My thoughts on the problems facing carriers

[Meneleus]

My thoughts on the problems facing carriers.

 

I think it is clear that most people, those active on the forum anyways, think there are problems with carriers. Since there are regular
changes made to carriers, be it to carrier mechanics, matchmaking or rewards, there seems to be some truth to the matter.

Let me make a few things clear. I am NOT a regular carrier player, having played only up to T6, because I do not like the current
meta surrounding carriers and, well, I like shooting guns a lot. I desire carriers to be an integral and accepted part of the game
for everyone to enjoy while using one and when fighting them.

 

I have attempted to make the wall of text more manageable by using spoilers for different topics.

 

Carriers are too powerful

 The main complaint levelled against carriers is that they are too strong. This seems to be a valid point. While all ship types can perform
well, players who focus on playing carriers seem to consistently score better then their peers when we regard win rate, maximum damage and XP
and kill ratio.
Some might point out that the stats for carriers are not that lopsided when we look at the statistics for the carriers, win rates of several
carrier classes are less then 50%. Since carriers are the only ship type that is mirror-matched I contend that the win rates are schewed
however, and that the other statistics prove my point.

 

The main cause of the success of carriers I think, is the mastery of the manual torpedo attack. The manual torpedo attack involves only skill.
There is no chance involved (I dismiss course changes as being chance), if you mess up it is the fault of the player. Once a player has mastered
 the skill of using his torpedo planes the damage output of these attacks increase steeply. When players also become familiar with carrier
tactics, and with that I mean managing attacks to maximize damage from fires and flooding, things tend to get out of hand.
While a team can defend against carrier attacks effectively it requires a willingness and ability to cooperate and communicate and, well...
We all know how that can go.

 

 So what could be an equalizer? I think it might be the element of chance within the mechanic of the torpedo drop. There are historical
precedents for this. Some torpedoes were simply dropped poorly by the pilots, some malfunctioned.
The number of torpedoes fired by a squadron may be randomized, influenced by the number of planes in a squadron. Alternatively, each dropped
torpedo might have a chance to either disappear upon being dropped, failing while en route or being a dud on impact. Such a mechanic would
be similar to the dispersion suffered by gunnery on other ships.
By introducing this chance element the "perfect" torpedo strike will be far less common. Of course, to compensate for this, some of the changes
to make torpedo strikes more difficult should be rescinded. Perhaps airplane turnaround time and speed should be tweaked to guarantee carriers
remain competative in dealing damage. It might also be an idea to make dive bombers more competative in this regard.

 

 A problem I have with carrier play is the forced mirror match. Every carrier player knows he or she will be facing at least one other carrier.
I think this is a problem because most players seem to be taking AA setups for their air group, ironically to defend themselves from other
carriers using AA setups. I don't have any hard statistics, only personal experience. I think this makes for tedious, boring play and has caused
me to sell my carriers and buy other ships instead.
I think mirror-MM has to go. To abolish it the damage output of carriers should be managed.

 

Another problem brought forward by carrier players is their inability to gather XP from capping. I do not know if this is a serious issue. If
it is then perhaps an alternative should be introduced for carriers. This might be reconnaisance, which was a duty carriers performed during
the war. This might for example be spotting damage by keeping enemy vessels visible with airplanes.

 

 I have read some complaints about the limited options carriers basically have. Personally I think that games are improved by introducing
meaningful decisions for players to make. Many possibilities have been put forward by other players:
* Option to load Bomber squadrons with AP or HE bombs during turnaround.
* Option for Torpedo squadrons to use different kinds of torpedoes with variations in speed, damage and range.
* Option for Fighter squadrons to strafe ships, taking out AA modules and perhaps cause superficial damage at the expense of ammunition.
* Captain skills and upgrades to improve Bomber squadrons and make bomber squadrons more competative.
* Abovementioned changes might also be a reason to rethink air group setups. It would be great fun if there are multiple viable setups
  to take, especially if people have reasons not to regard dive bombers as poor alternatives to torpedo planes.

