War Thunder

[Cavadus]

What's the ETA on ground forces' release?

[Payton]

Good news Nadar!  Grats!

[Nadar]

What's the ETA on ground forces' release?

No word on that.  The forums are rife with typical forum speculation that ranges from soon to 4-5 months but nothing from Gaijin.  For the brief period I was able to play, I didn't notice any glaring issues with game play but there wasn't much of the tank tree available.  I only had 6 German and 6 Russian tanks in my research tree - the other countries only had the reserve planes available....although that doesn't necessarily mean much since in makes sense to limit the choices for testing.  Just doesn't provide any indication of how much of the overall tech tree has been modeled and just isn't being released yet.

[Nadar]

They've increased the server uptime a bit so the CBT is now available Mon, Wed & Fri night as well as Tues, Thurs & Sat morning (Central time).

 

Figured out how to get the planes...the research tree has tab that switches you over to the planes tree where you can put them in your hanger...still limited to bi-planes.  First time I took them out it put the tank combat area into perspective....it is tiny compared to the plane map.  I found in the forums that it is something like 4 km by 4km.  In hindsight it makes sense or otherwise you'd spend the entire match just driving to the enemy.  No indication how this is going to actually work when the full capability of ground forces is released...I wonder if it'll really just limit the planes to the reserves for the various countries and use this tiny map.

 

So far, flying planes does not give you any advantage...you currently only have 50kg bombs and have to score a direct hit for a kill...even then you need some luck.  They also have anti-air ground units available that are firing 20mm that will rip up a bi-plane fairly quickly.  On the plus side, they are very lightly armored so if you can get close enough to drop a bomb without getting shot, the 50kg will take them out fairly easy.

 

Sighting is also more difficult than with air combat.  You don't automatically sight the tanks just by being in range... I haven't figured out when they consider you having sighted a tank cause as I fly around, I get the red sighting indicator just pop up sometimes whereas others, I can clearly see the tank but no sighting indicator ever appears.  Fortunately, the indicator for tanks on your team does appear as expected so there shouldn't be any accidental friendly fire...at least not sue to mis-identification.

 

A technical issue with the planes is that when you get near the ground, the enhanced ground details starts to tax the GPU.  I have a radeon 7870 (high middle end) which has had no problems with the air combat but in CBT, the framerate drops a lot and the visuals start getting rather jumpy.

 

For tanks, they've added some heavies to the mix (sorry, don't remember the specific names) as well as the anti-air.  They also seem to have adjusted the sighting indicators between the tanks.  The first time I played, the indicator would pop up for all the enemies within some range...regardless of if they were concealed or even within LOS...really made setting ambushes difficult.  But now it looks like the indicator will only appear if they are in LOS...and sometimes not even then (they might need to be moving).  But fortunately, if you go into gunner view and target a tank you can see but that doesn't have an indicator, it will silhouette red or blue depending on whose side the tank is on so you can tell which team it is on before firing.

 

The matches seem to last as long or longer than the air battles.  Still have only seen base capture maps so no idea if there'll be other types.

 

No word yet on when open beta will start.

[Cavadus]

If spotting is anything like World of Tanks there's some RNG magic going on between a set camouflage modifier for a tank and the addition of more camouflage value based on any type of concealment (like bushes) which is then checked against the spotting tank's detection value.

 

WoT has had a lot of wonkiness with this math in the past but at least in WT it sounds like the tanks are always drawn.  In WoT they pop out of and vanish into thin air.  Fuckin' retarded.

[Stickman]

In WT the spotting works pretty well.

 

If they are in visual range(which is dependent on your Pilot's personal skill level) then you just hit Q (correct me on that cause I think I am wrong) I believe and it puts a red name above them. The only problems I ever find is that I can clearly see the plane above me in the clouds and I can not spot them, but other than that it works well and does not allow for quickly vanishing like you were mentioning.

[Nadar]

Hi Stickman....this particular line of discussion is about the ground forces closed beta.  Spotting for ground forces CBT currently is different than with the planes.  It is more difficult but I think more appropriate.  For ground forces, camouflage and setting up an ambush is an important strategy whereas it is less so for the planes.

[Stickman]

Ah ok. My bad then ignore that last comment; I have no idea what I am talking about when it comes to the ground forces beta.

