I know it’s for the balancing purpose. But I think the minimal fuel operational time is excessive for specific aircraft. Either the fuel amount preset could be “time-in-the-air” based, or the fuel slider recently added should be able to go below 30% of the maximum fuel load. I think most twin fighters suffer from the excess fuel weight. It’s the same story for long range fighters. I want to have the fuel in the amount I just need for the sortie, for attackers, bombers, twin fighters with a long operational range. Twin fighters in this game is not favored by many for its characteristics. They usually get a better payload for bombing and ground attacks. But I think they are still quite heavy to contest other single engine fighters. If I could fly them with maybe 200kg less, I would be able to fight better. This is just my desire to have fun in the game. But it won’t hurt the game. Bombers will get a better climb rate. Usually the weight doesn’t affect the maximum speed that much, as long as the drag stays consistent.
I get the point that bombers need the fuel in the tanks to make them easier to get caught in the fire. It adds more immersion. I understand it. If it’s the case, I accept the adjustment. The phenomenon happens for any planes, so it could be said for any types of planes. As most aircraft store fuel secondary to the main tank located in the fuselage, whether wings being flammable or not is very important in the gameplay.
B-25 as an example, at 30% I’m assuming the plane is carrying around 790kg of fuel. It’s accountable for 45 minutes worth of flight time. I only need around 1 third of it, If I use 40% of it, I only carry like 316kg of fuel. So basically, it doesn’t matter for bombers. Because the player is likely carrying the maximum bomb load. In which adds 1600kg weight.
Beaufighter MkVIc as an example, to be specific. It has the minimal fuel at 55mins worthy. The weight added by the fuel is 530kg. Meaning it’s possible to reduce the weight by 350kg. Because the aircraft’s empty weight is around 7100kg, it has the windloading of around 150kg/m2 at the lowest. But if you add 530kg, it’s at 163kg/m2. It’s a whopping 13kg/m2 increase, and the difference is very noticeable in the game. If I could select the 180kg fuel weight option at 18mins worth of fuel, the wing loading would be around 155kg/m2. You might be thinking, why would someone care about a wingloading in a heavy fighter. Usually, heavy fighters pack a quite a punch. But that’s not gonna change the fact that heavy fighters aren’t good for B&Z either. Its playstyle is heavily centered around hit&run. But heavy fighters aren’t really suited for a vertical maneuver. They have thick wings with large control surfaces, resulting in a sluggish control at higher speed. Hitting someone and escape is harder, thus requiring the players to take the enemy in just one run. Twin fighters in overall is less forgiving of missing a shot. Meaning it’s very important to have the extra bit of the maneuverability, it’s also noted that some twin fighters are surprisingly maneuverable, like Ki-45. Ki-45’s minimal fuel is at 48mins. If it could carry 16 mins fuel, it would save around 200kg. Ki-45 tei has an option to carry two 250kg bombs so, dropping one bomb would make a similar performance difference between the weight, though other factors are involved.
Even for a single engine aircraft, B7A2 has a minimal fuel setting of 1 hour 28 mins. At 480kg fuel. I just searched online for the info and all the weight listed here are estimate. I don’t need that much fuel. Can I have like 1/5 fuel so that the fuel mass is at 96kg, again it saves 384kg weight. B7A2’s empty weight is 3800kg. Meaning it’s very significant in a comparison.
[Would you like to see this in-game?]
10 Likes
In general, I agree and this would be a positive change that would make longer range aircraft a lot more competitive. However, as overall maneuverability increases, I would assume that many aircraft would have to be increased in BR aswell. So I think that it is vital this is tested extensively before implementing into the game.
8 Likes
30% in some helicopters translates over an hour of fuel…
For the Z-10 it’s 1hr 14min…
The helicopter is already a heavy tank to fly, I DONT need more than 15min of fuel…
5% minimum please… but give players a warning when it’s on the lowest setting.
In the G-lynx 30% is 9 mins of flight so if you accidentally pick 5% you will get 2 mins in ground sim and NO WAY TO RESPAWN WITH MORE.
9 Likes
Took me a while to support this. I voted yes about a week back.
I think a lower percentage than 30 for fuel would be a net positive to the game.
2 Likes
+1 I support your idea! plane like SM.91 and SM.92 will be a lot better with addition of such slider :)
2 Likes
It also greatly annoys me that some aircraft have such high minimum fuel loads. Don’t get me wrong, the fuel-sliders were an absolutely brilliant change, but there was always one piece of the puzzle missing.
However I don’t think that the mimimum should be lowered to 5%. I think this gives too much unpredictability when it comes to judging the performance of your enemy, and I think for most vehicles it wouldnt be very useful. I think a better way of implementing it would be as follows:
Fighter and Strike aicraft either get A) Their current minimum fuel load if it is below or equal to 20 min or B) 20 mins if their current minim fuel load is higher than this.
This would mean that every plane in the game has a minimum fuel load of 20 minutes, or simply whatever they had before if what they had was less than 20. This would make props like the Hornet, Ki-83, Mosquito, SM-91, F-82E, Me 410, VB-10… a lot more playable. (Sure, the Ki-83 and hornet are already very good, but if the new minfuel makes them too good, move them up in BR.)
