… oh, sorry …

… better this, is more telling of the game:

A beginner’s guide to War Thunder Ground Arcade Battles

(i.e. “THE MOST UNFAIR, PAY-TO-WIN, NO-SKILL,
PATHETIC, HETERO-DIRECTED, IDIOTIC, FILTHY,

DISHONEST AND BADLY DESIGNED GAME EVER”)

brought to you by

Last update: June 10^tth , 2018

Reference patch version: 1.77

You can easily notice that this page hasn’t been updated since some time ago.
The reason is quite simple: I’ve suspended playing WT.
I stopped playing for a few weeks and after that I realized (with my surprise) that I don’t miss the game.

A couple of time I checked WT Forum, just to discover that the game is likely worsening (again!), with new bad behaviours having the usual uncertainty about being them new features or bugs.
All in all, the likely truth is that I definitively got tired of endless Gaijin’s “inventions”, arrogance and lack of care for players.
So I’m not motivated to put further effort and time in a game that (more or less) seems planned to fool players.

I don’t rule out at all I could restart playing in the future, at least to check if things got better, until then these pages will remain the way they are now.

ALERT LEVEL

The current alert level is:

ALERT REASON:

War Thunder Ground Forces Arcade Battles is a FULLY Pay-to-Win (P2W) game, with a lot of unfixed bugs and, even worse, bad mechanics since day-one

ADVISED ACTIONS:

Play WT Ground Forces AB just if you are prepared to FULL P2W and never fixed mechanics (such as invisible tanks, invulnerable tanks, almost invulnerable crews etc.).
Be warned: it’s VERY unlikely you could have real fun unless you pay, regardless the Tier you play, unless you don’t mind regularly losing from players that win mainly because they paid.

WHAT’S NEW.

Some words about the latest patch, 1.77, regarding Ground Forces:

· It seems that at first Gaijin finally removed the “hull break” made by crashing planes on light vehicles, then after some minor sub-patches they reintroduced it (!!!). Still to be fully confirmed, though.

Some words about new things in this Guide:

· The initial P2W part has been expanded with the examination of an example of “Superman’s play”.

· Some considerations added to the “The Dark Side of P2W?” section.

Introduction.

WHY THESE PAGES?

My Guides for Gaijin’s War Thunder beginners in Arcade Battles are composed of two web pages:

· “A beginner’s guide to War Thunder Air Arcade Battles“ ( http://www.clocloz.altervista.org/wt/War_Thunder_Air_Battles_Beginners_Guide.html ), regarding War Thunder Air Forces (battles with airplanes)

· “A beginner’s guide to War Thunder Ground Arcade Battles” ( http://www.clocloz.altervista.org/wt/War_Thunder_Ground_Battles_Beginners_Guide.html ), regarding War Thunder Ground Forces (battles with tanks).

The difference in gaming between the two kind of battles fully requires a separate dissertation (although several similarities do exist).

Why I decided to write these pages?
Basically, because after some years of gaming I definitively realized that on the net (WT Forum, YouTube etc.) there are very few good advices for beginners.

Many reputed YouTube tutorials are too much theoretical, devoted to specific (and not always really useful) techniques and not giving the Arcade Battles beginner a wide scope view of the battle.

Many techniques and tactics, although frequently suggested to beginners, are unsuitable for newbies, because they need stronger and more skilled crews (which beginners could have just if they start paying since day one) besides player’s own skill (which beginners have had no time to develop yet), Boom-and-Zoom is a primary example of that.

Some tactics, if followed by a newbie would put them directly against much more expert, skilled and strong players (where “strong” in WT often means “paying”), so immediately becoming “cannon fodder”. An example for that is the advice to stupidly “always climb, climb, climb!”, which in Air Arcade Battles usually means to meet the most experienced “professional” players which stay at high alts to “protect” their kill/death ratio stats and surely means drifting away from battle core, where a beginner has to stay if he want to score the needed points.

Some other tactics and strategy, which on the contrary would in part mitigate the obvious beginners inferiority and limitations, are almost never mentioned, the need to increase crews Vitality as soon as possible is one fundamental example.

Techniques and tactics apart, you’ll almost never find on the net, and in particular not on the WT Forum, any really useful overall picture of what this game really is.

I had to say even more: in too many cases WT Forum is misleading, especially (but not only) for newbies.
It’s largely a playground for very experienced players, usually paying players, which are amongst the most active participants. This means that a newbie asking for advice will likely be answered by this kind of “aces”, which is quite clear to me they have a very different game experience from newbies and non-paying players.
I could estimate that three-fourths of advices to beginners given by them are wrong or, in the best cases, useless.

In other words, on WT Forum you’ll find a lot of users giving bad advices, without giving good ones and talking as the game would be a “fair” game ruled by players’ skill.
Which is NOT.

War Thunder is a game developed by a business company, not by amateurs, and any feature of it is obviously designed with the primary goal to support and increase company’s income.

This in itself doesn’t deserves any criticism, although licit criticism can be expressed regarding the way it’s done.
But I have no doubt that War Thunder IS a Pay-to-Win (P2W) game, devoted to advantaging paying players well before any other, in some declared ways and very likely in many undisclosed ways too.
Because without paying gamers the game itself, which is a business enterprise, would not sustain itself.

This is what clearly emerges both from observation and reasoning.

Being P2W has an expected result: the possibilities of success for paying and non-paying players, and to a good extent even the effectiveness of chosen tactics, are markedly different.
And this is the first thing a beginner should understand, after that he can make his well-informed choices and decide how he wants to experience the game.

If he didn’t realizes these basic facts, it will never understand the reasons for a lot of things in game that seem (and often are) really absurd if not idiotic.
If he didn’t realizes these basic facts, it will risk to believe to a lot of bullshit, daily spread on the net by dumb or naïve people and, in part, by Gaijin itself too.

Unfortunately, in WT Forum that simple and obvious concept (“WT is P2W”) is opposed by a lot of players (several of them being, frankly speaking, quite stupid), likely in good faith for the most of them (but not anyone), which usually are very experienced and paying gamers.
Being very experienced, even more when being a paying player, is often an obstacle for them in giving good advices to newbies, because in WT experienced/paying players live in a world apart from beginners (and even from more experienced non-paying players).
They live in a (greatly artificially built) “world of aces” whereas beginners and non-paying players are more or less put in the “cannon fodder world”, largely regardless their personal skill.
This is likely a partial explanation why so few good advices are given in Forum from experienced players to beginner’s benefit.

As time went by, I began being tired to debate these things on WT Forum, where it’s quite clear to me too many players has been brainwashed by the smart Gaijin’s mechanism that advantages addicted/paying players well beyond their skill, but cleverly hiding it.
So a lot of them turned “aces”, in my opinion, largely for external reasons (advantages from the game) but convinced themselves it was just for their skill improvement. I’ve found that some of them, even players with more than 10000 battles fought, are smart and honest enough to acknowledge that, the most part usually not.
In truth, not all of them are arrogant and stupid, some of them try to find a “rational” explanation to the many strange things in WT, candidly thinking the game “has” to be fair. Sometimes they are right, some “strange things” are just apparent and happens because the player has made mistakes or don’t know the rules.
But writing, as I read on Forum, that there are “just perceived problems” and that “the biggest problem is people not knowing the rules or some of the mechanics” is, first of all, a proof of stupidity.
Really, a lot amongst the most assiduous participants in Forum are people making a fool of themselves.

Apart regular Forum participants, there are players that just occasionally read and write on Forum. Some of them told to me that they, after some time spent playing the game, “took the hint” i.e. understood how this game works, realized it’s basically P2W and no more believe in the usefulness of the Forum (even less in game fairness, of course).
I wonder how many player are around that made the same i.e. understood that the game is just like the most of other MMORPG, i.e. P2W, and use the Forum just from time to time.
I think there are many of them, but on Forum you’ll usually find a lot of hard-core gamers, the player writing on it almost every day, and some newbies hopefully asking for advices.
A whole world of WT players is likely invisible if looked at from WT Forum.

Since in WT Forum is daily at work a watchful Gaijin’s censorship that stops, hides and deletes any hint to any issue or question that could raise doubts about WT being or not “Pay-to-Win”, the Forum itself, apart being a place into which seeking for news and asking for technical details, is more a playground for dull or brown-lickers players than a really useful place, at least to the goal to understand game’s nature.

These pages of mine have been written with the main objectives to give beginners the instruments to understand the nature of the game and, having realized that, applying the best choices and tactics to survive, progress (as much as they can, especially when not paying) and, above all, having fun.

Of course, being addressed to beginners they are mainly devoted to non-paying players and likely less useful for paying gamers, although I’m sure that the most of things here written are useful for anyone and not just for newbies, certainly can be useful even for average-skilled non-paying players (like me).
They could be less useful for paying players since they largely live in “a WT gaming world apart” from non-paying beginners.

Since a lot of concepts here expressed are rarely seen on WT Forum, and usually quickly censored, these pages could be also seen as a “NON-politically-correct view on War Thunder”.

And I’m proud of that.

CloCloZ

War Thunder by Gaijin Entertainment (the acronym is WT) is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) about WW2 air and tank battles, developed starting from 2009, which is achieving good success these years.

Having played for some years with IL-2 Sturmovik simulator by 1C:Maddox Games, mainly off-line and with a joystick, I looked for some newer online-oriented WW2 air combat game, to be played with a mouse, and found essentially two: World of Warplanes (WoW) by Wargaming Public Co. Ltd. and War Thunder (WT) by Gaijin Entertainment.

I explained in my “Beginner’s Guide to War Thunder Air Arcade Battles”, located at: http://clocloz.altervista.org/wt/War_Thunder_Air_Battles_Beginners_Guide.html, why I choose War Thunder, notwithstanding a lot of faults and shortcomings.

So I started playing War Thunder, in Arcade Mode (the other modes are boring for me!) and mainly with airplanes.

Having started with planes has been a lucky circumstance since if I’d had started with tanks there is a great chance I’d have stopped playing after a few months!
In fact not only tank battles are more boring for me but, worse, they are much more coarse, almost invariably idiotic, with really rough tactics, much less skill-rewarding and absolutely non-meritocratic since they depend too much by mere length of playing experience, and/or by the real money spent by the player to quickly improve crews and tanks, than by true personal ability.
In other words, I really despise 70% of anything in WT Ground Forces, saving just graphics, the immersive feeling and very few of the rest.

Nevertheless, I still play tanks too, mainly because I need some change after years spent on planes only, and this is what I’ve learnt so far about War Thunder Ground Forces, i.e. Tank Battles.

I have to warn you that you’ll find here a lot of rants by me about WT Ground Forces.

But all the rants are explained and justified in detail.

I want to speak clearly since the beginning: I think that WT Ground Forces is not only a fully no-skill Pay-to-Win game, programmed to artificially and greatly advantage paying players at any Tier but, worse, is an incredible pile of idiocies (to a barely credible extent until you play it, know it and examine its sad reality).

On the contrary, WT Air Forces, notwithstanding a lot of serious faults, is all in all a good and fair enough game (AF being really P2W just after Tier III).

Just after a few weeks I started playing GF, after some years of AF only, I asked for advices on the Forum, since I had already found so many absurdities that I needed to know if it was my fault or if the game was really so badly designed.
So I discovered, listening to more experienced players, that in GF the spading (i.e. maximizing all the modifications) of the vehicle and BR difference between opponents are much more important than in AF. But they didn’t tell me all the truth, for example nobody pointed out the decisive roles of crews’ experience.
Anyway, I learnt that it wasn’t my fault.
Unluckily, more I played and more I went on discovering even more insanities in GF.

To my knowledge WT Ground Forces is the most impressive example of PURE STUPIDITY applied to design and development of a software program, in particular computer game mechanics and rules.

It’s a game that’s has almost NO link with skill and it’s purposely designed to greatly advantage paying players.
But maybe that’s not the worst thing: the worst thing is that it accomplishes that goal by being silly designed.

So, this is not a game: it’s an insult.

And when you are in a bad, incompetent or coward team (very likely to ending up into in WT GF!) and add this to game intrinsic unfairness and to an endless, really endless series of rubbish things, you’ll find this game can be a nightmare (unless you pay, of course).

I never, never, NEVER saw such a huge pile of shit in computer games or in any other piece of software.
And IT and software is my job since 35 years, so I’ve designed, developed and seen a lot of software.

That’s really a shame, because the game could (and should) be a great game. It has some really good features, such a graphics, plenty of vehicles and (on paper) a good balance between fun (arcade) and realism (simulation).
Even the MM mechanism, based on real results in battles (with often revised BRs) rather than on-paper characteristics is a smart idea ... if followed!

Unfortunately, bad things in GF are much more copious.

It’s not just a matter of a few bugs or shortcomings, any piece of software has some of them, it’s the fact that in ANY area of the game there are incredibly illogical and unfair rules, features and behaviours.
And ALL the game rules pushes towards unfairness and absurdity.

To worsen things … things are worsening: Gaijin seems wanting to add more and more bad features and/or bugs at any new release, without making anything to fix the older ones.

I know that “idiocy” is a word here copiously used but, please, don’t blame me: BLAME THE IDIOTS.

Someone told me to lower my tone and I periodically prepare myself to do that and revise this page but any time I play GF I’m more and more convinced that any word here is RIGHT and DESERVED.
Both about Gaijin’s idiocy/dishonesty and about the foolishness of some uncritical, stupid, liar or brown-nose players.

War Thunder Ground Forces IS “the Idiocy Game”. A grotesque idiocy. Without any doubt.
Someone has to say that.

Anyhow, if you think I’m too much polemic and rude, you should read this (and look at some pictures too!):

https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/War_Thunder

My harsh criticism toward GF doesn’t involve AF (at least, not to such an extent).

The difference is so great, even considering the inherent different mechanics of the two kind of battles, that I could bet there is not much communication or exchange between AF and GF design and development teams.

If I were told I’m wrong, I’ll immediately start to be covered by cold sweat fearing that AF could become similar to GF.

A guess of mine is that Gaijin choose to put all their good eggs in one basket, Air Force (which is the oldest and main game area), relegating worse designers and developers to GF!
Really bad designers should be restricted into their enclosure, to avoid they can do damage somewhere else.

On WT Forum a moderator said that there is just one development team in Gaijin.
Apart that anything said by Gaijin, especially on Forum, has to be taken with a grain of salt, this doesn’t necessarily mean so much: the team could be formally an unique single team but developers could be permanently assigned to AF or GF.
Anyway, my concerns remain.

· REALLY IN A NUTSHELL …

I perfectly know that, in a Twitter-era, reading more than 50 lines of text is so unusual to be often hard.

So I’ll put at first the advices I judge the most important for a beginner, the suggestions he should begin to follow immediately IMHO, such as I were quickly answering to a tips’ request in a forum:

o First of all, forget the naïve idea that WT is a skill-based game: skill is NOT the more important thing to have success in this game. Not at all.
This is true in WT Ground Forces, a terribly unfair game, even more than in WT Air Forces.
Only morons could think that WT is basically skill-based (you’ll find a lot of them on WT Forum). More below here.

o Since skill in WT is just limitedly rewarded, the best choice is trying to have fun anyway. And forgetting any “win obsession” if one doesn’t want to pay. More below here.

o try different nations and different vehicles, this will give you a wider perspective and will let you understand which planes best fit your style.

o fully "spade" your vehicles (i.e. add modifications to your vehicles using RP points earned in battles until they are fully developed, at least tanks you like to use). A fully spaded tank is much more performing than a stock one. Your performance will ever be heavily hampered by using stock vehicles.

o increase crews experience using XP points: it's not just you that's fighting in the battle, you fight thru your crews. Experienced crews are much more effective. Your performance will ever be heavily hampered by using unexperienced crews, even in things you couldn’t believe in, such as driving the tank at its best or aiming and shooting.

o always remember that in GF the most important thing, at least at low-medium BR, it’s NOT “hitting first” but “SURVIVING FIRST”,
GF “cemeteries” are full of tank crews who hit first (and well) just to see the almost undamaged enemy returning fire and killing them. That’s what happens daily to beginner and medium-level players when facing experienced/paying players. So please DON’T believe to the moronic advice which says you are safe just if you hit first: of course, hitting first is a very good thing to do but you can be much safer if you endure enemy shots longer than him.
That’s the reason why it’s very important to increase crew’s Vitality experience parameter.

o at any cost, don't rush to upper tiers! If you aren’t a paying player, stay at lower tiers, not beyond III. This is an advice good for AF too, but is even more important in GF. At upper tiers you would find many players much more expert than you, many of them being paying players, with fully spaded tanks and maximized crews. In practice, at those tiers you’ll encounter a lot of “artificially-skilled Supermen”, practically invulnerable for you.
Beware, having to face those “wallet-driven Supermen” is true even at lower tiers but since players tend to go up in tiers as they become more expert, their percentage is usually higher at upper tiers.
Moreover, higher tiers means much higher repair costs too. So high, in fact, that at those tiers you’ll find much more paying players, because playing free is practically impossible even for skilled-enough players. And this is another reason why at high tiers you find a lot of very experienced, paying players, used to pay even to improve their already developed crews and tanks. So, yes, they are become almost invulnerable for a newbie, irrespective of their “human” skill.
BTW, Tiers from I to III are considered the most amusing ones by a lot of players, myself included, and being quite cheap in purchases and repairs are enjoyable enough for unskilled players (which die a lot).
Really, the important factor to take into account is BR, much more than Tier, because matchmaking in GF depends on the higher BR between your tanks. But talking about Tiers is an acceptable approximation. More on BR in the following point.

o be aware of BR (Battle Rating) of your tanks. Your BR is the highest BR of your tank preset (even if you don’t use that particular tank in battle!), So don't use one high BR tank mixed with low BRs otherwise you could be heavily disadvantaged in MM (Matchmaking).
My advice to beginners is to stay under BR 5.0, being 4.7 the maximum advisable and from 1.0 to 4.0 the most convenient and amusing range. Going beyond 4.7 means having to face a lot of Tier IV tanks and even more, the realm of those invulnerable “wallet aces”.

o learn driving the tank, it’s very important especially in close-distance duels. I advise you to try “driver assist mode”, which greatly eases driving (even if has some disadvantages).

o since skill is very limitedly rewarded in GF and a non-paying beginners usually have weak crews and often weak tanks, try to take advantage of any situation or possibility which doesn’t requires much skill neither experienced crews nor fully spaded tanks and nevertheless gives points. If the game prevents you getting many points even when fighting well, because the enemy are incredibly “invulnerable” to your precise shots and, on the contrary, you are easily one-shot killed by them, you have to use tactics that give earnings even with weak crews and vehicles.
Capturing a safe zone (i.e. a zone far from enemy lines) at the beginning of a battle and hitting enemy tanks with your plane to possibly getting assists when those tanks are destroyed by your comrades, are both examples of that.

o use zoom view when shooting, it helps aiming. However, don’t be surprised to have nevertheless difficulties in aiming (trembling crosshair etc.): if your gunners haven’t maximized aiming parameters (Targeting and Rangefinding), your aim will always been hampered. Did you asked yourself how those “wallet aces” can be able to have that fantastic aim skill? That way, i.e. by maximizing those parameters, usually by paying.

o remap controls on mouse and keyboard, if needed, to fit your preference and the most comfortable arrangement.

o use battle replays to examine behaviour and tactics of the top players in real battles. That way you’ll likely learn much more than reading advices on the WT Forum. Unfortunately, in GF battle replays are much less significant than in AF, since tactics and skill are much less important in GF.

o If you really want to “win” in WT GF, with the same ease of those “tank aces” you admire in battle and even at Tiers beyond III, you should really consider start paying (if you like to “have success” that way). WT is a Pay-to-Win game, almost exclusively P2W in GF!, and paying players will ever have a HUGE advantage, since the lowest Tiers.
In practice, Gaijin set up a “virtual money wall” to prevent players going up easily in Tiers without paying. You can do it, without paying, but you’ll lose a lot so you’ll lose more SL than you earn an you won’t be able to make progress (buying vehicles with SL etc.).
Moreover, there are many signs suggesting that Gaijin is consciously advantaging paying players even well beyond the “money wall”, e.g. drawing them more frequently in the stronger team or using hidden parameters to enhance their chance to hit and survive.
In short, don’t even think to be able to reach the top without paying: “no payment” in WT means “be content to be an average successful player and have some fun, no more”.
Obviously, you should also consider if it’s really convenient to put real money in this game, since Gaijin uses to change things very frequently and often in a detrimental way.
Unfortunately, in GF paying is almost mandatory to have real fun, because non-paying tank players are “cannon fodder” since the lowest tiers.

o last but not least: set your own goals, not caring of any “objective” you can’t reach (unless you pay, if you have just a minimum skill). I stopped worrying even about victory (!) when I had an incredibly losing streak of 55 defeats on 70 Ground Forces battles, absolutely inexplicable with “chance”, “bad luck” or “skill”. When you realize that your performances in game are largely (likely for the most part) ruled by unfairness of the game itself and NOT by your skill (this is particularly true for Ground Forces), all suddenly becomes clear.
At that time, you have three choices: start paying, stop gaming or defining your own goals (e.g. spading all vehicles, trying to stay at least on the middle of the score ranks etc.). For my taste, the first one is not interesting (I’m not interested in becoming a “wallet warrior” or a “paying ace”, even less in giving money to a substantially unfair game), the second one is reasonable but deprives you from the good things the game has if lived just as a pastime, the third one allows you to have some fun even when treated by the game as “cannon fodder”. For now, the third one is my choice.

Now, I hope the reader won’t stop here and will go on reading even the rest, where all these arguments (and more) are better explained …

Why playing WT Ground Forces?

Now I think you could have a question …

Since I consider WT GF a paramount example of PURE IDIOCY, why I still play it?

For six reasons:
1) after some years in WT AF I need something different than playing with planes, although WT AF is still amusing for me (and I esteem WT AF much, much more than WT GF).
2) I’ve ever been a fan of tanks too.
3) at present, I know nothing better as a tank game. Unfortunately.
4) there are enough good things (graphics, immersion, great number of tanks, historical background etc.) to make it interesting to play notwithstanding the huge amount of shortcomings, unfairness and plain bullshits.

5) I’ve given up the naïve idea to be able to reach the top just improving my “skill” and accepted the idea to stay at the medium-low level which is only allowed by game without opening the wallet: when a player has realized that, the perspective from which he look at the game changes drastically, although all reasons for criticism remains.
6) I still naively hope someday it could really improve.

The seventh reason could be: I’m an idiot too, going on playing it …

A warning to WT AB aviators willing to become WT AB tankers.

When, after some years of playing WT AB Air Forces, I decided to try WT Ground Forces, I really didn’t knew what to expect.
After all, I thought that AF AB and GF AB were much more similar then they really are.
If fact, there are several relevant differences that makes GF a full world apart, even without taking into account the many shortcomings and stupid things in Ground Forces.

First of all: in AF AB you can’t cloak yourself, however being seen is not, in itself, a danger.

In AF AB, to see and being seen is the norm. If you can’t see a plane, not even in the on-screen Tactical Map, that plane is not a danger for you because he is too far away.
And if you are seen by an enemy, this doesn’t mean you are in danger, because to kill you he has to move closer to you, manoeuver and open fire.
In any battle you are constantly seen by a lot of enemies but just a few of them are in a position that could allow them to fire at you immediately.

Air Forces AB is a game based on movement and manoeuvers, in 3D, not on hiding or covering or sniping.

In fact in air you can’t hide, can’t take cover and can’t really snipe. The more similar thing to sniping is BnZ but even this is much different, requiring difficult, precise and risky manoeuvers to approach the victim and shoot. BnZ is not just like firing from a good position and good aim and any other AF tactic is even more dissimilar.

The goal in AF AB, at least for fighters, is to put your plane in a position that allows you to fire shots on the enemy, possibly shooting him down.
You can do that in two way: 1) catching the enemy by surprise 2) manoeuvring better that the enemy.

In the first case it means that he had not enough spatial awareness or that he was aware of your presence but took the risk because he had worthwhile goals to pursue, such as killing a comrade of yours. This is quite common in a real furball, such as the giant furball usually found in Air Domination battles, where “spatial awareness” is simply disregarded by almost all players.

Since in AF is usually more convenient (talking about battle scores) to kill a lot even at the cost of losing some planes and that in AF you can use several crews (four, five or more) in one battle, that daring tactic is not so absurd.
Just when repair costs start to be high, after Tier IV, losing a plane has to be carefully considered, needing a consistently good performance in battle (this is the reason why WT is almost impossible to play free at high Tiers without losing more SL than those earned in battle).

In the second case, both adversaries are aware of enemy’s presence since the beginning and battle outcome is determined primarily by their air skill, secondary by their planes and crews’ skill.

In both cases, the first player that’s able to hit enemy plane can reasonably be sure to survive the fight. He couldn’t even be able to shot him down but rarely a damaged fighter plane can turn the tables in his favour, so the player who hit first is rarely shot down, even if his plane is weaker than opponent’s one.

In a few words, AB Air Forces depends on movement and being able to hit first. Planes have no armour so the player can’t really count on their physical strength, the enemy can be everywhere and not just in front (except at battle start), there is no single-shot sniping but shooting is made using streams of bullets against a moving target (except in the deplorable head-ons), so flying and shooting are linked in one skill.
And I suggest you to focus on that word: SKILL.
Because luckily it is, all in all, linked to Air Forces.
Even if AF are a P2W game too, player’s skill has still some not negligible importance.

On the contrary, AB Ground Forces is primarily based on being able to take more damage than the enemy could do. Tanks have armours and a strong tank with a strong crew can still endure a hit, turn the turret and kill the attacker. A thing extremely common in GF but extremely rare in AF.
Moreover, driving and shooting are rarely linked skills, because shots are fired from an usually stationary tank to a stationary target.
With tanks aim is a one-shot affair, this means that it largely depends by crew’s aim parameters (Targeting and Rangefinding), much more than AF where personal skill (flying, deflection shooting) can at least partially compensate low Stamina and G Tolerance (which impair crew’s aiming skill). Just SPAA can be used against tanks in a way partially similar to planes’ guns, but SPAA are usually dead against tanks due to their weakness, so they can be effective just in some cases.

All this mainly regards game mechanics, very different in tanks to planes, but a lot of bad choices made by Gaijin make the game even worse.
For example, keeping for tanks the same +1/-1 BR spread we had with planes is a very bad choice, which takes to extremes the dependency from tank strength (a 0.7 difference would be the minimum reasonable, 0.5 would be the right one).

First time I encountered a Tiger in battle was when I started spading a Pz.IV H, a 4.7 BR tank, quite good at its level. It was the higher BR tank for me, since I had no other vehicle at that level, the remaining were 4.3. Before the battle I checked both teams: 70% of all players were at BR 5.7!
A few minutes after, using my Pz.IV H, I managed to hit a tank on its side: it was a Tiger, BR 5.7. It didn’t get perturbed at all, turned the turret and one-shot killed me.
Of course, after that I was very cautious with my remaining 4.3 tanks and at the end I finished just 13^th in team.
What else could I have done? Practically nothing. A 4.3 BR tank can’t do almost nothing against tanks at 5.7 BR.
With an hypothetical -0.7/+0.7 spread I would have faced tanks no more than 5.3, for sure more approachable.

In a few words, AB Ground Forces depends mainly on tank and crew strength (vitality, aim skill), much less on player’s personal skill.
Aiming and shooting is much more “artificial” than in AF (and, therefore, likely more easily exploited by cheats such as aimbots), driving skill counts much less than flying skill in AF, enemies are usually just in front, tactics are usually rough, battle is much more static, sniping, hiding and covering are the norm, armour strength and crew’s strength are of the greatest importance and often allow a mediocre player to survive and kill a better attacker who has a weaker tank and crew.

So, if you are a WT AB aviator, especially a fighter pilot, you have to expect a totally different experience from GF AB.
Much, much worse, in my opinion, about everything: fairness, respect for skill, P2W dependency, tactics etc.
Of course, YMMV.

And now, let’s examine the Big Idiocy …

As I wrote in my Air Battles Guide, War Thunder is designed to GREATLY advantage PAYING players, especially promptly giving them fully spaded vehicles and (even more important) fully experienced crews just by paying them.
That’s why you can see “aces” being able to instantly kill tanks running fast with just one shot or being insanely quick in (perfectly) aiming and shooting or being almost invulnerable to enemy tank shots or winning any head-on with planes etc.

As I wrote in my WT Air Battles guide, you should think at WT as a game where some players, namely paying players, have “doped” performance thanks to known and probably also unknown mechanisms that Gaijin set up to highly advantage players giving them money.

So, yes: WT IS A PAY-TO-WIN GAME, no doubt about that.
And this is evident especially in GF (whereas AF are much more fair towards non-paying players, at least at lower Tiers).

If you have doubt about that, even before having examined the huge amount of clues about that, ask yourself: how great is the chance that Gaijin gave the same opportunity to win both to paying players, that pay their salary, and non-paying players, that just use their resources?

How likely is they didn’t choose to use non-paying players to play a very needed and convenient (for Gaijin) role i.e. “cannon fodder” to please paying gamers?
You should be able to easily answer to those questions, even more when you’ll be acquainted with WT.

The bottom line is: if you REALLY want to “have success” (i.e.: to win) in WT, and especially in WT GF, you have to PAY.

Otherwise you could (more or less) have fun but you’ll be forever (more or less) “cannon fodder”.

This is an example of a typical tank of a “very successful player” in WT GF:

· Strong and proven tank (like Tigers, T-34s, KV-1s etc.), chosen with the only goal to win. I read an advice from an expert player saying that to have success in GF one should stay at BR between 3 and 4 and settle on a (three) T-34-only preset, point. And, although I dislike that victory-obsession and prefer to play with almost every tank, even weak ones, I have to say he is right: the difference in performance between very good tanks and average ones is HUGE, regardless player’s skill.

· Camouflages (skins, bushes …), not-free marks and insignia, sometimes Premium tanks, proving he is almost certainly a paying player, having usually paid also for fully maximized tanks and fully or at least highly maximized crews.
Both of these things (maxed out crews and tanks) give them a huge advantage against non-paying player, well explaining why so many of them are so “capable” (one-shot kills after just half-a-second they glimpsed the enemy etc.).

Of course, there is no significant advantage in camouflages and insignia in themselves, they are just a hint that his player pays to game, so having become a privileged gamer.
Can you believe that I met some stupid people in WT Forum making sarcasm in saying “hey, are you fool? How a bush on a tank can give such a great advantage”?
Certainly, the issue it’s not the bush, the camouflage or the “exotic” insignia, the issue is that in WT paying players belong to a different and privileged class.

