Restricted to only one per team, CVs are extremely useful scouts and assault forces, able to reach out across the entire map with their squadrons. As mentioned previously, your fighters are great for spotting enemy destroyers and killing stray ships that get too far from the support of their fleet. Your weakness: a total lack of useful weapons on your hull, and a tendency to sink when enemy capital ships sneeze in your general direction.
From a tiering perspective, you have it a little easier than most – it seems (I can only speculate here, but so far the games I’ve observed back this up) that when the Match Maker situates a carrier against you in Team battles, it will be of the same tier. So taking a tier-7 isn’t necessarily as crippling as it might be in a cruiser or other hull. You are guaranteed to face off against a same-tier CV in Ranked fights, but in Teams you may very well be the only CV on the map. Most teams are cautious enough to take along ships with good AA, so don’t get too cocky if this turns out to be the case.
One of the most important points to be made here for carrier players, however, is don’t forget to move your hull. Plot out a relatively safe course for your hull and send it on its way. Check back every few minutes to make sure you know where you are and where you’re headed, and adjust appropriately. Too many inexperienced CV drivers just leave their hull parked where they started the game, and become easy meat for a sneaky DD captain.
Early game, your team needs your fastest fighters to be positioned over the caps and to begin hunting for the enemy Destroyers. If a CV is present on the other side, you’ll start to fence with one another trying to drag one anothers’ planes over friendly cruisers for a fast perforation. Most important though at this stage is that you are the eyes of the team even ahead of the DDs.
Mid-game, keep those destroyers lit up if you can, and plot some strike groups against the enemy ships as best you’re able, especially against ships that are capping – a reset denies the enemy of a few ticks’ worth of points, and it’s almost always worth doing. Your eyes are still the most important asset to the team here, so keep the enemy fleet’s location known to your own crews. If another CV is opposing you, your decision will have to be based on how easy or difficult it will be to commit actions in the presence of his/her planes, or whether you can manage to draw a mistake out of the carrier by leading those planes over a friendly who has good AA. In team battles, this is where a ‘strange’ cruiser like the Atlanta or Mikhail Kutuzov comes in handy. At low tiers, a Farragut outfitted for AA duty can also help you out, as can (of course) a Cleveland or similar cruiser.
If you happen to note that the enemy has vacated a certain portion of the map, start heading that way with your hull. If there happens to be an unguarded cap point, by all means take it.
End-game, it becomes lots of strikes against the remaining enemy fleet – if you are winning, then by now your opponent is out of planes (if they had any to start with), and you own the skies. De-capping and destroying enemy ships, lighting up approaches where stray DDs might be shuffling around, and so on are the order of the day.
If you are losing, then it’s very likely that you may be the last ship in your fleet. If you have no planes left, at least you can set yourself up to perhaps ram an enemy, but let’s be plain – no planes and losing is pretty much lost. If you do have planes though, keep running strikes, particularly against enemies close to you in cap points – and drive your hull to capture those points asap.
