War Thunder released an update this week, version 1.35. It’s got the usual patch gubbins: new maps and planes, tweaks to cockpits and armaments, that sort of thing (full details in the change log). Something I’m particularly enjoying so far are Events. Aircraft in War Thunder are arranged into ranks roughly by their capabilities rather than strict dates to try and avoid mismatches (it’s not perfect, but the matchmaker does a decent job most of the time), and though Historical Battles limit the nationalities involves you can still end up with rather ahistorical fights like 1942-era British and American aircraft taking on the Russians in Korea, land based aircraft on naval maps and vice-versa, and significant numbers of Premium aircraft based on prototypes or one-off instances of captured aircraft. It’s fine in game-terms, but events offer something slightly more interesting historically.

You can still hit the “To Battle” button as normal, but there’s a new button on the screen, Events:

Click this for a list of available events. Currently there are three available at any one time, and they change each day, though I imagine both those parameters can be tweaked. The really, really important thing to notice here is that events can be Arcade, Historical or Full Real, currently there’s one of each per day. They can also have slightly tweaked rulesets, for example an Arcade Battle but with no respawns. The difficulty level isn’t quite as obvious as it could be, so there are reports of people joining in a Full Real Battle without realising it, resulting in a lot of crashing on take-off (via Reddit). Note the difficulty at the top of the event screen!

Events are (broadly) historical scenarios, with a limited selection of aircraft available based more on actual combatants than in-game ranks, as shown in the list on the event screen. Planes are colour coded: red if you don’t have sufficient rank in that air force, dark yellow if you’re high enough rank but haven’t bought it yet, bright yellow if you own it. For Historical and Full Real battles you just pick the one you want to use as normal, for Arcade you only need one qualifying aircraft to take part, but you’ll be more effective if your whole hanger is eligible. Arcade teams are also still mixed nationalities.

I’m finding the events a fun way of mixing things up between different levels, countries and difficulty modes, well worth a look.

As the British weather turns distinctly autumnal there’s an Indian Summer event going on in War Thunder, the objective being to shoot down massive piles of enemy planes. Not quite sure what the thematic link is, but hey, they’re giving out premium aircraft rewards. Don’t look a gift Typhoon in the radiator chin scoop, as the old saying goes.

The event is on until September 23rd, and there are six levels of reward available for each nation in each realism mode. The first five levels award silver lions (10,000 per level), the sixth level awards 100,000 lions plus a premium aircraft. The planes up for grabs are:

USSR: P-39N-0, Rank 8

Requires 1100 Arcade air kills, 360 Historical Battle air kills or 300 Full Real Battle air kills (while flying Soviet aircraft). The Soviet version of the P-39N is two ranks higher than both the US P-39N and the other Soviet premium Airacobra (P-39K); it’s probably slightly over-ranked, especially compared to the Yak-9, but it was only available in the store during one weekend event previously, hence the high kill requirements. If you like big guns (and you cannot lie) then you could stick it in an arcade line-up with the Yak-9T, Yak-9K, P-39K and P-63A for a whole lot of 37/45mm action, otherwise it’s a bit superfluous.

USA: A-26C-45 Invader, Rank 16

Requires 1100 Arcade air kills, 360 Historical Battle air kills or 300 Full Real Battle air kills (while flying US aircraft). Speaking of over-ranked, the A-26 does have a larger payload than the Rank 5 A-20 and (theoretically) better performance (there seems some debate over whether it’s modelled correctly), but that’s not really enough to justify the dizzying heights of Rank 16. It’s rare, though, previously only available via promotions on Facebook, in magazines etc., so has the joint-highest kill requirements. Unless you’re a dedicated plane collector and must have absolutely everything, I wouldn’t go crazy trying to earn one.

Germany: Fw 190D-13, Rank 14

Requires 900 Arcade air kills, 300 Historical Battle air kills or 250 Full Real Battle air kills (while flying German/Italian aircraft). Available in a decent value gift pack, once upon a time swarms of Doras plagued Historical Battles, swooping down from great height upon Allied aircraft and causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Over various patches the Focke-Wulf’s flight model was tweaked with some extra weight, and other aircraft received performance boosts such as the 150 octane fuel upgrade for the Spitfire Mk IX, and lo, was there much Allied rejoicing. Axis opinion is split between the Fw 190D-13 now being an utterly worthless pile of junk, and being a decent but tricky to master boom-and-zoom fighter, I suspect it’s more the latter but don’t have one myself.

UK: Typhoon Mk Ib, Rank 10

Requires 540 Arcade air kills, 200 Historical Battle air kills or 180 Full Real Battle air kills (while flying UK/Australian/French aircraft). A good choice for British pilots, the Typhoon Ib has decent performance and great firepower from the 4x20mm cannon. It’s not as nimble as a Spitfire, better suited to boom-and-zoom tactics than dogfighting, and is ideal for Historical Battles, or can slot into a nice Arcade lineup with the Spitfire Mks IX and XVI and Mosquito. The Typhoon is part of the Steam Ace Advanced Pack (also includes a Pe-2, 10000 Gold Eagles and two months of premium account time), an excellent value bundle (especially if on sale), so if you’re thinking of shelling out some real money then that’s a good option, but if you can’t or won’t buy a Steam pack then this event is a fine opportunity to pick up a free Typhoon.

