f13.net

Kind of like what World of Warplanes should have been, another Russian developer has this (http://warthunder.com/) in open beta now. Servers should be up for the same regions as WoT has them up afaik.

What I love about this game:
-Arcade mode
-mouse and keyboard control like Freelancer had

If you liked World of Tanks and like planes - you'll love this!

They also seem to be planning on incorporating ground and naval based player controlled units somewhere in the future. We'll see about that....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqAngrcO80

I downloaded it last night and it gave it a spin, did a couple tutorials and jumped into an arcade battle.  I like it so far, still have no clue about researching new planes and skilling up pilots but so far it seems like something I'll keep playing.

I really like this game.  Arcade mode is very playable with keyboard and mouse, it has proper damage modelling so there are no HP bars to whittle down & it doesn't force you to fly planes you hate to progress a la World of Tanks because you level up your nation rather than individual planes.

That may be because it's so different in that aspect to WoT.
1st difference: you don't research any plane, you research a new tier as a whole. So once you are tier 1, ALL tier 1 planes can be bought immediately, be it bombers or fighters and independent of what you achieved the unlock with.
2nd difference: when buying an additional "slot", what you actually do is buy another "crew". And that costs much more than the actual planes - at least in the beginning. So what you can do, is just move an existing crew into the new plane. Your crew will never unlearn flying the just swapped-out plane though and will keep all the XP for that plane.
3rd difference: All XP gathered in a battle/mission is moved to the overall XP needed to progress to the next tier. HOWEVER- this overall XP is split to individual crews based on how well you performed with the plane they were sitting in. You can see those XP values via mouse-over in the mission report screen.

Thanks, that helps.  Also I skipped around the video posted above and it cleared up some of the individual crew stuff and economics.

Who the hell are you people with no avatars?
You scare me.

I may get around to finding one in honor of my 10th anniversary on this site in June.

Something else about this game I just love especially when knowing the way WoT handles stuff like this:

You unlock camouflage and decals for your planes as you go along. While you can switch your camo literally on the fly, right before you hop into you plane, decals can be out all over the plane with complete freedom as to size and rotation. There are some pretty sweet looking planes out there.

I tried signing up this morning. The signup page only asks for a nickname, email, and CAPTCHA so I assume they must e-mail you a password. That e-mail did not arrive so after a half hour I went to the war thunder website and requested a password reset. If I make a address with random letters @ my provider it says the address is unknown. If I type in my real address it says it sent a reset e-mail but that e-mail also does not arrive. After another half hour I tried doing the reset through the yuplay site which also says it sends an e-mail but it also does not arrive. Any messages my provider thinks are spam get put into a special folder but the e-mails are not showing up in it either.

Yeah, their signup seems to be broken from time to time. Friend of mine had to wait a day from his first signup attempt until it worked properly. Worth the wait though!

Still not working. Have requested a reset every day.

Sounds like a problem with your e-mail then, provider related or not. Don't you have some secondary e-mail address available?

Unless they have the provider black listed and lie every time they say have sent a reset e-mail I don't understand what the problem can be. I sent an e-mail Monday morning to one of the devs that posted an address on the boards but have not heard back. The post was in response to a person having the exact same problem I am.

They said when I signed up if I did not log in within 2 days the account would be deleted. That is a lie too because the e-mail address is still valid to type in for a reset and the nickname is still taken for trying to sign up with a different e-mail address.

Signed up last night, just played my first match. Gmail dumped their confirmation email into my spam folder. I like so far.

This morning my nickname was cleared and I signed up and got e-mail immediately. I used an e-mail address that is actually the same provider but but has different domain name. Provider gives these extra e-mail addresses to manage spammers or be unanimous because real address has part of real name in it.

Edit: Yes that should have been anonymous. I had the wrong spelling and then chose the wrong word from the suggested spellings.

Anonymous? (In before Trippy!)

What, what?

I'll have to give this a try and see how it compares to another multiplayer air combat game I've been "playing". 

I don't much care about air combat games but I did become an alpha/beta tester for another flying game.  Then one day I took this out for a spin.  Since I created my WT account I haven't logged in to any other air combat game.

Does this game utilize rudder control sticks and is there sufficient speed bleed to avoid turning contests?

The flight models change based on which game type you pick (arcade is far less simmy, with regenerating ammo and other such things). My main complaint with this otherwise nice game is that matchmaking does not appear to be implemented yet. So there is a "reserve" tier where you fly rank 0 planes with other people in the same, and then there is "everything else" where your biplane gets to fight high altitude jet bombers.

If they fix that, it would make the game far more playable. But as is, I don't think they have the active playerbase to tier things properly yet. And without tiering things properly, they'll never get a very active playerbase.

This. Unless you get to play on the RU server, the matchmaking can be quite shaky. Granted, it's Beta and not a whole lot of people know about it yet in the EU and US server zones. Given the different play options (SP campaign, arcade, realistic, ...) I'd say they covered pretty much every potential customer out there so just like WoT, it'll pick up.


They (claim to) support everything from mouse+keyboard over gamepads to full-on joystick+rudder pedals+throttle control + headtracking setups. As for turning contests- while the flight model is very simple in arcade, you won't perform well at all if you don't play to the strengths of your planes.

Gonna try this out. The videos look pretty sweet!

Downloaded this overnight. Been in the World of Warplanes beta for ages, but have never tried it (word of mouth has kept me from bothering). This sounds a bit more promising.

I need to give this a try.  I want to see how it compares to  :nda:

The most difficult aspect of these flight games is that they struggle to find balance between sim and arcade.  If you get too arcade, you can dominate matches by exploiting problems with the flight physics.  If they are too sim, then the learning curve gets too steep for people to hop in and enjoy. 

Well I think they solved that quite well. If you're new to flight sims, just want a fast paced pew-pew dogfight - go arcade! Gathered some experience or are kind of a simhead? Jump into the Historical Battles and see what it's like aiming without the lead-indicator and being able to blow your own wings of by flying to fast. Still not enough? Go full on Realistic mode!

Best thing is: you get far more XP and credits in Historical Battles than in arcade ones so it actually pays off techtree-wise!

Did I mention that I love this game? It's awesome...

If this is true, then I really need to find the time to give this game a shot.

It's true, however most of the action is in arcade battles so you can wait a few minutes for a battle to pop and there is no respawn option in Historical or Realistic.  If you get shot down or crash you can stick around and watch the battles or jump out and queue for another battle, also there doesn't seem to be any locking so don't have to wait for a battle to end to fly the same plane again.

Played this for a couple of hours last night...had a blast. Worked my way up to a Hurricane and Blenheim on the Brit tree, and trained my pilot and gunners up a bit. Only got 1 game in with the Hurricane, but holy crap what a difference from the biplanes!

I keep playing a round or two. It has a lot of promise, the only real issue I have is with the matchmaking choices. Basically if it has a small pool of players, it would rather make a shit match than make people wait. I sort of get the idea, but I spent a lot of time in completely unwinnable matches.

I absolutely love the instant information with XP earning, and the bonus XP for shit like landing your engineless plane safely.

Does it allow grouping yet? Haven't gotten that far into all the options. That would help make battles a little more survivable.

Squads are in, yes. I think you need to have a premium account to invite more than 2 people (or have more than 2 people?) to a squad.

I've been playing this all week it's really cool, the arcade mode is fun especially with a squad. The initial curve was quite tricky for me, lost a lot of planes to stupid things like trying to land, stalling your engine etc.

