Board Thread:Fleet's Prepared-ness/@comment-35636900-20180731041211/@comment-32647310-20180801011318

Abukuma should be your top priority for blueprints right now.

I wouldn't worry about the AVs. I have heard noise in the past that they are needed, but over the past year, I have seen no evidence of them being needed since that one or two times they were in the past.

With regard to CAVs, there is very little you can do at the moment, unless Suzuya or Mikuma drop in your lap out of nowhere. While Tone and Chikuma are good, they both cost BPs, and, well, they just won't be ready by go-time (which is in about 2 weeks or so...).

As for your gear...

Large Main Guns You are a bit lacking in 35.6mm; ideally, you want to have 4 sets of these (these include the Proto 35.6 and 35.6 Dazzle), for a total of 8 guns. While you can use larger guns (such as the 41cms) on your FBBs, you will suffer some very stiff accuracy penalties. This may not affect you during the event per se (as accuracy is not necessarily as big of a factor in Easy/Casual), but later on it will, so it's something to at least be aware of.

Medium Main Guns You should be fine here. Whether or not to have/upgrade 15.2cm Twins is a matter of personal preference, as they supposed to give accuracy bonuses to Light Cruisers. Personally, I just use 20.3cms on all my cruisers.

Small Main/Dual Purpose Guns Between these and the Dual Purpose guns, you want enough to outfit all of your Destroyers. I will be clear, the only guns really worth keeping are the 12.7cm Twin B and C K2s as well as all of your present Dual-Purpose guns. More, and better guns will come with time, so the stock equipment and such should be okay for now.

Torpedoes For right now, you are fine. Some folks will argue that you need to prep your torpedoes for TCI setups, but to be quite frank, for Casual/Easy Mode, it's better to just stick with Double Attack.

Carrier Fightres You are kind of okay here. If I were you, I would try to get as many stars on your M21(Skilled) as reasonably possible. As it stands as well as try to get some more M21 fighters. There are some more advanced things that you can do, but there is no reason to concern yourself with that right now. As long as you have about 8 strong fighters for your carriers (which between the Reppuus and Shiden K2s, you do), you will be fine.

Torpedo Bombers You're fine here. You have the strongest Torp Bombers you can get in the game right now. You may want to get 2 or 3 more Ryuusei Kai to supplement them, but what you have at the moment is just fine.

Dive Bombers You are also okay here. You may want to have some more Suisei Model 12As for Carrier Support Expeditions, but they aren't wholly necessary.

Shells You may want 1-3 more T3 Shells to make sure that you have enough to put on your battleships and cruisers to deal with light installations in a Combined Fleet. While what you have should be fine, it's better to be able to kit out 6-8 ships with them and not need that many than not have them and find out they're necessary.

You definiately want more AP shells; you want at least 4, but again, you may want a total of 6, just in case.

Seaplanes You should be okay with what you have. Though I would not put any more effort into upgrading the T0 Recon Seaplane, unless you are looking to turn it into a T2 Seaplane Fighter.

Speaking of... your seaplane fighters are sorely lacking. Unfortunately, there is very little you can do about this other than devote the time and resources into getting more. Even more unfortunate is the general bias against carriers in that some maps you cannot bring them at all and there are (sometimes) punishing Air Power requirements, even on easier difficulties. The upshot is that since you're going Easy/Casual, you should not be hurting too much. This is something to be aware of in the future, however.

Anti Submarine Equipment You should be okay in this area. I will suggest that you try to get more T3 Depth Charge Projectors (which are craftable), T2 Depth Charges (created by upgrading T95 Depth Charges) and T4 Sonars (created by upgraidng T93 Sonar). Again, not something you need now, but something you will want later on.

Land Based Aircraft Before the start of the event, you want a total of 4-8 Land Based Attack Aircraft. The T96 is craftable, but costly. While you *can* use Carrier Aircraft instead, the fact of the matter is that the LBAA have much better range and damage-dealing capebility.

I want to wrap all this up in saying that from the looks of things, you should be okay to take on Easy/Casual. I mean, even with the power-creep, Easy is still something that can be overcome with standard/basic equipment.

I would also suggest you take a look at this site; it is pretty good in setting a new player up for being able to take on an event.

https://infograph.venngage.com/publish/b3055fbb-b256-4ea1-bf15-cee244b251ad