Japan: A6M5 Ko, Rank 12

Requires 540 Arcade air kills, 200 Historical Battle air kills or 180 Full Real Battle air kills (while flying Japanese aircraft). Highly manoeuvrable but fragile, a bit slow compared to most opponents of similar rank; I don’t play Japan very much myself, but if you do then the comparative paucity of the Japanese tree probably makes any addition useful. The A6M5 Ko is also in the War Thunder Steam Pack or Pacific Advanced Pack from the web store, presumably why it requires comparatively few kills.

If you really want to earn one of those planes, you’ll need to get flying. You should’ve probably got flying a few days ago when the event started, but barring the invention of a time machine that’s not very useful advice, and if you have a time machine I’m sure there are better things to be doing than playing War Thunder. Unless you’re an ace of such incredible skill that you never die and shoot down innumerable opponents every sortie, the easiest way to rack up kills is “seal clubbing”, flying low level aircraft against less experienced players. The game has some safeguards to protect completely new players, once you’ve passed a certain pilot rank I don’t think you can be matched up against rank 0/1 opponents even if you only equip rank 0 reserves yourself, so assembling a rank 3 lineup is the way to go with as many fighters as you can pack in. Playing at lower levels also means lower repair costs, if you’re constantly playing higher level aircraft somewhat recklessly then the monetary reward from the event might not even cover the repair bills. I do feel a bit guilty about going back to lower levels, but all is fair in love and war, as the LaGG-3 pilot said after tearing apart a poor biplane with 20mm cannon shells. I try not to be a total bastard, there usually seem to be at least a couple of seal clubbers on each team and I’ll go for the higher scoring opponents if I can, but the event does exacerbate the every-man-for-himself nature of Arcade battles. If you’re a brand new player, perhaps consider not buying a Rank 2 aircraft until September 24th.

If you only really enjoy one particular realism mode then you might as well stick to that, but if getting the premium aircraft is the main goal then you may want to record the duration and results of a few matches and use a bit of maths; if, on average, you can get 10 kills per 10 minute Arcade battle then you’ll need to be playing for 18.3 hours over the next couple of weeks for a P-39 or A-26. If in a Historical Battle you average 2 kills and the matches last around 15 minutes then that same plane will take about 45 hours to earn in that mode, bit of a tall order.

Don’t drive yourself mad with grinding, though, the planes are a fine bonus if you’re playing anyway, but you’re not missing out if you haven’t got the time to rack up the requisite kills; enjoy War Thunder responsibly!

Part 1 got us into our first battle, Part 2 covered the main mission types and Part 3 the aircraft types, in Part 4 we’ll look at upgrading aircraft so they are, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “well blinged up innit?”

When you buy a new plane you might think you’re getting a shiny factory-fresh model in tip-top condition, but I’m afraid that’s not the case; as a rookie you’re assigned a battered old thing that’s had several not-so-careful owners. At least that’s the excuse for why you need to gain experience and spend money to knock out the dents and service the engine…

After a battle, you might see an aeroplane icon on the results screen with a message along the lines of “New modification for Hurricane Mk II: Offensive 7.7mm belts”, indicating there’s an upgrade available for that plane; if you quit a battle before it’s over, the message might appear on the next results screen you see, so it won’t necessarily relate to the aircraft you were just flying.

To access the upgrade screen click the “Weapons” icon with three bullets, it should have a pulsating gold background if new options are available:

That should bring up the upgrades:

The precise options vary from plane to plane; the Hurricane Mk II just has one set of machine guns, other fighters can have weapons of two or three different calibres with separate upgrade options, bombers tend to have turrets, like the Blenheim Mk IV here:

Across the top of the screen we have the weapons: Offensive Armament (standard guns), Secondary Weapons (bombs, rockets, torpedoes, gun pods), and then the ammunition load of guns and/or turrets. For a brand new plane, you won’t be able to change any of these.

I wouldn’t worry about the two Premium options, purchased with Golden Eagles. “Backup plane” allows you to use the aircraft twice in an Arcade battle, potentially handy if you have a particular favourite but by no means essential. “Talisman” gives an experience bonus for the aircraft, worth considering in the higher ranks, but not so vital at lower levels when experience comes quickly.

Underneath those are the upgrades that are unlocked as you gain experience with the aircraft, four tiers grouped into Flight Performance, Survivability and Weaponry. These upgrades can be bought with silver lions (earned in-game) after you unlock them, but if you really can’t wait you can purchase locked upgrades with gold lions (real money). Hover your mouse over a locked upgrade and a box will show the XP required to unlock it, a “Buy” icon underneath will show the cost in gold lions to immediately purchase it.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

The first two groups allow your plane to fulfil the Olympian ideals of Faster, Higher, Stronger. As the names suggests Flight Performance upgrades to components like the radiator and compressor improve the performance of the aircraft in flight, Survivability options improve your chances of surviving a battle (though really quite marginally, you get a slightly stronger and lighter airframe rather than super-adamantium armour). To see precise details, hover the mouse over an upgrade:

Radiator? I hardly know ‘or!

In this example cleaning and tuning the radiator increases maximum speed by 4mph and climb rate by 0.1m/s; it’s unlikely you’ll notice a massive difference in a fight, especially in Arcade battles, don’t be too worried about upgraded opponents having an insurmountable advantage, but every little helps. The cumulative effects of a full set of upgrades is more noticeable in Historical and Full Real battles.

Use of Weapons

The Weaponry options are less Olympian in their ideals; “Improved Air-to-Air Combat Effectiveness” isn’t such a catchy motto, even when translated into Latin (Google Translate suggested “A’ris amplio-ad-caeli certamen efficaciam”, and struggled with some of my alternative ideas like “MOAR DAKKA”). There are three main types of weapon upgrades: new guns, ammunition unlocks, and pylons.

