Why Aircraft Carriers feel unbalanced

[WingedHussar_Adler]

4 hours ago, Th3Fl0 said:

Hello hater! How nice of you not to read what I wrote and only assume that it is a cry to remove CVs or such. I'm not feeling butt hurt because a random CV didn't cover me. I'm trying to initiate a discussion about CV's in relation to the people that use them. Read my post, and try to contribute in a positive way, like many already did before you. Otherwise, just be quiet. Thank you.

Wow. Epic. Ignorant and still did not get a single point why your topic is failfest. 

 

 

[Th3Fl0]

5 minutes ago, 15JG52Adler said:

Wow. Epic. Ignorant and still did not get a single point why your topic is failfest. 

 

 

I'm sorry that you lack the ability to have at least an open mind. Since you have nothing useful to contribute, I would kindly ask you to refrain from further comments. Thank you.

[Th3Fl0]

Just before, I had a perfect example of a battle where things went wrong. The CV went AFK mid-battle, when he found out that he couldn't really handle the enemy CV (who happend to be one of my clan members, which is our CV main). From there it went pretty fast. Enemy CV knew which ships to pick. It is these type players that I talk about, and it is these players that ruin the game for 21 others. 

[LazyInsight]

4 hours ago, Deckeru_Maiku said:

remove strafing, as that ability is buggy as hell imho and the skill ceiling is way too high

 

Never seen any bugs with strafing, besides UI problems with accepting orders but that applies to every CV operation anyway. Problem with removing strafing is that the outcome of CV vs CV airbattle would be random, as click on fighter engagements are pure RNG. Same planes with same upgrades and captain skills can tie enemy fighters over friendly AA and still end up being wiped out.

In case of two players of equall skill going against each other, one will just ranomly get air superiority and the other cant do anything about it.

 

Another problem with removing strafes will be inability to defend friendly ships at all, CVs could position their strike teams, and perform attacks with maximum efficiency, without fear of losing most of their planes.

[elblancogringo]

I totally agree with OP when he thinks that working on planes attacks controls could reduce the skill gap, therefore making the games more balanced when a very good player faces a not so good one.

But I don't think removing all manual attacks would be the solution.

I do think however, that the fighters strafe machanic needs to be competely removed.

Give back the manual drops at tier 4 and 5, but stop those strafe fiesta where you'll see a skilled player totally annihilate the capacity of the other one to even use his planes.

Oh, and it will maybe help balance that awful Saipan monster.

[elblancogringo]

6 minutes ago, LazyInsight said:

Another problem with removing strafes will be inability to defend friendly ships at all, CVs could position their strike teams, and perform attacks with maximum efficiency, without fear of losing most of their planes.

Strafe didn't exist back in the beginning of WoWs.

Remove strafe but increase fighters dps a bit, and increase the panic aura of bombers when locked by fighters squads (I mean increase the drop pattern surface more). There are ways to deal with the strafe removal.

[El2aZeR]

3 minutes ago, elblancogringo said:

Remove strafe but increase fighters dps a bit, and increase the panic aura of bombers when locked by fighters squads. There are ways to deal with the strafe removal.

 

The most fighters you have is usually two, split across two flanks. Bombers tend to number in 4 all the way up to 6. There is no way you can clear them all out without some kind of AoE attack unless you up fighter dps to ridiculous levels. As in full AA spec DM + DFAA levels.

You could also simply kill fighters with your bombers by picking two skills that were previously noob traps (Evasive Maneuver + Expert Rear Gunner). That'd still devalue fighters completely as a both an active and passive air denial tool. You could basically only intercept if your enemy is about to drop which really will not do anything given the small time window.

Also this assumes your enemy is simply going to let himself be intercepted as he can see your fighters coming from miles away. When you try to save an ally you usually have only a small time window to prevent enemy planes from causing catastrophic damage which prevents a click engagement entirely. If your fighters are in the area anyway, the enemy CV simply won't go there.

