AA strength at high tier

[KillSlim]

AA power is ridiculous at high tier (Tier 8+), I can no longer expect to have (m)any of my torpedo bombers return after sending them against a mere lone BB with no nearby support. That means sending them across uncontested water with no enemies to shoot flak at my squad, before arriving side-on to the target. I'm not complaining because I'm sending air units over enemy cruisers first, I'm talking about lone ships with comparatively weak AA at this tier being able to almost wipe TB squads out of the sky. Before they make it to their target, it's highly likely that they will panic against said lone BB and suddenly your carefully predicted torpedo path fans into an inaccurate mess, followed by maybe 2 of the 4 torpedoes launched actually hitting. It doesn't take much to make TB's panic at this tier. 

 

Tier 4-6 US carriers were great fun, at tier 7 things slow down somewhat as the Ranger seems to be just a bigger, slower version of the Saipan with worse torpedo bombers, but at tier 8 I'm starting to feel something nasty and unpleasant when I play CV. Sometimes my role is reduced to sending suicide squads of TB's in because the enemy AA completely wipes the sky clean of aircraft due to the sheer strength of it at T8 and 9, even when looking for open opportunities for lone and unguarded targets. Once or twice I've said in chat how strong the AA is, and I was once given the realism argument, "IRL Torpedo bombers don't really expect to live against ships like that", but the realism argument in a game like this just doesn't float. 

 

I don't know whether this is me having bad luck as I've only been at T8 for <20 matches, but this topic is something encountered almost constantly. Have other CV captains seen the same? 

[kwk75l48]

the aa buff overdid it on tier7+ imho in order to reduce whining from bb numptys at tier4-5 

my tier6 bb used to get 1-2 air kills from aa after lasdt update im getting 4-6 so go figure.

 

the trouble is air torps are less effective relativly as tiers climb so high tier cvs get a bit of an extra wham 

 

[tajj7]

Haven't played high tier CVs but in general you are seeing less about, thing is the realism argument makes some sense as the ships were modelled on real life ships and by 1944/45 those ships bristled with AA, I mean let's take the Yamato not sure if it has this many in game but IRL it had 162 25mm cannons, 6 6 inch guns and some 13.2mm guns. 

 

That is a lot of guns firing at what 6-8 planes?

 

Pretty sure they sent like 400 planes after the Yamato and her escorts, though to be fair only 10 were shot down but there were so many planes they swarmed from all directions, all those guns firing at one or two squadrons is a lot. 

 

Maybe higher tier CVs need more in a squadron, like 10 planes? 

[kwk75l48]

umm its a wn game realism makes no sense whatsoever when ships use hit points like basic d&d which was a pen and paper game 30+ years ago 

 

when i can hit a bb with my dd main guns and get 5k dmg on a citadel hit

 

the way they rebalanced aircraft survivability has made the game worse for carriers (the intention) much worse the higher tier you are we need the ijn carriers in and then a general rebalancing 

 

[Takeda92]

I think tier difference influence ships AA. if you send tier 8 planes against a tier 10 ship you can't expect all you planes to survive. After all, their AA is balanced against tier 10 carriers. Your planes' hitpoints and effectiveness increase with tiers. Look at Langleys and what they can do to Kawachis and Myogis for example.

You seem to do well in carriers anyway. So is it really a problem?

[valkarianism]

In my opinion, it actually forced the cv player to change his play style. 

 

See, in Lower tier, with ships like the myogi, cv could just take their time for a slow approach and land a manual launch into the side of the bb, scoring over 8 hits and instant wrecking the ships. Even against the kongo, an independence or saipan could pull off low risk maneuvers. At higher tiers they're basically preventing the shotgun maneuver, where the tb basically releases at a point where undodgable. 

 

That said, it more often than not, if you do not attack with at least 2 squadrons of tb, you'll never get a proper launch. 

 

One thing I can think of is having a skill or upgrade that reduces the spread of torps from planes under pressure. Could be considered. 

[Fominator]

The catch is that Lexington and Essex have unlimited planes, so you lose one squad of TB in ever run, shrugs over it and get a squad ready even faster.

