[2022] Post ex de facto analysis of things said in the "MFW People say AA is useless" thread by NefariousRaven

Play nice, everyone!!!

This sentence you wrote is literally the entire point of the previous Thread.

"MFW when people say AA is useless" --> "My feeling when people say AA is useless"

@NefariousRaven is saying AA wasn't useless, because it shot down planes.

The entire thread was saying, "Oh look, AA wasn't useless here."

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@Soshi_Sone has many similar posts showing off their skills in the Tiger '59. Folks say the Tiger is terrible, and yet Soshi_Sone has great games in it.

Trying to turn a person's display of skill with an AA ship or the Tiger into a refutation of all things said ever... is going to be a bit of stretch. But for those that enjoy AA or the Tiger, it's still nice to represent the other side of equation.

His point was literally to take the conversation out of Objective Analysis and into Realistic Situations.

Telling him his preference for a Realistic/Grounded Example set is wrong is a strange way to reply?

Please act in Good Faith. The "Just Dodge" meme people cite is used as a dismissive term. As nobody here as thrown around that is a joking minimization of the situation, please don't use it as a blanket.

Saying, "Hey, you might try moving to mitigate some of the incoming damage" is a far cry different from: "Just dodge [lol]"

Again, please act in Good Faith. Name dropping old terms like this is just trying to start a bar fight, which means I get Admin'y and lock things.

Why would you think AA should be defined on its ability to impact spotting?

One person has stated that they feel they can dodge planes. That IS NOT dismissing a situation by hand-wavingly saying "Just Dodge"

Hence, I request that folks talk in Good Faith or else I will stop this party.

You may be thinking of a Closed Test from a long time ago which was based on the idea of reducing base aerial detection, but causing turned off AA to have a "spin up" time before reaching 100%. That was never implemented into the game.

Cruisers often as not have Aerial Detection that is as large or larger than their AA Range.

You should consider the AA range and Aerial Detection of your ship to be a balancing characteristic that is intentionally set that way.

I realize you may not like being spotted outside of AA range, but that's part of the package that the ship was created in.

Extrapolating "I can dodge planes" to mean "EVERYONE CAN DODGE ALL PLANES" is Bad Faith. It's not a straight line from Point A to Point B.

You have to understand that some people will argue from their personal experience and not be speaking to a Universal Truth.

A recent test was investigating limited spotting ranges on ships detected by planes. In short, we are aware that Spotting by Planes is considered a pain point and are still working on measures to address that issue.

Currently however, the Aerial Detection and Spotting mechanics are functioning as designed and implemented for the past 2+ years.

Primarily the issue is with the "Just Dodge" dismissal statement. It doesn't add anything, while simultaneously making some posters angry and baiting a fight.

Bar Fights get the Police called, and as Boggzy likes to say:

"When a Bar Fight happens, either nobody goes to jail or Everybody goes to jail"

Right now, to me both sides are yelling at each other. I haven't closed this because I'm hoping folks will take a breath.

These discussions are akin to letting out air from a slowly inflating balloon. In needs to happen so the balloon doesn't explode, but letting it go crazy results in just as much chaos.

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I don't care what side wins or loses. I just want folks to talk with a level head. So, in regards to that:

Potato and Cthulu, please calm down.


Shomaruki, please don't poke people because that just whips things up further.

Spotting has been considered a pain point since back in 2019. It was discussed in front of an audience during the 2019 CC Summit. However, it was mentioned that balancing is best achieved moving one piece of the puzzle at a time.

It would seem enough puzzle pieces have been placed that the spotting part of the board is on the menu. How long that takes or how it might pan out is entirely up to the future and testing.

As a person that has spent literal weeks of his life in discussions like these, I'm well aware. I've heard it all before.

Still, I don't care who wins the unwinnable argument today or tomorrow. I only care that it's done with respect and civility.

This will be my last post on this point. The "Just Dodge" meme happened BEFORE the post you are referencing.

Moving on.

Community Managers do relay feedback and issues from the Community up the chain, and we relay news and information from the Company to the Community.

I want to be aggressively clear on this point. I am not employed as a Game Designer, and I do not have any direct input on the CV experience. Outside of my ability to have a solid understanding of things players like and don't like, this game is available across many regions of the planet and I only represent players from one Region.

