The CV skill(s) that should die

[dasCKD]

The CV skill(s) that should die

In news everyone already knows, the new skills for carriers were created by those who have never touched a carrier in their entire lives. The new developments suggests that not only have the devs never played carriers, but they have only heard about carriers from tales of distant lands. That's not what I'm here to talk about however. I'm here to talk about why Air Supremacy and Aircraft servicing Expert should be removed.

 

Aircraft servicing expert, in case anyone doesn't know, is a carrier only skill that grants 5% extra HP to all carrier borne aircraft and improves the servicing times. Air Supremacy is a carrier only skill. It has the effect of adding an extra plane to fighters and dive bomber squads. It has the following effects on the following carriers.

 

Carrier	Fighter	Torpedo bomber	Dive bomber
USN	+16.6% HP/firepower	no effect	+16.6% HP/firepower
IJN	+25% HP/firepower	no effect	+25% HP/firepower
SAIPAN	+34% HP/firepower	no effect	+12.5% HP/firepower

 

Many people also know about the recent carrier mirroring. This was done for a very simple reason that any carrier that is under tiered would get massacred by the enemy carrier. An AS Ranger doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against a strike Taiho. This may be a little bit of an extreme example, but it illustrated the point. Higher tiered battleships can get outplayed and killed by a lower tiered battleship, a Yamato's citadel isn't exactly well defended against the guns of an Amagi or N. Car when they're up close. With a carrier however, the skill gap would probably have to be within the 20% win rate difference between the two players for the lower tiered carrier to stand a chance. To illustrate why I think Air Superiority and Aircraft Servicing Expert should be removed, here are some comparisons between the carriers I own: a Taiho and a Shokaku. For the purposes of this particular point, both carriers are in their fully upgraded configuration.

 

Taiho vs Shokaku by plane HP

	Fighters	Torpedo bomber	Dive bomber
Taiho	2306 Health Points	2355 Health Points	2245 Health Points
Shokaku	2092 Health Points	1806 Health Points	1691 Health Points

 

Planes behave as a single unit however, so here is what we're looking at.

	Fighters	Torpedo bomber	Dive bomber
Taiho	11530 Health Points	9420 Health Points	11225 Health Points
Shokaku	10460 Health Points	7224 Health Points	8455 Health Points

 

Many people probably can't process these numbers too well however, so let's put this into context. A Taiho, even running 2/2/2, will stomp a Shokaku into oblivion as anyone who plays carriers and a lot of people who don't play carriers know. This is because of a difference between their plane performance. If we used the Shokaku as a baseline, we can see how much of a performance increase each plane squad gets from the transition from Shokaku to Taiho.

 

Fighters: (100/10460)*11530 = 110.2%

Torpedo Bombers: (100/7224)*9420 = 130.4%

Dive Bombers: (100/8455)*11225 = 132.8%

 

This means that the Taiho, upgrades and captain skills all accounted for, has a 24.5% plane health advantage to the Shokaku. This is a jump of an entire tier at the largest carrier power spike in the entire tree. If we consider the numbers I presented earlier for the performance increase that can be achieved by stacking the Air Supremacy and Aircraft Servicing Expert skills, we can compare these two values. The comparison assumes that the performance increase is static. If the performance increase due to the skill is cumulative, then the differences will be even more pronounced.

 

Air Superiority + Aircraft Servicing Expert vs 1 tier CV difference comparison

1 Tier Δ	+24.5%
USN	+24.6%
IJN	+30%
SAIPAN	+39%

 

This means that the performance difference between these two carriers as caused by their tiers as well as modules that are restricted to higher tiered carriers is actually significantly smaller than the advantage conferred by AS + ASE over a vanilla carrier (with no captain skills). Fighting in a vanilla carrier against a 15 point carrier is like fighting a Taiho with a Shokaku. I may be alone in my assessment, but a skill option in a skill tree should be important but somewhat negligible. The current difference in power as demonstrated here indicated however that the tier 4 and 5 skills are completely mandatory on carriers. If the extra fighter and bomber is needed to balance carriers against higher tier ships, then that skill should be standard to all carriers as a static boost to their performance. In the current system, the advantage conveyed by the skill is simply too high.

