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War Thunder: Playstation 4 version has launched! Crossplay confirmed!
TOGSolid
Drunk sailorSeattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
Drunk sailorSeattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
Welcome pilot to the Mark 1 War Thunder OP! As always do not hesitate to make any suggestions for new information to add or to point out any corrections that need to happen. Once the tank combat launches a section about that will get added.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sfA-NsbzJY
PS4 Players: War Thunder has not released in the US on PS4 but it's slated to in early 2014. For the EU crowd out there it's already available! However, much like with Warframe I’m gonna need help from the PS4 crowd in getting any necessary PS4 sections written up since I do not own, nor intend to buy a PS4. All of your contributions to this OP will be greatly appreciated and fully credited!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sfA-NsbzJYPS4 Players: War Thunder has not released in the US on PS4 but it's slated to in early 2014. For the EU crowd out there it's already available! However, much like with Warframe I’m gonna need help from the PS4 crowd in getting any necessary PS4 sections written up since I do not own, nor intend to buy a PS4. All of your contributions to this OP will be greatly appreciated and fully credited!
What is War Thunder?
War Thunder is a vehicular combat game from Gaijin Entertainment for PC and PS4 (though right now it's EU only, the US PS4 launch will be in early 2014) spanning the period from pre-WW2 to the Korean War. Currently it is primarily an air combat simulator that caters to pilots of all skill levels but the game is now transforming harder than Spaceball 1. Tank combat is being integrated and is coming Soon™. Details about the tank combat are still coming in but it's looking very promising and if it's as accessible yet deep like the air combat it'll make World of Tanks look like some high schooler's first Python project. Even further down the line naval combat will be added however that is just on the drawing board for now but still something to look forward to.
War Thunder's air combat features five different nations, the US, UK, Russia, Germany (which includes some Italian planes), and Japan. Each nation has a wide range of planes from fighters and strategic bombers, to ground attack aircraft and heavy fighters. The tank combat will be launching with just Russia and Germany but will most likely expand to include the other nations over time.
War Thunder offers three different modes for players: Arcade, real battles (formerly historical battles), and full simulation mode. Arcade is essentially Ace Combat: World War 2 Edition and is where most everyone hangs out. The flight models are relaxed, ammo reloads itself in the air, and a joystick is not necessary. Real battles feature more accurate flight models, and you have to land to get more ammo but you can still play using a KBAM and 3rd person. It's essentially a hybrid between Arcade and full simulator. Historical event battles like The Battle of Britain and Midway are done in this mode. Full Simulator is for all you IL-2 veterans out there clamoring for a shiny new way to barrel roll your way to simulated victory. Joysticks are mandatory, all realism options are on, you're locked to the cockpit view, and a Track IR becomes a really good idea to own. There’s something here for everyone from the greenest of rookies to the most hardened of flight simulator veterans!
Quick Start Guide to Getting In Game
War Thunder is available on Steam so just search for it there and install the game! After installing you will need to head to http://warthunder.com/en/registration?r=userinvite_87294 and create an account. Then simply log into the game, play through the tutorials, and get into Vent to fly with your fellow dapper PA chaps! You will be asked to pick a nation but that pick is only relevant for the tutorials. Afterwards you will be free to play as whoever you want whenever you want so don’t sweat it.
The Oosiks play on the PA Ventrilo Server!
Host: vent20.gameservers.com
Port: 4384
Password: Ask one of the thread regulars!
TOGSolid is an admin on it so message him if you need anything!
Joining is as simple as saying hi in the thread and then in game go to MENU -> SQUADRONS and then type 161 in the FIND A SQUADRON box in the top right of the Squadron menu. Apply for membership and one of the Oosiks will get you in! We're all more than eager to help teach new pilots the ropes and don't care how experienced you are, all are welcome!
Gaijin's Too Cool For School Map
So Gaijin introduced one of the coolest features ever in War Thunder. The in game map can be loaded up in your browser, tablet, or mobile device. To access it locally via a browser you can either install this Chrome Extension, or simply type in http://hostname:8111 in your browser (for instance mine is TOGSolid-PC:8111). If you have a second monitor this is an amazingly handy feature to have available as you will always have the game map and all associated info with it right there at a glance. If you want to put it on your Android device there is an app for that. You can also just use your PC's LAN address (i.e. http://192.168.1.1:8111) to get it running on any mobile device connected to your network. This is not a hack. This is an intentional game feature Gaijin put in the game so enjoy!
