War Thunder - WWII-Vietnam war Era tank and air battle game

[troonshine]

"Top tier is gay" is only true if you pick the wrong vehicles to play
playing the AV-8B+ and swatting premium F-4S droolers out of the air with the fist of god (the AIM-120 AMRAAM) is some of the most fun you can have in a video game

I like to do this with my mig-21bis where I just launch the missile at 1.5km without using my radar and the creditcard swipers wont have enough time to react or know where the flare button is lmao

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

Top tier Air RB is in such a bad state because the devs refuse to implement 8v8 or 12v12 matches. The most they did was make a toggleable option to have a chance of getting a 12v12 match.

Fuck AF campers too.

Not even top tier, fucking tier 3+ is a slog. Try playing a 109 of any sort today. The spits out climb, turn (and can sometimes out dive you), the japs out turn you, out climb you, the Americans outgun, outspeed and out climb you. Soviet planes just laugh in your face and dive you from altitudes they aren't even supposed to reach. This is on top of them nerfing the MG 151 from 20mm to 15 and then deliberately making the gunpods heavier, P-40 attacker spawn and the ahistorical bomb nerfs to the Japanese props.
Don't forget how they absolutely butchered the FW190 flight model and AI instructor (if you play RB/AB) and meanwhile literal sekret dokkuments means the Yak 3 FM was changed once from a UFO to a slightly lesser UFO. I see Yak 3s get up to 6000m and just murder entire flocks of 109s and FWs.
At least the TA-152 is skill dependent (you really need to know your MEC) unless you wanna get murdered by Laags and Griffons. If you know what your doing you'll be fine unless you get dabbed on by a twin mustang.

The on the groundforces side, holy shit the STB-1 nerf killed the tank so badly. The entire point was for it to be viable with a decent reverse gear vs the leopard. Type 60 SPG needs retractable gunner spot, lmao French 5.0+ repair costs and the AMX-50 Foch nerf.

They really need to stop balancing by repair costs and random silent nerfs. It just incentivies newer players to quit and seasoned ones to stick to the old shit.

 

[Snekposter]

Not even top tier, fucking tier 3+ is a slog. Try playing a 109 of any sort today. The spits out climb, turn (and can sometimes out dive you), the japs out turn you, out climb you, the Americans outgun, outspeed and out climb you. Soviet planes just laugh in your face and dive you from altitudes they aren't even supposed to reach. This is on top of them nerfing the MG 151 from 20mm to 15 and then deliberately making the gunpods heavier, P-40 attacker spawn and the ahistorical bomb nerfs to the Japanese props.
Don't forget how they absolutely butchered the FW190 flight model and AI instructor (if you play RB/AB) and meanwhile literal sekret dokkuments means the Yak 3 FM was changed once from a UFO to a slightly lesser UFO. I see Yak 3s get up to 6000m and just murder entire flocks of 109s and FWs.

My man, the 109/190 in Arcade are absolutely busted with UFO-like flight models. I don't know how the fuck they have such good energy retention. And no, the Americans don't outgun you considering the lack of module-wrecking HE, and the speed and climb are irrelevant considering you can just turn inside them on a dime when they dive and fuck them over.

 

[Gerelatha]

I like to do this with my mig-21bis where I just launch the missile at 1.5km without using my radar and the creditcard swipers wont have enough time to react or know where the flare button is lmao

problem with the MiG-21Bis is that it’s kinda bad if they know where the flare key is
AMRAAMs are insanely dangerous even to experienced players, let alone little pablo.gonzalez.2009 with his moms credit card

Not even top tier, fucking tier 3+ is a slog. Try playing a 109 of any sort today. The spits out climb, turn (and can sometimes out dive you), the japs out turn you, out climb you, the Americans outgun, outspeed and out climb you. Soviet planes just laugh in your face and dive you from altitudes they aren't even supposed to reach. This is on top of them nerfing the MG 151 from 20mm to 15 and then deliberately making the gunpods heavier, P-40 attacker spawn and the ahistorical bomb nerfs to the Japanese props.
Don't forget how they absolutely butchered the FW190 flight model and AI instructor (if you play RB/AB) and meanwhile literal sekret dokkuments means the Yak 3 FM was changed once from a UFO to a slightly lesser UFO. I see Yak 3s get up to 6000m and just murder entire flocks of 109s and FWs.
At least the TA-152 is skill dependent (you really need to know your MEC) unless you wanna get murdered by Laags and Griffons. If you know what your doing you'll be fine unless you get dabbed on by a twin mustang.