New guns, like flight performance components, tend to grant a slight improvement to e.g. reliability or accuracy, useful but not terribly exciting.

Ammunition unlocks tend to be the first weapon upgrade option, “Offensive 7mm” in the above screenshots. Once purchased you can ditch the boring Default ammunition and switch to something crazy like All High Explosive Incendiary Tracer, All The Time (note: not actual name).

Pylons allow you to fit secondary weapons to the aircraft. Most bombers start with a single default bombload, pylon upgrades allow them to carry more or heavier bombs, or alternative secondary weapons like torpedoes. The Blenheim Mk IV starts with 4x250lb bombs, with the MBC-B pylon upgrade it can carry 2x500lb bombs instead:

Some fighters only have guns, others have pylon upgrades for a fighter/bomber role; the Hurricane Mk II can carry 2x250lb bombs with the HSBC mk.2 upgrade, or 6xRP-6 rockets with the HRC mk.8. Some German aircraft have also recently gained the option to fit additional cannon as secondary weapons, as per Rüstsätze (field modifications), so the range of options are getting wider.

Guns n’ ammo

Once you’ve unlocked new secondary weapons or ammunition belts you can fit them to the aircraft using the drop-down arrows in the bar at the top of the upgrade screen. Note that upgrades are a one-off cost but you have to purchase non-default secondary weapons and ammunition with silver lions each time you use them. Don’t worry too much, though, they’re not particularly expensive, and even if you go on a crazy spending spree and have no money left at all, you can always equip the default options for free.

The types of ammunition available will depend on the weapon calibre and country selected. If you want to see the exact contents of an ammunition belt hover your mouse over it, in this case the British Universal 7.7mm belt:

Once I’ve got ammunition unlocked I tend to use Universal/Omni-purpose; it’s an improvement over the Default ammunition (the Default 7.7mm belts include Ball rounds, just plain chunks of metal, fine for making small holes in stuff but not very exciting compared to an Amour Piercing Incendiary round), and suitable for both air and ground targets. I haven’t found any particularly good discussions of the relative merits of other ammunition loads, feel free to experiment.

For a bomber you might have a few choices of bombload; the Su-2, for example, can carry 12 x 50kg bombs, or 6 x 100kg, or 2 x 250kg once you’ve unlocked the pylon upgrades. Though, as per the old maxim, quantity has a quality all its own, I tend towards the other maxim that bigger is better. If you can get nicely lined up on a road packed with a column of vehicles it can be glorious to drop a long string of bombs down it, but irritatingly the enemy are seldom generous enough to lay out their forces in nice, geometric, easily bombable patterns. Small bombs (50kg/100lb) have to be very precisely placed, they do little splash damage, larger bombs give you a bit more leeway, particularly useful if you’re intending to bomb from altitude, and some targets need heavy ordnance to destroy them.

Regarding weights, just to confuse things metric and imperial weights are used by different nations (e.g. 250lb bombs on the British Blenheim, 250kg bombs on the Soviet Su-2). 1kg = 2.2lb, so as a very rough rule of thumb you can multiply or divide by 2 to get a general idea of comparative bomb loads, or type a phrase like “500lb in kg” into Google and its handy-dandy converter will give you a more precise figure.

Choose your weapons

After you’ve kitted yourself out with new weapons and ammunition on the upgrade screen, you can change the load of your plane before going into battle. Here’s a spawn screen at the start of a match with our newly upgraded Blenheim:

Under Secondary Weapons we can choose 2x500lb bombs instead of the default 4x250lb bombs, and we can change the Default shell racks to Omni-purpose. Don’t worry too much about the other settings for now.

Once you have a bit of a feel for different maps and game types, you can tweak which plane you start with and its weapon load. In a Ground Strike battle you might want to start off in a fighter-bomber, head for the nearest ground targets, rattle off a few rockets or bombs, then look out for any friendly bombers who might need an escort; alternatively you could start out in a pure fighter, skip the secondary weapons for optimum performance, and climb up to high altitude in case an enemy heavy bomber is lurking up there going for your airfield. In a Domination battle you could start in your lowest rank fighter and have a crack at capturing the closest airfield (lowest rank so it isn’t too great a loss if you misjudge the approach and crash a bit), or pick a bomber, head for the enemy airfield as fast as possible and hope to catch one or two of the capturing team on the ground.

So that covers trivial things like the weapons load of your plane, Part 5 covers a far more important feature: painting your aircraft, along with a general wrap-up of crew skills, premium options and the like.

Good news for War Thunder, as part of the Steam Greenlight programme it’s been released on the digital distribution behemoth. Good news for players too, as a number of DLC packs are available on Steam with a 25% discount until August 19th.

I’m still thoroughly enjoying the rather splendid World War II flying fun of War Thunder; I’m not completely convinced by the revised upgrade system added recently in patch 1.33 with four tiers of individual components, resulting in a more significant difference between a newly purchased plane and a fully upgraded one, but it’s a fairly minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things.

If you’re at all tempted to grab your eggs and fours and get some bacon delivered, my complete beginner’s guide might come in handy (though I need to update part 3 to reflect the new upgrade system), and if you get into it then the Ace Advanced Pack is well worth buying for two nice premium aircraft, two months of premium account time and a nice stash of golden eagles. You can even buy a couple of packs, if you’re really keen, the premium account time stacks up; just be a bit careful about putting high level premium planes into service, you’ll get put into higher level matches, and that’s not so fun if the rest of your hanger is full of biplanes!

