dasCKD

Whilst research modules make sense on most tiered ships as it does squeeze a lot of free XP expenditure, most tier X ships are given their modules fully researched. Those ships are the accumulation of the player's effort and time and therefore come fully researched, usually at least. There are some ships that upgradable modules makes sense. The Kurfurst player might favor smaller and faster firing guns, a Khabarovsk player might prefer the higher alpha damage on the torpedoes, and the Shimakaze's F3s and Type 93s are both viable options for different play styles. For those ships, having upgradable modules makes sense to an extent. What doesn't make sense however is the tier X ships with the upgradable modules that are clearly superior without question to the unupgraded counterparts. The Midway and the Hakuryuu are the obvious example who both need to expend 126k free XP to get those tier X ships to their fully upgraded forms. A less obvious but no less irritating example is the Z-52 which needs to spend free XP or grind for a torpedo set that is superior to the first set in every way that matters. Tier X ships should come fully upgraded in my opinion, players should not have to grind a tier X ship in order to get their ship fully upgraded. The current system, especially as it pertains to carriers, is something that can't help but seem like an egregious cash grab and should be removed immediately.

That was my intention. The release of the Kaga, coupled with the Hood bundles, will likely see EU in flames again which is always fun to watch

I met Unintentional Submarine and Dropsiq earlier in the night. Both on the enemy team. Unintentional kept running away and won't let me burn her. Dropsiq managed to kill me. Fortunately for our team, we had Hagane on our team and he and the Minotaur both carried hard and won us the game. I had a match with Lup3s later in the night. I tried to save him from the enemy carrier, but my AA was just 300 meters too short to disrupt the drop. The team managed to pull thorough though.

That's the great thing about this system. Even if all your allies are complete tomatoes, you can at least use them as illumination lamps to help sense the enemy team.

Might not be the best idea. From what I've heard, if a WG developer lays eyes on a sensible idea their heads would explode.

Kann won't be happy about the carrier exclusion thing In terms of divisions though, there's a lot of combinations of ship combos that are unfortunately extremely easy to exploit to great effect. A lot of ships have weaknesses i.e. Belfast has poor AA defense, Scharnhorst's guns have poor penetration, Atlanta has basically no armor and poor gun performance at range. Alone, they're somewhat balanced. When divisioned up though, their balancing weaknesses disappears and they become close to unbalancable.

One day, we will find a use for all of the salt you produce. Maybe as some kind of energy source. On that day, scarcity shall be a thing of the past and the world shall come together in peace.

Anyways, I'm designing Enterprise next, seeing as how she's coming up. Any ideas as to what she should be like appearance and personality wise?

You could also browse Safebooru, their sister site.

Team (doesn't) work Bottleship Report #004 - The teamwork sucks, and the game isn't helping. Before you ask, this isn't a rage thread provoked by a series of bad games. Since the changes made to tier 4 and 5 carriers as well as the breaking of the carrier control system beyond what it was before, I have been at a constant level of simmering rage that one day threatens to simmer its way through my skull. Crawling out from the smoldering hole in my head, it will claw its way to the closest piece of machinery, a primal force let loose upon the world. It will then rise up, a horrific chimera of the machinery of modern society and fated to destroy it. The rage personification shall rise up into the atmosphere, forming a second red moon. As the inhabitants of earth gathers around the eldritch nest, the rage and the machinery of war shall be melded into the core that only grows more resentful and more massive. Then, when the day of the prophesy dawns the egg will - I - umm... Where was I? Ah yes, teamwork. Teams & Divisions Spotting Consumable use Knowing when to use consumables, and when to save them. Intermission Linguistic barriers This is probably more of a problem that is restricted to Europe and Asia, but a problem it is. Function keys Spotting target marker Well, that was this week's Bottleship Report. Perhaps next week I'll talk about something less serious, like implementing missile cruisers and destroyers. Now that this is done, I can finally get back to playing World of Warships.

I thought it'll be nice to have a place to compile the Bottleship Report comics as well as post some videos so I'm opening my first ever private thread! -throws confetti- I'll also use this thread to archive the threads that I started that I find to be still relevant. Let's make this thread as toxic as possible shall we?