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A little bit Extra

The skills most relevant to carriers in this new patch includes the Evasive Maneuvers, an entirely useless skill outside of clan battles and Emergency takeoff, a skill created by someone who can't tell the difference between a carrier and an ironing board. Just for fun however, I decided that someone who actually plays carriers should just create my own carrier exclusive skill branch with some skill that would actually be both useful to the carrier whilst providing a genuine choice between two options.

 

Tier 1

Training wheels

-30% torpedo autodropping distance.

-15% torpedo spread in autodrop.

-20% dive bomber dispersion in autodrop.

 For new players.

Aircraft Obfuscation Expert

-10% aircraft detection range

 Gives aircraft a bit more defense against extremely long range AA. A relatively simple skill though it would be rendered mostly useless by basic ship formations, hence why it's a tier 1 skill.

Tier 2

Explosives Expert

+10% alpha to ships between tiers 2 - 7

+18% torpedo alpha to ships between tiers 8 - 10

+20% torpedo detection range

+15% HE alpha.

-10% change of flooding.

-6% chance of fires.

 Tier 3 is where I can actually start putting the more powerful skills. This skill will be competing with skills like Basics of Survivability which is another skill considered mandatory to carriers by some. The increase to alpha damage will be somewhat offset my improvements to ship HP and armor protection whilst still stopping lower tier CVs from being completely overpowered.

Saboteur Expert

+15% chance of flooding

+1.5% fire chance for guns < 140 mm

+2% fire chance for guns 104 - 179 mm

+3% fire chance for guns 180 - 240 mm

+5% fire chance for guns > 240 mm and bombs

+20% module damage

-8% torpedo alpha

-10% HE alpha

This would be a skill that could allow demolitions expert to be mixed with a skill that is likely to be extremely effective if used correctly. Whilst not being as static or reliable as pure alpha damage, it could be used to great effect. The skill also needs to compete with basics of survivability. 15% is equal to the bonus conferred by the flood flag,

Tier 3

Deck Servicing Expert

-50% plane servicing times

-40% squad recreation time (for when a squad gets wiped)

-50% plane retrieving time

Planes of different types can be retrieved at once

 Many tier 2 skills can be taken at once much like tier 1 skills, so I avoided doing something too powerful or something that would actually affect carrier interaction with other ships. This skill would help IJN and be a massive boost to USN CVs with their minute long servicing times whilst not creating a gigantic leap in CV performance in an average match as most of the time in a CV is spend sending the planes to the correct point on the map. Nevertheless, this skill will reduce the amount of time spent sitting down and drumming fingers agast tables.

Storage Hangar Expert

+3 reserve planes per CV tier

The Langley would have 12 extra planes for example, making the carrier far less punishing. Might need nerfing though, but the skill doesn't really affect the instance engagements with carriers whilst allowing for the carrier to stay in the battle and relevant for longer if they play aggressively.

Tier 4

Nerves of Steel

-40% defensive fighter and fighter dispersion effects.

 Should probably have been its own skill in the first place.

Aircraft Direction Expert

-20% to aircraft turning radius

-30% size of point of no return circle

-10% torpedo bomber drop spread

-30% dive bomber drop spread

-8% plane flight speed

 This skill basically makes carriers easier to use. The smaller circle means that carriers will find it easier to execute attack runs. This is a skill that makes the carrier play better whilst not being so overpowered that it is mandatory. It would be an extremely attractive skill for the much neglected main USN CV line however, as it makes their dive bombers significantly more effective. A lot of clan CVs will probably like this one.

Experimental Engine

+40% aircraft turning radius

+10% aircraft movement speed

+20% aircraft movement speed (w/o payload)

+5% to ship turning radius

+8% to ship movement speed

 This makes aircraft attack faster and allows them to attack targets that have stronger AA firepower. It also allows them to return much more quickly to rearm and allows for better spotter squads. Whilst ADE makes it easier to attack small targets and cruisers EE will make it easier and safer to attack larger targets with extremely large alpha AA values like battleships.

Sixth.five sense

Shows when an aircraft is visible to enemy players

It'll be useful when playing against AS carriers. It can also probably be exploited by clan players to use planes as detection lamps.

[Fino_93]

good premises, but the skill in your tree are too OP for me, a CE for planes in t1? and "aicraft direction expert" alone would be more powerfull than any current carrier based plane ability including air supremacy IMHO.

