Actually, They Were Nerfed (2)
Sure, the process had produced no shortage of posts about factions this and factions that — clans collapsing, society crumbling, and so on and so forth.
None of my business, though.
I wasn't even part of a clan. Factional power blocs? Please. The Pirate Coalition's leader, Marianne, was practically commuting to and from my base — which meant the Pirate Coalition itself was basically my faction. The kaiju had allied with them too, and their princess was likewise stationed at my base full-time.
I was not, in any serious sense, someone who needed to care. So I ignored every last post flooding the gallery on that subject and dove straight into researching carrier aircraft.
And sure enough — there were more players in the same boat than I'd expected. One veteran-looking user had pinned a must-read notice packed with carrier intel.
[Earth Federation Carrier Aircraft Concept Art], [Light Carrier Proof Shot]
First off, proof I actually own a carrier.
Right now, across every faction, people keep saying the stats and performance on "carrier aircraft" feel completely off.
Obviously nobody can just roll out a full carrier at this stage of the game. Best most of you can do is slap a hangar on a cruiser or battlecruiser and try to make it work.
The problem is, holy shit, the devs must have touched something they shouldn't have.
I pulled a light carrier from the gacha by pure luck and tried to put it to use — and unlike the original game, the aircraft are completely broken.
Here's why:
1. Carrier aircraft evasion is not a joke — it's genuinely, absurdly low.
2. Meanwhile, ship AA values are set way too high.
3. So base aircraft evasion is already garbage, and even stacking command buffs and support units barely moves the needle.
4. Ships already have solid individual AA, and if the flagship is intact you get radar control buffs on top of that. Throw in the occasional captain or commander character buff and they'll shred a hundred aircraft, a thousand aircraft, whatever you throw at them.
5. Bottom line: unless the devs fix the performance on these things, carrier aircraft are completely unplayable. Yeah.
[Proof Shot: 3 Light Carriers]
I dumped every last resource into building three light carriers and for what.
What the fuck? I throw five hundred aircraft at them and even against AA-specialized ships — just five of them — four hundred and fifty get wiped??
Fuck this trash game! TRASH!!!
[Image of America-stans agitating for aircraft carriers]
Did we ask for a buff? Did we ask for anything??
Carrier aircraft performance was already mediocre and flavorless as hell, and now you pull this? What the hell are you doing, devs?
[Image of a sobbing toad]
Yeah, because the carrier aircraft themselves got destroyed and collapsed, you absolute bastards!!!!!!
I just started building carriers and you had to gut the whole thing to feel better about yourselves, you sons of bitches!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!
Watching player after player pour out their grief over carriers and aircraft, I couldn't help but feel a profound sorrow at the fact that our absolute clown of a development team had taken an entire ship class — one that ate resources by the tens of thousands every time you built a late-game hull — and turned it into a complete joke.
Actually, They Were Nerfed~ (2)
While I was deep in the gallery, conversation kept circulating on the other side of the command center about the Kraken's embarrassing showing in its first real battle. Not that "conversation" was the right word for it.
"Nonsense, nonsense! Our proud flagship would never make such a wretched spectacle of itself!"
"Her Highness is correct. Holding out against over three thousand organic strike craft is hardly a reasonable expectation, is it?"
"Well, that's true enough, but still."
"It was definitely strange, yeah. Nobody expected an AA-specialized ship to be sitting there..."
"Even so, for something that massive to start wheezing after taking a few small mines is a little..."
"Would you not feel pain if someone struck that vast mass of pectoral fat with a rock?"
"Ah. Fair point."
Our people had their doubts about the Kraken's performance — it hadn't even been properly leveled — and the kaiju side's Princess Luka and Oxianor were pouring out impassioned defenses and excuses like they were coughing up blood.
I paid them no mind and kept digging through the gallery for any kind of solution. After blocking about three more trolls, I spotted a fresh post from some genuine carrier devotees.
[Proof Shot: Carrier Under Construction]
I've been seeing all these carefully written posts about how carrier aircraft suck, how they got nerfed, blah blah blah.
Here's the thing though — no matter how fast you've been rushing base construction, finishing large ships on the level of an actual aircraft carrier and getting them properly leveled is not easy right now, you know?
And looking at the people writing those posts, every single one of them reeks of someone who played the old game and then quit.
You know about this, right?
About six months before we got isekai'd in, there was a massive carrier aircraft rebalance.
A handful of absolute bastard veterans kept showing up to low-level fights with carriers and farming newbies with them, so the devs gutted low-level aircraft performance into the dirt.
To actually make these things work, you need superhumans at level 30–40 minimum.
And like I said above — player base upgrade speed just can't keep up with that.
People who just hit base level 5 or 6 might not know this, but to build an aircraft carrier you need base level 7 plus a separate Aviation Command building.
If you pulled one from the gacha, sure, whatever. Everyone else is either still building their carrier or just finished one and it's still sitting at a pathetic level—