I am a WWII nerd who is interested in all things military. If anyone else is a fan of a game involving tanks, you should check out war thunder. But if anyone is already playing it, do you have advice you can share?
War Thunder - WWII-Vietnam war Era tank and air battle game
- Thread starter King Kong... with wings?
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Don't play it is mine. Do yourself a favor and buy a flight stick and Il-2 Stormovik 1946 if you're into planes
Kinda curious why you say dont play it though.
It's a free to play with obvious balancing and matchmaking issues and if you really like planes you need to get a real sim.
Il2
liffs of Dover (with mods),il
battle of Stalingrad are excellent modern ones, if you can't run them properly, try il 2:46 with its 600 flyable planes and all the theaters of ww2(finland,the Pacific,eastern front,western front , Italy) also dynamic campaign is awesome.
It's a free to play with obvious balancing and matchmaking issues and if you really like planes you need to get a real sim.
Il2
To be honest, I play the game and I never saw much of the issues you mentioned. The "Russian bias" that is being complained about comes from people being upset about losing and trying to make any other excuse for why they lost. Another issue is because there are 3 settings:
Arcade which is less realistic than others with you able to see both enemies and allies on the map, tanks move faster and turn their guns faster. Aircraft controls are simplified as well as physics and damage and you don't have to land when ammunition such as bombs or MG ammo is expanded. You can play any faction for both tank and air battles.
Realistic mode means the tanks don't accelerate as rapidly and the guns rotate more realistically (slowly) with the maps being larger than arcade mode and you can only play as a certain faction depending on the map (one team plays Germany, the other USSR if the map was Stalingrad or Eastern Europe) This is similar in Realistic AB where where two teams are differing factions such as USA vs Japan during Pearl Harbor or Battle of Midway.Planes need to land to reload bombs, rockets and mg ammo
Simulator mode is the hardest with view being restricted to first person and you have to control all functions such as changing gears for transmission in a tank and using the elevators to land and take off in aircraft.
Because people are lazy or inexperienced, they play the arcade mode and because they play just that, they think the game is unrealistic or biased towards a certain faction.
Even on simulator mode, the physics and air dynamics are extremely simplified compared to other flight games.
DCS for example, has a flight model that calculates fluids like fuel and hydraulics sloshing around the airframe,affecting performance.
Warthunder is fun,but is not realistic and the crappy matchmaking puts me-262s vs Korean war aircraft or Sherman's fighting t-44s.
I see. i do enjoy the game however
I invested hundreds of hours into this game from closed beta until one year ago, and I recommend not to play it. I only played in Realistic and Simulator Battles, got all the way up to fully upgraded top jets in aircraft (Meteors, F-86 F-2 Sabre, CL-13 Canadair, and MiG-15bis) and in tanks I got all the way to post-war models like T-54s and the American ones (I forget the name).
The aircraft maps in Realistic and Simulator modes are too small, especially for jets, where every pursuit runs into a map boundary within minutes. Meta-game always favored fast climbing interceptors in props and jets are dominated by whoever has max speed. Especially in Realistic mode, it is almost impossible to ambush anyone because it's so easy to have 100% situational awareness due to 3rd person camera, so outcome of battles is determined by teamwork (aka which team has the most 4 man rape squads) and energy (aka whoever makes the fewest mistakes in energy management). Match making is terrible, such that the team with more vehicles from the top end of the MM bracket has excessive advantage.
Tanks in Realistic and Simulator is much less formulaic and victory more dependent on chance than aircraft, as it is almost impossible to have 100% situational awareness in the ground battles. But there are still many cheap, game breaking tactics viable, like spawn camping behind the enemy, and many of the maps are garbage CQC urban fights or have no overhead cover from air attack. For sure it's more fun than World of Tanks, but if I'm going to get rape from the air by ground attackers after spending 7 min driving from spawn to front, might as well make it a full combined arms gameplay like Red Orchestra so at least you don't have to go into urban fights totally blind.
