Proposed changes to improve carrier gameplay for everyone, including other ships!

[SonofaSailor]

Note to Mods: I've put this carrier-focused topic in the Gameplay forum because I would like a broad response from the player base, rather than just comments from carrier players on the carrier forum, because whatever happens to carriers affects everyone.

 

Introduce carrier-based search/reconnaissance aircraft.

Carrier based search planes would deploy as single units (like spotter planes) but they would operate differently. Unlike spotter planes, the carrier player would control their movements. Also unlike spotter planes, the search plane would not enhance the shooting range or accuracy of any ship. It's real purpose is to find enemy ships and "escort" them. When the search plane spots an enemy ship, the carrier player would assign it to follow that ship and it would then circle the spotted enemy ship continuously until ordered away, or shot down. Crucially, the search plane must not be vulnerable to the spotted ship's AA - we would assume that it's flying high enough that it can circle the enemy ship at a distance great enough to keep it out of range. Only the spotted ships team mates would be able to attack the search plane, or the spotted ship's own catapult fighter, if it has one.

 

I can image several players won't like this idea, but guess what? It was just as annoying in real life. Several examples come to mind, such as the Kondor aircraft that shadowed the Murmansk convoys: those convoys would often try to use their escorts to set up AA ambushes for the Kondor to drive it away. Other solutions were to carry catapult fighters!

 

Given that catapult fighters don't turn up in lower tiers, perhaps carriers with search planes would be a mid to higher tier feature.

 

Search planes are the missing piece in the carrier airgroups and would have the following effects:

1. It would allow carriers to perform what is supposed to be one of their primary functions both in real life and in the game - scouting. They don't do that at the moment because of the risk of losing squadrons, and because their team mates don't value that function. This is because...

 

2. It would allow carrier players to scout without having to send an entire squadron, or risking that squadron to enemy attack. When you've only got one or two fighter squadrons, losing one on a scouting mission can make you horribly vulnerable to an enemy carrier, as well as preventing you from mounting any more scouting missions.

 

3. Because they no longer risk losing a major part of their offensive/defensive capability, carriers wouldn't be shy about sending their search planes off to find targets for their own squadrons, but also to directly support their team by, for example, locating and shadowing enemy ships. Those who believe that destroyers are currently too stealthy should support this, because a search plane could seek out and shadow a destroyer. A destroyer that is visible at long range is no threat to a competent battleship player. Meanwhile, the shadowed destroyer would need to fall back to its own team to get help from their AA to drive off or destroy the search plane, thus promoting team play on both sides!

 

4. Players would see the direct benefit of having a carrier on their team - at the moment most players feel that carriers just play their own game and don't get involved with their team unless they see a destroyer coming their way, at which point they start screaming for help. But this request for help is often resented because other players can't see what the carrier has ever done for them, and in many cases they are right - the carrier often doesn't appear to be helping fellow team mates at all, but is usually focused on killing the enemy carrier above all else. While this is useful, this is not always the best way to win a game.

 

Zombies

 

Switch the Fighter Barrage from air-to-air to air-to-surface

In other words, turn it into a strafing attack against ships, but remove the ability to barrage other squadrons. Just stick to the existing dogfight attack.

 

Why introduce a strafing attack?

1. Because this would be an excellent way to attack ships, and really fun against destroyers and cruisers. There is no way a strafing run could sink a ship (not unless it was down to extremely low HP, of course) but it would be a good way for a carrier player to accumulate more damage and would give the carrier airgroup more flexibility in terms of the types of attacks and strategies it could use. In fact, adding strafing attacks to fighters could, in addition to search planes, make the carrier more willing to scout for his team because the scouting fighters could do something useful (and profitable) when they found the enemy.

 

2. Carriers configured for AA wouldn't be as totally useless as they often are now. Once they've achieved 'clear skies' what's left to do? Sure, they can scout but if that's all they can do, the carrier player is going to get bored and lose interest, and this is perfectly understandable. With a strafing option, they can actively contribute.

