Balancing CV's as attempted by a drunken hobo!

[guy_incognito79]

First of all, I was going to put this in the big CV bitching thread but I decided not to as I want to try and keep this as constructive as possible, so if you're a CV's are perfect as they are guy this is not the thread for you.. same for the remove all CV's guys.

 

I think the 3 main problems with CVs as they are now are 1- no real counterplay options for targeted ships, 2- opressive spotting and 3- endless waves of pidgeons coming 1 after another.

 

For problem 1 I suggest bringing back the odd tier carriers (yes, I actually said that) and tweaking the MM for CVs to +1/-1. As I understand it plane health is balanced so that they can still attack +2 ships, making it by default a miserably unfair time for -2 ships. Ie in my scenario a tier 8 CV will comfortably be able to fight same tier ships, plus tier 7 and 9 ships but not be punished by tier 10 and not crap all over helpless tier 6's. 

 

This next part is still relevant for problem 1 but also helps with problem 2. The planes themselves. Rocket planes must be removed, completely. These things are so f&%^ing stupid it's unreal!!! They should be replaced by fully controllable fighter wings (I know I've said this before but I believe this is a good thing), good for air cover/ shielding the fleet but can't interact with surface ships (lets get some CV on CV crime going shall we?). DB's and TB's attacks are RNG based as I understand it but how much RNG I don't know, would need someone else's input here.  The fighter consumable should be replaced by a spotter plane consumable which just does what the current 'fighter' does.. flies in a circle until the time runs out or they die. Here's where the spotting change occurs.. anything spotted by fighters, DB's and TB's  is visible only to the CV, however if a DB squad drops a spotter, anything spotted by that is visible to any allied ship in weapons range and with line of sight. This also gives the spotted ship the chance to shoot the planes down and go stealth again.. the spotters would be as squishy as the current fighters are so even weak AA ships have a fair chance.

 

For part 3 I thin ALL CV's must have a fixed number of planes they start with and NO regenerating, ie a tier 6 CV has 60 planes at the start of a match, 20 of each. No planes can be launched for 30 seconds after a match starts, and once an attack run is finished all surviving plane must fly back to the carrier (no beaming, this isn't f*%^ing Star Trek and you're not James T Kirk) . You can launch as soon as the previous wing returns but it must be a different plane type. 

 

Last 2 little things, CV's must be as vulnerable to fires, flooding and detonations as the rest of us... and this one is  for CV players themselves.. fix the damn autopilot!!!  No-one likes the tought of having their ship driven by Ray Charles... and apparently your auto pilot is worse! 

 

If anyone has any other thought or wants to correct any mistakes I probably made please do.. let's see if we can balance this crap better than WG did and preferably in a civil manner so Excavatus keeps his mod stick to himself!

[JohnMac79]

This will end up buried in the CV thread because WG think if there is only one thread then CV are in a fine state.
 

I wish they would stop doing that because it makes trying to have any conversation about particulars pointless as there are too many things all going on at once in one giant thread.

 

If you cover your eyes nobody can see you...

 

Other than that, i agree with all the points you made, i nominate you to be hired by WG to fix their mess.

[ThePopesHolyFinger]

If CV's can regenerate aircraft, I demand my anti-aircraft guns also regenerate (not that it's of much worth these days)
If a flight of 6 or 8 is reduced to 1 or 2 during an attack, another flight of 6 or 8 mysteriously appears out of nowhere. I demand similar for my DD, CA or BB.
A flight of aircraft can magic a bunch of fighters out of their [edited]somehow. I demand the ability to magic a DD out of my BBs [edited].
If CVs continue to have stupid crap, I demand stupid crap for every other class.

[Mad_Dog_Dante]

32 minutes ago, guy_incognito79 said:

First of all, I was going to put this in the big CV bitching thread but I decided not to as I want to try and keep this as constructive as possible, so if you're a CV's are perfect as they are guy this is not the thread for you.. same for the remove all CV's guys.

Assuming the CV burial threads havent been constructive when everything you mentioned has been mentioned gazillion times in those 900 pages already :-)

 

TDLR: Carriers are bad for the gameplay mostly. I don't get bothered by them much anymore these days, but that is because I only play a handfull of ships in this fun forsaken META and most carrier players are god aweful.

