Hello I was Curious if there is a way to change what planes spawn during test flights. I’m rather tired of trying to test a low br plane, and having the chase a mig or some other jet to test the guns or practicing.
Yeah, I’d like it but no, here’s no way to change it. However, if you have the plane you might be able to create a Custom Mission with low tier planes.
Your best bet is the “Mission editor.”
Copy pasting the primer I made for WT sim gunnery:
Hello!
Stona on forums brought my attention to a little feature on Warthunder I didn’t even know existed. The mission editor. This weekend I tried it out and…
- You can pick what plane your enemies fly (somewhat constrained by mission type) to dictate the difficulty of landing your shots (big fat plane vs tiny annoying mosquitoes… although mosquitoes are kind of fat)
- When you have allies alive, the enemies fly in a fairly erratic but still somewhat plausible ways, giving you challenging deflection shots for practice.
- When your allies died, the enemy enters a passive cartwheel circling pattern, letting you choose between high-aspect deflection shots or trying to saddle up on their six.
- You can set the ratio of buddies/enemies to manipulate which of the earlier outcome will come to pass sooner.
- While friends are alive and enemies are “Veteran”; they’ll try to shoot you and get on your six giving you a very basic chance at practicing overshoots. Not the best use case, but it exists.
… This is perfect for being able to practice gunnery in new planes or to learn the basics before going into a live match as a newbie!
Why is this better than test flight?
You can set the amount of targets that spawn AND what plane they spawn in. As described, they also fly erratically to give more challenging shots. No more hunting chaikas in late-war spitfires.
Why is this better than custom battles?
Custom battles seem to devolve into enemies all spamming IL-2 or similar strike craft which are significantly easier to hit and the tail-gunners introduce unwanted variables when you’re completely new to a plane and are just trying to figure out the gunsight in the firstplace.
Furthermore, allies/enemies groundpounding don’t cause the battle to end prematurely.
That sounds great. How do I use this feature?
- Pick the plane you wish to practice gunnery and approaches in.
- Right click, select “Test Flight.”
- Bottom left corner, click “Mission Editor.”
- Map choice dictates what nation your enemies can fly. This is fairly self-evident and also follows blue/red splits.
- There, choose frontline: Pick “Friendlies around Hostile/Hostiles around friendlies” if you want to practice ground-strike or hunting CAS as they’re doing bomb runs. Otherwise, pick as you desire (hostile sector has AAA fire but it’s inconsequential).
- For practicing fighter-on-fighter action, pick “Head to Head combat” to cut out the fat. Friendlies around hostile to defend from enemy assault variants/bomber intercept mission types, hostiles around friendlies for being on offensive
- Pick high FRIENDLY average skill level to force enemy fighters to do evasive flying (they seem to ignore the player but react to your allies).
- Custom difficulty (sim but with markers) can be helpful to put red markers on enemy fighters to spot the more easily and unlimited ammo is a good idea if you’re completely new to the plane
Caveats
- A.I damage models seem funky. I’ve tore off a wing of a Bf109F4 in a spitfire while testing and the Bf109 just kept flying straight while barely losing altitude.
- You seem limited to pacific theatre as USA/Japan. Britain is limited to western front and the mediterrean. Germany seems to have the most diverse enemy/front selection. Soviets get eastern front khalkyn ghol vs japanese. Italy gets mediterrean.
- Sometimes the AAA hits you, can’t predict how or why.
- It’s a good idea to pick a slower target plane because they fly pretty damn fast in the cartwheel formation and while that’s neat for learning long-range shooting - it’s something to keep in mind (Zero chasing P-51-D30 not recommended).
- I havn’t checked how it works or if it at all works for jets above the F8 Crusaders. Even at crusaders, it is janky as hell and your aircraft carriers look a bit old. Hope your jet can take off without catapults (you can choose airspawn): Imgur: The magic of the Internet
How did you not realize this existed for so long?`
I thought “Mission Editor” required additional software to be downloaded and would be heavy on system resources. Nope. It’s just a few menu settings.
Nota bene: Only works for subsonic targets. Physics is only a suggestion to A.I
Wouldn’t creating a private Custom Match be better? Well, I’ve sometimes tried to do the Mission Editor thing and I had problems on the type of battle.
Bad thing about Custom Matches ar that you can’t select an exact vehicle, youncan only select the countries and the tier.
This is my main motivation (specifying A.I model) because custom battles love going all bomber/attacker (I get shredded) and I really don’t want to deal with tailgunners when I’m trying to learn a new gunsight/gun/ammo combo.