[Cavadus]

Have they released tanks yet?

[Nadar]

Nope...and no ETA yet although they have talked about a third wave of CBT starting sometime in Feb so it is likely a couple months before open beta starts.

 

I'm not thrilled with it so far.  The maps are so small that there tends to be a lot of spawn camping...from across the map.  On some of the maps, the enemy can get set up such that they can blast you as you try to leave the spawn area. I also haven't gotten the hang of the shooting yet...I tend to get one shot yet when I have everything lined up and the targeting indicator is green, I'll get 'no damage' or a minor hit at the best.

 

On the plus side, they've added a lot of additional tanks,etc....for the Russians and Germans.  Nothing for the other nations yet.

[Nadar]

Update on Ground Units....this is from a Developers Diary post oncerning the next big patch to WT (1.39)

 

Ground Forces
 
A lot of work has been dedicated to our Ground Forces. It is too early to say if player controlled ground units will appear in 1.39. CBT is at full blast and many of CBT members think that the game can be released for open test, we still want to fix, check and finish a lot. Ground Forces may be released in 1.39 but most likely it won’t happen before Spring.

 

The full posting is at http://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/108308-developers-diaries-139/

 

So it might be soon but much more likely another couple months.

[Cavadus]

Darn!  I was bummed to read about how small the maps were.  A big issue in World of Tanks was that maps were so small that you can't really flank effectively and it also nullified the speed advantage of medium tanks.

 

I really hope they don't make the same mistakes.

[Nadar]

They just started the 3rd wave of CBT so OBT is probably still a ways off. 

 

They also opened up the planes side of the tech tree to allow more of the tier 1 planes than just the reserves.  I haven't played yet so not sure if it is all the tier 1 planes or just a few. But definitely allowed for some of the real bombers to start participating....and the results sound a bit hilarious...there is a good video from Entac on him leading a squad of PBY bombers into a match and decimating the enemy tanks.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS8El6BeGMY#t=430

 

Some of the issues are:

• small map causing the tanks to be easier to find (NOTE: the enemy tanks are not being tagged with the red marker unless already spotted but due to the small map, it is basically just looking anywhere that blue marked tanks are NOT and you'll find the enemy)
• AA fire tracers make it easy to find any AA that may have been deployed and take it out quickly
• No one was really flying fighters ... that should resolve itself as fighter jocks go for te easy targets the low level bombers make.
• The capture points notifications are visible so if you see one being capture, you know you just need to drop a bomb on it and will get some kills...the capture points are relatively small which exacerbates the issue.

Going to be interesting on how the developers react to this info. Hopefully does lead to bigger maps since the current ones are too small even when it was just tanks.

 

 

 

[Nadar]

War Thunder is having another Golden Eagle event this weekend.  There are two 4 hour time periods for the event where you can earn up to 300 GE from each period (so a max total of 600 GE).  The time frame for the events is 20:00-24:00 Sat and 9:00-13:00 Sunday (central time).  The criteria of the event is that you can earn 100 GE for your 2nd, 5th and 7th mission win during the event time periods.

 

The link to the official page for the event is: http://warthunder.com/en/news/473-Spring-Golden-Battles-en

 

EDIT: I'm not sure about the Sunday time conversion to CT. It is likely to be off by 1 hour since in its infinite wisdom, Congress has the US changing Daylight Saving Time on a different weekend than Europe.  The official time for the second part of the event is 15:00 GMT to 19:00 GMT.

[Nadar]

There were some server issues with the second part of the GE event today so Gaijin is adding an additional set of GE events this coming week.  On 3 days this week, you can earn 100 GE with 7 wins during the 24 hour event period.  The event periods are

 

Mar 9 3:00pm thru Mar 10 3pm CT

Mar 11 3:00pm thru Mar 12 3pm CT

Mar 13 3:00pm thru Mar 14 3pm CT

 

The official page announcing the events is at: http://warthunder.com/en/news/481-War-Thunder-Golden-Days-en

[Nadar]

Patch 1.39 released! Sadly, no tanks yet

 

Details at http://warthunder.com/en/news/537-Update-139-released-en

 

Haven't tried to download the patch yet but forum indicates it is around 4.4GB....and current downloads are going slow.  Probably a good overnight exercise if you try it.