 

3. It would also mean that fighters aren't just easy damage points for enemy ship AA. Fighters could fight back! (I'll come back to this idea of easy damage points later - it's a big problem.)

 

Why get rid of the air to air barrage?

Because it's completely counter-intuitive. It's even more counter-intuitive than the fact that crossing the T gets you killed! The latter we've all learned to adapt to, but I still struggle with the idea that a massed formation of aircraft can be obliterated by a single enemy squadron simply because the massed aircraft chose to fly close together. Massed formations are ALWAYS stronger in defence and attack. If a single squadron of fighters is supposed to be able to destroy large numbers of enemy fighters or bombers just because the enemy are flying close together then the Battle of Britain would have been over on day one. Similarly, the USAF and RAF bomber raids over Germany would have been utter failures when the Luftwaffe fighters returned the favour.

 

In the time period of the game, bombers flew together because it worked. They provided mutual protection. So they should be able to resist a fighter attack, not be completely destroyed by one. The danger of fighter barrage means carrier players must send their bomber squadrons off on long routes around the map on their own, and then they're more vulnerable to ship-based AA, instead! This is part of the reason why other players can't see carriers helping them much. The carriers are too busy just trying to stay alive!

 

And finally, another idea from a very recent thread, but which I'm including here, again because it's all part of the same topic, and because the answers on that thread gave me some more ideas...

 

Introduce zombie aircraft

When a carrier is sunk, his planes go into some kind of autopilot and just circle until the end of the game. There are two problems with this:

 

1. It's silly. Why are we supposed to assume the pilots have gone brain dead because their carrier is gone? The opposite doesn't happen - if a squadron is shot down, the carrier player doesn't lose control of the carrier. Essentially the carrier is a single unit which can split itself into smaller units. Surely the carrier player is still in the game until all of his ship units are destroyed?

 

2. The current situation gifts more damage points to the enemy. Orphan planes can still be shot down after their carrier has been sunk, but the carrier player is no longer able to counter this by manoeuvring his planes away from danger. He's the only player who is rendered helpless in this way. So orphan planes are a potential points gift to the other team, which is an unfair advantage. If those planes had all been aboard the carrier when it was sunk, the other team would not have got the additional points for those planes. They can, however, get them after the carrier is sunk and the carrier player is unable to help his own team by attacking or keeping his surviving planes out of harms way.

We've all seen noobs suicide because they were low on health and wanted to finish it, and been annoyed at this because it benefits the other team. Here we have almost the same situation, but through no fault of the carrier player.

 

Possible solutions:

1. The carrier player doesn't die in the game until his last planes are dead or their ammo expended (note, this could include fighters if strafing is added!). After his carrier is sunk he can still control his remaining airborne assets, but he is fighting on borrowed time because he can't recover and rearm. He also can't scout because we can assume that the carrier was passing search information along to the rest of the team.

 

2. After the carrier is sunk the player is allowed to target his remaining planes at the enemy, but that is his last command - no manoeuvring. Just point and click on a target.

 

3. The planes revert to AI control and behave as they would if this were a co-op battle.

 

4. The planes all crash into the ocean BUT the enemy team do not get the points for their destruction.

 

 

Those are the arguments. Time to vote!

 

[IamTroublemaker]

Let fighters strafe ships? Nope, they should most certainly not be able to do any damage to ships. I mean, they had 20mm cannons and if you compare the 127mm guns damage (that is low), how much damage could those 20mm cannons do then? 5-15? Its just useless.

 

"The carrier player doesn't die in the game until his last planes are dead or their ammo expended" - that gave me a minor heartattack. It can be hard to sink them as it is. Sometimes it takes more than 10-15 minutes to find them and high tier CVs almost NEVER run out of planes.

 

CVs are really strong already, I am talking about high tiers here. You can even see some CV players making fun of it. It's the mid tiers that need some sort of balancing.

 

[NoirLotus]

So no option for those who don't like your propositions ??

