Wow, there 's alot of thought put into carrier airgroup controls here, well done ! Though I worry that, in the form presented, it runs the risk of not actually " playing the carrier ":
Makes sense, you could even have it so the selection of aircraft changes how many are available relative to the maximum possible to take - some tanks w/ gun-launched ATGM 's have a similar caveat to represent how the larger projectiles cannot be stowed in equal numbers to smaller ones.
It might be worth noting that WTM 's USS Essex (CV-9) and likely the carriers which will follow it there, organizes them by their loadout rather than the aircraft classification, F6F-3(2x 1000lb) occupies the " carrierBomber " slot. If we’re taking a similar " three aircraft models max " approach in this suggestion, a similar limitation might present some interesting tactical decisions for an AC player to make: take a higher-performance fighter-bomber group, or one w/ slower dedicated bombers w/ a greater payload ?
Also opens discussion for what might happen to those bombers in the former situation, the example TBF doesn’t have any payload-less loadouts as a player aircraft. The F6F-5, on the other hand, could conceivably fill all three aircraft slots alone, should that be allowed ?
I’m not convinced that removing player control of onboard weaponry is necessary, esp. after the AI main gun changes - there 's still situations where a player might want/might need to have control of their guns. Augmenting/expanding the weapon groups might be better.
This is a fantastic concept for an interface which succinctly describes the current picture of the aircraft operating from a carrier, but what worries me abt it is how it 's completely replacing any view of the match from the carrier 's perspective. At this level of removal there isn’t much use for the carrier, apart from being a tether into the match and something to be annoyed at when destroyed through neglect.
Much of the information presented could be incorporated into the 3rd person view/hotbar HUD, such as the current location of launched aircraft groups( in-environment marker w/ distance, as found on recon seaplanes ) or available aircraft count/readiness ( in hotbar icon/indicated by hotbar icon colour or shading effect, as used by current armaments ). That way the player has the information they need to direct operations from the carrier, rather than only being the operation.
Is this a limit on aircraft aloft, or aircraft in total ? If it 's the former, it might be better to have variable limits based on the aircraft/aircraft groups which are being used, like WTM does - even between carriers in similar time periods there are disparities in their capabilities, so it might be more useful to have greater numbers of low-performance planes in the air for the carriers operating them, or a reduced number of high-impact planes in a formation for opponents to deal w/.
I’m not certain these objectives are compatible if players are given the ability to make every one of their plane 's attacks while the rest stand out of harms way, the main strength of an aircraft carrier is already it 's ability to perform precision attacks. We’ve already seen that player direct control of projectiles is something hugely powerful, being able to intelligently pick an aiming point for maximum damage equalling if not surpassing the ability to disengage while putting an opponent under attack.
The conditional use of wingmen in Single Missions might be worth emulating here: the attack is made w/ the player and AI planes together - but the AI planes decide on their own how to perform it, and how to react under duress. In practice, that could mean the player has the ability to switch to a " lead " aircraft in a given squad, which provides them the advantage of making an attack in numbers. But by leaving the rest of the squad under total AI control, the defending ship 's player only need deal w/ one intelligent attack per squad - the automatic evasion and predictable attack patterns of the wingmen gives the attack greater mass w/o also giving it human precision, one plane is enough for that.
I’m not certain I understand the purpose of making this behavior a modification ?
Nor the reasoning behind this, putting economic pressure on the player for losing part of their capability to do actions in a match. It 's like having additional penalties for getting your turrets shot out, on top of your repair cost.
This is close to something I’ve been wanting to discuss, how should the aircraft available to a carrier be decided ? My personal position is that they should be as close to the ones it operated irl in the form it appears in - which would mean no TBD for USS Saratoga, since as represented in WT she 's at minimum four months, if not years after that plane was removed from service.
Atleast I’d not like to see anything as egregious as the original WT:E 's selection for IJN Kaga: giving it the B7A2, which not only wasn’t ever available to the ship historically but also would’ve been too large to have operated from it.
By " animated " I think you mean removing the aircraft collision model from the game world ? I guess there 's merit to it, ammo can’t be struck when it 's being raised through elevators so why should a carrier 's planes be vulnerable when cycling into/out of combat. Current game implementation is closer to fully automatizing the TO/L cycle than this though, w/ Campaign and Missions AI planes already able to fly off the deck as whole squads and return to fly the circuit pattern onto the wire.
It 's interesting that you bring this up, while our current carriers don’t have any modules for the aircraft elevators or catapults they do actually have ammoracks which aren’t for their guns - likely for use by aircraft.
One thing I’d like to see modelled are aircraft in below-deck storage, as found on some cruisers ingame currently( RN Pola and USS Fargo come to mind ).
I’m in agreement there, but I think it 's important to recognize that a carrier is not an airstrip - it 's a warship. Managing them as a whole, rather than just one aspect of them, would be better - and more inline w/ the representation of other ship types.
While I’d like to see them, I wouldn’t expect seaplane tenders to provide useful insight into how carriers might perform in gameplay: the very low performance of the aircraft they employ makes them irrelevant as an offensive tool, compared to what 's available in the MM where other 800t+ ships are located. So it 's likely they’d keep the same gun-engagement gameplay as late frigates and early destroyers, just w/ an expanded tool for [Domination] maps point capturing and NFEC shore bombardments, until/unless they fix the latter 's lock-on issues affecting minibases and airfields.
Mechanically there might be similarities to AC 's, along w/ those cruisers and BB 's which have multiple catapults and/or stored onboard aircraft.
