PSA - You can now register to try out the upcoming changes to CVs on PTS (Also RNGesus lottery to get Enterprise and Musashi)

[Asym]

2 hours ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Antiaircraft Action Summary
World War II

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/antiaircraft-action-summary.html

I assert that in-game AA is more effective than actual Naval AA effectiveness duirng WW-II in the Pacific theater of action.

Here again, History is written by the winners and seldom, will we see statistics that can be validated....  When in AA efficiency is a story unto itself since AA technologies grew exponentially....

My point really is:  where can we grow the game?  Stalled population = Stalled content.  Now, to be fair, some players really don't mind "the same old thing, day after day and that's fine I guess....   But, what "could be" is where growth lives and new content vis-a'-vis cloning content is where the real money is.....where population growth returns a non-skill based MM back into something coherent (a bell curve versus hard skewed left or right curves that can only produce left or right outcomes)...

Think about the real problem:  AA is not a dissimilar system.  It is part of the ship that operated within the horizon.  Planes are dissimilar and exceed all performance aspects of the ships:   they can find, so very much faster;   spot at great distances (BTW, did you knew satellites track navies because the wake produced can be seen from space?); attack and then retreat to be replaced much faster than ships can repair; and, regenerate.   Apples and Oranges....

So, how can we merge dissimilar systems?   As I have said many times, there are two fights that should be going on:  CAP and AA versus Anti-ship Ops...  It's mostly happened in the real world that way.  Spotters would find the bad guys (or, die by the CAP);  escorted attack aircraft sallied out and whomever won the Air-to-Air meeting engagement won that segment (rebuffing the attackers or allowing the attackers); then, AA made or lost the day............repeated over and over again...  A battle within a battle.

We skip a step.  We go straight to Attack and AA is all there is.   My Fabuki example earlier is that concept.  Update 8.0 is that concept....  We'd all benefit from having all of the steps that occurred in history.  Add in, that not all carriers are the same tactically..........and - well - even if we did include the first step (gaining air superiority) there'd be Carriers with better fighters and terrible anti-ship attack craft and others that had terrible fighters and great attack craft.....   We'd still have exploits and MM disasters that would be even worse than where we are now and, the gameplay would be my Fabuki vignette all over again.

A game can not be "one thing" to rule them all.......  And yet, that is what history produced !  To this day, our power projection (not, strategic deterrence) is based on ONE SHIP class.....the carrier.   Gosh, a bleak reality of status quo simply reminds me of a great movie line:  "[gong]  bring out your dead ! [gong]"  This is the way     I guess?

[Wolfswetpaws]

5 minutes ago, Asym said:

Here again, History is written by the winners and seldom, will we see statistics that can be validated....  When in AA efficiency is a story unto itself since AA technologies grew exponentially....

My point really is:  where can we grow the game?  Stalled population = Stalled content.  Now, to be fair, some players really don't mind "the same old thing, day after day and that's fine I guess....   But, what "could be" is where growth lives and new content vis-a'-vis cloning content is where the real money is.....where population growth returns a non-skill based MM back into something coherent (a bell curve versus hard skewed left or right curves that can only produce left or right outcomes)...

Think about the real problem:  AA is not a dissimilar system.  It is part of the ship that operated within the horizon.  Planes are dissimilar and exceed all performance aspects of the ships:   they can find, so very much faster;   spot at great distances (BTW, did you knew satellites track navies because the wake produced can be seen from space?); attack and then retreat to be replaced much faster than ships can repair; and, regenerate.   Apples and Oranges....

So, how can we merge dissimilar systems?   As I have said many times, there are two fights that should be going on:  CAP and AA versus Anti-ship Ops...  It's mostly happened in the real world that way.  Spotters would find the bad guys (or, die by the CAP);  escorted attack aircraft sallied out and whomever won the Air-to-Air meeting engagement won that segment (rebuffing the attackers or allowing the attackers); then, AA made or lost the day............repeated over and over again...  A battle within a battle.

We skip a step.  We go straight to Attack and AA is all there is.   My Fabuki example earlier is that concept.  Update 8.0 is that concept....  We'd all benefit from having all of the steps that occurred in history.  Add in, that not all carriers are the same tactically..........and - well - even if we did include the first step (gaining air superiority) there'd be Carriers with better fighters and terrible anti-ship attack craft and others that had terrible fighters and great attack craft.....   We'd still have exploits and MM disasters that would be even worse than where we are now and, the gameplay would be my Fabuki vignette all over again.

