SonofaSailor

I'm putting together a list of game chat commands and functions both as a reference for new and experienced players, alike, but primarily to start a discussion about what kind of commands we really need and whether we might request WG look at including some new or revised commands in a future update. Here's the list of communication-specific keys and commands. If I've missed anything out or got something wrong, let me know and I'll edit it. F1 - Help (access to help file, not a request) F2 - (appears to be unbound) F3 - Designating target F4 - Thank you F5 - Affirmative! F6 - Negative! F7 - Requesting support! F8 - SOS F9 - That was a great battle! F10 - Good luck everyone F11 - $%*#@! CTRL + LMB (on the mini map) - Attention to sector! M - access to the tactical map which also includes a list of the chat hotkeys/shortcuts What changes should be made? Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that F11 is wasted. We really don't need this. As I've already mentioned elsewhere, F11 might be in there for a laugh and a joke, and perhaps as a way for a player to express some rage in a relatively harmless way (one that doesn't involve personally insulting another player by name on the chat), but it's a waste of a function key and is not useful. We need tactical commands or suggestions that help teams to communicate at a basic level. Not everyone speaks English fluently but there's a good chance that poor speakers will have looked up and learned what the chat keys say and mean. For example, the other night I was working with a Polish cruiser using only the chat keys, but he didn't have conversational English, so we were limited to the basics. I used Requesting Support to indicate I wanted him to come with me, for instance, rather than using it to ask for fire support in a battle. We need more commands that help in this way, not silly commands like F11. I can see how F11 is intended to be either funny, or to let someone express themselves, but most of the idiots just swear and insult people on the chat anyway and don't use F11, so F11 should be rewritten to something more useful. While I say that F11 is a waste of space, I think F10 should stay. It's nice to be nice and F10 is often a good icebreaker at the start of a match that also draws people's attention to the chat. If you get a lot of F4s in response to your F10, you know that you might have some players who'll pay attention to the chat. If you get absolutely nothing... as sometimes happens... either everyone is on teamspeak or they just don't care. F9 however should also go. If you want to say 'good game' say it in chat. Even if it's just 'gg'. What are the alternatives? Like I said, what we need (especially on the EU server where we can never be certain everyone speaks good conversational English) is a list of commands that will allow a team to implement basic tactics. There can't be much discussion - that's too complex. It's at the level of suggestion and response, resulting in a decision by process of elimination. "Should we do this?" "Yes/No." So what would a revised list look like? First, what have got to work with? F2 - F3 - Designating target F4 - Thank you F5 - Affirmative! F6 - Negative! F7 - Requesting support! F8 - SOS F9 - F10 - Good luck everyone F11 - We have F2, F9 and F11. Are there any other keys you think could be changed and, if so, which ones? And, ultimately, what should they say?