Not to mention that this would once again promote selfish play. Lock enemy fighters with your own, go deal catastrophic damage to your target. Doesn't matter if your team is left without air cover once you do, at least you get some sweet sweet numbers out of it. There's nothing you can do to cover your team with only click fights anyway, either the enemy also simply locks your fighters with his or he chooses a target you're not in place to protect. And after enemy bombers have dropped their ordinance any kind of attempt to kill them would kill your own fighters.

 

Considering the current state of CV play and what fighters would look like without it strafing is not only a perfectly fine mechanic, I would even go as far as calling it essential as with it fighters pose the serious threat to air strikes they should quite frankly be. Unless you replace it with an equally dominant mechanic there is simply no way you can remove it.

 

Instead, let new players actually know that something like strafing exists, how to look for it (maybe a better visual indicator is needed here, currently you can only see an enemy fighter squad strafing if you're way too close for comfort or if you can recognize the particular behaviors the s***ty UI tends to exhibit when an enemy squad strafes. Also it is obviously mandatory that the UI is fixed), how to dodge it and how to counter it. Same things applies to strafing out.

[elblancogringo]

1 hour ago, El2aZeR said:

 

The most fighters you have is usually two, split across two flanks. Bombers tend to number in 4 all the way up to 6. There is no way you can clear them all out without some kind of AoE attack unless you up fighter dps to ridiculous levels. As in full AA spec DM + DFAA levels.

You could also simply kill fighters with your bombers by picking two skills that were previously noob traps (Evasive Maneuver + Expert Rear Gunner). That'd still devalue fighters completely as a both an active and passive air denial tool. You could basically only intercept if your enemy is about to drop which really will not do anything given the small time window.

Also this assumes your enemy is simply going to let himself be intercepted as he can see your fighters coming from miles away. When you try to save an ally you usually have only a small time window to prevent enemy planes from causing catastrophic damage which prevents a click engagement entirely. If your fighters are in the area anyway, the enemy CV simply won't go there.

Not to mention that this would once again promote selfish play. Lock enemy fighters with your own, go deal catastrophic damage to your target. Doesn't matter if your team is left without air cover once you do, at least you get some sweet sweet numbers out of it. There's nothing you can do to cover your team with only click fights anyway, either the enemy also simply locks your fighters with his or he chooses a target you're not in place to protect. And after enemy bombers have dropped their ordinance any kind of attempt to kill them would kill your own fighters.

 

Considering the current state of CV play and what fighters would look like without it strafing is not only a perfectly fine mechanic, I would even go as far as calling it essential as with it fighters pose the serious threat to air strikes they should quite frankly be. Unless you replace it with an equally dominant mechanic there is simply no way you can remove it.

 

Instead, let new players actually know that something like strafing exists, how to look for it (maybe a better visual indicator is needed here, currently you can only see an enemy fighter squad strafing if you're way too close for comfort or if you can recognize the particular behaviors the s***ty UI tends to exhibit when an enemy squad strafes. Also it is obviously mandatory that the UI is fixed), how to dodge it and how to counter it. Same things applies to strafing out.

I understand your point of view, and what you say makes sense. I am not a skilled CV player, neither an experienced one, I only play CV from times to times when I'm in the mood to have a bit of variety in the gameplay.

However, what I see is that plenty of players say that there are some things which are wrong with the current CV play, (and even WG acknowledges on that as they do not accept CV in clan battles) but every proposition/idea has its downside which makes any possibility of improvement just a dream.

I might be wrong with this idea of strafe removal, but then, what should WG do?

I bet they have no clue at all, which is why the now famous "2017, year of the carrier", finished in that way, with nothing done and an exclusion from clan battles.

I find it sad, but maybe only fixing the UI (go go WG, you could do that at least please!!) and let the CV be dominant and highly skill-based is the only way to go.

[MacFergus]

Its not that CVs are op its the fact that AA has been discarded thx to WG introducing the IFHE and FP skills people now in most BBs and a lot of CA/CLs ignore BFT and AFT due to the lack of CV players this has intensified and with the combination of HE module destructions making CVs life a lot easier than it used to be.

 

CVs were never a problem back in the day sure they were feared but people had the AA to deal with them if they worked as a team.

