Splitting carriers is a nightmare. You can't choose what planes will be on the splinter carrier and it's pretty frustrating.
The planes do get split off as well, but it doesn't go the way one desires most of the time. Let's say you have 10 tacs & 10 atks in a 2 stack max carriers and you intend to spilt the carriers wherein one would be carrying 10 tacs and the other 10 atks. Well that most likely won't happen, instead the planes will be spilt off with a mix tacs & atks in one carrier and the remaining into the second carrier.
The worst thing is that you're stuck with this undesired plane composition unless you're near an airfield or if there's an extra empty carrier (no one produces an extra carrier let's be real here). Even if there is an airfield or an extra carrier, the process would eat up an hour - travel to airfield/extra carrier, refuel, travel back to the desired carrier and refuel again. What if you dont have an extra carrier and you're in the middle of the Pacific?
Some recommend to just not stack carriers but that'll leave them vulnerable and managing multiple carriers one by one is laborious to say the least.
Upgrade the split command where if you split your carriers, you'll also be able to choose which planes will be loaded into the splinter group.
If there's a solution to this that I'm not aware off, please do inform me.
7 Replies
16 Dec 2021, 22:16
Z. Sakki wrote:
If there's a solution to this that I'm not aware off, please do inform me.
Don't split them.
Seriously though, yeah it is a pain but it is managable. Even in the Pacific, when you're passing some friendly island you have many hours to reshuffle stuff as your carriers are slowly sailing by. And to be perfectly honest, when I'm playing carriers, I often have spare ones (when I play carriers, I usually have 10+ of them).
Hitting the split button mid-battle is an absolute no-no obviously... but there are many like that; for example, accidently moving a stack which was in an ideal position to fight a defensive battle.
17 Dec 2021, 01:48
In certain circumstances, splitting is just the best move though. I too don't really split my carriers but it should still be a viable option if the situation calls for it, don't you agree? I mean just because it isn't done regularly doesn't mean it should be turned into a "should never be done" thing.
K.Rokossovski wrote:
Even in the Pacific, when you're passing some friendly island you have many hours to reshuffle stuff as your carriers are slowly sailing by.
In WaW, there's only 2 islands in the northern half of the Pacific. In both Northern & Southern Atlantic, there's only 1 island each. What if these islands are occupied by unfriendly forces? It doesn't seem worth to invade them just for changing plane compositions, especially with the embarkation & disembarkation time.
As for extra carriers, well it also doesn't sound worth to produce one just for the purpose of being a parking space for shuffling planes. More importantly however is that, what if the enemy locates you while you're planes are still refueling due to the shuffling? It'd be a feast for his interceptors and cruisers.
We shouldn't conform to flaws, they should be fixed. It's not like improving the split command as suggested above would harm carriers or the game in general, there's virtually no drawback. Nothing needs to be sacrificed for the suggestion to be implemented.
17 Dec 2021, 12:02
Carries have been very buggy since their introduction:
- Planes went missing;
- Planes suddenly decided they were cargo trucks in the middle of the ocean;
- Planes suddenly decided they needed to refuel at some nearby land base;
- Planes couldn't be controlled when you wrapped around the world.
All of these bugs were ironed out about a year ago I think (thanks Bytro!), but it indicates how complicated this part of the code is. Carriers have several unique features (an airbase which is moving around; an airbase which isn't a province but a unit; an airbase with a limited capacity; an airbase where planes can't become trucks when it is destroyed), which mean the code has to adress many possible edge cases (planes going out of range after an air mission was initiated, for example), so maintaining this code is extremely hard. Ironing out the bugs mentioned above literally took YEARS.
What you're asking now is adding even more complexity to it: an extra dialogue when splitting the stack, asking which planes should go where (old stack or new stack). This may not seem much to you, but in such a complex subsystem, there's a HUGE risk of creating new bugs... and if it will again take years to fix them, I'll gladly take the slight hassle over splitting carrier stacks over many more years of missing planes and support requests. The code is stable now, please leave it be.
17 Dec 2021, 15:16
K.Rokossovski wrote:
there's a HUGE risk of creating new bugs... and if it will again take years to fix them, I'll gladly take the slight hassle over splitting carrier stacks over many more years of missing planes and support requests.
Well I too would rather take the current faulty state of splitting of carriers than years of bugs, everyone would. However, I think this argument of yours, though it certainly carries weight, has digressed from the original subject.
The bugs that would possibly spring from this upgrade is a whole new different topic and shouldn't influence in determining if the suggestion by itself is of great benefit.
You oppose my suggestion because you fear it may produce bugs, not because it is lousy per se, right?
17 Dec 2021, 15:46
Yup. Which isn't the worst of reasons. I often tell that to my boss, who then ignores me and does it anyway... and it's usually me to clear up the mess half a year later.
17 Dec 2021, 17:34
Hey it's a valid reason as far as I'm concerned
21 Dec 2021, 18:05 (edited)
Last time I tried splitting carriers half my planes flew around the world as I was launching an invasion. I lost them for seven critical hours.
