War Thunder's best year: 2023 in review - Part 3 (June)

Game Discussion General Discussion
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Part 1 - Introduction-March
Part 2 - April-May
Part 3 - June (current)
Part 4 - July-August
Part 5 - September
Part 6 - October
Part 7 - November-December
Part 8 - Hopes for 2024-Conclusion

Table of contents

Introduction
  • Introduction
  • Table of contents
January
  • Pages of History (January)
  • Swedish Armed Forces Day
  • Lunar New Year
  • Battle Pass Season 10 “Royal Guard”
  • Australia Day
February
  • Pages of History (February)
  • Victory in Stalingrad Day
  • Answers from the developers
  • World War Mode news
  • Update for the War Thunder CDK
  • VR Flights in the PlayStation VR2
  • Japanese National Foundation Day
  • Valentine’s Day
  • Tigor Tshirt/New merch
  • First Flight of the BO 105
  • South African Armed Forces Day
  • Defender Tournament Series
March
  • Pages of History (March)
  • Finnish Air Force Day
  • Update 2.25 “Sky Guardians”
  • International Women’s Day
  • Fair Play: March 2023
  • Tank Football
  • CV 90105 (XC-8) Wiki Decal
  • St. Patrick’s Day
  • Guest Accounts
  • First Flight of the La-5
  • Lucky Piñata
  • Moments of Valour: The Turkish Armed Forces
  • 100th Anniversary of the Italian Air Force
  • Royal Air Force Day
April
  • Pages of History (April)
  • Mobile Infantry
  • “Edge of Shell” Pack
  • Bosses of the Gym
  • Atomic Thunder: Soviet Battle Robots Tree
  • Repair Factory
  • Exowarrior Twitch Drops
  • Day of Aviation and Cosmonautics
  • Vasily Matsievich’s birthday
  • Zimbabwean Independence Day
  • Battle Pass Season 11 “Her Majesty’s Hussar”
  • Italian Liberation Day
  • Israeli Independence Day
  • Air Superiority Tournament
  • Ingame May sale
  • Golden Week
May
  • Pages of History (May)
  • Polish Constitution Day
  • Legend of Victory: BM-31-12 “Andryusha”
  • Victory Day
  • May sale in the Gaijin Store
  • War Thunder Mobile
  • US Armed Forces Day
  • French National Sailor Day
  • The Review Bombing Saga Part I: The Fellowship of the Forums
  • Anniversary of the Israeli Defense Forces
  • Swedish Home Guard Day
  • Answers from the developers
  • The Review Bombing Saga Part II: The Two Responses
June
  • Pages of History (June)
  • Turkish Air Forces Day
  • Canadian Armed Forces Day
  • D-Day
  • 500th Anniversary of Swedish Independence
  • Rare D-Day vehicles returning for GE
  • Italian Navy Day
  • The Review Bombing Saga Part III: The Return of the Economy
  • Update 2.27 “La Royale”
  • German Navy Day
  • First Flight of the MiG-21
  • Following the Roadmap: Updated Economy
  • Rankings Challenge: 2023 Grand Finals and Twitch Drops
  • British Armed Forces Day
  • Following the Roadmap: maps for aircraft, flares and repair
  • Summer Sale in the Gaijin Store
  • Swedish Air Force Day
  • JSDF Day
  • Canada Day
  • Top teams for Grand Final Season I tournament
July
  • French Air Force Day
  • US Independence Day
  • 80th Anniversary of Operation Husky
  • Atomic Thunder
  • First Flight of the A-4E
  • Bastille Day
  • Atomic Heart Snail Decals
  • First flight of the Hawker Hunter
  • First flight of the T-2
  • Battle Pass Season 12 “Armour Breaking Ambusher”
  • Following the Roadmap: Compensation of Battle Expenses, Free Backups and More!
  • Following the Roadmap: Battle Pass available in Simulator Battles
  • Russian Navy Day
  • In Detail: Air event markers in Ground Arcade Battles
  • Bots in War Thunder: what they are and how we plan to get rid of them
August
  • Pages of History (August)
  • PLA Day
  • First flight of the BAC Lightning
  • Summer Extreme
  • Following the Roadmap: refining landscape
  • End of the French Navy CBT
  • Soviet Air Fleet Day
  • Polish Armed Forces Day
  • Following the Roadmap: research helicopters with ground vehicles, marking spawn campers and more
  • US National Airborne Day
  • A Sound of Thunder: the release of War Thunder Mobile
  • MiG-15 enters service
  • 80th Anniversary of the Battle of Kursk
  • Following the Roadmap: grouping vehicles, rank changes, and improvements to premium vehicles
  • Following the Roadmap: Reducing Research/Purchase Cost of Aircraft, map changes & more
September
  • Pages of History (September)
  • 78th Anniversary of the end of World War II
  • Soviet Tanker’s Day
  • First Flight of the P-38
  • 83rd Anniversary of the Battle of Britain
  • 76th birthday of the U.S. Air Force
  • Update 2.29 “Sons of Attila”
  • Following the Roadmap: Sons of Attila Roadmap implementations and some Postponements
  • First Flight of the Mi-24
  • First Flight of the Yak-38
  • Tokushu Heiki
  • National Day of the People’s Republic of China
October
  • Pages of History (October)
  • Moments of Valor: China
  • German Unity Day
  • 80th Anniversary of the Battle of the Caucasus
  • 248th birthday of the US Navy
  • First flight of the S.O.4050 Vautour II
  • Following the Roadmap: We’d like to hear your feedback on our proposed Aircraft Destruction Mechanics & Night Battles design
  • Trafalgar Day
  • First flight of the UH-1 Iroquois
  • Twitch drops for War Thunder’s 11th anniversary
  • Battle Pass Season 13 “Tropical Storm”
  • First flight of the J 35 Draken
  • 100th anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye
  • Halloween
  • Update 2.31 “Kings of Battle”
November
  • Pages of History (November)
  • 11th birthday of War Thunder
  • Dreams Come True: TOG II
  • Following the Roadmap: Skill Bonuses in RP & Selectable Night Battles!
  • Battle of the Atlantic
  • Italian National Unity and Armed Forces Day
  • 11th anniversary sale in the Gaijin Store
  • Polish National Independence Day
  • 74th birthday of the Chinese Air Force
  • 68th birthday of the Bundeswehr
  • Fair Play: November 2023
  • November research changes
  • Black Friday
  • Results of the Anniversary Tournaments dedicated to 11 Years of War Thunder, plus the “Esport II” Trophy!
  • Su-25K Wiki decal
  • St. Andrew’s Day
December
  • Pages of History (December): The Heroic Nurse
  • Winter Extreme
  • Following the Roadmap: WT Mobile Login Streak & Keeping you updated with our plans
  • Update 2.33 “Air Superiority”
  • Christmas and New Years
  • Ingame winter sale
  • Collecting ideas for the 2024 roadmap
  • Fair Play: December 2023
  • Gaijin says they “don’t believe” the M1 Abrams had upgraded armor
  • Gaijin says they don’t believe that MANPADS missiles can pull as hard as official documents say they can
  • Winter sale in the Gaijin Store
  • First flight of the MiG-15
Other stuff that happened in 2023
  • Secret document leaks
Hopes for 2024
  • A Lesser focus on top tier
  • No more high rank premiums
  • No more high rank event vehicles
  • A return to 6 vehicles for marathon events
  • Making it possible to get all 4 vehicles in crafting events without spending money
  • No more duplicate decals in marathon events
  • A return to 4 vehicles in the Battle Pass
  • A return to low tier prizes in marathon events and Battle Passes being coupons
  • Breaks between Battle Pass seasons
  • A system for returning old event vehicles
  • Better support for coloring text in lang mods
Conclusion
  • Conclusion

June

Pages of History (June)

This one is a huge step up from May’s Pages of History profile picture. It’s not stunning, it doesn’t blow me away, but it’s a huge step up.


“Nikolai Gastello” profile picture

Turkish Air Force Day

For Turkish Air Force Day, Gaijin brought back the T129 ATAK. It is very nice to see the T129 return. I think it’s one of the coolest helicopters ingame, but truthfully, I have no idea how good or bad it is. I don’t play helicopters, I don’t care for them, and I have no clue about the quality of this vehicle.

The thing I most liked about this event was the absolutely stunning decal. The decal — a T129 with the Turkish flag on the helicopter blades called the “Turkish Air Force” decal — is easily my favorite armed forces day decal ever. It is absolutely stunning and I adore it. I am so happy to have it.


“Turkish Air Force” decal


T129 ATAK

Canadian Armed Forces Day

For Canadian Armed Forces Day, Gaijin brought back the HMCS Haida and gave out the “Canadian Armed Forces Day” decal. It is nice to see the HMCS Haida back, though truthfully I have no clue how good or bad this vehicle is. However, I really like seeing these older vehicles brought back to give people a chance to get them. As for the decal, it’s another one of those standardized decals with the Leopard C2 (MEXAS) as the vehicle in it. On one hand, the Leopard C2 (MEXAS) is a gorgeous vehicle, but on the other hand, I still dislike these standardized decals. I don’t hate them, but I do dislike them.


“Canadian Armed Forces Day” decal


HMCS Haida

Note: this section has been updated to correct the Leopard C2 (MEXAS)'s name to the C2 from the C2A1. Thank you to forums user StormRyder13 for this correction.

D-Day

This was a very disappointing D-Day. All it was was a text decal that said “D-Day” on it, some gamemodes with historical vehicle presets, and some tournaments I don’t care about. I found this very disappointing. I’m not asking for much, not a vehicle, just a decoration or something. This was barely anything.


