COIN aircraft are one of the most demanded missing features in War Thunder. They have yet to be added for a variety of understandable reasons. Firstly, these aircraft generally do not have the speed to keep up with other aircraft from similar eras in air-to-air battles. Secondly, if they were placed at an appropriate BR for their performance, their weaponry might be too advanced or too weak compared to the aircraft they would face.
Gunship and spotter aircraft are in a similar boat. I imagine many players would enjoy flying out a heavily loaded AC-130, but they would also be a sitting duck in air battles.
For these reasons, COIN & gunship aircraft fit best into ground/mixed battles. Within the framework of existing mechanics, these vehicles would not consistently offer any advantage over traditional CAS or CAP aircraft. A few possible ideas (not all mine) to give them a unique place are:
Include them as either a subtree within the Helicopter tree or a separate tree
Allow the tree/subtree to be unlocked using RP from aircraft, helicopters, or ground vehicles
Lower spawn costs in game to compensate for lower performance
I wonder how those airplanes would perform, specially those that still use propeller and yet has modern equipment, at higher tiers if they would ever be implemented with such features in the first place in ground and air battles in War Thunder.
If more powerful COIN planes are implemented, it will be necessary to properly separate the BR of the WWII and Cold War periods.
Furthermore, COIN planes will have no choice but to make high cost performance their strength by serving as the lowest tier of the Cold War BR.
These would be perfect candidates for the new dynamic BR system, where they have separate BRs for no missiles/conventional bombs and missiles/guided A2G weapons. I do hope some are added at some point because modern propeller aircraft are neat.
I do think there’s a role for dynamic BR… for example the Super Tucano can carry AIM-9L, which isn’t found below BR 10.3 in the air tech tree. However, its top speed is 519 km/h.
It’s only my opinion, but I think it is a disservice to the small amount of realism/immersion the game has left to have planes like this going up against mid-WW2 aircraft with similar performance. It just doesn’t make sense for a Super Tucano to face a P-51D.
Absolutely. Put them at the BR they should be at. Helicopter tree makes the most sense imo
Unfortunately I don’t think gunships have much of a place in WT at the moment, though. They’re not really capable of much in any sort of contested threat environment, which WT basically always is.
A-37B would perform like a faster and more maneuverable Strikemaster. I think it also has more armaments compared to the strikemaster that we have in game
Yeah… it should be faster, climb better, and much more heavily armed than the Strikemaster.
Theoretically, it could carry 2x GPU-2A 20mm cannon pods (or 2x DEFA 30mm pods) plus 4x SUU-11/A minigun pods in addition to the built-in M134 minigun. This firepower would dwarf that of the Strikemaster. It could also carry AIM-9s and Shafrir missiles too, which would make balance a real headache in Air RB. Its performance would not be quite as good as the M-326K, though, so it would have to sit at a lower BR.
On a separate note, if a COIN tree is introduced, an argument could be made to move planes like the Strikemaster and Pucara into the COIN tree. They could be soft retired (like the Greek Apache in the US tree), which preserves them in Air RB for those who already own them, but removes them from future purchase in the Air tree. Not everyone would like this plan, though.