 

The other problem with CVs is the skill ceiling you are either very good or bad there doesn't seem to be any middle ground at all and I think this is what puts people off playing them , I mean at the moment is the best time to play CV they have never had it so good but people don't want to play them , I've seen the abuse a bad CV player gets in games even if the team plays crap they blame the CV with that sort of pressure why on earth would you play one.

 

There is no doubt in my mind WG need to revamp the CV completely they have to make them more attractive to play and appeal to the casual player but that's just my view.

[WingedHussar_Adler]

7 hours ago, Th3Fl0 said:

Just before, I had a perfect example of a battle where things went wrong. The CV went AFK mid-battle, when he found out that he couldn't really handle the enemy CV (who happend to be one of my clan members, which is our CV main). From there it went pretty fast. Enemy CV knew which ships to pick. It is these type players that I talk about, and it is these players that ruin the game for 21 others. 

Fail. Again. 

 

You did not only losse because of your cv. It seems you lost on points. 

[KarmaQU_EU]

Make CV have alternate ways to project strategic capability that does not rely on mastering its tactical control, aka. the Unicum gap.

 

[xxNihilanxx]

5 hours ago, 15JG52Adler said:

Fail. Again. 

 

You did not only losse because of your cv. It seems you lost on points. 

Presumably becasue the enemy CV was spotting the caps at the start preventing the home team from getting anywhere near them. Looks to me like the Ognevoi probably got some good capping XP whilst covered by his CV division mate.

 

I'd guess that the friendly planes never went near the cap circles.

[Reniwn]

19 hours ago, xxNihilanxx said:

If one CV player is good and the other bad then the outcome of the game is, in all but the most extreme of cases, a foregone conclusion. All that the 11 players in the same team as the bad CV player can do is hope to farm as much XP as possible before the inevitable loss.

In essence, the presence of CVs in a match turn a 12v12 into a 1v1. I think all can agree that this is not ideal.

Saying this for the 93632957th time: The counter of a good CV player is a competent team. Not an enemy carrier.

A team needs to push and play together, to cover each other's weaknesses.

 

I'll attach one of my games that I've played recently, just as an example:

Enemy CV was a complete potato, yet the outcome is a clear defeat for our team. A skill difference between carriers, even if it's a big one, is not enough to convert the game into an instant victory. I've played many games like this. And I know it BECAUSE i had those games. If you can't comprehend this, i suggest you to play more with CVs. (And yes, I also play all the classes)

 

19 hours ago, xxNihilanxx said:

Many times in this forum people have offered advice on how to deal with CVs - stick together and stack AA but, unfortunately, this does not really work for DDs. They cannot cap points that are being perma-scouted by enemy planes and sticking with the larger ships means the team gets outcapped and loses on points. Yes you can avoid being damaged by CVs in this way but this does not help in any way to secure the win. If friendly ships were willing to push into the cap with you you might stand a chance but meanwhile, back on planet Earth....

Capping is not the only way to win. You can work wonders on the flanks as a DD. Also, if you really need to get a cap, just ask an allied AA cruiser to get behind an island close to the cap, and you won't need to be worried about those planes again. You have smoke as well and planes can't spot you when you're inside of it. In some of my matches, some certain DD players really do find interesting ways to be useful for their team even though I try to spot them and their torpedoes frequently, which makes me sure that there are counters already.

 

19 hours ago, xxNihilanxx said:

As most of the good CV players will probably tell you it is not the ability to delete BBs at will that determines the outcome of the match but rather it is the ability to wipe out or entirely negate the enemy DDs that wins the battle so... What if CVs were given DW torps only to prevent them cross-dropping DDs whilst at the same time DD detectability by air was uniformly dropped to being the same as their assured detection range - 2km. Then buff all DD short-range AA sufficiently to prevent CVs keeping them permaspotted for free. I am not talking devastating AA like some of the higher tier DDs but just enough that the CV will lose a plane every 15-20 secs or so. This way DDs can still have a hope of performing their role without entirely neutering CVs as a class. This would, hopefully, go some way towards mitigating the whole 1v1 scenario that the presence of CVs introduces.

