Hey everyone, we’ve taken a look at your feedback on our proposed separate Battle Ratings for different modes and are presenting you with the updated table of changes and some explanations for specific vehicles and for Battle Ratings in general.
Battle Ratings
While we’re here, we’d like to give some additional context behind Battle Ratings and how they’re decided. Battle Ratings are decided based on how much a vehicle earns, but this is not purely economical. We use this metric because it’s all encompassing and considers every action a player makes with their vehicle, so this considers frags, assists, caps, and effectively every useful action a vehicle can perform all bundled into one universal metric.
This is the “Efficiency” of each vehicle and gives us a very well rounded perspective on all of its abilities and how it’s actually being used.
If a vehicle has high efficiency, it’s outperforming its contemporaries in multiple ways the majority of times it spawns on the map, and as a result may have to be increased in Battle Rating. Whereas a vehicle with low efficiency is not performing well across the board against what it fights, and may be moved down. However this is not purely a data driven process, we often consider additional factors such as the volume of players using a certain vehicle, its lineup, new features that may be altering performance in different ways etc — and this often leads us to delay a change we otherwise would have made to gather more information. Even though we do primarily go by this efficiency metric, we aren’t bound by it, and spend a lot of time each Battle Rating cycle to look over feedback for different perspectives and elements we may not have initially considered.
Ultimately, it’s very hard to balance a vehicle in a vacuum. On paper an aircraft might have incredible speed, or a tank might have great penetration for its Battle Rating, but this is cold data, in the sense that just because a vehicle on the surface has a very impressive asset, it doesn’t mean that asset guarantees high performance. It’s more about how a vehicle is actually functioning in the game, rather than weighing up its assets in isolation. So efficiency is good data to be informed by as it considers everything and everyone.
We’d like to note that when balancing aircraft before the introduction of separate Battle Ratings by mode, in the vast majority of cases the Battle Rating was set according to the performance for Air Battles, and not Ground Battles. We understand that many of you wanted a Battle Rating reduction for strike aircraft in Air Battles, so we have some additional answers for you on this below.
What’s Changed
We’ve provided some detailed comments about specific aircraft that you raised in your feedback. You can also take a look at the full list of changes in the table linked below.
Q-5L — we’ve removed the increase to 10.7 and instead the Battle Rating will be increased to 10.3 in Ground Battles. Please note that we initially decided to lower the Battle Rating in Air Battles to 9.3 (like the Q-5A), and not to 9.0 (like the Q-5A early), since in the next major update this aircraft will receive countermeasures, making it similar to the Q-5A in Air Battles. Countermeasures should also make it easier to counter various threats in Ground Battles.
Jaguar GR.1A and Buccaneer S.2B — we’ve decided to not increase the Battle Rating of these attack aircraft in Ground Battles. However, please note that when increasing the maximum Battle Rating of ground vehicles, the Battle Rating of these aircraft may increase so that they both remain within the ground setup, while still compensating for the high efficiency and for the increase in Battle Ratings of vehicles of other nations.
Various variants of the F-16A and Netz — we’ve removed the reduction in Battle Rating of all variants of the F-16A to 11.7 in Ground Battles, since these aircraft combine their strike and fighter capabilities well. The Netz will instead be lowered to 12.0, as it’s comparable to the rest of the F-16As in its strike capabilities.
Regarding Strike Variants of the Tornado and Bomb Carriers in General
At the moment, most aircraft that primarily bomb bases in Air Battles are as effective, if not more, than fighters of the same Battle Rating, although they often have much weaker weapons and air combat capabilities than fighters.
We’re aware that many of you think that the Battle Rating of bomb carriers in Air Realistic Battles is too high, comparing them with fighters solely in terms of air combat capabilities.
However, on the economy side of things, the Battle Rating of bomb carriers — which are discussed in many topics — are optimal or even underestimated. This means that their weak capabilities for air combat doesn’t prevent them from receiving on average a good or even great reward. As noted above, the average reward is one of the main factors in determining the Battle Rating of a vehicle. Therefore in order for us to be able to reduce the Battle Rating of these aircraft while maintaining healthy economic progression, the rewards for damaging and destroying bases would need to be reduced so that the average reward (the effectiveness) of bombers and fighters is equalized.
We fully realise that a change like this will not receive any support from players who are asking for a reduction in Battle Ratings at the current average reward values.
Therefore in the summer, we’re planning to give more clarification and bring this issue up for discussion — whether or not we should reduce the rewards for bases in order to reduce the Battle Rating of aircraft that mainly bomb bases, or leave everything as it is now. Please follow the news for more details on this.
