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War Thunder Open Beta What is is: War Thunder is planned to be a full scale military combat free to play MMO that will include air, surface and fleet combat. Currently in open beta, it is air combat only. The planes range from 5 main countries (USA, Britan, Germany, Japan, USSR) with a few other ones tossed in the mix. While in Beta, they have announced they do not plan to do any more wipes. What it ISN'T: This is not "World of Tanks but with planes". There is a much greater aspect of flight simulation and skill required. While WarGaming, the maker of WoT is making a plane game called World of War Planes, this is not it. War Thunder is by and large considered vastly superior and has many different game play aspects that WOT-style lacks. Game Play Leveling up and New Planes You have two levels. General pilot level and country level. To level up to higher planes within a given country's tree you simply need to reach that level. You do not have to grind through planes you do not wish to use to get to the next vehicle. Experience within a country is the only thing you have to increase (some planes required you unlock the previous plane too, but you still don't have to play through that plane). Different Controls If you are used to joystick flying you are in luck. If you are not or lack a joystick, you are still in luck. War Thunder has a control scheme called "Mouse Aim" that is designed to allow non-joystick users be able to play and enjoy the game as well. The trade off with mouse aim is some maneuverability (loops are a bitch and rudder control is useless as the plane is always trying to center and level on your aim point) but a bit easier accuracy. Mouse-Aim is not available in "Full Realism" mode. Game Modes The primary mode that most people will play is Arcade. You pick the country whose planes you wish to use and jump right in. Your team will be a hodge-podge of countries and you complete given objectives, which change with the maps, or to destroy all the enemy planes. In arcade mode however, you don't just have one plane, you have your entire country's hangar. You can have up to five planes per country in you hangar in a given time (although you can switch out planes before each game without having to re-train the crew who is trained on the given aircrafts). If you get damaged you can land to repair. If/when you are shot down, you pick another plane and fly back out. For those wanting more history, there is "Historical Battle" The historical battle changes at least once a day and pits two countries against each other. When playing this game mode, you can only use aircraft from the country you are assigned to / join with. In Historical Battle, you only get one aircraft (which is the biggest draw back to this mode at the moment). To rearm your aircraft, it is not just a reload time like in arcade, but you must land to rearm. The current benefit to Historical Battle mde is players are more cautious and play as a team because they know everyone just has one aircraft. Additionally, extra damages are added in Historical Battle mode, such as wings sheering off from over-speed or excessive g-force maneuvers and fuel flight time. For those who want a full on flight simulator, there is "Full Realism" mode. This requires a joystick and gives you the most control over the aircraft. I haven't played this and cannot speak much about it. Game Features So what makes this game so much fun? Locational Damage: If you come in behind an enemy and unload into his win, it will turn to Swiss cheese and/or get shredded off. Rip up their elevator, rudder, or ailerons and their plane becomes harder to control. Punch enough holes in their fuel tank and they will burst into flames or start leaking fuel. You can adjust how much fuel you carry which adds weight and resistance to fuel leaks, but only so far. You can also damage engines, shoot out pilots and gunners, and generally just shred things with bullets. Multiple Game Objectives: While you can always win a fight by destroying the enemy aircraft, even without premium slots that means 5 planes per person. This makes objectives very useful. There is :Domination" which is similar to CTF, but with airfields. To capture an airfield you need to land on it... in the middle of combat. Maps can have 1-3 airfields and the team that holds the majority will slowly drain the tickets of the other team. Then there is "Ground Strike". Ground strike can be won by destroying the enemy's critical targets before they destroy yours. Depending on the map these can be things like pill boxes, armored columns, or carrier/destroyer fleets. There are other