[Cavadus]

DAMMIT I WANT TANKS!!!!! AGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

With my work schedule the way it's been a few tank matches would fit right in,  Might need to just boot it up and fly for a bit.

[Nadar]

Access to the tanks closed beta is available....they are running an event this weekend - 10 wins & 50 kills (arcade) will grant you access to the CBT.  The official notice is at

 

http://warthunder.com/en/news/557-Ground-Forces-HQ-decisive-battle-en

[Nadar]

War Thunder ground forces are OBT!

 

http://warthunder.com/en/news/587-Update-141---Ground-Forces-OBT-en

[Cavadus]

Got it all patched and ready to go last night.  The fiance had a friend over who stayed until like 0100 and I drank way too much so I couldn't fit a match in but come hell or high water I'm playing tonight!

[Cavadus]

Alright, got a shitload of War Thunder tankin' yesterday with Stickman and it was awesome!

 

Like all of these types of MOBAs you're basically at the mercy of the match maker.  Sometimes you're top dog and some times you're tread grease.  It appears that tier I is its own separate match while II and III get lumped together.  Rolling up on a KV-2 in a Panzer III sucks!

 

But things are a lot more realistic here than they are in World of Tanks.  No health points, real engagement ranges, you actually have to aim, and you can have a few different control modes independent of the match type (arcade, realistic, simulation).

I ended moving to the realistic control mode as default because when you hit a steep incline and lose momentum you're driver will stop the tank dead and drop it into first gear.  In realistic control you actually shift the gears manually so hitting inclines doesn't stop your tank.

 

The other cool thing with tank battles is that you get two lives per tank unlike with aircraft where you just get one unless you buy a special thing to use it again.  So realistically I think you only need two tanks, three max, per battle.  I ended up dismissing all of my German aircraft to make room for tanks and kind of regret that since I will never, ever need six tanks.

 

Researching goes pretty quick and I had a boatload of convertible XP and with a few hundred leftover gold I was able to bypass all of tier I and probably a quarter of tier II.  After one day of playing I was able to begin researching my first tier III.

 

All in all, I had a lot of fun!

[Tsarg]

Well when I read this I guess I read wrong cause when I saw ground combat I thought infantry was meant. After downloading the game i guess Ill try, no point in stopping the download now that its 95% but armor has never been my forte.

[Cavadus]

So they launched kind of a neat thing called War Thunder Live.

 

If you've been sitting at the tank select screen inside of a mission you might have noticed the "User Skin" toggle.  It's set to disabled by default.

 

But on WT live it seems to be a big mod repository filled with camouflage patterns, single player missions, even extra vehicles.  Pretty spiffy.  I definitely have some camouflages to download when I get home tonight.

[Cavadus]

Okay, finally unlocked the first variant of the Panther last night.  First few battles were ROUGH!  I was getting one-shotted left and right.

 

Then I jumped into simulator battles and all was well.  Seems like them damn commies aren't so freakin' smart without their tank outlines and name tags and bullet drop indicators and penetration indicators and nyah!

 

So I guess I'm done with arcade for GF.  Sim is way the hell better.  Plus I finally got to play KURSK!

 

Fuck, I could play that map every single match.  It's big, lots of room for long range engagements; just perfect for some Panther domination.

 

Here's a video of Kursk.  This is why you should play War Thunder sim battles.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDqqoShE3TI

[Cavadus]

Oh, I forgot to mention that the rewards for sim battles are AWESOME!

Up until recently I was being bottleknecked by lions (the currency).  Typically I'd unlock my researched vehicle while still needing 2-4 upgrades in the highest tier tank I own.  So I'd play through with that tank to complete all upgrades even after I unlocked the next tank but I'd still find myself short on cash especially considering I'm now paying like 77,000 lions for a crew on top of the tank purchase price.

 

In sim, in a good battle where I win and get a kill or three, I can pull in around 30k lions, about 5k research points, and around 3k modification points (with premium) on the Panther D.

 

I'm now at half a million silver lions and climbing and only halfway to the Tiger H.  I spent every lion I had to get my Panther plus crew.  I'll have plenty of cash by the time I get it unlocked.  And I'm also unlocking modifications every other battle on my Panther which is faster then I unlocked stuff on tier Is and IIs.