Arcade matches in War Thunder are frenetic fun, a hectic hodge-podge of helter-skelter Heinkels and harum-scarum Hurricanes, ideal for a quick blast of action, but if you’re in the mood for a slightly more in-depth match you might like to try a Historical Battle.

The are a few key difference between Arcade and Historical Battles. Perhaps most significantly you pick one aircraft, and can’t respawn if you crash or get shot down. Ammunition is also limited; the Magical Mid-air Resupply Pixies won’t arrive within 10-30 seconds with more bullets and shells, you have to return to base to rearm, and you don’t get the handy lead circle that shows where you need to be shooting to hit a target.

Aircraft handling is still nice and simple, you don’t need a joystick or head tracking software. You still have the benefit of the Instructor if flying with a mouse, so you can just point in the general direction you want to go (though by all accounts if you do use a joystick you can pull off fancier manoeuvres than mouse-wagglers, as the Instructor errs on the side of caution). You’ll need to be a little bit more careful than in Arcade mode, though, as there are some more realistic elements; if you go too fast in a dive, for example, your wings will fall off, rendering the aircraft somewhat less effective in combat.

Aircraft Selection

Objectives vary between maps in Historical Battles. Some have tank columns and fixed emplacements, others have ships, a few have AI aircraft spotting or bombing ground targets; on all of them, though, you can also win by shooting down the entire enemy team, and that’s what happens the vast majority of the time in my experience. A couple of organised squads of bombers or attack aircraft, with suitable fighter cover, might be able to take out 50+ ground targets, but it’s not terribly likely in a random battle, so if queueing on your own I’d highly recommend taking a fighter along. The earliest I’d suggest joining would be with Rank 2 fighters like the Hurricane, Ki-43 or F2A-3 Buffalo (the I-153 Chaika can also do well, if an enemy is daft enough to get into a turning fight with one); significantly better options start coming in around Ranks 6 and 7, aircraft like the Bf 109 E and F, Spitfire II and Typhoon Ia, F4U Corsair, A6M Zero and Yak-1.

As you only take one plane into a Historical Battle they’re an ideal venue for premium planes like the Typhoon Ib, Fw 190 D-13 or the American versions of the Bf 109 F and Spitfire IX. You don’t need to worry about the levels of the rest of the hanger, or even be the same level as the plane, you can buy a Rank 14 Fw 190 and take into a Historical Battle right after the tutorial, but I really wouldn’t recommend it, get a bit of experience first!

Whichever aircraft you pick, make sure you have it selected in your hanger, then hover over “To Battle” and select “Historical Battle”, and click the button!

Adjusting weapons and fuel

At the start of the battle you get the familiar screen showing the map you’ll be fighting over and your selected aircraft, with the others disabled (if you picked the wrong one before hitting “To Battle” it’s too late now). You might want to make a few tweaks on this screen; if flying a fighter, then under “Weapons” I’d suggest sticking to guns only and not loading any bombs or rockets, lugging around bombs will hurt your performance in the (usually) decisive aerial engagements. I’d also suggest setting the Gun Targeting Distance to 200m or 250m; see this wiki page for the technicalities of what the setting does, you’ll usually be shooting at short range. Finally, you may like to set the Fuel Amount to about 30m; the lighter the load the better the performance, but Historical Battles can last a good while.

TAKE OFF EVERY ZIG

When you first select “Historical Battle”, if you haven’t completed the Take Off and Landing tutorial then the game will prompt you to do so (tutorials are also available under “Game Modes” if you want a bit more practise). Unlike Arcade mode, fighters start off on the ground in most Historical Battle maps, so you’ll need to master taking off to get into battle. Fortunately this isn’t too much of a challenge: max the throttle, leave runway when fast enough, the game even raises your landing gear automatically (or it’s ‘G’ as the default key, if you insist on doing it yourself). With a whole bunch of aircraft taking off at the same time things can get rather messy, but thankfully there’s no collision detection on the runway; be very careful as soon as you’re in the air, though.

‘Scuse me, pardon me, coming through, ‘scuse me

Such Great Heights

Once in the air, start climbing. When you bump into the enemy, whoever is higher up can dictate the terms of the engagement; you don’t want to get bounced by bandits. It’s a lot easier to dive than climb, if it turns out the entire enemy team is at low altitude you can always dive down on them, just remember if plummeting a few kilometres to keep an eye on the speed so your wings don’t fall off (cut the throttle right down, and *gently* ease off the dive if the screen starts shaking).

While climbing have a look around; teamwork is absolutely crucial, don’t head off on your own or you’ll be easy pickings. Hopefully there’ll be a gaggle of fighters you can tag along with, if your team insist on adopting Starburst Formation and all heading off in different directions at least try and find one or two in similar planes and stick with them if they look like they know what they’re doing (though if they’re doing the same thing you’ll just fly circles around each other; if you’re still over your own airbase after half an hour maybe reconsider this strategy).

Up, up and away!

If you’re in a plane with good climbing performance, like the Bf 109, you can afford to head straight towards where the enemy will probably be (usually somewhere in the middle of the map); if you suspect the opposition have superior performance you might want to take a more circuitous route to get to a reasonable altitude before heading for the enemy. What could be considered a reasonable altitude depends on factors like the composition of the two teams and the layout of the map, usually somewhere from 3,000 – 7,000m (10,000 – 25,000 ft).