objectives I can't remember right now. Multiple Load-outs: several aircraft have multiple load outs you can unlock. These can be changed right before you launch the aircraft during the match so you are not locked in to your choice. For example, if you are an attacker that can mount either bombs, rockets, or torpedoes and are put into a fleet-destruction map, you can change right then and there to the torpedoes. Crew Training: In WT crew training is not locked to an aircraft, but to a hangar slot. Once you train a crew on a given aircraft they retain the ability to jump into that plane at a moment's notice. Their skill points you can use to advance them stick with them as well. Multiple View Modes: You can fly in 3 basic view modes for most aircraft. Third Person mode, cock-pit mode, and "virtual cockpit / HUD mode. In Cockpit mode, you can toggle off the hands/.feet of the pilot if that bothers you as well. In aircraft with tail gunners, you can manually control the tailgunners. In bombers, you can also go into a bomb sight view. All aircraft can use their gun sights in cockpit mode. Some heavy attack craft and bombers cannot use cockpit mode due to the layout of the aircraft. Aircraft Customization: Each aircraft gets 2 decal slots by default. You unlock decals as you play and can get anything from pin-ups to kill marks to text to the obligatory angry-face-on-the-nose (they have about 5 types of that). Some are themed to a specific country and must be unlocked doing certain tasks in that country, but can be used by all countries and aircraft. You choose the placement, size, rotation, etc. Some aircraft can also have alternate camo patterns unlocked for them. This is done by doing specific challenges with the given aircraft and are aircraft specific. Aircraft Types Fighter: These are your basic air-superiority fighters. However some are more adept to certain play-styles and tactics than others. Depending on the plane, you can have anywhere from 2 to 12 machine guns (.30 or .50 cal), cannons of varying caliber and fire rate, rockets, and even small bomb payloads. Most of your famous planes fall into this category: Example: Spitfire Line, A6M Zero line, BF 109 Line, YaK Line, Airacobra Line, Hellcat/Wildcat Line. Attackers: Historically these are your heavy fighters and "bomber hunters". These often have larger ammo capacities, heavier guns and higher resistance to damage at the expense of maneuverability. These are your Mosquito's, Beaufighters, A-20's, Bf. 110's, etc. The actual craft very significantly as this category covers both attackers and "heavy" fighters. Bombers: These are you heavy payload delivery service. Like the "Attackers" this class encompasses both fast strike bombers and slow high altitude "oh sweet Jesus they just carpet bombed a whole armor column" bombers. Examples of these, at least American examples, range from the SBD Dauntless series to the fearsome B-X Series (B-17, B-24, B-29 in various variants). Bombers often have the most payload options so you can choose between slots of small bombs such as 18x 100lbs bombs or smaller "I'm sorry was that your map I just bombed in half?" payloads such as 2x 4000lbs bombs. Army vs Navy: Countries also have different lines of fighters for Army vs Navy. Naval planes tend to be have more anti-ship capabilities, such as torpedoes, dive-bomb air brakes, and the ability to land on carriers. Landing a Corsair or Hellcat on a carrier is totally possible. Landing a Spitfire on a carrier... yeah that isn't happening. Trust me. Also don't try to land the sea-planes on the land. Pontoons make terrible wheels. "But isn't is just Pay to Win" No. Not at all. GTFO and stop whining. Gold allows you to purchase more slots in your hangar or "captured" / "lend-lease" aircraft. For example if you play the USA tree mostly but want a Zero or Spitfire, that costs gold. They are the same as their counterparts from their country of origin. Gold also can buy you credits and allow you to convert XP, allowing you to get to the higher levels faster (a terrible idea if your skill can't keep up). It can also get you more decal slots Who in Ordo is playing? Currently our "Squadron" consist of: Format: Common Name / Other Name / War Thunder Name Tsume / HebrewHammer / TheEpicWinrar Ethan / TheEthanEffect Twitchy / RaginRegan / Jankoutsu Dylan / KillMeNow Ierimya / The Silent Russian / Archimedes2 Caleb / RevolutionFour Siaetto Firefox / Kanika Arc / Arcadian Kurama / CaptainFishStick Afevis As the whole clan / Squadron thing is not yet set up but at the rate we have been playing I expect we will start something. Currently we can play in squads of four and use Teamspeak for communication