Following the Roadmap: maps for aircraft, flares and repair

Official News, Development Blogs and Updates
1

Download Wallpaper:

We continue to let you know about the improvements we are implementing based on the War Thunder updates roadmap. Today, we are going to talk about improving the map rotation for air battles as well as increasing the availability of flares and the ability to extinguish fires and repair vehicles.

Flares from the start

image

An important point that we mentioned in our roadmap - increasing the availability of a number of mechanics. In the case of aircraft, countermeasures, and in the case of armoured vehicles and naval vessels, it is about repairing and extinguishing fires. The changes are already in the game: the default set of countermeasures is now available immediately after vehicle research and you no longer need to additionally unlock it!

When researching the “Flares/chaff” modification (or similar) you will unlock options such as “Chaff only”, “Flares reinforced” and “Flare priority”. Additional countermeasure kits such as BOL-type systems, additional containers with Chaff or additional countermeasures kits on the Mirage 2000 and Kurnass 2000 still require separate modifications to be researched.

Advanced FPE and repair kit

image

FPE for ground vehicles is divided into a regular, single extinguishment, which is available without unlocking any modification, and advanced, which requires modification research, which once unlocked, adds the possibility of double extinguishment.

Repair kits for ground vehicles are also divided into normal and advanced. Normal, available without unlocking a modification, enables you to perform field repairs on all modules up to partial functionality. Penalties to vehicle characteristics after repair of modules with field repair in AB and RB are changed as follows:

  • Gun spread multiplier has been changed from х15 to х5;
  • Guidance angles have been changed from 3 to 6 degrees;
  • Transmission losses have been changed from 50% to 25%;
  • Engine power reduction has been changed from 60% to 40%.

Once the advanced repair kit has been researched, this will speed up the repair process and allow you to make repairs without penalties to module functionality.

In naval battles, even vessels without upgrades now have all the tools for firefighting, module repair, breach repair and pumping water - their “field repair” is now replaced with battle for survivability. Without the researched modification, you will be able to conduct it in the former way. You can manually start each process with the buttons of firefighting, repair and water pumping. The crew of a new ship that just came into service will take longer to do this than an experienced trained crew, but even the normal firefighting system has no limit on the number of uses.

The crew can be trained in damage control and effective firefighting with the help of modifications. They are located in the place of the former tools and FPE. There is no need to upgrade them again: players who have previously researched these modifications already have them unlocked.

Improved map rotations for aircraft

image

We want battles to be as interesting and intense as possible and therefore based on our statistics and your feedback, we have revised the availability of a number of missions depending on the BR of the vehicles participating in the battle. Generally, smaller maps will now be available at low BR and larger maps at higher BR. Some missions, those that most often have fallen into the ban list of the players, have been completely removed from the rotation. Some of these changes have already been implemented in the major “La Royale” update and some we have just added.

Removed from the rotation:

  • [Air Battle] France 1944
  • [Operation] Husky
  • [Operation] The Last Battle of Khalkhyn Gol

Only available up to BR 2.0:

  • [Operation] Middle East
  • [Operation] Cochinchina
  • [Operation] Battle for Vietnam

Only available on BR from 2.3 to 5.0:

  • [Operation] Laizhou bay
  • [Operation] Battle of Spain

Only available on BR from 2.3 to 6.7:

  • [Front Line] Kursk

Only available on BR from 4.0:

  • [Operation] Pyrenees
  • [Operation] Bourbon Island
  • [Operation] Malta
  • [Operation] Peleliu
  • [Event] Attack on Wake Island
  • [Operation] Midway

Only available on BR from 5.7:

  • [Operation] Battle at Malta

We also introduced the display of a mission’s BR in the window of the preferred missions - now you can ignore maps that you don’t get rated within when compiling your list.

Despite the fact that we have added a display of the BR in the maps filter, the distribution of bans, likes and dislikes has not changed much, and many players ban those maps that are not usually played. Please update your filters to reflect the selection of maps you do and don’t want to see. Please also continue to let us know what you think about the selection of maps for those or other vehicle ranks in this special thread on the forum so that we can adjust it further.

We are continuing to make progress on the War Thunder development roadmap and we hope you will be pleased with these changes. Share your opinion in the comments, social media, on Steam or on the official forum!

image

17 Likes
2

Thank you for following the roadmap!
A side request, related to this thread: can Gaijin please update the WarThunder Wiki documentation, and add a table of the current maps, variants of them and at their BR ranges for all game modes?

2 Likes
3

I myself thought that giving everyone instant access to flares repair and FPE would be kinda overkill (even tho i do agree that not being able to repair, extinguish and use flares in stock sucks a lot) So i think this addition is very balanced, in giving us a basic variant at the beginning and a unlock-able advanced variant of these modification. Good work :D

4

I think you should take that to the Wiki moderators, they are responsible for it.