 

I agree that CV on t5/6 and up should be buffed, but not in this way.

[El2aZeR]

There is a turning radius on aircraft? Tbh I never even noticed that, directional changes seem almost instant. Unless ofc you mean the slight bleed of speed when changing direction.

 

Values do seem far too high, but the overall ideas are sound. Definitely better than what WG came up with (well, ok, that's not exactly hard to do, but still ).

[_ramrus_]

Lol remove op AS and replace it with op low tier skills, you need to tone down those numbers a lot.

That tier1 especially, it's airplane version of new RDF. Look, DD spoted my planes.

 

Since you have so much time to dwell on CV stuff OP, could you please do the math on DPS with +10% for tier diference for Shokaku vs Taiho matchup.

Also Bogue vs Zuiho, that I'll try myself.

[Fino_93]

There is a turning radius on aircraft? Tbh I never even noticed that, directional changes seem almost instant.

 

there is, you don't notice it when planes are simply moving through the map and you make them turn, but when you try to correct their attack manouver in the last moment before of the point of no return they show a slow and enourmous (compared to ships) turning radius, at the point that most of the ships can start turning on the other way and complete the rudder shifting before than the correct attack manouver starts, forcing you to make another correction and so on, it is one of (my) bigger problem with carriers atm.

[SexyCroat]

as i mostly agree on the usefullness of them, those numbers dont add up. 25% more chance of flooding is too much, that tier 2 skill Dock servicing expert would make cvs throw planes out like a cruiser spits HE,  these skills would bring back CVs back to OP and I as a CV player (both Midway and Hakuryu) dont want that, CVs should be a force but not that big.

[dasCKD]

Adjustments have been made to the values.

[El2aZeR]

there is, you don't notice it when planes are simply moving through the map and you make them turn, but when you try to correct their attack manouver in the last moment before of the point of no return they show a slow and enourmous (compared to ships) turning radius, at the point that most of the ships can start turning on the other way and complete the rudder shifting before than the correct attack manouver starts, forcing you to make another correction and so on, it is one of (my) bigger problem with carriers atm.

 

Oh, yeah, that. I usually cancel the run then reposition and attack again when that happens.

[dasCKD]

sixth.five moved to a tier 4 skill.

[DragonstrikerOrigin]

To be honest i found you thread very interessting since it shows what alternatives you could present for the CV playes.

So you get a big thumps up from me for all the effort you put in to the alternative possible skills that could make the CV play better

 

But what i must point out is that its very rarely that you encounter as a T8 CV a T9 CV. So it would be pointless to say a if statement when Taiho and Shokaku would meet against each other.

Also the biggest issue what CV has is that the planes are doing against any AA to quick to be usefull. So if you would take this skill away then probably we would have even a bigger issue with airplane survivability. 

 

You can watch a video made by Flamu that points out the new Captain skills and how overpowerd every ship becomes now with AA. So we need better skills to improve the surivibility of any aircraft otherwise the should just remove the CV line entirly.

[dasCKD]

But what i must point out is that its very rarely that you encounter as a T8 CV a T9 CV. So it would be pointless to say a if statement when Taiho and Shokaku would meet against each other.

 

You never have to encounter tier 9 CVs in a tier 8 CV. The point of the comparison is to demonstrate how powerful the ASE AS skill combo is and how it doesn't have a place in the game just because there's no other skill in the entire game that can hope to compete with the usefulness of those two skills.

Also the biggest issue what CV has is that the planes are doing against any AA to quick to be usefull. So if you would take this skill away then probably we would have even a bigger issue with airplane survivability. 

 

That's why I believe that if the skill is needed then it should be automatically given to all carriers much like how all ships now have sixth sense without taking the captain skill. A skill that is necessary for a ship should not be an option, it should be the default. You wouldn't see a skill that gives 200 extra mm of armor to a battleship or 2x better rate of fire to a cruiser just because of how broken those skills would be and how necessary it is that those skills were given to all ships.

[_ramrus_]

On those number crunching for air supremacy with same skills and modules, +10% for usn cause tier5 ( wildcat) vs tier6 ( zero )

 

Bogue 391 / 9541

Zuiho 240 / 7565

 

With AS Bogue vs non AS Zuiho almost 200% diff where it counts the most.