Flight School
Completing the tutorials will get you free premium currency so DO THOSE FIRST! They'll also answer a lot of your basic questions. I won't be going into any tips and tricks or explanations because frankly that'll make this OP longer than the manual to Falcon 4.0 and DCS Blackshark combined. What I will do is provide you with an array of links that will teach you everything you could ever want to know in a better fashion than I ever could. Still, if you have questions don't hesitate to ask! If there is something specific to War Thunder you need to know that's not "how do I not die" related I'll be glad to get an FAQ going if it ends up being a common question.
These links are in rough order of how important they are:
Gaijin and eNtaK's "Learning the Game" series. - Gaijin brought in eNtaK who has already made a ton of tutorials to put together a bit more official of a tutorial series that starts with the very basics like the interface, picking a nation, and so on and goes on from there. If you're totally lost then this series will absolutely steer you in the right direction.
Wikipedia's Basic Fighter Maneuvers - An absolutely mandatory read for new pilots filled with an amazing amount of information all about basic maneuvers and the hows/whys of plane energy.
Offensive Tactics Against Enemy Fighters in World War 2 - Restored Color 1943 - A restored, WW2 era training video narrated and produced by famous World War 2 ace John "Jimmy" Thatch with animation provided by Disney (yes, really). This is easily the single most important, informative thing you could watch if you're a brand new pilot.
eNtaK's Tutorials and Beginner's Guides - Has a truly massive amount of information and contains guides to damn near anything you could want to know, including ground attack, crew skills, game mechanics, maneuvers, and so on.
Bis18mark70's War Thunder Channel - This guy has a ton of info and his plane guides are fantastic. Definitely a great way to learn the ins and outs of the planes in the game. He also has other general tutorials and tactics videos.
RamJB's Fighter Combat School
Arcade Maneuver Guide with GrmlZGaming
Sliver's Ground Targets Guide- Shows you how many bombs it takes to destroy a given target and what cannons/mgs will destroy what.
Both seasons of the History Channel's Dogfights - Don't you miss when the History Channel didn't suck massive dick? This show features actual combat veterans telling the stories about their fights while CGI animation depicts how these battles went down. The show also usually does a quick break down of the planes in the fights. Highly entertaining and interesting due to the historical aspects and from just how much you can learn from this show tactics wise.
War Thunder with The Mighty Jingles - Not a whole lot in the way of tutorials but watching his antics can teach you some stuff. He has a tendency for getting into really hilarious situations.
Zenos Warbirds - A huge archive of vintage war videos that also includes a decent amount of old flight combat training films. The Offensive Tactics video is from this site but the channel itself is worth mentioning due to all the other videos it has.
The main War Thunder wiki. - This is at the bottom cause it has a lot of good info but some spots will lead you astray like the "tactics" section. Basically, if it involves hard data then the wiki is a great resource, stay away from any sort of piloting advice areas though. Includes information on all the planes, crew skills, bomb and weapon stats, and so on.
TOG's Tips
1.) Turn off your lead indicator: Yes, really. If you're really new to flight games then leave it on for a while but once you've got a decent idea how leading works turn the lead indicator off. You do this via the ingame menu -> game options -> interface -> turn leading off. The reason you want to do this is because the lead indicator isn't particularly accurate and will cause you to waste a lot of shots. Secondly, it serves as a gigantic god damn distraction that will make it harder to get good shots on critical components like the engine, wings, pilot, and control surfaces. Finally, if you get used to flying in arcade with no lead indicator then flying in realistic becomes a hell of a lot easier.
2.) Change the colour and shape of your crosshair: The shape is mostly to taste but I prefer the circle with a dot since it stands out the best out of all of them. Changing the colour, however, should absolutely be done. The default white gets lost very easily and on snow maps is a total pain in the ass to try and use. I use red and it made aiming a hell of a lot easier. This is also done via the interface options like the lead indicator.
3.) Use the advanced mouse controls: The simplified ones rob you of a lot of neat options like manual flap control and the advanced ones also come with WASD bound to elevators, roll, and pitch which you will absolutely want to use in dogfights for better maneuvering. To access advanced controls, hile in Mouse Aim hit reset to defaults or control setup wizard. Either will lead you to a prompt that asks whether you want Advanced or Simple mouse controls. Choose advanced.