 

1/ Scouting is not paid at this time, so what's the point ? Moreover, it would ruin the life of DDs and it would require a lot of work to deal at the same time with your squadrons plus to micro manage some number of scout planes.

2/ Fighters are here to fight enemy planes or protect yours. Straffing would be poorly efficient on ships.

3/ Air Barrage is in the game to put some skill in the use of fighters. If you remove it, it is just : "I click on your fighters, mine are stronger, I win".

4/ the BS of the day : "hey guys, enemy team was smart and killed me but I will keep on spotting them all game long".

[bloomoon11]

I've only had a quick skim read but I don't see how any of those changes improves the game for other ship than CV.

[SonofaSailor]

So no option for those who don't like your propositions ??

 

 

Fixed. An oversight.

[SonofaSailor]

I've only had a quick skim read but I don't see how any of those changes improves the game for other ship than CV.

 

The idea is to improve CV interaction with their team by giving them more ways to contribute to what the team is doing (scouting, using fighters to attack ships, zombie last stand) rather than just having a carrier battle on the map edge.

[IamTroublemaker]

 

The idea is to improve CV interaction with their team by giving them more ways to contribute to what the team is doing (scouting, using fighters to attack ships, zombie last stand) rather than just having a carrier battle on the map edge.

 

They already have fighters to scout and fight opponent planes. They already have DBs and TBs to attack ships. As for the zombie last stand, well, you can give them commands just before you die, although those rarely hit because they are mostly autodrops.

[SonofaSailor]

 

CVs are really strong already, I am talking about high tiers here. You can even see some CV players making fun of it. It's the mid tiers that need some sort of balancing.

 

 

I agree that this focuses mostly on mid-tiers because that was the intent. Mid-tier is where most players get and not many want to go beyond.

[RamirezKurita]

Search planes are an idea that could work, it does strike me as a bit odd that carriers don't have access to one of the 4 types of aircraft. The relatively smaller impact of having a single plane scout squadron compared to a full bomber squadron would also provide another option for tuning the balance between different flight setups. Alternatively, rather than making them proper scout aircraft they could just give carriers a number of single plane DB squadrons to use as scouts, as historically many DBs were hybrid scout/bomber designs, or that could be a USN specific thing (as I believe the IJN had dedicated scout planes but they only appeared towards the end of the war, they preferred to use seaplanes for scouting).

 

Something I have suggested before for carriers is to make patrolling aircraft above allied ships provide benefits, such as setting a squadron of DBs to follow an ally gives them the +20% range bonus of a spotting aircraft. TBs could provide a different but comparable benefit.

 

For the strafing run, I can see why it was introduced, but in its current form it is simply too powerful to not just use in every scenario. My personal suggestion is to bring back the ability for fighters to interrupt it as well as making it only damage bombers, that way it would still be a useful tool for dealing with massed zerg rush bomber attacks but wouldn't become an automatic choice to use in every encounter.  Making it exclusively anti-bomber would mean that massed bombers attacks are exceedingly effective against unprotected ships, but relatively ineffective if there are fighters around. The addition of strafing ships wouldn't need to occupy the alt button, as it could simply be the automatic attack for fighters against ships; strafing would also become far more important once the German aircraft get introduced as some of them mounted some quite scary guns on them, particularly as the attack aircraft could basically be coded as fighters with substandard dogfighting ability but significant strafing ability. Strafing would also help air superiority decks do something with their fighters once they have gained air supremacy, as it would then allow them to go around softening up targets for the bombers so that the AS decks meagre bomber reserves actually last rather than being gunned down in droves by enemy AA batteries.

 

For zombie aircraft, I'd rather if aircraft simply returned to the last location of the ship then either fell into the ocean or flew off the map. It does seem a bit random for aircraft to hover above the wreckage of their carrier until they are shot down, but giving carriers the chance for another strike is not the solution.

