War Thunder - the highs are very high and the lows are very frequent

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > War Thunder - the highs are very high and the lows are very frequent

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Recoome: Nov 9, 2013; Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

Azran posted:

Can anyone confirm that the D520 is currently not available in-game? I bought it a long time ago but a pubbie just asked how the hell did I get it and I'm confused.

It's no longer available to purchase, but like I have a Dewo

# ? May 28, 2017 01:13

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 12:11

NoNotTheMindProbe: Aug 9, 2010; pony porn was here

Some vehicles have been taken off the main trees and are periodically available through the warbond shop or events.

# ? May 28, 2017 01:24

Azran: Sep 3, 2012; And what should one do to be remembered?

Huh, I wonder if they removed it because it was a kinda lovely plane or because France might end up getting the Italy treatment.

# ? May 28, 2017 01:24

Azran: Sep 3, 2012; And what should one do to be remembered?

Double post:

I've updated the OP with the ammo information and I linked to Spectralent's tank aiming advice. I'm mostly missing HESH info and tank crew stuff.

# ? May 28, 2017 01:32

Sard: May 11, 2012; Certified Poster of Culture.

Azran posted:

tank crew stuff.

If it hasn't been handled by then, I could try and do a carepost about tank crew skills tomorrow. Here's something about crew allotment and training from near the end of the last thread, though:

Sard posted:

You can have up to 5 crews per nation without spending golden eagles (premium currency). How you assign those crew depends on the mode you're playing, but in general you'll want two tank crew, one fighter crew, one bomber crew, and the fifth can be whatever (I think most players opt to use this crew for self-propelled anti-aircraft guns or heavy fighters). In arcade battles, you get several spawns of the type of vehicle assigned to that mode. In realistic air battles, you only get one vehicle to use in the match. In realistic tank battles, you start out with a tank and can earn points in the match to spend on respawns in other tanks or in aircraft; the spawn cost of a vehicle goes up if you've previously spawned in a vehicle of its class (fighter, bomber, heavy tank, light/medium tank, tank destroyer, SPAA). In sim tank battles, you can spawn in one tank and one plane, and you can start in the plane if you want to; the airplane can only be used once, but the tanks will usually have two spawns unless they're considered a heavy, and only get one.

Because of how expensive crew training gets for the higher levels of stats, it's best to plan ahead how you're going to use each crew. Your fighter crew can focus on fighter skills while your bomber crew can do gunner skills. Your main tank crew might prioritize repair speed while your secondary tank crew prioritizes spotting distance, or an SPAA crew that needs to get the gunner and radio operator trained faster than the other positions. Sending a crew on holiday doesn't remove the crew from the slot, only the vehicle from the crew; crew 1 will always be in slot 1. There is no need to specialize forever, though; a single crew can eventually reach full capability with every skill for every class of vehicle, but this will take a very long time.

As far as I know, you get triple crew XP in arcade mode compared to realistic and sim because Gaijin made a weird decision about average earnings in arcade a long time ago and has not yet reversed it. One of the fastest ways to gain experience points is to get a light bomber that can stay above the melee in arcade, and just bomb every base into dust. While tank skills only work in tanks and airplane skills only work in airplanes, unspent experience points can be used for either type�so the points you earn in air battles can be used to train up tank skills. Skills are leveled up by half points, from 0 to 5, but 5 is only halfway finished. You can use silver lions (regular freely earned currency) to give a specific crew "expert" training with a specific vehicle, which adds +3 to all skills while using that vehicle, bringing the total to 8 if you have the skills at a base of 5. You can get a further +2 from "ace" training, which can be bought with GE or by using a vehicle with that crewa lot. The crew will slowly earn points towards free ace training for that vehicle, equal to the spendable XP they earn, which builds to a 50% GE discount off ace training, then 75% off, then 100% for free ace status. Also note, to even get expert and ace training with a vehicle, the crew must be a certain level overall for that type of vehicle (plane, tank, boat); this level required goes up with tier, so a tier 1 tank can be experted and aced by a fairly low-level crew, but something at tier 3 might need a level 60 crew to be aced. Aircraft training caps at level 75, while tanks cap at 150�and it will take much, much longer to get a crew up to 150 for tanks than it will take to reach 75 with air skills, but a tank crew is fairly capable around level 70, so don't stress over it too much.

