Air Simulator Battles: A goldmine that is yet to be discovered

Gaijin hasn’t yet acknowledged the economic and gameplay potential that Sim Battles has.
Air Simulator Battles is so close to being a true competitor to IL-2 Sturmovik, a paid game with an established playerbase. Gaijin has the advantage of having more aircraft and the fact that War Thunder and ASB is, well, Free-To-Play.
All it requires is some effort, and a whole new playerbase will be willing to enter the game, with a large portion of them staying thanks to the larger, more varied catalog of situations that ASB can offer. WT ASB is not limited to WW2 or before WW2. It has an extremely huge variety of aircraft from different time periods, with their mechanics implemented in a smart way, combining ease of use and realism. The problem, is that Gaijin hasn’t realized yet that Air Sim has such potential, instead fixating on Air RB and GRB. That, and the fact that Gaijin further tried to get rid of Air Sim playerbase, by releasing Ace Of Thunder and inmediately taking away developers of ASB to transition them to AOT, further worsening the situation with ASB. As of right now, ASB is pretty much abandoned, wasted potential that is waiting to one day, be awakened.

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Yeah, It has such potential, but they just dont seem to care about the gamemode anymore. It is a real shame

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Yes, Sir, great potential, but completly abandoned.

I was speaking yesterday with a wingman, that instead of just dead, they could add Captured, and Plane destroyed, so there would be 4 ways of ending a sortie instead of 2, and make the reward acording to that like in IL-2, and that would be really easy to implement.

But they just don’t care … it has so much potential … so many thing could be improved.

Some people makes list with those things, a they ignore it !!!

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As a former member of StG2-Immelmann I would be very happy to experience missions together in large bomber formations again. The SIM community in IL-2 1946 was always a pleasure.
Even my wallet would open up again for that …

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So many people think that you need $1000 in equipment to play Sim. When in reality, mouse-joy is perfectly adequate and people do really well with it. Players who are afraid to venture away from mouse-aim (and big red markers), are really missing out on the satisfaction of piloting their aircraft.

I encourage anybody that’s found themselves bored of mouse-aim gameplay to give mouse-joy a try. Seek a video on how to set up mouse-joy, create a custom match, and see what you can do. You might actually enjoy it.

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Well tbh, i wouldn’t mind a dual mouse wielding, for vision around the aircraft…

Air sim is such a disappointment in my experience. The rewards are atrocious, with 3-4 kills needed to break even per spawn, and despite its name as a simulator there is a halfhearted at best attempt to have historically realistic teams. Such amazing potential left completely unutilized. Hopefully we can see both air and ground sim evolve into EC-inspired historical gamemodes.

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A head tracking solution would work great for anybody who wanted to pair it with mouse-joy. Then one could slowly add equipment from there if they chose to do so.

We all start somewhere. 😉

I just bought a flightstick to go and try simulator from time to time! I tried with the mouse but I just can’t get it to work to something enjoyable (for me).

Tbh, i would use Kyboard for controls and mouse for vision if it was allowed,…
I’m doing it sometimes in AIR RB or Custom RB

Very interesting.

Hunter has a video where he makes use of Relative Mouse controls. Maybe it’ll help.

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Oh don’t worry i have tuned it to my liking already ^^"

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Gaijin has the highest hopes for tank GRBs, so it’s no wonder…
ARB … that’s also a mod that could be greatly improved, but it is the way it is…

I remember the beginnings of SIM, it was in the game a lot of players from iL-2 Sturmovik …

Then the editing started…

  • historical enemies were shuffled
  • maps similar to RB have been cancelled
  • then there was a problem with a lot of players. who bought premium and couldn’t do anything with it…
  • there are a lot of players in the game who only play “for fun”, the effort to get to know the plane, to understand its pros and cons is not all…
  • another thing, a lot of players play on “pocket calculators” and with SIM, the better the PC, the better the experience of the game and above all the display of all pixels and textures … so it is not surprising that they play where there are markers. .

There is more and I personally think that ARB is too close to Arcade and too far from Sim…
In addition, the players are comfortable, see at one time the heavy influx of bombers into the SIM, quite a lot of advantageous collection of SL …

I personally have such a thought…

  • I would leave the arcade as it is, mouseaim+3rd view
  • RB, only cockpit view and simplified controls, markers remain
  • SIM, what it currently has, plus other improvements depending on the situation

But this should have come, right from the start, this change would be too drastic and I’m not sure Gaijin dares…
But it is a fact that a lot of players across all modes have reservations, they basically consider the game settings and the meaning of the individual game modes to be outdated …

Warpig_ … interesting mouse-joy setup, thanks…

Warthunder = Wasted potential, the game.

… well, it’s more like a victim of commerce …

When the WT devs started, you could find a lot of articles on the Internet that they are crazy … that relatively free flight games are for a narrow circle of players and it is a non-profit enterprise … these were the opinions of the time, Sturmovikh lasted a long time, I don’t even know how it’s DCS on it, but I’d say it’s ok, but here it’s pay to play…

So 3 air mods, tanks were totally dominated by WOT back then…

The start looked great, a lot of players came from other games…
But then came into play … balancing … it was enchanted by the effectiveness of the weapons, the power of the engines, etc…

Another thing, the PEGI 12+ rating … for that reason, trying to simplify as much as possible … and a lot of other things…

So my impression is that if the game is made very universally, then it is for everyone, but in each segment there is something incomplete …

As one big dream of real aircraft designers is to create one type of aircraft for all types of aviation missions … my opinion is that such an aircraft is a little bit for everything … and a little bit for nothing …

I actually dont think that is a bad thing. I wouldnt want WT to ever become an ultra realstic sim game. Though I just wish for more optional control at times.

Yea, IRL best to worst options: safe landing at base, aircraft and crew survive > crash in friendly territory, crew survive, aircraft repairable > crash landing/ bail out in friendly territory, aircraft lost, crew survive > crash/bail in enemy territory, aircraft lost, crew at risk of capture > total loss of crew and aircraft. But Gaijin just don’t get that sort of immersion; they’re still playing Space Invaders from 50 years ago and you’re either alive or dead. Take damage in enemy territory and it’s ‘stupid’ to try to reach friendly territory; you’d might as well roll inverted and pull into the ground. Exactly the same as a safe crash landing just short of the airfield in Gaijin’s mind.

When you drill down through any of the many issues with WT in general or sim in particular, you always end up finding this childish arcade game mentality.

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Ok, might have to put a disclaimer here. Repair-to-Useful-Action ratio changes WILDLY between aircraft. That’s one of the problems with current U-A system.

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To be honest, the many misconceptions about Air Sim doesn’t help either. They say that joystick is required, but I have found no problems playing on a pocket calc and m&k for 1.5 years in sim.
Gaijin has the potential, but they aren’t willing to use it.

On anther note, have you guys noticed that Air RB is slowly becoming Air Aircade? The description of the Air RB gamemode is becoming hypocritical because:

  • Historically acurrate teams don’t exist anymore
  • Maps where the teams on the match fought irl don’t exist anymore
  • There are Arcade maps in Air RB

Truly, this isn’t just an Air Simulator problem. We’re seeing a large shift in Gaijin’s thinking overall, going for a more arcadey style. This could explain the abandonment of Air Sim

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Huh, didn’t know that. I’ve only played a bit of sim, guess I’ve just had bad luck in aircraft selection.