Righto, so now that the second round of Nuclear Thunder/Escalation is about to conclude and I’ve gotten a hefty number of games on both sides and with numerous planes, here is my feedback on it, which I will preface with saying I had a blast once again.
The Good:
The mode is once again leaps and bounds more fun and engaging than all other air battles mode that have been available in WT over the years.
- Strong AA feels like a valuable AI target that shapes the outcome of matches
- The new “cooldown” system where a player who dies before landing cannot spawn the same aircraft at the same airfield for a few minutes feels VERY good. Does a great job making shooting down another player in a sector of the map valuable, as said player cannot come back right away, which gives you breathing room to do ground attack work in the area. Also very much appreciate the fact that if you land after a sortie, the penalty is removed on your next death, making it important to survive if you want to continue to apply pressure in a sector.
- Nukes feel a lot harder to use with the removal of CCRP when employing them, but also feel a lot more impactful when a player manages to destroy an airfield with one, both in the ticket swing, and clearing up the enemy teams ability to fight effectively on that side of the map.
- Wider battlefield (into the mountains foothills) feels good
- Depots appear to get captured more? Could be a placebo, or could be from the higher volume of air to ground munitions and lower volume of tactical nukes being used, but the frontline definitely feels a bit more dynamic, which is nice.
- Retaining asymmetric battles (REDFOR vs BLUFOR) is great. The mode would be much worse if it was mixed battles (which leads me into my first negative…)
The "Bad":
Some of these might be contentious, but these are the parts that disappointed me the most in this current iteration of Nuclear Thunder/Escalation:
- Allowing off-nation aircrafts into the “wrong” team feels terrible (most notable of which was the Malaysian Su-30MKM flying for BLUFOR), as it allows for patching “problems” on either team, and as such reduces the asymmetry. Each team having their own identity and gameplan is good, and mixing airframes into either side hurts this.
- REDFOR medium range air defense (both Buk-M3 and S-300) REALLY needs to tone it down with the lock tones. Feels like I’m developing tinnitus flying against the Buk-M3 and its 70km onboard seeker lock range or the S-300 and its SARH locks.
- BLUFOR medium range air defense (SAMP/T) is an absolute joke. I’m sure SOME players died to it, but I never actually seen it happen. Even in the odd match where REDFOR didnt knock out all SAMP/T TADS within the first ~10min, REDFOR could comfortably fly at high altitude anywhere inside BLUFORs airspace and never get shot down by SAMP/T. As modelled, the SAMP/T are borderline worthless to have.
For example, this is the first volley of Aster-30's from this site in my latest match:
The missiles are already functionally out of energy (near M1.0) after less than 30km travelled, flying around 1/3 the speed of the Kh-31’s they’re attempting to intercept. The site can barely threaten aircrafts on the frontline, and the second line of SAMP/T are roughly 30km away from the first line, meaning that with the current modelling for the SAMP/T, the backline sites can’t even cover the frontline ones…
You can actually compare how absurd the difference in kinematic performance between the S-300’s and Aster 30’s are in this image:
As can be seen, the Aster 30s having travelled ~30km are subsonic, the S-300’s 5V55R having travelled ~30km are still flying at around M3.5!
- Barring the Kh-31 variants, none of the ARMs are really any good at the moment. It is literally impossible to use them at long range effectively, as they WILL get intercepted due to being in too small numbers, flying too slow, and with too high an RCS. For some aircrafts its their only real option for fighting Tunguska’s and ItO’s, but they just truly feel terrible. Fire 2 HARMs at a 2s6 and there’s a decent chance it intercepts both while also shooting you down if you didn’t aggressively pull of the moment you fired them, and most HARM carrying jets can only carry 2 HARMs…
- SHORAD systems still don’t have their radars active until they have fired a missile at something. This means they always have the first shot on you, also means that if you got ARMs off but died, they wont hit, since it’ll shut its radar down and be gone before they get there, AND means you cant even try to find them using the ESM function on some jets, so you often get jumpscared by a convoy SHORAD opening fire more often than not.
- Playing REDFOR specifically is incredibly boring. SAMP/T’s are literal non-factors, Kh-31PD’s mean optimal gameplay is to load min fuel and 6x Kh-31PD at the start of the match and fire on every single medium range system (SAMP/T and SPYDER) until the enemy has no AA left beyond ItO’s, which will only take about ~10min to do if a few people are doing it. You then spend the other ~50min of the match flying up at 10km alt raining missiles down on BLUFOR players hugging the deck trying to take out your GBAD systems or even just taking off really. Much like in top tier ground battles, the REDFOR (and more specifically Russian) experience is just 5-10min of getting you to a point where the enemy cant really fight back properly, and then spending the rest of the match shooting fish in a barrel.
