The purpose of this post is to gather ideas and suggestions before submitting a proper moderated suggestion
Carrier’s within WT are massively under-utelised at all BRs. Especially within ARB
Currently in-game Carrier Take-offs and landings within ARB are a very rare occurance which brings me onto the first key change. Add more maps to the rotation within a naval capacity for a carrier to take-off from and if the game last long enough, to land on them to rearm and refuel.
The main area of the game though that carrier take-offs and landings are more common is Air Sim (ASB). It is within ASB that a number of maps have carriers available for taking-off and landing on.
But there are issues and this is the main part of this thread:
Carrier Movement
Carrier’s at the moment, have highly eratic movement, rather than following a gentle course, they tend to change direction rapidly, often rotating 5°-10° almost instantly. This results in 2 problems. The first is taking off. If you get really unlucky, one of these turns can occur just as you take off and it will rip the landing gear off the airframe. The main issue is landing. You can line yourself up as best you can, only to have the carrier be at a 30°-40° different angle as you try to touch down, resulting in an awkard turn in flight or aborting and going again.
Catapult Speeds
The next is the speed at which the catapult accelerates aircraft. From what I can tell, its pretty universal regardless of what aircraft is taking off. For some, this is fine and the landing gear can withstand the acceleration. But quite a few experience landing gear ripping off due to the speed.So I think we need variable catapult speeds depending on the airframe.
Arresting Wire
The next issue is landing. The hooks routinely fail to catch, no matter how perfectly align you are. I have had a number of times where the hook has past through all 4 wires and not a single wire has caught. This means you have to take-off and try again, if you can.
Decent guidance
Currently in game there is no mechanic for guiding an aircraft onto the deck. IRL you’d have systems like OLS to help guide an aircraft onto the flight deck. Whilst in ARB this is less needed, in ASB, such a system would be of great benefit. Im not sure how such a system/mechanic could work in game, but is certainly an area I think the devs need to explore adding.
Those are the main areas of the carrier that I can think of so far. Carrier Take-offs and landings are a under-utelised mechanic in-game. In the future i’d also love to see more carriers added and actually used, at the moment in ASB its only the USS Forestal, for both teams and with greater improvments and carrier integration, i’d love to see different carriers for each team.