I think it's time War Thunder Ships specifically, has it's own thread. The War Thunder thread is far too many pages to discuss shippy things properly amongst the noise. Additionally WTS get's very little press and has even fewer players than the main tank and aircraft game in war thunder. Further reason to consolidate and close ranks around this excellent war thunder module.
I have been playinmg a fair amount of warthunder ships myself lately to the point that two of us created a clan. However I believe you need a tonne of people in your clan to make these green researcheable ships progress relatively fast?
I have been loving pretty much all kinds of ship fights in war thunder, Destroyers are probably my favourite. The larger ships are new to me as I am into cruisers for the first time. Smaller PT boat and frigate types are also fun and even have their place in large battles with BBs. I love that.
Unfortunately most of my friends are still stuck on world of warships.
Dislikes and problems:
• Looks like rudder control is about holding a key down until your finger goes blue. Alternately using an anologue control may be a fix. I am thinking of mapping my rudder to a hotas throttle dial. EDIT: Just mapped this to a dial on my throttle.
• Holding c down until your finger goes blue to look around without changing where your guns are looking. Again this is probably going to have to be a throttle tweak. EDIT: Just mapped this to a mouse key. Probably work on making this a toggle rather than having to hold the button down
• I'd like some maps to start with a bit of sailing and orientation time. Most games I join people are firing at each other from spawn to spawn.
• It's grindy. But I enjoy the game so thst is not a problem
• The whole war thunder interface seems like a casino kinda setup
• Not a huge fan of having modern stuff mixed with ww1/2 stuff. But it's not a huge deal like it is with the tanks. You don't really notice until you see a guided missile streaking towards you. Which is rare.
General questions:
• I think the ships in war thunder are to scale. But can anybody confirm that they are?
• Is the ships playerbase growing? I know world of warships is slowly losing its plsyerbase.
The good:
• warthunder generally does everything world of warships did but better.
• The more realistic aiming system
• Torpedoes are more a long gsme or an emergency fire game than in wows. In wows torpedoes were too fast and too much like laser beams.
• I like that all ship types at all levels are in together
• Respawn mechanic is ace
• War thunder ships has a huge variety of unique mechanics. Rocket mortars, mines, radar, towing, buddy repair help.
• War Thunder client is on steam like wows was.
• An absolute tonne of insane detail including being able to look at your ships armour in dock and move the cursor around after choosing enemy round types to see what different angles with that shell at different ranges do.
• A very detauled graphical and damage model compared to WOWS. Including showing the sailors on deck.
• Weather effects that make ships roll and smoke drift in wierd and wonderful ways. So many other things. I would not be surprised if tides and current are modelled but I don't think so.
• Some actual battleships in the line up now.
• Ammunition being carried to ready racks during down time
• Being able to take out components that are not just by chance % that wows has.
• Individual left and right engine control if you want it.
• Maximum friends group for a game is 4 instead of 3 in WOWS I think
•
So what I am wondering is if anybody else plays war thunder ships. I am pretty sure I saw Silentapprovalrobot say that he is enjoying it. I am of the opinion that it is the best multiplayer ship game around. Not that we have many choices.
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There was a big spike in naval players, but I'm sure 90+% of these new players were only there for the U-Boat vs destroyers event.
Blue water navy matches seem to be more populated but there's still the problem with eagle-farming bots. High tier navy is supposedly the best way to generate in-game currency in the war thunder economy so people just use a bot to throw a ship in. It auto targets the nearest ship and just goes in one direction, firing its big guns til it dies.
Makes you a massive target if you're the 1st to spawn in. Gaijin did a shitty thing to "fix" this. If you wait to spawn, it puts you at rhe front of the pack so you become the new priority target.
Mid tier coastal navy is still my fave. Zipping around in high speed gunboats is a blast. At least, I think so. Not many others do as most matches are 2/3rds ai players.
