Neat. When I went digging around last night it looked like the crew XP thing had gotten an overhaul. Did they make it less of a nightmarish grind at some point?
I'm currently going through and maxing out all the Tier 1 planes I had blitzed through last time and fucking oof is the OS2U just baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. It does literally nothing well. It's slow, it's sluggish, and it's got dickall for offensive power. It's like someone strapped bombs onto a Cessna floatplane and hoped for the best. I'm getting a newfound respect for the US reserve planes though. They're not gonna blow your mind performance wise but they're not bad! Just do basic BNZ passes and you can rack up kills nicely with em.
Well advancing to an Ace crew without forking over eagles is a nightmare grind, but imo ranking up crews normally isn't that bad. At least for planes. Tanks require a lot more XP to max out, and it's harder to earn XP in ground battles on top of that.
I'm not familiar with Japanese bombers. For grinding plane research, you want a tier 4 bomber to mitigate the diminishing returns of using low tier vehicles to research high tier ones. However, for crew XP, I think that an argument can be made for lower tier bombers. Simply because low tier players generally are less likely to climb to altitude, so you can frequently be safe with the sky to yourself if you can climb up to 6-7 km. This is of course from the perspective of arcade where your bombs reload in flight while you're 7 km up.
I'm not sure at this point there is a strong Japanese bomber in the game.
Yeah, I don't remember the Japanese having anything on par with what the other nations can field in terms of firepower. Even their tier 4 bombers were pretty light on the payload making them less than ideal for base rushing. They did have one of the most hilariously/terrifyingly well armed bombers in the game though. The Renzan is covered in 20mm cannons because fuck you and you and you and that guy over there, and also you. Granted, this is based on the last time I played so other nations may have bombers with even heavier defensive gun loads now. With that .50 cal buff the Renzan Death Star is probably not top dog for doubling as a gunship anymore.
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
I honestly couldn't give a monkeys about researching tier 5 vehicles so like tier 3 is probably the sweet spot for that sort of thing for me
It's fully upped statline looks deceptively bad, at 17 second turn with an apparent anemic 10.6 m/s climb but its WEP is the stuff of legends, able to nearly keep pace with Hurricane Is, and the combat flaps are also really, really good.
The armaments are nice too. 4 7.7s with only 800 less ammo than a Hurricane or Spit gets across all eight guns so you have incredible longevity in a match, AND you get two nose-mounted .50s on top of that.
And all of this at a paltry 2.3; so it's going up against Fulgores, Yak-7Bs, and Boat Zeroes at worst when even tiered, and has no chance of getting dropped against proper Zeroes like the poor, poor Buffalo can if you get uptiered at 2.7. And with the Ki-43 line getting justly nerfed (seriously, something like a 19 climb on the Hayabusa?) your main worry from Japan isn't nearly as dangerous.
And since everyone's dropping as Italy right now you get to boom and zoom biplanes all day, and occasionally get in a good scrap with 109s and the occasional Fulgore.
It's fucking great.
EDIT: Oh, and it has a ridiculous max speed; I had one going 650+kph in a dive without breaking the wings.
I honestly couldn't give a monkeys about researching tier 5 vehicles so like tier 3 is probably the sweet spot for that sort of thing for me
Tiers 2 and 3 are also generally the sweet spot for having an interesting spread of vehicles while avoiding players who take the game Way Too Goddamned Seriously. Half my tier 4 bouts, and basically all my tier 5 ones, involve at least a couple of players who spend the entire round in paroxysms of nerdrage about one thing or another.
However, I have noticed a slight issue with my new toy, and that is that it holy shit sucks. Like, I get way better climb performance out of basically any Tier IV plane, and it doesn't turn for shit, either.
It's going to take a looooooooong time to knock out some of these upgrades when you can maybe possibly get an assist once in a while? Before you're pounced on by half the enemy team who can outclimb, outrun, and outturn you simultaneously. I mean, like, bombers are just running away from me.
I decided to give this another go, and I'm so glad I did. I'm having a blast with the planes.
I'm wretched at it, of course, but that's totally okay.
I have a question regarding convergence for machine guns. Is there a particular range that I might find most handy for murdering ground targets? I've been enjoying swooping down on them when I'm not learning to dog-fight.