So far there’s one map where climbing might not work out: Berlin, where the allies need to destroy 21 light pillboxes to win. If a bunch of rocket/cannon armed attack aircraft and fighters make a beeline for the pillboxes they can clear them out in short order, it’s the only map that I’ve personally seen end before one team loses all its aircraft or has to return to base to rearm, though others may be introduced in the future.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

It’ll take a few minutes to get into combat; you can have a bit of a chat with the team, if you share a common language, and formulate some advanced strategies like “Hey! Let’s try and shoot the enemy with guns and stuff!” You can get an idea of what you might be up against by pressing ‘Tab’ for a list of combatants. Unlike Arcade, you won’t see the exact make and model of your opponent’s aircraft, but the icons give a general idea: orange = fighters, pink = naval fighters, blue = bombers, green = attackers, the silhouettes show whether they’re single or twin engine, and bomb/rocket/torpedo icons show whether they’re packing ordnance. (Patch 1.35 update: you no longer see aircraft type icons for the opposing team.) You could alt-tab and browse the web, but that’s a bit dangerous, you might get so engrossed in a Wikipedia article about the 1913 South Lanarkshire by-election you forget to alt-tab back and end up as a particularly easy kill. If you have a hobby that can be done in three minute chunks in front of a PC that would be ideal, or you could always go and make yourself a weak lemon drink. Either way, after a little while you should see some red dots on the screen, and then…

It’s clear it’s boom time, boom boom

Most of the action in Arcade battles is at low level; capturing or defending airfields, strafing ground targets, crashing to the earth in a blazing fireball. With the extra space and time in Historical Battles, air combat manoeuvres play a bigger part. One technique to be particularly aware of is hit and run, or “boom and zoom”. The essence is: start off higher than your opponent, dive onto them at speed, open fire (the titular “boom”; shouting “I’M THE BOOM KING” is optional), then speed away, usually back to higher altitude, before they can return fire (that’s the “zoom” part; you can sing “zoom zoom zoom“, if you like). Obviously that’s the simple version, have a browse of the Tactics section of the wiki if you’d like some more details, or enjoy a full four part article at SimHQ with plenty of graphs n’ stuff.

You like boom, I like boom, enough small boom let’s boom the boom

In the perfect scenario the defender isn’t even aware he’s under attack until his plane explodes; with ‘radar’ and target highlighting this is unusual in Historical Battles, but not entirely impossible, especially if the attacker is coming out of the sun. Even if the defender is aware of the threat there isn’t a massive amount they can do; turning into the attacker is generally the best way of trying to avoid the ‘boom’, but unless the attacker cocks it up then the best the defender can hope for is a quick snap shot before the attacker is out of range, back at higher altitude. Boom and zoom tends to be the preferred strategy when facing a more manoeuvrable opponent, avoiding a turning fight in which they have the advantage, hence the importance of climbing at the start of a fight: you either want to hit and run yourself, or if you’re more manoeuvrable you want to make sure you’re not being bounced.

The Battle is Joined!

Without turning this into a multi-volume epic it’s not really possible to offer detailed guidance on the best tactics for every plane in the game; if you’d like to know how best to handle a certain aircraft, which aircraft fit a certain style of play, or how to pull off various manoeuvres have a browse of the Wiki, or search for “War Thunder tactics” on YouTube, or ask the nice people on the forums or Reddit.

A couple of general points, though. Don’t just rush off straight towards the first target you see, especially if it’s at much lower altitude; keep your eyes open and look out for the rest of the enemy team (hold ‘C’, by default, to look around with mouse; do that a *lot*). Try and stay fairly close to the rest of your team so you can cover each other, but not so close that you risk a collision, be very careful if piling in on an aircraft someone else is attacking. Let your team know when you’re attacking (‘T’, ‘-‘ for “I’m attacking (target)”), and call for help if under attack (‘T’, ‘4’ for “Cover me!”); equally keep an eye out for other people calling for cover (their name will flash, if you can see them) and help if you can, but if they buggered off on their own, are 10km away from anyone else on the team and spamming “Cover me!” every five seconds then sod ’em.

With ammunition being limited, rather than blazing away at anything within about a kilometre it pays to make every shot count, only fire if you’re (fairly) sure of a hit, the closer the better (I tend to start around 200-250m if possible, hence that setting for Gun Targeting Distance). Without the handy lead circle of Arcade mode high deflection shots are tricky; if you’ve played a lot of Arcade you might be able to remember roughly where you need to shoot in various circumstances, a brief speculative shot now and again can pay off, but don’t waste too much ammunition.

You might well get shot down, possibly without even without landing a hit on an opponent; rather frustrating after all the time taken to get into battle in the first place, but such is life. To add insult to injury, you’ll probably end up out of pocket if you pay to repair the aircraft straight away; I always have automatic repairs turned off, so you can make the decision of whether you want to take that hit and get back for another battle, or leave the aircraft repairing over time and take something else out for a flight.

If you’re still alive, that’s a triumph. If you’re still alive and managed to shoot something, that’s not only a triumph but also a huge success. If you’re undamaged and still have some ammunition go find something else to shoot, otherwise it’s time to return to base.

Bringing It All Back Home

If you’re under no threat, have a nice leisurely little flight back to your home base. If you’re out of ammo and need to extricate yourself from combat then diving and pushing the throttle up to 110%/WEP can be enough to open up a gap to get to safety (try and point yourself towards home in the dive), if you’re already at treetop height then you probably need to jink around and hope your opponent misses a lot, call for cover and/or have a much faster plane… Airfields are protected by ack-ack guns that are more effective in Historical Battles than arcade, if an enemy does chase you then they may well break off as you get close to your airfield, if they’re aggressive enough to press home the attack then evasive manoeuvres over the base might give the gunners enough of a chance to bring them down.