Missiles on carriers Before you ask: yes, I am completely insane. What of it? I'll keep publishing these until the psychiatric services catches up with me. It is a common sentiment that USN carriers should be given better dive bombers in order to distinguish them from the IJN counterparts and to make them viable again. It is really not a controversial statement to say that the American carriers are outclassed by their Japanese counterparts. A certain YouTuber, (Notser I think it was, it could be any of them really) stated that the accuracy of USN bombers should be buffed. Yeah, it probably is Notser. Buffing the accuracy of the USN dive bombers to bring them in line with their IJN contemporaries, is after all about the worst thing you could possibly do to buff the USN carriers. This thread is about torpedo bombers, why they're such a good weapon system, and what missiles has to do with any of this. Missiles This is the point where I take a few sentences out of this post to gloat about how missiles are already in games in the form of ship artillery and how everyone is Englishing wrong. Everyone knows what I mean when I say missiles though: those things that release fires from one end and big explosions on the other. By replacing USN dive bombers with missile squads, I believe that it would allow for USN carriers to shine again. Missiles have to be handled extremely carefully however. Much like carriers themselves, the introduction of missiles has made large caliber ship artillery largely obsolete. Below is my detailing as to how missiles can be handled as plane squads, how it could be introduced in such a way that it emphasizes the skills of gameplay comprehension over raw mechanical prowess, and how to could be balanced in such a way that it won't entirely break the game. Figure 2, missiles! Air dropped torpedoes in many ways has given a very strong template in what terms of attack pattern is somewhat acceptable in terms of in game design. Whilst many players complain about the various aspects of AA and how it's skill-less, I disagree with this sentiment. The basics of ship to carrier interaction is relatively simple: a carrier wants the perfect drop so they have to place their plane within the AA aura whilst a ship wants to exhaust the carrier. It therefore comes as a conflict between two sides. A carrier attempts to get into the perfect drop position as soon as they possibly could, whilst the ship being attacked is trying to delay the enemy carrier's drop for as long as possible so planes get shot down. As torpedo bomber attacks are quite obviously telegraphed and requires a quite extensive runup, I think that it is a good system of ship interaction. A large number of problems comes from how AA is arranged and the idea of AA ships and non-AA ships in the game. The foundation holds firm however. A carrier can only drop from so many angles to maintain effectiveness. A ship needs to stop them from getting that perfect angle for as long as I can. A dive bomber has no such thing. Attack command The combat attack pattern behind the missile strike fleet that I've designed is based upon the foundation laid by the torpedo bomber drop. Whereas the Japanese carrier torpedo attack has an inverted drop, the imagined American missile drop has a spread drop. The attack pattern is the same in concept with a longer run up, meaning that the missile attack will have a longer telegraphing period. The expanding spread is a placeholder. It might be more appropriate, given some rudimentary testing, The torpedo power is augmented in this example, but only in the region of around 1k points. The primary difference in missile and torpedo performance in this design is the smaller effective region. All other commands are the same, and the missile impact zone is calibrated to ship height. This point will be more clear later on in the system description. Figure 3, missile drop reticle In terms of performance, missiles are obviously going to be faster than torpedoes. In this case, I scaled back the speed to something far within the ability of most smaller ships to evade, being slower than the fastest torpedoes in the game but without the possibility to further augment the speed. Whilst the missiles themselves would be incredibly difficult to dodge, it would be possible to dodge the missiles by turning in advance the moment the missile aircraft begins telegraphing the attack. The powered missile will fly straight from the point of launch in a straight line until it hits the water surface and becomes inactive, following similar attack patters as the ballistics of a very flat arced artillery salvo albeit at a far lower speed. In this case, the 6(7) squad dive bombers will be replaced with a 4(5) squad strong one, meaning that it would be significantly easier to shoot down this new missile attack squad compared to previous dive bombers. It is also much more difficult to catch destroyers in a crossdrop as the missiles will have to be dropped in far faster succession than torpedoes. It will act like torpedo bombers, the missile flying a short distance until it hits the target then explodes. This means that the use of these missile strike squads will take direct player skill instead of depending on luck and perfect mechanical skill. It also means that players under attack won't get screwed just because they were unlucky, but neither will they get a free pass just because they were lucky. Much like torpedoes, the flight path of missiles is fixed and can be anticipated for. Angle of approach & impact You might have noticed the red and yellow boxes before. Whilst these boxes would likely be invisible in the game, what they are is another balancing characteristic of the missile. You might rightly note that a projectile flying at 75 knots dropped that close to a destroyer would be impossible to dodge even in autodrop by a destroyer considering how awkward the angle will be. That is why the red zone exists, sitting squarely around the center of rotation that sits in the middle of the autodrop command. Whilst taller ships will get hit whilst in the red zone, destroyers are short enough that missiles will fly over them when they're in the red zone. The missiles flies in at a shallow angle. In the yellow zone, the missile will hit and explode against anything. In the red zone however, the missile has a chance of flying over a ship and not detonating. This means that drops on destroyers will need to be performed from longer away which provides improved protection and evasive options to destroyers under the attack of a missile armed carrier strike squad. These zones are not as rigid as presented in this example; the missile is probably best modeled as any other shell in the context of the game. The fixed zones are here purely for representative purposes. Damage performance You might have noted that the missile alpha damage is higher than the alpha damage of the torpedo and rightfully worry about what this might do to the game. The missile is a HE warhead however, meaning that it will do HE damage. When hitting a target, it would do around 30% of the stated alpha damage in a standard penetration. A torpedo, launched even against the belt of a ship like the Yamato, will still do 45% of the listed damage. This means that the missile will do typically less damage compared to a torpedo of identical alpha performance. The other balancing factor is the fact that missiles are HE warheads, meaning that they will set fires instead of causing flooding. Fires, whilst infuriating, are far less debilitating than floods. The missile performance compared with the fact that the spread widens and there are less missiles in the first place, will mean that the damage will tend to be lower than that of the current dive bombers. In exchange, the missiles will be far more reliable and leave a far clearer method for target ships to evade damage or to lessen the impact of the coming damage. The 94 mm of HE penetration is set as such because it would prevent citadel penetrations to ships of tiers 7-10 by HE missiles, at least without IFHE. Depending on the impact of missiles, it might be necessary to prevent missiles from being able to receive the benefits of IFHE. The missiles can shatter modules and cripple exposed modules like an HE shell would. Missiles on ships Seeing as how my ideas would not be likely to get implemented due to how pathologically averse WG seems to be to logical game design, I thought it might be fun to come up with an idea that almost certainly would not be implemented. Nevertheless, it was fun conceptualizing the missile and imagining how it could be balanced to fit in the game. I thought it would be a good idea at least. Not completely comically broken, but it would stop USN carriers from being completely annihilated by their Japanese counterparts. The speed of the missile might need addressing, but otherwise I am quite happy when it comes to how the missile system could fit inside of the game.

