Combined Battles To Fix Naval

Suggestions Maps/Missions/Events
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Gaijin puts a lot of time and effort into naval models. Have you noticed how we are always getting new ships, but it never really draws a permanent playerbase? This is because many find naval boring, and there are many ideas to fix it, but they are often complicated. People have always suggested combined battles in general, but I want to specifically focus on how this concept would bring so much more attention to naval vessels and other neglected types of vehicle. Here is what I suggest:

Combined Battles Gamemode:

  • Imagine a ground map, similar to Normandy or Jungle, except tanks AND ships can be spawned from the start of the game. There are two capture points on land. One is completely untouchable by ships. This one will be for the players who want a pure tank brawl. The other is closer to the edge of the coast, with much less cover from the sea. The last point is a bit farther out in the ocean, giving naval players a difficult choice: Bombard the coast, or protect your friendly ground forces from the other ships, thus capturing the naval point.

Balancing:

  • Battleships would spawn far away (around typical naval distances) and the map would have some outer islands to ensure that battleships can’t fire on ground vehicles and other ships from absurd distances, ensuring they would have to get close enough for the ground players to have a fair chance to notice the threat before deciding whether or not to advance from cover.

  • We need to ensure that the naval forces can’t win on their own. To solve this, the coast could have AI-controlled coastal guns, which serve to prevent battleships from sitting too close to the coast for too long. I imagine these guns wouldn’t detonate a ship’s ammo, but would do a good amount of flood and/or fire damage to make them think twice about coastal activities, much like a less deadly version of the AAA at airfields in air battles.

  • Put a limit on the number of ship spawns per team, like bombers in air battles. Maybe 25%. This will make it possible for aircraft to disable or destroy ships without an overwhelming amount of AA.

The goal of this mode is to make each and very role more fun and more vital to victory. The result:

  • Strike aircraft would still have their role in fighting tanks
  • Torpedo and regular bombers could finally have a use in attacking the ships
  • More players would now be interested in getting ships to support their lineup
  • Ground, Air, and Naval players could all play together
  • War Thunder gets entirely unique gameplay, making it strongly stand out from competition

Thank you for reading!

[Would you like to see this in-game?]
  • Yes, as suggested
  • Yes, but with some tweaks
  • No, I don’t want this
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Would be good to have it be a event but it would be a interesting mess.

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I don’t think it is feasible to make this into an attractive mode without a complete overhaul of many of the systems currently in play in Naval, Ground and Air.

As it stands, players of each category would earn more SL and RP in the already existing game modes, which would make this new mode a niche sideshow akin to Naval EC, but less attractive and a lot more difficult to implement due to a number problems with the features you suggested. Here are some of them:

  • Battleships as the only(?) Naval units. If AI coastal guns would force BBs to attack tanks from a safe distance, the resulting shell flight time in addition to long reloads would make effectively engaging tanks impossible due to the guesswork involved, further limiting the impact of Naval on this game mode. This would also shut out players without BBs, including the very Ground/Air mains you want to make Naval attractive for. Even if the game mode would offer free BBs, who is to say said Naval novices would enjoy that particular gameplay more than playing DDs or cruisers?

  • Limited Naval spawns. This would make it impossible for players to switch in battle from tanks/planes (even if they have access to BBs) to ships if all positions are filled. With such a limit in place, trying to spawn in a BB in any order at all might not be successful, again doing nothing to increase attraction for Naval.

  • AI coastal guns. In order to make them effective in their intended role, they’d have to be more powerful than in Naval EC, making them too annoying to deal with in a ship that can’t change position quickly to get out of danger. A Naval exclusion zone (“Return to the battlefield!”) might be a better solution, but that still would lead to the unsatisfactory situation described above.

  • BR balance between Naval/Air/Ground units. Currently many planes have different BRs according to the game mode they’re used in; trying to come up with an appropriate BR for this combined mode will probably lead to unsatisfying outcomes. Not to mention that planes capable enough to deal with BBs (AI AA is currently still to powerful) would most likely be too OP versus tanks.

In short, while I like the general idea of such a combined mode and appreciate your effort, I fear this isn’t quite it. o7