Premium Kaga not worth the money!!

[Bradenton44]

If you like Japanese carriers do yourself a favor and stick to the tech tree the Kaga is a tier 8 carrier with tier 6 planes that 80% or more of the time you will be up tiered to tier ten games so you will be facing tier ten ships with tier 6 planes sounds exciting does it not??? They tell you well  you get more planes well you have to because they are tier six planes and all the more planes really means is that the enemy ship will actually chase your planes down to run up their score. Only thing you can really do is wait till the end of the game and hope your team wins so that the ships will be badly damage and a lot of their AA defense is knocked out the first part of the game  you can look to see if there are any low AA ships but at tier nine and ten do not hold your breath even DD's will kill your entire squadron in seconds. Yep DD's will actually chase your planes around to farm kills and run their score up.

World of Warships has to make sure DD players are kept happy at all cost.

[Shoggoth_pinup]

Certain ships will do this. Just as certain T8 ships will. Just as certain T6 and 7 also will.

Avoid those particular ships, you will be fine. Know thy enemy and all that. Avoid the flak and you can attack even a Minotaur, assuming you have skill.

[AVR_Project]

You've got a good range on those torps.  You need to launch long.

The Kaga has the highest capacity of planes-on-deck of any CV.  It takes you three strikes to run low on torpedo planes.

And they are cheap, so use them up.

Fighting Tier 10:  Make one high-speed approach, drop long, and hit plane return right after they hit the water..  

[IfYouSeeKhaos]

@Hapa_Fodderwe have a spammer...3 different threads out of the last 4 all saying the same thing.

[Shoggoth_pinup]

Kaga is among the easiest T8 CVs, as you have such a high reserve that you basically can't be deplaned. You have 9 squads in your hangar compared to the 4.5 of other CVs. You also have hilariously huge squads, making that 9 downright silly. If you have issues, drop a third of your squad early.

1 minute ago, AVR_Project said:

You've got a good range on those torps.  You need to launch long.

The Kaga has the highest capacity of planes-on-deck of any CV.  It takes you three strikes to run low on torpedo planes.

And they are cheap, so use them up.

Fighting Tier 10:  Make one high-speed approach, drop long, and hit plane return right after they hit the water..  

Worth noting, if you hold W they will retain the boosted speed and escape faster from what I've heard. Hard to actually compare, however, so I dunno how true that is. I'm also not sure how it affects post-drop returns, either.

[BayraktarDeath]

4 torps per drop is pretty nice. Even the tier 10 haiku only gets 2. I was in a match where I saw 1 kaga had over 120 planes shot down and was still launching. I got like 51 myself. Not a bad carrier.

[Estimated_Prophet]

30 minutes ago, Shoggoth_pinup said:

Avoid the flak and you can attack even a Minotaur, assuming you have skill.

I can’t. No twitch ability worth a damn in that respect.

Mino is nothing but a buzz saw that eats planes as far as I’m concerned.

22 minutes ago, AVR_Project said:

You've got a good range on those torps.  You need to launch long.

Why? So you can miss a lot?

Sorry, but not everyone is Mister Super Torpedo lead predictor; and not every target is a stupid idiot who keeps sailing straight and actually lets themselves get hit from so far out if you did guess the right lead.

Quote

The Kaga has the highest capacity of planes-on-deck of any CV.  It takes you three strikes to run low on torpedo planes.

And they are cheap, so use them up.

Completely meaningless, when even some non Flat Pack DDs can evaporate the squad, or at least gut it, before you can get away. Never mind encountering certain cruisers.

With three similar threads, I certainly agree that there may be some trolling going on; but I don’t necessarily disagree with the nature of some of the complaints, as they relate to Kaga, (and Enterprise.)

[Shoggoth_pinup]

21 minutes ago, Estimated_Prophet said:

I can’t. No twitch ability worth a damn in that respect.