As for scale. I dunno if it's accurate but it seems so.
Back before they separated coastal and blue water forces, I'd sometimes be able to sneak up alongside a heavy cruiser while in my tiny little 78' Vospers torpedo boat and drop a string of depth charges alongside their hull.
The things seemed absolutely massive in comparison. Kinda like the opening scene in Star Wars when the star destroyer flies past.
Back to the player-base. I'm not sure, but I think players tend to prefer the Enduring Conflict battles over the quick matches. I suspect it's because it's easier to farm achievements there to unlock event giveaways.
I tend to avoid the enduring conflict stuff as I always seem to join at the wrong time and get dropped in the middle of a circular firing squad because the enemy has camped the spawn.
I'd like to see more historical battle events rather than random grab bags of mixed nations.
I was playing with a group who did historical stuff. Mostly night actions in the Med between Royal Navy, Kriegsmarine, and Italians. It was a lot of fun and very intense. Tracer effects at night are pretty overwhelming. Sadly, the guy who did all the heavy lifting in creating and organizing the matches has stopped playing die to stupid real life commitments.
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on December 19, 2023, 12:50:03 PMThere was a big spike in naval players, but I'm sure 90+% of these new players were only there for the U-Boat vs destroyers event.
Blue water navy matches seem to be more populated but there's still the problem with eagle-farming bots. High tier navy is supposedly the best way to generate in-game currency in the war thunder economy so people just use a bot to throw a ship in. It auto targets the nearest ship and just goes in one direction, firing its big guns til it dies.
Makes you a massive target if you're the 1st to spawn in. Gaijin did a shitty thing to "fix" this. If you wait to spawn, it puts you at rhe front of the pack so you become the new priority target.
Mid tier coastal navy is still my fave. Zipping around in high speed gunboats is a blast. At least, I think so. Not many others do as most matches are 2/3rds ai players.
I had no idea about most of that. I do like coastal boats but am more interested in the larger vessels. Not many people playing that mode unless you hit the right time of day. That might be because I never choose anything but realistic mode.
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Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on December 19, 2023, 01:18:28 PMAs for scale. I dunno but it seems so.
Back before they separated coastal and blue wager forces, I'd sometimes be able to sneak up alongside a heavy cruiser while in my tiny little 78' Vospers torpedo boat and drop a string of depth charges alongside their hull.
The things seemed absolutely massive in comparison. Kinda like the opening scene in Star Wars when the star destroyer flies past.
Back to the player-base. I'm not sure, but I think players tend to prefer the Enduring Conflict battles over the quick matches. I suspect ots because it's easier to farm achievements there to unlock event giveaways.
I tend to avoid the enduring conflict stuff as I always seem to join at the wrong time and get dropped in the middle of a circular firing squad because the enemy has camped the spawn.
I'd like to see more historical battle events rather than random grab bags of mixed nations.
I was playing with a group who fid historical stuff. Mostly night actions in the Med between Royal Navy, Kriegsmarine, and Italians. It was a lot of fun and very intense. Tracer effects at night are pretty overwhelming. Sadly, the guy who did all the heavy lifting in creating and organizing the matches has stopped playing die to stupid real life commitments.
I don't think I have tried any of that. Will have to take a look.
I think the scale is about right. If it is then it really will teach me a bunch about ship sizes, freeboard and such.
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Just unlocked this bad boy. It's the first time I have really felt slow and vulnerable. Big guns for a cruiser though.
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Nice.
I'm working on the last upgrades for the Hood then I'll have completed the Royal Navy tree.
Working on the 5.7 ranking Italians too.
I'm so out-of-date with Warthunder in general that every time I log into it, I just futz around with my stuff and wind up flying some low tier matches before logging off.
Still, love the gameplay moreso than Wargaming's offerings, so I know I'll wander back over to WT some day.
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on December 21, 2023, 02:09:42 PMNice.
