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World of Warships: Tier VIII British Aircraft Carrier Indomitable Review

9 min read

What an amazing way to start the year… Releasing what is literally the worst tier VIII Premium carrier by a big margin (because yes, even Graf Zeppelin is strong compared to that one). Every person with good knowledge of CVs was saying that the ship was in a terrible state but it was still released this way. The joke is that before all the nerfs and changes, I actually had fun with her back in May.

Ladies and Gentlemen… I give you the Indomitable.

This ship was credited to me by Wargaming to do its promotion for the playerbase. I now have to mention this because of a new law in U.S.A.

Tier VIII British Premium Aircraft Carrier Indomitable: The Abominable Indomitable

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Her permanent camouflage gives the standard Tier VIII permanent camouflage bonuses:

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The Good and the Bad

The Good

  • Bombers with the highest Health Pool of the game
  • Fastest planes in the game with Graf Zeppelin
  • Relatively small drop pattern for the bombs
  • Armored deck
  • 21 mm plating on the extremities and belt of the ship
  • Good ship concealment

The Bad

  • The planes have a huge turning radius
  • Small strike groups and squadrons
  • Very small reserves
  • Long plane regeneration time
  • Bombs that can only penetrate 32 mm
  • No torpedo bombers
  • Relies heavily on fires to deal damage
  • Very low carry potential
  • Unidimensional gameplay that is basically all about spamming carpet-bombing while hoping to get enough fires to have a bit of impact on the game

My Opinion

Aaaah… the Indomitable. I waited 7 months to see this ship again, knowing perfectly that with the changes to AA changes or the CVs changes in general, she would require some rebalancing. Boy, I was not disappointed by the result and made sure to list everything that needed an improvement just to be gladly ignored.

Basically, no change was made since May even with the fact that now, AA focuses on a single plane which is a problem with this ship. Most of your bomber’s strikes will be done with 2 planes to make sure that the reserves don’t completely melt as you will never be able to do 2 run on the same ship. The 2 other planes just won’t last long enough for that. At best, you drop with a single plane that will die right after.

Anyway… let’s review this ship properly at least…

Health Pool

The Health Pool is pretty good with 51 400 HP. Combined with the good protection on British carriers, the ship will be able to take a fair amount of punishment before going down.

The ship is however quite vulnerable against torpedoes with only 28% damage reduction with her torpedo bulge.

Attack Aircraft

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Attack AircraftConsumables
de Havilland Sea Hornet
TierVIII
Hit points per plane2 100
Cruise speed188 kt
Maximum speed228 kt
Engine boost time5 s
Engine boost reload time10 s
Engine cooling charges2
Size of attacking flight2
Aircraft per squadron6
Rocket typeRP-3 60LB HE NO1 MK.I
Rockets in payload8
Maximum rocket damage2 100
HE penetration27 mm
Fire chance10 %
Detectability range10.0 km
Aircraft restoration time115 s
Number of aircraft on deck12
Slot 1
Slot 2
Engine Cooling I
Number of charges: 2
Work time: 5 s
Cooldown: 80 s
Fighter I
Number of charges: 4
Work time: 60 s
Cooldown: 10 s
Patrol Radius: 3.0 km
Fighters in the squadron: 5

The Rocket planes of the Indomitable are… at best decent. You will only really use them against destroyers and they are sadly not the most effective. At the very best (and that was me testing them on stationary DDs for the “fun”) you will get around 4 000 damage per drop but that’s really if the guy doesn’t try to dodge at all.

These rocket planes also have the problem of having a terrible turning radius and high speed so if a DD has its AA turned off, it will just be impossible to get the strike on the first spot. The planes will need the fighter planes to spot the destroyer for her or any form of external spotting if you don’t want to just approach the destroyer blind, giving the guy the time to change course.

Except that, you will from time to time use them to strike cruisers but cruisers are from the start not your primary target. Also, you want to pre-drop every time you go with these rocket planes due to the low reserves.

