This topic is to address the subject of new game modes for both land and air combat.
Based on your experiences, what is your proposed new game mode for these modes, how would it work, and what would the objectives be in a match? be objective, detail points and say points about your game mode that differentiate it from other existing modes.
I think some kind of large scale ground offensive is needed for tanks. Planes seem to get all the attention with nuclear thunder and more modes potentially coming.
This sort of ground war could involve a historical scenario from WW2 or even something more fictional like Nuclear Thunder.
It could be done as a logistics battle where ammunition and parts have to be supplied to tanks and possibly infantry at the front line. Both side’s pushing to take control of the other sides main logistics city/hub or establishing control over majority of the map. Something like the game “foxhole”. Although this would be very different from traditional war thunder, the devs have already mentioned plans for adding transport and cargo planes in Nuclear Thunder to add more logistics based missions so I think this could work. Maybe not at the scale of Foxhole but smaller and faster paced over a smaller front.
Edit: They could also make it simpler with less logistics and more traditional spawn in and take objectives, push enemy back etc. Either way ground wars could be fun.
Something that requires more effort then press W until you meet the bad guys? One where theres a little more to it than zones and then camp the other spawn…
Nuclear Escalation, but no nukes, and so designed around using conventional weapons.
Also not the unfinished mess we have currently.
After that arcade gamemodes, like CTF, King of the hill, etc for ground would be kinda fun
Something inspired by “Gun Game” maybe. You get any random vehicle in the game per kill. Even stuff like the E100 or Panther II. No idea how it could work out though.
What I would do is fully overhaul the entire CAS vs Tank dynamic, and in the process create what is effectively “Ground RB 2.0” - which would be named “Joint Operations RB” and utterly replace the current mode. CAS is a multifaceted issue demanding an equally complex solution to address godawful game mechanics, perpetually whiny people who cannot be reasoned with demanding its removal, the lacking gameplay for both Tanks and CAS to even do which pits diehards in each at each others’ throats, and finally a host of old nerfs to both Tank and CAS weapons that have long overstayed their welcome.
Part One: Removing Unnecessarily Rage-Inducing Mechanics.
Remove the kill camera completely, or at most have it show the final few seconds of the current one with not even the slightest snapshot of where the killer was. Dying should not reward you with someone’s location in a game all about positional actions.
Make all planes runway spawn, engine off.
Remove all helicopter pads that are separate from runways, and instead make helicopters spawn on the plane runway complex with the engine off, perhaps at the front end of it.
Remove the text notifications of “[Insert] Team is Capturing Zone [Letter]” - these for all intents and purposes read to any CAS in the region as “Fresh meat here ripe for slaughter.” The game already has the flashing ticket bar and icons below that for each cap - this message is redundant and needlessly frustrating.
Part Two: Rebuffing The Counters and Adding New Ones.
(Probably the most controversial point) I firmly believe CAS is fundamentally unbalanceable as long as it remains a thing people lack access to at match start and must “earn through doing stuff on the ground.” No matter what you set it to, people will always find some way to rapidly access it before their opponents think to field counters. Raising the SP costs higher than they already are would render CAS inaccessible to anything that is not already a scout vehicle. Therefore I propose pivoting completely to Simulator Mode’s SP system - 1000SP per player at match start and no ability to earn more through any actions whatsoever. Everything would be available as a first spawn with any loadout, but so would its counters of Fighters and SPAAG, therefore NOBODY has ANY EXCUSE to complain.
SP costs of various weaponry would be properly itemized so small CAS loadouts are no longer stupidly-expensive compared to planes wielding much larger ones.
The baseline costs of Fighters without air-to-ground weaponry would be slashed to a third of their present values.
The costs of tanks of all flavors would be likely reduced somewhat.
All SP cost doubling would be eliminated, as the fixed supply of 1000SP means nobody would be able to earn more than one spawn of a given vehicle anyways.
Dying in a vehicle would not remove it from your lineup if you have SP to use it again. You can spawn it as many times as you wish until you are out of SP. This solves the issue of some nations having only one competent machine at some BRs.
All SPAAG, Tank MGs under independent control, Heavy Flak TDs (think the Flakbus, VFW, YaG-10 (29-K), QF 3.7 Ram, Breda 90/53), and all SPHs which have HE-VT rounds available would be given short-ranged lead indicators based on the Rangefinding Crew Skill. All stock crews get this from 0-1000m, with Aced Crews at maximum Rangefinding+Leadership skills extending it up to 1600m. Now even the densest idiots are told where to shoot, but only when the plane is close enough to even bother. Even Radar SPAAG would have this feature when their radars are either turned off manually or knocked out from battle damage.
