Audacious [Guide/ReviewUpdate](0.8.9): Rocket Queen
0The T10 British Aircraft Carrier Audacious, considered by some to be the easiest T10 to take out into matches and find some amount of success in. This is of course a vast simplification of the Audacious' characteristics; indeed it is quite easy to use what some might argue to be horrendously overpowered rocket planes and have an "impact" on the game, and tanky planes do make it easier to play around in heavy AA games. However this characterization skims over the fact that the Audacious is by nature unreliable, and ultimately in my opinion the weakest of the T10 carriers in spite of her ease of use.
Her strengths are her rockets and torpedo bombers. The rockets are limited in application due to their low penetration power of 27mm, however the sheer volume of rockets delivered onto the target, alongside the good handling of the Westland Wyvern as an arms platform mean that they end up being a consistent and reliable way of delivering chip damage onto light targets, or even crippling salvos of up to 15,000 (Theoretical peak output is roughly 27,000) raw HE damage into battleship superstructure. The torpedo bombers on the other hand, carry the Stalwart British torpedo with a converging drop pattern, fast arm time, and 3x3 setup, again on the maneuverable and durable Wyvern, with good flood chance and decent damage.
Sadly, her last squadron, the level bombers, can be extremely polarizing in application, ranging from exceptionally powerful when they devastate large, thinly armoured battleships, to absolutely worthless when you're forced to utilize them to go after a competent destroyer player. They do large amounts of damage per bomb, have good fire chance, and are dropped in sets of 18, but are let down by the enormous aiming reticle which means that even on the largest of targets you rarely land more than half those bombs, and expecting only 3-4 hits is the norm.
Because of this, Torpedo bombers form the Audacious' "Alpha" weapon, and while the maximum damage of a perfect strike is nothing to scoff at at around 17,000 damage, much of the damage is healable unless you strike perfectly onto a midsection (inflicting citadel damage); however inflicting damage there means that the torpedoes will be resisted by any torpedo bulges present on the ship, reducing both Alpha damage and flood chance, thereby rendering them moot as an Alpha weapon entirely. The rockets in turn, can also inflict heavy damage but are RNG reliant, require careful aiming on more heavily armoured ships, and their damage is drastically reduced later in the game once areas of a ship become saturated by high explosive fire.
This makes the damage output of the Audacious very swingy; games where you can stack damage over time effects such as fires and floods on enemy battleships will allow your damage to skyrocket. Games where you simply harass lighter ships, and are unable to inflict DOT effects that stick you'll get rather mediocre damage. And when push comes to shove, the Audacious lacks a true Alpha weapon to get the job done, and as a result she has less "clutch factor" to save a game than her T10 colleagues.
That being said, as a T10 carrier the Audacious is still very powerful, and in my opinion the pleasant handling characteristics of her planes and the utterly ridiculous strike power of her rocket planes make her the most enjoyable to captain. But I also like winning, and the winningest T10 carrier in World of Warships the Audacious is not.
Other Videos By GuiltofAphelion
Other Statistics
World of Warships Statistics For GuiltofAphelion
At this time, GuiltofAphelion has 15,997 views for World of Warships spread across 186 videos. His channel uploaded over 3 days worth of World of Warships videos, or 82.48% of the total watchable video on GuiltofAphelion's YouTube channel.