And those builds become much cheaper with next patch in current state, meaning I get 5 extra points on my 16 point Bogue captain

 

[Shagulon]

some love for CVs please WG

[Molybdane]

Haven't taken a good look at the skills you propose yet for a quick response:

 

Your premise makes no sense to me. Air Superioroty and Aircraft servicing expert are overpowered, because it makes too much a difference between T8 and T9 cv's? And yet, you stated that cv mirror matchmaking ensures this will never happen. What is the problem here? What am I missing?

 

Also, you need to take a look at you numbers:

 

The USN fighter plane HP/Firepower increase is 16% (from 6 to 7 right, I don't have air superiority but USN fighters consist of 6 plane standard)

 

Thee percenate increases are far less outrageous, you added 100%. They should be:

 

Fighters +10,2 %

Torp bombers + 30,4 %

Dive bombers + 32,8 %

 

You decide how this affects the rest of your post.

[RUSSIANBlAS]

The burning CV skill is actually really funny, makes you wonder what any of the testers do or if they're listened to.

 

Any low tier CV taking it isn't going to live for long enough to enjoy any of its benefits and a high tier CV player just wouldn't take it as you'd hope they're at least partly competent.

[dasCKD]

Your premise makes no sense to me. Air Superioroty and Aircraft servicing expert are overpowered, because it makes too much a difference between T8 and T9 cv's? And yet, you stated that cv mirror matchmaking ensures this will never happen. What is the problem here? What am I missing?

 

No, that is not my point. The point is that the power difference between a carrier WITH AS and ASE and one without those two skills is LARGER than the performance difference between a tier 8 and tier 9 carrier which is why those two skills should simply not exist. The advantages they confer should be automatically incorporated into ALL carriers, not just the ones with the skill. No one would say that pitting a Taiho against a Shokaku is fair, but WG's carrier mirror is tacitly stating that there is no problem in pitting two carriers with that level of performance difference against each other as long as the tiers of those two carriers is identical.

The USN fighter plane HP/Firepower increase is 16% (from 6 to 7 right, I don't have air superiority but USN fighters consist of 6 plane standard)

 

Error in my arithmetics, it has been fixed.

Thee percenate increases are far less outrageous, you added 100%. They should be:

 

Fighters +10,2 %

Torp bombers + 30,4 %

Dive bombers + 32,8 %

 

No there shouldn't. I was performing a calculation, not divining a value from the ether. You can do the calculations yourself. I removed the 100% when I create later tables because only the excess of 100% is relevant, but those values where the values that the percentage calculations yielded.

 

edit: the calculations yielded 110.2% in the case of fighters because that is the percentage comparison between the Taiho and the Shokaku. The Taiho's fighter squad has 110.2% of the HP of the Shokaku's fighter squad. The Taiho DOES NOT have 10.2% of the HP of the Shokaku's fighter squad.

You decide how this affects the rest of your post.

 

It doesn't.

[T_H_0_R]

+1 for the effort. I don't agree with removal of AS skill, especially since now that it requires 14 points to get it (well, it will with the new skills).

 

The new CV skills are plain noob traps and IMHO garbage and need to go or be reworked / moved to different rows when reworked.

[EmilyFara]

Sounds good / interesting

[Ferry_25]

Errr. I always tempt to make a screenshot of a match with a CV and send it to Greenpeace to show they're not extinct yet. I hardly notice their role in combat in 99,9% of the matches. I wouldn't take away more skills OP. Or do you want to see people chaining themselves to WG HQ in Cyprus to avoid complete extinction? The CV is pathetic enough in the current meta already. Seeing their performance ingame the fact modern navies are designed around carriers is as big a mystery as Cheops's pyramids to me

[ilhilh]

Wow, I am apparently reading this post after the adjustments.  Whilst there are some great ideas for skills and their effects (kudos for that), the percentage changes are all out of whack, particularly with a 19 pt captain.

[Kashuken]

Ignoring the values the skills are much better than anything WG can come up with.

[dasCKD]

Ignoring the values the skills are much better than anything WG can come up with.

 

That's not very much of a compliment ;)

[IVemo]

It is quite clear WG did very bad job from a CV's point of view with the new skills, and the fact they did not separate the skills into their own tree is just incomprehensible. Not to mention that they are going to revamp CVs in 2017 (heh heh..if  2016 was going to be a great year for CVs..), it does not make any sense to make new skills for CVs before the revamp.