 

 Finally it might be an idea to rethink the mechanics of AA armament, the AA consumable and the "panic" it causes to enemy squadrons. Basically
my thoughts are these:
* The AA consumable, especially when chained by different players, besically defeats carriers for the duration. This is a source of frustration.
* Close ranged torpedo attacks are the bane of their victims. When well-executed they spell death for the victim.
A solution might be to introduce a change to the mechanic of the torpedo attack insofar that the spread of the torpedoes increases
proportionally to the amount of AA DPS the squadron is subjected to as it makes its attack. The AA consumable might, in this scenario,
temporarily improve the AA efficiency of the ship. USN ships might have a larger AA efficiency bonus for the duration to emphasise their
role as AA escorts.
This way AA spread becomes more predictable for carrier players while AA maintains viability. It also adds to the value of short-ranged AA
batteries since they inhibit the enemy of making close, accurate drops. If such a mechanic makes AA very powerful this might be compensated by
assigning AA batteries specific fields of fire or reworking the ranges of AA armament.

 

Thank you for taking your time to read all this. I hope people find the information useful. Feel free to comment of course.

 

Cheers, M

[NuclearNoob]

Biggest problem of carriers (this is my opinion only and I`m not trying to play smarta$$ here so feel free to discuss and disagree) is AA when they hit tiers 6 - 8. Then they are put in battles as lowest tiers vs ships they can`t really hurt too much without losing all planes and becoming useless very quickly. It`s not very fun when battle after battle after battle you get some torpedo hits, true, but after first 5 minutes all you can do is to sail around.

I say: nerf AA on higher tiers (don`t start hating me just yet!!) but at same time nerf torpedoes (see? I`m not that bad). I think your idea in second spoiler could work. 

[Loha4]

Ehhh I don't get it I see 2 nerfs proposed here and frankly I don't think carriers need malfunctioning torpedo's and random spread based on the amount of AA being used those would make carrier playing even more frustrating than it is already when you finally wait out the AA barrage, line up a drop and it misses due to rng just like divebombers then you have to wait another 3 minutes to try again.

I think AP bombers are coming already wasn't that in the WoT magazine recently? I didn't have the app to read it but I thought that's what it said. If the manual anti air strike didn't target your own planes it would be a fair bit more useful too, allies lost a few squadrons before I realised that.

[Meneleus]

Ehhh I don't get it I see 2 nerfs proposed here and frankly I don't think carriers need malfunctioning torpedo's

 

I also wrote directly after that:

"By introducing this chance element the "perfect" torpedo strike will be far less common. Of course, to compensate for this, some of the changes
to make torpedo strikes more difficult should be rescinded. Perhaps airplane turnaround time and speed should be tweaked to guarantee carriers
remain competative in dealing damage. It might also be an idea to make dive bombers more competative in this regard."

 

 and random spread based on the amount of AA being used those would make carrier playing even more frustrating than it is already when you finally wait out the AA barrage

 

Perhaps I should have been more clear in my wording:

The AA consumable might, in this scenario, temporarily improve the AA efficiency of the ship [instead of increasing AA DPS and causing panic as it does now]

 

I think AP bombers are coming already wasn't that in the WoT magazine recently?

 

It might, I have not read the magazine. I reckon I'd have included it for the sake of completeness regardless.

 

Cheers, M

[Pekoe_Darjeeling]

Essex and Hakuryu on one side. Taiho and Midway on the other. Only one flag in the middle... Nobody even go cap all sailing around the spawn sniping at max range trying to stay close to each other to maximize AA. 1-2 players from both teams go yolo because they don't care and are not interested in that kind of gameplay. As far as I played the biggest problem is tier 9-10 carriers that are too op. Tier 4 to 8 I don't find a problem with those right now.

[NuclearNoob]

As far as I played the biggest problem is tier 9-10 carriers that are too op. 

