Within a match bombers have access to at most 3 different concurrent weapon types; Guns - Both forward-facing and defensive armaments as available, bombs and rockets.
An AC-130, depending on which modification, can have access to twice or even 3 times that. That is a lot to model for one vehicle, let alone key bind. But that is all besides the point.
The AC-130 has zero viability in War Thunder as the game is currently designed. Not even the oldest, most rudimentary variants have a niche’ they can fill where they won’t be dead on arrival. They are not designed to operate on contested airspaces, and not a single mode in War Thunder has an uncontested airspace for them to operate in.
They would be nothing but dead weight and an absolute waste of development time, even moreso than the strike drones or even naval.
No1 would be forcing you to take that many weapons, or even fly the plane at all.
And what makes you think Gaijin wants to put in that much development time into an aircraft that is so niche’ it’s entirely unplayable as the game is?
Because it’s a famous and unique aircraft that loads of people would wanna play. It would prolly end up getting an early or prototype premium version, and then a more modern TT version.
Although you are right that Gajin wouldn’t wanna spend money and manpower making a new airplane model with unique features (e.g its takeoff propeller pitch) seen on no other plane. They just wanna add copy paste reskins.
I mean, to be fair, they could add things like AC-130 and also while on it adding just regular C-130 as another mission for Enduring Confrontation gamemod (or high BR air battles since they already started to diversify variants with air spawns)
Loads of people want to play? Doubt it. Anyone with critical thinking knows that the AC-130 is an absolutely dead on arrival kind of aircraft in WT. It’s not an aircraft that can survive in contested air spaces, and every single mode in WT has contested airspaces. We have fighters and SPAA that would knock it out of the sky shortly after it spawns. It wouldn’t even be safe in night matches and the only BR range where it would have a chance is in WW2 BR zones of Ground combined arms where it would be absolutely overpowered.
In all air modes it would be absolutely worthless, even moreso than bombers as they are now.
The AC-130’s " cool factor " means absolutely nothing because in this game, as the game currently is, it would be absolutely worthless. A complete waste of the time, effort and/or GE and SL to unlock and use it.
And Gaijin absolutely will not change or add new modes just for a single vehicle. You’d be clinically insane to ever believe that they would. Hell, just look at how garbage Heli PvP was back in the day and how garbage Heli PvE is even now. An entire vehicle class that had 2 separate modes added over the years where both have been so beyond half-assed it’s never been funny.
Yeah yeah yeah, we’ve heard the same cassette for the A-10, and helicopters before that. “Who would play them, they would be defenseless!”
I thought people would have figured out by now that the IRL effectiveness or usage of a vehicle doesn’t really translate well to a game like Warthunder.
Also I think you’re seriously underestimating the mainstream popularity of the AC-130 thanks to COD and to a lesser degree 20+ years of hollywood movies. People would absolutely play the shit out of it and I bet Gaijin knows it.
A-10 is more agile and faster than the AC-130, and even then the A-10 is mostly Dead in the Water in both ground and air. Why? Because of it’s limited armament access compared to IRL and that it’s fighting in contested airspaces, which like the AC-130 it isn’t meant for. Now, IRL the A-10 is designed to survive being engaged by SPAA and SAMs to a point when caught unawares unlike in WT, but it’s not meant to be deployed directly into known contested airspaces.
Helicopters have more viability in WT over a lot of fixed-wing CAS, though this is BR-dependent as in regards to the early Helis they are generally inferior.
Also, the AC-130 isn’t all that hyped up by media. It hasn’t shown up on TV or videogames much at all in the last decade. Your average normie wouldn’t know what it is. You’re overplaying it’s quite niche’ popularity, to be frank.
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I suppose it is, if you ignore types such as.:
An-12, Shaanxi Y-8, Belfast
AC-47 , AC-119, AC-123
But seriously I think it would be DOA in the main game. Maybe in a special event testing features such as improved IR and TV systems, ECM & IRCM, supply drops etc that the real deal is fitted with or capable of.
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I can actually see loads of people wanting to play it. But at the same time those same people would be too stupid to put it into the orbit to properly engage with anything except it’s hellfires anyways.
Uh?? It appears in MWII 2022 in a bit controversial mission above a mexican village, as for movies Guy Ritchie’s the Covenant (2023) has a scene with one. It’s very much still present in popculture…
A-10 is more agile and faster than the AC-130
Sure but that’s not the point. It’s far from the most effective CAS out there but you still see them every game. Even in Air Battles people used to say it would be free food agaist supersonic fighters and yet you constantly see players turnfighting them and dying. We can’t really be sure how new hypothetical vehicles will perform before testing them, especially unique ones like the warthog, helicopters or in this case a four-engines turboprop the size of a small airliner. As long as the the hypothetical AC-130 gets his countermeasure suite and is in a low enough BR that it doesn’t see the most advanced SAMs and your team has air superiority, I don’t see why it couldn’t be at least usable. It doesn’t need to be meta.
This is a discussion, not a suggestion and rn should not come to the game. Rn is not designed with it in mind and would require far more coding and mechanics than available in the game.
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it’s not implemented because, unlike IRL, this is a “video game”
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That’s only 2 mentions compared to the entirety of military-themed media to come out in 2022 and 2023. Doesn’t disprove how niche’ it is.
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And in much of the matches they appear in from my experience they are quickly shot down by SPAA in ground combined, and in ARB when they are uptiered they are slaughtered easily before they can contribute anything. This is both from my experiences being on the giving and receiving end.
As I’ve already stated; AC-130’s are not deployed in contested airspaces and every single mode in WT comes with contested airspaces. Even in night matches it wouldn’t be viable because of the SPAA and CAP that is available in-game. There’s zero viability for it and that’s just a fact.
The game would have to change a whole helluva lot for the AC-130 to find any level of potential suitability as an addition to the game.
Which wouldn’t work in the game as it is because it would require the aircraft to be at a BR where SPAA would easily knock it out. It’d be the strike drone’s current issue but magnified by 10 because the drones can be hard to see and track compared to something that you’d have to be blind to miss.