Dodging flak has little to do with twitch ability. It's about timing your wiggle to make the flak miss you due to firing off to the side. Holding W helps, as fewer flak clouds to dodge if you go fast. You need to find a good rhythm to dodge flak.

Not only that, but attacking a Minotaur in a CV is most optimally done by skipping the flak. You do this by going over a tall island near them, as they need line of sight to fire the AA at you.

[Estimated_Prophet]

9 minutes ago, Shoggoth_pinup said:

Dodging flak has little to do with twitch ability. It's about timing your wiggle to make the flak miss you due to firing off to the side. Holding W helps, as fewer flak clouds to dodge if you go fast. You need to find a good rhythm to dodge flak.

Been trying for nearly a year and a half now.

Usual result. AA just moves in front of me again. If Hell freezes over, and by some miracle I actually dodge, I usually can’t settle the bomb or rocket reticle on a target.

Torpedoes you just charge through and drop. Launching from far out is a joke and a waste of effort; mostly because I can’t predict drops to do so. That, plus not having any faith in people being stupid enough to get hit from that far out.

9 minutes ago, Shoggoth_pinup said:

Not only that, but attacking a Minotaur in a CV is most optimally done by skipping the flak. You do this by going over a tall island near them, as they need line of sight to fire the AA at you.

Again; little ability to settle the sight after doing so.

If I can’t run in straight and settle my sight; making bomb attacks with anything besides RN is wasted effort.

[SgtBeltfed]

Kaga is ok, after you get past how she does different things to achieve the same results as other CV's, she's actually normal.

The planes themselves, are tier 7, kinda flimsy, good speed, and you get a lot of them per flight. That's both a blessing and a curse, you can take casualties better, but you won't fit between the flak, so you'll lose more aircraft.

Massive front loaded reserves, but a poor regen rate considering her aircraft loss rate. The net effect is, if you use standard precautions, you should have aircraft throughout a 20 minute match, just like a normal CV.

The "attack" aircraft, aren't up to much, but they're Japanese, so that's perfectly normal.

The DIve bombers, HE Bombs, get dropped in 4's, and in theory you get 3 drops of them. In reality, unless there's  no AA, you'll send 4 planes back to the ship, make one attack of 4 planes, and lose 4 planes. And you can do this most of the day. 4 8800 point (or 2900 per pen because they're HE and won't citadel anything) bombs may sound a little weak for an IJN CV, but they have good utility, 

The torpedo bombers: you get a long arming distance (800 meter instead of 500 and change), high speed, slightly better damage than Graf Zeppelin torp, dropped from a plane that's slower and more fragile than GZ's TA-152's. Sounds terrible, but you launch them 12 at a time, drop 4 torps at a time, and have a parking lot full of them. They're also stealthier with a 7.5km detection radius, which you can get down to to under 7km with skills. Against many targets, you'll attack with 8 planes, lose 2 to 4, and send what's left home. Against high AA targets, you'll have to predrop 4, attack with 4, and lose 4, which she can do for a long time. Kaga's tied with Saipan for second most torps dropped at a time, with Midway being on top with 6.

[Meta_Man]

Kaga torp planes are concealment 6.1 with ce. Your goal is to keep them hidden till you are in your torp run... Don't turn around in aa bubble unless they have weak aa..... 🚀 Planes aren't good... Dive bombers are OK... So mostly use those 2 but dbs and 🚀 doesn't have stellar concealment... I use the torps for damage and scouts with that great concealment.... Please don't just say I'm wrong just think about what I said.... I make it work, so can you... I make cv videos if you want to check them. Out, happy hunting Captain 😎 

[Estimated_Prophet]

6 minutes ago, Meta_Man said:

Please don't just say I'm wrong just think about what I said.... I make it work, so can you...

Would never say you’re wrong; just that like with Leander-Fiji-Eddy; I can’t make it work.

[AVR_Project]

2 hours ago, Estimated_Prophet said:

With three similar threads, I certainly agree that there may be some trolling going on; but I don’t necessarily disagree with the nature of some of the complaints, as they relate to Kaga, (and Enterprise.)

