This is just my opinion, and I’m genuinely curious what other players think about this.
I’m a US main, so I might be a bit biased, but honestly I’m actually happy that most US ground vehicles don’t get copy-pasted all over the place. Ground forces still mostly feel fine to me. Air vehicles, however, are where things really start to fall apart.
One thing that really bothers me is Gaijin’s selective logic when it comes to real-world conflicts. Gaijin refuses to add things like Ukraine under Russia or give Russia the Oplot because it’s a Ukrainian tank and they’re scared of the current conflict. At the same time, players can freely use Ukrainian flags on Russian MBTs, China under Taiwan gets top-tier Western vehicles, and other nations with ongoing political tensions are already mixed together in-game. I honestly don’t see where the line is supposed to be. If decals, flags, and appearances are already allowed, why is adding certain vehicles suddenly “too political”?
Another thing I don’t understand is giving top-tier vehicles to nations that barely operate them. Taiwan ordered around 100 Abrams, but only about 28 have been delivered so far, yet they still receive a top-tier Abrams in-game. Compared to the US operating thousands, this feels strange in a game that claims to aim for realism. If extremely limited numbers are enough to justify a top-tier vehicle, then almost anything can be added anywhere.
When it comes to France and air vehicles, I actually don’t have a problem with France getting the F-16 under Belgium. That makes sense to me. because it was added before the Rafale and they needed it.
Japan especially feels like the “grind this tree to get every toy” nation. You get almost every US jet, top-tier Russian aircraft, European aircraft, and even Malaysian and Indonesian vehicles shoved into the Japanese tech tree. At top tier, Japan can field a top-tier US aircraft, a top-tier Russian aircraft, and several other competitive options at the same time. The F-2 is a good example. In-game it performs better than the F-16, while in real life it’s mainly a strike aircraft and not designed for high-end BVR or dogfighting. Yet in War Thunder it outperforms aircraft that were actually designed for that role. At this point it feels like if you want access to everything, you just grind Japan.
That makes me wonder why players who want to fly Malaysian, or Indonesian, aircraft don’t just play the nation that developed and operates those vehicles and use flags or decals instead. Why should those vehicles be placed into tech trees that don’t actually need them?
Copy-paste also hurts Russia in a different way. Many Russian vehicles exported to other nations are produced with cheaper materials, reduced systems, or downgraded equipment. In War Thunder, those downgrades often aren’t modeled, which makes the vehicles lighter and sometimes better performing. So Russia ends up exporting vehicles that perform better in-game than the domestic versions, not because they’re better, but because missing or reduced systems weren’t modeled. Examples like export MiG-21s, such as the Finnish one in Sweden, show this clearly. Export versions that should be worse or more limited sometimes end up equal or superior simply because certain limitations weren’t implemented.
I’m not against copy-paste when it’s genuinely needed. What I have a problem with is copy-paste added just because it’s possible, nations becoming collections of everyone else’s equipment, vehicles performing better due to missing or unmodeled limitations, and tech trees losing their identity.
So I’m genuinely asking: do you guys also feel that copy-paste is getting excessive? Where do you personally draw the line? Should tech trees be defined by what a nation developed, or by everything it ever used or exported?