1000km x 1000km is lots of fun in it’s own way, but I also think we need stuff like AWACS and in air refuelling before we can get maps that large.
Right now I think the sweet spot would be around 200km x 200km - 250km x 250km.
But even increasing it to 160km x 160km would be huge. It’s so crammed even on the larger maps right now. We need some breathing room after taking off. By the time your at altitude and cruising speed you’re more than halfway across the map and have probably been intercepted already
I disagree about the AWACS and in-flight refueling.
It’s not a playstyle for everyone, but there are many who would enjoy maps that large with the current tools we have. Such a map could even include airfields as close to a few enemy airfields as we have now; have a sort of “hot zone” at the center of the map or something.
Mega-sizes 1000km+ would give players the option of starting farther back as well, it’s doesn’t need to take anything away from 200km or 300km maps, it would just add more around it and ideally more well-protected space farther back. For players who want it, it would allow us to climb to altitude and cruise across the map at 50% throttle for a long-range deep-strike, or perform CAP missions at-altitude relying on radar, patrol patterns, and high-performance for intercept attempts. It would create room for eventual proper SAM sites and SEAD gameplay as well, without that interfering with those who just wanna melee-brawl on the deck in the up-close spawns.
In-flight regueling would be useless at the current map sizes.
AWACS could be useful though as data-link gets implemented to the aircraft that had them.
The map size being 1000 km by 1000 km is way too much. First of all most players that play sim play it for the dogfights and wont want to fly an hour across the map just to find one. Secondly console wouldn’t be able to run 1000km by 1000km and Gaijin wouldn’t do that and lose customers that have probably paid hundreds add all those console players up and thats alot of money.
The sweet spot being around 160km by 160km or 256km by 256km is all we need. Just a little bit more map distance. With that they can add double the objectives and more of them. Like add CAS or SEAD objectives at top tier. That way there’s more player spread so it’s not so player cluttered but also you don’t have to fly so far just to get a surveillance aircraft all the way across the map or another objective, so there’s more objective spread as well.
For props to low-mid tier jets like the F80, F86, MiG 9, MiG 15 BR. 64km by 64km or 86km by 86km is fine.
At 1000km x 1000km to 1500km x 1500km we would definitely want in flight refuelling, especially if the game plays like it currently does where you have to find players yourself, you’ll spend a full tank looking for someone who will likely be RTB or dead by the time you get to him?
Also at 11.0-12.0BR, most jets can only reliably find other people in a 30-60km radius, with a few exceptions. That would only be a fraction of the map, we would definitely need awacs and full team datalink between jets, otherwise finding people would be like finding a needle in a haystack…
Red lines are radar ranges for Mig23, Mig29 and Gripen for example, and that’s only the 1000km x1000km map
You’re completely right, I’ve stated before the sweet spot we need right now for 11.0~ to 12.7 is around 200x200-300x300km, but even increasing it to like 160x160 would go a long way. (considering there’s some game-engine limitations right now)
The current system map and base is above being bad. it’s the worst system I’ve ever seen in videos game in the history. always the same thing. 4 base and 6 F4S to bomb those 4 base and not mention the bombers like F111A and others. I’m asking war thunder team. WHY NOT you make those 4 base needs 2 planes to take out. for example if one base in BR 10 to 12 needs 4000 of TNT to be destroyed we increase that number to 12000 TNT in order to destroyed that base. when you make that you will make players love to do more team work and above all the hate and team killing problems. why not make the players love the team work more and stop being selfish. if 2 planes work on one base and they both get 50% of the total score that base give everyone will be more than happy to work as team.
In short my suggestion is
1 - at last 10000 TNT per base to help the team work more
2 - MAKE BIGGER MAPS IN ALL MODS from BR 9.3 to 12.7
The match always end within 4 mins. no fun in that. I play in Realistic mod all the time and I never feel anything realistic
256km maps I think would be the sweet spot for high tier matches. I know they’ve said there are engine limitations stopping them from adding bigger maps, but as far as I know they haven’t said anything about what those limitations are. If the limitation is the number of polygons for the map mesh, I would think that having a map with similar land area to the current 128km maps chopped up into some interesting islands and scattered around a nice stretch of ocean would mitigate any issues and make for a varied and enjoyable map. Could have mountains, ground targets, naval targets, bases, carriers, basically everything, all on a single map.