BTW, amongst the huge number of bullshits spread on WT Forum I’ve read that “to unlock camouflages you just need to go on playing”. Anyone could check what’s the truth, opening the camouflage section in Customization: a customized camouflage costs at present 200 GE and, yes, you could unlock very few of them going on playing for an considerable amount of time, with the same tank. After one year of playing with tanks I think I have just a couple of “unlocked” camouflages in a couple of tanks! So you can imagine what’s the chance all those camouflages found in battle were unlocked without paying!
Although there is a chance to get some things with Golden Eagles won in wagers, so without paying, that’s is a rare case, so you can reasonably think that almost all players with not-free features paid for that (the exception proves the rule).

Another quite silly statement says that paying is unnecessary to quickly grind vehicles (tanks, or planes in AF) and maxing out crews, because this could be achieved just by playing. This is in part true, but is much longer for a non-paying player, so completing and fully spading a tree and/or maxing out the crews in a few months it’s impractical for anyone not wanting to spent his life in WT. So, the average player usually chose between paying (and being immediately at top effectiveness) or just playing (being at inferiority in the meantime, for a long time).

A caveat: being a “paying player” and being a “Premium player” is NOT the same thing.

A Premium player is for sure a paying player, but Premium itself has essentially just the advantage to allow a much greater reward in terms of SL/RP/XP at any battle.
If the Premium player badly uses those earned points, his “artificial performance” won’t be as much significantly greater as performance of other players that, even being NOT Premium, paid to cleverly maximize crews and spade the better tanks.
In other words, a smart Premium player can get a real advantage from the money he paid for being Premium whereas a dumb player could waste it.
Gaijin set up its game to favour paying players but can’t do much with dull-witted paying players!

In fact, you could find in WT Forum a lot of morons saying “hey, being a Premium doesn’t increase your chance of winning!”.
This speaks a lot about their lack of smartness, more than about Premium.

Obviously, a Premium player (even when stupid) has many objective advantages over a non-Premium, such as getting double or almost double XP/RP/SL, that means much faster grinding and faster crew improving. So, even if the Premium player doesn’t pay for single accelerated researches he is at advantage respect to a non-paying player, thanks to the earned points. Unfortunately, some of these players seems forgetting that.
One of the issues in WT Forum, which lead to bad advices, is that many expert/paying players depict WT just from their own “privileged” (usually by paying) point of view. This is one example.

Last thing about Premium: in the last years I’ve seen more and more players complaining that Premium account has become a ripoff, that there are no real advantages, that is much more convenient to spend money to ace crews etc.
It confirms that Premium account in itself it’s not the panacea and couldn’t be the best choice to exploit the P2W nature of WT.
Same goes for Premium vehicles, apart some of them clearly OP, such as IS-6 tank.

A paying player will always have significant advantages, unless he waste his money buying thing of low usefulness!

· Sometimes that player belongs to a tank squadron (easily recognizable by a prefix in front of his name) and he is even more dangerous when fighting alongside his squadron comrades (although not at the fearsome level of air squadrons, usually much more effective in AF than in GF).

· And the most important thing (even if not recognizable from the external): he has very high level or even maxed out (Aced) crews (a state almost always achieved by paying).
In WT AF is arguable if crews strength is more or less important than spaded planes or planes’ BR, whereas in WT GF crew strength is usually even more decisive than tank strength (to some degree, of course), although many players don’t realize that.
One of the most important thing a newbie should learn, as soon as possible is: WT Ground Forces is a game mainly ruled by crews level and Vitality is the single most important crew parameter. Please don’t believe to stupid players saying that crew level is not really important: they likely soon paid to get high-level crews and forgot (or never realized) how bad are weak crews.

Such a player (I said “player” but that includes his crews and his tanks!) is usually almost invulnerable for a newbie and hardly vulnerable even for intermediate free players.

He almost always will be able to shoot first and well (greatly helped by his high-level Targeting / Rangefinding crew parameters and maxed out guns and ammos), resist (sometimes in an incredibly way) to enemy shots (thanks to higher-Vitality crews, the ridiculous “crew knocked out” at the first suffered shot is a rare happening for him), reloads guns much quicker, drives better, has a better visual range etc.
Add to that his fully spaded tanks and you should be able to understand why is almost out of average players’ league.

You can find on the Internet some Youtube videos that show the “endeavours” of some of them, although you have to remember that those videos depict just the best battles of their authors, not the average ones.
But you can check replays of battle you fought to have daily examples of “superhuman” behaviours, even if less impressive that those videos.

I saw many examples of gamers having stellar performance even being at low level as player.

This means that playing level hasn’t necessary a relationship with performance, i.e. a Level 100 player is usually good because his great experience bur even a low level player can do wonders.
How? Almost certainly by paying.
Or, second hypothesis, he is a CHEATER using some aimbot. Since those aimbot, that anyone can find on the net, has to be bought, it would be the same reason: paying.

For example, a tank player still being at a meagre Level 17 (just a little bit over the newbie stage) being able to get 10 (ten!) kills, 5 assists and 1 plane kill with just one death, being well ahead in score and position of the second in his team, a Level 100 player!
He repeatedly one-shot killed enemies, one after the other, with his KV-1, which didn’t seem very bothered by close range shots suffered by adversaries. No stop in driving or turning the turret, no apparent trouble with the crew. I’ve used KV-1, it’s a tough tank but I can assure you that its crew can be killed at close distance quite easily, at least if the player is a non-paying beginner so its crew shouldn’t be very strong. His tank was finally destroyed just by a two well placed bombs dropped by a plane, only after having done the massacre.
It’s a performance practically precluded to non-paying beginners and very difficult to achieve even for intermediate players.
And, duh!, he was a paying player, as shown by the “regulatory” bush camouflages on his tanks …

After another battle I reviewed on server replay another Level 17 gamer, who was (by far) the better player in my team and in the whole battle, killing 11 enemies.

I wanted to know how he did that. It was instructive and depressing at the same time.
At the beginning he quickly killed a couple of enemy tanks, after that his gun was damaged by a close distance shot (which, BTW, did no harm to his crew) and, being now defenceless, was finally destroyed. With the second tank he got the remaining nine kills. How he did that? Simply: by having his crew remaining fully unharmed from the many shots he suffered. Having no damage, he was able to return fire and kill his opponents.
Now, I suppose you are wondering if he used a very strong tank such as a KV-1 or a Churchill: no, it used a Pz III L. Which, I know, has a good frontal armour but, good grief!, I used it a lot and I don’t remember having being able to fight for seven minutes, being hit by five or six shots, without having no damage on the crew, not a single time!
I stress: NO DAMAGE. Usually, just a single similar hit is enough to immediately halt my tank, wounding my crew and leaving me exposed to further shots. And this even in very strong tanks, having crews of medium-low strength! On the contrary, the only damage he suffered was on a track, that was repaired at an astonishing (and quite dubious) speed, just a few seconds!
So, you should easily understand what huge advantage is being able to survived unharmed to enemy shots, so being able to immediately return fire against the unlucky tank who uselessly struck him!
In other words, it’s a perfect example of one of the biggest truth in WT GF: the most important thing is not (as some moron says …) “hitting first” but “surviving first”!
BTW, that Level 17 player was a squadron player, so he could be a paying player too (likely with maximized crews). In fact, a Level 17 being able to incredibly survive multiple shots, to repair its tank in five seconds (!), to shoot like a sniper and being already part of a squadron, has to be a paying player. Or a cheater.

I’ve even seen a Level 9 (nine!) player, with less than 250 battles fought, being able to stop his tank, turn the turret, aim and one-shoot destroy an half-covered tank at 450mt in less than one second. He went on with an incredible series of one-shot destructions, at the pace of one perfect kill every thirty seconds while he advanced on the fields. He ended the battle second in his team (which won the battle), with 8 kills.
Even the first in team, a Level 100 player having 57% of battles won and 75% of average position in team (both very high achievements), had more captures and assists but managed to kill just 4 tanks.
And the third in team was another Level 100, with just a little bit worse stats, that killed 6 tanks.
That Level 9 player should be an absolute beginner (moreover with unskilled crews if he didn’t pay for them) and get two or three kills at most, on the contrary he had performances better than Level 100 players, shooting perfectly like a robotized weapon.

Now, if you want to directly know how these “superman” fight you can look at this (you can find also others on internet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjRLdz4-tY8

The upset player who posted that replay, regarding a Level 100 who wreak havoc in a SB battle, 16 kills just in one battle!, called him “a cheater”.
I don’t know if he is a real cheater, he could simply being exploiting some advantages Gaijin gave him for his payments, thru declared or undeclared ways.

However, the question asked by the video poster remains: how could he see what’s not visible and get not just one, but multiple and quick one-shot kills?

The answer of “naïve” people is “because his skill”.




In fact, if you like to believe in fairy tales you could think it’s just his skill, i.e. he is a reborn Zinoviy Kolobanov.
Since I don’t believe in fairy tales, I think there is something undeclared that rules GF battles, beyond (and possibly more important) than declared ones.

Or there is in WT GF much more room for hacking (aimbots, server side exploits etc.) than Gaijin admits.


Those above reported are not rare, exceptional, unusual happenings: those are very frequent events.
There is an endless, really endless series of disconcerting examples that can be seen practically at every battle: perfect shots fired in half a second after the enemy has barely shown himself, even killer shots fired by an enemy whose faint red marker is barely shown!, sometimes seemingly to leap over hills and obstacles, barely repeated one-shot so easy that the projectile seems a guided missile (and it could be somewhat …), etc.
And almost always the “ace” it’s a “camouflaged player”, often a squadron player, almost all of them being likely (or surely) paying players.



Supermen don’t exist in real world, but do exist in War Thunder.

A real-life … oops! … a real-game example of “Superman’s play”:

Sometimes ago, on WT Forum a very experienced and paying player (Level 100, squadron player, more than 13000 battles fought) published the link to a server replay of a battle of him, where he killed 26 (!!!) tanks, stating that "look, Gaijin didn't help me in achieving that!".

On the contrary, that replay shown very significant things.

So I went to examine it in more detail. This is what I found.

Let's name that player "B1", the best player of blue team (and the best in battle, by far).

B1 (Level 100, squadron player, paying player using Premium tanks), 26 tank kills (yes, I mean: 26 just in that battle …), was first in blue team and in battle (which lasted 18min 40 sec).

An exceptional achievement, no doubt.

He fought with great skill, in Stalingrad map, always moving between buildings and ruins and surprising enemies. He also had the luck the opposite team was not great and just in a couple of cases enemies targeted him.

It's since a long time I discovered that the most outstanding performances in WT are usually coupled with the fact that by chance enemies largely leave the player alone or the player has the tactic skill to stay away from troubles.

This is evident in AF but it seems to me to be true even in GF.

He fired 36 non-one-shot-kill rounds, i.e. 36 shots that DIDN'T give him a one-shot kill (a few of them missed the target but the most of them hit the enemy, damaging him more or less heavily).

Of them, 8 were two-shot kills (i.e. kills made just at the second hit).

Two-shots are significant because they mean being able to suddenly disable combat capability of the enemy with the first shot, then terminate him with a second shot after a few seconds (the reloading time).

One-shot and two-shots are kills that don't leave the enemy the possibility to reply (from three-shots on it's usually a reciprocal shoot-out).

Amongst those 36 shots there were some that caused an additional couple of kills that I didn't classify as one-shot or two-shot because the death happened sometime after the hit (for example, having set fire to the enemy tank).

In addition, he had 16 one-shot kills.

In total: 16 one-shot kills + 8 two-shot kills + 2 other kills = 26 enemy tank destroyed.

So he fired 36 (non-one-shot-kill) + 16 (one-shot-kill) = 52 shots

31% of them (16) were one-shot kills

15% of them (8, amongst the 36) were two-shot kills

With 46% of the shots he fired (even considering the few missed shots) he managed to have a kill at the first or the second shot.

61% of his victories were one-shot kills.

He had an average of just two shots needed to get a kill.

He arrived at battle end, having suffered two deaths.

He was lucky to be rarely hit but when that happened its tank/crew, even if damaged/wounded, was still able to perfectly drive and shoot, giving him several quick kills.
On Forum he said it's not true, he said he "wasn't able to move and shoot normally", but after having examined the replay I can say that statement has no sense at all:
with his "heavily damaged" M4 tank and an “heavily hit” crew (permanent damages to the tank and three crew members seriously wounded!) he was able, in the following one minute and fifty second (before being killed), to destroy three tanks, two of them with one-shots!, firing just six rounds.

Yes: three kills firing just six shots, i.e. the exact average ratio of two shots for any kill he had with intact tank. So, no difference in performance at all.

Now we can easily see he WAS able to drive and shoot "normally" ...

It's quite obvious that those kind of "paying Supermen" have their own personal and fully biased idea of what's the meaning of "move and shoot normally"!

He was able to move and shoot without any significant hindrance and MUCH better than any average player having suffered the same hits. Really, an average player (and many experienced players too) would have been immediately stopped and then destroyed after a few seconds by another shot.

He made a smart move by firing at first a smoke grenade to get about thirty seconds of smoke covering, waiting for a VERY FAST crew replenishment and tank repairing, but the fact is that the most of times an average non-paying player can't even shoot nor move and is usually quickly killed while stationary waiting for a long crew replacement and/or repairing!

By looking at a similar "Superman" fighting you can easily understand how much this game is "artificial": they had even no need to accurately aim, just approximately pointing and shooting in the blink of an eye, crew aim-related parameters make the rest!

Add to that the extremely important fact their crews are MUCH more resilient, so they can go on fighting without any relevant hindrance after having been hit (same hits that would kill or fatally wounded an average player's crew) ad it's quite clear how they can collect 15 or 20 kills in a battle.

BTW, a few days after that same player wrote on the same Forum, answering to a gamer complaining he was unable to kill an enemy crew with 6 shots fired to enemy’s tank side from 10m, that “6 shots on the side of a tank to kills its crew is probably very realistic.. […] the simple truth is, you didnt go around killing everyone inside of a tank with every shot. Most penetrating shots actually only killed 1 crew member if that”.
All that said by a player that on average was able to instantly or very quickly kill the enemy with no more than two shots!

Now, let’s see what B1 player himself wrote, answering to a gamer that stressed he was lucky to be able to kill 26 enemy in just one battle: “I did get lucky and i do quite often, i was also just ''feeling it''. These matches occur when im facing sub par teams, that are generally low levels, poor lineups and im towards the top of the br range and of course im not spading”.

Really? You were “lucky” and it happens “quite often” (what a surprise!)?
It’s not a matter of “luck”, buddy!

And, BTW, a few times it happens even to me to “feel” I’m fighting much better that usual (one-shot kills without even accurate aiming, “lucky” high resilience of my tank etc.): it’s not “luck”, it’s as if “something” gave me, just for one battle, a little bit of “superhuman” powers.
Likely, “supermen” players don’t realize they have that advantage at ANY battle!

Really, those wallet-driven players live in a world apart, under any aspect.
And they are unable to understand that.
This is the only reason why I stopped arguing with them: it would be useless.

Now, let's check the performance of the best opponents in red team.

R1 (Level 14), 8 tank kills, first in red team.

A good (very good for an almost-beginner) but, all-in-all, a "normal" performance.

He fired 25 shots, 16% of them were one-shot kills and 12% of them were two-shot kills.

With 28% of the shots he fired he managed to have a kill at the first or the second shot.

Any time he was hit, he was heavily damaged and had to wait for a quite long time to be combat-ready again, if not already one-shot killed.

He left before battle end, having suffered three deaths.

Then it was R2 (Level 64), 3 tank kills, second in red team.

Not a great performance.

He fired 15 shots, 20% of them were two-shot kills. He had NO one-shot kill.

So, with 20% of the shots he fired he managed to have a kill at the second shot, no one-shot kill.

Any time he was hit, he was heavily damaged and had to wait for a quite long time to be combat-ready again, if not already one-shot killed.

He left before battle end, having suffered three deaths.

I didn't participate to that battle so, just for comparison, I examined one of the best in my recent battles.

At present I'm a Level 63 and I consider myself an average AF player and a well-below-average GF player.

In a battle (that lasted 12min 53 sec) I had 4 tank kills (+ 1 destroyed using a bomber plane).

I fired 15 shots, 20% of them were one-shot kills, 6% of them was a three-shot kill.

So, with 20% of the shot I fired I manage to have a kill at the first shot.

Any time I was hit, I was heavily damaged and had to wait for a quite long time to be combat-ready again, if not already one-shot killed.

I left before battle end, having suffered three deaths.

Summing it up, according to this examination:

- "normal" players had about 20% chance to have a one-shot kill, the "Superman" had 30%.

- widening the stat to two-shot kills too, "normal" players could have a 25-30% chance to kill with at most two round, the "Superman" had almost 50%.

- being able to go on moving and fighting, practically not hindered, after having suffered relevant hits it's a fantastic exception granted just to "Supermen", the others are usually stopped and killed. The difference is absolutely evident and very relevant for player's performance, as much as aiming and killing facilitations.

I’ve understood that if you want to have many kills in GF you should take risks in game, just like in AF you have to fight “where the battle is”.
But, for goodness sake, how one could think to take risks when just a single glancing shot could immediately kill him? How one could easily think to expose his tank to enemy fire, knowing that being hit very likely means to die?
This is NOT a problem for “Supermen”: they know they are able to suffer some shots without being destroyed. Maybe they don’t know why, i.e. they don’t realize that for “normal” players things go differently, but they are used to be very often hit being nevertheless perfectly able to go fighting and killing. So they can take risks. And they are right, because for any death suffered they usually get several kills.
Could that be due just to their maxed out crews?
It could be, but since is practically impossible for an average/good non-paying player to max out their crew in an acceptable time, it would be just another kind of Pay-To-Win.
No surprise here.

- the speed of aiming, firing, reloading and crew replacing was perceptibly better for the "Superman" than for "normal" players. Crew experience and fully spaded tanks at work here.

- the ease in getting one-shot kills, for the “Supermen”, is impressive, even more if you consider that those kind of players aim and shoot at first sight.
Have they a fantastic "robotic" aim, that allows them to hit EXACTLY in the weakest points in no more than half a second? It could be, but in my opinion it's not (or not just that).

In the beginning, I started to understand how much "artificial" this game is when I checked the surprising effectiveness of the Stamina crew parameter in AF, giving the player a much better "aim" just in the first one or two minutes after having entered the battle. And this even without being a paying player or a long-time player with maxed out crews.

I could easily bet that a similar reason, i.e. maxed out crews allow player to have a "superhuman" aim i.e. a TRUE “robotic” aim!

But even this couldn't the full explanation.

In fact, it seem that those "superhuman" players get one-shot kill by hitting enemies in almost ANY part of the tank.

I've often hit enemies as much well as they do, sometimes better, just to see them just damaged at most (and a lot of time they quickly return fire and kill me). In the same situation, the "supermen" seem to have at least the 50% of additional chance to one-shot destroy.

So, it could be that a carefully "tuned" and “focused” RNG parameter it's at work too.

Really, if Gaijin would advantage some player it could be easy for them to instantly compute a "privilege difference parameter" between the firer player and the target: if the firer is a "superman" and the target is "cannon fodder", the latter is one-shot killed. On the contrary, if the firer is "cannon fodder" and the target is a "superman", it's likely that the latter will be just damaged, even if his tank should have been destroyed just according to Gaijin's own armour/penetration data.

Any honest player, especially non-privileged players, can check that such markedly different behaviours are what happens any day in WT GF.

Of course, "superman" will usually think that all is right, that they killed just because of their own skill and haven't been killed because the "cannon fodder" enemy did something wrong (bad aim, bad ammo etc.).
It seems Gaijin did a great job in convincing very experienced and usually paying players they are good just for their personal skill.
The best way to build a P2W game is make players being unaware they are winning mainly because they paid, because nobody wants to be told that.
Gaijin did just that, in my opinion.

Of course they have the right to do that.
Just as I have the right to say that is FILTHY DISHONESTY and that players believing in “skill” as the main factor in WT are IDIOTS.

So, I've been able to see "from the other side" what I daily see in WT GF: some players are allowed to have "superhuman" performance and "super lucky" RNG, being almost invulnerable while, at the same time, they kill any enemy almost always at the first sight and the first shot.
It has been a really instructive examination.

The only logical hypothesis is related to Pay-to-Win.

I’ve noticed that when I see such “aces” in action, the most of times my team lose.
And it seems to me that in those rare cases I had such good shots (e.g. lethal deflection shots, fired in a blink of an eye, almost without thinking at that) my team usually win.

So the hypothesis could be: game mechanism assists players of the team which is intended (by Gaijin) to win.
This could explain the very frequent unbalanced battles in addition to “superhuman” performances.
This hypothesis doesn’t mean that is sure that a team will win, just it will be advantaged and it could happens in several ways, for example gathering the best players just in one team and aiding its players individually.

Another hypothesis is simply that paying players are individually helped, independently by the team.

BTW, talking about player level, not only a low player’s level doesn’t mean really much about performances, since even very low level often show great performances (very likely “artificial” ones), but there are Level 100 player that didn’t pay anything and so couldn’t be really advantaged.
I met one of them on the Forum and he swore that he didn’t paid any money since day 1. He had fought almost 15.000 battles and when I checked his stats I noticed that he had an AB victories/battles ratio just a little bit better than mine at Level 58, about 50%. And at the moment I consider myself just an average player in AF and a below-average player in GF.
So, it seems that non-paying in WT … doesn’t pay! Even if you arrive at Level 100.

On the contrary, it clearly seems to me that paying allows a player to have great performances even at quite low experience levels.

90% of times a newbie can do absolutely NOTHING against such a player, except assisting other players to kill him, but also an average experienced player will lose at least two thirds of all fight against these opponents, usually dying by sudden “crew knocked out” since he still have weak Vitality crews.

Such a player is usually able to drive a tank destroyer, such as a Stug, with the same agility of a light tank, turning, aiming and shooting just like he had a turret.
No surprise they kill a lot and are able to win the most one-to-one duels against medium-low level enemies, showing many “Superman’s” capabilities (such as aiming and shooting perfectly in half-a-second and enduring several good shots which would have instantly killed an average-experienced player in the same tanks).

If you look at their AB replays, you can find they are often able to one-shot destroy even enemies having barely visible red markers.
Those players are able to destroy eight or ten enemy tanks at any battle, even more in their luckiest fights.

Those players are able to kill even more skilled opponents if those enemies have better tanks (even +1 in BR) but noticeably weaker crews.

What is worse, it seems to me there are many undeclared advantages for paying players, because there is no logical reason that a paying player can endure for twenty seconds a lot of well-placed hits (even “critical hits”!) well beyond the armour strength of his tank (on paper), then being able to counterattack and immediately destroy the enemy with a similar tank.
In other words, paying players seems to really have a “protection” by Gaijin in defensive actions as well as “performance boost” in offensive actions, even beyond the goodness of their crews and vehicles.
“Conspiracy theories”?, No, good observation skills about things that daily happen in battle and use of grey matter.

About that, you could read what I wrote in my Air Battle Guide (section “GETTING BETTER BY SPADING PLANES, TRAINING CREWS …”), in GF the likeliness of the existence those undeclared advantages in even more clear.

They could be poor players being nevertheless able to easily kill more skilled players with apparently the same tanks, without even being able to realize it’s not for their ability.

In fact, I’m sad in saying that some of them are real assholes in WT Forum, that really think anything they do is given just by their own skill and defend WT GF as being “fair” (!).
They add ridiculous to an already ridiculous game, I call them “camouflaged paying idiots”.

Only a moron could think WT GF is a fair game, giving anyone the same chances to win even without paying.
Sadly such morons are not rare.

I even met one some of them on battle chat.
Some time ago, being frustrated by one of the many absurdities in game, I’ve had just written on chat something like “WT GF is an incredibly P2W and unfair game designed by morons!” and one guy belonging to that ridiculous breed promptly answered “Bullshit, it’s your L2P [Learn-to-Play] issue! You are a mediocre player and shouldn’t bash a great game and its creators! I’ll report that to Gaijin!”.

I just hope he was no more than sixteen years old …

There is just one thing more pathetic than WT GF: some of its players.
And, unluckily, many of them spread bad advices or absurdities on WT Forum.

On the contrary, others are, luckily, frank enough to recognize the great advantage they get by paying, especially by maxing out crews.

An extremely experienced player (with more than 21.000 battles!) described on WT Forum, with great honesty, the effectiveness of his maxed out (Aced) tank crew in this way:
“It means that I kill 3 guys in quick succession before all their missed shots can reload. Being able to flip my tank around and put my front armour angled against a guy who shot at me from the rear vs turning to the side and giving their next shot a side shot means that crew matters. Getting a one shot kill at 3500 metres*, means that crew matters”.

(* someone dismissed this statement, saying that no kill can be accomplished at 3500 m but he was forgetting that modern guns (such as Leopard I’s L7 105 mm gun) have a range around 4000 m, so they can hit and destroy an enemy tank, if not too much armoured, at that distance. And such tanks and guns are modelled in latest Tiers of WT GF, so an expert player can achieve that, with some luck and .. if supported by a maxed out crew!)

So, when you see really “superhuman” behaviours, especially from guys proudly showing bushes and/or non-standard camouflages and/or uncommon insignia, you can understand why.

Are they really “good” players? It depends.

Some of them have their own good skill, usually a lot of experience too (which is important anyway), but many have just one kind of superiority over the average player: they PAID TO WIN. And they usually win, even against more skilled non-paying players and really easily against newbies.

You have to remember that in GF having maxed out crews is even more important than having spaded tanks and even more important than game experience (time spent in game). Many of these players are not Level 100 players but, for example, just Level 30 or 50: they are not particularly experienced but paid to have the best possible crews and tanks so they managed to have great effectiveness since the beginning.

Of course, sometimes they lose too … likely against other paying players!
So, at the end of the battle their team could lose but they had their share of “seal clubbing” and a lot of SL/RP/XP earned points.

Those are the players that make up the core business of Gaijin, so you should easily understand why the company has set up a game highly advantaging them.

Although I have no proof, I could bet that advantages go beyond the obvious and publicly declared ones, such as tanks and crews quickly maxed out by paying.
It could suffice to draw them in strong teams more often than in weak teams to give these players a clear edge in performances and point earning. So, maybe the often “inexplicable” losing streaks that affects beginners and non-paying players, the quite evident unbalancing in so many battles, could be counteracted by opposite winning streaks for paying players!

After all, to increase a paying player’s fidelity what’s better than giving him a lot of cannon fodder, relatively easy kills to enjoy him and push him to invest more money in the game?

Non-paying players, on the contrary, will need many months or years in gaming to reach (maybe) comparable levels, in the meantime they will be like flyweights or welterweights against heavyweights.
Non-paying players are the designed cannon-fodder for paying players, in Gaijin’s project.

Point.

But … how can they do that?

Are you still wondering how Gaijin could have designed and programmed the game to advantage paying players?
After all, you could ask yourself how it’s possible to program the game to change even a poor player into a good player just by paying.
For example, how a programmed mechanism could improve a bad aim?


Openly declared parameters.

Well, there are crew parameters that evidently advantage greatly players which have them maxed out, crew Vitality above all (but not just it). They don’t even need an explanation.
But even skills you could think it’s not easy to get benefits, such as aiming skill, can be effectively favoured by high level crews, so are indirectly favoured by paying.

I learnt that in Air Forces, when I noticed that many of my best one-shot kills happened just after my plane’s spawn.
In fact, in AF there is a crew parameter, Stamina, which Gaijin states “it has an effect on aiming accuracy in mouse aiming mode”: immediately after the spawn your crew is refreshed and aims much better than just a couple of minutes after, when it has grown weary.

The effect is that with a refreshed crew, with high enough Stamina, you can easily shot down an enemy aircraft with just a few hits, “miraculously” and almost “instinctively” well placed: you point, shoot and the enemy is dead.
On the contrary, with a tired crew (or a crew with low Stamina) you point, shoot, no hit, adjust, point, shoot, no hit, damn!, point, shoot, no hit, I’m almost running out of ammo, point, shoot etc. etc.
The difference is marked, although I could bet that many players with no observing skill (it seems there is a lot of them, judging by WT Forum!) never became aware of that and just think that their no-hits could be just a matter of network lag!

Now, Stamina is a general parameter on plane pilots’ vigour, nevertheless has a significant effect on aiming skill too (just as Gaijin itself declares).
In GF there is no Stamina parameter however there is not just one but two parameters explicitly related to aiming skill: Targeting and Rangefinding. So you should easily believe that they counts a lot about player’s ability in aiming!
And it clearly seems to me that their effect is the same of Stamina in AF: when having high levels they allow the player to aim and shoot perfectly in the blink of an eye, one-shot destroying even enemies at 200-300 mt of distance.
This explains how very experienced and/or paying players can shoot and hit perfectly in the first second after the enemy shown up, whereas players with low level crews struggle just to put the cross on the target!

So, no reasonable mechanism could adjust a really badly aimed (off-target) shot to a good shot, but it can easily adjust a quite poor on-target shot to a perfect shot, making all the difference in the world.

Since Gaijin doesn’t give significant details about how the game is programmed, one has just to do guesses.


Programmed “adjustments”?

One of my conjectures is that the game doesn’t calculate projectiles trajectories in an exact way, with an approximation of a few centimetres, but in a rough way and deciding the outcome of the shot largely by some form of statistical calculation which takens into account several factors: distance, very approximate location of the hit, very approximate armour strength of the victim tank, victim’s crew strength (of the maximum importance!), shooter’s crew values for Targeting and Rangefinding, kind of ammo and maybe some other factors.

Amongst those factors there could easily be other undeclared mechanisms made to improve performance for paying players, making their shots more precise and maybe even their armour more strong.
It would be easy for Gaijin to record parameters regarding how much a player paid, how much often, how much time ago etc. and use them in “aiding” (or, on the contrary, hampering) player’s performance.
Since Gaijin could have the complete recording of player’s stats, they could easily decide, for example, to facilitate poor-skilled paying players that are losing “too much” during last weeks or aiding and pleasing players that stopped gaming for some months and are returning to WT.

But the easiest unfair mechanism that could be used would be based on the infamous “crew knocked out” kind of death: since there is no way for players to check if the shot could have really killed all the crew members (the on-screen depiction of shot’s effects is just a post-shot approximation, as admitted by the game maker), Gaijin can do (even) here whatever they want.
If they want to make win the paying player A against the not-paying player B, it suffices that they make the shots suffered by A cause just limited damage to his crew whereas shots suffered by B cause instant death of B crew and this could go well beyond the famous Vitality parameter’s level.
All of that ruled by the “classes” where the players have been put, roughly speaking “aces” and “cannon fodders”, not by shot’s kinematics in tank’s interior.
And nobody could contest that.
This could well explain the plethora of “inexplicable” happenings in game, such as precise shots at close distance making almost no damage even on weakly armoured “ace” tanks and glancing shots killing instantly an entire “cannon fodder” crews.

