To get crits in air RB, the most efficient way is to shoot at the BTR’s that have replaced some of the ground targets, you will usually find them towards the back of the little trench setups with the Pillboxes, or the light tanks/trucks that make up the ground convoys. They are not available on all maps, but they are on a good few these days, especially at the higher teirs. Hitting them with rockets or shooting engine blocks will usually give you the crits you need pretty quickly.
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Problem is, when fighting in top tier, your priority is not in ground targets.
Or do you waste game hunting ground targets in fighter with radar missiles?
I dont play top teir for ground targets, I usually go to around 7.3-9.7 depending on what I have that isnt spaded
In top tier you aren’t normally getting crits to begin with?
before the update, it was quite normal to get crit on missile hits, now it’s “just” severe damage.
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You also can do that on the NPC planes. Here you get more often crits. And the assist counts for quests too.
But the problem is most of your teamates don’t know this.
Oh really? Damn, I must have missed that change. ( sarcasm if you cant tell it)
This was not about kill stealing, or rewards from assisted kill and finishing enemy off. This was about severe damage effects on crits.
And now they are quite rare. Simplest way to fix this, is that severe damage would count also as crit, it would also be logical since it has to be damaged critcally also when having severe damage.
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Could you please give us a link to this?
Because I see something totally different here:
currently (in the old system) when an enemy aircraft gets destroyed (“Target destroyed”), they can sometimes still fly, shoot, land to repair and have no automatic bail out. The aim of this was to allow you to score a frag and at the same time prevent another player from finishing off the heavily damaged enemy aircraft and steal the frag.
We’d rather not count the aircraft as destroyed based on “guesses”, but instead would like to leave you the opportunity to attempt to control a “severely” damaged aircraft until it’s either completely destroyed or returns to the airfield to repair.
They even admit in their official article that the old system was designed to prevent kill steals. The system we don’t have in the game anymore, because it was replaced by the new severe damage mechanics.
If an aircraft is damaged to the extent where it would have been counted as being destroyed previously, (…) this new mechanic will count it as severely damaged.
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I may have missed something from this thread topic, tought it was “No crits from severe damage after-effects”
Instead “why severe damage was introduced in war thunder.”
We were here to talk about lack of crits, like thread topic is about, if you want to talk about severe damage reasons, etc what is not about crit hits, go and take a better thread on that.
And My opinion about severe damage counting as crit is actually inside this thread.
Now, have a nice day, and stick on topic. =)
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The old system outright killed a still airworthy vehicle for the sake of giving the kill to the original aggressor.
Instead of ditching this in its entirety, severe damage still grants a majority of the kill rewards while not showing the enemy as destroyed.
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Thank you SFMerc for reading the original post.
Teddy and mordillo, i am aware of the obvious work arounds to complete the mission. None of those address the original topic, however.
Foxxo, Ive read too many of your angry posts to really be objective, but ill just say it seems every post not only misses the original posts point, but brings up the old system. Old system is gone, deal with the new one please.
The reason I chose Discussion and not Suggestion is because I am just one mediocre player who only just yesterday realized the impact of severe damage on crits. I wanted the opinions of people who are more experienced than me, who know the CURRENT system better than me, and who could look at my “rough draft” suggestion that only the initial severe damage should not count as a crit, but if you then shoot 5 gunners, well those should count as crits.
For all I knew I just had bad luck - I needed smarter and more experienced people to chat with before making a Suggestion post. Not work arounds, not shooting AI or ground targets, not yelling into the wind that the old system was better, but constructive criticism of my potential suggestion, and well as confirmation I even was correct about crits having mostly vanished. It was just 8 games, it could have been bad luck (really really bad, but possible).
I appreciate those who read the original post.
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If you want experienced players opinions about this, why didn’t you read one of already existing topics? Uncle_J_Wick already mentioned one of such topics. I understand this one is huge, but it contains a lot of interesting information.
There are also different topics, that explain how the new system works:
Spoiler
Critical hits are broken as of 15th of February or nearby
Critical hits in Air RB / broken & hard to get
https://forum.warthunder.com/t/severe-damage-did-nothing-to-fix-kill-stealing/84776
Is it true that I severe damage an aircraft and it won't count as a kill?
Where have the critical hits gone?
Knowing how the system work, you wouldn’t write what you wrote here:
This is not true. You can first severe damage and then critital hit the enemy. The reason why you see so few critical hits nowadays is that all the parts that were counted as destruction in the old system don’t have critical hits attached to them anymore.
