Harv72b

Because I believe @LittleWhiteMouse is genuine in her desire to actually fix this, and because I've invested too much time into this game to just quit over this (though believe me, I'm sorely tempted), I'll try one more time to sum up how I feel about the CV rework. Strictly as a non-CV player. I've watched enough 0.8.x carrier gameplay to know that it holds zero appeal to me. Much like in the old system, against an average or poor carrier player, there really isn't an issue here. Yes, they can potentially do a lot of spotting which can be inconvenient, but it can be worked around. Yes, they can do a bit of damage here and there, a large bit of damage when we're talking about high tiers, but again...that's part of the game. Nobody would want to play a class that does no damage; I get that. The problem arises when you're up against a carrier player who understands the game and how to play it, and who plays it well. Against that player, there is no defense short of huddling up in your spawn and waiting for the other team to win on points--the absolute best you can hope to do, in any ship, should that player decide you need to be sunk, is to prolong the process. Some ships, with specific module and captain builds, are better at prolonging it than others, but the end result is still going to be the same. This was also true with the old style of CV play, perhaps even more so, except that back then you could mitigate the issue by having a good CV player on your team as well--that is no longer true, and I suspect that was one of the primary goals of the CV rework--balancing play between carriers, rather than balancing carrier play on the whole. They achieved that by taking away the ability of one carrier player to counter another...okay, yay--it's no longer an automatic loss when the opposing team has a unicum level CV player and your team doesn't, but it's still an automatic zero fun and enjoyment game when you're up against a good CV player. There is no counter-play! Not at high tiers, anyway; at low tiers I would say that exactly the opposite is true (each game produces zero fun for the person playing the CV). The frustration and anger you see, along with the baseless hyperbole and threats, is because there is no easy fix to this problem. Hell, I'm not sure if there's a fix, period. At its heart, World of Warships is a game of surface-to-surface warfare, primarily based around WW2-era ships. In that same time frame, aircraft carriers basically obsoleted the entire concept of traditional naval warfare--when you see significant gunnery battles at sea from World War 2 on, they occurred because there were no aircraft carriers in the area. Attempting to force ships to continue exchanging broadsides while simultaneously fending off persistent air attacks is not going to work, at least not without making one side or the other (gunnery-based ships or aircraft carriers) highly frustrating and unrewarding to play. The old system balanced that somewhat because it was not user-friendly to learn and play, meaning that few people played carriers and fewer still played them well. Occasionally you'd get one of those auto-losses because of the imbalance between CV players, but while certainly memorable those occasions were exceedingly rare. Far more often than not, you wouldn't see any CVs at all in high tier play, which worked for the vast majority of the player base. We play the game for myriad reasons, but at the heart of it we simply enjoy playing out childhood fantasies of big battleships slugging it out with each other, cruisers steaming around like vultures waiting for their meals, nimble destroyers playing cat & mouse with each other while trying to avoid fire from those big guns. For most of us, aircraft carriers just don't factor into those fantasies--there are numerous other games out there for the people who prefer flying to steaming, covering just about any niche you can imagine. There are not a lot of other shooty-boats games, and certainly there aren't any with such gorgeous 3D models and attention to detail. I've seen most of the suggestions that have been put out there. Some of them have potential, many of them don't. Putting in some form of cooldown between squadron launches seems like a no-brainer, but again, all that would really do is slow down the (inescapable) end result a bit more. Giving fighter squadrons some of their teeth back sounds attractive, but how do you do that without creating even more excess spotting problems and/or going back to the old problem of huge imbalance between CV players deciding battles before they've begun? Lowering damage and/or DOT potential sounds good to non-carrier players, but achieves nothing other than ruining the game experience for carrier players as well. Introducing yet more nerfs to carrier spotting abilities takes away what little team play factor the ships have left. Limiting the range of carrier aircraft seems reasonable in the abstract, but in practice do you really want strike planes with less range than ship-launched munitions? Because that's the only way you meaningfully limit the planes within the map sizes we have. Coming up with some miracle AA system that makes (ship) players feel engaged and capable of protecting themselves while simultaneously giving (plane) players any hope of striking ships sailed by people with a working brain cell would obviously be the preference, but that's going to be exceedingly difficult to do...if it's even possible. Putting hard limits back on the number of planes each CV carries sounds good in concept, but that's also going to need to come with a reduction in the effectiveness of that same AA. Limiting CVs of tier VIII and above to one per team, not "soft caps" but limiting them, should have been a bare minimum quality of life improvement more than a month ago. The fact that this still hasn't happened, coupled with the proposal of adding these same carriers into Ranked and (presumably) Clan Battles, is just plain insulting. While I sympathize with those who are actively trying to fix this, I cannot help but realize that there is no way, no way at all, that all of these potential issues were missed entirely during the development and pre-release testing phase of this rework. Somebody, somewhere in the hierarchy, decided to ignore these issues and instead release something that was "good enough", likely on the basis of some studies which predicted gaining more revenue from new players than they lose from the existing ones who simply walked away from the game. It's a business, and WarGaming is in it to make money--I get that. It's just that until this CV rework, I had always felt that Warships was at least trying to do right by their player base. I don't feel that way about this. And I cannot offer concrete suggestions on how to fix this because I can't think of any, either. To be blunt, I honestly don't think it can be truly fixed.