Basic things that may help people starting out. These mainly apply to fighter class.

• Don't train gunner skills for single cockpit planes, these only affect turret gunners. Do train them a little bit to get the qualification boost, but not as much as I did.
• Don't chase stragglers towards their spawn in the early stages of a match, if you see someone on other team doing this he's yours.
• Watch out for the furball in the center of the map, only enter this when you know what you are doing.
• Beaufighters mean business, do not play chicken with them !
• Fly Beaufighters and play chicken with other people it's hilarious
• If you are tailing a plane, be prepared to shut down your engine so you can finish him off. Only do this when losing energy won't leave you prone.
• Landing: Right before the strip shut engine off and pull back hard to lose speed quickly, make sure you are at least under 300kmh preferably 250kmh before touchdown. When on the ground apply brakes and zig-zag.

Try these basic tactics starting out.

• Defend the base from bombers or defend the airstrip if it is taken.
• If you see one of your team being tailed, get in there and help out.
• Look for stragglers near your base and try get behind them.

Ad 1) Don't do this. Energy = win. Shutting down your engine makes you lose energy for no reason. If you are about to overshoot, pull up and trade speed for height and then drop down on your prey again. It's hardly ever worth it to lose all the energy for just a killshot. Also, use your flaps. When engaging in a dog fight, get the flaps down (press F) and get them up again when you try to gain speed.

Ad 2) Zig-zag in the air using your rudders to burn speed before hand. Works better than pulling up dramatically.

If it guarantees a kill then that's a reason right? But yeah I should have stated you should probably only use this when you are 1v1 or in a have to kill situation. Like a lot of things it's quite situational.

Weird, Ive tried zig zagging and pulling back, I find pulling back bleeds a lot more speed especially when the engine is off. A mixture of both would be optimal. Pulling back is a good starting point for beginners cause you still get to hold your line which can be tricky at first. Oh and don't do this at low speeds you will nosedive ;)

Funny how this works...first couple dozen matches I was pretty lost, just kind of learning how the game works (I am still fuzzy on a lot of it). Then something clicked. I am far more situationally aware now, I am very tough to shake once I am on your tail, and I am racking up kills and points in my bombers like a madman. Haven't topped the leaderboard in score yet, but have come 2nd about 10 times (there is always 1 guy in a super high tier plane that kicks the shit out of everyone, it seems). I am having a blast. It is a perfect change of pace from World of Tanks- dive in and get some crazy furball action instead of being patient and careful all the time  :grin:

The ability to bring multiple planes is really what makes this fun. There's no "fuck, I can't be out of position or take any risks" feeling, because the risk doesn't mean you're completely out of the game.

Not sure how I feel about the repair system, or it being hidden behind ~100 games per plane of free/instant repairs.

Is a joystick mandatory for this? I haven't had one in years and I'm not sure I can convince the wife I need one for some fly by night free to play.

Oops double post.

Don't use a joystick, they suck for aiming from what I hear.

Unlike a certain other plane game, a mouse works just fine.

I won the Internet last night. Was in a game vs a B-17, whom everyone wanted to kill. I spawned in my Beaufort and was bombing ground targets, and ignored him, figuring one of the Beaufighters or someone would take him out. Got shot down in my bomber, switched to my Hurricane (which has 6 rockets on it). When I spawned, the first thing I saw was the B-17 1.17 miles away! I got on his six and then hit him from below and behind...let all 6 rockets go from about 50 feet. He insta-popped and I rammed myself to death on his flaming wreckage  :grin:

Got Hercules and Balancer achievements, plus a giant gaming erection. Good times.

This game is massively fun. There are a few issues, such as a very odd menu/gui system and the inability to see the rank of planes in the sky, but I figure this stuff will be ironed out or someone will make a mod at some point.

Good point about the menu...it is like it came from a console port or something. It is especially noticeable when trying to add decals to planes. Having to back in and out of every menu is just mind-bogglingly stupid.

There's a lot of issues including those you mentioned, what about attackers and bombers having the same symbol. But really the main issue at the moment is if the game crashes or you lose connection you are removed from the battle. According to my stats I've played 200 games but really 150 cause I crash and lose connection a lot, I hate that I can't rejoin battle albeit with one plane less.

You still playing with a tethered blackberry from the back of Irish hillock, Blindside?

Hehe, I moved out of the hillock and got myself a nice ol' patch in broadband central, I may have purchased a faulty network card though.

So I think this game may be my new thing for a while. I played it all weekend, ignoring the x5 xp on WoT.

Good- learn all about it so you can teach me  :grin:

This is fun.

Not sure I'm sold on the mouse control thing. 3rd person view and mouse can get real wierd at times. The first person view on the plane I had though was so restricted that it was pretty useless. Still this is fun.

Going to try gamepad tonight. Tally ho.

f13 squadron?

Game is sorely missing a detailed stats page, yes I'm a stat whore.

I would love this. Yes, I am a stat whore, but I also like to use them to better understand game mechanics. Things are a bit out of whack now...most maps are ground strike, so taking out ground targets wins the game. However, the XP/lions gain for doing so pales in comparison to taking out aircraft. They need to balance that better. When someone takes the time to do the boring task of taking out 25+ ground targets, he/she should be commensurately rewarded. Instead the fighter jock who took his level 20 jet out and whacked n00bs in bi-planes gets top score.

Here's to hoping that getting greenlit on Steam will grow the playerbase enough to A) require a North American server, and b) give enough liquidity in the player pool to keep the matchmaker from putting tier 20 jets in with fucking reserve planes. Doesn't happen often, but god it sucks when it does.

Something seems to have upped the player count. Last night I was down to about 10 seconds to get into a new match, and never had a tier inappropriate match. Wound up playing russians pretty often, but the ping really isn't bad.

Unlocked the Ki-61 (tier 5 Japanese fighter) last night. Just tried it out today...WOW. I love it. It is agile as hell and packs quite a punch. Flew it once and immediately bought the talisman for it  :grin: Engels, you are going to love it.

Japanese fighters are nimble as fuck, but they bleed speed so badly in turns. SO BADLY.

I was trolling like hell with my brits last night. I need to upload a few pictures. But my favorite bit was a domination map starting with my Hurricane II. Rushed the enemy cap point. Put one midair rocket into a hurricane, two into a landed Spitfire, and the last three (hurricanes turn for shit, couldn't line up a good shot) on someone taking off from the initial cap, then zipped off at 500mph.

Dick move? Yes. But totally fucking worth it. <3

Man this game becomes a lot of fun when you have something with punch.

What's amusing is watching those players who tend to have half a clue waiting for the inevitable ground level furball to develop so they can swoop down for a quick kill. Kind of like a bunch of vultures. Then you have those players eyeing each other off waiting for the first one to make his dive before they commit.   Eventually you get greedy and dive on some noob checking your 6 the whole time hoping you aint being followed....and hoping you can exit the furball to regain altitude and speed for the next attempt.

Oh and fuck Beaufighters.

Beaufighters are so trolly. Fast, over gunned, and turns like a goddamned bus. Every time I've died in mine has been to a friendly ramming me while I try to turn after my attack run. Some nimble fucker turns from under me far tighter and takes my wing right off.

The damned things never go down to gunfire. Dear lord do they take forever to drop with gunfire.

Also, MG damage mostly sucks and you will enjoy fighters whenever you get cannons. The exception to this are US and British planes with like 12 fucking MGs. The Hurricane 2 turns like a whale but has an absolutely silly number of shitty MGs on it. However, you cannot strafe a patrol boat enough to actually kill it.