Aircraft Carriers need an Overhaul By god, this is a retro thread if I ever saw one. Second sentence, and I'm already lying. Did you like the clickbait title? I did. Anyways, let's get onto the topic. I want this thread to be easily accessible, so if there's good points in the thread I'll make sure to combine it in the original post so that new viewers could quickly see how and where the conversation went. This is a forum post after all, I should be able to keep up with everyone's thoughts ;) <<<<((<(>_<)>))>>>>> Dive bombers and torpedo bombers Asking all CV captains, would you be willing to trade 2 or 3 of your dive bombers for 1 extra torpedo bomber? Is there anyone who ISN'T willing to make that trade? The results of a poll on that question would undoubtedly be obvious to anyone who plays CVs. Right now, there is a massive imbalance between the field effectiveness of the two squad types are obvious. In most circumstances, only 1 or 2 squads of dive bombers are necessary to perform their job of lighting the enemy on fire. Due to this, I would like to suggest improvements to the mechanics associated with dive bombers in order to give them more utility when compared with the torpedo bombers. USN - give the USN CVs dive bombers some AP bombs. I thought of suggesting this for the IJN but 1) the IJN has bombs with less damage potential both historically and in game and 2) having AP bombs with the precision of IJN bombers will be rather overpowered. This would mean that 1) the USN strike loadouts in the Bogue and the Indy won't be entirely useless and 2) it would give USN carriers another vector of dealing high amounts of damage as deck armor tends to be quite poorly armored and therefore they could potentially even score citadels with plunging fire if they are really lucky. They might not be able to penetrate the citadels of most battleships, but they could retain utility against enemy CVs/CAs and lower tier BBs (relative to the carrier). IJN - improve the precision of the IJN dive bombers, make their circle of no return smaller, and increase the chance of them setting fires and causing module damage. You can scale back the damage output if you want for compensation, 4600 damage per bomb hit is virtually destroyer tier anyways. These changes are suggested both to be used to expand on the points below as well as to give the IJN bombers a different role in engagements. With the increased precision the bombers could target specific modules for destruction/incapacitation and therefore be used to soften up enemy ships for your allies by going after gun turrets or stop them from moving my going after the engine or steering on top of setting the ships on fire. Both nations + future nations - An increase in speed, HP, and DFC resistance. Dive bombers right now quite frankly suck at their job. They're nothing more than an extra 2000-7000 extra damage and fire damage on top of the tens of thousands that dive bombers provide. The changes I will suggest will no doubt be controversial, but we CV players have always liked that don't we ;) I suggest significantly increasing the speed and HP of all dive bombers on all tiers relative to their tiers. They don't need to be as fast as fighters, but bombers that are significantly faster than torpedo bombers would add extra depth to the game. It would mean that whilst a less skilled player would be using a dive bomber like they always have, a more skilled player that can multitask could use the dive bombers far more frequently as a separate strike squad to lethal efficiency. Their extra speed will also provide them with relative resistance to fighters and AA from the enemy team so whilst they can't compete in terms of damage with torpedo bombers they can still strike deep into the enemy fleet at strategically significant targets and therefore may hold a far more significant strategic worth in a future patch instead of being the tag-along to a CV game. This will make USN dive bombers like a single battleship salvo whilst it will make IJN dive bombers more similar to cruiser guns, which will also allow us to preserve the 'national flavor' that War Gaming seems so fond of. The last change will also mean that there are situations where dive bombers are obviously better for dealing with the situations that a torpedo bomber will suffer from. I will expand on the suggested national differences below. IJN vs USN CVs Right now, the tech trees are something of a mess. The IJN tree is advertised as the strike tree whilst the USN tree is advertised as the fighter tree but as many CV captains would attest this is utter tosh. The IJN tree has torpedoes that cause less damage than any US torpedo from t6 upwards to go with their bomb damage that is a tiny fraction of the USN damage potential and from t6 or t7 a USN fighter squad can be held up by the IJN squads as the strike aircraft runs riot around the allied fleet and so the AS loads become mostly an easy way to lose the damage game but is nevertheless something that USN carriers (up until about t8) have to put up with because almost all cruisers are loading deck fighters and they need a way to guarantee a hit. This means that t4-t5, MM decides if an IJN or a strike deck USN carrier will have fun or will have every plane they send up ripped to shreds by enemy aircraft. It's not even that fun to hunt aircraft, I'm sure most carrier players would rather be menacing the entire enemy team instead of just aggravating 1 enemy team member. tl;dr: IJN strike units can't compete with USN in terms of damage. USN is 'balanced' with this by having terrible loadouts. I have many changes that I would like to suggest in altering the current paradigm that I am certain will have an overall positive effect on the game. 1. Speed up IJN torpedoes and speed up the spread convergence. Not long ago, IJN bombers were inferior to USN bombers in every way. They had a massive spread that needed luck to even score 2 hits on even a slow battleship and they had the aforementioned inferior damage output. I welcomed the new converging spread, but the torpedoes were now just as slow as their USN counterparts and converged too slowly to be used even if you angled the drop nearly perfectly. If the torpedoes had a base faster speed(the torpedoes used to have a speed of 42 knots if I recall correctly), with the new captain skill a really skilled carrier captain could actually utilize the IJN bombers in such a way that it could be dropped from 500+ meters away and actually hit someone who isn't braindead/AFK. 2. Give the USN AP bombs and the IJN more effective fire bombs as well as torpedoes that have a higher chance of causing sinking. I suggest this due to the playstyle that is most evident on high tier ships namely the Midway and the Hakuryu. Most Midway players group their torpedo bombers in a group and strike at once to cause maximum damage whilst the Hakuryu players use the faster plane speed and smaller squads to make their enemies die of a thousand cuts. With this system, the two nations can distinguish their playstyle. A USN carrier can cause as much/more damage with their new setting whilst the IJN carrier will be able to guarantee leaking with fewer torpedo hits and fire with bombs and therefore be able to more effectively use their multiple squadrons to inflict damage over time on enemy ships that, if used correctly, could match or even exceed that of the Midway even if the damage isn't necessarily apparent when the strike is over. This would also mean that there is a national 'flavor' to both carrier lines now. 3. Widen the USN torp spread and scale up the damage as the tiers increase. I will expand more on this in the level increase subsection but for now let's deal with US torpedoes. Right now, USN CVs can start guaranteeing that every torpedo will land on target starting at tier 7 battleships and they only get better from there as opposed to the supposed strike focused carriers of the IJN. Due to this, making a full salvo strike more difficult as well as more rewarding might be optimum for US CV drivers who have unchanged potential damage output starting with t5. If we introduce the AP bombs for extra damage, I suggest compensating for the massively increased strike potential of USN carriers by raising the skill slope for USN CV players in order to allow more skilled players to excel and distinguish themselves. Tiers and levels Right now, the Langley starts out with 5900 dmg per torpedo that quickly jumps up to 8500. The Indy further increases the torpedo damage to 9867 and it stays there for the rest of the game, significantly higher than the IJN torpedo damage. Whilst this would be unhistorical, I think that this would be fine if the soft stats for IJN torpedoes were improved i.e. speed, chance of flooding, arming time(mostly for killing destroyers). I also think that the massive damage torpedoes should be reserved for higher tier USN carriers whilst the mid tier USN carriers should be buffed in other ways i.e. giving them more squads. Many will likely say that is insane, but I think that we can make this work if we make USN torpedoes do less net damage in the lower tiers. This, combined with the fact that they have slower torpedoes and are targetting smaller ships with lower speed and smaller turning circles, could be made to work. Here is a table of possible values: 35 knots Torpedoes: Damage/squads(planes)/potential Chance of flooding Speed Damage/squads(planes)/potential Chance of flooding Speed Tier IV 5900 / 1(6) / 35400 40% 35 knots 8000 / 2(8) / 64000 40% 35 knots Tier IV 6300 / 1(6) / 37800 40% 35 knots 8400 / 2(8) / 67200 43% 35 knots Tier V 6800 / 1(6) / 40800 40% 35 knots 8567 / 2(8) / 68536 45% 37 knots Tier VII 6800 / 2(12) / 81600 40% 35 knots 8567 / 2(8) / 68536 45% Tier VIII 7500 / 2(12) / 90000 40% 35 knots 8567 / 2(8) / 68536 65% 42 knots Tier IX 9867 / 2(12) / 118404 40% 35 knots 8567 / 3(12) / 102804 70% 45 knots Tier X 10500 / 2(12) / 126000 40% 35 knots 8567 / 3(12) / 102804 75% 53 knots p.s. I have no idea what the real values on flooding are. These are example values. Yellow is USN, orange is IJN.,green is for the superior stats As aforementioned, the USN carriers could receive a debuff in having more space between their torpedoes (a wider torpedo fan) and a torpedo damage debuff in lower tiers but are compensated by having more torpedo bombers to work with which will reward the better players. The IJN can make up for the difference by their better soft stats like chance of flooding or torpedo speed. Dive bombers: Damage/squads(planes)/potential Chance of fire Chance of module damage Damage/squads(planes)/potential Chance of fire Chance of module damage Tier IV - - - - - - Tier V 5500 / 1(6) / 33000 0 % 12 % 2300 / 1(4) / 9200 40% 12 % Tier VI 7500 / 1(6) / 45000 0 % 12 % 4500 / 2(8) / 36000 40% 16 % Tier VII 7500 / 2(12) / 90000 0 % 12 % 4500 / 2(8) / 36000 50% 20 % Tier VIII 7500 / 2(12) / 90000 0 % 12 % 4500 / 2(8) / 36000 60% 24 % Tier IX 8500 / 2(12) / 102000 0 % 12 % 4500 / 2(8) / 36000 70% 30 % Tier X 8500 / 2(12) / 102000 0 % 12 % 4500 / 3(12) / 54000 80% 40 % Keep in mind that these values are if every single shell fired penetrates the citadel. In most attacks, RNG will likely not give much more than 2 or 3 citadels maximum. Nevertheless, the damage from those hits aren't insignificant for even a high tier battleship or carrier. IJN bombs won't penetrate anything, but has a large chance of fire damage and module incapacitation. I'm not sure where I've heard this, but apparently as you go up the tiers, ships gain natural resistance against fire and flooding. These new values will likely allow carriers to maintain their damage over time tactics even in a high tier environment. Ships in the higher tiers have far higher health to splash around so the steadily rising damage will allow carriers to effectively deal with tougher threats as they advance up the tiers as well as continue to cause them trouble. I.E. A Hiryuu and a Ryujou in this cause cause identical potential damage. Both ships might be able to attack a New York for an average of 8000 damage but if a Ryujou attacks a New Mexico a torpedo might average 5000 damage whilst a Hiryuu, whilst having identical stats, would be able to do 8000 damage. This mechanic would help carriers deal with the often extremely tough ship torpedo bulges as well as encouraging carriers to go after the sometimes harder targets as the same damage against a higher tier ship would usually give them more rewards as well as helping their team against ships they may have problems with. That's what I have for now. Thank you for reading as far as you have. I might have to come back here later to condense this down or add onto the list. Best regards and happy sailing!

