How to fix carriers and some inspiration for WG

[Cpt_RickSchwifty]

So Im sure all of you enjoyed as much as I did the explosion of CVs this weekend 

 

There are a few CV threads going on right now and after reading some people's posts I saw that there is a pretty solid consensus on what is wrong with CVs, why it's wrong, but not what to do to fix it. So I thought I'd put my foot in my mouth and brave the flames and salt to repost some information that I feel deserves its own thread in order to give WG a suggestion on how to rework their CVs.

 

Im going to borrow what I think is pretty much the best condensed description of the issue.

 

 

An here are the main pillars that shape CV balance:

 

Rule No. 1:  Fighter-less Strike Power = Absolute misery for surface captains, especially BBs. 

The more "Fighter-less" Strike power a CV has, the more miserable the gameplay is for surface ships. The best example of this to date are Lexington vs Lexington Tier 8 matches in current meta. 90% of Lex captains go Strike, and when the game has 2 Strike Lex, with 90+ AA rating and DF, the Lex wont strike each other, it's just a race to who can farm more damage. The only thing stopping them is AA and the RNG/inaccuracy of the bombers towards small targets such as DDs, as well as long reload times. 

 

Rule No. 2  Full Air Superiority = Misery Strike Captains and Boredom for AS Captains. 

When an AS carrier is put up against a Strike carrier with low hangar capacity and/or low strike power, essentially the AS carrier shuts down the STrike CV, and makes the CVs irrelevant to the outcome of the match. It is a miserable experience for the Strike captain, and, by most accounts, extremely boring for the AS captain. 

 

Rule No. 3 Balanced loadouts = Everyone is happy

Balanced loadouts, due to fact that they have to sacrifice strike power to have more fighters, by default, have less striking power against surface ships. This, combined with strong ship AA, ensures that CVs cannot "delete" or "one shot" surface ships, keeping surface ships happy. Strike CV captains are happy, cause they still get to kill surface ships, and AS captains are happy cause they still get to shoot down fighters. CV captains in general are happy because they can choose they role, and are not at a disadvantage from the get go due to their loadout. It is player skill which determines who wins and loses, not the predetermined loadout. 

 

In order to fix Cvs we need to change some things.

 

1. Balance - CVs need to be balanced against each other and in ability to control the map.

 

Give everyone 1-1-1 or 2-2-2  based on tier and then make the modules add a squad to either Fighter, Torpedoes, or Bombers  based on selection. Change the current modules to be the same 3 for all CVs, a fighter module, a torp module, and a bomber module. They will increase the squad numbers and hanger capacity of the plane type of the module selected with torpedo bombers getting the smallest hanger increase and dive bombers the biggest. Reduce all squadron sizes to 4 with Dive bombers having 6. This will buff Dive bombers by making them have the highest squad numbers of 6 and the highest hanger stock and the most likely to return home without having to do anything to the current way they work in game. 

 

Additionally reduce the hanger capacity of all CVs across the board, especially at T7+ right now any decent CV player with a T7 CV never really runs out of planes. It makes AS spec that much more ridiculous as you never really accomplish a total shut down of the enemy instead you just fly around and and force your poor strike spec'd foe to keep his bombers cuddled by his friendly fleet. Allow the module you chose to augment your hanger capacity to compensate. 

 

 

2. Captain Skill - you know, the broken one.

 

Get rid of the +1 fighter/bomber captain skill,  have it replenish 1 plane per 110 seconds seconds for an additional 12-16 (t4-T7)& 24-27 (t8-T10) TOTAL planes over 20 minutes 1 per squadron per tick to the hanger so 3 restocks of each plane type and 2 restocks of DBs. In this way you remove the ability to totally shut down the CV making them essentially useless for the last 3-7 minutes of a match, but you negate them to just a few planes per squad once their initial hanger stock is depleted so its still very meaningful to take out CV squads. With a  high skilled captain, If you run out of planes it keeps you in the game and doing your job like spotting and defending caps. With the cevat that it reduces your ability to do so dramatically by limiting you to 1 or 2 plane squads. This makes the skill meaningful, especially late game but does not give you an over whelming advantage for the significant duration of the map against someone who does not have the skill. 