It's usually easiest to assign a vehicle to a crew from the research screen, but you can also speed up the process by using the filters next to the list shown when you press the two-arrow button at the bottom of the crew slot. You can filter by aviation or army, whether a crew is trained for a vehicle, whether the crew has expert (and/or ace) training, vehicle tier, and (most useful by far) if the vehicle is allowed in the mode you currently have selected. If you're trying to join an event battle with a limited list of available vehicles, you can use the filter to only show those.

# ? May 28, 2017 01:43

Azran: Sep 3, 2012; And what should one do to be remembered?

Added!

# ? May 28, 2017 01:57

Recoome: Nov 9, 2013; Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

So I've been playing Italy for a while now (even pre-patch) so here are some of my thoughts and musings regarding the planes.

Fighters
Basically the main event for the nation, I think its a weird mix of going fast and actually being able to turn. Turning is a fair strategy for the earliest planes (or at least until the Spitfires become more common), although you need to be really close before opening fire. It can be an adjustment if you are used to having buckets of ammo. I find that everything after the G.50 is basically an energy fighter which can can out-turn things it can't outclimb (Spitfire caveat here), but still relies on good positioning (altitude is life). I used to use Stealth when the guns were bad but I use Air Targets belts now on the .50s because it actually works.

Avoid being shot at, you basically never have armour on your plane. You will die a lot flying Italians. Never head on.

The Cr.32 and Cr.42s are able to basically outtturn everything bar Chaikas and probably Gladiators. The Falcos have a distinct advantage in s p e e d relative to every other biplane in the game, and it dives fairly quickly so its down to how good your pilot is. The G.50s are basically like slightly turnier Hurricanes without the guns, so while you can turn with some planes, you wont with others and therefore will just die. Sorry.

The C.200s are okay I guess, I usually think of them as (((slightly))) better G.50s with more ammo, but the serie 7 is at 2.0 so I'd rather take a C.202 at this tier because you will really want that extra horsepower and guns.

The C.202 is probably one of the best Italian fighters at this point and exemplifies what the Italians are all about (agile, fast, poor guns). It can turn pretty well and has a pretty powerful engine so you can fight in the horizontal and vertical if you need to, and you'll probably do both in the same game. You will normally be running this plane on the edge of overheating but you gotta push it to the limit. I am not a big fan of the cannon 202 because you get fat and thats a big loss for the .202. The .202 has changed a bit as now it doesnt have the same elevator authority that it used to, so be mindful of this, although its not as bad in the Folgore

I've only been flying the Serie 1 Veltro, but I think the C.205 is an extremely good fighter that trades some of the agility/horizontal ability for power and weight. This allows you to do more vertical maneuvers (like a high yo-yo) and dunk Spitfires who don't expect you to be so fast/retain as much energy. This thing dives like a freight train so you can really hit that loss of elevator authority thing fairly quickly, but you wont be outdiving Typhoons or Thunderbolts. I guess the Serie 3 Veltro with the cannons would be good, but it just makes the thing heavier so again you wont be as agile.

I haven't flown the regular G.55, but the G.55S is a cool plane which is like a faster again Veltro with less compression problems, although I haven't used vertical loops as much (as most planes at this tier are pretty powerful. The 3x cannons are fine and honestly its basically comparable to every other plane at it's level. It overheats faster than a pot of pasta on the boil but it performs pretty great normally.

