war Thunder

[Esquire]

So, umm... who all's playing War Thunder? I transferred in from the World of [x] universe a few years ago, and I've got to say, I like this a lot more, in tanks and especially in planes. Anybody have any stories, thoughts, tips, tricks, or whatever to share? Apologies if this already existed; a cursory search revealed nothing.

[Imperial528]

Note: I consider myself, at best, to be a mediocre War Thunder player.

I can offer you some tips for RB and to a small extent, Sim, though I have only ever done ground in Sim. Most of my experience is in US planes and tanks.

If you like to play solo, Japan and Britain offer the best options in terms of fighters, Russia and Germany have some good solo fighters too, but to truly do well in them you need a more advanced handle on things as they will rely more on energy fighting than the turn fighters common to Japan and Britain. Unfortunately for me I was not interested in these nations. I chose to play US, solo.

Do not play US solo. Not in planes, not in tanks. Do not do it. It is a recipe for suffering. The majority of mid-late war US planes perform best with two wingmen. The majority of US tanks perform best in groups of two or more, though you will not suffer as badly with them alone depending on which one you pick, in part due to the nature of ground combat. In general having a buddy is good in any nation, but for successful US play, it is necessary.

You will find that with few exceptions US planes do not turn particularly well, nor do they climb particularly fast. US planes are happiest at high altitude to provide a good reserve of energy. This is where the climbing comes in. US planes do not climb fast because most US planes are not designed for bomber intercept; in the war upon entering enemy airspace they would already be at altitude and speed, often escorting bombers. You will spend most of the start of the match climbing to the side in an attempt to be at least equal altitude when the enemy finds you, unless you have been blessed with an air spawn.

If you play US planes, in any mode, I recommend bringing along substantially less than a full tank of fuel. I usually bring 30 minutes worth. The large fuel tanks on planes such as the P-51 are intended for long climbs over the English channel which you will never get to do in War Thunder. Forgoing that useless fuel substantially increases performance on all fronts.

Likewise on US tanks do not carry your full ammunition load. This is good advice for all nations, but I find American ammo racks to be particularly explosive. Even the wet racks, which last I played (a few months ago admittedly) still do not function properly, but they are at least as explosive as other nations' ammunition, versus earlier American tanks which tend to detonate fairly easily, mostly due to the placement of ammunition in the thinly armored and easily targeted sponsons.

If you have any specific questions I may be qualified to answer them.

[Sea Skimmer]

I play daily but flying only these days, I got a couple tank trees up to BR 5.0 which is about where I think the game gets really painful. American tanks are fine solo at lower levels, I don't think anything is fun alone above 5.0 because the probability of one shot kills starts to skyrocket even in arcade and odd hits and teams start getting floor wiped a lot more.

Never carry full ammo on any ground vehicle unless the maximum count is something pathetically low in the first place. Seriously think about 30 rounds or less, I believe people have worked out specific cutoff points before. All vehicles brew up easily when full, if you have very low ammo counts some racks will be completely empty but the game doesn't tell you which. The wet storage on certain US tanks reduces the chance the ammo explodes from an explosion inside the tank, it doesn't help if a full rack is hit directly. Remember you can get more ammo in arcade when sitting on a flag capture.

As far as aircraft go advice is very specific to what you are flying even within one tree. But some stuff off the top of my head...

Avoid flying the P-38s like the plague for example, and basically anything British with two engines ever as well, while the P-61 meanwhile is some kind of flying light cruiser that can win against anything. British planes are probably the easiest to fly in general but are very fragile. They need to avoid head on engagements once you get past the Hurricane, even though they tend to have very heavy armaments. Your engine will get shot out really easily. American stuff never turns the best but the roll rates can be extremely good and they are very rugged and powerful in head on attacks.

In general be more careful attacking American and Japanese bombers then other nations, they tend to have a lot better defensive armament, in the Japanese case it's because a lot of the bombers have 20mm cannons, as many as five of them. Be aware a lot of bombers even four engine ones have no belly guns or nearly worthless ones. Russian and German fighters almost always have cannons and are fairly durable so you don't want to head on those unless you have a major positional advantage.

