Air RB reduced EXP gain

hello, im just want to ask ppl, are u also feel that they nerf how much exp u get for your action during the match? l shooting down enemy plane gives u 800 exp, base gives u 1000 exp ( non prem plane + prem acc) and for u to get a goon exp u need somehow make a game long more than 15 mins. sometimes i can kill 6 people and game will end in 7 mins and boom. u got 6k exp cause game was short. why they did that? Air rb has 1 life, it is not tank rb. Then why we have same economy?

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Because warthunder is going torwards glorious soviet economics. Move along comerade.

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You already noticed that these values depend from a few factors. It’s not only premium vehicle and premium account, but it’s also the vehicle itself. Every action reward is multiplied by your vehicle RP/SL multiplier, so it will be different with pretty much every vehicle.

You are also misunderstanding action rewards and mission rewards. Action rewards do not depend on the time spent in the vehicle. Every action you see on the screen won’t be changed, that’s the final RP/SL for this specific action that will be added to your total RP/SL result.

So for example, this means:

that after this battle my total SL from actions will be increased by 820 SL and my total RP from actions will be increased by 70 RP. This number is not affected by length of the battle, activity %, win or lose etc. This total action RP/SL result per spawn is also used to balance vehicles, but that’s another story.

Your total rewards are mission rewards + action rewards. The mission RP reward is calculated this way:

The mission RP reward = time alive in the vehicle (in seconds) * win/lose multiplier (1.2 for a win, 0.8 for a lose) * game mode multiplier (hidden value used by the devs to keep rewards on the desired level) * vehicle RP multiplier (can be checked on the vehicle stats card) * activity % in the vehicle (/100)

So you can see the mission RP reward depends greatly on the time spent in the vehicle. In longer battles the mission RP reward can be much greater than action RP reward. This is why players sometimes call the current RP system time based, but it’s only half of the story.

The current system replaced the old system a few years ago (in 2021 to be precise). In the old system action rewards were more important than mission rewards, but this was changed. The reason given for this change was that players who played very aggressively at the beginning of the battle could get a very high action rewards, usually die early and just change the battle. This was actually the most effective way to gain RP and progress quickly in the game. After the change, mission rewards became much more significant, so if you die early you won’t see any great RP anymore (your mission RP reward will be always low with not enough time and activity % in the vehicle).

This new system should encourage players to stay longer in battles and try to play safer. Just keep in mind that rewards are counted separately for every vehicle you use in the battle (vehicle, not spawn!). So you won’t be able to “abuse” this system e.g. in Ground game mode and just re-spawn and do nothing in the new vehicle to keep the time alive increasing. The calculations for this specific vehicle will indeed include the time alive, but because your activity % in the vehicle will be 0, the final mission RP reward for this vehicle will be multiplied by 0. And the time alive in this vehicle won’t affect any other vehicle you played previously. But because the calculation is based on the vehicle and not spawn, you can actually use a backup to improve your RP result in the battle.

The activity % is an interesting part here. It depends only on your score and time alive in the vehicle. This means that to get max possible rewards, you have to reach specific score and time, which will give you 100% activity. Everything lower than 100% will reduce your mission rewards, e.g. 80% activity will multiply your mission rewards by 0.8 (reduce it by 20%). And because the new formula that calculated activity % is based on time alive in the vehicle, it’s impossible to reach good activity % in a short battle. This is the part that the devs didn’t thought out too well in my opinion. In Air/Ground/Naval Arcade (I play mainly these modes), but probably also Ground/Naval Realistic to get close to 100% activity with specific vehicle you need to keep it alive for at least 11-12 minutes. Most battles don’t last that long, which is a big problem.

To show you an example of this problem:

Spoiler

It doesn’t matter I’m first in the battle with a very good result. Because my time alive in the battle is only 4:31, my activity was calculated as 78%. This means my mission rewards were reduced by 22% just because the battle was short. And also because the battle was short, my time alive on the vehicle was low, so the mission reward in the first place is not the greatest. You can see it’s only 1096 RP. I actually got more action RP in this battle (2280 - 1096 = 1184 RP from actions).
Before the 2021 activity % changes (in the old system), my activity % for this battle would be 100%, because the activity % was based only on the score (which is based on actions).

