Hi. I don’t want to make this into a TL;DR, so I’ll do it as short as possible. Any improvements welcome, feel free to let me know.
1. What is Assault Ground Arcade anyway?
Ground Assault is a cooperative PvE game mode. This means that players must work together against automated enemies (bots). It doesn’t help if a single guy in a 2S38 racks up 190 kills, but the match is lost anyway because he’s playing for his score, not the team win. There will be another remark in the “Pilots” section.
You have about 30 seconds before the bots start spawning for the first wave, and 5 seconds for each of the next ones. It’s important to understand right from the start that the bases do not provide full cover against long-range shooting, and on every map is at least one spawn point which has the reload/repair circle in line of sight. Cover against spawn X might be fully open to point Y. When it comes to this, Sinai is the worst map because three out of the seven bot spawn points are elevated. While the earth walls on some maps provide cover against bots shooting from one direction, another spawn point might have a clear field of fire.
2. What’s the task?
The entire point of an assault match is to defeat 11 waves of bot tanks (each wave from three out of seven spawn points per map) before the initial 10.000 tickets have been drained. The number of bots per wave depends on how many players are in, the maximum is 12 to 15 per spawn, so three times that for an entire wave. Also included are up to two bot planes per wave, which are high-priority targets because they’re equipped with cannons and rockets or bombs (Maginot-only). Direct and close-by rocket or bomb hits will take out any tank, including the top-tier ones. Since we’re talking about bots, be advised that they can and will park their ordnance right on top of your turret. The bot planes will use their heavy weaponry on the first attack and rearm over time if not shot down.
2.1. Which enemy tanks will come?
Each assault map has bot tanks on four different BRs. Light, medium, heavy, heavier (higher BR). At Mozdok that means for the BR 5.3-6.3 bracket the enemies will be Waffenträger, Panther D, Tiger H, Tiger II (P). In Kursk it’s PT-76B, T-34/85, IS-1, IS-2. Fulda has for the BR 8.3+ tier the Ikv 91-105, Challenger Mk.3, Leopard 2A5, Leclerc…and so on. They come in a fixed sequence.
Light-medium-very heavy-medium-heavy-very heavy-light-heavy-very heavy-heavy-very heavy
3. How to win?
I’ve played War Thunder for 15 months at the time of posting this, 99% of that in Assault Ground mode. That doesn’t make me the foremost expert in the world, but I have played enough matches to have an understanding what works, what is blind luck, and what will fail.
3.1 Ticket loss
Bot tanks standing inside the marked base square will also drain tickets, the faster the more bots are inside. They must be taken out as fast as possible. That’s particularly important on the Maginot map where the southwestern spawn point and the route from there to inside the base square are entirely out of sight for the actual base. The bot tanks will cluster below a ridge line and only become visible if a few of them drive uphill. Players must move to clear this zone, or have a bomber clear it (difficult to destroy all tanks at once). After a wave is defeated, up to 1500 tickets will be refunded.
3.2 Basic strategy
Rushing the bot waves is only in a few situations a good move (such as bumping a bot tank out of the base square), neither is staying out in the open. If the bots have line of sight on you, hits are to be expected, even across the entire map. Keep an eye on the map to see when one of the other spawn points will be able to hit you. Shoot from cover, wiggle forward to shoot and backward to reload. Just let them come towards the base and take them out along the way. Due to the layout of the base on Sinai players have to keep track of pretty much every single bot tank, their position relative to gaps between the buildings and your own tank. In my personal opinion the Hornet Sting patch made this map a real nightmare to play.
3.3 Target priority
Very important for winning is treating the bot planes as high-priority targets. A lot of players, especially in lower BRs, just ignore them, some on purpose because they think AA against them isn’t necessary. That is a bad idea because even with the heavy explosives expended, the cannons are sufficient to break tracks, set engines on fire, punch through hull or turret roofs and kill crew members. I had planes shooting out the gun breeches on my Panthers and Tigers with just cannon fire. Also, cannon hits cause sparks and smoke, making aiming at targets harder. To make matters worse, the bot planes will rearm their heavy ordnance over time or when they fly out far enough.
Extra bot plane problem: if enough of them are in the air, they will fixate on a target and keep circling back to it until shot down – meaning players having a “personal bot” pestering them.
Ardennes is a good example why taking down the bot planes is so important. If a player gets blown up by a bot plane and one, two or maybe even all three of the southern spawn points are populated, these spawn points have clear line of sight to most player spawns. There is a brief span of 15 to 20 seconds which makes respawned players “transparent” to shots from bot tanks, but this ends instantly when moving or shooting. My own personal record is two seconds from respawning to being shot to pieces by an M26 Pershing.
In general, unless you like being blown up or forced to repair by bot plane attacks, getting rid of them has top priority – preferably before they can use their high-explosives. Use aircraft, shoot them with your MGs, main gun, find somebody to play an SPAA, but get rid of them. While it is possible to win a round with 8 or more bots in the air, it’s blind luck and about as much fun as falling off the roof.
4. Anything to do for pilots?
In every BR bracket players can use aircraft. Either fighters, ground attack, or bombers. On the waves with heavy tanks, have a bomber pummel one of the spawn points can be very useful, just keep in mind that IS-2 bots on Kursk have no problem of shooting down a B-29 with MG fire in surprisingly short time. Unfortunately, a lot of players using the smaller planes also ignore the flying bots. Instead of shooting them down, they just fire their rockets with more or less success at a ground target, then ram their aircraft into the ground to no gain.
Using a bomber on a light or medium tank wave doesn’t serve any real purpose. These waves go down fast enough.
Helicopters are available in the top BR bracket. However, on some maps the helo pilots are making typical mistakes, worst for this is Maginot because it’s full of hills and ridges, with six of the seven spawn points out of view from the base. What the chopper people do is this: they will immobilise an entire spawn point out of sight, then take ages to destroy all tanks – if they manage to do that. Often enough this is a huge waste of time, imagine a round which takes 18 minutes for just four waves, while the chopper pilots think they’re “carrying the match” due to their numbers being higher than those of tankers who don’t want to drive all over the map just to get a target or two.
5. Isn’t it good to have a very high score?
Mostly for the ego. The maximum amount of SL and RP earned will be reached with a score of about 1500 – which does not mean to quit when reaching 1500, or stop being useful. Anything above that will get large-scale diminishing returns. I have played rounds from a score of 1500 up to 8200 (triple-digit number of kills). SL rarely goes over 30.000 for a win (not counting the 50% bonus for premium accounts), and the RP top out around 7000 (with premium and win bonus). Same goes for crew XP points, a good win will give up to around 240, while a third-wave loss due to bad playing might yield 10 to 20. The final half-rank to maximise the tank commander’s Leadership skill requires 970 crew XP points, that’s five good wins or fifty-plus losses. This is what makes the cooperative part so important. No matter how high your score is, the bonus from an actual match win outweighs it. Being first on the scoreboard is nice but not essential. As long as the match is won and the score is 1500+, one might as well be last.
Bottom line is, play for the team win, not a super-high personal score. Do not monopolise spawn points to prevent anybody else from shooting these tanks. Assault mode is cooperative, don’t forget that. It’s not for making you feel good about yourself by employing an antisocial playing style. It’s also a waste of time, as already mentioned in 3.1. Personally I have yet to see a match where stopping spawn points out of base view has sped up things, so far it always slowed everything down.