Latest DevBlog Changes to CVs and AA - Closed Test April 16th - UPDATE

[HogHammer]

Here are today's WoWs DevBlog changes to CVs and AA in a little more detail.

Changes to Aircraft Carriers and AA - Closed Test - Development blog (worldofwarships.com)

 Of note --

TRAVELING

Similar to the current implementation, traveling (also now known as "high altitude") is the state that aircraft will spend the most time in as they traverse the map. What will be different? While traveling, aircraft:

• Will not spot enemy ships.*
• Will not be targetable by regular AA fire.*
• Will not deplete their boost.
• Can be spotted by enemy ships.
• Cannot attack enemy ships or drop ordnance in any way.

*Exceptions apply. See the section "Defensive AA Fire

ATTACK RUNS

We've talked about traveling, but how do you actually interact with enemy ships now? Similar to the current implementation, Aircraft Carriers must start an attack run. While conducting an attack run, aircraft:

• Will spot enemy ships.
• Become targetable by AA fire.
• Take significantly reduced damage from AA for the first few seconds of the attack run.
• Will deplete their boost as usual.
• Can attack enemy ships.

* DEFENSIVE AA FIRE

We mentioned earlier that aircraft in travel mode will be un-targetable by AA. Well, here's the exception! While Defensive AA Fire is active, your AA batteries will be able to target enemy planes even while they are flying over you at high altitude; however, while active, planes at high altitude which are under fire will be able to spot you in return. With these changes, we're also renaming this consumable to "Barrage Fire."

PASSIVE INCREASE TO AA

We're not done just yet! All surface ships will receive a new passive way to deal with enemy planes targeting you while there are planes in your AA zone. Passive increase is a meter that will charge up while your AA is shooting enemy aircraft. Your progress is not time-limited, meaning that even if your AA does not shoot enemy aircraft for a certain period of time, progress will stay the same and not decay. But once your progress reaches 100%, the passive increase will be automatically activated and you will receive the following perks for a period of time: 

• A bonus to AA damage.
• A bonus to the damage caused by Active Concealment (formerly Priority Sector)
• A reduction in Active Concealment cooldown.

Additionally, this passive increase:

• Will not reset if you disable your AA.
• Will last for several minutes.

Read full details at the above link.

Please note that all information in the development blog is preliminary.

[Wulf_Ace]

oh my god that CV changes, its like nuclear science, instead of just removing CV spotting and thats it, they made Allllll that crap up and complicated to the point of stupidnes.

Who knows can WoWs spagetti code do all these changes without bugs.

All they had to do is remove CV spotting, leave it only for map spotting and thats it, clean, simple, strong nerf, but this mumbo jumbo is bad

[HogHammer]

14 minutes ago, Wulf_Ace said:

Who knows can WoWs spagetti code do all these changes without bugs.

^^^THIS^^^ is my biggest concern.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

I expect them to throw this out the window and revert to all aircraft not being able to spot past 2km. 

Aircraft not being able to spot AT ALL until they enter their attack runs is nonviable, and I expect the test to show this very quickly.

[Bai7200]

Why In the name of what they Call their good, are they doing this much to fix something that In my veiw could be fixed by….. removeing aircraft spotting…

we all know that this will create a shitshow due to bugs and things they overlooked.

[xxNihilanxx]

1 hour ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

Aircraft not being able to spot AT ALL until they enter their attack runs is nonviable, and I expect the test to show this very quickly.

Why do you say this? Surface ships require surface spotting to be able to attack, why would CVs find it non-viable?

I understand that they take a little more time to perform their attack but with correct positioning of their planes it should be perfectly possible. 

[Admiral_Karasu]

1 hour ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

Aircraft not being able to spot AT ALL until they enter their attack runs is nonviable, and I expect the test to show this very quickly.

??? Until they enter their attack runs? That's like complete opposite of what would make sense...

[Wrath_of_Deadguy]

Leave it to WG to find the most convoluted solution imaginable to the problem after ignoring it for years...

[Andrewbassg]

30 minutes ago, xxNihilanxx said:

Why do you say this? Surface ships require surface spotting to be able to attack, why would CVs find it non-viable?

 

Because a) of the planes speed

               b) it will require planning, positioning and stuff which is not the forte of a big chunk of the Cv population.

 

30 minutes ago, xxNihilanxx said:

I understand that they take a little more time to perform their attack but with correct positioning of their planes it should be perfectly possible. 

Less then good players will be unable to adapt, thus reducing nr of people, who play Cv's, also probably will create a sever skill imbalance , which the Cv rework was to (supposedly) address.

Don't get me wrong, I literally  fought (for years!!!) for changes, but these are not viable. And its not what is needed.