Disclaimer: I don't play much, anymore, and read the forums even less, so if this has been covered, who ever wrote it didn't use good keywords because my search didn't bring it up. I also like putting stuff in bold for visual interest. I'm a visually interesting kinda guy ;-) One of the reasons I don't play much anymore is because nothing in this game evolves. The play style and tactics change very little. Some ships get buffed, some get nerfed. Big deal. The essential arcade game remains unchanged. For battleships: Angle. Aim. Shoot. Repeat. For cruisers: Angle. Aim. Spam. Repeat. For destroyers: Smoke. Torp. Retreat. Repeat. For carriers: get some therapy, because why are you playing a carrier? ;-) WOWS's problem is that its game play doesn't change, thus it doesn't create added interest, thus they have to resort to gimicky ships like the RN cruisers. Look! A branch of 155mm only cruisers that have less armour than the Russian glass cannons, worse ballistics than an Atlanta, RNG that makes a shot gun look like a precision weapon, and no HE?!?! Of course, I understand why there is no HE on RN cruisers. It's because there are islands and smoke. It's because an RN cruiser could sit motionless inside smoke, or behind an island, and burn everything to death. It would kill gameplay. It would immobilise whole quadrants of the map. It would murder low HP ships and drive everyone else crazy. It would be... shock horror... worse than submarines! So what's the problem? I think there are two closely related factors, here: the ability for ships to sit motionless without drifting, and the ability of smoke to sit motionless without drifting. Basically, both of these things are bollox and if they were fixed, it would add a whole new dimension of more interesting game play, and would help differentiate WOWS from WOTS. When I first started playing I was quite puzzled by ships that would "come to anchor" behind an island, sometimes poke their bow around it, shoot, then go into reverse. WTF? I thought. Is this a tank game or a ship game? Why aren't we all just playing WOTS, instead? But what really bent my brain as a beginner was the fact that smoke didn't move. I've been on this planet for a few years and I've noticed something about smoke: it moves. Especially when there's a breeze. Even when there isn't. Smoke is hot, hot gas is energetic. Energetic particles tend to move about. The other thing I've noticed is that when you're inside smoke, people can't see you and... YOU CAN'T SEE OTHER PEOPLE. But in the game, when you're in smoke you have perfect visibility, everywhere. It's an invisibility cloak. But wait, this isn't Star Trek, either. So how come destroyers have cloaking devices? Now someone will lecture me about how game physics isn't like real physics. But you're missing the point. There are two things WG can do to shake everything up and really develop a separate style of gameplay for WOWS: 1. make ships that are not under power drift. 2. make smoke drift and opaque. After the game starts, wind will blow ships that are not moving. So, that player who is AFK at the start will slowly blow to the map edge, or maybe onto an island, or even right into the middle of a firefight! I think that would be amusing, or maybe I'm just mean ;-) A player who hides behind an island and cuts his engines might drift onto the island if he's forgotten which way the wind is blowing. Or he might drift away from it and lose his cover. He could end up going backwards or sideways or, if he's in a narrow strait between islands, maybe he'll start turning in circles! I think that would be amusing ;-) Wind will blow smoke. Before setting smoke, a player should consider the wind direction. The smoke will travel, slowly, in that direction. So I destroyer will not be able to come to a full stop - he'll have to follow his smoke. He can speed up a bit or slow down a bit so that he can still move around inside the smoke, but if he stops he risks drifting out of it, or it drifting away from him. Better still, when setting a smoke screen to help his team, a destroyer can set it upwind of his team and then let it drift down towards them, so that the team doesn't have to manoeuvre to make use of it. The smoke will come to them. And this is interesting: smoke will drift across a large section of the map, so you might suddenly find yourself with someone's second hand smoke drifting past. Benefits of introducing wind effects and opaque smoke. 1. Introducing wind effects will reward players who maintain situational awareness (a great many still don't have it, even at higher tiers). 2. It'll reward team tactics. 3. It'll punish campers, especially habitual torp ninjas who never do any scouting or fire support or capping or destroyer hunting, and focus all their energy on getting that battleship kill, instead, which is not always the most useful thing a DD can do in the game. And a bit boring, as well. 4. It'll shake up destroyer tactics to the point where WG might feel able to de-nerf some of the ships and torpedoes that they've nerfed in an attempt to balance the game. 5. It'll differentiate WOWS from WOTS - tank tactics just won't work, at all. 6. It'll allow RN cruisers to have HE and become useful. WG are scraping the barrel in the search for something new. They're not going to introduce any new ship types, so every new nationality has to have some kind of gimmick. And no one is impressed. So why not just say, fck it! Let's shake up the whole game! What have we got to lose? We still only get 20k players on a weekend compared to the nearly 100k that play WOTS. And we're still only on version 0.5 so why not have some courage and take a decision and make something that's more stimulating than just another boring shoot-em-up?