“D-Day” text

500th Anniversary of Swedish Independence

It was neat to see Sweden’s 500th Independence Day celebrated, but truthfully, I think it was worthy of a more interesting decal. The one we got, which is the top of a building with the Swedish 3 crowns emblem on the top overlayed on the Swedish flag as a background is cool, but I think that for a day as significant as this one is to Sweden, it deserved more. this one feels lacking, it feels like something you’d get on some other event for the Independence Day of Sweden, not the 500th Independence Day of Sweden.


“500 Years of Swedish Independence” decal

Rare D-Day vehicles returning for GE

It was nice to see this. Bringing back these rare vehicles is nice and I like it. I’ve covered all 4 vehicles already, it’s the Achilles (65 Rg.), the M5A1 (5th Can.Arm.Div), the P-47M-1-RE, and the Typhoon F.B. Mk. 1b. Because I’ve already covered them already and you can read earlier in this article to see my longer opinions, I’ll quickly sum them up here:

Aviation:

  • P-47M-1-RE - USA - Rank IV - Fighter - Hidden premium

    • Very, very good. Easily the best P-47. If you have the money, it’s very much worth it, but $40 is quite expensive.

  • Typhoon F.B. Mk. 1b - Great Britain - Rank III - Fighter - Hidden premium

    • Pretty good, but absolutely not necessary.

Ground:

  • M5A1 (5th Can.Arm.Div) - USA - Rank II - Light tank - Hidden premium

    • Very good and I highly recommend it, especially because it’s cheap.

  • Achilles (65 Rg.) - Great Britain - Rank III - Tank destroyer - Hidden premium

    • Good gun, but it’s not my style.

Italian Navy Day

Italian Navy Day saw the return of the RN Geniere. The Geniere is a decent vehicle. Decent speed, decent guns, not great turret traverse, decent enough armor, but still relatively bad because it’s a destroyer. It’s a relatively bog standard destroyer. Don’t feel bad if you missed out on getting it, it’ll probably come back again and 2 other Soldati-class destroyers are in the game: The RN Corazziere in the tree and the event premium RN Aviere.


“Emblem of the Italian Navy” decal


RN Geniere

They also gave away the Emblem of the Italian Navy as a decal and I really like this, both because it gets bonus for being historical, and because I think that it looks really nice. It’s in a style that personally appeals to me and while I don’t always like decals that are coats of arms, this one I quite like because I really like coats of arms as a decal style when done well.

The Review Bombing Saga Part III: The Return of the Economy

Okay truthfully, it would be more accurate to call part 3 The Return of the Roadmap, but there is no returning roadmap and I need the LOTR title theming to work. This is part of the story is Aragorn being crowned king at Minas Tirith. This is the happy ending. Gaijin did something they so rarely do: listen. To be fair, Gaijin listening to the players is not always a good thing. If they did, we would have a historical matchmaker (enjoy your Strv m/38 vs T-55s). But in this case, it very much was.

On June 13th, Gaijin released a roadmap detailing massive, wholesale changes to the economy, progression, gameplay, and maps. It’s too many changes to go over all of them, so I’m just going to show you the roadmap and go over the important stuff that I want to talk about. The initial roadmap has changed quite a lot since it was released, with a lot of changes that were supposed to happen later in the year being brought forward and a small handful being pushed back towards later in the year.


Initial roadmap published on June 13th, 2023

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Roadmap as of update “Sons of Attila” on September 19th, 2023

Note: I’m not sure why these images sometimes appear heavily vertically squished and sometimes don’t. I can’t figure out how to fix it and it looks fine in the editor.

Pretty much all of these changes are good. The list of changes I am covering is absolutely nonexhaustive, there are plenty of great ones I am not going to talk about, as made evident by the roadmap, these are just the ones I want to talk about. A lot of these changes came later in the year so instead of discussing them in detail when I cover the major updates some of them came in, I’m going to discuss them here because they are all part of the roadmap. Later on during my discussion of the major updates, I will just briefly mention these changes and refer back to this section for a more detailed discussion. The major changes I want to cover are:

  • All vehicles have had their repair costs, on average, reduced and their reward modifiers increased so every vehicle now on average breaks even in terms of how much SL they make, even without a premium account.

    • This is an incredibly good change. The ability to consistently break even in SL even without a premium account is an absolutely fantastic change. I feel like I don’t have to explain why this is amazing, it’s pretty self explanatory, but yeah, this is fantastic!

  • Repair costs have been recalculated so all vehicles of the same type and BR have a roughly similar repair cost.

    • This is also great. It does somewhat create an issue where vehicles that are really good at a certain tier will have a very similar repair cost to really bad vehicles at the same tier and of the same type, but that’s not a very big issue and in my view, it’s more than worth it to have that small issue in exchange for much closer parity between vehicles of different nations, especially because on the old vehicle statistics-based system, minor nations ended up generally having way higher repair costs because much fewer people play them. Part of this recalculation was also a drastic reduction in repair costs across the board, and while there are certain vehicles that I think should still have a higher repair cost such as the A-1H, but on the whole, I think this is fantastic.

  • Night battles have been disabled with an option to enable them.

    • This is a fantastic change. Night battles are terrible if you don’t have NVDs or thermal sights unlocked yet so this is fantastic. Night battles make it impossible to see when you don’t have NVDs or thermals unlocked yet.

  • Certain large air maps have been transferred to higher BR ranges and an overall revision of what maps are seen by propeller-driven aircraft and jets.

    • This was really nice to see. One big problem since EC maps were added to air was that planes of far too low a BR could see them and this would result in planes being on maps far too big for them which created long, drawn out games and caused planes to waste way too much fuel and time getting to the battlefield. This issue now being mostly fixed is fantastic.

  • Parts and FPE are now available by default and the modifications for them now improve the speed and efficacy of repairing and extinguishing fires, and in the case of FPE, you get 1 extra fire extinguisher so now you can extinguish fires twice instead of just once.

    • This is an absolutely phenomenal change. The unavailability of parts and FPE has been one of the single biggest issues in War Thunder, especially because while ground vehicles got the research cost reduction for parts and FPE, naval never got that RP cost reduction, so it still had very high RP costs for parts and FPE. I cannot overstate how fantastic this change is and how good it is, especially for vehicles with bad stock grinds. This makes the stock grind for every vehicle infinitely better, but it’s especially beneficial to vehicles like the Type 60 ATM, Zachlam Tager, and all of the boxes with a TOW launcher on them, among others.

    • Also, quick sidenote, but I feel like FPE should be called FEE (fire extinguishing equipment) or FSE (fire suppression equipment) because FPE stands for “fire prevention equipment” but it isn’t preventing anything, it’s extinguishing a fire that has already started.

  • Premium account now compensates you if you go negative in SL in a battle, it is now impossible to lose money in a battle with premium account and you will just be compensated up to 0 SL so you neither make, nor lose money and just go neutral. Thus, it is impossible to lose money in a battle with a premium account unless you teamkill. This mechanic needs to have auto-repair turned on to work.

    • This is a nice change, but there are some issues with it. On one hand, it is very nice to be compensated if you go negative in a battle if you have premium account. This is fantastic for premium players. However, on the other hand, this creates a huge issue with botting. One of the uses of repair costs is that they act as a negative incentive to bots can’t just farm and consistently make SL no matter what. This creates a huge issue with botting being much more profitable. Now, all someone has to do is wait for a sale and buy premium account for a full year once for only $40 USD, and now they can never lose money in a battle if they bot that account. Gaijin did go on to address this later on, but as nice as this change is for a lot of players, it does come with this huge downside.

  • A detailed battle log has been added allowing you to see exactly where your SL and RP came from and what actions earned how much of it.

    • I really like this change. It effectively demystifies SL and RP earnings. No longer are you wondering why you got a certain amount of SL and RP. You may disagree with the amount of SL and RP you got from a match and you may feel like you should have gotten more, but now you at least know where it all came from, and I think that’s fantastic.

  • Helicopters can now be researched through playing ground vehicles.

    • I think this is a super nice change. I don’t play helicopters because I don’t enjoy them, but the rate I grind at means eventually, I am going to run out of other vehicles to research and be forced to research helicopters, and the ability to research them without having to play stuff I don’t like is quite nice. On top of that, this allows players to grind helicopters even in battles where they weren’t able to get into a helicopter, it wasn’t advantageous to get into CAS, or where a plane was more useful as a CAS platform than a helicopter (which is most situations because planes are near universally more effective CAS platforms than helicopters).

  • Foldering a lot of vehicles to heavily condense the ground and air trees of every nation.

    • This is one of the most phenomenal changes in the entire roadmap. In my view, the best solution to reducing the grind has always been to folder a lot of the vehicles in the game. This allows Gaijin to continuously add new vehicles wherever in the tree without increasing the necessary grind to progress. Here, Gaijin decided to folder vehicles more based on rank, type, and roll, rather than different variations of the same vehicle. This does result in a few somewhat bizarre folders like the Radkampfwagen 90 and TAM 2C being foldered, the M15/42 and the Pz.Kpfw. III N being foldered, and the G.55 I and Re.2005 0 being foldered, but on the whole, I don’t think that is an actual problem per se, as much as it is just mildly odd.

    • Part of foldering a lot of vehicles also involved reworking where a lot of vehicles sat in the tree. This was neither good nor bad, and a lot of it was to order vehicles in a way that more folders could be created, but there also were a few changes that didn’t involve folders but still were sort of weird. A few of the somewhat strange choices are the Leopard 2 K being after the T-72M1, the WZ1001(E) LCT being in the same line as the CM11, though the MBT-2000 was added in between them, and the new prototype Type 10 (which is really just the TKX but with the armor on the side of the turrets removed to put it in its transport configuring) being in the light tank line after the folder of the Type 87 RCV and the Type 89. Granted, there was some reason for some of these. Notably, Gaijin said that the Leopard 2 K was moved into the same line as the T-72M1 because they plan to fill that line with more prototype and export vehicles, and the same reasoning applied to moving the WZ1001 into the same line as the CM11 with the MBT-2000 in between them. I overall also don’t think it’s a problem, and since they said they have plans to fill those lines with more prototype and export vehicles, the vehicles moved into that line will seem more at home there over time, but some of the changes are still a touch strange.

