War Thunder

No, the P-38 is great at taking down bombers, though, and boom'n'zoom attacks on people not paying attention; dive on them, build velocity, shoot the shit out of them on approach, and then use that velocity to get your altitude back.

I'd not put a huge amount of stock in what's currently in tier 5. All of the nations currently covered had early jets, and end-phase prop fighters, that are missing from the game.

The Brits are lacking the Venom/Sea Venom, the Hunter (first flew before the stated cutoff date, but entered service just after, but I think it should get in), Supermarine Attacker, EE Canberra, Hawker Sea Hawk, and the Gloster Javelin. We should also get the Canadair Sabre as a premium plane, since the RAF had almost 500 of them in service.

We're also missing a fair few later British prop planes; the Hawker Sea Fury, the Westland Welkin, Blackburn Firebrand, DH Hornet / Sea Hornet, and the turboprop planes the Westland Wyvern and Fairey Gannet (last questionable since it's 1954 when the announced cutoff was 1953, but we'll see).

I want more countries to have tanks.

And I want the Italians in here. Where are my Italian planes?

What's the point? Italy's equipment was absolutely terrible, to the point where they had to cut back on the amount of metal used to armor their tanks and only had a single working heavy tank during the entire war that didn't even see combat!

Because they had pretty names for everything

The Fiat G.55 and Macchi C.205 "Veltro" were reportedly pretty nice planes, though

edited 12th Jun '14 8:43:06 PM by Glowsquid

The Folgore and couple others are part of the German tree, if that's what you're asking.

Yes, Italian tanks were bad, but that was understandable: Italy doesn't really have land borders with other countries that suit tanks. The elite Italian troops were the mountain regiments, and those were exceptionally good, but Mussolini sent them to back up Hitler on the Eastern Front and got them all killed. Italy did have some nice planes at the start of the war, though they didn't really improve them over the course of the war.

The Italians get a lot of stick for being cowards and useless that they don't really deserve. What it really was that the Italian populace didn't want to go to war; there was nothing in it for them. It was all about Mussolini's ego and the fact that he felt he owed Hitler.

Their tanks were (though not exclusively - the Semovente TDs were pretty good), but their ships and planes were often fairly strong designs. The Zaras, the Littorios, and their submersibles were all let down by bad doctrine or bad use.

Italian planes were excellent, and Italy's best could be fairly be considered some of the best aircraft designs of the war. They were only hamstrung by Italy's inability to even think about competing in the war of production. But there's no way that you can say that the SM.79, the Centauro, the Veltro, the Saggitario, and even the earlier-war Italian designs don't deserve to be in the game. Certainly, and no offense to the Americans, I'd much rather more combat-proven Italian planes than dead-end prototypes like the Ascender.

Other stuff I'd like to see: the IAR-80, the P.108A (with it's tooth-loosening 102mm cannon), the Horten Ho-229, and the Hungarian tanks.

I gather most of these are coming soon^note Or are already in - I've been on a self-imposed exile since I need to upgrade., so when my computer is upgraded...'dis gon' be gud.

Good post. One thing to note is that Rommel used his Italians very badly because he didn't trust them. They also did fairly well at sea despite huge disadvantages, and also fought with the Allies for the latter half of the war, throwing the Germans out of the North of Italy pretty much by themselves.

edited 15th Jun '14 2:01:33 AM by Achaemenid

I want American tanks too. We've got one captured Sherman as a premium thing for the Germans and that's it.

I don't think there's any question that Ground Forces will eventually have Shermans and Pershings along with British, Japanese and, I sincerely hope, French, Italian, and Hungarian tanks. Personally, I'm hoping for the Sentinel, the Turan, the Maresal, and the Centurion. Seeing the mighty IS-8 (and not the crappy, watered-down WOT version) on the Russian tree might also be cool.

Or even, as a Prem or an April Fools giveaway, the Bob Semple Tank.

American tanks are coming; the USA is apparently going to be the next nation added to ground combat mode.

The German-captured Sherman available for money is really a teaser for what's coming, I guess because they finished that model early.

Ground combat mode is still very early-days.

And yes, I'd prefer more effort on giving us planes that actually fought vs. planes that hardly saw combat, though certain things are just too demanded by customers not to provide.

Gaijin seem to be going with the rubric: "if it actually flew, it can be in the game". I actually prefer this approach to Wargaming's fantasy approach from World of Tanks and World of Warplanes, where the German tree in particular is full of stuff that never left the drawing board or, in some cases, even existed.

edited 15th Jun '14 4:50:05 PM by Achaemenid

Nah, give us the Terror Tank

I see your Terror Tank and raise you one Rammtiger◊.

I'd totally love to have some of those ridiculous backyard conversion "tanks", though they should have their own ratings much lower than real stuff. And killing a real tank with them should give you lots of stuffs.

I think Gaijin's "if it flew, it's OK" guideline is sensible because there's a lot of utterly ridiculous stuff that never left the drawing board. Like Vickers' 1943 proposal for a 6-engine canard intercontinental bomber for the RAF. If it flew (or drove, or sailed) then at least it was borderline feasible and had real specifications and there'll be accounts of its actual performance.

I do have to say this game has whinier players than World Of Warcraft.

I never pay much attention to them. I'm too busy being sad that my crews will never quite be up to snuff.

