Today we’re taking a look at new unlockable decals, updated logic for automatic tank camouflage application, and a “Favorites” category for decals and decorations!

Camouflage Management

Recently we’ve been working on refining the process of automatic camouflage selection in battle, and these changes have come right from your suggestions. You suggested that we account for marketplace camouflages, to be able to edit the auto-selection list, and to exclude unwanted skins from it entirely.

Today we’d like to cover another improvement. We’re sure that each of you have your favorite camouflages, whether they were earned from in-game events or tournament streams and drops. Everyone wants to see it in battle as much as possible (without turning into a brightly-colored target on winter maps though!). Previously you could switch to a different camouflage by selecting it before spawning, but in the heat of battle, this was easy to forget.

At your request, we’ve refined the automatic camouflage system: you can now designate any available camouflage as your default. Let’s go through a quick example. Let’s say you have 3 camouflages, “Forest 1” is the regular default, but you also have “Forest 2” and “Winter 1”. If you change your default to Forest 2, whenever you load into a forest map, Forest 2 will be automatically applied each time. But, if you load into a winter map, Winter 1 will be automatically applied instead.

So effectively, if your new default is a suitable camouflage for any given map, it will always be applied, but if it is not suitable and you have a more suitable alternative, this alternative will instead be used. No more losing precious seconds swapping around camouflages! Thank you for this suggestion, keep sending in more and we’ll keep working on improving your favorite features.

Add to Favorites!

Over the years, a truly enormous number of decals have been added into the game. Around a thousand are available at any given time, and we routinely add more through Monthly Historical Decal events and various specials. Understandably, you’ve probably amassed quite the collection of decals too, and likely have favorites that you like to use more than the rest. You’ve asked us for a way to separate your favorite decals and decorations, and in the Heavy Cavalry update we’ll add this as a feature! There will be a new “Favorites” menu for both decals and decorations, simply click the favorite icon and build your own personal list of special markings and 3D decorators.

Decals and Decorations on Composite SAM Systems

Composite SAM systems are an integral part of high-rank ground battles, and as such you’ll want to be able to customize them too. Previously you could only apply decals and decorations to the main vehicle, the auxiliary vehicle would mirror your camouflage but nothing else. In the major update, you’ll be able to fully customize these additional vehicles! Give them a fresh coat of paint and your favorite markings, and thank you for suggesting this feature!

New Decals!

It’s been a while since we’ve routinely added new decals to the game on a permanent basis, but in the Heavy Cavalry major update we’ll start to add decals for nations that currently don’t have any, or have very few. Below are some examples of what we’ve been working on.

French Navy

Like most navies, markings directly applied to ships are relatively uncommon, so for the French navy we’ve used their badges for inspiration here. In the 1930s, French naval traditions led to the creation of individual pin badges for practically every ship in the fleet, that would be worn by the crew of each vessel. The creation of these badges were not particularly standardized, which led to many unique and interesting designs being created, often drafted by members of the crew themselves.

As these emblems only existed as pins, or in some cases Tape de bouche (Gun muzzle covers), we’ve created the decals in more of a “what if” style, taking the original emblems and giving them a hand-painted look, like how they probably would’ve looked if they were historically painted onto ships. This is a somewhat new approach for us, so let us know what you think!

Japanese Navy

Prior to the Second World War, Japan painted names onto the hulls of its destroyer class vessels. This practice was limited to destroyers, and featured the name of the ship in large katakana characters on both sides of the hull. Most names of this period fell into two primary classes: 1st Class destroyers (over 1,000 tons) were named after the weather, wind, tide, current, waves, moon, seasons, and other natural phenomena, the less common 2nd Class destroyers (600–1,000 tons) were named after plants. An outlier here was the Mutsuki class, which contained 12 ships all named after a calendar month.

After Japan joined the Second World War, they scrubbed the katakana names from the hull sides, as it was of course not particularly wise to telegraph the exact name of the ship to the enemy. After the war, the newly formed JMSDF returned the tradition for its surface fleet, but painted the names in hiragana, as a deliberate symbolic separation from the IJN.

We’ve included a few examples for ships we have in the game, both of the WW2 era and post-war. In some cases it was quite a challenge to accurately recreate the names, as photos of the time are often not particularly clear when it comes to the finer details. Regardless, we’ve done our best to faithfully recreate these markings for you to unlock and customize your vehicles with, we hope you like them!

Hungarian Aircraft

Following the Hungarian additions from the last update, we’ve added some decals for their air forces as well. Several of these come from WM-21 squadrons, a particularly nice one is the chief, which could be accurately recreated thanks to a detailed photo in an old Hungarian aviation magazine.

We’ve also included the famous wasp emblem of the 1/1. Vadászszázad. Interestingly though, even though the emblem was clearly a wasp, the official nickname of the squadron was “Dongó” (Bumblebee). Because of the wasp emblem (which was likely chosen as it was more aggressive than a bee), even in 1940 the squadron began to be called “Darázs” (Wasp), which makes using the correct official name in relation to the emblem seem like an error funnily enough.

We’ve also included the dive bombing eagle of the 102/1 fast bomber squadron which operated the Me 210C, and the “Pöttöm” inscription, which means pint-sized or tiny. It’s uncertain whether this was the pilot’s nickname or an affectionate moniker for his Fw 190 F-8, this one’s a little mystery...

That’s not all though, among examples listed above, the update will include more decals for the Italian Army and Navy, the Chinese Army and Air Forces, and the Indonesian Air Forces! In future major updates we’ll steadily add more decals for nations that are missing some options as well.

That’s all from us for today, customization is an integral part of War Thunder, so we hope you like these new features and be sure to check out all the new decals when the Heavy Cavalry update releases!