[foche]

The catch is that Lexington and Essex have unlimited planes, so you lose one squad of TB in ever run, shrugs over it and get a squad ready even faster.

 

unlimited plane ? , how so ? 

 

plus Essex is the most UP carrier related to tiers right now , as Essex planes can't survive yamato AA (and it will be even worst with montana class BB) 

[Takeda92]

 

unlimited plane ? , how so ? 

 

plus Essex is the most UP carrier related to tiers right now , as Essex planes can't survive yamato AA (and it will be even worst with montana class BB) 

Essex is tier 9, Midway will be tier 10. So you will struggle against Yamato, but should be fine against the tier 9 battleships (the problem is we don't have any tier 9 battleship to see how it will fare)

[Eisenengel]

If you think airplane survivability is bad, wait for the IJN Carriers. IJN unfortunately (for them) had no small, powerful engines, so their planes couldn't be well armored, generally speaking. 

 

Now, I only have the Ranger, not the Lex. At tier 7, I've noticed that carriers work a bit like sheepdogs - or wolves, if you prefer. They make the enemy cluster their ships for mutual AA protection. If someone leaves the herd - a BB, that is - it's fair game. 

 

Unlike the OP, I haven't really a problem with losing a lot of planes to lone BB's. If the enemy BB is skillful at evading or forcing me to send the planes around... if I press the attack then, yes, I'll lose a lot of planes, but in those cases I'll often just launch a semi-effective spread and go reload, hoping the next BB won't be as alert. Notably, the Ranger has a large amount of replacement planes (18 torp bombers with the first configuration)

 

At tier 7, there are two important things: 

1: I am reliant on using enemy tactical AND strategic mistakes to be effective. If an enemy BB forces me to circle to attack, I'll lose too many planes. If the enemy fleet clusters, I'll lose too many planes. Only if the enemy are not alert and does not cluster can I be really effective.
2: The Consolidated does just 5900 HE damage, which is not a lot - in fact, it's the same as the langley's TBY's. 

 

Fortunately, the enemy makes mistakes more often than not.

[Sharana]

 

They HAD "unlimited" amount of TBs before the change. Now you can be out of planes even in Essex pretty easy, simply because it's balanced as tier 9 (that's why it's performing so badly against Yamato).

 

And we are not talking about almost 100% survival like in Langley. If 9/12 planes survive to drop (75% damage capacity) and 6/12 return alive it would be fine (like it was before actually), so Lexington will have planes for 5 attacks on avarage. The problem now is that 6/12 would actually survive to drop on avarage (50% damage potential) and 0-3 will make it back alive. That was the case when attacking escorted BB before, now lonely BB can do it and escorted one is pretty much immune. That's the whole point, not the lack of enough reserve planes.

 

[_ramrus_]

Now, I only have the Ranger, not the Lex. At tier 7, I've noticed that carriers work a bit like sheepdogs - or wolves, if you prefer. They make the enemy cluster their ships for mutual AA protection. If someone leaves the herd - a BB, that is - it's fair game. 

 

Try this against lone cruisers if they are close to you. Lure them with one squadron and when they fire up their consumable run away and wait for it to cool down - then attack from 2 sides ( this will work against t6/7 cruisers )

[Fominator]

plus Essex is the most UP carrier related to tiers right now , as Essex planes can't survive yamato AA (and it will be even worst with montana class BB) 

They HAD "unlimited" amount of TBs before the change. Now you can be out of planes even in Essex pretty easy, simply because it's balanced as tier 9 (that's why it's performing so badly against Yamato).

 

Well, I barely played after the last patch and most of my CV experience comes from the CAT, so I should trust you guys.

 

Still, if the squad is obliterated but 4+ torpedoes are in the water, is a good exchange for Lex or Essex IMO.

[foche]

[off topic]

 hey btw  sharana , i'm closing on you ! 