NOTE: Keep in mind, the activity % you see here won’t be accurate when you use more vehicles in the battle than one. Then mission reward will be counted separately for every vehicle based on the activity % in that specific vehicle. The total activity % you will see on the battle summary screen will only be used for tasks and challenges (that require specific activity levels). Only if you use one vehicle in the battle (backups included), the total activity % will be equal to vehicle activity %.

We don’t. Air Realistic has easier system that counts activity % differently than other game modes. It’s possible to reach 100% activity in this mode even in shorter battles than 11-12 minutes. I don’t play Air Realistic much, so I can’t say how long you have to stay alive for such activity %. Just keep in mind, you still need specific score to reach that 100% activity.

At the same time, your action rewards in Air Realistic have an additional multiplier of 2.5, so it’s also much easier to exp planes in this mode.

For example, I think this was my highest RP battle in Air Realistic. I only had small 15% RP booster active here:

Spoiler

You can see huge 35126 RP from mission reward. But only 54152 - 10499 - 35126 = 8527 RP from actions. So my RP from actions is more than 4 times lower than my mission RP! Only because the battle lasted 24:37, and I survived from the beginning until the end.

You can also notice on this screen, I had slightly too low score to get 100% activity, so it was reduced to 96%. Even if my time alive was enough to potentially get 100% activity, my score in this battle (3924) was still not high enough to achieve such activity.

I hope everything is a little clearer now.

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Closest I ever got to 100% activity was 6 air kills with 15 minutes alive. I got 99%.

3 kills, 1 assist got me 94% activity at 15 minutes alive. This I got the score too: 2142.

Another 3 kill game at 12 minutes was 94% activity as well.

2 player kills, 2 assists, 5 ground AI kills over 24 minutes got me 74% activity (dont have total score, was placed 4th).

So it seems, especially given Wick’s own advice for maximizing activity for battlepass tasks:

It seems there is a fall-off where matches lasting for longer actually reduce your activity%. My own experience indicates the sweet spot is around 15 minutes for a score of 1500-2000 in ARB and it starts decaying after that unless you get more score (which, in ARB, will end up difficult as fewer targets exist and ground targets give less score.)

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Yes, the whole thing is a bit complicated, so I didn’t want to go into details too much. You can see my post was already pretty long, I bet like 99% of users won’t even read it.

But you are correct and the score:time alive formula to calculate the activity % is a function. For specific time you need specific score. This formula is exactly what changed in 2021, and this made our life much more complicated.

Even with amazing results, I can’t get 100% activity nowadays in Air Arcade, the score:time formula is just too harsh to achieve that.

But with the previous formula, I had plenty of battles with 100% activity, simply because you only needed specific score (even if the battle was short). For example, very old Air Arcade battle:

Spoiler

But after the formula changed, the activity % was hit very hard in other modes than Air Realistic, for example Air Arcade result:

Spoiler

With 19 kills I still didn’t have enough score (3808) to get 100% activity, even if the battle time was good enough. Also that’s why it’s much easier to exp in Air Realistic, even for a newbie like me (I normally play Arcade game modes). The current requirements to get good RP results in Air Arcade are just crazy.

It’s not the kills that matter here, it’s the score. It’s only the score vs time relation.
Too short time, too high score = low activity % (you will be limited by time).
Long enough time, too low score = low activity % (you will be limited by score).
You need to have both values in specific window to get high activity % nowadays, which is not easy.

I’m not a mathematician, but for every specific score (let’s say 2000 in this case) the function will look similar to this:

Spoiler


I understand this graph is not professional, because I don’t show the values here, but the thing is, we don’t know this function. It was never revealed by the devs, so we can’t calculate exact values.

You basically want to keep the score and time value in that red zone, because it’s that max possible activity area. For too short time your activity % will be very poor, even with 2000 score. For too long time your 2000 score won’t be enough to keep high activity (you simply need to get more score). That’s why it’s so complicated to control.

