Changes to Aircraft Carriers and AA Mechanics - Closed Test
Earlier, WG presented a concept aimed at addressing the problems highlighted by the community over the past years. The first playtest WG ran was meant to check the viability of that concept and, after going through the feedback and data WG gathered, WG were satisfied with the results. Nevertheless, there was still a lot of work to do regarding balance and UI improvements. Now, WG are looking to polish the new design as WG aim to implement it on the live server this year.
In the recent Waterline publication, WG shared our plans to have a public test of the new AA and carrier mechanics in February. Since then, WG had several internal tests and, based on the results of these, WG decided to postpone the public test (on a separate test server) till the end of March/beginning of April to ensure all technical issues are patched up.
While preparing for this, WG plan to hold a separate closed test, the details of which WG would now like to share with you.
Let's have a quick recap: The new design aims to reduce spotting overall and remove unintentional spotting by aircraft, as well as make AA more impactful while ensuring aircraft carriers remain viable in battles.
After the first public test, WG outlined additional improvements WG wanted to achieve:
- Make the new design more intuitive by:
- Better informing ships when planes pose a threat to them and when they don't
- Improving interactions between ships and aircraft and making them easier to understand
- Make changes to some of the older systems tied to aircraft for better quality of life and to provide room for future improvements
Several important changes have been implemented since the last test. WG will briefly mention them here and talk further in depth later on:
- Shell Explosions (Flak) have been completely removed.
- The recon mode won't be restored while flying. It will be separate for each squadron and can only be restored while your squadron is not in active use.
- Manual AA (previously Priority Sector) will combine old and new designs—covering 360 degrees and buffing AA damage.
- Defensive AA Fire won't prevent planes from spotting anymore and instead will work as it currently does on the live server.
- Ships with Defensive AA Fire will also get a new consumable in the same slot. This consumable directly decreases incoming damage from aircraft and all types of torpedoes.
- Patrol Fighters, Combat Air Patrol, and Fighters can't spot ships.
- Various UI improvements have been implemented to make the mechanics easier to navigate both for surface ships and carrier players.
- Hybrid ships will have their aircraft behave in the same way as those originating from aircraft carriers.
Changes to Aircraft Carriers
The overall concept hasn't changed – aircraft will operate in three distinct modes: travel, attack, and recon, each with its own goals and rules.
Travel mode
When in travel mode, your planes operate at high altitudes. You won't be able to spot enemy ships directly, relying instead on spotting from your teammates to identify targets, but you can still detect enemy aircraft. At the same time, your planes can be spotted by other planes and surface ships.
Planes move faster in this mode, allowing you to reach targets quickly and enjoy a more dynamic gameplay experience. You can additionally adjust the speed using the W and S keys.
Planes are safe from AA fire while in travel mode, though they can still be damaged by Fighters and Interceptors.
Non-player-controlled aircraft, such as Fighters, do not use this mode and remain vulnerable to AA fire at all times.
Pressing F at high altitude will return the entire squadron to the carrier.
- Based on player feedback, we're bringing back the speedometer for better control of the aircraft, as well as enhancing the aiming UI to make it feel more like traditional flight simulators.
- Since the Engine Boost bar was removed and your ability to increase your speed is no longer limited during travel, a new consumable that increases the maximum speed of aircraft in all three modes will be introduced.
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To better differentiate between modes, WG added special UI and visual elements that will provide additional information about the current altitude of your planes.
Recon mode
Recon mode is a new tool specifically meant for spotting. When activated, a flight of planes will detach from your squadron and briefly descend from travel mode to spot opponents like planes currently can, however, your planes will become vulnerable to AA.
You can activate it by pressing the Q button while in travel mode. Each squadron has a recon mode timer that depletes while in use.
If the attacking flight in recon mode is destroyed, you switch back to the remaining squadron if there are any planes left, and the timer stops. After that, you can start another recon run if there’s still recon time left.
You can enter recon mode at any point as long as it has more than 0 seconds, however, if you run out of time, the planes will automatically return to travel mode (unless you start an attack).
- In this iteration, we've made some UI improvements to help you understand the mechanics.
- The timer is displayed near the Recticel and will turn red as the time is about to run out. The only way to replenish the timer is to return the planes to the carrier – this encourages carriers to rotate their squadrons in battle.
- Recon mode can't be immediately activated or deactivated – there's a delay to avoid potential "dolphining".
- If you see a suitable target, you can start the attack from recon mode, however, it will still require some preparation time.