  • Reduction of research and purchase costs for rank 5-7 aircraft.

    • I think this was another fantastic change. The aircraft at rank 8 didn’t change much, but for ranks 5-7, this was a huge benefit. For example, the F-4F went from 1.06 million SL to 830K SL, and went from 390K RP to 300K RP. These were amazing changes and I am very happy they came in.

  • Rank 6 for bluewater fleet and naval progression rework.

    • This is the single change in the roadmap that I really dislike. There were some map changes I didn’t cover that weren’t great, but this is the one change I actually have a big issue with. I really dislike rank 6 for bluewater fleet. There were some nice changes in RP, SL, and modification cost for bluewater and coastal fleet ships of ranks 2-5. They reduced the RP and SL costs for ships and modifications of ranks 2-5 by a lot, which was very nice. That RP and SL cost reduction happened in update “La Royale”, but in the update right after it which was “Sons of Attila”, they added rank 6 for bluewater fleet. New ranks always just mean increased research costs at that new rank and for the vehicles from lower ranks moved into that new rank, and that has certainly stayed true for rank 6 bluewater. There are other issues related to rank 6 bluewater because of the new high tier premiums, but I’ll talk about those when I get to "Sons of Attila’'. Suffice it to say that the RP and SL reductions were incredibly nice, but rank 6 bluewater was not.

  • The repair cost you pay when you die in a vehicle depends on how long you survived in that vehicle, with the cost you pay increasing by a certain amount per minute up to the cap that is the max repair cost. The repair cost per minute can be found on the stat card.

    • This was a really nice change. The biggest benefit is that you are no longer heavily penalized for situations such as being spawn camped. For example, if you spawn in the Ikv 91 on a map like Karelia where whichever team has the B point can camp both spawns from miles away and you get instantly killed after spawning, you’ll pay 914 SL because that is the Ikv 91’s SL cost per minute and you survived for less than a minute, rather than the full 3,578 SL repair cost for the vehicle. I think this is fantastic and it ensures that if you die after a long time, there’s a much higher chance that you did more things during that timespan and thus, the SL loss is offset. Another very good change.

  • The daily login streak can now be kept by logging in through War Thunder Mobile.

    • This is another quite nice change. Unlike a lot of the other changes, this one absolutely is not game changing, but it is nice and it means that if my PC and my laptop both nuke themselves into the abyss (which has happened to me before), I can still use my phone to keep my 700+ day login streak (I don’t have a problem what are you talking about).

  • Players of minor nations now get a research bonus for high tier vehicles if they already have vehicles of that tier in another nation.

    • This is one of my personal favorite changes. I recognize that it is not as game changing as many other changes in this roadmap, but it is one of my personal favorites because I am a huge proponent of playing minor nations more to get those unique experiences. I recognize that not every minor nation has a lot of unique experiences in it (cough Israel cough), but a lot of minor nations have really fun and unique experiences in them which are very much worth playing. For example, the French ground tree is my personal favorite ground tree in the game and it’s incredibly good after you get past rank 1, though rank 1 is very painful, and while the Swedish air tree isn’t all good vehicles, it is a very good air tree with some of the most monstrous aircraft in the game such as the J 21s and J 22s. More people being incentivized to play these minor nations I see as an amazing thing.

To summarize, this roadmap is absolutely incredible. I’m sure that there are some requests certain players had that were not met, because you can never make everyone happy, but the vast majority of major requests that the vast majority of players had have been met, and then some! This roadmap has been one of the single best list of changes ever added to the game and it makes me overwhelmingly happy to see such a comprehensive roadmap with so many good changes. Well done Gaijin.

Update 2.27 “La Royale”

On June 14th (that’s right, we’re 19K words in and we’re not even halfway through the year yet), update 2.27 “La Royale” released. La Royale was the second major update of the year and was named so for the addition of the French bluewater fleet. It is sort of sad that France didn’t get a coastal fleet tree, but also, France has next to no vehicles to make a coastal fleet tree so it’s basically impossible to get them.

La Royale was quite a good update, and definitely better than Sky Guardians. While Sky Guardians was sort of a chill update and definitely a good one, it also lacked the variety in changes and additions, especially in the realm of vehicle additions, to make it that interesting. La Royale is certainly not that. To illustrate my point better, let’s go over the vehicles added in La Royale.

Aviation:

  • USA:

    • BF2C-1 - Rank I - Fighter - Tech tree

      • The BF2C-1 was a new reserve fighter added to the US air tree because the P-26s are quite bad and so the BF2C-1 was brought in as a new reserve, with the P-26A-34-BO (M2) remaining as a reserve vehicle but the other 2 P-26s being foldered and no longer reserve vehicles. The BF2C-1 is pretty good and I enjoyed spading it. It’s definitely a way better reserve vehicle than the P-26A-34-BO (M2), so I’m very happy it was introduced as the P-26s are kind of painful and are at a huge disadvantage compared to the reserve planes of nearly every other nation.

    • F-14B - Rank VIII - Fighter - Tech tree

      • Remember when I said in the section on Sky Guardians that while that update didn’t push the envelope, that wasn’t going to last? Well this is what I meant. The F-14B when it was added was the best plane at top tier, full stop. Not overwhelmingly the best, but the best by a small, but meaningful margin. The F-14B and F-16As play very differently. The F-14 used to generally turned a lot better and overall be a better dogfighter. I personally enjoy this much more. Still, before the F-14B, the F-16As were still better. However, that all changed with the F-14B. What made the F-16As better was that they had AIM-7Fs and AIM-9Ls. The F-14A had AIM-7Fs and AIM-54As, but only AIM-9Hs. The AIM-9H is good, but it’s not enough to compete with the AIM-9L. The F-14B changed that because it got AIM-7Ms, AIM-54Cs, and AIM-9Ls. The AIM-9L made this vehicle very potent and, in my opinion, made better than the F-16As when it was introduced, though I know many disagree with me. This lasted until Sons of Attila where, on top of the addition of the MiG-29SMT and F-16C-50, all the F-16s got a flight model buff that means they are all now better than the F-14s. Now, the F-16A are unequivocally better than the F-14B, but for a while, it was even worse power creep than what the game already had before. Nowdays though, it’s in a pretty sorry state.

  • Germany:

    • Su-22M4 - Rank VII - Strike fighter - Tech tree

      • It’s functionally the same as the Su-17M4 in the Soviet tree because the Su-22M4 and Su-17M4 are the same vehicle, the Su-22 is just the export name of the Su-17. It’s fine. I haven’t played the Su-22M4, but I have played the Su-22M3 and it’s very not good in air, and it’s decent in ground. All in all, a fine vehicle and a nice addition to Germany because it’s the only vehicle in the German tree that can carry the Kh-29T.

  • USSR:

    • Su-25T - Rank VII - Strike fighter - Tech tree

      • This thing isn’t that great. It’s an Su-25 at 11.3. It’s flight performance makes it nigh unusable at that tier in air battles, and it later getting R-73s in Sons of Attila didn’t help it that much. It’s decent in ground battles and can kill a lot if it can get to the point where it can actually fire its weapons, but good luck not being taken out by every SPAA that exists before you reach that point. The problem that comes inherent with vehicles like the Su-25 and A-10 is that they have crazy weaponry but terrible performance, so they can never be good because they either end up at a BR that matches their weaponry, but their flight performance is so bad at that tier that they’re useless, or they end up at a BR that closer matches their flight performance, in which case you end up with the situation that happened with the A-10A (early), A-10A, Su-25, and Su-25K where they absolutely dominate everything and destroy the entire BR bracket and then are quickly shot up in BR because of that. In the case of the Su-25T, they went with the approach of putting it at a BR that matches its weaponry, which is the better choice in my opinion because having a bad vehicle is better than having one that destroys an entire BR bracket, but the vehicle is not great because of it.

    • Su-39 - Rank VII - Strike fighter - Pack premium

      • I hate high tier premiums like this, I hate them a lot, but I’m fine with this one. This one is a carbon copy of the Su-25T, except for the fact that it gets the Kopyo-25 radar which isn’t very useful. While technically better because it can mount that radar as suspended weaponry, it’s functionally identical because the Kopyo-25 isn’t very useful and the vehicle is still terrible.

  • China:

    • J8F - Rank VIII - Fighter - Tech tree

      • It’s quite good. It’s a J8B, except it doesn’t get the radar-guided Aspide-1A missile, but in exchange, it gets the IR-guided PL8. What makes the PL8 so good is that the PL8 is just the Chinese designation for the Python 3 which is that absolutely crazy 40G missile on the Kfirs and the F-16A Netz. It’s a bonkers missile, one of the best in the game, and it makes the J8F quite good. The issue with the J8F is it will often die at long range before it can make it to the battlefield because of the crazy radar-guided missiles that exist at that tier. Still, it’s quite good.

  • France:

    • PBY-5A (late) - Rank I - Bomber - GE premium

      • It’s functionally identical to the PBY-5A. I know that the PBY-5s are not that bad, but personally, I hate them. I can’t stand playing them and while I recognize that it is not that bad, from my personal perspective, because I hate their playstyle, I absolutely would not recommend this as a purchase.

