Game != real life. But that is not what War Thunder is about.
War Thunder is about giving players the most realistic real time simulation possible for it’s weaponry and armor physics (within reason), simplifying controls for easy use, adjusting the vehicle’s battle ratings to compensate for historical tech advantages, and throwing them into unrealistic scenarios to show players what could theoretically happen. All while making a boat load of money.
You can’t have this with artificially buffed/nerfed vehicles and ammunition. This, and only this part of the game must be as realistic as possible.
Ok, I’ll try again. Hypothetical: I think they should allow repair of aircraft in flight now. They allow you to repair other vehicles, after all. When your plane gets damaged a bunch of little gnomes or droids could run out on the wings and fix things up. And then other players could shoot off your gnomes to delay repairs. Fun new mechanic! No downside that I can see. What’s the counterargument? Remember you’re not allowed to use the words “historical”, “realism” or “accuracy” in arguing against. Also I think all planes should be able to warp across the battlefield once per game, like the Millenium Falcon. Fun right?
“The way it is” was not an option in this poll, only a) buff it or b) test to see if we can counter the buff with a nerf. “Buff it” won.
The argument against plane repairing is that in air, movement is life. If you’re damaged but can still fly, you could possibly limp back to the airfield or die trying. It’s still engaging.
In ground, you could be shot at and disabled, and then the person shooting you gets sniped. You’re not dead, but if you can’t repair, you’ll just be sitting there until someone finds you, the game ends, or you J out. Not engaging.
And ground vehicle repair doesn’t impact the simulation aspects that War Thunder focuses on.
They are only going to add the shell cap. The rest of the spalling stays the same.
Due to a number of technical reasons, secondary fragments from APHE shells differ and are worse compared to fragments from regular, solid AP shells. When reworking fragmentation fields, we’ll enhance the secondary fragments of APHE shells to the level of solid AP shells.
In other words, the armor spalling of APHE will only be increased IF the changes to fragmentation are done.
Yet people accuse the “no” voters of being illiterate…
And irregardless, point still stands- APHE, which has been universally acknowledged to be OP for years, is now receiving a further big buff while not being toned down realistically to balance it out.
You made a good try, for sure. Not to take this too off topic, but I’m not sure I would have said, “oh this is so engaging” the last time I was falling out of the air on fire, though.
I mean even that method of destruction (or your struggling home scenario) has a tie to realism. It’s engaging only because we read stories about how stuff like that really happened. There are other equally fun/engaging ways to convey the “you died” info there. People prefer the one that reminds them of real things though, I suspect.
Me, I liken it to a set of miniatures rules in tabletop wargaming. I want my set of plane models, all lovingly decalled, to fight your plane models for fun. What are the rules? Maybe it’s because I actually did that with friends and toy soldiers when I was a kid. And yeah, we’d add new rules to our growing ruleset each time to make things look more like the books we’d read and movies we’d seen. It was iterative progression within the confines of a tabletop game. And if the rules had got too boring or too silly or too biased to one side I’d have literally taken my toys and gone home.
I disagree with War Thunder when they add realism and disagree when they remove it. I don’t expect perfection, but I do expect the attempt. So yes, in that sense I do “care about realism.”
Getting back to topic, in this case, realism and gameplay both went in the same direction anyway. No one, literally no one, wanted APHE to be even more buffed a week ago, but because of a bafflingly stupid social media strategy Gaijin has now boxed themselves in to that result.
That’s an assumption. Adding the shell cap and secondary frags from the cap is also changing fields. At least we don’t know it isn’t.
If they had put that section AFTER the “here’s what we want you to vote on” line I’d say you’re right.
If you go back to OP, the first Tiger graphic before/after shows the changes if they only do the buff, which is what people voted for. The second Tiger set with the cupola shot shows the counter-nerf.
In the first diagram, because of head preservation only, a center mass APHE shot that only takes out the driver today now will take out driver, gunner AND engine. That’s a SIGNIFICANT buff, and people voted down the counter-nerf.
If he had said “additional spalling/damage from the shell cap”, that would be perfectly fine and correct.
However, as he himself has stated (after all, he apologizeed for being wrong), he was refering to APHE armor spalling being increased to the same level as solid shot armor spalling, which is not happening if the vote fails, as Gaijin themselves have stated.
I never stated that the shell cap wasn’t a buff either.
Well, I was referring to that and I thought it was understandable enough xd. And I still edited it for further clarity afterwards.
Even if my writing abilities were not at my peak because I had just woken up, the point should have still come across rather clearly without calling out “illiterancy”, duh.
Well, but, as the dev blog states, that change is non-negotiable.
So APHE is getting a non-negotiable buff while not getting the correction that would tone it down to reasonable levels; therefore making the OP shell OP+.
In many cases an uncapped APHE would just shatter into many pieces after penetrating sloped or thick armor plates.
Only in rare cases where the armor is thin and the shell penetrates intact, would the bursting charge even have an effect.
So most of the time APHE would infact just deal the same damage as solid AP, at least when it comes to defeating armor at the higher penetration limit.
Not to mention the many times the fuze would fail or even detonate the round before it reaches its full armor piercing potential.
Just thinking about that makes you realize why the concept of APHE was abandoned by pretty much anyone after WW2, except a big country of big gun users :)
Honestly the whole discussion only really showed that it shouldn’t matter how APHE performs but that any round penetrating should just knock out the vehicle the same way APHE can do at the moment.
The entire killing system should be reworked.
Just shows you how flawed the current APHE system is.
Shell weight is the most important factor, then comes explosive filler.
But in some instances Gaijin made 30mm or 40mm APHE rounds just deal the same damage as heavier shells with many times the weight and explosive filler.
They will because at the moment they would deal more damage firing solid shot then those sad excuse of 20mm APHE confetti.
APHE just defies any physics. First it doesn’t create the same armor spalling as AP, but then it creates a physics defying fragmentation sphere.
I never understood that. Was that like some super weird balance descicion?
It’s super annoying when your APHE doesn’t fuze on a target and then deals practically no damage unless the round hits some component directly.