Due to nature of the game, aiming for realism in vehicle specifications/operation and nationality-based team composition, gameplay will by its very nature be unbalanced. However, they make the victory conditions, map balance, and team size based on presupposition that both teams are going to be equal in all respects, which they aren't, so it feels cheap when your team was obviously disadvantaged by MM, but there is no handicap to soften the blow. So the most enjoyable part of the game were the special Events in Realistic and Simulator battles, because they are intentionally set up to be unequal, but with victory conditions and gameplay mechanics (ie vehicle spawns, team size) that are adjusted to that limitation. But the special events are so rare and infrequent, rarely taking advantage of the end-game jets and tanks, so I ended up most of the time in normal realistic and simulator battles, derping around in biplanes and those crappy interwar armored cars because the high performance vehicle combat is so unsatisfying due to MM and team balance.
Now if I want to play tanks, I play Red Orchestra, and if I want to do flight sim, I do proper flight sim.
The aircraft maps in Realistic and Simulator modes are too small, especially for jets, where every pursuit runs into a map boundary within minutes. Meta-game always favored fast climbing interceptors in props and jets are dominated by whoever has max speed. Especially in Realistic mode, it is almost impossible to ambush anyone because it's so easy to have 100% situational awareness due to 3rd person camera, so outcome of battles is determined by teamwork (aka which team has the most 4 man rape squads) and energy (aka whoever makes the fewest mistakes in energy management). Match making is terrible, such that the team with more vehicles from the top end of the MM bracket has excessive advantage.
Tanks in Realistic and Simulator is much less formulaic and victory more dependent on chance than aircraft, as it is almost impossible to have 100% situational awareness in the ground battles. But there are still many cheap, game breaking tactics viable, like spawn camping behind the enemy, and many of the maps are garbage CQC urban fights or have no overhead cover from air attack. For sure it's more fun than World of Tanks, but if I'm going to get rape from the air by ground attackers after spending 7 min driving from spawn to front, might as well make it a full combined arms gameplay like Red Orchestra so at least you don't have to go into urban fights totally blind.
Due to nature of the game, aiming for realism in vehicle specifications/operation and nationality-based team composition, gameplay will by its very nature be unbalanced. However, they make the victory conditions, map balance, and team size based on presupposition that both teams are going to be equal in all respects, which they aren't, so it feels cheap when your team was obviously disadvantaged by MM, but there is no handicap to soften the blow. So the most enjoyable part of the game were the special Events in Realistic and Simulator battles, because they are intentionally set up to be unequal, but with victory conditions and gameplay mechanics (ie vehicle spawns, team size) that are adjusted to that limitation. But the special events are so rare and infrequent, rarely taking advantage of the end-game jets and tanks, so I ended up most of the time in normal realistic and simulator battles, derping around in biplanes and those crappy interwar armored cars because the high performance vehicle combat is so unsatisfying due to MM and team balance.
Now if I want to play tanks, I play Red Orchestra, and if I want to do flight sim, I do proper flight sim.
I'm also pretty sure if you don't fork 150$ +80$ for a trackIR+a decent hotas joystick you will be also fucked in sim battles
- Highlight
- #10
Apparently some guys learned to become very skilled with mouse and keyboard in WT's sim battles, but I found it very difficult to successfully do anything other than dive bombing and intercepting bombers. Since most of the people playing WT are Slav or Brasilian poorfags (I used to be in Brasilian poorfag jet clan lol), they rarely play aircraft sim battles, so it takes 30 min for enough people to get in queue for a sim battle to start.
And I know it might seem like I'm just shitting all over the game (I sort of am), but I really had high hopes for WT since the beta days, enough to invest 12 USD and many hours into it, but eventually my enthusiasm for the game hardened into bitter cynicism. In the early days, when there was only aircraft, it seemed like the best thing that ever happened to the f2p vehicle MMO combat, and when tanks became released and improved, it really was superior to World of Tanks. Back then I really tried to help them improve quality of game, sharing some aircraft documentation to correct modeling errors, participating in community content creation (2 of the art decals in-game are credited to me). But development team settled into this frustrating cycle of alternately improving and breaking the game with every subsequent patch, and eventually it was just too much bs to put up with. They earning so much money from premium purchases and have no real competition in f2p flight sim area that there is little incentive for them to improve the product.