    • Lancaster Mk. VII - Rank IV - Bomber - Tech tree

      • I’m entirely unsure why they added this, especially because it doesn’t get the 12,000 lb bomb that the British Lancasters get, and it sits at the same BR as the PB4Y-2. It’s decent, it’s not that bad, but I’m very unsure why the French tree got this vehicle. It does have an absolutely gorgeous default skin though. Easily the best skin out of the 3 Lancasters, it’s not even close. Most of the rank 4 French aircraft actually have very nice skins.

    • Mirage 2000 5F - Rank VIII - Fighter - Tech tree

      • Yeah yeah, I know this is the only one any of you actually cared about. It’s good. It’s not crazy, it’s around the middle of the pack as far as 12.0s go, but it’s pretty good. Very nice performance, great missiles, and guided bombs. The thing that holds it back is that it only has 4 missiles so you either have to carry 2 IR-guided missiles and 2 radar-guided ones, or 4 IR-guided missiles. Both of these are worse than the F-16s’ 6 AIM-9s and the Su-27s’ 6 R-73s, and while it is equal in count to the F-15’s 4 AIM-9Ms, the F-15 can also carry 4 AIM-7Ms. That lack of quanity of its air-to-air armament severely holds this plane back.

  • Sweden:

    • AJS 37 - Rank VII - Strike fighter - Tech tree

      • It’s quite nice. I generally really enjoy the Viggens and how they fly, and this is no exception. The Rb 74s at 11.3 are also really nice because the Rb 74 is the swedish designation for the AIM-9L, but annoyingly, it does suffer from the countermeasures having to be mounted as external ordinance which takes up 2 hardpoints that could be used to carry Rb 74s. It also gets Rb 75s which are AGM-65As and the Rb 05A which is the same AGM on the SK 60B, both of which are really nice and help it be useful in ground battles in its intended role as a strike fighter.

Ground:

  • USA:

    • M4 (T26) - Rank IV - Medium tank - Tech tree

      • This was a very nice addition. Not only does it give something to run the M41A1 with if you don’t want to uptier it to 6.3, but this is also a vehicle that I have personally wanted in the game for a very long time. To me, this is one of those interesting and unique pieces of history that don’t push the envelope or offer something groundbreaking, but still deserve to be represented in War Thunder. This is the type of vehicle I want to see more of.

    • M1 (KVT) - Rank VII - Medium tank - Pack premium

      • Moving on from any sort of praise I had for the M4 (T26), let’s talk about… this thing. I absolutely hate this thing! I think this is a terrible addition! A rank 7, 10.3 M1 Abrams as a premium is bad enough (though admittedly, it came in at rank 6 and was moved to rank 7 in Sons of Attila with the research changes), but Gaijin decided that it had to be a fake rank 7, 10.3 M1 Abrams premium. That’s right, the M1 KVT isn’t real! The M1A1 KVT is real, but not the M1 KVT. If they really wanted an M1 Abrams premium, they could have added the M1A1 KVT or M1E1 and just given them worse shells which is how they balance stuff anyway, or if they really wanted an M1, there’s the M1s from the 1983 NATO Reforger exercises. From the M1s from the Reforger exercises include M1s the camouflage netting like the Leopard 2 A4 (PzBtl 123) and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment has a veritable goldmine of M1s with unique camouflages from the Reforger exercises. But adding a fake M1? I think that’s a terrible decision, especially when there were other options of not just M1A1s for which they could nerf the shell selection, but of actual M1s.

  • Germany:

    • Pz.Kpfw. 38 (t) n.A. - Rank I - Light tank - Tech tree

      • It’s decent. It sits at the same BR as and in a folder with the Pz.Kpfw. 38 (t) F, and it is similarly decent, but not mind-blowing. Still, it’s a cool addition, especially considering the fact that it was datamined ages ago.

    • Raketenautomat - Rank V - Tank destroyer - Tech tree

      • This thing is a monster. It is an absolute monster. It’s the U-SH 405, but in the German tree and at the same BR, and in the same way that the U-SH 405 is a monster, so is this thing. I don’t have much to say about this, but it is absurdly good.

  • USSR:

    • BTR-80A - Rank V - Light tank - Tech tree

      • The BTR-80A is quite a nice vehicle. The APDS belt is really nice, though unfortunately it is a rank 4 modification, and with a max speed of 87 km/h, it works really well as a quick IFV for flanking. The downside however, is that it is absolutely huge. It’s nowhere near the size of the Class 3 or anything, it’s not that big, but it’s still huge, and that makes it quite easy to see. However, the benefit to that size is that there is so much dead space in the vehicle that if someone shoots at the center of the vehicle, the round will just go through and out the other side, unless it’s HE or HEAT that is being fired. But, because the thing is built like a Ratel and has all the crew stuffed right at the front, it means that if someone shoots for the front of the vehicle, it will just instantly die, and that makes peeking corners much harder because while the turret is frontally mounted, all the crewmembers are also stuffed in the front. On the whole, this is quite a nice vehicle, but it does have to be played carefully and while it can zoom around the battlefield, it can’t zoom wherever it wants with no regard for anything around it.

    • Object 435 - Rank VI - Medium tank - Tech tree

      • The Object 435 is really good. I’m not sure why it’s in the second line of the tree right before the T-64s considering that it’s a T-62 prototype, but either way, it’s really good. It’s basically a slightly slower T-62 with worse hull armor, but gains a 14.5 mm DShK machine gun, and it has the same gun with the same ammunition as the T-62. I have not personally played this vehicle, but based on what I have heard from those who have, as well as facing up against it myself, it’s very good.

  • Great Britain:

    • SARC Mk. IVA - South Africa - Rank I - Light tank - Tech tree

      • This is quite a good vehicle. It’s relatively comparable to the Daimler Mk. II and the best round has 89 mm of penetration which is really nice at 1.3. This is a very nice addition, and it’s also especially nice that the South African line now has a vehicle at rank 1. I did always find it sort of weird that it didn’t have a rank 1 vehicle, especially since there are options for South Africa at rank 1, so this was a very nice addition.

    • Vijayanta - India - Rank V - Medium tank - GE premium

      • This was the first Indian vehicle ever added to the game, and I am very happy that India is now also represented in the game. The vehicle itself is decent. It’s a Vickers Mk. 1 with a HEAT-FS shell which puts it at 8.3. The Vickers Mk. 1 is very good, and while this being at 8.3 does make it slightly worse, it’s still pretty good.

  • Japan:

    • Type 87 RCV (prototype) - Rank V - Light tank - Tech tree

      • This thing is fine. The APDS belt is really good against light vehicles and the sides of some heavy vehicles, and the Rh202 cannon is, as always, great for taking out tracks and barrels. The issue is that it really struggles against heavy armor, and unlike the BTR-80A, this is 7.7 so it can see 8.7s which is where things really start getting powerful. Because of that and because all the crew is clustered in the front, anything with a 12.7 mm or greater will kill you. The Soviet 14.5 mm DShK machine gun, which also exists on some Chinese vehicles, is especially dangerous.

  • China:

    • ZTZ88B - Rank VI - Medium tank - Tech tree

      • Despite what its name suggests, the ZTZ88B was actually made before the ZTZ88A and comes before the ZTZ88A in the tree. It’s a pretty decent vehicle, but I really don’t have very much to say about it. It’s not bad, but it won’t blow you away either. That is sort of the summary of everything about this vehicle. The speed is decent, but not amazing. The armor is fine, but not great. The gun is good, but not incredible. Everything is decent.

    • 211 - Rank III - Light tank - Tech tree

      • This vehicle isn’t very good. It’s functionally nearly the same as the PT-76, and it is still not good. I really dislike the PT-76. The sad part though is not that. The sad part is that this exists in a folder with the PT-76, but the Chinese PT-76 was actually removed from the tree in this update, so the 211 only exists in that folder if you already own the Chinese PT-76. I hate this decision. I am very anti-removing vehicles from the tree, and I think removing the Chinese PT-76 is a terrible decision.

  • Italy:

    • VBM Freccia C/C - Rank VII - Light tank - Tech tree

      • The VBM Freccia C/C was the first tech tree vehicle to get fire-and-forget (F&F) missiles, and while the event Chinese QN506 did get fire-and-forget missiles first, this is certainly the first vehicle in the game to get actually good F&F missiles. Specifically, this vehicle gets the Spike-MR ATGM. That, combined with the APFSDS belt on the Freccia’s gun, makes it quite a good vehicle. I also really like that Italy was the first country to get the Spike missile and not the Americans, though I would have been fine if Israel got it first.

  • France:

    • AMX 30 Au F1 - Rank V - Tank destroyer - Tech tree

      • SPHs are generally not good, and this vehicle is no exception. It’s not god awful, vehicles like the Type 75 SPH are way worse, it’s just sort of fine. It is great as a meme, which is true for most SPHs, but it’s not a good vehicle and it will not be fun to spade. It suffers from all the issues other SPHs do which are:

        • Bad armor
        • Being the size of a building
        • No AP shell, only HE
        • Having an absolutely gargantuan ammo rack

    • VBCI 2 (MCT-30) - Rank VI - Light tank - GE premium

      • This vehicle is pretty good. It is the size of a bus, but the gun is good with a really nice APFSDS round, though it does have a less-than-desirable fire rate, and the mobility allows the vehicle to zoom around the battlefield and be good at flanking maneuvers against larger and more heavily armored adversaries. It also has really good optics. I do find it somewhat sad though that the first VBCI in the game is a premium, though thankfully, it’s not one of the main VBCI variants, but rather a prototype built for Qatar in 2018 that is fitted with the Norwegian Kongsberg MCT-30 turret, which has since been renamed to the RT40 turret.