 

3. Flavor

 

These changes would promote 3 flavors of play. 

 

Do you want to run another torpedo bomber squad but have the least amount of plane stock. The highest damage potenial but be at the biggest risk to fighter spec?

 

Do you want to run another fighter squad and try to deplete your opponents planes fast enough to change the game, insure vision of caps and play for your team but still retain the standard strike ability of a stock carrier?

 

Do you want to run more DBs and give up guaranteed damage to decrease the effect of battle attrition have the biggest plane stock and focus on objective control, hitting softer targets, and providing vision? 

 

 

Once this has been done you have removed a lot of the national flavor of the CVs, which is a good thing. It's the national flavor that is primarily ruining CV game play. I don't have any direct answer as to how to promote the playing of one nation over the other, but I don't think it matters. If anything give them flavor in their consumables, like defensive fire, or smoke, or an instant repair kit or a heal or something.  All these changes can be done with out having to rework the planes or numbers them selves. Seems easy to me, even if it wasn't perfect it would be leaps beyond what we have. 

[YWNGG9820]

[1nv4d3rZ1m]

I like the idea of replacing AS with a skill that makes the drop patterns smaller, so closer together torps and smaller bomb dispersion.

 

Also I want the old 1/2/0 Independence back. 

[Cpt_RickSchwifty]

I like the idea of replacing AS with a skill that makes the drop patterns smaller, so closer together torps and smaller bomb dispersion.

 

Also I want the old 1/2/0 Independence back. 

 

Well, I'd say you can essentially choose to do this already by stagger dropping to 1 side (typically how I drop torps with Saipan or IJN) it essentially makes the spread smaller with the trade off that you have to focus a single target, but how about replacing the silly +10dpm per fighter Dog fighting Expert captain skill with something like that.

 

It would be good I think, it would give you a choice, faster shorter range torps, or closer together torps with even shorter range. 

[X15]

I really like this idea for CVs, the "national flavor" did bad things to the meta.

 

What I think is most important is for CVs to not have a one hit ability. But still be useful damage wise.

[AVR_Project]

I love the variety of the current CV modes.

After recently playing with the dreaded Bogue again, I discovered the beauty of the 1-1-0 mode...

I HAVE MORE SPARE TORPEDO PLANES (14).  So I can afford to get them beat up.  And with a 6 torp spread, I can auto-drop if I feel tired.

So if I can keep my ship afloat, I can pretty much spam torps all mission long.

...

The Zuiho really doesn't have a Strike or AS mode, and not really much choice at all..  1-1-2 or 1-2-1..  Obviously, we want the two torp squads.  That gives a loadout of 15 torpedo planes/CV

[Cpt_RickSchwifty]

 What I think is most important is for CVs to not have a one hit ability. But still be useful damage wise.

 

 

Limiting the torpedo squad sizes help with that some....

 

But when it comes down to it, depending on your health, you can always be eliminated by a single strike. This would not get rid of the ability for CV captains to 3 drop a single target and make them eat several unavoidable torps in T8+ but that is not something that can be fixed really. If you have 3 squads you can cross drop like that, it is up to the player being targeted to mitigate some of the effect of the drop. 

 

The choice has always been to manually target one of the 3 squads and turn into it and try to reduce the damage. This also will be helped by the fact your friendly CV will be better equipped to stop it from happening to begin with. 

 

 

 

I love the variety of the current CV modes.

After recently playing with the dreaded Bogue again, I discovered the beauty of the 1-1-0 mode...

I HAVE MORE SPARE TORPEDO PLANES (14).  So I can afford to get them beat up.  And with a 6 torp spread, I can auto-drop if I feel tired.

So if I can keep my ship afloat, I can pretty much spam torps all mission long.

...

