Search the Community

With the rework looming ever closer, I thought it would be fun to dash any hopes of the rework actually improving the game for whomever reads this. It's not because it doesn't address a few problems with the old, or because it introduces new problems that the old didn't have. It's because Carrier gameplay is the complete antithesis of how most ships work in the game, and no matter how you try to rework them it will never change. What makes them so unfit to be in a game based on ships in an era where their dominance was most prevalent? First lets discuss why the old CVs do not fit. As a note, this is mostly addressing random and ranked battles, and not the higher skill matches of clan battles/tournaments. In those, CVs are actually a good fit, even though it's only if every ship is either specialized for AA or suffering the consequences. Old CVs are an RTS without the busywork of base building etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with RTS gameplay, it can be very fun and it pushes your awareness and reflexes to the limit. However the RTS of CV is a complete failure in WoWs for 3 reasons. A highly reactive, awareness driven and reflexive gameplay does not mesh well with the slower, methodical and long term positional gameplay of the rest of the game. There is no skill based matchmaking (random/ranked) that is pivotal to RTS gameplay. This creates harsh games where one CV player is completely outclassed by another, and essentially locked down from having any real effect on the battle while the other goes on a rampage. The presence of a CV, and it's strength, reduces a lot of options other classes have, such as concealment, flanking, being aggressive etc. A CV usually forces a much more campy, reserved game along with the moans and groans of the players subject to it whether spoken or unspoken. And there really is no debate that old CV is a complete failure in the game. WG struggled trying to balance a class that was meant to have power based on it's real world era effect, but not so powerful that it ruined the experience for other players. Absolute fail on all fronts, from removed manual drops from low tier and stupidly strong high tier with strafes allowing good cvs to dominate weak ones, with some AP bombs that do well in defensive fire because F players. So, what will the rework change? Essentially 3 things. It removes most of the effect of cv vs cv, at least in terms of fighters. There is still some potential with cv sniping maybe. It reduces the awareness and reflexes needed to play, and it will increase the player count because it will be much easier, and it is. Unfortunately this is actually bad for the game because of aforementioned problems. You will still get that sinking feeling of seeing planes pop up on your viewfinder and know that there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop the first strike, and maybe not even 2. They will still force campy games simply because they exist, and low tier will still be hamstrung trash in how ineffectual you can be. And the best part is the more accessible gameplay will result in more games being subject to the forced campy playstyle by a ship with inexhaustible resources in which the only way to fight back is to hopefully not be the one he decides to pick on. Because make no mistake, if that CV wants you dead you are dead. With so many players jumping into their cvs in the hopes to cash in on the fxp when the patch hits, it's always amusing to see a normal player get picked on, deleted or just have their game experience ruined by that cv and to say "oh man I sure can't wait for the rework". Nothing is more sad than the naivete of that comment, because nothing will get better. Your experience in other ships will in fact worsen to the increased population, much like it is now before the patch hits. That is why the rework will fail, not because of the potential for players to enjoy the new gameplay of carriers, but because of the negative impact cvs will have on other ships, always, simply by existing in any form. They are a detriment to the balance of the 3 class triangle. This will be a dark and annoying quarter of 2019 for ships, born of WGs refusal to cut their losses and instead devote a year or more of resources to implement a new gameplay style that does not and can not address the fundamental problem that is a gameplay style of power with impunity results in bad experiences. I remember long ago when someone let us guess what the rework could possibly be, all the while getting a no/not even close to all our guesses. They weren't kidding, nobody could see this coming, because now instead of one cv in the game having the ability to hit whoever while he holds the other cvs hands behind his back, now both cvs are free of eachother and can lord over everything in a match. instead of a fighter counter, a damage race. No bad positioning mistakes to be had like with other classes, that have to take a lot of time to re position in hopes to be effective. Just turn a few times and drop away. Whats that, the last 2 strikes of your group got shot down? That's fine, just fire up another and be right back there within 30-40 seconds. Do yourself a favor. Take a break from WoWs. Find another game to idle your time with while WG tries desperately to rebalance new cv gameplay in a live server, and toss out all their old 'progress' of 3 years out the window. Or play cv yourself. YOU DO NOT want to be a ship in the rework, even with AA, because it probably wont stop you from being hit at least once, and if you're a DD just exit straight to port. Remember, after a cv strikes it has to turn around and wait for the timer to hit again. Thats about a time sink of 15-25 seconds. If you kill the rest of the planes after that first strike instead, that's still only 30-40 till the next full squad. Sure it will be a different type, but i'm sure it will be completely fine getting constantly harassed until you are dead with fires/floods etc. A rollercoaster of fun. Anyway, that was long winded, but the effect of this rework is important to talk about. I for one will spend my time playing another game or just playing CV, because at least if I am the CV I can't have my game ruined by one. See you at the apocalypse.