I haven't flown the 205N or anything else, so :shrug:

Attackers

I guess the Ba.65 is good because it's reserve, but the Ba.88 is pretty situational (slow and undergunned) and neither plane has any armour. I like the Ba.88 as a comedy plane, it looks sweet as gently caress but don't be fooled, its very vulnerable.

Bombers

The Br.20 is good, but the Sm.79s suffer from extremely high br relative to their performance/bombload. As a joke, you can get 3.0 Sm.79s which are not as well armed as the 1.7 one. The Z.1007s are actually okay but the lack of armour sucks, the .50s don't have the same hit as the US ones so you will constantly find yourself outshot and all your gunners dead. The P.108s might be better but probably not.

# ? May 28, 2017 03:19

Corky Romanovsky: Oct 1, 2006; Soiled Meat

I tried purchasing an Italian plane to play, but it wanted me to purchase through some lovely site for my region...which doesn't seem to sell the plane packs yet?!?

I try VPN to the US, then PayPal with my region credit card. Failed for some reason. Now trying pay through Amazon, but it has been waiting for confirmation for 40 minutes.

# ? May 28, 2017 03:22

Azran: Sep 3, 2012; And what should one do to be remembered?

The 205 serie 3 doesn't feel like a brick, unlike the 202EC. I liked it so much that I ended up putting a talisman on it.

# ? May 28, 2017 04:04

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I'm a big fan of Italy putting 200-250 Rounds Per Gun in their 20mms.

# ? May 28, 2017 04:09

Recoome: Nov 9, 2013; Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

Azran posted:

The 205 serie 3 doesn't feel like a brick, unlike the 202EC. I liked it so much that I ended up putting a talisman on it.

Thats excellent. I figured that the 3 series wouldn't be so bad because the better engine, but the 202EC really loses out in my opinion.

# ? May 28, 2017 04:18

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Recoome posted:

Thats excellent. I figured that the 3 series wouldn't be so bad because the better engine, but the 202EC really loses out in my opinion.

I think part of that is because the 20mms are in gunpods, so they also gently caress up the aerodynamics.

You're right about the thing being a brick, though.

# ? May 28, 2017 04:20

BBJoey: Oct 31, 2012

The 205 serie 3 is basically the platonic ideal of the dogfighter, even more than the 109 f-4 or g-2

# ? May 28, 2017 05:03

Alkydere: Jun 7, 2010; Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.

So, Puma Trip Report:

It's a German Hellcat, or perhaps a Leo on Wheels. Get behind enemy lines, shoot idiots in side/rear end. It's a bit squirrely at high speeds but it has no problem reaching said speeds, and at its BR the long-50's a good gun. I fully expect it to be moved up to BR 3.0 from allied teams bitching that it's no fair for half of the German team to flank...yanno the same thing that they were doing when the M18 first came out. Just gotta wait for it to also get smoke to match the grenades on its head.

As a side note, I actually love the technical detail of the fact that every axle turns. Gives the thing a rather tight turning radius (part of the reason it's kinda wobbly at high speeds) and just looks really cool. I spent the last minute or so of the round just turning the steering wheel back and forth as I sat in place so I could look at that detail while I waited for the idiot in the plane to fly into my bullets.

# ? May 28, 2017 06:32

Dr.Radical: Apr 3, 2011

LOL I am loving this .50s buff. God bless Gaijin.

# ? May 28, 2017 12:10

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Alkydere posted:

It's a German Hellcat, or perhaps a Leo on Wheels.

It's a Pz II H on wheels.

and it does own.

Also the shells guide needs smoke shells which I'm prepared to call essential on tanks that get them. They shine with teams but even solo you can do dumb poo poo with stuff like the 75mm sherman like firing shells straight ahead as fast as you load them to have a solid corridor of smoke ahead of you to hide in.

# ? May 29, 2017 00:14

Alkydere: Jun 7, 2010; Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.

spectralent posted:

It's a Pz II H on wheels.

and it does own.