  • Sweden:

    • Sherman Mk. IVb (M3) - Rank III - Medium tank - GE premium

      • We’ve done it! Every nation ingame now has a Sherman! As for the vehicle itself, it is functionally identical to the M4A4. It’s good, all the M4A4s are, but it’s nothing special. I would say that this is the most visually appealing Sherman in the game, but the M-51s stole that title already. Excluding the M-51s though, this is the nicest looking Sherman ingame.

    • CV9030FIN - FInland - Rank VI - Light tank - Tech tree

      • This vehicle is bad. Like, bad. The mobility is fine, though it’s not great, but only in a straight line, and in a turn it’s really sluggish. However, the gun is the real issue. The gun has a bad fire rate and very bad damage output. The APFSDS does have 116 mm of penetration, but it doesn’t output any damage, it just penetrates and goes through and then out the other side.

  • Israel:

    • Magach 6R (Hydra) - Rank VI - Medium tank - Tech tree

      • It’s pretty good. Most of the Magachs aren’t bad, even if they do have insufferable stock grinds. While we generally do not need any more Magachs ingame, this is one I am happy to see because it is a very interesting and unique piece of history. This vehicle is a Magach 6R fitted with launchers for M261 Hydra rockets. I have researched this vehicle for a while and had looked into it long before it was added, and to my knowledge, only 2 photos of it exist. It was tested in Suez in 1981. These are the types of cool pieces of history that I like seeing represented ingame.

    • Magach 6B Gal - Rank VI - Medium tank - Squadron vehicle

      • This vehicle is just a Magach 6B with the Gal fire control system, meaning it gets a laser rangefinder and a thermal sight. It’s not bad, but because it’s a squadron vehicle, it does have the standard Magach stock grind which isn’t great and means it starts with a HEAT-FS round when the APFSDS round is the round you need to be effective. Once you have the APFSDS and the thermal sights, it becomes quite a good vehicle, but it is hard to get there, and it does suffer from being the 15th Magach in the Israeli ground tree.

Naval:

  • Germany:

    • Z 46 - Rank III - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • The Z 46 is not that good. It looks gorgeous, visually one of my favorite destroyers in the game, but that’s the only stunning thing about it. Everything about this destroyer is stuff that would make it good if it was just a lower BR. The primary culprit is the guns. They simply don’t output enough damage to be effective. The armor on it isn’t great, which would be fine, but that means that, because the guns aren’t either, the thing just dies before it can output enough damage to kill things.

  • USSR:

    • Bravyy - Rank IV - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • I hate this thing. I absolutely hate it. It’s a monster of a vehicle, and I hate it for that. Any plane that comes even close to it will die, which is already a problem because it means CAS is near-useless around it, and on top of that, the missiles can be used against ships too, and they’re brutally effective. I think adding this vehicle was a very bad idea and I have seen it absolutely take over games.

  • Great Britain:

    • HMS Daring - Rank III - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • I truthfully have no idea how good or bad this vehicle is. It looks to be pretty good, but there was only so much I was willing to subject myself to in order to write this and grinding the French naval tree was enough.

  • Japan:

    • IJN Ise - Rank VI - Battleship - Tech tree

      • The Ise is straight up Japan’s best battleship. It’s AAA armament is decent, slightly better than the Hyuga, though worse than the Fusō, Kongo, and Haruna which sit at the same BR, and it has the exact same good 356 mm guns as on the Fusō, Hyuga, Kongo, and Haruna. However, none of those are particularly special. They’re nice, but not that special. What truly separates the Ise from the rest of Japan’s 7.0 battleships, and in particular the Fusō and Hyuga which are very similar to it, is the fact that the Ise actually has magazine armor! The Fusō is the Ise-class’s predecessor, and while the Hyuga is an Ise-class, it is the 1920 fit of the Hyuga which has useless magazine armor and as a result is a powder keg masquerading as an armored vessel. However, while the Ise and Hyuga are both Ise-class ships, the Ise ingame is in its 1937 fit which actually has good magazine armor! And no, I don’t care if Gaijin lists it as the 1941 fit, because they modeled it as the 1937 fit.

  • France:

    • Before we start with the French Navy, there’s a few important things to mention. The first is that French ships simply don’t get AP rounds. They have SAP rounds, but only the light cruiser Emile Bertin and the battleships Paris and Lorraine get AP rounds. Even the 5.7 premium heavy cruiser Dupleix, which isn’t in the list for La Royale because it was added in August for the end of the CBT (this will be covered later), doesn’t get AP rounds. All the ships generally have good firepower, but no AP rounds. However, the SAP rounds are really good. Second of all, the French ships tend to have pretty good mobility, but the tradeoff is armor. The lack of armor becomes particularly noticeable in ships like the Lorraine which, for a battleship, takes hits very poorly. This makes nearly every French ship a glass cannon. The third thing to note is that the French naval tree has a lot of copy-paste vehicles, but not copy-paste from other trees. There’s only one of those, the Marceau. Rather, it’s copy-paste from itself. 3 Jaguar-classes (Leopard, Chacal, & Panthere), 3 Aigle-classes (Vautour, Milan, & Aigle), 2 Duguay-Trouin-classes (Primaguet & Duguay-Trouin), and 2 Courbet-classes (Paris and Courbet (the Courbet will be covered in the section on update Air Superiority)). This means that you will have a lot of similar experiences in the tree, with only 13 unique classes (11 unique classes at launch). Granted, this is much better than the 7 unique classes the Italian bluewater fleet launched with, but it still feels a bit lacking. Finally, all of the 4.3 destroyers suffer from the same cripping issue which is the SKR-1 and SKR-7 existing. The SKR-1 and SKR-7, especially the SKR-7 because it’s a squadron vehicle so you don’t have to research down the full tree to get it, are some of the most phenomenally overpowered vehicles in the entire game and they single-handedly body all of the 4.3 French destroyers.

    • Bourrasque (T41) - Rank I - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • This vehicle is fantastic. Much of the French naval tree is rather middling, but this vehicle is the one exception. This is one of the best reserve destroyers in the game. It’s certainly the best one I’ve played, though admittedly, I have not played the HMS Vega. The armor is not great, but it’s quite fast and while the guns don’t have a very good fire rate, they pack a serious punch. It is an absolutely fantastic vehicle. It did take me 4 matches to spade it, but that is only because 3 of those were uptiers and my team managed to lose all 4 games. This is an absolutely amazing vehicle and one of the biggest highlights of the tree.

    • Leopard - Rank I - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • I quite like the Leopard, but I found it to be a pretty rough vehicle when stock. When stock, the vehicle doesn’t have the speed it needs to be effective, though it still bas the good guns from the Bourrasque. Also, the torpedos on it are not that useful and it only gets 3 of them, just like the Bourrasque. When spaded though, the Leopard has the speed it needs to be effective which is the biggest change. However, the biggest strength of the Leopard is that it is a certified tank. For a destroyer, this thing has an absurd amount of armor. It can eat rounds all day and takes way longer to kill than everything else it faces.

    • Chacal - Rank I - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • The Chacal is another Jaguar-class ship, much like the Leopard and Panthere, and is functionally a slightly less tanky Leopard with an extra main gun which puts it at 4.0. I much prefer the Chacal to the Leopard because that single extra gun makes a world of difference. It is noticeably quite less tanky than the Leopard, but the extra gun is worth it. I really enjoyed this vehicle.

    • Panthere - Rank I - Destroyer - GE premium

      • The Panthere is a Chacal with 1 less main gun which puts it at 3.7 with the Leopard, which it is of the same class of. It has worse secondary weapons than the Leopard and it’s 386 tonnes (425 tons) lighter meaning it’s much less tanky. The Chacal gets an extra 10 km/h in speed and an extra gun compared to the Leopard in exchange for that decreased tankiness, but the Panthere only gets the extra 10 km/h which is absolutely not worth it considering the loss of quite a bit of armor. To be clear, this is a good vehicle, but it’s definitely the worst of the 3 Jaguar-classes. I actually would say this vehicle is worth your money if you want to complete a 3.7 lineup, but otherwise, save your money.

    • Vautour (X71) - Rank II - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • The Vautour is a slightly faster Aigle (though only by 1 km/h and is still slower than the Milan) with 2 extra 13.2 mm Browning machine guns like the Milan, but also a new 75 mm gun. This technically makes it the best of the 3 Aigle-class destroyers, but not in any meaningful way, and this vehicle is just as middling as the Milan and Aigle. You can refer back to my piece on the Aigle in the section covering Sky Guardians for an ever so slightly more detailed review.

    • Milan (XIII) - Rank II - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • The Milan is a faster Aigle with 2 extra 13.2 mm Browning machine guns at the same BR. Much like the Aigle and the Vautour, it’s an incredibly middling vehicle. Not terrible, just middling. I truthfully don’t have much to say about this vehicle and once again, you can refer back to my review of the Aigle in Sky Guardians for slightly more detailed coverage.

    • Marceau (D601) - Rank II - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • The Marceau is just a slightly worse Z 32 at a 4.3 instead of 4.7. It has 1 less main gun and it loses 2 of its 20 mm cannons as well as 2 of its 37 mm cannons in exchange for 8 40 mm Bofors cannons, which would be a good tradeoff, except that only one gun can fire forward. While the second turret can face forward, it can’t actually fire forward because it’s behind and blocked by the superstructure. To boot, the guns also have quite a long reload. I do not like this vehicle and I’d say you should stay away from it.

    • Le Malin - Rank III - Destroyer - Tech tree

      • It’s a very standard French destroyer. Great guns, bad armor, fine AAA at close range. It is an entirely bog standard 4.7 glass cannon destroyer with not much interesting about it. The 5 second reload is nice, but the biggest issue is that it is 4.7 because that means it sees 5.7 heavy cruisers a lot and because it’s a glass cannon, those absolutely body it.

