Why does War Thunder players put up with this silver lion grind?

Game Discussion General Discussion
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20

Now fly the F2H-2 Banshee and only do air-to-air combat.

Then fly the Ho 229 Horten and only do air to air combat.

Then fly the F80C shooting star and only do air to air combat.

Then fly the Me262 (any variant, but I did the math for the 7.0) and only do air to air combat.

Also make sure you’re fighting against enemies on peer skill level rather than farming zombers or new players to sim. You know, people who can kill you back. (going to be hard to find with early jets because the costs are so absurd, people leave after 2 deaths and you got nothing to do afterwards if you want pvp).

Spoilers:

Horton: 17.4k to spawn, makes 1430/min so 0.92x15x1430 = 19.7K. You make 2.3K in your first 15 minutes max assuming full score and landing.

21

Now you’ve gotta be smart about it imo. If ur looking to grind sl in any of the mentioned planes its possible ofcourse but won’t get you a lot.

Playing sim is a privilege with how abandoned the gamemode is and flying your favorite aircraft in sim should not be to seek rewards but rather the pure enjoyment :)

Anywho, offtopic. Just had to share the screenshots for laughs! Lol

22

When were those images taken? How many times did you die? What was the net SL gain? And how did you get 800k for doing almost nothing?

Now do it in a TT plane without premium time. You won’t get anywhere close to that.

2 Likes
23

I’m not seeking rewards.

I’m seeking the ability to afford to spawn my banshee a second time to actually fly and do PvP rather than afk in the corner of the map after bombing 1 base.

I WANT to fly my banshee but I am unable to justify how much SL it’d cost me in an active and populated lobby.

My usual sim kill/death in props tends to look something like ~2-5 deaths and 4-6 kills over 90 minutes using a plane I’m moderately familiar with.

This usually gives me around 30-50K SL in the P-51 "cannon"mustang/A6M3 or M5/F4U-4/BF109F4.

In the F2H-2, doing 4 kills and 2 deaths puts you solidly in debt (you’d need to get 2 kills, stay alive for 15 minutes and land, get 2 kills, stay alive for 15 minutes and land to afford 1 death.)

1 Like
24

Gotcha, well this goes deeper.

As said, sim is abandoned sadly but there is a lot devs could do to fix this as we all agree on.

Hope you find the time to premium grind at one point though!

25

It wouldn’t even need a lot of effort.

Just scale Cost-to-Spawn and Max SL reward so that 1 full survival cycle nets you enough SL to at least respawn once rather than the super enthralling gameplay of… (bomb 1 base/get kill, afk 15 minutes)x2 (so total of 30 minutes) to afford 1 respawn.

In my F4U-4, spawn cost is 4K and I make 730 SL per min (0.92x15x730 = 10074 ) This means, surviving for 15 minutes and getting max score (2 kills) allows me to break even if I die right after my second take off and accomplish nothing.

This also means that getting 2 kills and dying early (around 7.6 minutes, assuming the following: 0.90*x*730*0.8 = 4000 where x is time alive in minutes and 0.90 assuming 800 score. In fact, even with 1 kill (assuming score of 0.75), we break even staying alive for 9.1 minutes!

This mathematical ratio (break even if you get 2:1 KD die 7 minutes in, break even if you get 1:1 KD and die 10 minutes in, profit if you survive the full cycle) should be consistent.

The values for my F2H-2 though are…
Spawn cost: 15416
SL/min: 1370
thus: 0.90*x*1370*0.8 = 15416 gives a result exceeding 15 minutes which due to the way the reward function works is not a workable answer. If we look at real income for 15 minutes ( 0.90*1370*0.8*15 = 14796 we can see that you can just about break even with a 2:1 K/D ratio and need to land to actually make a profit of 4K (14796/0.8= 18495).
If we do the same as in the F4U-4 and get a K:D of 2:1 and survive for 8 minutes (0.90*8*1370*0.8 = 7891.2) (notice me using 8 minutes rather than 7.6 and we’re still losing 7000+ SL per respawn with a 2:1 KD!
Or we get a K:D of 1:1 and survive for 9.1 0.75*8*1370*0.8 = 7480.2

Notice how little difference a KD of 2:1 and a KD of 1:1 have by the way (assuming 1 kill is worth 450 points). Getting 3:1 KD makes no difference (well 2%), and getting 4:1 KD makes absolutely no difference). The 135 score you get for dying MIGHT give about 2% more reward than I accounted for but… 2%… It’s not making a difference. Unless you survive the full 15 minutes and land (which likely means disengaging from a good fight the moment you got your 2 kills and leaving your allies to fend for themselves), you’re likely paying SL each respawn.

The multipliers are based on the research in this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1elUK6q-ujEgfb-QYwt4II1u3z-leh_8LqeJdHgWttGU/edit?gid=0#gid=0

image

What’s the solution?

