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Author Topic: War Thunder: F2P aerial, ground, and naval battles  (Read 19309 times)

BuriBuriZaemon

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War Thunder: F2P aerial, ground, and naval battles
« on: June 22, 2012, 08:52:42 pm »

For those of you who like flight simulations particularly the IL-2 games, you may like War Thunder: World of Planes. Please don't get mixed up with WarGaming's World of Warplanes. War Thunder features more realistic physics and damage models based on the ones used in IL-2 versus arcadey feel of World of Warplanes. War Thunder also features air to land (tanks models are in the game) and air to sea battles (warships, even carriers, are in the game). I personally believe this will blow World of Warplanes out of competition.

Official website:
http://warthunder.com/en/

Fan-made trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7G9u0OwOaU

CBT gameplay:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4tUEVoW-n0&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLD35C59813B2B2606
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXfjHGpp5ZQ&feature=related

Damage models in CBT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul9tbPopm0o&hd=1

They have been doing closed beta and you can apply for it. There are a lot of videos floating around in YouTube. I noticed most of them are fan-made and they tend to have epic music!
« Last Edit: January 06, 2013, 12:57:43 am by BuriBuriZaemon »
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Ozyton

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If the game mechanics are different enough as you suggest, then I don't see this 'blowing World of Warplanes out of competition' much in the same way Men of War didn't blow Company of Heroes out of competition.

In any case, I really wish I was good at flight simulators because they seem pretty fun.

Rex_Nex

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I'm not terribly interested in flight games. When you arent actually on the ground, maps are nothing but different backgrounds to fly over. I also feel like tactics get thrown out of the window when you're in a giant open space like the air.

Oh well.

It looks interesting. Slightly more interested in War Thunder then WoWP, but we'll see.
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BuriBuriZaemon

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The reason why I don't see any selling point in World of Warplanes is because unlike tanks in World of Tanks, planes are very fragile. In World of Tanks, your facing matters, hulling-down matters, using terrain as cover matters because every tank is unique. In World of Warplanes, it's just open space and planes are just shooting at each others. Unless they make each plane behaves differently, they are just the beautifully modelled hitboxes of varying sizes.

The only appeal is its accesability to those who are looking for more simple arcade games. Just my two cents, though.
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Rex_Nex

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BuriBuri has a point. Without any of those little details that a game like World of Tanks makes you pay attention to, WoWP might have gameplay that is way too simplistic for it's own good. There is no cover to care about, no maps to learn, no angling to be done, etc. The only advanced thing to learn is maneuvers to put you behind the target.

War Thunder will at least have some other stuff to pay attention to.
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BuriBuriZaemon

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I am actually having way more excitement about World of Battleships. I think WarGaming is releasing World of Warplanes to directly compete against War Thunder. Ironically, War Thunder's previous working title: "World of Planes" has both caused confusion and drawn attention of World of Tanks players. Some players are actually testing both games.   :P
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SeaBee

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I am actually having way more excitement about World of Battleships. I think WarGaming is releasing World of Warplanes to directly compete against War Thunder. Ironically, War Thunder's previous working title: "World of Planes" has both caused confusion and drawn attention of World of Tanks players. Some players are actually testing both games.   :P
I have high hopes for World of Battleships. Not really interested in World of Warplanes ... I guess I'll check out World of Planes. Kind of tired of the World of X naming convention.
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Rex_Nex

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Its better then Blankcraft.
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Anvilfolk

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I've flown IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 on/off for around 6 years now, and I think you'd mostly wrong if you were talking about proper flight simulators. As it is, this is being done by Gaijin, which means they will probably not be pushing the limits of realism like IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover has been doing. Either way, let me tackle your points one by one!

I'm not terribly interested in flight games. When you arent actually on the ground, maps are nothing but different backgrounds to fly over. I also feel like tactics get thrown out of the window when you're in a giant open space like the air.

- Engagements should indeed happen further up, but if a dogfight continues for long enough, it will go all the way down to the terrain. I have seen people make excellent use of terrain for evasive manoeuvres, including evasive stunts that cause less experienced pilots to crash into the ground trying to follow.
- If you don't have a minimap that shows where you and your opponents are (i.e. realistic), the terrain is what you use to navigate with relation to an "actual map". This is much trickier than you'd think with big maps dozens of square km/miles. If you also consider weather and the sun's position to be part of the map, they have a totally non-trivial impact on combat. Ducking into clouds for cover and using the sun behind your back are both very sound tactical choices. Maps of the Pacific are harder in that sometimes you'll fly a long time without a whiff of land... but you have carrier navigational aids such as beacons etc.
- Regarding tactics, I've already mentioned ducking into clouds and being up-sun. Other than that, entire books have been dedicated to the subject of air combat (including "In Pursuit", which you should be able to get the pdf of). On a more practical level, you have E, or Energy, which stands for altitude+speed. You can convert E into speed or altitude, and gives you an idea of how "prepared" you are for combat. Estimating your enemy's E is integral to air combat. See also my other comments below.


The reason why I don't see any selling point in World of Warplanes is because unlike tanks in World of Tanks, planes are very fragile. In World of Tanks, your facing matters, hulling-down matters, using terrain as cover matters because every tank is unique. In World of Warplanes, it's just open space and planes are just shooting at each others. Unless they make each plane behaves differently, they are just the beautifully modelled hitboxes of varying sizes.

