You care about rewards, yet?
Do you know how research points are awarded in warthunder?
You get RP for individual actions.
You also get RP for EVERY SECOND YOU SPEND ALIVE.
However, this RP you gain is modified by your Activity%.
Activity% is a function that takes time alive and score obtained as input and spits out a multiplier.
In Air RB, this comes out at a maximum around 95-97% at 12 mintues and 1500-2000 score then decays for staying alive longer while getting enough score to sustain 90+% becomes very hard to nearly impossible - yielding 80% activity games even for 2200 score (5 kills or so in a mode without respawns).
In ground, the activity system behaves really weirdly. If you stay alive for the whole match, it behaves as you expect for air realistic. However, if you respawn your activity% seems to become some form of averaging of the score and time survived across the different vehicles. I struggle to pinpoint its exact mechanic as my special interest lies in othher game modes for obsessive data gathering.
However, even without exact data it’s clear that with very high probability, the best reward for a match requires surviving to the end without respawning.
A single kill, assuming 100% activity and no victory bonus is equal to surviving for 80 seconds.
A single capture, assuming 100% activity and no victory bonus is equal to surviving for 167 minutes.
Even at 80% activity, we only need to survive for 200 seconds to get the same RP reward as a single solo point capture.
At 10 minutes of survival at 80% activity, you need to single-handedly capture a point ~3 times to get the same RP income. THREE TIMES.
And we havn’t considered the full formula.
Without victory bonus (1.34 loss multiplier, 1.0 economy modifier, 100% activity):
94 RP for cap= 1.34 x 1.0 x 1 x 0.56 x ? (using ? rather than x due to forum formatting)
? = 125 seconds.
If we lose the game, have 100% activity, we only need to survive a whooping 125 seconds to get as much RP as capturing the point! If we assume 80% activity, we need to survive 156 seconds.
Crazy!
What if we win?
94 RP for cap= 2 x 1.0 x 1 x 0.56 x ?
? = 83 seconds
With 80%, 104 seconds!
Do you see how little personal benefit there is to capturing a point if doing so means you die earlier?
If you stay alive, gain score to be within the 80-95% activity range and win? You’ve hit jackpot.
Now kills.
Kills get funny.
Kills give pitiful RP per kill - only 45. However. Kills give us a universal RP multiplier for all RP sources in the match (at least in air battles it applies for all RP sources I tested).
So.
What’s the optimal ground battle in terms of progression?
Survive for 12 minutes in a single life. Get 8 kills for 100% RP bonus. Get ~2000 score and win before 15 minutes pass.
If you respawn, predicting how the activity% and time alive will reward you RP for your score gets really weird, but so far I found you get less RP for 500 score 5 minutes alive, 500 score 5 minutes alive compared to 1000 score 10 minutes alive.