This suggests to me you don’t understand the severe damage mechanics. Most severe damage conditions are old destruction conditions.
You can check this quote which should help you to understand the change in critical hits between the two systems:
About your proposition:
The underlined part doesn’t make sense. You don’t see these critical hits, because they are disabled on all parts that were counted as destruction in the old system. It’s not like the old critical hits became severe damage.
In fact this change happened even before severe damage mechanics was implemented. One day the devs just disabled critical hits on most parts of the plane. To be honest, we don’t even know if that’s a bug or not. We just assume it’s not a bug, it was probably part of preparation for the new severe damage mechanics. But this is something the devs never explained anywhere. They didn’t mention critical hits change in any official news or changelog, so we can only speculate why this change happened.
Basically, after the change, if you want sure critical hits, you should attack these parts of the plane:
This graphics is not fully correct, but it shows in general which parts have critical hits disabled (red) and which still can give you critical hits (green).
So if you destroy more than half of the enemy left wing and get severe damage, to get a critical hit you would have to destroy less than half of the right wing, which is not easy when the enemy is spinning.
The ridiculous part is, if you first destroy more than half of the enemy left wing and get severe damage, but then destroy more than half of the right wing, you won’t see a critical hit, because critical hits are disabled for more than half of the wing destruction. This doesn’t make any sense to me.
Like I said, we don’t even know why the new system have this critical hits problem. Maybe critical hits on most parts were disabled by mistake? But there is no way to contact the devs of this game. I saw some forum members asked our community managers about this matter, but in 2 months they never replied. Maybe they don’t want to ask the devs about this problem or maybe they can’t (because we don’t even know if they have a direct contact to the devs). So we don’t even know if that’s the design or a bug. Especially this change happened before severe damage mechanics was introduced, which makes it even weirder.
This screenshot was taken after most critical hits were already disabled (probably 15th of February), but before severe damage mechanics was implemented (29th of February):
Spoiler
You can see that even if the severe damage mechanics is not in the game yet, critical hits from destruction conditions are already disabled. In that time it looked like a bug. But it’s 2 months later, and it’s still not fixed, so it could be the new design (that would honestly be illogical), we just don’t know.
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As I said in the very first sentence, I did. And I clearly marked its date of opening and closing. There were no others returned by the Search. This is the first time I am trying to quote so I may goof it up. Also that last sentence sounds angry or snarky and it is not meant to be. I appreciate your full and detailed reply - again, this is exactly for what I was hoping before I posted potential nonsense in Suggestion. Thank you.
Can you list an example? Anything that comes to mind, like “Wing falls off” then “Shoot gunner”. I saw zero cases.
This explains why I do not get a crit on same shot as Severe, but not continued firing, or maybe it does? I guess if additional shots were also “kill shots” in old system, youre 100 pct correct…
Then why is it so easy to get a full kill and skip the Severe damage stage?
I find it worrying that all of your examples use wings, an injury that can be survivable, and so should be Severe Damage not kills.
?? Thats exactly what I said, the Severe Damage is not a crit, and I did not argue for that to be changed.
That is truly bonkers.
OK here are two scenarios. Can you help me understand, under the current system (which as you said theres a chance its a feb15th bug - your screenshot was chillingly compelling)
-
I am trying for crits, so aiming for engines on a four-engine bomber. I get “unlucky”, and a minengeschoß hits the left wing root and blows off the wing, giving me a severe damage. I just spray and pray as it spins out of control. I destroy both left and right flap, the rudder, an aileron, and kill lets say 4 gunners. Do I get any crits?
-
Same scenario as above, but i just set a fire. I fly away happy. As the fire damages more and more, i Get beeps and grey text as items are destroyed by the fire. lets say three beeps as major and minor (a flap) fall off. Are any of these crits, or can they be? From setting a lot of fires in those 8 games, I saw a ton of grey-item beeps and pieces being destroyed … and zero crits at end.
Thanks for your extensive reply Poul !
In RB, just attack the AA vehicles on the ground - gently.
ground vehicles are not aircraft, and not part of the severe damage system. I think you replied to the wrong thread.
No, I just tried to help you. But feel free to ignore it. I do OK.
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I guess you missed the original post, and the reply to teddy, and the reply to mordillo. I do understand how just from the title of the thread, your reply would seem helpful, and so i do thank you for trying to help me complete the mission. That is sincere not sarcasm, its clear you were trying to help me get crits, appreciated.