The Zuiho really doesn't have a Strike or AS mode, and not really much choice at all..  1-1-2 or 1-2-1..  Obviously, we want the two torp squads.  That gives a loadout of 15 torpedo planes/CV

 

I would say that the balance between tiers 4, 5, and 6 is far better overall than 7-10. This is largely an example of what you pointed out, Having to manage your limited hanger capacity and a more balanced squadron selection between the two nations. This breaks down in higher tiers because you end of with so many planes you don't really care if your squad dies or not (for the most part) and there is such a disparity in available map control between the 2 lines. A Saipan or a T7 IJN CV just does not run out of planes even if every squad you send out dies. The ranger... well Im not going to talk about the Ranger lol. 

 

 

 

[Hyyena]

Nie idea i think can help with balance. 

 

[userz123]

How about let us have our own custom load out!? like NAVY FIELD!? why the hell am i limited to 1 DB, TB OR Fighter!? you can still have hanger capacity limit but let us have our own load out please! 

[Hyyena]

How about let us have our own custom load out!? like NAVY FIELD!? why the hell am i limited to 1 DB, TB OR Fighter!? you can still have hanger capacity limit but let us have our own load out please! 

 

Because make the right loadout gonna make the BBybies cry a lot. 

[VTAdmiral]

How about let us have our own custom load out!? like NAVY FIELD!? why the hell am i limited to 1 DB, TB OR Fighter!? you can still have hanger capacity limit but let us have our own load out please! 

 

Because that's a terrible idea and always has been for this game. Just because another game did it doesn't mean it's good for this game.

 

By that logic, Warship Gunner 2 let us customize what kind and how many turrets to put on our battleships, so let us do that. I'm sure my 80cm doubles won't be overpowered on a Kongo that can go 90 knots and reloads in 2 seconds.

[IronWolfV]

I like the idea of replacing AS with a skill that makes the drop patterns smaller, so closer together torps and smaller bomb dispersion.

 

Also I want the old 1/2/0 Independence back. 

 

Yeah. No on the 1/2/0 Indy back. OP as hell.

[Estimated_Prophet]

After recently playing with the dreaded Bogue again, I discovered the beauty of the 1-1-0 mode...

 

I HAVE MORE SPARE TORPEDO PLANES (14).  So I can afford to get them beat up.  And with a 6 torp spread, I can auto-drop if I feel tired.

 

Yeah, I've started using the 'stock' Bogue loadout myself because my skills have reached a point where the big torpedo squad makes up for not having a divebomber, and my one fighter can easily escort the torpy, or jump away for a bit to attack enemy squadrons.

[Fiero85]

So Im sure all of you enjoyed as much as I did the explosion of CVs this weekend 

 

There are a few CV threads going on right now and after reading some people's posts I saw that there is a pretty solid consensus on what is wrong with CVs, why it's wrong, but not what to do to fix it. So I thought I'd put my foot in my mouth and brave the flames and salt to repost some information that I feel deserves its own thread in order to give WG a suggestion on how to rework their CVs.

 

Im going to borrow what I think is pretty much the best condensed description of the issue.

 

 

In order to fix Cvs we need to change some things.

 

1. Balance - CVs need to be balanced against each other and in ability to control the map.

 

Give everyone 1-1-1 or 2-2-2  based on tier and then make the modules add a squad to either Fighter, Torpedoes, or Bombers  based on selection. Change the current modules to be the same 3 for all CVs, a fighter module, a torp module, and a bomber module. They will increase the squad numbers and hanger capacity of the plane type of the module selected with torpedo bombers getting the smallest hanger increase and dive bombers the biggest. Reduce all squadron sizes to 4 with Dive bombers having 6. This will buff Dive bombers by making them have the highest squad numbers of 6 and the highest hanger stock and the most likely to return home without having to do anything to the current way they work in game. 

 

Additionally reduce the hanger capacity of all CVs across the board, especially at T7+ right now any decent CV player with a T7 CV never really runs out of planes. It makes AS spec that much more ridiculous as you never really accomplish a total shut down of the enemy instead you just fly around and and force your poor strike spec'd foe to keep his bombers cuddled by his friendly fleet. Allow the module you chose to augment your hanger capacity to compensate. 