[GarrusBrutus]

Cvs are already pretty balanced: Nobody plays them

[HystericalAccuracy]

34 minutes ago, guy_incognito79 said:

Rocket planes must be removed, completely.

Yes, at least from the lower tiers.

 

35 minutes ago, guy_incognito79 said:

Last 2 little things, CV's must be as vulnerable to fires, flooding and detonations as the rest of us.

This is too much logic for WG-employees. But one can suggest and discuss it.

[159Hunter]

4 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

For problem 1 I suggest bringing back the odd tier carriers (yes, I actually said that) and tweaking the MM for CVs to +1/-1.

This guarantees that your two division m8s can always play the top tier ship in a match. 

To avoid this off you need to:

- remove CVs from division ( but this is bad as it removes one of the few teamplay things that actually funciton properly).

- limit divisions with CVs to a single tier.

[SV_Kompresor]

4 minutes ago, 159Hunter said:

This guarantees that your two division m8s can always play the top tier ship in a match. 

To avoid this off you need to:

- remove CVs from division ( but this is bad as it removes one of the few teamplay things that actually funciton properly).

- limit divisions with CVs to a single tier.

Option 3. 1 tier spread when the cv is solo. 2 tier spread when in a div.

[SodaBubbles]

Heard these so many times. The devs simply do not care about the playability and enjoyablity of the game.... it's all about the 

 

 

[Bindolaf_Werebane]

5 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

First of all, I was going to put this in the big CV bitching thread but I decided not to as I want to try and keep this as constructive as possible, so if you're a CV's are perfect as they are guy this is not the thread for you.. same for the remove all CV's guys.

 

I think the 3 main problems with CVs as they are now are 1- no real counterplay options for targeted ships, 2- opressive spotting and 3- endless waves of pidgeons coming 1 after another.

 

For problem 1 I suggest bringing back the odd tier carriers (yes, I actually said that) and tweaking the MM for CVs to +1/-1. As I understand it plane health is balanced so that they can still attack +2 ships, making it by default a miserably unfair time for -2 ships. Ie in my scenario a tier 8 CV will comfortably be able to fight same tier ships, plus tier 7 and 9 ships but not be punished by tier 10 and not crap all over helpless tier 6's. 

 

This next part is still relevant for problem 1 but also helps with problem 2. The planes themselves. Rocket planes must be removed, completely. These things are so f&%^ing stupid it's unreal!!! They should be replaced by fully controllable fighter wings (I know I've said this before but I believe this is a good thing), good for air cover/ shielding the fleet but can't interact with surface ships (lets get some CV on CV crime going shall we?). DB's and TB's attacks are RNG based as I understand it but how much RNG I don't know, would need someone else's input here.  The fighter consumable should be replaced by a spotter plane consumable which just does what the current 'fighter' does.. flies in a circle until the time runs out or they die. Here's where the spotting change occurs.. anything spotted by fighters, DB's and TB's  is visible only to the CV, however if a DB squad drops a spotter, anything spotted by that is visible to any allied ship in weapons range and with line of sight. This also gives the spotted ship the chance to shoot the planes down and go stealth again.. the spotters would be as squishy as the current fighters are so even weak AA ships have a fair chance.

 

For part 3 I thin ALL CV's must have a fixed number of planes they start with and NO regenerating, ie a tier 6 CV has 60 planes at the start of a match, 20 of each. No planes can be launched for 30 seconds after a match starts, and once an attack run is finished all surviving plane must fly back to the carrier (no beaming, this isn't f*%^ing Star Trek and you're not James T Kirk) . You can launch as soon as the previous wing returns but it must be a different plane type. 

 

Last 2 little things, CV's must be as vulnerable to fires, flooding and detonations as the rest of us... and this one is  for CV players themselves.. fix the damn autopilot!!!  No-one likes the tought of having their ship driven by Ray Charles... and apparently your auto pilot is worse! 

 

If anyone has any other thought or wants to correct any mistakes I probably made please do.. let's see if we can balance this crap better than WG did and preferably in a civil manner so Excavatus keeps his mod stick to himself!

Some good ideas, but:

 

Noone wants to play the CV you describe. Zero fun.

