yesterday it was announced on the WOWS asia facebook that Graf Zeppelin is coming to the game. and for a moment I was quite excited. While I would never play the ship, and have played a collective 0 minutes in any german ship, I liked the idea of it. WOWS is a place where I feel that you should be able to drive both ships that served, ships that didn't get a chance, and ships that make you pause and say 'what if.' Full disclosure, I don't like fake paper ships, but the Graf Zeppelin was almost very real, and if you were to read up onto the history and proposed specifications it certainty is a fantastically unique ship that absolutely needs to be implemented.

and then I read the stats, and Graf Zeppelin is now the ship that I hate most that isn't even in the game. its a towering beacon of all that is wrong with carriers and the way that premium ships are balance, and a slap to the face of the proposed historical ship. I'm tempted to say that almost everything is wrong with what WG wants to implement.

So lets get into the crux of the problem and why I hate it so much.

historically, the Graf Zeppelin was a very well armed carrier with 16 150mm cannons and additional 12 105 mm guns. with a hanger capacity of 41 aircraft (which is quite small for a carrier that is longer than USS Ranger). It's flight complement (that existed) was a navalized version of the Me 109E (designated Me 109T), navalized version of the Ju-87R designated the Ju-87C, and the Fieseler 167 biplane torpedo bomber. later this was revised, with the Fieseler and Ju-87C both being replaced by the Ju-87E-1 (based on Ju-87D-4). For the earlier proposed load out it would have consisted of 20 Fi-167's, 10 Me 109T-1's, and 13 Ju-87C's. As the war progressed this changed to 30 Me 109T-2's and 12 Ju-87E-1's. While large, Graf zeppelin would have a speed of 35 knots, which is pretty damn fast.

the point of this is that with the small hanger and the aircraft selection being very well known, Graf Zeppelin makes sense at tier 6 or at tier 7.

so ignoring all of that WG has boosted the hangar capacity by 50%, put it at tier VIII, and given it a 2/3/0 loadout of 2 fighter squadrons and THREE F***ING TORPEDO SQUADRONS OF 5 PLANES PER, with 25 fighters and 47 torpedo bombers. The speed has been reduced to 32 knots arbitrarily as well but that pales in comparison to the farce of the 2/3/0 loadout.

remember the days where having 2 flights of 6 tb's was considered gamebreaking? then kaga showed up and proved that it was alright (well, actually it proved that it was overpowered as expected but whatever) at tier 7. well imagine 3 flights of 5.

this ship may look like what the Graf Zeppelin would have looked like, but apart from that, it basically is a completely fake thing that WG doodled on a napkin.

So, there's the start of my two cents worth of free rant. am I overreacting? comment below

Before we get too carried away, let's see how the aircraft actually perform.

6003513
well, stats are preliminary, but here's the breakdown on that.

all aircraft are tier 8, so the notion of the aircraft being easier to shoot down because they are under tiered can be dealt with immediately.
as far as the 109's go, they have the lowest HP of any plane at the tier (1580), have the fastest speed of any plane in tier (175), and have lowest damage (61) and mid spread loadout (41).

the torpedo bombers also have the lowest hp at 1630, and are slowest at 135 kts. but the important part is here. they have the most damaging torpedo at 10500 damage per, and while it may be the slowest at 33 kts speed, they have faster fuse times (3 secs as opposed to 3.5) so that you can drop them closer to the target.

so it will be able to drop more torpedoes than any carrier in the game while retaining the survivability edge at tier 8 and these torpedoes are also the most powerful air dropped torps in the game and it can drop them closer to the target for less reaction time. if the ship is implemented as such it is absolutely overpowered, and absolutely ahistorical to the point of hilarity. as stated, these are very early stats, and I hope to god they change, but I rather doubt it.

6003695

German Superiority FTW.

Sillyness aside, I'm going to look at it from my own perspective.

So far the fighters aren't sounding that good. Fast, but low HP AND low damage. Not a winning combo to me. Sure they'll get to trouble faster, but they won't be able to survive it or even help much.

The Torpedo bombers are the slowest AND have the lowest health as you just said, and have the slowest torpedoes.
So yes they can be dropped closer, but their slower speed still gives the target more reaction time.

And the fact the planes are the slowest means they will be in the AA guns for all their targets longer than the torpedo bombers of other nations would be. Combine that with the fact they have the lowest health also means they're going to start dropping dead faster than the torpedo bombers of other nations as well. Powerful torps don't matter if they're slower to reach the target and you cant even survive to drop them off.

So honestly, preliminary look from how I see it? The Graf Zeppelin is UNDERpowered, not overpowered. It'll depend how her secondaries perform and her armor (which I hope will be superior to that of other carriers).

6004773
lets put some things into perspective, seeing as how I ranking them by if they are slowest or whatnot really doesn't give the greatest picture as to their actual effectiveness. should have put out the numbers from the start, but here goes.

BF109: health 1580, damage 61, loadout 41, speed 175 kts, 4 planes per squad.
F4U-1: health 1700, damage 63, loadout 61, speed 169 kts, 6 planes per squad.
N1K5: health 1660, damage 70, loadout 38, speed 171 kts, 4 planes per squad.

looking at this objectively, they are the worst, with only the fact that they can dictate engagements being their advantage. IE, a skilled carrier player who knows whats up can probably do well with strafing and baiting fighters, but in a head to head they should lose every time.

but Graf Spees bread is buttered on her ahistorical torpedo bombers, and here is where things are different.

