Analysing Jingles "Fun Police" video to improve DD play

[Moggytwo]

This video I linked below (The Fun Police) from Jingles was quite interesting, in that it provides some really good examples of what not to do in a DD.  I thought it might be nice to have a bit of an analysis of what went wrong, and how those DD's could have done better.  Let's have a look at what happened.

The first clip, the Halland sees the FDR DB's slowly lumbering towards him and decides to turn into the enemy. Not a good choice, as it means that he is going to be extremely vulnerable if spotted to the fire from the enemy ships near C, particularly the Smolensk. That single poor decision would have killed him even if the CV had missed him. He then compounds this by turning his ship to line up perfectly with the CV's reticle, something the CV was no doubt pretty happy with, given the ridiculously long fall time of the FDR bombs make it pretty difficult to hit a DD that isn't so obliging.

If the Halland had accelerated and turned away when he saw the FDR planes were clearly going to spot him (at 1:30 it became obvious, and he had plenty of time to depart), he would have taken negligible damage from the Smolensk, and if he'd turned so as to be rotating through the perpendicular of the DB reticle as the drop happened, the CV likely would have missed completely, or only landed a bomb or two. So clearly the Halland got what he deserved - such are the rapid consequences of poor decisions at crucial moments in a DD!  Also, rushing into a cap at the start isn't necessary - it is generally better to position between two caps and back a little, spotting and torping/gunboating depending on what you're sailing, and when you know the enemy deployment and are keeping constant awareness of CV squadron type and positioning, attempt to cap when the opportunity presents itself, while always having an out for CV's, radars, and enemy DD's - you need to have the plan of what to do in these situations formulated before you get into trouble!

Next we have the second clip, the Oland. His first and main mistake was pushing to the absolutely most obvious point of the map where every DD always goes on that map, the D4-E5 area. Even the densest and most potato CV is going to send some planes there to look for DD's in the opener. His second mistake was not realising that the Chappy's position was equally suicidal, and that he was clearly not going to be much use for very long, as he was also going to be inevitably spotted by the CV's and focused down from both flanks. The Oland then, after being attacked by both squadrons due to his poor positioning in the opener, decides that pushing into the cap is clearly his duty as a DD, and keeps on going. The CV's are both obviously thinking that this DD is asking nicely to be killed, so of course come back to the Oland, which is now the closest target, and the easiest target to attack, so about as inviting a target as a CV could want. The Oland is on about 90% health at this point, but is dead - there is no possible way he can survive from this point. The rest of it is just inevitability unfolding on screen, although the Oland does make it even more difficult for himself by staying close to islands and thus severely limiting his movement options, while also sitting for extended periods in the gaps between the islands so as to give as much opportunity as possible for the surface ships on both flanks to hit him. Very accommodating really.

The Oland had plenty of viable options at the start, being centrally placed and able to support both the A and C caps if he so desired, both of which would have been reasonable decisions. I personally would have gone around the north of the island in C5 at full speed and operated briefly in the C6 area while I waited to see what the CV's were doing and the initial deployment of the enemy team. In this way I have the option to cap C, or move towards B depending on enemy CV action and enemy team deployment. If he really wanted to go to B he should have started at half speed staying about 3km from the Vlad for the first minute, avoiding sight from the CV's and not suffering from the first attack. He could have then moved to D5/D6 and reverse capped in open water from the north part of the B cap, giving him plenty of options and open water to avoid the CV's if they came to him, and protecting him from the enemy southern flank surface ships so he only has to worry about fire from one direction. Once again though, he got what he deserved from his terrible decision making.