The interesting part is that you don’t really want to have too high score for the time alive. Because getting higher score is a risk. If you have let’s say 2000 score already and the battle barely started, risking another kill doesn’t make sense for you. It makes more sense to play defensively and make sure to extend your time on the vehicle. If you die after 2 minutes having 2000 score, you will “waste” huge part of that score. If you die after 5 minutes having that 2000 score, your activity % will increase, your battle time will increase, and your final RP result will be much better, even if you don’t do anything at all for the additional 3 minutes. This can be controlled to some point, of course not perfectly, but more or less. I usually push a bit more (but not too much) at the beginning of the battle, and then I start playing defensively. My main objective becomes to stay alive. Basically, the better score I already have, the more defensively I play.

In Air Realistic everything is much easier, because the action rewards give you much higher rewards. So you can die early, and still get a relatively good RP from actions. But this is an exception, and if you want to get that at least 4-5k RP in other game modes, you really need to care about the time alive on the vehicle.

I personally don’t see any problem with RP in Air Realistic, in my opinion it’s very good. But playing other game modes and grinding vehicles there can be a huge pain. And I’m talking from a perspective of a player, who have all vehicles of rank 1-4 and also many rank 5 vehicles already spaded.


I really like spading vehicles, trying different things, that’s just the way I enjoy the game. Understanding the RP system is very important if you play this way.

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In the game, there are RP and SL multipliers. These are visible on the stat cards.
But there are also hidden multipliers, for example, for ground-targeting weaponry.
For ground-targeting weaponry, there are also additional multipliers, which are hidden in the game files.
These multipliers determine how many points you will receive for specific actions.
I suspect that there are similar multipliers for actions against air targets as well.
Depending on the weaponry you currently have mounted, meaning whether it’s just cannons, cannons with missiles, or cannons + missiles + bombs, etc.
Here is an example from datamines:

  • F-4J [UK]: loadouts changed:
    • 1x 20 mm GAU-4/A + 10x 540 lbs M.C. Mk. 1 + 4x AIM-9G + 4x AIM-7E: reward multiplier changed: 0.69 → 0.68
    • 1x 20 mm GAU-4/A + 4x AIM-9G + 4x Skyflash + 180x SNEB Type 23: reward multiplier changed: 1 → 0.8
    • 13x 540 lbs M.C. Mk. 1: reward multiplier changed: 0.58 → 0.57
    • 8x 1000 lbs M.C. Mk. 13 + 1x 20 mm GAU-4/A + 4x AIM-9G + 4x Skyflash: reward multiplier changed: 0.52 → 0.53
    • 11x 1000 lbs M.C. Mk. 13: reward multiplier changed: 0.44 → 0.45
    • 11x 1000 lbs M.C. Mk. 13 (No. 117): reward multiplier changed: 0.44 → 0.45
    • 234x SNEB Type 23: reward multiplier changed: 1 → 0.8
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Dear Poul, i might ments a bit different thing. We used to gain way more for single actions such as base bombing. i used to remember got i could get 50k exp in air battles couple years before. After bombs and rockets nerf and with fatal hit mechanic it feels like i started getting less exp.

And in ground rb if u even died, u still have other tank with play, while in air rb u need to start a new game and pray that u will not die because of the " horrible matchmaking, clouds, fox 3, missiles which ignore flares and etc. "

and i think that supebuster11 was closer to my question.

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Oh, it’s not a problem. There was indeed a nerf to base bombing. The devs said they did it to “fix” a bug that was giving players too much RP:

But this has nothing to do with the time of the battle. Action rewards are not affected by the length of the battle. So my answer was based mostly on this part of your post:

There was no change to this part. The mission rewards work the same way today as they worked in 2021, after they changed the RP calculations. Since then you just can’t rely only on action rewards to get good results. In fact, you need to care more about mission rewards nowadays, as they are potentially much higher than action rewards, so it’s more important now to stay alive in the battle. This is what I tried to explain in my previous posts. I also explained in my first post why they changed the system in 2021.

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