ENTERPRISE !!!!   I haven't played that in a long time.

Double nerfed with weak planes, and super-duper expensive price of those planes (double Kaga), and 1.5 times post battle service cost  just switched me off of that until it was fixed...  and I haven't checked for a while...

Oh wait..  Yes I did.   I perfected the 8KM skip-drop..   and tried it...   the target reticle over the ship never becomes ready until all my planes evaporated..  I need to work with this in a training room to see HOW BAD THEY NERFED ENTERPRISE AGAIN.

Enterprise has become the CV rework poster-child to me.  I used to have a lot of fun while at least coming in the middle of the battle results.  Now, I'm always bottom.  Kaga escaped all those timing nerfs.

 

 

Edit -- Just got back from a training room with the Big E..

For skip-bombing, the time interval is 9KM for boosted, and 7KM for non-boosted.  And you have a painful 4KM out in raw AA.  With a 9 plane group - and you used 3 to get close, that leaves 3 sacrificed to AA to make one good 3 plane run.  I'd give it more than these numbers.

 

[Estimated_Prophet]

26 minutes ago, AVR_Project said:

ENTERPRISE !!!!   I haven't played that in a long time.

Double nerfed with weak planes, and super-duper expensive price of those planes (double Kaga), and 1.5 times post battle service cost  just switched me off of that until it was fixed...  and I haven't checked for a while...

Oh wait..  Yes I did.   I perfected the 8KM skip-drop..   and tried it...   the target reticle over the ship never becomes ready until all my planes evaporated..  I need to work with this in a training room to see HOW BAD THEY NERFED ENTERPRISE AGAIN.

Enterprise has become the CV rework poster-child to me.  I used to have a lot of fun while at least coming in the middle of the battle results.  Now, I'm always bottom.  Kaga escaped all those timing nerfs.

Yeah... I’m so hopelessly pathetic with anything but RN carpet bombs I just put all my armor on the torpedo planes for my carrier drivers.

[AVR_Project]

Just now, Estimated_Prophet said:

Yeah... I’m so hopelessly pathetic with anything but RN carpet bombs I just put all my armor on the torpedo planes for my carrier drivers.

I edited the post just now...

Edit -- Just got back from a training room with the Big E..

For skip-bombing, the time interval is 9KM for boosted, and 7KM for non-boosted.  And you have a painful 4KM out in raw AA.  With a 9 plane group - and you used 3 to get close, that leaves 3 sacrificed to AA to make one good 3 plane run.  I'd give it more than these numbers.

[Herr_Reitz]

On 6/27/2020 at 8:13 PM, Shoggoth_pinup said:

Avoid the flak and you can attack even a Minotaur, assuming you have skill.

Got any good videos or even text articles explaining exactly how to avoid the AAA? I haven't seen it yet. I'd really like to watch a few, maybe a half dozen of them.

 

On 6/27/2020 at 9:08 PM, Shoggoth_pinup said:

Holding W helps, as fewer flak clouds to dodge if you go fast. You need to find a good rhythm to dodge flak.

This is misinformation - holding W makes you fly into AAA faster with no ability to "dodge flak". It also accelerates you faster into unknown AAA space. I will say this - at risk of them "fixing it"... with TBs, you can drop into attack mode, the "flying on the deck" flight model and almost lose no aircraft. Attack mode for the other two won't get it done as well. 

 

So folks I'm just gonna suggest that AAA in this game, as of this release, is far too powerful. I'd also like to know how a ship the size of the Edinburgh is not visible to me until around 6km... seems a bit wonk. 

I'd also like to see numerous, unscripted combat play from the devs using all the carriers. I'd like THEM to teach US how to play them PROPERLY, within the current game "meta". Do the devs have any experts who can illustrate the finer points of playing a carrier, match after match? 

If so, get them on camera, get them out here to show us weaker, mere mortals how to enjoy the illustrious carrier career. 