How to Play CV Rework Changes: Table of Contents: 1. Introduction. The rework is truly upon us. With such a major change coming to the game, there are probably many people who aren't aware what can be done, how to even play, or even know it's happening. To this end, I have gone over what can be done in the rework a lot, testing ideas from people and even theory crafting my own. I have been the carrier and the ship trying to maximize the potential and exploit the game to a high level in these interactions. I don’t have the patience of LWM to show you the tiny details, so instead I will focus on the overall effect of ships vs carrier, and the players behind them, while also discussing the best ways to combat from either side. Take note that I only spent my time in tier 8-10, against as many actual players I could find and I will be using video examples taken from my twitch to explain everything that I will be talking about here (there are vulgarities in the example videos, you have been warned). If you like the effort put into this, and want to see me in action, follow the channel here. https://www.twitch.tv/pulicat Also note that when I say Ships, I mean non-CV ships. 2. The Carrier Experience. In my time playing the CV’s, I actually had a good time. The gameplay lines up much better with what it’s like playing other classes, the controls and events are fluid, and the visuals are great especially with the new perspective. I’ve seen a lot of complaints from players saying it’s boring, that all you do is just attack over and over the same way. Perhaps they are just people who only play the old carriers, but if they aren’t they should take a second look. You control 1 thing, and use concealment, positioning and accuracy to attack the enemy and avoid damage in return, exactly like every other class. However, the difference is in how you attack. Ships in the game simply throw their shells and torps at each other and whittle down the only HP bar they have. Carriers fight in this way, but they are not fought in this way. The CVs have 3 separate HP bars, the one that’s applied to their hull, their plane reserves, and their plane HP. The plane HP is what you fight to fend off an individual attack, and at most a squadron can use ½ or 2/3 of the maximum strikes before plane risk is too high. Every plane that escapes, no matter it’s health, is a full HP plane later, which brings us to the second HP bar, the carriers reserves. This is probably the closest resemblance you can find to the HP of a normal ship going down over time. The more plane kills you can get, the more you are actually hurting the CV, but it’s important to keep in mind that the CV is regenerating the reserve HP by about 1-2 planes per squadron for every attack it sends out. If the CV player is using all their squads, you will want at least 4-6 plane kills done to every squad in order to outpace the regeneration. That is what the actual hull HP of the carrier is doing, a floating factory that once you finally kill, you put it out of commission for good. This gives the CVs a big advantage against another ship. Overall, I think there will be a portion of players that enjoy the new carriers, like DD players as they play very similar now. Both quick and low alpha damage (so they say), weak against group focus. It makes a lot of sense that WG decided to branch the carrier tech tree off of Destroyers when you think about it like that. 3. The Carrier Balance, IJN vs USN. Feels mostly like brains vs brawn. IJN have less but stronger and faster torps, AP bombs and comparatively slow attack craft with less rockets. Their planes are weaker overall, and the AP bombs suffer to this. USN on the other hand focuses on saturating the target with more in their payload in exchange for less damage. Their attack craft are much faster but the bombers much slower, and all squads more durable. It’s the much more DoT (damage over time) focused of the two, but there are methods for both nations to cripple opponents with DoTs. The Tier 10s are a different matter entirely however. Their deck armor makes it so that the only effective squad to ‘cv snipe’ them with is torpedo planes, which can be dodged. Here is an example of 2 tier 10 CV trying to snipe me from the start of the game. I am completely without allied support, fending for myself. After I take a big hit because I was just sitting still not caring, I start actively countering and they can never finish the job. I end up killing 50 planes. Example: Being CV sniped by 2 enemy carriers. Unfortunately, at other tiers, CV snipe is still possible, but at least unlikely. It’ll take them some time since you are so far away, and your summon fighter and plane fighters make it so an enemy squad can only attack you once before being swarmed down, it’s simply not a viable strategy to winning the game unless the kill is confirmed in 2-3 attacks. 