Addressing the Battleship Plague I would probably be getting far more attention if I just put all of this time and effort into a Youtube video instead. The battleship numbers have been discussed, but it has yet to be addressed by War Gaming. The pure power of battleships have been somewhat diminished by the catapult fighter nerf, changes to captain skills, and changes to the timer of the damage control party. In my belief however, the fact is that the fundamental issue that both causes and is caused by the high battleship numbers. War Gaming has claimed that they want to change the battleships to address the issue, but it doesn't seem like they understand the underlying issue. At least if they did, then they aren't acting in a way that would actually address the issue. On the failure of Rock, Paper, Scissors The RPS system is a system of class control. All classes are meant to counter each other to stop games entirely dominated by one class. The idea was that if battleships were getting too populous, then more people would start sailing destroyers. If there are too many destroyers sailing around, then more people would start sailing cruisers. This would mean a better distribution between ship classes, something that is necessary to maintain a healthy game and keep users playing with all of the new content. On in-class interaction With the fall of RPS, one way to address the class issue is the implementation of in-class balance. If a class needs another class to drive it away when it's getting too popular, then that requires the players to want to play the counter class. If a class can be designed in such a way that other ships of the same class gets in the way, then the population of the class will be self-managing. As this is better than even the RPS system, it is something that should be created if possible. Changes to ship classes These are changes made to the different ship classes in such a way that would minimize the impact and power that battleships wield in battle. Ideally, the changes should be made to the problem class. The issues with the classes exists regardless of whether or not there is a battleship overpopulation issue however, so these changes should probably be considered regardless. To destroyers To cruisers To carriers To battleships Changes to game mechanics Changes made to the fundementals of the game in order to attempt to make cruisers and destroyers a little less punishing and a little more confortable.

I stayed up late a few nights back to do some work, and before I had to wake up I spent time in my dream wandering in a desolate hospital infested with some threat I can't quite ever see, trying to find a place to sleep but being unable to. I woke up later, too late to get to close to class on time. Wanting to sleep but being unable to due to a fast approaching threat. Real funny, brain. F*ck you. With that completely irrelevant note out of the way, welcome to the second Bottleship Report. Not a guide. As we are talking about carriers, here's a video of that one time a Taiho wiped 2/3 of our division using nothing but pure luck. War Gaming has began to introduce changes to ships that are directly overperforming whilst incrementally improving ships that are underperforming. Some of these changes are nice, such as the changes to the Mogami's turret traverse. Other changes, like the changes to the Shimakaze, is reminiscent of trying to fix a flood with a dishrag. The most egregious changes however is the changes being made to the Khabarovsk. Now a very strong case can be made for nerfing the Kebab, considering that in her current iteration she is basically a cruiser without a citadel hitbox that can outrun every single ship currently in the game with a side plating that makes her immune to the largest standard size of cruiser HE in the entire game. Considering that not even the most battleships and cruisers have that distinction, a strong case could be made for nerfing her. So, they nerfed her rudder down to painful levels. Instead of changing the stupid side plating that no destroyer should be allowed to have or nerfing her 9 second turret traverse speed to make her less potent in knifefights, they nerfed her rudder shift instead. Something that basically only a carrier can exploit on a regular basis anyways. Which brings me back onto the topic, before I could wander off into another endless ranting chasm that gets trimmed from all of these released articles due to necessity if nothing else. Carriers are Underpowered? Carriers are being shut out due to two issues: advancement and uncertainty. Team Fortress 2 and Gold Ammo Carriers are, in my mind, simply the ones who most obviously suffers from a fundamental design decision that goes into War Gaming. A design decision that I think has been carried over from World of Tanks and persists because it's unchallenged by anyone. It is in fact used as a point of argument in the general forums persistently in defense of essentially every ship class at some point or another. In order to talk about the fundamental and persistent issue in World of Warships, let's talk about Team Fortress 2! Level advancement is actually relatively rare for any type of competitive shooter, something that Warships is despite all of the cosmetics implying otherwise. Games that have an advancement mechanic usually have horizontal advancement, handing in their starter weapons or characters for different but mostly balanced items. This is done for what are quite frankly obvious reasons, as competitive games do not want to create a large gap between new and veteran players as that seals up the market and any ongoing game needs to keep bringing in new players to stay alive. Another feature of competitive shooters is their characters. I'll like to use the Heavy, the Scout, and the Sniper for this example. For those unfamiliar with the game, these characters are the tank, the high speed CQC, and the long ranged glass cannon respectively. Whilst you can access unique weapons from drops, the weapons do not significantly alter the way that a class plays. The player advancement system and the uncertainty that goes into a game. An Iowa knows not to get into a bow trade with a Yamato at close ranges. Unless you try, you'd never know if that battleship or cruiser is easy prey or if you'd get your attacking force wiped. This, combined with how you're essentially at the mercy of matchmaking, means that playing carriers long term is extremely draining. All things considered, the population of carriers at the lower tiers is quite numerous. As you go up the tiers however, the uncertainty and stress as you hope that matchmaker doesn't end your game before you even began weights on you until you're left drained and frustrated. I have seen various carrier veterans leave the class, and they often cite overpowered AA as the reason. I think that simply saying that AA is overpowered is far from the whole story however. Instead, I think that all carrier players subconsciously comes to know that what they can do is entirely left up to the whims of the matchmaker. Buffing carriers is not the correct decision here, the problem is far too convoluted right now to be fixed just by improving the health pool of the planes. Changes To carriers Quite frankly, the problem with carriers does not lie with anything inside of the carrier class. Nevertheless, there are things that should be done regardless. To AA Most of the problems with carriers stems from how shipborne AA functions. If the carrier population is ever to recover, the system behind AA needs to be completely overhauled. My main point is about ambiguity. Playing carriers, like any other class, should still be left largely to player intention instead of feeling like you are entirely at the mercy of matchmaking and being slowly driven out of the class. Ambiguity and insurmountable odds should be removed wherever possible and replaced with hard and fast rules that you can work with and play around. There are changes I would like to see to the carrier class, especially in regards to the balance between American and Japanese carriers but I suspect that this article has grown long enough. I was actually meaning to write an article on why half of the captain skills should be axed, but this takes precedence.