I still insist the proper way to match carries is down the tier tree 10/9, 8/7, 6/5, 4 and NOT up the tier tree. 

Tier 6 planes, no matter what, upscaling four tiers for combat? I wonder - do they have any tier 6 BB main batteries fighting at tier X ? I haven't looked yet. 

On 6/27/2020 at 9:44 PM, Meta_Man said:

Dive bombers are OK.

See I'm torn... I want the accuracy buff for my TB but am now thinking I'd prefer it on the DB... 

[Meta_Man]

34 minutes ago, Herr_Reitz said:

Got any good videos or even text articles explaining exactly how to avoid the AAA? I haven't seen it yet. I'd really like to watch a few, maybe a half dozen of them.

 

This is misinformation - holding W makes you fly into AAA faster with no ability to "dodge flak". It also accelerates you faster into unknown AAA space. I will say this - at risk of them "fixing it"... with TBs, you can drop into attack mode, the "flying on the deck" flight model and almost lose no aircraft. Attack mode for the other two won't get it done as well. 

 

So folks I'm just gonna suggest that AAA in this game, as of this release, is far too powerful. I'd also like to know how a ship the size of the Edinburgh is not visible to me until around 6km... seems a bit wonk. 

I'd also like to see numerous, unscripted combat play from the devs using all the carriers. I'd like THEM to teach US how to play them PROPERLY, within the current game "meta". Do the devs have any experts who can illustrate the finer points of playing a carrier, match after match? 

If so, get them on camera, get them out here to show us weaker, mere mortals how to enjoy the illustrious carrier career. 

I still insist the proper way to match carries is down the tier tree 10/9, 8/7, 6/5, 4 and NOT up the tier tree. 

Tier 6 planes, no matter what, upscaling four tiers for combat? I wonder - do they have any tier 6 BB main batteries fighting at tier X ? I haven't looked yet. 

See I'm torn... I want the accuracy buff for my TB but am now thinking I'd prefer it on the DB... 

The advantage to the Kaga TBs is the low detection,  so you do not need the buff on the TBs because you can line them up in stealth.

[Herr_Reitz]

 

4 hours ago, Meta_Man said:

The advantage to the Kaga TBs is the low detection,  so you do not need the buff on the TBs because you can line them up in stealth.

I thought it best to go back and recheck my entire ship layout (module/commander/etc). You are RIGHT on the 6.1km conceal! The best I'd read on her recently (I just looked this week) was a discussion of 6.7km, which is what I had. Thanks to you, I now have 6.1km conceal.

Going out to test her now! It did take a reduction to deck capacity of two and a return to her original aircraft rearm speed (it's now five percent longer), but that conceal should be huge. 

Find out now! 

[Meta_Man]

15 minutes ago, Herr_Reitz said:

 

I thought it best to go back and recheck my entire ship layout (module/commander/etc). You are RIGHT on the 6.1km conceal! The best I'd read on her recently (I just looked this week) was a discussion of 6.7km, which is what I had. Thanks to you, I now have 6.1km conceal.

Going out to test her now! It did take a reduction to deck capacity of two and a return to her original aircraft rearm speed (it's now five percent longer), but that conceal should be huge. 

Find out now! 

Awesome, here to help, I make strategy and ship review videos probably a few a week.... Meta_Man2002 happy hunting Captain 😎 

[Shoggoth_pinup]

13 hours ago, Herr_Reitz said:

Got any good videos or even text articles explaining exactly how to avoid the AAA? I haven't seen it yet. I'd really like to watch a few, maybe a half dozen of them.

 

This is misinformation - holding W makes you fly into AAA faster with no ability to "dodge flak". It also accelerates you faster into unknown AAA space. I will say this - at risk of them "fixing it"... with TBs, you can drop into attack mode, the "flying on the deck" flight model and almost lose no aircraft. Attack mode for the other two won't get it done as well. 

