Why do people keep using US carriers?

[eliastion]

eliastion, on 16 January 2017 - 01:48 PM, said:

 

Just today I had a Taiho match that illustrates well what I mean. I faced an AS USN equivalent on two brothers (or what was the name of the match with suicide channel between two big islands). He had so many fighters, the sky was full of them, I cursed him in my head and spent half the game doing nothing. But the "doing nothing" part still allowed me to outplay him. And a couple times I did just manage to sneak past his air cover. My drops took a lot of time to set up around his fighter cover. Sometimes they were rushed (no time for corrections with enemy fighters approaching). I did lose all my fighters (mostly to his fighters while trying to save my other air groups) and most dive bombers - he alone managed to shoot down... don't remember exactly but it was well over 50 of my planes.

The problem is: he didn't manage to stop me. Almost all his efforts were focused on stopping me and I still managed to sneak in a couple drops, dealing over 100k hp damage. Oh, and in the end game I killed their last DD trying to cap one of the points - far from the remnants of the fleet and carrier's air cover. He got rewarded for these plane kills he did. His score wasn't bad. Actually, had he won, his XP would've been more than mine. But he lost. He lost because he had little strike potential to outweigh even these couple drops I managed. He gave up his strike potential for the potential to block mine... but it was Random - and it was just not possible for him to block me completely (assuming roughly comparable skill on both sides) - all he managed was making my life harder and more frustrating. 

 

 

 

You make some good points.

 

In the above example how much more damage could you have done if he had a strike loadout while you would still be providing a deterrent forcing him to be the cautious one? Would the extra damage you could have done outweighed what he could have done, assuming equal skill?

 

It's very difficult to say since I lack 1st-hand experience with USN carriers. I played them on playtest servers to check how they feel and to be better prepared for when I face them. However, my general perception is that I just couldn't effectively stop a USN strike CV that seems to play as well as I do. I have only two fighter squads. In Randoms more often than not I see 2-3 groups of ships to protect plus sometimes someone blunders away from even these groups. Oh, and also my fighters are pretty fragile AND I don't have a big supply so I can't really hover them over ships that get into close-range fights - my fighters will simply melt from enemy AA if I do so, so they need to stay back... and that means that they're inevitably late for effective interception - I can usually strafe incoming groups IF my planes are positioned right but it's the not-so-effective strafe from the front (to deal a really heavy blow fighters need to attack from the back or at least the side).

 

Also, it's very important to note that I'm talking Taiho here. USN opponent of Taiho is Essex and Essex on his strike loadout does feature a single fighter squadron. This makes a big difference - basically, it means that if he commits his planes to protecting the strike groups (as he should since one fighter squadron can't protect the fleet), his strikes WILL go through. My fighters could make equally skilled USN carrier a bit more cautious but they wouldn't really make that much of a difference since every time I manage to significantly reduce such carrier effectiveness, I inevitably get the feeling that I just met a less skilled player that didn't plan his attacks well and/or didn't react to my planes the way he should. If at all.

 

Now, how would the match be different for me? A single enemy fighter group would be little threat - I could intercept it (or scare away) with my fighters or simply play around them - one squadron can be in one place at the time, no more. So, the battle would've been much more comfortable for me. Still, the number of targets of opportunity wouldn't go up THAT much (most idiots sailing alone in BBs were also the idiots that sailed away from where enemy fighters were able to efficiently protect them - so the same targets I actually did attack anyway) and the travel/service times of planes would still be the major limiter. In that particular battle I'd easily break through 150k damage, maybe get closer to 200k... HOWEVER that calculation involves one major assumption: similar dynamic of the battle. It was a long one and a pretty even one. Now, how would enemy CV killing things - and my extra damage - affect that? It's quite possible that the match would've been faster paced (meaning less time for planes flying there and back) and quite likely my own team would've actually crumbled - remember that it was a relatively even match despite enemy CV not doing much besides reducing my contribution a bit. It would be more comfortable, but - quite possibly - less successful and, in fact, huge DMG values wouldn't even be guaranteed since the battle would just end quicker than it did.

[Tigdam]

Why do people keep using American carriers, well overpowered fighters? and more torpedoes in the water from each squadron. Honestly they should remove fighter set ups from the game completely then they might actually get around to fixing the lead-out issues with usa carriers.