Agree here very much. I don’t see why there arent different objectives ingame already. I think there is design space for different kind of objectives without making game too complex or too fractured.
There could even be multiple objectives at the same time during the match suitable for different types of vehicles.
Definitely agree with all here.
I would like every map to have opportunity to play the niche vehicle of choice. Should it able to go anywhere on map or will every phase of battle be suitable for it? No, but maps design shouldn’t completely exclude some vehicles imo.
If game comes to state where I can play certain vehicles only every 5th or so battle, then those vehicles are not worth playing imo.
On the other hand I don’t want maps to be too similar in design to each other just to make every vehicle viable there. I want to have niche maps as well as niche vehicles, but I guess less niche than vehicles:)
Fully agreed with pretty much everything you’ve said. My crippling ADHD makes it impossible for me to play like a normal person, which is how I ended up with over 2500 Jagdtiger battles :P
I love the flexibility of the lineup system, but if I do decide to, say, spawn the JT on Alaska, I know it’ll be my fault when it goes bad, and once the momentary frustration is past, I’ll move on, as you say: it comes with the territory. The only reason behind my interest in balance more generally, is that I really like the game, and find it stimulating to talk about it in depth.
So much more could be done with game modes. It would transform the game, would bring so many benefits even beyond giving niche vehicles their time in the sun. I think they rank pretty high on the list of things that need lots of love right now.
The only thing I sort of disagree on is this:
I think this is greatly overstated. This is Gaijin’s unique selling proposition for War Thunder, yes; they’re much more “grounded” than their competitors, absolutely; but we should not let that blind us to the fact that they always put game balance ahead of realism. As, imho, they should.
Look at the claim that I was refuting: in real life, even a glancing hit to a barrel can cause a tank to become mission-killed. That is completely true, but it’s also irrelevant to War Thunder. In real life, once a tank is hit really badly and is maybe on fire, crews will bail out of the vehicle. They certainly won’t fix the tracks and put out the fire while also somehow reloading and operating the gun.
Even if you just look at pure vehicle performance parameters, the cornerstone of War Thunder, look how many things are altered for the purposes of balancing and gameplay: reload times (!) and access to ammo types are openly cited by the devs as soft balancing tools.
Optics are tougher than armour, and even when they aren’t, their destruction is almost inconsequential.
The speed of our turret rotation does not change even if we’re giving all RPMs to the engine to hit top speed. Traction values are constantly altered to facilitate or disincentivise gameplay or map-related behaviour. Our components have no reliability problems.
To stick with the Jagdtiger’s example, I’d like to see Otto Carius’s face if he saw me effortlessly hit 42km/h when racing the thing downhill without worrying that something in the drive train is going to explode… :P
On the contrary, to me barrels feel way too tough now. A direct Hit with a 75mm, 88mm, 100+mm should disable it instantly. Same with high Rof, high caliber autocannons hammering a Barrel.
Hey that’s actually a really good idea! At the moment I hate how my entire battle plan can be thrown out the window immediately if someone simply shoots my barrel and I can’t do anything.
Alternatively, reducing repair time for breeches and barrels would also be great as you don’t have to spend so much time unable to play the game.
The barrel damage is ridiculous and something of a game killer.You are talking about a tank hitting something the size of a tennis ball from 300m away with a ridiculous chance for a hit.Just have a think about that in a game that prides itself on realism in physics
They need to cut down the chance that you will shatter a barrel end on from a distance.It’s a joke.
Changing the sight from barrel pov would be better since there is inherent inaccuracy due to misalignment of gun/sights, but as it is now the sight is exactly dead on in vertical/horizontal planes. That makes it much easier to successfully hit other people’s barrels. Same with hitting weak spots, cupolas, ect from range. I doubt that would go over well as a base setting though.
I find it more of a problem that tanks can survive 122mm and 128mm hits because the round hit the barrel instead of the tank.
Personally a bigger issue for me.
I want some overkill mechanic. You’re not gonna repair any internal modules destroyed from massive shells.
If the round penetrates it’s over, if the round hits the barrel, there’s nothing left.
I guess that could be problem with stabilized 122mm and 130mm APHE barrel sniping though.
No tank would be safe against the mighty +122mm barrel destroyer.
But I guess that’s an issue in general. It should be easier to insta kill tanks.
Now, I feel like I should clarify: if the shell hits the barrel dead on, both the muzzle brake AND the barrel get disabled. Otherwise people would abuse this mechanic to bait and absorb a shot with their muzzle brake, then push with a still functioning gun while the enemy is reloading
I don’t think when you’re facing death you’d care about not overstressing your tank’s mechanisms. If the gun breaks in battle, you just abbandon vehicle and get back to friendly lines.
But, this is a very unrealistic game, so a mechanic reducing the RoF with a damaged gun is alright.
Why not? I was specifically refering to large caliber shells.
It’s an overkill mechanic. No tank should be operational after taking a +120mm shell to the barrel, because there would be no barrel left.
I guess the mechanic could be refined to a certain shell caliber to barrel caliber ratio.
Like a 122mm will kill everything below 90mm.
I’m also talking about full caliber AP. Even though it could probably also applied to direct hits from large HE rounds.
A tank with 25mm of armor shouldn’t be alive after taking a +122mm shell just because the barrel blocked the round.
How does that make sense?
Through the evolution of tanks, rarely does a tank with a larger caliber then another have problems penetrating the other tanks armor.
A Pz IV can’t take a 85mm AP round anywhere, it would go through and most likely disable the tank and it just happends that a barrel is quite an important module of a tank.
It’s already much harder to actually destroy a barrel from the front, unless it has a giant muzzle break, because of volumetric shells.
There are many instances already were the barrel only becomes damaged and turns orange or red.
This is something I often think about when it comes to light vehicles as well. A lot of the time you’ll see a Fiat 6614 survive an IS-2 or Jagdtiger shell because the fuze didn’t trigger. Fair enough it didn’t trigger, but this isn’t a 75mm, it’s a 28kg metal object slamming into the vehicle at 940m/s. The kinetic impact alone would probably just render the vehicle inoperable.
It’s even more egregious with small vehicles like the AML. While the fuze may not trigger, how are the crew and the shell occupying the same fighting compartment? 🤣
Now that’s what hull break used to be, but that had its own issues. However, I’m curious because it seems like they’re going to address it by adding internal modules to vehicles, which is very labour intensive. It would have been much quicker and simpler to have some kind of impact damage, wouldn’t it? Maybe there’s a downside I’m not seeing.
Anyway. I’m not a realism junkie by any means and I prefer fun over realism. But since in terms of balance light vehicles are supposed to trade survivability for mobility, and since they consistently overperform in the game, well… 😁
To put into perspective how unrealistic it is that a grazing hit like this one can disable a barrel.(Yeah, I know, just as unrealistic as repairing a destroyed barrel in 40 seconds) Not to mention that an aggressively curved piece of steel is stronger than a flat one of the same thickness.
But maybe, for gameplay purposes, we should give gun barrel some actual armour, so that guns will require to have a minimum of X pen to be able to take them out in one hit from the front, while still being vulnerable from 90° shots from low calibers.
It might not be required to take into consideration the full thickness of the barrel, as it can be made to burst on it’s next shot even without perforating it completely. But it will probably still launch its projectile at a bit reduced muzzle velocity, so maybe it will get -25% pen?
