I have added a poll to vote your opinion on this mechanic.
3 Likes
Voted
New mechanics are NOT realistic. Despite it may give some chances for cruisers to kill a battleship, the cost are too heavy.
6 Likes
Gaijin should balance big and small ships by gamemode, at least in RB, but not by this silly mechanic that turns the game more and more arcadey.
If Gaijin plans to make WWI battleships rank 1 and have WWII destroyers fight WWII battleships, this is not the way. I would rather give an extra respawn to uptiered ships for free…
4 Likes
Voted, I like the idea of a more consistent way to defeat the heavily armoured ships (like scharnhorst) and I dislike the ability to infinitely repair major battle damage but this implementation is so unrealistic it anhililates war thunders core tenants of being realistic.
4 Likes
I really liked the previous “unrepairable breach” mechanic instead. Real holes in the ship being computed at real time caused by torpedoes, bombs, and underwater AP shell hits. It’s realistic and real-time. Ship even sinks faster if you are going full steam ahead with a hole.
The new mechanic is horrible. All ships now have 8 compartments and turning 2 of the 6 middle ones black = insta death within 30s. Like what? I mean this is better than what we had in Beta where there are only 3 compartments, but 8 is still too little, especially for large ships. And the compartments are only lengthwise, there’s no division from port to starboard (because IRL one of the main flooding mechanism is for ships to capsize). I think this mechanic could work but it would require a complete overhaul and significantly much more refinement than just 8 simple compartments.
I’ve also tried out ways to black out the compartments - for destroyers and some CL all you need is a sufficient amount of HE, and two compartments would be blacked out in no time. This will make TTK in 5.0 DD games even shorter than before and it’s no fun, effectively turning them into top tier coastal where the armament far outmatches the armor. For larger ships (BBs) it’s somewhat reasonable, as HE could not deal any hull damage and it requires AP or high caliber bombs/torpedoes to deal compartment damage, but once again the idea of bombarding compartments above the waterline would cause it to sink because the entire segment is “black” is absurd.
I think it should either be reverted, or significantly revamped. Add port/starboard compartments so ships can capsize again. Differentiate between compartments above and below the waterline so shooting at the superstructure won’t cause a ship to sink. And finally, don’t make 2 (or any for that matter) black compartments insta-kill, instead make each blacked out compartment worth a certain % of buoyancy. Say you hit a central, large compartment near the boiler room, that would rob you 40% buoyancy, whereas if you have a small stern compartment flooded it’d be 5%.
Just my two cents from someone who preordered Pr.1124 MLRS eight years ago.
8 Likes
The development team needs to stop implementing intelligence-insulting methods to nerf dominant warships like the Scharnhorst, as this only damages the game’s ecosystem. The current naval combat mechanics suffer from “meta shifts with every update” syndrome - the core reason for player attrition. Each mechanical overhaul forces casual naval players to relearn fundamentals, while veterans master new systems during test server phases and dominate on live servers, inevitably driving newcomers away. It’s absurd that by 2025, the devs still haven’t recognized this recurring pattern spanning multiple updates.
Regarding Scharnhorst balancing, the solution lies in overhauling naval map design and victory conditions rather than tampering with vehicle mechanics. Historically, the Scharnhorst’s 283mm main guns were outranged by contemporary battleships, yet in War Thunder’s top-tier matches, spawn points are consistently positioned within its optimal engagement range - a fundamental design flaw that should have been addressed during naval mode’s initial development. And the cursed victory conditions - particularly these endless capture point objectives - mechanically funnel ships into concentrated zones, creating scenarios completely divorced from historical naval engagements. This forces players into a lose-lose dilemma: either sail straight into Scharnhorst’s kill zone to contest these asinine objectives, or be branded a deserter by the game’s flawed victory system. It’s precisely this design that amplifies the Scharnhorst’s artificial dominance while punishing players attempting to employ historical naval tactics. Despite minor map tweaks over the years, the core issue remains: players routinely face Scharnhorsts at 10km engagements from match start. The current poll results conclusively prove this isn’t a ship balance issue, but a systemic failure of map layouts and objective design.
18 Likes
I don’t understand why Naval gameplay needs to be nerfed when it’s already a difficult and unfinished mode.
Kills and kill assists are credited arbitrarily—you shoot at a ship for 5–6 minutes, single-handedly take out 70% of the crew, and then one shot from a teammate comes in, and at best you get an assist with 10 RP. The standard outcome is nothing.
Why is the hull being nerfed for all ships, which only buffs spam ships even more? Mid-tier cruisers and weaker battleships will become unplayable since the current mode already nerfs them enough.
This change must be reversed, and the real Naval issue needs to be addressed—reworking and fairly balancing kills and kill assists.