The on the groundforces side, holy shit the STB-1 nerf killed the tank so badly. The entire point was for it to be viable with a decent reverse gear vs the leopard. Type 60 SPG needs retractable gunner spot, lmao French 5.0+ repair costs and the AMX-50 Foch nerf.

They really need to stop balancing by repair costs and random silent nerfs. It just incentivies newer players to quit and seasoned ones to stick to the old shit.

repair costs now solely exist to make you want to buy premium, since they added that premium players can never lose money outside of teamkills

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

My man, the 109/190 in Arcade are absolutely busted with UFO-like flight models. I don't know how the fuck they have such good energy retention. And no, the Americans don't outgun you considering the lack of module-wrecking HE, and the speed and climb are irrelevant considering you can just turn inside them on a dime when they dive and fuck them over.

I play mainly RB/SB (back when SB had players) so it's a bit different. From what I can tell the 109 in Arcade has way better retention than it's supposed to (the 190 is meh), but in RB the 109 and 190 sucks.

Module wrecking HE isn't needed when you have the 12.7s on American planes... In RB the big issue is that turns bleed energy so you'll just be a sitting duck to an experienced American player (plus the fact it's usually US/USSR or US/UK in RB.. Ouch).

repair costs now solely exist to make you want to buy premium, since they added that premium players can never lose money outside of teamkills

"We won't have Tier V premiums"-Gayjin

 

[Snekposter]

Module wrecking HE isn't needed when you have the 12.7s on American planes...

Are they really that good? They're very inconsistent in my experience whereas only a couple hits from any cannon will send you back to the hangar with a good chunk of your plane missing.

 

[Polock]

Are they really that good? They're very inconsistent in my experience whereas only a couple hits from any cannon will send you back to the hangar with a good chunk of your plane missing.

Depends on the patch but it usually doesn't matter when you have 4-18 guns with 20,000 rounds of ammo. Unlike .303 you can just spam and win dogfights because of the sheer volume of fire.

 

[Snekposter]

Depends on the patch but it usually doesn't matter when you have 4-18 guns with 20,000 rounds of ammo. Unlike .303 you can just spam and win dogfights because of the sheer volume of fire.

Maybe in RB but in Arcade all your enemies have UFO physics and can weave around your bullets like Agent Smith does.

 

[Gerelatha]

Are they really that good? They're very inconsistent in my experience whereas only a couple hits from any cannon will send you back to the hangar with a good chunk of your plane missing.

there’s a meme of US fiddies being flamethrowers because of how often they set everything on fire

 

[Snekposter]

there’s a meme of US fiddies being flamethrowers because of how often they set everything on fire

Funny, I wind up getting nailed by minengeschoss and Russian potato guns more than anything else. 109's and 190's might as well be firing laser beams when loaded with air target belts, especially with the gunpods that do precisely jack to slow them down in AB, and a single Russian 37mm is all it takes to wreck you. There's been a lot of discussion on the forums lately about how durable airplanes really were, especially bombers, and I gotta say the photos of them making it back to base with half the airframe being replaced with hole (albeit the plane would be a complete write-off, but considering it managed to fly all the way from Germany back to England in that state...) really puts the lie to a lot of the claims.

Its a far, far cry from when I first got into WT where US planes were as durable as they were IRL where you could unironically quote Obi-Wan about flying half a plane, just so long as your expectations about combat effectiveness and landing properly were on par with his.

 

[Gerelatha]

Funny, I wind up getting nailed by minengeschoss and Russian potato guns more than anything else. 109's and 190's might as well be firing laser beams when loaded with air target belts, especially with the gunpods that do precisely jack to slow them down in AB, and a single Russian 37mm is all it takes to wreck you. There's been a lot of discussion on the forums lately about how durable airplanes really were, especially bombers, and I gotta say the photos of them making it back to base with half the airframe being replaced with hole (albeit the plane would be a complete write-off, but considering it managed to fly all the way from Germany back to England in that state...) really puts the lie to a lot of the claims.

Its a far, far cry from when I first got into WT where US planes were as durable as they were IRL where you could unironically quote Obi-Wan about flying half a plane, just so long as your expectations about combat effectiveness and landing properly were on par with his.