4. Basic Carrier Gameplay. It’s fairly straightforward in terms of controls. You can use WASD for movement, and mouse aiming for fine tuning. It will probably take some time to adjust to the mouse aiming, as you will find it doing it automatically while you're just looking around. If you use right click to lock your guns and look around playing a ship, this same thing works for planes. When attacking another class of ship, it's important to use the correct aircraft for the job. When attacking destroyers, Attack Planes have the easiest time. The damage may not always be great, but keep in mind they're not always going to be trying to dodge only you as you are keeping them spotted. Torpedo Bombers are good for dropping into smoke, but a moving DD will be a very tough target. Dive Bombers are the least useful, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to hit. When attacking cruisers, Attack Planes are once again your best choice. They are quick enough to take less damage within enemy AA auras, have reliable damage, and don't care too much about enemy angling. Dive Bombers can be a good choice as well, especially AP bombs. Stationary cruisers camping islands will be a prime target for DBs. Torpedo Bombers are least effective, as they are slow and dodgable for a cruiser. When attacking battleships, literally everything works. They are not maneuverable enough to dodge attacks well, and can be harassed effectively. 4-1. Starting an Attack Run and the Grey Marker. That grey marker is very important, far beyond just where the attack lines up. The grey marker represents the point at which your planes will achieve full accuracy with their aim during the attack run if you do not debuff the accuracy with moving. Example: Grey Marker Represents Full Aim Note where the grey marker is when I start the attack run, and you will see it lines up with where I get full aim. 4-2. Do Not Move When Starting an Attack Run. This is key. Get in as close as possible to your target with the grey marker lined up, make sure your mouse is centered on it and do not WASD or mouse move and you will achieve full aim in the shortest amount of time, leaving you less exposed in your limited attack run movement. If you happen to overshoot with the marker slightly, you can hold slow down (Skey) and this will not affect your aim negatively, but give you more time to aim. This does expose you to flak however. Example: Don't Move While Aiming Also, if there are a lot of ships with AA, it will affect your aim time. 4-3. Don’t Be Greedy. Most people will probably learn over time, but if you go through with a strike and more than half your planes are yellow HP or less, just send them home. It’s honestly not worth crippling your late game potential if you lose your planes by trying to turn around and get another strike. If you are squad shortening, you can always just launch the same squad and get back there. Your games are long in CVs, be patient and think of the long game. 4-4. Do not bother with pre-emptive on-summon fighter drops. They are better saved for BBs that have used DCP. Tell your BBs to either say they used DCP or use a quick command to ask for AA support. If you see bombers flying around, don’t try to drop a fighter on them. It simply does not engage fast enough and will be wasted. They are also good for yourself in the late game, which may become very cv vs cv. The consumables will fill the gaps of the one for your CV. Example: Dropping fighters on enemy planes doesn't work. 4-5. Using Attack Runs Defensively. In certain situations, you may find use to use the attack run to lower your planes closer to the water. You can duck behind certain islands to avoid enemy AA guns, or even from being spotted entirely. It's important to note that currently you can't cancel an attack run in progress, but you aren't usually locked out of attacking again for very long. So it's possible to attack run to sneak in, exit attack run for your approach, and then start the actual attack run. This was requested to be added in by @MaliceA4Thought. 5. Advanced Carrier Techniques. This is the section I believe most people will be interested in. Over my time playing I tried existing strategies I heard of and even came up with a couple on my own that have potential to be really strong options. 5-1. Hakuryu Stealth Torping and Sequential Dropping. Everyone probably knows about this one by now. With the 8km torps and full conceal, you are able to drop torpedoes 7km away from a target, and turn away holding the S key to never be spotted by him. Though the torps are slow, people still land torpedoes with ships like the Sims or Black. This will be very potent against ships that like to hug islands, bow tanking or are otherwise relatively immobile. Sequential drops are very potent too, as the torps are extremely stealthy. Once you get good at aiming the lead and predicting opponent reaction, you will hit them. And with the spacing on the torps, you may be able to reapply flood after they DCPed one in the first wave, all without losing a single torp bomber. Examples: Stealth Torping. Sequential Dropping 5-2. Squad Shortening. This is one of mine, as far as I know nobody has tried this or talked about it at all. The idea is when you launch a fresh squadron, you immediately drop a payload to send the planes back home. This is best used in 2 situations. At the start of the game, you can shorten your attack plane scouts to half so it’s easier to dodge in the long-range flak bubbles, and to make sure you can launch a full squad of the same type right behind landing the ones you’re on. The applications are limited because, even though you are