Yugoslavian/Balkan Tech Tree

[War_Embodied]

Should Yugoslavia/the Balkans be added as a tech-tree into the game?

• Yes, as a full fledged independent tech tree rank 1-8+
• Yes, but similar to Israel where it starts higher in rank
• Yes, but as a sub-tree to another nation (Such as the Russia)
• No, at least not yet
• No, Never

Yugoslavia and the Balkan nations that survive her would make for a great addition to the game I believe. Yugoslavia had its own military industry and had a very unique history of working with both the West and the East in the Cold War. Here I will list some of their unique vehicles as well, to help bring home the point (although I will not be providing any extensive documents for these vehicles here, as this topic is more about the addition of Yugoslavia, not so much the details of the vehicles within, that can come later)

The Partisan/Kingdom of Yugoslavia had mostly early war and pre-war vehicles, and would end up modifying them extensively creating very unique tanks from the parts of other nations, although these did not have any official designations

S35 w/ 6lber cannon

this was a French S35 with a 6lber installed, it had a new turret to allow this

M3 Stuart w/PaK 40

This was an M3 Stuart modified to be a casemate tank with a German 75mm PaK40, similar to the Marder

M3 Stuart w/Flak 36

This was another M3 Stuart that was modified to be used as an SPAA by having 4 German 20mm cannons

After the war Yugoslavia had a lot of rebuilding to do and needed to be able to defend itself, so it started to build up it’s industries rather than relying on others (as it did have the resources to build itself up as well)

Vozilo A

The T-34-85 was a major tank development, so much so that it was (at the end of the war) still secret as to its specifics, unless you had one you could not really make one, and so with only pictures of them Yugoslavia set out on making them, and created the Vozilo A ‘Heavy Tank’ This vehicle was quite different, it had angled hull cheeks instead of the standard angled T-34 front. It had a muzzle break on its 85mm cannon, and most distinct of all, a quite bulbous turret.

SO-122

The SO-122 was a Yugoslavian attempt to ‘modernise’ the Sherman by replacing the engine with a specially modified engine from the T-34-85, alongside a new armament… the 122mm cannon used on the IS-2 and other Soviet tanks. It had a modified turret and could fully traverse and fire, the image is the one known photo of the SO-122 in testing and it has the cannon transport support up and on

M-84

The M-84 was made originally as a variant of the T-72M tank, but also is still used and modified today by many countries, it features an improved fire control system, better engine and mobility, and improved composites (as its base model that is, other variants do exist)

Yugoslavia also had unique air vehicles, here are a few ground attack vehicles and fighter vehicles

Soko J-20 Kraguj

The J-20 was a ground attack vehicle indigenous to Yugoslavia. It was made in the 60s and was a lightweight propeller aircraft with a light armament of 2 .30 calibre Brownings, but could carry large calibre rockets, and up to 100 kb bombs

Soko J-21 Jastreb

The Jastreb was another ground attack vehicle, this time a jet. It was armed with 3 M3 .50 Cals, and could carry a variety of ordinance

Soko J-22 Orao

The Orao was a ground attack vehicle made in the 70s in similar vein to the Su-25. It has the 23mm of the Su-25, but also could carry a variety of ordinance, from the AGM Mavericks, to the Grom-1 (a Yugoslavian made Kh-23) and a variety of bombs or rockets

Ikarus S-49

The S-49 was a fighter aircraft, and the first to be built and designed within Yugoslavia. It came armed with an MG151/20 in the engine, and 2 M2 50 cals.

Novi Avion

The Novi Avion was never built, or at least fully built, it never did have a first flight or a selected engine as far as we know, but was built to be Yugoslavia’s indigenous 4th Generation Multirole aircraft. It would be armed with a 30mm cannon of some variety, have 11 hardpoints, and be capable of up to Mach 1.88 supposedly.