Always load ammo belts without tracers when it becomes possible. In one or two cases belts with tracers have a major advantage because the other belts have some kind of lame factor, mainly having random practice ammo thrown in to weaken them, but that's rare. AP-I and HEI/SAPHEI types are the best ammos.

And in general unless you have a dedicated anti tank plane your odds of killing tanks with guns are really low, while HEI/SAPHEI rounds can destroy armored cars and halftracks so loading the ground target ammo is almost always pointless.

Hitting moving vehicles with bombs seems hard at first, but if you fly low enough you'll find it not a big deal, in arcade you won't kill yourself with your own bombs. The game heavily rewards destroying ground targets (because they want people to fly the bombers) but you can can lots of RP even with fighters strafing stuff as it is. Also remember the game is very rewarding of kill assists, even if you only slightly damage an enemy plane. Take shots even if you aren't likely to get a kill! That's also where no tracers is really important.

[Zwinmar]

Bombers still fall out of the sky as soon as someone is on their tail? I remember I finally unlocked the b17 only for it to get murdered.

Also, early British planes use tiny .30 cals which makes it horrible to try to shoot anything down, while the early Soviet planes get extremely rapid fire guns and/or cannons.

[Elheru Aran]

I remember dicking around a bit in War Thunder for awhile there. Mostly planes though I started playing around with tanks a bit towards the end.

In planes I didn't get very far anywhere except as a Brit. The Vickers Wellington is godlike at its tier, particularly once you unlock the massive loads of light bombs and fill up your gunners' experience. I won a few games on my own just destroying columns of ground vehicles with a few sticks, or dropping dambusters on bases. Even shot down a few pilots fool enough to sit on my tail. I was much less impressed with the Halifax or the PBY.

English fighters though... get a pretty hearty 'meh' from me. I could never master cannons once I figured out how to unlock those. The Boulton-Paul Defiant's tailgunner is a surprisingly useful little feature. The Swordfish is also fairly decent.

The first-tier fighters on pretty much any group are pretty lousy. Second tier isn't great either. Basically I've never really figured out fighters very well is what it adds up to. I'm much more of a bomber fanboy, and low tier bombers will get the job done no worries. High tier bombers kind of get stuck with having to stay at altitude though. But I must admit there wasn't much more fun than diving straight down from bomber height with the Welly...

[Esquire]

British cannons have pretty poor muzzle velocity, as I recall - they require more vertical lead than other weapons. This can be partially managed by setting your controls to have all weapons converge at the altitude as well as the same horizontal point (vertical alignment, maybe, or somesuch), and by flying a few arcade battles where you get the nice little lead indicator. It's definitely true that bombers are more forgiving at low BRs, which flips somewhere around the middle of Tier 3 for me.

[montypython]

I usually go by the principle of: 1 nose cannon is worth 2 wing cannons, especially in terms of accuracy.

[Elheru Aran]

In planes: low level flak will get you every time, and at low tier, trying to nape-of-earth ground targets is just making you a massive target for fighters and AA. Bombers can suck up some damage, which is good for survivability, though a determined fighter will certainly smoke you in no time if your gunners don't shoo them away. Tier 3 (2?) fighters arent' very likely to keep up with a Wellington coming out of a power dive over a column of ground vehicles though... but move over to the Halifax and it dives slow while being an even bigger target.

The main downside to bombers, if you're into that kind of thing, is you don't really get to shoot back unless you're willing to go on autopilot and man one of your gunner positions. Only tried that a few times; too distracting and nerve-wracking because it basically means you're travelling in a straight line, usually with a couple of yahoos coming right up your six.

[Sea Skimmer]

AA fire is only dangerous if you fly straight and level for a while, except around the enemy airfield where it has a huge accuracy buff. I blow the sites and vehicles up with close range strafing constantly, honestly I don't view it as a threat unless I'm already damaged and another bit of minor damage might bring me down.

Low is certainly bad against enemy fighters though. Big bombers should stay as high as possible. If you want to fly bombers get an experienced gunner for each position ASAP and a couple of points into each gunner aiming skill. It makes a real difference.

Manually gunnery is to be avoided, it will almost never work low tier though sometimes you can snipe at an enemy bomber with some luck. Some of the later aircraft have much heavier armament and it can be worth giving a shot because your gunners will probably never save you from a Tier 4.7 or higher fighter, they don't open fire at long enough ranges.