The CV skill(s) that should die The CV skill(s) that should die In news everyone already knows, the new skills for carriers were created by those who have never touched a carrier in their entire lives. The new developments suggests that not only have the devs never played carriers, but they have only heard about carriers from tales of distant lands. That's not what I'm here to talk about however. I'm here to talk about why Air Supremacy and Aircraft servicing Expert should be removed. Aircraft servicing expert, in case anyone doesn't know, is a carrier only skill that grants 5% extra HP to all carrier borne aircraft and improves the servicing times. Air Supremacy is a carrier only skill. It has the effect of adding an extra plane to fighters and dive bomber squads. It has the following effects on the following carriers. Carrier Fighter Torpedo bomber Dive bomber USN +16.6% HP/firepower no effect +16.6% HP/firepower IJN +25% HP/firepower no effect +25% HP/firepower SAIPAN +34% HP/firepower no effect +12.5% HP/firepower Many people also know about the recent carrier mirroring. This was done for a very simple reason that any carrier that is under tiered would get massacred by the enemy carrier. An AS Ranger doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against a strike Taiho. This may be a little bit of an extreme example, but it illustrated the point. Higher tiered battleships can get outplayed and killed by a lower tiered battleship, a Yamato's citadel isn't exactly well defended against the guns of an Amagi or N. Car when they're up close. With a carrier however, the skill gap would probably have to be within the 20% win rate difference between the two players for the lower tiered carrier to stand a chance. To illustrate why I think Air Superiority and Aircraft Servicing Expert should be removed, here are some comparisons between the carriers I own: a Taiho and a Shokaku. For the purposes of this particular point, both carriers are in their fully upgraded configuration. Taiho vs Shokaku by plane HP Fighters Torpedo bomber Dive bomber Taiho 2306 Health Points 2355 Health Points 2245 Health Points Shokaku 2092 Health Points 1806 Health Points 1691 Health Points Planes behave as a single unit however, so here is what we're looking at. Fighters Torpedo bomber Dive bomber Taiho 11530 Health Points 9420 Health Points 11225 Health Points Shokaku 10460 Health Points 7224 Health Points 8455 Health Points Many people probably can't process these numbers too well however, so let's put this into context. A Taiho, even running 2/2/2, will stomp a Shokaku into oblivion as anyone who plays carriers and a lot of people who don't play carriers know. This is because of a difference between their plane performance. If we used the Shokaku as a baseline, we can see how much of a performance increase each plane squad gets from the transition from Shokaku to Taiho. Fighters: (100/10460)*11530 = 110.2% Torpedo Bombers: (100/7224)*9420 = 130.4% Dive Bombers: (100/8455)*11225 = 132.8% This means that the Taiho, upgrades and captain skills all accounted for, has a 24.5% plane health advantage to the Shokaku. This is a jump of an entire tier at the largest carrier power spike in the entire tree. If we consider the numbers I presented earlier for the performance increase that can be achieved by stacking the Air Supremacy and Aircraft Servicing Expert skills, we can compare these two values. The comparison assumes that the performance increase is static. If the performance increase due to the skill is cumulative, then the differences will be even more pronounced. Air Superiority + Aircraft Servicing Expert vs 1 tier CV difference comparison 1 Tier Δ +24.5% USN +24.6% IJN +30% SAIPAN +39% This means that the performance difference between these two carriers as caused by their tiers as well as modules that are restricted to higher tiered carriers is actually significantly smaller than the advantage conferred by AS + ASE over a vanilla carrier (with no captain skills). Fighting in a vanilla carrier against a 15 point carrier is like fighting a Taiho with a Shokaku. I may be alone in my assessment, but a skill option in a skill tree should be important but somewhat negligible. The current difference in power as demonstrated here indicated however that the tier 4 and 5 skills are completely mandatory on carriers. If the extra fighter and bomber is needed to balance carriers against higher tier ships, then that skill should be standard to all carriers as a static boost to their performance. In the current system, the advantage conveyed by the skill is simply too high. A little bit Extra The skills most relevant to carriers in this new patch includes the Evasive Maneuvers, an entirely useless skill outside of clan battles and Emergency takeoff, a skill created by someone who can't tell the difference between a carrier and an ironing board. Just for fun however, I decided that someone who actually plays carriers should just create my own carrier exclusive skill branch with some skill that would actually be both useful to the carrier whilst providing a genuine choice between two options. Tier 1 Training wheels -30% torpedo autodropping distance. -15% torpedo spread in autodrop. -20% dive bomber dispersion in autodrop. Aircraft Obfuscation Expert -10% aircraft detection range Tier 2 Explosives Expert +10% alpha to ships between tiers 2 - 7 +18% torpedo alpha to ships between tiers 8 - 10 +20% torpedo detection range +15% HE alpha. -10% change of flooding. -6% chance of fires. Saboteur Expert +15% chance of flooding +1.5% fire chance for guns < 140 mm +2% fire chance for guns 104 - 179 mm +3% fire chance for guns 180 - 240 mm +5% fire chance for guns > 240 mm and bombs +20% module damage -8% torpedo alpha -10% HE alpha Tier 3 Deck Servicing Expert -50% plane servicing times -40% squad recreation time (for when a squad gets wiped) -50% plane retrieving time Planes of different types can be retrieved at once Storage Hangar Expert +3 reserve planes per CV tier Tier 4 Nerves of Steel -40% defensive fighter and fighter dispersion effects. Aircraft Direction Expert -20% to aircraft turning radius -30% size of point of no return circle -10% torpedo bomber drop spread -30% dive bomber drop spread -8% plane flight speed Experimental Engine +40% aircraft turning radius +10% aircraft movement speed +20% aircraft movement speed (w/o payload) +5% to ship turning radius +8% to ship movement speed Sixth.five sense Shows when an aircraft is visible to enemy players

Fires suck (and so does flooding) I'm baaaaack~ This is NOT a guide! DO NOT move it. (Unless you count guides to game design as a guide as well which you don't, so stop complaining). Oh, and just post something at the bottom. I'm far too lazy won't be awake to bump the thread myself. Artist page: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=5192176 Extra battleship camping =P In most of the games in my Zao where I don't get instantly wiped because I managed to get my ship stuck in the middle of the ocean, I land somewhere around 150-250 shell hits. Mostly on battleships of course, but also on some cruisers and destroyers. The Zao, bar none (currently), is the cruiser with the highest fire chance on burst. A chance that is tied to RNGsus's will, a malevolent dark god who rules above all others of Chaos and will one day cast judgement upon the impudent imperial scum. Zao, being the cruiser with the highest fire chance, can be extremely dangerous to large targets with the way her guns work. I have often managed to land salvoes with two or three fires. Conversely however, I have managed to also sustain fire upon a single enemy ship for excessive periods of time with little to no result in terms of fire. Issues with fire and flooding Damage over time is a very large part of the game, and many have come to depend on it in order to keep benefiting their team and bringing their allies victory. As things are however, the ability to effectively utilize these systems makes it difficult to build tactics around them. It's often impossible to know if a salvo or three would be necessary to set a target on fire or if the use of damecon right this moment would mean that your ship would need to burn for half your health from a fire you can't stop. Sometimes this makes me laugh in the way that makes my division members want to call the psychiatric care service on me, other times this makes me spasm out in a way that has often caused quite serious bodily harm to myself. I still need to buy some cleaning alcohol now that I think about it, the blood on my mouse seems oddly impervious to my efforts to use water to clean it. A mechanic that players depend on to this extend should not be left up to the roll of the dice. It would benefit everyone if ticking damage was managed in a way that doesn't depart too much from our current system, but still has the depth that players in the know can exploit in order to perform better in their games. The concept The Implementation The Implications I believe that the current system is frustrating. Randomness benefits no one, and being able to reduce it for such a large segment of the gameplay would, in the end, benefit everyone. At least in my opinion.