I think my dislike of Japan right now is entirely that they can't respond to boom and zoom fighters. They'll win any clusterfuck turn fight, but the moment they try to engage they drop to stupidly low speeds and cannot possibly disengage. The Hurricane 1 and 2 also have this issue where if you get into a turning fight you'll wind up bleeding so much speed that you can't keep your nose level.

Yeh the beaufighters are crazy, especially the Mk X. I've stopped playing British since I realised how amazing the Russian fighters are, the Yak 9-T and Yak-3 are awesome.

Downloaded it. Pressed "play." Computer crashed so hard it rebooted into safe mode.

LOL holy shit. Inauspicious. Hope you give it another try. It is really damned fun.

Update video drivers? I think you'd really dig this one Aba. And of course, if there aren't enough -J- folks playing WT, ex-Chickens are welcome back into the fold  and our TS server for WT goodness.

There are few things as amusing as seeing one of your buddies on TS corkscrew his plane into the earth right in front of you  :awesome_for_real:

Looking behind you and watching the three planes trying to slip into your 6 all crash into each other? <3

At times, the furballs in this game make WoT players look elegant when trying to get out of their spawn.

I had a match last night where I lost 3 out of 4 aircraft all by having people run into me, either friendly or enemy. It's a little overdone.

And still...fuck Beaufighters.

I yelled at a guy on my team for ramming me, only to have him insist I ran into him. Even though he hit me from behind.  :psyduck:

Turns out if was the sound. Got it fixed and playing with the tutorials.

Learn to land in arcade mode from shitty angles. It's sadly required to play one of the modes and it's comical to see the number of crashes 45 seconds into the match.

Side note: finally out of my free repairs on some planes. Uh, I hope this isn't done yet. My spitfire's repairs: 20m. Okay! My beaufighter's: 6h. I was curious how dickish the repair timers would be to force you to use pay for repairs.

Gack I haven't hit repair timers last night.

Don't cap airfields, let other suckers do it for you. Your just asking to get strafed doing that. I only land to get repairs.

I'm amazed by the sheer number of players who dive to the deck and can't wait to get into a turn fight. I was a shitty pilot on ww2ol but even I know better. Was racking up some nice kdr numbers last night.

Depends. If you're in a turn fighter, such as a spitfire, going to the deck deprives boom and zoom fighters of some of their advantage. 

It's worth it to hit the deck in some aircraft that perform better down there.  It's also useful in arcade domination maps where you want to gain stupid speed right off the bat and meet the cappers at their "safe" base.

Personally, I do cap airfields if I see an opening where nobody has an easy line on me. It's pretty easy to at the very least uncap it without ever slowing down and get the hell out of there again, and uncapping is practically as good as fully capping. I need to upload the picture of my spitfire going for a cap while badly damaged. Hit the ground at a shit angle, lost my landing gear and engine. Spun around a bit and came to a rest flat on the runway.. and got a safe landing bonus and a repair timer instead of a respawn timer. What the hell, magical repair gnomes.

The Eve Online iteration of Bat Country play this all the time on our TS server when there's no fleets running. Second only to LoL right now I'd guess.

That said I'm still only level five :(

Endie, what's your stance on Star Conflict?

I like to win, so I cap airfields while my oblivious teammates play grabass with the enemies in the middle of the map. It is a good use for bombers  on domination maps after all the ground targets are gone (so, like 3 minutes in).

Played this for a bit and it's too arcade for my tastes.  I think I prefer that 'other' flying game in beta. 

Time to give Star Conflict a try. 

Must admit my experience has been a lot different with most of my teams heading to cap the airfields instead of one or two. So I just loiter and blow up the low and slow stuff.

Did you give Full-Real-Battles a try? Or Historical Battles? If not, there's your sim. If you did I'm not sure what the other game would have to offer you that is *more* realistic than those 2 modes.

The planes are too responsive.  There's no feel of weight or drag to them.  Does this change?  The game feels way too twitchy for what I'm used to in flight models. Even with the sensitivity turned way down on my stick and rudder there was far too fast a response in my controls.

If you're talking about that feel of actually being in a physical vehicle, I think the only sim to do that successfully was IL-2. Not even MS or X-Plane capture that feel correctly. With a f2p game that's trying for mass appeal, chances are this isn't ever going to be worked in. There's a sense of -work- in IL-2 that can actually be kinda physically draining. The g-forces have such an immersive realism that the blackouts kinda make me queasy. I think that for a business model like WT, that's not an wise choice, since it stands a good chance of alienating 2/3rds of the player base.

I agree with you completely.  I was more pointing out that I gave it a try and it's not for me. Perhaps I should just refrain from comment in the future... I'm not adding much to the thread.

I've said this in voice chat a few times. The planes don't...drift through the sky like they should. It feels like there is no gravity or air resistance.

I by no means meant to tell you to stfu or anything! I think this thread should include any kind of comments regarding flight sims or flight models in general, since there's not a whole lot of conversation on that topic as it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOF4fLZiyrI

Me and 3 friends installed this yesterday and had a play. Within 30 mins we all had our wallets out and had dumped some Euros on it. Lot of fun.

Got my own Beaufighter today. First few battles I was like  :uhrr: then I realised the power of the cannon and I was  :heart:.

Thing turns like a pig but one bursting blenheims is fun.

We may have some differences in what we both mean by feeling drag etc, but trying to handle a Typhoon with 2 500lb bombs under the wings while dodging AAA and 109s in istorical Battles is all I can handle. It's like flying a mule. Completely changes once the bombs are dropped and you actually get to energy-fight.

Maybe give it till Rank 5 and then a few Fullreals and Historicals?

Played a full-real without a stick. Rammed my cockpit into another player while trying to take off.  :ye_gods: /  :awesome_for_real:

A lot of the pilots from my old ww2ol squad felt the same way about the game. They HATED arcade mode but were somewhat satisifed with historical and real battle modes.

Personally I love arcade mode, yes I want a radar and an aiming reticule and third person view. Too many years of trying to fly in ww2ol and getting crushed by guys who loiter at 10k feet with their full joystick and foot rudder setup and probably a set of flying goggles as well. Fuck. That.

Don't you dare make fun of my rudder pedals and trackir!  :why_so_serious:

/simnerd

Don't lie you put on the goggles and one of those white scarfs too don't you!

... and a fan.  Don't forget the fan!

Had a 36k XP loss today.  :oh_i_see: 17 ground kills (including 2 destroyers), and 8 air kills. Apparently my team was too busy licking their cockpit windows clean to help.

Ok, noob question but the fuck do I land and take off again?  I know how to lower the landing gear and adjust the flaps but thats it.  I always end up crashing.  I'm actually doing fairly well in most other aspects of the game except for bombers.  I hate flying them.  I my best effort so far yielded 12 kills and now usually I'm around 5 or 6, often with 1 or no planes lost.

I got mine yesterday and it is fun.  One burst and I obliterated a fighter. :heart:

Ginaz, try this to land, on approach turn side to side while pulling back to bleed speed, you want to be somewhere between 120 -250km. Once on the strip turn side to side while holding B button to brake. Takes a while to get the feel for it, but not too bad once there.

Landing is overrated. Yesterday I smacked into the runway, snapped off both wings, caught fire, turned upside down and got 1000xp for a "soft landing".  :awesome_for_real:

Don't even try if you are going over 220 or so. My fav way to do it is to approach parallel to the strip, killing my engine and putting my flaps down. At the end of the runway, flip around and land going the other way. That almost always bleeds off enough speed.