There are three simple rules for making a smooth landing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

When safe to do so, carefully land as per the tutorial: line up on the runway nice and early, gradually reduce throttle, deploy flaps (‘F’) and lower landing gear (‘G’), lovely. If you’ve taken damage then the controls probably won’t be as responsive, you’ll need to be particularly gentle and careful in the approach. It’s well worth practising landing in general in the tutorial, and also via the “Test Flight” option in the hanger for specific aircraft to get an idea of the sort of speed you’re aiming for (just above stall speed as you touch down) and the general handling; I should probably have mentioned that before you started the fight… Once on the deck, apply brakes (by default the Throttle Down key), but make sure you release them if your tail starts coming up, you don’t want to dig the runway up with your prop.

All being well you come to a nice gentle stop, and within about 30 seconds you’ll be repaired and rearmed and automatically placed back at the start of the runway to get back into the air. Don’t panic too much if you do nose over, or slightly misjudge the landing speed and slam in to the ground a bit hard, even quite serious damage can be repaired in a minute and a half or so, though it’s a bit variable; sometimes what seems to be a flaming wreck can be repaired, other times seemingly less serious damage will end your game. Take off again, and repeat until either you or the entire opposing team have been shot down!

Ground Attack

Most of this post so far has been about air combat, as that’s the deciding factor in the majority of Historical Battles, but as the battle progresses and things break up then strafing a few ground targets brings in a bit of cash and XP if nothing else. Be very careful at low level, especially around dense concentrations of enemy anti-aircraft units, you can easily be brought down with a single hit; try not to fly slowly in a straight line any longer than you have to. I’ve been in a battle where the enemy was down to one damaged plane that returned to base and repaired, we had three or four planes left that decided to take out some ground targets, and all of them were shot down by flak, much to the opposition’s amusement. If you want to be a bit more serious about ground attack, and your aircraft can fit bombs or rockets, then when you return to base, after you’ve landed are are *fully* repaired, you can leave the aircraft (either via the ‘Esc’ menu or by holding down ‘J’), and you’ll return to the initial aircraft selection screen, where you can change Weapons, Fuel and, if you’re bored of your paint job, Camouflage before going back to the fight.

I think that covers the basics; if the longer build-up isn’t for you or you just want a quick blast then there’s always Arcade, and if Historical Battles are still too simplified then there are Full Real Battles, but I find them a nice balance.

War Thunder has just released update 1.31, and amongst the myriad changes there’s one you might like to pay particular attention to:

Added New Premium Level 1 aircraft:

USA – Thach’s F2A-1 Buffalo;
Germany – Marcolin’s CR.42CN ;
USSR – Zhukovsky’s I-153-M62 ;
Britain – Tuck’s Gladiator Mk.II;
Japan – Hagiri’s A5M4 .

After your first battle against other players (in case you receive any XP) – You will receive one of these aircraft for the nation you chose. (One free aircraft only)

Choose your first battle carefully!

The new aircraft have, I believe, the same stats as their regular counterparts, but new paint schemes reflecting their historical pilots. The I-153 is generally regarded as the best Rank 1 aircraft, so you may want to play as the USSR in your first battle after the patch, or just pick your favoured country; you can always buy any of the others for 250 Gold Eagles (about £1).

We’ve had a letter about our series of War Thunder guides, from a Mr J. Clarkson. He says: “Dear KiaSA, never mind all of this signing up and game mode and aircraft type and upgrade nonsense, how can I paint ‘The Fighting Cock’ on my aeroplane?” Well, Mr Clarkson, you’re in luck, as Part 5 is a bit of a miscellaneous wrap-up, starting with with aircraft camouflage and decals.

Camouflage and Decals

Click the left hand icon over any of your planes, “Hanger”, to open the hanger view. From here there’s a “Test Flight” button on the right, if you’d like to try out some aerobatics without a bunch of people trying to shoot you down, a “Weapons” button next to it to see the weapon loads of the plane, and an “Information” button for a bit of historical detail. In the bottom left corner is the painting section, with “Camouflage” at the top, and decals below.

Aircraft start with a single camouflage option, some (but not all) have new skins that can be unlocked. To see what’s available, click your username at the top of the screen to access your profile, then select “Skins” in the tabs along the top, and select the country you’re interested in. Click an option on the left to see what aircraft it’s for, a bit of information, and the criteria for unlocking it (often a number of kills).

Alternative Hurricane Mk I Camouflage

If you’ve unlocked additional skins then the “Camouflage” option in the bottom left of the hanger has left/right arrows to make the selection:

After choosing the basic paint scheme you can add your own your own touches via decals. Everyone has access to two decal slots (the boxes under the Camouflage section), with two more being available to premium players. Select a decal slot and you can scroll up and down the various decal options; again more can be unlocked through various achievements, but there’s a good selection available to start with. National insignia decals (e.g. the various roundels) are restricted to appropriate aircraft, but slogans and emblems can be applied to all.

Choosing a decal

After selecting a decal the cursor changes to a paintbrush, and you can position the decal on the aircraft. Hold the right mouse button to pan around your aircraft, and as the on-screen guide says use Shift+mouse wheel scrolling to change the size of the decal (you can manage some pretty gaudy effects by scaling decals up to cover most of the plane), and Alt+mouse wheel to rotate it.

Placing the decal

For Mr Clarkson’s benefit, in the “Allies (inscriptions)” section he can find “Panchito: the fighting cock”, based on US Bomber nose art inspired by a Disney character, though perhaps he was thinking of No. 43 Squadron, The Fighting Cocks.

