Today we’re back with some updates on what you can expect from the game in the near future. We’ve got some sneak peeks and interesting information to share with you today, so sit back, grab your favorite drink and read on! We’ve also changed the title of this series to better reflect the content.

Reflecting on the SEAD event test

Recently, we tested the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) event for two days and have seen your enthusiasm for something like this. We would like to thank everyone who tested it and left their comments!

We’ve taken note of your comments about this test starting during the week instead of the weekend. Since this was something new, we wanted to be on standby so that we could keep an eye on any major issues and fix or change an aspect of the test in real time. This helped as we did reduce the defender team size from 16 to 12 after reading your comments and checking the statistics. Shortly after making this change, the win percentage for the Attackers raised to a far more reasonable level.

Another concern raised by some players was the strength of the Shilka and S-75s firing at the Attackers. Their strength is intentional as we want it to be a challenge and for players to use tactics, teamwork and utilize different weaponry types to take them out. Overall they’re difficult, but not impossible to engage — we’ll of course keep an eye on any issues but they will retain their strength as of now.

On the contrary, some players raised the concern that the rewards for destroying SAM sites was too low and not that incentivising. Therefore we’ve increased rewards and mission score for certain actions, check out the bullet points below on exactly what was changed.

Due to the popularity of the SEAD event, we’ve decided to return it this weekend from May 2nd (14:00 GMT) until May 5th (04:00 GMT), so that everyone who is at home from education and work can give it a try if they missed it the first time round. We feel confident to run this on the weekend now since we’ve had time to make changes based on the first test.

The way it plays will be the same as the first test, with the exception of the following new changes / additions:

• Players will be distributed a bit more randomly at the front when spawning in at a random spawn point
• Enemy planes near allied spawn points will be highlighted on the map (like in Ground Realistic Battles)
• Afghanistan has been removed, and some the following maps are likely to be added: Sinai, Spain, Rocky Canyon, and Southeastern City
• There are now 12 players on the defending team instead of 16 (this was changed near the end of the first test)
• The reward in Silver Lions and research points for destroying the SNR-75 tracking radar has been doubled
• Mission score for destroying the SNR-75 tracking radar has been tripled to 270
• Mission score for destroying launchers, Shilkas and detecting radars (P-12) has been unified for the Cobra and Phantom and increased to 135

Next Event Vehicles

2025 marks the 80th anniversary of Victory Day! For this we’ll have our traditional celebrations and an event with a Soviet tank as the main reward, which has already been announced. Afterwards, those interested in aircraft will be able to appreciate one of Kurt Tank’s designs in the aircraft event. And in early June, we’ll be having an event dedicated to D-Day with an American tank as the main reward. When this event finishes, there will then be about a 1 month gap without an event — after that, naval fans will be able to enjoy a naval vehicle in a naval event.

Keep an eye on the news for all information surrounding everything mentioned here!

World War Mode

Back in December last year, we said we hoped to share some info about WWM early in 2025 and referenced WWM during the SEAD test. At the moment, we’re testing SEAD for Aerial Warfare, which is dedicated to aircraft. After SEAD, we’ll do another test for a mission that will be in Aerial Warfare in the same format as the SEAD event, so keep an eye out for that. WWM is still in development and we hope to share more details about it in the coming months. Thank you for your patience with it!

The Upcoming Major Update

Vehicles

In December’s Q&A, we mentioned that some powerful ships will be released in 2025. And that’s definitely true, as the next major update will be bringing in some superior, iconic, big, vast and yottabyte ships.

There will of course be aircraft too, including a rather cool helicopter for the USA and a jet for Japan. In December’s Q&A, we also spoke about more advanced SAM system vehicles at top tier for ground forces coming in 2025. The next major update will see several of these new systems come to the game for several nations at once.

The dev blog season will be beginning in the coming weeks, so be sure to check out everything we’ve got lined up there.

Talking about a top-tier French premium tank

We’ve seen many questions and requests for a top rank premium tank for the French tree, and today we’re ready to provide some information and our thoughts regarding this.

We previously mentioned the challenges of finding a suitable candidate that fits a populated Battle Rating with other vehicles possible in its lineup. This is an important consideration when we look into including a premium vehicle in the game — we look into other vehicles that could fit into a lineup with it.

We have plans to add a prototype variant of the Leclerc in the next major update, however not as a premium. The reason for this is that its armor protection is still under question, and we’re wary of adding a premium vehicle with armor that could very much be subject to heavy changes if new information came to light. The specific variant of the prototype is still being worked on and is planned for the main research tree, where potential drastic changes to armor and Battle Ratings are more tolerable than if it was a premium vehicle.

To reiterate, we don’t want to add premium vehicles at the highest possible Battle Rating, so a premium at 12.0 for ground forces is not possible at the moment. With this in mind, we looked into another consideration as well. This included some form of a production Leclerc as a premium, but without a top round so that it could be placed at a lower Battle Rating. However this vehicle would have no lineup of its own and would only be valid in toptier 12.0 lineups, where it would be at a disadvantage with a weaker round.

So what solution have we come to? We plan to introduce a Leopard 2A4 NL from the Netherlands as a premium for the French ground forces tree. It will come with some cool and distinct visuals. This is a reliable and proven MBT that will serve the premium role well, while allowing us to retain the Leclerc MSC prototype for the research tree and offer further support for lesser populated Battle Rating ranges. Both of these tanks are planned to come together in the next major update.

Map Visual Upgrades

We’re continuing the trend of visual updates for older ground forces maps in the next major update. Berlin and Kuban are up next and we can’t wait to show you how they look soon.

Falklands Island map for air battles

We’re happy to announce that a new location for air battles, the Falklands Islands, will be coming in the next major update. We know many of you have been speaking about the idea of a map set on this island for some time now. From Port Stanley to Port San Carlos and to Goose Green, keep an eye out for more information about this new location, coming soon.

Tooltip Improvements

In the last couple major updates, we’ve been working on several areas of the interface, and in the next major update we’re continuing this trend. First up, the tooltip when hovering over any player’s name in the scoreboard will now show their fancy player background, instead of just their name written as plain text.

Next, vehicle stat cards will now show in full when hovering over a vehicle name in the scoreboard while in battle. You can also add a vehicle to your wish list from the context menu here too. And lastly, all tooltips have been improved in the battle debriefing menu as well.

VFX Updates

War Thunder’s VFX are constantly evolving and in the next major update we’ll have some improvements to this aspect of the game. One in particular that we’d like to mention is the afterburner effect of aircraft, where we’ve looked to refine the inside of the nozzle by adding a flame effect, giving them a more realistic and in-depth look. This improvement will come for all aircraft that have afterburners.

Fuel Dumping

In the next major update, we’ll be adding the ability to dump fuel for aircraft! Let’s go over a run down of how this will work. After dumping the fuel, the weight of the aircraft will reduce, so you can dump fuel just before going into combat, for example.

When the engines are running in afterburner mode, the fuel can catch fire. Other sources can also cause a fire, for example flying missiles or nearby explosions. Even another aircraft flying in afterburner can cause fuel to catch fire.

Burning fuel emits intense heat, which allows infrared-guided missiles without anti-jamming systems to target it. You can use this ability to swap your fuel for an improvised heat trap to divert a missile from the aircraft. However, this functionality can become bait for missiles, depending on the flight angle.

This new functionality will be available on those aircraft that had it in real life.

Rounding off

There is of course more things in the works coming in the major update, we haven’t mentioned everything in this news. We’d like to thank everyone for their continued comments and interest in War Thunder. See you next time!

From your CM and Dev Team