I'm working on the last upgrades for the Hood then I'll have completed the Royal Navy tree.
Working on the 5.7 ranking Italians too.
Very nice. I think I "will" prefer battleships when I get that far up the tree. But I was already too far down the line so battlecruisers it is. I hope the Hood is not as unlucky as the real one was.
Quote from: Dammit Carl! on December 21, 2023, 06:47:30 PMI'm so out-of-date with Warthunder in general that every time I log into it, I just futz around with my stuff and wind up flying some low tier matches before logging off.
Still, love the gameplay moreso than Wargaming's offerings, so I know I'll wander back over to WT some day.
Have you ever played the ships in war thunder Carl?
Quote from: Destraex on December 22, 2023, 03:34:00 AMQuote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on December 21, 2023, 02:09:42 PMNice.
I'm working on the last upgrades for the Hood then I'll have completed the Royal Navy tree.
Working on the 5.7 ranking Italians too.
Very nice. I think I "will" prefer battleships when I get that far up the tree. But I was already too far down the line so battlecruisers it is. I hope the Hood is not as unlucky as the real one was.
I've been one-shotted more than a few times. Just have to take about a 40% ammo load
Quote from: Destraex on December 22, 2023, 03:34:59 AMHave you ever played the ships in war thunder Carl?
Sort of. Last time I touched WT naval items was when the "patrol boat," stuff came out and then for just a little bit. Think my thinking at the time was that I had time invested in WoWs (beta tester and all of that) so I was more concerned with that grind. Then my gaming ADD kicked in and tra-la-la there I go elsewhere... :uglystupid2:
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on December 22, 2023, 09:52:06 AMQuote from: Destraex on December 22, 2023, 03:34:00 AMQuote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on December 21, 2023, 02:09:42 PMNice.
I'm working on the last upgrades for the Hood then I'll have completed the Royal Navy tree.
Working on the 5.7 ranking Italians too.
Very nice. I think I "will" prefer battleships when I get that far up the tree. But I was already too far down the line so battlecruisers it is. I hope the Hood is not as unlucky as the real one was.
I've been one-shotted more than a few times. Just have to take about a 40% ammo load
Thanks for the tip. I had no idea taking less ammo made you less vulnerable to ammo racking. I'd imagine in real life that even 40% ammo is enough to have a similar effect to 100% ammo load if you get hit in the magazine. But I guess the magazine might withstand the explosion of less ammo if it is protected enough. I would be interested in the naval thinking of the time on this subject, not that any captain in his right mind would actually take less shells on any mission due to the uncertainty of how long you will be out of port and how many engagements you will be in.
P.S. These British ships seem to have an absolute tonne of freeboard (they are tall making them suitable to heavy seas) compared to other ships. I know British ships were designed for the North Atlantic, but were they really so much taller than their contemporaries? I am still interested in confirming the scale thing.
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Quote from: Dammit Carl! on December 22, 2023, 06:58:35 PMQuote from: Destraex on December 22, 2023, 03:34:59 AMHave you ever played the ships in war thunder Carl?
Sort of. Last time I touched WT naval items was when the "patrol boat," stuff came out and then for just a little bit. Think my thinking at the time was that I had time invested in WoWs (beta tester and all of that) so I was more concerned with that grind. Then my gaming ADD kicked in and tra-la-la there I go elsewhere... :uglystupid2:
War Thunder now allows you to skip all the coastal craft and start directly down a "blue water" tree. So if you don't want to play small ships you can go straight to large ones now. I also last looked at war thunder ships when it was primarily small boats. But that was a good thing because I have a fair few to throw into my blue water fleet line ups. Small boats are useful for capping points clandestinely. I also generally have an aircraft in my line up for laughs but am yet to bother looking into what speed and height to drop a torpedoe from because I get show down so easily in them... AA fire is rightfully heavy with so many ships below.
