Uglesett

Over my 20+ years of various fairly keyboard-intensive games ranging from Quake and Unreal Tournament through good portions of the Battlefield series, TF2, Overwatch etc. I've had one (membrane) keyboard actually start to develop unreliable keys. Only keyboard I've actually swapped out because it stopped working (and not because I just wanted something new and shiny) was a wireless Logitech one that I spilled a pint of orange juice on.

Well, I've argued since pretty much day 1 of the rework that they should never have been introduced in the first place, and still think it's the way to go. I don't think they'll ever be able to balance them in a way where they'll simultaneously feel useful and satisfying while not being overpowered against DDs. And personally I don't see the need for them. The other classes in the game generally have limited effectiveness against one of the other classes, and CVs don't need to be the speshul ones that have weapons that are effective against all other classes in the game. In the RTS version, a CV's main contribution against most DDs that knew how to wasd was by spotting them for their team, and there's no reason why it shouldn't still be like that.

I said "roughly". Bottom line is, they screwed up the CVs to make them "more similar to the other ships", but forgot that CVs didn't have one of the most important balancing aspects of the other classes: range. The logical conclusion is that if they really want CVs to behave more like the other ship classes, they have to give them the same limitations.

There is one way of making cvs take roughly the same risks as other ships, and that is to introduce a limit on the aircraft operational range from the CV that is roughly on par with similarly tiered long range ships.

I think if the class is going to make it into the game, I'd prefer to see it with the 4x15" guns of the "standard" Courageous class, and then have the meme guns as an alternate gun module. That way you at least have the choice of a non-silly play style.

Played a couple of T4 cv games after 0.8.0.3 yesterday, and to be honest the T4s are about as much fun as a traditional Norwegian packed lunch. And we're supposed to grind a total of 71 k exp in these tubs?

Blücher says "guten tag".

Musashi Jokes aside, if we're talking stupidly powerful guns for its tier, then I'd go with one of the 15 or 16" armed BBs at T6, like the QE, Warspite or WV. I guess Mutsu might qualify as well. As for sheer derp, in terms of lots of damage potential but also lots of randomness, I'd like to present the Lyon as a contender.

10, which is actually more than I thought.

I assume OP is talking about any single tech tree line, and not lower tier ships in general. I have a couple of lower tier tech tree ships that I've kept despite having researched their successors. E.g. Amagi, Leander, Fiji, Gaede.... But I find I don't really play them. It's a combination of causes. It tends to feel a bit like a waste of time because the rewards for playing those ships aren't that useful. I don't convert elite exp to free exp, and if I want credits I'm better off playing a premium. I don't see the big point in playing Amagi with a lower skilled captain when I have Kii and Musashi where I can stuff in my 18 pt Yamato skipper, even though it is an enjoyable ship. Captain skill points (or the lack of them) are typically the big blocker for playing an elite tech tree ship (since I usually move captains to the next ship in a line). But in addition, in case of lines I'm still going through, I prefer playing the successors where exp still feels "useful" and I'm getting progression out of them, rather than piling up exp that are never going to be used.

I agree that Exeter looks like it'll be more interesting to play if it's kept closer to its original design, but at T6.

Well. To be honest, I think the concept was a failure from the start. No amount of tweaking is going to make the fundamental gameplay loop of the reworked CVs less repetitive and boring. And I don't think they can balance them in a way that both feels rewarding to play, while not completely ruining the fun for everyone else.

Fixed.

Two different, independent windows. So your division didn't get ed every time the chat server went down, and you didn't risk getting stuck in a division that couldn't enter battle for a week.

-Return to the old chat and division windows. -Quick way of assigning previous captain to a ship. When you keep swapping the same captain between one tech tree ship and several premiums it gets unnecessarily fiddly some times.

