Why do people care about aircraft specs?

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
21

I partially blame jets for this.

People seem to forget aircraft fight in 3 dimensions and instead just turn in a flat circle. From what I’ve seen of modern jet gunfights, it works there due to their extreme TWR/SEP. People then apply the same logic to propeller planes where even the best plane has worse SEP than is needed to keep turning at corner speed, maybe not zeros since they love being slow.

You can partially see this in people hearing advice to climb and rejecting it as “But I can’t go 2km above enemy to dive in them so climbing is worthless!” forgetting that altitude isn’t just about diving but offsetting your horribly weak (compared to jets) engine and trading altitude to maintain your best turning speed or to cash it in for an aggressive lead turn without falling out of the sky afterwards.

I feel jets can also be blamed about people not doing out-of-plane maneuvers. Most CC jet dogfights I see stick to the deck to avoid missiles (or at least that’s what I was told when I asked why nobody is cutting into the other guy’s turn or using yoyos, pitchbacks and lag rolls), while with props you kinda want to fly the egg.

And beyond these…

People go “Props boring, idc to learn” for the final jet blame.

4 Likes
22

Exactly mate, thankyou.

23

Glad we could help you resolve this issue, (I’m not taking credit for RunaDacino’s response here) I apologize for not understanding at first

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24

More of a rant than anything on my behalf but happy to have your contribution mate :)

25

Because specs are important in a supposedly realistic game? If they didn’t matter then you get funny shit like when the sea hawk had it’s thrust doubled.

26

Like… Why not? It’s the very basic thing to do, or why don’t we just make Tie and Xwing

27

My point is people care about specs etc but whether they have 10hp or 1000hp - people just fly into headons, the behaviour, tactics dont change.

You see it for yourself, highly agile fighters and climbers such as zero’s etc totally disregard their capabilities and strengths and go into headons with mustangs and 190’s.

I understand specs etc but my sentiment is that the playerbase utilise the same method regardless of capabilities/statistics.
At that point - who cares about lacking 100hp?

28

Generally the people who care about that stuff, aren’t the ones mindlessly flying planes. Plus it’s nice to know that the plane you’re flying is realistic.

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29

I get buffing/nerfing planes, but I don’t get some people literally leaking secret docs just to prove a point.

None of the top tier vehicles are accurate. It would be impossible to get things accurate, and even where data can be reasonably found, Gaijin refuses them to balance the game.

Besides, the A6M would rip itself flying like in the game lol

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30

Fr. it also provides historical intrigue, especially in sim, when you face a vehicle from another nation that is better. I was with on call with a few friends in air sim when i just here “Holy ******* christ japanese!!!”

31

Hi, I have a question, not about some aircraft specs, but about the Zeppelin. I have done the missions for the Tanks and I din’t get the zeppelin. So how can you get it and did someone of you get it. I want it because it’s just cool. Thanks for every answer.

32

Sadly you cannot receive the zepplin

33

It is not available as a reward from the event, the only aircraft available is the British bomber. Also, for future reference there are already topics on this, so you can post and read others comments on them

This one is locked now, but you can still read it Making the Zeppelin a reward in the WW1 mode event [WITH POLL]

34

What if I told you, that you can discuss the mentality of the playerbase seperately from the importance of vehicle performance.

It’s easy enough to say that there’s a vocal portion of the player base which struggles with the game and will try and use anything as an excuse to lobby for changes made to the game to resolve their problem, ‘buff my vehicle’, ‘nerf the enemy vehicle’, ‘my ammo or missile is underperforming’, ‘the enemy ammo is overperforming’… ‘decompression’.

You don’t need to undermine the important of vehicle stats.

35

I think my favourite part is when you’re the only one flanking while the rest of your team is flying to the neighbouring galaxy with the enemy team, so you literally get all the ground troops and A-4s you could ever need

1 Like
36

Not my intention to undermine specs, moreso to highlight the discrepancy between the community’s
concern for specs compared with the general behaviour of which I see every single match.
I.E - having a concern about having 10 less horsepower on the forums then having 0 concern when ingame and doing a headon against a bf110 with a zero for example or turnfighting by default.

If a new player came on the forums and read all these posts, they would think “wow this community is expert and highly skilled” - then going into match and then thinking “wtf are these lunatics doing?”
It doesn’t add up.

37

moreso to highlight the discrepancy between the community’s
concern for specs compared with the general behaviour of which I see every single match.

TL;DR - congratulations, you have observed typical human ignorance with a splash of ‘no self awareness’

In some ways, you’re not so different from the community you’re denigrating. To me it seems like you’re susceptible to the same mistake.

