War Thunder Thread

[Dread Rlyeh]

One thing I've just learned is to not overlook the leadership skill.  It's relatively cheap and I know it reduces loading time which is the most important thing you can improve.  It used to be broken, so most of my crews didn't have many points in it, but it is certainly working now.  I'm probably going to max that before loading as it's cheaper and presumably alters repair at the same time.  Best thing I've found is to just get the qualification though.  That +30 boost to loading, repair, leadership is amazing if you can afford it.   

[endfire79]

Agreed.  First skill I dump points on (leadership), and the expert qualification.

[W8taminute]

Vitality, leadership, and getting crews qualified on equipment.  I've got to rethink my crew xp spending habits. 

[Nefaro]

I LOL'd pretty damn hard at this compilation vid from 'Orange Doom':

Now I'm gonna hear that every time some dickbag rams or team-shoots me. 

[Nefaro]

Someone on another forum asked me for tips on transitioning from War Thunder Air Forces Arcade Battles to Realistic Battles.

Figured I'd post this here, too.  Prepare to be crit'd with Wall Of Text:


Make sure your elevators and ailerons mapped to easily reached keys for Realistic Battles, so you can hold them down for stretches if needed.  I mapped mine to WASD.  You can turn a bit faster when holding the elevators, and you will need to learn to use them for rolling in defensive situations.  Same could be said for Arcade but it's even more imperative with RB since you can't turn nearly as quickly.  It won't be as precise as using your mouse to turn but you will need to "pour it on" sometimes so learning to use pitch & roll with keyboard keys is needed.  I used these WASD keys in hard turns & rolls, and then I use the mouse for finer movement/aiming.  So there will be a mix of both.


Manual Aileron & Elevator will also stop the occasional "rudder wobbling" which the AI Instructor will start doing with some aircraft in a turn (most notably German fighters).  The "Instructor" is the AI code that translates your mouse movement into control surface combinations, and since each plane's flight model is different, sometimes it goes a bit nuts whipping the rudder back & forth in RB.  I wish they'd fix that stuff but until then, when it starts happening, use the control surface keys.


Remember to use Flaps during low speed turning in RB, or when firing at low speed and your nose is 'wobbling' too much (for steadying).  I still don't always remember to do this, but it will definitely improve both your turn rate and stability when you're approaching stall speed (and, of course, often gives you more time before stalling).


Likewise, whenever you get a Jet, you will need to use your Airbrakes.  So have those handily mapped too.  You can overspeed/over-G and snap off wings in RB.  Every plane has it's limits, you'll just have to find them for each whilst flying them.  Even prop planes can snap wings, usually pulling out of a long dive, but most don't have airbrakes except some dive bombers.


The flight modelling will seem weird at first, but you'll get used to it and will likely come to prefer it after awhile since it provides a much better energy model.  So it makes the vertical & energy fight more important, as it should be.  Try not to get caught slow, as you're an easy target.  Speed/Altitude is life, so hoard it when you can.


If you're in a fighter, climb as much as you can after taking off, and try to stay near support.  You only have one life in RB matches so fly smart and get every advantage you can before getting into a fight.  Keep your friends close and use them to clear your tail.

Likewise, get good at your gunnery.  You have limited ammo and must RTB to reload/refuel/rearm.  Make your shots count.  I'd even suggest setting up a test flight, in any aircraft model you've not flown in RB before, zoom in and watch where the arc of your tracers fall in relation to your gunsight.  That will help you most with head-ons, even though I recommend avoiding those when you can.  Ammo types and the gun improvement that reduces your bullet spread can be pretty helpful.  For air-to-air, belts with a good amount of Fragmentation rounds is good for cannon, while Incendiaries are good for MGs.

Fuel needs to be taken into account too.  Some planes can carry as low as 10 or 15 minutes worth of fuel, which is nice for an extra tiny bit of agility, but many of the matches run longer than that.  If you find yourself alive after that time, it's usually down to very few aircraft on each side and the enemy team will often stalk your airbase to wait for anyone who took such a low fuel level to come back for a landing on fumes.  Easy kill.  I generally take 30 minutes of fuel so I don't have to land in the middle unless I'm out of ammo or severely damaged and the airfield is clear.


You REALLY need to play as a team in RB mode.  Luckily this can be half-assed in the pick-up games.  If you're in trouble, with someone on your six, do your best to drag them toward friendlies while you're rolling & dodging bullets.  They'll be more than happy to pounce on them, sometimes in large numbers.  After doing it enough, you'll also learn how to best set up your pursuer(s) for easier shots from your buddies.  This isn't anything different from Arcade, in practice, but since you only have one life per match it's all the more important in RB.


Just don't be discouraged after your initial transition to Realistic Battles.  Many things will be different, more difficult, and take some time to get used to, but I think it's far more rewarding once you do. 


Lastly.. watch a few YouTube vids on people flying in RB to see their tactics, if you get a little spare time in between.  Don't focus on their maneuvers, but what they're doing in relation to enemy planes and their teammates around them.  It's as much a team strategy game as a lite flight sim.

[Dammit Carl!]

Playing ground forces like I do, I dump my points into loader ("OH GOD, HURRYHURRYHURRY,") gunner ("check..got this,") leadership ("hmmm..thanks to me you all do better [waves magic wand]) in pretty much that order.  I've also started dumping vitality points into the radio operator as he is probably the poor sod who get to scrape the remnants of the gunner or driver out of the way and take their place once the inevitable job opening occurs and it pays to have healthy back-up in place, eh?

p.s. I drive the AA halftrack (quad .50s for lyfe, yo) around pell-mell and sing the Dukes of Hazzard theme song at the same time so you can guess how mad my skillz are here - so, "grain of salt," with my advice and all of that...