The existing feature of giving all users default SPAAG and a backup MBT in higher ranks would be extended to all BRs, and it would also be expanded to include a default Fighter and a default CAS, all using preset ammunition loads or ordinance loadouts where applicable. Now even the most stubborn tank-only supporters cannot dare argue they aren’t able to access the counters to the CAS they hate.
(Another highly controversial take) SPAAG being able to more accurately hit planes is good and all, but player behavior shows plainly that if the given SPAAG does not have adequate anti-tank ability, the vast majority of players will NOT move outside their own spawn zone. Then tank players in the map center still whine endlessly about how “OP” CAS supposedly is while the SPAAG then get ganged up on in/near spawn and also whine as a result. Therefore I propose undoing the repeated nerfing of SPAAGs’ (and autocannons more broadly) anti-tank capabilities. Almost all SPAAGs are outright missing their best anti-tank ammunition types. Some have their best ammunition types but due to deliberate penalty nerfing and a legacy of global nerfing for APCR and APDS either don’t pen at all or do fuck all postpen when they do pen. I would even go so far as to give some time-traveling rounds to make them guaranteed able to melt the sides and rears of most tanks they could encounter. All their BRs would intentionally be altered to ensure they are competent “Ersatz TDs,” in many cases lower than now. SPAAGs butchering tanks would be force-normalized until the whiners give the fuck up - the actual problems of old 2D armor models full of gaps and holes are not fixed by nerfing SPAAG.
Tank cannon barrels would intentionally become immune to all damage regardless of weapon or caliber that hits it. This is mainly to prevent SPAAGs from melting the barrels of whatever they cannot frontally pen to then try flanking it while it repairs, but this would also help all the beleaguered heavy tanks and heavy casemate TDs with similar issues.
All SAMs physically able to aim their launchers down in a direct-fire manner would be made able to dumb-fire their weapons. This is to give all SAMs with the ability to aim actual anti-tank capability.
All IR SAMs would be modeled similarly to the Strela in terms of how easily it locks onto targets.
All Helicopters would actually be locked by IR SAMs from reasonable distances, even in cold weather.
All Helicopters would have a constant Doppler return from their spinning rotor blades even when stationary.
The act of firing your own missile to counter the enemy’s missile would become impossible, specifically so a helicopter cannot fire 12-16 missiles against a SAM with at most 2-4 ready to shoot between reloads. Use hard cover to evade the missile…or else.
Part Three: Adding New Objectives for Both CAS and Tanks to Distract the Die-Hards in Both Camps and Get Them Off of Each Other’s Throats for Good.
Spoiler
Copy over the Cap Zone design from Naval EC, where caps double as spawns for the team controlling them. Current spawn zones now double as caps, and on each map where there are currently two spawns automatically by default, each team now starts with just ONE under their control to spawn at initially, sorta like [Battle] Mode.
Each of these “Command Posts” (yes I got the idea from OG Star Wars Battlefront 2 only to later see Naval EC already had it) would have some AI-controlled Pillboxes and AT Guns that actually fire. These are intentionally only moderate-potency weapons for each BR and vary based on the nation capturing the zone. In higher ranks towed AT guns are replaced by ATGM launchers. Like Naval EC caps, these must be all destroyed to begin capturing the zone, but unlike Naval EC they do not respawn unless players of the same team drive up to each emplacement to physically fix them. Killing these bleeds chunks of tickets like killing players does, and killing these rewards RP and SL like killing players does, intentionally to give CAS something productive to kill that cannot go scream on the forums upon death. Tanks, particularly ones with bunker-killing derp guns, would be expected to also kill these when CAS isn’t available or is distracted.
The new “Command Post” style objectives enable map sizes to dramatically increase without adding “meaningless driving time only to be one-shot and then do it all over again.” Instead the likely new meta would be to use fast machines to grab forward cap zones and spawn superheavies up front later on upon the death of the initial scouts.
The ability to capture even rear enemy spawn points will solve much of the spawn-camping complaints, because now when a flanking party has finished a flank, they do not need to sit there staring down the spawn zone to shut off enemy reinforcement flow - instead they can capture that zone and encircle the enemy team spawning mid-map. Obviously this means removing nearly all spawn invulnerability, all map red-zoning, all minimap highlighting, all flashing chevrons from people shooting into spawns, etc.
The Artillery Support mechanic gets a total makeover, and is split into Gun Artillery and Rocket Artillery. Each team has three batteries of each with their own reload timers, so you do not have say 16 impatient players spamming 32 consecutive artillery barrages all on Cap Zone C. These also scale with the BR range and the nations in a given team. Up to the early Cold War era, gun sizes grow and number of rounds per barrage proportionately decreases. Past then, gun sizes shrink down to modern 150mm-203mm sizes but rounds per barrage substantially increase. Killing these also rewards like killing players and bleeds ticket chunks like killing players, again to lure CAS away from player tanks because bots don’t whine when they die.