Yeah, flying an aircraft in naval battles is a risky affair. Floatplanes are good for grabbing points and heavy bombers like the Lancaster are good for one-shotting battleships but you need to stay above 4000m. Nothing is quite as satisfying as landing a 12,000 lb bomb on the deck of the Arizona though.
Tonight's festivities.... showed a new gent warthunder ships and did not realise how deep it was. It's hard to teach a new guy that's not really switched on. That just wants to play because the rest of us are playing.
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I have definitely died a couple of times in much smaller ships to very accurate level bombing with massive bombs like this. Makes you wonder because the bomb sights of the time and the evidence for successful level bombing attacks on ships in ww2 indicate that it would be very rare. See Midway.
I think they need to be stationary, like the Tirpitz.
Yeah I think even then they had trouble. I seem to remember the Germans raised it from the shallow harbour it was in and just kept it on supports of some kind iirc. But even a near miss from one of those tall boys would do damage. I imagine that is why I died rather than having been directly hit.
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Those screens are awesome. How do these games work? Is it a tournament style? Free for all? Are there campaigns of any kind? I've never played any of these types of games.
It's free to play.
There are 3 main branches. Tank warfare, naval warfare, and air combat.
Tank and naval have arcade mode and realistic mode. Air warfare has those 2 modes as well as simulator mode for the old school flight sim pilots.
Air combat is strictly aircraft (although you can control some guided weapons like the Fritz X glide bomb when you use them)
Tank and naval allow players to control aerial vehicles during the match once they accrue enough points during the round. These include planes, helicopters, and drones. Naval is further divided into coastal battles featuring smaller ships and boats (destroyers, mine layers, torpedo boats, etc) and blue water navy featuring the bigger ships (destroyers and larger, although players can use small boats if they really want to).
The default match is a team-based affair. They used to make teams to roughly represent WWII adversaries, so you woukd get Soviets vs Germans, or Brits and Americans vs Japanese but as rhe number of nations increased and the vehicle rosters expanded to add Cold War stuff, the nation specific battles went by the wayside.
Now quick matches are basically a random grab bag. The matchmaker will make two pools of nationalities and pit them against one another so you might see Brits, Germans, Israelis, and Chinese vs Americans, French, and Italians.
You choose one nation's vehicle pool to play as and you build a roster of vehicles that you've unlocked (some nations have other countries within their tree. Britain also includes Canucks, and S. Africa for example).
Vehicles are ranked from 1 to 11 and you'll be assigned to a battle based on your best vehicle's rating. Tanks and naval give you 3 spawns at a minimum while Air gives you only one. If you do well during the fight and accrue enough points, you gain more unlocks.
Most tank and naval quick matches involve capturing and holding objective zines whereas Air usually involves bombing certain targets. There are some aviation, but that's basically it.
In addition to the quick matches, there are also events. These can be reenactments of historical battles like Kursk or Midway or sometimes something silly like tank races.
There are campaign modes. Shorter ones are called enduring confrontations and are basically 2-3 day battles where players drop in and out and it's an attrition battle to try to grind down the other team's points pool which is spent to spawn in vehicles. They take place on a single map.
There is also a World at War grand campaign system. These are only offered intermittently and usually last a few weeks or a month. Similar to the enduring conflict but it also involves capturing objectives. Once enough objectives are seized, the campaign migrates to a new map.
Finally, you can create private battles where you choose map, weather, time of day, nations available, vehicle ranking limits, etc and set up your own scenarios.
Thanks SDR. Does not sound like I would be interested in much of the above except the campaign modes. How well-behaved or not are players on these servers?
And when you set up a private game, can AI bots take the place of humans like in Verdun, Tannenberg, and Isonzo games?
It's the internet. You get a collection of idiots. Most players are perfectly fine but there are always a few outliers. Arcade tends to be where the majority of them congregate but you do get a few cropping up in Realistic. Not many in Simulator mode but almost nobody plays simulator mode anymore. Ever since War Thunder went cross platform and they implemented mouse and keyboard controls for planes, joystick optimization has gone by the wayside. It's quite hard to get your stick set up in a way where the responses feel natural.