I mean that Gaijin’s statements about a “sophisticated” and “precise” simulations of the shots should largely be a smokescreen and the outcome would be calculated by many more parameters than player’s “human” aiming skill, in fact in a much more “artificial” way where relative crews strength would be by far the dominant factor (even more than tanks’ armours).
This way, Gaijin would be able to steer the results of one-to-one duels, greatly advantaging paying players and very-long-time players (which sooner or later put some money in the game).
In addition, they wouldn’t need to make a precise simulation of the shot and this could reduce the load on their servers.

This, by the way, would explain some other incredible and fully un-realistic happenings such as precise hits on the crew of an open tank (such as a Gepard), shot from just 40 mt, doing no damage at all.
And it would explain Gaijin’s own admission that the animated replays showing the effects of shots are just an “approximate depiction”.



Black code.

Does it exists an hidden “ace-or-cannon fodder” parameter?

But what Gaijin could check to decide if a player has to be advantaged or disadvantaged, what to check to determine if he has to be a “winner” or a “cannon fodder”?

I don’t know if Gaijin do that and how, but if they would do that they would have a lot of information, really all the information they need.

To decide if a player is worthwhile (or not) to be advantaged some simple things have to be considered, and Gaijin has all the info:

- if he has paid Gaijin in his career. If he paid once, he could pay again. Has really sense to have care of his loyalty and the best way is to make him win, becoming satisfied and proud.
- if he has paid recently and frequently, i.e. is an active payer. A single episode of buying in the past could be significant, but a player who is paying just now is even more important.
- how much he paid? The amount of money spent would be of the greater importance.
- how much he plays? An addicted player has more chance to become a payer or to paid again.
- does he belong to a squadron? If he belongs to a squadron, it’s almost certainly an addicted player, so likely paying in future.
- what’s his player level? A very high level player, e.g. a Level 100, is for sure addicted enough to make sense having care of his loyalty.
- is he winning too little? An occasional help to a player that is winning too few battles would have sense, to not discourage him.
- is he a returning player, i.e. a gamer that stopped playing for a long time? A time-limited help to a player that has returned to the game would have sense, to encourage him to stay in game.

So even non-paying players could have some advantages from time to time, but paying players could likely have much more and permanently.

All these info could be easily transformed into a hidden parameter ruling the chance a shot has to make a damage, beyond the declared armour / penetration data and in part beyond crews experience levels and vehicle spading levels.

It would be a “secret” parameter, easy to calculate and to use in battle for Gaijin, for example with the above guessed “programmed adjustments”.



Many players in MMO games often talk about a mysterious RNG (Random Number Generator) factor deciding the outcome of duels.
Some says that this RNG decides just if a ricochet (shot bouncing on the enemy tank’s armour) happens and not if a penetration happens or the effects of a shot exploding inside a tank.
Really, nobody (apart Gaijin) knows how RNG works (and nobody can even sure that it do exist, since AFAIK there is no official statement by Gaijin).

But looking at events in battle you can be sure that some “random factor”, deciding the effects of shots, is daily at work in WT GF.
The hypothesis here is that factor is not entirely “random”!

If such a “programmed damage chance parameter” would be used, it could be decisive in duels, both in GF and AF.

A winning firing player would think it’s just his skill (just like it happens now), whereas a losing not-advantaged player wouldn’t be able to understand why his strong enough tank has been so easily one-shot destroyed (just like it happens now).
And a winning advantaged player enduring the hit would think his armour was strong enough or the enemy shot wasn’t so good (just like it happens now), whereas the player who fired the shot would be unable to understand how it could have failed against that enemy notwithstanding declared armour / penetration data (just like it happens now).

Such a parameter could easily separate “programmed aces” from “programmed cannon fodders”.


Although there is no direct proof of it, the indirect proofs are so many and so clear that you would be the most naïve man in the world to think that when you perfectly hit and kill an enemy at long distance it’s due just to your great skill (and, inversely, the same applies when an enemy one-shots you at 500m and destroys your not-so-weak tank).


Another example: a Level 16 (!!!) player killing 18 tanks just in one battle!

This is one of the many examples of “unbelievable things” that happen in WT GF.

It’s a battle that my team foolishly lose because a lot of comrades stay camping far from the (only) capture point.
We lose the capture we had conquered (and kept for a long time, thanks just to a few brave comrades) and at the end lose the battle.

But when I examined the final battle score rank, I was astonished: the best enemy and best player in battle, by far, was a Level 16 player with 18 (eighteen) kills!
Checking his stats, I discovered that he had absolutely “normal” values about Win Rate and Average Position In Team (both around 50%).
So I replayed the battle and discovered that in that battle his tanks were incredibly resilient to enemy fire and he was able to one-shot kill with ease.
His first tank, a T-34, was hit several times with just minimal damage, both on tank and crew. In the meantime, my T-34 was hit several times with much more serious damage, both on tank and crew!

After the battle I sent him a personal message saying “Congratulation for the wallet. A Level 16 can do that just by paying or by cheating.” (well, they have to know what’s happening and that not any player allows to be fooled that way by Gaijin …).
He politely answered saying “That was so lucky, dude! I can’t believe it!”.
And maybe he was honest, although it’s not about “luck”.

In fact, there were other strange things:

- he had two years’ experience but relatively few battles fought (around 850) and short play time (4 days), so he could have been a “returning player”.
- although being just Level 16, he was already battling at BR around 3.7 (T-34s etc.), making me guess he could have paid some money to unlock these vehicles.
- he was (quite unusual for an almost-beginner) a squadron player (so, for sure paying at least for this fact)!

All this make me thinking he was likely advantaged by some Gaijin’s “black code” that helps: 1) returning players, 2) paying players, 3) squadron players.

He seemed really surprised by that performance, likely unusual for him.
Maybe, going on in gaming he will convince himself that it’s not “luck” but … his skill is really improving!
Effective Gaijin’s commercial tactics: passing off artificial advantages for just natural players’ skill.



BTW, why using just an “approximation” for the post-kill replay?

The depiction of the shot that killed you is declaredly (by Gaijin) an “approximation”, not an exact replica of what happened to your tank and crew.



The question is: WHY?
I mean: why they should give us just an approximation, if the shot effect would have been given according to a precise dynamic (the famous “sophisticated Damage Model”)?
They could replay with the same dynamic parameters, to show exactly what happened. But they don’t.
There could be no reason regarding the need to keep low the CPU load on servers, because the replay is done when the player has been killed and the tank is out of the battle, so the replay could have a low CPU priority.

I’ve asked this question to a player who is amongst those who deny that Gaijin could “direct” victories and defeats by advantaging some gamers and even him admitted he can’t understand why.

My guess is that Gaijin has (just like in many other cases) no interest in giving players detailed info about what happened, so they can go on deciding duels using “hidden parameters”.

And what about team unbalancing?

Any WT GF player, if minimally smart and honest, can easily recognize that in a lot of cases (almost half of them, IMHO) the MM system set up fully unbalanced battles: one team made of expert “aces”, the other of “cannon-fodder” victims.
Since winning or losing a battle has a huge impact to SL, RP, XP earnings, being put into a winning team is a boon for the player.
This could be, and likely is, the easiest albeit effective way for Gaijin to favour paying players.
Since there is no clear explanation about how MM takes into consideration other parameters in addition to BR, they could easily put paying players in the better team, so hugely increasing their probability to win and earn points.
Inversely, team unbalancing is linked to “losing streaks”, because to suffer a long series of defeats as a team, unlikely explicable with statistical fluctuations, means that the player is too often drawn in the poorer team of the two facing in battle.



A sure case of “programmed advantage”: the “protection period” for newbies.

I’m always amazed at hearing “naïve” players denying that Gaijin could implement a mechanism to advantage or disadvantage players.

Fact is there is a 99% chance that a similar mechanism do exists and this is widely known even to those who deny the possibility: the beginners have a “grace period”, which lasts just for the first few battles, possibly just until the player unlock the first non-Reserve tank, when they are drawn to face just other inexperienced players.
Really, nobody knows into detail how this works (as usual there is no statement by Gaijin about it), some says that beginners are protected for the first 10 battles, others that are protected until they unlock the first 1.0 tank.
Nobody knows the details but practically any player knows that the newbie protection do exists.
So there is even less a reason to have doubts about the possibility that Gaijin could and would intervene on some players behalf: they are already doing that.

This is a very reasonable feature, no doubt on that, to avoid to scare newbies and making them stop gaming just at the beginning.
But its logic is the same I’m explaining here: if you want to increase player loyalty you have to make them win or, at least, not to lose too much often.
Of course, this works not only for beginners but for any player of any experience.

All the above listed hypothesis could effectively explain why and how paying players could be helped and non-paying players used as “victims” for the formers.
There is the strong motivation, there is the easy technical feasibility, there is an example that something similar really do exists in game: the unlikely thing would be they don’t do that!

“Hey! Gaijin has something against me! I’m a target for them!”

That’s NOT what I mean, at all.
I DON’T think Gaijin is individually focused on some players to make them losing.

There would be simply too many players to monitor if Gaijin would want to do such a thing and I don’t think they want.
They have no need to do that, too.
If they want to have a mechanism to separate “pariah” gamers from “patricians”, “cannon fodder” from “aces”, they could and should use general parameters applicable to the whole WT players’ population, first of all the pay-or-not-pay parameter.

I don’t think they “persecute” some players in particular.
For example I could be a good “target”, since my harsh criticisms towards them, but I never had the impression to be in their gunsight, to be in a “black book”, not even when I had the worst losing strike of my career (80% of team defeats on about 70 GF battles): after having stopped playing French I immediately re-started to win about 50% of my battles, so the question was not “why Gaijin had something against me” but “why playing low-tiers French seems to facilitate so much to be drawn in cannon-fodder teams”.
This is just an example, in general I think that any “strange and bad happening” can be explained by (hidden or clear) game mechanism based on players’ subdivision in categories, to be advantaged or disadvantaged, in an impersonal and automatic way.

So if you lose a lot, so much that it seems very unlikely it’s just your poor skill’s fault, don’t think that Gaijin had personally put you in a black list but ask yourself why you could have been put in the “cannon fodder” crowd.
It could be that you’ll arrive at the same conclusions of mine, i.e. there is a general mechanism that try to make some player categories losing so that some other categories can more easily and more frequently win.

And now …

As a further note, I had to say that I’ve seen on WT Forum a player expressing ideas similar to mine, reporting detailed cases involving things such as “invulnerable” tanks and “superhuman” behaviours by “camouflaged” gamers, and wondering if Gaijin is on purpose advantaging paying players, even exploiting the obscurity of game inner mechanisms.
All his remarks were fully reasonable.

Practically all the other players (except one, who tried to discuss in a proper and rational way) mocked him, saying it was just a matter of his poor skill and stating he was a believer in “conspiracy theories”.
As you could expect, those players were generally very experienced (and likely paying) players!

He answered on any point but, after just a few pages and while interesting issues were surfacing under the pressure of his questions, the Gaijin moderator locked the thread with the justification it was a “Post without logic, quarrel, made by a troll. Closed”!

And this is not a single case, is the normality.



Just another example, the following is a thread immediately locked by a top-Moderator and moved to the Thread Archives section (a secluded Forum section made to contain posts and threads considered “inappropriate” by Gaijin):
https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/390385-hacker-community/

Please note the justification: “you need to learn to play and read forum rules before you type any more posts”.
Now, please also note: the “smart” moderator is suggesting the need of learn-to-play to a Level 100 player having fought more than 25000 (twenty-five thousands) battles!

And is charging him of “insulting other players by accusing them of being hackers” whereas the player wrote “This is the best game I know, but it is ruined by bad management OR by a whole community of hackers”.
That is the true reason of the lock, that player was speaking plainly, criticizing Gaijin and asking “unorthodox” questions such as:
“Tanks:
Why don't my ammunition have any effect on the opponents while I keep being destroyed with a shot?
Why am I continually destroyed by artillery and enemy planes while I am using these weapons I get no effect?
Why do I keep being destroyed by enemies you don't see?
Because at the first enemy hit I can no longer react and destroy me quietly while after my shots even critical the opponents continue to maneuver without problems?”

Those are the same questions I raised in this Guide.
You can see that even extremely experienced players have the same huge doubts of mine.
And the answer by Gaijin is always the same: CENSORSHIP.

I’ve even seen a thread not only being locked with the excuse it was “rant” and “useless”: next day the thread (yes, the entire thread!) literally disappeared!
What was the “useless rant”? An extremely experienced players (Level 100, with more than 22.000, yes: more than twenty-two thousand battles fought!) protested against unbalancing in teams, giving a replay of him proving that in a battle there was a huge unbalance between teams and many players were at a marked disadvantage having to face 12 or 13 enemies with at least +1 BR difference, contrary to Gaijin’s statements.
That player made a big mistake too, writing on the international forum the original post in his native language and not in English (then he made a clarification in English explaining he did so to make his post more evident), so giving moderators a good pretext to lock that thread being “out of place”. But, of course, the moderator could have moved the thread to its national sub-forum instead of locking at first, then deleting it.
Likely, a vehement protest along with a proving replay were too much to sustain for Gaijin: within a few hours their “Police” wiped the whole thread, without even moving it in the “Thread Archive” (which usually contains locked treads too)!

This is perhaps an extreme example (full thread deletion) but it’s not unexpected.
The usual course of happenings is:

- a player complains or criticizes a game feature or a Gaijin’s policy on Forum.
- several brown-nose gamers (usually long-time players daily wandering around the Forum and giving often poor advices) start accusing him of being a “conspiracy theorist”, a “tinfoil hatter”, just a few players (often disconcerted players that noticed exactly the same shortcomings in game) defend him or make reasonable objections.

- after some time (from a few hours to a few days) a moderator realizes that some “dangerous” thoughts could spread from the discussion and promptly locks the thread and/or delete posts considered annoying by Gaijin.

You could find a significant number of locked threads in the “Threads Archive” section of the Forum but I’m pretty sure that not any locked thread ends up there, there are many threads and a lot of single messages that are simply deleted.
Disappeared, vanished, missing.
Gaijin simply erases them.

In one case, an absolute newbie (just 31 battles fought) started a thread named “This game is a MASTERPIECE” , expressing his wonder and satisfaction about WT.
A post in just two rows, the most “significant” of them being: “This game is truly masterpiece. I am enjoying the game. I must thank for people who created and developed this game”.
Maybe a fake self-lauding post by a fake newbie, maybe just a proof of true naivety by a real newbie.

That quickly attracted several of the usual brown-nose players to clap for the poster (instead of explaining him that the game has a lot of shortcomings too). Just a few others stressed some of the many issues of the game.
So I wrote a post, with just an appropriate emoticon:
Then a “Community Helper” (i.e. an “independent” guy recruited by Gaijin to flank staff, they say at no cost and no salary) added a post saying “War Thunder is an amazing game!”, along with lovely little hearts to express his love.
After that, just after twenty minutes having written it, my message silently disappeared!
Since my message was just a (deserved) facepalm emoticon (not towards the original poster but towards the concept) and they sometimes use the excuse that a no-text message is not allowed, I replied with this:

A participant (a very experienced player) quoted this second post, adding (in a fully respectful way) that he knew well that kind of censorship in WT Forum.
In another post he stated that WT is “A good game indeed, with a terrible matchmaking system”. So we are not talking about “rants” or “trolling”, just criticisms.

After that, more players started giving opportune advices to the original poster.

Then one of the most inveterate sycophant in Forum replied that game has no problem really, that there are just “perceived problems” and that “the biggest problem is people not knowing the rules or some of the mechanics”!

Another one of the same league wrote “Ignore the naysayers...like most of the contributors on this thread...focus on the positives and just enjoy and learn the game as you go”.
The original posters thanked him.

So, mission accomplished for ass-lickers in WT Forum: another newbie has been misleaded.

Case closed?
Not at all.

After a couple of hours a moderator gave me a “verbal warning”, this one:

With the “explanation”:

So, I learnt that my post wasn’t deleted … just HIDDEN!
And it was a COURTESY!

BTW, my “silly emoji” wasn’t silly at all and was fully significant and useful in that thread, surely more useful for the original poster than one-row thought-out considerations such as “War Thunder is an amazing game” or “Over 15000 missions later, I still agree with the OP”.
It was done to make OP understanding that the game CAN’T be called “a MASTERPIECE”. And at least other participants in thread immediately understood that.
“Spamming” and “trolling”? Get a life …

Nor I did participate in a flame war, in fact I purposely avoided any harsh rant and answering to ass-lickers in thread!

Was this the real end?
NOT AT ALL!

Another one hour more and EVEN MY SECOND POST (the one above displayed) was DELETED … sorry, HIDDEN!

The same happened to the post of the very experienced player who quoted me.
Oh, if you are wondering if they were relegated to “Threads Archive”, the answer is NO.
So, if really Gaijin “hid” them, well … they concealed those post in some effectively unattainable place! So much “hidden” to be, in practice, … deleted!

Evidently they pondered for a while, then decided that those posts were “too much dangerous” to be left visible to all players and deleted them.

After a while, the same disapproving player posted in that thread another message where he simply criticized the game (in a fully polite way) making an example of a thing that, in his view, is NOT an example of “masterpiece”, i.e. the fact that in GF you can have, in the same battle, tanks of mixed eras such as WWII and post-WWII.
Gaijin’s CENSORS deleted even this post!

Do you think that, at last, this was the final act of the comedy?
Wrong again!

The player who complained about Gaijin’s censorship changed his signature into a denounce of that, then published on his profile a message saying “Ideas never die. The more you are silenced, the more you should speak up” and calling them “cowards hiding behind their authority”. Answering to the message I expressed my support to him, adding that widespread and systematic censorship in addition to brown-nose players changed the Forum into an useless misleading place that leads astray novices.
Both his and mine messages didn’t resist for more than a few hours: no less than FOUR moderators (including one aptly self-defining “inquisitor”!) visited his profile, one after the other, and then deleted his message, my linked answer and his challenging signature.
It seems that not only forum’s threads but even the secluded personal profile is view as “critical” for Gaijin’s Torquemadas.
My God, how much are they scared?

Well, maybe they are right: someone is saying that THE KING IS NAKED.

Next day, they deleted on Forum even a mildly-criticizing but very polite post of another gamer (a post that, unfortunately for Gaijin, remained indirectly visible because it was fully quoted by another player, this last belonging to the “Gaijin’s Supporters Squad” who stated that, yes, WT is really a MASTERPIECE!).
In that post there were just sensible things such as “Well it's not masterpiece, I'm sure of that. It's good game, but it has many flaws you'll figure out this sooner or later. In my opinion it's way better then WoT for many reasons. …Masterpiece looks differently in my opinion (I'm heavily oriented on visuals - especially realism), but today it's the best tank game of this kind there is for sure. ... this is feedback. Professionals should handle criticism”.

Evidently, even that was “too much” for Gaijin.
In the end, almost only posts “allowed” in that thread were of people praising “the MASTERPIECE”, in practice almost all criticizing messages, even slightly, were deleted!
So that thread became a real and frankly ridiculous “ass-lickers party”.

Well, it’s clear that Gaijin’s “professionals” can’t handle ANY criticism, even less if well-pondered and thought-provoking.

Likely they aren’t bothered by “rants” but are really scared of any post that could make players, especially newcomers, start thinking.



This is easy to understand: for game creators the most dangerous posts aren’t generic “rants” but those posts explaining that not anything in game is what it seems to be, for example that P2W is a structural characteristic of WT.
Any post that could discourage players … telling them the truth, is very dangerous for Gaijin.
After all, one of the written Gaijin’s “Rules of War Thunder” is: “Do not encourage other users to stop playing the game, or encourage users to avoid purchasing any content from the store, in order to prove a point”.
It’s likely the most important “Do Not” rule for Gaijin, much more than “do not insult, do not start flame wars etc.”.

And other dangerous messages are those denouncing that posts such as the above mentioned and any post raising doubt on game fairness is systematically deleted or blocked by “moderation”.
That is, posts denouncing Gaijin’s censorship are intolerable for Gaijin too.
And likely they are “right”: it’s quite obvious that if players were well aware of censorship they would start to ask themselves questions about the reasons of doing that and could arrive at the right but unspeakable conclusions.

If players would understand that WT is a basically unfair game ruled by wallets and that their “improved skill” is mainly what they bought from Gaijin, so they can’t be proud of their performances, well … likely just a few of them would think that is a MASTERPIECE that deserves to put money into it!
The most of people want to win, not to know they bought the victory.

These true stories are quite incredible, isn’t it? (Well, incredible just if you don’t know Gaijin …)
I went into such a detailed description (of which I keep some other “proofs” too, just to be clear with sceptics) because I was really amazed to realize how much censorship is at work on WT Forum and I’m convinced this is a thing that should be widely known.
Now I wonder how many other cases, hidden to 99.99% of players, happen any day.

How much different would be that Forum without such an oppressive daily action continually committed to delete “disturbing” messages?
Do you think it would be an even worse forum? Why? Today rants abound in it anyway and the action of ass-lickers can rightly called “pro-Gaijin trolling” with the added damage to mislead newbies.
A censorship-free forum could have some more angry diatribe but, much more important, more smart ideas being shared too.
Unluckily, this last thing is likely just what Gaijin doesn’t want.

In Gaijin are so afraid of criticisms to stealthily delete “bothersome” posts (likely hoping that the poster don’t become aware of that and don’t protest on the Forum!).
After that, they could haven’t even the guts to admit that they did it in a furtive way!
And, of course, if you protest you are charged of “having challenged the moderation”, with the additional frequent pretext of having done things you never did.

“Hey, we didn’t deleted your post, we just made it invisible!”.

Do you think there is still some hope for those people? I don’t.

About brown-nose players happily helping them, well … it’s “business as usual”!
No surprise for me, that kind of people unluckily are quite widespread in WT but, above all, are amongst the more assiduous participant in Forum, so they spread their intellectual damage any day.
It’s just another bad thing of the game.

So, to my amazement, the sad truth I discovered is that Gaijin’s moderators systematically lock threads (or, in some cases, delete single messages or even full thread) that could instil doubt about P2W, goodness or fairness of the game, as soon as they have a pretext to justify that (“trolling”, “insults”, “off-topic”, “rants”, “personal quarrel”, “useless discussion” etc.).
They really seems scared to death for any thread that, on the international section as much as on national sub-forums, could make gamers start thinking.
Their behaviour is so much systematic and attentive than is quite evident there are orders from upstairs to all moderators both on main Forum and sub-forums.

That also means that WT Forum is more and more becoming a “Brown-Nose Party”, where just people on board with Gaijin’s line are fully allowed to express themselves.


Well, if Gaijin could have done something to further raise “conspiracy theories” … they did!

“Cleverness” of the game …

So, WT nature ultimately derives from a comprehensible balance between Gaijin’s needs and players’ wishes.
Unluckily, in many cases the balance is heavily compromised by Gaijin’s choices.

The real issue is that there are even some TRUE IDIOCIES, sometimes beyond imagination, in game mechanics, FM and DM.

This in Tank Battles (i.e. War Thunder Ground Forces, GF in short) is even more true than in Air Battles (War Thunder Air Forces, AF in short), especially with undeveloped tanks with inexperienced crews that are fully cannon fodder irrespective of the opponents battle rating and theoretical characteristics of the vehicles (declared by Gaijin).

So I’ll describe here the fully ridiculous state of Ground Forces, especially from a newbie’s point of view.
In fact, there are much more differences than one could think between Air and Ground battles and knowing them is important for a plane pilot wanting to try tanks too (and vice versa).

Some of those peculiarities, such as the weakness of newbies’ planes and crews, are present in Air Battles too and in large part are fully justifiable depending on the planned game mechanism. No rants about that regarding Air Battles, even if features as crew Vitality are fully artificial and made just to encourage gamers to play.
But in Tank Battles true shortcomings are heightened and without any rational explanation (apart “Gaijin decided to program it that way”).

When I started gaming in Tank Battles I thought that they were similar enough to Air Battles, which all in all are fair enough in recognizing player’s skill.
For sure even in AF crew experience and development of planes are very important but if you play well you have chances to kill even more experienced gamers with better crews and planes or, at least, not to be instantly killed by them.
Things are very different for Tank Battles and just in part for the different game mechanics. In GF player’s skill is much less important and it seems that Gaijin did nothing to mitigate that. On the contrary, they are doing more and more to advantage low-skill paying players.

Since skill and smartness are not so important, on the contrary tank and crew strength are much more decisive, you can find that even bots in Custom Battles can often kill you in a direct player-vs-bot duel!
This is much different from AF battles, where the only really dangerous bots are, as usual, bomber’s sniper gunners and an average player rarely is killed by an enemy fighter if being just a bit cautious.
But in the much dumber GF, even a bot’s “intelligence” can easily win a direct fight, if the human gives it a chance.
This make GF off-line battles (such as Custom Battles) more interesting than their equivalent AF off-line fights but it’s also a resounding demonstration that it’s not smartness nor skill that rules GF.

WT GF is what led me to give even less importance to results and stats, because I quickly realized that it’s a COMPLETELY UNFAIR GAME, both on its pathetic mechanics and on its absurd score system.

In very short, in Tank Battles crew experience (especially Vitality) and BR difference are much more important and decisive than in Air Battles and skill doesn’t count even for the mere score calculation.
An EPIC FAIL about fairness.

Let’s examine Ground Forces issues in some detail.

Some … well … many words about WT Ground Forces, i.e. “THE BIG PATHETIC IDIOCY”.

A game designed and programmed by idiots and/or by people enjoying fooling players.

This is my concise but well-pondered opinion on WT Ground Forces.

A WT GF player on WT Forum wrote that is “a great game but unfair”.
I agree with him, even if my definition would better be “a game with a great potential but unfair”.

Whereas Air Forces are, all in all, a reasonable fair and well-thought game, notwithstanding a lot of defects, Ground Forces are a game that very often makes me feeling humiliated, not for losing but for the simple fact I still insist in gaming it, pathetically hoping someday it will change from ugly-duckling to a wonderful swan.

I suppose that many gamers which never played WT Air Forces could be more approving than me when judging WT Ground Forces.
However for me, that started gaming GF after two full years in AF, the differences in logic, fairness and maturity are evident and huge and go well beyond the unavoidable difference in game mechanics.

And all the differences are strong minuses for GF. They seem as having been designed and implemented by a completely different team respect to AF (I don’t know if this is true, but it’s a strong suspicion).

In short: WT Ground Forces is an idiotically designed game, disrespectful of gamer’s skill, made to strongly advantage paying players and with a lot of other shortcomings too, much more blameworthy than the faults in Air Forces.

First of all: in AB Tank Battles, at the beginning but not only, some player are “cannon fodder” and some others are “cannons” depending just by how long they are in game and how many “experience points” their crews have, neither by their vehicles’ technical specs nor by clear tanks’ improvements and not even by good aiming and skill in general.

Especially under level 20 in crew experience level, and with a low Vitality parameter (a crew parameter determining how much “strong” crew members are), the entire newbie’s crew can easily be destroyed by a peashooter’s shot. More, an entire crew at low Vitality, closed into its tank, can be instantly killed by the splinters of an artillery shot exploding not on the tank but at several meters of distance on the ground.
Of course, there are tanks really made of cardboard and giving almost no shelter to their crews (e.g. M22 or the dreadfully weak 75mm M3 GMC) but I’m not speaking about these extreme cases (which are historically justified).
The vast majority of “deaths” at the beginning are suffered for “Crew knocked out”, just like in Air Battles but in a much more striking way: you shot first, hit the turret of the enemy tank even at short distance and nothing happens. It turns his gun and kill your entire crew with just one shot. Even at great distance.
How nice.

And, obviously, Gaijin prevents players to increment Vitality for a long time: after just ONE increment at the beginning, that crucial parameter can’t be increased again for months (whereas ALL other parameter can be raised, apart the important Tank Commander Leadership, which acts on all the other parameters) and for months stays at a meagre 0.5!
How nice.

In practice, WT Ground Forces is ruled by crews’ experience parameters, especially Vitality, more than by any other thing. This is just one of the many expedients (some declared, others likely existing not declared) used by game maker to favour paying players.
This is particularly evident at low Tiers but is true even at upper levels.

And Gaijin strongly wants that, because that way it can control the growth of the (largely artificial) “skill” of players and advantage paying players, separating “winners” from “cannon fodders”.
How can they control that growth? Easy, it’s Gaijin that control which crew parameters can be incremented and Vitality is (“strangely enough”) the least frequently “unlocked” one (to increment it).

Moreover, if Gaijin would be able to decide who have to win and who have to lose according to the “favour level” they want to give, the easiest thing would be to calculate if the player has to live or to die independently from the precision of the suffered shot, show a shot exploding in the interior of the tank (like they really do) and, if the gamer has to die, say “crew knocked out”.

Who could contest that? Who could say, for example, that just two crew members should have been killed and not all five?
Players can read declared armour/penetration data (which often seem just unreliable, BTW) but can’t easily judge and challenge crews’ health results in relation to suffered shots, since according to Gaijin even a glancing shot can kill ALL crew members and the replayed depiction in battle of the fatal shot is just an approximation, like Gaijin itself admits.

Gaijin could control anything in this game, if they would, players performance included to a large extent, without making gamers becoming aware of that.
And this is likely what’s happening just now.

Think about it: this game is made to allow you easily gain SL, even without paying and without the need of great performance, just at the lower Tiers (I-II, max III).
If you want go higher and going on earning SL notwithstanding repair costs, you have to win a lot at those higher Tiers.
To win a lot at higher Tiers you have to further improve your Vitality and the other relevant crew parameters, otherwise you are as much cannon fodder as at your beginnings.
To improve those parameters, given the endless grinding times at higher Tiers, you have just two choices: playing for a century, losing a lot of SL in the meantime, or paying.
Of course, many players choose to PAY, to became “immediate aces” thanks to their wallets.
That’s just what Gaijin wants.

It’s a simple business strategy and the smart thing is it’s made to avoid players being fully aware of that.
In fact, a lot of “naïve” players still think it’s a game mainly ruled by their skill!

Is this a “conspiracy theory”? NO, it’s a theory. Based both on logic and observation of the game.
And after a good amount of time of observation it’s clear to me that the likelihood it’s wrong is clearly less than it’s right.

Many “naïve” players contest that such a theory can be proposed, because “it has no proof”.
The fact is that even the “naïve” opposite theory that all in WT is essentially ruled by players’ skill and there is no intervention of Gaijin to favour paying players has “no proof”.
And that naïve theory, based just on things Gaijin has said or hasn’t said!, contrasts with too many observations to believe in it.

Just to be clear: it’s a fully licit business strategy, no doubt about that. They have to make money if they want going on developing the game.
Only real complaint from me is that it’s very badly designed, at the point it clashes with logic, history, reasonable expectations and even declared characteristics.

Perhaps the examples I did before are not the most significant ones not the worst things of all.
Worst is, for example, that an AAA truck with light guns, driven by an expert and/or paying player, could be almost invulnerable and lethal towards a newbie’s tank.