It is a good skill to learn- capping bases is lucrative as hell, and getting free repairs is invaluable.

Depends on the plane Way. Some planes will pancake if they're going too slow. Higher speeds seem even necessary if you're chassis is fucked up, in order to gently place weight on the structure of the plane as it touches down.

 :heart: your avatar Engels.

This game is in dire need of more players or a patch or something. Getting oneshotted by planes 5 or more tiers above the highest thing I have in the match is seriously getting old.

Fly something with cannons, you can one-shot people then.

Tough to do in the 0-4 bracket.

Japanese have at least one.

Fly something with 6-8 Brownings or Hispanos (i.e. something British) then set the gun convergence to ~400m.
Win.

Does gun convergence actually do anything in arcade?

Yes.

I've read suggestions of changing it to like 400. I got six kills before I went down in my corsair with 4 hispanos.

I've heard it doesn't make much difference in arcade mode, which is all I play right now.

It helps a bit. So anyways, those low tier germans. Holy shit is it rough to get kills with them. Up to tier 3 so far, and still rocking the same dual MGs on everything. Fast planes, but you can't really boom and zoom with something that takes a few hundred rounds to hurt russians.

I strongly advise against opening the general chat window while waiting for matches to pop.

During Euro peak times it's full of dipshits whining about how German planes are underpowered and hateful nationalism and racism from every corner of the EU. During US peak times it appears to be completely unmoderated and is a total fucking cesspool of abuse, profanity and full on internet dickwaddery.

The in-game chat channel gets bad sometimes too but less so because generally people are too busy flying planes to type much, although the fact that putting someone on your blacklist doesn't block the team voice messages is hilarious in a  :facepalm: kind of way.

You should have seen the IL-2 forums back in the day.

So what you're saying is the World of Tanks general chat has moved over in full force?   :awesome_for_real:

Early German planes are a POS. It gets better. I'm enjoying the 109s, even though I generally suck at boom and zoom. The ME104 attack plane series is very fun, but of dubious effectiveness. Think Beaufighters but without the armor.

German bombers also suck at first, and they are, as with most of the bombers, made of tinfoil and spit, but they get decent payloads later. The stuka line is very fun to play, due to their graceful dives, but their ordinance for their level is a bit gimped. They also climb terribly, like freaking Wellingtons.

Speaking of which, Beaufighters need to be smacked with a nerf stick hard. No tier 4 plane should have that amount of firepower and resilience, regardless of how hard they are to maneuver.

I am really not liking the 1.29 patch. I only play arcade battles, so if you're a HB/FRB fan you may have different experiences, but after a few games today I have no desire to play any more, a lot of the fun has been surgically removed.

The new damage model is extremely harsh - one bullet is enough to rip a wing off or destroy an engine. Backup planes costing Gold are blatant pay-2-win and are a really bad idea, but with this damage model they're going to be very popular amongst people willing to shell out a lot of real money.

Kills are very buggy. It's much easier to actually kill people but 4 times out of 5 I'm not getting awarded a kill for doing so. This has had the effect of greatly nerfing XP - I got under 10k for a 3-kill, tier 7 win earlier. This makes it feel instantly super-grindy.

The damage model also means that bombers are pointless now in solo arcade battles. You get shot down in a few seconds, plus you can't dive-bomb any more so good luck hitting mobile targets. Oh and Attackers don't get a bomb sight any more, you have to guess where your bombs might land.

Other people have said that the joystick control is improved, so that's one good thing.

Oh and the new ammo belts are a pointless complication that is totally unexplained in-game. The only way to find out what the ammo types do is to go to the forums and hunt around. Great game design.

I agree with you on nearly all fronts. The patch is a royal disaster and I hope Gaijin has the brains to roll back their changes pronto or they're gonna find themselves in a WoP situation.

The only correction I'd make to what you're saying is about the dive bomber reticle. It does show up, but only if you have an acute enough  angle. If you're too level it won't show. The reverse of a high altitude bomber, who's reticle disappears if you dive.

I also agree that the new ammo types are a needless complication, especially since there's fuck all explanation as to what they do and how it would affect different plane types/parts of a plane.

Ahh OK, I'll have another go with the dive bombing then. Some kind of indicator letting you know what the correct angle is would help, instead of just an unexplained "this used to work" missing reticule.

Devs on the WT boards are already handing out warnings to posters who are mad at the patch.

Yeah this is definitely not their finest moment. Hope they learn something.

I haven't played in a while and it sounds like I can just keep not playing for a while.  I remember the game as fun but mostly I want to play internet tanks instead of internet planes so until they have ground vehicles in I don't feel much reason to log in very often.

Just played a couple of matches, and it is definitely quite a bit less fun. With the money earning nerf to low tiers it is going to be grindy as fuck. Sigh. Not sure I can go back to tanks yet. Minecraft it is.

Well, the thing for me is the attempt to make Arcade 'realistic' in some ways, but entirely ignoring others. Fighters 'realistically' rarely shot down bombers in one passing strafe, yet this still happens in Arcade. However, the new 'realism' that they brought to both bombing sights and damage, along with the money nerf for targets downed makes playing a bomber MORE of a chore than it was before. Downing a carrier gives you ~2k lions now. Hardly worth the pass after pass you need to do to get the job done.

Entirely necessary to win ground strike missions, yet frustrating and even less rewarding than before.

US servers are up as of today!

looks like they patched out some of the crappy stuff that 1.29 introduced.

This is good news.

Specifically, the bomb sight fix. I can't wait to see if they really did revert it or did something else.

Also:

Fixed excessive effects of wing damage on the aircraft steering

This was driving me batty.

They also need to improve the tail 'armor' on bombers. I know, its probably 'realistic' that that's the first thing affected when being shot from behind, but 5/6 deaths last night were exclusively because my tail ailerons were gone. And you don't remotely die right away, you just float about like a drunk at 4k, unable to dive properly or anything. You just bumble about the arena till someone else takes you out of your misery. Kinda hilarious the first time, pita the rest of the time.

They probably also need to rethink the economy. Played all night, on premium, made ~70k.

Oh, and I bought the tier 7 Corsair, the F4u 1A, and I regret it. Freaking Stukas outturn me.

Hmm, nothing on fixing credit for kills & kill assists.

There's a thread here (http://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/22413-economy-v129-upd/) where Borisych claims that the new economy should be more rewarding than previously for most planes at most tiers, along with some charts to aid his point. I'm not convinced personally.

If I'm not Arma 3'ing tonight I'll put a couple of hours in and see how it is.

Just did a quick quick run and the monetary reward for ground targets was upped a bit. Also, the flight model in general seems a bit less janky. Dogfights don't feel like jostling about on the subway platform.

Except he forgot to tell you that they upped retraining crew-skills a metric fuck-ton. Not really higher than tier 7 as of yet, but my desire to climb the ranks has decreased quite a bit. Flying 300 missions with auto-repair turned off to gain enough creds for higher tier planes, thanks but no thanks. Guess Historic or Full Retard Battles is the way to go.

Except those are generally boring when in a group, since chances are you'll lose your one plane in the first 3 minutes and then have to watch for 20 minutes while your last remaining buddy faffs about at 7k altitude :P True story.

I wonder if they'll unfuck the economy on this before or after it hits Steam?