Manual Control of Carrier Guns
The ability to manually control carrier guns is here to stay, with some balancing adjustments:
To remind you how it works:
- While not piloting aircraft, you can take control of your carrier’s secondary guns.
- For carriers with mixed secondary armaments, you control only the largest caliber guns. Smaller calibers remain automatic.
- If a carrier doesn’t have any secondary guns, it will operate as it did before.
- When controlling a carrier, you must manually use the Damage Control Party consumable. Once you launch your planes, the consumable will become automatic again.
- As part of this change, the settings of fires on aircraft carriers were adjusted to be closer to those on battleships. Now they last longer and do more damage in total but in turn, carriers cannot be relit on fire constantly, which led to higher damage compared to a battleship fire before. (Duration of fire: 45 sec; Damage per sec: 0.3% of maximum HP; Fire resistance: same as on battleships of the appropriate tier)
Changes to Surface Ships
To give surface ships more ways to fight against aircraft, we've revamped existing AA tools and introduced new ones.
Manual AA Defense Reinforcement
Manual AA Defense Reinforcement can be activated when pressing O and it takes effect within your AA range. It instantly deals a percentage of damage proportional to the attacking flight's health. Additionally, it temporarily buffs all continuous AA damage. The effect will gradually get weaker over its duration.
In other words, Manual AA should be used reactively to deal burst damage to enemy planes.
After reviewing your feedback, WG decided to combine the best of the old and new designs of this mechanic. When activated, it will cover the whole AA area around the ship and buff AA damage.
Automatic AA Defense Reinforcement
Automatic AA is a new defensive tool meant to discourage aircraft from repeatedly targeting the same ship.
While your AA is shooting enemy aircraft, a special progress bar will passively charge up.
- Mechanically it's pretty similar to Combat Instructions, though in this iteration the progress won't decay, even if you don't damage enemy planes for a while.
- Once your progress reaches 100%, a passive bonus to AA damage automatically activates. After activation, Automatic AA will start losing its charge. If it’s not attacking planes (because there are no nearby planes, or if AA is disabled or broken), it will happen slower than if it’s actively damaging them.
- There’s no limit on how many times Automatic AA can be activated in a battle, though you won't get any charge while the Automatic AA is already active.
- Aircraft can see Automatic AA if it enters its radius – it will have different visual effects.
Defensive AA Fire
Defensive AA Fire will remain unchanged from the way it works on the live server. We've chosen to preserve the original mechanic, as it provides a familiar experience of boosting AA capabilities.
Preparation for a strike*
A new consumable will be introduced for testing – Preparation for a strike, that directly reduces incoming damage from rockets, bombs, and all types of torpedoes (yes, even non-aerial!).
WG want to provide more versatile tools for you when dealing with carriers, so WG are trying a different approach. For this test, the consumable will be available only for the ships that have access to Defensive AA Fire (in the same slot) but WG might consider giving it to other ships in the future.
* - working name
Other changes
Secondary Aviation Changes
To make things more consistent and to address a very popular feedback point among our community, Patrol Fighters, Combat Air Patrol, and Fighters won't be able to spot ships.
This will make the spotting system even simpler and, more importantly, remove the spotting tool that was initially designed as an instrument against enemy aircraft.
Due to these changes, Napoli (and Napoli B) will get Spotting Aircraft in the same slot as Fighter to still have an opportunity to detect opponents while using her Exhaust Smoke Generator.
UI improvements
To support these changes some UI improvements are required. Now, it will be much easier to see if planes pose any threat to you or not. For example, if you are controlling a battleship, a squadron in travel mode won't be considered a threat until it starts descending. At the moment, this applies only to controllable aircraft.
- If the aircraft is at a significant distance, regardless of mode, its indicator color will be orange.
- If the aircraft is close to you, regardless of mode, the indicator will turn red.
- When the aircraft starts descending into recon/attack mode, the indicator will have a dedicated border effect.
Changes to Concealment
Lastly, we'd like to introduce some balance changes to the concealment system that should benefit the overall gameplay:
- Base detectability by air and by periscope changed for all ships: now it can't be more than 10km.
- Detectability penalty from being on fire has been unified for both surface and air detectability. Fires now universally increase the ship's detectability range by 2km.
- Detectability range of Japanese torpedo bombers increased: 7.5 to 10km.
- Detectability range of Depth Charge Airstrike, Fighters, Patrol Fighters, and Interceptors increased: 7.5 to 10km.
- Detectability range by air won't increase when firing main battery guns.