Also the shells guide needs smoke shells which I'm prepared to call essential on tanks that get them. They shine with teams but even solo you can do dumb poo poo with stuff like the 75mm sherman like firing shells straight ahead as fast as you load them to have a solid corridor of smoke ahead of you to hide in.

It doesn't rock nearly as much as a Pz. II H, but it is about the same BR and has a very similar "GOFAST and don't get hit" gameplay but is entirely free. Still dies to pretty much any AA (the front actually is thick and angled enough to bounce .50 BMG freedom).

Also smokes are hliarious. I was surprised/delighted to find that Japs actually have a decent amount of smoke-shells. Being able to squid-out when your rubber bullet bounce off of a KV-1 (goddamn are Jap shells bouncy) is so very nice. Still waiting on the Puma to get its smoke grenades.

# ? May 29, 2017 01:00

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I kinda think they may've unfucked the Vya23s.

E: Since I started playing again, I've noticed I can't use my keyboard inputs to control my plane in turret gunner mode anymore. How the hell did that get disabled?

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 05:07 on May 29, 2017

# ? May 29, 2017 02:59

Nuramor: Dec 13, 2012; Most Amewsing Prinny Ever!

Night10194 posted:

I kinda think they may've unfucked the Vya23s.

E: Since I started playing again, I've noticed I can't use my keyboard inputs to control my plane in turret gunner mode anymore. How the hell did that get disabled?

Controlling the plane while turreting got disabled because Sim, I guess.

# ? May 29, 2017 06:31

Sard: May 11, 2012; Certified Poster of Culture.

Night10194 posted:

I kinda think they may've unfucked the Vya23s.

What the gently caress, I'm popping medium and heavy tanks on Kursk. When did this happen?

# ? May 29, 2017 06:51

Vivick: Feb 24, 2007

Another old but good gif:

# ? May 29, 2017 07:02

Anta: Mar 5, 2007; What a nice day for a gassing

Nuramor posted:

Controlling the plane while turreting got disabled because Sim, I guess.

It's not disabled, it's just hidden behind a game option now. Something like "autopilot in gunner mode" under game options.

# ? May 29, 2017 07:05

Psycho Society: Oct 21, 2010

You definitely can still use the keyboard to control the plane for gunners in sim, with or without the autopilot. With it on it'll just correct to level flight afterwards.

Was your plane super damaged or close to stalling? That could make it seem like there's no input happening. Or for me, if I press 3-4 keys at once during a maneuver the keyboard circuitry gets overloaded.

# ? May 29, 2017 07:29

Recoome: Nov 9, 2013; Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

I know that the SM.79 is a carry-over from the good ol' days of when 50kg bombs weren't flaming garbage but loving hell can we please have 100kg bombs like the Z.1007??? Having only 50kg bombs to start with is so unimaginable poo poo.

Imagine hitting 12 targets but killing none.

# ? May 29, 2017 11:44

McSpanky: Jan 16, 2005

Recoome posted:

I know that the SM.79 is a carry-over from the good ol' days of when 50kg bombs weren't flaming garbage but loving hell can we please have 100kg bombs like the Z.1007??? Having only 50kg bombs to start with is so unimaginable poo poo.

Imagine hitting 12 targets but killing none.

Or dropping the whole lot on a strategic zone only to chip off about 1/15th of its health. And you still have to deal with that poo poo well into BR5~ on some :ussr:

planes.

# ? May 29, 2017 12:16

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Psycho Society posted:

You definitely can still use the keyboard to control the plane for gunners in sim, with or without the autopilot. With it on it'll just correct to level flight afterwards.

Was your plane super damaged or close to stalling? That could make it seem like there's no input happening. Or for me, if I press 3-4 keys at once during a maneuver the keyboard circuitry gets overloaded.

I played around with it more, and what's weird is I can't use WASD, but I CAN use Q and E to control the rudder while in gunner mode.

# ? May 29, 2017 13:04

free hubcaps: Oct 12, 2009

Lol when did they give the f2a1 two extra .50s? It rules now.