Started a couple days ago with this.  Kinda disheartened with being launched against folks in planes that I cannot out-turn, cannot out-run, only to see my US experience bar go up a teensy-weensy little bit at the end of the match.

I did all the tutorials.  I'm taking out ground targets, I'm (occasionally) getting plane kills (mostly just credit for hits/kill assists).  Short of paying cash money - is there anything else I could be doing to speed up the time of being in a crap plane?  Is my perception that the higher tier planes are significantly better than the reserve/level 1 planes mistaken?

Things will lighten up as soon as you're out of the reserve-planes. Unless you fly germans, then it takes a while it seems. Russians have some awsome killers at tier 1-2 carrying several ShKas bullethoses.
Those things will take down anything in the sky with ease. Tiers doesn't really matter all that much.  Earning sweetspot is in tier 4-7 anyway. But seriously, go russian. The russian bias is strong in this one.

Not as strong as it is for the British, or Americans once you get the P-39s. The German line is just fucked up. I'm tier 5 in German and the only decent fighter is the Fulgore. Lots of Stukas though. Lots.

I split my time between the Germans and the US.  (was playing the Germans to allow my brothers to catch-up, they joined a little after I did).  Hitting level 4 with the US is like having the fun patched in, so much better.

The Germans... why is the He 112 such a fucking brick above 450 kph?!  Ok, so I understand that I'm not supposed to take the plane above 450 kph, but I frequently take BI-PLANES above 450 and don't rip apart or lose maneuverability.  Also, no "SLOW DOWN NITWIT!!!" warnings for the He 112?  Hello mountain!  BOOM!  Maybe it's just cause my player is level 5 and I'm suppose to know better?

Not sure if it applies to this game, but German fighters were energy fighters.  These are the toughest types of planes to dogfight with.  Once you master controlling energy, these planes dominate the skies, but it's a steep learning curve.  You can outclimb everyone in the sky and you are much more stable on dives.  Just don't bleed speed or altitude too much else you become an easy target.

Just got to level 11 german and I can tell you that the 109s of all stripes make the grind to them worth it.

Its sorta true, but again, russian bias. I've been chased out of a dive by Yaks of all stripes. I eventually outrun them on my climb back up, but the cannons on a Yak 9T are enough that all he needs is those 5 seconds when I'm still in range for him to one shot me. This is obnoxious as fuck.

I don't see how they are ever going to balance a game like this and stay anywhere near the realistic strengths and weaknesses of the planes. Most of the wars and conflicts these vehicles were in were incredibly imbalanced machinery wise and were often made up for via pilot skill, and in the real world, good pilots in good machines were ultra deadly.

Ya, its like the P-51. In the 'real world' it was an exceptional fighter IF the pilot was great, which by and large they were, since they were the top fighters planes of the US, and they didn't hand it over to anyone.

In any given flight sim/computer game, the P-51 sucks ass for the average player because a) energy fighting is hard and requires quite a bit of knowledge and b) the intangibles of flight aren't accounted for in most computer sims, or if they are, the mechanics are weird.

Gaijin really have outdone themselves with the April Fool's prank this year. 

Can't. Stop. Laughing.

I think they just outdid everyone.

http://youtu.be/lSRQ6suu9nw

That's hysterical!

Nebu, I don't think it's because it's historically accurate, I think they are trying to get folks to play the Soviets.

At level 2 the Soviet's get the I-16 type 18.  It has 4 armament presets. One preset is 4 x 7.62mm machine guns (ammo 2600) and 6 rockets.  The I-16's top speed is 461 kph and has a turn time of 16.5 seconds.  It handles like a hyper kinetic dream at high speed and low speed.  It looks like Roger Rabbit should be flying it.  It is all kinds of awesome.

At level 2 the Germans get the He 112 V5 that has one armament preset - 2 x 7.62mm machine guns (ammo 1000).  It has a top speed of 385 kph and has a turn time of 15.5 seconds.  It handles decently below 400 kph.  It handles like a flying brick above 425ish kph.  Most other planes give a "SLOW DOWN NITWIT!" warning, not the He 112!  I've flown into canyon walls, the ground, the sea, everything you can think of because my speed is too high and I cannot turn or pull up.  And it's fire power is weak.  It is all kinds of suck.

today's update brings +20% income for air kills and +50% for ground kill.the latter may only be applicable if you're flying a bomber though, not sure.

NICE! That will make the grind a hell of a lot less grindy. Ground kills especially needed love- you spend the whole match in a bomber winning the game for your team and you got rewarded dick.

That is so true, without bombers you lose.  If you bomb, you get dick.  This drives my friend insane - because he wants to win and I fly fighters and I always outscore him, but I have little impact on whether we win or not.

Its truely an odd game mechanic. Its like the devs all just wanna dogfight all day long, so they put in rewards for that, but realized right quick that it would just turn into Call of Duty - Fly About Division and had to come up with something that was a little more sophisticated. They put in ground target goals and called it a day.

Its so true to real life work environments. You bust your ass making sure your company works smoothly and the ponce who's been faffing about at meetings all day gets the credit  :uhrr:

Maybe they could make Historical Missions a more directed experience with more sophisticated goals and such instead of just the stepping stone between console retard happy funtime game and grognard who lives in his mother's basement nutpunching 'realism'. Right now it plays like arcade but with takeoffs and no respawns.

I like biplane dog fighting the best so far.  I do well with the Spitfire, decent with Hurricane/Kittyhawk (which I think fly similarly), but I have the most fun with the biplanes.  To bad they didn't make a Red Baron game.

This may be relevant to your interests. (http://riseofflight.com/en)

Just want to check- does anyone want to ram me? Apparently I have a giant fucking bulls-eye on my planes that begs people (teammates, opponents, flocks of birds, UFOs, whatever) to do so at every opportunity. A couple of times I didn't pull out of a head to head engagement, so I am equally to blame, but the rest...jesus. At least the dumbfucks aren't getting kill credits for it any more. I wonder how many of them don't realize that?

I will purposefully ram a bomber if we're close on score and he's nearby a ground target we need to keep alive.

Oh I agree- there are times when it is strategically useful (like when a much higher level plane decides to play chicken with me). It was just egregious last night. I think I died 15-20 times from rams in about 10 matches.

The amount of blue on blue accidental ramming that happens is fricken hilarious. Especially watching the meltdown on text by the ramee.

But it's a bit comical if you have five planes come after you and look back to see a clusterfuck of wreckage falling to the ground as they all try to get into the same spot on your tail.

You sound like me when I'm in my liberator in Planetside 2. Stupid friendly aircraft slamming into me.

So I ran out of premium and decided to slum it for a day and see how the economics go. Dreadful. I just can't play anything above tier 9 now. Even then, its adviseable to stick to tier 7 and below. This, if you're a decent player, will earn you between 10-20 k per match. I, however, am no such player, so I'm hovering between 5 and 10 k a match.

I have the 109-G6, the FW-190 A5 and F8 mouldering in my hangar due to the economics of playing those.

I'm not really bitching per se, but  to progress in this game you have to either have premium or be a pretty damned good player.

Sounds like they followed the WG model of financial success.

You can earn pretty good XP and money by filling your slots with the Russian SB bomber line or the Italian S.79. Both are pretty fast for bombers and are better at fighting than the assault planes. My gunner crew size is equal to the plane's and their accuracy and spread are maxed out, but between shooting down people attacking me or actively pointing the front of my SB at people I usually manage to kill 4-5 people a match in addition to assists and potshots. The S.79 isn't nearly as rugged as the SB's are, but they eventually get torpedos which is really nice. they also have a center forward gun that you control while piloting, as well as a third engine in the front of the plane so it's not as big a bitch when you lose an engine.

