Currently, hydroplanes find themselves in a difficult spot, most of them sacrifice the ability to land in runways in order to be able to use bodies of water, while in real life this proved versatile, due to said aircraft being very flexible due to not needing as much infrastructure to do their work. Perfect for patrol aircraft to keep eyes on any part of allied territory or provide support to remote areas.
Sadly in War Thunder, said flexibility is only modeled via the ability to capture points in naval battles and rearm next to carrier (if the carrier doesn’t move away before the repair is over).
Which ends in most hydroplanes to belly land in runways or rip those floats off in some cases in order to remove those extra kilos and allow safer belly landing. Which also makes it so its impossible to do loadout changes or instant repairs (J-out on runway without any damage).
Which is where this suggestion will try to fix by offering some solutions to said problem.
By allowing these aircraft to rearm in any body of water as long as conditions are met.
This post will be separated in many parts in order to explain in detail the mechanics and how would they would be implemented in an easy and flexible way.
The first mechanic we will see will be the “Frontline”, similar to Air Simulator’s Frontline, it will fill the duty of indicating which waters can one rearm and in which they would be captured in (same as currently landing in an enemy runway).
Landing in any body of water behind the blue line and within 45m of a “shore” (will be explained further down the post) will result in a repair/rearm procedure, which in case one didn’t take any damage will be able to skip by J’out.
This “Frontline” ported to ARB / AAB (can’t really see a use for it except for repairs in the last one) will be ideally placed in a spot where the map is split in equal halves and/or following vague line placed AI units drawn, it will not be an exact split and friendly AI units will probably be located behind enemy lines, but that can be easily justified as those units performing an offensive move.
It will move by accomplishing map objetives or by killing all units/pillboxes in a dedicated square.
This would allow more aggresive yet risky plays by hydroplanes due to being vulnerable on water, or simply act as a super convinient repair for those who are barely flying after a long push.
The Frontline will allow for these aircraft to completely detach themselves from runways, which would make behaviour prediction for the enemy more difficult, In case of floatplane bombers, it would allow to compensate for those slower speed they operate in compared to other frontline bombers. It would be an equalizer to land based aircraft, which would be locked to runways and far easier to predict paths, by allowing hydroplane river/lake and coastal operations from almost 50% of bodies on water found on maps.
I mentioned about “Shores” before on this post, to define a shore we will simply look at any point where terrain starts to see water above it. To start a repair, one must be 45m away from it on water.
If one lands 20 meters from a body of water, the usual repair/reload will happen but after said time it will be forced to “launch”, taking around 20 seconds. After set timer passes, the aircraft will be pointed towards the nearest points that counts as a “Shore” and taking said point as a reference, will move 30 meters (from center of mass) into the water, ready to line itself up in case of landing in a river or simply take off if landed in a beach.
While this would avoid softlocks via beaching, it would still reward players who took time to properly line up and safely land without issue. Since hydroplanes don’t really manouver well on water, except for cases like the S17BS where those tiny rudders help with manouvers. Even still, differential throttle manouvers could be implemented for heavier aircraft.
While hydroplanes would be able to rearm/repair almost anywhere, AA and allies would not be found “anywhere”.
Unless our plane lands in a body of water near AA or runway, it would be left completely exposed and vulnerable.
To safely land one would need to look for a area with no traffic but also not super far way to simply not run out of time in a battle.
Also some very few maps simply don’t have any water, which would make forced runway landing still a thing, which is why I will not remove the ability to repair in runways, however it will apply a penalty of no repair skip and a 25% slower repair time. Somewhat of a tradeoff for AAA protection and airspawn.
Now floatplane fighters can think 2 times before ripping those floats off since they will now actually have benefits.To have access to repair time skips and more sneaky ambush routes to attack enemies from is niche but felt upside.
Floatplanes fighters would stand out more as simply “dumber x-plane” like A6M2-N, N1K1, Spitfire Mk Vb (float), He 51 B-2/H or allow aircraft like the Ro.44, F1M1, OS2U-1 / 3 or Ar 196 A-3 /A-5 more relevance.
And of course allow for smoother addition of aircraft like the multiple floatplanes locked to naval like russian KORs, future additions like F4F-3S, Loire 210 or even jets like SR.A/1.
- Yes
- Yes but with some tweaks
- No