4.) Tier 1 (and even some tier 2) planes are pretty undergunned and can take a while to chew targets up. There is a fix for this though! Set your convergence to 100-150 and your dinky little MGs will pack far more of a punch and have a much better chance to get solid hits and crits on what you're shooting at. Just remember you'll need to be right on your target's tail for this to work though. Convergence is set both in the options but more commonly done in the spawn menu where you can alter it depending on what plane you pick. This is especially handy for Japanese planes as their MGs are generally pretty awful.
Tank Combat Information and Videos
The various types of ammunition you'll run across.
The Mighty Jingles explaining the hows and whys of all the different ammo types.
Video: War Thunder Beginner Tutorial & Guide - Getting Started In War Thunder Tanks & Ground Forces by eNtaK.
How things blow up. War Thunder's tank damage modeling.
http://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/89821-developers-diaries-ground-forces-damage-model-part-1/
http://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/90185-developers-diaries-ground-forces-damage-model-part-2/
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The United States
The United Kingdom
The U.K. does have a few downsides though. Their fighters never get any of the really big bore cannon loadouts that everyone else does and tend to rely on the “MOAR DAKKA” principle to make up for it by mounting up to twelve machine guns on some fighters or 4 20mm cannons on their Beaufighters. Their weaponry never really gets any better though so you're going to have to learn to be an excellent shot in higher tiers. They also have a pronounced lack of dedicated ground attack aircraft. The Beaufighter can get the job done thanks to its 4 20mm Hispano cannons and some of their fighter planes can carry bombs but there is no real equivalent to the Dauntless or IL-2 in the U.K. lineup. Their strategic bombers like the Wellington and Lancaster do well in in their role but they aren’t particularly outstanding in any notable way.
There is one final, notable quirk about U.K. planes that will only ever matter when you’re wanting to land: Their propellers tend to be hilariously huge making it really easy to rip them off when going for a landing if you don’t land properly. You’ll want to avoid trying to do high speed landings with any expectation of coming out of them in one piece.
Germany (with Italy tagging along like a tragically adorable three legged puppy)
No, really, that’s all you need to know about German fighters. They do one thing well and that is climb like the clouds are full of hookers and blow and then dive in on targets with impunity and oh boy are they good at it. Their fighters are some of the best in the game and almost all have a solid amount of firepower to them set up in configurations that make their hallmark boom and zoom techniques even more fearsome. However, the other dominant BnZ nation, the U.S. does tend to have a maneuverability advantage over the BFs which evens the score a fair bit. The Ju-87 Stukas, while not terribly maneuverable, are just as good at dive bombing as you’d expect from these famous WW2 planes and are able to carry some really heavy duty loadouts for such a small plane (one of the early ones even has the Jericho horn!). Their early access to a 1000kg bomb gives them some serious firepower for taking on base and ship destruction tasks. The German strategic bombers, thanks to the dozens of 50kg bombs they tend to carry, are actually competent at taking on ground target formations with practice and once they get access to the bigger bombs, can follow the Stukas in on base destruction missions. Their early heavy fighters, however, are generally pretty bad and are best used only for shooting down opposing bombers if you absolutely have to bring one.
As mentioned before, the early tiers have a smattering of Italian planes in them and generally they’re pretty crappy. They handle like bricks and are basically best treated as penance for the glorious BF-109s and Fw-190s you get later on. Once you get out of the Italian tiers the German tree really gets fun so just stick with it until you’re out of the woods.
Japan
Japanese planes almost uniformly have the exact same weakness, they tend to be a bit on the squishy side of life. It's a fair tradeoff, however, when they're the most maneuverable things in the sky. Japanese machineguns are also not very good resulting in their early planes being kind of a chore to get kills in unless you take the time to aim properly for weak spots on enemy aircraft but their cannons are at least comparable to everyone else’s so the Japanese firepower equalizes as you tier up.
Russia
The Russian tree is not without its faults though. While they enjoy a large amount of dominance in tier 1, they level out power wise afterwards and rely on the pilot's knowledge of the enemy aircraft due to the Russian planes not playing to any one specific extreme. This can also result in being caught in bad positions if you're not careful, luring a German plane into a slow speed fight only for you to get pounced by a Spitfire. The other problem with Russian planes is that since they are so powerful out of the gate but then level out you can get some bad habits flying them. You'll find that even in mid-tiers Russian pilots tend to be fairly middling since they're used to leaning on the fantastic Russian cannons rather than on good airmanship.
EDIT: That Roundel is something I cooked up in 5 minutes using that commissioned art I had sitting around (it seemed really appropriate so yay!). I'll make a snazzier version up later when I've got more time but if I don't finish eating and go watch the Doctor Who X-Mas special tonight I'm going to get my ass beaten by @Saldek.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Historical accuracy!