[_Lupastro_]

1 ora fa, Bindolaf_Werebane ha scritto:

Some good ideas, but:

 

Noone wants to play the CV you describe. Zero fun.

I have to correct you.

Noooone wants to play CV except who wants to play them anyway, anycase, anytime, forever and ever ruining the game of other 10 players.

[Bindolaf_Werebane]

41 minutes ago, _Lupastro_ said:

I have to correct you.

Noooone wants to play CV except who wants to play them anyway, anycase, anytime, forever and ever ruining the game of other 10 players.

I know you're being (at least partially) facetious, but I disagree. I like playing CV. I'm not particularly good at them, so I don't ruin the game for anyone. I like the planes, the mobility and utility if carriers. The changes OP described would make CV gameplay a total chore.

[1MajorKoenig]

1 hour ago, _Lupastro_ said:

I have to correct you.

Noooone wants to play CV except who wants to play them anyway, anycase, anytime, forever and ever ruining the game of other 10 players.

What a nonsense

 

8 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

 

 

8 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

problem 1 I suggest bringing back the odd tier carriers (yes, I actually said that) and tweaking the MM for CVs to +1/-1

While it would be nice it won’t happen. WG messed up the power Progression of the general trees royally and crap themselves in the foot twice by the way the trees for CVs and Subs work.

 

We told them as early as 2015/16 what the problem with the forcked up idiotic power progression is. Mind you at a time when fixing it would have been relatively easy. They didn’t do it and now the system is simply shi.t no matter how much paint you put on top of it 

 

What in hell makes you even consider the possibility that WG will ever repair this?

 

8 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

The planes themselves. Rocket planes must be removed, completely. These things are so f&%^ing stupid it's unreal!!! They should be replaced by fully controllable fighter wings (I know I've said this before but I believe this is a good thing

While it sounds good it won’t happen either because 1) the manual control of fighters would be a too powerful tool to give to one player and 2) the simplistic core mechanics don’t support anything like that - hence you would need to redevelop the whole flying part. And we know what WG thinks about changes other than implementing T10 premium ships with a price tag North of 100€

On that note: I am not a big fan of the rocket planes either. I would prefer more flexibility in Loadouts such as chosing AP or HE bombs and such and would trade in rocket planes for more options on the bombers. But that won’t happen either 

 

8 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

For part 3 I thin ALL CV's must have a fixed number of planes they start with and NO regenerating, i

Sorry to repeat but won’t happen either. It is a gameplay concession that WG wants to keep the CV meaningful to the end of the match. 
 

Although I would have liked to do it different - more like having some defined heals which regenerate parts of the flight deck, similar to the ship heals. 
 

Plus: here is how I would like to see the fighter thing changed:

 

 

https://forum.worldofwarships.eu/topic/144957-proposal-enhanced-cv-fighter-mechanics/

[Miscommunication_dept]

CV vs CV play  is something Wargaming actively tried to discourage as they saw this as a reason CVs had too high of an impact on the match.

I don't think it will come back.

 

I do like the idea of removing rocket planes as a way of reducing the CVs impact on the game. Of course rebalancing would then have to occur.

FDR wouldn't suffer losing rockets whereas Midway would be much weaker.

[DFens_666]

4 hours ago, SV_Kompresor said:

Option 3. 1 tier spread when the cv is solo. 2 tier spread when in a div.

 

But then CV divs can only face other CV divs, because f.e. there is a Fuso/Nürnberg/Ryujo div, and if they could get T8 MM, it cant just throw a solo CV player under the bus, because he would face T8 ships.

[Mad_Dog_Dante]

21 minutes ago, gopher31 said:

CV vs CV play  is something Wargaming actively tried to discourage as they saw this as a reason CVs had too high of an impact on the match.

I don't think it will come back.

 

I do like the idea of removing rocket planes as a way of reducing the CVs impact on the game. Of course rebalancing would then have to occur.

FDR wouldn't suffer losing rockets whereas Midway would be much weaker.

Planes are designed too fast and carriers can simply sit on the furthest corner away from their team umbrella protection. Designed like that, the ONLY initial threat to carriers are enemy carriers. It is a problem WG created by their own design, and then 'fixed' by removing the carrier to carrier combat. That wasn't enough protectionism, so they changed the fire and flooding mechanics specific geared towards the planes, made sure they cant detonate and voila: we are left with a class that probably even BBabies think is for babies.