The third clip is generally an example of good play against CV's, particularly in map positioning, although not so much in tactics while actually under CV attack. His decision making was poor in terms of pushing that Cossack early, and he could easily have died because of it if the Cossack had been slightly better or the enemy support ships a little more accurate. Apart from that he plays mostly a great game. At 13:02 he turns out instead of in to the Haku RF's, and he's lucky the Haku stuffed up the drop because he should have been hit hard there. If he'd jinked in for a couple of seconds then out on release, he would have mitigated a potential good drop from the CV. He obviously plays very cautiously and intelligently from there on out, and would have had a really fun and satisfying battle (despite the video title!). If you look at his positioning for most of the rest of the battle, the CV has to fly through multiple friendlies with decent AA, plus he's not spotted for large periods as well making the CV unsure of his exact positioning. This makes him a very unattractive target for the CV despite his low health, and so of course the CV leaves him alone (a CV might be able to strike through decent AA, but he most definitely can't search for DD's while sitting in heavy AA!). He's not an attractive target again until he decides to 1v1 the Goliath while not near any friendlies, at which point the CV drops what he's doing and comes for him - but has TB's out, making it a very unlikely proposition (the CV should have immediately recalled and come back with RF's - in his defence though he probably though the Mogador would die quickly if he just spotted him). At 21:18 the Mogador does make another mistake - he turns away from the RF's instead of into them. This should have got him killed but he was saved by the ellipse shape of the RF's and the French DD saturation mechanics. If he'd turned in at a 30° angle to the RF's, keeping an island between himself and the Riga, then jinked to the other tack before release, he would have had the maximum chance of the Haku not arming in time, and drift jinking the rockets to minimise damage taken if he did arm in time.

Overall this video shows some good examples of how to get yourself killed against CV's. Good play would have seen the first two DD's happily able to minimise the effect of the enemy CV's, and have fun and impactful battles.

Clearly this video also very nicely outlines the main point of DD play against CV's - your AA is not their to save you, as it is a mechanic that is mainly for the CV.  As I've outlined above, your map positioning and your ship control while under CV attack is what is going to minimise damage taken, maximise the time wasted for the CV, and ensure you happily live to the end of most battles in your DD while contributing heavily to your team.

 

[Sventex]

5 minutes ago, Moggytwo said:

So clearly the Halland got what he deserved

No CV deserves to do that kind of damage to an AA ship 4 minutes into a match.

[1Sherman]

You've kinda painted a target on your back here, buddy. The anti-CV people out there who want the class to be completely impotent rather than balanced to a more equal but still capable state are going to roast you alive.

[Moggytwo]

5 minutes ago, Sventex said:

No CV deserves to do that kind of damage to an AA ship 4 minutes into a match.

The mistake is on par with turning out in your Russian CL to a BB at mid range.  The consequences are the same.  It happens quickly I know, but if you make mistakes on this level in a DD you are inviting a dev strike, and it is only RNG that will save you at that point.

The Halland would have been absolutely fine if he'd had awareness and made the correct decisions.  The correct play was clear in real time - he put himself in the situation where he was vulnerable by being angled in while capping with a CV, a Smolensk, two enemy DD's, and zero friendlies nearby, then he compounded that by turning the wrong way when approached by the CV, and then put the cherry on top of his mistake-cake by lining himself up beautifully with the DB reticle.  He most definitely deserved what happened to him. 

Also, even if the CV had missed him entirely, the Smolensk would likely have killed him.

[Sventex]

5 minutes ago, Moggytwo said:

The mistake is on par with turning out in your Russian CL to a BB at mid range.

No, it's on par with a Battleship getting ganked in the first 4 minutes by an Atlanta.  The CV is attacking an AA ship, his supposed counter.  Not like a Halland can ever gank a CV in 4 minutes despite all the whining CV players make over that ship.

10 minutes ago, 1Sherman said:

You've kinda painted a target on your back here, buddy. The anti-CV people who want the class to be completely impotent rather than balanced to a more equal but still capable state are going to roast you alive.

You've kinda painted a target on your back by throwing out insults with your strawman there, but hey, paint away.

[MBRicochet]

I agree largely. I play a fair bit of CV, and I enjoy playing my DDs too. I enjoy playing DD in CV matches because I feel like I have advantage over the other DDs, most of them do not know how to play with CVs. I am ironically far more comfortable dealing with the CVs planes, costing him time/resources, then winning knife fights with other DDs LOL. 