For ground targets, you generally want your convergence to be out pretty far - you need to be shooting your targets at or about convergence range to get the most impact, which is really important for ground targets, and close-in convergence makes it really, really easy to clip a tree or a mountain and really ruin your day.
For dogfighting, of course, you want your convergence fairly close.
This changes, of course, depending on the layout of your guns. The closer together and to your centerline they are, the farther out you can put your convergence without really impacting your dogfighting ability.
I decided to give this another go, and I'm so glad I did. I'm having a blast with the planes.
I'm wretched at it, of course, but that's totally okay.
I have a question regarding convergence for machine guns. Is there a particular range that I might find most handy for murdering ground targets? I've been enjoying swooping down on them when I'm not learning to dog-fight.
For nose mounted guns, I commonly use either 800m converge or no convergence.
For wing mounted guns, I think I normally set them between 300m and 500m depending on what I'm shooting. Solid bullets rely on their kinetic energy for damage, and that drops off dramatically over distance. Explosive rounds primarily rely on their explosive filler for damage and are deadly out to longer range.
@Elvenshae
Congrats on the jet! My condolences for jet Stock syndrome.
Jets suffer pretty badly from stock syndrome. When it was stock, my Arado jet bomber could be outrun by mustangs and spitfires in level flight while I was carrying the drag of my bomb load.
Props are more agile, climb faster, and accelerate faster than you. Your engine maintains its performance at really high altitudes better, and in theory you have a better top speed (if you can fix your stock drag coefficient and engine performance). It is mandatory to stick to an inflexible boom and zoom strategy against props since that's the only field that you can have an advantage in against props.
One change that caught me by surprise was a dramatic shift in climb speeds. While most of my previous prop planes had optimal climb speeds somewhere between 230 and 300 Km/h IAS, my me-262 has an optimal climb speed closer to 500 km/h IAS. Experiment in test flights to try and find your optimal climb speed (it will change a bit as your upgrade the plane).
One advantage to the higher climbing speed is that you have more kinetic energy to work with when climbing. Most Notably you can use that speed to pop upwards quite a distance if you transition from a sustained climb to a zoom climb. The easiest application of this is to surprise bombers by climbing up until you're about a kilometer below them, and then zoom climbing into their soft belly like a shark striking from the deep. With practice, you might be able to find situations where you can bait props that are climbing up to you to chase you ever higher in a zoom climb and then catch them in a rope a dope.
When taking off from the ground, make sure that you have a distinct brake button bound. Set your throttle to 100% and hold down your brakes until your engines have fully spun up to max thrust (either watch the appropriate dial in the cockpit, or wait until you start slowly inching forward despite your brakes). Then release your brakes and push your throttle to WEP. If you don't do the above, then many runways are simply too short for you to take off in a jet.
I tried to grind out the first real jet I got (HE-162 doesn't really count), the Mig-15 bis, and after like 5 matches just bought the bullet and spent 3 bucks or so worth of golden eagles to buy a few of the upgrades...i figured I could grind out the ammo belts and bomb type stuff on my own, but it was just miserable playing in a slow, clunky version of the jet.
I am freaking terrible at jets though....like truly awful.
Especially on the narwhal variant of the me 262. The stock belt is terrible. It's 50mm cannon has a small magazine that jams if you fire too fast, and the stock belt is an even distribution of a tracer round (mostly worthless), an HVAP round (overpens anything that flys), and a 50mm HE minengeschoss round (the good round).
So far, I've only been playing against jets (in Realistic, because I don't have much else even close to this thing's BR for Arcade, so it would be this one jet and, like, some BR 5 stuff). I'm mostly trying to boom-and-zoom to minimize the amount of time I can be potentially targeted, but this relies pretty heavily on my opponents deciding to attack my teammates first and start a dogfight. If they pick me first, despite hanging back and climbing desperately, or they just BNZ themselves, then I'm lucky to score hits, let alone any kills.
I'm not sure I can hit 300+ MPH in level flight in this thing ...
My stock belts are (4x 20mm cannon) HEF-I / HEF-I / APT, which seem okay? The upgrade to Universal from default makes them a 50/50 split instead of 66/33.
That sounds like a good stock belt to me. Although I've always been fond of stealth belts to hide the fact that you're shooting at someone until they're being hit by your cannon.
I mistook your jet for the F-84 with six fifty cals, which is a bit anemic for shooting down some of the higher br jets.