 

And... spotting ( for the team) and seeing (for yourself) are two separate things. They won't be able to see, which is really braindead in a tactical shooter. What happens if there are only two ships remaining, lets say a Cv and a red dd?? it is an autowin.

Edited April 15 by Andrewbassg

[MBT808]

23 minutes ago, Wrath_of_Deadguy said:

Leave it to WG to find the most convoluted solution imaginable to the problem after ignoring it for years...

From what I’ve read, I doubt it will actually solve anything. There are easy changes they could be making that would help but they’re simply not. Remove planes attack run invincibility, remove bogus AA accuracy, make AA target the attacking squadron(sorta doing that), and return DefAA’s original effect that caused planes to be less accurate while active. These may not solve all the problems but I guarantee would make a difference. It’s also leagues less complicated than the mess on the devblog.

[xxNihilanxx]

Just now, Andrewbassg said:

Because a) of the planes speed

               b) it will require planning, positioning and stuff which is not the forte of a big chunk of the Cv population.

 

Less then good players will be unable to adapt, thus reducing nr of people, who play Cv's, also probably will create a sever imbalance , which the Cv rework was to (supposedly) address.

Don't get me wrong, I literally  fought (for years!!!) for changes, but these are not viable. And its not what is needed.

 

I disagree. In practice there are ships in game that remain spotted for ages, plenty of time for a CV to plan an attack run. While I agree that a lot of players seem to lack the understanding to position their planes correctly I also feel that even those players will soon catch on to the notion of following DDs with their planes so as to have ample opportunity to strike at what the DDs spot for them. Maybe I am being overly generous here but hey, I'm in a good mood :)

Personally I always advocated for the removal of aerial spotting as it negates so much tactical play. I do, however, doubt that these changes will ever go live but it is interesting to see that WG are, at least, testing it. 

[Andrewbassg]

2 minutes ago, xxNihilanxx said:

I disagree. In practice there are ships in game that remain spotted for ages, plenty of time for a CV to plan an attack run. While I agree that a lot of players seem to lack the understanding to position their planes correctly I also feel that even those players will soon catch on to the notion of following DDs with their planes so as to have ample opportunity to strike at what the DDs spot for them. Maybe I am being overly generous here but hey, I'm in a good mood 🙂

Personally I always advocated for the removal of aerial spotting as it negates so much tactical play. I do, however, doubt that these changes will ever go live but it is interesting to see that WG are, at least, testing it. 

Oh I will absolutely love the crocodile tears!!!  its just that's not what the game needs. Btw read the edit. 

[Jakob Knight]

So it appears they want to make CVs more dependent upon their team to find targets for them to attack, rather than the reverse.  Now, a CV that is caught alone or without someone to spot for them will have a very difficult time making attacks.

 

Edit:  on the plus side for CVs, when attacking a target spotted by a teammate, they can wait until they are within 3.5 km to initiate their attack run and avoid flak and a good amount of AA damage (if I am correct...I need to read the full article).

Edited April 15 by Jakob Knight

[Aragathor]

Someone asked Ahskance on Discord what happens when a ship activates at the same time:

-DEFAA - which automatically spots the ship.

-Priority sector - which hides the ship.

 

His response:

Spoiler

 

This whole set of concepts has no hands nor feet, but is asked to run a marathon. It will fail in testing.

[Wulf_Ace]

2 minutes ago, Aragathor said:

Someone asked Ahskance on Discord what happens when a ship activates at the same time:

-DEFAA - which automatically spots the ship.

-Priority sector - which hides the ship.

 

His response:

  Hide contents

 

This whole set of concepts has no hands nor feet, but is asked to run a marathon. It will fail in testing.

I admire the dude who wrote this thing in dev blog, he must be a genius, beacouse it makes no fucking sense hahaha.

 

[Kynami]

Few things here to unpack. But I've a few comments of my own here...
First off the CV will still know if ships are roughly within an area by the fact its squadron is spotted. Granted this is going to make finding destroyers significantly more difficult but most cruisers and definitely all battleships it can find with one attack flight dip.

Secondly the for all intents and purposes enrage meter for boosted AA is to discourage the old chestnut of a carrier repeatedly shitting all over a cruiser in what should be a decent spot for any match without a CV in it. So the likes of a Des Moines in island cover is going to suddenly be much harder to remove... especially if they get Active Concealment off allowing them to juke the worst of a drop.

Additionally I'm expecting some carriers to suddenly need massive adjustments. Aquila's planes being made of soggy paper without replacements from portion of the squadron that isn't attacking... that is not going to fly as it currently stands.