I don’t think overly durable aircraft are conducive to good gameplay, it just makes the person who played right feel unrewarded that even though they outplayed their opponent, they get denied a kill because of RNG

 

[Snekposter]

I don’t think overly durable aircraft are conducive to good gameplay, it just makes the person who played right feel unrewarded that even though they outplayed their opponent, they get denied a kill because of RNG

Yeah, Saburo Sakai felt cheated as fuck when he ripped a Wildcat's rear to shreds with a few hundred 7.7mm rounds and it kept on flying instead of turning into a giant fireball like his own Zero would.

 

[Polock]

Arcade

As far as plane durability goes, its a good thing that planes aren't very durable because of how the game has changed the reward structure.
You get no points for dogfights. You get no points for near misses. You get no points for non-critical hits. All that matters are kills.
Additionally, back when sparking was a thing, extreme plane durability sucked. Almost everything was unusable except for mine shells. You could run out of ammo before you did any meaningful damage, which is way on the other side of the durability spectrum.
Also additionally, a gentle reminder that "bombers landing back at base with a hole in their right wing from taking a 30mm hit" is the definition of survivor bias. Bombers were regularly shredded.

 

[Gerelatha]

As far as plane durability goes, its a good thing that planes aren't very durable because of how the game has changed the reward structure.
You get no points for dogfights. You get no points for near misses. You get no points for non-critical hits. All that matters are kills.
Additionally, back when sparking was a thing, extreme plane durability sucked. Almost everything was unusable except for mine shells. You could run out of ammo before you did any meaningful damage, which is way on the other side of the durability spectrum.
Also additionally, a gentle reminder that "bombers landing back at base with a hole in their right wing from taking a 30mm hit" is the definition of survivor bias. Bombers were regularly shredded.

not to mention how frustrating it would be to waste 6 missiles BVR jousting one dude only for the last one that hits to do trivial damage and he flies back to his airfield

 

[Snekposter]

Bombers were regularly shredded.

Yeah, they absolutely were. They also regularly landed at base missing substantial chunks of them. There's a reason the Germans used increasingly bigger weapons against them, including modified Nebelwerfers and 50mm autocannons.

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

Funny, I wind up getting nailed by minengeschoss and Russian potato guns more than anything else. 109's and 190's might as well be firing laser beams when loaded with air target belts, especially with the gunpods that do precisely jack to slow them down in AB, and a single Russian 37mm is all it takes to wreck you. There's been a lot of discussion on the forums lately about how durable airplanes really were, especially bombers, and I gotta say the photos of them making it back to base with half the airframe being replaced with hole (albeit the plane would be a complete write-off, but considering it managed to fly all the way from Germany back to England in that state...) really puts the lie to a lot of the claims.

Its a far, far cry from when I first got into WT where US planes were as durable as they were IRL where you could unironically quote Obi-Wan about flying half a plane, just so long as your expectations about combat effectiveness and landing properly were on par with his.

To be fair to AB, literally everything has a UFO FM except a few that the snail really hates.

I think the bigger issue is that warthunder is going down the "balance by nerfing shit" route that other F2P (LOL and DOTA come to mind) did instead of balance by fixing the underlying cause. I can list several examples:

1)Vicious nerf cycle of the Mk 151 and 108s followed by the .50 bmgs and then the .303s. First it was ranger, then velocity/ballistics and finally belt effectiveness (151 Minengeschoß and the 50 tracers). They used to spark and do some damage but now the aiming ballistics are so terrible you'd be lucky to hit.

2) FW 190 and 109 FM followed by spitfire FM nerfs in the same cycle. There's lot of literature of 109s fighting with 151 gunpods dogfighting very effectively and common (the 108 was for ripping bombers). They then nerfed the spit engine but not FM for some odd reason.

3) Bomber altitude advantage (see 2). 109s with the Mk108/151 pods are used for bomber hunting, but the time you get up to bomer alt they have taken all the bases are already RTB. God help you if those bombers climb you ain't catching them on maps where you need a larger fuel load. Should have been give bombers a lower spawn or extend map.

4) Bomber "survivability". This is an issue of 2+3 since you're supposed to take bombers out by attacking from a vertical plane (never front or back) but you can't climb that far. Also there needs to be less on hit explosions and more spark/overpen imho.

The best aircraft autocannon in thegame I think is the Sh-37 (Premium fighter from what I've seen others do with it), NS-45 (it's suprisingly accurate for a 45mm and you can snipe) , T31 (fights jets unfortunately).

