there is sadly too many of them at this point, but still a lot could have been replaced with indigenous designs but gaijin would rather be lazy and copy paste then trickle unique vehicles later as premiums and event vehicles. I usually avoid using them completely, i grinded the French tree completely with French planes only.
There are a few reasons for existence of export planes in TTs:
most people fully grind one or two nations at max;
people from x country want to have all planes which were used by said country, without the need to grind some other tree;
air arcade exists, which needs setups to play;
ground lineups need competitive CAS/CAP planes;
devs aren’t interested in players researching TTs as fast as possible (actually if there aren’t enough planes in the line it is usually compensated by higher RP requirements).
Would be nice if you could get a RP discount for each identical vehicle researched though.
Romanian planes are accomodated in the Italian TT, mostly premium unfortunately.
Calling unique export variants “slop” is certainly a choice… not a smart choice, but a choice.
Complaining about the unique Malaysian & Thai aircraft… holy.
No one is forcing you to play them, and you need to research 6ish vehicles of a rank to unlock the next rank irrelevant of what other vehicles are present.
@simsimkek
Nothing should be replaced, only new things added.
Copy-paste is uncommon in War Thunder major updates.
Hopefully France gets stuff like Fouga Magister, some early Cold War jets, and prop variants like DB3803 to bridge over the black of French designs in rank III/IV
It’s pretty frustrating on the ground side of things too where more and more German tanks are being added in a way where you are forced to grind and purchase them in order to unlock new tiers
There’s a fine line to walk, especially as the over reliance on copy paste has diluted the unique feel of many of the trees.
For example, why does Germany need the m44? Hummel fills the same role in the same Br range. Likewise, why does France have so many F-16’s? It’s not like France doesn’t have domestic designs and variants in the same Br range that carry similar weapon systems.
Some additions, like the Japanese m41 make more sense as Japan had a notable gap in design and manufacturing of indigenous armor at the end of WW2, but it doesn’t seem like much thought is going into asking “does this tree need this imported design?” it’s just paste, paste, paste
i get that this is not what you want, but lets say all exprts were removed. japan would have 0 top tier air, same for israel. i am with you on the hummel, M44 and m55 were put way to many places. but it makes many tech trees more playable. britain for exaple has no reliable CAS from like 3.7 to 8.7 and is in need for some export planes.