 

Lets not forget though, great gameplay is secondary to WG. It's not that important to them, they have their own agenda.

[JohnMac79]

4 hours ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

Some good ideas, but:

 

Noone wants to play the CV you describe. Zero fun.

Perfect. The shoe is on the other foot.

[guy_incognito79]

5 hours ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

Some good ideas, but:

 

Noone wants to play the CV you describe. Zero fun.

I would disagree with that, I like the idea of out thinking/out playing your opposite number. It's why I'm drawn to DD's, the feeling you get when outmaneuvering the red DD is  awesome (doesn't happen for me very often but still I try lol) and the same would apply to these proposed CV's.

 

Cv's as they are now are just a case of rolling your face across your keyboard and 'hurr durr red ship go splat!'.. how is that fun? It's devoid of any challenge, skill or the need for any brain power at all.... and a set up like that is to me at least bloody insulting!

[Miscommunication_dept]

1 hour ago, Europizza said:

Planes are designed too fast and carriers can simply sit on the furthest corner away from their team umbrella protection. Designed like that, the ONLY initial threat to carriers are enemy carriers. It is a problem WG created by their own design, and then 'fixed' by removing the carrier to carrier combat. That wasn't enough protectionism, so they changed the fire and flooding mechanics specific geared towards the planes, made sure they cant detonate and voila: we are left with a class that probably even BBabies think is for babies.

 

Lets not forget though, great gameplay is secondary to WG. It's not that important to them, they have their own agenda.

I usually rejoice if the enemy CV comes to me as aCV. Yes he might eventually kill me  but it will take him a long while where he is not attacking my destroyers. 
Meanwhile, I’ll be striking his team, resetting caps etc.

[Bindolaf_Werebane]

31 minutes ago, guy_incognito79 said:

I would disagree with that, I like the idea of out thinking/out playing your opposite number. It's why I'm drawn to DD's, the feeling you get when outmaneuvering the red DD is  awesome (doesn't happen for me very often but still I try lol) and the same would apply to these proposed CV's.

 

Cv's as they are now are just a case of rolling your face across your keyboard and 'hurr durr red ship go splat!'.. how is that fun? It's devoid of any challenge, skill or the need for any brain power at all.... and a set up like that is to me at least bloody insulting!

You are partially right (partially wrong). Obviously you can be a "hurr durr" CV potato and still splat some red ships (i.e. me). However (also @Europizza above), CV gameplay is not mindless. Positioning is very important, as a CV is a kind of DoT resource. Flight time is dead time. There is room for intelligent and strategic play. I can't enlighten you more, but my betters, like @El2aZeR, probably can.

[DFens_666]

47 minutes ago, guy_incognito79 said:

Cv's as they are now are just a case of rolling your face across your keyboard and 'hurr durr red ship go splat!'.. how is that fun?

 

Most people dont have an interest in flying planes, when they come to play a naval battle game. They are interested in playing Bismarck, Yamato or whatever, but mostly not fly planes. Sure occasionally they might do it. But in order to get more players to play such a class, it needs to be braindead-easy. WG said so themselves, if the numbers get too low, balancing will be ignored in order to get popularity back up...

[DeviousDave02]

15 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

For problem 1 I suggest bringing back the odd tier carriers (yes, I actually said that) and tweaking the MM for CVs to +1/-1. As I understand it plane health is balanced so that they can still attack +2 ships, making it by default a miserably unfair time for -2 ships. Ie in my scenario a tier 8 CV will comfortably be able to fight same tier ships, plus tier 7 and 9 ships but not be punished by tier 10 and not crap all over helpless tier 6's. 

Agree, removing odd tier CV's was a mistake as it makes the jump between ships too great, aka. TVI to TVIII going from no or light AA to "OMG why is everything on fire" I have a suspicion that it's one of the reasons the CV population at higher tier is low because new players hit tier VIII and run into a wall of skill that puts them off.