Spoiler: AB sperging

As to your AB notes:
1) AB is called arcade for a reason. The Mk151 20mms in AB are pinpoint lasers (I've pulled off 2km+ kills in AB before on the 151). They are much harder to aim in RB (~600m) . The 30mm wiffle ball has shit for ballistics and now shit for damage (They nerfed the Mk108 again) that only does well within 300m and has the trajectory arc of Rekieta's internet career.

2) .50 cals are notorious. In the old days in RB a P-47 with them was basically a phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range, it could outrange and head on a 109 with the 20mm gunpods frome over 3km if done right.

3) In RB kills are ~600-800m range. In AB IDK right now. IRL/SB it's ~100-200m usually.

Spoiler: Since you seem to be a USA fighter player?

For the .50s...
To kill a 109 easily, dive under to get more speed and aim for the front center pliot seat (4mm) or behind the seat fuel tank, from above shoot before the cockpit glass. Head on shoot the engine/front pane.
To kill a 190 easily (if pilot isn't retarded, anything can kill this POS, even a PO-2), split S away perpendicular or at a 45 degree, if they still commit, dodge and wing over with extreme AOA follwed by engine shutoff and hard rudder kick to where they would be climbing.

there’s a meme of US fiddies being flamethrowers because of how often they set everything on fire

It still kinda is, but the British M2 Ground target belt is especially effective against planes. Usually I just stack as much AP and tracer and just snipe out engines or the pilots.

As far as plane durability goes, its a good thing that planes aren't very durable because of how the game has changed the reward structure.

They should make the rewards go by shot charachteristics as well, range module hit (if any) and time shot made (until plane goes down). Would solve a lot of the 1% assists issues even though it hit a turret gunner in the face.

 

[Polock]

They should make the rewards go by shot charachteristics as well, range module hit (if any) and time shot made (until plane goes down). Would solve a lot of the 1% assists issues even though it hit a turret gunner in the face.

The true problem is that if they ever make it easier to generate rewards for yourself they are turbocharging botting. Yeah they've been cracking down on it somewhat but its still a rampant problem that they don't really have a reason to fight too hard. That would require money and effort pidorski, are you racist????

The severe damage mechanic is actually a pretty decent change, even though it affects bombers weirdly. You can set 3 engines on fire and rip out a wing root and put a bomber into a flat spin and you wont get a severe damage credit sometimes but usually it works pretty well.

 

[Gerelatha]

The true problem is that if they ever make it easier to generate rewards for yourself they are turbocharging botting. Yeah they've been cracking down on it somewhat but its still a rampant problem that they don't really have a reason to fight too hard. That would require money and effort pidorski, are you racist????

The severe damage mechanic is actually a pretty decent change, even though it affects bombers weirdly. You can set 3 engines on fire and rip out a wing root and put a bomber into a flat spin and you wont get a severe damage credit sometimes but usually it works pretty well.

severe damage still suffers from inconsistencies, i can slam a MiG-23 with a sidewinder and he's burning spinning out toward the ground and it still gives me a crit so that some faggot teammate can rob me of the kill

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

severe damage still suffers from inconsistencies, i can slam a MiG-23 with a sidewinder and he's burning spinning out toward the ground and it still gives me a crit so that some faggot teammate can rob me of the kill

I don't know if there's some code issues that prevent it (or they make a bit of money off the botting, I wouldn't be suprised). I'm personally waiting for Gunner Heat PC to add mutiplayer someday lmao.

 

[Preacher ✝]

This post ended up being longer and more rambling than I initially expected. If you don't care at all about War Thunder Naval feel free to ignore it.

I have a love/hate relationship with War Thunder Naval, and I want to write about it so here we go.

Having played a decent amount of it, grinding mostly the British tree with some Italian, Japanese, and French too, but I havent really touched it since the HMS Renown event.

Grinding the Renown really burned out my enjoyment of Naval for a while, and the fact that Renown has some serious issues that have gone unfixed (it sits too high in the water making the ammo easy to rack, and it's secondaries are missing their VT rounds) was severely disheartening. To grind it I focused on coastal over blue water. I'd set up a reliable min/max British coastal team and it proved reasonably effective averaging a couple thousand points a match.