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Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
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ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
For ground targets, you generally want your convergence to be out pretty far - you need to be shooting your targets at or about convergence range to get the most impact, which is really important for ground targets, and close-in convergence makes it really, really easy to clip a tree or a mountain and really ruin your day.
For dogfighting, of course, you want your convergence fairly close.
This changes, of course, depending on the layout of your guns. The closer together and to your centerline they are, the farther out you can put your convergence without really impacting your dogfighting ability.
Also the nature of your guns. Like you can afford some fairly high convergence values on mid-tier British planes despite the wide-set wing mounts simply due to how ludicrously accurate fully upgraded Hispano Mk IIs are
So far, I've only been playing against jets (in Realistic, because I don't have much else even close to this thing's BR for Arcade, so it would be this one jet and, like, some BR 5 stuff). I'm mostly trying to boom-and-zoom to minimize the amount of time I can be potentially targeted, but this relies pretty heavily on my opponents deciding to attack my teammates first and start a dogfight. If they pick me first, despite hanging back and climbing desperately, or they just BNZ themselves, then I'm lucky to score hits, let alone any kills.
I'm not sure I can hit 300+ MPH in level flight in this thing ...
My stock belts are (4x 20mm cannon) HEF-I / HEF-I / APT, which seem okay? The upgrade to Universal from default makes them a 50/50 split instead of 66/33.
The F2H2 is a pretty rough place to start your jet career.
I have a feeling it will closely mimic my experiences with the La-15. The difference being that instead of nice squishy, peaceful B-57s & Canberras you get matched against Tu-4s.
The best advice I can give you is to start keeping a log & really good notes on how your rounds play out.
If you have a particularly successful round, write out the exact and complete sequence of events. Think about why things happened the way they did, and try to make them happen that way again in future rounds.
One thing I noticed pretty quickly in the La-15 was that there was statistically no reason whatsoever to stay in an uptiered Korea game. Your mileage may vary.
I own many jets. I can count the number of realistic battles I've played on all of them on one hand. Know why?
The Jet Lords.
You see, The Jet Lords are the Ones Who Came Before, who spent the weeks of constant playing required to get Their Holy Steeds fully upgraded, turned into truly fearsome mounts of war. They ride these gleaming machines high into the stratosphere, engaging in incredibly high-velocity, low-opportunity window dogfights well beyond the ken of mere mortals. Occasionally those poor souls flying planes with mere propellers are able to glimpse Their Glory, a rapid, unerringly accurate assault from on high, the Jet Lord rapidly returning to the heavens from whence They came, leaving only a shattered wreck of debris and occasionally a trail of Blessed Exhaust as evidence They were ever there.
Any aspirant to Their throne must deal with endlessly dying, over and over, praying for even the barest chance to engage in Their Holy Wars, thousands upon thousands of meters above the surface. Only after running this gauntlet for weeks can they even begin to assume the mantle of Jet Lord.
And then the neophyte Jet Lord must learn how to fight properly in those rapid dogfights.
And y'know what, I don't have the patience for that. I'll just fly Tier II-III and be quite happy.
I think the most fun I have had with Warthunder is just messing around in the very bottom tiers in arcade battles. I don't have a flight control system (or even a basic joystick) that is pretty important for those super realistic battles, and there's just too much dead time in even the middle realism battles honestly. I would like to fly some of the really iconic planes like the Mustang (I have a couple Spitfires, a Hurricane and I think a BF109) but I just don't find those planes as much fun as the little biplanes. Though I did have some fun in the fist Stuka the few times I flew it.
I've done some Realistic battles (months ago, but I did them). I don't think I want to step into that again with a plane that isn't fully upgraded, honestly. At least in Arcade it's not such an immense handicap having crappy planes.
There's also the fact that I'm not really that good. I don't do a good job of managing energy and I can never seem to get to altitude before my enemies do no matter what plane I am flying. Arcade is fun because even if I'm terrible, I can still manage to accomplish something eventually. My "best" Realistic battle I was the last one alive on my team, and they had a couple of bombers, and if I had managed to shoot one of them down I would have won the match because their tickets would have run out first. I spent quite some time trying to find those suckers, and then when I finally did I pumped one of those bombers full of holes but wasn't able to take it down, while I got chewed up in return and had to head back to base to repair and rearm. Except I managed to mess up on the landing just enough to tip forward and damage my prop, which counted me as out of the match for a few seconds and therefore our tickets ran out first and we lost.