Based on what we’ve written above, as of now we are going to leave the strike variants of the Tornado at their current Battle Ratings in Air Realistic Battles. The Battle Rating of the Tornado IDS ASSTA1 (Germany), Tornado GR.1 (Britain), and Tornado IDS (1995) (Italy) will not be lowered, and the Battle Rating of the Tornado IDS MFG (Germany) and Tornado IDS WTD61 (Germany) will not be increased to that of the other Tornadoes mentioned above.
AMX — in Ground Battles, the effectiveness of this aircraft is very high. It has a lot of flyouts and its efficiency is more than twice the average for its Battle Rating, so we can’t help but increase its Battle Rating altogether. However taking your feedback into account, we’ve decided to increase its Battle Rating just by one step to 10.7 and will monitor its effectiveness. We’d like to note that we’re not expecting miracles here, and it’s likely that this aircraft’s efficiency will remain at very high levels even at 10.7. If this happens, it may face a further increase in a planned Battle Ratings changes in the future.
Fighters with Weak Strike Capabilities
In our proposed changes, there are many aircraft that can be good fighters, but at the same time they carry weapons that don’t stand out at their current Battle Ratings in terms of quantity and/or quality. Based on the short combat ranges in Ground Battles and the focus on the ground part of the battle (any aircraft in Ground Battles mainly serve as strike aircraft), we consider fighter capabilities to be secondary, and take them into account last when balancing aircraft in Ground Battles. However, we’ll monitor the performance and make changes to the Battle Rating in Ground Battles if needed.
A-6E TRAM — at its current Battle Rating, this aircraft has a large selection of guided weapons that can effectively engage enemy ground targets. However, at its new Battle Rating, this aircraft will, among other threats, encounter longer-range air defences. We’re also considering expanding this aircraft’s arsenal, and in a future major update we’re planning to add the AGM-123 Skipper II, which can be used to combat air defence systems and hit targets from distances greater than regular free-fall bombs. Please note that the AGM-65 Maverick was not used on this variant of this aircraft.
Su-25/Su-25K — we’ve seen your questions about why these aircraft don’t receive Battle Rating increases in Ground Battles. This is because according to current game data, these aircraft are already at their ideal Battle Ratings. They don’t carry “fire and forget” weapons to hit ground targets and don’t have a targeting pod with good zoom or guidance angles that allow them to fly away from combat while guiding weapons. When using their primary weapons, they’re forced to not fly away from the target, but instead to fly straight at it. In order to effectively destroy ground targets, they constantly need to operate in anti-aircraft defence areas and fly almost in a straight line which explains the efficiency for them.
A-10A/A-10A Late — these aircraft have “fire and forget” weapons, which gives them an advantage in both defeating ground targets and duelling situations when going up against air defence systems. They’re quite effective in Ground Battles.
Super Etendard — in Ground Battles, the efficiency of this aircraft is too high to increase its Battle Rating by only one step, as its efficiency is almost 2 times higher than that of its contemporaries. When its Battle Rating is increased to 10.7 in Ground Battles, we’ll be adding the option to carry the AS-30L missile to the Super Etendard.
Aircraft with All-Aspect IR Missiles at 10.0-10.3 Battle Ratings
For this one, we’re primarily talking about the A-10A, A-10A Late, Su-25, Su-25K and A-6E TRAM, which populate these Battle Ratings in Air Battles and have all-aspect missiles. The flight performance characteristics of these aircraft after expending air-to-air missiles does not allow them to fight equally with aircraft that have higher speeds and thrust-to-weight ratios, which is why these aircraft can only effectively fight with aircraft that have similar characteristics.
The effectiveness of these aircraft, even at their Battle Rating, is lower than expected or equal to that. Increasing their Battle Rating can lead to encounters with even more difficult opponents, which will further reduce their effectiveness. The AMX on the other hand has good performance characteristics and a fairly high efficiency, so in a future planned changes to Battle Ratings, its Battle Rating in Air Battles may be increased.
Future Plans
We’d like to reiterate that the separation of Battle Ratings for lower ranked vehicles will be carried out as part of future planned Battle Rating changes. We’ll also be monitoring the performance and any changes may be revised as part of the planned Battle Rating changes if the efficiency of changed aircraft becomes too low or high.
We hope we’ve clarified the situation on this news and addressed the concerns you raised in your feedback. Thanks once again for all of your comments!
The War Thunder Team