It's pretty simple, really. You don't really need to dodge the flak so much as trick the AA AI into puting the flak in the wrong place. If you wiggle just right, nearly the entire flak wave will miss by a long shot, firing the opposite direction as you turn. Takes practice and a good rhythm to pull it off, and still not especially worth it to strike into Minotaurs and such unless forced, but the payoff can be worth it for a kill.

That said, flak bubbles last less time than they are visible. Each poof actually explode twice. Onc makes them appear, and a second explosion turns them off as far as I can tell. You can go hard and fast, then slow down so that the flak ""despawns"" by the time you actually reach it. The important part is that you need to time it just right as to when you speed up and slow down. Do it poorly and you'll just take a faceful of flak.

With these two tricks, AAA ships are not purely no fly zones, only no return zones. That said, these tricks are not 100%, only 90 or 95% effective. The flak's main body will always miss, but the extra poofs outside might still get you with bad enough luck. This can be when you combine the two tricks, going from trick 1 to trick 2.

These two tricks are what makes me perfectly effective in a T8 CV against T10 AAA. I will lose the entire squad due to high continuous damage as they escape, but the attacks will almost always break through at least once if not twice.

That said, those stupid AAA DDs aren't worth it 9/10 times. You're best served baiting def AA and then fleeing. After it ends, then they are fair game. Similar can be said of Worcester mid-def AA. Def AA is a tool people really don't respect enough, as that 50% buff can be the difference between inescapable AA and painful AA. I thought Minotaur's stealth AAA was bad, but those DDs are worse by a country mile...

[Herr_Reitz]

7 minutes ago, Shoggoth_pinup said:

It's pretty simple, really. <snip>

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. I looked up iChaseGaming, who has a video on carriers that's only like five months old? 

In it there were a number of tips I had known but forgotten. He sort of describes a couple ways to avoid the flak (AAA) with some live action. 

I took a couple pointers from the video, added in the stuff from above and went back to random. Major improvement in my Kaga game.

Thanks to everyone's pointers, Ima Doin Better. 

[Shoggoth_pinup]

7 hours ago, Herr_Reitz said:

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. I looked up iChaseGaming, who has a video on carriers that's only like five months old? 

In it there were a number of tips I had known but forgotten. He sort of describes a couple ways to avoid the flak (AAA) with some live action. 

I took a couple pointers from the video, added in the stuff from above and went back to random. Major improvement in my Kaga game.

Thanks to everyone's pointers, Ima Doin Better. 

Ohh, and one last thing. Don't try to go fast then slow in a CV with great speed retention like with Ark Royal. If memory serves (been a while since I played Ark) you need to go fast and only fast against high AA, as slowing down results in... an end that isn't so pretty. Ships like this walk a razor's edge, as messing up the rhythm while dodging can't really be recovered from. All you can do is dodge over (RN HE bombs) dodge under (torps) or wince at the losses.

Man, I really need to get back to Ark, on that note. Fun ship, but hard. I think I'll do it once I finally hit 113k average T10 CV damage before next update. I want that T4 CV medal bad, as the new req is finally a number I can attain realistically. Only 8k more to go!

Edit: Right, I should explain why. You see, good speed retention comes at a cost, as you also can't slow down quickly, nor can you speed up quickly.

[iRA6E]

I'm not sure how anyone could say Kaga is a bad CV?    Literally it has so many planes that you can just suicide potato with them and do above average damage..  pre dropping will buy you another attack or six.   Frankly it's Torp planes are as dangerous as any at the tier or above.   With any level of care at all you can keep effective levels of planes in the air for an entire match.. Even at T10.   Shoggoth is correct..  CE is important and understanding how to use when attacking with your torp planes.. understanding how to make long lead torp drops to set up ships and make for easy follow up 2nd strikes to almost defenseless targets.  It's a BBs worst nightmare IMO.  Even without that knowledge its almost potato proof with it's massive planes counts. It's plane speeds are more than adequate for the tier.     It and Ark royal are easily the best values in premium CVs currently available for the average player.  I'd actually say that Kaga is on the verge of being OP IMO.