Some more examples (all checked by myself) of this absolute unfair madness.

Can you really believe that even a T-34’s 76 mm gun (71 mm armour penetration a 100 mt with BR-350A ammo, or at least 29 mm in the very bad case of 30° angle of attack) shooting to a Gepard (max 20 mm armour) can’t penetrate it at 10 mt distance detected by game (really ONE meter, vehicles in contact!)? Well, that happens in WT Tank Battles, at least if T-34 is driven by a newbie (even worse if just half-spaded, i.e. only half-developed and not really effective).

Can you believe that a similar Gepard can’t be not just destroyed but not even being damaged by a M3 shooting multiple time his side at 90° and at 60 mt, four time on the hull (in different places) with armour-piercing shells and two times right on the “unprotected” crew (on their back, from behind!) with shrapnels?

Can you believe that a Ho-Ro, Japanese tank destroyer about which Wiki Warthunder says “it is capable of destroying or severely disabling any opponent it meets, even against vehicles in Rank V”, having a powerful 150 mm howitzer being able (according to Gaijin itself) to pierce a 61 mm armour at 100 mt, can’t destroy a light tank M2A4 1^st Arm Div (having just a 25 mm armour even at the front side!) with a full precise frontal shot at just 90 mt and a favourable 90° angle of attack? No immediate destruction but not even any immediate killing of the entire crew, just how the unlucky Ho-Ro, with his weak crew, suffered a few seconds after. But you can believe to this: the player riding the “winning” M2A4 1^st Arm Div was a paying player. How can I say that? Simple: M2A4 1^st Arm Div is a Premium vehicle, available just by paying it.

Can you believe that a Na-To, another Japanese tank destroyer at BR 3.3, with a 75 mm gun capable to pierce a 145 mm armour at 10 mt can’t kill all the crew member of a T-28E, BR 2.7, 30 mm max armour, after four full APHE explosive hits at zero distance (tanks in contact)? So unable to kill the T-28E crew that the Russian tank is since the beginning perfectly able to move and, after 15 seconds, fight back, shoot and kill the Japanese tank!

Can you believe that a ZIS-30, a Russian tank destroyer with practically NO armour, can survive an explosive full shot on the hull at 180m, a shot unable to kill no crew member into the hull (according to Gaijin’s Wiki it has a “Crew extremely prone to being injured”!), immediately returns fire and one-shot kill the entire crew of the poor Chi-He (a full closed, much more armoured tank) who has naively thought to be able to win? Or to do exactly the same thing with an equally unlucky Pz IV J which, again, hit first but after just one second was one-shot killed by an absolutely unperturbed ZIS-30 (notwithstanding the death of one of its two crew members in charge of the gun)?

Can you believe that a Pz. IV F2 (camouflaged, did you have some doubt about that?) can endure first a full shot on the side and then a full frontal shot on the turret (50mm armour, which Gaijin itself describes as “weak” in the Wiki) at just 50m by an M4A2 with its M61 shots (88mm declared penetration at 100m), so that at least two crew members are shown as dead but the tank can immediately return fire (one-shot destroying the M4A2, did you have some doubt about that?) and immediately restart moving and battling?

Can you believe that a T-34 1942 (camouflaged, did you have some doubt about that?) can endure a full 105mm Gr.39 rot HI/C shot (115mm declarated penetration at 100m) on its turret (53mm armour) from 60 (sixty) meters by a StuH 42 G, having just 1 (one!) turret crew not killed but only slightly wounded? And that he can stops for just 3 (three!) seconds to aim, fire and one-shot immediately destroy the poor StuH (“crew knocked out”, as usual)?

Can you believe that a T-34E STZ can endure a full BR-350B shot of another T-34, hit from 170m fully frontally on a track (while it was overpassing a bump) without the slightest damage on that track (nor on any other part or any crew member)? And that he can perfectly move and immediately aim, fire and one-shot destroy the other poor T-34 (“crew knocked out”, as usual)?

Can you believe that such a game is a serious and honest game and not a farce?

These are not rare cases at all, it’s what could happens (and usually happens) any day, with any kind of vehicle, at any Tier.

I could talk about many other dozens of disconcerting examples, I could fill my Guide with them.

For sure, there could be bugs explaining “inexplicable” things (this could be one of them: https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/376236-how-does-m24-kill-kv1-zis-5-throught-the-gun-mantlet/ ) but it’s not possible ALL those cases are due to bugs.

And surely there are cases that seems oddities and could be (maybe) “rationally” explainable, for example from peculiar features of the enemy tank.

Just to make an example, once I was killed, in my Pz.III J (BR 2.7), by one of the weakest tank in game, the Russian Su-5-1 (BR 1.3), a tank destroyer made by flimsy paper (10 mm armour in hull).
At first I was disconcerted that, shooting both frontally at the same time at 100m, he one-shot killed my 5 member crew with a shot on low-hull area whereas my shot (perfectly aimed on the hull) just killed one and wounded the pilot (which anyway was still able to drive the tank!), and this for a shot exploded at 10cm by his pilot’s head!
Then I checked that Su-5-1 76mm gun is more powerful than Pz’s 50mm gun and its ammo has much more explosive, moreover Gaijin’s Wiki says about Su-5-1 that “Transmission in the front can absorb shots”.
So, even if what happened is barely credible, it could have some sense (maybe …).
At least in the sense of demented game designers according which a tank pilot can survive a shot exploded 10cm near his head because “in that tank there is transmission in the front”.

But it’s not possible that ALL those cases are explainable that way.

Some “explanations” usually given by many brown-nose players in Forum are ridiculous and unacceptable, others are border-line but still not credible.

For example, talking about my last example you could easily find some “expert” explaining you that a Gr.39 rot HI/C ammo is not the best choice for StuH 42 G notwithstanding its best penetration, just as Gaijin warns in its Wiki, so that T-34 could have been destroyed if a PzGR would have been used.
But do you think It’s reasonable to think that a 238g explosive mass shot as PzGr should kill more turret crew members than a 2550g explosive mass, which penetrated the turret!, such as the Gr.39 rot HI/C? How much inefficient would be such an ammo to be unable even to kill just one crew member after having penetrated at 60m?




Fact is that a lot of these “technical explanations” don’t hold water in front of logic and even a minimum of realism.
Unfortunately, these “explanations” are the favourite way to “explain the unexplainable” by brown-nosers in Forum.

They will tell you that the reason a shot didn’t penetrate an armour that would have been penetrated is due to “lag, packet loss, steeper angles than expected, the player hit a different bit of armour, longer distance than expected or a combination of the above or also the servers occasionally have problems”.
Yes, for sure, things such as non-penetrating shots at 10m, i.e. things happening daily and more times a day, are due to “lag, packet loss or players unable to see what they are firing at”, just at 10m distance …
Looking at how many similar episodes happen, it’s not only non-credible, it’s ridiculous.

They could also tell you things that they for sure don’t know, such as “a non-penetration is not RNG dependant, a ricochet is”. Really, nobody (a part Gaijn’s developers) know how RNG (Random Number Generator) works in WT, so making such a statement is just a further proof that brown-nosers say a lot of BULLSHIT.

BTW, in the former case my StuH, just a few seconds before, hit another T-34 1942 (driven by a quite low level player) using the same ammo at the same distance, exactly on the hull left side where there is a fuel tank. Gaijin says about this ammo: “if they hit Fuel Tank or Ammorack, they usually detonate them reliably”. Well, in this case my hit damaged its left track, seriously wounded two crew members into the turret (even if this time I hit the hull!), set (temporarily) afire the tank but not even remotely destroyed it, as it would have been expected!
Talking just about crew’s strength, in this case the Vitality parameter likely made a lot of the difference: the “camouflaged ace”’s T-34 (a player with 62% Victory/Loss ratio and an astounding 78% average position in team) likely had an higher Vitality than the second (a much lower level player).

In Forum an honest Level 100 player (paying or at least having paid in the past) once posted a replay on a battle where his Aufklärungspanzer 38(t) / Sd.Kfz. 140/1 (a BR 1.3 German gift tank) survived to five consecutive shots fired from 20m by an AMC.34 YR (a BR 1.0 French tank, quite good).
He stated that “the game is rigged, Gaijin makes those who want die, as they want, without distinction of skill or rank or vehicle and anything else you want to list ... I don't know how you see, but I'm indestructible, and the player I had against is simply dead instead of bursting me”.
He was right.

I checked the replay and I saw that the first frontal shot damaged the Sd.Kfz. 140/1 and wounded the crew, after that the AMC was in perfect position for a kill firing to enemy’s weak side. And he fired FOUR more times on the side of the German tank, setting it on fire and further heavily wounding the crew, but without destroying the tank nor killing the whole crew! After that, the German was able to turn the turret again, returned fire and quickly killed the French.
Well, the usual brown-noses in Forum promptly shown off the usual equipment of bad explanations: French tanks are weak, the French tanker made a mistake going on hitting the hull and not the turret and … even them weren’t able to find more excuses! So one of them shifted the focus to the easy kill that German had returning fire, which wasn’t a debate argument, since Sd.Kfz. 140/1 has a good gun and AMC.34 YR has a weak armour.
The real issue was: how is it possible that a quite weakly armoured tank in its side (the German one) can survive to four APHE shots fired by the best low-tier French tank (the only one good enough, with a not-so-bad gun and ammo) just in the side?

I’m absolutely sure (I know, it happened to me hundreds of times …) that if I were the German tank player I would have been killed no further than the second shot, i.e. the first shot suffered on the side. I repeat: I feel sure about it.
On the contrary, what happened to that Level 100 was exactly what I see, any day, happening to Level 100 players: surviving not only beyond the average behaviour but also beyond the declared armour/penetration data.
The explanation about the “hitting the wrong point” is bad too: a “superman” player usually one-shot kill a whole crew hitting the enemy tank anywhere. One time my crew was instantly destroyed by a shot exploded (according to Gaijin “reconstruction”) on a rear fender of my tank: the whole crew, from turret men to the crew members in the front of the tank!

How could it be possible these thing happen?
The answer is: it shouldn’t.
A more in-depth answer could be: the beneficial, albeit artificial and distorting, effect of a very strong crew demonstrated here.
The concise and complete answer should likely be: the German tanker was a Level 100 and the French tanker a Level 54 …
Or there are some other explanation giving reason why some players are “designated supermen” and others are “cannon fodder”. Only Gaijin knows.

The only unacceptable explanations are based on “bad skill/good skill”, “luck” etc.

The game is rigged or extremely badly designed or both.
Explanations of brown-noses are BAD. And they should feel BAD.


Add this unrealistic crew strength/weakness to the unrealistic DM and the very likely advantage for paying players and you’ll understand why these weird things happen.




There is a method in this madness.

The sad truth is that a tank newbie has to expect to usually lose even when he manage to hit first and precisely (even a few meters away, green cross, full shot) an expert and/or paying enemy that has (on paper) an inferior vehicle.

This greatly deters brave actions in hand-to-hand combat, since the attacker knows that his weak crew could be easily killed even after having hit first at close distance a tank with more experienced and “stronger” crew (and likely some other forms of “preferential treatment” being a paying player).

These in my opinion are things of full unfairness and unbearable (and anti-historical) stupidity, unacceptable even in an arcade game, just think in an half-simulator game.

BTW, I saw an expert player saying that Vitality is not so much important and it’s better to give priority to Artillery or targeting, because “the most important thing in GF is to hit first”.
I’ll try to be polite and just say that this is plainly wrong: WT GF “cemeteries” are full of players that hit first and were killed by an opponent that, having a strong and Vital crew, was still able to move, turn the turret, aim and shoot, destroying the imprudent and weak adversary with one shot.
Being that the second shot in the duel, not the first …

Of course, a well-placed shot will ever be able to kill any crew but with low Vitality a crew can be entirely destroyed by a single shot even ill-placed!

That’s why increasing Vitality is really important, even more at low Tiers where the “Crew knocked out” death reason is the most common.
At lower Tiers guns aren’t as much strong as in upper tiers, but a low Vitality crew in a typical low tier thin-armoured tank can be entirely and immediately destroyed by a glancing shot hitting a fender or even by the splinters of an artillery explosion happening five meters outside the tank.

To a great extent, Gaijin is fooling players on GF and many of them seem unable to realize that, talking about “really there is no problem, it’s just because of a sophisticated Damage Model” or “you just didn’t aimed at the right places”(!).

To be honest, Gaijin usually don’t says which inner mechanisms rule the game and, AFAIK, never explained in detail how a kill or a damage is calculated. They showed just a “theoretical” document, stating it has the support of historical and technical papers, that says nothing about the actual implementation in game. And looking at implementation in game (e.g. exposed gunners in tank destroyer not killed even when directly hit in their back!) you can be sure there are a lot of bugs even if it were true they followed logical and realistic rules for DM.
Similarly, they never explained in depth what’s the actual effect of Vitality etc., just as they didn’t explain in detail the most of game characteristics. This doesn’t happen by chance, IMHO, because Gaijin has no interest to unveil the inner workings, otherwise they should “justify” any change they will done in future, including changes made just for their own interests.
Moreover, there likely were riots amongst players if they had confirmation that Gaijin is highly favouring the more experienced (and more likely paying) players, changing a supposedly “fair” game in a game half-decided (at the least) by artificial mechanisms having NO relation with gamers’ skill.
But this also means that Gaijin can’t be accused of dishonesty, they are simply tight-lipped. It’s players’ advantage to understand that.

If you add the pitiful weakness of unexperienced crews, especially when opposed to high level crews, and the weaker unspaded tanks to the crazy DM, the whole situation of Tank Battles for newbies is a disaster (much more than in Air Battles).
There is an evident beginners’ inferiority that goes well beyond the newbies’ still inferior skill.

And since the Matchmaking max different in BR is huge (1.0), if a beginner meets an expert player having in addition a tank with BR 1.0 higher, he is simply dead, no matter what he do.
Of course, it’s not just to the detriment of newbies, there are things damaging any player, e.g. kamikaze planes. And many other faults are shown below.

The famous “sophisticated and realistic WT Damage Model”: truth or myth?

And now some food for thought:

- Gaijin’s primary competitor, Wargaming Group Limited hasn’t a sophisticated and “realistic” DM for its “World of Tanks” game (this raises frequent criticisms against WoT); Wargaming Group Limited has about 4000 (four thousands) employees.
- Gaijin says its War Thunder game has a sophisticated and “realistic” DM; Gaijin has about 200 (two hundred) employees.
- both companies develop more than one game, but WoT and WT are their main products, so it’s reasonable to think they give them all the resource they need, provided that they can allocate.

The question is: do you really believe that while Wargaming hasn’t developed a realistic DM, a company twenty times smaller, i.e. Gaijin, has the resources to develop and maintain such a DM?

And if they haven’t, which is quite likely, don’t you think that probably the vaunted “accuracy” of WT Damage Model is largely a pretence?

And if it’s a pretence, don’t you think there has to be at least another mechanism, fixing DM holes and shortcomings, to largely determine “who win and who lose”?

If you have followed me up to this point, you can now ask yourself onto which such a mechanism could be based.
I suggest you to think about the fact that Gaijin is a business company …

Gaijin: can they pull it off?

Of course, it’s impossible to avoid another more general question: what could we reasonably expect from a small company such as Gaijin?

Sometime (well, rarely …) I wonder if I’m too much faultfinder about Gaijin.

Sometime I ask to myself if I could really expect much more from a company that likely has limited resources, apart their quality that doesn’t seem brilliant (especially about design, more than coding).
Sometime I think that the many delays in fixing bugs (worst, in deciding if they are bugs or features!), implementing an inconsistent DM, designing a weird scoring system, allowing money to rule the game, turning a deaf ear to community’s complains etc. could (maybe …) due to lack of resources more than negligence and arrogance and incompetence …

Sometimes.
The most of time, when I look at the pitiful state of this game, especially Ground Forces, and the answers given by Gaijin, I think that it’s not acceptable at all.

Whereas WT Air Battles have several faults but are playable without the feeling of being fooled, WT Tank Battles are one of the badly conceived set of wicked ideas I’ve seen in a game (and not only).

Until you fight with spaded tanks and somewhat experienced crews, at least, your (right) impression of Tank Battles could easily be (and should be!) of a pathetic game programmed by hopeless pathetic idiots (maybe to be played by idiots too?).

Well, I don’t know how many low-smartness people play WT GF but for sure there is a certain number, you can be sure of that reading both WT Forum and battles chat.

For example whose that still haven’t realized how WT GF works, think it’s a fair game (!) and believe that winning or losing mainly depends by skill.
I’ve seen some of them saying “This game is fine, it’s NOT a pay-to-win game like WoT!”.

Another “genius” made sarcasm about the possibility that Gaijin could steer battles to favour some players instead of others by assembling teams, saying that it would require “rocket science” to force some players to win and others to lose. Fact is that if Gaijin would decide to put a player in the losers’ league, they could do that easily by putting him the most of times in the weakest team. It’s not a matter of “forcing” a player to lose or to win, it’s a matter of probability: in the medium-long term, a players put in the losing side … will lose! Did really Gaijin arranged things in such a way? I don’t know (even it’s extremely likely they really did that) but for sure it could be done quite easily. It seems he was unable to understand that.

I’ve even seen another one of them saying, on battle chat, “It’s not P2W, I never paid a dime to play this game!”. Then I checked his player card, expecting (after having heard his proud statement!) he was a non-paying successful player. A typical successful player (the usual invulnerable “camouflaged ace”, one-shot killing enemies in series) has about 55-60% in win/loss battle ratio and about 70% in average position in team and I expected to find similar stats.
On the contrary he was an absolutely average player, not better than me, with about 45% both in wins and average position in team!
He was losing, he was cannon fodder in this game and he didn’t realize that!

Really some people don’t know what they are talking about.

Ridiculous people, as much stupid as WT GF designers …

At least until the gamer has played for many, many months, this silly game it’s based at 80-90% just on crews strength and crews capabilities (even more than tanks strength!), and especially on the fully “artificial” (and carefully “administered” by Gaijin!) Vitality parameter, not at all on player’s skill.
And even a later time, crews’ strength and tanks effectiveness accounts for the largest part of what is needed to win, much, much more than skill.

Of course, if the player make big mistakes he’ll likely be killed. But when being a newbie, the most of times you are not killed because you made real mistakes but just because you are playing the game since a short time, differently to the most part of your opponents. So you still got extremely weak crews and tanks.
This is partly true in AF too, but in GF this disadvantage is taken to the extreme.

In GF, crew vitality is crucial.
With a low vitality crew (or even a medium vitality if the enemy has an high-vitality crew) the player is like a glass hit by a hammer: he will be destroyed with great ease by the opponents.

Progressing in the game, things change a little bit in better, but not really much until you have got really experienced crews and better tanks (at that time, you’ll start seal clubbing newbies, for the same bad reasons you have been seal clubbed before …).

Add bad DM, bad max allowed BR difference (so bad MM) and the impressive series of faults and absurdities here listed, to the “natural” (and justifiable) difference from stock tanks and spaded tanks, and you’ll understand why WT GF is an idiotic game (surely it is so for beginners but not just for them, unfortunately), much more than with planes.

It’s all this just because the Damage Model? It’s just because the player badly aimed at not critical parts of the enemy tank whereas his opponent aimed well?
That’s what some silly people claim. They are stupid, indeed.

Even the animated image replaying the shot that killed you usually shows that there is no reason why he managed to kill your crew with one shot whereas you couldn’t. Unless you take into account your low crew strength and his high crew strength.
Contrary to some beliefs, paying attention to where you have been hit and destroyed usually doesn’t teach you anything significant if your crew is weak, because your crew can be easily killed by a shot suffered in any part of your tank.

A common happening to beginners is a crew fully and instantly destroyed because of a shot (even a low-caliber one) in the frontal part of the tank (which usually is the stronger part!) that propagate on the whole interior killing anyone.

In many cases we have five crew members, seating both in the hull and in the turret, all killed at once by an hit on a fender: it’s really smart, isn’t it?

Just with much stronger crews there is some chance that someone survive.

And what about the entire crew of a AAA truck suck as 94-KM ZIS-12 that can be killed by a single perforating shot hitting just the side of driver’s cockpit, without touching gunner … who die anyway!

The only “usefulness” of this instant-replay is perhaps to definitively persuade the observer (if he still needed further evidence) that WT GF, and in particular its simulated Damage Model, has been designed in an absurdly bad and unfair way.



Notwithstanding Gaijin’s efforts, Damage Model in WT Tanks is rough and inaccurate, sometimes crazy and fully inconsistent with declared armour strength and penetration capabilities.
Gaijin proudly declares that “War Thunder has a complex and realistic damage model” and that could even true enough for the most of planes, not credibly true for tanks.
For sure it usually make difference to hit on a tank part or another but don’t think that the reason your crew instantly died is due to a particularly well placed shot (as well as, inversely, when you’ll have more experience you’ll make a carnage of newbies only in part for your improved skill).

I’m not asking for perfection here.
I’m just asking not to have a so-called “Damage Model” that allows a Marder’s crew being invulnerable even to spot-on hits on their undefended backs, if that crew is “strong”, and, on the contrary, a fully closed medium tank’s crew being immediately and fully wiped out by a glancing shot, if that crew is “weak”.
I’m asking for a DM that is not ruled by crew’s Vitality or, if Gaijin has decided that’s the right way, at least doesn’t pretend to be “sophisticated”, “realistic” and ruled by player’s skill.
In short, I’m asking not to be fooled by a moronic, unfair and dishonest game like WT GF is at present. It should be, at least, “mildly dishonest and unfair” like WT AF is, where skill is a little bit more respected..

Some players (a minority, actually) even say that World of Tanks is much more realistic and sophisticated, about DM, than WT GF.
If this would be true, big shame on Gaijin.
But likely neither of them are realistic, it’s just Gaijin that boasts about having one.

I often ask to myself why I go on playing these pathetic and embarrassing Tank Battles and my answer is: likely just because after some years with planes I needed a different distraction and at the moment there is no better alternative with tanks (an that’s really saying something!).





At the beginning you can do almost nothing, just a few sporadic kill (possibly against other newbies!), some assists and maybe a few point capture (if you are brave enough to try that), with the hope not to be instantly killed by expert players that shoot like snipers (heavily assisted by their much better tanks and crews, so being able to kill you at first shot just one second after having spotted you: you aren’t so naïve to think it’s just their skill, are you?).
The end position in battle ranks for a true newbie is usually beyond 12^th position, in the rare cases when he ends in the first positions it just means the rest of his team was even weaker than him and they all have been slaughtered.

It’s quite a pathetic situation: you find a place, aim, shoot to an expert enemy and your hit make no decisive damage, because your ammo are weak, your crew’s targeting skill is low and, above all, his crew is strong. The enemy reply (if he hasn’t already shot first!) and immediately kills your crew or part of it.
Even when your crew is not entirely destroyed, your tank and your gun are immobilized for a long time. Since enemy repair speed, reload speed and crew recovery speed are faster than yours, he can move and shoot again and again (and very effectively since his crew has a good targeting skill) even if he has suffered some damage before, when you are defenceless.
You are dead 8 times on 10, even having hit first at a very short distance.

What’s the difference with Air Battles, which are difficult for a beginner too?

When comparing AF to GF you can think about Air Forces as a judo match and Ground Forces as a boxing match: a physically weaker judoka can beat a physically stronger one if the former has greater skill but a flyweight boxer has no hope against an heavyweight, even if he has superior boxing skill.

The difference is that in Air Battles if you hit first at short distance, even being still a newbie, usually you kill or at least heavily damage the enemy.
Air battles are faster and in Air there is no “automatic repair” or “crew healing” or “crew substitution”, so it’s unlikely that the surprised enemy is able to turn and immediately kill you (you could be much more easily killed by a comrade of him coming to the rescue).
All this is not only fair but quite realistic too.

On the contrary, in Tank Battles the mixture of game mechanics, bad DM and crucial importance of weak crew, especially for Vitality, means that even a newbie who is improving and manage to hit first (and well) will likely die anyway.
The enemy had its crew hit but not wounded (or quickly healed) whereas for the newbie is “Crew knocked out” even at the first faint suffered shot and game over.
No rewarding for increased personal skill, all advantages go just to experienced players with experienced (and “physically” stronger) crews, independently from their ability.

Add to that the quite frequent and unpleasant feeling that too many times you are drawn, when you are a newbie, in bad teams (losing 75% of your battles on a long streak of 20-30 is not quite credible as randomness!) and the situation is often unbearable and annoying at a critical level.

A good resolution, at that time, is to use these battles just for spading tanks and training crews, without worrying about victories, scores and ranks, even less trying to find some “logic” in a game designed in a fully moronic way.
Trying to fight in a “smart” way in a game that’s not smart at all, at least at that stage, would be quite useless. And would be detrimental if it would induce you to an inactive battle, just hiding and trying “not to die”: your score would be almost zero, your tanks and crews wouldn’t improve.
You “have to die” to improve your pitiful (at present) situation, even if that means playing an often absurd game.

This game is SO moronic that quite often I decide to use a battle just to spade tanks (and training crews), especially those really bad at stock level, and when my spading tank is destroyed I exit the fight even if I have more tanks available.
I’m sorry for my comrades in team and for my stats (doing that I usually end in 15^th or 16^th position in rank, so trashing my average position stats!) but, as I wrote, WT GF is too much stupid to accept to play for a long time even with really poor tanks and poor crews, so my only goal become improving both as soon as possible, without being really much interested in the battle outcome.
Please take note: I never used such a strategy in Air Forces battles! With planes I always stay in battle until its end and did that even when I was a newbie plane pilot.
Fact is: WT AF battles deserves to be fully played even with stock planes and weak crews, because your skill can always do the difference. Not so in WT GF.

Then, “miraculously”, after having spaded tanks and above all after having increased your crew levels at least above 20 you’ll start to kill enemies more often (likely, part of them are unexperienced newbie just like you were a few months before!), not anytime you are instantly killed and sometimes you arrive around the 5^th position in battle (wow!).
It’s because your skill has so much improved, in just one month? Just in a small part, dude. Three quarters of that improvement are due to improved tanks and crews.
The proof? Change nation, re-start (at the same BR level) with unspaded tanks and inexperienced crews and you’ll be cannon fodder again.
Just after having gained experience for one year or two you’ll be able to partly compensate for poor crews and vehicles with your really increased skill. Until then, you’ll have to cut your teeth.
It could be needed one month continuous gaming to reach level 20 for three crews and be aware that level 20 is the very minimum level to avoid being killed by a flea but even at level 35 your crew will still “weak”.

Oh, BTW: even after having improved a little bit (you and your equipment), going up too much quickly in BR will put you against more expert opponents with better crews and better tanks, so your slaughtering will start again, like it does in AF too but more evident because of the same peculiar GF faults about excessive BR difference, excessive crew importance etc.
While until BR 2.7-3.0 a level 20 crew starts to be (barely) enough, at level 3.7-4.0 even a level 35 crew is still weak. In other words, at level 4.0-4.3 your level 35 crew can be quite easily killed even when driving a KV-1.
In WT GF is even more important than in AF to stay at lower levels until crew skill is low and vehicles are stock, since personal skill is largely made worthless with WT tanks.

Guys, do you really are still wondering about “why my seemingly well placed shots almost never kill the enemy whereas my crew is so easily knocked out at the first shot”?
Are you still shouting, any time you play, “Hey, I hit him three times and he is still alive … and can even move! … and shoot … and … no! … I’m dead … again!” and can’t understand why?

Don’t have you realized that in WT GF your skill counts for no more than 30%?

Do you really think that with level 30 crews you can compete on fair bases with players owning level 120 crews, maybe those paying people proudly displaying squadron mark before this name?
If so, think again.

After a certain level and Tier the game is unbalanced even in AF, but in GF is a true joke since the lower levels.

The icing on the cake: airplanes in Tank Battles!

Tank Battles have a plethora of other silly/strange/unintelligible things such as haystacks being able to swerve tanks when ran over (!) and the ridiculous FM of planes you can use in Tank Battles, totally different from FM in Air Battles for the same planes (and besides, not easier to control and with a disgustingly poor aim control).

Can you believe that a Ju 87 (28 sec turn time declared in Air Battles data chart) and even a Ju 88 (31 sec declared) actually can have a turn time equal or less than a Yak-1 (17 sec declared in Air Battles)? Well, that’s what happens to planes in Tank Battles.

And it’s not only annoying but also quite ridiculous that Gaijin decides that these airplanes sometimes (!) has to start the battle with flaps extended (quite unpleasant when you start the battle with just a fighter at 6 o’clock and you try to gain speed by diving …).

BTW, bomber gunners in GF planes are very dangerous and unrealistic snipers just like in AF.
Oh … maybe even more unrealistic: I’ve seen the gunner of a Ju 87 G-2 destroying my Spitfire Mk IIb using just his two 7.92mm MG. I want to stress: he destroyed the airframe of the Spitfire, to the point it lost both wings!, not that he killed the pilot (which in fact remained unharmed by the shots)!
Unbelievable …

On the other hand, often you get an air kills just with a few bullets put on the enemy plane, before he crashes usually for having lose the control and not for the damage.
But if your enemy has a twin-engine plane and he is skilled and smart enough not to crash, you won’t likely be able to kill him in just one minute, even if you damaged him. In fact, air battles in tank missions are very short (at least this is understandable because while flying you have to leave your tank abandoned and vulnerable).

So short that, in part for time shortage and in part for the poor skill of many “tanker” temporarily transformed into pilots, many of these battles consist just in head-ons, often with collisions.
Anyhow, these micro-battles are so short that in practice you have just one load of ammo to use, since timeout happens before the completion of the first reload!

In these battles airplanes used are drawn by the system and the player can’t even know which plane he will have, apart knowing that it will be a fighter, an attacker or a bomber, randomly chosen from a predefined set.
But in some cases your aircraft is chosen by the system being inferior to the enemies, in fact if you play well and kill the enemy you could be gratified by a “Rank Does Not Matter” achievement!

A quite questionable choice here is the use of medium bombers such as Wellingtons and He-111 against tanks, I doubt it has historical bases but, in any case, their bombs are too much deadly for tanks (which have almost no chance to move away enough from their powerful dropped bomb, before the timed fuse make them exploding).

Finally, although there is no statement by Gaijin about that (as usual), it seems to me that plane effectiveness depends a lot by player’s “experience”, likely by his tank crew level or by player’s level.
In my opinion there is a quite evident better performance of planes started by tanks at BR 4 respect to planes started at BR 2, so it’s likely that it’s linked to the greater experience of crews/vehicles at BR 4.
This could explain the incredible agility of some planes and not others (equally nimble on paper), the large differences in effectiveness of bombs and rockets between players, the usually “lucky shots” of squadron players in head-ons etc.
It seems that the same mechanisms that in tanks favour experienced/paying players are at work in GF planes too.
Again, GF is just like AF but in a more marked and markedly worse way.