I think the most fun I have had with Warthunder is just messing around in the very bottom tiers in arcade battles. I don't have a flight control system (or even a basic joystick) that is pretty important for those super realistic battles, and there's just too much dead time in even the middle realism battles honestly. I would like to fly some of the really iconic planes like the Mustang (I have a couple Spitfires, a Hurricane and I think a BF109) but I just don't find those planes as much fun as the little biplanes. Though I did have some fun in the fist Stuka the few times I flew it.
To be honest keyboard and mouse are better than a HOTAS setup for realistic mode. The precision of mouse aim is just too large of an advantage.
Also arcade's great. The dogfights that break out over the airfield control maps are the best. You never see that sort of ferocity in the other modes.
The most flabbergasting moment from last night's mixed battles was someone who yelled at elvenshae for flying his P-47 to the airfield instead of killing tanks.
To state what should be obvious, elvenshae had already killed some tanks and was returning to base to get more ordinance for another sorty.
I tried to explain that planes need to land at the airfield to get more bombs. He was all for getting more bombs but still dead set on the notion that you should not fly that far from the ground battle. I can only fathom that he has a severe deficiency in spacial reasoning skills and wasn't able to grasp the notion that the airfield itself, and in turn the bomb reloads, were several kilometers from the ground battle and that one must cross that distance if they want to reload.
We also had about four spitfires in the air that were gently pecking the remaining German tanks with mgs to spot them, so it wasn't a matter of needing airborne spotters.
The most flabbergasting moment from last night's mixed battles was someone who yelled at elvenshae for flying his P-47 to the airfield instead of killing tanks.
To state what should be obvious, elvenshae had already killed some tanks and was returning to base to get more ordinance for another sorty.
I tried to explain that planes need to land at the airfield to get more bombs. He was all for getting more bombs but still dead set on the notion that you should not fly that far from the ground battle. I can only fathom that he has a severe deficiency in spacial reasoning skills and wasn't able to grasp the notion that the airfield itself, and in turn the bomb reloads, were several kilometers from the ground battle and that one must cross that distance if they want to reload.
We also had about four spitfires in the air that were gently pecking the remaining German tanks with mgs to spot them, so it wasn't a matter of needing airborne spotters.
That was also the match where Armchair and I were advancing on the "C" point on Normandy, and for some reason a Jagdpanzer and I just basically drove right past each other in an open field. He was looking at Armchair, who warned me about him on the coms, so I was able to sloooooowly swing around (the M10 is not a nimble vehicle) and shoot it in the ass for a one-shot kill.
I'd expected the German to still be hiding in the buildings near "C", so I was looking right, and I guess he was expecting us to sneak up through the woods, so he was looking to his right. Ships in the night, man.
What was really funny is that, respawning into the P-47, I came back and scored a couple of assists on ground targets between my bomb load and rocket load (I still need to practice non-naval dive bombing more), and then scored two A2A kills against FW-190s while carrying around my remaining bomb (the lighter one on the Thunderbolt's centerline). I got an assist with that one, too.
And then we lost because every tanker died and was out of respawns, so we didn't have anything to contest the ground battle. Enemy had 4 Panzer IVs and Panther Ds on the ground at the end, against me (P-47, at the airfield) and P-51 (shooting 50 cals at tanks) and a Typhoon (crashed on the airfield).
chasr34 was the guy with the attitude problem. I feel confident that the relative scores speak for themselves.
" he's right behind you, but don't worry he's looking towards me instead "
The ground lineup in that event feels in Germany's favor. They can start out in some nice panzer IVs or some jagdpanzers,then upgrade to Tigers and Panthers after they accrue some spawn points.
The air belongs to the allies. The German Bf 109's and FW 190s don't quite match up to the air superiority power of the spitfires or the close air support of the P-47s.
The ground lineup in that event feels in Germany's favor. They can start out in some nice panzer IVs or some jagdpanzers,then upgrade to Tigers and Panthers after they accrue some spawn points.
The air belongs to the allies. The German Bf 109's and FW 190s don't quite match up to the air superiority power of the spitfires or the close air support of the P-47s.
It's weird because I'm used to Germany having the disadvantage in the air in addition to post war tanks stealing the thunder of German heavy tanks.