I think the sweet spot would be between 160km and 192km. It would be a huge step forward for 11.0 - 11.3+
Because of “supposed” engine limitations it would be fairly easy to fix that with 160km or 192km. Also I wonder what engine limitations it is… Fuel, overheating…?
This is actually pretty much modelled in game realistically afaik. When you’re cruising on military power at sea level, “10 seconds of fuel” goes by in that… 10 seconds, however if you get up to cruising altitude, you’re not only faster (around 6% faster without afterburner, much faster with afterburner), but you also burn through fuel much slower. going through “10 seconds of fuel” at this altitude takes 28 seconds. So both these things considered you’re almost about 200% (3 times) more fuel efficient at altitude. The afterburner is also about twice as efficient at altitude but you’re much faster
I did this test with the Gripen at pretty much sea level 100 meters, and at 10,000 meters.
With the addition of many all-around fighters such as the F-15, F-16, MIG-29SU-27 and the MIRAGE-4000, it has become very difficult to find a suitable role for Close Air Support aircraft in the Air Simulator (Referred to 'SIMonwards) game mode. With the SU-25T being at 11.3 in SIM as of the update ‘Alpha Strike’, this aircraft has lost its worth within this game mode as it is already lacking in maneuverability and general Speed/ Reliability. The SU-25T very often has to face superior F14s in the BR brackets in SIM. In addition to thatthe SU-25T allies tend to be more useful in the battlefield, for instance MIG-23s and other aircraft.
I believe that if the maps had a vast increase in size, all aircraft would have the chance to display their necessary powerThe SU-25s would compete with other CAS aircraft in taking down opposing ground units while the fighters are fighting for the skies at the same time.
If map sizes in SIM would be increased, the time taken to travel from point A to B would be much longer. My suggestion would be that the rewards would be increased for the compensation of flying for a longer distance. I also believe that this change in map size could go up to 1000km x 1000km rather than having the 128km x 128km on bigger maps such as Sinai.
Sorry for being so late, but I think the in-game limit is actually just an engine limitation. Like the engine can’t handle rendering spaces too big or something.
That being said, I don’t know much about the Dagor engine in detail. Nor have I tried to make maps with it. But it does struggle rendering a lot of stuff, you can sometimes notice in sim where the loading in times are super long.
Heightmaps have very low resolution, so we see pyramid-like low poly mountains on big air maps. Map size is also limited by engine. Something about old 32-bit stuff, but I can be wrong.
It’s all about engine limitations.
10 years ago it was good for WWII battles, but not for mach 2 speeds.
If we have bigger maps, we’d see big modern airbases like Bagram airfield that is unused on afgan map.
It’s always engine limitations. Always comes back to it lol. Maybe they could update it to 64-bit if they haven’t already?
But yeah the engine was not designed with the intention of implementing 60+km active radar homing missiles the same way something like DCS was, and it is kind of showing after all of this time. We’re getting to the point where, at the right altitudes and launch parameters, an active radar homing missile can cross an entire (small) WT air map and still have a good chance of hitting it’s target.
To be honest, I’m not sure what they can even do to “update” the engine and make it capable of handling bigger maps. I’m not a programmer/game developer, and there’s people out there who probably know it a lot better than I do, but I hope that, somehow, they increase the “maximum” map size the engine can handle to something like the size of the smaller DCS maps, such as Caucasus. I think that would be a step in the right direction for the game as a whole, giving more freedom to both mission designers and players in what to do and how to do it.
(Plug to my suggestion for the Pearl River Delta, in the south of China, size approximately ~550x~750km)
Of course, that’s assuming the engine actually gets updated to such a point. Maybe one day it will.
