Ambient Infantry for ground battles

Suggestions Graphics/Sounds
21

Dang, take out that autocorrector!

Seems like a perfect job for Infantry! :D

I like this whole idea a lot.

While WarThunder is mostly a “capture the flag” kind of game, you could make an argument that “behind the scenes” or “under the hood” or “in the background” or whatever - well… Tanks don’t capture cities. Infantry does.

On City Maps, tanks have always been the “Hero Class” supporting invisible infantry who are doing the hard work of holding the physical ground (evidence: When a tank gets CASed to death while on/near a cap, the cap does not instantly revert to neutral. something is keeping control of that point while “off screen”.

The biggest issues that I see (as a longtime IT person) is Resource Management.
It’s a cool feature, but doesn’t bring any benefit to the table.

It’s not a new vehicle.
It’s not a new game mechanic: for example, there isn’t a mechanic to capture a point with infantry on a point without a vehicle being specifically “in the circle”. A new mechanic would be something like “In RB, on City Maps, every player vehicle exerts a Zone of Control extending 100m in all directions.” which means that you could be up to 100m away from the edge of a Capture Point and be capturing that point - but that would be an enormous change and would piss a lot of existing players off.
It’s a LOT of art assets, modeling, and animation for a cosmetic feature.

It’s an excellent idea, but without functionality, I think it would languish at the bottom of a to-do pile forever.

Now, if you set aside “War Thunder is not an infantry-focused game, and it would make the game less focused on being a military vehicle simulator” as an immutable characteristic of War Thunder and think of it as a new business opportunity for a company that likes to make money…

How would you do it? Plenty of other games (going all the way back to World War II Online which launched in June of 2001, and still exists today) have successfully integrated the idea of Mechanized Infantry.

It’s not impossible, but I think it needs to be some sort of Business Opportunity for it to get any real traction.

With infinite resources, I think I’d run with this with a new game mode that requires armor to support APCs and APCs to support Infantry and Infantry exerts a Zone of Control over their area on an urban map. Lord knows I’ve spent a lot of time riding in the back of a Bedford or Opel Blitz hoping we don’t die on the way between the spawn and the town we’re trying to capture (20 years ago in WWIIOL) Conversely, with a game mode that includes significant infantry assets, Armor ‘in town’ should rightfully fear the Panzerschreck and the Javelin, y’know?

Love the idea from top to bottom - not sure how to justify spending the development resources on it though.

3 Likes
22

The addition would bring an entire new line of vehicles and give players a new style of gameplay. I can absolutely see players buying premium IFVs or APCs to skip the grind of lightly armed or armored transport vehicles. Same with helicopters. Lets say a player wants to get into helicopters. Attack helicopters keep taking all his points and SPAA keeps swatting him out of the sky. But wait, theres another way to grind helicopters. Bam! Now players can buy a premium CH-46 and grind by transporting troops. Wanna grind out the Russian transport line? Bam! Now you can buy a premium BMP. As far as the cosmetics, a lot of it is already in the game. The infantry is there and a lot of the weapons are there (as vehicle props). All they’d have to do is update pathfinding and add skins. Theres a huge opportunity for financial gain and the addition would cost no more than a regular update.

23

I mean, I like the idea a lot - and there could be game mechanics that support it in higher tiers.

The Hind carries 8 troops, and the Merkava (this blew my mind when I learned it years ago) has room for 6.

Technically, brand new vehicles aren’t even needed - just a mechanic to simulate rolling up and dropping your buddies off to hold the point. It could be abstract - I mean “capturing a zone” is already pretty abstract, it’s just a timer that represents…a timer.

Modify it to represent a generic ‘count’ of infantry in and around the zone (either 1:1 for however many infantry can be carried at later tiers, and representing infantry riding on top or walking behind medium and heavy armor sets at lower tiers - or a multiplier, like “every infantry in a Merkava is 10 points, the Merkava carries 60 points of Infantry”

The interesting twist for me in even a wholly abstract “points based” layer of Infantry Support like this is that the enemy can roll up with their own infantry to control the zone (a house to house firefight breaks out) - and to win you need to bring MORE points than the enemy has in that zone already (or you fight to a stalemate, and you capturing the point just turns it back neutral as you fight to a standstill.

OR

Armor can call CAS or Uncle Artie directly on the zone and “hurt” the infantry ability to hold the zone -not necessarily casualties - even though this is all abstract numbers with some animation window dressing to make it look nice, Artillery can make the Infantry keep their heads down, suppressing them. that can be just as effective as dropping 500 pounders on their heads…

Could introduce the mechanic with existing assets (no real changes or new vehicles to mess around with) and see how well liked it is before a full commit.