It kind of sucks to have such varied taste in WW2 armour.
Japanese and German fighters
Japanese ships
German and British tanks
American high-altitude bombers
I can only grind so much.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
The only suggestion I can think of is to add those charts, that are at least somewhat accurate, about what kinds of bombs and ammo can kill what. I saw it in the last thread, but after looking I just can't find it any more. It was a grid full of yellows and reds. Argh.
Also, I still believe I'm waiting for my invitation for the squad to be accepted. IGN is bejamus. I didn't realize everyone uses vent, so I'll hop on that when I sit down to play.
EDIT: And it appears most of them are either not helpful or really inaccurate.
EDIT EDIT: Linked to a ground target guide in the OP and added eNtaK's tutorials and guide's channel.
Damn fine!
― John Quincy Adams
I've started in American planes because of familiarity and patriotism and all that, but had already noticed that the Russian biplanes are very common/popular/OP in Tier 1; thanks for explaining why. I have other questions: What should I be spending and saving my eagles for? How does truly free (i.e., not converted/accelerated) research (especially of new plane unlocks) work - do I need to fly more missions to get more points, or wait a certain number of real hours for the bar to fill on its own?
You get Research points after each match. Some go towards unlocking a plane of your choice, and some goes to unlocking modifications on the planes you used during the match.
Spend eagles on Crew Skills. Get Vitality up high (30+ at least) and crew level to the first rank of qualifications (These bonuses are plane specific). Qualifications give you +30 levels to certain skills, the most notable being reload speed and repair speed. You might not notice long reload times now, but once you get cannons those things take centuries to reload.
Unless they changed the bonuses for qualification with the patch, they aren't plane specific
Ah gotcha
The only World War 2 museum I've been to was in Overloon, Netherlands..
That place was amazing, the actual museum was on the spot where the tank battle occurred. So you could walk outside and go into the bunkers that were tucked into the woods.
I also took a glass jar of sand from Omaha beach in Normandy. All with my dad, was some good bonding time.
― John Quincy Adams
Is this the bug your talking about?
― John Quincy Adams
This game will utterly destroy me once ships come out.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Those packs for sale on Steam, is the mustang premium in that it works like MWO premium mechs? If so, is it preferable to the Dora? TOG's nation summary leads me to say yes.
The Steam pack also contains three premium planes, one of which is the P-38 (which I have a hard-on for) and two singleplayer campaigns. They any good? Is it recommend to get the Steam pack over the mustang pack?
Also, I have no joystick. Would a gamepad work? Is KBAM preferable to pad for arcade play?
Can any of you make the tank expansion release this second?
KBAM is best for arcade. You'll get smoother maneuvers with a pad or stick, but your aiming ability will be crippled compared to those using a mouse because the flight model for arcade is very generous. I haven't really looked into the steam packs much, so I'll leave that to someone else.
Heres some tank stuff to hold you over.
You get large bonuses to plane research when you use a premium plane. If you'd rather focus on the US get the Mustang pack or the Steam Pack. If you want to focus on Germany, get the Dora pack. Japan works with the Steam Pack as well. Britain and Russia for the Ace Advance pack. The Ace pack is the best value because for 27.99 you get two months premium time, 10,000 golden eagles, and two premium planes (Britain and Russia) and the amount of golden eagles alone are worth $50. If you want to, you can buy a tank pack to get into the closed beta for tanks, but the packs are kinda expensive.
Yeah I saw that, but I assume that T-34 is a 'premium' tank even though the pack makes no explicit mention of this.
I'd love to pick a low profile tank, roll up on some foliage for cover, and then direct the other oosiks with coordinated bombing.
not necessarily go in depth with 6-line and 9-line targeting, but we could work something out for the maps
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Like, in my mind, it is just going to be a bunch of tanks begging for air cover as they get blown up by dive bombers. Unless they have player AA.
http://warthunder.com/en/news/387-Developers-Diaries-Ground-Forces-Damage-Model-Part-2-en
Makes me feel good, I'm sure they were throwing huge fits behind their keyboards
― John Quincy Adams
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
That was fantastic sealclubbing those guys in our shitbucket planes. I got complete fucking squat for XP for the plane I was working on but it was still a good time.
So they are making tanks dangerous to planes? Have to see how it works, I guess.
Too bad you can't play as an 88 tho.
God today's daily challange. What a kick in the nuts.
Literally took me 4 hours.....
― John Quincy Adams
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.