Now with HMS Barham up for grabs I was tempted to get back into it. However I did not want to go back to that grinding team. If I was going to play Naval I wanted to work on the French tree. Since I didn't have any rank III French ships this meant the only way my matches would count is if I could spawn a Rank III plane (in this case the SB2C Torpedo Bomber) before the match ends. To be fair, even though they suck, the French destroyers are fun. In fact I think their more fun because they suck since that makes kills more of a challenge. Unfortunately when you're goal is to earn points for the achievement this type of fun is counter productive, but I pressed on anyway.

After two matches with polar opposite results I decided to stop. The first match was awful, I got unlucky and was targeted right away, losing my first ship before it could do anything of note. The next ship did better but not well enough to spawn the plane so that match didnt count at all.

The second match was awesome. I still lost one ship almost immediately but the following ship racked up a kill and two assists, largely because I did not get targeted and was thus able to concentrate on pouring rounds into enemy ships which allowed me to spawn my plane. That one match got me 2300 points towards the achievement goal of 45k, a great result considering the ships I was using. If I could maintain that kind of performance, averaging ~1k/match, the achievement goal was feasible and I'd make good progress on the tree at the same time.

So why did I say "fuck that" before going back to my beloved Ground RB? Because Naval sucks.

Too much of my success in Naval matches relies on luck, primarily in whether or not the enemy decides to shoot at me or not. Yes, this probably is a skill issue, but in my defense the Meta for being good at Naval is very gay. If you get targeted and you're not hiding in cover behind an island wiggling back and forth to you're only option is evasive action, which makes return fire more complicated, especially at any kind of range. The most fun I have in Naval is close range Destroyer combat, which is part of why I like French destroyers even though they suck. They're fast which makes closing the range during a flanking run easier. That second match where I did well and had a good time was partially because combat was at ranges of 6k-3k. When you're left alone and allowed to steam around targeting other ships you're still spending time monitoring the rangefinder, and adjusting for the opposing ships speed and maneuvers. If you get targeted now you have to do that while also making your own evasive maneuvers and messing with the damage control system. While that's doable it becomes such a juggling act that it isnt fun anymore.

Part of the issue is the Damage Control system, it's ass. For those who havent played Naval, ships have 3 elements of Damage Control. Fire suppression, module repair, and dewatering. These can be toggled between automatic and manually activated, but they also effect eachother. If more than one is active at the same time they both take exponentially longer to work. Fire is usually the most important, a fire left raging will just keep damaging modules so repairing first is dumb. Dewatering is almost always a non-issue until its suddenly a serious issue. That makes the priority ranking Fire -> Repair -> Dewater, with Dewatering jumping ahead if its urgent.

So for example you get attacked and your ship is now on fire, no problem activate fire suppression. Ah but wait you're guns are damaged and you can no longer return fire. Okay, after you get the fire out fix them. Oh fuck, before you can fix them you're hit again and back on fire. Shit now you have to hold down the repair key to cancel the repair order and allow the fire control to work. If you leave both on at the same time neither will get done fast enough to be effective. Unless you can get into cover, or lay down a smoke screen and maneuver behind it, you're going to end up stun locked like this until you're dead, worse depending on where you were hit manuevering might no longer even be possible. This is why the unfun Island cover meta exists, but there are also maps where that approach is less viable. Throw into the mix overpowered premium ships like the USS Frank Knoxx and USS Moffett with their array of fast firing 5inch/38s and 1000+% SL boosters and you end up with matches where both teams are flooded with the same ships. Plenty of players only use Naval with one of these two ships as a means of grinding out SL, and such players are a plague at the BRs where there kind of Naval combat I enjoy is most viable.

It's all very frustrating and just not a good time most of the time. Worse still the reward is a top tier ship and, at least for me, the nature of top tier Naval is all of the worst parts of Naval turned up to 11. The ranges are even longer, the ships are slower, the few players there are either pay to win noobs or people who main Naval and are very skilled at it.

I really want to like Naval. I enjoy Naval history and war ships are cool af, but it proves time and time again to be more frustrating than fun. How much of that is my own fault for not enjoying the meta vs the games fault for inspiring a shitty meta is debateable, but the result is the same either way.

There's no good reason to suffer through a Naval event for a reward ship I ultimately wont really play anyway.

Does anyone else here dabble in Naval at all? Have your experiences been similar to mine? If anyone actually plays a lot of Naval, why? Do you enjoy the meta? Do you grind SL with the OP premiums?