Fara Carrier Guide

[Farazelleth]

Hello everyone, quick overview of who I' am!  The name is Fara (Farazelleth in game) and I've played Aircraft Carriers since the beta of World of Warships. I play for the OMNI fleet in competitive games and also play solo in Ranked seasons getting World top 2 ~ 20 depending on season (based on winrate).

 

I've decided to make a comprehensive carrier guide in the form of YouTube Lectures. As and when time permits I will add link annotations to YouTube & Twitch video replays explaining in visual detail to what I'm attempting to explain in lecture format. The intention is to create episode videos on YouTube covering each major topic based upon my experience as a CV main player.

 

The guide is quite extensive so In order to create a structured format I've created a list as you can see below. YouTube videos will be added to this thread over time, each video Episode title links directly to the list below. So for example Episode 1 will cover everything within 1. bullet points below and so on. Additionally the list below will have hyperlinks embedded allowing readers to click on material directly as it becomes available.

 

           

 

 

The explain it like I’m 5 guide to playing an aircraft carrier.

 

1.1 What is a Carrier?

1.1.1 Different plane types

1.1.1.1 Fighters

1.1.1.2 Dive Bombers

1.1.1.3 Torpedo Bombers

1.2 Difference between USN and IJN

1.2.1 IJN

1.2.1.1 More plane waves, fewer planes

1.2.1.2 Cross dropping

1.2.1.3 Greater map presence

1.2.1.4 Faster plane turnaround

1.2.1.5 Wave Loading times

1.2.2. USN

1.2.2.1 Fewer waves, more planes

1.2.2.2 Limited Flight Controls options

1.2.2.3 Wave Loading times

1.2.3 Which Nation to pick & play styles

1.3 You and your Carrier

1.3.1 How many enemy Carriers will you face?

1.3.2 What is expected from you?

1.3.3 What tier of enemy ships can you expect?

1.3.3.1 Matchmaking

1.4. The User Interface & controls

1.4.1 Remapping control keys

1.4.2 Alternative battle interface

1.4.3 Alternative mouse controls

1.4.4 Shortcuts

1.4.5 Ship & Plane waypoints

1.4.6 The Minimap

1.5 ‘Alt’ attack mode

1.5.1 Fighter strafes

1.5.2 Manual bombing

1.5.2.1 Differences between IJN & USN

1.6 Ship AA (Anti-Aircraft) fire

1.6.1 How does it really work?!

1.6.2 Manual Fire Anti-Aircraft Focus

1.6.3 Calculating real AA numbers

1.6.4 Which ships have high AA and are dangerous?

1.6.5 Estimating range of your planes to enemy Ships

1.7 Defensive Fire and you

1.7.1 What does it do and how long does it last

1.7.1.1 Cruisers and Destroyers

1.7.1.2 Aircraft carriers

1.8 Playing Tier 4 & 5 Carriers

1.8.1 Abuse of Border

1.9 Playing Tier 6+ Carriers

1.10 Playing in Divisions

 

2.1 Skill breakdown

2.1.1 The don’t pick me skills

2.1.2 Dogfighting & Scouts

2.2 Build templates

2.2.1 11, 15, 19 point builds

2.3 Tradeoffs

 

    

3.1 Flight Control selection

3.1.1 Strengths & Weaknesses

3.1.1.1 Number of waves

3.1.1.2 Exact plane count per type

3.1.2 Playstyle

3.2 Module Upgrades

3.2.1 Consumables

3.3 Ship Exterior

3.3.1 Camouflage

3.3.2 Signals

3.3.3 Flags

3.4 Recommended Commander Skill builds

 

   

4.1 General ship maneuvers, aka where to move

4.1.1 What Map

4.1.2 Enemy ship classes & tiers

4.2 Situational Awareness

4.2.1 Use the Minimap

4.2.2 Plane or Ship detected!

4.2.3 Plane location

4.2.3.1 Danger of AA

4.2.2.2 Spotting

4.2.3.3 Flight paths

4.2.4 Ship position & terrain

4.2.4.1 Can you been shot? Can you be bombed?

4.3 Manage the Map

4.3.1 Two different top-down zoom modes

4.3.1.1 Close in for bombing?

4.3.1.2 Further out for grand picture?

4.3.2 Reading the map to decide what to do, where to go

4.4 Communication

4.4.1 Battle situation

4.4.1.1 Not everyone has the same grand overview as you

4.4.2 Expressing your intentions to friendly team

4.4.3 Offering support

4.4.4 Dealing with unrealistic expectations of non-cv players

4.5 What to do first?!

4.5.1 Scout, strike or escort

 