[Mayv]

Note to Mods: I've put this carrier-focused topic in the Gameplay forum because I would like a broad response from the player base, rather than just comments from carrier players on the carrier forum, because whatever happens to carriers affects everyone.

 

Introduce carrier-based search/reconnaissance aircraft.

Carrier based search planes would deploy as single units (like spotter planes) but they would operate differently. Unlike spotter planes, the carrier player would control their movements. Also unlike spotter planes, the search plane would not enhance the shooting range or accuracy of any ship. It's real purpose is to find enemy ships and "escort" them. When the search plane spots an enemy ship, the carrier player would assign it to follow that ship and it would then circle the spotted enemy ship continuously until ordered away, or shot down. Crucially, the search plane must not be vulnerable to the spotted ship's AA - we would assume that it's flying high enough that it can circle the enemy ship at a distance great enough to keep it out of range. Only the spotted ships team mates would be able to attack the search plane, or the spotted ship's own catapult fighter, if it has one.

 

 

Sounds like a fun addition for DD players, being completely nullified by one click and no way for themselves to counter it.

[Kazomir]

Let fighters strafe ships? Nope, they should most certainly not be able to do any damage to ships. I mean, they had 20mm cannons and if you compare the 127mm guns damage (that is low), how much damage could those 20mm cannons do then? 5-15? Its just useless.

 

"The carrier player doesn't die in the game until his last planes are dead or their ammo expended" - that gave me a minor heartattack. It can be hard to sink them as it is. Sometimes it takes more than 10-15 minutes to find them and high tier CVs almost NEVER run out of planes.

 

CVs are really strong already, I am talking about high tiers here. You can even see some CV players making fun of it. It's the mid tiers that need some sort of balancing.

 

 

Fighters strafing ships has happened.  Most notably to the Yamato, where fighters strafing it were able to knock out some AA guns (or at least that is what WG's movie about the Yamato told me ) .  Fighters strafing a destroyer could easily kill gun crew, AA gun crew, people on the bridge, all sorts of damage. And the death of crew members should definetly be counted as HP damage since ship effectiveness is lowered by that.

[IamTroublemaker]

 

Fighters strafing ships has happened.  Most notably to the Yamato, where fighters strafing it were able to knock out some AA guns (or at least that is what WG's movie about the Yamato told me ) .  Fighters strafing a destroyer could easily kill gun crew, AA gun crew, people on the bridge, all sorts of damage. And the death of crew members should definetly be counted as HP damage since ship effectiveness is lowered by that.

 

It did happen, but do you think any CV captain would be willing to trade his fighters to destroy a couple of AA mounts on a BB that he can simply torp or drop bombs at?

[RamirezKurita]

 

It did happen, but do you think any CV captain would be willing to trade his fighters to destroy a couple of AA mounts on a BB that he can simply torp or drop bombs at?

 

What if he has already destroyed practically all enemy aircraft and is trying to find something to do with all of his leftover fighters?

[Hero_of_Tython]

Let fighters strafe ships? Nope, they should most certainly not be able to do any damage to ships. I mean, they had 20mm cannons and if you compare the 127mm guns damage (that is low), how much damage could those 20mm cannons do then? 5-15? Its just useless.

 

 

 

Agreed that fighters doing damage to ships with machine gun and cannon fire is a bit daft. But here is an idea what if Fighters could do a strafing run on a ship but rather than damaging the ship it acted as a debuff, something like, for example, launching a strafing attack on an enemy ship forces the enemies AA to target the fighters (overriding any manual targeting of AA), the fighters will take an absolute hammering but they will draw fire away from any incoming Torp of Dive bombers, give the straffing attacks a short duration (say >20 seconds) so timing on the part of the CV player is crucial and also make it so any ship that has their Defensive Fire ability active is not affected and it might make an interesting additional tactic. 

[Psychocouac]

I'm not against strafing. It would be a low damage disabling attack on ships. Something like less than 1K damage, 5% chance for fire, 2% for flooding and maybe a tiny effect on the target cunsommable reload speed for a fixed amount of time maybe? (simulating the "take cover" effect.)