able to dodge flak easier, continuous AA damage will have less planes to work over. The effect of continuous is best explained in this thread here made by @Edgecaseand @GoldPile. You might be able to get more use out of Last Gasp this way too. 5-3. Forcing DCP. As we all know, a flood is usually an instant DCP for any ship that suffers one. Using the above trick to fly around with 2 torp strikes instead of 3 and having a full squad at home, you can try to dive through heavier AA to get one torp strike on a BB and fly away with Last Gasp. If you flood that BB, he’s going to have to DCP it. Land the rest of your weakened torp planes and launch a full hp squad to do the same thing again. It is nearly impossible to stop a full HP squadron from coming in and attacking once, but it is very possible to stop a second strike from the same group. This method gets around that limitation, and can guarantee anywhere from 30-40s of uninterrupted flood damage, plus two torp plane strikes worth of damage on a BB. And that’s assuming they’re running premium DCP with max cooldown reduction. On top of that, you will barely lose any torp planes. Very viable but the window is short and you must be able to launch enough torp planes to field nearly 2 full squads at one time. Take care of your reserves. Example: DCP Forcing. I have taken the flooding mechanic changes into account for this technique, and have determined it will still be effective and potentially more. 5-4. Abusing Flak Spawns (Plinko Flak). Flak is the deadliest thing to you, obviously, and sometimes the flak walls spawn too long for you to go around. A lot of the time I see this complaint, the planes are flying right at their target, so the flak wall spawns between you and the target forcing you to fly around and mess up your attack run. One thing to note is that the flak spawns in front of you, not always between you and the target. This can be abused, and with the name Plinko you probably already understand. When approaching a target, use boost to go full speed at an angle to the target ship. When the inevitable flak wall spawns, release boost, turn to another angle and boost again as if you were just rolling off the wall to the side. You can adjust how you want to plinko the flak based on how your opponent is maneuvering against you, but it is an extremely reliable way to not only mitigate flak damage, but potentially remove it entirely, including defensive fire. Examples: Plinko ex.1 Plinko ex.2 Plinko ex.3 6. The Ship Experience. The workload here has gone up. Now everything you knew about the game must be considered with carriers. No longer will CVs appear once every 5 or 10 games. It will be common to see at least 1v1, and probably a lot of 2v2 coming right out of the patch, especially with a new carrier line coming out in 0.8.1. Unfortunately most of my experience fighting other ships with carriers around was against bots in PTS. Even with that limited experience, I don't think fighting carriers will be much different as it is with RTS CVs. It can be slightly satisfying when you see the big red damage numbers done to planes, but after a while it became a bit hollow. The CV is still just fighting against a mechanic, not against me directly. As much as I really wish for direct control over my AA so that it's really ME he is fighting, I think this would be too much for a good amount of players to handle without suffering. Now before you start saying that's crazy talk, people should either be able to handle it or be punished, I would agree with you IF there was skill based matchmaking. At least then, the players with lower capabilities would fight people of similar skill only, and what they would or wouldn't be able to do wouldn't be as unfair. I don't find it unreasonable to give some concessions to those players since they are forced to play against really good players. Back on topic to Automated AA however, having the entire interaction with another class be automated is fairly frustrating at times. I can think of a couple unobtrusive ways where a player can have more interaction with the aircraft, and that will be below where I suggest mechanic additions. Overall, carriers and ships interact the same way, it will just be much more frequent now since they will appear in more games. There will be some system shock at first, and I have no doubt that gameplay will settle and be balanced around it over time. Whether I want to be a ship in that gameplay however remains to be seen, and right now it's sitting at a no. 7. Defending Yourself from Airstrikes. Stay near ships with defensive fire if you don’t have one, don’t get engaged by planes when you can’t maneuver much, and be very careful with your DCP. At the start of 0.8.0, a lot of players won’t be experienced yet and you may not notice their effect all that much. They will probably lose a lot of planes doing things they shouldn’t, and be out of reserves for late game. Don’t let that fool you, good carriers will be deadly as ever, and nothing but the longest flak walls, highest continuous damage and most bizarre maneuvering will stop them. Using your defensive fire or catapult planes should not always be used just because you have them active. Saving them for more dangerous squad types, or protecting