Crew Skills

As you gain air force ranks, your crews are also gaining skills. The third button over a plane, the pilot’s head icon, opens the crew window with four tabs: Pilot, Gunners, Ground Service and Qualification. There’s a good guide to skills on the Wiki, including tables showing how much faster you reload with higher skills. The amount of crew XP needed to raise a skill by one point increases as the skill goes up, so it doesn’t make much sense to pump all the points into a single skill

Skill Selection – Ground Service

You’ll probably want to focus on the Pilot for a single-seat aircraft, not much point improving Gunner skills (unless you’re planning to put the crew into a different aircraft later; the crew retain their skills). With multi-crew aircraft the Gunner skills are more important; the first of these, “Number of experienced gunners”, is crucial as you start with a single skilled gunner, and if you have more than one turret position on your aircraft (quite likely on medium and heavy bombers) then the effect of skill points spent in the other areas is dramatically reduced. Extra skilled gunners are awfully expensive at 240 crew XP; you can use the “Accelerated Training” option to purchase crew XP for golden lions, otherwise it’s a lot of saving up. The third tab, Ground Service, allows you to speed up repair and rearming times; Reload Speed is especially useful in Arcade mode where you don’t even have to land to reload. The final tab, Qualifications, are specialisations that can be purchased (for silver lions) for each aircraft once your crew reaches a certain level, and offer a hefty boost to a number of other skills.

Repairing

Although your great skill and masterful tactical aptitude will surely ensure you emerge from most battles unscathed, every now and again, through pure bad luck or unsporting enemy behaviour, you might get shot down. Or rammed by an enemy aircraft. Or rammed by a friendly aircraft. Or you might misjudge a strafing run and prune a few treetops with your wings (note: your aircraft warranty doesn’t cover using the plane for horticultural purposes). Or your graceful landing attempt to capture an enemy airfield may result in an interaction with the ground at a somewhat higher velocity than would be ideal. On reflection, it’s incredibly unusual to come through a battle unscathed, so you’ll need to repair your aircraft. By default this is done automatically, but if you want to save a bit of money you can un-check the box in the bottom left of the screen next to the spanner, “Automatic repair of all airplanes after battle”; your aircraft will then gradually be repaired for free over time. Each aircraft gets 10 free repairs after you buy it, you can see how many are remaining, along with the time to repair for free and average repair cost, in the stats of a plane when you mouse over it. The Rank 1 Gladiator takes 21 minutes to repair for free, or on average costs 208 lions, for the Rank 19 Meteor if you don’t want to pay 21,960 lions then you’ll need to wait 17 days, 1 hour and 56 minutes! I tend to switch between two or three different nations while waiting for aircraft to repair, or you can always manually repair an aircraft (a spanner icon appears on its bar if damaged) if you’re in more of a hurry.

Premium Accounts and Planes, and Converting XP

As mentioned in Part 1 there are two currencies in the game: Silver Lions earned from playing missions and battles, and Gold Eagles bought with real money. Gold Eagles have several uses: each nation has three crew slots to start with, a fourth and fifth can be bought with silver lions, then further crews cost gold eagles. Crew XP can be purchased with gold eagles in the “Accelerated Training” option, as per “Crew Skills” above. You can purchase some Premium Aircraft with gold eagles; these are usually shown on the right hand side of a nation’s tech tree, and tend to be more unusual variants, often foreign aircraft. Premium aircraft can be flown at any time, regardless of your national rank (e.g. if you’re Rank 3 with Britain and buy the Rank 7 Hellcat F Mk.I, you can still put it into service and fly it); be careful in Arcade mode, though, as you’re put into matches based on the highest rank aircraft in your hanger.

The “Shop” button in the top right of the screen has a few more options. You can upgrade to a Premium Account, boosting the amount of experience and lions you earn from battles (the results screen at the end has a “Here’s what you could have won…” section, showing how much you would have earned with a premium account). The Store features a couple of campaigns, and starter kits containing both premium aircraft and gold eagles.

As you gain ranks for a particular country you also gain “Free XP”, this can be used with the “Convert XP” option to boost the rank of any country, so you can either really focus on getting to a high rank for one nation, or if you want to try something different but aren’t keen on being stuck in biplanes for a couple of ranks you can skip past those.

In this example I’m spending seven eagles to convert 10,500 Free XP to boost my British Air Force Rank from 2 to 3.

You certainly don’t need to buy any Gold Eagles if you don’t want to; player skill and teamwork will get you a lot further than just spending money. Like many games of the genre I imagine the pressure to spend real money increases as you move up the ranks and the cost of new aircraft, repairs and the like gets steeper and steeper, but if you’re not too hung up on progress and enjoying the battles I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If you feel the game is worth it, though, and want to progress a bit faster, by all means buy some Eagles.

Which country should I play?

There are no terrible choices when it comes to picking a country to play, each one has strengths and weaknesses. If you’re feeling patriotic you can go for your own nation (if it’s in the game), or if you have a particular favourite aircraft then go for that country and work up to it (or enjoy it right away, if you happen to be especially keen on the P-26 Peashooter). There’s nothing to stop you playing all the nations to get a feel for different styles of play, though advancement will be slower than if you concentrate on one; as repair costs rise in later ranks, you may want to turn automatic repairs off and play a different country while waiting for aircraft to repair.