15 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

This next part is still relevant for problem 1 but also helps with problem 2. The planes themselves. Rocket planes must be removed, completely. These things are so f&%^ing stupid it's unreal!!! They should be replaced by fully controllable fighter wings (I know I've said this before but I believe this is a good thing), good for air cover/ shielding the fleet but can't interact with surface ships (lets get some CV on CV crime going shall we?). DB's and TB's attacks are RNG based as I understand it but how much RNG I don't know, would need someone else's input here.  The fighter consumable should be replaced by a spotter plane consumable which just does what the current 'fighter' does.. flies in a circle until the time runs out or they die. Here's where the spotting change occurs.. anything spotted by fighters, DB's and TB's  is visible only to the CV, however if a DB squad drops a spotter, anything spotted by that is visible to any allied ship in weapons range and with line of sight. This also gives the spotted ship the chance to shoot the planes down and go stealth again.. the spotters would be as squishy as the current fighters are so even weak AA ships have a fair chance.

Agree and Disagree with this one. Rocket fighters could be removed and it would be good for DD's (and Cruisers if you take German CV's into account) however....

Controllable fighters won't work.

Let me explain, firstly all a CV player is going to hear all match is "CV Y U NO FIGHTER" "CV FIGHTERS" "CV PROWTEC MEEEEEE" "REPORT CV" "F&*K U CV NOT FLYING UR FIGHTERS" because all, ALL the surface ship players will want the CV player to spend 100% of the match chasing down and shooting the other CV's planes because then they don't have to deal with it.

Secondly, why the ever loving money whale would I bother to take off in my fighters? By the time I spot the enemy attack squadron, fly over to them and engage them they will have already dropped on their target due to the distance between my squadron and theirs causing excess travel time giving the enemy more than enough time to do their thing and then scarper before I get there. Unless they are on the same flank as my planes but you can't guarantee that so it would be a un-necessary gamble and if guessed wrong would put your team on the back foot due to missing out on early damage.

Thirdly, I guarantee that most CV players will end up in a gentlemen's agreement of "Don't launch your fighters and I won't launch mine" because it just makes sense to ignore each other rather than try and waste time chasing each other down.

Lastly, As a CV player, why would I sacrifice my own rewards by dealing less damage and not interacting with the battle to loiter over an area in squishy fighters that can't reliably spot due to being vulnerable to AA just to say to the enemy CV "Nah, you can't hit the ships here because I'M protecting them"? All they will do is go "Ok" and fly off to the other flank and beat up ships there while waiting for me to get bored and go back to attacking surface ships.

15 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

For part 3 I thin ALL CV's must have a fixed number of planes they start with and NO regenerating, ie a tier 6 CV has 60 planes at the start of a match, 20 of each. No planes can be launched for 30 seconds after a match starts, and once an attack run is finished all surviving plane must fly back to the carrier (no beaming, this isn't f*%^ing Star Trek and you're not James T Kirk) . You can launch as soon as the previous wing returns but it must be a different plane type. 

Could be done but with the way AA is would it really work? I doubt any decent CV players wouldn't be too bothered by this but it might make potatoes have a bad time. Also planes already DO fly back the Carrier (no beaming involved) and I do agree with the delay at the start, though I would make it 20 seconds myself. 

 

One idea I had about it would be that the state of the returning plane governs how fast it is made ready for take off after landing, so a plane that has taken no damage would be readied for take off again after 10 seconds, a plane that has taken light damage would take 15 seconds, medium damage (Grey smoke) 20 seconds and heavy damage 30 seconds.

That way a CV can be made to temporarily run out of planes much faster by just damaging the squadron, even if planes are not shot down.

 

15 hours ago, guy_incognito79 said:

Last 2 little things, CV's must be as vulnerable to fires, flooding and detonations as the rest of us... and this one is  for CV players themselves.. fix the damn autopilot!!!  No-one likes the tought of having their ship driven by Ray Charles... and apparently your auto pilot is worse! 

Agree, although personally though I would make it so fire and flooding burn the full duration but do 50% less hull damage compared to other ship classes however also screw with the CV's ability to get planes into the air by slowing restoration speeds, slowing aircraft take off and landing and, if it was added, increasing the repair time of damaged aircraft.