Ok, assuming you research all modules along the way, getting from the Langley to the Midway is: Langley: 71000 exp Ranger: 189000 exp Lexington: 429000 exp For a total of 689000 exp Hosho to Hakuryu is: Hosho: 71000 exp Ryujo: 196000 (she has one more hull upgrade over Ranger) Shokaku: :411000 (Lexi has one more plane upgrade) Total: 678000 Don't know how that compares to the RTS CVs. You're probably also slowed down a bit by spending longer at each tier, and "missing out" on the extra exp that the higher odd tiers would give over their lower, even tier replacements. I.E. griding 71000 exp in a T4 followed by a T5 is probably faster than grinding the same in only a T4, unless they've tweaked the earnings.

With the hull upgrade it's 71k exp to go from T4 to T6, and I assume the progression on higher tiers corresponds to this. Can check when I get home. So you probably need on the order of ~300k exp more on CVs before you can start these missions than you needed previously.

1 mill free exp (and one credit)

Dude, the Midway player literally has zero damage in their one game in the reworked Midway. Which means they were probably AFK, and the planes you saw them using were in all likelihood the automatically triggered fighter consumable. And when the Haku isn't at least aware enough to do a sweep to initially spot the enemy DDs, then he is playing poorly. Whereas being killed in a DD by a semi-competent CV mostly just requires playing a non-AA DD in a marginally aggressive fashion and getting spotted.

To be honest, that just looks a bit like bragging about winning a wrestling match with a paraplegic. I mean, everyone can get those kind of results if the enemy obligingly does not go looking for them and then just lines up to be shot.

This is what I did. Although it did mean I ended up going into a couple of matches without captain skills because I forgot about it Nürnberg without priority target? Yeah, not an enjoyable experience.

General feedback: Still stuck at T4, and the CV game play loop so far is about as much fun as sorting rocks. It's repetitive and unexciting. And I can't really see how it can get better at higher tiers, since it's the same fundamental game play loop with little finesse and variation. It just goes a bit faster. That said, with all the crap going on requiring T5+ ships, I'm not sure how WG are intending people to actually finish the stupidly long grind to T6. And I don't think you can hope to keep attack planes in the game while still having DDs be an enjoyable class to play (barring the few exceptions with cruiser-level AA performance). Honestly: I don't. All other classes have limitations which means that their offensive tools are more or less effective depending on their targets, and while it's not exactly rock-paper-scissors balancing, you can see the remnants of it. There is no need for CVs to have the choice of tools that are effective against all other classes in the game. There is no good game balance reason for not completely removing the rocket planes. Their only reason for existing is that they make the CV game play less dull. Remove them and you go back to the status before the CV rework, where the CV could spot DDs for their team, and they could attack but with limited efficiency because neither TBs nor DBs were optimal against most DDs.

As I mentioned in another thread, this is really not the time for WG to be stingy with anything. They've cocked up the game balance massively, they've annoyed a huge portion of the player base. This is not the time to try to sell stuff, this is the time to be really generous with things like premium time, respecs and retraining and other goodies just to mitigate the bad impression from the CV rework.

Yeah, here's the thing, though. In order to get to a CV that is actually compatible with all of the events and other crap happening all the time, I first have to grind 68k exp in the T4. Sooo... play a metric ton of T4 games or just play other ships that already are T5+ instead? Excellent design, WG. EDIT: Also, it doesn't help that playing the CVs (at least on T4) is boring as hell. There are only so many games in those things I can tackle before I either just quit the game or say " it, I'm going back to a class that's actually interesting". It's genuinely amazing that a class that is to such a great extent designed to be the fun police to everyone else manages to itself be so unfun to play. I don't think they're willing to do the one thing that will actually let the meta settle on something that's reasonably fun for DD players.

I can check when I get home if nobody beats me to it. That said, had it taken any damage at all previously? The rocket mounts at least used to be stupidly fragile, and I'm not sure if the survivability buff really has done anything to change that in practice. Even if she'd only taken negligible damage previously, it could have made a large impact on AA.