When I read books or listen to historians discussing the characteristics of armoured fighting vehicles, one of the key features that distinguishes certain tanks and AFVs re the quality of their optics and the ability for the crew to observe their surroundings and Identify targets.
Despite being modelled ingame ground vehicle vision ports, episcopes and periscopes serve no function that I’m aware of. This excludes, the drivers view, commander view and gunners optic ofcourse.
I haven’t played more realistic sims but I have served in the armoured core. My thoughts are that there’s no way to implement vehicle optics as a core part of the game without destroying the pace of battle, making the game painfully claustrophobic and difficult to enjoy. I’m also aware that there a many concessions necessary for the a single player to handle the rolls of several crewmen
That said, I can’t shake the feeling that the vehicles in ground forces are missing a huge part of their personality by not including the benefits and limitations of their optics. Wishful thinking has me considering that the added balancing factor of vision and situation awareness as a mechanical factor may help round off some of the roughedges in some BR brackets.
I think destroying sights should block their use. For example, when Gunner’s sight is destroyed, you are forced into commander or third person view until it is fixed. Right now, destroying a sight only disables it’s thermal vision.
It depends on if there are backup sights, which iirc many tanks do have, so only losing thermals due to your main optics being shot out isnt as unrealistic as you’d think
Right, but in War Thunder the optics still retain their magnification IIRC, while in reality backup sights often are worse in this aspect. And many vehicles don’t even have backups.
Yes, magnification should be worse to a degree varying between tanks. Iirc Abrams just has a conventional sight as a backup so magnification would be worse but still usable
For tanks without backups, then they should be locked out of sight mode
In part its a balancing decision to level the playing field. It also makes their life a lot easier when it comes to vehicle design. Also I think maps are WAY too small to see the major impacts optics would actually have.
But it would be good to see a greater divserity in optic types and such
This is an awful idea, but what if destroyed optics blurred the third person camera in a certain direction and by a given area based on which optics were hit.
Well, I think about the amount of development, testing and conceptual work required to make this feasible would be massive and it would a be a feature that is still a net deficit to the game.
In a perfect world where the blindness or blurred vision resulting from damaged optics is implemented in a way that is fair to all tanks (as they mostly have a unique setup for sights) I think the frustration of the receiving player would always outweight the benefit to the attacking player in a way that would make war thunder overall less fun.
To flesh out my idea, I’m thinking the optics would be a max 4s repair on stock repair and 2s on ace repair. The idea is a solution looking for a problem at the end of the day. I would expect it would only come into play intentionally at very short ranges. I’m imagining a Sherman or Chaffee using their 50. Cal to shoot the optics of a player just on the other side of a hill crest to temporarily blind them. Or arty strikes on a tank waiting around a corner and hoping to disable or at least blind them so you can have a higher chance of successfully pushing a corner.
The more I think of it, the it seems like it would detract from the fun of the game without adding meaningful mechanical depth. To me it would make more sense in Enlisted to give infantry that have no anti armour capabilities to disable tanks. In war thunder, most vehicles have a reasonable chance of disabling each other with the main armaments, so adding minute elements like this just seems like it would be tedious.
One of the things I notice on the largest maps at top tier, is the game slows down and becomes more manaegable. To the point where I can patienly line up kills with my stock tanks.
It would be interesting if those huge maps were included as low as BR7.7. I think it might give some of late WW2 vehicles some breathing room if the maps were opened up a bit
One of the theories I have is that the topography of war thunder maps is exaggerated to the point where most tanks can’t fight effrctively due to power to weight or gun depression.
Sometimes I think the unnatural terrain is a big contributer to which vehicles climb to the top of the meta.
The largest toptier maps are too small. We really need to redo maps like old Tunisia where one side is very long range, one side is CQB, and the middle is relatively medium range.