Note: The image of the Novi Avion is an artist interpretation, as the aircraft never flew

Edit: I am not sure if it comes across, but also the vehicles I mention here are not an exhaustive or even close to full list, these are just a handful I picked that I found interesting to try and show some of the unique vehicles Yugoslavia has to offer, there are more that could also easily be added aside from foreign vehicles that they also used

[Uncle_J_Wick]

I support everybody willing to invest time in order to use war thunder as a platform to bring long forgotten or simply rare known vehicles back to a virtual life.

I am simply not convinced that the current nation tree and or sub-tree concept initiated when war thunder was launched can handle anything properly after WW2, in some cases like Italy or France - they fought on different sides at certain times, so even 1940 creates issues.

From my pov gaijin sees nations outside the big 3 (most played) simply as business opportunity to earn money - and this happens mainly towards top tier, so sub trees are used to attract players from there and are allocated to close gaps or where the most income would be expected (like Swiss Hunter).

Asking for a Yugoslavian Tech Tree is imho the same as asking for an Indian / Pakistan TT - the have similar cultural (long term) backgrounds, but their people are different and eager to distinguish themselves from each other.

Even if you would forget about civil war and long and bitter fights in the Balkan area (or the ongoing border war between India & Pakistan) they are and were always different people.

This whole nation / subtree / minor nation concept is killing (besides a hell of other facts) together with foreign/captured premium vehicles the last remaining realism within wt.

Look at the Chinese tree - a total mess regarding PRC and ROC - there were lots of incidents when ROC P-47s slaughtered PRC fighters. Or the German tree covering cold war planes from both sides until 1989/90 - so up till then they were potential enemies. Just a joke.

If you analyze the state of the game you might come to the conclusion that the only things which are realistic are the look and the skin of vehicles.

From my pov a war game should consider a somehow realistic combat scenario - if u just look at some vehicles like Shermans or Bf 109s - any long term motivation based on real interest in actual events gets killed if you see and fight with or against the same or similar vehicles.

Anyway, good luck with your project!

[War_Embodied]

Personally for War Thunder i’ve always been a fan of the realistic vehicle behaviour but not ‘historical match-ups’ approach, as historically nations were rarely ‘balanced’ and I wouldn’t be having fun trying to fight IS-3s in a Tiger E or using a Chi-Ha Kai.

Although as for the issue of national representation post-WW2 I honestly believe Gaijin should do a minor update to amend that and change things like make it so Germany is shown with the modern German flag, and Russia with the modern Russian flag, etc.

As for the Balkan area, I am speaking from the background of someone who’s family was from Serbia and Croatia, and the vast majority of them preferred Yugoslavia (although the real issue came up as to how Yugoslavia was supposed to be run, with my Great Grandmother being from the formerly Kingdom of Yugoslavia) I don’t know if a single flag could be used to encompass the modern Balkan area, so they would definitely be an outlier if they changed nations to represent their modern counterparts instead of their WW2 counterparts, but either way i’m digressing…

The biggest thing is at this point Gaijin has stated their intentions of adding new tech trees, and largely is moving past WW2-era equipment, whether it be for money or ‘fun’ or some secret third option I don’t know, I don’t really judge because it’s their business and they need to keep the lights on end of the day. More than anything I just love to always see more unique vehicles in the game, and it is annoying when real life politics can interfere with that (like if they ever did make an India tree it would be a PR mess to include Pakistan as part of India although TBH I feel both nations would just be added as part of the UK’s tree)

I hope my rambling actually makes sense, because I realise now I’ve gone on for a while and I don’t know if I really made a point, so for conciseness sake a TL-DR;

I like seeing new unique vehicles in game, and I feel adding Yugoslavia/Balkans as a tech tree would help in that endeavour

[Marx974]

mec t’a hyper bien travaillé, et surtout tu as eu une très bonne idée, je n’avais pas penser à la yougoslavie, effectivement quand j’y pense c’est un très bon pays qui pourrait faire un von arbre technologique. à la fois ce n’est pas une nation occidentale et même elle était du coté du bloc de l’est mais avait coupé ses relations avec l’URSS à cause de Staline et Tito. c’est une super idée, j’espère que gajin l’aura vu et le mettra en place :)

[oom1992]

I wonder Greece maybe sub tree for Yugoslavian/Balkan Tech Tree ?