[Staggerwing]

Every time I click on this thread (or even try to post to it) my browser downloads a file called 'J3SHN4_EsJ4' with no known association for the computer. This is all without actually clicking on any links. I noticed Nefaro's post that seemed to reference a 'compilation'. Coincidentally, there is a war thunder youtube vid somewhere with this name but the file does not open to that youtube page. Also, there is no in-post link anywhere that I am clicking on to make this happen. Is this some weird forum bug? Is this some new form of youtube-related malware? The download happens even with a page refresh.  ???

BTW, this is in Safari. I'll check later in Chrome but I just reformatted and reinstalled my OS so have not gotten other browsers loaded yet.

[W8taminute]

Really great tips Nefaro, thanks for sharing.  I like the mapping of the elevators and ailerons tip.  Never even thought of that before.

[Nefaro]

Every time I click on this thread (or even try to post to it) my browser downloads a file called 'J3SHN4_EsJ4' with no known association for the computer. This is all without actually clicking on any links. I noticed Nefaro's post that seemed to reference a 'compilation'. Coincidentally, there is a war thunder youtube vid somewhere with this name but the file does not open to that youtube page. Also, there is no in-post link anywhere that I am clicking on to make this happen. Is this some weird forum bug? Is this some new form of youtube-related malware? The download happens even with a page refresh.  ???

BTW, this is in Safari. I'll check later in Chrome but I just reformatted and reinstalled my OS so have not gotten other browsers loaded yet.

I posted a Youtube vid on this page, with the YT forum tags.  I'm guessing Safari is bugging about it?  *shrug*  Shows up fine on my Firefox.  Which isn't to say Firefox has it's own issues with some things.

Really great tips Nefaro, thanks for sharing.  I like the mapping of the elevators and ailerons tip.  Never even thought of that before.

Thanks W8!  You definitely need to use those manually, in hard turns and defensive maneuvers, for Realistic Battles.  Ideally, you'd get pretty good at using them at the same time as you're using mouselook to watch the guy on your tail, to better time your rolls to avoid his fire.  But I'm still not terribly good at that (as you may be able to see from my YT dogfight vids where I still tend to look forward & roll while being fired at).

[W8taminute]

Yes being able to look backwards whilst rolling and turning is key to surviving someone on your six.  I gotta try this method out.  Now that you mention it I do recall noticing how shallow turns are in RB when using just the mouse. 

[Nefaro]

Yes being able to look backwards whilst rolling and turning is key to surviving someone on your six.  I gotta try this method out.  Now that you mention it I do recall noticing how shallow turns are in RB when using just the mouse.

The turns will still be slow and bleed off your energy to varying degrees, depending on what you're flying, but using the manual keyboard keys does a slightly better job.

[Nefaro]

Orange Doom put out another one in the hilarious "Thug Life" vid compilation.   

Warning:  Language

[Nefaro]

New Awesome Game Mode!

Running this weekend for Realistic and Sim Air Battles.  Soviet vs Japan, all tiers and BRs.

I just jacked around in a Tier I match for a bit to get a feel for it.  This looks to be my new favorite game mode for these types of MMOs. 



<Pretty much unending fighting & bombing on a big map.  Take off, comm with teammates, find & kill/bomb enemies, RTB and do it again.   8)  >

From 15.00 GMT on November 12th until 09.00 GMT on November 16th
"Enduring Confrontation" (RB/SB) is available!

    Five events with different Battle Ratings are available:
        1.0 - 2.0
        2.0 - 3.3
        3.3 - 4.7
        4.7 - 6.3
        6.3 - 9.0
    For your first aircraft to fly out in a session, you may only choose aircraft with the lowest BR for the given game session or those 0.3 or 0.7 points above the minimum (e.g if the Battle Rating for the session is 2.3 - 4.3, you may only choose an aircraft with a BR of 2.3, 2.7 or 3.0 for the first flyout).
    If all of the vehicles in your lineup come with higher BR than minimally acceptable for the session,  you will be given a vehicle with minimal available BR, but without any upgraded modules or crew.

http://warthunder.com/en/news/3419-development-test-of-enduring-confrontation-en

[Nefaro]

This new mode they're testing is extremely addictive.  Finally an RB mode where the battle just continues permanently on, and you can join/quit whenever since rewards are given instantly. 

I hope they add this as a permanet game mode with all the nations available.  Which is the plan AFAIK.  Just doing some open testing I suppose.  The Silver Lions gain needs to be a higher IMO, but the Research bonus is quite large.

It's the first mode I've seen Bombers actually needed.  Even asked for when not enough are flying them.  The fighters even escort them to the target.  O0


In addition, I just had one of my longest WT dogfights in a LaGG-3 vs Japanese J2M.  Low & slow scissor fight on the deck.  It was brutal.  I had to squeeze every bit out of my damaged Lavochkin.  Saved the replay so I definitely need to upload the vid to YT sometime soon.  8)

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I went hunting Pe-8s in my Ki-102.  That 57mm cannon really rips them up.  Very rare that they'd have fighter cover and I never saw them flying in formation.  I think that's one of the drawbacks of this mode is that it's hard to coordinate a bombing run when people are just popping in and out whenever they please.

I think I might give the oblique cannons on the Ki-45 a whirl and see if I can catch some bombers off their guard.