How can we add more interaction to: Airplanes versus surface ships?

[LemonadeWarriorITA]

I think most of us agree that there is very little interaction between airplanes and surface ships at this moment.
With the RTS carriers we had the option to use DFAA which caused a panic effect and we had the option to focus on specific squadrons, both of which were taken away. 

Hence this topic, can we come up with some ideas to add some interaction again, e.g.: Bring back the panic effect of DFAA, manual control of AA guns and etcetera. 
Depending on how serious the reactions are I will do my best to add the best ideas (most thumbs up) in this first post.

Greetz Lemon

Suggestions

• Fix AFT. (doesn't really add more interaction though :P)
• Give DFAA her panic effect back.

[Uglesett]

Well, to build on my comment here, one solution is to make maneuvering great again.

 

Basically, make it worthwhile to actually bother to try to evade attacks. And the way to do that is to get the reworked carriers to behave more like the RTS CVs: Single strike per flight (which means more alpha damage), but slower planes and longer turnaround between strikes. Make losses before the attack happens actually count for something, and make it worth taking the risk of showing broadside if it means you evade a strike.

[thiextar]

No, too much interaction needed from the surface ship is a problem, because he needs to actually be able to focus on fighting/maneuvering vs actual enemies, and when carriers can constantly attack you every 30 seconds, you cannot make them too distracting.

 

Lower the attack rate of carriers to about once every 2 min like the old carriers, and we can add some interaction, the current constant harassment system is just stupid.

[Allied_Winter]

The thing is: Who'd want to play an 'Action Focused' gameplay if you have to wait 1 min+ before you can do something again.

[xxNihilanxx]

3 minutes ago, Allied_Winter said:

The thing is: Who'd want to play an 'Action Focused' gameplay if you have to wait 1 min+ before you can do something again.

 

Torpedo DDs with a two minute plus reload on said torps...?

[Uglesett]

3 minutes ago, Allied_Winter said:

The thing is: Who'd want to play an 'Action Focused' gameplay if you have to wait 1 min+ before you can do something again.

How popular was the Shimakaze again?

[Allied_Winter]

1 minute ago, xxNihilanxx said:

 

Torpedo DDs with a two minute plus reload on said torps...?

 

1 minute ago, Uglesett said:

How popular was the Shimakaze again?

 

Kinda true. But while you wait for your torps to cool down (if you launch all launchers at once), the Shima can:

 

- scout

- contest caps

- lay down smoke (for herself or friendlies)

- shoot guns.

 

But yeah I get your point that enough bad players out there do neither and just wait for the 20km torps to come back up.

 

[invicta2012]

I would like them to:

 

1) fix catapult fighters so they are not so easily avoided, and;

 

2) for ships to be given a manual AA boost mechanism, controlled rather like the Boost of CV planes. The effect would be to significantly reduce the accuracy of CV attacks, not to increase damage taken by CV planes. The boost would recharge, but slowly. This would give surface ships a better chance of survival in late game scenarios, and; 

 

3) introduce more specialised AA ships and weapons such as proximity fuse AA shells, and ;

 

4) reduce carrier AA and increase fire chance so that attacking other CVs is viable, and ;

 

5) increase CV damage overall to compensate. 

[Beastofwar]

41 minutes ago, invicta2012 said:

I would like them to:

 

1) fix catapult fighters so they are not so easily avoided, and;

 

Already near instant attack that cannot be evaded when deployed when the aircraft are in the centre where the consuable will be deployed. No escape either as these fighters will chase you for at least 3-5 km outside their circle and overtake you despite using boost acceleration.

 

There are escapes but it makes you abandon attack completly.

 

 

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2) for ships to be given a manual AA boost mechanism, controlled rather like the Boost of CV planes. The effect would be to significantly reduce the accuracy of CV attacks, not to increase damage taken by CV planes. The boost would recharge, but slowly. This would give surface ships a better chance of survival in late game scenarios, and; 

 Late game you probably are weak to air attack due to destroyed AA modules and being solo scattered somewhere in the map with no teammates close enough to cover you.....cannot shoot with what you do not have ( anymore )

 

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3) introduce more specialised AA ships and weapons such as proximity fuse AA shells, and ;

 

You think destroying all aircraft always in any situation would offer good and balanced gameplay ? WG is not going to remove CV or make them unplayable. CV should do the exact same damage other ship can in a match. And that they seem to do after many hotfixs and patches.

 

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4) reduce carrier AA and increase fire chance so that attacking other CVs is viable, and ;

 

Some have 60 AA guns....how do you reduces that ? And you know a player can spec into actually strenhtening them a lot too.......i think not many have, but they can.....