Okay, seems folk are split about 50:50 between 'like it, would be fun' and 'meh'. Maybe I should have included a poll ;-) I take the point about not having perfect visibility when in smoke. Perhaps it should be limited to having others spot for you, and not having direct line of sight on anything from your own point of view. Thus, DDs couldn't mount unsupported attacks using smoke, and if teams wanted their DDs to help, they'd need to support them with spotting. I'm encouraged by those people who think having wind/currents and ships that drift when the engines go idle is all potentially fun and amusing, whether it's for setting up interesting smoke screen attacks/defences or just the schadenfreude of watching AFK players bobbing about helplessly! Whatever floats your boat! (Or sinks it.) Maybe those players who like the idea will remember it next time they get a survey from WG to fill in! ;-) There's always one of these questions: What's the biggest disadvantage in World of Warships? Answer: no wind! Cheers

I notice the game has been patched. (Nothing gets by me!) Armour models. Nice. And this raises a thought - what are the odds that improved armour modelling now and in the future will result in ships with effective angled belts, which will further result in players not having to do silly and counter-intuitive things like angle the ship bow or stern towards the enemy instead of gaining an advantage by crossing the T, like ALL the naval textbooks and histories show is the best way to win. I don't post very often so someone will probably tell me how stupid I am. C'est la vie. Says more about them than it does me.

As one of the few people who don't like the Cleveland, I sold it and focused on IJN and German cruisers, instead. Now I'm considering which Tier 7 to go for, first. But, of course, we're post-patch and most of the forum posts and reddit discussions are now out of date. My problem is that I like the Nurn more than the Aoba, even though I do like the Aoba's sniper rifles. So, how is the Yorck playing just now? Did the Myoko suffer any nerfs?

This is a good idea. It motivates individuals to work as a team in order to earn personal gain. I will have to remember to put that in the comments section of the next survey.

I've been working my way through the Myogi recently and have searched for other peoples ideas on how to use it. I've come across quite a few comments in different places, and among those comments I've noticed a few strange sentences, like... 'it was quite good in real life' and 'it was a battlecruiser, not a BB' and, best of all, 'if they had crappy ships like this, no wonder they lost the war!' What? The Myogi did not exist. It never existed. It was a paper ship, a suggestion, a Japanese naval architects doodle. It wasn't even a preliminary design that was developed into the Kongo, as many people seem to think. The Kongo was an improved version of the Lion class battlecruiser and was built by Vickers in the UK! The Myogi didn't even have that name. It was referred to as B something. 'Myogi' is a name made up by WarGaming. Yeesh. Someone on the World of Warships Reddit group wrote that things like the Myogi risk filling the internet with inaccurate trash that people assume is factually accurate because they get their facts from games, instead of books. Well, I guess that's already happened, because people are discussing the Myogi like it was a real ship. The situation isn't helped by things like the WarGaming wiki which describes it like this: That should read: A very high speed battlecruiser design with relatively weak armor typical of this type of ship. It was a prototype design for Kongo-class battlecruisers which was never built. It's a mountain. It's on Honshu Island. There was also a small town called Myogi but it recently became a suburb of a larger, neighbouring city. The Japanese named many real life ships for mountains, but never named a battleship, dreadnought or predreadnought, for Myogi.

Hi. I just connected to a game so late that rounds were already incoming. Can someone tell me where I should begin with diagnosing this problem? I just ran a ping test on pingtest.net and got 22ms with jitter of 9. Mind you, Storm Frank is currently blowing outside. Could this be causing component failure in street cabinets? Having said that, the fibre optic cable is buried under the street! It's not like it's blowing in the wind.

I'd like to see more spawns like this. Adds a lot more interest and scope for setting the scene, and potentially a new game mode. Destruction? Fight your way through the enemy team and bombard his home port. Damage points and XP for entering his port zone and hitting important infrastructure targets ashore.

I'm not colour blind myself, but sympathise with those who are. There should definitely be a mode to accommodate players with this difficulty.