Even with a premium account, the economy is ass. I'm level 9 in everything but the US and Japan, and I've got a solid dozen planes that I'm high enough level to get but can't because I'm broke as shit. That's why I went bacl to flying the tier 3 SB's. They're cheap, tough, carry 12 bombs, and cost almost nothing to repair.

I think that 1.29 broke something on the SBs. They are no longer accurate with the top down site, nevermind the 3rd person reticle.

I find that the Ju88 is the best strafe bomber out there. 36 bombs and on maps like African canyon, Fjords and Rice Fields, you can get many ground kills that pay for most of the match.

Finally purchased the grossly overpowered Yak 9T. Still learning to fly it, but good god. If you catch someone unawares with that cannon, it is lights out in a big fat hurry.  I can't wait to get it fully upgraded for maximum hilarity.

The 9T is really overpowered, but when one pops up in a game everyone stops what they were doing and does whatever they can to kill it.

Overall the game has a depressingly large number one or two shot kills. Bombers seem to be especially bad about breaking in half when shot by anything with a cannon.

Speaking of which, holy shit are American bombers the fucking worst. my B25 just randomly falls out of the air without taking a single hit in about half of the battles I'm in. I was really looking forward to getting the B17s, but I can't see it being worth it.

Anyone else feeling like there's an invisible tier 9ish ceiling to this game? Not only do things get more expensive, but unless you catch the game at Russian prime time (US morning time on a weekend), any tier 11+ match is going to be with 8 people per side with AI bots as filler. Ya, those 75 ground target maps take forever with 8 players per side, especially since you have to take out bombers that are just XP pinatas for FW-190-D13s and Mustangs.

That sounds about like my experience as well. The ceiling seems to be in cash though, not XP. I'm still leveling at a decent rate, but I'm a dozen planes behind in stuff to buy that I have the level for but no money. I'm not minding it so much since I enjoy the lower level stuff much more. Right now I'm playing the different nations in the 23, 45, and 6-7 brackets while I get money. and backfill planes to fill out the tier brackets. I like those tiers though and there seems to be much less one hit death at those levels. I am playing germany in tier 8-9 and it's a clusterfuck of one hit deaths. I'm getting better dogfighting with the twein 37mm Ju 87's though and they'll 2 hit a b-25.

Also, if the server is deserted just switch from the default server to "all" or "north america"

The Ju-87G is hysterical. Especially when someone decides 'oh he is a dive bomber, I can go head to head with him'. One shotted a bomber yesterday...he just fell apart. It was glorious.

 I bought 3 months of premium when it was 25% off, but mistakenly did it 1 month at a time. As soon as I noticed the 25% applied to 1 month and above (and not just 1 month), I filed a support ticket to ask them to shift it to a 90 day purchase. 8+ days later, I finally get a response to my support ticket. Can't refund or change anything. God forbid they try to not actively fuck over their players.

So ya, new patch, new planes, fixed flight models, etc. Modified economy. The P47 now won't break the bank, and you can fly a B17 without screaming about repair costs anytime an La5 flies within 2 km.

Details here (http://warthunder.com/en/news/168/current/)

Edit: nm the economy, that's not been fixed. Typical.

Here  (http://warthunder.com/en/news/169/current/)is the official statement:

Oh, and Sophos AV detects a file from the new patch, aces.dll, as a virus.

So ya, work in progress, the blessings of the eternal beta goddess be upon you.

fun game though, enjoying it a lot.

Holy crap they nerfed the living hell out of bombs. Bombs have to land SMACK on a vehicle, or nothing happens. There's virtually no splash radius to any of the bombs anymore. Also, it takes a lot less to take out a bomber with the new damage models. I lasted about 2 seconds in my Wellington when some F4U was spawn camping our bomber spawnpoint.

Also, now Domination requires elimination of ground forces or they will start the ticket counter, even if your base is secure. You have to eliminate the ground forces on the enemy camp or the timer runs out on you.

So, to summarize. You must take out a bomber, which can't hit shit, and dies in a few rounds, to take out enemy vehicles or your team loses. Upshot? Noone takes out bombers, everyone floats about behind the safety of their base taking out the few suicidal idiots in bombers actually doing their job.

And don't even get me started on Ground Strike missions.

I will be playing Historical Battles because they are less stressful.

The new damage is batfuck crazy. Getting hit with the bigger cannons has always been bad, but I can't tell you how many times I died today having my fuselage snap in half on the first hit. I also wish that my guns shot lit torches because any fire is a two second death sentence now.

As far as bombing I haven't noticed a difference, but I've always bombed unconventionally. I have my bomb timer set to .5 so they hit, bounce up, and then explode a little overhead of what I'm aiming for. It makes a big difference for medium and heavy tanks. I also always bomb at less than 500 feet, even with wellingtons. I rarely get more than two passes, but I always hit what I want to and usually kill at least two targets per bomb so in the end it works out much better. My gunners are also aces so I usually rack up a kill or two from that. Especially with the Japanese bombers with the cannon in the tail. You probably already know this, but some of the bombs are in pounds and some in Kilos. I've been in plenty of arcade games where someone is bitching that their American 500 bomb won't blow up any of the stuff their russian 500 takes out easily. Russian favoritism!

Yeah after playing again last night I am not a fan of this insta killing in arcade. Feels like a FPS where everyone has a 1 shot kill sniper rifle. Once someone gets on your back you're done, any little damage will either insta kill you or cripple you, no more chance to weave enough for a teammate to help.

I'll try that bomb timer cuz I also enjoy low level bombing especially in a plane with a lot of 50kg like jap Donryu or JU-88, sweeping through tank columns.

The economics patch can't get here soon enough. It is cockstabbingly painful to grind out enough Hitlerbux to afford even one of the dozens of unlocked planes I can't currently afford. I am barely breaking 5 figures in most games after all the bomber nerfs. I am afraid to even take out my P-47- 6k to repair after my last free repair goes bye bye. Fuck that.

Big patch 3.3
http://warthunder.com/en/game/changelog/

Haven't played this for over a month and this isn't very inspiring.

Lots of balance changes, seems like a lot more emphasis placed on upgrading planes which I'm not too keen on. You gotta pay for non-default ammo too.

Hmmmm. I get the feeling that the savings from 30% off of plane purchases will be more than eaten up by paying by the shot for ammo and for all the new mods.

looking at some reviews, new money sinks aside supposedly arcade battles are greatly improved by them changing objectives (primary and secondary), improving some of the maps, and getting rid of the fast ticket bleeding and random ground target destruction ("gremlins") added in 1.31 so I think I may give it a whirl. Maybe they even nerfed 37mm cannons which is my other beef with arcade, how good those 1 shot kill planes are especially between level 6-10.

I generally stick with arcade, not just cuz I am a crosshair leader crutching massive homosexual, but also because I like that there's actual objective based gameplay while Historical Battle is just a pure team deathmatch where the team that has the most high climbing fighters wins. I think they need to add a HB with respawns or something, cuz currently it's just a pure fighter air to air contest.


edit: uhh wait a few days to try this, apparently it's a big mess, needs hotfixes.

After reading this thread, this game joins my honor tier of online games...the tier too grindy won't play. This world of tanks, and a few other treadmills.