 

 

2. Captain Skill - you know, the broken one.

 

Get rid of the +1 fighter/bomber captain skill,  have it replenish 1 plane per 110 seconds seconds for an additional 12-16 (t4-T7)& 24-27 (t8-T10) TOTAL planes over 20 minutes 1 per squadron per tick to the hanger so 3 restocks of each plane type and 2 restocks of DBs. In this way you remove the ability to totally shut down the CV making them essentially useless for the last 3-7 minutes of a match, but you negate them to just a few planes per squad once their initial hanger stock is depleted so its still very meaningful to take out CV squads. With a  high skilled captain, If you run out of planes it keeps you in the game and doing your job like spotting and defending caps. With the cevat that it reduces your ability to do so dramatically by limiting you to 1 or 2 plane squads. This makes the skill meaningful, especially late game but does not give you an over whelming advantage for the significant duration of the map against someone who does not have the skill. 

 

3. Flavor

 

These changes would promote 3 flavors of play. 

 

Do you want to run another torpedo bomber squad but have the least amount of plane stock. The highest damage potenial but be at the biggest risk to fighter spec?

 

Do you want to run another fighter squad and try to deplete your opponents planes fast enough to change the game, insure vision of caps and play for your team but still retain the standard strike ability of a stock carrier?

 

Do you want to run more DBs and give up guaranteed damage to decrease the effect of battle attrition have the biggest plane stock and focus on objective control, hitting softer targets, and providing vision? 

 

 

Once this has been done you have removed a lot of the national flavor of the CVs, which is a good thing. It's the national flavor that is primarily ruining CV game play. I don't have any direct answer as to how to promote the playing of one nation over the other, but I don't think it matters. If anything give them flavor in their consumables, like defensive fire, or smoke, or an instant repair kit or a heal or something.  All these changes can be done with out having to rework the planes or numbers them selves. Seems easy to me, even if it wasn't perfect it would be leaps beyond what we have. 

 

 

[Hyyena]

I just dislike this st**** tag "carrier cancer" on thread. 

[cometguy]

What I think is most important is for CVs to not have a one hit ability. But still be useful damage wise.

I think that will be difficult to accomplish due to the way CVs deliver their attacks. Between rearming, flying to the target, and flying back, every cv squadron has a very long cycle. Since there's really no way to force a cv to not focus fire a single ship, to take away the one hit ability would require the total damage of all cv squadrons to be less than the ships health. I don't know how to counter the burst damage by increasing the cycle time without increasing plane speed. And that would make dodging dropped torps more difficult.

[twitch133]

They also need to at least double the run up for the torpedo bombers. As they sit, they are impossible to dodge, even doing everything right, Turning into the TB squad, slowing down, speeding up, WASD-ing until your fingers fall off, hanging with other ships. The current TB's can move from ferry altitude to attack altitude, and drop their payload and be back to ferry altitude all in a matter of about 400 meters. There needs to be at least a 1-1.5 km run up from the time the TB's reach attack altitude to the time the release their payloads.

 

I really think that this would do the most for balancing the ability of CV's to do damage vs the ability for a skilled captain to avoid it.

 

Edit... I forgot to mention, Eliminate the ability to control squadrons at the same time or to stack them on top of one another. There needs to be somewhere between 1-5 to 3 km between the squadrons. That will give you the ability to attack from multiple angles still.

[cometguy]

They also need to at least double the run up for the torpedo bombers. As they sit, they are impossible to dodge, even doing everything right, Turning into the TB squad, slowing down, speeding up, WASD-ing until your fingers fall off, hanging with other ships. The current TB's can move from ferry altitude to attack altitude, and drop their payload and be back to ferry altitude all in a matter of about 400 meters. There needs to be at least a 1-1.5 km run up from the time the TB's reach attack altitude to the time the release their payloads.

 

I really think that this would do the most for balancing the ability of CV's to do damage vs the ability for a skilled captain to avoid it.