# ? May 29, 2017 13:11

Psycho Society: Oct 21, 2010

Night10194 posted:

I played around with it more, and what's weird is I can't use WASD, but I CAN use Q and E to control the rudder while in gunner mode.

That's pretty odd. Maybe submit a bug report about it?

# ? May 29, 2017 13:36

Mercrom: Jul 17, 2009

Night10194 posted:

I played around with it more, and what's weird is I can't use WASD, but I CAN use Q and E to control the rudder while in gunner mode.

Yeah I have the same issue. Disabling the autopilot doesn't work for the bomb sight mode either. I kinda felt like trying attackers for once but Gaijin.

# ? May 29, 2017 13:37

Feindfeuer: Jun 20, 2013; shoot men, receive credits

Recoome posted:

So I've been playing Italy for a while now (even pre-patch) so here are some of my thoughts and musings regarding the planes.

Fighters
Basically the main event for the nation, I think its a weird mix of going fast and actually being able to turn. Turning is a fair strategy for the earliest planes (or at least until the Spitfires become more common), although you need to be really close before opening fire. It can be an adjustment if you are used to having buckets of ammo. I find that everything after the G.50 is basically an energy fighter which can can out-turn things it can't outclimb (Spitfire caveat here), but still relies on good positioning (altitude is life). I used to use Stealth when the guns were bad but I use Air Targets belts now on the .50s because it actually works.

Avoid being shot at, you basically never have armour on your plane. You will die a lot flying Italians. Never head on.

The Cr.32 and Cr.42s are able to basically outtturn everything bar Chaikas and probably Gladiators. The Falcos have a distinct advantage in s p e e d relative to every other biplane in the game, and it dives fairly quickly so its down to how good your pilot is. The G.50s are basically like slightly turnier Hurricanes without the guns, so while you can turn with some planes, you wont with others and therefore will just die. Sorry.

The C.200s are okay I guess, I usually think of them as (((slightly))) better G.50s with more ammo, but the serie 7 is at 2.0 so I'd rather take a C.202 at this tier because you will really want that extra horsepower and guns.

The C.202 is probably one of the best Italian fighters at this point and exemplifies what the Italians are all about (agile, fast, poor guns). It can turn pretty well and has a pretty powerful engine so you can fight in the horizontal and vertical if you need to, and you'll probably do both in the same game. You will normally be running this plane on the edge of overheating but you gotta push it to the limit. I am not a big fan of the cannon 202 because you get fat and thats a big loss for the .202. The .202 has changed a bit as now it doesnt have the same elevator authority that it used to, so be mindful of this, although its not as bad in the Folgore

I've only been flying the Serie 1 Veltro, but I think the C.205 is an extremely good fighter that trades some of the agility/horizontal ability for power and weight. This allows you to do more vertical maneuvers (like a high yo-yo) and dunk Spitfires who don't expect you to be so fast/retain as much energy. This thing dives like a freight train so you can really hit that loss of elevator authority thing fairly quickly, but you wont be outdiving Typhoons or Thunderbolts. I guess the Serie 3 Veltro with the cannons would be good, but it just makes the thing heavier so again you wont be as agile.

I haven't flown the regular G.55, but the G.55S is a cool plane which is like a faster again Veltro with less compression problems, although I haven't used vertical loops as much (as most planes at this tier are pretty powerful. The 3x cannons are fine and honestly its basically comparable to every other plane at it's level. It overheats faster than a pot of pasta on the boil but it performs pretty great normally.

I haven't flown the 205N or anything else, so

Attackers

I guess the Ba.65 is good because it's reserve, but the Ba.88 is pretty situational (slow and undergunned) and neither plane has any armour. I like the Ba.88 as a comedy plane, it looks sweet as gently caress but don't be fooled, its very vulnerable.

