We’re continuing to follow the Roadmap that we released in June. Skill bonuses in RP have arrived in the “Kings of Battle” major update, and optional night battles and their rewards will be enabled soon in a future small update, which we’ll announce. Today, we’d like to explain the details surrounding these two mechanics. We fully appreciate the patience that you’ve had while waiting for these as well as the feedback you left. Let’s dive into the details.

Bonus Research Points for your skill!

What is counted as “skill” in War Thunder can be looked at differently depending on the player. It might mean the number of kills, assists and capture points you get, the total points earned in battle, or your map knowledge and the way you position yourself to lock down enemy positions.

As War Thunder is primarily a PvP focused game and getting kills is the ultimate goal to win battles, skill bonuses in the form of Research Points will be given based on the number of kills against players or system named bots that you get. The only exception is Naval Battles, where the amount of damage dealt is counted rather than the number of kills.

Welcome to the new 3-tier Bonus Level system

We’ve created a system that will reward those of you who get a specific number of kills, where you’ll be put into one of three levels. These are Level I, Level II and Level III, which we touched on back in June.

Finishing a battle in one of these levels will give you a bonus amount of Research Points in the form of a percentage that multiplies the base amount of RP you earned in that battle (the base excludes RP earned from boosters, premium accounts and talismans). That bonus amount is then added to the total sum.

How will you know when you’ve got into a bonus RP level? The icons in the table below will be displayed on the scoreboard in a separate column and in addition, any other player who has entered into one of these levels. Any number of players in the battle can get into a Level if they meet the kill criteria.

Gamemodes will have Level I, II and III bonuses, but each gamemode is slightly different in terms of the bonus percentage amount as well as the amount of kills needed to get into each level. All of the numbers and details for each mode are in the Major Changelog.

Click here to see the Major Changelog

Ground Realistic Battles:

Level I

Get 3 to 5 kills.

15% Bonus RP*

Level II

Get 6 to 8 kills.

50% Bonus RP*

Level III

Get 9+ kills.

100% Bonus RP*

*Multiplies from base RP earned in battle.

When the battle finishes, you’ll be able to see how much Research Point bonus you got in the battle results window. The Level you earned in battle will also be shown in the battle results window!

A real use-case scenario

If you get into Level I, II or III, the bonus amount of RP will be applied to your base RP earned in the battle, before any booster RP, premium accounts and talismans. Here’s an example scenario.

For Ground Realistic Battles (GRB):

• You’re playing in GRB. For this game mode, Level I has a 15% RP bonus, Level II has a 50% bonus, and Level III a whopping 100% bonus.
• To get into Level I, you’ll need 3-5 kills, Level II: 6-8 kills, and Level III: 9 kills or more.
• You get 6 kills which means you get Level II. Nice! You’ll therefore have received a 50% RP bonus.
• Let's say you earned 3,199 base RP in this battle, boosters also brought you an additional 640 RP. So the final reward would be 3,839 RP.
• But you received a skill bonus, which is 3,199*50%=1,600 additional RP. So your 3,839 RP turns into 5,439 RP for the battle: 3,199 base RP + 640 RP from boosters + 1,600 RP for your skill!

There we go, a nice transparent and beneficial indicator of how you are doing as a player! If you have any further questions about how this works, feel free to ask in the comments.

Welcome to selectable Night Battles for Ground Realistic Battles!

You are now able to select Night Battles from the gamemodes screen! As default, night battles are turned off for everybody, so if you would like to play in them you’ll have to turn it on. You can do this by clicking on the icon that looks like a half Moon next to the map filter icon.

We’re sticking with our proposed design in terms of queueing. When enabled, you’ll be put into two queues: one for daytime and one for night battles, where you’ll have the chance to get into both. This means that even with night battles turned on, you’re not guaranteed to get into one.

Vehicles that can participate in Night Battles

Night Battles will only be available for lineups that have a vehicle with a Battle Rating of 10.0 and above for Ground Realistic Battles (GRB). For example, if you’ve got vehicles below 10.0 Battle Rating in a lineup with a 10.0 vehicle, you’ll still be able to go into a night battle with this lineup.

If you’ve got a vehicle that is capable of participating in a night battle, a “night battles” button will be shown the NVD/Thermal modification for vehicles at 10.0 Battle Rating.

Indication of the time of day and weather

The time of day and weather of your battle will be displayed in the spawn window and when opening the scoreboard next to the mission name. This is so you’ll be able to know if you’re in a night battle or if it’s just early evening.

What we’re planning for NVD modifications

In a future update, we’re planning to make some changes to how night vision and thermal modifications work. All tanks that can use night vision will now have NVD by default — you won’t need to research any modification to get initial night vision. If a tank has thermal and at the same time night vision as well, you’ll have night vision as default, but you’ll need to research the thermal modification to be able to use thermal. We’ll announce these changes in a regular small Update in the future.

Rewards for playing in Night Battles

As mentioned in our proposed night battles design, night battles will have several night-themed cosmetic rewards. Rewards for night battles can be found in the same area where you enable night battles.

You’ll need to have night battles enabled as well as play in night battles to start earning these rewards. When completing a certain amount of mission score, you’ll be able to progress through levels to reach the top. Take a look at the rewards below!

Titles

• Prowler in the Night
• Warrior of the Night
• Lord of the Night

Other Roadmap changes

The Severe Damage mechanic that we announced previously is still under development — thank you for taking the time to leave your feedback on this! We’ll let you know in a separate news post in the future when it’s ready.

In regards to Research Bonuses for new nations from the Roadmap. The changes in progression have a noticeable delayed effect, so at the moment we’re wary of introducing bonuses for nations. We expect mid and long-term results after changing the research trees, reducing RP in vehicle groups and skill bonuses. We’ll keep you updated in the future.

That’s all for now! Please continue to leave your feedback and comments: be it either on our official forums, social media, on Steam, Reddit, as well as other platforms that we read. And remember, let us know your feedback about these proposed design changes. See you soon!