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5) increase CV damage overall to compensate. 

 

Useless if they cannot survive getting to the target. Other then that the rare strikes the do hit would be cause to cries for nerfing again.

[El2aZeR]

44 minutes ago, invicta2012 said:

1) fix catapult fighters so they are not so easily avoided

 

Fighter exploit has been fixed, as such catapult fighters are actually much better at air defense than DFAA.

There are ways to preserve your aircraft when under attack but the strike is ruined regardless.

[GulvkluderGuld]

Can we start by making a few changes to make current interactions more meaningful?

 

1. Make AA captain skills relevant again? AFT is currently completely worthless. How about having it add 20% range or damage?

 

2. First wave of planes always get through and do full dmg, because shot down planes will get replenished from the "reserve" in the squadron. instead, reduce the damage resistence of the strike wave and/or make replacments impossible (so shooting down planes actually means less damage taken).

 

3. ???

 

[Allied_Winter]

5 minutes ago, GulvkluderGuld said:

How about having it add 20% range or damage?

Won't happen, since it had that pre rework, and would create yet again larger no fly zones. And would zield even more problems regarding: No more stealth AA fire. Thus: If my Mino had her old 8.7km AA range back, that'd mean she'd be spotted from 8.7km ... no thanks!

[GulvkluderGuld]

1 minute ago, Allied_Winter said:

Won't happen, since it had that pre rework, and would create yet again larger no fly zones. And would zield even more problems regarding: No more stealth AA fire. Thus: If my Mino had her old 8.7km AA range back, that'd mean she'd be spotted from 8.7km ... no thanks!

I know those arguments and I disagree with them, I also heavily disagree with the decision to make overlapping AA less strong. 

 

However, adding 20% to aa dps in addition to 20% flak damage would not cause any upsets to aa range. It would also make AFT a viable pick for aa, instead of straight up less worthwhile than BFT which is a 3 pointer.

[olmedreca]

Well, AFAIK WG is yet to implement XP/credit rewards for shooting down planes, so that would be first thing to fix.

 

Current AA sector system covering half of ship is is about as primitive as it can get. It would make sense to have option to concentrate AA into much smaller sectors so that there would be some actual value in guessing the angle of attack.

 

Maybe also some way to select certain friendly ship as covering AA priority, so that for example in 2 km radius around that friendly ship your AA will be strongly boosted while obviously outside that circle your AA damage drops.

 

 

[thiextar]

3 hours ago, GulvkluderGuld said:

I know those arguments and I disagree with them, I also heavily disagree with the decision to make overlapping AA less strong. 

 

However, adding 20% to aa dps in addition to 20% flak damage would not cause any upsets to aa range. It would also make AFT a viable pick for aa, instead of straight up less worthwhile than BFT which is a 3 pointer.

Yeah, it really is stupid that bft is much stronger than aft, when aft costs more skill points.... Aft desperately needs a fix.

[CptBarney]

Maybe introduce the ability to switch from, full, stagger or overlap?

 

and maybe manual targetting as well and get rid of sectors. 

 

My ideas for now.

[thiextar]

1 minute ago, CptBarney said:

Maybe introduce the ability to switch from, full, stagger or overlap?

 

and maybe manual targetting as well and get rid of sectors. 

 

My ideas for now.

Far too much input need from surface ships every 30 seconds. We can have complicated counterplay mechanics against air units, but only if their attack rate is reduced significantly as to not demand the surface ships attention 100% of the time.

[CptBarney]

Just now, thiextar said:

Far too much input need from surface ships every 30 seconds. We can have complicated counterplay mechanics against air units, but only if their attack rate is reduced significantly as to not demand the surface ships attention 100% of the time.

Nah just have the different cycle through Q that takes like a second or two to change, that should be fine.

 

Maybe longer if its too much.

 

although too be honest wg should of done testing like this on their, i don’t know ‘test’ servers?

 

[El2aZeR]

12 minutes ago, thiextar said:

Yeah, it really is stupid that bft is much stronger than aft, when aft costs more skill points.... Aft desperately needs a fix.

 

*inb4 they simply swap AFT and BFT*

No seriously, I can see that happening.

[Allied_Winter]

4 minutes ago, CptBarney said:

although too be honest wg should of done testing like this on their, i don’t know ‘test’ servers?

Maybe they did. Maybe it was too complicated to be implemented. Maybe it'd open them up to the question: If true manual AA, why not true manual secondaries. Or maybe they just wanted it that way...