5.1 Launch order

5.1.1 Wave ready times

5.1.2 RMC - Cancel Plane takeoff sequence

5.2 Scouting

5.2.1 Which planes to use?

5.2.2 Advantage of speed boosted bombers

5.3 Fighter micro

5.3.1 When to fight & when to run

5.3.2 Sight Denial

5.3.3 Importance of friendly and hostile AA

5.3.4 When to strafe

5.3.4.1 Ammo usage

5.3.5 When to exit strafe

5.3.5.1 Ammo usage, inability to exit with no ammo

5.3.5.2 The Saipan exception

5.3.6 Protect your bombers or friendly Fleet?

5.4 Target Selection

5.4.1 Who to bomb and why

5.4.1.1 Lone Wolf, high priority target or other etc

5.4.2 When to exercise patience

5.5 Bombing

5.5.1 Auto & Manual bombing

5.5.2 Strike Group Management

5.5.3 Target approach

5.5.4 Knowing when not to bomb!

5.5.5 How to extradite planes form bomb area

 

6. Advanced Tactics

6.1

6.1.1 Unavoidable strikes (Ultra close range TBs)

6.1.2 Approach from behind enemy player Camera

6.1.2.1 If ship is firing to Port, approach from Starboard

6.1.2.1.1 Reduces enemy players reaction time

6.1.3

6.1.3.1 Evading cross drops!

6.1.4

6.1.5 Forcing a ship turn

6.1.5.1 First TB wave forces turn, sets ship on predictable path allowing more connections from 2nd/3rd TB waves. Useful on highly maneuverable ships (CLs)

6.1.5.2 Can also force enemy ship to expose broadside to friendly ships

6.1.6

6.1.7 Damage over time stacking

6.1.7.1 Baiting Damage control party

6.1.7.2 Reapplying flooding & fires

6.1.8 Catapult Fighter Baiting

6.1.9

6.2

6.2.1 Dive bombers can destroy Light/Medium AA mounts

6.2.1.1 Send DBs first before TBs on heavy AA targets

6.2.2 Target ships subject to heavy HE spam will have reduced AA

6.3

6.3.1 Team support

6.3.1.1 Sight Denial

6.3.1.2 Preventing fighter locks and bomber attacks

6.3.2 Lures, baits & strafes

           6.3.2.1 Strafe missed strafes

          6.3.2.2

          6.3.2.3

6.3.3 Advanced Exit strafes

6.3.3.1

6.3.3.2 Exiting incoming enemy strafes if your planes are tagged

6.3.3.3

6.3.3.4 Strafe enemy fighters who exit strafe immediately

6.3.4

6.4

6.4.1 Who to spot

6.4.2 How long do you spot for

6.4.3 Spotting for torpedoes

6.5

     

6.5.1 Land first, or take off?

6.5.1.1 Plane takeoff time dependent on wave size

6.5.1.2 Two Plane landing at a time

6.6

               

       6.6.7 Surviving a Carrier Snipe

      

 

  

6.7

6.7.1 Are you USN Strike?

6.8.1.1 Split bombers & use friendly AA

6.7.2 Are you balanced IJN setup?

6.7.2.1 Split enemy fighters with bomber scouts

6.7.2.1.1 Isolate and destroy if possible

6.8

     

6.9.1 Patience

6.9.2 Realistic expectations

6.9.3 Scouting

6.9.4 End game bombing

6.9

6.9.1 Map awareness

6.9.2 Ship positioning

6.9.3 Team support

6.9.4 Survive

6.9.5 Desperate plays

6.9.6 Acceptance, go into next game. Try not to flame!

 

7.1 Ship Setup differences

7.2 Commander differences

7.3 Expectations within battle

7.4 Importance of communication

7.4.1 Fighter & friendly AA co-operation

7.4.1.1 Stealth AA DD etc

7.4.1.2 Baiting planes closer into hidden AA traps

7.5 The hard carry

7.5.1

        Warning loud audio at 16min 50sec

[Farazelleth]

Latest YouTube Videos

 

Comparing IJN & USN T9/10 Carriers

 

What makes a good Carrier?