2 Likes
24

Think it would be like the arty we have now or maybe some smaller type ones that only hurt open top tanks? It would be cool to have actual infantry interact with each other. Maybe even their own mortars in the back.

1 Like
25

I also like the idea of unarmed troop transport vehicles. They may not be able to defend from an T-90 slinging a hunk of metal at you faster then the speed of sound, but they have one thing that tanks an other vehicles lack.
S p e e d. Try hitting a target faster than your turret can even traverse. Try hitting something light like a Hummve or a jeep while its zooming through buildings and dropping off troops near objectives. And the best part? It would theoretically have the lowest cost to spawn since its vulnerable to pretty much everything else. Once you run out of most of your spawn points, you could zoom around the map in the hopes of assisting the team by trying to cap a point, preforming reconnaissance, repairing damaged tanks with engineers, or even dropping off supplies. What makes it all even better is the fact that this could be done with every tech tree and every battle rating.

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2 Likes
26

well guys, it would appear that my suggestion is somewhat coming true tomorrow, lol

2 Likes
27

lol, guess we’ll see how the april fools goes with actual infantry combat

28

Its April first so I’m not getting my hopes up, but I do hope they’re just using this as a test bed to see if it would fit in the game. The trailer made it look like it’ll be an FPS thing but hey, fingers crossed lol

29

I just hope that its actually for war thunder and not for enlisted. I hope enlisted sticks to ww2 and the modern combat side is contained to WT

30

Pre WW2
Hanyang 88 rifle
WW2
Zhong Zheng Shi Rifle
1950-60s
Type 56
1970-1990s
Type 81
2000s
Type 95

32

Yes i think this is a good start. Just Ai control Infantry (bot) that player can interreact with . (and reward with a few SL and RP when player shoot at them) . Can capture and defend capture zone. can help spot enemy . can shoot at enemy infanry.

Then update that gave them AT weapon. (that not too strong) for Each era

Early ww2 - Anti tank grenade , Anti tank rifle grenade , satchel charge
Late ww2 - Bazooka , Panzerschreck , Anti tank grenade
early cold war - various rocket launcher , M20 super bazooka , RPG-2
late cold war - various rocket launcher , M72 Law , RPG-7 (PG-7V warhead)
modern era - various rocket launcher carl gustaf , AT-4 , RPG-7 (PG-7L)

Then another update that give IFV and utility helicopter ability to deploy infantry squad . (Still Ai control Infantry [bot] ) But player can order them to go anywhere they want them to be.

1 Like
33

Did you even read it? Because there’s a reason that they can’t be interacted with.

34

I think he’s going off the point that the infantry in the ww1 event can be interacted with

35

yeah probably, he just doesn’t realize that it only works because its a limited time event and not a permanent part of the game

36

Yes i have read your post.
But i suggest that player should be able to interreact with them in the future update.
And btw i think infantry in WW1 event can kill your tank with anti tank grenade if you get too close to them as someone mention that in others topic.

38

From my email reply.

Tbh the “pegi rating” thingy are a bit redundant to me as there are plenty of things that (already in game) that could be the problem. For example you are able to shoot and kill tank crew that are exposed due to vehicle being open top like SPAA and such. There also Field artillery piece with crew on it (it actually a recoilless gun) that player can shoot and kill in helicopter PVE . Once they are dead there are no gore or blood being show as they’ll just act like they’re unconscious or just disappear entirely.

Also i don’t think infantry alone would cause unbalanced for certain vehicle than the map could. As most already have weapons that will keep them at bay which is HMG , LMG given Gaijin could alway add suppressive fire mechanic that will stun infantry Ai and force them to stay in cover / stay prone. HE and howitzer would outright delete them if use right.
And the Anti tank weapon they carry wouldn’t be more lethal than AP,HEAT that tank shoot. Not to mention they would also have a hard time hitting moving target beyond 200-500m let alone penetrated medium and heavy tank from the front.

39

One thing I noticed during my first time playing the event is that the infantry seems immune to MG fire, except the ones in the MG nests

40

You don’t know PEGI then.

It comes off as being that any occupant of the crew is falling asleep, and that the individual person isn’t targetted directly, independently of the vehicles crew.

With actual troops, this becomes an issue, as they’re being directly targetted.

The difference in rating from enlisted to war thunder shows the difference.