Bombers

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Dive BombersConsumables
de Havilland Sea Hornet
TierVIII
Hit points per plane2 590
Cruise speed182 kt
Maximum speed217 kt
Engine boost time20 s
Engine boost reload time40 s
Engine cooling charges2
Size of attacking flight2
Aircraft per squadron4
Bomb type250LB G.P. BOMB
Bombs in payload6
Maximum bomb damage4 700
Projectile speed300 kt
Air drag0.35
Projectile mass454
HE penetration32 mm
Aircraft restoration time117 s
Number of aircraft on deck8
Slot 1
Slot 2
Engine Cooling I
Number of charges: 2
Work time: 5 s
Cooldown: 80 s
Fighter I
Number of charges: 4
Work time: 60 s
Cooldown: 10 s
Patrol Radius: 3.0 km
Fighters in the squadron: 5

The Bombers of the Indomitable are basically what you will be spamming 90% of the time unless you mess up and end up with none left. You also have to follow a specific rule: ALWAYS go strike with only 2 bombers in the squadron unless you are 100% sure that every plane will survive. The reserves of the Indomitable don’t allow you to make any mistake, especially when it’s about fighters.

Basically, the standard procedure with these bombers will be this:

Take your full squadron towards an enemy battleship with the engine boost going. When the engine boost is about to run out, drop the first strike group so that the effect of Last Gasp kicks in and reloads your Engine Boost. After that, just go strike the battleship, hope for fires or for a Damage Control Party which means that the next drop will give you long-lasting fires.
After that, wash and repeat. Isn’t it a very fun gameplay?

The best part is that since you rely so much fires, you will have a very low impact on the game and as such a low win rate in general.

It’s funny to see that in the end, the ship with the fastest planes and also the most HP per planes turns out to be so bad while these 2 metrics (especially speed) are so important when it comes to carriers.

Secondary batteries

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Secondaries
8 x 2 113 mm/45 Mk II BD
Maximum Firing Range4.50 km
Reloading Time5.0 s
Sigma1.00 sigma
Shells
Type of ProjectileHE – 113 mm HE 5crh
Alpha Damage1 700 HP
Damage470 HP
HE penetration18 mm
Explosion Size0.38
Chance to Cause Fire8 %
Projectile Speed746 m/s
Air Drag0.329
Projectile Mass24.95

For a quick look at the secondaries, they have a short range, you only have 4 turrets per side. They will not help you in any sort of way except for shooting down planes.

The anti-air armament

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Air Defense
8 x 2 113 mm/45 Mk II BD
Sector range0.1 km – 5.8 km
Hit chance100 %
Sector’s damage25
Sector’s damage frequency0.29 s
Sector’s damage per second88
Flak clouds number3
Flak cloud damage1330
6 x 4 40 mm Vickers 2-pdr. Mk VII
4 x 2 40 mm Bofors Mk I
Sector range0.1 km – 3.5 km
Hit chance100 %
Sector’s damage66
Sector’s damage frequency0.29 s
Sector’s damage per second228
21 x 2 20 mm Oerlikon Mk V
16 x 1 20 mm Oerlikon Mk IV
Sector range0.1 km – 2.0 km
Hit chance95 %
Sector’s damage110
Sector’s damage frequency0.29 s
Sector’s damage per second385

The anti-air of the Indomitable is overall strong enough to make the few geniuses that would go for CV hunting pay for it. Its only downside is that it’s focused on the close range with LOTS of 20 mm Oerlikons.

Maneuverability and Concealment

Maneuverability and Concealment
Maximum speed30.5 knots
Turning Circle Radius970 m
Rudder Shift Time13.0 s
Surface Detectability13.5 km
Air Detectability 10.58 km

While the Indomitable turns like a brick, like pretty much all CVs in this game, she does have the advantage of being quite stealthy. This will allow her to get closer from the fight to have more strikes per minute. With concealment expert and the camouflage (DO NOT use the concealment module, you need the bigger reserves!) you can reach 11.8 km spotting range by sea and 9.5 km spotting range by air.

