Plane Proficiency

Planes have the ability to earn experience and gain ranks. Experience is gained from combat, be it normal sorties or LBAS attacks and defense.

• The only aircraft unable to earn experience are Rotorcraft, Liaison Aircraft, and LB Land-Based Recons.
  • The Type 2 Land-based Reconnaissance Aircraft (Skilled) have a base experience of 1 that cannot be lost.
• Certain elite planes such as the Tenzan Model 12 (Tomonaga Squadron) already have some ranks when they are obtained.

Overview

As planes earn experience, they will progress through the ranks as follows:

Rank Level	Displayed Insignia	Experience	Fighter Power Bonus		Innate Bonus
				Bomber
0	(blank)	0-9	0	0	0
1	|	10-24	0	0	+1 ~ 1.549
2	||	25-39	+2	+1	+1.581 ~ 1.975
3	|||	40-54	+5	+1	+2 ~ 2.324
4	\	55-69	+9	+1	+2.345 ~ 2.627
5	\\	70-84	+14	+3	+2.646 ~ 2.898
6	\\\	85-99	+14	+3	+2.915 ~ 3.146
7	❱❱	100-120	+22	+6	+3.162 ~ 3.464

Notes

• Planes will gain ranks at different speeds. Exactly what determines that is unknown. Please see below for more details.
• Planes getting shot down will lose ranks.
  • A slot getting emptied has a high chance of resetting plane ranks.
  • You cannot gain or lose ranks in PvP.
• Abyssal planes do not have proficiency.
• Opposing PvP fleets do have proficiency.
• It is important to secure air superiority where possible to preserve plane proficiency.
• The innate bonus is calculated as [math]\displaystyle{ \sqrt{\frac{\text{Exp}_\text{plane}}{10}} }[/math]; where [math]\displaystyle{ \text{Exp}_\text{plane} }[/math] is the current experience level of the plane.
  • Unlike most other formulas in the game, it is not rounded down.

Rank Effects

Fighter Power Bonus

The biggest bonus from plane proficiency is giving a fighter power bonus to help during the air control phase. The innate bonus is added onto the fighter power bonus of the relevant plane to get the full fighter power bonus.

Fighter Power Bonus for ❱❱ Planes

Plane Type	Plane Type	Fighter Power Bonus
Fighters		+25.464
Seaplane Bombers	Bomber	+9.464
All other planes	SpReconbomber	+3.464

Notes

• Fighter-bombers are considered dive bombers and only get the +3 bonus and not the +25.
• This is a flat bonus applied after the fighter power of the slot is calculated. This means it is not affected by rounding.
• Even if the plane has 0 , it will still get the relevant bonus.

Critical Bonus

There are two separate critical modifier bonuses for plane proficiency. One affects normal carrier attacks and carrier night cut-ins, the other affects carrier cut-in attacks. The Captain refers to the plane in the top slot.

Carrier Attack Modifier

[math]\displaystyle{ \text{CritMod}_\text{CVAtk} = 1 + \lfloor \sqrt{\text{Exp}} + \text{Bonus} \rfloor }[/math]

• [math]\displaystyle{ \text{Exp} }[/math] is the current experience value of the plane.
• [math]\displaystyle{ \text{Bonus} }[/math] is the innate bonus based on the level of the plane, detailed in the table below.
• The critical bonus is halved for planes not in the top slot.
• This means a carrier with two maxed proficiency planes equipped in the top two slots will have a 1.3x bonus. This makes her total critical strike modifier 1.95x (1.5 x 1.3).
• This also applies to carrier night attacks.
  • Unlike other carrier night attacks formulas, non-night capable planes are taken into account for calculating the proficiency critical bonus.
• Planes in empty slots do not count towards proficiency bonuses.

Critical Bonus

Experience Level	Proficiency Bonus	First Slot Bonus	Other Slot Bonus
0-9	0	0-3%	0-1.5%
10-24	+1	4-5%	2-2.5%
25-39	+2	7-8%	3.5-4%
40-54	+3	9-10%	4.5-5%
55-69	+4	11-12%	5.5-6%
70-79	+5-7	13-16%	7.5-8%
80-99	+7	16%	8%
100-120	+10	20%	10%

Carrier Cut-In Attacks

[math]\displaystyle{ \text{CritMod}_\text{CVCI} = 1.106 + 0.15\text{(If the plane in the first slot participates in the attack)} }[/math]

• The average skill level of all planes is taken into account when calculating the modifier. The base multiplier of 1.106 assumes all planes equipped are of max proficiency.
• When having multiple aircraft of the same type equipped, the plane in the first slot, "the Captain" will always take priority.
• This bonus is multiplicative with the base critical modifier. This means if the Captain participates in the CVCI, the attack gets a critical strike modifier of 1.875x (1.5 x 1.25).

