World of Warships

[Nephtys]

What? Four kills lets you try a new ship? An event?
Just roll out in a cleveland and KS every last ship in the enemy battle line with mass HE rain! Never stop firing!

Also, I have now played multiple Kongo games. It's truly impressive. I don't really fear anything in it. Even destroyers aren't a huge deal, as American DDs will die to 14inch HE from such an accurate gun platform (who also can escape in a stern chase). Jap DDs need to fire at long enough range where their torps can be predicted. Managed to play a game where I turned the wrong island and ran into a Zuiho at 2km while engaging a colorado and new mexico. Took out the New Mexico with primary fire, secondaries lullz'd it up and killed the fresh carrier, and damaged then outran the Colorado in a stern chase where it was losing ground.

I've given up on US DDs. The Nicolas is not an upgrade from the Clemson, but my opponents are no longer 1st gen dreadnaughts with zero secondaries and 17 knot speed. Worse yet, the next two DDs look literally identical (even downgraded! WTF, 4.5km torps?!).

[Thanas]

Yeah that grin that shows on your face when a US DD tries to catch up to you when you are at 30 knots and he eats shots every second...

[Skywalker_T-65]

What? Four kills lets you try a new ship? An event?

Yep. Technically supposed to start the 13th, but eh. Not complaining.

[darthkommandant]

Sank 2 DDs and an BB in a Kongo for over 1500 experience and 150000 credits.

[Borgholio]

I'm finding it much easier to kill DDs that are chasing me in the New Mex. The triple turrets can knock out the tin cans fairly easily if they stop weaving even for a few moments.

[Anacronian]

Having worked my way up to both a Montana and a Yamato I've come to realise that I find the Kongo the most fun to play, the speed and the accurate guns just makes it my favorite ship in the game.

[Nephtys]

The guns lack pen when fighting anything higher tier it seems. I can bully around Tier 5s and Tier 4s, but rarely get solid hits on anything higher even from the most favorable of angles (especially New Mexicos, Colorados and Nagatos), but help me if I take a 16 inch hit.

Just started playing carriers too. Langley is fun, and it's a great feeling when you take out a fighter screen to get your torp run in on an enemy carrier, your nemesis. After that, it's just finding proper victims. Later on I'm sure AA will ruin my day, but at least I'll have more planes and replacements!

Also, it seriously is weird that suiciding a bomber wave is more DPM efficient than reloading them.

[Vendetta]

Just started playing carriers too. Langley is fun, and it's a great feeling when you take out a fighter screen to get your torp run in on an enemy carrier, your nemesis. After that, it's just finding proper victims. Later on I'm sure AA will ruin my day, but at least I'll have more planes and replacements!

Just look for battleships that are away from the herd. No battleship can defend itself from TBs alone, especially at high tiers, they have to run together for their AA to have enough effect.

[Thanas]

And that bullshit is why I am in all likelihood going to scale back on the game. It just is so fucking frustrating staring at a screen, knowing that planes are incoming and then doing a lot of maneuvers that you know will be futile in the end.

But hey, wargaming says nothing needs to be fixed for carriers. Instead, the IJN carriers are going to get buffed. Fucking shit.

[Anacronian]

Since high tier cruisers can get the BB heal ability I think it would be only fair if a high tier BB can get the AA defensive fire ability.

[Thanas]

Yeah, but then wargaming would lose the spoiled CV player base (which already had a collective shitfest about fighter loadouts actually being strong enough to shoot down torp planes now and balanced matchmaking) and playing a cruiser would be even more useless.

I am all in favor of it but then they need something for crusiers to do.

[Vendetta]

To be fair, cruisers need something to do now. Something to do that isn't "be shotgunned by battleships and lose all their health in one go".

BBs do get the catapult fighter, which might not be very good at killing planes but does ruin their launches. Not that it helps because the planes and torps are too fast at high tiers.

As it stands though, Carriers in World of Carriers have all the killing power of WoT sky cancer but in a consistent reliable package that can only be countered by other carriers (which was why they had to force the MM to tier match them).

So it's not like this is a new and unique fuckup for Wargaming.