 

I have to agree with you there, about CVs putting too much pressure on some enemy DDs, or even worse, just outright deleting them in the initial minutes of the game. This is not really much of a problem against DDs with DefAA or high AA overall, since they can't be permanently spotted, or spotted for longer than 20 seconds. Even spotting them for a while will cost you a lot of planes and it'll make you lose air control, and will cost your team heavy damage. But some DDs, like shima (oh, the poor shima, tell me what can't counter you) are in really painful situation. But then again, given time, even a shima can't be permaspotted.

 

However, a CV can't be everywhere. If he is constantly spotting you with fighters, that means he can't prorect his team against your team's CV, who can do more damage than you do while you can still sit in a cap, denying enemies to take it and send some area denial torps or even spam HE from smoke.

 

Islands are your friends, don't forget that. Even if you're spotted by plane, radar whatever, it's not worth anything for the enemies if no one can shoot you. (and that CV is risking his planes for that, and it'll cost him air superiority during the endgame)

 

I personally find radars which can penetrate islands more annoying. You can counter planes with AA and smoke but you can't counter radar (except island cover).
 

Giving CVs deepwater torps will make them too weak against DDs, as IJN divebombers hit very low and USN divebombers are pure RNG. Reducing torpedo damage of planes might help it (maybe with a multiplier of 0.7 or 0.8 against DDs only). And learning how to cross-torp a DD really takes a while (I still suck at it).

 

Reducing air detection of DDs also seem like a good idea. ~2.5kms would be good enough imo as it'll give DDs more room to manouver and evade planes spotting. But AA range of them shouldn't be higher than 4km, because it will turn out to be a situation where if you spot an enemy DD, if he has good AA or DefAA, he can ruin your squadron before you take them out of his AA bubble, and this will only lead to CVs refusing to spot enemy DD because they're afraid to lose planes = bad teamplay.

[xxNihilanxx]

19 hours ago, Commander_Cornflakes said:

Have fun with DDs going around the map to hunt CVs because they are now invincible to planes.

This will happen a lot which

• makes CVs easy victims for DDs
• destroys the game in another way because these DDs won't cap nor spot

 

I don't see my suggestions as making DDs invulnerable to planes. DBs can still hit them and they can still be spotted by air, just not kept permaspotted by a single squadron. I don't see that CVs would be any more vulnerable to DDs either as they will still be spotted by air and killed by the CVs team mates and as for DDs chasing CVs instead of spotting or capping, well, these would only be the bad DD captains who already don't spot or cap but rather chase BBs round the map firing torps from max range. What it would do is allow good DD players to still function in the presence of a good enemy CV player during those games when the friendly CV player is a total potato and thus go some way toward preventing that match outcome being solely determined by the 1v1 in the air.

[WingedHussar_Adler]

3 hours ago, xxNihilanxx said:

Presumably becasue the enemy CV was spotting the caps at the start preventing the home team from getting anywhere near them. Looks to me like the Ognevoi probably got some good capping XP whilst covered by his CV division mate.

 

I'd guess that the friendly planes never went near the cap circles.

When you have best AAA ship out side of deff AAA and best overall AAA ship in game (Montana and DM) you can not blame enemie cv t8 for cap spoting. You need to push him out of cap. He can not came near you. 

[Prospect_b]

18 hours ago, Th3Fl0 said:

Just before, I had a perfect example of a battle where things went wrong. The CV went AFK mid-battle, when he found out that he couldn't really handle the enemy CV (who happend to be one of my clan members, which is our CV main). From there it went pretty fast. Enemy CV knew which ships to pick. It is these type players that I talk about, and it is these players that ruin the game for 21 others. 

To begin with, I like your topic.

 

But this pic? Given your team setup some people must have screwed up royally. My (o so random...) bet would be that the tirpitzes or izumo screwed up and got bombed. Should never really be possible for him to have 3 kills.

[Sub_Human]

20 hours ago, Th3Fl0 said:

Just before, I had a perfect example of a battle where things went wrong. The CV went AFK mid-battle, when he found out that he couldn't really handle the enemy CV (who happend to be one of my clan members, which is our CV main). From there it went pretty fast. Enemy CV knew which ships to pick. It is these type players that I talk about, and it is these players that ruin the game for 21 others.