I need a subtitle for these long articles, so I would appreciate it if everyone thought of one for me. Like the skybuck's x-files, but without the persistent stench of failure. Speed boost is actually a terrible consumable, something that not many people appreciate. I'd need to justify that, but I would like to mention the inherent issues with cruisers first. Long ago, I had created an article on French cruisers and the potential gimmicks that they would receive. Cruisers need their gimmicks Henri IV, which I shall henceforth refer to as Henrietta, pretty much unanimously sucks in everyone's opinion. Except Ichase, but he thought RL was a good idea. She is big, but doesn't have the armor to compensate for it. She is very fast, but she handles like crap and can't maneuver anywhere near enough to dodge incoming fire. She has a strong health pool, but she can't hold on to any of her health even against enemies that don't know about her magazine weakness yet. Ships are strongest when they are new and people don't know how to deal with them. The fact that Henrietta performs so badly even now does not bode well for her future. Speed doesn't suit Henrietta All of this is of course just background issues. The primary issue, the one that sits like an unexploded barrel of chlorine trifluoride in the middle of a bumper car ring, is that speed boost is a bad consumable. Any line that is built around it would inevitably be bad. That is not to say that speed is a bad gimmick for a line. Just that speed boost. The distinction may seem small, but the fundamental issue is that speed boost is a bad consumable. Given the option, basically everyone chooses another consumable over speed boost. Even a consumable that gets to be used maybe one every 10 games gets chosen over the speed boost. I routinely encounter destroyers with the defensive fire cooldown despite the fact that they could go for dozens of games without ever having run across a carrier, never mind one that chose them as a target. Speed boost is just a poor choice for a consumable to base a ship line around. Speed boost sucks I am not saying that speed boost is entire useless, simply that it is an extremely weak consumable that would be far better if it was improved to a point where it rivaled the likes of hydroacoustics or healing in terms of utility. I have devised some concepts that I would suggest that War Gaming considers. I am not sure why I'm doing the game designer's job for them. I would like this game to stop itself from growing stagnant, and that goes beyond one mediocre new line and a pathetic tier 10. Here are some things that could be added or changed about speed boost to make it actually a good addition to a ship. Speed boost improvements The French cruisers could be improved, they could be buffed, and they could be changed. That however does not change the fact that they fundamental foundation of the French cruiser line is flawed to a fault. Speed boost COULD theoretically work as a cruiser consumable, for a line of extremely small and agile cruisers that basically serves as over-sized destroyers in the same vein as the SN DDs. A line of fast and big ships with poor armor is the melding of traits that have little to do with each other. Separately, the traits of the French cruisers adds up to a series of highly valued traits. Combined as they are now, it creates a irritatingly mediocre line without an identity and speak of. Speed boost might work with another line, but it has no place with the French. I'll, as always, will await your indignant protests down below. Best regards.

WG's plan to Facilitate High-Tiered Carrier Seal Clubbing I have recently returned from the test server, and f*cking awful is an understatement to end all understatements. So, emergency post it is. Oh, and quick message to the forum mods : THIS IS NOT A GUIDE. DO NOT MOVE IT. War Gaming's Cretinous Design Concepts To be perfectly honest, War Gaming probably had no idea what to do with carriers. This was something that was made evident with the introduction of the Hakuryus strike deck. For those who are not aware, the Hakuryu used to run a strike deck with a flight control module of 0/5/3. Translating for those who are unfamiliar with carriers and putting it into the context of the game, if that deck existed in the game right now as it did back then then the Hakuryu can one-shot two of the three tier X battleships in the game right now with just above half of her strike deck and without the need for any fires and flooding to help them on their way. War Gaming quickly realized that releasing a ship that would have made a tier 2 Imperator Nikolai seem balanced was a terrible idea, and went ahead to start making extreme changes to carriers. Whether these changes were of necessity (taking away the Haky's strike deck/ giving cruisers defensive fire), annoying (taking away the 2 torpedo bombers from the Essex and Midway), short sighted (buffing battleship AA), or outright insane is largely a point of personal opinion. Unless that opinion is mine, which is automatically the validist and correctest points ever made =P. To put it simply, War Gaming has no idea what to do with carriers. I was evidently not the only one who was interested in this new carrier system. It took about two minutes to enter a game, something I was willing to wait for as someone who is used to waiting for 10 or 20 minutes for a game in ranked thanks to my choice of ship class. Besides, people are curious. I can't fault them for that. I quickly switched over to settings after I finally got into the match, turning on the new mouse interface mode. The minutes that followed were filled my room with the inhuman screeching and foaming at the mouth that would put most demonic possessions to shame, so I'll spare the forum members here the details. Needless to say I nearly had to leave my apartment for the third time today to go purchase a new keyboard. Before I go into any details however, I would like to cover something that the university would have failed me for if I tried to pull off as a student. I'm not sure how many of you have ever played Starcraft or any other strategy game. Left mouse button is for selecting and deselecting units. Right mouse button is for guiding units. Attack, defend, escort, or interact commands are all context sensitive. Anything else can also be manually ordered. Therefore you would click ON a target to order an attack. The reason for this is simple: you point at what you want your units to attack. You may be wondering why I am fixating on something so simple. It's because they manage to screw THAT up! As it is when I was playing on the test server, you don't click ON the unit to order an attack. You click ABOVE a target to attack a unit. You know, where the health bar and the username is. Yes, because when I think intuitive UI, I think that I shouldn't actually click ON the object I want to interact with but instead I should click the object next to it! Genius! Why hasn't Apple, Google, and Facebook offered you billions to acquire your UI designers yet War Gaming? Seeing as how you managed to come up with such concepts that are so beyond human comprehension! Let's switch over to the 6.3 patch notes for now and see what we have for us to look at shall we? What you mean is that you switched the RMB to the LMB. I could have done that in 5 seconds with the client we have right now. Tell me dear, are you that stupid or do you think I'm that stupid? Because those are the only two options I could think off right now. No they're not. I played the public test. Same janky design. Or maybe they are more responsive in manual mode. I wouldn't know. YOU REMOVED MANUAL DROPS! I quite frankly can't stomach it for long enough to find out, and I say this as someone who grinded my way through the German tier 5, 6, and 8 destroyers manually. Oh how gracious of you War Gaming! You just blew off an old man's legs, but instead of super-gluing some splintery wooden rods onto the stumps that used to be his legs you tied the splintery stumps with some soft padding instead! How generous of you! Let's take a look at the reduced travel distances for torpedoes shall we? Oh no War Gaming! Are you sure you want to improve the autodrop that much? That Kirov might need to start turning about 3 or 4 seconds after the torpedoes are already in the water to avoid literally every single torpedo! Oh my! That is SUCH a HUGE improvement to a carrier's player experience! I see why you were so quick to add this new feature! The rest of the 'fixes' are cleaning up your screw ups that should have been fixed even before the changes went live. It's like waiting for six months before you fix a bug that changes the ammunition types on a battleship just before you're about to fire. Or a bug that makes your destroyers randomly deploy smoke. Or a carrier bug that makes it so that you can't deselect your carrier without an annoying three action procedure so you end up accidentally end up sending your carrier into the middle of the map where all the enemies are. Wait, no. THAT'S STILL IN THERE! The only thing that has improved in this patch is the German destroyers and your pandering to the clueless cretin demographic. I'm not going to go through the cliche of threatening to leave the game or saying that the game is doomed, but to say that this patch makes you look bad is beyond an understatement. Rant over.