Edit :
And on the tank front, I think that's fair to put king Tigers and such up against more comparable competition. But the tier 4 109's and 190s feel overtiered compared to the competition. Although it's probably just sever spitfires being under tired in a lot of cases. But the 109 k4 doesn't belong way up at br 6.0
Woo, got all of the Tier 1 US planes maxed out! That 50 cal buff is amazing and while in a Buffalo I had one hell of a finale on my mod research adventure last night. That plane can't really do anything worth a damn and I was almost done so instead of playing smart, I just dove into a furball for the hell of it without using any sort of, yanno, tactics or even general intelligence. I ended up getting three planes tied onto my six but the first Buffalo being gutless ended up being helpful. I did a snaproll that bled all of my energy off in a heartbeat causing the other planes to overshoot. I then was able to pop one, snaproll again, pop a second, but then finally got tagged by the third just by virtue of numbers. If the Buffalo had just a bit more maneuverability or power I probably could have tagged the third too but oh well.
Time to give these new seeewwww faaaahncyyyy Italian planes a try!
The Breda's are WAY better than they used to be. I'd rank them in the same league as American fiddies... Except the Italians only ever seem to mount two of them on a plane compared to the Americans mounting six to eight.
But oh boy do things change once they start importing German mg-151's.
The mc202-ec is NOT gonna stay at 2.7. She's got to get a br increase. 3.3 or 3.7 is more her place I think. She's a seal clubbing machine in her current tier. Most of the flight performance of the mc202, but pairing twin bredas with twin mg-151's and 500 rounds of 20mm ammo.
I also hear that the G. 55S is a monster of a plane, but I don't have an Italian crew that's high enough to qualify for her yet.
Oh, and can I point out how fucking gorgeous this game still is?
(Spoilered for HUGE)
Just, damn. War Thunder is one hell of an eye candy machine. Also I love how the B-18 looks like a Pixar plane that's just so happy to be alive and pooping bombs on people.
EDIT: Woof, the Bredas are better than I remember but I still feel like I'm shooting rocks at people instead of bullets just cause of how hard these shots drop. I also forgot that Italy somehow figured out how to make a biplane that turns like a brick
Yeah, American planes were always fun because American plane doctrine was basically PUT THE BIGGEST GOD DAMN ENGINE YOU CAN IN THIS THING AND LIKE A HUNDRED MGs AND SEND IT TO THE FUCKING MOON but post .50 cal buff they're absolute dream murder machines.
I unlocked the belts for the Bredas and all of a sudden it makes sense why I've been seeing Italian planes doing work while I was playing my T1 US planes. They get AP-I and IAI rounds right out of the gate O_o
The Itallians always had those belts for their 12.7mm bredas, even back when they were guests in the German tree. It's just that they were hot garbage before this patch. The running joke was that the bredas shot breadsticks. Now they're really good. Particularly the explosive rounds. They used to always detonate on the skin and do essentially nothing. Now they can actually penetrate the skin and cause some serious pain within the confined space of the plane's interior.
The Itallians always had those belts for their 12.7mm bredas, even back when they were guests in the German tree. It's just that they were hot garbage before this patch. The running joke was that the bredas shot breadsticks. Now they're really good. Particularly the explosive rounds. They used to always detonate on the skin and do essentially nothing. Now they can actually penetrate the skin and cause some serious pain within the confined space of the plane's interior.
I confess to generally avoiding Italian planes way back in the day so I never had much experience with them besides having a hot take of their stuff being generally garbage.
I have to say, so far it seems like Gaijin has done some good shit to this game while I've been away but I haven't taken any of my higher tier stuff out for a spin so I don't know what that end of things is like right now. That said, the Ba-65 is SO MUCH FUN. Those 100KG bombs are like mini-nukes and the plane has enough dakkadakka to help plow the road on the way to a target or to make derpydoos trying to do head-ons think twice. I've got a huge bias hard on for Attacker style planes though so my opinion should not be trusted.
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I'm currently going through and maxing out all the Tier 1 planes I had blitzed through last time and fucking oof is the OS2U just baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. It does literally nothing well. It's slow, it's sluggish, and it's got dickall for offensive power. It's like someone strapped bombs onto a Cessna floatplane and hoped for the best. I'm getting a newfound respect for the US reserve planes though. They're not gonna blow your mind performance wise but they're not bad! Just do basic BNZ passes and you can rack up kills nicely with em.