Nobody really knows anything about how planes in GF work, so there is a large room for Gaijin for advantaging some kind of players and damaging others, without having to declare that.
As usual.

“Hissatsu!” Kamikazes in GF!



And all this not to mention the never resolved issue of kamikaze planes destroying tanks, notwithstanding the many and loud complaints from players!

Gaijin says that tanks aren’t destroyed by kamikaze planes but by the bombs dropped by the kamikaze just a moment before the crash, and this could be true, AFAIK. And says that since there is a fuse delay of a few seconds, the issue doesn’t exist.
Well … what’s the difference? Kamikaze pilots use their planes to easily carry the bombs just on the target instead of more skilfully dropping them from a some height, also because they know to have just the time for one bombing run, so they are in a hurry, and losing a plane hasn’t any cost (!).

Weren’t the same easy using bombing crosshairs, dropping bombs from, let’ say, 150 mt height? Not at all, using crosshairs require some skill both on pointing and on timing, whereas crashing very close to the enemy assures that all the bombs, dropped just one or two seconds before, will be close the same. And when using rockets, a very inaccurate weapon which lacks a precise enough aiming systems, firing them just a moment before the crash is even more significant regarding to precision.
Moreover, crashing near an enemy tank disturbs its player, which could be easily distracted for a few seconds allowing kamikaze’s comrades to attack him. The objection that the crash can be counterproductive because it can warn tank player that bombs have been dropped nearby don’t take into account that players are always warned of coming bombs, with the whistling sound, so no contraindication.
The only bad side effect in kamikazeing at present is indirect, i.e. if the plane has been previously hit, even slightly, his crash will give a victory to an enemy.
Another one contraindication, but again of little significance, is that by crashing the players loses the very few SL given by the “safe and sound” achievement: a so little reward that players by far prefer the much higher score gained by crashing on the enemy.

In WWII, Japanese kamikazes were instructed to shout “Hissatsu!” just a moment before the crash. “Hissatsu” means “certain kill”.
In WT GF is the same: kamikazes do that to have a sure kill or, at least, they hope to succeed in killing using a tactic maximizing their chances.
Only an idiot could be unable to understand that’s the reason why there are so many kamikazes in GF.

Until Gaijin won’t understand (or admit) the issue and won’t take measures (e.g. making tanks invulnerable to bombs dropped within a few meters from the crash place of the kamikaze), kamikazes will go on.

Apparently not yet satisfied by having just kamikazes, in 2017 the geniuses in Gaijin merrily invented the “hull break”, i.e. the possibility a tank, especially a light tank or a SPAA, is more easily destroyed just by a single HE (i.e. explosive) shot … but also by a plane crashing on the tank!
So, finally Gaijin managed to make true the behaviour they denied for such a long time: yes, now light vehicles can be really destroyed by a kamikaze crash, even without bombs or rockets involved!
And kamikazes immediately started to exploit the umpteenth Gaijin’s idiocy …
After many months and many complaints from player, it seemed that Gaijin removed that “bug”, so hull break by planes disappeared. I wrote “it seemed” because, as usual, there was no official statement by Gaijin and just players observing the game deduced that. If they really removed hull break by planes they did that in secret.

But, wait, the story isn’t finished yet!
After a few more months, after patch 1.71, the hull break by planes reappeared!
So it’s very likely that previously Gaijin hasn’t removed it voluntarily but just by chance, as a side effect of some change! And it reappeared after some other unrelated changes.
It’s even from things like this that you can realize how bad are Gaijin’s developers.

At present, hull break by planes is still present.

However, hull break is just a part of the kamikaze issue and maybe not the most relevant one.
Kamikazes in GF is a not yet solved problem and since the issue started causing uproars more than one years ago without any intervention by Gaijin, it seems that the game maker could have no intention to fix it.

Misery of GF planes “battles”.

But, wait, talking about planes: very often you can’t join a GF air battle even if you timely press the required key when the instructions appear on the screen! Maybe it’s a server-related delay but it’s another pitiful shortcoming.

Well, if there is one thing that really resembles the pathetic Word of Warplanes air battles, this is planes used in WT tank battles.

Why one couldn’t use planes he has in Air hangar (at least if he has ones of the right BR), with their correct FM used in Air Battles and all the modifications bring about in spading them, is beyond my understanding. Linking “real” planes used in Air Battles by the player to his tanks would be a very effective way to increase gamers loyalty and induce them to play both Air and Ground.
On the contrary, a gamer playing just planes in Tank Battles will never know how much different (and much more amusing) are Air Battles.

One often is led to think how much brain Gaijin’s programmers and analysts could have.
And also to suspect that two not-communicating teams do exists in Gaijin, one for Air Battles and the other for Tank Battles.

Of course, there is a possible alternative explanation: Gaijin purposely did at least some of those absurdities, for example to prevent newbies to be able to easily kill more expert players.
This could be but the fact is that there is no good reason for many things, apart being convenient for Gaijin.

Whereas often Tank Battles seem have been developed by idiot monkeys, regarding Air Battles things are quite better, even at the lower tiers, and differences in planes performance are rationally explainable with applied modifications (e.g. regarding structural strength, better gun versions etc.).
It’s true that even in Air Battles there are situations, such as head-ons, that a newbie usually loses regardless his good aim because of enemy crew’s aim (since the greater experience gained) and the enemy plane’s better structural strength (because of its spading). But on the whole those “brainless” and “brutal” circumstances, which are the rule in Ground Battles, are a minority in Air Battles and with planes there is more room for real skill.

Anyhow, I have to finish this brief examination of Air Battles in GF saying that, in some way, they are … the “best” part of Tank Battles (!), at least for one thing: they recognize personal skill more than tank battles (especially if the player avoid accepting head-ons). Yes, air battles in GF are extremely short, fight are often just stupid head-ons, planes FM is disgusting but … if you manoeuvre, aim and shoot well you can get a deserved victory more easily and rightly than in the most battle with tanks.
Considering how bad plane battles in GF are, think about at the overall sad state of Tank Battles …

An endless series of shortcomings and mediocrity in Tank Battles …

You have to see it, to believe in it.

The number of faults, shortcomings, mediocre features and poor behaviours found in WT GF is overwhelming, almost incredible.

I still barely can believe that Gaijin has been able to stockpile such a number of bad design choices, it could be one of the worst case in using development resources for a game.

Let’s go on looking at other fine examples of failures and miseries.


Bleakness of team fight.

For example, I’ve been very surprised by the fact that in Tank Battle chat seems to me much less used than in Air Battles, notwithstanding that ground battles are much more static, action is slower and there should be more time to coordinate actions between team members! In many battles I didn’t saw any message during all the fight time, neither the usual “Attack B point”!

Another related surprise: players fighting in a squadron with tanks seems much less effective than players fighting in a squadron with planes. A squadron in air is lethal and usually can be well opposed just by another squadron. When in air battles I see one squadron in just one team, I can predict the winner team with 90% of chance. This is not so in tank battles, I don’t know if because of the lack of coordination (notwithstanding in tank battles it should be easier than in air, since battles are slower) or because an average player skill no better than the average solo-player. Anyhow, I too often saw tank squadrons doing very bad.
I even heard a squadron player complaining in chat with the whole team, calling all us “noobs”, whereas its squadron, three players!, was barely able to get a handful of kills and ended at the middle of our rank!

What surprised me was also to notice how often there is a generalized lack of aggressiveness in teams, even when there is just one capture point, it has already been conquered by the enemies and it’s clear that if nobody in our team take some risks to take it away they’ll win.
It seems that in tank teams there is a lot of people scared to death by the risk to “die”, even more than amongst plane pilots!
Well, I have to admit that I consider Tank Battles so stupid, tactic-less (and frequently boring) that I often take even too many risks for myself because it doesn’t seem worthwhile to me trying to fight in a “clever” way, since I find no “intelligence” in them!

In general, finding very bad teams it’s more likely in Tank Battles than in Air Battles. We have to consider that in GF is easier to judge team effectiveness, because actions are slower and players becoming estranged are easier to detect, nevertheless it really seems to me that on average tankers are less skilled and with less initiative than average plane pilots.
There are innumerable examples of tank teams camping for 70-80% of their members instead of attacking capture points and so hopelessly losing.


“Scientifically” arranged blindness.

Crew eyesight is much more important, and so badly implemented to be critical, than in Air Battles: you could think to be vulnerable just to enemy tanks you can quite distinctly see, with their marks in vivid red, or just by artillery fire requested by an hidden enemy.
On the contrary, you can be destroyed with a direct hit even by a player whose mark is barely visible (heavily “greyed” red mark) or fully invisible (NO red mark at all!) and that in no way you could hit him. In some cases he has “bush” camouflages to help him hiding (even at the point it could be fully invisible) but just sometimes, in many cases not and notwithstanding that you can’t see him. But he can see you, likely having a much better crew … or for a stupid bug.
This was an incredibly unfair and annoying but occasional fault until 1.65 patch … when it became a rule!





Fully invisible tanks (!!!) is in fact another silly thing that’s happening more and more frequently after patch 1.65, practically at every battle.
You look around, no enemy tanks … Then you start to look at shots towards you coming from nowhere! Really, no tank visible, even from a few dozen meters distance!
Curiously, only after having been hit you start seeing the enemy …

BTW, the fact that just after having been hit you can see the enemy tank even when it is in front of you, in your field of view, immediately disproves the hypothesis that you didn’t saw it because “you were looking in other directions” (this is a quite common “explanation” given by brown noses in WT Forum).
Like for a zillion of other game features and behaviours, Gaijin never explained the spotting mechanism in GF, so the context is unclear. Even if it’s possible than in several cases there is no true “invisibility” but just “invisibility on the map”, more or less explicable with crew’s visibility (see my following example), there is no doubt that in many cases you can’t see what you should see.
Too many examples have been presented to think that it’s just a whining obsession or a fallacy by inattentive players.

This example of absolutely cretin design/implementation raised threads on WT Forums, when players started to realize it wasn’t an occasional and rare bug but the (ab)normal behaviour of GF after patch 1.65.

I have the “proof” this stupid behaviour couldn’t be recorded in replays and in this case local replays can be more significant than server replays.

First case: in one battle I noticed an invisible player, straight on at about 500 m, just because he started to shot at me and I saw his red marker only after his first shot. After a while, I tried to capture a point enclosed by buildings and ran towards it, seeing no enemy around in the map nor any red marker in the area. But there was the same player, around the corner. When I saw him I was upset and disconcerted: his tank seemed intact but has no red markers! For an instant I hoped it was just a wreck but he was alive, shot at me and I saw the red marker just after his fatal shot.
When I examined the local replay, I noticed that in the recording the red marker was very faintly visible, in both cases, and became fully visible after his shot. But this was NOT the behaviour in battle, where there was NO red marker before the shot, not even faint!
So, not only there is a bug (?) in battle, but even in replay!

But is local replay trustable?
Well, I sadly discovered that (at least) about this issue local replay is more trustable than server replay!
Let’s examine the …

Second case: this could be another variant of tank invisibility, i.e. “invisibility on the map”, not clear if linked with the direct view invisibility. In practice, the effect is the same: the player can’t see a nearby enemy he should be able to clearly see, whereas the enemy can, so having a huge advantage.
Near the end of a battle, I go to capture a point previously captured by enemies but that didn’t seem still occupied by them. Together with a comrade (one of the few remaining) I approached the point, we discovered it was free so occupied and captured it without having to fire any shot. Immediately after the capture I moved forward to cover the side facing the enemy bases, to prevent an attack from that side. At the same time, I carefully checked the Tactical Map: there was NO enemy in the neighbourhood, only tanks in sight were me and my comrade (who at first has remained to protect the capture point, then moved to another point).
Then … WHAM! I’ve been hit! I re-checked the map: NO enemy in sight!
It was stupid by me, but for a moment I even wondered if I could have been hit … by the comrade! Of course, it wouldn’t have been possible because in GF tanks can’t do friendly kills.
While I was thinking about was happening … WHAM! Another hit! Where is him? On the map? No, NO enemy shown in the zone! Maybe he is one km away?
I turned my damaged Stug tank destroyer and … he was there, a KV-1 at just 5 m away from me! Of course, he fired again and killed me.

After the battle, I first checked the server replay: with my surprise, all seemed normal. He started from his base, directed toward another point then changed direction and went toward me. He fired the first shot on my side at 100 mt, the second on the back of the tank at 60 m and the third at 5 m. And on server replay all this was clearly visible, even in Tactical Map!
So, how could I have missed him?

Then I checked the local replay and discovered that … he was really invisible to me in map! In this replay, all went just as I remembered: an enemy tank being able to approach me without being visible AT ALL. On the contrary, checking the local replay from his point of view, it was clear that he perfectly saw me. Likewise, his remaining comrade was able to see me and my last remaining comrade oh his Tactical Map, even if he has no direct view but just faint red markers of us (I checked this too).
Moreover, I checked from the point of view of my last remaining comrade: he didn’t have the enemy KV-1 on map too, even if he has a faint marker visible! So it seems that both of us were blind on map, whereas both the enemies had on their map a clear picture of our position!
If you consider that Tactical Map allows you to track friends and enemies through your direct view and thru the view of your comrades, I should have been able to detect my enemy in map, considering that a faint red marker was visible. On the contrary, I had NO visible enemy on map!
And the KV-1 very easily killed me.

Even if possibly not reproducible in replays and with incoherence between local and server replays, the “bug” (or the “feature” …) is absolutely real, as testified by a lot of angry users in WT Forum.

In spite of this, you could find in Forum some cretin (or/and ass licker) denying its existence, such as a very expert player (more than 12000 battles fought) that said to me “Never seen it happen - nor have I ever seen an example of it presented here over the last few months where it appears to be anything other than you just didn't see the enemy. As far as I can tell this is just you being miffed that you don't see someone, and not any kind of actual mystical unreproducible bug at all".

Well, since that player was the usual experienced/paying/Premium/decorated etc. player, so likely being a very addicted and frequently fighting player, I could see three possibilities:

1) the fact he never (!) noticed the issue is because he is a paying player and has also the capability to be immune by that (a very intriguing possibility …)

2) he is a brown-nose that is lying

3) he is a stupid (sorry, I really have to make this hypothesis too …)

Hypothesis 4, “he is right”, it’s not possible.

Judging by some other statements by him I read on Forum, hypothesis 2 or 3 are plausible.
Hypothesis 1 is suggestive and knowing Gaijin and their P2W mechanisms it could be possible too!

So, Gaijin GF designers and developers managed to make even worse an already stupid game!
Idiocy without end …

Apart the bad implementation, having a low “Keen Vision” parameter is much more critical than in Air Battles, because you could be surprised by a tank popping out from a hill or a building, especially if he has a better crew eyesight and can plan its ambush. With planes it’s not so important, because in air there are no obstacles (apart in some mountainous maps) and planes positions and distances change very quickly so their instantaneous values are less significant both for the attacker and the defender.




Crazy, absolutely crazy score.

Score in Tank Battles is CRAZY, much more than some perplexing score you can find in Air Battles.

For example, in one Tank battle I got 2244 points having 6 kills, 1 assist and 1 zone capture, 89% battle activity (so very high and not easy to significantly best). Another player in my team bested me with 2444 points, with just 1 kill, 4 assist and 1 zone capture! He received some awards too, but less than mine (I got multiple “Shadow strike streak”, “Tank Rescuer”, “One Shot” etc.).
So three more assist are more important than five more kills? Can you find some logic in that? I replayed that battle, trying to understand, and didn’t find anything.
Another example of the countless ones: I earned 1257 points in a good battle (won by my team) where I had 5 kills and 1 assist (with 1 death), another player earned 2071 points with just 1 kill and 4 assists (and 3 deaths, BTW).

I give you just a last “visual” example: a good fight by me, I ran from one cap point to another (battle activity: 90%), I destroyed 7 enemy tanks (more than any other player in the battle, so earning Heavy Metal Fury award, often with one-shots), captured one point and all that losing just one vehicle.
Final score: fifth place in team, much lower than some comrades that in battle did quite less, it seems!

Well, I was happy for my performance and for the victory of the team but not so much for my final score and rank position!

Of course, sometimes things turn to your advantage: in another battle I finished first in my team, with 3483 points, 4 kills, 3 assists, 1 capture and 1 plane shot down; the second in rank, with 3451 points, had 2 captures, 1 plane, 3 assists and 8 tank kills! Why I deserved to finish ahead of him, it’s a mystery to me.

A possible explanation (showing however a complete lack of logic): a player carefully examined several battles and on WT Forum confirmed that not only assists are incredibly well rewarded respect to kills (just a little bit less score points) but also being hit rewards a good amount of points!
He made some examples and in one of them a gamer, playing heavy tanks, made nothing else than placing himself at the centre of the map and sitting there absorbing hits. At the end, he got the first place in his team ranks by having zero tank kills, zero plane kills, only 4 Assists, 1 zone cap: 3378 points. The player in second place had seven tank kills, one plane kills, 1 Assists, 1 zone cap: 2803 points.
First place and almost 600 more points just for three more assists and for having being hit, with a fully passive attitude!

Really, I had proof of that when I put a couple of KV-1 on my Russian preset in place of more weakly armoured tanks: my score immediately shot upwards, even without having more kills. Having a very strong tank allows you to score a lot while being hit and in the meantime hitting a lot enemy tanks, that means many assists.
And since assists are incredibly well rewarded compared to kills, the summed up effect is being advantaged thanks to a passive attitude!

But … do you want to hear a funny thing? There are players (behaving that way) that say this is right, because “Taking hits and surviving is an accomplishment  ... you need to do smart things to do it"!
Smart things in staying passively while being hit? Which smart things? Playing with heavy tanks? Having crews with high Vitality? Maybe having even the luck that the most of enemies have guns too much weak to quickly terminate the “smart player’s” tank?
Well, considering this kind of “justification”, there is an explanation why so often Gaijin gives us pieces of junk ...

In practice, score in tank battles seems to have quite little to do with players’ performance, let alone skill!

Obviously, such a rough and stupid score system can’t be so clever to take in account some frequent good behaviours, very useful for the team although not giving immediate outcome for the single player.

Just to make a personal example, I had a battle where my main goal was to spade a German tank-destroyer. Being stock, it was really horrible and after 5 minutes I was killed. After that, I took a Gepard and tried to do my best, when we were already clearly losing. No way, I was destroyed by the usual perfect instantly one-shot kill of an expert (I don’t know if paying) player, a kind of shot you quickly learn to recognize. Well, I took my last and better tank, a Pz.IV, and moved towards one of the two points in the hands of the enemy.
At that point, after 8 minutes, we were on the verge of losing, being left with 10% of our tickets whereas the enemy had still 80%. One more minute and my comrades captured another point, so we had two on three. But we were left with just 5% of tickets, the enemy had still 70%! We were headed to the defeat and very, very quickly. So I decided to do a very risky move and entered the last point held by the enemies, while my comrades were waiting statically around it. I attacked frontally the enemy point keeper and, even if I was heavily damaged, I managed to destroy him. That freed the point.
Me and my comrades captured this last point, after that I was destroyed. But my action had turned the situation around and the enemy team, left without captured points, started to lose tickets very quickly. At last, we won by a hair’s breadth, an absolutely unlikely victory just two minutes before!
And I’m absolutely sure that if I wouldn’t have attacked that point we’d have lost. With the understanding that my fight in itself was nothing exceptional, much less skilled than many other players’ actions, it’s quite objective that I reversed the battle with that attack. So we won, but my position in battle rank was … 14^th! Absolutely no reward for my action, although it was decisive.

In another battle, using a half-stock 94-KM ZIS-12, a completely unarmoured SPAA, with a good enough gun but killable even by the weakest MG, I took some essential shelter behind a house, at a certain distance from the only capture point, which was already in the hand of enemies. From there I continually shot to enemies, exposing myself and then hiding again, until my comrades, protected by my guns, managed to conquer the point at last (when we were badly losing). At the end we won the battle by a whisker. My action wasn’t decisive but for sure was very important … but having had with my SPAA just some assists and a lot of hits I ended 16^th!

Another example: in one map I found a good sniping point on the border of a group of buildings and positioned my Marder, waiting for enemy exposing themselves. I killed two tanks, defending my comrades, without losing mine. Since things were going well, I remained there. But at the end of the battle my position was 16^th! Having been stationary for all the battle (which was largely won by my team) my battle activity was just 53% and I understand that rightly lowers my performance. But the five players ahead of me had just one kill or no kill at all, just assists! And just one of them had one capture and one kill, without losing any tank (just like me).
My battle was good, I took advantage of any chance of killing an enemy and did it, without losing my tank. Nevertheless, I was last in my team.

I‘m sure that any player had a lot of similar experiences or even more disappointing ones.

Am I complaining about that? No, because I never had any trust in Gaijin’s capability to create a scoring system so clever to detect the importance of such actions (and I’m sure that a lot of players better than me do a larger number of decisive actions, without getting any reward). And, after all, I perfectly know that recognizing such actions is not an easy task from a developer’s point of view.
So I’m not complaining but just warning you: you could be much more useful for your team than the game credits to you. Even a player finishing in the low third of the final battle rank can be useful, if not decisive, for his team’s victory if he did the right thing at the right time.

A relevant thing worthwhile to be noted is that the final position in your team’s battle rank depends not only by your performance and by the crazy calculation mechanism but also by the strength of your comrades.
This is obvious but can be easily forgotten, since the overall quality of the teams varies in a very wide range. One battle you are in a poor team and at the end you can be second or third in rank with just a couple of kills, next battle you could be in a strong team and finish tenth even with four or five kills and some captures!
Of course this has no impact on score in itself, but it has on the “average position in team” parameter. Which is, in my opinion, a good indicator about the crews+tanks+player performance, assuming that on the long range you are fairly drawn in teams where the sets of players have an average performance. An assumption which is a hope too: I have no real data about that, even if my impression suggests it’s true; a completely different thing, of course, is balancing between teams (onto which I have, on the contrary a lot of doubts!).

Although I don’t mind so much stats, I have to say that until recently this cretin game, WT GF, trashed general player stats.

In fact, Gaijin GF stats were (stupidly) unified with AF stats, so a good Air player could have at least his “average relative position” stat made completely meaningless by the contamination given by GF stats, which are barely significant.
In fact, I definitely stopped worrying about my stats after having started playing GF and realized it’s an unfair game designed by very big idiots.
After that, in a miraculous and ephemeral burst of smartness Gaijin started to give stats that, on game GUI, can be viewed separately, for AF and GF.

So they (incredibly) fixed that absurdity, just one of the many.





Absurd matchmaking.

One more rant, and a relevant one: Matchmaking in tanks is calculated (in AB) in a way that sometimes can force you to fight with enemies whose best tank has a BR higher than your best tank by 1.0.
This is less than the difference in AB air battles, where the max difference is 1.3. But where in plane battles this gap is acceptable, in tank battles just 1.0 it’s too much wide since the weakest tank can’t do almost nothing against the stronger that has a BR 1.0 more. A Pz.III F (BR 2.3) can do practically nothing against a T-34 1940 (BR 3.3), even if it’s the first one to hit, but it’s almost the same against a Cromwell V (BR 3.0).
Whereas in air an inferior plane, if well flown, can shot down a superior plane (because personal skill is more important with planes than with tanks), in tanks the strength of the vehicle is much more important and in many case it’s an insurmountable obstacle. It’s like a flyweight boxer that have no hope against Mike Tyson, notwithstanding his good and even superior boxing skill.

The widest acceptable BR gap would be no more than 0.7, IMHO, better if just 0.5.
This way a BR 3.0 tank should face at worst 2.7 or 3.4 enemies, not 2.0 or 4.0, and battles would be much more fair and balanced.
This would be a smart choice. But Gaijin chose 1.0 and this is a typical … “Gaijin’s choice”!

Of course, reducing the gap would mean a somewhat longer queue waiting for the battle, so there could be some reasons for this. However it’s another issue leading to many unbalanced duels.
A beginner with a not fully spaded tank and an inexperienced crew will invariably lose against an enemy with a spaded tank, expert crew and a BR 1.0 higher. In these cases his only hope is to be able to get at least an assist, to share with better equipped comrades.


Nonsensical tank BR assignments.

Oh, BTW: of course, some of the assigned BR have very little sense or no sense at all, considering the actual performance in battle of the vehicles.

For example, an M24 light tank has no sense at BR 3.7, just like the very effective medium tank T-34 1942, much stronger under any aspect (except speed) and one of the most powerful in game under BR 4.0.
Just a moron could think to assign to it the same BR as much stronger tanks, such as 8.8 cm Flak or KV-1 L-11. Only a stupid could assign BR 3.7 to a tank that can be quite easily killed, especially if its crew has medium-low vitality, even from a LVT(A)(1) i.e. a Reserve tank!
And just an idiot could assign the same BR (4.3) to a Pz IV J, one of the less armoured tanks at its Tier and with one of the slowest (if not the slowest) turret in game, and to the very strong and effective KV-1S / KV-1 ZIS-5. You can safely estimate that a player using KV-1s has at least a double chance to win, survive and get high score, respect to a Pz IV J player.
But some demented people in Gaijin decided to put them at the same BR level.
Bad BR choices are plenty, even if not always as striking as the former examples. What’s the sense of giving BR 3.0 both at Cromwell V and Valentine Mk IX? They are quite similar tanks (same gun, practically the same armour, similar shape) but the former is much faster (the double faster!) and has a much stronger crew (5 members against just 3).

And these are just a few examples.
I said “of course” because could you think that a game designed in such a stupid way could be good in BR assignment? Of course not.


Team balancing? Which team balancing?

What about team balancing in GF?
Well, there is NO team balancing, nor about BR neither about players’ experience.
A player that did some GF stats says he found just that when two organized squadron are on the same battle, the Match Making mechanism puts them in different teams. Nothing more than that. You could have (and often have) a battle where there is just one squadron in one team and weaker “solo” players on the other. Or a lot of newbie on a side and a lot of Level 100 on the other.

This stupidly designed game is so much unfair that very often I can predict my team will lose already in the first fourth of the battle, simply considering how much easy is for our opponents to fire to me “superhuman” shots or resist to my very good shots without any hassle.
It’s often very clear since the beginning that one team “has to win” and the other “has to lose”, one make one-shot kills in series and the other die in series, one is made by a lot of “supermen” and the others mainly by sacrificial lambs.
In this sense it’s possible, maybe likely, that this bad MM is directly linked to the P2W nature of the game, advantaging some players also putting them in the stronger team.

Fact is there are often battles with absolutely unbalanced teams, just like in AF, and the battle’s outcome is predictable since the beginning (to be honest: in AF this is even worse, at least when there is one squadron in just one team, because squadrons in AF are even more deadly).

This is one example of that:

We start badly losing since the very first minute (look especially at kill stats!) and in the first minute I made the following statement in chat:

And subsequent events demonstrated that I was fully right.

Of course, since team composition should be largely given by a random factor, on average a player should be drawn on good teams as much as in bad teams. This could be the reality, although there are so often, so strange and so long “losing streaks” (similar to AF ones) that I’m inclined to think that is not true.
But even if it was true, it would be silly to say that “there is no issue here, because you have 50% chance to be in a good team”. Knowing since the beginning that your team will lose (or win) largely spoils the fun.


The infamous “losing streaks”.

A “losing streak” is a so long series of defeats of the same player’s teams that seems unlikely it happened by chance, considering that a fair (and even random) composition of teams should, in the long term, draw the player in teams on average neither stronger nor weaker than enemy teams (so the battle defeats/victories ratio should be, in the long term, around 50% for any player, regardless of his individual skill).

Do they really exist? The answer is a resounding YES.
Both in GF and in AF.

Do they happen often? According to my experience and a lot of complaints read on WT Forum, the answer is YES again.

Do they happen by chance? Nobody knows, but more I play WT and more I’m convinced they don’t happen by chance.
In other words, I no more think they are a statistical fluctuation, also because I don’t remember similar “winning streaks” so long and so often.

In one case I checked how long was my current losing streak, in GF AB: in a few days, I swear, I lost 32 battles out of 40!
In other words, in the same short period I lost 80% of the battles me and my teams fought!
Quite incredulous, I went on checking my percentage in the following days: same appalling results, after about 70 battles I was still winning just one battle out of five: 15 victories, 55 defeats!
Too much to believe in chance, also because similar losing streaks (even not always so incredibly long) happens quite often and, as I already wrote, they aren’t counterbalanced by significant “winning streaks”.

There is NO reasonable explanation that could be based on chance or on bad luck or on player’s skill and his individual performance.
Team performance is not so markedly hampered by a single player, even more if you average team performance on some dozens of battles. So, even the less skilled player with weak tanks/crews should win, as a team, about 45-50% of his battles, not much less, if teams would be honestly and fairly put together by the game, certainly not winning just 20%!
BTW, when I checked the teams during that streak (even if I didn’t check any time), I usually found markedly unbalanced teams.

Well, there is just another strange thing: that unhappy streak occurred to me while I was playing just with low BR French tanks.
Their weakness can’t be a reason for the incredibly poor victory percentage, since there were other French tanks in the enemy teams too and, on average, strength and weakness should be equally allocated in both teams.
However, my losing streak ended immediately when I changed my tanks with BR 2.7 Russians! I immediately started winning about 50% of battles, as one should expect, and with good personal performances (as expected too, since Russians are so much better than French).
Just while I was experiencing that, I read on WT Forum about other players’ experiences, telling of 80% defeats with low BR French tanks!
So, I have no doubt there is some link between those defeats and Tier I French tanks, it wasn’t a coincidence.

But if losing streaks don’t happen by chance, why they occur?
In my opinion because of some Gaijin-made P2W hidden mechanism that draw “cannon fodder” players (especially non-paying players) into weaker teams, on average, to ease the game for the usual advantaged and privileged paying players.

The interesting additional question is: are they trying to hide, at least partially, that unfairness by taking advantage (when they have the chance to do) of the intrinsic weakness of tanks and crews the player is using?
In other words, could it be that Gaijin exploits the fact player is using weak tanks/crews to even more frequently put him in the “cannon fodder team”, hoping that the gamer ascribes the defeats to the weakness of his equipment, so don’t realizing he has been fooled?

In the case of French tanks, they are so weak that could easily be a tempting occasion for Gaijin, since a player using those ridiculous vehicles is surely doomed if drawn in a poor team … if this would be Gaijin’s wish! And the player expects to lose, knowing he is using the worst equipment in game.
Low BR French tanks could give Gaijin a very significant helping hand to achieve the goal of making some players lose, to allow others to win, and having a smaller risk to raise suspects.
Weakest tanks/crews combination in game and worst (by far!) losing streak ever: just a coincidence?

So, losing streaks could be the most evident effect of an unfairly “programmed” team (un)balancing.

