damage mechanics WILL NOT fix carriers. Ever. AP bombs are a distraction and a fad that will fade faster than it appears. It is nothing more than another proof in a long line of proofs that War Gaming has no idea what to do with carriers. You would have thought that the massive (and excessive) success of the Saipan would have given a hint to the developers as to what carriers need. Instead, we get a carrier with a torpedo drop pattern that is worse than the drop of most panicked carriers and a dive bomber that comes with a Wargaming prescribed aimbot tied to a anti-one class killsat. None of this is particularly complicated stuff. Any CV player with as much as a 50% win rate and experience with the Independence and the Ryujo could have told you this, WG. The Enterprise might not be the weakest carrier released, she might not be the most overpowered ship ever released, but she is by far the worst carrier I have ever seen enter the game.

Well, it's time for me to pretend to be a game designer again. Let's do this. I would like to preface this article with a note that I had to rewrite about 10 paragraphs worth of this post because the new forum decided, for some moronic reason, to delete about 2 hour’s worth of my work because it was too stupid to keep even a simple cache of a bloody typed out article. I am not happy right now. As this is a thread about battleships, rest assured that I have a bucket and mop to deal with all of the bile that I will be splattering all over this thread before it can cause any lasting damage to my desktop screen. A retrospective on Battleships With the British battleships on the horizon, I chose to ignore them and focus on the upcoming French battleships because even glancing at the datasheet of the Conchqueror is enough to give me a minor aneurysm. Battleships, like destroyers, are primarily there to define the zone of control of each team. The German battleships have hydroacoustic search, but that doesn't mean that they can go chasing down destroyers or even really charge down British cruisers unless they catch them on the back foot. We have the German battleships with a lot of secondaries, powerful AA, and a hydroacoustic search that a destroyer could see coming about 5 minutes away and guns that can overmatch the bows of cruisers. We have the Americans with a lot of secondaries, incredibly powerful AA, and guns that can overmatch the bows of cruisers. We have the Japanese with lots of secondaries, powerful- The most important thing that any new line needs to do is to appeal to players. The only way I know to make a line appealing without making it universally horrifically overpowered is to make it so that it would find its role in the meta of the game as the game stands. New ships should be there as a tool to fight against an enemy that a large number of current ships need to face, and coming up with something to help battleships deal with battleships without making them overpowered against cruisers or destroyers would go a long way towards addressing the battleship problem. Anti-cruiser Anti-battleship Map control Support Natural reload skill Speed Boost HE focused Communication jammer Lunar AP, Railgun HE Glass cannon Well, that’s it for this week. I couldn’t think of anything funny involving the French, and so I put the Willy Wonka-esque image I drew of the Richelieu up in the bar. Hopefully that’ll hold you over until I drag myself out of my slump to do something actually productive. Best regards.

As far as I understood, that's the gist of it. I would have preferred it if she had superior theoretical planes but with a lower fielding capacity to balance out her small hangar, but I guess War Gaming doesn't want a replication of the Saipan shenanigans. Can't really blame them for that. I am looking forwards to this one though, even if I can't in good conscience approve of a strike loadout that would have eclipsed Midway's former strike weight.

She most likely will be used to test out the carrier replenishment consumable that WG has been threatening for a while.

I could take my Shokaku out to have the issue 'addressed'.

Even so, this is a terrible way to balance a game. Defensive AA, for all its faults, provides the ability for both sides of the aisle to play around each other. The Enterprise doesn't only crap on that, she also just breaks the game. You either have the AA to wipe out her planes, or you die (if you're the wrong type of ship). The aiming is comically easy compared to other CVs and the dive bombers even in automatic drops can rip apart ships with little to no difficulty. Her fighters also still have lower survivability and lower speed, meaning that the concerns with the ships have went unaddressed and instead they chose to exacerbate the problem. She also has the same stupid torpedo bomber pattern which no doubt the Zeppelin will also have in order to balance the torpedo strike weight that would have been egregious at tier X.

I have only grinded my way up to the Akizuki one night before the patch came in, so I have very little experience with the Akizuki's stealth firing capabilities. The sum total of my experience with her using sustained stealth fire was against a Kurfurst which consisted of a few minutes of ineffective plinking before a Zao rounded the corner and ended me before I could turn my rudder away. The Akizuki strikes me as a ship that was built around stealth fire however, her feeble HE, poor alpha damage, and unspectacular gun arcs (though still better than the Germans and Americans) was traded in for her ability to receive a smaller penalty when firing her guns. Formerly, this would have made her an excellent harasser, even against cruisers. Now however, that has been taken away. I would like to gather the experiences of those who have had experience with her both prior and in the current patch. How is the Akizuki now?

I hate the announcement panel. Is there a way to get rid of it?

-slow claps-

Which doesn't change the fact that half her strike is nigh useless whilst the other half is either useless or horrifically overpowered depending on how the dice rolls. Plane survivability can be tweaked, the Enterprise is broken to the core.

Simply Amazing.

I say this as someone who DOES do well in USN CVs. Let's take the example of the Amagi and the Nagato. If we disregard tier, the Amagi is superior in basically every way to the Nagato. More guns, more accurate guns, better penetration, better concealment (thanks to the tier 8 upgrade slot), better AA, better speed, better armor layout. That doesn't mean that a Nagato can't take on an Amagi. That doesn't mean that the Nagato is a bad ship. It is just that, assuming all other things equal, the Amagi is a superior battleship. If there was a line that compared like that for battleships, then it would be addressed right away. The same can't be said about carriers. I could conjecture about why USN carriers have the numbers they do, but it is a pointless exercise. Ultimately, if a game was developed in such a way that an experienced player is more or less equally satisfied with all the content, then it is my belief that it would benefit everyone. The USN carriers, in the respects which they have the advantage, have many advantages over their IJN counterparts. The problem is that those aspects can't save the USN carriers from obsolescence, and so the game needs to change.