And somehow they are almost extinct. If I want to do daily in Essex I need to play at peak hours when there is 25-30k players online otherwise I`ll wait for game 10 minutes. So what is the problem? Why nobody is playing high tier carriers?

 

[Ishiro32]

Hi Meneleus

 

First of all, glad you cared enough to write this feedback, as for the content itself I have couple of comments.

 

I don’t think there is any need for RNG elements in the torpedo bombers. RNG in gun dispersion might be annoying, but fact is that without it the autocorrection games does would be too obvious and without those people would not hit anything. Shooting is super complicated so adding RNG to smooth the performance is not such a bad idea. New players might sometimes score lucky citadel which feels great and as long as good players can score much more than avg players then there is nothing wrong. 
With torps the situations is different. They are slow, predictable and have huge reload times. Any significant amount of rng would be very obvious and would have huge impact. In the situation when rng would “save” the enemy ship, then the satisfaction of that ship would not be big since he did not perform anything to do it and at the same time frustration of the carrier player would be immense as he would feel cheated out of the damage. The potential impact of it is just too big. So this is a huge No.

If you want to adjust performance of torpedo bombers there are better tools.

As for the options. I would assume a lot of them will be added to the game WHEN devs will feel good with the implementation of carriers as a whole. AP bombs for example would not work very well with current implementation of Dive Bombers and will require some changes to them. At the same time it’s much easier to fix gameplay issues when there is not a lot of content which makes stats more difficult to read. Patterns are easier to see. With time more content will be added for sure, but first they have to find right spot for the basic gameplay, then they will probably release premium CV.

 

AAA as a whole feels like a placeholder system more than anything else. At the same time panic button for CA was balanced around the beta gameplay and with such a big number of fighter planes in the air it is too much. This was most likely reasons of recent nerfs. AAA needs to be expanded. I have written a bit more here http://forum.worldofwarships.eu/index.php?/topic/37037-aa-is-unfixable-right-now/page__pid__685786#entry685786
Even shorter version:
-    Steep progression curve for carriers is creating issues with AAA when enemy is lower tier than you and higher tier than you. Values needs to be smoothed out globaly for both AAA and plane surv and speed.
-     AAA zones need to be expanded so it will take into account direction from which planes are approaching.

 

As for the high tier OP. Issue is with speed, planes are simply too good and because of it at high tier is much easier to perform well than on lower. I must say that for me tier VIII was always most fun and most balanced, even with Shokaku 0/3/3.

[Tugnut]

In the fix tomorrow they circle wile waiting to land has been reduce to help speed up turn around time.

 

But the 2 things that make cv boring to me is first you know your going to face anouther cv.... so you tend to lean more to fighters.   Where as before you go heavy fighter set up only to find no cv on the other side lol.

 

Now the other thing thats made the cv game a little point and click now is torp bombers are so slow and clumber some that even a blind BB player should be able to dodge them and the planes are soo weak that the bb aa can deal quite some damage to the squadron.    So the only way to stop this is auto drop from further away making it easy to dodge and even more of a point and click game.  The drop bomers last longer but again are more of point and click.   The only thing  you got to think about is your fighters and thats still more of a point and click as well.... and for me just makes it boring to play and at the end of the game soo much effort in the fighters that xp is poor.

 

Also now torp bombers are so week that the US ca aa is kind of point less and makes a lot of the ships usless to play.

 

 

They took all the skill out of cv to stop them killing bb players so easy so they can sail in a strait line amd do not need aa ships to help them that the class is now defunk and boring to play.

[Ishiro32]

I almost forgot. Heavy fighters setups, were and are still the newbie trap. I have no idea why people lean towards those setups when their efficiency is so low. The only decent "fighter" setup up to tier VIII is Lexi 2/1/1 and only because it's hardly "fighter" setup but more like defensive balanced setup.
 

[ilhilh]

I almost forgot. Heavy fighters setups, were and are still the newbie trap. I have no idea why people lean towards those setups when their efficiency is so low. The only decent "fighter" setup up to tier VIII is Lexi 2/1/1 and only because it's hardly "fighter" setup but more like defensive balanced setup.