A game can not be "one thing" to rule them all.......  And yet, that is what history produced !  To this day, our power projection (not, strategic deterrence) is based on ONE SHIP class.....the carrier.   Gosh, a bleak reality of status quo simply reminds me of a great movie line:  "[gong]  bring out your dead ! [gong]"  This is the way     I guess?

Wow.
Your earlier point is "busted" like a myth on a television show.
And you then proceed to reiterate your usual favorite "talking points" as though nothing happened.  😉 

If AA in-game is more powerful than in-real-life AA, then why the <bleep!> should we need to improve AA?
Perhaps it would be better to educate the player population?

As @HogHammer mentioned in one of his posts, the proposed changes seem like nerfs intended to appease a portion of the player population.

As for myself, I shouldn't need a crystal ball or a psychic medium in order to target opponents while I'm playing a CV.

The current aerial detection system requires that my planes "stumble" over a DD (with its AA turned-off) or a surfaced Submarine, and in order to attack them I have to turn my planes around and mostly guess where the target has sailed to while I was turning around and lost contact.
 

[Asym]

57 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Wow.
Your earlier point is "busted" like a myth on a television show.
And you then proceed to reiterate your usual favorite "talking points" as though nothing happened.  😉 

If AA in-game is more powerful than in-real-life AA, then why the <bleep!> should we need to improve AA?
Perhaps it would be better to educate the player population?

As @HogHammer mentioned in one of his posts, the proposed changes seem like nerfs intended to appease a portion of the player population.

As for myself, I shouldn't need a crystal ball or a psychic medium in order to target opponents while I'm playing a CV.

The current aerial detection system requires that my planes "stumble" over a DD (with its AA turned-off) or a surfaced Submarine, and in order to attack them I have to turn my planes around and mostly guess where the target has sailed to while I was turning around and lost contact.
 

Ok.  You're always tight and the rest of us need not voice opinions.....  You win.  I'm done wasting my time. 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

2 hours ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Wow.
Your earlier point is "busted" like a myth on a television show.
And you then proceed to reiterate your usual favorite "talking points" as though nothing happened.  😉 

If AA in-game is more powerful than in-real-life AA, then why the <bleep!> should we need to improve AA?
Perhaps it would be better to educate the player population?

As @HogHammer mentioned in one of his posts, the proposed changes seem like nerfs intended to appease a portion of the player population.

As for myself, I shouldn't need a crystal ball or a psychic medium in order to target opponents while I'm playing a CV.

The current aerial detection system requires that my planes "stumble" over a DD (with its AA turned-off) or a surfaced Submarine, and in order to attack them I have to turn my planes around and mostly guess where the target has sailed to while I was turning around and lost contact.
 

Because AA alone, no matter how powerful, does not provide air defense...either in history or in game.

[Wolfswetpaws]

2 hours ago, Asym said:

Ok.  You're always tight and the rest of us need not voice opinions.....  You win.  I'm done wasting my time. 

Hardly.  Instead of sulking, how about you level-up your figurative game and get some new & improved material.

[Itwastuesday]

Maybe they could at some point consider letting the carrier send out fighters/interceptors from the minimap, perhaps locking them to follow a ship you want to protect rather than having to go out of your way with your attack to do something unrelated and useless to your attack. 

[_KlRlTO_]

20 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

Maybe they could at some point consider letting the carrier send out fighters/interceptors from the minimap, perhaps locking them to follow a ship you want to protect rather than having to go out of your way with your attack to do something unrelated and useless to your attack. 

That would be woefully ineffective against Immelmann and the Russians. They have a longer attacking path, which they can deploy and escape before most CAP fighters will respond if centered on the target. To stop those carriers, the planes would have to be centered further out away from the ship, which is pointless because 1) they will just attack from the other side instead if they can and 2) you can't really lock fighters on to a friendly ship, then expect them to center further out in a direction instead.

It's funny, because you could actually get fighters to do that before the rework, but it wasn't the best defense, given that strafing was a thing, and to be honest, strafing was the single biggest problem with RTS CVs, because it was the strafing ability that determined who had air superiority in a battle. I was great at strafing, but I couldn't take a battle over quite the way the unicums could because unlike them, I was terrible at manual drops. If WG had taken out manual drops and replaced strafing with a simple exit manuever at the cost of a plane (An alternative use for strafing back then to escape an engagement with enemy fighters), then RTS CV would have been fully functional and really not that hard to use and be average with. No, WG always overthinks their changes, mostly because they want it to LOOK like a change.