At any rate, there was enough griefing and general idiocy that the game devs turned off nearly all friendly fire and removed collisions on runways.
I think the only place where friendly fire still exists is with aircraft bombs on the tank and naval maps. I like to fly my Lancaster Mk III bomber and drop 12,000 lb bombs on tank maps but the blast area is so huge that I nearly always manage to get one or two friendly fire kills when I bomb. It doesn't really endear me to my teammates... AA vehicles can also shoot down friendly planes. This usually only happens when they fire at a dogfight and end up accidentally tagging their teammate instead of the enemy.
These days, apart from the occasional random imbecile dropping mini nukes from his Lancaster, the only real toxicity you'll see is in the chat but that's not all that common and muting people is easy.
Yes, you can set up private matches that include bots or are exclusively bots if you wish. They are pretty brain dead but can still take you out on occasion.
Thanks again SDR. Getting a team together of trusted peeps sounds like the way to go.
Loved "Simulator," and whatever else mode in tanks; the lethality of the platforms made it a unique kind of hide-n-seek plus the occasional weather effects making a hard thing that much harder. Damn. Really need to get back into this game now that I think about it.
I watch DollarPlays whenever he posts his videos and then I get sucked back into playing tanks. Then I get killed without ever seeing an enemy, remember I suck at tanks, and scurry back to naval.
The dude's situational awareness boggles my mind. He tooled around in an absolute garbage French aa truck in his last video and still managed to have a better match than I do on my best day.
Quote from: Gusington on December 26, 2023, 05:42:52 PMThanks again SDR. Getting a team together of trusted peeps sounds like the way to go.
I'd turn up, timezone permitting... trust me, trust me. (C3PO).
We even have created a little clan BTW (which cost real money) and have 6 out of 128 people already... only two of us really active. The way that works for the green clan ship research is that you play to a maximum points level of 360 every 3 days. Every 3 days the game distributes research points based on your ratio of activity compared to the rest of the clan. The more people active the bigger the research point bounty I believe.
^You're in Australia though, aren't you?
The grind at rank IV is almost unbearable because you have to have every ship in the tier.... some of which I needed to go back to rank III to get preceding ships in the column for. But once you get past it and get your first BB I imagine it's where you relax a bit more and enjoy the game again.
Does anybody have any idea what the actual warthunder ships population is? I know it is the smallest out of ships, aircraft, tanks etc.
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His videos are certainly entertaining. What is that accent?
Lithuanian.
Some good progress on my British tree. I now have the Orion.
Progress slowed though as some more friends joined me and I had to play 3.3 and eventually 3.7 BR ships with them.
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Check this out for those that may want to play against bots:
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Good reminder of how much fun coastal navy is. (And how bad the initial Italian boat is! Later Italian boats are great though)
There is a free ship grind event shortly
You can get the battleship Baden which will be new to the game in this event. I got the uss Mississipi in a similar event not somlong ago.
https://warthunder.com/en/news/8788-event-earn-sms-baden-in-the-imperial-flagship-event-en?fbclid=IwAR2BYr3Vm0wyNkXkcKI-dxgQr_C8T9J2kGwmAQzYcYtejmjYan5T_zxoEL4_aem_Af5xa_nH3xPUuk6pP1Cu4XcuuTkN40ilZw9I7LEVxZGVaPRLbPJFmWMqPtL-BppoEXk
Holy crap am I learning to hate the
Mutsu. The damned thing one-shots my poor
Hood 50% of the time.
I am finding their is a scourge of Japanese warships in naval right now. I get killed more by Japanese BBs now than the Scharnhorst.
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The new baby. The event ship BADEN. A grind but it's free and fun. What a ride it's been with the new patch though...
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