It's not actually that grindy...

Sure the achievement factor of gaining pixels and advancing levels can be fun but it doesn't change much. Fighting at level 5-6 isn't much different from fighting at level 10-11 or 19-20. You just have faster planes with more guns against similar fast and lethal planes. Point of the game is to go out and pew pew in WW2 airplanes, even more fun with a squad of friends,  all this works the same at low level as high.

I am still not sure how I feel about this. The component system is sort of neat, but it fucking pisses me off that I have to buy all that shit again on planes I had maxed out for fucking MONTHS. I spent almost $500k yesterday without buying a goddamned plane, and I still have formerly maxed planes that don't have a full loadout because I ran out of money. FUCK THAT.

buy some more gold eagles, duh

7 air kills (plus 2 assists), 6 ground kills, my team (of course) loses. 17920 lions. Fuck this game. That should be 30k at least.

I've been playing this a ton and having a fun time, but it's got too many issues and the development direction is all sorts of wrong. There are illions of Russian planes and they keep adding more while other nations languish with neglected, bare trees. The reason for that apparently is that they had two flight model teams - one for the Russian planes and one for everyone else. It turns out that the international team all left because the Russian team would change their stuff before letting it go into the game. There was a big thread on the forums that got deleted, but the stuff that was said matches with what's going on in the game. shitloads of overpowered Russian planes while everyone else under performs. like last patch did the russians need two more tier 3 airplanes with fucking cannons and another mid level Yak with a cannon even bigger than the one in the the 9T?

Plus the last patch really ruined the skin collecting for me. I ground out games in the P40 to get all its skins, but there's no way I'm grinding out 300 air kills in shit like the Stuka B2. I spent 600k to buy the modules for the planes I have actively slotted and ran out of money half way though Britain.

The populations are way down across the servers as well. I liked the game a lot but I'm pretty much done when my sub runs out in a couple of days.

I'm feeling similarly. The separate dev team for the Russians is one of the most bone headed things I've heard of. Apparently its because the official documents on Russian planes for specs and flight model info are still classified and only a Russian team could have access to it, but I have my doubts about that. I mean, we know the USSR was stupid, but keeping 70 year old plane specs classified seems nuts, even for Russia.

And to be honest, its not so much that the other flight models are gimped, but that the Russian ones are fantasy.

The Russian thing is really overstated. They really aren't OP at all besides a few absurd examples like that premium Chaiki biplane with cannons but every nation has a few planes that are very strong. I think the big QQ du jour is USA's premium mk IX spifire, before that it was the German premium FW 190.

My dirty secret is that I am abusing Jap planes which are OP as fuck but nobody realizes it because Japan is a bitch from level 0-7, lacking planes and undergunned. But those lvl 8 & 9 A6M3 zeros are ridiculous. They climb as well as BF109s, out turn anyone even spitfire Mk2s, and their cannons omni ammo packed full of HE drops just about any fighter in a short burst, I usually can kill 3 before reloading. Seal clubbing in 8-9, about to hit 12 in Jap and I will add a couple more Zeros to roster and see how they stack up  in 12-13.

There's YouTube videos comparing the flight characterteristics of of the different fighters. The only Russian fighter with a different flight model seems to be the Yak-3, all the rest are modeled with no stalling and very little inertia. That's huge considering everyone else's planes do stall and have to deal with inertia. Add in that they all have fuckcannons from tier 3 onwards and it's pretty bad.

I guess I should mention I play mostly arcade battle, so maybe all this matters less there. I don't like historical because the ground objectives are meaningless since it all boils down to a team fighter deathmatch when 99% of games end with a side dieing off. Add in the boring 10 minute takeoff start, and the fact that climbing is the only thing that matters so you can BnZ dive the opposition. Finally the "instructor" seems to be completely whacked out for me and makes handling very difficult of most planes.

Russia is easier at low levels since their small calibre MG seems to be stronger but by 6-7 it's not much more of an issue. What fuckcannons? They aren't obviously stronger plus they usually only have one mounted. I eat Russian planes in 10-11 tier with the premium british mustang with has 4 hispano cannons. I would say brits & japs have stronger cannons, germans probably equal.

So at most I would agree Russia are strong 0-5, then it gets even, they have some strengths but nothing exceptional. I don't even really like playing them that much, the light bombers like IL-2 and Pe-2 are fun but not so much the fighters.

Tanks Gameplay (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tQmJZ4tSg8&feature=share&list=UUpnjlvS2zxhbNJuGNo_TxkQ)
Air vs Ground Gameplay (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_33CI9DvqpU&feature=share&list=UUpnjlvS2zxhbNJuGNo_TxkQ)

Well the new patch basically increased the grind by a large multiple. People have calculated it takes about 4 times as long to unlock a whole nation tree (even with premium account), and gold eagles to EXP conversion cost has been increased by a factor a factor of 7.

They also totally screwed newer players, they removed tier 0, so now people with 1930s era level 0-1 biplanes are being matched against  (clubbed by) 1940 combat tested spitfires, ki61s, lagg3s, etc.

Basically if you are a new player joining the game now you're hosed. Setup to get beaten senseless by people in way more advanced planes, and if you persevere it will take you a lot longer to get said planes.

Really don't understand how they can do this right at a critical moment when they have a huge influx of new players from steam + playstation 4, facing new &  heavy competition from world of warplanes (they are spending huge $ on advertising, even on TV here in Canada at least),  and right when people have some time to sit down and play the game over holiday. Hopefully they reverse this asap cuz otherwise it's really going to hurt them.

At least the rest of the patch was ok, new planes, better flight models on existing. They need to re-balance arcade battles a bit more though, too much yer-2 bomber (a ridiculous plane that has 6 variants in game, even though only 300 produced, and carries an max load, so twice that of lancasters and B17, G8N, who just get a fuel economy load) base rushing ending matches in 4-6 minutes.

I tried this a bit but haven't in the last few weeks. I really enjoyed flying bombers, but the sheer grind to get them to carry any kind of decent bomb is pretty damn offputting. AND you got sod all XP. AND the whole grind to actually get your crew up to speed is madness. Basically you have to spend a wagon of XP on "experiance gunners" or all your gunners have all their stats reduced. And that's before you spend your hard won XP on actually leveling up your crew stats. Or you could simply give them dollahs for crew XP...

The patch described above sounds like sheer madness. I guess its to stop deep lack of population in the high tiers so the top guys finally have something to shoot at, but for fuck sake anyone could take their tier 7s for a spin.

Haven't played this in a while, but the Tier/matchmaking really felt "off" to me.  I hated being in my Tier 3 plane up against Mustangs and advanced Zeros.  I felt that they needed to force you to pick your three planes (for arcade) first, and then match you based on that. 

They really need to learn from the mistakes/choices of others and try to apply those same principles.  The early game is where you hook players, not the late.

They made the grind WORSE? Wow. They are going to let WG win by default even when they might have the superior game.

The Matchmaking was based on your highest active plane. so if you replaced all your planes with tier 4 or below (which you could easily and for free) you would bot face advanced planes above tier 4


Yep, World of Warplanes is an inferior product, no question. This is almost like corporate suicide where they would just like to take the money and run.

experienced gunners are nice, but only marginal help. Bombing is always going to be a tough job with a fiery doom, you need to be smart to maximize your life expectancy. Spawn with a fighter or light/medium bomber first, in T3 up more people now are climbing so this opens a chance to do a ground run low against tanks. unfortunately this is more difficult now since they nerfed bomb splash again, I think so tankers have more of a chance in upcoming ground combat so use 500lb/250kg bombs, smaller doesn't cut it anymore. You wanna try and dive in, then cut back to friendlier area and hopefully shake any pursuers there. After you die, look around, does enemy have a lot of fighters still up high or did your team clear them? If so then you can spawn a heavy bomber and go attack the new fixed map objectives for pretty solid xp/cash.