I'm not familiar with Japanese bombers. For grinding plane research, you want a tier 4 bomber to mitigate the diminishing returns of using low tier vehicles to research high tier ones. However, for crew XP, I think that an argument can be made for lower tier bombers. Simply because low tier players generally are less likely to climb to altitude, so you can frequently be safe with the sky to yourself if you can climb up to 6-7 km. This is of course from the perspective of arcade where your bombs reload in flight while you're 7 km up.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
It's fully upped statline looks deceptively bad, at 17 second turn with an apparent anemic 10.6 m/s climb but its WEP is the stuff of legends, able to nearly keep pace with Hurricane Is, and the combat flaps are also really, really good.
The armaments are nice too. 4 7.7s with only 800 less ammo than a Hurricane or Spit gets across all eight guns so you have incredible longevity in a match, AND you get two nose-mounted .50s on top of that.
And all of this at a paltry 2.3; so it's going up against Fulgores, Yak-7Bs, and Boat Zeroes at worst when even tiered, and has no chance of getting dropped against proper Zeroes like the poor, poor Buffalo can if you get uptiered at 2.7. And with the Ki-43 line getting justly nerfed (seriously, something like a 19 climb on the Hayabusa?) your main worry from Japan isn't nearly as dangerous.
And since everyone's dropping as Italy right now you get to boom and zoom biplanes all day, and occasionally get in a good scrap with 109s and the occasional Fulgore.
It's fucking great.
EDIT: Oh, and it has a ridiculous max speed; I had one going 650+kph in a dive without breaking the wings.
Tiers 2 and 3 are also generally the sweet spot for having an interesting spread of vehicles while avoiding players who take the game Way Too Goddamned Seriously. Half my tier 4 bouts, and basically all my tier 5 ones, involve at least a couple of players who spend the entire round in paroxysms of nerdrage about one thing or another.
Time roll out the spitfires
I am now officially jet-powered.
However, I have noticed a slight issue with my new toy, and that is that it holy shit sucks. Like, I get way better climb performance out of basically any Tier IV plane, and it doesn't turn for shit, either.
It's going to take a looooooooong time to knock out some of these upgrades when you can maybe possibly get an assist once in a while? Before you're pounced on by half the enemy team who can outclimb, outrun, and outturn you simultaneously. I mean, like, bombers are just running away from me.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I'm wretched at it, of course, but that's totally okay.
I have a question regarding convergence for machine guns. Is there a particular range that I might find most handy for murdering ground targets? I've been enjoying swooping down on them when I'm not learning to dog-fight.
For dogfighting, of course, you want your convergence fairly close.
This changes, of course, depending on the layout of your guns. The closer together and to your centerline they are, the farther out you can put your convergence without really impacting your dogfighting ability.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
For nose mounted guns, I commonly use either 800m converge or no convergence.
For wing mounted guns, I think I normally set them between 300m and 500m depending on what I'm shooting. Solid bullets rely on their kinetic energy for damage, and that drops off dramatically over distance. Explosive rounds primarily rely on their explosive filler for damage and are deadly out to longer range.
@Elvenshae
Congrats on the jet! My condolences for jet Stock syndrome.
Jets suffer pretty badly from stock syndrome. When it was stock, my Arado jet bomber could be outrun by mustangs and spitfires in level flight while I was carrying the drag of my bomb load.
Props are more agile, climb faster, and accelerate faster than you. Your engine maintains its performance at really high altitudes better, and in theory you have a better top speed (if you can fix your stock drag coefficient and engine performance). It is mandatory to stick to an inflexible boom and zoom strategy against props since that's the only field that you can have an advantage in against props.
One change that caught me by surprise was a dramatic shift in climb speeds. While most of my previous prop planes had optimal climb speeds somewhere between 230 and 300 Km/h IAS, my me-262 has an optimal climb speed closer to 500 km/h IAS. Experiment in test flights to try and find your optimal climb speed (it will change a bit as your upgrade the plane).
One advantage to the higher climbing speed is that you have more kinetic energy to work with when climbing. Most Notably you can use that speed to pop upwards quite a distance if you transition from a sustained climb to a zoom climb. The easiest application of this is to surprise bombers by climbing up until you're about a kilometer below them, and then zoom climbing into their soft belly like a shark striking from the deep. With practice, you might be able to find situations where you can bait props that are climbing up to you to chase you ever higher in a zoom climb and then catch them in a rope a dope.