yourself from follow up attacks while your DCP is down would be better than trying to defensive fire rocket planes as soon as you see them. When Attack Planes are coming for you, their main goal is your soft spots. The biggest one being your superstructure. To describe how they launch rockets, I will use Shokaku as an example. They launch rockets within their elliptical as 2, and then 8, followed by the last 2 in a straight line. This means that broadsiding the incoming attack planes is exactly what they want you to do. Try to show the least amount of profile possible while still keeping them in your sector to fight against them the best. With Torpedo planes, the same can be applied. Show the least amount of profile as possible while maintaining your sector on them. You also want to try to turn towards them if you can, because this will reduce the amount of time the torpedoes are around you and reducing your movement options. If you turn away, it sets up potential for the enemy cv to cross drop you, since torpedoes move slower and they'll box you in longer. With Dive bombers, their preferred angle is with you pointing directly toward or away from them. At least the tech tree ones. Give them as much broadside as possible. 7-1 Beating CVs with the Numbers. What it comes down to now is minimizing the enemy CVs effect on you and the game as much as possible. Any amount of time waste and plane reserve hits you can cause to the enemy are victories. Even if they are small, they all add up, and wasting their time is good since they are focused on damage over time. Remember, even though there will be more players in carriers that you will see often, there will be a balance between good and bad ones, so it may not always be so bad fighting against a carrier. 7-2 DDs vs Carriers. Destroyers will still have to be careful early game, because attack planes can still hurt even if they don't delete you. Try to take a more cautious approach to caps, so as not to be spotted in the open by planes and be attacked by both them and enemy ships. Watch out for torpedo planes assisting in cross dropping your smoke. 7-3 Early Sector Switching. When under attack by a squadron, and you know they will pass over to your other side, try to learn the timing of your sector switch delay to line it up so it switches right when they pass over. This will maximize your sector, and there is no AA loss in switching. It will take some time to get it right, but every little bit will help. 7-4 The Downtier Experience. Be really careful when you are bottom tier against a CV as well. It's really hard to defend yourself alone against strong planes, almost to the point where it seems unfair. I hope WG puts more focus onto this area of balance. The downtier experience To judge whether or not you were successful in fighting off a plane attack, a good rule of thumb would be expecting 3 plane kills and upwards to even have a noticeable effect on his reserves per attack. If the enemy carrier is smart though, he will just land his planes before he loses too much. The best you can expect most of the time is to make sure you only get attacked once by the entire squadron, and try to mitigate the damage from that 1 attack as best you can. 8. Possible Mechanic Additions. One thing that is really strong right now is using the land command for your squadron right after an attack. Your planes disappear so quickly that the enemy can’t really shoot you down. Something that would be good is adding a similar effect of strafing out of a fighter lock. Losing a plane doing so, or taking a lot of damage from AA if you use the land command inside short or medium range AA. This would at least give the ships more of a chance to destroy planes and some punishment or risk to pulling the land maneuver (flying high into the sky sharply) right over enemy AA. I also think that since fires on CV only last 5s, the DCP auto consumable should never activate for them. A player would never use it for that, even if they somehow happened to have 4 fires going, that would not come close to the damage of a normal fire on anything else. Even if there are players that would want the auto use to activate for a single fire, it would just do them more harm than good. In respect to the lack of interaction for ships in fighting aircraft, one thing that would be doable is re-implement ctrl-click aircraft, and have a delay of 3-4 seconds between each time you are able to click to add in a couple bonus ticks of continuous damage. Nothing that will disrupt the balance, but at least add some player action = impact. Another thing that could help with that would be to add a fourth attack mode, being AA. Picture the mode you get for torpedoes, a large cone representing the limits of your aim, and a smaller one showing you where you are aiming within that cone. The smaller cone would increase the damage for any aircraft that are inside it (above it), and the large aim limits would just be your AA auras. This would not only be a better and more interactive system than what I just mentioned above, but this would also be better than the sector system. The smaller aim cone could be 1/4 or even 1/6 of your AA aura, like a slice of pie. You could lock it in place with the key used to activate the sector