In many cases this not-at-all honest mechanism could be masked by a more clever victory distribution (if “allowed” victories would happen quite regularly, such as one every four or five battles, the player couldn’t figure it out!) but, since battle outcome is not realistically decided from the outside but just favoured, sometimes this doesn’t happen and its presence is leaked by “losing streaks”.

It’s just an hypothesis but the number of similar events is overwhelming, so naming this a “conspiracy theory” is just a sign, in the best case, of huge naivety.

Tactics? Which tactics?

I tried to do with tanks what I did with plane battles, i.e. watching replays trying to learn the individual tactics of the best players: unfortunately, I found almost no tactic.
A brutal fight of boxers, that start clumsily bumping into each other at the spawn area and go on with hide-and-seek where the more expert player usually win without real skill.
It seems to me that knowing the details and the hiding places on the various maps is much more important than skill.

Only tactics you can find in GF are those carried out by squadrons or organized teams (even in an improvised way). If a team, or a part of a team, works together as a whole then can sweep off enemies in a surprisingly short time.
If a team decides to put its effort on conquering a point, rushing in mass toward it, and is not opposed by the enemies by a similar mass action, it’s likely that after that it will conquer the remaining points too, shifting to them as a whole army.

This is why fighting as a squadron is so beneficial: four players deciding to focus on the same objective, at the same time mutually defending, have a huge advantage against solo players, even if the latter are more numerous.
Moreover, when team players watches a squadron of comrades acting as a whole and having success, they easily join them, increasing the power of the group.

Apart that, individual tactics in WT GF focused to advantage the team are quite limited.
In AF you can individually give a significant contribution to team victory by systematically destroying enemy bases, strafing ground targets, capturing airfields, staying on your base to defend it from bombers etc.
On the contrary, in GF the main tactics are devoted to individual player surviving, apart the smartness of conquering cap points careless left unattended by the enemies or placing the tank in a good sniping position and stopping enemy advance.

More oddities and idiocies ...

A strange and likely revealing peculiarity: whereas in Air Battle you can kill a friendly plane, in Ground Battle you can’t kill a friendly tank! If you hit a tank belonging to your team, it doesn’t suffer any damage. I suppose that this says something about the clumsiness of many GF players, especially newbies (me included, at that time!) but maybe not just them, shooting by mistake while desperately trying to drive their tanks in the crowd of comrades at battle beginning (it seems to me that many players don’t even know of “Driver assistance mode”, which make driving tanks much easier).
I suppose that Gaijin decided to avoid a probable number of friendly kills to prevent harsh controversies in battle!

But … wait! This doesn’t count for artillery fire!
If you ask for artillery support (which is, for all purposes, an additional weapon of your tank), those artillery shots can wound or even kill a comrade of you and give you a “friendly kill” SL deduction!
So, no friendly kill from your gun but, yes, possible friendly kill from your artillery! You can shot wide burst with a Gepard to a point where friends and enemies are fighting, being sure you’ll make no harm to comrades, but can’t do the same using artillery. Maybe there is some logic in that, but for sure not much coherence.

Don’t you have enough? Ok, this is another fault: it usually happens that if you fire a shot (a good, well aimed shot) and exactly at the same time the enemy open fire and kill you, your shot instantly “disappears”, no hit on the enemy tank! This is the great “smartness” and “realism” of Gaijin-made GF mechanics …

Last, another funny peculiarity of Tank Battle: tank bots! Yes, in addition to tanks driven by players you often find in battle a small number of tanks controlled by the game, on both sides. Why? I can’t understand why. In Air Battles the only bots are ground vehicles acting as targets. Anyhow, tank bots are quite dumb, not much dangerous and easy to kill (but their score value is low), it’s primarily a matter of being an odd situation.
And sometimes even a plane bot appears, as much as dumb and even less dangerous.




Do you want to know another funny thing? Very often the game merrily says “victory is close!” or “keep it up and victory will be ours!” just when your team is badly losing, e.g. when you are giving the enemy all the three capture points and your ticket level is no really better than their one!
I’ve even heard a “we no longer have the advantage” when … in a battle we never had any advantage, badly losing since the beginning!

I have to honestly say that even AF suffer of this fault, even maybe not so frequently.
If Gaijin’s system is not able to understand that you are not winning even in a so clear situation, why being surprised for the “smartness” of all the rest?

And there are programming bugs too, more than in Air Battles. The most common and most annoying one, in my experience, are client crashing at battle startup and, even worse, game screen spontaneously reducing itself to icon (!) just in very inopportune moments when playing with a plane in GF, often when doing sharp manoeuvres. I’ve lost several planes and missed several hits or likely kills just for that.
But the bug is not restricted to AF, I saw other cases where the program iconized just where I was giving fast commands against tanks, for example turning the turret at max speed to shot at a close enemy. You could imagine my reaction …
After all, what could be expect from a game (better: a part of a game, fortunately there are AF too) designed by incompetents, like WT GF? Could programming bugs have been missing?
Of course not.

Last but not least, amongst the many unpleasant characteristics of GF there is the quite low rewarding in battle.
This is a well-know “feature”, to the point that many play AF just to be able to transfer XP points to the corresponding tank crews, instead of directly playing tanks!

Just to end this sad list, it remains to be said that (of course) GF keep all the general and inacceptable shortcomings already seen in AF, such as the shortage in the number of available presets and the lack of a marker quickly warning the player that XP points are waiting to be assigned to a crew.

Idiots, idiots everywhere …





In conclusion, after a couple of years with planes only, I started to play ground battles too, because there are some interesting things in them (historical, technical), are a good diversion from airplane fighting, graphics is very good and from time to time I enjoy them, but for me there is no contest:
Air Battles are smart (enough), Tank Battles are really dumb.

And I’m afraid it’s likely a clue of the corresponding skill and smartness of WT GF designers and developers. I should be curious to know them but I’m scared about who I could meet …

In the end, I’m really tired of being fooled by such “geniuses” …

Air Battles seem as if they have been programmed by Albert Einstein, when compared to Tank Battles.

And that says it all about tanks in WT.

Last question.



However, I can’t abstain from a last fundamental question: are GF Gaijin’s developers really so inept OR, on the contrary, they simply implemented a cleverly thought (albeit illogical) game mechanics, specifically made to give advantages to Gaijin’s only?

In the latter case the real morons would be players thinking to play a fair game.

Really, I've started to understand a lot of WT "logic" when I started any reflection from the consideration (too much often overlooked, IMHO) that Gaijin is a business company.

So their first (and licit) goal is to earn the highest profit from the game, not pleasing players. Of course they can't afford to lose their customers without drawing more (or at least as many) at the same time, but you could bet that if they would think to be able to earn more even displeasing 70% of gamers to the advantage of the remaining 30% they would do it.

And likely they are doing that just now.

What's the sense in having an unfair game (as GF is today), ruled much more by tanks and crews strength (often bought with real money) than by gamers skill?

What's the sense in having a GF with an absurd scoring system where just being hit makes players collecting significant battle points and raising in the ranks? And having 1 kill, 4 assists that gives a better score than 6 kills, 1 assist (true, personally seen and more than one time)?

And, speaking about Air Forces, what's the sense in changing the once skill-rewarding AF in a bomber feast now ruled by spacebar warriors with steel planes and sniper gunners?

Well, one sense does exist: facilitating poorly-skilled players, better if they are long-time gamers (so being loyal to WT) and even better if they are paying players (so quickly spading and grinding vehicles, and quickly improving their crews).

Why they should be primarily worried to assure the delight of less expert players, with lower BR (and often still unspaded) vehicles and low-experienced weak crews, large part of them being free players?

Why they shouldn't have care primarily of paying long-time players, even those of them having poor skill (but strong tanks and crews), given that they are who pay their salaries?

Why they shouldn't use non-paying players as "cannon fodder" for Premium users (as they are now especially in GF), carefully designing game features to that purpose (from BR to crew XP assignment)?

War Thunder is an highly “artificial” game, where player’s performance largely depends by skill and power of crews and vehicles the gamer uses, at least as much as his personal skill (maybe more).

And that mechanism is purposely exploited by Gaijin to steer players toward choices (and performances) being advantageous for the company.

Having a very different game mechanics and being much worse designed and implemented (often to a shameful poor level, except the usual good graphics), GF is much worse than AF in game fairness, but the "logic" is the same on both. And this will last forever unless too many unhappy players will start to leave the game, depleting the gamer's base to an extent endangering WT survival.

All of that is fully licit, the important thing for a player is to be aware of it.
Unfortunately the game is full of deluded and unaware people. And also full of paying and Premium users not realizing that the game, especially GF, is highly advantaging them and disadvantaging free players, to an extent that makes skill counting very little.

It's up to Gaijin to decide if all this is good for their business. In my opinion it’s a quite short-sighted strategy and, for my part, this so strong unbalancing (especially in GF) together with a lot of faults and bad features leans me towards not putting money in the game.

But I have to admit that my point of view it’s not Gaijin’s one. Maybe they are right.
Maybe …


Another consideration is: could all those shortcomings be originated by the mere fact that Gaijin devoted too little resources on GF, respect to AF?
Frankly, the most part of them seems to me depending on choices consciously done, not by bugs or flaws due to scarce resources.
But lack of resources, if real, could have worsened things.


Up for debate.

Constructive criticism corner.

So, nothing is good in War Thunder Ground Forces?

I don’t think so.
Notwithstanding my several huge criticisms, there are a few good things:

· Graphics is excellent, as usual for WT.
Even at Ultra-Low Quality, gaming WT GF is an immersive experience. I never have the impression to be in a cartoonish world, differently from games as “World of Tanks”.
Sounds are good too.

· Tanks are rendered as much as well.

· The number of tank models is ample enough, although less than the number of planes in AF (I suppose that Gaijin has so far invested less resources in GF).

· The number of tank crews you can use in AB (three) is right, not too many nor too few.

· Contrary to the opinion of many, I think that planes in GF is a good idea in itself, it’s just very poorly implemented.

Are these “good things” too few for what one could expect? In my opinion, yes.

There are too many faults in GF to be really happy for so few good features.

Since Gaijin seems to encourage “constructive criticism” (there is a dedicated section in WT Forum, I don’t know how much really considered by Gaijin developers), I give here my advices for improving Arcade Battle for Ground Forces.

In my opinion, Gaijin should:

· Highly decrease the importance of Vitality parameter or, at least, make its increase as much easy and even faster as the other parameters. At present duels are decided at 80% by this parameter and not by player’s skill. This is a grotesque shame which fully deserves to be declared a really big idiocy.

· Fix the Damage Model, which now it’s often ridiculously wrong and not respectful of the published tanks armour and guns characteristics. No more armours invulnerable from shot fired at two meter distance, no more unharmed crews even when hit on their exposed back (in tank destroyers as the Marder) by a direct shot.

· In general, change the game to better respect players’ skill, instead of just favouring players’ experience i.e. crews level. No more players hitting first without any result and being easily one-shot killed by an invulnerable expert enemy. Tuning both Vitality and DM should favour to do that.

· Remove any likely existing “hidden” mechanism that, in addition to publicly declared ones (such as Vitality), purposely favour experienced / paying players. There are too many “strange things” in GF, such as “invulnerable tanks” and “invulnerable crews” even when hit from a short distance or incredibly long “losing streaks”, to abstain thinking that such mechanisms exist.

· Fix the kamikaze planes issue. It’s not true that delay fuse solves the problem, since players on purpose crashes on targets dropping bombs just a moment before the crash, much easier for them than skilfully drop bombs from a certain height, and 10 seconds delay is too little time for the tank to move. A suggestion: bombs unloaded by a plane crashing within 200 Mt from the bomb hit point, during the 10 seconds fuse delay, should be make ineffective. This would make useless crashing on the target after having dropped bombs at the last second. Such a check should be easy to do.
Rockets (and bullets) are a different thing because they hit in advance of the crash but hitting with rockets and plane gunshots requires much more skill respect than kamikazing with bombs, so I can't see an issue here. Making bombs ineffective with kamikaze behaviour would solve the problem.

· Use planes’ FM of Air Forces and not a “fictional” (and ugly) FM for GF.

· Allow the use of planes that player already has in hangar, with their level of spading and the “true” FM they have in Air Forces.

· Change the kill attribution mechanism for shooting down planes: a kill attributed just for having scored a mere single hit on a plane, which then crashes by itself, is simply stupid. A “critical hit” concept would have more sense (but it needs longer battles and more ammo) otherwise planes in GF will remain the present grotesque mockery of air battles.

· Allow longer plane battles if the player wants do that: an extension of plane time should be permitted, to allow a second gun reload and better fight than the present silly head-ons.

· Remove the use of medium bombers against tanks, those bombers are too much powerful and historically questionable.

· Absolutely fix the Score calculation! At present Score in GF is not only almost meaningless but fully unfair. Highly decrease the importance of assists respect to kills, highly decrease the rewards for being hit (!). It would be nice to add rewards for commendable behaviours, such as players that defends bases occupying key positions and impeding enemies advance toward the base.

· Decrease Matchmaking BR max difference, from 1.0 to at least 0.7, much better 0.5.

· Fix some clearly wrong BR assignments. For example, just an idiot could assign 3.7 to M24, 3.3 to a SU-122 etc.

· Decrease the effectiveness of “bush” camouflage. A fully invisible tank, just for having a bush on the front and even in a winter map, is not a realistic thing.

· Remove tank bots. They are useless, poor rewarding when killed and just add confusion on the map.

· And, for the love of God, fix that unbearable “bug” (?) that gave us “invisible tanks”!

Doing such fixes would make Ground Forces much better and much more similar to Air Forces.

I had to say that I don’t think Gaijin will never make any of this fixes, at least not the most significant ones.

WT GF is a pathetically designed and developed game, in almost all its features, and Gaijin is not even renowned for humility or for paying attention to players’ needs, so …

And now, after so many rants, some …

Tips and advices.

These are my tips for beginners tank pilots in War Thunder tank Arcade Battles (AB), tiers from I to II.

· IN SHORT (ALMOST) …

I’ll put here the advices I judge the most important for a beginner, the suggestions he should begin to follow immediately IMHO, such as I were quickly answering to a tips’ request in a forum:

o

Saying the untold: WT Ground Forces and the embarrassing issue about paying and winning.


First of all, have clear in mind this fact: differently from WT Air Forces, which all in all are a fair enough game at least up to Tier III, Ground Forces are without doubt a PAY-TO-WIN game, from lower to upper tiers.

Only morons could think that WT GF is entirely or mainly based on player’s skill.

The fact that there is a lot of morons around (WT Forum is full of them) doesn’t change anything.

The mechanisms used by the game to greatly favour paying players relies mainly, at least at lower Tiers (I-II), on crew XP (experience) level and especially on Vitality parameter. This is one of many things you usually don’t find to be said in WT Forum, just like poor effectiveness of BnZ in AB AF is a kind of “secret” almost never said.
Shame to the Forum.

Not only playing GF AB requires much less skill than AF AB, making GF almost a no-skill game, but Gaijin arranged things to greatly advantage paying players (even with poor skill) which:
1) can quickly maximize crews skill (by paying)
2) can quickly grind and spade tanks (by paying)
3) can benefit of the huge BR spread, quickly getting spaded tanks that become almost invulnerable (even more when coupled with strong crews) by lower rank and/or unspaded tanks
4) can benefit of the frequently unbalanced teams, where experienced/paying players are put on the same team against a much weaker team.

This way, paying players fight the most of time with tanks and crews almost “untouchables” by non-paying players. Tanks and crews able to hit quickly and lethally at first sight and able to resist to enemy shots. You can see incredible, “superhuman” things from paying players, such as a clumsy tank-destroyer, without any rotating turret, being able to aim, hit and destroy at the first shot a fast vehicle such a Gepard running fast on a bumpy terrain! This is true in AF too but the difference in capabilities between free and paying players is much bigger in GF.

Gaijin pretends to base the game on a sophisticated Damage Model (DM) that can be exploited by gamers’ skill but the observation reveals that the effectiveness of the fight is likely decided by general parameters linked to player experience and his vehicles/crews strength, much more than gamers individual skill, responsiveness and accuracy of shots. Some player started to realize that hitting in different points of the enemy tanks seems to have little to do with the outcome. It’s like having a “counter” that is diminished any time the player’s tank is hit and the counter for experienced/paying players starts from a much higher number, making them almost invulnerable against newbies.

Skill in GF really counts very little, almost nothing, unfortunately.

So, if you really wants to WIN in GF AB, you’ll have to PAY since the beginning (if you like to “have success” that way).

Otherwise you could have some good battle from time to time (especially if you are lucky enough to mainly encounter other newbies!) but on average you’ll lose much more frequently than in AF. Against a paying player with maxed crews and tanks, a beginner can do nothing. He can hit first just to see his enemy absorbing the shots without any relevant damage, turning the turret and killing him at first shot.
But against paying players even medium level non-paying players can’t do much.

How far could a non-paying solo player go up in GF battle score ranks?
Well, it depends a lot from factors such as tanks chosen, spading level of tanks and crews strength level, much more than from his skill.
In my opinion is very unlikely that such a player, let’s say at Level 50-60, with a couple of good enough fully spaded tanks on three and having crews at about 40-50 level of strength, battling at no more than BR 4.0-4.3, could hope to go much more further than 5^th – 7^th place in rank and 45-48% percentage of victories.
Of course, if he is lucky enough to have to face a team of enemies of the same or lower levels and in his team, too, the average players level is similar to his level (those conditions sometimes happen, but very unfrequently) it could even get the first or second place, now and then.
But, on the average, the most likely outcome for him is ending up in the lower part of the rank, i.e. from 8^th position down. This means having an average position in team of about 35-40%. This is much worse than in AF AB where, at BR about 3.0-4.0, he could hope to reach very frequently the upper half of the rank, and frequently the upper third, so having an average position of about 60% (and usually a victory percentage about 52-53%).

In both cases, AF and GF, going up in BR makes things even more difficult (and practically unbearable from Tier IV on from a non-paying player, both for the difference in strength between players and huge repair costs) but, at least, in AF under Tier IV a good non-paying player can still win more than he loses.
Not so in GF.
In fact, In AF the game under BR 4.0 is “almost” fair whereas in GF is always unfair, since the beginning!

A free player can’t do really much in GF when:
- his hits rarely one-shot the enemy, even if well-placed, whereas he is so frequently one-shot even by imperfect firing.
- any suffered enemy shot almost always suddenly stops his tank and gun, even when not all crew members have been immediately killed, whereas enemies stops just for one or two seconds before restarting to move and returning fire.
- he is so frequently drawn in a losing team.

He can no more than occasionally win against paying players that have everything (tanks, crews, incredible artificial “skills”, incredible resilience to shots, favourable teams, often squadron playing etc.) to be able to win 55-60% of their battles and having an average position in rank of about 65-75%.

Forget the naïve idea of reaching the top just improving your skill.
Forget the naïve idea of being able, just because of your skill, to be on par with paying players.
Things don’t work that way in WT and even less in WT GF.

It’s entirely clear to me that WT has been purposely designed by Gaijin to prevent non-paying players to reach the top.

This is evident when you consider stellar repair costs above Tier IV. Hindrances decreasing performance for free players is just another mean, and not less effective, to reach the same goal.
The combined effect of having hampered performances, both for having on average “free” inferior equipment (crew level, vehicle level) and untold mechanisms to put him in the “cannon fodder” league, and the markedly increased cost of repairs make that a free player has to stop his “career” around BR 4.0-4.3, both in AF than GF.
Of course he still can go up in BR but is almost sure he will start losing much more Lions than the earned ones.

This shouldn’t be surprising for anyone, considering that is a commercial game that relies on paying players to go on in business, so obviously holding them in high regard.

You should be able to understand that after a while if you didn’t started to pay. On the contrary, if you paid since the beginning (or just after a short time) you could be unable to realize how things go in GF, having already started to put yourself on the “winning side” (on the average, of course, and not being invulnerable) and leaving the “cannon fodder” league.

Please remember that being Premium it’s not the only way to be a paying player in WT and likely not the more relevant: you can buy Premium vehicles but just a few of them are superior to “normal” vehicles. It essentially allows you to progress much more quickly but just if you make the right choices about crews and vehicles. This explains why some say that being Premium makes no difference at all: evidently they didn’t exploited the advantage or are really unable to understand the advantage.
You can quickly improve crews and vehicles by paying even without being Premium.

Clearly, you should consider if it’s really convenient for you to put real money in a so much flawed game (GF) that, moreover, Gaijin uses to change very frequently and often in a detrimental way.

o

Don’t be a moron.

If you has played WT GF for more than six months and still believe it’s a fair, skill-based game, you are a moron (and a big one, BTW).
If you believe to idiots in WT Forum who say that WT GF is not Pay-to-Win, you are a moron.
If you believe to armour/penetration data given by Gaijin, thinking that duels are decided by them, you are a moron.
If you think that crew’s level is not so important, you are a real moron.
If you don’t believe that Gaijin could set-up the game just to maximize their income, not giving a damn about fairness, you are a moron.
If you think that Gaijin is willing to pay attention to players need, you are a moron.
If you think that Gaijin treats all players the same way, you are a (huge) moron.
If you think that Gaijin really wants to have balanced battles, you are one of the filthiest morons ever lived on Earth.
If you believe in Gaijin, you are a real moron.
If you think that your skill can overcome your tanks and crews limitations, you are a pathetic, childish moron.
If you think that the same tank has the same performance in a free player’s hands and in a paying player’s hands, you are a ridiculous, grotesque, hopeless moron.
If you usually try to ridicule players, which raised doubt about the game, by babbling about “conspiracy theories” and “tin-foil hats”, for sure you are a genuine moron.

Don’t be a moron.
Please.

o

The Dark Side of P2W?

There is a quite alarming possibility that being advantaged by paying to Gaijin it’s not the only way to be advantaged in game by the use of money.

In WT there is a long-standing debate about the effectiveness of cheats.
Gaijin officially says that cheating in an effective way is almost impossible in WT because all the calculations made to determine the mechanics in game are done server-side.
But Gaijin in 2017 admitted that several players have been banned for their use of cheats being able to give them server-side information, not given by the game to fair players.
So Gaijin itself acknowledges that at least some information extracted from servers could be used by cheaters.

The question is: what if not just information would be extracted by servers, for example to operate an aimbot (software allowing to automatically adjust aim) on client-side, but even reserved features residing on servers could be exploited? For example, features assigned to game developers to improve their aim for debugging purposes?
If a normal accounts could be transformed in such a privileged account, it could likely have big advantages over normal and honest players.

Does this happens?
According to some, the answer is yes.

Apart this possibility to escalate account privileges (which would be clamorous), there surely is a “dark market” on the web where unfair players can find pay aimbots and other cheats.
So, several “superman” you see in action in battle could have those abilities not (or not only) for having paid Gaijin but also for having paid cheats developers (usually with some dozens of dollars).


Just an example.

This is the list of the features of one of this aimbot, working both with planes and tanks, as declared by its creators (these information have been published on web).

It seems it relies on information extracted by servers, as one could deduce by the note regarding Features.
The “radar” part seems a “Tactical Map on steroids” but the real benefit could be the aim assist feature.

_________________________________________________________________________________________
Prices:

- 1 month $11.95 US

- 3 month $21.95 US

Features:

NOTE: ESP/Visuals positions are controlled by the server. If the target/person is not visible the ESP will not show them.

Aimbot : (Aim assist)[Plane and Tank]

- Active

- Aim at Allies

- Aim at Bots

- Aim at Planes

- Aim at Tanks

- Stick to target

- Predict Speed

- Predict Bulletdrop

- Auto Save/Load your custom Scale Values for each Unit

- Predict Speed

- Configurable Aimkey

- Max Distance

- Max Aim Angle

- Tank Prediction Scale

- Tank Bulletdrop Scale

- Plane Prediction Scale

- Targeting style (Distance, Crosshair)

3D Radar :

- Object Name

- Player Name

- Distance

- Type

- Box

- Show Allies

- Show Bots

- Show Planes

- Show Tanks

- Show Aimbot Target

- Show Aim Indicator

- Make Text Bordered

- Max Distance

2D Radar:

- Enable

- Show Allies

- Show Bots

- Show Planes

- Show Tanks

- Remove Box

- Lock to Radar

- Scale

- Size

- Transparency

- Max Distance

Misc:

- Circle Crosshair

- Enemy Close Warning

- Enemy Close Warning Distance

- Panic-Mode

- Panic-Mode Key

- Enemy Aiming Warning

- Enemy Aiming Warning Distance

- Crosshair Size

- Crosshair Color

- Auto Load Config

- Save Settings

- Load Settings

Anti-Cheats:
- Custom
_________________________________________________________________________________________

According to some people all of that is just a scam, others says it’s true but ineffective and others say it’s true and it works.
For sure, if it would be just a scam it would be a quite elaborated scam, with web site and a forum with a lot of users’ posts, some of them criticizing aimbot’s shortcomings.
And I’ve seen too many “flawless snipers” (even one being able to shot down an attacking fighter-bomber swiftly turning and firing with a 8.8cm Flak gun …) to dismiss the hypothesis that working aimbots do exist.

So I think they are real and likely work at least in some cases and for some players.



After all, it seems to me that even Gaijin believe (or knows) that cheats are real and likely are working.

Look at this April 30^th 2018 announcement (one of the several announcements of this kind that are periodically published on WT web sites):

PLEASE NOTE: they are not talking about frauds such as stolen codes to get Premium Packs at cheap prices and similar things (which are rightly prosecuted too).
They are saying that those banned players USED PROHIBITED CLIENT MODIFICATIONS!

And, although they are saying that “War Thunder mechanics are such that most forbidden modifications will simply not work or will at best provide extremely meager opportunities”, they also state that “[to discover cheaters] we use a highly effective algorithm. It is based on analyzing the difference in the behavior of players who have only legitimate information provided to them from the game interface and players who have information that contains more data - service data intended primarily for the internal needs of the game client”.

Do you think that it would be really possible to detect “the difference in the behavior of players” if the cheats would be just a non-working scam?
If they can detect a difference in behaviour, it means that a difference exists and if a difference is noticeable when using a cheat software … it likely means that it works!

Maybe even more significant: do you think that they had implemented a sophisticated algorithm to discover what they would know being inefficient cheating?
I’m really sceptical they would have done that, because a not-working or badly-working cheat would be detrimental just to naïve buyers of the illegal cheat software.

Could you think that Gaijin would spend money and time to discover cheaters that, using non-working software, would do NO damage to honest players nor to Gaijin itself?
Come on …

So, it’s quite likely that effective cheats (unfortunately) do exist.

I don’t know how widespread and how much effective those cheats could be, for sure this could be a plausible explanation for low level players fighting better than veterans.

Because one thing has to be perfectly clear to you (otherwise you’ll never understand this game and will go with the crowd of “naïve” players) :
in no way a Level 10 player can kill 10-12 tank in one battle if not heavily assisted by some “artificial” means.

This could be just a case of luck if it would happen just from time to time but, on the contrary, stats prove that those seemingly “beginners” constantly win at an unbelievable rate on several hundred battles.
If you don’t believe me, please read my Air Battles Beginner’s Guide at “DANGEROUS PEOPLE IN THE SKY TODAY!”, in “The Mystery of Low Level Aces”. Quite an impressive reading, isn’t it?

Only MORONS could think that is because their “skill”.
Since it happens daily, you can check it at almost at any battle and stats prove that, it’s not possible that we are talking about “lucky shots”.

So, the only thing to determine is if it’s P2W to Gaijin’s benefit or cheating, i.e. likely P2W to someone else.


Anyhow, I strongly advise you AGAINST buying and running such a software, be it effective or not:

- first for fairness
- second for the security of your account, your PC and the confidentiality of your personal info
- third because you could be banned by Gaijin if identified (it’s understandable that they are protective of their own P2W capability!)
- fourth … what’s the pleasure in becoming an “ace” just by cheating?


For other info, see my “Air Battles Beginners’ Guide” in Chapter “The (surely) infamous cheating issue”.

o

Tank technical data sheets: are to be taken seriously?

Please don’t believe too much in characteristics declared by Gaijin about armour strength, ammo penetration and weak points of tanks, otherwise you’ll go crazy in seeing how much often it doesn’t works that way in game!
I think that Gaijin has done an effort to build a sort of simulation but it works just to a limited extent, maybe both for bugs, negligence and lack of development resources.
There is no reason for a lot of behaviours, such as a Ho-I hitting four times a weak Ke-Ni on any part (turret, hill, tracks), with a quite powerful Type 2 HEAT at 200 mt, without being able to kill all the crew, which was just so slightly wounded to be still able to drive and shoot to me (it needed a fifth shot by me to destroy the tank making ammo to explode).
Just to report one of the endless series of silly things that happened just to me. I could bet that in other cases this faulty Damage Model advantaged me.

So, data declared in GUI’s tank cards are to be taken with a grain of salt and the same is true for info contained in War Thunder official Wiki ( https://wiki.warthunder.com ): a lot of info and advices there written are truthful and right but some are not.
How can you decide which are good and which bad? Just playing with those vehicles (until they are spaded too, otherwise their performances would be inevitably poor).
Since WT Forum is full of bullshits, even worse than WT Wiki, you risk to receive very bad advices and news asking there. So, it’s better to learn things from experience.

o

Want to know the game? Use anything.

If you want to become a WT GF “connoisseur”, try different nations and different vehicles, this will give you a wider perspective and will let you understand which tanks best fit your style. You could also be able to know weak points and bad features of enemy tanks, to be exploited at your advantage in battle.
That’s my choice, BTW.

o

Want to win? Use just the best tanks.

If you, on the contrary, just want to maximize your chances to win and survive, choose the best tanks at their BR, fully spade them and always use just them. For example, at BR 3.7-4.0 the safe choice is a line-up of threeT-34 (T-34 is a wonderful tank in real-life and in game, so effective in game, both offensive and defensive, that I call it “the tank of the cowards”!).
In general, Russians and Germans are “safe choices” at any BR and any tier, if your goal is “to win”. Especially Russians are a not debatable choice an in fact you’ll see hordes of T-34 and KV-1 at any battle in their tiers.
I find this “safe and steady” strategy very boring but this is just my preference.

However, no doubt that using, on the contrary, bad tanks will prevent you to reach good achievements. Likely just paying players could have acceptable or even good performances using poor tanks and even them would be relatively hampered by inefficient vehicles.
You can find in the following my personal and incomplete reviews for three lists of bad, good and so-so tanks.

So, remember that “Win = good tanks (too)”.
For example, no “normal”, non-paying and non-privileged player can really have top-performances using the incredibly poor low-Tiers French tanks or, for example, a Japanese lineup at BR 3.3 composed by M24 SDF, Chi-Nu and So-Ki (having to face, at that BR, much stronger T-34s, KV-1s, Pz IIIs, PZ IVs, Stugs etc.).
If you should find a player being able to have really good results with really poor tanks, you could bet it’s a paying/privileged player designated by Gaijin to be an “ace”.

o

Stay at the tiers you are good for!