Bombing targets would be brought back on tank maps, and be worth tickets when killed. Destroying all 3-4 would open runways to be destroyed, but destroying those would NOT auto-end the match - it just blocks further plane/helicopter spawns or repairs/rearms of existing ones.
Spawning at each bombing target early game is a convoy of light trucks and maybe a few bot tanks+SPAAG. Killing these does NOT bleed tickets, but each unit arriving adds tickets equal to ten player/bot deaths to its respective team.
Part Four: Undoing Old Nerfs to Tank and CAS Weaponry
APCR: penetration would be restoratively increased to real levels across the board. “Shell Shattering” would be removed as a game mechanic - the large reduction in angled penetration for sharp-nosed APCR was already sufficient to model it. Postpen would be increased to be roughly equivalent to solid AP with a 45-degree-wide spall cone of highly lethal fragments.
APDS: “Shell Shattering” would be removed as a game mechanic - the large reduction in angled penetration for sharp-nosed APDS was already sufficient to model it. Postpen would be increased to be roughly equivalent to solid AP, with a 45-degree-wide spall cone of highly-lethal fragments.
Solid AP of all sizes: Even for smaller-caliber rounds of the 20-37mm variety, all would be granted a 60-degree-wide fragmentation cone to be consistently lethal. This would of course make autocannon solid AP from both SPAAGs and CAS planes considerably more lethal whether they have APHE or not.
HEAT and HEATFS: Both would produce a 45-degree wide spall cone of consistently-lethal fragments, though the core of it extending to 30-degrees wide would punch especially far into the tank.
HESH: Firstly, it would be converted to use the Base-Fused HE model as its basis, because real HESH was not that sensitive to bushes and small trees like the game portrays it as “a weird type of HE.” HESH should punch through mud-guards, track armor, most side skirts save for maybe the thick ones on the E-100 Tiger-Maus, track sprockets on tank hull sides, optics, and all other junk it currently goes “poof” on. Due to using a base-fused HE model, HESH would be able to directly penetrate inside and detonate inside lightly-armored machines sorta like APHE, as it actually did to armored car test targets. Second, HESH would consistently generate overpressure given it is a giant HE variation. Third, the scabbing penetration effect would have an extremely wide spall cone of 120 degrees of highly lethal fragments that fly far into the tank, but cannot detonate ammunition easily - thus it WILL eviscerate the sloped homogenous plating of T-54s, IS-3s, IS-6s, etc. exactly like it is supposed to, and frequently one-tap them outright.
Big HE: Firstly, all HE shells not fired out of autocannons would gain the ability to have their fuses set before firing - instant-detonation like how they are currently is the default, but they can be set to delayed detonation and thus act similarly to base-fused HE with increased kinetic penetration. The kinetic and explosive penetration values of HE across the board would add together regardless of fuse mode.
ATGMs, AGMs, and SAMs: The controllability nerfs of the past would be removed. All of these which are aimed via mouse movement would fly forward reliably without hitting the mud so they are actually usable, regardless of what platform they are on.
Rockets: Much like big HE, all unguided rockets would operate similarly. If mounted on tanks, the fuses can be set before launch like with HE shells. If mounted on planes, you can only set them before you take off (because obviously pilots can’t reach around to change the fuse on underwing rockets while in midair). The aforementioned HEAT rebuff would also apply to all HEAT warhead rockets, and missing types of HEAT rockets such as HEAT HVARs would be added.
Bombs: Lethal blast radii would be approximately doubled for all bomb sizes against tanks without NBC sealing and positive-pressure ventilation, possibly more so for especially large bombs. War Thunder currently uses the vehicle’s physical destruction as the threshold for how effective bombs should be - but unless you’re in a modern NBC-sealed tank, real bombs will kill or incapacitate crews via spalling or just the shockwave throwing them around even if the tank is mechanically operable. As one example, a 1000lb bomb would incapacitate the crew of a Sherman or Panzer IV if it landed up to 25m away despite the tank being operable if hit at that distance. All the aforementioned buffs to anti-air abilities and making CAP available from the start balances this out automatically.
Bombsights: All bombsight-equipped planes would see the return of a CCRP-style 3D bombing point that was unjustly removed from RB mode back in 1.59 without explanation, only to then be repackaged as a “new” feature on modern jets years later. Bomb trapezes would be optional instead of forced equipment on specialized dive bombers.
Anyone who wants to pick up their preferred weapon and actually try to kill the CAS they claim to hate is now heavily encouraged and empowered to do so. The people who would try to sit back and cry for nerfing or removal of CAS would be laughed out of the room by everyone who does adapt. Many Tank BRs would dramatically shift with the peeling back of all the artificially stupid ammunition nerfing, leading to a vastly healthier game for everyone involved.
GRB EC mode