[Thanas]

To be fair, cruisers need something to do now. Something to do that isn't "be shotgunned by battleships and lose all their health in one go".

Yeah but what is that supposed to be?

All the roles for cruisers at top tier are:
- be that annoying stealth shot spammer (Zao)
- AA escort (US cruisers)
- kill DDs and other cruisers.

What more is there?

BBs do get the catapult fighter, which might not be very good at killing planes but does ruin their launches. Not that it helps because the planes and torps are too fast at high tiers.

The catapult fighter doesn't do much because the enemy CV can just zip a UFO fighter squadron at it, kill it and then launch the Torps.

As it stands though, Carriers in World of Carriers have all the killing power of WoT sky cancer but in a consistent reliable package that can only be countered by other carriers (which was why they had to force the MM to tier match them).

So it's not like this is a new and unique fuckup for Wargaming.

Yeah. The game is so much better without CVs in a match. Because if a CV is present at Tier IX and X, then you will either usually lose the match or win it on the strengths of your own CV.

[Simon_Jester]

Mm. Realistic, but annoying. I hope they fix it somehow; I've been looking forward to playing this game when I get a computer upgrade.

[Thanas]

If realism would count for anything in the game, then I would actually not be afraid of being sunk by HE from cruisers in a BB and DDs would actually be threatened by my secondary armament. And planes would not be able to execute 180° turns in midair like Ufos.

Point is that this game is making the deliberate choice not to be realistic in favour of more fun.

Getting sunk while knowing there is nothing you can do at all = not fun.

EDIT: To elaborate. If a DD torps me, I know it is because he managed to sneak up on me. If a cruiser shoots at me I know I can at least in theory shoot back, evade or angle to minimize the damage. If a BB shoots at me I can evade and shoot back.

But a CV? If he is even a decent player, I will die unless my team has dedicated at least two cruisers to protect me. I will die without any risk at all to the CV. They are these untouchable ship-sinking machines that are almost guaranteed a profit every match whereas everybody else has to risk their ships for it. And there is nothing I can do about that.

[Sea Skimmer]

If realism applied then destroyer caliber fire could take our your main battery directors, cruisers would not be outranged so damn often, and all ships would be able to lay smoke screens for unlimited hours. That would not really be in your favor.

As for carriers if realism applied the carriers would be vastly more powerful, The top end American ships are credited with Skyraiders and Skysharks after all. No battleship would even come close to withstanding hundred something of those going into the sky. Certainly two cruiser escorts would be utterly incapable of repelling such an attack. It isn't for nothing that all existing US anti aircraft guns were considered inadequate by 1945 and even the twin 3/50 considered only an interim upgrade. Maulers and Skypirates which would make more sense would make this even worse. You would need the entire team in a ring formation to even think about getting away clean.

[Raesene]

After acquiring a Hosho abut two hours ago and playing four battles with it I would appreciate it the developers to put carriers into an optional battle arena - I never got that many high-end kills in one game as with the carrier.
Having been on the receiving end of torpedo bombers most of the time before, I feel (while them dominating the arena is realistic) it's detrimental to the fun factor of the game.

The higher tier carriers are going to be fun when playing them, not that much when facing them.

A strategy that works however is the carrier as a decoy - when out of planes, show yourself to the enemy team - they will just try to run you down, allowing your team to fulfil the mission. A shadow of Leyte gulf...

Looking forward to the night mission - that should impede carrier operations a bit.

[Borgholio]

Looking forward to the night mission - that should impede carrier operations a bit.

Now they just need to add radar-guided gunnery so we can truly simulate night battles. :

[Thanas]

If realism applied then destroyer caliber fire could take our your main battery directors, cruisers would not be outranged so damn often, and all ships would be able to lay smoke screens for unlimited hours. That would not really be in your favor.

The point, as I made abundantly clear in my post, is that realism hasn't been much of a game design objective.

Looking forward to the night mission - that should impede carrier operations a bit.

Now they just need to add radar-guided gunnery so we can truly simulate night battles. :

The night mission is purely cosmetic, isn't it? There probably won't be any effect on carriers.