TLDR: I didn't move mountains and start making any CV anything happen at all. That's not my role or job.

I know it was meant well, but I want no questions to exist about the fact that my ideas and opinions as a CV driver have literally NO impact on the CV Balancing process.

I do take my responsibility to the Community very seriously, however. That includes representing those that Like AND Dislike CVs and their reasons for doing so.

I think there's one part of the CV snipe that isn't quite being represented here. Yes, you're looking at it from a 1v1 sense, but the entire action has to be weighed against what the team is doing and if there are other decisions that are the better choice.

In terms of the ability to strike and do damage, there are other mechanics in the game which are similarly "breachable". For instance, even heavily armored ships can be lit of fire at the expense of "wasting" a plentiful resource of HE shells that might shatter on the armor. Or Torpedoes which may only result in a small number of hits out of a larger throw-weight.

In this sense, I think even the damage interaction isn't part of the whole, as the picture is much larger than just that 1v1.

I understand that you addressed the validity of the CV Snipe idea. What I'm asking is if you SHOULD look at it in the 1v1 perspective.

Basically, while each ship is controlled by a different player, winning is accomplished through the actions of the team. Is a CV player does something and deals some damage, while the target may not enjoy getting shot (who would?)... is it correct to view the CV's action in isolated as opposed to as a member of a whole?

Why isn't a team of Players matching themselves against other Players in a team-based situation PvP?

While PvP is typically short-hand for "Player vs Player", there's nothing to say it can't apply to multiple players on either or both sides.

Others have and will disagree the CV/Surface interactions have an inherent skill dual. For my part, I believe they do, and I enjoy the matchup.

While I'm certainly an oddball on that front, I know others that feel the same, so at least I'm not alone in my insanity <3

In a raw math sense, grouping increases Continuous Damage and Flak Grouping. However, more advanced positioning is available by examining islands and teammate positioning to find where you can limit/buffer attack lines.

I haven't made a specific video on this topic, but I have addressed the idea of Attack Lines in a "Countering RU CV" video I did.

It's more in the latter half of the video. Remember I talk slow, so 2x speed is fine for easier listening.

Direct Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGZpEBEl6gI

I've had this discussion with Pulicat previously, and while I respect his opinions on the matter I still disagree.

My actively pew'ing with guns against planes or the AI hammering away and doing the same amount of damage is all the same to me.

I'm much more of a tabletop gamer in the sense that I don't play the ship as my avatar. I use a piece on the board with respect to other pieces. It's just a mentality difference between us.

CV Players learn how to attack ships. Ships learned how to deal with CVs.

The idea that AA must kill all the planes to teach the dangers of assaulting an enemy position and getting hurt for doing so isn't a necessary correlation. Ships will shoot other ships, and planes will attack ships too. The is a combat game, and part of the game is surviving to take positions and make things happen for your team.

I do know that some players will dislike being taken out of a battle by planes, but it takes a team to move mountains and some folks are going to fall in that effort. That's the nature of an attrition-style game.

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To a separate point, Tier 4 CVs were nerfed a while back and rather considerably. There may be a large number of new players trying out the CVs, but their threat is very non-threatening compared to their higher-tier family members.

You have absolute control over your AA. You decide where you are to use it, and you decide how much to bring when you choose your ship.

You don't need to man the AA Batteries yourself for your AA positioning choices to be impactful.

Some discussion regarding island play discussed islands blocking AA lines. You use the island to block attack lines, like to protect from skip bombs, torpedoes, or broadside rockets if the island is high enough to cause aiming issues.

The CV driver doesn't not sail your ship for you. You are the one who decides where your ship is at any given time. That is 100% your choice.

If the game is designed to kill 2-3 planes on approach to a ship with automated AA, why would a manual version be expected to kill more than that? The balancing was set at a plane loss per attack amount already.

Having manually controlled guns would mean not being able to use other weapons on the ship whenever planes appeared. While that could be fun in a multiplayer-style game where multiple players can man different sections of a ship, that is not a facet of our game.

Priority Sector is a "Manual AA" in itself, and even it is too taxing to use consistently for players that are under duress. It's just looking in a direction and hitting a key once every 20 to 30 seconds.