Don't rush to upper tiers, where you would find many players much more expert than you, with much better crews and spaded tanks.
Such advice is even more important in GF than in AF, since in GF vehicle strength and crew experience are much more decisive than in AF.

Moreover, any existing P2W mechanism, declared or undeclared, designed to favour paying player seems to be at work in a pathetically shameless marked way at higher Tiers, maybe more than at lower levels.
In practice, a beginner that, maybe after one year of gaming, has managed to have fair performances at Br 2.0-3.0 could easily discover that shifting at BR 3.7-4.3 makes him being cannon fodder again.

Remember that crew strength, ruled by Vitality, is relative to the power of enemy guns at any BR: a Vitality level which is good for enduring shots from BR 2.0-2.7 tanks could be no good at all at BR 4.0.
But I have the strong suspicion that crews’ relative weakness at high tiers is “artificially boosted”, independently from declared guns’ strength.

A further inconvenient of rushing too early to upper tiers is that repair costs are higher, so if you lose many tanks (being “cannon fodder”) you’ll have to pay a lot and likely you’ll start to lose more SL than the earned ones.
As much as in AF, Gaijin allows you to easily gain SL, even without paying and without the need of great performance, just at the lower Tiers (I-II, max III). If you want go higher and going on earning SL notwithstanding repairs, you have to win a lot and to win a lot you have to pay.
Quite a simple business strategy, isn’t it?

So, carefully evaluate your performance and your crews’ experience at the present Tier and BR level before going up in tiers and Battle Rating.

BTW, Tiers II and III are considered by many no less amusing than upper tiers and not so much dominated by a few type of tanks (such as Tigers) as in those tiers.
So, staying for long at lower tiers/BR is not a penalty.

o

The need for spading or “how to transform a coffin-on-track into the terror of battlefields”.

Fully "spade" your vehicles (i.e. add modifications to your vehicles using RP points earned in battles until they are fully developed, at least tanks you like to use). A fully spaded tank is much more performing than a stock one. Your performance will ever be heavily hampered by using stock vehicles and some tanks in particular, for example the Japanese Na-To, are absolutely detestable under any aspect and almost useless when stock.

But even strong tanks can be ghastly to play when stock. Just to mention one, Pz.IV G with stock engine isn’t even able to turn in place when the ground is even slightly sloping! With a slow tank you can hardly capture a zone at the beginning of battle and you’ll ever be in danger in a lot of situations, especially when you need to cover.
Not to mention lack of artillery support, that means lacking of an additional weapon. Not to mention that if you haven’t FPE you are dead. Not to mention that stock ammo are often mediocre. Not to mention …

At the same time, remember that throughout the spading phase your still almost-stock vehicles will be so inefficient that your performance will significantly suffer. This happens even in AF but in GF is much worse. My estimation is that using stock or semi-stock tanks the performance is on average no more than 60% respect to spaded tanks.

So you have to spade you tanks but you’ll be really disadvantaged during the spading phase, which often is a lengthy affair, especially beyond Tier II.
Is it possible to avoid that? Yes, of course: you could PAY to instantly add modifications!
As usual in WT, this is the easier solution for becoming an “ace” ...

About modifications to apply to tanks, in roughly decreasing order of importance: FPE (to extinguish fires, absolutely necessary at the beginning but needed even later, without it you are usually dead), Parts (to repair your tank on field, without it you can’t do much more than hiding … if tracks still works!), Crew Replenishment (even more important with weak crews), Ammo (always grind and then choose the best), Adjustment of Fire (to improve the usually pitiful fire accuracy in stock vehicles), Engine (being as much fast as you can, always help) and then the others.

o

Choosing tanks.

Not all tanks are equally effective. Some of them are almost useless against any enemy (even the weakest ones) and are “good” just as cannon fodder, such as the Japanese Ka-Mi, or stupidly overtiered and so unable to survive for long at their BR (like M24 at BR 3.3) or have really crappy design such as the Archer.
Although I usually spade ALL of them (before leaving them forever in my hangar!), then accepting long periods of inferiority in battle, I had to advice against doing that if you really want to “win”: just as I said before, choose and use just the best tanks if you are really worried about “winning” and “protecting your stats”.

If the tank is both stock and weak, your performance will suffer twofold, even if you play skilfully. For example, if you use a weakly armoured SPAA and, worse, this is also stock, you could survive the battle if you move and hide carefully but at the end your battle activity will be low and your kills and hits even lower (if any): the most likely outcome is that you’ll finish in the worst quarter of the battle rank, even having done good for what your tank permits you to do.

You have to take into account another (somewhat surprising) fact: more you are skilled and more likely you’ll survive for a long time in a battle even with a weak tank, but this also means that you’ll fight for a long time (or all the battle) with an underperforming vehicle, so having quite mediocre performances.
So, speaking about battle score, it would be often “better” to be quickly destroyed with that tank and changing to a stronger one!
My advice here is: having three crews, start the battle with the strongest tank and leave the weakest as the last resource. This of course could be changed if you have a specific goal to play exactly that tank, for example to spade it.

A last note: you could find guys in WT Forum stating that good skill can make good even a bad tank. It’s a silly statement, a bad tank is a bad tank, point.
But it’s true that Gaijin-generated “artificial skill” can change a tank’s effectiveness in battle: an “artificial (paying) ace” can use a poor tank and have nevertheless an acceptable performance, just because the “RNG God” loves him. A beginner/non-paying player won’t ever be able to have so much success, his armour will be weaker, his crew easily killed and his gun won’t be able to penetrate even armours it should, according to “official” data.
Since there is a lot of these “wallet aces” in WT Forum you could easily be ill advised by them, even on tanks’ strength, because they don’t realize what’s happening when they successfully use bad tanks.

o

Choosing between tank species.

Not all kinds of tank are equally effective. Although it’s partly a matter of personal fighting style and preferences, it’s difficult to reach top ranks playing just with tank destroyers and SPAA.

If you use tank destroyers you have to deal with limited gun mobility (and in some cases with weak armour), being in great danger if there are nimble enemies at close distance. In this case you should find a good sniping point, possibly flanked by friends at near distance, but your battle activity at the end will likely be low.
And a low battle activity means a significantly lower score.
In addition, tank destroyers in WT hasn’t even artillery support!
Tank destroyers could be good in RB (Realistic Battles), where there are no markers to make tank positions evident, but in AB any tank close enough is easily identified so it’s very difficult to plan ambushes.

If you use SPAA, which are usually very weak, you should use their speed (many of them are fast) to harass enemy tanks with hit-and-run tactics, avoiding at any cost to be hit. In the meantime, you could target enemy planes flying above your zone. Since planes presence is random and the most of SPAA are at most able to get assists, just rarely getting kills against tanks, it’s unlikely the end score will be really high (even if in WT GF assists are well rewarded, so always try to put some shots onto any enemy tank, even the strongest ones, and hope that a comrade give it the finishing blow).

So, if you want to have the best performances preferably choose traditional and strong tanks with turrets, such as T-34s or Pz IVs.

o

Choosing your nation.

About which nation have the better tanks, as I already said Russians and Germans are, on the whole, the better IMHO. If you would force me to made a quick rank I’d say:

1) Russia: usually sturdy, good guns and ammo, many of them are quick and very easy to drive too. T-34s are likely the best tanks at their rank, KV-1 are strong and effective and several other tanks are good too. Russians are the easiest choice to win, on the whole you can’t go really wrong with them.

2) Germany: not always sturdy (for example, Pz IV around BR 3.7 are surprisingly poorly armoured) but with good guns and ammo. Pz III and Pz IV have to fear mainly Russians, other tanks such as Gepard, Wirbelwhind and Marder are fun and effective. Second best choice.

3) USA: strong enough (at least under BR 3.3), good enough guns, just acceptable ammo. An average strength nation, unfortunately their ammo are often not the best at their rank (small explosive contents).

4) GB: mixed situation, much improved after patch 1.75 at lower tiers. Some tanks are strong, some fast, many of them had poor piercing-only (no explosive) ammo until patch 1.75. Before that patch they were much less effective in damaging, having to use by far the worst ammo in game.
Then all changed, in a night: Gaijin decided to buff solid-shot ammo (to a quite ridiculous extent, the effect became the same of an explosive ammo!) and lower tiers British tanks, using those kind of ammo, suddenly became very, very dangerous for any opponent. This is for sure true until BR 3.0, beyond that level the strength of armours’ opponents greatly lessen their effectiveness (one thing is fighting T-28s, facing KV-1s is a totally different matter), which is however better than it was before.

5) Japan: mixed situation, some of them are good and really amusing to play, many other aren’t. A common drawback is the terribly slow turret rotation speed (at lower ranks), however guns are usually good, some almost exceptional for their BR such as 75 mm Type 3 (at BR 2.3). On the whole, Japanese tanks are weak, just like their AF counterpart, so it’s very likely to have much poorer performance with them than with Russian, Germans or Americans. They were the weakest nation before the arrival of French.

6) France: talking just about low BR tanks (from Reserve to 1.3), the situation is almost appalling. Some tanks, such as H.35, FCM.36 and the absolutely detestable R.39, are at the bottom of performance in the game, other are a little bit better (such as AMC.34 YR) but, on the whole, low-BR French are even worse than Japanese. Any Russian, any German, almost any other tank at the same BR or even lower can easily destroy those funny tin cans. If you really like to end battles at 14^th , 15^th or 16^th place in your team, choose French under BR 2.0 and your dreams will easily come true!
Avoid, unless you have a taste for defeat and horrible tanks.

7) Italy: so far, not enough experience for me to give opinions.

Of course this is just an averaged and rough rank, a good judgement should be done at least for any single Tier or BR range.

o

Shitty tanks.

I can’t avoid giving you a list of really shitty tanks, according to my experience and opinions of others too. You could even avoid spading them (unless you are a “spading fanatic” like me!).
Please note that the list is absolutely incomplete and judgements regard AB only and until Tier III included (i.e. tiers involving beginners). Listed BR are those set by Gaijin at the moment I wrote these notes, always check them because they could have been revised.

I have to add a general remark: sad but true, as in almost any other thing in WT and especially in GF, you have always to take into account the “ace/cannon fodder factor” set up by Gaijin.

I’ve encountered in battle a comrade that reacted to my statement saying WT GF is P2W, strongly denying that and saying that he was doing fine even with non-fully upgraded tanks. He ended the battle in second position in team and in the whole battle with 10 kills and being him just a Level 18 I replayed the battle to discover how him, being just a little bit more experienced than a beginner, managed to have such a good result.
Well, I’ve unveiled the mystery.
I was ready to see some example of very good skill in driving the tank, tactics, aiming and firing. Otherwise, I was also ready to see a case of good luck, or bad and suicide tactics by his opponents.
None of this.
He didn’t anything special, except surviving in a surprisingly effective way and using that survival (and an equally surprising effectiveness of his guns) to win.

The first tank he used in battle was an M4A3 (105) Sherman, with according to me is a bad tank in game, both relatively weak and with an ineffective gun (read below to understand why).
However, with it the player endured an impressive amount of hits, even on the weaker side of the hull and even when fired from 20 m, which damaged it but without giving any significant impairment to his capabilities.
As usual in GF, at least in low-medium tiers, the key to win is enduring enemy hits and being still able to fight, more than “hitting first”, and that was another example of that truth.

I carefully checked the server replay and its damage status display: that tank fought for almost five minutes with a lot of heavily damaged parts, red and even black!, and two crew members seriously wounded. Notwithstanding that, the tank never stopped, the gun never went out of use, it went on moving, turning the turret and quickly firing just as if it was untouched!
So, he could return fire and, incredible!, even its 105 mm was able to do a one-shot kill series!
He had three kills with that tank, whereas I’m sure, according to my experience, that I couldn’t have been able to survive even to the first hit in the same tank and I could have considered me being lucky if I had a single kill before being destroyed!

Do you know what it means being instantly stopped by a single enemy hit, being unable to fire, counting down repairing time while hoping not receiving the finishing blow? I’m pretty sure the most of you know very well that situation: being disabled at the first suffered shot.
It’s just when you should definitively realize that it can’t be a chance when you so easily are heavily damaged and handicapped (both tank and crew and even in heavy tanks such as KV-1s and Matildas) for frightening dozens of seconds, whereas the enemies usually can go on fighting just after a few seconds (if any).

That didn’t happened to him. The most he had to do is to use FPE once, which extinguished the fire in very few seconds, after that he was back kicking, alive, fighting and killing enemies.
What it happened was what you see when you hit well an enemy, maybe even with a declared “Critical hit” (one of the most ironic definition in game!), and he is still able to move, fight and return fire. Usually you notice that on enemies, in this case I checked the same being true to the advantage of a comrade.
It was as if “RNG God” protected him, both in defence and in attack phase, except I don’t believe in God and even less in randomness of shot effects in WT GF.
I can’t know the details, I don’t know how much strong were his crews, but it’s clear that comrade has been evidently put into the “winner” league (at least as individual, as a team we lost that battle for a thin hair at end), differently to me and the majority of players.

When you understand that, you easily understand why a poor H.39 French tank can do well enough if used by the usual “wallet ace” and why so many H.39 “Cambronne”, a Premium (i.e. paying) version (having no technical difference between the free version), so often do even better.
When you understand that, you won’t be surprised to see a cardboard-armoured M24 Chaffee driven by a “wallet ace” being able to endure several close-distance shots, whereas driving the same tank you would be killed at the first shot.

So, if you find that some tanks I’m here calling “bad” seems to be much better than my judgement, please take into account that WT GF is a such “artificial” and P2W game that a player, if designated to be a “winner” or having bought his “skill”, can do quite fine even with bad tanks.
On the contrary, all the other players … has to suffer!





75mm M3 GMC [USA, BR 2.0]:
how do you think a “tank” with “armour” of 6 (six) mm of “thickness” could behave in AB battle? Well, I think you can give an answer by yourself. Although it has a good gun, if you want to save you from despair, avoid it.




M4A3 (105) Sherman [USA, BR 3.3]:
by far the worst of the Shermans. You could be titillated by its 105 mm (wow!) howitzer until you use it: absolutely useless with the M1 shell but practically useless with the M67 shot too. With M67 the effect is usually poor but also quite unpredictable: 80% of shots you put on the target even at close distance (20-30 mt) can’t do any significant damage but a few of those surprisingly do, likely just when the enemy has a very weak crew. Data published by Gaijin for M67 penetration is 130/112/64 mm at any distance from 10 mt to 2000 mt, which is huge and which could theoretically be credible since it’s a HEAT shell (that don’t lose penetration over distance) but the fact is … it rarely works! It’s an obvious mistake that allows you to realize how this tank is neglected by Gaijin.

Add to this the extremely slow turret traverse rate, extremely long reload time, low muzzle velocity, a huge shell drop and the fact is very easily one-shot destroyed by shots hitting its ammo racks (even if containing very few ammo) and you should be able to understand.
Moreover, although max speed is not bad, its in-place turning ability is very poor, so you can’t effectively use stationary turning to compensate slow turret traverse.

Gaijin in his Wiki says “HEAT shell option with approximately 100mm of penetration even at long range, making it able to take on even KV-1 tanks frontal armor“. Pure bullshit. KV-1 are untouchable by this shit even when hit on the side armour at 30 mt!
Gaijin in his Wiki says “devastating against lightly armored tanks” but the truth is that you will have a lot of troubles even to destroy a T-50 at 10 mt!
This is a tank that can be effective (maybe) just against weak SPAA, even open tanks like Flak 88 or Marder are usually strong enough to endure direct shots from it. With this shit it’s much more easy to get assists than kills, even when hitting under 50 mt, so flank your comrades, hit first and hope they finish the job.
In real life, M4A3 (105) was intended as a support tank, not as a front-line attacker tank. So you could think it’s logical enough its being so poor against tanks (apart absurd data about armour penetration and the multiple bullshits Gaijin says).
And it could be true, however the absurdity is that initially Gaijin chose for it a BR 3.7 (in AB), which was fully demented (as usual …)!
It shouldn’t have a BR greater than 3.0 (2.7 would be fine), on the contrary at 3.7 it had to face tanks being able to easily resists to its shots and easily one-shot destroy it. A Gaijin-made disaster (as usual …).
Luckily, after some time Gaijin lowered its BR to 3.3, better but still way too much.

I heaved a huge sigh of relief when I finished spading it, then I gratified it with a “zero digit” decal (which I use as a black mark for bad tanks) and shelved it forever.
Absurd and useless gun and shots, fragile as a stem glass (but please remember my initial remark), clumsy as a sloth but over-ranked by idiots: it’s really significant of the overall stupidity of WT GF.




M24 Chaffee [USA, BR 3.3]:
quite fast and nimble (but you have to fully research Engine and any other engine-related modifications, such as Filters and Transmission, as soon as possible, otherwise it’s almost shit!), barely acceptable gun (with M61 ammo) but made of cardboard. It’s usually destroyed by any shot fired by any enemy, especially when having a not really strong crew.
In practice, in a game when enduring enemy shots is the most important virtue, it can’t resist a peashooter’s shot!
Moreover, even on the offensive side is much worse than expected when reading declared penetration data (look at the following review of its twin, the Japanese M24 SDF).
It has no sense if put at BR 3.3, as Gaijin did (previously it was even worse, to a fully idiotic 3.7!). Just filthy minds could have given it the same BR of a T-34. It should be good enough for capturing points, thanks to a good speed (when spaded) but just when … there are no enemies around! Otherwise, you’ll have to hide behind obstacles or heavy tanks in your team (please, if you want to closely follow a friend tank, warn him before doing that …).
Only really remarkable characteristic is a fast reverse speed (!), thinking a that you could easily understand how bad is this tank.
It’s absurd BR positioning It’s just one of the many examples of Gaijin’s idiocy.

However, if you really want to use this tank you should make use of its reverse speed, choosing a shelter and moving forward and backward between a shot fired and the following one.
Another suggestion is to use explosive M61 shot instead of the piercing-only M72 (which has more penetration power but overall makes less damage).
I really advise against using it, unless you want to test your skill in covering!





M24 SDF [JAP, BR 3.3]:
as Gaijin says in their Wiki, “this Japanese vehicle is identical to the American M24 Chaffee”. First think to know, this is one of the biggest fabrication of history ever made by Gaijin: some M24 were given by USA to Japanese Ground Self Defence Force just after the war, so no Japanese tanker used them in WWII. This isn’t a case of a “captured vehicle” put in tech tree: it’s full fiction, no M24 ever fought in Japanese Army during the war. Likely Gaijin did that just to fill a hole in the Japanese tree.
Apart this, it has the same BR of the American M24 and, of course, all its shortcomings remains in the Japanese version. At BR 3.3 you’ll face so much better tanks that rarely you’ll be able to kill them or to survive for long.

As usual for this imbecilic game, things are really even worse than you could think they are on paper. For example, its gun is particularly inefficient. Do you think that M24 SDF gun can really penetrate 109mm at 100m, as the stupids in Gaijin say? Think again, I fired three M72 shots at zero distance and 90° angle against the turret of a Russian SMK without any penetration. And, yes SMK is a heavy tank but its turret has “just” a 60mm armour, which should have been easily pierced by an AP ammo! Of course, SMK was driven by the usual “wallet ace” …
According to my experience, it has one of the most unreliable gun when compared with what it should be able to do according to Gaijin’s data. As I wrote for the American version, it’s better to use M61 ammo, at least you have some more chance to kill enemy crew or making enemy tank exploding.

Poor kill capabilities, easily killed, even a poor and slow MG quite ineffective especially against planes.
A quite bad tank even when spaded, very bad when stock.





So-Ki [JAP, BR 3.3]:
I have to mull for a while over the placement of this SPAA, in “bad tanks” or in “so-so tanks”.
In fact, it has one good enough feature: its double 20mm cannons are effective enough to make some consistent damage to medium tanks if used in close range (forget being able to do it with heavy tanks).

However, it’s difficult to use it against planes, because its rate-of-fire is quite low and the turret rotation speed is not good enough to compensate that. If a plane attacks you foolishly flying just in the same direction your guns are pointed, it’s very likely dead (but likely your So-Ki will be destroyed by its crash, too!). But when you have to use deflection shooting, it’s much more difficult than with the most of other SPAA.
So, we have a vehicle not really good to do what it has been designed for and good enough against tanks just against some tanks and in favourable situations.

Moreover, it has a low-power engine, making it quite slow on rough terrain (where it struggles to reach 20 km/h!) and making more difficult to move in battle. Having difficulty in movements means being an easier target and since it’s an open vehicle and has practically no armour that means being easily destroyed at the first shot by any enemy, from the ground or from the air (even a fighter with just MG can kill the whole crew with a short burst).
It’s really weak against kamikazes too, likely one of the vehicles more prone to be hull-broken (death by kamikazes breaking the hull of the tank).

Of course, a nearby-exploding artillery shot is always deadly too!

So, all considered and even if sometimes it’s fun to use, I think it’s a really bad tank, especially at the absurd BR 3.3 the idiots in Gaijin placed it (please note that the infinitely better Wirbelwind is just at 0.4 more!).
I finished spading it, then I gave it my personal “black mark” for bad tanks, i.e. a “zero” digit (just to remember to avoid using it in future …).





M4A2 Sherman [USA, BR 4.3]:
a very disappointing tank, especially for its BR. As correctly (for once!) Gaijin says in its Wiki, the 75mm gun is just “decent” at its BR (and that’s an optimistic view) and the armour is quite weak. You’ll suffer a lot of immediate deaths if you expose yourself with this tank. Practically any suffered shot from medium distance is enough to damage it (and the crew) so much to leave it stopped an unarmed. Add-on armor you can grind when spading is a useless joke.
If you are used to play aggressively, with this tank you simply can’t do that.

It’s an extremely frustrating tank that at first glance seems “big, powerful and sturdy” whereas is just “big” (enough), forget about powerful gun and toughness.
Any Pz IV or T-34 or KV-1 will easily kill you whereas you’ll have a lot of difficulties to destroy them, even if having a lower BR, such as Pz IV F2 or T-34 1942.
Any BR 5.3 tank that you could encounter in battle, such as IS-1, will pierce you like a hot knife into a stick of butter whereas you won’t be able to damage it at all.
But almost any other tank MM could put against you can kill you, a Pz III M (BR 3.3) can endure your full frontal shots and one-shot kill you and even a Crusader Mk III (BR 2.7) with its poor non-explosive shots can be dangerous!
In practice, it’s a clearly overtiered tank that should be put at no more than 3.7 just like the “normal” M4 Sherman.
If you really want to use it, at least fully spade it and use artillery any time you can. But my advice is to shelf it because it’s one of the worst choice at that BR.




ASU-57 [USSR, BR 4.0]:
one of the weakest, really thin-paper tank in game (hull: from 4 to 6 mm, turret: 15 mm!!!), can be destroyed by a slingshot. It’s low profile is good for RB but useless in AB.
A “coffin on tracks” tank.




Ho-Ro [JAP, BR 1.7]:
a disaster of a tank destroyer. Clumsy, with a weak armour, very limited gun movement angle, heavy recoil (requiring aim adjustment after any shot) and a ghastly reload time (25.4 s !!!) it should be considered just a mobile howitzer to stay behind a hill.
Avoid.




Chi-Ha Kai [JAP, BR. 2.0]:
although if opposed to weak enemies it could seem good enough and the usual Gaijin’s Wiki praises its gun (well beyond its merits), after having used it for a while I dislike it. It just suffices to fight at BR 2.3 (just 0.3 more than it’s BR) to be usually overwhelmed by almost any other tank. It’s slow, having a bad acceleration due to a underpowered engine that makes it’s much slower than you can think looking at its max speed (99% of times I’m not able to capture a point with it at the beginning of the battle, because too many comrades already arrived at it well before me!). As usual for Japanese tanks of similar tier the turret movement, simulating hand cranking, is extremely slow, making it more a tank destroyer than a tank, with the difference that … it rarely destroys enemies! It also has a very weak armour, so it has almost no hope against Pz. IV, Stugs or Sturmpanzers but also against T-70, T-80 and the most of other tanks around its BR. A Gepard can kill a Chi-Ha Kai whole crew with just a single burst.

Gaijin’s Wiki stupidly says it’s “lethal in the right hands”: pure bullshit. A very good player, best with a very experienced crew, could have some limited success against less experienced players, before being destroyed, but by no means this tank can be called a “lethal weapon”.
It’s a weak, slow, clumsy, almost harmless tank starting just at medium distances and which is suicidal to use in a close combat because of the slow turret and almost non-existing armour, so fighting with it is a very frustrating exercise. Unluckily, there are very few good Japanese tanks around BR 2.0 so it’s not easy to find a substitute.




Chi-He [JAP, BR. 2.3]:
similar to Chi-Ha Kai in disappointing characteristics, it has just a little bit better frontal armour and a more powerful engine, not enough to really change things. So advices against it remain the same.




Pz.IV J [GER, BR. 4.3]:
whereas the Pz.IV series is, in general, good enough, this particular model is deservedly ill-famed in game. In real-life it was a simplified version of the previous and much better Pz. IV H, to speed production in order to replace heavy losses suffered by Germans.
One of these simplifications was the removing of the electric engine that rotated the turret in the previous versions, so the turret has to be rotated manually. This means that turret traverse speed is abysmal: about 4°/s instead of the 8°/s of model H and almost 13°/s of model G! In practice, it’s worse than the already very bad speed of Japanese hand-operated turrets!
Add to this a weak armour for its BR and you’ll easily realize why so many players despise this tank. Fighting with it, especially at close range, it is more a suicide than a battle, since it has a gun mobility almost as bad as a tank destroyer but without having a low profile and it can be destroyed by practically any other tank at its BR end even by several tanks of lower BR.
Only good thing it has is the good gun … if you manage to use it before being killed!

It’s a very bad tank even when spaded but at stock is one of the worst nightmare you can have in GF (with stock engine it even struggles to turn in place!).
In fact, is one of the very few tanks I’ve almost decided not to finish spading (well, with great strain I spaded it at least …).
Since at present there are not really many German tanks at BR 4.3 (there are good tank destroyers at that BR, such as StuG III G and 88 cm Flak, but few tanks) you could be tempted to use it to stay at that BR, in that case be prepared to suffer.
My advice: avoid it and use instead the much better model G, same BR, which has practically the same gun, same armour but a hugely higher turret traverse speed (and this alone makes a fully better experience).
Otherwise, use model J like it was a tank destroyer: hide and snipe, trying to be usually covered. And don’t forget to grind, as soon as possible, “Horizontal Drive” modification for the model J, that slightly improves turret traverse speed.
Of course (have I to say it?) the inveterate idiots in Gaijin gave the same BR to J and G model …




Hotchkiss H.35 (FRA, Reserve):
yes, it’s a Reserve tank so you shouldn’t expect good performances, but this is judged by many (me included) as the worst Reserve tank so far appeared In WT GF.
It has almost nothing good, apart a passable armour for its BR and a good enough turret rotation speed: no gun, no ammo, no speed, no good handling. Just two crew members, so it’s easy to kill at once its whole crew, especially a weak level crew.
Although its armour is not bad, it can nevertheless be pierced by practically all other Reserve tanks (let’s alone tanks from BR 1.0 to 2.0) at close-medium distance whereas its very poor gun and ammo are unable to perforate almost any other tank. Its “best” performance: no more than 36 mm at 10 (ten) meters, 90° angle!
If you consider that a T-26, a BT-5 or a Pz.III B, all of them being Reserve tanks, at the same close distance could penetrate from 60 mm to 90 mm (depending on ammo), you can easily understand why the short barrel gun and its ammo are the worst feature of an overall very poor tank.
In real-life H.35 was designed as an infantry support tank, not to battle against other tanks, so for once its in-game performance it’s quite realistic!
Even mobility is poor: very slow (31 km/h max!) and an engine so weak that, especially when stock, it’s difficult to climb low hills and turn in place.

One favourable characteristic could be its small size, that means a small target. However, please remember that is quite dubious that WT GF really respects all “realistic” parameters, target size included at least when seen from medium-great distance. I’ve seen the usual “supermen” in game aiming and one-shot destroying an H.35 at 600m in the blink of an eye, just by having the gun pointed in the right direction and apparently without having to make aiming corrections. Again, don’t be fooled by Gaijin’s statements and by this unfair game, so don’t count too much on H.35 (or any other tank) to be a difficult target because its being “small”.

In some way it’s an interesting tank to play with: you can discover how much well you can play with the weakest tank in game!
Of course, don’t expect to win (unless you really are an “advantaged superman” in game). Some hits, assists, maybe a zone capture and (if you have some luck) an occasional enemy plane hit by its machine gun if he directly attacks to kamikaze on you (so giving you a victory if he has been hit!) are the most realistic expectations.

His successor H.39 (BR 1.3), with a better engine and better gun/ammo, is for sure preferable, as much as the other Reserve tank AMC.34 YR (less armoured but faster and nimbler, better gun and a much better ammo).
But even H.39 is a very mediocre tank and at that BR is easily destroyed by almost any other countries tank.
My only doubt is about the Premium version H.39 “Cambronne”, which seems to me better than the “plain” version (especially about resiliency), but this could be the effect of being usually played by paying players.




FCM.36 (FRA, BR 1.0):
one of the most pathetic tanks in game (if you really want to consider it a “tank” ,,,).
Even slower than H.35 (max speed 26.6 km/h!), with the same pitiful “gun” of H.35 (so being unable to damage any enemy unless being really in contact), same just 2 crew members (so you are one-shot dead 90% of times especially with a weak crew), it’s quite incredible it has been put at BR 1.0 and not at Reserve.
Avoid using it, even the Reserve AMC.34 YR is better.




R.39 (FRA, BR 1.3):
if H.35 is likely the worst Reserve tank in game, this one is likely the worst tank that Gaijin (absurdly) gave it a BR 1.3.
According to Gaijin it should be more performant than FCM.36 since the gun is a little bit more powerful and the armour a little bit better.
But other characteristics, such as gun vertical guidance, are worse and, above all, it’s even slower, slower than a sloth (max speed 22.2 km/h!!!), because it has a pathetic 109 hp (!) engine (about half the power of the most low-BR French tank, apart H.35 that has 90 hp) that make it struggling with the smoothest hill and even when trying to turn in place.
Moreover, it has just AP ammo, no APHE, and this, coupled with a very poor gun, makes almost impossible to kill any enemy apart in case of lucky circumstances.
It’s a very tiny tank and you can become aware of that by looking at it side-to-side with an FCM.36 which is, surprisingly, “bigger” than the R.39. As I already wrote, you can’t count really much on this smallness to survive.
More than a “tin can” it’s a “thimble”, but a very weak one. With a low level crew you can be sure to be immediately destroyed for “crew knocked out” by any suffered it, either good or bad placed.
It could be barely acceptable to have it at BR 1.0 (really, according to its performances it should be a Reserve tank), on the contrary putting it at 1.3 is an absurd joke.
Really a good candidate for the “Worst Tank in Game Award”, not just at its BR.




