Feel free to comment with questions or suggestions, try to keep discussion civil and criticism constructive. Will add images later on to improve this.
In this guide i'm going to break down basic CV tactics. This does not cover specific nations, this is just basic tactics that can apply to all nations, CV1 to CV7.
1. Fighters
The first thing that all players should know is that fighters should never be used to scout the enemy line or hover over your team's BB line. The reason for not scouting with them is because that is the job of the BBs to scout, your job is to help keep the scouts in the air and bombers away from the BBs. The best way to do this is to be aggressive with your fighters, you should always push your fighters towards the enemy CVs to cut off their fighters and bombers before they have a chance to shoot down your team's scouts, fighters and bombers or to bomb your BBs and CVs. Keeping control of your fighters is absolutely essential to maintaining vision for your team's BBs. If you keep your fighters over your own BB line, they are likely to be shot down by friendly AA, they give away the position of your BB line, and you cannot stop bombers when they have already reached the BB line.
2. Bombers
This probably seems obvious to most, but when you are going in for a bombing run, the most important thing to do is to avoid enemy fighters. I've seen too many times where players send out a wave of bombers without looking and right into my fighters before they even get close to any of my team's ships. You have to be on the lookout for where the other team's CVs are, what kind of aircraft they have loaded, and where their fighters are to avoid them. On top of that, you also must raise and lower the altitude of the bombers so that you don't make it stupid easy for ships with AA to knock out all of your bombers in a few seconds. It would also be worth the time and effort to learn how to do manual divebombing and torpedo bombing. Just like with manual FCS, it is much more accurate and effective to manual divebomb or torpedo bomb.
3. Ship movement and position
You should move with the BB line, staying approximately 1 square tile back from the line so that you aren't too close as to get shot by rushing BBs, and not too far away so that your planes run out of fuel as soon as they get to the enemy CVs. The absolute worst thing you can do is to go full speed ahead and cross a BB or go beyond the BB line. Once you pick a position (North, Central or South) you should slow your ship down some and keep an eye on your position on the minimap. When it comes to deciding which direction you should go, you should decide that based on the direction that all other CVs are going. If the other 2 CVs on your team go north, you should be going south so that south doesn't get rolled over. If you are running only fighters and there is a bomber only CV, you should be in the same area as the bomber CV (North, Central or South) so that you can cover him with fighters (though if you are running only fighters in a high tier ship, CV5+, you should be able to cover all 3 enemy CVs).