That said, there is a balancing factor at play in the game that nobody seems to notice that I have seen used to negate CV impact. In the game, CVs have to be a lot closer to the enemy than in real life, meaning that an aggressive team can sometimes force themselves into spotting and damage distance of the CV. The CV wants to be closer to cycle squadrons faster, but someitmes the enemy team plays very "Leroy Jenkins" and boom, CV gets hard spotted and deleted. My greatest flaw playing CV is that I play way far back, which hinders my damage output. I do this in the early game until I am certain the enemy on my side isn't playing the hyperaggressive YOLO game. I have seen enemy CVs, especially Russian ones, die to this more than a few times.

[Itwastuesday]

@_KlRlTO_ There's much that would need work for even a semblance of air superiority play to exist, but I think allowing carrier to even somewhat conveniently to deploy fighter cover could be well received by the surface and cv player populations both.

Several carrier players on this forum claim carrier should play closer, but it's quite dangerous as a flank can collapse in a minute with little you can do about it, and the funny thing about the 40% winrate stacked lemming push is that they have stacked AA and take no damage from the opposing lemming push on the other side of the map. I find I do best when both teams are sorta good and worst when both are terrible. 

[Taylor3006]

On 7/6/2024 at 9:42 PM, Asym said:

You can't fix "dissimilar weapons"........because, they are dissimilar !!!   The only real solution is that Carriers have to fight the enemy CAP and AA "before they can launch anti-ship" operations...  No air superiority no attaching enemy ships......

Exactly Asym.  The best defense against a carrier is an opposing carrier. Removing the ability for CVs to fight one another was absolutely the worst thing that happened with the original CV rework (when they removed the RTS style). 

Love or hate RTS carriers, it was glorious to watch them battle it out for control of the skies back in the day. You wanted to help your carrier out too by trying to get your ship underneath the planes and add your AA to the fight.  You knew how important it was for your carrier to dominate the skies.  It may have just been a minor point of cooperation but in a multiplayer game where there is usually very little actual teamwork, it was something.  I used to enjoy playing CVs mainly just to protect my team from incoming aircraft. I found more fun and enjoyment doing that than actually attacking enemy ships.  Anyways they need to add the ability of carriers to engage one another back into the game IMHO. Just pooping out a fighter consumable is just plain stupid. 

[Itwastuesday]

Well surely it would be more fun to play AA cruiser if your contribution could result in your carrier demolishing the enemy battleship. 

[Estimated_Prophet]

1 hour ago, Taylor3006 said:

Removing the ability for CVs to fight one another was absolutely the worst thing that happened with the original CV rework (when they removed the RTS style.)

Not sure about the first part...

The second part is absolutely right.

Current CVs are so boring and dull it's not even funny.

They're barely tolerable as WoWp Lite; and now WG wants to take away the last few vestiges of them being able to even pretend they are carriers.

I hope carriers become so insanely dull and even more boring to play, that nobody but the unicum types that terrorized everyone in RTS days even bother to play them any more.

Would serve WG right; since their track record 'fixing' carriers is basically to just make things worse.

Edited July 8 by Estimated_Prophet

[OldSchoolGaming_Youtube]

And on that note ................. WG is testing AP skip bombers with 27 200 potential damage per drop..... 

Wonder what effect that will have on the already passive gameplay?

For those who don't burst into flames by you simply mention the name "Flamu" (he who shouldn't be mentioned by name .... just like Voldemort..!) i linked the video from the relevant timestamp. There are some good points there.

Also fun with new CV planes with bombs that change parameters with each skip drop. So on top of trying to learn and understand all the circles on the map and game modes (which already proven really hard for many), they will also need to understand the range sub torps get hard hitting, what range new French DD torps will be hard hitting and the different levels and damage per each km they travel probably, they will have to try and keep count of which number of attack the new German AP skip bomb CV is on ("Did he strike that Yamato earlier or am I his first target....??") and soon at what altitude CV planes are flying and if you should waste you're Def AA consumable ot not ....

Oh, I forgot, also the new T9 Premium BB that apparently change concealment range when they go from they regular AP shells to their "other alternate AP shells" with different characteristics ....

Anyone else foresee any issues for the player base with all this? 

 

I also wonder if WG when they are trying out new things like this take 1 CV and 1 cruiser into a training room and when the cruiser can maneuver and dodge freely with no punishments, they go "Look, its perfectly balanced and players can avoid damage from this" not considering how games actually are in 12 Vs 12 Randoms where same cruiser will be subject to punishment from Supercruisers like Annapolis/Conde, Yamatos, Vermonts, Thunderers etc etc etc Submarines, DDs etc etc etc.

 

                                                                 "Hey .... just Dodge...!"

Edited July 8 by OldSchoolGaming_Youtube

[Itwastuesday]

I think they just meant that the battleship is now more concealed than the previous iteration.