 

Enterprise Carrier Review & Guide

 

Kaga Carrier Review & Guide

[Farazelleth]

Questions on anything I have or have not covered are welcome and I will do my best to answer them.

 

Change log

1st May 2017 - Initial Setup, Intro & Episodes 1, 2, 3.1, 3.2 added

2nd May 2017 - Episode 4 added

3rd May 2017 - Episode 5 added

4th May 2017 - Episode 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 added

5th May 2017 - Episode 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9 7 & Numerous example clips added

 

First Draft Complete! Hurray

[Farazelleth]

Topics missed in first draft.

 

Default Plane detection ranges. Plane detection is 8km by other planes and 11km by ships

 

Weather effects, Cyclones and you.

 

Calculating enemy Carrier Plane setup via game countdown Ship Comparison (mouse over)w

 

Reverse Alt attacks (strafe and bombing backwards)

[Drunken_Jedi]

This is really comprehensive! Thanks for this, must have taken quite some effort to put together. Have some rep, hope it's tasty ... (not as tasty as my cookies however )

[SexyCroat]

very nice for beginners, everyone should look these videos up BEFORE getting started in cvs.

 

[_FTD_]

very nice for beginners, everyone should look these videos up BEFORE getting started in cvs.

 

This guide is usable way beyond the beginner stage.

[SexyCroat]

This guide is usable way beyond the beginner stage.

 

sure, but i see it very usefull for beginners, Fara explained it all to very basics dow to which key to pres to do this or that.

[iJoby]

 

Excellent work, I hope WG are paying you for your immense knowledge and contribution to new and veteran CV players. 

Subscribed to your 

.

 

[OceanKiss]

very detailed guide，nice work.

[GeneraIKrizmuz]

very exciting

[lup3s]

Very well done!

 

[MaxxyNL]

Nicely done. Keep up the good work! 

 

[Allied_Winter]

Even though I'm not a CV player (I suck at RTS) I know a good (and much needed) guide if I see one! Great Job! Looking forward to the remaining chapters.

 

 

Greetings

[KarmaQU_EU]

"Hi Fara first off kudos on the detailed writeup, as a coplete noob I would like to know how to become a god amongst ships as I heard it was possible to do in ye olden times where randoms are chickesn and the CV is a god, thank you have a nice day"

 

- Every guide reader ever.

 

Now I am sure everyone has seen the irony of the above sentence. The reality with any and every guide is that is is not a magical cheat manual where you do as it says and something magical will happen. Guides are not meant substitute your own thinking. They aren't even to act as a rulebook, even though I am quite sure the facts are correct. The value of guides is that you can follow along someone else's logic on how everything fits together, and critically weigh it around in you mind. You don't even have to pretend it is correct, what you know yourself should be assumed correct first and foremost, even if it might be wrong. This is because there is in no way can you perfectly replicate a Fara.exe into your mind, and in a thought experiment, if you even deviate from the way Fara plays in a game for even one split second, then Fara rules are no longer applicable for your game because it is no longer a Fara game. Thus every game you play will only be your game, even if it might have some styles of certain guides and guidelines. Your personal choices in the situation will be what defines the outcome, not pre-established rules of causality. There is no such thing as fate, either. Thus your personal awareness in the given situation, or rather, the extent of it, is the only true limiter of how well you do. This is the secret of all good players; they always just plan slightly more ahead, see slightly wider possibilities, and play slightly more diligently than their competitors. Thus the purpose of this guide is not to shoehorn you into the tiny intricate details of how many degrees your drop is from perfection, it is to serve as a neutral yet expanseful overview of the analytical perspective of this whole situation. The soul of the CV, as how it should be played, is to be able to embody exactly what I just tried to describe which is to be able to ever so slightly and gently nudge the overall situation of the battlefield in your team's favor, and eventually win. And something as qualitative as that, is subjective. Everyone will have a different take on it, and everyone will be able to do it differently. Yes, that includes you. You and your own unique logic can, and will (at least try to think of it in this way) be able to overcome ever many logic forms of the unicums on the enemy team and guide your team to victory. But that requires you to sort out every flaw, every problem, imperfection that involves which bar it from happening. What those are, in what forms they take, and how they should be addressed is absolutely up to you. But, in what areas they are likely to happen, what forms and situations they are likely to be involved in, this guide will help to cover their topics of and serve as a reminder and checklist. Thus is how it is.