 

Other ideas are bad i think.

 

The most annoying thing i find about CV are their stealthness, allowing them to poorly place themselves on the map. Those things are freaking huge. Even more than battleships and have less detection range. I'm not against the idea of a big deathstar but only if i can see it and shoot at it.

[IamTroublemaker]

 

What if he has already destroyed practically all enemy aircraft and is trying to find something to do with all of his leftover fighters?

 

Hmm. I really do not have an argument against that.  It simply seems like a silly idea to me, not worth losing the planes.

 

Maybe BBs AA and CAs AA should also be able to shoot at all other ships and inflict all that damage as well then?

Agreed that fighters doing damage to ships with machine gun and cannon fire is a bit daft. But here is an idea what if Fighters could do a strafing run on a ship but rather than damaging the ship it acted as a debuff, something like, for example, launching a strafing attack on an enemy ship forces the enemies AA to target the fighters (overriding any manual targeting of AA), the fighters will take an absolute hammering but they will draw fire away from any incoming Torp of Dive bombers, give the straffing attacks a short duration (say >20 seconds) so timing on the part of the CV player is crucial and also make it so any ship that has their Defensive Fire ability active is not affected and it might make an interesting additional tactic. 

 

Seems like a good idea, although a bit too strong from my perspective.

[ezymodo]

 

 

I found the post represents ignorance of carrier game play and meta in general, and I do not see how the proposed changes will bring anything positive to any class in the game.

 

1. Regarding scouting planes:

•  Every plane in this game (fighter, torpedo and dive bombers, and floatplanes) has the ability to scout already, making it redundant.  In fact, the best scout in the game is an empty dive bomber, which has speed surpassing that of a fighter.
•  Addition of a scout plane means a reduction of other plane stocks in the hangar, which is undesirable. On the second part of the post the OP propose to add strafing ability to fighters, since it would become "useless" after there are no planes to hunt. But here, the OP propose the addition of something which is similar to the fighter, but even more useless.
• As for the invulnerability to AA: Seriously? I would be ok with this change if OP will only play destroyers and not any other class; see if you like it. Addditionally, OP can ask other DD players in the forum as well to see what they think about it.
• The reason most CV players do not scout is not because of reduction in offensive / defensive power, but lack of micromanaging skills in an average players. For those that saw the unofficial leagues being done between clans, it can be seen that the CVs are being used to scout just fine. After all, reduction of a single DB is negligible in terms of offensive power. Most players struggle to control more than 4 units at once; does anyone really think that they will joyfully control 1 more scout plane?
• I do not think I need to explain why clicking on an enemy ship so that scout plane can continuously follow it would be a good idea.

 

2. Regarding strafing ability

Strafing using fighters expends valuable ammo, which can be decisive in determining aerial victory.

Isn't using the fighter to shoot down the bombers is the best "teamwork" (whatever that word means in the author's mind) compared to doing minimum damage to a ship?

I do not see any reason why I should use valuable ammo to do minimum damage or suppressing AA when the same role is already filled by  dive bombers.

The current implementation of strafing ability is balanced by the fact that once a fighter fails in its strafing, it would be an easy prey against a full ammo fighter.  

 

3. Regarding zombie aircraft

This, once more, reflects a lack of understanding in part of the author.

As mentioned by the other posters, it is already possible for a plane to actually bomb a ship or escort a ship AFTER the CV is sunk.

The argument about idle airplanes becoming point bonus for the opponents' team is of little importance, considering that 40 (fourty) plane kills give about the same xp as 1 (one) ship kills.

And I do not see the connection between the opponent getting bonus xp, and OP winning or losing the game.

 

In conclusion, I found the proposal barely adds anything new to the CV gameplay, and unconvincing in encouraging teamplay between CV and the surface fleet.

It is recommended that the OP plays more CV, preferrably at mid - high tier, and ask for a guidance from a good CV player while doing so.

