World of Warships - First Look: Tier X Premium American Aircraft Carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt
169We come to it at last: the first T10 premium carrier in World of Warships. The wailing and gnashing of teeth can be heard around the world. On the face of it, this was inevitable, really… especially for the Americans, who built more carriers than anyone, and continue doing so even today.
Dev Blog for FDR: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfWarships/comments/fgc1eo/st_new_ships/
+ I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the hull; this is the same hull as Tier X American tech tree carrier USS Midway. Same speed, same armor, same hit points. FDR’s rudder shift is slightly better. That’s the only difference.
+ AA-wise, FDR is actually a bit different from Midway, but it’s not like you’re going to be throwing planes at this thing. Her long-range aura is a little less stout than Midway’s as she has dropped 4 of the 5”/54 turrets, but she makes up some of that gap in her mid-range aura on the backs of the infamous quad Bofors mounts.
+ With all of the basics out of the way, let’s see what’s cooking with her air wing. As you start to glance through these plane stats, it becomes clear that Wargaming is attempting something new with FDR: these planes, overall, have insane health pools with crazy long respawn rates and - if the dev blog is correct - long delays between attack runs. That means that each individual attack from an FDR squadron should hit pretty hard, but there will be a notable amount of time in between attack runs. We can’t see that data here in port, but if I recall correctly from the dev blog entry for this ship, it can be as long as 25 seconds in between bomb runs. On top of that, the repair consumable for her bombers doesn’t heal as much as those on other carriers.
+ The attack aircraft pack an eye-popping 3200 hit points per plane in a squadron size of 10 planes. All that health comes at a price: not only is their reload time - the time it takes a single new plane to respawn out of the hangar - nearly two minutes, the cruising speed is silly slow. 113 knots is like Tier III speed… that’s right kids, Langley’s attack planes at Tier IV are faster than this. These planes attack in waves of two, and each plane dumps THIRTY - yes, you heard right, THIRTY - 5” HVAR rockets into the target zone. I have no idea what the reticle size is on this thing, but as a destroyer player, the idea of having sixty American rockets raining down on my head is unappealing to say the least. The trick is that after one of these “death from above” attack runs has concluded, the FDR captain has to wait nearly half a minute to try again. So, uh, don’t miss.
+ Next, the torpedo bombers. Remember, these are still Skypirates. The cruising speed of these aircraft is EVEN SLOWER than the attack planes, down to 108 knots, so we’ve almost caught up to Ranger’s torpedo bombers at Tier VI in terms of speed. And that respawn time: 180 seconds! Don’t take casualties in this squadron, you will only regenerate SIX torpedo bombers over the course of a twenty-minute game. These torpedoes will blessedly perform like all other American torpedoes in terms of arming time and speed, but because you’re putting so many in the water - each plane carries four torpedoes, as was historical - the individual damage of each torpedo has been watered down because an attack wave puts eight of them downrange. Still, the total damage if they all hit has the potential to be pretty impressive. Of all the planes on FDR’s flight deck, these are the most intriguing to me. They are crazy slow, with horrible respawn times, but should hit like anvils if they can land a strike… which, given the health of these planes, they should be able to do. Captains who make bad targeting decisions or bad attack run angles are brutally punished, though, by that reload rate.
+ Lastly, the dive bombers. The armament here are exactly the same 2000-lb HE bombs packed by Midway’s Douglas BTD Destroyers, but each Skypirate carries four of them. As with all the other bomber squadrons, these attack in waves of two, putting eight of these monster bombs into the attack reticle. This generates a potential damage about 25% higher than Midway’s bombs, assuming you’ve sacrificed enough goats to RNGesus to get them all to hit a target. As with the other squadrons, captains are punished HEAVILY for losing planes, as the reload time on her dive bombers -171 seconds - is only marginally better than her torpedo bombers (182 seconds). The speed of the dive bombers remains a worst-in-tier 108 knots. For the dive bombers, this is particularly bad, because dive bombers spend more time clawing their way through anti-aircraft fire than any other plane type. Yes, these individual planes have a ton of health, but the overall squadron health is only about 20% more than Midway’s squadrons, while the reload time is about 150% higher.
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