Some of the whining I understand. What's obvious to me is that the game is way more of a hit in AB and RB than SB, and the dev team is focusing their efforts on AB and RB. For the hard-core flight sim fans, I don't think War Thunder is going to devote the resources necessary to make it a great experience.

Balance issues are a constant complaint, but I think that's absolutely inevitable in a game like this. The fact is, the team has to satisfy multiple conflicting demands.

• Historical matchups: people enjoy more fighting against a plane or tank's contemporary opponents.
• Historical performance: people want the plane or tank to behave like the real one.
• Real-life imbalance: Contemporary vehicles may be not equivalent. For example, early on in the Pacific war, Zeroes kicked the butts of their American opponents, and were superior in many respects. Later on, Japanese planes were inferior to those Americans flew, though overall lack of well-trained crews and new planes hurt probably more. Or in tanks, the T-34 overwhelmed most of the contemporary German tanks when it was introduced.
• Rare vehicles: lots of people want them, but many of them were overpowered compared to the common ones of the time, and they threaten the realism of the game if they're too prevalent.
• Desire for even matchups: Hard while keeping in mind all of the above.

Ummm... You might want to define the differences between AB, RB and SB. I think you're referring to "Arcade Battles", "Sim Battles" and such, but I'm not too sure.

"Arcade Battles", "Realistic Battles", "Simulator Battles", going from obviously arcade-y (forgiving, fast-paced) to full-on flight sim (no out of cockpit views, requiring joystick, and an attempt to wholly model the performance and operation requirements of the real planes or tanks).

The common feeling is that SB is being left behind a bit, because it's not where the money and player numbers are. I'd say at least half of all players are AB-only and only a small proportion play SB only.

RB is kind of in the middle, as you might guess; it's more realistic than AB because you don't get lots of lives per game (I think one plane, one tank, but I haven't played it since they started doing mixed battles), you have to take off from an airfield and the only way you get more ammo or bombs is to land and rearm — but its flight model is simplified enough that you can play it with keyboard and mouse.

New patch! Updated ground maps! I like the changes so far. More cover, more hull-down possibilities, more terrain challenges.

I'm only good at using Ground Attack aircraft and Bombers; if it doesn't have any bombs or at least one turret I'm no good in it.

I love the A-20G Havoc, I dun care that it's a lower-tier plane.

Did you know that the Catalinas that survived the war are still in use? Not as military planes of course, they've all been sold off to civilians by now, but they're still transporting people and cargo through the skies at the speed of greased molasses. The fact that a plane nearly a century old, properly maintained, is still a perfectly good alternative to anything newer, makes me feel all warm inside. That is QUALITY my friends. You don't see that anymore. Used to be that when you built something, you built it to be good and you built it to last. Nowadays everyone follows the Bic method of design, cheap and easily disposable.

Want another example? Hewlett-Packard HP-12C Financial Calculator. My mom has had hers since before I was born, still uses it. HP started making them in 1981, they're still making them to this day. Sure, they don't male the shell outta metal anymore, but it's the same damn calculator they we making before the Internet, and it's still a damn fine calculator. Hell, to this day it is the industry standard for those in the financial world. Reverse Polish Notation though, so it's hell for newbies to learn.

Now that is muthafuckin QUALITY.

The game is pretty fun but often baffling. Why can't I view the tech tree when the game is screaming for me to pick something new? Does it bother explaining anything about how research and the hangar function? It's fun being laughed at as "the World of Tanks potato" because I can't figure out how to sell an unwanted tank and free up a slot for something new. Because of course, logically, you can send a biplane "to holiday" and then for a thousand bucks teach its one man crew to be four men in a tank.

It's bizarre having a bunch of really incompetent bot tanks around, especially because I think they were nerfed so they can't wipe out players. I've driven straight into a bot tank with minimal damage, pulled around it and shot into it's rear and it doesn't attempt any defensive maneuvering. Meanwhile, I'm lobbing shells at player hatches, periscopes, machine gun mounts, engine grills, anything that looks like a weak spot and doing nothing to the enemy tank—only to get completely one-shot by a shell fired at the front corner of my hull.

I was having a great game on my T-26 until my engine was hit, leaving me crippled and immobile in an area we had just won. So there I was, completely stuck, with no way to repair, and nothing to do because the fighting was five minutes away elsewhere on the map. So I just went afk until the match ended, dropping from first place to fifth on the team when it was done. Very exciting.

Another game I was the top scoring player because I drove into the point and captured it by myself. And that's all that happened that game. I was too far to kill the enemy objectives. I didn't see a single other player until the match had ended: with 30 seconds left on the clock, I stopped defending the hill with the point, drove down a random road and saw my first enemy and ally at the same time. After the game had ended and it was doing its post-game calculating / wrap-up / whatever before dumping us back to the hangar.

Really enjoying the game...if I'm allowed to do something.

What I don't like is their desperate shilling of their microtransactions. In WoT, 5% of all experience earned on a tank is tossed into a universal pile you can spend on anything. It seems that War Thunder sticks half of my rewards behind a paywall, while screaming about how I can be making twice as much if I pay them.

edited 26th Jun '14 11:06:52 AM by Rotpar

Just as a note if you get disabled again, you can hold "J" to bail out of your current tank/plane.