Capra76

I've seen plenty of ships lose 50%+ of HP to CV in the first few minutes, so even if it's not a one-shot it is pretty much mission-kill/game-over before you've fired your guns. The difference between CV and BB/DD is that you can one-shot them back so the XP/credits you lose out on from being killed get returned to you when you kill them, in the case of CV the problem is that there's too little return to the other classes compared to the cost they inflict on them.

It might be that there's not much incentive for new players to grind CV or spend FXP etc when there's no certainty about what the final state will be.

Please don't give them ideas.

I think to be balanced a ship has to give a reward (either directly or indirectly) to the target ships equal to the cost they impose on the target ship, thus: Shima is balaned against Yamato because it gives Zao something to shoot at; Zao is balanced against Shima because it gives Yamato something to shoot at; Yamato is balanced against Zao because it gives Shima something to shoot at; and obviously all classes can shoot at and kill each other and the hard-countered classes can fight back as well. But what does CV offer back to the other ship classes? Largely meaningless plane kills with automated AA mechanics? Much WOW. Very occasional kills/damage against the hull, usually once the game is decided anyway unless the CV is a complete potato? Again, my cup over-runneth with meh. So if CV offer so little back what is balanced? Single or low double-digit damage returns and 50% WR for potatoes and super-unicums, but then who would want to play such a class? But then any more than that and how is it fair to other classes? That's why I think CV are fundamentally unbalancable in this game.

I have a hard time imagining what a balanced CV might look like, do you have any idea how it might look?

Not more space battles please, it was meh last year, this time it's just plain lazy. Bring back the bathtub game, or subs, or something different.

Or to put it another way, CV can strike anywhere on the map with no accuracy penalty, ignore or even benefit from terrain AND spot their own targets and in return the surface ships get some consolation XP from meaningless plane kills.

Arguably it was needed to "!balance" new CV and their rapid cycling drops, which could start perma-floods regardless of how well DCP was managed.

T-61, if you know what you're doing as a DD player. Better than the EG in every meaningful category, loses out to it in a few meaningless ones.

The Chinese server must be wondering WTF has happened with the sudden influx of EU (and presuambly NA/RU) super-unicum CV players.

Odds on the RU BB radar getting replaced by the standard one at the last minute "to simplfy game-play"?

And herein lies the problem, every anti-dd mechanic hammers the tactical aspects of the game (capping, spotting etc) whilst leaving Shima's walls of skill untouched.

Why would anyone want to invest time/money in the reworked CV when you've no idea what you're going to be left with once the balancing process is complete? You could spend 550,000 FXPing your way to T10 Midway only to find that this time next week you've got something that's as effective and fun to play as the T4 Langley. Isn't there a fundamental conflict between the two objectives there? To be entertaining in a pure damage dealing class you need to be able to deal lots of damage and kill things, but to be balanced in such a low risk long lived class you need to have very limited damage potential. How are WG supposed to square that circle?

Invest in cammo/flags/premium time, train the captain on your favorite ship up to 19 points then do all of your crew training using elite captain XP.

Sail away from them and if you can't kill a DD closing on you at 3-4 knots in a cruiser work on your aim.

Fushun/Gadjah Mada?

The reason for that of course was the limited hangar capacity on the lower tier CV, if the surface ships had better AA the CV would be de-planed within 5 minutes every game. With the hangar mechanic gone and an "infinite" number of planes to play with there's a lot more scope for equalizing AA power across the tiers (IRL issues not withstanding).

And when BB have infinite range without accuracy penalty, can spot their own targets and shoot through islands that might be relevant to something.

Another picture: The key point is that T8 had a strong lead with T9 & T10 tracking each other closely until 9 june 2018 when T10 started to become more popular, there was then a sudden jump on 30 June before the previously unthinkable happened and T10 passed T8 on 7 July and now seems to regularly lead by over 100,000 games/week, T9 seems to be struggling now, will the sudden drop off at the start of February continue, we'll have to wait and see. Dataset if anyone wants to dig further, please note that I've excluded weeks with over 500,000 games in any class, the graph is unreadable otherwise.

Maple Syrup, games in the week ending on that particular date, perhaps not the most robust or scientific measure but a useful snapshot in time.

Here are the actual number for the 3 years with a bit of analysis as well: Highlights: 5/6 of the top ships were in the game at launch and all of the top 9 have been in for at least 2 years; GK presumably makes top 6 due to popularity of Bismarck/Tirpitz at T8; Minotaur first of the newer ships at 7, presumably due to being the first RN line; interstingly only 27.5% increase from 2018 against average of 67.8% Yamato, GK, DesMo, Zao and Conq broadly tracking the 67.8% average; Monty someway ahead with an 80% increase; Midway/Hak obviously up due to rework, contributes approx 20,000 out of 125,000 gain on 2018; Hindi down a bit, obviously post nerf, Moskva for some reason has become a lot more popular; Some new ships this year, but that applies at every tier and doesn't explain why the likes of Zao/Monty etc are so much more popular (might dig around and see if I can find any clues); Shima still top overall but less than 7% increase from 2018; Gearing, Z-52 and Yueyang down significantly from 2018; Khaba making a small comeback and Groz doing well after buff (but still small numbers); My best guess is that it is; people finally completing a grind to T10, hence 5 out of top 6 in game from launch; perhaps aided by more flags and camo (125 gold for +200% XP Type 59 camo, ESCL now buyable for 16 gold, more of the special flags around) and maybe players getting better at using camo/flags; possibly a snowball effect, with T8 being the largest tier by far in 2017 it gets good MM and there's no great incentive to move up to T9/10, once more people reach T10 the T8 MM gets progressivly worse over time such that now there's a very strong incentive to move on (WG no doubt considers this a good thing).

That I can help you with: Over 2x the number of T10 games compared to T9 drags up lots of T8 and T9 to make up the numbers (hence terrible T8 MM), creating a shortage of T8 and especially T9 games hence T7 are usually top tier and if not are very rarely in T9 games (most of those T9 ships usually being dragged up into T10 as well). Interesting to compare the balance to this time last year:

No idea who you are but you seem to be pretending to be someone you are not.

Any idea how you would code to identify such behaviour. DD/CA doing their jobs properly can still die very early from a small misjudgement or even factors outside of their control, how do you plan to distinguish between that and the genuine lemmings.

Best bet is the Wiki these days, that has recommended captain skills on it.