Treads and Wings

Game Discussion General Discussion
1

10 years ago, I picked up the treads and wings with wonder and amazement, but now the same treads and wings are tarnished and dull, seemingly left in disrepair

The wings have been tarnished, Air RB isn’t fun anymore.

The charm of Sabre-Mig15 top tier, or F-4E-Mig23 top tier is no more.

Replaced with the dread of modern ARB with modes that do not befit the airplanes that partake in them.

No more meaningful matches, no more game-winning plays, no more going back to the hangar feeling like a fighter ace of old.

Not even any teamwork, or strategy, no 1v1 faceoffs over a hundred-mile stretch of sky vectored in by AWACS and guided by good situational awareness.

No freedom to go where you choose, no unique way to contribute to the battle, just 32 planes throwing themselves blindly onto each other.

Just a 5-minute meatgrinder that is repeated over and over again to the same end, the fighters of team A win against the exact same fighters of team B.

The treads have been tarnished, ground RB is not fun anymore.

The tanks have outgrown their battlefields, no more are the fields of Poland inhabited by Tigers, Mice, Shermans, and Pershings.

Instead Abrams, Urals, Leopards, and Leclercs thunder over the same tired fields, now unable to truly serve as an arena for these new-age behemoths.

What was once a grand arena befitting the era has now turned into a cramped killbox where snipers are forced to fight with knives.

What was once an arena where battles came down to the skill of the warriors, is now simply a ground for unfairly crowned champions to throw their weight around.

These champions are named Greyhound, Fullback, and Flanker.

Together, we must make the effort to remedy these issues, I know we may disagree in our methods, but I hope that we at least have consensus of a problem. Where there is consensus of a problem, a solution is usually not far behind.

So I ask, can we together make an effort to polish again our treads and wings?

4 Likes
2

We got War Thunder poems before GTA VI 🙏🏽😭

3

For your complaints about air RB:

I got disillusioned with Air RB brainless TDM and unreliable team-mates who refuse to try as well.

I have found a solution though which I propose to you:

Air simulator Enduring Confrontation!

But you say - “I don’t have a HOTAS! I don’t have rudder pedals! I don’t have headtracking nor VR!” and I hear you. Not having rudder pedals is a major pain point to me, and lacking headtracking does make some cool planes harder to fly due to my stiff camera controls.

However, you do not need fancy equipment to fly in air sim AND have fun AND be reasonably competetive against most people.

All you need is a willingness to fail, to fail horribly, to keep crashing and presevere until all the little nuances and muscle memory clicks.

Also some actual flight theory (Left turning tendencies, adverse yaw, proverse roll, coordinated flight, stall & spin prevention and recovery) is quite helpful, but it’s pretty basic and quick to learn.

Here’s my control setup with captioning to explain my choices: Warthunder Air sim controls - Album on Imgur

Why pick air simulator battles?

  • No more instructor restricting your aircraft’s full potential. No more instructor who has no idea how to coordinate rudder and ailerons. It’s just your and your plane, free to kill yourself through reckless flying or to push the limits of the airframe.
  • Outside of grind events bringing people who only care about score multipliers, prop tier sim is only really played by people who think propeller planes are cool and are willing to engage with their nuances, tactics and proper use. There still remains the occasional jet grinder, but they’re far more harmless than in ARB and actually useful since bombing ground objectives actually wins battles!
  • Chat is usually very chill and mutually respectful with the enemy and your team often employs genuine teamwork and communication to gain the edge. Only time I find lack of comms tend to be if I had the luck of the draw to only have newbies on my team. People tend to be happy to learn the conventions and shorthands tho after being ifnormed so no big deal outside of grind events
  • 3 hour maximum match length that can be cut shorter though ground-strike draining tickets and taking down air-to-air objectives (capturing zones, intercepting AI aircraft). This allows you to climb to a reasonable altitude to bank energy for those cool dogfights that start at 4K and end up on the deck.
  • Everyone starts on runways (floatplanes start 100m or so above runway) so no abusing airspawns
  • It’s a super cool feeling to fly escort to your team’s bombers in a mustang and have it make a difference

That sounds too good to be true

  • Yeah, we got buggy objectives (128x128 km maps at early jet tiers mean impossible to intercept a.i bombers as they fly at some mach 1.2 while you’re in a f2h2/horten).
  • We have issues with spotting/rendering
  • Capture objectives LOVE to expire after you flip them and are within 1% of victory on 128x128 maps
  • Jets are compressed to hell and back, and this is made worse by the BR system in sim being “for 2 days, BR X is always top tier” (sim calendar: Warthunder Air Sim BR Calendar)
  • Some closed beta aircraft feel like they could use a flight model update
  • Some closed beta aircraft feel they could use some love and care for their cockpits
  • Air grind events ruin the game mode for a few weeks at some BR brackets
  • Bombers get third person view with stabilized point & click mouse aim (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7bbd7AdgqE)
  • Early jets are only playable if you got a massive pile of SL to spend or a premium account due to the absurd way of Useful actions cycle interacts with spawn costs. In short - F80C costs 18K to spawn and can earn a maximum of 19.7K in 15 minutes assuming perfect gameplay (2 kills, land without dying after 15 mins pass)
  • Useful actions system makes Air-to-air combat feel unrewarding if you want to grind. Your rewards cap out at 1050 score essentially and any excess performance gets you nothing (Community Bug Reporting System)
Joys of the UA system

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Despite the flaws I strongly recommend giving it a try.