The French Cruiser's Thing I'm back with a topic that no one should care about and writing about things that community managers should be doing in my place! Yay! -throws confetti- A quick retrospective on the British cruisers: So here we are, at the sixth cruiser line with the French. We have the Japanese with solid gun performance all round, powerful but difficult to use torpedoes, and very potent HE. We have the Americans, who specialized in AA before the endless patches turned the battleships that used to depend on them for defense into a far more potent source of AA than the cruisers as well as the Russians and the British in the higher tiers usurping their role there. We have the Germans, with their Frankenstein line with long ranges and good gun handling for very dangerous AP but substandard HE. We have the Russians, and their long range HE spamming and rapid firing guns at the cost of being easier to penetrate than the easiest [segment omitted] down at the ports. Then we have the British with their odd but powerful guns and smoke screens. Two HE lines. Two AP lines. One AA line. And now the French. The concept behind the cruisers perhaps works best if they are thought as as simply a subset of ships that are specialized but not in any mutual way as with the battleships or destroyers. Whilst WG might go the way of giving the French cruisers a flavor, something that is far more important in my opinion is the creation of roles for them. I think that the game works best if it works like natural selection in the wider world. If a certain species grows too large in number, then they will either die off or a predator species will grow in number as they feast on the growing prey numbers. I think, for the lack of a better description, that the new ships should be there as a tool to fight against an enemy that a large number of current ships need to face. The role of ships can be thought of as the following, to a very simple degree. Anti - destroyer Anti - battleship Anti - cruiser Support Objective Reconnaissance All ships can fulfill all roles to a larger or smaller extent, but that is what game balancing would ideally be in my opinion. These tasks are, in my personal opinion, a good way to evaluate how ships can decide the result of a match. Minotaurs are excellent at ripping destroyers to pieces and holding the line from inside of the smoke, but fighting against any other cruiser at standard cruiser engagement ranges will very quickly result in a very dead Minotaur. A Hindenburg is only slightly effective at dealing with non-British cruisers, mediocre against destroyers thanks to her quite poor HE, and only slightly effective at dealing with battleships due to her slow speed and large turning circles. She has insane AP alpha values, a very good hydro coupled with very good turret mechanization on a heavy cruiser, and excellent torpedo arcs and very dangerous close range guns however. This in, in my eyes, a balancing factor in a way. One ship is extremely good at a few things, but terrible at others. The other ship is in no way remarkable, but neither does she suffer in any specific area. Certain ships are simply better performers than their counterparts (e.g. Hindenburg VS Zao) but all ships are best at one of the five roles whilst suffering in others. The Zao for a start is decent at the first, excellent at the second, and good at the third but lacks any ability to fulfill objective and reconnaissance in any major way as front line Zaos are usually dead Zaos. So we come to the gimmick that goes to the French ships. The French cruisers, from what I've seen of them, are quite unremarkable. They appear to resemble either Clevelands in the case of their light cruisers or Hippers in the case of their heavy cruisers. Their speed is slow, peers with the British and Germans and certainly not anywhere near the Japanese or the Russians. Their armor is described as good for a cruiser though the Gloire's 120 mm side and 105 mm belt armor is rather significant for a light cruiser. No significant references were made to their AA capabilities. They're rather short for cruisers of their era, though not notably so. The role of light cruisers So, what should be the French light cruiser's "thing"? It took us a long time to get here didn't it? My ideas are generated rather simply. The French cruiser's thing will almost definitely have to be something to do with their ammunition. I do have one idea about a consumable, but that will be right at the bottom of the list. I will also not be stealing the British's gimmick as tempting as it is to transfer those traits to a ship line with serviceable armor. Incendiary HE Anti-battleship Suppressed Firing Penalty Anti-battleship No Citadel Anti-destroyer, Objective Speed Boost Objective Armor Objective, support Rapid Autoloading Anti-cruiser, anti-destroyer Right, I'm done. I shall eagerly await your indignant protests to my ideas below. Best regards.

Carrier interface needs a complete overhaul It's that time of the month again, where I arbitrarily think that I should write myself another essay instead of doing something actually beneficial for my professional life! Yay! Artist Page: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=5192176 Carriers are the most decisive ship in the game. Player skill can be entirely compromised in half the team, but as long as the carrier captain is of sufficient skill they could still pull through. Likewise, a mostly competent team could be brought down by a bad carrier player. The skill of the carrier players are extremely important for just about any game, often deciding the outcome of the battle which is why carrier players train so long and hard to combat their single largest enemy: the crappy carrier interface. It should be noted that the changes that I am discussing here have nothing to do with the performance of carriers in the game. This thread is not about making carriers more powerful in any way (though I might start another long thread made if nothing interesting happens in Warships) but making them less irritating to use. Mechanics such as ships and planes being able to spot each other over mountains and high smoke screens are also issues, but would probably be best addressed in its own thread. A quick retrospective on carriers: The promised carrier overhaul has yet to come. It was promised this year, but I would sooner believe it when Donald J. Trump tells me that liberal professors are smuggling Apache helicopters, napalm, and Hilary's rancid [segment omitted] into our water supplies to turn our goldfishes gay before I trust a WG developer announcing a sunrise outside of official patch notes. The track record of War Gaming doesn't exactly imbue me with great optimism is what I'm saying. WG is probably working on carriers to some degree, but trusting WG devs to balance out carriers without guidance is like expecting a pre-neolithic humanoid to spontaneously compose a manual on constructing and maintaining a interplanetary warp network. This, combined with the fact that the devs of WoWS would probably have to sustain third degree burns over their entire body before they'd listen to me when we tell them that they're burning down their house if the RDF debacle is anything to go by, does not imbue me with much faith. It won't be surprising that War Gaming would attempt to court more carrier players by straight up buffing the alpha damage, plane performance, or flight control modules. This is something that is, for the most part, unneeded. I suppose that when all you have is a hammer, everything ends up looking like a nail and when all you listen to is your statistical analytic you might think that numbers are the only thing that would fix carriers. The largest issue with carriers isn't the direct performance, though match making can screw over the middle tier carriers rather often. The interface and controls for the carriers is one of the largest if not the largest problem with carriers right now and buffing carrier alpha damage is like Nintendo trying to boost Wii sales by introducing exclusive gore, horror, and porn titles into their repertoire. In order to bring the team victory, carriers need to perform the correct role at the correct points and perform those roles well. It becomes a very large issue when a carrier player gets interrupted by performing those roles not by good play on the enemy team but by the game just refusing to cooperate with the player. This issue is persisting. Many changes have been made to the interface of the surface vessels in order to make the game more pleasant and convenient for them to play. The carrier interface, as far as I know, is as bad right now as it was in the early game stages and in many ways worse as the introduction of the circle of no return and large plane turning circles makes it extremely annoying to pull off attacks against fast targets when the planes would rather fly in a straight line for a little longer, turn away, then spinning back to try to attack a target whose crew has sailed or flew on, reached their destination, and is already building a family with three children (the youngest of which is a mostly mute cook) and an inheritance that would be attracting the attentions of a psychotic yet quirky thieving count when their parents ultimately die in a fire "accident". The issues that arises from the carrier's interface is numerous: Redundant Controls Insufficient Vital Information Cluttered Interface Annoying Camera Tilt Terrible Minimap Feedback The issues with the carrier interface is numerous, as are the ways that they can be fixed. Each topic can probably be used to start a topic all on its own, but for now I want to keep everything in one place so I can give suggestions for improving the game interface all at once. These are the interface changes that I would like to see that would, in my opinion, do much to close the massive gap between skilled and poor carrier players. In the current meta carrier combat isn't comparable to a duel with swords or guns between two opponents of skill. It's more like a switchboard operating contest when all of the buttons are labelled in Mandarin and the manual is written in Braille. Improvements Section With that over with, let's get to the crux of the article. I created a few slides to go with the radical interface changes to help players visualize the improvements I am suggesting. Locked Camera Angles Improved Interface Improved Interface II Improved Minimap Redundant controls That is all for now, I think. I might have to edit this article later. This one took a lot longer than I thought it would. I will (not) be awaiting the indignant complaints from the whiner brigade below saying how carrier population should be cut down as much as possible and that the interface should be made as unpleasant and unusable as imaginable despite the fact that almost every single problem with carriers in the game right now are being caused by those issues. Best regards.