[scrappygwilly]

Let fighters strafe ships? Nope, they should most certainly not be able to do any damage to ships. I mean, they had 20mm cannons and if you compare the 127mm guns damage (that is low), how much damage could those 20mm cannons do then? 5-15? Its just useless.

 

"The carrier player doesn't die in the game until his last planes are dead or their ammo expended" - that gave me a minor heartattack. It can be hard to sink them as it is. Sometimes it takes more than 10-15 minutes to find them and high tier CVs almost NEVER run out of planes.

 

CVs are really strong already, I am talking about high tiers here. You can even see some CV players making fun of it. It's the mid tiers that need some sort of balancing.

 

 

Agreed that fighters doing damage to ships with machine gun and cannon fire is a bit daft. But here is an idea what if Fighters could do a strafing run on a ship but rather than damaging the ship it acted as a debuff, something like, for example, launching a strafing attack on an enemy ship forces the enemies AA to target the fighters (overriding any manual targeting of AA), the fighters will take an absolute hammering but they will draw fire away from any incoming Torp of Dive bombers, give the straffing attacks a short duration (say >20 seconds) so timing on the part of the CV player is crucial and also make it so any ship that has their Defensive Fire ability active is not affected and it might make an interesting additional tactic. 

 

 

I found the post represents ignorance of carrier game play and meta in general, and I do not see how the proposed changes will bring anything positive to any class in the game.

 

1. Regarding scouting planes:

•  Every plane in this game (fighter, torpedo and dive bombers, and floatplanes) has the ability to scout already, making it redundant.  In fact, the best scout in the game is an empty dive bomber, which has speed surpassing that of a fighter.
•  Addition of a scout plane means a reduction of other plane stocks in the hangar, which is undesirable. On the second part of the post the OP propose to add strafing ability to fighters, since it would become "useless" after there are no planes to hunt. But here, the OP propose the addition of something which is similar to the fighter, but even more useless.
• As for the invulnerability to AA: Seriously? I would be ok with this change if OP will only play destroyers and not any other class; see if you like it. Addditionally, OP can ask other DD players in the forum as well to see what they think about it.
• The reason most CV players do not scout is not because of reduction in offensive / defensive power, but lack of micromanaging skills in an average players. For those that saw the unofficial leagues being done between clans, it can be seen that the CVs are being used to scout just fine. After all, reduction of a single DB is negligible in terms of offensive power. Most players struggle to control more than 4 units at once; does anyone really think that they will joyfully control 1 more scout plane?
• I do not think I need to explain why clicking on an enemy ship so that scout plane can continuously follow it would be a good idea.

 

2. Regarding strafing ability

Strafing using fighters expends valuable ammo, which can be decisive in determining aerial victory.

Isn't using the fighter to shoot down the bombers is the best "teamwork" (whatever that word means in the author's mind) compared to doing minimum damage to a ship?

I do not see any reason why I should use valuable ammo to do minimum damage or suppressing AA when the same role is already filled by  dive bombers.

The current implementation of strafing ability is balanced by the fact that once a fighter fails in its strafing, it would be an easy prey against a full ammo fighter.  

 

3. Regarding zombie aircraft

This, once more, reflects a lack of understanding in part of the author.

As mentioned by the other posters, it is already possible for a plane to actually bomb a ship or escort a ship AFTER the CV is sunk.

The argument about idle airplanes becoming point bonus for the opponents' team is of little importance, considering that 40 (fourty) plane kills give about the same xp as 1 (one) ship kills.

And I do not see the connection between the opponent getting bonus xp, and OP winning or losing the game.

 

In conclusion, I found the proposal barely adds anything new to the CV gameplay, and unconvincing in encouraging teamplay between CV and the surface fleet.