 

 

I realised this too late.  I don't play a massive amount of CV games and have only made it to the Hiryu but my worst performing CV was the Ryujo where I ran 3/1/1 when I really shouldn't have but I got sick of getting chewed up by Independence squadrons.  This particularly hurts with low number of replacement planes you get at lower tiers - with the Hiryu I run 2/2/2 but with 4 replacement squadrons for each plane type you don't get punished quite so bad for any losses.

[Azalgor]

-Mirror match - should stay. Im not a CV player, but when tier 8 meets 2 tier 10 in random battles like it could happened before, its kind off..em..well...So i think meeting same tier along with a lower or a higher one would result in a more fair fight.

-Limited options - Different bomb tipes, right now there are 2 shell tipes in game as we all know - HE and AP, torps go as AP (with a huge bonus - flooding) and bombs go as HE. Giving the chance to swich bombs to AP would result in carriers becoming more OP, and probably some might even ask that AP shels would also start to cause flooding (say on DD's at the very least, as AP, like WG says, causes overpeneration and a controlable flooding), so to avoid confrontation its a no.

-The maual torpedo drop - torp being a dud on impact, its already plausible if a CV drops torps to close. And regarding that, i think that the range should increase a little more to give the targeted ship a fighting chance. I personaly withnessed a significant AA nerf from 0.4.1 till now, making my BB's maxed AA a lot less effective in shooting down planes, with that, tier 10 CV gets 2km away and stufs my belly wit no less than 10 torps, each doing 15 to 20k dmg, overkill, even moving in groups does not help much, as planes only start to go down when they droped their payload.

-The role of AA and consumable - well, like stated earllyer AA undergone a drastic change in to negetive, but as a compensation we recieved a catapult fighter that acts like the consumable and decreases the accuraxy of a drop. The only thing they forgot, is to give it some inteligence. As i see a plane group aproaching, i fokus the torps as primary for AA, but my buzzer is mindlessly flying circles around me, and even if a miracle happens, it does not attack the group id want it to attack.

 So the drops should still remain unpredictable for both, as it can still be a double edge sword, that you spread the torp drop that it will actually hit you, instead of missing it if you didnt use the consumable.

 And no more AA nerfs, as it is, it should go back to what it was before 0.4.1. Because the AA mods are useless now as well as accuracy, the RNG just doesnt make the difference matter, so why bother, might aswell just remove the modules from the game as they are just extra money you spend.

 

 Carriers became OP in real life, i dont actually complain much as i just explain whats going on on my part and how i see it. But  WG that fokuses on balance, kinda made a very big gap in how big a difference there is between tier 9 and tier 10 CV's.

 

 

[CherryWood]

I almost forgot. Heavy fighters setups, were and are still the newbie trap. I have no idea why people lean towards those setups when their efficiency is so low. The only decent "fighter" setup up to tier VIII is Lexi 2/1/1 and only because it's hardly "fighter" setup but more like defensive balanced setup.

 

 

dunno about that... sniped cv is even less efficient and recent changes that force fighters to lock into each other makes them rather unreliable for defending. So the fighter setups seems like ok choice when I dont want to bet everything on the who-reach-each-other-first race at the beginnig on the match or lose by default if enemy CV manages to get a cruiser protection and I dont.

[Kirasa]

-Mirror match - should stay. Im not a CV player, but when tier 8 meets 2 tier 10 in random battles like it could happened before, its kind off..em..well...So i think meeting same tier along with a lower or a higher one would result in a more fair fight.

-Limited options - Different bomb tipes, right now there are 2 shell tipes in game as we all know - HE and AP, torps go as AP (with a huge bonus - flooding) and bombs go as HE. Giving the chance to swich bombs to AP would result in carriers becoming more OP, and probably some might even ask that AP shels would also start to cause flooding (say on DD's at the very least, as AP, like WG says, causes overpeneration and a controlable flooding), so to avoid confrontation its a no.

