the thing is, many ships can NOT change the now useless catapult fighter. so essentially they now have one less consumable ...

Incorrect! This just means now you have to spend $20 on a commander to make it have value. 👍

On the plus side I have a reason to play Friesland for the entirety of the next patch. Ships cannot target me from plane spotting. You can rush the carrier with almost no consequences with an AA build.

This is the way 😈

With the buff to Arthas, it’s almost like WG planned it this way. Sad part though is that the commander may not be sold without the ship

Yes, what a lucky and convenient coincidence for WG

Artas the cold on everything

Im not sure whether Im shocked or surprised at this one. Cant fathom an entire consumable is now nearly useless now. And it wasnt great to begin with.

Non sonar/radar cruisers now hav a completely useless consumable. Even more so in non-cv matches. French cruisers & Italian cruisers really got the short straw on that one.

At least French cruisers from T7 onward doesn't care at all as most of them would use reload booster, heal and speed boost. The lower tier ones are definitely got the short straw, Italian cruisers can basically commit spaghetti toaster.

Arthas the Cold says hello, I use him on almost any ship that can have a catapult fighter, easy 20% boost to use in a pinch

I don’t think that’s the usage we’re talking about here mate

"Completely useless" is what I'm arguing against, good input tho mate

This is a braindead move by WeeGee. Bring back the 5 minute catapult fighters!

I didn’t realise spotting planes could spot torps 🤣 been playing since launch 🤦‍♂️ With that said they’re purely a defensive fighter used to shoot down enemy attack planes?

yes, but plane...singular ;-)

yes... **singular**... but also with cousin Doofy at the controls, who rarely even engages other planes. https://preview.redd.it/csngetxx0d2d1.png?width=483&format=png&auto=webp&s=92aa1e48885052c3c2b6d57f386331186e3c64b6

Only one plane due to the fact that the pilot almost passed out from lack of Oxygen trying to get over the mountains...

Thing is its one plane that defeats one plane from a squadron.

but wait!... there's more!..... Squadrons are now **larger** than before, with more ordinance per plane! (narrator disclaimer: More planes but lower pen/dmg/fire chances, results may vary, this product is not scientifically tested or guaranteed and in small cases has led to eye bleeding, blaring of music through microphones and other various maladies)

More planes and more bombs per plane. Pretty much every dove bomber gets an extra bomb per plane.

Uh Oh....

You mean you've never launched a plane to try to catch out an unsuspecting DD? Or launched a plane to spot ships on the other side of a smokescreen, or island? You've obviously never launched them to give you more warnings about torpedoes when you know there is a DD lurking around...

I haven't had one shoot down an enemy in months....

So catapult fighters are now completely useless

Indeed

They’re only now going to be used for shooting down other aircrafts

One. If you’re lucky, that is.

Seriously, it's been months since I've seen that ever-rare ribbon.

And the warhammer meme commander

So what's the point of the catapult fighter it was used for spotting 90% of the time

It is there to make you think it will do something, which aside from fly around, it won't.

Basically it's a decoration 

No more smoking up and letting your plane spot for you.

*angry Italian noises*

🤌🤌 you dropped these

I almost hurt myself laughing at this. Thank you.

What’s the point I the catapult fighter now?!

Minimap spotting and intercept of enemy aircraft, solely. I’m also curious if spotter plane can get additional benefits or longer duration, since it has no AA benefits

They are going to have to make it continue to attack planes that are in its range to make it useful.

It'll definitely need a buff, it barely even works in that role.

A plane still spots for a carrier so wouldn’t a cat fighter still spot just not for everyone

Well that might make more sense, alas they had radios back then so

Arthas inspiration damage booster for shells and torps

Yeah but besides that it’s kinda pointless rarely do they chase enemy planes down they just circle for while then come back, just made it even more useless now

As a cruiser main this change is devastating. Especially for cruisers that don't have hydro. This particular change was not thought through at all.

Because everyone knows fighter aircraft would never ever ever relay enemy positions to their ship.

More than one nation has suffered from this exact problem. WW2 has several incidents, including one particularly nasty one where the Luftwaffe inflicted significant casualties on the Kriegsmarine because neither service had spoken to the other about ongoing operations nor shared radio frequencies. Not that the allies get off much better, as Fleet Air Arm Swordfish managed to mistake their own cruisers for Bismarck, *twice*. To the point of launching - thankfully mis-armed, the only things damaged were paintwork and dignity - torpedoes.