Carriers were good. Operating practices differed from USN and IJN in terms of aircraft storage and handling, partly a restriction created by having an armoured deck. But the armour proved its value many times during the war, and no carrier built since has had a soft deck. BBs were good, too, if looked at objectively. WWI era ships were top line. Iron Duke and the spinoffs could take anything afloat. WWII King George Vs were a very good basic design handicapped by the decision to reduce freeboard forward for shooting over the bows - it was thought this would be necessary but turned out it wasn't. And their 10 x 14" gave them a heavier total broadside than many other 14" and 15" gunned ships. If this game was about building empires and protecting them, then British cruisers would rule. British 8" guns on the interwar ships were excellent. Apples and oranges. In this game, I predict most British ships will suffer because this is an arcade game/boxing ring, not a naval warfare simulator. For instance, if and when the French line is created and Fantastique turns up, it will be able to do its 48 knots in exactly the same water as other destroyers. But in reality the fast French and Italian ships were only suited to the Med and couldn't survive in the Atlantic or Pacific, where US and British destroyers could not only sail but fight, as well. This game should include weather effects and sea states, then it would really get interesting. Personally, I shall rule every map in my alphabet class destroyers when they get here! 8 x 533mm torpedoes for everyone! (Pointy end first.) Anything from either the L or V classes will do.

Funny thing is that I liked the Furutaka and did well with it, but am fairly cool with the Aoba... and yet the Aoba is supposed to fix the Furutaka's shortcomings! Maybe it was the tiers that Furutaka is matched against. Mind you, I've played a lot of destroyers in the last few weeks, and in the Aoba I'm noticing that I'm getting focused a lot. Perhaps it's me.. Need to re-adjust to big ship gameplay. What turned me off the most about the Cleveland was the firing arcs. What I hear a lot about the Yorck is the firing arcs, which didn't fill me with warm fuzzies. I wondered if anything had changed after the last patch, but from what folks have said here, it seems not.

Thanks guys, I guess that answers my question! I like the Nurn, but will work with the Aoba (and maybe some free xp) to get the Myoko. Then I can have a go in team games! Otherwise, I probably wouldn't bother. Cheers

Dear WarGaming... Please can I have the following two changes in the next patch? 1. A semi-transparent mini-map. I am currently running Aslain's mods. I'm only using two in-game mods. One is the semi-transparent mini-map. I have the map expanded almost full size for clarity. Sometimes, when leading fast targets like DDs, the target disappears behind the map! The semi-transparent map has solved this problem. It seems like a very simple, yet effective option. Having tested it with a mod, I highly recommend it! 2. Listing a players ship type in brackets next to their name in the game chat window. This is the other in-game mod I'm running. I find it really helps to figure out who is talking, where they are and what they're doing without having to hit tab and check the teams list, or to scan around the game looking for that player's name. If a BB shouts for help, and his ship type is listed beside his name, I can glance at the mini-map and quickly guess which BB is in trouble. It also helps in talking tactics during the game. In fact, it helps in many, many ways. I can't see why it isn't included as part of the game, itself! So, can we have that in the next patch, too? Two little changes that would noticeably improve the way things work. I know I've already got the benefit of them with mods, but I think they would improve the game for everyone, especially the chat mod. 2.a. There is also a mod in Aslain's pack to list ship types on the mini-map. I tried this mod, but it also showed things like detection ranges and lines of sight and this made the map too cluttered. But an option to show the ship type next to the icon would also be very good - I suspect it would only work when the mini-map was expanded. If contracted to it's smallest size, I suspect the map would be too cluttered. Perhaps this function could be bound to a key so that it could be turned on and off in-game? That way, if there were a lot of ships in one place, or close to islands, and the player couldn't clearly see them on the mini-map because of the names, he could temporarily deactivate them for a clearer view. Cheers

Hi folks. I've just begun my CV career! I've been learning in co-op games so far and just today tried to do a manual torpedo drop. But I can only adjust the angle relative to the target - I thought I could also adjust the drop point by making it closer to the target. I assumed this was done in the same way as adjusting the angle: click and drag on the icon at the edge of the circle. I thought I could drag the icon into the middle of the circle to change the drop point, but it doesn't seem to work. So, how do I do that? And in what situations should I do that? Cheers