Meanwhile, as to how imbalanced carriers are:


Now, as you can see yourself, I didn't play that well - got nuked by the midway in one run and only got one kill.

But the battle unfolded this way - our team was all out attacking, and managed to have eight ships left. Then our Midway got killed by the enemy midway (our midway hadn't focused on the enemy midway but instead assisted us in pushing). So the situation was: eight ships, all close to each other, all with their fighters in the air. We had a heavy point lead of over 500 points. The enemy team consisted of four ships. And then the midway, who was at the other side of the map, just started deleting our ships. Nothing we could do. We had completely outplayed them up to that point but that doesn't matter because they had a midway and we did not.

[wautd]

Wow... I do suck with the tier I Soviet and German ships...
The German noob ship is a bewdy though

[Nephtys]

The issue is torpedo bombers flights are individually extremely powerful, even if you get few.

They're really trivial to use. I miss maybe once every eight drops vs cruisers, and never vs a capital ship. Meanwhile, even a few torpedos of the salvo connecting means half health.

They need to be locked in a longer run, manual or not. Simple as that. Something to make it so that it's not an auto-hit.

AA fire should IMO also by default reduce attack accuracy, even without the AA boost consumable. That, and make Dive Bombers more useful to partly compensate for all these TB nerfs.

[darthkommandant]

Yeah I get 75+ hits with the Kolberg and do only 10k damage at most. I think it is safe to the call it the lolberg since the teir 2 Russian dd has better guns.

[Thanas]

So 0.5.1. hit. The new patch is mostly awesome. Missions, challenges etc. All fun.

BUT: Wargaming has just enacted a change that utterly fucks over all BBs. Without telling anybody.

You can now overpen citadels. And dispersion has been vastly increased for BBs. If you hit a cruiser at 8km with AP, even if he is showing broadside, chances are you will only hit one or two shots now. And if you hit him - you cause a whopping 2k damage. I had multiple games today where I hit cruisers with Izumo guns at below 13 kms...and got like 27k damage out of 24 hits. Holy crap.

That means, all that training for getting AP shots on citadels? Well, screw you. What do you train for in this game? What is worse is that now IJN cruisers (especially the Atago) can now sail up to me within secondary distance and torp me at their leisure.

Now BBs are all shooting HE again. Fuck that. I have had multiple T9 games today and almost at all times, cruisers were dealing more damage than BBs. No surprise there. You shoot one salvo and get at most like 5k damage every 30 seconds. Meanwhile, cruisers can cause at least 2k damage every 5 seconds. And they got torps.

Cruiser AP however remained unchanged for the most part.

[Imperial528]

One thing I've found really, really annoying is that fire damage is done, from all observations, based on a % of you health, rather than a flat rate. I've been in a BB, just dodged most of the torps of a destroyer, and he lights me on fire after my repair is done from fixing flooding. My secondaries light him on fire and overpens from my main guns knock out half of his health. Even with just two fires on deck I am taking hundreds of damage per second from fire, and he is barely taking more than three dozen per second. A few salvos from him later, I've got four fires on deck. His fire is now out.

I finally get the fires under control with the repair, then dodge a second torpedo salvo completely as he hides behind an island. Then he pops out just as the repair wears off and goes into cooldown, lights me on fire again, my secondaries light his entire deck up. We're both completely on fire. I burn to death. He survives. When we started our engagement, I was at about half hp and he was on full. Almost every point of damage he did to me was from fire, the single torpedo hit was mostly canceled out by my damage control party. A friend of mine had a simmilar story in his Clemson, where he burned two kawachiis to death and they didn't even get a chance to scratch him.

I guess it wasn't as bad as having cruisers take flaming shits on my deck from ranges I cannot reliably hit them at. Or being burnt to death by a BB firing HE that barely pens but still does more than enough damage from fire once my repair is out of the way.

Fire is something that desperately needs fixing. It was so much better in the beta, but now they've taken everything wrong with it and made that even worse, while making AP comparatively less effective at the same time.

[darthkommandant]

I had a great match in my Kongo where I detonated an enemy cruiser in one salvo. Unfortunately I had to leave the match early but I still pulled a healthy profit.