Bombers

The Br.20 is good, but the Sm.79s suffer from extremely high br relative to their performance/bombload. As a joke, you can get 3.0 Sm.79s which are not as well armed as the 1.7 one. The Z.1007s are actually okay but the lack of armour sucks, the .50s don't have the same hit as the US ones so you will constantly find yourself outshot and all your gunners dead. The P.108s might be better but probably not.

So, what do you think is the best support fighter of the Italian tech tree?

# ? May 29, 2017 14:05

Recoome: Nov 9, 2013; Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

Feindfeuer posted:

So, what do you think is the best support fighter of the Italian tech tree?

Veltros unless you have a pilot which doesn't black out all the time.

I crash all the loving time because my pilot blacks out for 10 minutes after doing a loop

# ? May 29, 2017 14:19

Recoome: Nov 9, 2013; Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

Seriously if you want to compare, the 205 Serie 3 is at 3.7, whereas at 4.0 you have the preseries G.55 which can actually pull up from a dive AND has 4x .50s and 1x cannon.

# ? May 29, 2017 14:21

Corky Romanovsky: Oct 1, 2006; Soiled Meat

Just took a shake at the Italians. Kinda nice there is an intermediary stage between AAA doing superficial damage and shooting your pilot through the heart which also detonates your plane. The reserve planes seem more a joke than I remember.

# ? May 29, 2017 14:49

Recoome: Nov 9, 2013; Matter of fact, I'm salty now.

All the armour that would normally shield your pilot from bullets has been repurposed to forge gigantic steel ~~pots~~ ~~testicles~~ moustaches

Recoome fucked around with this message at 15:04 on May 29, 2017

# ? May 29, 2017 15:00

Rorac: Aug 19, 2011

Vivick posted:

Another old but good gif:

THANK YOU. I have been looking for that one.

# ? May 29, 2017 19:00

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

God, being able to properly IL-10 again and waste everyone's time is a joy.

# ? May 29, 2017 19:07

Anta: Mar 5, 2007; What a nice day for a gassing

Night10194 posted:

I played around with it more, and what's weird is I can't use WASD, but I CAN use Q and E to control the rudder while in gunner mode.

I had this issue after the previous patch, following the instructions here solved it for me back then.

# ? May 29, 2017 19:48

Sard: May 11, 2012; Certified Poster of Culture.

Night10194 posted:

I played around with it more, and what's weird is I can't use WASD, but I CAN use Q and E to control the rudder while in gunner mode.

Anta posted:

I had this issue after the previous patch, following the instructions here solved it for me back then.

I've had this issue for a long time; could use rudder and elevator, but could not control ailerons while in gunner mode. Read over the solution in that thread and lol gently caress redoing my ultra customized config, so I just went and tried clearing the roll bindings. Previously, it was A/D;Left/Right;Joystick Axis, but just setting it to A/D solved the issue? I swear I tried this months ago to no effect but whatever, it works now, if anyone else has the issue and doesn't want to try redoing everything.

# ? May 29, 2017 20:13

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Sard posted:

I've had this issue for a long time; could use rudder and elevator, but could not control ailerons while in gunner mode. Read over the solution in that thread and lol gently caress redoing my ultra customized config, so I just went and tried clearing the roll bindings. Previously, it was A/D;Left/Right;Joystick Axis, but just setting it to A/D solved the issue? I swear I tried this months ago to no effect but whatever, it works now, if anyone else has the issue and doesn't want to try redoing everything.

I'll give this a try. It's not a big enough deal to gently caress around that heavily with, but if this fixes it it'd be great.

# ? May 29, 2017 20:18

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 12:11

BBJoey: Oct 31, 2012

Recoome posted:

Seriously if you want to compare, the 205 Serie 3 is at 3.7, whereas at 4.0 you have the preseries G.55 which can actually pull up from a dive AND has 4x .50s and 1x cannon.

yeah the 205 is really tough at 3.7, for sure

# ? May 29, 2017 23:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > War Thunder - the highs are very high and the lows are very frequent

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