If you have no particular preference then starting off with the Soviet Union isn’t a bad idea as the I-153 Chaika they get at Rank 1 is lovely, fantastically nimble with strong armament for a biplane, a good way to get to grips with the game, and since they started handing out a bonus premium aircraft to the first country you fly with then you get a couple to play with. You can dabble in just about every style of aircraft, by Rank 3 there are single engine fighters (I-16, LaGG-3), twin engine heavy fighters (Pe-3), light bomber/attack aircraft (BB-1, Su-2) and light/medium level bombers (SB series), with plenty of variants if you prefer to pack your hanger with one particular style instead of a mixed approach. Further up the tree the Yak-9T and -9K are notable for their massive cannons (37mm and 45mm respectively) that can take out even heavy bombers with one or two shots, the Pe-2 series of medium bombers are relatively quick and can deliver 500kg bombs with precision in a dive, and the Il-2/10 are perhaps the defintive ground attack aircraft of the war.

If you like fighters then Britain is a good choice, the Hurricane Mk I is an excellent dogfighter at Rank 2 and rapidly followed by the Hurricane Mk II, then the Spitfire Mk I and IIa. Their armament (8 or 12 .303″ machine guns) is good enough against most single engine fighters but a bit light against bombers, but at Ranks 5 and 6 you get the Beaufighter Mk VIc and Mk X, heavy fighters with four 20mm cannons that rip through just about anything in short order. Early British bombers aren’t so hot, though, the Blenheim and Beaufort having a light payload, but the Hurricane Mk II and Beaufighter Mk X can mount rockets to slightly beef up the ground attack potential. In the mid ranks the Wellington medium bombers can carry a decent payload, but are rather vulnerable to cannon-packing fighters. If you’re a fan of torpedo bombing you’ve got plenty of options, most of the bomber/attack lines can unlock torpedo pylons, but without being able to specifically choose maps featuring shipping targets it’s a roll of the dice as to whether you can actually use them.

The Germans, conversely, aren’t blessed with fighters in the lower ranks. The He 112 series and Italian fighters are rather underwhelming; though some handle nicely (the MC.202 Folgore in particular) their lack of firepower hurts them, especially in Arcade battles. The Bf 110 at least packs a punch, at the cost of some manoeuvrability. There are ample bombing options, though, with numerous variants of the Ju 87 Stuka for dive bombing, and the He 111, Ju 88 and Italian S.79 series of medium bombers. The emphasis changes in the mid-ranks as you get to the Bf 109 series, excellent energy fighters (i.e. better suited to hitting and running than turning in dogfights), along with a swathe of Do 217 and Me 410 heavy fighters, while the bomber line thins out.

The USA take a little while to really get going, their early fighters are decent enough without being spectacular, slightly further up the tree the 37mm cannon of the P-39/63s pack a hefty punch, the F6F and P-47 can carry a literal ton of ordnance for ground attack as well as being reasonable fighters, and the F4U Corsairs and P-51 Mustangs are strong in the mid ranks. If you’re a fan of heavy bombers then you’ll probably want to go for the USA (or possibly Britain for the Lancaster), though it will take a while to get to Rank 13 to unlock the first B-17. The A-20G at Rank 5 is rather fun along the way with a good bombload and a nose full of machine guns for strafing soft targets (or other planes if they get in the way).

Japan suffers slightly at the moment with a comparatively small tree, but they tend to have the most agile fighters in the game from the gloriously nimble Ki-43 to the A6M Zero line. The Ki-45 heavy fighters pack large cannon, if you can line up your shots accurately, and their bomber line has some nice aircraft; the H6K can carry a massive payload for Rank 3, takes a lot of hits to bring down, and has plenty of turrets including a 20mm cannon to ward off attackers, the downside is that handles like a boat with wings, probably because it *is* a boat with wings.

Other Game Modes

These guides are aimed at getting a new player up and running in Arcade mode, a whirling maelstrom of instant action. If you’re seeking more realistic and considered gameplay, you’ll probably want to step up at least to Historical Battles.

Historical Battles use the Realistic mode; you can still fly with a mouse and keyboard quite easily, the Instructor takes care of the basic flying, and you can stay in third person view, but you won’t be able to get away with the really silly stuff from Arcade mode like vertical dive bombing from 30,000 feet in a heavy bomber. You’re limited to one aircraft, no respawns, so choose carefully, and bombs and ammunition don’t reload in flight, you have to return to your airfield and land. Historical Battles are based on real scenarios and therefore have fixed teams (e.g. Germany vs the Soviet Union or Japan vs Britain), though your aircraft selection isn’t limited by the date of the battle. Once you’re confident in Arcade mode I’ve whipped up another guide if you fancy trying Historical Battles.

If that’s still not real enough for you then there’s another mode after that, Full Real battles in Simulator mode, no assistance at all with flying, you get to control the prop pitch and mixture and trim and magneto positions and… I tried a test flight in Simulator mode, and very nearly made it to the end of the runway before crashing. OK, that’s a wild exaggeration, I got nowhere near the end of the runway before crashing. One rather interesting thing is that the game supports head or face tracking hardware that allows you to look around in the game by… looking around. I gather this works in all modes, but is probably most useful in Simulation when you’re locked to the cockpit view, there’s a guide on the forums if you’d like to try it.

If you’re not so keen on player vs player combat you can fly missions or campaigns against AI opponents with either AI wingmen or human chums at the realism level of your choice (Arcade, Realistic or Simulator). Under “Game Modes” in the top left select “Missions”, from there you can join someone else’s mission, or create your own with the “Dynamic Campaign”, “Single Mission” and “Mission Editor” buttons in the bottom left.

Peter Cushing lives in Whitstable, he goes shopping on his bicycle

Well, I think that about wraps it up; if you have any questions do leave a comment, or there are some Contact details at the top of the page if you’re terrifically keen. Soupy twist!