The absolute best way to mitigate the effect a high tier CV can have on your destroyer is to make yourself a less appealing target. Switch AA on & off as aircraft enter and leave your detection radius (this includes in between strikes, as the CV is circling his planes around for another attack on you). As Edgecase mentioned above, when detection by aircraft is unavoidable, turn into the planes and use engine boost if available--the CV player will not have a chance to line up an accurate strike on you before you've passed beneath their squadron. Where possible, stay within the AA umbrella of a friendly cruiser with good anti-aircraft capabilities; this doesn't mean parked next to a Des Moines behind an island, just keeping your DD within about 6km of the nearest AA cruiser's position (and maneuvering closer when an air strike comes in). Use your smoke charges to avoid prolonged air attacks, being sure to keep moving in an unpredictable manner within your smoke cloud. Finally, understand that there will be times when a CV player just decides that you're the only ship on the enemy team and sends every single plane he's got your way. With the way the game is currently set up, you can't escape being sunk in this scenario--what you can do is make him waste as much time as possible sinking you. That whole time he's chipping away at your health pool, he is not doing anything at all to your teammates...soaking up air attacks for 10+ minutes of the battle isn't going to do much for your own XP & credit earnings, and it isn't going to be fun in the slightest, but it can at least make it easier for the rest of your team to secure the win.

Matchmaking Monitor is the perfect add-on for the person who enjoys being miserable. If you take this tool away from them, I shudder to think what new measures they'll come up with to accomplish that goal.

Still waiting.

I have fewer than 8,000 battles in total. Yet I've got a higher average damage, higher kill ratio, and higher PR in Shima than you do--I point this out only because you keep harping on my stats in two cherry-picked ships, which couldn't play more differently from each other. All of this you conveniently leave out because that doesn't fit your narrative. Just like it doesn't fit your narrative that I happen to own all the tier 10 DDs, rather than just Shimakaze and Harugumo. Just like nothing I've said beyond radar and ship speed fits your narrative, and then you've used the incorrect speed for the very ship you've played 8000 + battles in, coupled with a non-radar cruiser, to "demonstrate" that Shimakaze can't outrun a radar cruiser....all while ignoring the fact that, as I've said repeatedly, you shouldn't need to gain more than a km or two when "outrunning" a radar. As for your narrative....I can only assume that you've figured out some other way to survive 80% of your battles in Shimakaze while winning 54% of the time. Would you care to explain how you do that for all the lesser DD players who might be struggling?

The Shimakaze does 39 knots base. 41 knots with speed flag, 44 knots with Sierra Mike and with engine boost active. Henri IV has a base speed of 35 knots, 37 knots with speed flag, 44 knots with Sierra Mike and with engine boost active. Henri wants to kite; that's what it's best at. The only times it's going to be trying to charge down a Shima are: Late game when the Shima's team has already lost and Henri doesn't have to worry about getting blapped by a battleship. When the Shimakaze has seriously over-extended. If a Henri (or any other cruiser) tries to YOLO you in the early game, then again...unless you've over-extended, there should be more than enough friendly ships around to mitigate that problem for you, before he ever gets close enough to do serious damage. If you're trying to turn out after you've been lit up by radar, once again--you screwed up. You're also ignoring the fact that Henri (or any other cruiser) also has to turn while pursuing a destroyer, unless it only wants to use its front turrets. And good luck doing meaningful damage to a Shimakaze that's angled out while only using 6 barrels. Alternately, in one battle, back in February, you got spotted far too often by an opposing team that couldn't aim. Let's not start comparing stats. Let's instead try to refute any single statement I made regarding radar. Or, regarding ship speeds. Or, regarding anything else in this thread. Before you could buy them with credits, signals could be purchased with coal. Before you could buy them with coal, you could routinely pull them from daily containers and/or missions. Before you could pull them from missions & containers, radar didn't exist in the game (nor did the Henri IV). If a player is credit poor, the other options are still available. Regardless, and as I've already pointed out, Henri doesn't carry radar...even if OP was not running a Sierra Mike and the fastest cruiser with a 12km radar was, Shimakaze still enjoys a 1 knot speed advantage (without factoring engine boost into it).

