dasCKD

Don't you remember the brilliant and not at all half-arsed button rebinds?

Okay, OP, let me put it this way. At 13-14 km, a Taiho would bounce a YAMATO's shells.

I'm going to start archiving my posts here as well, so they don't get lost. Anyways, second video with the French Baguettes.

My missile thread disappeared! It didn't get blocked or moved, it just straight up vanished. This better not be a server error, I spend a lot of time on that!

Before you ask: yes, I am completely insane. What of it? I'll keep publishing these until the psychiatric services catches up with me. I also noticed that I am not getting the reception I want, and so I made changes to the article title. Not only am I insane, I'm also a shameless Edited. 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. This post has been edited by the moderation team due to swearing.

Yes, I did some background reading on rockets. Even the USN variants are quite inadequate as alpha weapons, the RN appears to be even worse. At least against targets like large warships of destroyer size and up. I'll need to make adjustments to the alpha values of the stated missiles and have them fired in large salvos to remain competitive it seems. As for the pure alpha power gap between the British and the Americans, I doubt it'll be much of an issue. USN torpedo bombers were practically unusable midwar compared to their IJN counterparts considering how unreliable they were, yet the US carriers at least works fine in game. I doubt that a little historical inaccuracy is too big a price to pay for a better game. If we just must have it so that the RN carriers have smaller payloads than their USN variants, we could probably have each plane fire a larger missile salvo with each missile doing less damage with a lower HE penetration. Maybe 49 mm instead of 94. Perfect against most cruisers and all destroyers, but less appropriete against certain battleships. A higher total alpha damage per plane, but with a more limited target range.

I posted the bullet holes to demonstrate the point that metal does not react the same way that flesh does to a kinetic perpetrator, hence the OP's point on exit holes are completely moot. I said it in the post. Human flesh is mostly water. It doesn't react to shells like metal does. Bold words. Go on then. Find me an image of an overpenetrating hit on ANY ship that is remotely ANYTHING close to as catastrophic as the torpedo impact on the New Orleans that I have above. I can use any of the first ten WW2 images that I get for the search query "torpedo damage" to prove my point, especially since these are on the lower end of the torpedo damage spectrum considering that those ships were even recoverable. If a shell overpenetrates or doesn't detonate, it basically does nothing. Even less than it's doing in the game right now. The ship is mostly air, with only some zones dedicated to vital components. A shell that doesn't hit the engine room or the magazine and fails to explode does virtually no damage at all. Shells not triggering isn't modeled in the game either. Citation of this happening needed. Find me an example, one is all I need, of an overpenetrating shell causing flooding in a destroyer or light cruiser. It's one more annoying mechanic that doesn't need to exist. No one asks for a different type of flooding when hit by a full salvo of Type 93s compared to the Langley's airdropped torpedoes either.

Depends on the battleship. The lower AP damage would be a massive relative buff to ships like the Scharnhorst with a lower relative AP alpha damage that would now have a massive advantage against ships like the Nagato or the Colorado with their slow firing but hard hitting guns. It would also be a relative buff to ships like the Hindenburg, Moskva, Henrietta, and Zao who will all have the citadel alpha potential above that of any battleship in this new system. In regards to damage per match, it's not likely to change much. Battleships get the majority of their damage per match mileage out of regular penetrations on other battleships.

Here's where I'd have to object. My opinion on the matter is that dive bombers as anything but a DoT weapon is completely unbalancable. It's one of the reasons I object to the Lexington's current setup so much. If AP bombs were introduced, I would give them low alpha values (5000 maximum) and a flooding chance with only one squad of dive bombers. If I was given the option to redesign the carriers from the ground up, I would build it as such: For tier VIII (competitive) carriers Shokaku Fighter 4 x 2 Torpedo bombers 4 x 3 Lexington Fighter 4 x 2 Missile bomber 4 x 2 AP dive bomber 5 x 1 Brit carrier #6 Fighter 4 x 2 Missile bomber 3 x 2 Torpedo bomber 3 x 2 This topic deserves its own thread though, so consider this a spoiler if you would.