I feel that you cant fix this without broadening Cv-play to include 3-4 CVs on each side. But since this cant be done the way CVs are designed at the moment I would argue that CVs are broken beyond tweaking. IChase made a video last week trying to diskuss this. He has some good points and some interesting sugestions. 

[Sub_Human]

On 2018-02-10 at 6:34 PM, Commander_Cornflakes said:

Have fun with DDs going around the map to hunt CVs because they are now invincible to planes.

This will happen a lot which

• makes CVs easy victims for DDs
• destroys the game in another way because these DDs won't cap nor spot

Yes it was hillarious to hunt dwt graf z in my Khaba. But still the best defence for a CV is his or her team. If you let a dd get through your cv should die. And if you are out of range from your team as a CV you should be helpless. Deep water torps would be a great idea. But then again I am biased.

[Capra76]

What happens when your top tier CV goes AFK for the whole game?

 

Spoiler

 

[Deckeru_Maiku]

On 10.2.2018 at 11:30 PM, aboomination said:

 

Yeah, new players and tons of seal clubbers 

 

I can assure You, sealclubbers don't need manual drop to club them seals. Even a Hosho can sink a DD with a well timed auto hammer&anvil crossdrop.

[Floofz]

As I see it there are two main issues with CVs as it is.

1. The impact a CV player has over the outcome of a battle is far too great as you said yourself.

2. The gameplay is horribly annoying and unforgiving.

 

Both these two points comes together in the fact that if you are an average CV player and face a good CV player youll have absolutely no chance at all to do anything in the battle. Especially not if youre at the same time in an inferior ship. This is not the case with any other class in the game. CV gameplay needs to be simplified, it needs to be more userfriendly and more enjoyable to play while at the same time not have as great of an impact in the game.

I have a few suggestions that I will make a post for in the future on how to completely rework carrier gameplay but as it is now a lot can be fixed with a few simple tweeks.

 

1. Remove strafing for fighters. So much this, its incredibly annoying because you can lose two full squads if you turn your head the other way for 5 seconds. Its also extremely unrealistic.

2. Reduce the number of active squads. Give all CVs one of each group but tweak the number of planes in each group. For example instead of having 2-3 torpedobomber squads with 5 planes in each, give us one squad with 10 planes in each. This will first of all make it easier to control your squads while also make them survive longer when you go up against ships with alot of AA. Also having one fighter squad per CV will also greatly reduce the chance the enemy CV has to lock you out of the battle if his fighters are superior to yours.

[aboomination]

4 minutes ago, Deckeru_Maiku said:

Hosho can sink a DD with a well timed auto hammer&anvil crossdrop.

If the DD happens to be an Okhotnik, yes  And learning to execute that should take 2-3 attempts at most. But how would new players (and even old ones who don't read the forums/watch Youtube) know about it?

Is there a tutorial? The least they could do is to make new CV players watch farazelleth's CV guides ^^

 

Auto drops at t4 are brutal vs players who played 1-2h tops.Manual drops (which don't require a genius to pull off - timing the exit strafe requires a higher level of micro imo) should be learned at tiers where players learned to defend themselves. Or in operations. Those bots are quite good at dodging, use def. fire and punish players who spend an unnecessary amount of time in their AA bubble.

 

Bottom line: CV are ONE class. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

 

[El2aZeR]

2 hours ago, QueenEuin said:

1. Remove strafing for fighters. So much this, its incredibly annoying because you can lose two full squads if you turn your head the other way for 5 seconds. Its also extremely unrealistic.

 

Tl;dr: No.

Long version:

Spoiler

On 2/11/2018 at 2:01 AM, El2aZeR said:

The most fighters you have is usually two, split across two flanks. Bombers tend to number in 4 all the way up to 6. There is no way you can clear them all out without some kind of AoE attack unless you up fighter dps to ridiculous levels. As in full AA spec DM + DFAA levels.

You could also simply kill fighters with your bombers by picking two skills that were previously noob traps (Evasive Maneuver + Expert Rear Gunner). That'd still devalue fighters completely as a both an active and passive air denial tool. You could basically only intercept if your enemy is about to drop which really will not do anything given the small time window.

