- Yes, but only let you do it when in the spawn menu. So before spawning the vehicle you must choose what you want.
- Yes, allow us to do it mid battle. You push a button and the skirts will change to whatever you want.
- No, keep it the way it is. You’ll have to choose what you want back in the hanger.
- Yes, add all three of them as possible modes.
- Yes, but instead of having three different modes, just change the current ‘skirts up’ mode to the fully closed one. (This will still keep two different modes but now the skirts will be fully closed up)
- No, what we have right now is good enough.
Hey everyone
So with the addition of the Versuchsflakwagen fur 8.8cm Flak 41 (a.k.a VFW) and with it’s feature to raise and lower the side skirts in the hanger, a lot of people (me included) came up with some nice ideas for this.
Now I’m going to split this post into two, first I’m going to talk about a pretty hot discussion a lot of people got about the skirts. And last I want to talk about a little thing I would like to see.
So let’s dive right in!
Raise and lower the skirts in the beginning or mid game
Spoiler
So a big thing that sets the VFW apart from any other vehicle ingame, is that you can have side skirts raised up, or lowered. You can do this while in the hanger by changing the ‘Side skirts up’ modification.
Now this is very cool and all, but a lot of people have been complaining that this should be possible to do while in a game. And I agree with that, but there are two ways of doing this:
- -While in the spawn menu, you can change the state of the side skirts.
- -While driving the VFW in a battle, you should be able to push a button and the skirts would go up (this can be set on the retract radar button for example)
Now let’s talk about the first option, this one is the most easy to implement. Just before spawning you just choose whatever you want to have. This is also much more usefull then having to set it when your back in the hanger.
For example: When I’m on an large open map, let’s say Kursk, I would want my skirts lowered so I can enjoy that fast reload and cover all the sides of my vehicle. But when I’m on a urban map with small roads and such I want to have my skirts up so I can fit in set small roads and have my crew be better protected against flanking enemy machinegun fire.
Although it looks like a small little feature, it is however very usefull to have. It will allow you to adapt to your suroundings.
Now onto the second option, this one is a little unhistorical I must say, but we can give it some features that might make it a bit more historical. So first the unhistorical part, in real life putting the skirts up or down took a lot of time and would require the entire crew to get out of the vehicle and get the skirts down or up. However in War Thunder this can not be added. You just press a button and some invisible tooth fairies will magically raise or lower them for you.
Now how can we make this more historical? Well let’s start with making the vehicle immobile while this is happening. So you push a button, the skirts go down, but your tank must stay where it is while this is happening. Also the duration of this process could maybe take up to 30 sec ingame (wich will feel like sitting still for hours in some cases). Maybe some other penalties could be done to, like a slower reload, or maybe total loss of movement in both your tank and gun, thus making you completely immobile during the process.
But those are the two ideas most of the community is talking about lately, give us your opinion in the poll above!
Adding a third ‘mode’ for the skirts to be in
Spoiler
What we have ingame right now is either the skirts all the way down, or almost fully up. And that’s the importnant thing, almost fully up, not all the way.
You see in real life the skirts could also go up all the way.
Now for this to be possible the front mantlet of the tank did have to be changed. The outer plates of the mantlet had to be removed.
You can see that these plates are connected on the back.
When these side plates are removed the entire side skirts will be able to fully close up, turning the vehicle into the real Flak Toaster we all know and love!
Now horizontal movement will most likely be even less in this configuration, but it does give your crew the maximum ammount of safety against enemy machinegun fire.
So let’s list all the possible confirurations to clear things up:
- -Side skirts all the way down.
This will remain the most widely used configuration. It gives you all around fire and no reload penatly! With this setup you can get the reload down to 4 seconds!
- -Side skirts partially up.
In this configuration your giving your crew a lot more protection, but on top of that I want to point something out:
As you can see in the image above, the turret still has 360 degree of rotation, only the gun elevation is hindered by the side skirts. This is something we don’t have ingame at this moment but could be something fun to have in the future.
What we also have ingame is that this setup gives you a reload penatly, the minimun reload time like this is 6 seconds.
- -Side skirts all the way up.
Now like this you have become the true Flak Toaster! It removes the side plates on your mantlet and turns your tank into a full tank destroyer!
Maybe this setup can give you an aditional reload penalty like the previous setup. I would say a minimun reload of 7 seconds sounds fair.
So yeah there you have it. I heard a lot of people talk about this so I thought I make a post about it!
Anyways give us your opinion in the poll above, and I’ll see you on the battlefield!
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