Sharana

essex
Average Score per Battle

Experience    1,917.65
Damage Caused    105,223.96
Warships Destroyed    1.27
Aircraft Destroyed    17.54
Base Capture    0.00
Base Defense    10.53

Foche

essex
Average Score per Battle
Experience    1,769.65
Damage Caused    100,710.78
Warships Destroyed    1.11
Aircraft Destroyed    16.02
Base Capture    1.02
Base Defense    10.62

 

 

seriously , i'm still looking for ppl with more than 100 k per battle with essex , look like there isn't that much 

[/off topic]

 

4 torpedo in a water for a squad isn't even close from a good exchange , i consider an attack as a waste if more than 3 plane are down , why ? , because in the case all the remaining torpedo (3) hit the target , it will be arround 15 k damage .... for 3 min of game , that really low

then you also need to take into account the fact that we are the only class of ship right now that can run out of firepower (out of plane) without being hit ...... would you like to lose all your gun of your BB because you fired too much ?



i think there is 2 way to fix the TX CV gameplay : 

-giving us fast moving plane (actualy plane are moving at minimal possible speed , some are barrely above the stall speed with full load ) , like jet (as planned ) or giving a good boost to TX propeller plane

 

or/and

-giving us the long distance high altitude high speed torpedo drop , as "murica did during WWII (eg : 260kts at 600 feet , torpedo flying on 3000 yards during 7 sec , meaning low risk but hard to hit drop

 

 

 

[Fominator]

4 torpedo in a water for a squad isn't even close from a good exchange , i consider an attack as a waste if more than 3 plane are down , why ? , because in the case all the remaining torpedo (3) hit the target , it will be arround 15 k damage .... for 3 min of game , that really low

 

15k riskless damage every 3 minutes is way better than the 15k "not really so risky" damage form Shimakaze. Also, if you lost the squad you skip the return time, increasing your DPM.

 

would you like to lose all your gun of your BB because you fired too much ?

 

Do I look like a BB player?

 

i think there is 2 way to fix the TX CV gameplay :

 

Most AA damage is in the 3km range, so you could drop your torpedoes form 3.1km instead of 300m. With the current acquisition range you won't hit anybody though.

[Celandri]

planes is either do a long drop and get one or two hits in a torp and no planes dead, or you can do the manual way where you pay your planes to hit way better so its high loss, high gain vs low loss , low gain. most nowdays just go full herpaderpa and want to sink enemy ship and do the manual high loss way and thats something you choose yourself, as you do know that if planes get the long drop you may loose 1-2 planes max per run

[Sharana]

seriously , i'm still looking for ppl with more than 100 k per battle with essex , look like there isn't that much 

 

 Now when I checked we are only 3 really with 100K+ avarage with 2 more pretty close (99K).

azell - 99K
Bambunas - 62K
BestiaEXmetallum - 55K
difference - 77K
Droowzor - 99K
dryw113 - 90K
enri901 - 90K
Exorep - 71K
foche - 101K
FuriousAt0m - 95K
Golo31 - 46K
Guderian_GER - 73K
JohnHusky - 96K
interwenient - 53K
Sharana - 105K
Tru3H3ro - 106K

 

[Grim_Destiny]

The catch is that Lexington and Essex have unlimited planes, so you lose one squad of TB in ever run, shrugs over it and get a squad ready even faster.

 

Quote for most ignorant post for the day.

[Hauptbahnhof]

Tier 4-6 US carriers were great fun, at tier 7 things slow down somewhat as the Ranger seems to be just a bigger, slower version of the Saipan with worse torpedo bombers, but at tier 8 I'm starting to feel something nasty and unpleasant when I play CV. Sometimes my role is reduced to sending suicide squads of TB's in because the enemy AA completely wipes the sky clean of aircraft due to the sheer strength of it at T8 and 9, even when looking for open opportunities for lone and unguarded targets. Once or twice I've said in chat how strong the AA is, and I was once given the realism argument, "IRL Torpedo bombers don't really expect to live against ships like that", but the realism argument in a game like this just doesn't float.

 

Someone saying it's "realistic" that the planes are shot down is simply talking [edited].

