But I’m not sure if they really added the active scouting from drones because they couldnt fix that “exploit”? I mean, not a lot of people used it like that and it was at least somewhat unreliable, especially on moving vehicles. Once you missed your scouting on the squad marker you were on a long cooldown. Now its 100% reliable every 30 (or something) seconds and in between you can just use the other marker without cooldown (the non active scout “enemy at this position” or whatever). Could be they just wanted to fk over gameplay a bit more?
I mean scout drones used by a well coordinated 4 man premade squad already give these players an insane advantage (one sitting in back scouting for the rest of the 3, magically lowering his sp cost for cas without any risk of losing sp himself, while his squadmates play arcade mode, hell yeah snail) even without the active scouting you could get into cas pretty easily and reliably when playing a bit more safe and not just throwing yourself at enemies hoping for 2 kills. Especially if you always know where everyone on your side of the map is.
I think ill just never understand why in addition to the universal roles light tanks can already be used in (anti drone, anti air for closer tagets, supporting mbts, scouting (not sure what the radio operators in some heavy tanks are doing but whatever) this also needs to be rewarded with lowering the sp of spawning cas in succesful matches down to something like 200 sp??? is it necessary that just throwing yourself right into the enemy team and maybe getting a kill and an assist in a light tank and then being able to spawn fully loaded cas planes like 2 min into a match is actually a (somewhat) viable “strategy”?
It’s a clear exploit, you don’t need quotation marks.
I believe they added this to give people a legal way to scout enemies without LoS to their own tank as they were already able to do just that. They increased the cooldown as even they figured out it could be really OP. To me this looks like a band aid fix to the bug as scout drones existed for a long, long while before this thing got introduced.
The sad reality of 2025 GRB as it has never been more arcade-ish than it is currently.
I’m pretty sure Gaijin understands light vehicles in higher tiers (especially top) are clearly inferior to MBTs so they had to give them something to be playable.
It would definitely be a nerf but some problems would still prevail:
Why do only light tanks get it?
Of course tanks ingame should somewhat resemble their reallife counterparts. But hero shooter mechanics like that are against the fundamental principals of War Thunder.
In real life, light tanks were cheap tanks fighting against superior battle tanks, doing reconnaissance. But War Thunder is a game where vehicles get matched by the BR system against equally capable tanks with similar combat power.
There is no need to give light tanks this scouting role in War Thunder since they already fight against tanks with the exact same combat power.
Scouting throws the ingame balance game off balance since light tanks get to have these hero shooter mechanics, even though they are already matched against equally as good tanks, on top of that.
And it shouldn’t be a marker in the view of the players that screams and them, also telling him if the enemy is in shooting range.
If you get scouted you can be sure every enemy that has the opportunity will try to get you in their line of sight, trying to kill you through rows if houses, bushes etc. since the marker helps them to assess if they can shoot at you.
So if suddenly you get shot at from multiple directions by the craziest shots, through forests etc., that is because someone scouted you and the marker shows every enemy where you are (with only a small inaccuracy) and if you are within reach.
Here a good example of how unfair scouting can be.
I killed that Fiat without me getting hit.
But thanks to his hero shooter ability he could scout me so I was exposed to the entire enemy team what lead to my death.
The number one rule for driving open top vehicle is at this point; don’t get scouted / don’t meet light tanks.
Now this happens every match but the problem is that one doesn’t realize it. You only really recognize it when it helps you localize enemies but not the other way around.
Either every tank or no tank should have these hero shooter mechanics.
These mechanics that punish you for being seen by a light tank are totally unfair.
No type of tank should be “balanced” through hero shooter mechanics but through the BR system and map designs that take these tanks into account!
You can literally decide the match completely alone if you and maybe one or two other players scout through the drones.
And that’s not because of any skill; no skills is needed for scout drones. It is because scouting undermines the principles of Ground RB so much that the game becomes unplayable for the enemy.
I believe scout drones and how the scout mechanic is implemented in general is highly detrimental to flanking playstyle and vehicles that rely on that to make an impact. Staying invisible isn’t possible if enemy team has just a couple of decent scout drone users.
Scouting wouldnt be as toxic if the marker stayed fixed and lasted a short amount of time, like 10 seconds or so, so if the spotted target moves, ennemies would still have to relocate him but they’ve been warned of it’s activity in that sector.
The system as of now is stupid and if you don’t use it, you put your team at a very big disadvantage. When there’s a couple good scouters in teams, it has a huge effect on the match flow.
Nobody cares about ammo replenishment. But yes, in principal that is just another stupid hero shooter mechanic that shouldn’t be in the game.
The Game should be balanced by the BR System and by taking all the types of tanks into account when it comes to map design. Gaijin stopped doing the second part.
The maps should offer tactical opportunities for LTs and TDs, then they wouldn’t suffer anymore.
In some messages you can also read that I said that I would not like it if every tank had this feature. BUT it would be fair. It would undermine RB totally but at least it would be fair because then everybody gets to use these hero shooter mechanics.
I said it, talking about the unfair character of scouting.