This way, 80% of planes in the game are unaffected and life goes on as normal for the majority of the playerbase, meanwhile a lot of heavier fighters and attackers become a little bit more competitive. Heavy/Twin fighters are arguably not competitive enough and so I highly doubt making them slightly lighter would be game breaking, and in cases like the Ki-83 where it might be, move them up!
+1
6 Likes
Support, planes that have fuel much longer than the maximum time of a battle should always be balanced by their bracket and not arbitrary weight restrictions. 5% is a good level since any plane forced to take 1 hr can go down to 3 minutes worth now. Maybe give a warning to new players that their fuel is too low and not have the minimum setting be available in the drop down menu, only in the slider
4 Likes
+1, the fuel slider literally didn’t change the actual problem with minimum fuel that everyone complained about, and that being way too much fuel for something not relevant to the game.
Half the US propeller planes have so much fuel that their performance suffers greatly, and they are already not well suited to the game meta of climbing and dogfighting, especially the naval planes which includes jets as well. Same goes for all naval planes of every country. Bombers as well.
2 Likes
I don’t think so - gaijin had simply no better idea. And we had 1 h match durations a few years ago.
Despite i voted with a “yes” - imho the minimum fuel time for all planes should be 25 minutes - as long as Air RB matches last (at least in theory) that long.
Why?
These min fuel spammers ruin the whole point of "realism"in very rare vs 1 dogfights vs an (almost) identical performing opponent (aircraft and skill), as the slightest advantage is decisive.
Those guys buy a performance increase with fuel loads like 7 minutes (jets) or 12 minutes (props) just to achieve a performance their aircraft never had irl combat scenarios.
If you want to continue this fantasy game play path - be my guest.
But have in mind that based on current match duration almost everybody flies already with min fuel - after a theoretical implementation of your suggestion you would see the same effect, therefore the 25 minutes min fuel for all would level the playing field…
SM 92 is my favorite plane in Air RB and already a beast - with 1 hour min fuel…
Fully agree.
I prefer 25 minutes, but 20 seems ok too.
more balancing for bombers in WT and all other aircraft with high minutes of minimum fuel loads
+1
some planes have upwards of 30 minutes minimum fuel, bombers sometimes 3+ hours.
Others have barely any. Plus the fuel amount seems to barely if ever be used for balancing after initial implementation.
Therefore I’d rather give players full control
On further reflection it should be 0-100%
+3
Me, myself, and I all agree that America needs this.
Or realism. Real combat sorties usually don’t last less than 15 minutes.
bombers turn into fighters with 5min fuel, could be fun lol . +1
1 Like
+1, completely needed change
I get that the current minimum fuel amount is for balancing purposes, but I’d much rather have a few months of chaos until planes get re-balanced than have such an important feature not give me full control (it’s literally the only feature in the game we don’t have complete control over). There are still tons of aircrafts with so much fuel on the minimum level that is completely unneeded and very noticeably affects their maneuverability. Same goes for bombers and many strike aircraft being more sluggish than they need to be. It’ll be chaotic at first, but in the long run will turn the game more fun by allowing you to get more out of your planes.
2 Likes
Even if you come with the realism argument, you forget that many planes flew sometimes for far more time than we do in-game while flying to the objective, the amount of flying we have in War Thunder wanes in comparison to how longer flying operations took time.
1 Like
I actually do agree with the assessment that this would make heavier aircraft more competitive against lighter airplanes. I can’t deny the rationale behind it and it is just a game meaning it really won’t hurt the individual game players by making this change.
However, I disagree with implementing this because it will grievously affect the reality of gameplay. If I am down to 20% or less fuel, I am searching for a landing strip, not offensively engaging in combat. Yes, I do understand that survivability in this game is likely less than 7 minutes for all but the very best players and your airfield is literally in your backyard (for the game). However, many of us play the game for the reality of the experience. If my P-38G can out turn a Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero, that isn’t reality. The P-51 Mustang built its reputation with far too much fuel (game wise) because they still wanted to make it home to England after escorting deep into Germany. Even now, the F-16 has the reputation of taking off “out of gas” with full internal fuel and at least one external tank full.
I want to acknowledge the intent of the original poster and I do believe it would be successful for its stated intent. I simply disagree with that intent because it diverts from reality. I have 5000 flying hours in multi-engine heavy aircraft, 650 combat hours and I would never engage in offensive combat operations (defensive combat operations, hey, you do what you gotta do) with less than Joker fuel on board unless I had fuel-planned to a gnat’s ass that I could make it to a friendly airstrip after an aborted midair refueling.
I like the idea, but IMO this is just gonna result in a lot of people taking the bare minimum they can get away with just to tunnel vision on someone for 1-2 kills (with their now superior climb and turn rates) and then die.
So perhaps not 5%, but any aircraft above 20min minimum fuel gets to choose an amount as low as that.
1 Like