 

Good luck and fair seas - from once the only top 20 EU CV player to use the air superiority IJN build.

[Takru]

Personally, I am always struggling with estimating the range of enemy AA when playing on different maps since the visual scale varies a lot. I.e. Haven is a lot smaller than Okinawa etc, so when I look at the map on Haven, enemy AA has a wider range than on Okinawa ... not sure if that's understandable, but I hope you get my drift.

 

 

Can you may be edit your first post in such a way that you use your synopsis as a video guide simultaneously by way of adding hyperlinks?

 

Like this:

 

 

1.

 

 

[walter3kurtz]

This is going to be good, thanks!

 

Might I suggest that you link the video's in the index you made (like Takru suggested)?

[Takru]

Watched video 1

 

First time ever I was even thinking about rebinding keys.

 

Seriously, that should make handling IJN CVs in particular somewhat easier .... (Hakuryu with 8 squadrons anybody?)

 

I'll be off, facepalming because of own stupidity.

[KarmaQU_EU]

And also, as for every rule, there is the exception. So don't cry if you follow the rules but come out worse. Sometimes, you gotta do the drop under AA barrage. Sometimes, you gotta go for that otherwise un-threatly ship. What is priority and the why is always changing, in no way can a guide cover every conceivable scenario and provide accurate solutions for them all. Sometimes, you will just have to use the ridiculously increased spread of your torpedoes under AA barrage to your advantage instead, and the absolute horror, of the enemy fleet (hint: simple geometry). Sometimes, you just gotta do a bow-on drop on the most heavily guarded ship in their entire fleet landing precisely your single and last torpedo which, to their absolute horror (and the absolute delight of your otherwise undelighted teammate), unnerves and tilts them (because your single surviving tb plane drops from (beyond) max range and they eye that torpedo coming in for about 30 horrifying seconds and it still hits them, bow on, causing just the extra flooding they dread, and which your friendly Zao is lavishing).

 

Games are meant to be fun. GO have fun. If a guide doesn't have that effect on you after reading it, then you're not having fun. If you don't have fun, well, god help you do anything.

Seriously, that should make handling IJN CVs in particular somewhat easier .... (Hakuryu with 8 squadrons anybody?)

WEll, please think of it as why it is precisely fun, tilting, and absolutely trollishly horrifying for the enemy when you pull it off. Plus, you know, bragging rights because no one else plays it.

[Takru]

Games are meant to be fun. GO have fun.

 

Quoted for truth.

 

Also, sometimes you have to drop torps and DBs in such a way as to make the enemy turn broadside into friendly guns or into that friendly DD torpedoe spread or just to decap a ship inside a cap zone.

[Battleship_Nagato]

Subbed. Thank you just so much for doing this, I really needed help about carriers~

[Farazelleth]

Personally, I am always struggling with estimating the range of enemy AA when playing on different maps since the visual scale varies a lot. I.e. Haven is a lot smaller than Okinawa etc, so when I look at the map on Haven, enemy AA has a wider range than on Okinawa ... not sure if that's understandable, but I hope you get my drift.

 

 

Can you may be edit your first post in such a way that you use your synopsis as a video guide simultaneously by way of adding hyperlinks?

 

Like this:

 

 

1.

 

 

 

Smart idea!

 

My thinking is to do a lecture based episode covering the major number points. And for smaller sub sections hyperlinking would be a great way to provide additional material to showcase what I'm trying to explain. +1 to you sir

[KarmaQU_EU]

Is there a way to hyperlink within your own post? It'll be helpful to know, if someone could please teach me.

[Takru]

Is there a way to hyperlink within your own post? It'll be helpful to know, if someone could please teach me.

 

When you write / edit a post, mark what you want the hyperlink to cover like this and hit the "chain" symbol in the text field.

 

The linked thread showcases an older forum software but the symbol looks pretty much the same.

[Takru]

My thinking is to do a lecture based episode covering the major number points.

 

One more thing:

Since the index includes both linked and non-linked parts, could you possibly differentiate between them by way of using colors? I.e. make hipper-linked text blue and leave the non-linked parts black?

 

Might be easier to find the linked bits.