system now, so you could do other things, or take direct control during an attack to maximize the damage you do to the planes. You yourself fighting a CV while it is attacking you. This isn't quite as far as real control over your AA, but it would line up well with existing gameplay and reduce the automated RNG of your AA that is your entire interaction with another class. By @NCC81701, Have you thought about viability to adding manual control to altitude and AA similar to subs? Say for High altitude drop is less accurate but takes less damage from Short/Mid AA but low altitude attack is more accurate but take more damage from Short/Mid AA. The player ship then have to judge/decide the altitude level of the large caliber AA/flack burst. if it's at the correct altitude it does bonus damage. Cooldown will be present for changing the altitude of both planes and large caliber AA of course. 9. General Thoughts. Overall, I enjoyed my experience playing CVs, the same cannot be said for playing ships against them however. I feel that the gameplay of WoWs is much more strategic and enjoyable without CVs in random battles, and a lot of that is lost with them. When CVs are around, they dominate the no-mans land, and nothing can really contest this. Even if the CV can no longer one shot you, it doesn't change the environment they cause. This will really be felt if WG puts in 2v2 CV matches. If WG happens to read this, I really think you should limit it to 1v1 for at least 0.8.0, and then evaluate the effect from live to consider if upping the amount for 0.8.1 is warranted. I know this will impact the amount of people trying to play CV in 0.8.0 and the queue times, but 2v2 would really put negative opinions in people's minds as they experience it as ships, no matter how balanced you might think it is. Being attacked by a carrier is not something people will enjoy, and doubling that occurrence is risky for tolerance. 10. Thank You. I hope this Guide/Opinion piece was useful to you. I put a lot of work into it over the course of the week, and tried to make it as unbiased and fair as possible. I ask that you share this with people in the game so they too can get a handle on this new gameplay, and if you have questions or want to counterpoint what I’m saying, I’m always glad to respond. You can either comment to this thread or talk to me in Twitch. Also, feel free to argue points made here or by other people commenting, but keep it civil so this thread remains unlocked and open for discussion. Special Thanks to: @HellaCopterRescue for putting up with my long rants and playing Devil’s Advocate, along with helping me test things for video. This guide would not be what it is without his help. @Kousatsu for assistance behind the scenes ensuring this guide was well structured. @Carrier_Hornet for playing CV for me so I could play ships in PTS and guarantee carrier games. @Warlord78 and @Ponymagistrate for reviewing this guide among other things.

It doesn't open past the launcher. Pressing play on the launcher simply results in that little window appearing. Please help, I just wanna try out the new CVs.

The wiki team has updated the AA Defense section of the Aerial Combat article. (Note: The other sections are still obsolete.) If you want to know how AA Defense works now, please read: http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Aerial_Combat#Anti-Air_.28AA.29_Defense Hope this helps.

All of you people probably are aware of the CV rework. If you are a new player and you want to play CVs (aircraft carriers.) Well, think again. In this topic, I'll tell you why CVs aren't just worth to play with. 1. How you execute a attack is rather poor. No matter how much planes are in your squadron, torpedo bombers for example will only have 2 planes that will actually attack while the original CV mechanic will have all the planes left in the squadron attack. How you attack is basically doing a manual drop with the old CVs except the "drop area" moves with the squadron, and in 3rd person instead of a birds eye view which somewhat makes executing a attack worse. 2. They whatsoever had to remove tier 5,7, and 9 carriers and it also messes up with the matchmaking. Right now, it's possible for a tier 4 CV to be in a tier 7 match where common sense tells you the poor tier 4 CVs planes would just get shredded. 3. The micromanaging I'd say is worse than the old CVs and I mean a lot worse. All CVs are 1-1-1 instead of other flight systems. If this isn't bad, you can only control one squadron, and controlling that one squadron does not let you control the CV itself without autopilot. If you played before 0.8.0 and you played CVs, you can tell striking a ship with only one squadron is stupid and either you don't do enough damage or that squadron will get shredded. 4. Sometimes, the point of playing CVs is to have fun shredding the opponent's planes with your fighters. Now with the rework, its a pain to have the air superiority. Yes, there is a consumable on strike aircraft but it only patrol a certain area and the fighters are consumables and only circle your ship. Thats all I have to say about the CV rework. If I missed anything, feel free to comment down. This is just my opinion and it's ok to have a different opinion than me.