When taking off from the ground, make sure that you have a distinct brake button bound. Set your throttle to 100% and hold down your brakes until your engines have fully spun up to max thrust (either watch the appropriate dial in the cockpit, or wait until you start slowly inching forward despite your brakes). Then release your brakes and push your throttle to WEP. If you don't do the above, then many runways are simply too short for you to take off in a jet.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I am freaking terrible at jets though....like truly awful.
Especially on the narwhal variant of the me 262. The stock belt is terrible. It's 50mm cannon has a small magazine that jams if you fire too fast, and the stock belt is an even distribution of a tracer round (mostly worthless), an HVAP round (overpens anything that flys), and a 50mm HE minengeschoss round (the good round).
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I'm not sure I can hit 300+ MPH in level flight in this thing ...
My stock belts are (4x 20mm cannon) HEF-I / HEF-I / APT, which seem okay? The upgrade to Universal from default makes them a 50/50 split instead of 66/33.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I mistook your jet for the F-84 with six fifty cals, which is a bit anemic for shooting down some of the higher br jets.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Also the nature of your guns. Like you can afford some fairly high convergence values on mid-tier British planes despite the wide-set wing mounts simply due to how ludicrously accurate fully upgraded Hispano Mk IIs are
The F2H2 is a pretty rough place to start your jet career.
I have a feeling it will closely mimic my experiences with the La-15. The difference being that instead of nice squishy, peaceful B-57s & Canberras you get matched against Tu-4s.
The best advice I can give you is to start keeping a log & really good notes on how your rounds play out.
If you have a particularly successful round, write out the exact and complete sequence of events. Think about why things happened the way they did, and try to make them happen that way again in future rounds.
One thing I noticed pretty quickly in the La-15 was that there was statistically no reason whatsoever to stay in an uptiered Korea game. Your mileage may vary.
I caught up to one once, put about 20 rounds into it, and then the gunners shot my pilot, so ... Yeah.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I own many jets. I can count the number of realistic battles I've played on all of them on one hand. Know why?
The Jet Lords.
You see, The Jet Lords are the Ones Who Came Before, who spent the weeks of constant playing required to get Their Holy Steeds fully upgraded, turned into truly fearsome mounts of war. They ride these gleaming machines high into the stratosphere, engaging in incredibly high-velocity, low-opportunity window dogfights well beyond the ken of mere mortals. Occasionally those poor souls flying planes with mere propellers are able to glimpse Their Glory, a rapid, unerringly accurate assault from on high, the Jet Lord rapidly returning to the heavens from whence They came, leaving only a shattered wreck of debris and occasionally a trail of Blessed Exhaust as evidence They were ever there.
Any aspirant to Their throne must deal with endlessly dying, over and over, praying for even the barest chance to engage in Their Holy Wars, thousands upon thousands of meters above the surface. Only after running this gauntlet for weeks can they even begin to assume the mantle of Jet Lord.
And then the neophyte Jet Lord must learn how to fight properly in those rapid dogfights.
And y'know what, I don't have the patience for that. I'll just fly Tier II-III and be quite happy.
Seriously. Make the jump to Realistic. There's so much more to War Thunder than the utter randomness of Arcade Battles
There's also the fact that I'm not really that good. I don't do a good job of managing energy and I can never seem to get to altitude before my enemies do no matter what plane I am flying. Arcade is fun because even if I'm terrible, I can still manage to accomplish something eventually. My "best" Realistic battle I was the last one alive on my team, and they had a couple of bombers, and if I had managed to shoot one of them down I would have won the match because their tickets would have run out first. I spent quite some time trying to find those suckers, and then when I finally did I pumped one of those bombers full of holes but wasn't able to take it down, while I got chewed up in return and had to head back to base to repair and rearm. Except I managed to mess up on the landing just enough to tip forward and damage my prop, which counted me as out of the match for a few seconds and therefore our tickets ran out first and we lost.
To be honest keyboard and mouse are better than a HOTAS setup for realistic mode. The precision of mouse aim is just too large of an advantage.
Also arcade's great. The dogfights that break out over the airfield control maps are the best. You never see that sort of ferocity in the other modes.
I always forget that those sandbags are in the middle of the runway...