I love my Catalina. Great, versatile bomber you can mount anything on. Torpedoes, bombs, it can take on most surface targets with ease.
TDB-1 is fun to play, and if you can get the better of your attackers in maneuver, your turret will destroy the enemy.
TDB-1 is fun to play, and if you can get the better of your attackers in maneuver, your turret will destroy the enemy.
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SoylentGreen
kiwifarms.net
I love this game when it works. If it ever faced the slightest bit of competition it would collapse instantly and everyone would leave to it. The devs don't listen to the players and will censor posts because the only other thing to play is world of tanks which is even worse. Not to mention the ridiculous shots like a 120mm shell bouncing off the armour of a lightly armoured AA vehicle, which is the vehicle equivelant of a bullet ricocheting off a cigarette case.
Hot take : Gaijin adding ground forces is what began the decline of War Thunder. I've been playing since beta, way before it was on steam, when the devs actually tried to make a compelling WWII dog fight game. After GF, it just turned into how much money they can milk from their players.
And yes, IL-2 is a way better game and simulation, however Historical / Realistic Battles were great for some semblance of realism without needing a HOTAS set-up.
And yes, IL-2 is a way better game and simulation, however Historical / Realistic Battles were great for some semblance of realism without needing a HOTAS set-up.
Aidan
kiwifarms.net
Disagree on that being where things started slipping, ground forces was fine at first and for years. They did make the grind worse than planes, but I think that's because they realized planes, at that time, was "too fast" (it was reasonable imo) and maybe around 2016 or so something shifted and and they started going hard for people paying money so they made the grind worse. Focused on higher battleratings, and made the game nigh unplayable without paying at least some money to either skip the grind or pay for ingame currency.
In both tanks and planes you lose players after WW2 era and there's multiple reasons for that, and gaijin, in their infinite retardation, are unable to realize why this is and instead keep piling on things to make it worse. That has nothing to do with the tanks imo and just gaijin being dumb. It doesn't help that the community they witness the most on their own forums and subreddit is equally retarded and are detrimental to the game as a whole.
ps i quit some time ago so idk what it's like now, but I would bet everything it hasn't improved one bit
I always thought it went to shit when the bombs on many bombers were nerfed. This was before the era of battle ratings. Game was decent to play and fun at lower tiers as well. The grind is though worse than World of Tanks who have kept their stuff simple.
I remember that bomb nerf when the blast radius was reduced to like 50 meters, it was ridiculous. I always thought they could have solved the bomber issue players had by limiting the amount of bombers per match, that way you don't spawn into a game with 8 B-25s.
Aidan
kiwifarms.net
I forgot about that, but I know bombing went from "hey this is something I can do and actually enjoy" to "why would i ever play as a bomber?"
Most of my countries I ended up researching fighters only because the early bomb grind was hell.
I played for years but never paid for any golden eagles and never got a jet. I was 1 plane away but by then I just didn't care, WW2 planes is where it's at.
Someone did the math on some of the grind and it's impossible to unlock multiple full trees without playing for years and paying absurd amounts of actual money. This is especially true for ground forces where the grind gets absolutely absurd in the WW2 era, along with repair costs in some cases.
It's like gaijin has a team dedicated to hating fun and they work around the clock. If the game isn't fun then people will pay for golden eagles to skip that content, naturally. R-right?
Most of my countries I ended up researching fighters only because the early bomb grind was hell.
I played for years but never paid for any golden eagles and never got a jet. I was 1 plane away but by then I just didn't care, WW2 planes is where it's at.
Someone did the math on some of the grind and it's impossible to unlock multiple full trees without playing for years and paying absurd amounts of actual money. This is especially true for ground forces where the grind gets absolutely absurd in the WW2 era, along with repair costs in some cases.
It's like gaijin has a team dedicated to hating fun and they work around the clock. If the game isn't fun then people will pay for golden eagles to skip that content, naturally. R-right?
I've been playing for years, I own a couple early package planes and I've maybe bought premium two or three times for less than a years worth of time.
I only have jets in three countries though, 2.0-3.3 is the gameplay sweet spot imo but jets can be fun with friends.