The biggest danger to a DD from a CV is spotting, not the CV itself. Do not over extend. Watch those planes. Have an escape plan. Don't make sneaky high risk plays and get salty when you lose the gamble. 

I wish I could opt in to more CV matches regardless of what I'm personally sailing. Give me all the CV games. 

[Moggytwo]

4 minutes ago, Sventex said:

No, it's on par with a Battleship getting ganked in the first 4 minutes by an Atlanta.  The CV is attacking an AA ship, his supposed counter.

AA is not a counter to CV's, it is a mechanic to provide game play limitations for CV's.  The purpose of AA is to provide a time limit to a CV to surface ship interaction, to provide a decision making process for CV players to pick the targets they will most effectively be able to influence the game by targeting, and to provide consequences for poor CV decision making and execution.  AA is not there to make up for poor positioning in a surface ship.

The method to successfully play your DD's against CV's is the same methods that you use against any other ship type - positioning and maneuvering.  If the Halland had positioned correctly, and maneuvered correctly, he would have racked up a nice stack of plane kills (and thus XP - plane kills give great XP!) while taking no significant damage.  He would have been able to throw torps into very inconvenient places for the enemy, while continuing to pressure the B cap.  He could have had a great game regardless of what the CV decided to do, if he'd played intelligently.

[AJTP89]

The Halland screwed up, that's the only way it's even possible for a FDR to hit him. Simply accelerating into the DBs once spotted would have done the trick, as FDR has LONG aim times and turns slow. Turning away in a straight line is asking for it. FDR hits like a truck, but you have to make it easy for him to hit a DD. And while Halland AA is good it's not enough to chew through an entire FDR squad.

The Oland, both CVs decided he had to die and short of running away the whole match there's not much he could do about it. Yes, going into B isn't a great idea, but he's a DD. Sure he could hide in the back, but he's not being much use and the CVs have removed him almost as effectively as if they killed him. No, he didn't play that as well as he could, but with both CVs after him there wasn't much he really could do. That Chappy's positioning though, that was definitely special.

The Mogador, I don't know how much we can take from that. That was a good player playing like a stereotypical Russian and it happened to work that game.

[mofton]

36 minutes ago, Moggytwo said:

 I thought it might be nice to have a bit of an analysis of what went wrong, 

I thought I might try to white knight a wildly unpopular event with some pretty awful mechanical basis and convert it into a 'how to lose less but still ultimately have no chance' example of sheer unbridled CV apologist double-think? 

 

Oh sorry, I guess I'm projecting. 

[Sventex]

16 minutes ago, Moggytwo said:

AA is not a counter to CV's, it is a mechanic to provide game play limitations for CV's.

5 planes for the best AA DD in the game.  I'm floored by the limitations for the CV, I hope he was able to recover.

[ramp4ge]

19 minutes ago, Moggytwo said:

AA is not a counter to CV's, it is a mechanic to provide game play limitations for CV's.

 

Considering the AA is the only connection between the target ship player and the CV player, (and even then it's completely automated and out of the player's control so it's an extremely vague connection at that) you're basically saying here that there's no counter to CVs at all. 

 

At least someone admits it.

[Pugilistic]

52 minutes ago, Moggytwo said:

 

Overall this video shows some good examples of how to get yourself killed against CV's.

 

#1. Hit the Battle button. 

[Pugilistic]

4 minutes ago, ramp4ge said:

 

Considering the AA is the only connection between the target ship player and the CV player, (and even then it's completely automated and out of the player's control so it's an extremely vague connection at that) you're basically saying here that there's no counter to CVs at all. 

 

At least someone admits it.

Only carrier AA comes close to being a counter against carriers. 

[ramp4ge]

Just now, Pugilistic said:

Only carrier AA comes close to being a counter against carriers. 