I will, by the way, use this review to transmit a message.

Guys! When you are playing carriers, DON’T just go hug the border from the beginning. That is just bad as you will take way more time to go towards your target, by such, have fewer strikes per minute and less impact on the game. If you want to move anywhere with your carrier, move somewhere that will either give you an advantage when it comes to planes travel time or that will give you cover against enemy fire.

The armor

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The armor of the Indomitable is similar to the one you can find on Implacable. She has a 21 mm bow, stern and belt which allows her to shatter 127 mm HE shells. The sides are only 19 mm and the citadel, as well as the rest of the main armor belt, is 114 mm thick. This is of course very vulnerable against cruisers, battleships and French 138.6 mm AP shells (Yes it’s the real caliber of the guns for things like Le Fantasque, Mogador, etc.) Finally, the superstructure is 13 mm thick.

Since she is a British carrier, she, of course, has the classic armored flight deck, divided in 3 parts. The extremities are 25 mm thick, the sides and outer-parts of the midsection are 38 mm thick and finally, the center is 76 mm thick.

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The citadel is much smaller than you would think. The deck is 76 mm for the outer part and 25 mm for the center part.

The consumables

Consumables
Slot 1
Slot 2
Damage Control Party I
Work time: 60 s
Cooldown: 90 s
Fighter I
Number of charges: 4
Work time: 600 s
Cooldown: 40 s
Patrol Radius: 3.0 km
Fighters in the squadron: 4

Conclusion

The Indomitable is a low impact, unidimensional and boring ship to play. Pretty much any tier VIII carrier will do a better job at dealing damage and will also have a much better impact since they don’t rely heavily on fire damage.

As an experienced CV player, I simply cannot recommend this ship. If the bombs had a better penetration like on the Audacious or that the strike groups would be bigger, she would be good but here… Graf Zeppelin looks good compared to her.

Recommended build

During the testing of the Indomitable, I used the following captain build and upgrades:

Captain build:

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  • Air Supremacy: Very important skill for CVs, it’s a must-have.
  • Improved Engine Boost: Speed is a must on CVs, always try to have more speed.
  • Last Gasp: Especially useful on Indomitable for the technique I covered with the bombers.
  • Priority Target: Because it was the last point I had and there was literally nothing else that was at least somewhat useful.
  • Improved Engines: Once again, Speed is everything on CVs.
  • Survivability Expert: You want your planes to survive right? Vital perk.
  • Aircraft Armor: More survivability and also a vital perk.
  • Demolition Expert: Since this ship is all about setting fires, make sure that you start as much of them as possible.
  • Concealment Expert: It allows you to get closer from the action with your CV and also it’s more useful than Sight Stabilization that is a massive noob trap except for Midway’s torpedo bombers that take ages to aim.

Upgrades:

  • Air Groups Modification 1: Faster returning speed is always useful, especially for CVs with low reserves.
  •  Aircraft Engines Modification 1: Because you never have enough speed.
  •  AA Guns Modification 1: That one is more because the other options are… basically useless.
  •  Bombers Modification 2: Your bombers are your bread and butter so you want to make sure that they survive.
  • Flight Control Modification 1: Very useful because of the addition planes in your reserve and faster regeneration time. You should never take the Concealment System Modification 1 as this thing ceased to be useful after they removed Hakuryu’s quad drop.

About Author

15,466 thoughts on “World of Warships: Tier VIII British Aircraft Carrier Indomitable Review

  1. It would be much better if they put their efforts into “Ise”-cl*** hybrid battleship-carriers. They have working algorithm for bot-planes now, so it wouldn’t be hard to implement bot-bombers to non-carrier ships…

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