So it's been three days, and I think we can all agree that 0.8.0 has been wildly contentious. I've been holding back my judgement till now so I could play a variety of classes, and I'll try to keep my feedback to objective comments. For full disclosure I'll throw out that I was also a fan of the reasoning behind the rework in the first place, and saw the necessity of the design decisions they took. I also played RTS CVs, though I was not a main by any means. What went wrong The AA. Not the numbers, I think we all knew they would be wildly off on release. The consistency is the problem. The "AA is OP!" thread right next to the "AA is worthless" threads right next to each other are a testament to the range of effectiveness AA can have. I think most of this because of the randomness behind the flak mechanic. Rewarding skilled dodging is important, but perhaps the rewards are a little too good against solo ships. How to fix: Move AA damage away from flak alpha, and increase it's consistency. How this happens doesn't matter so much. Right now too much relies on at least one solid hit if you want to down planes before they drop. The F-key. Press F to pay respects... or I guess not, because not many planes die unless you're slow on this button. The recall button is necessary, but the implementation of it goes against one of the best changes in the rework. The goal was to have CVs strike multiple times, so surface AA isn't useless if it can't stop the initial strike. But the current F key is so good the CV is only really forced to suffer losses on the initial approach. Any losses past that can be prevented by the CV, or are caused by the CV being greedy. It also means a CV can strike the blobbiest of AA blobs, and as long as they dodge flak in the 4-6 seconds it takes to line up a run they can avoid most plane losses. Having an ability this OP makes CVs extremely hard to balance later, and also connects to point 1. AA is horribly inconsistent when the CV never has to sit in the aura designed for consistent damage. How to fix: Put a long(er) delay on the time before planes become invulnerable. Plane HP may need to be buffed to compensate, but I believe that's a worthwhile trade off for being able to punish "suicidal" attack runs. The Vision Meta. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but the meta really feels like CBT and OBT where vision control wasn't a thing because CVs saw everything. Unfortunately since then, CVs sorta disappeared and DD became the kings of vision control. And that drove a TON of the game's balance decisions since then. IJN torp nerf? Without CVs to keep them track of them, low detection + insane alpha was too much. RADAR? Without CVs, larger ships couldn't proactively hunt DDs if the DD played smart. The list goes on. Now CVs are back, but all the tools WG gave cruisers to beat up DDs are still there. Now, the meta is back to the early days of the game. But even if it could be balanced, that's not the meta or the gameplay most DD drivers signed up for or enjoy. I believe that last point has been communicated quite well by a large number of DD mains. How to fix: Remove CV spotting for team. It's quite a simple fix actually. It doesn't remove the CVs power in any way, and also preserves the meta that most DD players know and love. Personally I'd go a step further and slash air detection of DDs by half. That way DDs could choose to be REALLY hard to strike if they're not already lit while not reducing the CV's power against a lit DD. I think these three points cover the three major complaints people have with the rework, or at least the ones I've seen. I left the UI issues off here, because I think everyone agrees with them, but if I'm not mistaken it's not the Dev team that can fix that. What went right The visuals. It almost feels like a cop-out saying it, but things do sure look pretty. The reduced alpha. As a CV I no longer feel really dirty when I strike a surface ship. Now some may put this as a negative, and say that even the best runs aren't rewarding. I feel there is a middle ground to be found, especially with AP bombs, but overall this feels like a much better direction for the game than "high reload + high alpha". The intensity. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, especially not many of the old guard CV players, but the new game play definitely is much more fast paced and hectic. Design wise, I think WG put together a class that will appeal to a type of player. In that aspect I think it was a success. It's not easy putting together (effectively) a new class! The WG response. No, seriously. I would really hate to be a WG employee having to browse through the forums and reddit right now. But here they are, acknowledging our complaints and sometimes offering their views. Like or hate the rework, you gotta give them props for that. They may not be able to say much but it is reassuring that they're taking this much more seriously than I've ever seen them before. So, what do you guys think of the suggested fixes? Step in the right direction? Completely wrong? Not enough?

I wonder if WG are aware of two "side effects" of the update and, if so, whether they anticipated this happening or even planned for it. Side Effect #1. I only play PvE and have had 23 straight battles which resulted in only one instance of a CV sinking a ship. Some of those battles had two CVs on our team, some had only one, but in 23 sequential battles, even allowing for the fact that in one of those a CV claimed a sinking, all the CVs scores were at the bottom of the list. Side Effect #2. The large number of players who are saying that they are now playing PvE in preference to PvP, because of the changes. Oh...I should add that #2 has also been stated by players on the SEA server, where I also play.