[SatsuJ]

They should just do something akin to ‘rest of the world’ tech tree. Maybe even split in parts, like ‘rest of the europe’ and ‘rest of the world/asia’, whatever.

Would give them opportunity to introduce new vehicles without shoehorning them into some nation they don’t really belong.

[War_Embodied]

I feel that with the addition of Israel, China, and Sweden the idea of an ‘International Tree’ is basically gone, Gaijin has shown they are willing to make tech trees that are either;

• Mostly a mixed bag of other nations equipment with almost no unique vehicles (Such as China)

• Willing to make a tech tree start after rank 1 if the nation doesn’t have the vehicles to make up the earlier ranks (With Israel)

• Willing to put areas of ethnic/cultural ties together to make a tree fleshed out (Sweden+Finland)

• Will put minor nations into bigger nation tech tree if they cannot make their own (South Africa+UK)

I used to be a big supporter of the international tech tree, but since then gaijin has moved away from that idea in large part because they’ve moved away from being a largely WW2 game and moved into being more of a vehicle simulator, which I am personally fine with. As it stands I see nations either being added as sub-tree, mini-trees (Israel), or full-fledged trees (even if they get vehicles already in game to make up for holes in the tree)

[War_Embodied]

I was thinking that, a Greek sub-tree would fit the Yugo/Balkan tree more than somewhere like Italy

[AspandaIV]

Should Yugoslavia be a TT? Yes

Should it be paired with other Balkan nations? No, Romania can have a TT within their own right, adding Turkey to the Yugoslav TT or any other Balkan nation is as smart of an idea as adding South Korea as a subtree of Japan and it makes more sense to add Turkey either as a Subtree to Israel or even be a TT within it’s own right, Bulgaria can be paired with Romania, Albania has nothing unique to offer and Greece/Cyprus (at least Post war Greece) is better off being a subtree of Germany since that is the country they have the closest military ties to that is not the Untied States.

[War_Embodied]

I really do not see Romania or Turkey as Balkan nations, Turkey is strongly in their own category. Romania is a tougher one, falling somewhere nearer to Italy or Germany in my eyes rather than a Balkan nation.

By Balkan nations I largely just mean the successor states of Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Etc.) If nations like Greece could fit then that would be great, but i’d largely be looking at the addition of Yugoslavia and its successors first

[AspandaIV]

I am perfectly fine with Post Yugoslav Nations being in the Yugoslav TT since i did not specify them in the previous post but i am still massively against Greece, Albania and Bulgaria in the Yugoslav TT for the reasons i stated before

I also did a draft of what a Yugoslav ground TT would possibly look like, i’ll add the images of what the vehicles would look like in a later date since they can be found in the Yugoslav ground TT thread on the old forum and it will take a little while to compile all of the pics and info on them

[oom1992]

So I guess at least might be able to see F-4E Peace Icarus 2000 (AUP), F-16C Block 30, F-16C Block 50, Mirage 2000EG, Mirage 2000-5F Mk.2 in rank VIII and F-16C Block 52+ in rank IX at Yugoslavian/Balkan Tech Tree in the future

[big_spooky]

Yugoslavia for sure has potential to stand as its own tree, with no outside additions from other countries. In my opinion, yugoslav tech tree will look more like a mix of sweden and france, where sweden is a generally small tech tree, and france is fully fleshed out, with some use of foreign vehicles.

[atta26hu]

As a person who has roots from the former Yugoslav states I would love to play an independent Yugoslav tech tree. It has potential and could work fairly well.

The tech tree can have really wacky and good vehicles, which I would love.

With the support from people giving suggestions, it would be nice to see the tech tree and its vehicles in game.

I fully support it!

[Kingtiez]

You should add the Pantsir-S1M to that list since Serbia has two batteries on order, I created a suggestion for it if you’re curious about it.