 

In Operation Ten-Go USN Aircraft Carriers Attacked the Battleship Yamato in it's final fully upgraded 1945 AA form, it was escorted by 1 Cruiser and 8 Destroyers.

 

The force was attacked by 386 Carrier Airplanes ( 131 of them Torpedo Bombers ), and only managed to shoot down 10 aircraft in total ( 2.6% ).

 

Haven't played high tier CVs but in general you are seeing less about, thing is the realism argument makes some sense as the ships were modelled on real life ships and by 1944/45 those ships bristled with AA, I mean let's take the Yamato not sure if it has this many in game but IRL it had 162 25mm cannons, 6 6 inch guns and some 13.2mm guns. 

 

That is a lot of guns firing at what 6-8 planes?

 

The airplanes arrived in waves, I would be surprised if there in reality were more then 6 - 8 targets to choose from at the same time for any of the smaller guns with short range.

 

The first airplanes arrived over Yamato at 12:00 and more were arriving pretty much constantly to relieve those that dropped their ordnance until the Yamato stopped 14:05 and capzied completely 14:20.

 

 

According to my estimates the Anti air in World of Warship is at least 10 times more accurate then the historical anti air, probably closer to 20-30 times more accurate. Remember that historical anti air guns were all manually aimed and most smaller guns also hand cranked. All of them were to slow to track fast moving airplanes efficiently and too inaccurate to hit them reliably.

 

 

USA made a remarkable invention to make AAA more effective, called the VT fuse. instead of expending 2000 shells per airplane shot down ONLY an average of 500 were needed. http://www.microworks.net/pacific/equipment/vt_fuze.htm

 

To clarify this ammo was not for machineguns, but for the slower firing 5" guns that fire around 15 rounds per minute, so 33 min of constant firing instead of 133 min, before one barrel will on average shoot down an airplane. For example the mighty Iowa had 10 of these barrels per side, so on average constant firing all of them for over 3 minutes on a single target to statistically bring down one single airplane ( or over 12 minutes for all other nations that did not have advanced proximity detonating ammo ). THAT is how bad real AA was at the time.

[Fominator]

Quote for most ignorant post for the day.

 

Done. What I won?

[Magni56]

The airplanes arrived in waves, I would be surprised if there in reality were more then 6 - 8 targets to choose from at the same time for any of the smaller guns with short range.

 

 

USA made a remarkable invention to make AAA more effective, called the VT fuse. instead of expending 2000 shells per airplane shot down ONLY an average of 500 were needed. http://www.microworks.net/pacific/equipment/vt_fuze.htm

 

To clarify this ammo was not for machineguns, but for the slower firing 5" guns that fire around 15 rounds per minute, so 33 min of constant firing instead of 133 min, before one barrel will on average shoot down an airplane. For example the mighty Iowa had 10 of these barrels per side, so on average constant firing all of them for over 3 minutes on a single target to statistically bring down one single airplane ( or over 12 minutes for all other nations that did not have advanced proximity detonating ammo ). THAT is how bad real AA was at the time.

 

Haha, no. Feeding 6-8 planes into AA at a time was not how anyone actually did carrier strikes in WWII. Try several dozen planes per "wave", with a mix of torp and dive bombers forcing the AA to decide which angle to fire at.

 

And if you seriously wanna talk about realism, *any* amount of incoming AA fire greater than that of a single DD should immediately cause accurracy on TBs and DBs to go to hell as if they're under a CA barrage. It took planes dozens of torpedos and/or bombs expended to score single hits - that's how good AA was at disrupting attacks. So if you wanna make estimates, airplanes in WoWs are also at least ten times more accurate than historically when attacking targets with substantial AA, more likely 20-30 times.

[Hauptbahnhof]

And if you seriously wanna talk about realism, *any* amount of incoming AA fire greater than that of a single DD should immediately cause accurracy on TBs and DBs to go to hell as if they're under a CA barrage. It took planes dozens of torpedos and/or bombs expended to score single hits - that's how good AA was at disrupting attacks. So if you wanna make estimates, airplanes in WoWs are also at least ten times more accurate than historically when attacking targets with substantial AA, more likely 20-30 times.