OP specifically said that the radar cruiser had the "same top speed" as he did; Henri does not carry radar. Even still, Henri IV can only match Shimakaze's speed when running engine boost; in terms of base speed, Shima has a 4 knot advantage. RPF gives you a general bearing to the closest ship (when it's working correctly), but Henri still has to close to within 5.6km before it can spot a Shima--if the Shimakaze player allows that to happen, that's a big error on the DD player's part. If that player leaves port without a Sierra Mike signal, that's another mistake. As for the rest, I explained why I was harping on a relatively minor point. Radar in general is a remarkably easy thing to counter in a destroyer, if you maintain your tactical awareness and learn the capabilities of the various ships you're going to face. If you get caught out by a radar, while close enough to that ship that you can't escape, that's 100% on you.

AP works for most destroyers against broadside targets, from medium range in. Dropping AP salvos into the superstructure of a broadside battleship will net you consistently solid damage; it's not just about scoring citadels.

No cruiser in the game is as fast as Shimakaze. Given the 12km radar you mentioned, the closest any cruiser comes is Dmitri Donskoi, which is 3 knots slower than you and does not carry the engine boost consumable that Shima possesses. Even if he was running a Sierra Mike signal and you (for some reason) weren't, you'd still have a 1 knot advantage...again, without factoring in your engine boost. Am I picking a nit with this? Perhaps, but it's hard to take anything else in your post at face value when this statement is demonstrably incorrect. I absolutely hate being stuck in a game against two Tier 10 CVs, in any destroyer, but even then it's still possible to have a solid game. Not a lot of fun, admittedly, but possible. Aside from that scenario and the random time you run into a couple super-unicum divisions on the enemy team, the explanation for any poor game(s) you have should begin with your own play. Are you over-extending? Are you aware of where the enemy radar ships are positioned, and where you can position yourself to avoid taking excessive damage when they radar you? Are you paying attention to how other players in your battles are playing, and using that information to better predict their movements after you fire your torps (even from 4.5 km)? Are you looking into the best recommended captain/ship builds with your destroyers, and why those are the recommended skills/modules? Are you getting the best use out of your consumables? If you (or anyone else who reads this post) are willing to put in the work needed to do well in high tier destroyers, Destroyer KuroshioKai's YouTube should be on your own radar. He's got multiple videos up talking about how to get around each of the issues you mentioned, and more.

Note that each of these crates contains one reward; it's not like every other container release where you get 3 different items per crate. I.e., I earned my two free containers today and received 2 Red Dragon and 2 Basilisk signals. Total. Nothing else, unless you count the oil earned for every container you get.

One of my space battles teammates tonight: Punched off both his hydro and radar within 5 seconds of the battle starting, and then spent the rest of the game sailing around dumping torpedoes at nothing in particular. Except for the 2 minutes he spent trying to drive through the center of my battleship.

Are you using the "Improved Chat" mod in Aslain's? I had that issue earlier today, there's already (another) update to Aslain's which fixes it.

Also, whose bright idea was it to give this guy a tier 10 ship? Space battles can't at least require owning a tier 8? EDIT: Also, the volume of gunfire, aircraft, and hits to your ship still randomly decides to increase itself to 150% while zoomed in during battle. Regardless of audio settings. Which is somewhat less than optimal for those few players (read: all players) who use headphones. But hey, glad we get to earn new camos.

I have Atlanta. Extra range works against you, given that your shells fly only slightly lower than the ISS while those tier 9s you speak about can actually hit you from 14km+. Less range = you hit what you're aiming for more often and you can actually use terrain to stay dark without parking behind a single island all battle.

Game software still requires ~15-20 seconds to close after selecting "Exit Game" from the ESC menu. This was not an issue before 0.8.0, has been a continuous issue since. Port lag appears to be better but is still present. New Port menus: I appreciate what you're going for, but it's quite annoying not being able to jump directly to a specific sub-menu (i.e., "Personal Missions" under the Missions tab; it now defaults to the splash screen every single time). Additionally, all the work done to streamline the excess of menu options in the Port itself is more than outdone by the ridiculous quantity of sub-menus inside the new Armory. In four consecutive (tier 10) battles just completed: No carriers. Two carriers per side (1 T10, 1 T8). No carriers. Two carriers per side (1 T10, 1 T8). Tell me again why the matchmaker still allows multiple high-tier carriers per team? Because clearly it's not an issue with queue times.