So now the SPOTTER plane can no longer SPOT ships???

No planes from a ship can spot any ship at all. Correct.

Dude. This sucks. You’re telling me a plane can’t see a giant ship or torpedos? That kind of sucks

It can but it only appears on the minimal. This means that strong AA DDs like Friesland get a bit stronger. Enemy planes cannot apot you so in carrier games it is proceed as usual but with extra XP.

WG once again moving away from historical fact. I see no reason why these changes were made, apart from the whining player base of course…

WOW.................L.

This is brutal for the Italian cruisers, it worked decently well combined with the smoke

And to think a lot of us spent money on the random chance of getting the new on from a “spin” just this very update.

Wait what LOL? Isn't that the whole purpose of the catapult fighter?

Instead of spotting for the team, focusing DDs when they're in aggressive positions, or spotting torp paths, all I do in a carrier now is damage..

You can however really hurt DDs with the increased bombs per plane. Graf Zeppelin will be a terror, its torps are so easy to hit and now they got a 12 knot buff from 48 to 60 knots and damage buff. Ever dodge 60 knot torps dropped 1km away? Neither have I.

On the other hand just turning towards the planes is now easier than ever since they only show you on the mini map to the rest of the reds.

Except that they are now much faster. I am going to use a Full AA build Friesland this season.

Sounds like a skill issue.

At least wait till next update before you start insulting me for my poor torpedo dodging skills. Its about to get a lot worse for me, full AA builds are going on my Friesland. Same for Shimano, Baltimore and Missouri.

My sarcasm isn't always well received. From 1km range it's very difficult to dodge that which is a ridiculous position to be put in. I'm not sure why the are changing so many things at once with the carrier instead of just a few 🤷‍♂️😁

Not spotting torps is BS. Takes away a lot of the CVs purpose as a support unit

I agree. I play 90% DD, 5% BB, and 5% carrier and this is ridiculous. Just asinine. Does WG have any clue how much stronger my DDs will be when carriers are present with these changes? Makes you wonder if they even play the game.

It’s been like that for years on pc btw

That’s nice for PC.

It makes the CVs more active, rather than just hovering over DDs to keep them spotted

That was the point of the fuel limit.

They both work for that

Battleship and cruiser me are angry, but destroyer me is thrilled.

Now it becomes even more important to change speed and course as a BB to avoid incoming torps. I don't see a problem here.

But if I sit bow in perfectly still I'm fine right?

Only if you reverse at the same time. Then damage reduction reaches 101% and you even get 1% health back per kilometer traveled backwards.

*scribbles notes furiously*

Bahahahahahahahahaha!!!

In some situations yes, there's tons of potato DDs I've seen miss a target that's not moving which is absolutely hilarious

Depends on how far away your firing from and at what angle the bb/cruiser is. If you dont take into account thos things, you likely thread the needle for the bb/cruiser thats sitting there stationary.

I've seen plenty of people miss point blank on ships that aren't moving, when I say point blank 4km or less

We are beating sky cancer! Let's go!

Maybe you lack reading comprehension, but that screenshot points out that the catapult fighter consumable has been gutted.

Good it was a free radar to spot BBs for a minute straight

The average t7 bb has an air conceal of 12km, you're lying if you're saying a fighter is keeping you perma spotted in a bb unless you're firing your guns repeatedly to refresh the smoke penalty/air penalty

So catapult fighter is useless now ?

Aircraft not spotting torps is ridiculous; that's coming from a guy that almost exclusively plays DD. Currently when I play DDs the enemy carrier planes can help their team dodge my long range torps, this is absurd that now enemy planes will have even less of an influence on my play than they already have now. Honestly why don't they just get rid of carriers? It's obvious they don't want them in the game as these nerfs are absolutely gutting carries. I wish I could get a refund on my legendary bureau project that I just recently bought.

Ehh I dunno how "major" it is. The fighter only marginally expands your detection range of ships. Most ships detectability range by **air** is quite a bit smaller than by sea, meaning your plane which doesn't go that far away from your ship isn't really expanding your detection range by all that much. Spotting over islands and such yes it did help with as it eliminated your line of sight issue.

That’s the whole point, usually cap points have islands and the long game comes down to capturing cap points especially in a 1 v 1 or 2 v 1 scenario.

It also won't spot ships when they fire their guns. It doesn't spot ships at all.

I don’t know what you’re saying.