You use your position, islands, and teammates to see what a CV can and cannot do. Then you play off that. There is no reason to expect that your only option is to run, it's simply not the reality of what happens in the game as there are more players than just you and more things happening at any given time.

If this isn't something that I can convey through abstraction, then you should just provide replays for analysis and I can give you specifics in regards to actual situations.

Unfortunately, as AA can combine together, if you design the game to be around the 1v1 than anytime two ships are remotely in proximity there is no interaction consistently possible.

AA values were nearly double what they are now in Patch 8.5 when they changed Plane Damage to be taken by only the last plane instead of randomly distributed across all of the planes in the squadron. The Patch caused an extreme amount of plane loss because of the now "focused damage" mechanic, though it was still a playable situation for high-end players. The AA damage was altered in 8.7, though Instantaneous Damage was added to offset some of the loss.

I don't have a way to convey to you what it was like, but I could loosely offer you think of something like... If ships are close together, they gain half-again as much armor and have half the chance of being set on fire. While the game would continue to function under such overlapping mechanical rules, it would be VERY different.

That was a personal concern during the last 1v1 Brawl, and yet surface ships killed CVs repeatedly. Turns out it was unfounded concern on my part.

The reason I refer to this as a team game, is because it IS a team game. Random Battles have 12 players on both sides short of a Queue Dump, and to imagine that the game is always going to boil down to a 1v1 is incorrect. It's not the reality of the situation.

The common refrain of people cowering and fleeing to hide in the back of the map isn't reality. Why do I know this? Because I've played thousands of CV games where people moved up, claimed space, took objectives, broke flanks, pushed flanks, and a variety of other encounters that were not fleeing in fear of planes.

As I believe you are primarily a Battleship player, I can agree that Battleship AA skills are often not a choice you would make. Battleship AA is often sufficient to matter enough for its purpose outside of Battleships that have a specific AA weakness. While you might not feel killing 1-3 planes per attack is enough retribution for the damage you've taken, I assure you there are levels a CV can sustain and levels they cannot. What feels like only a few plane kills does matter and alter the CV player's decision making.

There is no reasonable expectation of ships all sailing in a hardened formation. In general, AA is designed around having a single other ship mattering. The term I use is an AA buddy.

As players rarely push flanks solo (typically 5-7 go to one side of the map and the rest go to the other), there are usually ships around that a player can simply move closer to.

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Note: With more advanced knowledge of AA and CV play, you can play off your teammates positions instead of trying to be next to other ships. It's about funneling the attack patterns of the enemy CV onto a known and unpleasantly defended vector.

Your experiences are YOUR experiences. Understand that the game is designed across a wide playerbase and what you are able to do does not account for what all players are able to do.

Other players have reported being in situations where they never once lost to a CV in said 1v1. It's going to come down to the skill and execution that actually happens instead of theory-crafting.

You're saying it's easier to strike closer targets? Sure. They're closer. But your ability to strike something doesn't mean a win or satisfactory outcome.

Matches move and evolve on the play of the multitude of players in the game, not a single CV's actions.

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Before you move to "But a CV's actions matter a lot", sure. But so do the actions of any skilled or influential player. Again, the reality of the situation will dictate the actual result instead of theory-crafting artificial power levels onto hypothetical encounters.

This is why AA skills are rarely taken. You are already aware of this.

A Battleship has 10-12 enemies that aren't a CV, and players plan accordingly. A 10% buff to AA, or the more useful increase to Priority Sector are very expensive at 2 and 3 points repsectively.

Please don't waste my time with this. There was a significant amount of discussion about 1v1 Brawls back when it happened. I do not have links to provide you and have no interest in trying to "prove" this to you.

I am not lying when I say there were experienced players that killed every CV they came across and bragged about doing so. Other experienced CV players said they never lost, so it went both ways.

Honestly, plane health is fairly consistent from one tier of CV to the next. The biggest difference is Squadron size and Speed.

Tier 4 AA is very weak to allow for a learning environment. Tier 6 isn't powerful, but the CVs are also restrained compared to their Tier 8 and 10 counterparts.