    • Jeanne d’Arc - Rank III - Light cruiser - Tech tree

      • It’s pretty good at its tier, it’s just not that impressive. It has a 10 second stock reload which is pretty nice and the guns, in standard French Navy style, are very nice with the same penetration as the American 127 mm guns but with 6 times the TNT filler. The issue is the same as the Le Malin though. it has pretty much no armor whatsoever, aside from the armor around the ammunition, and the bridge is massive which makes it an easy target. That results in the other big issue that the Le Malin also has which is uptiers. The Jeanne d’Arc is good at facing things at its tier, but when it’s uptiered, it meets 5.7 heavy cruisers that body it because it has no armor.

    • Primaguet - Rank III - Light cruiser - Tech tree

      • The Primaguet is functionally a Duguay-Trouin at a higher BR with worse AAA. At 5.0, it’s not great. The Duguay-Trouin is decent at 4.7, but this isn’t at 5.0 because of the worse AAA while being functionally the same otherwise. Not worth your time.

    • Colbert - Rank IV - Heavy cruiser - Tech tree

      • It’s fine. The guns don’t have very good penetration for 203 mm guns, the AAA is decent but only at close ranges, and the mobility is pretty nice. It is a very boring vehicle and there is not much to note about it. It’s good at hitting other light cruiers and destroyers, but it suffers against heavy cruisers.

    • Emile Bertin - Rank IV - Light cruiser - Tech tree

      • This is one of the few good French cruisers. Its biggest advantages are that the guns are pretty nice and they have a really nice rate of fire. They don’t quite have the ridiculous reload speed of American cruisers, but a 7.5 second reload is better than most other nations’ 152 mm guns. But like most other French ships, it is once again a glass cannon and it takes damage very poorly. It also has the issue of it being pretty easy to detonate ammunition on because while most of the ammunition sits below the waterline, there is a 20 round magazine for each gun that’s relatively high up. It’s still quite good though because of the guns and quick reload.

    • Paris - Rank V - Battleship - Tech tree

      • This is a bad battleship. For a battleship, it has very poor armor and is very easy to detonate the ammunition rack on. Furthermore, by battleship standards, it has bad guns that struggle to penetrate other battleships. Beyond all that, it also suffers from the standard issue of battleship gameplay being, in my opinion, really boring. Even if you like battleships though, stay away from this one.

    • Lorraine - Rank VI - Battleship - Tech tree

      • My criticisms of the Paris are exactly the same as the Lorraine. The AAA is pretty nice, but it’s still a bad battleship that you should not play.

That is all 47 vehicles added in La Royle and all in all, I think it’s a pretty good vehicle selection. For me, the highlights are the BF2C-1, J8F, Raketenautomat, SARC Mk. IVA, Vijayanta, BTR-80A, and the French Navy. Those are certainly not the best additions that came this update in terms of how good the vehicles are (except for the Raketenautomat, that thing is crazy), but they are my favorite.

La Royale introduced the French Navy specifically in its CBT phase where you had to buy either the Aigle or Duguay-Trouin, or to complete the 12 Tester Stars to get access to it. The full release of the French navy came later. Gaijin said that if at least 10/12 the Tester Stars were completed, you would get the “Emblem of the French Navy” decal. While this is true, I also learned first-hand that you could also get the decal if you bought the Duguay-Trouin or Aigle while the French Navy was in CBT.

As for model updates, the AH-1G, BO 105 CB-2, Hkp 9A, Hkp 9A (FC), the Israeli AH-1G, and the Israeli AH-1Q all got updated cockpits which is really nice. The Japanese AH-1S (early) was also renamed to the AH-1E and had its model replaced with that of the AH-1E which is truthfully not a very big change and functionally it’s still the same. In addition, the Wirraway got an updated model. Model updates for top tier aircraft and helicopters are nice, but what I really like is there low tier model updates for vehicles that many people don’t think about. I think it’s neat and I like that Gaijin does it.

Furthermore a bunch more vehicles got ejection seat animations. Those vehicles are:

  • Su-25 (all variants)
  • MiG-23 (all variants)
  • MiG-27M
  • F-4 (all variants)
  • Kfir (all variants)
  • Tornado (all variants)
  • JA 37/AJ 37 (all variants)
  • Ka-50
  • Ka-52

It should be noted that the Ka-50 and Ka-52 have an absolutely stunning ejection animation. The propeller blades are shot off by explosive charges and the top of the cockpit opens up, with the pilot(s) shooting out of it, being carried upwards by a spinning rocket! It’s an absolutely gorgeous animation and I’m so happy they added it.

We also got 2 new maps this update: Iberian Castle and Franz Josef Land.

Iberian Castle is quite a nice map and it has a nice variety in the ways you can play it. There’s a dense city that goes from the northeast edge of the B point to the southwest edge of the A point that is very reminiscent of Campania and the A point on Maginot Line. I personally don’t particularly like this area. It’s not poorly designed or anything, it’s sort of just fine, but I personally do not enjoy playing in it. Dense areas can be fun, but they have to be done right and these really dense and narrow cities like on Campania, Maginot Line, and Iberian Castle are personally not my style. My favorite place on this map is around the C point. The C point is a bunch of sparse clusters of small house ruins surrounded by a castle wall with more of those ruins outside of it, which is then surrounded by another castle wall. It’s sort of like a larger version of White Rock Fortress’ B point, but with the ruins inside the walls being way more sparse. I quite enjoy this area and I think it’s very fun to play in, but I think the ruins are slightly too small. Their sparseness is fine, I like that, but some of the individual ruined structures are a bit too small. Having a decent portion of the buildings be the size they are on the map is fine, but there should have been some slightly bigger ruins just to provide cover for larger vehicles (e.g. the Class 3), some of which have a lot of trouble hiding behind the ruins at their current size. However, it is, on the whole, still quite a good map.


Iberian Castle

Franz Josef Land is a very good map, in fact it’s my favorite naval map, and comes with a unique mechanic. It does suffer from being slightly large for coastal fleet vessels, but that’s fine considering it’s also designed to accommodate larger ships around the C point. The arrangement of the islands on this map means that there are not a lot of really small islands like on most coastal maps, but instead has a lesser amount of larger islands. I like this because while the maps with a lot of small ones aren’t necessarily bad, there’s just so many of them. When it comes to naval, maps generally fall into 3 rough categories:

  1. A bunch of small islands surrounded by a ring of larger islands that act as a barrier between the smaller islands and a large open ocean area around them with maybe a few medium-sized islands that are meant for the bigger ships to fight.

  2. A bunch of very small islands for coastal fleet vessels clustered to one side of the map that transitions into larger islands and more open water around the middle of the map for some coastal vessels and small bluewater fleet vessels, and then that transitions into a fully open ocean area at the other end of the map which is exclusively for bluewater fleet ships.

  3. A cluster of small islands in the center of the map surrounded by absolutely nothing that very abruptly transitions into pure open ocean for bluewater vessels (this is the worst kind).

Franz Josef Land loosely falls into category 2, but what separates it from every other naval map in the game is that it has that section of smaller islands clustered to one side, but those islands are much bigger than normal. They’re large islands and you can’t shoot over them because they’re sheer cliffs. South Kvarken and Aleutian Islands do something similar, but even those have much more of a smattering of small islands and less that are big cliffs that you can’t shoot over. New Zealand Cape is also a bit similar to this, but while all of its islands are big cliffs and/or mountains, but the arrangement of the islands is far too sparse and leaves far too much open water for the islands to have the same effect as they do on Franz Josef Land. This makes Franz Josef Land quite unique in its map layout, and it also gets a new mechanic for naval maps. Franz Josef land has AI guns on the shore that will shoot at you and can do serious damage to your vessel, especially if it’s a coastal fleet ship. The AI is destructible and it’s a very cool mechanic that adds a unique element to it that I really like. It also appears to have its actual layout very loosely-based on the real Franz Josef Land, with the 2 big islands appearing to be modified versions of Hail Island and McClintock Island, which I really like.


Franz Josef Land

When it comes to new mechanics and effects in La Royale, there were quite a few, but only certain ones I actually want to cover. First off is that radiators finally have a purpose! For years, the radiator has sat as a piece in a tank that gets destroyed when a shell hits it, but then nothing has happened. It has had no functional effect. Now, they have a purpose. When the radiator is hit, white steam will be emitted from the engine deck. The engine itself won’t fail instantly, but the radiator being damaged means it will fail quickly. This means you do have a bit of time to get to safety to repair before the engine fails. Missiles also got some new, stunning smoke trails from their engines. Wire-guided missiles also finally got a visual effect added for the actual wire attached to the missile which is incredibly nice and quite surprised me because I had assumed Gaijin had just elected not to add it. There were also new effects for marks left when shells hit a tank. These effects are visually fantastic when they’re still, but they move in a jittery way when the part of the tank they’re attacked to starts moving. Though, in all fairness, that is not an issue unique to these effects as much as it is an issue that has always existed with them since they were added in their first iteration. Finally, not a new effect but a mechanic, night battles have been disabled! This was part of the roadmap and I have a more detailed explanation on why this is great in the section on the roadmap that comes right before this current piece on La Royale, but suffice it to say that this is a fantastic change.

The camouflage trophy was pretty nice this time. I certainly like it more than that of Sky Guardians, which is something that seems to be a running theme with this update, and the biggest highlight for me is definitely the gorgeous skin for the Mirage 2000 5F, but I don’t have much to say on it.

This overall was quite a good update. I certainly consider it to be better than Sky Guardians because while Sky Guardians didn’t push the envelope and add a bunch of new things that power creep the game further while this patch did, this patch simply had more things in it. I am generally a quality over quantity type of person, but I think there is something to be said for an update having more things in it when those things are of high quality. La Royale is of just high quality as Sky Guardians was on a technical level, so while I certainly find more to dislike in La Royale than I do in Sky Guardians, I still think it is overall a better update because I also find more to like in it.