- The new naval assets were an interesting addition, but as modelled do absolutely nothing. They have no impact on the match, and you get like, 3 score for taking a ship out, and the ships don’t even fight back.
- Depots and their SHORAD still feel like they respawn too quickly (it honestly doesn’t make much sense that they respawn in the same location at all quite frankly.)
- BLUFOR jets not getting built-in ESM despite multiple bug reports on the subject is frankly disgusting.
Now lets talk balance:
Note I didn’t put “balance” in either the “good” or “bad” sections earlier, and that’s because I think balance isn’t too far off from being in a “good” spot right now. Now obviously, REDFOR is currently favoured rather heavily, since their GBAD is actually dangerous, and their workhorse ARM (Kh-31 variants) are incredibly effective, which allows them to set the pace of the battle and take all important positional advantage within the first few minutes of the game, forcing BLUFOR to fight an uphill battle. BUT, and I only noticed this today, once BLUFOR manages to actually take out the REDFOR AA, the advantage shifts in their favour. Most BLUFOR jets tend to carry more ground attack munitions which lets them kill more targets per sortie, and the F-111F is a much better nuke carrier than the Su-24M or Tornado, which lets them more reliably get those big late game airfield nukes that can swing the game.
As it stands, it seems most matches I’ve played today for example have ended with either teams around/below 1000 tickets when the other team hit 0, so very close matches, which is great, but the REDFOR team consistently played with a 3 player disadvantage compared to BLUFOR, showing that even with ~20% less players, they were still putting up a very good fight and even winning, supporting the claim the current balance is skewed in their favour.
Regarding the decision to remove the Buk-M3 and to add the AGM-88G AARGM-ER, I’ve already mentioned this, but I think its a step in the wrong direction, and a lazy way to try to balance the mode.
Finally, for my recommendations on how to improve the top tier version of this mode in the future:
- Fix the Aster 30’s kinematic performance. There are multiple bug reports on the subject already. If the reason you aren’t doing this is because it would “be too strong” in GFRB, just remove the Aster 30 from the player variant of the SAMP/T and add the Aster 15 instead. Its pretty obvious that’s more in the ballpark of all the other current top tier SAM’s and the way you’ve modelled the missile anyways.
- Bring the Buk-M3 back but nerf its 70km lock range seeker down to something like 25km instead. There is no reason why the missile should have a 70km seeker when it has a max flight range of 70km and most of the other ARH seekers in-game have 16km range. This will remove the issue with the annoying constant RWR alerts from its seeker or the S-300 lock, making the game a lot more pleasant, and will likely reduce its effectiveness greatly.
- Use a similar system to ground simulator battles and set specific airframes to specific teams instead of just dividing them by what tech tree they are in. No more Su-30MKM on the BLUFOR side, no more F-15/16/Eurofighter on the REDFOR side. Maybe give REDFOR Rafale and/or Gripen for the sake of providing them a few more options, but if you do, lock them to REDFOR.
- Buff the ships AA substantially and have them actually DO something (land troops, shoot at depots, actually defend the coastline from aircrafts trying to fly along it into their rear)
- Buff rewards for damaging and killing ships.
- Don’t let depots respawn in the same spot. Attacking convoys should be able to “build” depots if they capture a depots spot and the depot is destroyed, but if a depot is destroyed, it should respawn further back to provide a more dynamic frontline!
- Give BLUFOR jets their ESM as per bug reports. Its not fair, nor even realistic, that REDFOR is the only side with built in or even quite frankly functional ESM (HARM ESM is so bad its not worth using)
- Reduce the RCS of smaller ARM’s like HARM/ALARM/LD-10/CM-102. There’s no reason they should be getting picked up by radar at the same range as the Kh-31 variants. Or better yet, revisit the RCS of munitions in general, as there are other major issues with munition RCS, namely the ability for aircraft radars and ARH missiles to consistently find an hit other AAM’s even at extreme ranges, leading to the current “iron dome meta” where players shoot each others missiles down until one player runs out.
- Increase smaller ARM’s like HARM/ALARM/LD-10/CM-102’s track rate and max G loads. There’s no reason these missiles should be as bad as they are at closer ranges when closer ranges is basically the only time you can use them in-game.
Looking forwards to seeing your next iteration of this game mode, be it at this top tier BR, or any other BR you choose to test it in next. Its the most fun I’ve had in War Thunder in years, and there’s a ton of potential there!
Oh, and it goes without saying, but having this mode adapted to sim would be fantastic, and could help you really stress test the mode.