After the first few 0.8.0 games left a horrible impression on me, I decided to bring out an old favorite of mine - Aoba - and see how her anti-aircraft fire fares against the new carriers. In this game, I spent much of the battle pushing alongside a Gneisenau, and for a time, I broke off to hunt a CV that got too close to our battle line. The imminent threat of a CA ganking a CV turned both carriers' squadrons on me, and I found that when used correctly, sector AA when paired with DefAA II and Fighter II really tears through strike aircraft, even for a nation with notoriously poor AA capabilities. It was also during this battle that my biggest sector AA gripe came up: I was forced to use the cumbersome sector UI to enhance and change sectors. Even though I survived to help capture the enemy base, I found the UI clunky and borderline unusable in the heat of battle. My suggestion is this: allow for a keybind to toggle sector AA from port to starboard (and vice versa) like 'P' turns AA on and off. That way, sector switching becomes a lot more fluid and doesn't cover the whole screen, allowing for more dynamic surface ship play. It's difficult to fire guns, drop torpedoes, and manage AA sectors all at the same time, and I think this QoL change would really benefit aggressive play like the match in question. Side note: For those wondering, my build for this game was as follows: Captain (14 points): Direction Center for Fighters, Last Stand, Basic Firing Training, Advanced Firing Training, Manual Fire Control for AA Armament Upgrades: Main Armaments Mod 1, Propulsion Mod 1, Aiming Systems Mod 1, Steering Gears Mod 2 Consumables: Damage Control Party II, Defensive AA Fire II, Fighter II Signal Flags: None

This is not an essay about the pros and cons of the rework itself but on the player base reaction to the rework. Let's not let this thread devolve into the pros and cons of the rework please. I've seen a wide range of emotion from players in the past day. We have people saying they are quitting and we see players telling them to give it more time and we have other players telling them good riddance and don't let the door hit you on the way out. The amount of players upset over the rework far outweighs the number from any other previous major change to the game. Think back to captain skill rework and RDF from 2 years ago or the removal of OWSF in 0.6.3. The fact we have a larger number of people saying they are disappointed with the rework and are quitting the game is extremely concerning. Yes, it's early into the new patch, but every single day that there are players not having fun is extremely dangerous for the game. If players are quitting the game, it casts doom and gloom on the whole community. Those players might have friends that are, in turn, less inclined to play the game if their friends are leaving, possibly leading to a domino effect on the player base. There is a pile of uncertainty in the player base right now. Even though a lot of players aren't just quitting outright, they just don't feel like playing right now. I see this in my clan mates and other div buddies that I have played the game with for years. and because of that, I'm less inclined to play the game and am less enthused about it. I might not care for the CV rework right now, but even going and playing ranked without CV's seems very unappealing. Why go play a game mode and grind out reward ships to play in the future when I don't have a clue whether this game is going to have the player base it used to in 3 months time. Why continue to grind at this game when I have no clue whether the players I enjoy divving with right now might just up and quit and not come back? I know that I feel this for sure. Even if I didn't enjoy it as much, but all my regular friends that play the game were super enthused and playing the game, I cannot see myself leaving for quite a while, but I'm not seeing that right now. The danger is that even though today the game still has the majority of the player base, the chance for the domino effect to lead to a mass exodus is very real. Even if the game balances itself out nicely in 2 or 3 patches, what effect will the painful process of the balancing lead to? How many players will have been lost along the way? So to those of you wanting to slam the doors on players who don't like the rework and want to quit the game, I would suggest you be careful what you wish for. Yes, it is early, but the longer this game is not fun for players that had fun before, the more dangerous it gets. The domino effect is real. The majority of you probably can't deny that you are apprehensive about what the CV rework might do to the community and the game itself. WG threw the dice on their player base and customers liking this rework and I'm hoping they were right, but scared that they are wrong.

I've been playing this game since it came out, and I've been loving most of the things that WG decides to do. UNTIL NOW. Like seriously, how is this fun to play or play against? When you get into a t10 room with almost guaranteed four cv, also almost guaranteed that those CVs will survive to the end with all their planes. And thanks to the new update, planes are so fast that they can spot you even before you turn on your computer. And why would I need concealment skill anymore? What's the [edited]point if I will be spotted by thousands of planes for 20 minutes? I have to say this is literally the worst version of WOWS I've ever played. Maybe some people really like it, idk, good for them? But before WG decides to do anything about this stupid new mechanism, I won't be playing it anymore. Just dealed 310k damage to win the game with my Reupublique several hours ago, and I cannot feel any positive emotion right now. Thank you WG, ABSOLUTELY PISSED.