The issue of AA not making good transitions from Tier 6 to 8 and 8 to 10 is more in terms of the pacing of the gameplay. Tier 10 gameplay tends to be the fastest, biggest experience.

I don't have a way to describe this to you other than the video I linked that I don't believe you watched. I don't currently have access to recording tools, so I can't create something for you.

As you are only hearing me say that ships don't have to group up and are ignoring everything else, I will not continue to talk about this to you at this time.

As I was referring to an actual 1v1, the Surface Ship has no restrictions on movement patterns and can advance in any way they see fit. While the CV can expect to lose less planes per strike, they can also expect to do less damage without any team assistance to restrain their target's movement.

What you feel is important had nothing to do with what you said earlier. Adding it now doesn't change anything.

I invite you to play 10 games in a CV and submit every match where the enemy team saw a CV on the other side and decided to stay in their spawn hiding from planes.

I'd like to see how many out of 10 involve no ships moving forward to take positions on a side of the map, or attempting to take a cap point, or pushing forward when enemies are dead and they want to claim space.

My gut feeling is none of them will, but as that feeling is based only on the thousands of battles I've played, I could certainly be incorrect.

Every target that is farther away is a harder target. This is true for every ship in the game.

This has no value in this discussion and I'd kindly request you stop repeating something that A) doesn't happen to any appreciable extent, and B) doesn't matter outside of being a soundbite.

Just means running a different amount of risk assessment when you make your choices. Nothing strange about that.

I'd love to see them be reduced by 1 point each~ The +10% at Rank 1 and the +25% as a 2 pointer like it is on Cruisers would be them MUCH more attractive, I think.

If you are in a 1v1 Brawl, you are advancing toward the CV to kill it. There is no "forever", there is "until you kill the CV"

Stop with the Just Dodge nonsense. Evading or mitigating incoming fire is a real, actual thing and not a meme.

This is a nonsensical statement. "Putting myself into danger for an objective benefits the enemies that are capitalizing on my putting myself in danger! I should run away!"

If you continue with nonsense like this, I will time you out for intentional trolling. Please, if you're going to reply to me every few minutes, I need you to put effort into it.

Two things.

The faster you strike, the faster you burn through your resources. This may not be a hindrance if your enemy makes it easy for you to strike them with little plane loss, but in a situation where the enemy isn't giving you their health for free you can and will run low on resources over a sustained barrage.

As to the Crossfire, that's just a different way of saying a CV strikes a target and does damage. The attack from a CV is minimal compared to what a surface ship can do to an exposed target. Having a teammate restrain a target simply means more of the CV's damage will strike home, but as the damage of a CV is survivable this isn't life changing. An actual surface ship crossfire is a Problem as surface ship DPM provides very high amounts of threat when unmitigated.

Sure, Tier 8 is where CVs come into their own in terms of actual threat. AA and Flak are appreciably tough to deal with, though they aren't amped up to 11 like at Tier 10.

A Tier 6 CV has an extreme difficulty dealing with Tier 8 AA, but that's ok. It just means the CV needs to find the areas it can help and be relevant in. Everyone's job is to do the best they can with the tools that they have.

A CV cannot restrain 11 ships by itself. Please make reasonable arguments.

We all care about the game. That's why we're here.

We can disagree on whether we like CVs in the game, or how impactful we feel CVs are when they exist. That's certainly a topic for disagreement.

I know many folks that despise Destroyers and Battleships and want them removed from the game. Ultimately, everyone has their own vision of the game they want to play, and with hundreds of thousands of players that's no going to line up for everyone.

I'm going to give you 5 minutes to show me proof of where I have ever advocated that.

Ever.

I'm going to have to ask you to stop baiting the folks in this thread.

AA works and planes die. Ships can avoid and mitigate damage. This is a known thing.

Coming here with this is just baiting people to come out and attack you for your post. Please stop.

Sure, 11 Hostages in a room and 1 Bad Guy with a knife. While 11 people could overwhelm the Bad Guy, nobody wants to get stabbed. That's definitely a thing.

However, people don't play like that in this game. Folks don't hide in fear of a CV like that. It's a false narrative that is laughable.

There is no argument there, because that isn't an argument anyone would ever make in good faith.