Meh. Powered missiles are usually small. If they're weaksauce, just have the higher tiered planes launch a bigger barrage. Two or three per plane or something. It's not like the IJN gain torpedo alpha damage at the higher tiers, though maybe they should.

The fact that USN attack aircraft are being combined with fighters raises its own balancing issue though. I'd prefer it if the issue of contesting air supremacy was instead left to a more universal fighter setup across the nations (i.e. 4x2 fighters on all carriers of tier V and above) then have the national flavor expressed in their strike components. All carriers, without exception, should run balanced setup with no other options in my ideal world.

El2aZeR, on 07 May 2017 - 08:11 PM, said: Honestly, I thought for the longest time that giving HVARs to USN CVs could be one way to make them competitive. Instead of introducing dedicated missile squads however, I'd have introduced fighter-bombers. They should be able to engage enemy planes like normal fighters and attack ships with HVARs via alt attack, but lose the strafe ability. Squad size should be 3, upgradeable to 4, so that a single squad will always lose against an IJN fighter squad. Alternatively you could just give them worse stats and make the squad size 4(5). That would be generally a bad idea IMO. The Aichis were also mixed armament aircraft IRL, but they don't have fighter capabilities in the game. It's probably better to keep the current system where all of the plane squads are designated a specific role that they serve. Webley_Mark, on 07 May 2017 - 06:40 PM, said: Ok, I'm calling them right now. They'll never find me, and neither will you

No. It'll be too difficult to balance.

Firstly, metal is malleable. Human flesh is mostly water. The materials are not comparable. A kinetic penetration going straight through metal will leave only a negligible hole. Secondly, have you seen what a torpedo does to a ship? A torpedo hit in the game SOMETIMES causes flooding. The idea that a ship's artillery would cause flooding anywhere comparable to what a torpedo hit or a ramming would cause is ludicrous beyond reason.

A Shimakaze has the length of 129.5 meters. A Yamato's shell has a diameter of 0.46 meters. A similar equivalent size of hole in a long rowboat would be around the size of a fingernail on your index finger.

A tear caused by an overpenning BB shell would be tiny compared to the tear caused by ANY torpedo exploding against a ship, yet there is a good chance that a ship doesn't flood when hit by a torpedo. It would be incongruous to have the tiny holes caused by overpenning result in floods. Besides, most overpenning happens above the water line. Now that we're on the subject, why doesn't cruiser AP cause flooding in your hypothetical model? Cruiser AP overpens just as often as battleship AP does when fired at destroyers.

I can neither confirm nor deny.

So many chances for me to post my copy-paste memes

To be fair, OP could be using AP shells for those ships. Remember early day Thinder "only n00bs use HE on the Budyonny" chief?

I actually thought of a better image for this! One more thing. You shouldn't be pulling seniority over other people, especially when you have basically none.

Could be done for an obscene fee, like 500k credits to try out a tier 8 premium for 3 matches with no income or something. It would open the option to people, but stop it from being a regular thing.

What about carriers

Considering that the premium shop is WG's primary source of income, is it not high time that you improved the information displayed there? You sell ships, yet prospective buyers have to go around chasing information from secondary sources to inform their purchases. Most people would want to know the range, health pools, AA DPS values, torpedo payloads, top speed, consumable choices, and upgrade options for a ship and yet all you have is a wiki link to an article that is quite frankly extremely user unfriendly. You sell camouflage packs, and yet do not list the boost that the camouflage packs you are selling confers. It's even worse than the ships, as there isn't even a link to the camouflage characteristics on the page selling the camouflage packs. Could we expect to see improvements to the information displayed in the premium shop anytime soon?

Thank you. I really actually wanted more +100% XP camo so I can speed up my grind. This one's a little questionable for me, it might be better for me to wait for next time.