We could literally just copy the F4U-4’s repair and spawn costs to the F2H-2 banshee, limiting max income/15 minute and land to 10K from 18K and also reduce repair cost to say, 5K and make it so it’s worth it to fly into PvP and risk your plane against peers who can and will kill you either 50-50 or at least some of the time (2:1 KD) and be able to stay in a full lobby for 90 minutes building up some 4-5 deaths and 7-8 kills and brreak even and have a lively, engaging time.

The hilarious thing?

Higher tier planes are cheaper to fly than the F2H-2!

I’m pretty sure we can all agree the F8U-2 is far more OP in a downtier than a F2H-2, right?

Now, the wing rip is back so it's not as powerful, but still - high G missiles at 10.0 is pretty crazy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl3IN9tZOPk

F8U-2 max repair cost: 11K SL
F8U-2 SL/min: 1600 sl/min
Thus, 15 minutes max score gives us 22080
Break-even with 2:1 K:D time is (0.9*x*1600*0.8 = 11078 is... 9.6 minutes)
Break-even with 1:1 KD time is (0.75*x*1600*0.8 = 11078 is 11.54 minutes)

The far more oppressive, powerful plane with much better kill-potential is… cheaper to fly than the F2H-2 banshee. And the banshee is one of the cheaper WW2/korean jets - Horten I don’t even dare calculate but you saw its fixed values (17K spawn cost, max 19 something income).

F5E is 1660 SL/min and according to wiki, spaded spawn cost is 11958 SL
F4E is 1700 SL/min and according to wiki, spaded spawn cost is 12333 SL
F16A is 1710 SL/min and according to wiki, spaded spawn cost is 14951 SL
F15E is 1730 sl/min and according to the wiki, spaded spawn cost is 17621SL
(I trust the wiki for this, spaded spawn costs line up with what I see in-game for planes I own)

Yes.

You see it right.

The F2H-2 costs more to spawn than an F16A while making 5100 SL less per full survival 15 minute max score cycle.

The Horten costs barely 200 SL less than the F15E and makes 4500 SL less.

1 Like
26

Because it’s impossible to play without a premium account, and progressing to new vehicles is unmanageable.

27

It’s fairly alive at prop tiers, and the times I check my F3H-2/F8U, missile thunder is also pretty alive.

Gunfighter/Korean/WW2 jet era is dead though and… even ignoring the horrible balance/compression issues (Horten is 7.7, Saggi 2 is 8.0 - what chance does the horten even have), it’s just plain unaffordable.

Props I can always break even given I got a buffer to eat costs for early game screwups.
F8U-2 also seems to do as well as props in its break even calculations.
Top tier is top tier and idk about it outside of squish rants.

28

Well, there are about a dozen 12.3 aircraft in the game, but 12.3 is missing in Sim. I think this says a lot about the developers’ attitude towards this mode.

29

You can’t, the issue is you don’t gain much either

30

Yes and no.
I have finished nations but since I like spading every tank I do keep playing long after I finished them.

31

I don’t really like flying, so I don’t do it much. But I think I make about a million SL every few days playing tanks. Not doing anything special - just having fun.
That’s why I asked if air was that much different.

32

as a f2p player, i only have issues with RP, and i have literally an abundance of sl. maybe its skill issue

33

Playing spaded lineups more than likely

34

You will probably run out of sl if you are just playing to grind out everything asap.

Nothing wrong with going back to low tiers and/or nations you “finished”

35

yeah, for me, if I have nothing to research in one tech tree, I will not be playing that tech tree. So basically I am always paying for new vehicles

36

I am not trying to grind out everything asap. If I am, I would be playing a pack vehicle or something, those will definitely make you positive. I talking about grinding with regular vehicles, spading them and such. Besides, even if I want everything asap, I am paying, why do I still need to worry about the silver lion issue…

37

what do you usually play? do you just play one vehicle? do you try to spade all the top tier in the game? For example, if I only commit myself playing the f16 only, I dont think I would have SL issues as well.

38

The people who struggle the most with SL are those who unlock and spade most vehicles. Every vehicle costs SL for research, more for basic crew training and more for every module. If you go for Expert crews it’s an extremely quick way of going bankrupt. People who always play the same vehicles and skip vehicles on the tech tree only have to worry about repairs and ammo costs.

True, but most if not all of the RP you get goes to waste, so what’s the point?

1 Like
40

It sounds like you are trying to 100% the game. It doesnt seem like you ever go back to play vehicles once they are spaded or their tech tree is “complete”.

Because they are a fun vehicle to play. If you only think about sl/rp when playing, you are not going to enjoy the game as much.

I have had the US air tree fully researched for a while and i still play US air a lot. I dont play them to get new things. I play them because they are fun.