Accuracy Bonus

The average proficiency of all torpedo bombers, dive bombers, seaplane bombers, and large flying boats on the carrier are taken into account for calculating the accuracy bonus.

[math]\displaystyle{ \text{Acc Bonus} = \sqrt{0.1 \times \text{Exp}_\text{Avg}} + \text{Mod}_\text{proficiency} }[/math]

• [math]\displaystyle{ \text{Exp}_\text{Avg} }[/math] is the average experience level of all relevant planes on the carrier.
• [math]\displaystyle{ \text{Mod}_\text{Skill} }[/math] is the extra bonus depending on the proficiency level.

Accuracy Bonus

Experience Level	Proficiency Bonus	Accuracy Bonus
0-9	0	0
10-24	0	+1
25-39	+1	+2
40-54	+2	+4
55-69	+3	+5
70-79	+4	+6
80-99	+6	+8-9
100-120	+9	+12

Notes

• Remember that fighters are not counted for the accuracy bonus.

LoS

• The developers have stated that proficiency will provide a bonus to LoS and contact rate.
  • The increase is either bugged or too small to be observed.

Ranking Planes

Carrier-Based Planes

Carrier-based planes can be ranked anywhere. The most resource-efficient way is to send them on sorties to surface nodes with little to no air power. It is possible to rank them through LBAS but it gets expensive. The following are recommended spots:

• 1-1
• 2-2: 3CV+ off route

Land-Based Planes

Land-based planes can only be ranked through LBAS. This makes ranking them quite expensive. Outside of events, only 7-4, 6-4, and 6-5 have LBAS available to use for now. Of these:

• 7-4 is the best place as it has multiple submarine nodes that are easy to reach, and are on the main resources farming route. This allows any land-based plane to be ranked while doing regular "risk-free" resource farming.
• 6-5 is also a good place, as it allows the use of two land bases and has a Range 1 submarine node at node B, that can be reached using 1CL and a mix of DD & DE.

Important Notes on Ranking Planes

• Numbered air group planes like the Ryuusei (601 Air Group) start at |.
• Named squadron planes like the Type 97 Torpedo Bomber (Murata Squadron) start at ||.
• Remodeling planes to better versions through quests will retain their ranks if it is higher than the default rank.
  • Exceptions are for remodels that require the plane to be at maxed proficiency like for the Zero Fighter Type 53 (Iwamoto Squadron).
  • Remodelling a plane using Akashi's Improvement Arsenal will only retain 60% of the plane's proficiency.
• Ranks can decrease by 1-2 if a large number of planes are shot down.
• Ranks will be reset if the entire squadron is shot down.
  • Even elite squadrons with default ranks can lose all their ranks.
    • There is a visual bug where elite squadrons may retain default ranks visually, sortieing them again will update it to their actual value.
• Rank loss is calculated before rank gain, therefore it is possible for a squadron that was wiped to retain 1-2 ranks if it did well.
• Rank is only calculated once the fleet returns to port.
  • It is possible to save ranks by quitting the sortie before the results screen is shown. This can be useful during events to save preparation time for boss kills.
• Planes will not gain or lose ranks in Support Expeditions or Exercises.
• Planes must participate in aerial combat or detection to gain/lose ranks.
  • Planes in 0 slots will not gain or lose ranks.
  • If planes are not launched due to failing Detection, they will not gain or lose ranks.
  • In Combined Fleets, when facing a single fleet, no plane in the escort fleet will not gain or lose ranks.

Leveling Speed

Planes gain a certain number of internal proficiency points with some random variance every time they participate in Aerial Combat or Detection. The amount gained depends on the exp-rate group of the plane.

Detection: ReconSeaplane Recons, BomberSeaplane Bombers, Carrier Recons, Flying Boats

Aerial Combat: Fighters, Dive Bombers, Torpedo Bombers, Seaplane Bombers, Seaplane Fighters, Jets, Land-based Bombers, Interceptors, Land-based Heavy Bombers

LBAS Attack, LBAS Defence, Jet Assault, and LBAS Jet Assault also count as Aerial Combat.

• Each LBAS Attack wave counts as one round of Aerial Combat, so planes attacking the same node twice gain experience twice. There is no Detection for LBAS, so recons (including Land-based Recons) do not gain experience.
• Because Seaplane Bombers participate in both Aerial Combat and Detection, they effectively level twice as fast as other planes of their group in most cases.
• Jets receive experience from both Jet Assault and the following Aerial Combat, effectively leveling twice as fast as other planes of their group in most cases. However, Jet Assault does not occur against all-submarine fleets, so they gain experience only once in this case.

Leveling speed is measured in the estimated number of battles it will take to get a plane from no rank to ❱❱ .