[xxNihilanxx]

24 minutes ago, Andrewbassg said:

What happens if there are only two ships remaining, lets say a Cv and a red dd?? it is an autowin.

CVs will still be able to spot with their hull. I anticipate that CVs will have to move with their teammates more instead of parking behind an island and pretending to be an airfield. They will have access to manually controlled secondaries to combat the DD. 

As it stands at the moment if there remains one CV and one enemy DD it is pretty much an autowin for the CV. 

But let's not spend too much time debating this, it will almost certainly never come to fruition.

[Admiral_Karasu]

Something about the situation made me think about this.

Spoiler

 

 

[AdmiralThunder]

This may not be popular with the anti CV folks (I am not a hater or a fan boy of CV's just FYI - just another class in game to me) but I think removing all spotting from CV's unless they are attacking is ridiculous. Spotting should be one of the CV's main functions. It was IRL and it should be in game.

I must say, it's quite humorous to me the way DD and Sub players complain about CV spotting, and are all in favor of this massive nerf to CV's, when they themselves torture other classes with spotting. Guess it is ok for them but not others. DD's and Subs not being able to spot other ships unless shooting or launching torps incoming when?

Has WG even considered all surface ships can just hide from the CV and the CV can do nothing if there are no surface ships to spot them? How is a CV supposed to spot reds if it is the last ship alive and the game is on the line? WG better ramp up CV secondary battery's if they expect them to physically go chase down surface ships just to spot them.

WG never met a problem they couldn't muck up and screw up with the fix I guess. This make no sense to me and is a bad change. And all the rest of those changes are just a convoluted mess. They over thought it and have over complicated the change. 

Also, WG best start adjusting mission tasks as far as spotting goes now that they have neutered a CV's ability to do so. I better not see any more 1,200,000 CV spotting damage tasks like we have in this Dockyard if they have literally taken that ability away.

Sorry, not a fan of this change. It is not a good one.

Edited April 15 by AdmiralThunder

[xxNihilanxx]

1 minute ago, AdmiralThunder said:

I must say, it's quite humorous to me the way DD and Sub players complain about CV spotting, and are all in favor of this massive nerf to CV's, when they themselves torture other classes with spotting. Guess it is ok for them but not others. DD's and Subs not being able to spot other ships unless shooting or launching torps incoming when?

 

The difference being that, with the exception of the support CVs, carriers are currently able to spot at three separate locations on the map - hull, planes and fighters - while all other ships are only capable of spotting from just their hull.

[OldSchoolGaming_Youtube]

Awesome! I foresee a thousand new bugs we will enjoy in the near future when WG tries to fix the easiest problem by creating the most insane backwards solution.

[Admiral_Karasu]

1 minute ago, xxNihilanxx said:

The difference being that, with the exception of the support CVs, carriers are currently able to spot at three separate locations on the map - hull, planes and fighters - while all other ships are only capable of spotting from just their hull.

Yes, but... that sounds like the natural state of things per se. Whether and how that needs adjusted for fair game play is, of course, a consideration of its own.

[AdmiralThunder]

4 minutes ago, xxNihilanxx said:

The difference being that, with the exception of the support CVs, carriers are currently able to spot at three separate locations on the map - hull, planes and fighters - while all other ships are only capable of spotting from just their hull.

I understand that but it is a common sense thing. CV's aren't regular surface ships because they have planes (hybrids surface ships excluded). Planes should be the best at spotting. CV's don't have guns to stand off and fight with. They fly planes around. Doing so = spotting stuff. And, the CV can only attack 1 ship at a time or at most 2 if something is in secondary range (which 99% of the time ends bad for the CV). No need for this. 

Edited April 15 by AdmiralThunder

[AdmiralThunder]

38 minutes ago, MBT808 said:

From what I’ve read, I doubt it will actually solve anything. There are easy changes they could be making that would help but they’re simply not. Remove planes attack run invincibility, remove bogus AA accuracy, make AA target the attacking squadron(sorta doing that), and return DefAA’s original effect that caused planes to be less accurate while active. These may not solve all the problems but I guarantee would make a difference. It’s also leagues less complicated than the mess on the devblog.

These are the problems with CV's (mostly AA based) NOT spotting.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

I see a massive gap in communication here...

Can PLANES spot other planes in travel mode?

A big part of the new USN line is shutting down the enemy CV with your fighters and smoke.

Hard to do that if you can't see...easy to do that if you can see and the other guy can't see his targets.

This is as bad as the idea that strafing mechanics would give strike load outs a chance against air superiority load outs in the RTS era.

WG demonstrating conclusively that their idea source for CV changes does not actually understand how CVs are played.