What do you feel are some of the most impactful single modifications for vehicles in Warthunder? Can be anything from engines on planes to shells for tanks. What vehicles in particular are reliant on a singular upgrade?
For aircraft, beyond the really obvious things like Chaff and extra AAMs (especially IRCCM unlocks) id usually say G-Suit for anything that is going to be doing a little turning.
But one of the most impactful that was surprising was the booster mod for the Typhoon. Normally its one of the last mods I grind because I find it does next to nothing and even for a number of years, it was recommended to uninstall the mod from the Phantom FGR2 because it caused wing rips in turns. But in the Typhoon its night and day, that thing is a brick (and I mean turns worse than a Tornado kind of brick) without the booster mod installed.
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APFSDS shell for tanks past 9.0
I still remember the AMX-40 grind where the first APFSDS shell was a rank 4 modification. Using HEATFS shells against Soviet tanks for so long hard, especially when your next best tank was the AMX-30B2 Brenus as the AMX-32s hadn’t been added yet.
Engine upgrade
Or parts
It really depends a LOT on not only the vehicle type, but also class/role. For me, I generally put my focus here:
Air:
Fighters: More advanced weapons > Countermeasures > G-Suit
Attackers: Targeting pods > Countermeasures > more powerful weapons
Helis: Thermals > more powerful missiles > countermeasures
Ground:
Tanks: Rangefinder > Thermals > More powerful ammo
SPAAG: Horizontal Drive / Vertical Elevation > AA-Ammo > Artillery
SAM: More advanced weapons > Horizontal Drive / Vertical Elevation > Artillery
Sea:
Rangefinder > anything that improves survivability
For tank, very important modifications are “Adjustement of fire” and Elevation mechanism" who improve significatively the gun precision at range more than 800m.
For naval, “Ventilation”, “Shrapnel protection” and “Ammo wetting” are most usefull modifications, and take better ammo , “damage control team” and “fire division” in priority for up rank modifications.
For propeller planes:
G-suit.
Being able to stay fast means you stay high energy. U.S fighters, if you can get G suits and don’t, become utterly clipped in dogfighting. A P51D or a F4U-4 become very competet dogfighters in downhill spirals provided you can avoid losing conciousness and sometimes, you can use your G-suit as an edge with equal crew levels to make the enemy miss a roll and thus force an overshoot and then sit on their tail.
All that performance goes to waste if you keep blacking out doing a sustained 6.2G or so spiral or from rapidly reversing your turn for a scissor. Slowing down to avoid blacking out is not a choice because your plane becomes a monster at high energy and a pitiful boat when slow (although more for mustang than corsair)
Now, having a 5/5+expert crew makes the impact less severe (as that sustains ~6.0G turnindefinitely), but getting a 5+5+expert crew takes ago. I only achieved such for my american crew slots, for Britain I’m still handicapped despite flying a premium Mustang Ia in that slot (thus premium RP).
Afterwards, it probably has to be engine injection or high octane fuel. That seems to give me the biggest bang for SEP.
In planes I start with the guns to get effective ammo and for it to be reliable since its not much not much fun to outmaneuver someone only to not be able to hit them.
Tanks, used to be parts and fire extingishers, but now horizontal traverse and accuracy for the same above.
I generally play assaults with new things until I get at least the armament and engine “upgrades” or artillery unlocked before I venture out into PVP games. Reduces frustration and just leaves “skill issues” for reasons to suck.
For a lot of vehicles it’s ammunition.
If your stock ammo isn’t your primary ammunition, you are significantly underperforming in a lot of cases.
There’s a big difference between a vehicle having slightly less performance vs. using ammunition that isn’t effective for the BR.
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Well…apparently everyone simply ignored the repair modifications which are by far the most important :)
Then this:
Some vehicles will not work without proper ammo (75mm AP or some HE only vehicles come to mind)
Others will improve a lot with better ammo
Other than that…for tanks i recall most other modifications are “useful but not key” or “minor upgrade”…THAT SAID…once you get most of them, vehicles will be considerably better…faster, more nimble and usually better armed… :)
Depends.
On a lot of light vehicles I don’t even bother since 90% of the time I’m killed when shot anyway.
I rather have better killing power than relying to survive getting shot.
Same with unlocking ammo.
What’s the point of repairing your gun when 76mm M79 shot at 5.7 or 6.3 isn’t going to kill anything anyway.
Getting kills speeds up the entire module grind.
Not exactly my experience…although it is true…
However, my light vehicles often get damage from MGs, artillery or air attack…which can be repaired…and if not repaired i often become unable to fight…
Unless ammo is REQUIRED for the vehicle to be effective, i always start by the two repair modifications…
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for me:
Tanks - I always go for the engine and repair first unless its a high br vehicle with only HEAT-FS. In that case I get the tier 1 apfsds round if there is any. If there isn’t a apfsds round at rank 1 then just FPE and parts until i can get the apfsds shell. After FPE and parts i go for mobility upgrades if its a slow tank. If its slow bus survivable i go for better shells, smoke, arty, rangefinder and then for engine and transmission. If its a light tank ill just get the right side of the modifications and light tank specifics like drones and scouting.
TL;DR 1. FPE & parts 2. new shells 3. smoke/arty/rangefinder 4. engine/transmission 5. then go back and research whatever you haven’t in mobility 5. traverse and gun stability isn’t really needed in most tanks. Especially if they have stabilization.
Planes - I dogfight so my go 2 is always fuselage repair at low tiers and at high tiers, compressor. then I make a judgment if the airplane has offensive armament that would allow me to kill easier I go for that. Which is relevant when you get missiles at 8.0 up to top tier. If its aircraft where you only have guns (w/wo bomb or rockets) I just keep doing the flight performance and survivability. At high tiers you want chaff and missiles as quickly as possible.