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I know ground events where Germans have access to Tigers and the allies can't bring post-war tanks are generally ghost towns.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
https://discord.gg/hMMKSv9
I'm hopping into War Thunder now!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
To state what should be obvious, elvenshae had already killed some tanks and was returning to base to get more ordinance for another sorty.
I tried to explain that planes need to land at the airfield to get more bombs. He was all for getting more bombs but still dead set on the notion that you should not fly that far from the ground battle. I can only fathom that he has a severe deficiency in spacial reasoning skills and wasn't able to grasp the notion that the airfield itself, and in turn the bomb reloads, were several kilometers from the ground battle and that one must cross that distance if they want to reload.
We also had about four spitfires in the air that were gently pecking the remaining German tanks with mgs to spot them, so it wasn't a matter of needing airborne spotters.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
That was also the match where Armchair and I were advancing on the "C" point on Normandy, and for some reason a Jagdpanzer and I just basically drove right past each other in an open field. He was looking at Armchair, who warned me about him on the coms, so I was able to sloooooowly swing around (the M10 is not a nimble vehicle) and shoot it in the ass for a one-shot kill.
I'd expected the German to still be hiding in the buildings near "C", so I was looking right, and I guess he was expecting us to sneak up through the woods, so he was looking to his right. Ships in the night, man.
What was really funny is that, respawning into the P-47, I came back and scored a couple of assists on ground targets between my bomb load and rocket load (I still need to practice non-naval dive bombing more), and then scored two A2A kills against FW-190s while carrying around my remaining bomb (the lighter one on the Thunderbolt's centerline). I got an assist with that one, too.
And then we lost because every tanker died and was out of respawns, so we didn't have anything to contest the ground battle. Enemy had 4 Panzer IVs and Panther Ds on the ground at the end, against me (P-47, at the airfield) and P-51 (shooting 50 cals at tanks) and a Typhoon (crashed on the airfield).
chasr34 was the guy with the attitude problem. I feel confident that the relative scores speak for themselves.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
"where is he? "
" he's right behind you, but don't worry he's looking towards me instead "
The ground lineup in that event feels in Germany's favor. They can start out in some nice panzer IVs or some jagdpanzers,then upgrade to Tigers and Panthers after they accrue some spawn points.
The air belongs to the allies. The German Bf 109's and FW 190s don't quite match up to the air superiority power of the spitfires or the close air support of the P-47s.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
So, historically accurate then
Edit :
And on the tank front, I think that's fair to put king Tigers and such up against more comparable competition. But the tier 4 109's and 190s feel overtiered compared to the competition. Although it's probably just sever spitfires being under tired in a lot of cases. But the 109 k4 doesn't belong way up at br 6.0
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Time to give these new seeewwww faaaahncyyyy Italian planes a try!
But oh boy do things change once they start importing German mg-151's.
The mc202-ec is NOT gonna stay at 2.7. She's got to get a br increase. 3.3 or 3.7 is more her place I think. She's a seal clubbing machine in her current tier. Most of the flight performance of the mc202, but pairing twin bredas with twin mg-151's and 500 rounds of 20mm ammo.
I also hear that the G. 55S is a monster of a plane, but I don't have an Italian crew that's high enough to qualify for her yet.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Just, damn. War Thunder is one hell of an eye candy machine. Also I love how the B-18 looks like a Pixar plane that's just so happy to be alive and pooping bombs on people.
EDIT: Woof, the Bredas are better than I remember but I still feel like I'm shooting rocks at people instead of bullets just cause of how hard these shots drop. I also forgot that Italy somehow figured out how to make a biplane that turns like a brick
I unlocked the belts for the Bredas and all of a sudden it makes sense why I've been seeing Italian planes doing work while I was playing my T1 US planes. They get AP-I and IAI rounds right out of the gate O_o
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I confess to generally avoiding Italian planes way back in the day so I never had much experience with them besides having a hot take of their stuff being generally garbage.
I have to say, so far it seems like Gaijin has done some good shit to this game while I've been away but I haven't taken any of my higher tier stuff out for a spin so I don't know what that end of things is like right now. That said, the Ba-65 is SO MUCH FUN. Those 100KG bombs are like mini-nukes and the plane has enough dakkadakka to help plow the road on the way to a target or to make derpydoos trying to do head-ons think twice. I've got a huge bias hard on for Attacker style planes though so my opinion should not be trusted.