 

The best solution could be a skill tree of 2 CV options per tier to customize the play, and not to offer straight buffs... because the buffs will just be auto-picked.

 

On current skills:

- Evasive maneuvers could be changed to: When loaded with bombs/torps, reduce detectability and speed. Skill's effect will turn off if squadron is detected. Skill itself switchable on/off (before match?).

- Firey takeoff just replaced with Defensive fire, and def fire removed from all CVs.

- Dogfighting is a relic.... What if some functionalities were tied to skills, such as fighter strafing? Of course such a skill would be auto picked, so would need wider change

- Self def armament for bombers.. right.. you cannot tell if you picked it or not so again a 100% useless skill.

- Air supremacy is a must pick, so should be changed.

[159Hunter]

I like your skills, but some seem a bit too strong. Like fe Aircraft Direction Expert and Experimental Engine. You might want to add some downsides to those skills as well, cause right now they are must haves in my book, simply cause they don't have a negative effect.
 

Maybe WG should read this as well, you know, for their upcoming cv rework...

[Ishiro32]

 

I am opposing AS Skill since the introduction of the Saipan and I am actually annoyed that I did not notice earlier how much bad that skill is. The performance jump is huge and is inconsistent as it’s heavily depended on the wing size. It is impossible to balance CV with and without this skill at the same time. It also limits possible future design options as if WG decided to make whole line with just 2 fighters per wing it would give them immense advantage while for 8 wing squads it’s benefit would be negligible. This skill is creating issues only when one of the players don’t have it and before there was a premium CV, situations like that were rather rare. So this skill is incompatible with any premium CV as it gives immense advantage to the player with better cpt.

There is also bigger issue with this skill that Saipan showed. Try playing fighter setup without this skill, you will notice that because of your low numbers you can’t contest against other fighters in straight up fight. It was forcing only barrage gameplay which made sense since the strike part of the fighter setup was pretty much automatic (no manual drop needed for high efficiency). Now with the skill fighter Saipan can challenge others in straight up right click combat, effectively getting rid of the whole challenge behind the deck and breaking whole idea behind it.

Saipan fighters also were balanced before with the low ammo which made fighter barrages risky venture, but WG decided to buff ammo count on that ship. Making whole deck pretty straight up dumb.

 

I don’t like your proposed skills though. WG says it wants to open new options for CVs, so why everyone is focused on the idea behind just straight up numerical upgrades.

You want skills to be a choice, to be a specialization. You can get that by focusing more on the idea that skills are half upgrades half sidegrades and they always have some kind of trade off. Let me just show example of what I have in mind:

Skill: I want to drop attack blobs and crusiers

• -20% speed of your attack planes
• -50% damage received from AAA arment
• Panicked planes have the same drop as usual but their speed drops down another 20%

Numbers are random pretty much just to show the idea. Which is to give CV option to counter blobs and crusiers DF. The tradeoff is huge as not only it lower overall performance (speed is critical stat for CVs), but at the same time it leaves attack planes very vulnerable to fighters. In the situation when attacking lone crusier the speed debuff from DF skill should give the crusier chance to evade the majority of the damage from drop thanks to lower speed of planes.

Skill: Lighter torps, faster planes

• 10% to speed of attack planes
• -5% health of attack planes
• +7 knots to the plane deployed torpedoes
• -20% alpha from torps
• Increase activation time of torpedoes by 1s.

This one is supposed to give option to perform long drops, while making sure faster torps are not used to abuse DD hunting.

 

Skill: Just let me use my fighters

Fighthers no longer have to attack back when attacked by other planes. They can move when being attacked with lower speed and they will fight back, but will deal only rear gunner damage.

 

Both of those are immense game changers and are a bit too bloated (to many elements in one skill), you don’t have to go that hardcore. Evasive maneuver skill overall is step in the right direction, but we need more stuff like that. To have a real choice, to really tailor our ships to our needs. Not just… 10% more ammo… Hell yeah, now I can do the same thing I did before but better.

Overall WG consistently shows that they have no idea what to do with CVs, they are so disconnected from the class it’s not funny. I read what they wanted to do with currently proposed CV tree... and they are failing hard.