 

But the more I read about this topic, the more I begin to understand that as long as CV = manual, AA = automated, there always will be problems with regards to balancing (even if WG goes for a tier bound AA dps system).

[invicta2012]

6 hours ago, El2aZeR said:

Fighter exploit has been fixed, as such catapult fighters are actually much better at air defense than DFAA.

I'm glad to hear it. It will take the playerbase a while to work out what to do with them, though, as they've been the chocolate teapot's worth of use up until now. 

 

6 hours ago, Beastofwar said:

Late game you probably are weak to air attack due to destroyed AA modules and being solo scattered somewhere in the map with no teammates close enough to cover you.....cannot shoot with what you do not have ( anymore )

You can if you're a Destroyer or a Cruiser with DP main guns. Those should be as potent at the end of the game as they are at the beginning. 

 

6 hours ago, Beastofwar said:

You think destroying all aircraft always in any situation would offer good and balanced gameplay ? WG is not going to remove CV or make them unplayable. CV should do the exact same damage other ship can in a match. And that they seem to do after many hotfixs and patches.

Well, that wasn't what I said.

 

Dedicated AA ships would provide stronger long-range AA for team mates and have DFAA for their own short-range defence, but they'd have shorter range and weaker guns for surface combat. Ships like the RN Cruisers Carlisle and Delhi, which had their 6 inch guns replaced with 4 and 5 inch DD guns, the Dido class, and the late war modifications to Fiji/Sheffield etc where they traded X Turret for lots more AA guns. Proximity Fuse HE would increase the hit probability of DP main battery guns against planes, but it wouldn't do jack against surface targets. If that was a switchable ammo type then the player would have to choose and make sure they had the right ammo loaded - if you had Proximity HE loaded when you get attacked by the enemy, and it's 30 seconds until you can do much damage in response... tough luck! These would be ships to be played with care, to keep them alive to the end of the battle so that CVs don't always have their pick of badly weakened opponents.

 

6 hours ago, Beastofwar said:

Some have 60 AA guns....how do you reduces that ? And you know a player can spec into actually strenhtening them a lot too.......i think not many have, but they can.....

Well, take some away, or make CV defence more based on consumables. As it stands attacking a CV with planes is on the wrong side of the risk/reward ratio, so no-one does it. 

 

[LemonadeWarriorITA]

@GulvkluderGuld @thiextar @El2aZeR

I do agree as well that the cost of AFT doesn't meet the benefits. I'll add to the main post that it needs a fix, but I'll the kind of fix open for discussion. What do you guys think about the Manual Fire Control for AA Armament? Is it worth the points?

@Allied_Winter
With the RTS carriers I had the feeling I could so something about planes by clicking on the squadron I wanted to kill first and by using DFAA. It made me able to make a tactical decision. Using DFAA mostly meant that I'd be safe that drop, where when I use it now it doesn't mean anything. That is how it feels though.
 

 

So what about bringing back the panic effect of DFAA?

Or what about removing the enemy fighter circles of the minimap? Does the fighter system need a rework?

[thiextar]

2 minutes ago, LemonadeWarrior said:

@GulvkluderGuld @thiextar @El2aZeR

I do agree as well that the cost of AFT doesn't meet the benefits. I'll add to the main post that it needs a fix, but I'll the kind of fix open for discussion. What do you guys think about the Manual Fire Control for AA Armament? Is it worth the points?

@Allied_Winter
With the RTS carriers I had the feeling I could so something about planes by clicking on the squadron I wanted to kill first and by using DFAA. It made me able to make a tactical decision. Using DFAA mostly meant that I'd be safe that drop, where when I use it now it doesn't mean anything. That is how it feels though.
 

 

So what about bringing back the panic effect of DFAA?

Or what about removing the enemy fighter circles of the minimap? Does the fighter system need a rework?

Yup, dfaa really needs the panic effect back, and the carrier drop system needs to be reworked so that they arent 100% immune to everything on the first drop.

[SeaWolf7]

Bring back manual fire control "LOCK ON" that way you can actually target a squadron that is actually the greatest threat to you/teammate if providing support. 

The more automated this game becomes the less interaction we have and thus our experience becomes less and less enjoyable. Don't know what WG were thinking on this one...

[GulvkluderGuld]

There needs to be more interaction from surface ships towards planes. Bringing back DFAA panic and "Lock on" would be a step in the right direction (although I could see lock on would be a bit difficult to implement)

 

I do run BFT where it is relevant for it's dpm buff, and I do run MAA on some BBS and CAs where I have the spare points. I'm not convinced it is worth 4 points and the effect seem very mediocre, but it is the only AA choice now.