2 Likes
5

we need bigger maps in AB in Top Tier Also that After burner Animation is very Unreal that should be fix.Thanks Gaijin

6

Love to see changes regarding maps! And to see that some bases on revised maps looks like radar stations - great job, appreciate it!

Regarding the 3 quoted maps:

They are all pacific maps and imho only available if you fly US/GB/JP planes. As i see daily A6Ms and F4Us above Sowjet cities it would be great if you allow access to pacific maps for all nations - just to give a lot more pilots the chance to fight there - as semi-historical MM was given up some time ago it would be great…

Last but not least - do you have plans for pinned map feedback threads? Some of the maps are still unbalanced like hell and some of them have hidden air spawns, non-working af aaa or auto-win conditions (like Wake Island). I ask because respective bug reports are open for ages…

1 Like
7

It’s still weird, this map is rather small and it did well with hunters of tier 2/3.
There blocked in 5.7 and more, it will just be the kingdom of Ju-288.
And for the hunters, they won’t have time to climb high enough to be in their preferred altitude.

This map is huge ! How can spare planes fight on it???

8

Hello i would like to suggest not removing france 1944. I and many people i know think this map is one of the best maps in game

5 Likes
9

Removed from the rotation:

  • [Air Battle] France 1944

Of course the one map that doesn’t cater to Ju 288 spam and AF campers gets removed.

6 Likes
10

This is one of the best maps in Air Realistic Battles, please dont remove it from rotation.
It has the best configuration for PvP fighter combat in the game, four airfields in symmetry with no airfield AAA:
image
The combat in this map is very fast and dynamic, one of the most interesting and intense maps in the whole game, because the strategy and the good gameplay is the most rewarded.

This map is most played around 6.0 where Ju288 is spammed.
This map is worse for Ju288 players because they are more vulnerable, in other maps there is a secondary airfield closer to the battle with strong AAA protection. Making worse gameplay but faster grinding for bombers and attackers.
Ju288 spam makes so that 6.0 is forced into 6vs6 battles where 4 are ju288.
This map was probably banned by Ju288 players because they want their gameplay to be more simple in orther to grind faster. To remove this map is a big error if what you want is better gameplay.

Please, please dont remove it. If you care for interesting and intense battles dont remove it.

19 Likes
11

Air Battle France 1944 is one of the best maps in the game for props. Unlike most other maps, AAA is not there to babysit players, who are too afraid to play this… PvP based online game.

It also cannot be called unfair. First off, ARB has one spawn, so anyone caught on an airfield has already went back to it. A player’s choice. If there is an enemy in the area, this choice should be punishable. Moreover, there are 2 airfields far away from each other. If one airfield is occupied by the enemies, the player can choose to land on the other one. If both are occupied, well… the team got stomped and the game is over anyways.

We need more maps like this, not less!

8 Likes
13

So we finally have stock repairs and firefighting. Nice. Now can we PLEASE have stock, or at least half price, for AP/SAP shells on all BR 5.3+ cruisers and battleships/battlecruisers? Ships at that level all have enough armour to protect their vital parts from HE shells of all calibers. This means that stock ships, equipped only with HE shells, are completely helpless against other ships equipped with AP/SAP shells. You cannot earn much rewards without AP/SAP shells, yet you need those rewards to grind said AP/SAP shells. This creates a big negative feedback loop that makes stock top tier ships very frustrating to play. AP/SAP shells are as essential to top tier ships as missiles and countermeasures are to top tier planes and helis. Please seriously consider this.

Malta. Wake Island, and Midway are also pretty unbalanced maps, always giving one side an advantage. These should be carefully analyzed and then temporarily removed and only re-introduced after reworks and tweaks.

Also can I provide some feedback about maps for naval battles here?

2 Likes
14

Please!
Consider adding so we can reload our FPE’s on the cap points after we have gotten the module.

3 Likes
15

I would like to add that it is not convenient to have larger maps at top tiers since it literally just means flying for 5 minutes aimlessly for every game just wasting time. I would recommend instead of ban maps, give us the ability to pick 5 maps to play instead of 2 maps to ban and this way, we can all just play whatever map we prefer regardless of some random arbitrary metric that Gaijin comes up with since they do not understand that wasting irl time doing nothing is not fun for anyone.

16

So finally we get the exact parts/FPE change we suggested and then constantly asked for for almost a decade.

I think Gaijin should really rethink using snail as their logo … pick something slower. Way slower.