I only have jets in three countries though, 2.0-3.3 is the gameplay sweet spot imo but jets can be fun with friends.
I stopped playing about 4 years ago. At that time, the F-86F-2 was the king of jets, and I spent many hours pubstomping MiGs and other lesser jets with 4-man F-86F-2 "rape squads". Dicking around in high tier jets was alright for me since by then I had accumulated many years of in-game currency during the "good economy patch" times to cover the exorbitant repair costs, but I know for other players the high tier jet matches could often be nerve wracking and stressful since the repair costs were so steep when economy was broken and it took so many matches to turn a godawful stock jet into a fully upgraded jet. The worst thing about jets was the grind to turn it from a stock flying brick into a properly competitive upgraded machine. As bad as the ground vehicles' grind for fire extinguisher.
For all the limitations of the map design and metagame, the immense exhilaration of a good jet match was only exceeded in its intensity by the biting disappointment of an awful jet match.
But I think the most consistent enjoyment I got out of the game was in those special multiplayer scenario missions where they made multiplayer balancing completely secondary to historical matchups and combat conditions. Like that "Defense of the Reich" bomber interception/escort mission where the American fighters would spawn at altitude and have to guard the AI B-17s from German interceptors. Or the one where a horde of P-51s would be pitted against a handful Me 262s. Those kinds of missions broke the staleness of the highly artificial and contrived "climb to altitude and intercept ASAP" deathmatch metagame in the regular multiplayer. And the "balance" was provided by longer wait times for players queuing up for the "favored" side in the matchup, which i thought was a fair exchange.
In the regular multiplayer, I got a lot of enjoyment out of shit-tier biplane and floatplane matches. The slower speed made the scale of the claustrophobic maps feel much bigger and roomier, and the gunfights between turn-fighting rifle-caliber peashooters would be bitterly contested and drawn out battles of attrition, instead of the high deflection, 2000 kph closing speed, snapshot millisecond instant-kill combats like in cannon-armed jets. Very refreshing change of pace.
For all the limitations of the map design and metagame, the immense exhilaration of a good jet match was only exceeded in its intensity by the biting disappointment of an awful jet match.
But I think the most consistent enjoyment I got out of the game was in those special multiplayer scenario missions where they made multiplayer balancing completely secondary to historical matchups and combat conditions. Like that "Defense of the Reich" bomber interception/escort mission where the American fighters would spawn at altitude and have to guard the AI B-17s from German interceptors. Or the one where a horde of P-51s would be pitted against a handful Me 262s. Those kinds of missions broke the staleness of the highly artificial and contrived "climb to altitude and intercept ASAP" deathmatch metagame in the regular multiplayer. And the "balance" was provided by longer wait times for players queuing up for the "favored" side in the matchup, which i thought was a fair exchange.
In the regular multiplayer, I got a lot of enjoyment out of shit-tier biplane and floatplane matches. The slower speed made the scale of the claustrophobic maps feel much bigger and roomier, and the gunfights between turn-fighting rifle-caliber peashooters would be bitterly contested and drawn out battles of attrition, instead of the high deflection, 2000 kph closing speed, snapshot millisecond instant-kill combats like in cannon-armed jets. Very refreshing change of pace.
I keep coming back to this game like a serially abused spouse, just because there's no good alternative out there. World of Tanks is just as royally fucked up when it comes to balance choices and power creep (get the T110E5 some radiotherapy for that tumor and then we can talk, Wargaming), and Armored Warfare is all about modern vehicles, and the devs recently made their own terrible balance patch that solves nothing and just standardizes all vehicles in a class. That said, the forums have been in a constant uproar for the past few weeks over the terrible decisions Gaijin has made, such as HEAT-FS as stock round for MBT's when composite armor and ERA are standard and the absolutely dogshit post-war and even late-war balance that's been an issue for ages where Panthers and KT's get to shit on everything and IS-2's get to laugh at your rounds because people who play Germany whine when they can't just lolclick a Sherman and Russians get ass-mad when their tanks are forced to deal with counters specifically developed against those tanks.
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