-The maual torpedo drop - torp being a dud on impact, its already plausible if a CV drops torps to close. And regarding that, i think that the range should increase a little more to give the targeted ship a fighting chance. I personaly withnessed a significant AA nerf from 0.4.1 till now, making my BB's maxed AA a lot less effective in shooting down planes, with that, tier 10 CV gets 2km away and stufs my belly wit no less than 10 torps, each doing 15 to 20k dmg, overkill, even moving in groups does not help much, as planes only start to go down when they droped their payload.

-The role of AA and consumable - well, like stated earllyer AA undergone a drastic change in to negetive, but as a compensation we recieved a catapult fighter that acts like the consumable and decreases the accuraxy of a drop. The only thing they forgot, is to give it some inteligence. As i see a plane group aproaching, i fokus the torps as primary for AA, but my buzzer is mindlessly flying circles around me, and even if a miracle happens, it does not attack the group id want it to attack.

 So the drops should still remain unpredictable for both, as it can still be a double edge sword, that you spread the torp drop that it will actually hit you, instead of missing it if you didnt use the consumable.

 And no more AA nerfs, as it is, it should go back to what it was before 0.4.1. Because the AA mods are useless now as well as accuracy, the RNG just doesnt make the difference matter, so why bother, might aswell just remove the modules from the game as they are just extra money you spend.

 

 Carriers became OP in real life, i dont actually complain much as i just explain whats going on on my part and how i see it. But  WG that fokuses on balance, kinda made a very big gap in how big a difference there is between tier 9 and tier 10 CV's.

 

 

 

Limiting the Tier difference between CVs on both teams would be enough.

 

Mirror MM was introduced to see if it can get rid of the unbalance of like T6CV vs T4CV.

It simply does not work though. Keep the normal MM for CVs, as in which enemy ships they can meet in general, but force a max 1Tier difference between the CVs of both teams, that would work way better. And 1vs2 CV was always fun, since that was a real game of skill to win (and it was possible, regularly)

Also bring back Strike Decks and get rid of the IJN AS Decks. WG should have never removed those. While they're at it they can just get rid of ALL changes since 0.3.1.1 and start the balancing from the beginning.

 

As for the rest of you points:

AP bombs were promised from the start for CVs, and don't forget that the CV has to decide which to bring into the Air. If he has AP loaded and has to kill a DD he won't have much luck. As for your "more OP": CVs are anything but OP right now. They need MAJOR buffs.

 

Regarding the Manual Drop, but sorry, if you eat a full manual drop it's your own fault. I've evaded Midway drops with Atago pre Rudder Buff, when she was horrible to steer. It's all about getting hit by as few torps as possible, not like many BB players want (and like it IS atm) to evade all.

 

Also AA was NOT nerfed. The AA rating was just changed to represent reality more. The real AA DPS values weren't touched in any way. Everyone having fighter planes is also pure stupidity and makes attack runs way to hard. CA? Sure. BB? Shouldn't have them.

 

 

[ilhilh]

Everyone having fighter planes is also pure stupidity and makes attack runs way to hard. CA? Sure. BB? Shouldn't have them.

 

What should the BB have?  A spotter plane that makes the viewpoint horrible?  No thanks!  I will only use that on low range or stock BBs.

[AgarwaenME]

Essex and Hakuryu on one side. Taiho and Midway on the other. Only one flag in the middle... Nobody even go cap all sailing around the spawn sniping at max range trying to stay close to each other to maximize AA. 1-2 players from both teams go yolo because they don't care and are not interested in that kind of gameplay. As far as I played the biggest problem is tier 9-10 carriers that are too op. Tier 4 to 8 I don't find a problem with those right now.

 

Funny how i see the exact same thing happen when there's no CVs around either. It's almost.. as if you twist a situation to fit your bias.. 