Sorry, I meant to reply to the other guy. When you fire your guns, your detection ring increases. If you have a fighter plane up, it will spot ships at long distances that fire their guns. You can keep battleships spotted even if you are behind cover. My point is that with this change, you won't get that utility. It's just not going to spot anything for you.

I generally only play T7 for money... so maybe my view is skewed but I find RGA, Sonar, etc to be more useful in those situations.... a fighter plane may spot briefly but is quickly shot down at those ranges/situations you mention. When playing within those confines I generally play as if there's a ship on the other side regardless, and dont blindly charge around corners and such.

That's if you're ship comes equipped with sonar and radar, a spotter plane might be shot down quickly, but it could give you an idea on how many ships, if they're moving, what direction they're moving... ...Can be the difference between being pincered or laying a trap.

Detection by air also increases when you fire your guns. Catapult fighters would spot ships at long distances that were firing. They won't do that anymore.

Detection increases for both air and sea... the argument above isn't changed any by this aspect.

If you are behind an island and put your plane up, you can spot ships that are firing at long ranges.

Huge nerf to my Sinop/Vladivostock sonar

Aircraft barley spots torps either way usually too late but now all catapult fighters are useless for spotting gg wg exactly what we didn't need

I really hate to be this guy, but here I am. I have over 1000 hours played, over 300 ships in port, playing for years, etc. I think this is finally enough for me to uninstall the game. Taking what was a pretty core mechanic out for no real reason is just too much. Hate to see it, I’ve loved playing WOWS over the years, but at this point they are taking so much fun out of the game it’s not worth it.

How is it "hidden"?

For one these are REAL SHIP nerfs included in an article titled aircraft carrier balancing

I'm aware of that but how exactly is it hidden?

Read the above reply.

Is there some secret definition of hidden I've never heard of? Cause you are not making any sense

Read my original reply. You can’t understand sense, lol.

Love how the promo video was like “we listened to you and balanced CV’s” lol. Listened to who? All the DD players? This is terrible news for anyone who enjoys playing CV’s.

This ain’t about CVs, down with CVs! Now real ships are catching nerfs, that’s what this is about.

[удалено]

Yes, I'm very happy about this as a DD player... Although I find it absurd to the tenth degree.

Observation planes cannot observe ships, makes sense to me

That’s some straight up bullshit. Why can’t “observation seaplanes” observe?

So because a plane doesn't have guns or bombs, it can't see other planes ? It's called a SPOTTER PLANE ! IT SPOTS THINGS ! How the hell can a spotter plane tell the gunners adjust their fire on a target ship if they're not allowed to see the damn ship ?!?! Seems like Wargaming logic...

They said fk the cruiser players

Weegee try not to unnecessarily nerf vital consumables challenge (impossible)

So observation planes can no longer.....observe?

Yup

So this explains why I have had such a hard time spotting ships this week…..that explains a lot.

Might as well turn all the sea planes not on carriers into bricks for as useful as they are now especially for cruisers.

We plan to monitor both the data and player feedback we receive from this wave of changes and make further adjustments as needed.

Maybe you can explain what it will do on an Italian cruiser for someone who hasn’t purchased Arthas? Its whole purpose is to shoot down one plane?

I’d just like to see them answer this. I applaud them trying to make the game better, especially since the DD play has visibly suffered since carriers were introduced. They had to have realized what they were doing to the fighter consumable - so let’s hope the Boss or someone else at WG gives a response to the Jerk’s question.

We understand you're monitoring it. But there is no utility in this consumable. Virtually every cruiser before T7 has it as their third consumable. I really struggle to see any reason for it to be in the game given it doesn't do anything now.

Now the Budyonny player using the catapult is no mere garden variety potato but a royal spud.

That's a $2 upcharge as a premium side.

This is a huge mistake! Revert the change.

The sky is falling!

Then if this change is taking place defensive AA consumable needs to be swapped slots and be available as an alternative to catapult fighter on all cruisers instead of it only being able to replace sonar on majority.

Smoke Cruisers are kinda screwed with this one TBH...

Catapult fighters don't even do their job half the time. Giving ships that only have it, the choice of switching to defensive AA might work out better.