Ju-87: health 1630, speed 135, torp damage 10500, torp speed 33 kts, 5 planes per squad
TBM-3: health 1710, speed 136, torp damage 9876, torp speed 34 kts, 6 planes per squad
B6N: health 1720, speed 148, torp damage 8567, torp speed 35 kts, 4 planes per squad

Yes, the Ju-87 has less health, but it is still a good bit better than that of a tier VII torp bomber (which is 1510 for the TBF) and because it has more planes it has better overall survivability than the B6N squadrons. and while it is slowest, it's not much slower at all than the TBM-3. and the same goes for the torpedos, yes they are slower but not enough to really matter, and the fact that they can be dropped closer more than makes up for the slightly lower speed. And again, these torpedos are friggen powerful.

so, I still think that its going to be OP if implemented as such.

6004796

but Graf Spees bread is buttered

Wrong ship, darling.

Anyhow, I was mostly just playing Devil's advocate/trolling a bit with my initial response. I have no clue if she is overpowered or not, since I don't even play CVs. I swore I wouldn't play CVs unless they introduced a german CV. I was honestly NOT expecting Graf Zeppelin of all ships anytime soon. I figured we'd get a rework of the US CV line, the UK BBs would be released, and we'd also see the UK CVs before we ever saw anything from the Kriegsmarine that was CV related.

I'm gonna go ahead and continue playing Devil's Advocate here. If we're going to go and compare the rest of the stats. I will also be using full upgraded stats where I can find them as you're more likely to face a fully upgraded ship than not.

And rather than retyping it myself, I'll just reference this Reddit post.

I'll point out that the thread starter either has the HP stats for the Graf Zeppelin flipped around, or other sources do. Not sure which to reference.

For her carrying additional aircraft? It's the exact same as the other tier VIII CVs, Which I highly suspect is exactly why they did it. A "balanced/fun gameplay > historical accuracy" thing. OR you can think of it as 40-ish are stored in the hangars, while the others park on the flight deck.
As for the damage of the torps, one of the thread commenters brings up a very interesting point. The historical german torpedoes used more explosives. Not only that, the explosive they used had a higher energy yield than the US equivalent. So their increased damage makes a bit of sense on that front.

I don't get too bent out of shape for historical accuracy. IF historical accuracy was the be all, end all of everything, engagements would take hours, not a mere 20 minutes. And we certainly wouldn't have the HMS Hood and KMS Bismarck forming up in a division together with both looking like they just got raised from the bottom of the sea.
We wouldn't have a Tier X German battleship either. I happen to like my Grosser Kurfurst. She's not the H42 or 44, but she feels like the rest of the German BBs do and is a good crown jewel to end the line.

As for the Graf Zeppelin's torp squadrons, we don't know what her drop pattern is going to be other than different. It could be something less than functional like the W pattern of the Enterprise.

6007904
How come every time I see anyone say "hey, I'd like a bit more historical accuracy than the Graf Zeppelin going slower than it should by 3 kts, having 20-30 more planes than it ought to, and having a flight loadout that better reflects what it would have had" (or a equivalent argument) the response is usually "oh, so you want the game to take 4 hours etc etc." yes, it is a game. yes, concessions should be and are made to gameplay. but that doesn't mean that in-game ships that are supposed to be representative of actual ships shouldn't be at least kinda like what you'd expect. More recently I've been seeing that across WG's games the notion of outright changing armor or other characteristics of real life vehicles (characteristics that are well known and defined) is catching on, and I think that's terrible.

and if you did play cv's (I got up to tier VII with American, which is the exact point they become literally worthless) you'd know that if you want to deal damage you want torpedo bombers. the fact that Graf Zeppelin gets tons of them when realistically they would either be biplanes or weren't tested speaks volumes about what WG wants the ship to be like.

anyway, the drop pattern will be different. no telling on if it will be like the kaga's awesome drop pattern or the Enterprise's super garbage one. If it is super garbage, then that would probably make the Graf Zeppelin balanced. annoying to play, but balanced. balancing CV's as far as I can tell is a bitch.

also, the supertest Graf Zeppelin got nerfed. its range got nerfed from 3.something km to 2 km (which doesn't really matter), detectability got nerfed from .9 to 1.1 km (which really doesn't matter) but the flooding chance got reduced by 56%. that's a clear indicator that currently it is much too powerful, and I hope that at a minimum they make it balanced. Now ideally they'd put it at tier 7 or 6, give it 42 planes, give it it's 35 kt speed and a historically accurate loadout, but just making it not broken is all I can hope for.

6008018

There's sticking to historical accuracy, then there's getting OCD about it. For me, a few knots of speed and a different hangar capacity REALLY is NOT a big deal. It's a "*shrug* whatever" type of deal. A few knots is not the end of the world in my mind, and giving it a carrying capacity equal to it's Tier piers to help it stay competitive is, quite frankly, the RIGHT decision in this case. So why you're getting so hang up on these points is beyond me.

As for the TYPE of craft it's carrying, I can see your point, to a degree. She should have something closer to what she was planned to carry. But I'd also point out that changing the planes a ship carries is a heck of a lot easier than swapping out main gun turrets on other ships. So seeing it carrying different planes, again, doesn't bug me too much. If she had ever been completed, she may very well have ended up with different aircraft before being deployed. So it doesn't bug me that much.
Hell, the fact that the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau have different turrets doesn't bug me. I just don't see the need to get so worked up over what are, in my mind, minor things. I would be more worked up if the Graf Zeppelin didn't have her secondary armament. That was a unique, defining thing of her. Not her aircraft.