[Takru]

 

Some thoughts in this:

 

Carriers are too powerful

They are actually not that powerful. The problem we all, including the carriers, face is their rather poor scaling mechanics per tier. If you end up as a low tier in a match, your planes will virtually be pointless because the enemy ships will have so much AA rating that few if any of your planes will survive long enough to drop their payload. The losses incurred will be prohibitive even against individual ships. On the flip side, if you end up being top tier in a match, those ships one or two tiers lower will have a very hard time surviving if they are not able to get substantial AA defense on their side, even if you have to wait occasionally until their defensive fire consumale runs out.

 

The manual torpedo attack

The major issue I see here is that of travel time. A carrier in a high tier match can hit targets only every few minutes, so when you eventually get your planes into place, potentially having had to fight off enemy planes to get there in the first place, the experience of finding that the one or two torps your guys dropped malfunctioned would be extremely frustrating.

 

The Mirror match

Currently playing Essex, I can not confirm that a lot of people are using fighter setups. Balanced setups are usually way more team effective and while you can protect your team from a lot of damage, you’ll still earn very poorly if you chose fighter setup. That said, a game where only one team has a carrier could still be extremely one sided because oft he poor scalinge mechanics for carriers.

 

Unable to Cap

It’s more a matter of having to stay a good deal away from the enemy and thus usually from capping zones because your carrier can be seen from a very long way away and you don’t want it to take hits. Carriers can in fact cap zones, they just usually will die if they try since enemies will usually be somewhere nearby.

 

Limited options

This is indeed a problem I think. The available setups sometimes include options you just won’t use ever because they offer no advantage over the other choices. However, I have no issues with DBs, since they can cause fires which I very much like to use on a tactical level.

 

The role of AA armament and AA consumable

I do think the AA consumable is a vital option for cruisers, it just needs a comparable counterpart. The Sonar thing isn’t an equivalent option since it’s somewhat situational and does not benefit your score.

 

[Takru]

I almost forgot. Heavy fighters setups, were and are still the newbie trap. I have no idea why people lean towards those setups when their efficiency is so low. The only decent "fighter" setup up to tier VIII is Lexi 2/1/1 and only because it's hardly "fighter" setup but more like defensive balanced setup.

 

 

Recently got the Essex. Poor scaling in CV mechanics meant that I always had to fight against fully upgraded CVs of the same tier. That and the issue that I have to face ships up to tier 10, where my planes are just not going to do any damage, made me go for the fighter setup, at least until my carrier is fully upgraded so the strike planes can actually do something. Only then I'll switch to 1/2/2, for now it's 3/0/2 for lack of decent options.

[MrDane]

The only problem I have with carriers, is that some times they drop their torpedos pretty much right next to you and there is no way you an avoid them, well maybe one of five. Other then that I do not have any issues with them. I do not play carriers, the playingstyle is not for me, so granted it might be a little bias.

[Takru]

It simply does not work though. Keep the normal MM for CVs, as in which enemy ships they can meet in general, but force a max 1Tier difference between the CVs of both teams, that would work way better. And 1vs2 CV was always fun, since that was a real game of skill to win (and it was possible, regularly)

 

 

Will not work since the scaling mechanics between CVs are just out of bounds. A one tier difference already means that the lower tier CV will be at a substantial disadvantage. One possible solution would be the introduction of new perks or modules, but as of now, it would just not work.

[Ubertron_X]

The role of the CV needs to be determined/fixed before any changes are made, else changes will be pointless.

 

As a CV player I want to have 'fun' by bombing the s**t out of the enemies capital ships.

As a non-CV player I want the CV in my team to prohibit exactly this instead of a 'lets see who of us can sink more ships' mini-game in between the CVs.

 

So what is the role of a CV? A scout, striker or a defender?

 

Once the general role of CVs has been determined, changes can be made and the game rewards need to be amended to reflect this (new/old) role.

 

Otherwise this whole discussions will go down a route not unlike many a MMORPG: 'Oooooh, but I do want to play a smite cleric!!1!'  <=> 'Sorry, but as a team we want/need a heal cleric...'

