Some quick thoughts on these before the year ends:
-USS Essex being in her earliest configuration possible makes some sense, being the lead ship of her class. Being the first carrier available to players in WTM( based on her previously added economic data ) she 's probably intended to be the benchmark " lowest " capability one, after all.
-IJN Zuikaku seems to be JPN 's " late war " carrier, but that might not be as much of a difference as it would be for other carrier-operating countries - the capabilities of her airgroup did not change as drastically over the course of the war.
The antiaircraft rocket barrage might be interesting, if it 's modelled - similar weapons have been in the files here in WT for other ships and are still unused.
-Even in her earliest configuration USS Midway is a massive increase in capability over all other carriers yet found in WT Mobile, except one: the USS Forrestal.
- In the other direction, IJN Kaga and USS Lexington are below the capability level I was expecting aircraft carriers to begin at in WT.
Even though Kaga is reportedly in post-reconstruction form, her airgroup at the time still looked like this:
Which, well. imo these would struggle to destroy ships that could not be done in by Kaga 's own guns, or those in that size range having virtually any antiaircraft weaponry beyond " none ".
USS Lexington(CV-2) seems to be in a similar, but slightly worse position:
Again w/ the low flight performance/too-small payload airgroup, but also 1929 was a very specific year in her service: the first one for her to have close-range antiaircraft guns onboard. Six 7.62mm machineguns in two triple-mounts.
Though it 's probably no accident by WTM 's development team that they’re represented as earlier fits since they’re 8in-armed - that’ll be a noticeable capability on Mobile 's small playable areas compared to more modern AC 's. In WT …
Lexington is unusual here since her model has already been transferred to WT, where we can see that her configuration is the mid-1941 to early-1942 one - the combination of 8in gun turrets and 1.1in AA gives it away.
The capabilities of the ship and it 's airgroup over a decade later are very different from what would be implied by this year shown in the files.
Mobile is probably closer to the addition of Aircraft Carriers than we could be, they’ve now completed the addition of all battleships in the files during the Beta period( and representatives of all battleship capability progression from Dreadnought to the end too ) and have a typically monthly schedule of update release compared to WT 's DEC-MAR break. It 's possible they could be made available there as early as the end of next month, almost certainly it’ll be before the middle of 2024. When they’ll come to WT is harder to predict, though it 's reasonable( and ambiguous ) to say that it’ll be after Mobile gets them. Probably after the addition of 16in-armed battleships starts here (?)