17

I just noticed current 8.0BR - 9.3BR aircrafts gets these maps in ARB

  • [Operation] Golan Heights
  • [Operation] Pyrenees
  • [Opetation] City
  • [Operation] Sinai
  • [Operation] Vietnam
  • [Operation] Moscow
  • [Alternate History] Spain

However, 7.7BR - 9.0BR basically still has early jets from late WW2 and subsonic jets with straight and swept wing from the Korean War era, so all maps except [Operation] City are too wide for them. Also, The Pyrenees is decent map when flying MiG-15/MiG-15bis and MiG-17 because of its altitude, but when flying Sabres and Hunters, it is not balanced due to its poor high altitude performance.

It would be better to bring the 7.7 to 9.0 BR game from the Prop BR maps listed below.

  • [Operation] Korea
  • [Operation] Poland
  • [Operation] Ruhr
  • [Operation] Sicily
  • [Operation] Battle of Malta
  • [Operation] Berlin
  • [Opetation] City (Already on tables)
  • [Alternate History] Spain (Already on tables)
  • [Alternate History] Berlin
  • [Military Exercise] Preparation for landing on Hokkaido
18

[Air Battle] France 1944 was amomg the most disliked missions. There’s no plans to add it back.

@Maverall

19

Ever wondered why? The question is why the guys in charge for maps haven’t realized that Huertgen 2nd battle, France 1944 and Moscow 1944 are basically the same maps - but only France 1944 and Moscow 1941 had no af aaa. So i bet that Huertgen 2nd battle has far better ratings as the other 2 maps.

In addition the air spawn for bombers on all 3 maps was for years 1.000 meters lower than on other maps (tactical bombers ~2.000 / heavy ~3.000 m) - but even standard fighters have an airspawn of 700 meters altitude. So spawn alt advantage of bombers was cut by 50% - resulting in turkey shootings…

I do agree that the 3 maps are from a layout perspective quite nice, but due the visibility of own ground units disappearing from the map enemy attackers could be easily located.

The main advantage for fellow players in heavy bombers (able make it through the screen of death) is that they actually face non-respawng bases (so less TNT required - 0.5-0.6 tons of TNT up to BR 4.7, 0.8-0.9 at BR 5.0 +) - unfortunately newer players see 4 bases and assume respawning bases, so most of them waste their bombs.

This theoretical advantage is countered by
a)very few occasions they make it through, and
b) there are 2 airfields to kill, not one.
The sheer map size made it impossible for “heavies” to go for second run as
c) time ran out or
d) they got strafed on the runway due to missing af aaa.

And even if you fly with a fighter on all 3 maps - the auto ticket bleed is sometimes so high that you are screwed if your planes is unable to kill medium tanks or pillboxes - 1 running Wyvern is enough and you lose.

Last, but not least, these 3 maps are the only ones (i am aware of) which implements 100 points ticket drain if you kill an enemy player. This mechanic looks interesting, but not all players are aware of it, so your might lose in tight ticket scenarios if some guys on speed SL farming missions decide to leave (costs 100 tickets too) and to jump to another match.

I would like to renew my question for opening pacific maps for all nations and a special section for map feedback…

1 Like
20

Ok, thanks. Very sad news.

Now that we are on this subject some questions that I think are very important about the future of Air RB maps in low tiers and it is of big concern to a lot of players:

1. Are there any plans to improve Airfield AAA mechanics at low tiers?
The Airfield AAA below BR 7.7 is felt by players like a hit scan, with it going throught terrain and tracers being only cosmetic. It is also overperforming in accuracy.

2. Could the airfield AAA protection of secondary airfields be removed?

Currently at this low tiers there is a secondary airfield very close to the battle area, this secondary airfield has the same defenses as the main airfield.

First, there should be some trade off for being able to get to the airfield much quicker, this airfield should not have AAA protection.

Secondly, this secondary airfields having strong AAA protection makes so that a very little area of the map is playable and that for many players when they are in a disadvantage it is much easier for them to just run to this secondary airfield that is always very close, this breaks ARB gameplay and it is a very big issue.

There are lots of this maps with strong AAA in secondary airfields, some are even worse for the gameplay than others but just some examples:

Spoiler

image.png.8db8514b67f12964a4bfec75942fb3 image.png.ba7a4cda5745036185b38583eee5b1 image.png.339d24057d0822497838536e2b712d unknown.png unknown.png

image.png

image.png

image.png

image.png

I made a rectangle of the part of the map that AAA makes unplayable, as you can see it almost covers the whole map.

Idk if you can answer to any of this but it would be great to see this changes to low tier Air RB maps that are in a pretty bad spot gameplay wise right now.

6 Likes
21

Hello, community administrator, have you noticed that there is a medal for defending Leningrad in the medal of the Soviet Union, but it is required to match to enter the map: Lake Ladoga is completed, I tried to use the Soviet Air Forces to play in one day, but I still cannot select this map, and I have added three Ladoga maps to my map preferences, hoping you can give feedback to the development team