 

Of course. Because carriers are the only class in the game that plays half of the game for you so the player can focus on the "WEE AIRPLANE GO ZOOM!" mini-game and ignore everything else completely. That's why their consumables self-pop, their fires and flooding only lasts 5 seconds, their consumables have outrageously long action times and stupidly low cooldowns and you can't even detonate them..

 

It's like a self-drawing Etch-a-Sketch. Fun and engaging. Truly. 

[Wrath_Of_Deadguy]

Modest proposal: When a CV player returns damaged planes to the carrier, there should be a chance of each returning damaged plane crashing on landing and dealing variable damage to the CV, with an additional chance for each crash to cause a fire scaling with the level of damage to the crashing aircraft. If a crash occurs, flight operations of any kind go on a cooldown while the crew clears the deck (say ~30s for the sake of argument), and of course the CV player has to either use DCP or eat the fire damage if it's on cooldown. This presents a choice to the CV player; accept a fixed time penalty (regen timer) for losing the whole squadron, or take the risk of recovering damaged planes to launch the next strike faster at the cost of possibly taking damage. Now CVs may be allowed to retain the rest of their current offensive capabilities, because whenever surface ships deal AA damage to aircraft it presents an actual, tangible risk to the CV itself.

Other ideas:

- Any ship with a fighter or spotter aircraft consumable may direct their planes to follow a CV's aircraft back to their base ship, if the CV's aircraft enter their action radius. That aircraft would then spot any enemy warships along their flight path. While the CV's heavy AA fire would undoubtedly result in that plane's rapid destruction, it would also present the attacked ship with a limited opportunity to spot and fire on the CV itself. Thus, just as a surface ship may be spotted and attacked whenever it fires its guns, a CV may be retaliated against if its planes are followed home.

- CV fire and flood protections should be removed, because frankly they're ridiculous. Nearly every carrier lost in combat was sunk by torpedo, or as a result of an out-of-control fire caused by other damage (with only two exceptions unless I'm very mistaken: HMS Glorious, and USS Gambier Bay, which were both sunk by surface gunfire). No further comment required there.

The problem isn't what a carrier can do to other ships. The problem is that the carrier risks little to nothing when it launches an attack. By introducing tangible risks to the CV itself, the CV retains all of its offensive potency... but becomes vulnerable to counterplay for every attack it launches, just like any other ship is.

[black_hull4]

18 minutes ago, Pugilistic said:

Only carrier AA comes close to being a counter against carriers. 

pfft, only on certain carriers. I can just plow right through the AA defenses of Hermes & Hosho. The AA defense of any Japanese CV doesn't seem to have helped them much. And fighters? Ha! Dive bombers can out-turn them like nobody's business, and I can out-dogfight AI planes any day. And if the CV player isn't looking, nothing can stop me from getting at least 2 torp hits.

22 minutes ago, ramp4ge said:

Because carriers are the only class in the game that plays half of the game for you so the player can focus on the "WEE AIRPLANE GO ZOOM!" mini-game and ignore everything else completely.

Which is why I always check to see what the enemy CV player is doing first. If they're a stationary target...

23 minutes ago, ramp4ge said:

their consumables self-pop, their fires and flooding only lasts 5 seconds, their consumables have outrageously long action times and stupidly low cooldowns

I seriously hate this, like why does it trigger with ONE  flood? Why can't I just trigger it myself when I have 2 fires & a flood?

[ramp4ge]

1 minute ago, black_hull4 said:

Which is why I always check to see what the enemy CV player is doing first. If they're a stationary target..

 

I was watching a Yuro video last night where one div member in a CV would scout the enemy CV and the other two would Yamsashi the enemy CV in the first 2 minutes of the game.

 

It was cathartic. 

[Shannon_Lindsey]

@Moggytwo Thank you for this post! You hit the nails right on the head.

You are also going to get attacked a lot more by the Anti-CV crowd, because they do not care about facts or reality when it comes to CVs, and everything you just wrote about undercuts many of their arguments. 