 

Oh really? lets run the numbers shall we?

 

131 torpedo bombers attacked the Yamato taskforce

 

at least 22 torpedoes confirmed to hit Yamato

at least 7 torpedoes confirmed to hit Cruiser Yahagi.

at least 4 torpedoes confirmed to hit escorting destroyers.

 

In total 33 confirmed hits out of 131 or at least 25.1% hit rate.

 

Now since the torpedoes in WoWs are at least 10 times more accurate according to you, can't you tell all Carrier captains how to score 25 hits out of 10 dropped torpedoes or 250% hit rate? I'm sure they would be happy!!!

 

I'm sure your extensive experience as a Carrier captain ( 0 total battles in a Carrier ), will be helpful!

 

 

But ok ok, let's look at an acknowledged Carrier captain instead

( 114k average damage in the Essex on American Servers ). What might his hit % be like you wonder?

 

13% hits with torpedoes overall, and 14% hits in the Saipan Carrier, so a little better then half the accuracy of what the historical attack on Yamato achieved ( one of the most powerful AA ships in the game )...

 

 

You my friend seriously have no clue what your talking about.

 

 

[Sharana]

Interesting post, thanks +1

 

Hauptbahnhof, on 23 April 2015 - 10:13 PM, said:

13% hits with torpedoes overall, and 14% hits in the Saipan Carrier, so a little better then half the accuracy of what the historical attack on Yamato achieved ( one of the most powerful AA ships in the game )...

 

 Are you sure that's the torpedo hits in the stats? I had a look at my stats and find it pretty strange...

- Langley - tier 4, very slow planes, 62K avarage damage (11 torps with max damage or 15 torps on avarage) ... 6% hits? That will mean I was dropping 250 torps per battle = 20 TBs = 10 attacks. Langley can't make more then 4-5 per battle...

- Independence - tier 5, 67K avarage damage ... 0% hits?!

- Essex - tier 10 - 105K ... 29% hits (that sounds real now). That would be 15 torps hits again on avarage so from 50 dropped total (4 full TBs = 3 attacks on avarage) which is pretty much what I do in avarage battle.

 

From the whole thing I can say that I never died in Independence (0% hits), so I would bet that's the secondary batteries hit ratio where Independence hasn't used them and Essex got pretty good ones...

 

 

[Hauptbahnhof]

 Are you sure that's the torpedo hits in the stats? I had a look at my stats and find it pretty strange...

- Langley - tier 4, very slow planes, 62K avarage damage (11 torps with max damage or 15 torps on avarage) ... 6% hits? That will mean I was dropping 250 torps per battle = 20 TBs = 10 attacks. Langley can't make more then 4-5 per battle...

- Independence - tier 5, 67K avarage damage ... 0% hits?!

- Essex - tier 10 - 105K ... 29% hits (that sounds real now). That would be 15 torps hits again on avarage so from 50 dropped total (4 full TBs = 3 attacks on avarage) which is pretty much what I do in avarage battle.

 

From the whole thing I can say that I never died in Independence (0% hits), so I would bet that's the secondary batteries hit ratio where Independence hasn't used them and Essex got pretty good ones...

 

 

 

I guess your right, looks like there is some bug or weakness with the stats tracking for CVs in that airplane attacks maybe are not tracked, but I mean what else would "hit performance xx%" for a Carrier be representing? Do Carriers even have guns you can shoot with? The hit performance in the main detailed statistics over all ships is split up in 3 by primary, secondary and torpedoes, so I guess it could be a combination of all those.

 

From personal experience on average I probably take 1-2 hits for every 6 incoming Torpedo bombers when I am in a Battleship, which would mean something like an average of 17 - 33%.

[Sharana]

Yep it's logical, but we don't have aerial torpedoes in the detailed account stats too, just torpedo hits. And the 17-33% is very real I would say, depending on the CV captain's skill. As one of the top clickers I guess mine is between 30% and 40%. If using the auto you can even get down to 10% I think.