German Navy Day

For German Navy Day, Gaijin brought back the T 31 and Z 20 (1945), as well giving out the “Emblem of the German Navy Headquarters” decal. The decal is a really nice one, a lot of the historical naval decals are, and speaking of that, as always, it gets bonus points for being historical. I don’t have many deep thoughts about it, I just like it.


“Emblem of the German Navy Headquarters” decal

As for the vehicles, the T 31, which Gaijin actually modeled as the T 28 but still calls the T 31 for some reason, is quite good. I don’t own it, but it is very similar to the T 22 which I have played. The speed is not great, it’s pretty average, and the armor is paper thin, but the guns are really nice. They have a quick 4.8 second reload and they pack a pretty good punch for 105 mm cannons. I don’t have evidence to back this next point up, but I’ve found that the HE round that they can fire really likes to set fires.


T 28

The Z 20 Karl Galster is quite a fun vehicle and once again, what makes it shine are its guns. The guns are not exceptionally powerful, but my god are they rapid! These things have a Fletcher-class-level reload on them, with a reload speed of 4 seconds on the dot. I once again do not own this vehicle, but I have played the Z 22 Antom Schmitt which, despite Gaijin calling it the Z 22, is actually the 1941 fit of the Z 20 Karl Galster and is very similar to the premium one which is the 1945 fit, except for the fact that the premium — the one Gaijin says is the Z 20 — has a lot more AAA on it. That means that you can basically see the tech tree vehicle Gaijin calls the Z 22, but with the AAA armament of the Z 25. The vehicle is also really fast and while it, in my opinion, certainly does not hit the heights of the Z 25, partially because it is 4.7 while the Z 25 is 4.3 (and yes, I will be using the Z 25 as my comparison for every mid tier German destroyer because it is and always has been the best 4.3 destroyer in the game), it’s quite a good vehicle. I’d say it’s a worthy pickup whenever they make it available again if you want something to replace the Z 46 in that 4.7 lineup.


Z 20 (1945)

First Flight of the MiG-21

To celebrate the first flight of the MiG-21 on June 16, 1955, Gaijin brought back the German MiG-21SPSK, which is a rank 6 premium, for a limited time. At 10.0, 2 R-60s is really good. They’re very easy to flare, but they’re still very good for a 10.0 vehicle. However, the vehicle has 1 fatal flaw. To be clear, it’s a decent plane, but it suffers from 1 detrimental issue: you can either carry countermeasures or a gun, but not both. If you carry the gun, you have an opportunity to get more kills after your missiles are expended. It also should be noted that while the GSh-23L hits like truck-kun if you can land the shot, it is really annoying to get used to the arc on it if you haven’t played something with a GSh-23L on it before. However, if you don’t carry the gun, you get a countermeasure pod with 64 countermeasures in it taking up that underbelly pylon. If you do this you can fend off all of the crazy missiles that start flying about around this BR, but you can get at most 2 kills with your R-60s, and that’s assuming that your missiles don’t get flared, which is a very big if because the R-60 is one of the least flare-resistant missiles in the game.

It was nice to have the MiG-21SPSK back, and while it is still decent and has one of the most gorgeous camouflages of any plane in the entire game, its glory days are long gone. When it was added, it was one of the best 10.0s in the game. The only other things at that BR that could fling around crazy missiles the way the SPSK could were the A5C, the Mirage IIIs, the Jaguars, the Hunter F. Mk. 6, the F-8E(FN), and the Harrier G.R. Mk. 1 (yeah a lot of things at that BR got Magic 1s). Yes, that is a pretty big list, but compared to what we have today, it’s rather small, and it allowed the SPSK to be amazing. But now, the A-6E, the A-10s, the Harrier F.R.S. Mk. 1s, and the Super Étendard have all been added at a similar BR of 10.0-10.3, and while getting uptiered into 10.7 and 11.0 was always hard for the SPSK, it now has to deal with stuff it simply cannot compete with. The scariest thing for it right now that is at a very similar BR to it is the Harrier F.R.S. Mk. 1 (early) because while AIM-9Ls on the A-10s and A-6E are scary, those planes fly like a bus, but the Harrier doesn’t. Overall, I’d say it’s not worth your money anymore and next time they bring it back, instead of spending the $60 on it, save your money for premium account time during the next major sale.


MiG-21SPSK

Following the Roadmap: Updated Economy

This was one of the minor patches, included in it was the first round of economy changes from the roadmap. They improved SL rewards for vehicles across the board and changed the repair cost calculations to be based on vehicle type and BR. I have a much more detailed explanation of this in my coverage of the roadmap, but the TL;DR is that this was a very good change and the first in a long line of very good changes.

Rankings Challenge: 2023 Grand Finals and Twitch Drops

These were Twitch drops for tournaments and I don’t care about tournaments 1 bit, so I’m just covering the drops.

The 1 thing before the drops to cover is that there was a decal available for all people participating in the grand finals. It’s just the War Thunder eSports logo, that’s it. It’s nice, but not that impressive.


“War Thunder eSports” decal

There were drops for the finale of the Rankings Challenge and for some tournament called the Fire Front tournament. For the Fire Front tournament, you could get:

  • June 22nd (08:00 UTC) - 24th (08:00 UTC):

    • “eSports enjoyer” title
    • “Salamander” camouflage for the Pz. IV/70 (V)

  • June 29th (08:00 UTC) - July 1st (08:00 UTC):

    • “War Thunder eSports” decal
    • “Invasion” camouflage for the Ho 229 V3

The orange, light gray, and black geometric camouflage for the Pz. IV/70 (V) is fine. I don’t like it that much, but I don’t actively dislike it. Part of that reason is that when it comes to what camouflages I like, I am generally deferential to historical camouflages, though there are some gorgeous tournament ones.

The camouflage for the Ho 229 V3 I both love and hate. It has this really futuristic aesthetic to it and the way they did it means part of me loves it and part of me can’t stand looking at it. That’s all I have to say about the Fire Front tournament drops.

The drops you could get for the Rankings Challenge grand finale are:

  • June 24th (15:00 UTC) - 25th (16:00 UTC):

    • “Bee Hive” camouflage for the Type 10
    • “Zhulongs Guardian” camouflage for the Q5L
    • “Peridot Snake” camouflage for the Leclerc SXXI
    • “eSportsman” profile picture

  • July 1st (15:00 UTC) - 2nd (16:00 UTC):

    • “The Thunder god” camouflage for the JA 37D
      • I hate that “god” isn’t capitalized
    • “Crimson Prowler” camouflage for the Merkava Mk. 4M
    • “Steep Gradient” camouflage for the F-14B

None of the camouflages are particularly impressive, except for the Q5L camouflage which I think is absolutely stunning. Other than that, nothing particularly impressed me, though I do somewhat like the Type 10’s camouflage.

The profile picture is quite cool and appears to be a depiction of the face of a level 2 player right after their first match in a rank 7 premium. I’m very annoyed that I didn’t get it because I forgot to claim the Leclerc SXXI skin drop for about 3 hours and by the time I realized, it was too late and I was 86% of the way to it when the stream ended and what I really don’t like is for some reason, Gaijin decided to make it so, unlike every other time, you couldn’t finish any drops you missed on June 25th the next week when the drops for the same event came back on the July 1st.


“eSportsman” profile picture

Despite me not getting the profile picture because I was stupid, I think it was a pretty cool round of drops, even though I could not possibly care less about the tournaments themselves.

British Armed Forces Day

This is another one of those standardized decals but, to make it even worse, it’s not even a unique one among them! It’s called the “British Armed Forces Day” decal which is the exact same name as the 2022 decal for the holiday of the same name, and the decal itself is the exact same decal as in 2022, but with the color of the ring outside and the color of the Challenger 2 in it having their colors changed. They are literally the same decal!


“British Armed Forces Day” decal

Following the Roadmap: maps for aircraft, flares and repair

These were also a lot of really good changes. I’ve covered why these are amazing in my coverage on the roadmap, so I’ll just quickly cover what they added this time.

  • Stock countermeasures. The modification now gives access to options such as chaff only, flare priority, and flares reinforced, but countermeasures are available by default.

  • Stock parts and FPE. The modifications now increase the speed and efficacy of repairing and in the case of FPE, unlock an extra fire extinguisher.

  • Rework of what maps are available at what tiers. A lot of the larger maps have been removed from the map rotation for lower tiers.

These are all great changes, but stock countermeasures and stock parts and FPE especially are a godsend! Those alone are some of the best research changes War Thunder has ever made. You can go read my coverage on the roadmap for a more detailed explanation of why this is so great.

Summer Sale in the Gaijin Store

This was quite a disappointing sale. Unlike the summer sales in previous years, this time, only packs up to rank 5 went on sale. It’s clear why they didn’t put the rank 7 packs on sale — it’s because they wanted to make people wait until November before they discounted the $70 USD packs, but only up to rank 5 is quite disappointing. Part of why they did this is also probably because they just removed a bunch of rank 6 air packs in May, but the F-5C, A-10A (early), AV-8C, and Su-25K, as well as all of the rank 6 ground packs were still there. And this was before a bunch of the rank 6 ground packs and the F-5C were moved up to rank 7. Still I find this sale to be quite disappointing. A lot of the packs on sale were nice, especially the Turm III F which is a monster that, if played right, can absolutely take over games, and the Somua SM which is another monster of a vehicle.