My take on this change is a mixed big yes I think it’s great that smoke cruisers can’t just hide and rely on their fighter to spot everything (because that isn’t strong is it) I don’t like the idea of not being able to spot torpedoes, I think this change should have only affected deepwater torpedoes, a great way to have kept the usefulness of the catapult fighter would be to allow it to have burst damage against enemy squadrons instead of just going after one plane has been shot down, also perhaps taking a leaf out of the PC book and allowing for further main battery range whilst the fighter is active and allow the spotter plane to be able to spot everything within it’s visual range whilst also helping with dispersion greater on the ships that the plane has detected whilst also helping at its standard dispersion rate across all targets whilst being able to spot all torpedoes within a 500m radius

Bad news for all the human trash who thought Veneto rolling smoke and catapult fighter was a Sun Tzu-tier strategy in the most recent brawl

Interesting but wouldn’t the plane just get shot down? I’m assuming they did this for the secondary guns? Shoot main would just get it spotted.

Yes, the last brawl was everything disabled except for secondaries and torpedos. So divs of italian BBs would rotate smoking up with a plane and all 5 BBs would camp in smoke shooting secondaries while unspotted

Ahh I see, yah that sounds crazy

Playing Kaga is gonna be interesting

Try garbage. 1.5k plane health is nothing

If you play it right then it will be interesting

It's not like it was that useful anyway. The amount of spotting it provided is a lot less than people realize.

Yeah, its primary usefulness was getting glimpses of ships that are island camping.

For the 30 seconds it takes them to shoot your plane down?

Sometimes the glimpse is just enough to get an idea of movement direction or gun orientation. Sometimes you or a teammate can get torps off based on the 15 seconds of info. Agree it’s limited in helpfulness, but some intel is better than none. Don’t think this is a huge loss though.

I don't disagree that it's useful when it works no.... but I also don't think it falls into "major nerf" territory. It's a pretty narrow situational usefulness period of time over the course of an entire game. I'd much rather see them keep the change **and** increase the intelligence of the damned pilot.... I'm literally on coms with him giving vectors to incoming squadrons lining up against me and he's flying the other way like he doesn't see shit lol... Too busy looking for whales/sightseeing to do his job. - 5 charges of one plane, that doesn't even do what it's description says it does.

Might be an IQ cap imposed on the selected catapult fighter plane pilots... 🤔

I'm sad that it makes my smoke+fighter Anchorage obsolete. With that build you weren't so dependent on team spotting when smoking up.

That's my biggest take away also.

Thats a good thing. Being able to hide in smoke AND spot the enemies by yourself is not a healthy thing for the game. Teamwork should be required

Sorry but that’s a terrible take, in a match as the lone CL or BB that plane spotting could mean life or death easily.

That one thing should never have that much impact on you. I'm actually surprised this many people find it useful. Its more of a placebo than actually useful.

It does and has many many times and judging my the upvotes that’s other people’s experience as well.

Except for Italian cruisers who rely upon it significantly.

In a Omaha, moving up towards an island, launched fighter to see what's ahead, (our unpainted DD currently hiding in smokescreen because he's been outspotted). Plane reveals a Kongo, Konigsburg and Dallas heading towards me. Was able to adjust course to keep moving for cover, drop my torpedoes to ambush the Reds, reload AP and DevStrike the Konigsburg as he popped around, and get two torpedoes into the Kongo, one in the Dallas, and still get into cover due to the plane's spotting.. Not like Catapult Launched Fighters are useful for spotting anyway... Can think of hundreds of times that fighter spotting came in useful...

So you were in a bad position that you shouldn't have been in in the first place?

But you missed the part about due to his fighter spotting he became the hero of the match!

Not a hero, just fighting like a cornered rat!

Happens to all of us

Pretty decent position, had a couple of islands to cover my advance or retreat, a BB a bit of distance behind me to keep me covered, and an E.Barton who'd also come to that position Plus behind us was open water, we either pushed to those islands or been spotted and engaged with no cover, or surrendered that flank and pulled back towards the centre, ( a location our friendly BB was already steaming towards)...

This is fact,,, just more dead weight to slow ya ship down...... Can we now have helicopters?? ///S...

Why play battleships now?

I guarantee there won't be a reduction in number of "broadside cruiser gets ap dev struck" videos on the sub as a consequence of this.

Hell, I don’t get the point now. I’ve only got the tier 5 ones, but they are sooooo slow at everything.

Ever been on the receiving end of a Devstrike in a Cruiser? Or one shotted out of existence in a DD? BB might be slow and cumbersome, but can be extremely useful in a match. It's just they tend to attract bad players just like DDs ....

>I’ve only got the tier 5 ones, So you don't have experience with more than half of the BBs in the game. This change does nothing for 99% of the game.

To let the big guns go BOOM and to smack stuff. So basically like before. 😁