AP skips I imagine won't hit more than 1-2 bombs on most cruiser citadel, with the way those bombs converge and scatter. Which is still horrible for the cruiser, but I don't believe they're adding a destroy a cruiser in 2 passes squad. Not on a German ship. 

[SolitudeFreak]

39 minutes ago, OldSchoolGaming_Youtube said:

AP skip bombers

Just add sorcerers to the game at this point.

These devs are hopeless.

[OT2_2]

14 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

Which is still horrible for the cruiser, but I don't believe they're adding a destroy a cruiser in 2 passes squad. Not on a German ship. 

"Not on a German ship". Why so? Because they got / get a penalty for being German?! Just wondering. 

Edited July 8 by OT2_2

[OldSchoolGaming_Youtube]

19 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

I think they just meant that the battleship is now more concealed than the previous iteration.

Its not easy to understand since they grouped the concealment change together with the alternate AP shell information, but probably just another "miscommunication" from WG. Flamu seems convinced WG uses Chat GTP to write all the articles, I would also wonder if they use Chat GTP to balance the game/come up with new monstrosities. 

 

19 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

AP skips I imagine won't hit more than 1-2 bombs on most cruiser citadel, with the way those bombs converge and scatter. Which is still horrible for the cruiser, but I don't believe they're adding a destroy a cruiser in 2 passes squad. Not on a German ship. 

I mean ..... I wouldn't put it beneath them.

WG seems to strive for "Bigger and better" (read "more OP and broken") at every new implementation. Gotta keep the whales interested. And even the AP skip bombs that doesn't hit the citadel will probably end up doing massive damage (I will never forget the times I missed to "Just Dodge" a German CV AP rocket strike and he gets a perfect angle on me), and they get 3 passes....

 

I cant wait to see what they will come up with on the coming Russian Super CV......

 

Edited July 8 by OldSchoolGaming_Youtube

[Itwastuesday]

47 minutes ago, OT2_2 said:

"Not on a German ship". Why so? Because they got / get a penalty for being German?! Just wondering. 

It's a recurring joke with some truth in it. 

[OT2_2]

58 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

It's a recurring joke with some truth in it. 

Well ... 

[Wolfswetpaws]

7 hours ago, Itwastuesday said:

Maybe they could at some point consider letting the carrier send out fighters/interceptors from the minimap, perhaps locking them to follow a ship you want to protect rather than having to go out of your way with your attack to do something unrelated and useless to your attack. 

What you ask for was possible in the RTS CV era.

There were some important & relevant details though ...
1.  You could order a squadron to fly circles over an allied ship.
2.  The squadron would not act on its own initiative to attack red-team planes.  A CV player had to manually order the planes to attack.

I suppose some amalgamation of current fighter deployment mechanics and behaviors with the "escort this ship" or "patrol here" concept would be beneficial?

[Wolfswetpaws]

5 hours ago, Itwastuesday said:

Well surely it would be more fun to play AA cruiser if your contribution could result in your carrier demolishing the enemy battleship. 

Hopefully.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I feel that in-game AA is stronger than real-life AA.

[hipcanuck]

I havent used the PT server in a long time, any ideas on how big the file is? Is it just a duplicate of the WoWs file with the testing content? Smaller perhaps?

[Itwastuesday]

18 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

What you ask for was possible in the RTS CV era.

There were some important & relevant details though ...
1.  You could order a squadron to fly circles over an allied ship.
2.  The squadron would not act on its own initiative to attack red-team planes.  A CV player had to manually order the planes to attack.

I suppose some amalgamation of current fighter deployment mechanics and behaviors with the "escort this ship" or "patrol here" concept would be beneficial?

Intresting. Seems like every idea I ever have on how to fix carriers is something that existed in the RTS days. 

[Wolfswetpaws]

2 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

Intresting. Seems like every idea I ever have on how to fix carriers is something that existed in the RTS days. 

Yeah.  You may want to dive into the RTS CV era history.
The problem, of course, is finding & accessing the information.  It's getting tougher to find.

[thornzero]

14 minutes ago, hipcanuck said:

I havent used the PT server in a long time, any ideas on how big the file is? Is it just a duplicate of the WoWs file with the testing content? Smaller perhaps?

2nd instance install, same size as regular server install. However, there are details not yet published with the exception that the server will be different. So might wait before you install pts instance.

[Wolfswetpaws]

42 minutes ago, hipcanuck said:

I havent used the PT server in a long time, any ideas on how big the file is? Is it just a duplicate of the WoWs file with the testing content? Smaller perhaps?

Here are my file-size properties taken from the installation folders.

World_of_Warships_PT = 68.7 gigabytes
World_of_Warships_NA = 69.7 gigabytes