The only appeal is its accesability to those who are looking for more simple arcade games. Just my two cents, though.

- Have you tried to shoot down a TBF Avenger with an early-variant zero? There's a reason Grumman was called "Grumman Ironworks" ;)
- Some planes are fragile, some aren't, and some withstand +20mm cannon punishment and others don't. Every plane is unique. Furthermore, facing is very important. Trying to take down a plane from dead 6 gives you a minimal target to shoot at. Depending on the damage modelling in the game, hitting from dead six, besides being harder, will also cause lower damage since the enemy plane is not pulling any G's (which can cause cannon shots to snap off a wing more often than not...) and since  the shape of the airplane means the bullet might get slightly deflected. Plus, the pilot usually has armour plane behind him, depending on the plane. If you do deflection shooting, estimating deflection is always a challenge. Plus, you can expose interesting targets, such as hitting the canopy (instead of armour plate) and trying to get the pilot, the belly of the airplane (there's usually some fuel tanks there), the engine, or fuel tanks at or near the wing roots.
- Aside from all this, planes have immensely different flying characteristics. Turn rate, roll rate, climb rate and acceleration are all parametrised by current altitude and speed. Of course there is also max speed. You need to know how your plane behaves in relation to the enemy you are facing (which you also have to identify. This can be surprisingly hard at speeds of 300mph). For instance, the F4F Wildcat was outclassed in mostly all respects (except capability to sustain damage) by the A6M Zero. However, it was found out that in high speed dives, the Zero lost left (or right, I forget which) aileron authority. This meant that a turning dive was pretty much the only way to get away from the Zero.


I'm gonna stop with the wall of text now, but just bring up a couple points. There is an absolutely insane amount of tactics involved in air combat as long as airplanes aren't modelled all equally. I never realised it until I flew in a online in a full-real server. No matter what you do or what planes you're flying, those guys will get behind you and shoot you down - heck, our own Erkki does that all the time. He'd probably have a lot more to say about this, and a lot better too. The deeper you go, the more there is.

The question is how all this stuff is going to be modelled in War Thunder. Gaijin came out with Wings of Prey, which had actually simplified IL2's flight and damage modelling. I'm not sure they're gonna go the other way with this one, which really is too bad for those of us who are into hard core realism, but there you go. If damage and flight modelling aren't done properly, this won't have nearly as many tactics as in "the real thing", as you guys have said.

The Mechanical Man

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Thank you. I've played IL-2 1946 on and off for a few years, and there is a lot more to it than people think.
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fenrif

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Planes have a whole 3rd degree of movement, which means tanks are boring and simplistic with no tactics or strategy involved. I mean I guess they're accessable... That's probobly all tanks have going for them, accessability.
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BuriBuriZaemon

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Thanks AnvilFolk, that's quite an eye opening. I do think War Thunder is closer to a simulation than World of Warplanes. While a hardcore flight sim would be great (look how rare they are these days) I imagine Gaijin would make it enjoyable for flight sim vets but also accessible for someone like me who plays with mouse and keyboard, otherwise they'd be limiting their target market.

The game itself seems to have a pretty strong community, indicated by the testers making fan-made videos to promote the game. World of Warplanes has stricter NDA but most of the time I see its beta testers complaining about it whereas War Thunder testers are giving praises.
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Anvilfolk

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The post was written in a hurry but it seems I might've gotten something through so that's good :)

Again, being from the more hardcore crowd, I don't think it will scratch my personal itch. I might give it a whirl if it's F2P though, especially if other B12's are doing it! :) They are mentioning 32 player battles, which really isn't that much (some IL2 '46 servers boast 70+), but they are planning combined air/sea/land ops in the future, which is absolutely awesome.

At the very least, I think it'll have a lot of popularity and people who find they really enjoy it may think of upping the realism level by trying some other games. IL-2 could use some fresh blood :)

BuriBuriZaemon

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Speaking of IL '46 Cliff over Dover, I heard it had performance issues before. How's the game running now?
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Anvilfolk

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IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 is the ultimate version of the "old" IL-2 game. The new one is IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover. I tend to shorten the old game to '46, but that might confuse people! Sorry!

The game has gotten a lot better performance-wise, but I wouldn't get it unless you have a fairly modern system. Or at least get it when it goes into one of the many sales it goes into... Also, except another patch in the coming weeks, which should further improve things.

The real problem was that the game was much better in some ways, but so terrible in others that it completely fragmented the community. People went to CloD then couldn't come back to '46 (due to it now being super simplistic and bad looking), and kind of stopped playing altogether. It's been getting better as the game very slowly gets patched, but I dunno... it took too long, and they're already working on a sequel, that people are already saying they won't be buying, etc etc etc... It saddens me really.

Still, when I managed to play it at around 10fps, I absolutely loved it. It was definitely the next step up in realism. Engine management isn't just ram the throttle and leave it there... it's a huge factor in how you perform as a pilot, and that alone is amazing. Just taking off in a Blenheim was a huge challenge. It's gotten easier, perhaps more faithful to its true behaviour, but I spent 3 hours trying to get those first-version Blenheims into the air, and another 3 hours to make it back alive from a round-trip across the Channel (never got shot at). And it was glorious when I finally managed it!

Can't wait to get a computer that can run it decently :)

P.S. Sorry about all the unnecessary info. Kind of got carried away :)
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