Additionally, bots should have ghosting mechanics for the player so they don’t ram, block, push you into torpedoes, or block your path.
These two issues should be the main focus - not the hull nerf
13 Likes
I feel like I’d just be echoing what many have said here, so I’ve issued out my hearts to people and made my poll choice. I’m glad to at least see a poll on one of the bad naval changes gaijin seems to want to force on us, but I do need to request a similar thread and poll be made for the aiming system for arcade. It is, as I’ve brought up repeatedly in the changelog thread to much support but zero comment from the devs, an awful change that is only going to break and dumb down NAB even more than the last couple updates with rangefinding speed changes has done. Make the poll and let the community again answer with a resounding no.
Listen to your naval community. It is small but it is here and cares. All you’re doing by ignoring the naval community is killing what should be a solid part of your game.
7 Likes
They should make the “severe damage” mechanics for naval.
The thing you describe is so frustrating
13 Likes
It’s still something to get used to, but after some testing on the dev server I do have some thoughts.
First of all, two compartments are way too few. A suggestion I have is that it should require the majority of compartments to be knocked out. blue water ships have 6-7 segments (excluding the bow and stern which do not count towards this mechanic. Requiring only 2 of these to be knocked out is inadequate. I’ve not yet had the opportunity to really try out how much damage a compartment can take in a “live match” so I’m not sure if this is adequate or not.
The replacement of “perma flooding” but the addition of hydrostatic shock is something I need to look into more too, but I can already tell that some torpedoes (like the long lance) will be really lethal with the current two segment requirement.
One of my main concerns of this system is that it’ll become the new “optimal” way to sink a ship, drastically changing the meta and confusing people as to what shell will be best used, especially with the new HE pen. So for me this system ideally should offer a way for suboptimal ships to still form a threat to targets they previously couldn’t damage due to lack of pen or the way crews are spread over a ship. Which in its current state, this mechanic is not that.
I’m not sure if this is the appropriate thread for feedback on the new coastal hullbreak mechanic, so I won’t comment on that.
9 Likes
I really don’t understand what the reason for adding this mechanic in the first place was
4 Likes
Sharnhost being unkillable, probably
But as with every mechanic designed around one single vehicle being broken OP, it doesn’t shift the meta because it makes every ship worse, not just the Sharnhorst
But hey, at least Sharnhorst players won’t have a 30:1 k/d anymore !
1 Like
I think its meant to simulate permamnent waterline damage and the flooding that would cause buts its wierdly done.
But I do wonder if the intentions of this are more for future weapon systems like ASMs rather than Battleshp vs Battleship combat
1 Like
I feel like AShM would create much bigger holes than 20mm/400mm cannons
Maybe, but would likely do damage to about 2 sections of a cruiser and cause the ship to eventually sink
HMS Sheffield vs Exocet:
Spoiler
1 Like
Ironically the devs have implemented a mechanic for this, damage-based reward where if you dealt 70% of the damage you’d get 70% of the kill RP, and the kill stealer would only get the last 30%.
In reality, it works maybe half the time if not less. The other half of the time it’s still buggy and not triggered despite them repeatedly claim to have fixed this bug.
Severe damage should just be implemented and solve this issue once and for all.
5 Likes
Which is weird because we already have permanent waterline damage in the case of unrepairable breaches, which could be caused by either bombs, torpedoes, or large caliber APs. The amount of water taken is then computed realtime with the hole size and ship speed.
Instead of refining that solid mechanic they decided to reinvent the wheel.
7 Likes
Yeah, I agree, the existing system needs some work, but this feels. A tad ott.
But ASMs would explain why hits above the water line results in flooding/kills though
2 Likes
I may be misunderstanding something here, so feel free to correct me, but heres another issue I can think of.
This seems to punish people for not repairing their ships, as it prevents players from just sitting in a non-combat capable ship and tanking shots with the crew still in the citadel mostly safe until the shooters get tired of trying to pen the citadel and move on to another target, since if the destroyed sections are not repaired (my understanding is that the sections can be repaired, please correct me if im wrong), the ship will just begin magically sinking.
I’m ok with this goal to some degree, but the repair mechanics need some major reworking before something like this is implemented. As it currently stands, all the non-critical components to surface combat are repaired first, prioritizing stuff like AA batteries and the likes over things like the main guns and bridge. Once repaired, those AA guns become crewed, making it substantially easier to destroy the ship via crew loss, wile often perma-locking the ship in repairs that do not even render it combat capable, as the crew repairs AA guns and crews them just in time to eat another volley of main gun shells from an enemy ship, increasing the repair time and decreasing the remaining crew.
If a mechanic that punishes people for not repairing is implemented, repairing needs to be reworked in a way that it isnt suicide to try to repair your ship in the first place.
2 Likes