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Answers from developers

It's time for another part of Questions and Answers!

Aircraft

Which attackers are you planning for the USSR with a BR within the 3.7-8.0 range?​ There’s an obvious shortage of assault aircraft with such Battle Ratings right now.

Answer: We are not going to share all of our plans right now. Developer diaries will definitely be posted eventually. However, I can tell you that we’re planning to introduce some interesting attackers and something unusual-looking. Some of which is already in the works.

Will it ever be possible to increase the number of aircraft spawn points in arcade battles?​ Adding a large number of respawn points could solve the problem of “spawn campers,” who shoot down aircraft a few seconds after they respawn without giving them a chance to react. Then aircraft could spawn somewhere else, and players would have the time to examine the situation on the battlefield

Answer: To be honest, we don’t see a problem here. First of all, the diameter of the respawn area in Air AB is about a kilometer, so camping at a specific point where players will always respawn is not possible. Needless to say, you can still camp “approximately” above a point, but I doubt that this would guarantee you a large number of aircraft kills.

Is there a chance you might add some Japanese heavy fighters with high-caliber weaponry for co-op battles?​ You said there were no armor-piercing rounds for them, but this isn’t actually true. The 75 mm Type 88 AA gun (there’s even data available about this gun’s ability to fire on Shermans that proves its effectiveness) installed on the Ki-109, as well the 57 mm Ho-401/402 and the 75 mm Ho-501 (based on the Type 88) installed on the Ki-93 all had armor-piercing rounds. Taking all this into account, I’d like to ask whether or not it’s possible to introduce at least a partial solution to the problem of Japanese assault aircraft?

​ Answer: Specifically we were talking about lower-caliber rounds. It’s true that there was a gun installed on the Ki-109 that could also fire armor-piercing AA rounds, and we’re planning to introduce this aircraft to the game.

Are you planning to ever go back to intermediate Battle Rating values for the era V aircraft in RB?​ Right now all vehicles are spread out in accordance with rounded BR values, i.e. we only have 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0 (with rare exceptions), and players simply do not fly many aircraft (such as the MiG-15) because there are vehicles tied to the same BR value that are significantly more powerful (such as the MiG-15 BIS or the MiG-17). That is why such an approach to assigning Battle Ratings automatically implies dividing vehicles into “Holy cow, that’s so OP!” and “Why would anyone want to fly that thing?”, which isn’t ideal.

​ Answer: We decided on this kind of division because of the following factors: the need to match as many top-ranked aircraft as possible in a single battle on the one hand, and the significant differences in flight characteristics between early and late jets on the other. Incidentally, this division was very well received by players at the time, although certain aircraft with certain characteristics end up in the same battles over and over again. In other words, no, we’re not planning to go back at this time.

Ground Forces​

Will you ever add at least some kind of visible/distinctive difference between auto-repairs (fixing tracks only) and manual repairs? Sometimes you press the repair key, and it seems like the repairs have begun, but it isn’t the repairs activated by the player, but just the track.

​ Answer: It’s certainly possible. We will consider this suggestion.

There’s this popular expression: “fall on deaf ears.” So why is it that in Tanks AB, RB, and SB, tank drivers can hear the whizzing of bombs as they fall from a great height?​ Most bombs dropped by aircraft make absolutely no noise, you know. The only sound a bomb can make before it explodes is the sound of it hitting the ground and other surfaces (assuming it has a delayed fuse).

​ Answer: What makes you think that most bombs dropped by aircraft are silent? If a bomb falls at a speed that is less than the speed of sound (usually when dropped from a height of up to 6,000 meters), the sound it generates will reach the ground before the bomb does.

Are you planning to rework the way HESH rounds work?​ In the game, they generate a massive amount of shrapnel with a dispersal cone of nearly 180 degrees and enough penetrating power to pierce a breech, engine, and transmission, although in reality, this kind of shrapnel has low speed and no penetrating power and can only “disable” people.

​ Answer: We aren’t planning to do this in the immediate future. The parameters are selected in such a way that secondary shrapnel from armor, when a HESH round hits, can take out a tank’s crew, parts, and components without completely running them all through. The most powerful shrapnel has a dispersion cone of 50 degrees, and less powerful varieties that can only hit the crew have a cone of 140 degrees.

When are you going to introduce a mechanic for correctly calculating the sides of armor plating?​ Right now a three-meter-long, 20mm-thick plate has a side of only 20 mm (i.e. its effective thickness along three meters is 20 mm rather than 3,000 mm). The result of this is that heavily armored vehicles have weak areas, where they can be penetrated by machine guns. Just one of the example would be the Ferdinand.

​ Answer: This kind of mechanic, i.e. one in which the thickness of the armour is calculated based on the distance the shell flies within a tridimensional armor component, certainly seems very attractive from the perspective of the options it could lead to, but it also demands substantial changes to the code, as well as painstaking checking, and reworking of the models, so for now I can’t say anything about how long it might take or how and when we might introduce it. For the examples described in the report, correcting the geometry and thickness of certain armor components would be enough to remove these bugs from the SPG. We’re definitely going to fix it.

Other

Are you planning to add an expanded (perhaps ring-shaped for ease of use) tactical command menu to the game?​ One with more advanced messages for the team. You could talk about your intentions, issue requests or orders, etc. Right now there is, tactically speaking, very little interaction among players. It’s frequently easier to just type a message to a teammate to let them know that I’m moving from this point to that one and ask them to do something. But I’m sure you can understand that you don’t really have time for typing in the heat of battle.

​ Answer: The current command menu is already ring-shaped. Which commands do you think are missing?

The War Thunder Team