The reality is there are a group of "Unicum" DD players who were absolutely unicum when CVs were rare, but utterly can't or won't adjust their tactics since the rework. They do not play like Unicums with a CV present. In fact, they play a lot like that first match in Jingles video, doing everything you should never do when planes are coming. Playing against a Roosevelt in a DD is supposed to be easy mode, but that player royally screwed it up. The reason those player hate CV so much, is because they are a direct threat to their purple status. They have to play more cautious with CVs areound, but they are impulsive and alpha, and really despise the thought of being more cautious.

[Pay_Your_Torpedo_Tax]

So, basically don't play like a DD is what your telling the majority of the player base. So why even BOTHER to play DD unless you are unicum in them. 

 

5 minutes ago, Shannon_Lindsey said:

Playing against a Roosevelt in a DD is supposed to be easy mode

I want what your smoking bud. 

 

5 minutes ago, Shannon_Lindsey said:

The reality is there are a group of "Unicum" DD players who were absolutely unicum when CVs were rare, but utterly can't or won't adjust their tactics since the rework. They do not play like Unicums with a CV present. In fact, they play a lot like that first match in Jingles video, doing everything you should never do when planes are coming.

 

6 minutes ago, Shannon_Lindsey said:

The reason those player hate CV so much, is because they are a direct threat to their purple status. They have to play more cautious with CVs areound, but they are impulsive and alpha, and really despise the thought of being more cautious.

 

[Sventex]

14 minutes ago, Shannon_Lindsey said:

The reason those player hate CV so much, is because they are a direct threat to their purple status.

I'm not a unicum, so what's your big theory now?

[Versili]

WG has supposedly BALANCED the AA for every ship ...and even the best AA ships in the game can't even fend for themselves. So unless you allow all the ships to be CVs in the battle so they can fend for themselves youre totally not getting the point of the video.

WGs year of the carrier has drug out so long it has corroded the hull on this game so much the bilge pump is having trouble keeping it afloat. 

[Taichunger]

2 hours ago, Moggytwo said:

early this video also very nicely outlines the main point of DD play against CV's - your AA is not their to save you, as it is a mechanic that is mainly for the CV.

Hahaha. Another long post in Moggytwo's desperate struggle to rationalize playing a toxic, unethical mechanic that ruins the game for other players. Sad.

 

[Taichunger]

26 minutes ago, Shannon_Lindsey said:

tThe reality is there are a group of "Unicum" DD players who were absolutely unicum when CVs were rare, but utterly can't or won't adjust their tactics since the rework. They do not play like Unicums with a CV present.

Hahaha. Have you thought about comedy writing?

I mean, are you really dumb enough to think a secret cabal of unicum DD players gives negative karma to so many CVs, creates all the posts in the forums, and spends their time with 00s of sock puppets dissing CVs on Reddit and on this forum?

Hey psst! I hear some aliens built the Pyramids!

[ramp4ge]

1 minute ago, Taichunger said:

Hahaha. Another long post in Moggytwo's desperate struggle to rationalize playing a toxic, unethical mechanic that ruins the game for other players. Sad.

 

 

You gotta' love how he defends CVs by basically telling you that you have no defense against the CV, the CV is just playing his own PVE game and you're stuck in the middle.

 

That, somehow, is rationalizing things.

 

If the opening post wasn't 50,000 characters long I'd think this was a troll thread. It might be. If it is it's elaborate. But nobody makes an argument against you by making an argument for you and is serious about that argument..

 

I mean, this account has never played a game above tier 2 so I'm leaning toward troll. 

[Taichunger]

2 minutes ago, ramp4ge said:

 

You gotta' love how he defends CVs by basically telling you that you have no defense against the CV, the CV is just playing his own PVE game and you're stuck in the middle.

LOL. He even says your AA can't help you. A true statement!

2 minutes ago, ramp4ge said:

I mean, this account has never played a game above tier 2 so I'm leaning toward troll. 

He says he has extensive experience of CVs on SEA. I believe him. If he didn't enjoy ruining the game for others so much, he wouldn't be here defending that crap.