German Destroyers and the Future of Stealth Fire The news of the German stealth firing nerf will probably spread over the entire player base within the next few days. The magnitude of the nerf was so harsh that you would have thought that the KM DDs have the HE alpha damage and gun arcs to make the Zao green with jealousy. With further consideration however, it's quite easy to see that War Gaming is up to. They envisioned the KM DDs as close range DD hunters and point holders. As this is probably the case, they don't want to create another line of the playstyle that is currently being held by the Akizuki and Blysawica. They are obsessed with ship uniqueness if the RN cruisers are anything to go by and KM DDs would do their best work up close anyways considering that they have lackluster HE but very potent but low caliber AP. I personally don't like having opnions removed, but War Gaming's efforts to shoehorn ships and their players into their game vision by disregarding player opinion is a topic in itself, but that's not what this post is about. Stealth fire is a mechanic that War Gaming has stated that they want to remove. At the moment stealth firing is a very limited ability that very few ships in very specific circumstances could use. They're also rumors floating around that ships that are most heavily affected by the stealth firing nerf would be compensated in some other trait. The Zao, the ship with the most infamous stealth firing abilities, would probably benefit from the changes irf anything as she has the armor, the range, and the gun arcs to dodge and negate incoming fire even if the enemy ship can see her. Ships like the Akizuki would be the ones to suffer most with her slow speed and large silhouette, but at least she has a smoke screen. The nerf would also create a wider gap between premiums like the Blysawica and their tech tree counterparts, but stealth firing from destroyers is not something that is tactically significant enough that taking it away would be a gigantic nerf to the class especially after the HE performance nerf. The larger issue in my opinion is a far reaching gameplay balance one. Battleships a currently the most represented class in the game. War gaming has long espoused the need for a rock, paper, scissors system and to a large part this system is theoretically necessary in order to naturally balance ship numbers in the game without necessitating the creation of rigid numerical quotas and limits for each ship class. If they are too many cruisers then more battleships would be launched. If they are more battleships then more destroyers would be launched. If they are too many destroyers then more cruisers would be launched. That is the theory anyways. The problem however is battleship rushes and its effectiveness. Destroyer charges flat out doesn't work, a tier 10 cruiser would dispatch of 2 destroyers with similar ease to dispatching of 6 of them if the destroyers just charge said cruiser. Battleships charging a destroyer is another matter however. This is mainly because ship number balancing is not done through pure combat effectiveness of a ship class against another but rather the ways their spheres of influences interact. Each ship can be thought to exert a sphere of influence, a sphere of power that holds most strategically aware players away. The power of the sphere becomes more pronounced closer to the ship of origin, as guns, secondaries, and torpedoes all increase in lethality up close to the enemy ship. The issue is that a destroyer, the battleship's counter, exerts a sphere of influence that is fundamentally very different from that of a cruiser or a battleship. A battleship or a cruiser exerts their spheres mainly using their guns. If you come close to them, they shoot at you. The closer you get, the more shots they land. The closer they get, the more likely those shots are to hit somewhere that will really hurt. Destroyers depend on the threat of torpedoes to exert their spheres however, slow loading weapons that can be easily evaded if the enemy anticipates the torpedo destroyer early on. This means that an aggressive and skilled team can push past a destroyer blockade with similar difficulty whether or not the destroyer is alone or is with three or four friends especially now with the introduction of the hydroacoustic search on prominent battleships. The rock, paper, scissors system doesn't work because destroyers can't effectively exert power in the form of a sphere against the battleships. A destroyer's in-game relevance is self-eliminating. One destroyer is incredibly important for the team's success and exerts a sphere of influence that keeps the enemy ships at bay. Three destroyers is generally ideal. Once the destroyer count hits four and higher however, they become largely redundant. The power to exert the sphere of influence is shared between the destroyers so they individually become less powerful in effect. To simplify the effect, an appreciable rise in battleship numbers will reduce a cruiser's strategic effectiveness so battleships can be used to balance cruiser numbers. An appreciable rise in destroyer numbers won't reduce a battleship's strategic effectiveness and so we have the current situation where battleships can just reign free without any contest apart from each other. This is where stealth firing comes in. Stealth firing is not class specific, and some ships are far batter at it than others. At present however, stealth firing is the only effective thing to cull battleship numbers. A large battleship population means a diminished cruiser and destroyer population. Smaller and stealthier ships nullifies stealth firing completely in most cases. Battleships on the other hand can't really do anything about it because basically every ship capable of the stealth fire can easily outrun them whilst still raining down fire on the battleship. A few battleships and a few cruisers reduces the effectiveness of stealth fire because the combined arms as well as speed of mixed ship teams can chase down and kill the would be stealth firer. A pure battleship team however is extremely ineffective at dealing with the stealth firer as the stealth firer can dictate most of the terms of engagement as well as when to break off the engagement. Battleships can't force and engagement against any stealth firing ship in the game right now. This means that currently stealth firing ships are the only ships that are fulfilling the overall destroyer's goals of suppressing battleships when their numbers grow too large. I theorize that this is in fact the reason why battleships are so dominant around the mid tiers but far less prominent (though still populous) around the higher tiers where ships like the Zao lurk. I find the removal of stealth firing concerning. It is currently the only thing that is really stopping further battleship number rises and it isn't a large stretch to theorize that the removal of the mechanic will only result in battleship numbers growing even larger than it is right now.

The problem is that she is an INFERIOR Hipper clone. I would be willing to give up her superior AA any day if they bought down the turning radius of the Prinz to parity with the Hipper.

This is just silly. This is like asking for the Kaga class helicopter destroyer to be added to the game just because the Kaga had name recognition.

I'm planning to buy a Scharnhorst for the US server so I can go troll them. edit: even better, I could buy an Enterprise.