As a non-afterburning attacker, I think the A-4 Skyhawk would benefit from having a fuel tank, as the internal capacity is limited on larger maps (The plane manages to return after dropping its bombs but if the plane finds itself in a long dogfight it could become complicated).
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A few spitfires and Japanese props got some, a few American ones too IIRC. Not to mention the MiG-9(l) got its droppable.
I just looked, indeed the A6M3 among the Jamonais received a drop tank, on the other hand none among the Americans. For the Mig-9(l) I can’t drop them
Counter point.
ASB.
Large map (120x120)
Due to how heavy fuel is and how minor performance characteristics can change the outcome of duels, the side that has to travel farther to contest objectices is at a significant disadvantage.
One side must budget 7 minutes of fuel to climb and cruise just to get to the objective and another 7 minutes to get back. On top of this, this side must also carry fuel to loiter and contest objectives.
Taking the standard 30 minute fuel loadout can mean cutting it very close. As a rule, i like to have 5 minutes of fuel when entering landing pattern in case of unexpected events delaying my landing.
How would prop tier drop tanks help?
Simple.
You load the customary 20 minute internal fuel load for l contesting objextives so you can return to airfield with fuel to spare. You then add a drop tank with 30 minutes of fuel for total of 50 to give you time to arrive at battlefield and loiter until contact or objectives where you ditch the 30 minute drop tanks for perrormance gain.
Why not just take 50 minutes?
Because assymetry.
On denmark redfor must choose between an airfield without aaa or travelling 80-100 to contest the objectives in the south east corner of the map. Bluefor can take off and basically dly right into those objectives.
Bluefor can afford to take less fuel without penalty.
With this, a bf109 could engage spits and mustangs and corsairs and cats with 20 minute fuel guaranteed rather than whatever load they got left from 50 minutes after crossing (~7 minutes) and loitering (could be 0. Could be 10. Could even be 20 on lower pop or bad spotting conditions)
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the israeli ouragans, mystere and i think supermysteres have theirs modeled and appear when the planes are in the hangar as background vehicles, yet are unusable. Also the Nesher and Kfir have pylons which are actually drop tanks, also unusable
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Yes absolutely, moreover a large part of the external tanks are already modeled and the files are in the game, they are just not implemented. The Mirage 2000 wing tanks have been in the files for almost a year if I am not mistaken
Even in Air sim i run out of missiles before i run out of ammo. If you fly high you die,so everyone flies at deck to multipath missiles.
Ive had quite a few games in the f4u-4, c202 and even the bf109f4 where i stayed in the air for 30 minutes hopping from a point to a point, bomber objectives and intercepting enemy bomvers and fighters on small maps like ruhr and tunisia.
For ruhr and tunisia it is inconsequential.
For smolensk and dover, the symmetry reduces the pressing need for such.
For denmark though?
Redfor spawns in northwest corner. Objectives spawn in southeast corner.
Bluefor spawns in southeast.
Bluefor planes can load 30 minute or even 20 minute fuel loads and loiter and contest objectives without falling out of the sky. They dont even need to loiter as objectives are right nextdoor.
Redfor must either:
- Spawn on a carrier (so only IJN). You can land without a hook but it is very sketchy and id rather not make it a havit as even if you are consistent, it is not very immersive to belly land on a carrier in a bf109.
- Spawn on the tiny island without aaa that turns into the whole blue team spawncamping it. (I have killed someone without even taking off in an army plane - it is that swarmed with spawnkillers rocketing and strafing it)
- Spawn in the north west that is some 80-100 km travel away which is gonna be about 7 minutes of travel, give or take climbing to altitude .
In case of 3,
You need 15 minutes of fuel just for a round trip and that is without spare fuel to abort landings in an emergency. Let’s add 5 minutes so we can dafely abort.
We are at 20. We have zero loiter time.
Due to how objectives spawn in a way that allow bluefor to contest them with little travel time while you need to travel across the whole map, we want the ability to loiter over the southeast region to be ready to respond to calls of cover me and a points and ground battles to act as air superiority.
Let’s go with a reasonable 10 minute loiter time since that seems about what i feel the delay between objectives tend to be on other maps.
We are at 30 minutes of fuel without having room to contest an A point.
Without the enemy team delaying a points - i havnt measured how long exactly - they take a fairly significant amount of time. Let’s say 5 minutes.
Now add the possibility of enemies contesting and it dragging out and…
We want some 40-50 minute fuel load to feel comfortable with our chances to return home.
If we over estimated the fuel load - we arrived right as an a point spawned or had to respond to a friendly cover me - we are seriously overweight compared to our peers.
If we however underestimated our fuel load we need to ditch the front & allies and rtb to avoid sipping some salty baltic water
All the while our enemies can take off, fly ~16, maybe 32 km and threaten the objectives we flew some 80-100 km for.
Surely you can see the use case for a drop tank?
We can over-estimate our fuel needs and ditch the excess to fight on parity without too much risk of sipping some fresh baltic salt water.
(All this is assuming you dont care about rewards because you are penalized for flying without landing for 2 ua cycles.)
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Maybe I’m thinking of the F-9 naval jet.
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Counterpoint to your entire argument
Not enough people play Sim for gaijin to bother with the financial investment
The argument of the number of players is absolutely not valid, more and more people are switching to simulator mode these days.
And if we stayed in the same logic of “since no one plays we do nothing” Gaijin would have abandoned the naval mode years ago.
No players = No money
No money = Not worth paying a dev to do work
Because naval mode makes them money according to you? Naval battles are so empty that they increased the number of bots to fill the gaps. The last games I played were so empty that there were 3 to 4 real players on each side. And yet they continue to add content.
In comparison, I think that the number of players who start in simulation mode is only increasing and that they are attentive to it.
ok ill be honest i have no idea why gaijin keeps investing in naval
the gamemode is becoming worse month by month yet they still keep throwing money at it with no significant improvements
no submarines
no modern naval vessels
no homing torps
no homing AShM
Flipside:
Warthunder has a unique position in providing a much more pvp heavy sim experience than its peers that also allows the use of a significant, arguably unparalled variety of aircraft.
Given that they are developing aces of thunder, albeit only for vr, they can clearly see a demand for more authentic and realistic flight experiences - especially given how vr is a market not everyone whod love improvements to wt sim can contribute to (motion sickness barring even wealthy customers for instance).
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WT with interactable cockpits would kill DCS within a week
Really a shame gaijin is focusing on adding that only for the VR version
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Exactly,
On the other hand, for the simulation mode, given the efforts they are making regarding the MFD of the planes (which are only useful in this mode), the cockpit displays etc. are gaining momentum among the players. When you compare the current situation to that of last year it is obvious. Before you had to wait several tens of minutes for players to join certain lobbies while currently after a few minutes it is good.
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They wouldn’t even need that, a real sim mode even without a clickable cockpit in game would destroy DCS. If you made a real sim mode with big maps, tankers/AWACS, real missions and a minimum of immersion, all in a game that remains free (more or less), DCS players wouldn’t hesitate for a single second.
Having had the discussion with players on DCS a few years ago, the only thing that keeps it on DCS is the fact that War Thunder’s sim mode isn’t really a sim mode.
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main issue is that the game engine cant handle big enough maps
otherwise we could have entire europe as one map and just have a massive EC 32v32 match
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