In this digest we would like to tell you about our continuing work on improvements and fixes in the game. You can find information about all updates that have been released in War Thunder in the website special section.
Eyes to the Sky
Today a change arrives in air events in Ground AB that we already told you about a short while ago — fighter pilots will no longer see ground vehicle markers.
This change will reduce the frequency of so-called kamikaze attacks that annoyed many of you — when fighters who were meant to escort bombers chose to instead attack light vehicles and SPAAGs with open turrets. This will also motivate interceptor and escort fighters to stick to their jobs in the sky and not try to imitate strike aircraft.
We’ve detailed this idea in the discussion linked above — thank you for your participation and feedback!
Automatic Bail Out
If a helicopter or an aircraft receives critical damage, a countdown starts that leads to the pilot ejecting from the vehicle and the player returning to the vehicle selection screen. But something went wrong: as the timer reached zero, nothing happened.
Pilots of aircraft could still bail out manually using the corresponding button. Yet this error allowed for unsportsmanlike behaviour for helicopter pilots in Tank RB: they could land on an enemy helicopter landing pad and keep shooting at spawning enemies.
Well, enough of that. The pilots now bail out properly by the end of the timer, and the players are returned to the vehicle selection screen.
Laser Guidance
Beam-riding missiles are a delicate matter. How many missiles can you launch into the beam before they start missing the target?
The players used to find this out empirically, but we decided to make it easier for them: now after launching a beam-riding missile a timer will pop up indicating how long you can keep launching more missiles without causing the first one to lose its guidance. This feature was added for ground, aircraft, and helicopters!
For aircraft missiles with a laser seeker or a semi-automatic guidance system (SACLOS) we are making the indication of a missile launch window during third person play more helpful. Now it’s linked to the aircraft axis and is visually displayed for the player: make sure the target is inside the launch window — and fire!
Vapour Cones
As an aircraft goes over the speed of sound, a vapour cone surrounds it due to the Prandtl–Glauert effect. If it maintains the necessary speed, the condensation cloud follows it continuously — but in the game this obstructed the player’s view, which was detrimental, especially during manoeuvres. So we decided to change the algorithm of the effect. Now the cone will appear in the same speed range (0.98 — 1.02 Mach), but it will last for a limited time and will reappear after a certain pause. This way, if an aircraft maintains speeds close to the specified range, it will no longer “blink” with vapour.
Search and Destroy
We recently detailed the problem with bots in War Thunder and how we deal with it. Your reports remain a key element in finding the accounts that break the rules — and, to make it easier for you, we’ve added a special category to the report window. Now you can choose the “Using bots” category for your report to tell us about suspicious accounts.
You can also do that on our website in the replay section. Use it well — and help us make your gameplay more enjoyable!
That’s Not All
You’ll find the full list of improvements in a separate patch note — there are lots of interesting things! Helicopter pilots no longer receive erroneous messages about the possibility of repairing allied ground vehicles, the “watch the battle” button returned to the “messages” tab in the battle results, and cross-platform play for Xbox users now operates correctly.
Once again, many thanks for all your bug reports that you submitted using our special service.