Henrietta. Not a bad ship per se. I thought she would be so much...more.

Just a guess. I've been awake for 20 hours, everything makes sense to me right now. Besides the reception my Hindenburg is getting. Do people really hate her that much?

It's probably the color. The purple (color of imperial Rome) mixed with the sleeveless jacket (more often associated with worker's overalls) does create a visual clash.

Put simply, the lack of versatility, unreliability, and the long servicing times that makes it extremely difficult to come back from having a plane squad wiped out when it comes down time to hard carry. There is also the issue of very limited target selections leading to them being very easy to shut down.

It's been a while since I've done one of this, but in celebration of my most recent improvement in my Hindenburg's EU ratings I decided to make one of these of the best tier X cruiser (Edited, fight me!). This post has been edited by the moderation team due to swearing.

In actual combat though, it's a marginal buff that's barely worth it. Maybe a 2% reduction. Often, it's not even necessary because against a good CV captain you spend most of the time just waiting for the enemy CV to relax their guard before going in for a strike.

I find torpedo armament expertise to be a waste of points, considering that you spend far more time actually recovering and launching the planes than you do actually servicing the planes.

Win rate is the most important statistic in indicating the skill of a player. Whilst win rates can be largely inflated by divisioning which makes it hard to evaluate a player's skill base on winrate alone, what makes you good at a team game is still fundamentally bringing your team to victory more often than the average player and not how much damage you can farm on oblivious bow tankers or how many frags you get by firing a full battleship AP salvo at a 1000 HP cruiser.

Many people are complaining about the Enterprise, so I thought that I might as well pitch in. Currently, the Enterprise's status makes her a tad rubbish to put it lightly. She is known for her status as the unsinkable ship however, I therefore think that the Enterprise should be given the high tiered British cruiser heal ability. This is obviously the only thing that could possibly fix the Enterprise and therefore this should be added to her immediately before it's too late! On a more serious note, the Enterprise as she is right now is quite frankly a tad rubbish. In my opinion, she falls behind even the balanced Lexington, which makes it so that she is basically incapable of possibly competing with the Shokaku, the ship that was her Japanese contemporary in the war as well. There are various ways that the Enterprise could be fixed in order to make her an appealing carrier for players. Option 1 - Tier 8 1/2/1 Apart from the fighters, each single plane in the American roster outperforms their Japanese counterparts. A 1,2,1 setup with 5 planes per squad and tier 8 would make the Enterprise incredibly powerful as a tier 8 carrier, but it won't make her straight up better than her competition. At least if they took away the idiotic drop pattern the premium carriers are getting. The Shokaku can still win air fights and outperforms her as a balanced carrier, but the Enterprise would at least be able to outstrike a Shokaku whilst still having the ability to defend her own strikes. Whilst she can't juggle fighters like she could right now, she would at least be able to do more damage. She'll struggle to win a damage race with a Lexington, but her more numerous planes would give her more options. Option 2 - Tier 9 2/2/3 The Enterprise is an insanely famous ship, both to history nerds and people who watch Star Trek. It's therefore surprising that War Gaming hasn't tried to milk more money out of her. A tier 9 carrier with an incredible credit coefficient would be something I, for one, would personally be very interested in. With a plane squad size of 4 planes per squad, she'd be similar to a Taiho with her strike focused around the dive bombers. She'll have a balanced loadout to contest AS carriers. She'll be able to crossdrop slippery ships if she needs to. She'll also have a very nice dive bomber strike squad in order to make her extremely effective against battleships. Whilst 92 planes are quite low for a tier 9 carrier, and this would make the Enterprise the only unprotected carrier at that tier, I still believe that this would make her a powerful tier 9 contender. The fact that she is a tier 9 would also mean that she would have little risk of breaking the competitive scene or ranked battles. Give her a fictional 40 mm deck armor upgrade if carriers of this tier really had to be protected. Option 3 - Tier 8 gimmicky Her drop currently makes it nearly impossible to drop an enemy ship effectively. With the Saipan, War Gaming has made it clear that they are willing to break their own game if it's a premium ship. The concept is relatively simple: have the Enterprise's bombers ignore the dispersion effect caused by fighters and defensive fire. This would make her effective at sniping enemy carriers. Whilst carrier sniping is quite frankly a scumbag tactic, it never stopped War Gaming before. Option 4 - FIX THE DROP! What is it with these new carriers and their stupid drops? Is it too hard to just give them a normal drop pattern? I didn't even buy the Kaga because of her drop pattern, and that thing's torpedoes looks like it had been fed crack! The Enterprise already has to contend with weaker planes, ridiculous AA of tier 8, and Shokakus! Is it too much to ask for one straight line drop pattern with torpedoes that can actually be used to hit enemy ships? FFS.

So if I understand what you're implying, if WG releases the Shinano with a 163 plane hanger capacity with 5 squads of torpedo bombers that drop F3 torpedoes for testing, I would have to reserve judgement and condemnation because I haven't played her before? I never played the Black before either, do I also have to accept that a Fletcher with a radar consumable and smoke is perfectly balanced until I have experience with her?