I was reading a thread on Steam about how introducing captured vehicles was a mistake.
The OP mentioned being shot down by a German P47 while being in a P47 himself.
I see a flood of captured vehicles in GRB now and when we have enemies and friendlies in close proximity in urban maps it is hard to tell who is who.For example I see blue writing over a T34 while I am in a T34 myself and I assume it’s a friendly and I get hit or killed and find it’s a friendly behind the enemy that is showing the blue writing and some way away.Must be hell in Sim.
So the question is what does the forum think about captured vehicles in the game? What are your experiences? Does anybody else find them to be an issue? Are there too many?
To avoid making this kind of mistake you must look carefully at your map all the time to be aware of the space around you as well as the distances. This way you don’t get fooled by nicknames which can be confusing in certain very specific moments.
Never liked it, and its always been a thread on the forums about it. There is no reason BMP should be in the german tech tree. It’s a soviet designed and built vehicle and thus belongs in the soviet tree. Just because there were some elft over after the fall of the soviet union doesnt mean Germany should have it. Same applies to pretty much all vehicles. Why does Sweden have a T80? They never had any, they only considered purchasing them and never did, again a soviet tank.
There are many mistakes in game but captured equipment imho wasn’t one of them, Sure they’re problematic in SB & depending on team composition meaning they’d play superiority against their own equipment without the burden of counters but they spice up the trees they’re in.
I see no problems with captured equipment & hell I’m all for them be it armour, aerial or maritime plus if it was all removed a quarter of the Israel & some of the Finnish sub ground tree would be removed heh (some of the soviet armour you can find in these tree was captured in several conflicts).
When it comes to ships I’d be fine if the nation of origin gets an equivalent to the captured vessels in other trees so example Italy is to get a Regele Ferdinand class Destroyer someday since the soviets have the Letuchiy Ex NMS Regina Maria & hell prior to the current update (2.31 Kings of Battle) the only french warship with a HE-DF shell for the main cannons was the Type 1936A Mob Z31 later Marceau in french service.
I’m personally surprised the British don’t have a single captured machine yet but I guess that’s the British Tax for ya even through some of the most famous surviving machines were captured by them then sent around the world for evaluation by different countries before being placed in museums later on.
An for aircraft nowadays most often teams are mixed so captured aircraft tend to blend back into the mixture without causing to many problems.
From my pov you can’t separate captured vehicles from premium vehicles and it depends from your intentions whilst playing war thunder and from gaijins intentions why they introduced them.
Besides the obvious identification issues for SIM players the introduction of any captured vehicles that did not saw any use in combat units is killing any attempts to be historically accurate.
So if you love WW2, some vehicles make sense like the mentioned tanks, but the example of the BMP assigned to Germany is perfect to show that those vehicles are not suited to satisfy player with higher demands regarding historical accuracy.
On top of that: Captured premium vehicles kill the technical aspect regarding conceptual advantages / disadvantages whilst playing certain nations.
From an Air RB perspective:
So: Yes - at least for my mode Air RB as the flood of captured vehicles killed the last reasons for being somehow authentic regarding conceptual advantages / disadvantages of several nations fighting each other.
And ofc the problem is related to premium vehicles as a whole.
Even if they would have been introduced in good faith like to flatten some of these conceptual differences in order to balance the game play - it simply looks like that the main driver to introduce them were more or less monetary reasons as captured vehicles are premium vehicles.
If i would take this P-47 example - in the old days with semi-historical MM you get extremely high win rates with the German version whilst flying them (after they killed the P-47 airspawn) - but a rather low number of kills as your 109 team mates simply outclimbed your P-47 (and ofc the US teams) and slaughtered them before you had to chance to shoot a single bullet…
As most US fighters start to shine just above 6-7 km they came rarely to these altitudes as they were shot down due to superior climb of the 109s. So the introduction of the US 109 versions leveled the playing field to a certain degree.
But there is imho a much bigger difficulty besides identifying enemies:
In deviation to tank warfare were most fights were decided by spotting and shooting first - aerial warfare works different as spotting first has a similar impact, but usually energy / positional advantage decides a fight. So in the unlikely case that you meet an equally experienced pilot in a 1:1 copy of your plane on an equal energy level - how to get the upper hand in a 1 vs 1?
That’s why you are forced to keep an eye on captured planes and you need to kill them very early game - you can’t get away if you meet them later in an disadvantageous position.
You see these difficulties if you watch RU Yak-3s fighting French Yak-3s or JP P-51 Cs fighting US P-51 Cs…
But besides my examples with US Bf 109 - there are also some upsides of captured premium planes - so if you like turnfighting you won’t be happy whilst playing most US planes, but you can do this with the captured Ki-61 and the A6M2.
So as a summary:
If you like historical game play: Everything what never saw combat is not appreciated.
If you like more fair and balanced game play: Everything what helps to flatten conceptual advantages / disadvantages or to fill holes in the TT is appreciated.