Summary:
For high-tier Simulator Battles (BR 8.0+), divide Germany into two historical alignments:
- FRG (West Germany): NATO-aligned vehicles
- GDR (East Germany): Warsaw Pact-aligned vehicles
This would improve realism, reduce teamkill confusion, and enhance Cold War immersion — without affecting RB or GRB.
Why This Matters
Right now, Germany appears on both NATO and Soviet sides in Sim Battles above BR 8.0. That leads to:
- Friendly fire due to identical vehicles on both teams (e.g., MiG-21MF)
- Immersion-breaking combinations (West German Leopards flying alongside East German MiGs)
- Harder vehicle recognition, especially for new or returning players
Sim Battles are meant to be realistic — but right now, Germany is historically incoherent.
How It Would Work
Scope:
- Only affects Simulator Battles
- Applies at BR 8.0+, when GDR vehicles (MiG-21MF, T-55AM, etc.) start appearing
System:
Each high-tier German vehicle gets an alignment tag:
- NATO (FRG): e.g., Leopard 1, F-104G, M48A2, TAM
- Warsaw Pact (GDR): e.g., MiG-21MF, T-55AM, BMP-1
Players using NATO-aligned vehicles go to the NATO team, and Warsaw Pact vehicles go to the Eastern Bloc team.
Gating (Optional):
To avoid overwhelming new players, GDR-aligned vehicles in Sim Battles could be **locked behind unlocking Tier V USSR similar to how Israel requires Tier IV US/UK/France to access.
Why This Works
- Realism: East and West Germany were never on the same side
- Simplicity: No need for a new tech tree — just matchmaker filtering in Sim
- Clarity: Easier for players to identify friend vs. foe
- Expandable: This model could apply to other mixed tech trees (e.g., Polish, Czech, Finnish vehicles)
What This Is Not
- This is not a call for a new GDR tech tree
- This would not change RB or GRB
- This is only for Simulator Battles, where identification and realism matter most
Let me know what you think. I would love to see GDR and FRG properly represented.
10 Likes
Cause hitting “R” on your keyboard before you shoot a tank is hard?
No. Because some shitter on the other side playing the “hehe I’m so quirky being le spy” doesn’t have to rangefind and wait the 5 seconds for it to ID, they can just shoot.
1 Like
5 seconds? It’s 1 - 3 seconds.
IFF is not tied to rangefinder speed.
It kinda is, the #1 thing that scares new potential sim players is punishment for tking, and even without one its embarassing and feels bad.
Sim needs more players and there are more hardcore sim games that give players more info on the hud/map than wt does, in combination with much higher level of communication via voice etc.
WT has way too many vehicles to learn without the goofy captured tanks/planes and things like GDR etc. For anyone but serious nerds to feel comfortable there.
I really wish ground sim was more popular, no 3rd person camera and larger maps changes the game a lot.
Theres a lot they could do to help. Voice chat, friendly tanks showing up on mini map, blue chevs when you aim at a friendly, instant iff via rf, lots of things i cant think of off the top of my head. Making sim more kind to newer players at the cost of some realism cant hurt when the mode is as dead as it is.
And even in games like post scriptum or squad with like 1/1000th the amount of vehicles to learn, much more realistic matchups, voice chat, friendlies marked on the map etc. FF still happens.
I get these games do not model damage anywhere near the level of WT, but the fact you have a player taking individual roles inside the vehicles like driver commander, gunner etc. Prescence of ground units AT, gun enplacements, working with infrantry (radio calls to real players on the ground asking for info etc.) Makes it a whole other level WT will never reach.
2 Likes
+1 for more nations/vehicles, and for air sim too.
I think a system that prevents captured/copy paste vehicles from facing their parent country (by forcing them to the same side) would be a wonderful addition to sim.
1 Like
I wish they would take advantage of rotations to make like real battles or as close as they can with the maps they have and limit vehicle usage to historical prescence instead of bringinging whatever slop you have between x and y BR.
Also balance things around sp costs or make a whole new system. IF you are gonna spawn a KT in the BoB it should have some serious player friction/weight/cost vs spawning in a pz IV.
The few times Ive tried sim its just everyone bringing whatever the most OP vehicles are available in that bracket for the day and its kinda lame.
Jokes on you, buddy, many people play on Xbox and PlayStation, so we don’t even know what the R key is. Also, you can report your position all you want, not everyone answers back. People also cover their roundels with bushes or other roundels to hide that they are captured vehicles.
Honestly, the whole Copy-Paste tanks need to be put on the proper side. Captured KVs should not be with Germany, T-55s and T-72s should not be with NATO, F-16s and Mirages should not be flying on the same side as J-10s. Simple as. East Germany was with Russia, therefore their tanks should be with Russia. Taiwan is allied with America, therefore their equipment should not be with Russia and China.
1 Like
IFF is automatic and requires no input from other team mates.
IFF doesn’t care if roundels are covered.
Using acronyms do not make you smart. Spell it out.
Do…do you not know what IFF stands for? Are you that hurt that he didn’t spell out “identification, friend or foe” twice?
Acronyms are a useful tool to shorten and streamline communication, so long as the parties understand why the abbreviation means. And I’d say it’s entirely reasonable to assume someone on the War Thunder forums knows what IFF is, and if they don’t they can ask instead of being offended.
On one hand, it would be nice for immersion. On the other, it would be annoying to implement (because you have to do the same for China, and for any nation with subtrees) and kill a lot of lineups. Like what, you just going to run the BMP as your only tank?
Then there’s also the consideration of Sim being extremely ahistorical anyways. It’s based on BR and not historical period, prototype vehicles are allowed, and every nation in the game is simply divided into two teams and thrown at each other with no nuance.
2 Likes
Not all of us have English as our first language, you daft codger. Bet you won’t be saying the same if I said those acronyms in Mandarin.
It wouldn’t be too hard. “All M-60s go to NATO” and “All T-72s go to Warsaw Pact”, a multi-million dollar company can figure out easy programming.
1 Like
First off, this is the English forum. Second, I would ask what an acronym meant, or perhaps search it online, before attacking another user for using an acronym.
I totally agree, and the same needs to be done for any other nation that has copy-paste vehicles that do not align with the political climate of the tech tree nation within a given BR era…
But I think you totally overcomplicated how this could be done.
Simulator Ground Battles is already a set of predetermined vehicles allowed in each lineup, it is not a BR range as some vehicles appear as outliers (for whatever reason…) from the main BR group of most vehicles. So, in that case, all that would need to be done is simply move the GDR vehicles (and others) to the other side’s lineup.
The only reason this cannot currently be done right now is because there is no way for the player to select what team they want to be on first, you just select the nation you want to use and search for a match. With the lineups appropriately changed, now all that would need to be done is to just make simulator battles a lobby based system, which already exists in the game for Air SB and Custom Battles. If the player selects the red team, all NATO vehicles in the German tech tree are unavailable and grayed out because of the predetermined lineups already in the game. If the player switched to the blue team, the GDR vehicles become unavailable.
Problem solved, works just like the old events with predetermined vehicle lineups.
3 Likes
Survey says? You’re wrong! (Shocker)
Spoiler
It’s 3 seconds of continuously holding over the silhouette. That means no bumping the mouse, perfectly tracking the target, praying it doesn’t have part of it slip behind a hill or tree or bush or literally anything.
Meanwhile they point and click on you. Perfectly balanced.
2 Likes
@warthogboy09
Weird that you call yourself a liar after agreeing with me.
Also last time I used it I moved without issue, though that was last year.