I'm happy to unhide it as soon as you give me what I requested. Until that time, you can stop making up false lines of attack and sit out of this conversation.

Reasonable people understand that AA works and not all CV players are Gods. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversations on this forum aren't built on that baseline. They're constructed from Theoretical Maximums and Universal Truths.

Coming in with a ship that did fine in a game just means you now have a host of people saying you can't prove that the game is perfect because your ship did X or Y.

It's a helpful example, but in the context of this discussion it's just baiting a more heated response.

@Bandi73

Find me a replay of 11 players that stopped in their spawn and denied themselves the ability to do anything... because a CV existed in the game.

We'll all had games where your teammates have yet to discover the mystery of the W key on their keyboard, and spend entire minutes sitting around waiting for realization to kick in... but on a whole, 11 people do not hide from a CV in fear all game.

Ya Rly.

I hid your post because it made a false assertion. I request you show proof of how your assertion isn't false. I said I'll wait and that you can sit out until then.

I'm going to hide this post as well, so please either find your proof or hang out until the next "Great CV Debate" thread kicks off.

Bandi wanted to talk about CV stuff. This is the result of a thread with no goal other than general CV talk.

Multiple people saying multiple things at near random.

I'd be happy for you to post clips of me saying a CV can singlehandedly restrain 11 players from playing the game. As that doesn't exist, I will offer you the same option.

Provide me the information you have or you can sit this conversation out as well.

Not going to lie, that looks like it'd be an interesting replay to watch.

Are you serious with this? This is an awkward joke, yes?

Add useful things to the discussion or leave the discussion. Stop with this nonsense :\

Yep. Your clip doesn't say anything to support your argument and is a waste of time.

You are now taking a break from this thread.

Just to point out, the game your picture is showing has no Destroyers.

There are many Cruiser players that don't know how to advance without having a DD go ahead. They get scared to move forward and spot because Cruisers are so much more visible than DDs. Granted, a CV can provide spotting, but this isn't an uncommon occurrence.

Sure. I'm just noting it specifically because I've learned to expect lemming-trains on single DD games.

The flank without a DD leaves and heads over to the side with a DD and you get the giant doom-train. It's frustrating, but it's a reality.

It's a great video and supports both Pro and Anti CV arguments.

There are some people that enjoy the CV interactions from a surface ship perspective, but there are others that don't. Ideally, everyone would be in the "I enjoyed this!" camp, but nobody said this stuff was easy. (Well, lots of folks do say that, but it's not <3)

The video states that if Person A does to Person B, that it should be an interaction that both parties should enjoy.

It might be an attack that A wants to do damage with. If A hits, they'll enjoy that, but B needs to be able to avoid the damage. If the damage is avoided, B will enjoy that. It has the ability to send enjoyment both ways.

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Bandi is saying that there is nothing enjoyable about being lit by a CV, so it's ALWAYS a negative interaction. And he has a point.

Worth nothing that while the enemy has a negative interaction, the teammates of the CV have a positive one as they can attack a target they previously couldn't.

For instance, an enemy Destroyer that is unspotted on a flank that lost its DD. If the CV provides the intel on the DD, that's a Good Thing for their teammates that needed that information.

In a way, it's kind of like a "Heal". It's beneficial to teammates only, and enemies should never be happy to see their enemies being healed.

Ooh, that too. Yes, that was a point as well.

Though an arty shell can't be shot down so there is still a difference. But the ability to self-spot is quite strong.

As I recall, the original "Healer" in Dungeons and Dragons is a Cleric. They wear heavy armor and have a nasty mace or hammer <3

But yes, CVs have a lot of different functions, so they don't quite fit a characteristic mold.

Honestly, if you play CV enough it feels like a Tabletop game where there are 24 people that each have a piece and are playing at the same time.

Hapa_Fodder mentioned that once. That this game is one that actively has folks that don't play any other games. I think that's really cool, personally.

There's a game called Diablo. While it was being designed, it was made as a Turn-Based game. Well, Blizzard (the Publisher) said they needed to change the game and make it Realtime.

So, they just made it so all the turns happened at once, and it turned out awesome (it was a little more complex than that). WoWs feels to me like a Tabletop game where 24 people take turns... at the same time.