Also this assumes your enemy is simply going to let himself be intercepted as he can see your fighters coming from miles away. When you try to save an ally you usually have only a small time window to prevent enemy planes from causing catastrophic damage which prevents a click engagement entirely. If your fighters are in the area anyway, the enemy CV simply won't go there.

Not to mention that this would once again promote selfish play. Lock enemy fighters with your own, go deal catastrophic damage to your target. Doesn't matter if your team is left without air cover once you do, at least you get some sweet sweet numbers out of it. There's nothing you can do to cover your team with only click fights anyway, either the enemy also simply locks your fighters with his or he chooses a target you're not in place to protect. And after enemy bombers have dropped their ordinance any kind of attempt to kill them would kill your own fighters.

 

Considering the current state of CV play and what fighters would look like without it strafing is not only a perfectly fine mechanic, I would even go as far as calling it essential as with it fighters pose the serious threat to air strikes they should quite frankly be. Unless you replace it with an equally dominant mechanic there is simply no way you can remove it.

 

Instead, let new players actually know that something like strafing exists, how to look for it (maybe a better visual indicator is needed here, currently you can only see an enemy fighter squad strafing if you're way too close for comfort or if you can recognize the particular behaviors the s***ty UI tends to exhibit when an enemy squad strafes. Also it is obviously mandatory that the UI is fixed), how to dodge it and how to counter it. Same things applies to strafing out.

 

Too many forget that strafing was introduced so fighters aren't completely worthless. The last thing CVs need is to revert to a pure damage farming class.

 

2 hours ago, QueenEuin said:

2. Reduce the number of active squads.

 

...Do you realize that you can select and give orders to multiple squadrons at the same time? Reducing squad numbers does absolutely nothing to alleviate the micro situation (which isn't very intensive to begin with) as you can already command your 2-3 TB/DB squads as a single unit if you desire to.

Also having only a single fighter means an enemy CV is even more likely to lock you out of the battle as your enemy only has one fighter squad to deal with before achieving temporary or even permanent air superiority. It'd put tremendous pressure on your own prediction, scouting and fighter capabilities, making even the slightest mistake potentially fatal. Naturally this would once again raise the skill floor for CV play, surely not what is needed.

[Voncarsteine]

On 10-2-2018 at 6:34 PM, Commander_Cornflakes said:

Have fun with DDs going around the map to hunt CVs because they are now invincible to planes.

This will happen a lot which

• makes CVs easy victims for DDs
• destroys the game in another way because these DDs won't cap nor spot

Well, CV's should have teamsupport better suited to hunting DD's. Cruisers should hunt the DD. A CV can still spot a DD, but it requires micromanagement keeping planes above the DD while support comes over to deal with it. 

DD's that won't cap or spot but going around the map will suffer with their own gameplay getting ruined. How much of a chance does a DD really have to kill an enemy CV at the start of the game? With all the CL's still alive? If a DD manages to get through in early game that's really the entire team's fault. DD's hunting CV's in endgame is working as intended. 

 

The suggestion is worth considering by WG actually. And it's better than it is now. Although, getting permaspotted by a CV in my DD is what makes me biased as well :s

[robihr]

On 2/10/2018 at 4:26 PM, El2aZeR said:

 

You know you can also do it the other way around?

Just remove auto drop.

 

There is literally no reason for auto drop to exist other than to trap new players into bad habits.

 

this is great suggestion. fully support it.

 

also why are CV unbalanced. certainly bad players vs unicum is a part of it. but problem bad players dont know how to face is overwhelming AA on some ships with big AA bubble. then another problem is AA balance in +/-2 MM. you see rather significant increase in AA if you are bottom tier, or rather laughable AA if you are top tier vs bottom one.

 

what would i suggest to nerf skill gap? reduce bombers alpha damage for decrease in AA range/dpm. so lets say 20% of torpedo alpha damage reduced for 10% of AA range reduction (just putting random numbers, this would need some testing to determine best ratio). that would significantly nerf unicums that can strike under heavy AA with most of the planes intact and give more torpedo hits to non unicum players.

 

what would i suggest for AA tier problem? well games with CV should get special +/-1 MM when there is CV present and AA/plane HP balanced around that.