I can assure you they are not impossible to dodge. Very difficult for some ships, but they are most definitely dodgable. If you're waiting until you hear the warning about torpedoes in the water to take action, you're waiting too long. Begin to take action when your minimap shows TBs on the way.  CVs have to telegraph their attacks in that way.

[userz123]

 

Because that's a terrible idea and always has been for this game. Just because another game did it doesn't mean it's good for this game.

 

By that logic, Warship Gunner 2 let us customize what kind and how many turrets to put on our battleships, so let us do that. I'm sure my 80cm doubles won't be overpowered on a Kongo that can go 90 knots and reloads in 2 seconds.

 

That's not a bad idea they should totally do that instead, this is already a super arcade game and nothing in here that is even remotely realistic, all these supposed "realism" just create frustrations, why is some properties need to be "realistic" while some other don't? instead of all these "nerfing" they should just try to make everyone else more powerful.  

[vak_]

I like the idea of replacing AS with a skill that makes the drop patterns smaller, so closer together torps and smaller bomb dispersion

 

People would complain that this is another Saipan P2W buff

 

How about let us have our own custom load out!?

 

Yeah, because full TB carrier meta would be super-duper fun.

[twitch133]

I can assure you they are not impossible to dodge. Very difficult for some ships, but they are most definitely dodgable. If you're waiting until you hear the warning about torpedoes in the water to take action, you're waiting too long. Begin to take action when your minimap shows TBs on the way.  CVs have to telegraph their attacks in that way.

 

LOL, I always point my bow at the squads... and you know what the CV driver does, he backs off and comes at me from the opposite angle. He can re-adjust and attack me in the time that it takes my rudder to shift again, leaving me with no way out. You can do EVERYTHING right and still eat a full salvo of torpedo's from a CV. I am not some scrub that does not know what he is doing.

 

Anybody who says that it is possible to dodge these kinds of attacks from a CV, has obviously never been the target of a skill and determined CV pilot. Imagine how OP it would be if a DD could steer their torps, that is the same this we are dealing with with CV's right now.

[cometguy]

What if the t5 captain skill decreased the distance from which planes are visible to ships, and increased the range at which your planes detect planes?

[The_Red_Butcher]

Im sure that this is going to destroy someone's little fantasy but guess what carriers aren't and never were overpowered. What made carriers so damn annoying is their ability to manual drop because you can't maneuver to avoid them when they manual drop 1000m off your port bow. I'd like to see manual drops go away and rather you select an attack pattern, the manual strafe can stay though. As for fixes for cv's one of the first issues in my opinion is that every other class has unlimited ammo except cv's who are expected to keep fighting with low plane cap while fighting an as load out and cruisers w/ def fire. Something else that would make cv's much more enjoyable to play would be the ability to choose to load ap or he on your dive bombers, real db' used ap bombs on ships and I don't think it's asking for much as most bombs miss and those that would hit still need to penetrate the deck of the ship, but yes this means a carrier could citadel you as they should be able to. This would allow carriers to tailor their strike to a specific task, ex: he for destroyers and dot on bb's ap if your feeling lucky and you want to smack that bb where it hurts.

[Hyyena]

What I think is most important is for CVs to not have a one hit ability. But still be useful damage wise.

 

So.... give cvs fast planes but less strong to atack in ever 30 seconds like a BB?

CVs atack in more time but can make more damage and 'one hit' the enemy if he are a potato or just unluck. Why thats so hard to people understand? 

[vak_]

LOL, I always point my bow at the squads... and you know what the CV driver does, he backs off and comes at me from the opposite angle

 

If the carrier can loiter around your ship for a while with no fear of losing airplanes, then perhaps you solo too much in ships with weak or mediocre AA. Carrier captains love a lone ship with weak or mediocre AA.

 

PS Also, why is it surprising to people that a skilled carrier captain can do at least some damages to a ship when there is no overpowering AA? If carrier damage was completely negatable with simple maneuvering, who the hell would ever play them?