[AspandaIV]

That is what the Pantsir-S1 is in my draft is alluding to but when i going to do the next draft i will fix that error and specify that it is the S1M variant

[Kingtiez]

Sounds good, also I thought they had the Pantsir-S1, must be mistaken then.

EDIT: I also updated my suggestion to include it into the Yugoslavian tech tree.

[MDC5000]

Regarding the Soko J-22 Orao it’s already being worked on as the Romanian IAR 93 Vultur by the creator of the IAR81c and TA 154 premiums. The J-22 Orao/IAR 93 is the same plane as it was co designed and co produced by Iugo and communist Romania : https://live.warthunder.com/user/NovA29R/

[indycar]

if you need some more suggestions you can look up in wargame:red dragon

Yugoslavia

[Nick_Cloud]

That’s a big misconception about Greece right here…
Greece is a NATO nation, which means (similar with Turkey for example) they have a mixture of vehicles from European and US origin and even some Russian ones and some modifications of them.
Airforce side , in ww2 at start we had a mixture of PZL P24 (a variant of P11 that Poland didn’t use ) , Fairy Battle B.1 , Potez 633B2 and Gloster Gladiator…and some other vehicles of pre-war era.
During WW2 , the squadrons that survived fought mainly in Africa … with a mix of equipment from US and British origin such as Spitfire VB/ VC, IX HF/LF , Hurricanes, Blenheims , Helldivers and even Spit XVI (though post war it was a ww2 plane).
50’s to 70’s we had mostly US equipment we used mainly US types, F-86s, F-104Gs, F-5As , F-84G/F and F-102s.
After 1974 ( Post Greek Junta era) they added in the equipment Mirage F1CG, F-4E and A-7H/E .
After 1988 the types consisted mainly of variants of F-16 constantly upgrading and M2K EG…along with the everlasting F-4Es , while in 90s we stopped using F-104s and by 2000s we retired A-7s and F1CGs with the major force being F-16s and M2ks (their upgraded variants). If we go till now add Rafale in the mix of F-16s and M2K-5s and the upgraded F-4E AUPs …
Aka … Nothing to do with Germany. Basically if you add us in Germany, the German Air Tech tree will get one of the main US fighters, the main French fighters and MiG 29 …
In fact it could be good for the German Air Tree.
Other than that, in Ground tree for years we mainly use various types of US equipment until the arrival of first Leopards…and even had some BMP-1s and a variant of BMP we replaced the turret with ZSU-24 turrets …
The funny thing is naval side… our main types were US, until the point of MEKO frigates and 209/214 submarines of German origin… yet the main frigate was Kortenaer S of Netherlands origin…and some La Combattante missile boats of French origin and some US ships along the line like Knox-class Frigates (now retired) as well as C.F. Adams destroyers (retired). That makes it as fact that before 70s-80s our main ships were US origin…

So just because we have Leopard tanks makes us us in common with Germany?
For the most part we are heavily related with US and French vehicles and depending on the era you can even see some main UK vehicles…
Adding us in Germany, yes… would help their tree , no comment about it , especially post 1970 equipment and ww2 equipment (access in Spitfires) , but…wouldn’t it make it jack of all trades ?
On the other side it is a good idea… i don’t know.
But just for game reasons… i don’t think that we do have many other reasons than 3 specific types mainly in the modern era (1980s +) in relation to Germany… when we practically have US inventory from 1950 and then as a core.

I’d prefer a Balkan tree , which will be a multinational mixture of equipment from the get go, could be fun.
Or else a NATO mix tree along with PACT mix tree, where you could insert vehicles from many nations and create a solid core of vehicles , without defying logic on it…
Else, we go like China tree and i very much dislike what they did because at some point we would have F-16s/M-2Ks/Su-27s along with any indigenous and any mix of Soviet and US made vehicles until post Cold War…essentially making them all in one tree and even favorable in some cases comparing to USSR/Russia and US trees . Each tech tree should have something unique…