  • People discuss the stats of vehicles, because it’s generally the only data they have to quantify vehicle performance. The mistake being made is when people assume that all the characteristics of the vehicle can be boiled down to the stat card and armour thickness; “it’s all they can see therefor they assume that it’s all there is”.
  • The mistake I think you’re making is confusing the ‘noisy few’ with ‘the entire community’

I stopped paying attention to aircraft stat cards years ago as there was nothing in them that would affect my decision making in battle, it was only recently that I learned how inaccurate the cards were to the point of being disinformation. Very few if any people on these forums are pilots, tankers or sailors (or they keep reasonably quiet about it), which means that basically everyone complaining about vehicle performance has no frame of reference for comparison. Lots of people talk about realism, but it never has anything to do with realism, when they wear themselves out arguing, it quickly becomes evident the realism they’re describing is more accurately ‘immersion’ which has nothing to do with War Thunder and everything to do with their own personal suspension of disbelief. Player expectations are typically informed by:

  1. Movies and Other video games in the setting
  2. Documentaries or Youtube Video Essays
  3. Books - Historical Memoires
  4. Books - Publications about vehicles of war
  5. Actual research

If a new player came on the forums and read all these posts, they would think “wow this community is expert and highly skilled” - then going into match and then thinking “wtf are these lunatics doing?”
It doesn’t add up.

Similarly on the forums, I see many familiar faces here and with the exception of a few wild personalities the people here have reasonable expectations when it comes to the game’s modelling of physics and vehicles. Most people agree on the systems that work well, most people agree on the systems that work poorly. If anything, it’s the ‘new players’ with a limited understanding of the game, showing up to the forums full of emotion and bluster complaining about stats, bias or some other tired bullshit about historical matchups, and then, the usual suspects will slowly respond to the topic.

War thunder is a free to play game, there is a huge variance in the demographic of players. Some people are enthusiasts who are interested in the vehicles and looking for a game, other’s a simply looking for something exciting to play in there spare time. Some people might pick this up for a week or two every few months, others invest a considerable portion of their time into the game.

The forums are where the committed players (good and bad) tend to clash with new players who have no idea what they’re talking about.

38

In my experience at least, when people discuss “stat cards” they mean more datamined information, actual aircraft testing in controlled environments and recording the data or direct WTRTI output (usually for MEC).

Spoiler

E.g.: I know my plane has XYZ altitude ranges where its SEP drops. I know my opponent has ABC altitude ranges where its SEP drops. I want to avoid flying at ZYX altitude because my engine is very weak there relatively, and if possible I want to fight my opponent near ABC.

Or I know my plane has a high energy cost instantaneous turn that almost spins me around my axis and will give me a gun solution thanks to a maneuvering-energy diagram produced by a trusted dataminer or youtuber like squishface. I also know my plane has terrible SEP compared to anyone I can face within my BR spread. Therefore I know to win fights I need altitude so that I can trade it for energy in place of engine power and to avoid going vertical - “Never fight a hellcat in a descending spiral, it will win.”

Or I know my plane has significantly better SEP than that scary spitfire I saw so I turned the fight into a vertical climb since I also have experience with spits and know they handle terribly at low speeds (which granted, isn’t on any graph or easily digestible stat card, only tutorials on how not to kill yourself with the spitfire with stick & rudder)

And so on, and so forth - knowing what speed you have best corner speeds at and how steep your dive should be, knowing whether it’s worth going vertical vs your opponent or going flat or using aggressive turns in a spiral or whether you should ease up on the stick because you don’t need to monkey-pull to beat anything provided you keep your speed at 350 km/h or so all comes down to WTRTI/maneuvering energy diagrams and SEP charts.

Oh, and knowing how to run away (whether to go vertical, shallow climb, shallow dive, steep dive, straight-extension on deck).

As an aside, I wish gaijin replaced the useless IG stat card with a maneuvering-energy diagram and a SEP charts.The in-game stat card misleads and doesn’t tell you enough.

39

I have no idea how its actually handled in Forza if it’s even a desirable system but my understanding is as follows.

In forza cars are rated by simulating their performance on a theoretical race track. It would be cool if the stats in war thunder reflected a better variety of vehicle scenarios. I.e climb rates at variety of angles/altitudes, fuel slider and armaments considered.

Getting rid of bullshit terms like parasitic drag :-(

40

Half of the threads on this forum are from people who whine their little treasured vehicles isnt good enough to cover their massive skill issue, so I dont think hanging out in here is going to teach a bunch of headon monkeys anything significant about the game.