Note to Mods: I've put this carrier-focused topic in the Gameplay forum because I would like a broad response from the player base, rather than just comments from carrier players on the carrier forum, because whatever happens to carriers affects everyone. Introduce carrier-based search/reconnaissance aircraft. Carrier based search planes would deploy as single units (like spotter planes) but they would operate differently. Unlike spotter planes, the carrier player would control their movements. Also unlike spotter planes, the search plane would not enhance the shooting range or accuracy of any ship. It's real purpose is to find enemy ships and "escort" them. When the search plane spots an enemy ship, the carrier player would assign it to follow that ship and it would then circle the spotted enemy ship continuously until ordered away, or shot down. Crucially, the search plane must not be vulnerable to the spotted ship's AA - we would assume that it's flying high enough that it can circle the enemy ship at a distance great enough to keep it out of range. Only the spotted ships team mates would be able to attack the search plane, or the spotted ship's own catapult fighter, if it has one. I can image several players won't like this idea, but guess what? It was just as annoying in real life. Several examples come to mind, such as the Kondor aircraft that shadowed the Murmansk convoys: those convoys would often try to use their escorts to set up AA ambushes for the Kondor to drive it away. Other solutions were to carry catapult fighters! Given that catapult fighters don't turn up in lower tiers, perhaps carriers with search planes would be a mid to higher tier feature. Search planes are the missing piece in the carrier airgroups and would have the following effects: 1. It would allow carriers to perform what is supposed to be one of their primary functions both in real life and in the game - scouting. They don't do that at the moment because of the risk of losing squadrons, and because their team mates don't value that function. This is because... 2. It would allow carrier players to scout without having to send an entire squadron, or risking that squadron to enemy attack. When you've only got one or two fighter squadrons, losing one on a scouting mission can make you horribly vulnerable to an enemy carrier, as well as preventing you from mounting any more scouting missions. 3. Because they no longer risk losing a major part of their offensive/defensive capability, carriers wouldn't be shy about sending their search planes off to find targets for their own squadrons, but also to directly support their team by, for example, locating and shadowing enemy ships. Those who believe that destroyers are currently too stealthy should support this, because a search plane could seek out and shadow a destroyer. A destroyer that is visible at long range is no threat to a competent battleship player. Meanwhile, the shadowed destroyer would need to fall back to its own team to get help from their AA to drive off or destroy the search plane, thus promoting team play on both sides! 4. Players would see the direct benefit of having a carrier on their team - at the moment most players feel that carriers just play their own game and don't get involved with their team unless they see a destroyer coming their way, at which point they start screaming for help. But this request for help is often resented because other players can't see what the carrier has ever done for them, and in many cases they are right - the carrier often doesn't appear to be helping fellow team mates at all, but is usually focused on killing the enemy carrier above all else. While this is useful, this is not always the best way to win a game. Zombies Switch the Fighter Barrage from air-to-air to air-to-surface In other words, turn it into a strafing attack against ships, but remove the ability to barrage other squadrons. Just stick to the existing dogfight attack. Why introduce a strafing attack? 1. Because this would be an excellent way to attack ships, and really fun against destroyers and cruisers. There is no way a strafing run could sink a ship (not unless it was down to extremely low HP, of course) but it would be a good way for a carrier player to accumulate more damage and would give the carrier airgroup more flexibility in terms of the types of attacks and strategies it could use. In fact, adding strafing attacks to fighters could, in addition to search planes, make the carrier more willing to scout for his team because the scouting fighters could do something useful (and profitable) when they found the enemy. 2. Carriers configured for AA wouldn't be as totally useless as they often are now. Once they've achieved 'clear skies' what's left to do? Sure, they can scout but if that's all they can do, the carrier player is going to get bored and lose interest, and this is perfectly understandable. With a strafing option, they can actively contribute. 3. It would also mean that fighters aren't just easy damage points for enemy ship AA. Fighters could fight back! (I'll come back to this idea of easy damage points later - it's a big problem.) Why get rid of the air to air barrage? Because it's completely counter-intuitive. It's even more counter-intuitive than the fact that crossing the T gets you killed! The latter we've all learned to adapt to, but I still struggle with the idea that a massed formation of aircraft can be obliterated by a single enemy squadron simply because the massed aircraft chose to fly close together. Massed formations are ALWAYS stronger in defence and attack. If a single squadron of fighters is supposed to be able to destroy large numbers of enemy fighters or bombers just because the enemy are flying close together then the Battle of Britain would have been over on day one. Similarly, the USAF and RAF bomber raids over Germany would have been utter failures when the Luftwaffe fighters returned the favour. In the time period of the game, bombers flew together because it worked. They provided mutual protection. So they should be able to resist a fighter attack, not be completely destroyed by one. The danger of fighter barrage means carrier players must send their bomber squadrons off on long routes around the map on their own, and then they're more vulnerable to ship-based AA, instead! This is part of the reason why other players can't see carriers helping them much. The carriers are too busy just trying to stay alive! And finally, another idea from a very recent thread, but which I'm including here, again because it's all part of the same topic, and because the answers on that thread gave me some more ideas... Introduce zombie aircraft When a carrier is sunk, his planes go into some kind of autopilot and just circle until the end of the game. There are two problems with this: 1. It's silly. Why are we supposed to assume the pilots have gone brain dead because their carrier is gone? The opposite doesn't happen - if a squadron is shot down, the carrier player doesn't lose control of the carrier. Essentially the carrier is a single unit which can split itself into smaller units. Surely the carrier player is still in the game until all of his ship units are destroyed? 2. The current situation gifts more damage points to the enemy. Orphan planes can still be shot down after their carrier has been sunk, but the carrier player is no longer able to counter this by manoeuvring his planes away from danger. He's the only player who is rendered helpless in this way. So orphan planes are a potential points gift to the other team, which is an unfair advantage. If those planes had all been aboard the carrier when it was sunk, the other team would not have got the additional points for those planes. They can, however, get them after the carrier is sunk and the carrier player is unable to help his own team by attacking or keeping his surviving planes out of harms way. We've all seen noobs suicide because they were low on health and wanted to finish it, and been annoyed at this because it benefits the other team. Here we have almost the same situation, but through no fault of the carrier player. Possible solutions: 1. The carrier player doesn't die in the game until his last planes are dead or their ammo expended (note, this could include fighters if strafing is added!). After his carrier is sunk he can still control his remaining airborne assets, but he is fighting on borrowed time because he can't recover and rearm. He also can't scout because we can assume that the carrier was passing search information along to the rest of the team. 2. After the carrier is sunk the player is allowed to target his remaining planes at the enemy, but that is his last command - no manoeuvring. Just point and click on a target. 3. The planes revert to AI control and behave as they would if this were a co-op battle. 4. The planes all crash into the ocean BUT the enemy team do not get the points for their destruction. Those are the arguments. Time to vote!

