Dear players,

We have another round of questions and answers for you, with War Thunder producer Vyacheslav Bulannikov!

Aviation

Q. With the introduction of medium range missiles as well as increasingly fast top tier aircraft now and in the future, maps in top tier air realistic battles are becoming increasingly cramped. Are there any plans to mitigate this going forward?

• Yes, we have already increased the battle area in the high ranks and if necessary we will do it again in the future.

Q. Both the Jaguar GR.1 and the Jaguar A were capable of mounting flares. In game, currently neither variant has them, yet they are ranked with the high end jets that have them. Do you have plans to introduce them for these aircraft to better assist them?

• The Jaguar A and Jaguar GR.1 currently featured in the game have incorrectly modeled supports for the installation of the Tracor AN / ALE-40 flare units, which were installed only on later aircraft modifications. This will be fixed in a future update. The French version had its own Matra-Philips ARAL 1A / 1B Phimat system with a different mounting method. It will also be modeled in a future update. On the British Jaguar GR.1 (not to be confused with the later version 1A that was not presented in the game), in reality it was possible to install pods with countermeasures, but the question of adding them to the game has not yet been finally resolved.

Q. Is it possible to load the IL-28Sh at the same time with bombs and with missiles or use other variants of mixed load? Some of such combinations will fit perfectly into the load carrying capacity (less than 3000kg). Example: 1.5t missiles + 1.5t bombs will make 3t load. The maximum isn’t exceeded, the weapon control elements are different, so why not?

• We are trying to add a large number of suspended weaponry combinations where it was technically possible. We will consider this option and don’t exclude its addition in one of the next updates. Follow the news and leave your suggestions on the forum in the appropriate sections.

Ground Forces

Q. Are there any reasons why there is not a permanent “Tank Only” mode?

• One of the main features of War Thunder is the ability to combine in one single battle different vehicle types and we find this mode more interesting than just single ground battles. Additionally the game also has a lot of modes so adding another type of ground battle on a permanent basis makes no sense from our point of view.

Q.Sometime players are entered into night matches without having NVD unlocked. These players cannot compete with players that already possess thermal vision or IR devices. Are there any plans to limit night battles for players with vehicles that do not have NVD unlocked?

• There are no such plans but we reconfigured the weather conditions and day times so that night battles were always in good weather conditions and with moonlight. In addition we don’t exclude the future implementation of lighting shells and mines.

Q. Swedish top MBT’s and top tier vehicles in general have a really high repair cost, significantly higher than any other nation. This puts people off of researching and playing these vehicles as even with a 4+ kill game, a single death will outweigh the cost of your rewards. Do you have any plans to review these costs and better balance them so thank vehicles don't receive repair costs in excess of 25k Silver Lions?

• There are no artificial restrictions on the repair price - it depends on the vehicle efficiency. Repair costs will be constantly updated on the basis of statistics but we also plan to make some changes in the algorithm for calculation the repair costs which will lead to a price decrease for some vehicles, for example STRV 122.

Q. In top tier battles, it's quite common to see a lot of the small variants of some maps very often. Is it possible you can distinguish and separate these maps out, so that low tier vehicles can see the smaller variants, whilst modern top tier vehicles have the larger more spacious maps? Top tier gameplay it not well suited to these maps.

• Statistics of the bans and dislikes shows that it isn’t the case. At the top rank players like both - big and also compact maps and compact maps even more.

Q. In the past top ranked MBTs were balanced around shooting weak spots. With the introduction of volumetric projectiles shooting weak spots has become more inconsistent. This benefits certain vehicles more than others. Are any additional algorithms to the volumetric calculations planned to make the system more predictable?

• As we know, in the top rank the main type of shell is the APFSDS the core calibre of such shells is usually much smaller than that of the cannon and is 20-40mm. In this case the implementation of the “shell size” mechanics for calculation of the penetration has had an effect on reducing the number of vulnerable zones much less than for tanks in other ranks. In addition, in a recent server update we fixed some issues with armour penetration at large angles which was relevant for the top kinetic shells. We also have plans and are working on the fixing and improving of these mechanics.

Misc

Q. Mines are a really interesting addition, but they don't last very long and this limits their tactical use. Do you have plans to review mine active times in the future? 

• Yes, we do have such plans.

Q. Can you tell us the status of Mac and Linux development for the game? More recently there has been more and more bugs and less overall fixes for these platforms. Can you tell us anything about Vulkan and if support will be introduced for War Thunder?

• This isn’t true. The number of bugs on these platforms hasn’t increased, we fairly quickly release client fixes. Also Metal has recently become available for MAC users for which we have more positive feedback. Yes, there are some bugs there but we are fixing it and in this case it is possible to use Open GL parallel. The Linux platform is complex itself because of different distributions, builds and drivers but we are also doing our best here.

The War Thunder Team