 

Some good ideas here but I think you need to spend a bit more time on them and re-think the whole 'manual fighter idea' maybe take a look at the fighter idea that was posted a couple of months back for inspiration. 

[Mad_Dog_Dante]

2 hours ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

You are partially right (partially wrong). Obviously you can be a "hurr durr" CV potato and still splat some red ships (i.e. me). However (also @Europizza above), CV gameplay is not mindless. Positioning is very important, as a CV is a kind of DoT resource. Flight time is dead time. There is room for intelligent and strategic play. I can't enlighten you more, but my betters, like @El2aZeR, probably can.

You're bringing up dead time as if it is very decrimental to carriers. The preperation time for doing actual damage for DD's is the highest of all classes mostly. The prep time for carriers is the shortest of all classes. The DOT for carriers had to be nerfed so hard, that it makes the dead time almost intolerable to bear. It is again a problem WG created by the absolute worst PVP class design in the history of this game.

 

The 'flighttime = dead time' has been fixed by WG by making the planes stupidly fast and manouvable and removing flying back manually etc. This only diminished the necessity for carriers to risk positioning their hull in forward positions, which is what I pointed out earlier. And because WG expanded on the already existing issue instead of adressing them in the redesign, they had to resort to absurd measures to fix the glaring gameplay problems.

 

Seriously, if there is room left for strategic gameplay it is not because carriers have a balanced risk reward scheme going. That 'tactical room' is basically a singleplayer game superimposed on top of a pvp game. It has very little to do with everything else going on in the game. Almost all combat initiative is up to the carrier. CV gameplay IS kind of mindless spamming, I'm bored out of my skull within 2-3 games. As a design, the carriers failed on almost every aspect except making them obnoxiously resilliant in the pvp enviroment, their survival rate case in point. Remember, that survival rate is reached with the abismal skill level of a big part of the carriers played.

 

WG made that class so awefully monotone and void of suspense I can't get myself to play them - which is one of the main reasons the rework failed for me personally. I do sometimes. Below the result of my latest carrier game after 1,5 years of hardly playing them, nothing special. Dropping a Ceveland with HE bombs like it's nothing. I hardly even made an effort in that game and only lost 33 planes (excluding fighters, a wait, scout sqaudrons- ROFL).

 

 

In b4 lock.

[Bindolaf_Werebane]

21 minutes ago, Europizza said:

You're bringing up dead time as if it is very decrimental to carriers. The preperation time for doing actual damage for DD's is the highest of all classes mostly. The prep time for carriers is the shortest of all classes. The DOT for carriers had to be nerfed so hard, that it makes the dead time almost intolerable to bear. It is again a problem WG created by the absolute worst PVP class design in the history of this game.

 

The 'flighttime = dead time' has been fixed by WG by making the planes stupidly fast and manouvable and removing flying back manually etc. This only diminished the necessity for carriers to risk positioning their hull in forward positions, which is what I pointed out earlier. And because WG expanded on the already existing issue instead of adressing them in the redesign, they had to resort to absurd measures to fix the glaring gameplay problems.

 

Seriously, if there is room left for strategic gameplay it is not because carriers have a balanced risk reward scheme going. That 'tactical room' is basically a singleplayer game superimposed on top of a pvp game. It has very little to do with everything else going on in the game. Almost all combat initiative is up to the carrier. CV gameplay IS kind of mindless spamming, I'm bored out of my skull within 2-3 games. As a design, the carriers failed on almost every aspect except making them obnoxiously resilliant in the pvp enviroment, their survival rate case in point. Remember, that survival rate is reached with the abismal skill level of a big part of the carriers played.

 

WG made that class so awefully monotone and void of suspense I can't get myself to play them - which is one of the main reasons the rework failed for me personally. I do sometimes. Below the result of my latest carrier game after 1,5 years of hardly playing them, nothing special. Dropping a Ceveland with HE bombs like it's nothing. I hardly even made an effort in that game and only lost 33 planes (excluding fighters, a wait, scout sqaudrons- ROFL).

 

 

In b4 lock.

Not saying you're wrong. I enjoy the class (mostly) and it offers me variety.

[Ronchabale]

Any change that would sort the fng stupid spotting everything, everywhere all the time issue

I hate cv:s and their negative impact on this otherwise pretty awesome game