Pay to throw out the boss? That's not so much mutiny as a workers strike! Do we get to elect a Union Rep? How much gold do we pay for a our union subs? Is there a working mens drinking club? If we make up our own protest placards can we claim the costs back? Does union membership come with health insurance and legal aid? Is there a newsletter?

I agree that this focuses mostly on mid-tiers because that was the intent. Mid-tier is where most players get and not many want to go beyond.

The idea is to improve CV interaction with their team by giving them more ways to contribute to what the team is doing (scouting, using fighters to attack ships, zombie last stand) rather than just having a carrier battle on the map edge.

Fixed. An oversight.

I recently read another thread somewhere on here (can't remember which subforum) in which someone discussed the various special abilities that each ship has - the abilities which are supposed to balance the game. Destroyers have stealth and speed, cruisers have strong AA, battleships can heal, that kind of thing. Carriers have no obvious special ability. So I thought about what it was that always struck me as odd about carriers in the game. When I first started playing and got into matches with carriers, I remember seeing the red carrier get sunk. I thought, okay, that's nice. Still, better watch out for his planes! And I turned away from a promising torpedo run on a battleship so I could be ready to comb torps I expected to see coming from a now orphaned TB squadron. But the squadron just droned right by me, moronically. I shot one down, I think. Anyway, perhaps you see my point. In real life the pilots don't become brain dead moths circling a light bulb. It just seems unnatural that with the carrier gone, the remaining planes that still have ammunition are suddenly incapable of using it. So, I propose Zombie carriers. The carrier player doesn't die in the game until his last planes are dead or their ammo expended. He is fighting on borrowed time, but after his carrier is sunk he can still control his remaining airborne assets. Now, I say this as a cruiser player who has been on the receiving end of the manual drop more often than I'd like. But I still think it's a strange facet of the game and doesn't entirely make sense. Vote!