Yeah, the best rounds I've had was launching torpedoes at ships in suicide runs, sadly. Ah well, sadly there's a big difference between fun and effective in these types of games. And I had good fun in historical battles as well.

The absolute worst thing about WoWP is the default controls; they are god-awful. If you switch them out to something more like, well, more like War Thunder the game does play a lot better.

Tanks are live now btw.

Where? No sign of it on web.

Seriously, where? Need tanks. Now.

Sorry, my fault. I still think of the whole game as Beta, so when they said the ground forces were released to Beta I assumed Live servers... Not so.  :heartbreak:

To pass some time though. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lks-PNnwt9Y&list=PL_C2DlZhfQMSiXihfYw6QBO39DEiKYZJJ)

Ground Forces (tanks) live now.  :drillf:

For everyone?

yup

Looks like I'm tryin some War Thunder.  Wasn't interested in the flying but I'll give tanks a shot.

Those models are beautiful.  If it plays as well as it looks, WGN is in trouble.

I think it's great. I like their solution to artillery. Instead of artillery vehicles you use research points to buy a "call in artillery strike" option for aech tank. Another nice change from even the plane part of WT is that you get more than one spawn of each tank so if you die in it due to being one-shot in an ambush you get a second or third chance to earn XP with it. The down side is that the game doesn't reward camping and picking off damaged tanks. Most of the time if a tank is damaged it's dead a second or two laterby the first guy who shot it. It's a lot faster paced in my opinion.

6gb.. looks like I'm not playing tonight.

I've really enjoyed the CBT version. It's very much a one shot kill setup most of the time, but I find that I really like the idea that every penetrating hit causes useful damage and a possible kill.

There's a playerbase population issue at least in the CBT with 2/3rd of the players picking germans. I will say that Realistic and Simulator are the modes to play. Arcade is kind of silly due to how the drop indicator works. Basically people just wave their guns around until it turns green and pull the trigger.

I really like the artillery implementation.  It makes more sense to me than what WoT did.  The German Soviet imbalance seems like it has carried over from the CBT, which doesn't surprise me much. 

Yeah, the queues are about 7-1 german. Not helped by the starter pack german sherman being pretty much a seal clubbing dream.

Which is really surprising given that in tier 1 at least Soviet guns seem to be soooooo much better. You can take out anything else in the tier right off the bat in a T-26 where the Pz II has to spam a whole load at something and hope for a penetrating shot that causes a fire. So far the only annoyance I'm having is that my fire extinguishers will not acknowledge and keybind for them. Given the number of times I get set on fire it's a pretty major issue.

I don't think this is going to be my cup of tea.  My PZ3 moves like the old T50-2s in WOT.  Things are far too fast and it feels like I'm running with an awkward FPS avatar not a tank.

The first tank I tried does powerslides, constantly, no matter what. Not sure if it's realistic, but it just doesn't feel right.

Which mode where you all playing? Arcade is pretty loose with physics, realistic less so and simulator can be downright hard to turn at times.

I mostly play Realistic, if their are enough people on to make the queue bearable I'll do Simulator.

Downloading now to give the tankage a whirl. Are planes and tanks in the same games or are they still separate?

Split right now for no known reason. Cbt had them together in rb and sb only.

Hrm... one reason could be that they are stress testing live separately to make sure its stable before combining them.

Or (most likely answer) balancing tonks and skygods for the same battle is hard and they're still trying to figure it out.

They changed the queue system a bit which may also apply. Planes were actually mostly shot in the mixed cbt events because not many ground attack folks play rb or sb

This game has been such a mess since 1.35 patch, still not really tempted to get back into it. Historical battle still garbage, boring TDM climbfest, arcade still ridic unbalanced with wide BR spreads, playing all kinds of jets in T4 while I'm in some weaksauce A6M5 zero or P51.

Not going to bother updating until the mix is in. I have played planes, I can play tanks in WoT. What I can't do is play both. Once they get that up and running it will be worth a look.

I played arcade, maybe I'll give it another go but it's far more likely I'll just delete it.   It didn't grab me and failed to explain anything in the interface about research, or even wtf I'm doing beyond shooting other tanks. Just tells me they're not my cup of tea.

Shooting other tanks or capping is pretty much what there is. Play the realistic battles, handling is less over-responsive though the lighter tanks will still slide. It doesn't bother me much though, after renting a little tracked backhoe and trying to drive it has given me an appreciation how easy it is to over correct a tracked vehicle. The research is pretty self explanatory. The plane version gives the actual numerical modifiers for each item and I admit would have been nice here. Realistic aslo gives a lot more XP, but you have to actually aim your gun. No little red outlines or colors for pen, or any help or hint whether you're even going to hit what you're aiming at. Sniping is very, very hard in this game.

Played a few matches of this flying arcade battles recently. A LOT has changed and I am completely confused. Having fun though.

Yeah I re-installed this last month and played a bunch after not playing for over year. I didn't really notice many changes though to arcade airplanes. Some changes to arcade tanks but not much, new British ones and also some new maps, although I don't really like the tank game as much as planes.

I guess I should try that new "enduring conflict" in simulation mode. The thing I never liked about simulation mode was it took too long with runway starts, and then the most important thing was climbing forever to get to max height. The game setup was single life team death match too, so the only point was to knock off everyone so the team with the most performance altitude fighters generally won (bombers were essentially just leeches). If this EC mode can fix this by altering the TDM aspect, giving ground targets more importance, and using altitude starts instead of runway, it would make it more appealling.

The upgrading and purchase interfaces have changed significantly since I last played.

Yeah they re-designed that UI which is ok but not really something that changes the game much.

Sick !!!

http://warthunder.com/en/news/4185-news-naval-battles-in-war-thunder-closed-beta-test-later-this-year-en/

Nice! It will be fun to strafe the shit out of those from the air  :drill:

I imagine that will be in it. The air battle spawning in ground battles is one of the best parts of the game, at least in arcade which is basically all I play.

Anyone still play this? I've been getting some battles in for something new (planes plus its not WoT) bought myself a new tank IIIJ and suddenly I'm completely outclassed by every tank I go up against. Not in the manner of 'oh Shannow you suck dude get some skills', but to the point of I can't even penetrate a single tank when shooting it in the rear from 50m away. Am I missing the p2w factor?

waiting for ships to go public before I check it out, never was a big fan of tank battles though, liked airplanes better. They steadily ratcheted up the grind too over the years which took away the fun.

The Grind and P2W was always this games biggest flaw. In terms of mechanics it meat the crap out of WOT, but they are just too fucking greedy. I remember looking at how much money I would have to pay to be competitive in planes (beefing up my crew and firing rate and so on) and I just said fuck this.

The plane grind isn't as bad as tanks especially at low tiers, unless they've changed that. At higher 4-5 tiers where planes get really grindy they aren't as fun, fewer intense furballs, more about climb and snipe. When tanks came out they really ratcheted up the module grind too, stuff like fire extinguishers being a lvl 2 or 3 module really irked me (random burnout death without them).