It is recommended that the OP plays more CV, preferrably at mid - high tier, and ask for a guidance from a good CV player while doing so.. 

now im not a carrier player and a few people in this post know that rather well however this post has intrigued me quite a bit. i agree that its the mid tiers that need balancing of that the is no doubt as a battleship player some things do feel rather week when being attacked by mid tier CV's ( do any of you remember the Kongos CBT AA) . 

secondly while i agree with the above post vastly and have no argument against it the strafing ships idea and as someone suggested it could be debuffs instead did get me thinking. although i agree with troublemaker it needs some work as an idea its too strong what has been suggested. if you think about it in game though fighters do already effect accuracy on enemy planes on attack runs so it wouldnt be a stretch to far to think it could affect AA gunners accuracy on ships or divert fire. Debuffs have been mentioned via wargaming in meetings to do with their other game and Ammo types to fix a certain class. its about giving the player choice. in the case of carrier while it would give the player more choice ( maybe it could be a skill you could choose or the type of fighter you take on board your carrier) at the same time it could just make carriers more frustrating and worse for all classes, 

now as i have previously mentioned I dont play carriers so some of what i have mentioned may be wrong or a misconception and i apologise for that and feel free to correct me where you think ive gone wrong.however i do agree with Ezymodo OP in that you need to go back and play more CV gameplay to make your post and ideas more constructive and workable.  

[Kazomir]

 

It did happen, but do you think any CV captain would be willing to trade his fighters to destroy a couple of AA mounts on a BB that he can simply torp or drop bombs at?

 

If you have a fighter setup and nothing else to do with your fighters...why not?

[Ishiro32]

 

If you have a fighter setup and nothing else to do with your fighters...why not?

If you have fighter setup then why would you care about AAA? It's not like you fly your fighters around enemy ships.

 

 

It did happen, but do you think any CV captain would be willing to trade his fighters to destroy a couple of AA mounts on a BB that he can simply torp or drop bombs at?

 

In fact many would do this. That's why people often wait to attack big ships until they are wasted by HE and this is decent advantage DB have.

[Seedling]

Fighters during WW II actually managed to detonate ships, so it is a very valid tactic. Obviously on a BB or some CVs you might at best knock out some AA or unshielded secondaries, so it's rather pointless, but destroyers in particular would be far better attacked by fighters then dive bombers. Dive bombers that might hit 2 out of 6 bombs and deal 0 damage and no module damage on a beached destroyer, whereas fighters would detonate torpedo magazines...

 

I'd still keep the air strafe though.. you can recognise the difference between good and bad cv players in the way they use and counter strafing. Perhaps strafing should simply hit ships and planes alike.

 

As for controlling planes after their carrier sinks, I don't think they should remain under control, but go autonomous instead until they run out of ammo or fuel, THEN go into vulture mode around their carrier's grave. (They wouldn't know their carrier sunk until they returned.)

[ghostbuster_]

 

What if he has already destroyed practically all enemy aircraft and is trying to find something to do with all of his leftover fighters?

Hmm let me think how about scouting with fighters?

[RamirezKurita]

Hmm let me think how about scouting with fighters?

 

Sometimes there are no destroyers left and all the cruisers and battleships are permaspotted by your own ships because of their high visibility. This happens to me particularly often as I tend to go for AS decks and focus nearly all of my bombing efforts on enemy destroyers for the first half of the game, as the only counters to my own teams destroyers are enemy destroyers and aircraft.

[ghostbuster_]

 

Sometimes there are no destroyers left and all the cruisers and battleships are permaspotted by your own ships because of their high visibility. This happens to me particularly often as I tend to go for AS decks and focus nearly all of my bombing efforts on enemy destroyers for the first half of the game, as the only counters to my own teams destroyers are enemy destroyers and aircraft.

thats nice. because lots of CV players think that spoting is not their job. I even heard one time that someone said: "i wont risk my planes to scout enemy DDs. their AA shoot my planes down." you could spot the enemy CV for you sniper BBs. and once he is dead too, sit back and relax.

[Mayv]

 I even heard one time that someone said: "i wont risk my planes to scout enemy DDs. their AA shoot my planes down."

 

We need more CV players like this