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I don’t quite understand why you would want to change the system again, if not for tasks?
What do you want to accomplish instead?
There are also 6 links in this topic you can read to understand everything better.
Just keep in mind to not believe in everything other people write. There’s usually a large group of people in every topic, who repeat lies or overall spread false information without any proves or checking anything.
And there is often smaller group of people, who post screenshots and prove how they tested everything step by step.
You should ignore the first group, take the second group seriously, but it’s always best to double-check everything yourself.
When you spend more time on the forum, you will start recognizing names and patterns.
I already did in my previous message. But if you want video proves, not just text, then I have two videos saved on my channel:
First I got severe damage, then I cut less than half of the enemy wing, which gave me a critical hit.
And before you say I used a vessel to attack plane, and that plane was a bomber, so maybe it works differently in fighters and air battles, I also have second video:
First I got severe damage and then a critical hit from destroying less than half of the enemy fighter right wing. It was of course completely random situation, fighters wings are very small, so it’s really hard to cut less than half of his wing in this situation (and cutting more than half of his wing wouldn’t give me that critical hit!).
To be honest, I don’t recommend shooting at severely damaged planes, it’s usually just a waste of time and ammo. But these videos proves, you can get severe damage and then a critical hit.
All parts that can give you old destruction have critical hits disabled. When it’s disabled, it’s disabled. Severe damage doesn’t change anything here, it’s not related to severe damage.
It’s not easy, there are only two instant kill conditions left in the new system: sniping the pilot and tearing off the tail. Nothing else will instantly kill the plane.
If you use jets and missiles (or just very good guns) you will see instant kills more often than when you use propellers and especially bad guns. That’s because in the game missiles (or good HE ammo) explode. So the explosion itself can tear off the tail or kill the pilot, you don’t need direct hits (like with weaker guns).
I play propellers, and the number of instant kills decreased significantly after the devs changed the system. I heard in jets it’s about the same number as before (maybe slightly less instant kills).
In War Thunder in almost all situations, losing more than half of your wing means you will die. But almost all doesn’t mean all. And yes, there were situations in the old system, where you could be counted as destroyed, but still be able to fly (even without one wing), land and repair. I personally never saw this as a big problem, especially it was a very rare situation, but for some players it was a huge deal. That was one of the reasons why the new system with severe damage was implemented.
This is something that was already explained many times in my posts. All parts that previously meant instant destruction condition have critical hits disabled. This has nothing to do with the severe damage. You often see this “connection”, because most previous destruction conditions became severe damage in the new system. But it’s not severe damage that causes this problem. If let’s say 90% of plane parts have critical hits disabled in the new system, you just won’t get them. It doesn’t make any difference when you shoot these parts (before or after the plane was severely damaged), they just have critical hits disabled.
We are getting here into the details. I never said I understand every single detail about the new system. I find stuff by my own tests and reading posts with proved and explained tests of other players. I’m not a dev, I don’t have access to the game source code, so I can’t check every detail easily.
I’m pretty sure you will get 1 critical hit from the destroyed aileron and rudder. In theory that should be 2 critical hits, but keep in mind you can only get 1 critical hit on the same enemy. All next critical hits will be changed to regular hits* (*there is a timer on that, but I don’t want to complicate this explanation too much, as it doesn’t change anything in 99.9% of situations).
Destroying flaps is something I don’t fully understand. Maybe it depends how the flap is positioned on the plane (it takes more or less than 50% of the wing), but I don’t know. It’s really hard to figure out such details.
From what I heard killing gunners is not counted as critical hit nowadays. And there are different opinions about how it worked in the old system (we can’t test this anymore).
If the fire destroy the part that can give you a critical hit, it will be a critical hit. But usually fuel tanks are located near the center of the plane (for better balance). So the potential fire in this area won’t give you critical hits in the new system. But in the old system, critical hits from fire were very common.
I hope everything is clearer now. I really recommend you to read those linked topics, because a few players there managed to understand the new system very well. You can also ask additional questions there. I also strongly encourage you to do the tests yourself. And once you get your results, it would be great if you write your findings and conclusions in the forum.
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Whoa thanks for such an awesome reply!
Wow OK now things are starting to fall into place, thank you
And another mind-bomb, did not know thanks.
I mean that alone is epic. Combined with removal of crittable items, I can see my games were not flukes or bad luck.
Thanks a ton Poul!
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