This would probably be the easiest change to implement, and thus the most likely to be implemented! And it would still be an improvement over the present situation. This seems like something that could be readily fixed. Deactivate the spotting ability of the planes so that they cannot pass on their information to team mates - the rationale for this would be that the carrier, the communications hub for the aircraft, is no longer around the pass on that information to other ships. So it's a trade-off: you lose the scouting ability but gain the zombie/last stand ability. Spotter planes are the type most obviously absent from the airgroups of carriers. Before the days of truly multi-functional aircraft (i.e. today) nearly every function required a specialised airframe to do it well. So it wouldn't be out of place. The idea of assigning one to a team mate is an interesting one: you can already escort team mates with fighters, but that doesn't add spotting ability to them. Maybe the spotter plane escort would help to integrate the carriers with the rest of the team, because that's one of the problems already mentioned: carriers are mostly on their own, fighting their own battle. Most other players ignore their own carriers. Most never even talk to them (unless, as I found out, it's to tell them to shut up and die). A spotter plane escort might help carriers become more integral to the team. Here's a further development on the idea: spotter planes that seek out and place certain enemy ships under surveillance. This, too, has huge historical precedent. Search planes which the carrier player can assign to 'escort' an enemy ship once it's been sighted. The search plane would have a greater spotting range than other aircraft or ships so that it could circle outside AA range of the target ship. The target ship would rely on its team mates to come and chase off/shoot down the search plane, while the enemy would have a constant feed of information on that ships location. This would finally address the stated purpose of carriers in the game - scouting for the team! At present they only do that by accident if they happen to overfly a ship that wasn't previously spotted. Why is a search plane better than just scouting with fighters? Because the search plane could be assigned to its target and forgotten. The other night I was scouting for DDs with fighters and I couldn't leave the fighters alone. I had to follow the DD, and then I had to evade the DDs and other ships AA fire or lose the fighters. A spotter/search plane would fill that niche nicely. It would also help address the complaints/whines of players who get stealth torped all the time by DDs. In a game team mates would have an incentive to seek out the DDs quickly, not just to destroy them but so that their carrier could put a search plane over the DD. A DD you can see from a distance is as good as sunk. Unless his team shoots down the search plane, he can't help them. Search planes on their own might be a big step towards improving team work in the game. Good idea.

Well, I proved the point again tonight. Sank a Bogue then hung around near his smoking carcass and slaughtered the circling squadrons. Nearly hit my total of 150 planes for one of the missions. Of course, this was near the end of the game and there wasn't much else left to do. But in an earlier game I was a carrier. My team buggered off and abandoned me (couldn't keep up at 15 knots - cheeky buggers replied "negative" when I asked for support as DDs and Tenryu's charged towards me, but this is another story). Then I was sunk just as I launched and got to watch my planes circling pointlessly (that's a pun, because by circling they weren't earning any points, and there were some targets, right there, next to me, and I couldn't touch them). Point is, there is no other ship type that breaks into tiny pieces and then, when the player is killed, the tiny pieces stay in game as target practice for the other team.

Also '1 of the 66' We could start a THD fanclub and put that in our sig

Another aspect to consider is gifting more damage points to the enemy. Orphan planes can still be shot down, but the carrier player is no longer able to counter this by manoeuvring his planes away from danger. He's the only player who is rendered helpless in this way. So orphan planes are a potential points gift to the other team, which is an unfair advantage. If those planes had all been aboard the carrier when it was sunk, the other team would not have got the additional points for those planes. They can, however, get them after the carrier is sunk and the carrier player is unable to help his own team by attacking or keeping his surviving planes out of harms way. We've all seen noobs suicide because they were low on health and wanted to finish it, and been annoyed at this because it benefits the other team. Here we have almost the same situation, but through no fault of the carrier player.