User blog:Reikyu/Carrier shelling and size 0 plane slots

Part 2 of having fun with all your planes blown up!

In this episode we are looking at the effectiveness of having your bombers blown out to slot 0. Yay!

As you can see, poor RJ has no planes for her Suisei Egusa. Naturally this means that she will suck at her opening airstrike as you can't quite strike with 0 planes. But what about her shelling damage?

For a type 97 torpedo bomber + suisei egusa on RJ, firepower numbers will be thus:

Green T: 178

Parallel: 148

Head-on: 118

Red T: 89

For this experiment I first blew out a lot of planes on RJ. This was done (not guaranteed) by filling in her 6 and 3 slots with tenzen tomonaga + suisei egusa and waltzing into the first node on 5-5. I would then leave after one node (8 fuel 8 ammo left) and see if one of my plane slots would be 0'd out.

I would then throw on a type 97 and head over to 1-1. First node will be rekt by opening airstrike, but second node would survive because only one plane can participate in the opening airstrike. RJ would have 6 fuel and 6 ammo on entering this node so no negative penalties would come into play.

As it turns out, my first two runs of this were both parallel. How convenient!

First run shelling damage: 213 crit, target 5 armor Ro class

Second run shelling damage: 141 crit, target 6 armor I class

Based on damage formula, enemy armor of 5 or 6 x random number between 2/3-4/3 well simply put it's small. Let's say average 5-6.

By the way that first hit was a true crit because 213 is a big number. 213 divided by 150% (crit boost) = 142 damage

So for both runs RJ would have attack power of roughly around 147-148 or so. This matches  up perfectly with RJ's supposed firepower of 148 for parallel.

What would RJ's firepower be if she didn't have a suisei egusa in that 0 slot?

Green T: 147

Parallel: 122

Head-on: 98

Red T: 73

And for fun I sortied RJ with the same setup only with actual planes in the Suisei Egusa slot.

Head-on shelling damage: 107 on 7 armor Ha class

Conclusion: While it's true that you can't even shell if ALL your bomber slots are 0, and that 0 slots won't provide any help to your opening airstrike, your CV/L will still shell like a boss as long as some bombers are left in the other slots.

How you use this will be up to you, but consider this:  If enemy CV/L operates on the same system (and that seems very likely) then unless you completely wipe out ALL their bombers in ALL slots, they will proceed to shell with full strength. Blowing up 99% of their bombers will weaken their opening airstrike and that's a good thing, but that 1% will still come around and smash you.