However to me the saddest part of this sale, more than any pack not being on sale, is that with the end of it, the US and Japanese Pacific Campaign packs were removed from sale. These were some of the best value packs in the game. 1K GE, 7 days of premium account time, and the A6M5 Ko in the Japanese pack and the YP-38 for the American one. The A6M5 Ko especially is a beast. Before update 1.101 “Raining Fire” the American pack was actually even better because it had the XP-38G in it which is still one of the most monstrous vehicles in the entire game, but it’s fake so they replaced it with the YP-38 and now only those who got the XP-38G before Raining Fire still have it. Still, even after the switch, it was still an amazing pack and It’s very sad that it was removed.

Overall, while not a bad sale in and of itself, it was quite disappointing compared to previous years.

Swedish Air Force Day

For Swedish Air Force Day, Gaijin put the J 29D Tunnan and J 35A-1 Draken back on sale for a limited time as well as offered a decal of the JA 37C. I think the decal is gorgeous, certainly much nicer than the decal for Swedish Independence Day, and I really like it. I don’t have many deep thoughts on it, it’s just cool.


“Swedish Air Force Day” decal

The J 29D is a cool plane. It was one of the first 2 planes ever added to the Swedish air tree and is effectively a J 29F but with no missiles and 30 mm cannons instead of 20 mm ones. It also gets additional ground strike ordinance compared to the J 29F. However, the lack of missiles puts it at 8.7 instead of 9.0. I find it most useful as a strike fighter due to the increased strike ordinance options and the 30 mm cannons packing a serious punch against ground units. I’d say it’s worth it if you’re looking for a cool and occasionally useful vehicle to add to your collection, but as a grinder, it’s not worth it.


J 29D

The J 35A-1 is a similar story. As a grinder, it’s purely not worth it because so many crazy missiles fly around at that BR nowadays that it gets eaten alive. When it was added, it was a monster. It was a crazy vehicle, but is certainly no longer the case. It is still usable in air battles, but it does get eaten alive because at 9.7 with only AIM-9Bs and no flares, it just dies the second anything with an R-60, AIM-9L, or Magic 1 gets anywhere near it. It does, in my experience, see some use in ground battles as an air defense fighter though. However, much like the J 29D, it’s not worth it if you’re looking for a grinder. Just shell out the extra $10 USD for the Saab 35 S.


J 35A-1

JSDF Day

For JSDF Day, Gaijin introduced another one of those standardized decals that I really dislike, though admittedly, this is one of the nicer ones. They also brought back the IJN Kiyoshimo, J2M4 Kai, and Type 74 (G/Kai). I’m not going to review them here because these are all the same vehicles that were brought back for Japanese National Foundation Day in February and you can refer to my reviews of the vehicles there. I overall thought that, while nice, this was rather disappointing as it was very similar to the Japanese National Foundation Day event back in February.


“Japan Self-Defense Forces Day” decal


IJN Kiyoshimo


J2M4 Kai


Type 74 (G)

Canada Day

O Canada! Where the beaver empire starts!

I guess that sentiment is more than just a joke because the decal Gaijin gave out was, in fact, a beaver flying a Canadian flag! I absolutely love this decal. I cannot state just how much I adore it. It is in my top 5 favorite decals ever given out for anything ever. Well done Gaijin, well done.


“Canada Day” decal

Top teams for Grand Final Season I tournament

It’s a bunch of tournament teams I don’t care about, moving on.

Part 1 - Introduction-March
Part 2 - April-May
Part 3 - June (current)
Part 4 - July-August
Part 5 - September
Part 6 - October
Part 7 - November-December
Part 8 - Hopes for 2024-Conclusion

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2023, Gaijins worst year. Never seen so many bad decisions. No cash from me in this year’s sales.

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So to be clear, from your perspective, the roadmap is a set of bad decisions? The roadmap was the majority of the major, sweeping changes this year, so it would be logical to assume that you’re referring to the roadmap.

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It all tinsel and window dressing in addition to some shocking decisions and a game that is going backwards rather that forwards overall. Stickers don’t cover bad map design or an overall absence of immersion and in game enjoyment.

It may seem negative but only my optimism carries me on in this game now. I have to dig deep and use a fair bit of imagination to pretend that what happens in the game itself is in any way relative to any kind of real warfare and if it is not then what is the point? No matter what Gaijin do outside the game, it is what happens inside the game that really matters and that is what makes players stay or go.

PS let me commend you on a very good well written post. I’m forgetting my manners here, sorry.

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First of all, thank you for the commendation. Second, I don’t think the point of War Thunder is to be realistic to real warfare. The goal of War Thunder is to have realistic vehicles (I know it doesn’t, especially at top tier, I’m saying that’s the goal) and to have it look as real as possible, but I don’t think its goal is ever to feel like you’re in real warfare. You can be immersed in a game and still be aware it’s nothing like real warfare. Finally, while there are certainly a lot of things that I disagree with in the game, I wouldn’t call the roadmap tinsel and window dressing. Sweeping changes like mass research cost reductions, RP and SL modifer increases, and overall increase in how much SL and RP you earn, skill bonuses, and upcomming RP cost reductions for the top tier of minor nations which is coming in the spring of this year are all hugely large and impactful changes, and many of them don’t cover up previous issues, but rather directly fix them. I also think that the fact that they’re making a 2024 roadmap even though there was no major outcry or review bombing for it like there was with the 2023 one shows that this is an ongoing trend and not just a new coat of paint on the same thing.

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I think that is where the confusion starts and as you say it is not even something Gaijin can keep up with now. I just had my immersion and enjoyment shattered by a 1970s vehicle firing HEAT while driving a Tiger and straight away I knew I had been taken out by a vehicle that should be nowhere near a 1940s vehicle. I was happily taking damage from all the T34s and dying and taking it all then the era stupidity comes in and it just ruins the game. Only way I can face WT is to revert back to lower and lower BR and now the BR is raised that is harder to do. Little changes make such a difference.

I have had forty years of video games and never seen non-WW2 vehicles in non-WW2 settings. Just seems like a fundamental to me and in a game from 2023.That and the atrocious narrow maps.

For all the good things you took time to mention all I can think of is those horrible maps with red lines each side and the dreadful map rotation. The RP thing was simply Gaijin correcting a long-term injustice and hardly calls for praise.

Gaijin are still seen as fundamentally greedy and overcharge for everything while giving little in return.

I don’t think there was anything in the huge spate of review bombing that was unfair to Gaijin to be honest. It was all true.

Next year the window dressing will continue, and “new and exciting” vehicles will be introduced to the bad maps and lame matchmaking. Tell me I’m wrong.

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^ That, War Thunder has never been a Real Life Simulator… War Thunder is a Game with Realistic components

Development does require funding… and Gaijin never forces anyone to buy anything, War Thunder will always be a Free to Play game and we have had many members that just play for free, not really purchasing anything

As for the review bombing, Gaijin was already listening a day or so before that had blown up

And yes, I have to agree! I dont want to know how much time was spend making all of these extremely detailed Threads ^^

So, @war_Tinder Amazing Job! And Thanks for taking the time to make them! even tho may not agree with a few little things :P

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I think this comes down to you and me having fundamentally different philosophies on the game. To be clear, I think Gaijin needs to take a very long break from top tier, I said as much in the conclusion of this article in part 8. However, I’m not focused on if War Thunder immerses you in real war. I’m more focused on if War Thunder immerses you in the world of a game and I think it does that successfully.

As for the review bombing, I’m not saying it was unwarrented, I’m saying that the fact that a 2024 roadmap is being done without it and without major outcry for one is a sign of a continuing trend.

As for the map design, I think it’s a mixed bag. I don’t think there was any abjectly horrible map added in 2023, but I do think that there are a lot of really bad maps like Red Desert, Sun City, Surroundings of Volokolamsk, Pradesh, and especially Karelia, which is the worst map ingame in any gamemode, for ground; Wake Island for air, and New Zealand Cape, Palau Islands, North Sea, and especially Midway, which I absolutely cannot stand, for naval. On the other hand, there’s also quite a few great maps such as Rocky Pillars and Kamchatka for air, both of which came this year and which I have detailed map reviews on in their sections in this article; El Alamein, Tunisia, and especially Kuban, the best ground map; and North Port, African Gulf, and Franz Josef Land, which is my favorite naval map and which I review in this part of the article.

Side note: the analysis of Franz Josef Land in this section is the part of the article that I’m most proud of.

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Thank you very much. It was exactly 110 days of writing this. From September 13th to December 31st.

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All of which are outweighed by it unrealistic components. Nobody is asking for a sim here just a common sense at a basic level and gaming fundamentals that are expected. WT had them once.

Nobody can pass off 70s vehicles fighting 40s vehicles in a game expecting to be taken seriously.
Game making intelligence suggests divisions , era’s chapters, whatever you want to call them. War Thunder is verging on Marvel like levels when it comes to suspending disbelief. Mine are at breaking point think many others agree.

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Yes great job, no sarcasm there it was genuine, but I think you will find those few little things are not that little. Who can say?

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That is true, but on the other hand, the alternative option is historical matchmaking and if you do that, you end up with things like M48s versus T-72s and Strv m/31s vs T-54s. I’m not saying that 1970s vehicles versus 1940s vehicles is ideal, but it is the best option we have considering the vehicles already ingame.

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I agree. Gaijin has boxed itself into a corner and isn’t trying to get out of it.
Flooding 6BR which is very much WW2 territory with the M109 and other HEAT firing line up filler. So I have to drop down to 5 BR or just trundle along one-shot Death Valley in my slow old Tank vs super-fast HEAT firing teammates beating me to the punchline every game?

Sorry. Stickers, Condiments, all window dressing in a game where more and more long-term players are dropping out due to bad decisions. If things keep up I might be one soon myself. So much coming in that is stopping me having a good game.

Anyway, enough from me, nice post all the same. All the best.

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