[NoirLotus]

The main problem with CV is that they don't fit in the scissors/rock/paper gameplay of the other ships, so they need some kind of special treatment as they don't really have a nemesis.

 

CV OP : before 5.1, there was some ling of gentlemen agreement between CVs to ignore each other and focus on damaging the rest of the team. So they had almost nothing to fear and could focus on doing the maximum of damage. Now CV are more focusing on neutralize the enemy CV, that's really better.

 

Manual drop : pb is that this is rather easy to master and devs want to improve the skills needed to be a good CV player. So adding RNg is not the best idea. Maybe reducing the ability of TB to turn on a dim and forcing a long torpedo run would make manual drop a bit harder to master

 

Mirror MM : CVs have 1 problem in WoWS : contrary to all the other ships, a one tier difference means that the lower tier CV is screwed. So mirror MM is mandatory.

 

unable to cap : that's not completely true !! smart CV players can easily try to cap in domination end games

 

 

[Aerroon]

I almost forgot. Heavy fighters setups, were and are still the newbie trap. I have no idea why people lean towards those setups when their efficiency is so low. The only decent "fighter" setup up to tier VIII is Lexi 2/1/1 and only because it's hardly "fighter" setup but more like defensive balanced setup.

 

 

But I like supporting and helping my team!

 

Even though going that route doesn't actually help my team but it makes me feel all good about myself. They should just increase XP for planes shot down so that I get rewarded more for not being useful!

[Tyrendian89]

one thing I find kind of silly with CV progression through the Tiers is how they get much much tougher planes as well as seemingly inexhaustible reserves at around T7-8. One of the two would be perfectly fine, but both together is just demoralizing for the supposed AA ships (i.e. USN cruisers). In my New Orleans, escorting an Izumo (both of us fully upgraded), we were targeted by a full Shokaku strike. Planes went over me, to the Izumo, dropped their load, went back over me. I had Defensive AA Fire running the whole time. End result? We shot down a combined grand total of four planes. And that, frankly, is just so very disheartening when you see the only thing your ship supposedly does very well (as in, better than its competitors) fail completely. If those four planes had been a substantial part of his reserves, it might have felt better, but knowing he won't even notice those losses... argh. And it wasn't even from something above my Tier, that again I would have been sort of fine with.

Anyway, rant over, Carriers are darn hard to balance...

[Pekoe_Darjeeling]

 

Funny how i see the exact same thing happen when there's no CVs around either. It's almost.. as if you twist a situation to fit your bias.. 

 

Because bad players will camp around spawn with their battleships no matter what is there a cv or not while good players see the opportunity and push when they do not have to watch for dozens of torpedoes that are drop 0.5km in front of their battleship. It's the same as in wot where arty is supposed to eliminate camping but battles without arty are sometimes even more dynamic than those with arty where most players go from rock to rock from cover to cover not to get hit by it making the gameplay boring and slowly.

[Kirasa]

The main problem with CV is that they don't fit in the scissors/rock/paper gameplay of the other ships, so they need some kind of special treatment as they don't really have a nemesis.

 

CV OP : before 5.1, there was some ling of gentlemen agreement between CVs to ignore each other and focus on damaging the rest of the team. So they had almost nothing to fear and could focus on doing the maximum of damage. Now CV are more focusing on neutralize the enemy CV, that's really better.

 

Manual drop : pb is that this is rather easy to master and devs want to improve the skills needed to be a good CV player. So adding RNg is not the best idea. Maybe reducing the ability of TB to turn on a dim and forcing a long torpedo run would make manual drop a bit harder to master

 

Mirror MM : CVs have 1 problem in WoWS : contrary to all the other ships, a one tier difference means that the lower tier CV is screwed. So mirror MM is mandatory.

 

unable to cap : that's not completely true !! smart CV players can easily try to cap in domination end games

 

 

 

Longer Torpedo Run was tested before. It did NOT work.

 

Even the slowest BB with the highest rudder shift time and widest turning circle could evade ALL torps from a close manual drop.