AMR.35 ZT3 (FRA, BR 1.0):
a so-called “tank destroyer” whose only noteworthy quality is a very good speed (65 km/h when fully spaded but good enough even at stock).
Apart that, no armour (max 13 mm) and just two crew members means that you are dead when touched with a stick. Moreover it has a very limited gun traverse, so it not easy to exploit its not-so-bad gun.
Ideally you could think to use its speed to attack enemy at flanks, in practice you’ll be easily killed by anyone before succeeding to close the distance.
Just another example of the mediocrity of low-BR French “tin can”.


(to be continued …)

o

So-so tanks.

This is a personal and incomplete list, like the “bad tanks” one, of some tanks that are “bad enough” to require caveats, even not so bad to be inserted into “bad tanks” list.
Or, otherwise, some tanks with some good characteristics but being not so good overall to be inserted into “good tanks” list.




Sd.Kfz.234/2 “Puma” [GER, BR. 2.7]:
a peculiar light vehicle with wheels instead of tracks, has a good cannon and exceptional speed. However it’s less nimble than one could think and clumsy off-track. Driving it is more difficult than expected and often irritating, even in “driver assist mode”.
Having wheels instead of tracks means that it can’t turn in place, differently to a tracked tank. In crowded maps into narrow streets and squares within buildings this can be a not negligible handicap, especially if enemies are close. Moreover, if you make sharp turns at high speed it skids a lot, so you can easily bump into buildings and the such. And if you bump into something and stop your Puma, you could find yourself in a very difficult situation while trying to disengage, just because you can’t turn in place.
It’s not an entirely bad tank but you have to bear in mind that it has almost no armour (very vulnerable from planes too), it’s not great off-track and it’s not so much nimble.

Its best use could be, thanks to its speed, capturing those points where enemies can’t arrive before your team, because those points are much closer to your spawn area.
Any other action approaching enemies at close distance have a great chance to end in your immediate destruction.
In general, I can’t advice using it although sometimes its speed make it fun (until you are hit …).




AMR.34 YR (FRA, Reserve):
this tank has at least one good characteristic: although being a quite weak Reserve French tank it’s better than almost any other French tank at Tier 1, even the ones at BR 1.0-1.3!
And this justifies the inclusion in this list, to warn you that it’s more convenient using it than almost any other French tank you have in hangar for that tier.
In my opinion it’s much better to use this instead of H.35, FCM.36, AMR.35 ZT3 or the horrid R.39.
It’s fast enough, nimble enough, with a decent turret rotation speed and, luckily, has APHE ammo that makes a great difference for killing enemies.
In the first Tier there is no better French tank apart H.39, which is not much better than this anyway (if any) and has just AP ammo.
Be careful about its weak armour and try to exploit its speed and good ammo: I’m pretty sure you’ll never have good times with lowest tier French “tin cans” but this one is not so awfully bad as the most of others.




Cromwell V [GB, BR 3.0]:
Cromwell V and its elder brother Cromwell I [BR 3.7] are two “good enough” tanks that the solid-shot buff made by Gaijin in 1.75 patch changed in good ones.
But, really, this is true just for Cromwell V, because the model I has an uptiered BR (3.7, certainly too high for its performances) so it has to fight against much stronger opponents.
Model I, when compared to V, has a just marginally better gun (if any and just using the slightly better Mk.5 HV shots) and, above all, is faster (incredibly fast!) but these advantages are adversely out weighted by the 0.7 BR difference. In short, Cromwell I has no advantage against its usual opponents, astonishing speed apart, often has issues in penetrating their armour and can be easily destroyed by them.
No doubt, Cromwell I is a fun tank if you exploit its incredible speed (72 km/h!) but its performance in battle heavily depends by opponents’ BR: meet a T-50 (BR 2.7) and you should do fine, encounter a Pz IV H (BR 4.7) and you will likely die at the first shot.

So, the true worthwhile tank of the two is the model V, if you keep your preset BR not higher than 3.0 (this is essential!).
Please, even if you could be tempted to do, don’t use both V and I in the same preset, because rising to BR 3.7 could much more easily bring into the battle KV-1s or Pz IV, M18 or M6A1 tanks, all of them really dangerous for the Cromwells (which aren’t strong tanks) and/or difficult to pierce.
Although not as much speedy as the model I, even the V is fast enough to make it an effective point-capturing tank: always make use of that quality in maps where you can safely capture a nearby zone at battle start, arriving there amongst the first in your team and practically without any risk (such as Jungle).

Use it carefully planning your overall BR and always having in mind that it’s not really resilient, if you do that you’ll have a winning tank in your hand against the most opponents around BR 2.3-3.0 … until Gaijin keeps the present solid-shot strengthening.
If Gaijin in future would reduce solid-shot effectiveness, as it has been for years, Cromwell V would go back to being just an average tank for its BR, nothing more.




Matilda Mk II [GB, BR 3.0]:
Matilda is a strange tank: in many ways I should say it’s a “bad tank” (slow, with a quite poor gun) but quite often it shows to be useful for the team.
It has a good armour but better on paper than in the reality of game, IMHO, also because some weak spots weaken the front. If you use it with a medium-low strength crew, you’ll be often one-shot killed, just as it happens with other heavy tanks used with weak crews. However, if you use it carefully (i.e. trying not to be outflanked) you could behave as a good support tank for an advancing team and a good captured point defender.
Unfortunately, having a poor 40 mm gun it’s much more likely you’ll get assists than kills. You could try to close distance with enemies but this will expose you to much danger and, on the contrary, if you stay away it’s difficult to destroy enemies. After all, it’s an infantry tank, i.e. a support tank, not a “tank destroyer”.
Slowness (even more on uneven terrain) is another big drawback, also because makes practically impossible to run capturing zones at battle beginning: always several comrades will arrive well before you!


(to be continued …)

o

Good tanks.

This is a personal and incomplete list, like the “bad tanks” one, of some tanks that on the contrary I found to be good, sometimes beyond my expectation.



Ho-Ni III [JAP, BR 2.3]:
it’s an improvement of the already good enough Ho-Ni I (which is quite similar in use and characteristics, although weaker, at BR 2.0). Even if gun’s mobility is very limited (but is fast swinging!) for this tank destroyer, it’s fast and agile enough and, above all, its gun is amazing at its BR 2.3, great punch and fast reload rate. It’s so good, nimble and usually lethal at close and medium distance that I’m always tempted to use it as a real tank (and often I do, many times with surprising results)!
Really, since its armour is quite weak and gun has only a small usable angle, making it risky to use at close distance, try to stay sheltered as much as you can, especially if you have a weak crew. If you attack at close distance, use its decent speed and good agility, trying to hit first. The gun and its ammo (Type 1 APHE) are so powerful that a well-placed shot at close distance is usually a one-shot kill.
I’ve used it with success even in a BR 3.3 preset (a full 1.0 higher!), since at close distance it’s able to kill even KV-1s!

It has no artillery support (a lack that is the norm in WT GF for tank destroyer), otherwise it would even more dangerous.
It’s main shortcoming is the weak armour: although the fighting compartment is fully closed, almost any single hit (sometimes even artillery splinters) immediately wounds gunner or driver or, often, both of them or more. At that point you are static and unharmed i.e. cannon fodder: if no comrade helps you, you are dead.
His predecessor Ho-Ni I is even weaker, to a frustrating level of fragility.

My other caveat is: pay attention when using it in Berlin map, especially as static tank destroyer. I don’t know why (maybe because its tall profile?) but I never had great success with it in that map. In Berlin, it’s likely better to use it as a tank, moving into the grooves (so staying covered) and attacking points such as the Reichstag point. It can be great in any other map, particularly Korea (remember to shoot thru the buildings!) or Ash River.
On the whole, it’s for me one of the more amusing tank destroyers in game, maybe THE most amusing, belonging to a tank category that usually I don’t like really much.



T-34, all models until Tier III [USSR, BR from 3.3 to 5.3]:
well, I’m not convinced I need to put T-34 in the “good tanks” section since any player should have already realized that!
Really, what has been one of the best tanks in WWII (if not “the best”, all things considered) is one of the best in game (and it shouldn’t be a surprise, even more considering that Gaijin is a Russian company!).
All of the many models of T-34 in the lowest tiers are “so good” that my definition of it in game is “the tank of cowards”!
In fact, with such a vehicle even a mediocre player can have good results, since a lot of his opponents use different and weaker tanks anyway.

T-34 is fast, nimble, well-armed, well-armoured and with a cleverly sloped shape that causes a lot of ricochets. In many cases it seems almost invulnerable against shots fired by close distance, even if the declared data for armour and armour penetration could make you thinking it shouldn’t.
Its speed causes problems to slower enemies and, coupled with a good resilience, makes it one of the best tanks for capturing zones too.
All kind of gun mounted on it is a great gun, with great ammo, dangerous for any enemy tank at its BR level.
This tank it’s even sexy-looking!

You can’t go wrong with this tank. One of the best possible presets in game is a three T-34 one, from BR 3.3 to 4.0, all spaded.
So easy that it’s even “too much easy” to reach the higher positions in battle ranks. That’s the only reason why I often use other tanks around BR 3.7: no challenge playing with T-34 only!
But if you are “obsessed by winning”, you could settle down on such a preset and you should do fine.
My advice? Don’t be obsessed by winning, especially in WT GF if you don’t pay!, and play with many different tanks, even the many models much weaker than this, and learn more things although winning less.
However, it’s up to you.



KV-1, all models until Tier III [USSR, BR from 3.7 to 4.3]:
in WWII, KV-1 series received mixed judgements, since they had great armour but a gun that wasn’t better than those mounted on Russian medium tanks, were difficult to steer, too heavy (at the point of being unable to cross some bridges without making them collapsing) and were not much reliable. In WT GF game, however, their qualities shine and some of the shortcomings are not simulated (like manufacturing defects), so KV-1 is a very good tank until Tier III.
According to many players it’s even OP (overpowered) in game and in my opinion they are right.

Being slower but better armoured than a T-34, its typical play style is quite different. Take advantage of its armour to absorb enemy hits (it will give to you several points just for being hit!) and support your comrades in their advancing, but beware not to be flanked because explosive shots received on tank side could make ammo or fuel exploding.
Its gun is nothing special but good enough and reload rate is acceptable, so by being so much resilient (if your crew is strong enough) you’ll be able to fire many times against the same enemy, even in open field, and at the end destroying it.
There are several KV-1 types but recommended play style is substantially the same for any model, even for the “lighter” and faster KV-1 S.
A recommendation: however well armoured, a KV-1 can’t fully protect a weak crew. So, if you have a Level 10 crew expect to be quite easily killed even in a KV-1. It’s the usual artificial mechanism set up by Gaijin, where crew’s “strength” counts as much as tank’s armour and increasing Vitality is … vital!

A mixed T-34/KV-1 preset around BR 4.0-4.3 is a good choice for winning a lot, playing with two of the best tanks in game, each one with its peculiar (and somewhat complementary) characteristics.




(to be continued …)

o

Tirelessly increase crews experience using XP points.

It's not just you that's fighting in the battle, you fight thru your crews. Experienced crews are much more effective. Your performance will ever be heavily hampered by using unexperienced crews.

To gain XP points you have to fight with any crew you want to improve (you can’t gain XP for unused crews!) and earn RP points: XP are given according to a given percent of the earned RP.

At the beginning Gaijin allows you to increment crew experience very quickly and without the need to have great performances to earn XP points.
However, more you go on playing and more difficult (i.e. less frequent and more performance demanding) will be to increase that, sometimes with a disheartening, obscure and perplexing slowness in the allowed increments.
If, in addition, you have no RP booster active (XP points are calculated as a percentage of gained RP points) thing go even slower.

Although sometimes frustrating (often you’ll find you haven’t given any new applicable XP points even after quite good battles), you have to incessantly increment crew XP parameters any time you can and you have to do it well, i.e. giving priority to add points to the most convenient parameters: neglecting in doing that would be a capital error, although many players, even experienced ones, seem to underestimate the importance of this.

A good goal could be to increase any crew experience level for any nation to a value allowing acceptable performance.
There could be a step at level 20, which is already much better than below, but the first really acceptable value is 40, IMHO.
So my personal goal in the first year or two in GF was to increment all my crews, for all nations, to level 40 at least, it was a nice way to make a sense of a so often silly and unfair game.

Gaijin allows you to increase it when you have gathered enough unused XP points, the exact mechanism is undeclared AFAIK (after a very good battle results you usually can increment some parameters for the crews which did well but sometimes you have to wait for longer).
Of course, XP boosters (given by RP boosters) are important too: don’t forget to activate them!

Note that until a few years ago Gaijin gave us a marker on the crew icon to signal to player that there were unused XP points ready to be applied. After a while Gaijin removed that marker.
Why they did that? In my opinion, it’s clear: Gaijin has no interest in facilitating players to improve their performance for free, so they are happy if gamers forget to increase crews’ capabilities. Therefore they removed the reminder marker.
They set up a mechanism that allows players to gain XP for free, but after a while the rate of free increase become so slow to effectively separate free players (the “pariah”) and paying players which bought “skill” for their crews. Paying players don’t need a reminder marker because they explicitly paid for XP, so the marker removal was done to further undermine free players performance and advantage paying gamers.

Nothing illicit but, please, remember that any time you find out some strange “change” in game it’s very likely it has purposely been done just to Gaijin’s advantage.
So, try to remedy to that behaving in smart ways, in this case applying XP points as soon as you can do it.
After any battle spent one minute of your time to check XP points for any crew and apply if any.


Give priority to Vitality (especially for Gunner and Driver) and Tank Commander Leadership, anytime you have the chance to increase them.

Vitality is extremely important at the beginning (and somewhat important even with BR 4.0 tanks) and Leadership is important because it improves the skill of any other crew member.

If you are not convinced of the importance of Vitality or if you are unfortunately tempted to believe to players that say it’s not so much important since high vitality can’t make you invulnerable (nobody said that …), think again and look at the very low frequency Gaijin allows you to increase it (and TC Leadership too, very important because it increases almost all the other components), compared to all the other parameters.

The following images (taken from a true case of a crew of mine, pictures were captured at the same time after a battle) depict a very typical situation for a non-paying player who depends just on Gaijin’s choices to increment crews parameters:

Vitality is usually the LAST parameter that Gaijin allows him to periodically increase, often the only parameter of the subset which is prevented to increase for a quite long time, along with Tank Commander’s Leadership. And this happens for any crew experience area (Driver, Gunner etc.).
You can check here that those two parameters are the only non-increasable ones, whereas others that have been recently incremented, even repeatedly (such as Targeting or Artillery), can be improved again.






This happens at any time, even for initial level crews. For example, when I started spading French Reserve tanks, with Level 1 crews, after two missions the system allowed me to increase almost all parameters in all areas. Just three parameters were then untouchable in all areas: Keen Vision, Tank Commander’s Leadership and, guess what?, Vitality.

Moreover, if you check the cost of buying XP points to increase the various parameters you’ll find that Vitality is usually one of the most expensive (and this also explains why Gaijin so rarely assigns XP for free to Vitality!).

Do you think that happens by chance? Of course not. These are critical parameters and Gaijin perfectly knows that keeping them low for a long time allow them to keep low the performance of non-paying players, which is one of their more constantly pursued goals.

In other words, controlling crew parameters increase allows Gaijin to control players performance to a large extent.

If you don’t believe that Gaijin wants to control players in such a way, please answer to this question: why Gaijin, sometimes ago, deprived players of the capability to choose which parameter to increase?
In fact, during the first years of game life players could choose any parameters they wanted to increment, given them the earned XP points. For example, they could increment just Vitality if they felt convenient.
Then Gaijin changed things and since then players can choose just the parameters that, time after time, Gaijin allows them to increment.
Do you really believe that Gaijin, a company which is leaving a lot of unfixed annoying issues in game (kamikazes in GF, spawn campers, invisible tanks etc.), put effort in creating a new mechanism to control parameters increase if not for their own advantage?
And which other advantage could be if not to control players performance? They didn’t changed the mechanism of XP earnings or their amount but just how players can improve their crews, i.e. they started to partially control crews performance i.e. players performance.

And after all that, Vitality has become the most rarely increasable parameter.

Please remember that at the beginning, i.e. at lower Tiers, and contrary to the statements of some, winning or losing depends much more by surviving enemy hits than by hitting first, so Vitality is crucial. Even more considering that in first tiers guns usually have much lower calibre and there are more chances to survive to their hits, if the crew is strong.
Having low Vitality crews makes you being cannon fodder at the first tiers, point. Even against not-so-skilled enemies and not-so-perfect enemy shots.

A level 8 or 10 crew can be instantly killed by ANY shot, even poor shots, by ANY enemy tank, including the lightest ones.
A first step up is at level 20 but just after level 40 the Vitality parameter is usual at least at 1 (one) for any member crew and “crew knocked out” begins less likely to be suffered with just one shot, at least if you stay well under BR 3.
But even level 40 strength is not great! At BR 4 it’s the BARE MINIMUM for avoid being killed at once practically by any shots.

So BEWARE: Vitality is really important but its effectiveness depend not just by its level but also by the BR of the enemy tanks!

More you go high in BR and more Vitality you need!

In other words, if you improve your crew’s Vitality from 10 to 40, you’ll find a marked benefit until you stay under BR 3.0 whereas if you go further in BR the benefit will be moderate.
To have crews strong enough beyond BR 3.0-3.7, you’ll have to further increment Vitality.

I want to be EXTREMELY clear: at BR 4.3-4.7 you are still CANNON FODDER with crews at Level 40!

It’s just another gear of the P2W mechanism that Gaijin has created: at the beginning you have to increase Vitality to survive, but around at BR 4.0 you are cannon fodder again with the same crews that are strong enough at 2.7.
So you have to start again strengthening the crews but this time it needs so much time to do, while you lose a lot of battles and lose so many SL in much more costly repairs, that almost the only solution to stay permanently at upper Tiers without depleting your patrimony is start paying to maximize crews’ skill, i.e. buying an “artificial skill”.

For sure, a good placed shot can always kill the entire crew even if its Vitality is quite high.
This is likely the reason why some players say that “Vitality is not important, because the crew can still one-shot killed even at high Vitality”.
True, but it’s a relative matter: higher Vitality gives you much more chances to survive.
Nobody say that high Vitality means “invulnerability” of the crew!

If you consider that the maximum Vitality level is 5 (five), you can imagine what is the difference between a player having level about 40 and all the members’ parameters at Vitality equal to 1 and a player with maxed out crew having all members at Vitality = 5.

Obviously the effect is similar for any other parameter, so a maxed out crew (level 140) is “God” respect to a level 40, under any aspect.

Oh, things works two-ways so if you have a good shot, killing a quite distant enemy at the first shot, don’t became excessively proud: it’s likely that the enemy simply had a weak crew, destroyed even by a glancing shot!
The same if you kill a tank just after half a second it shown itself, turning the turret in a blink and destroying it at the first shot: if you have a strong crew, it’s likely crew skill’s credit more than yours. Let silly excessive proudness to silly people denying the importance of strong crews and tanks.

It’s not a chance that Gaijin so rarely gives us the opportunity to increase those two parameters, Vitality and Tank Commander Leadership, because that way they can slow crews strength increase rate, which is important to keep beginners’ performance low enough for a long enough time, to the benefit of more expert/loyal/paying players.
So remember: crew Vitality is 80% of the “skill” you need at the beginning and half of what you need later. In a duel between two heavy tanks, often the winner is who has the stronger crew, independently from which one “hit first”. And a weak crew very often means death even in a KV-1.

A warning: Vitality is an usually overlooked parameter, expert players often say that is useless because a good shot can kill the whole crew anyway. So beginners, believing to them, doesn’t increment it,
I really disagree: even if it’s true that a good full shot can kill the entire crew regardless Vitality level, if Vitality is low just a poor shot can do the same.
On the contrary, if Vitality is high a damaged tank often can still move, sometimes even return fire, usually hide and repair.
So, Vitality should be incremented any time the player can do it.

Some time ago, I knew the level of crew parameters of an expert player (almost Level 100): whereas he maximized Targeting, Rangefinding and Radio Communication, one of the most neglected parameter was Vitality, practically left to zero (!).
I became curious and went to check its stats, something I usually don’t do (and certainly don’t use other players’ stat in discussions, as unfortunately too many gamers do), anticipating to find a victories/battles ratio about 65-70%, as I expect from a Level 100 (likely paying). Well, I found just a 55% V/B ratio, better than mine but nothing exceptional, and a Battle Performance of 38% (lower than mine, and I’m no more than an average player at level 58!).
So, I don’t know if stats would have been better for him if he had maximized Vitality but for sure he hadn’t a performance suggesting that low Vitality doesn’t matter …



Finally, at a certain point in my GF player “career” I had the proof of the importance of Vitality, by the game itself: after having raised crew levels to about 55 I suddenly started to get, quite frequently, the “Adamant” award.
I didn’t even knew before that award (which means “Take some hits, stay alive”) existed!
Until my tanks had crews under 53-54 I never got any “Adamant” award, my crews were regularly killed by almost any shot, it was unthinkable to believe to be able to survive to repeated enemy hits. It didn’t happened even with strong tanks such as KV-1, those heavy tanks were just marginally more protective than medium tanks about crew’s health.
Just after having raised the crew level and the corresponding Vitality I started to endure series of hits and get that award, even with tanks with poor or medium strength armour such as Pz IV J or G.
And this means that, at last, I could survive, return fire and sometimes win duels!
I never had any doubt about the great importance of that parameter, this was just a clear confirmation by WT GF itself.

Apart those two parameters, in my opinion the next most important ones (in roughly decreasing order of importance) are: Targeting, Weapon Reloading, Artillery Targeting Accuracy, Field Repair, Agility, Rangefinding, Tank Driving.
Other players surely could have different preferences.

Targeting affects aiming speed, so if your crew have poor targeting you’ll spend a lot of time trying to precisely aim the enemy tank whereas your enemy could notice you and shoot in advance (a very common event for newbies)!
Consider Targeting in some ways similar to Stamina parameter in AF, i.e. it affects the “skill” of your crew about hitting well and quickly the enemies.
Having a low Targeting is one of the main factors that explains quite well why you struggle to put the gunsight cross on the enemy whereas he, having a better crew, point and shoot immediately. Of course, even the maximum Targeting can’t fix a really bad aim skill!

Weapon Reloading is important because can allow you to return fire before the enemy, a thing often crucial in direct duels.

Artillery Target Accuracy is important because, to all intents and purposes, artillery is an additional weapon of your tank and, furthermore, a weapon that can hit beyond hills and obstacles. For some weak tanks, calling artillery gives them the best chance to kill enemies. But a crew having a very low Artillery Target Accuracy could be unable to destroy or damage, by means of requested artillery shots, even an enemy far no more than 100 or 200 meters!

Field Repair and Agility both affect your capability to heal your damaged tank/crew, so they closely work together with Vitality as defensive equipment.

Rangefinding is important for long-range shots but this kind of shot also need a good gun and good ammo, so it’s more useful for some tanks than others. This is the reason because I favour Targeting, useful in the most situations and with any tank, over Rangefinding.
BTW, some think that Rangefinding is useful just in RB and useless in AB but this official WT Wiki link says a different thing: “Mostly useful for Arcade mode, it affects the accuracy at long range (It affects the Aim Assistant)” https://wiki.warthunder.com/index.php?title=Beginners_guide_totank-battles

Tank Driving is more important for some tanks than others, a nimble tank such a T-34 need it much less than a clumsy tank.

Of course importance of GF parameters also depends by the specific tank used, e.g.: some tanks have no Artillery Support; Targeting and Rangefinding are less important for SPAA than for tanks and tanks destroyers, since with SPAA you can easily adjust the aim when firing.


Unfortunately Gaijin warns you that you can increase crew level just when you have gathered a lot of unused XP points on a particular crews, by putting a special mark on the crew icon. It would be absolutely easy for Gaijin to warn the player at any time he has even just one unused point, but they choose not to do that.
Why? In my opinion it’s because they have no interest that a non-paying player increase as much fast as possible his crew strength, reducing the gap with paying players with already maxed out crews. So they choose a middle way in order to give another small advantage to paying players, whereas a non-paying gamer who has to increase XP just by playing has to always remember to check and possibly apply points after any battle.
Another annoying way to remember us that Gaijin favours paying players.

And now, a quite surprising feature: you can increase XP for tank crews … playing planes! But I’m not talking about planes in GF, I’m talking about playing AF. If you earn XP by playing AF you can decide to transfer those points to the corresponding tank crews. This is what several players do, finding that convenient since AF are usually better rewarding in any kind of points (SL, RP, XP). This could seem a wonderful way to gain XP points but in my personal experience the “grinding” of experience points in AF, with already experienced crews (let’s say about level 35), is quite long and I couldn’t find any real advantage.
So, who can be advantaged? Those players that already have maxed out AF crews and can move from air crews to tank crews any further gained XP, instead of wasting them. So, the really advantaged gamers are paying players … as usual!
Are you still startled by that?

o

Beware of Matchmaking!

In GF the highest BR (Battle Rating) tank of a line-up determines the MM (Matchmaking), so be aware of BR of your tanks. Don't use one high BR tank mixed with significantly lower BRs otherwise you could be heavily disadvantaged in MM.

o

Focus on the three crews you can use.

Since in GF you can’t have more than three crews to use in battle there is no point in increase XP of crews past the third, so use and improve always the same three crews (for example, first, second and third in your presets’ windows). You could leave the others empty, so you can’t risk to put there, by mistake, an unused high BR tank that could trash your MM. Of course, having just three experienced crews and three tanks in-line limits the possibility to choose different type of vehicles in battle (such as SPAA instead of a tank or a tank destroyer) but I really think that spreading XP points on more than three crews has no sense at all in GF, since the high importance of crew experience.

o

Zoom is your friend.

Use zoom view when shooting, it greatly helps aiming.

o

Make enemy silhouette appear.

When you hit, the enemy tank is highlighted with a red silhouette: take advantage of it, if the enemy is far from you or hidden in part, to know how the enemy is oriented and possibly correct the aim.
This is quite easy when using SPAA against ground vehicles, because the continuous flow of bullets can highlight the silhouette for several seconds. The same thing can be achieved shooting with machine guns against the enemy: a burst with MG not only could make some damage to the enemy crew, at least if its armour is weak, but will also reveal its silhouette. Then you can better aim with your main gun.

o

Machine guns against tanks are more useful than you could think.

Always use machine guns not only against enemy planes but against enemy tanks too, even well armoured ones.
There are two reasons to do that: first, even strong tanks have some weak spots, such as embrasures, that can allow you to wound some crew member.
Second, the MG burst will reveal enemy silhouette if they are distant so allowing you to adjust the aim with the main gun.
So you can wound its crew, aim better with the gun and, at the minimum, will be an annoying distraction for the enemy player, impairing his capability to focus on a target (you or comrades in your team).

o

Like a plane: deflection shooting!

You can use even with tanks the same technique is used with planes (at least by plane pilots above a minimum skill level): deflection shooting against a moving tank.
It’s not easy, especially against quick enemies, and requires a turret that can rotate fast enough but it can be done. Some of my best and memorable shots has been done that way. Being also a WT plane pilot for sure helps in being good at this.

o

SPAA can be dangerous for tanks too.

You can use, with some success, SPAA against tanks and other ground vehicles: some of them, such as Gepard, AC MkII AA and Wirbelwind, can be very dangerous for light and medium tanks if used at close distance and with the right ammo.
Just remember that SPAA are usually light armoured, so moving close to enemy tanks is dangerous. Try to take advantage of SPAA speed, possibly even shooting at tanks while moving, to be a less easier target.

Using this kind of vehicles has another advantage for a newbie: since aim for a newbie with unexperienced crews is difficult (low Targeting and Rangefinding and likely other parameters affecting aim capability too, such as Tank Commander Leadership), even more with stock or almost stock tanks, using a continuous flux of bullets (what is more, highlighting enemy tank silhouette!) is much easier for aiming. For a newbie is practically impossible to make fast-lightning perfect shots at the first aim with a cannon, such as ones made by expert/paying players (having maximized crews) and usually slaughtering beginners with one-shot kills, but he can hit much more easily with the machine gun of a SPAA.

o

Adjust your controls.

Remap controls on mouse and keyboard, if needed, to fit your preference and the most comfortable arrangement.

o

Take advantage of technology.

WT GF is in itself such an unfair game that if you add a poor hardware to your gaming, your life will be really miserable!

I’ve been forced to play on a notebook with a weak integrated Intel GPU and the frequent stuttering added more frustration to those given by game’s idiocies and Gaijin’s P2W policy (putting me in the cannon-fodder league).
So try to play with a good enough hardware, especially about GPU power and screen and mouse quality.

Moreover, use any licit hardware/software device to help you.
In particular, I suggest you to use the free WT Tactical Map App for Android or iOS (see my WT Air Battles Beginner’s Guide for more details).

If you install it on a large enough device (for example an 8"-10” tablet) it's much better, IMHO, not only than the original (and almost useless, on small displays) on-screen tactical game map but also more comfortable than any zoom you can do on it with (yes, you can zoom the on-screen map, but it’s clumsy, distracting and time-consuming. By default: M button, then zoom with mouse wheel).
And it's a boon for elder gamers too.
The important thing is: it's fully licit, according to Gaijin itself ( https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/180409-war-thunder-tactical-map-app ).
After all, it's just an external replica of default map, using data purposely provided by Gaijin to external applications and adding just a few and not essential features (e.g. a warning when a plane is approaching).
You can bet that a lot of players, especially top players, use it … although likely many of them would prefer not to admit!

However, you have to remember that it doesn’t solve the “invisible tank” issue: if a tank is invisible on sight, it’s invisible on Tactical Map App too.
And in that case you can easily misjudge situations, blindly rely on the map and being killed for that.

But this is not the only issue: I saw, in an unequivocal way, that both WT Tactical Map app and the standard in-game, on-screen, small tactical map couldn’t show enemies even when they are few meters distant and, at the same time, the enemy can clearly see your position on the same map!

For example, an enemy KV-1 surprised me on Kuban map: near the end of the battle, tactical maps shown no enemy on C so I rushed to cap with my Cromwell I.
I arrived on C, no enemy in sight. I had almost finished the capture when I was hit from 5 m away: the KV-1 has popped out behind a nearby cliff and started firing.
After battle end I checked server replay: to my surprise, KV-1 were clearly visible near C on maps! But I was sure it hasn’t been visible before on my WT Tactical Map App!
So I checked the local replay and, bingo!, the KV-1 was invisible on maps (both the standard one and the App). Then I started to be really suspicious: I checked the local replay of my enemy too and I discovered that he could have seen me on his map (that, very likely, is what happened)!
I had no sign of him on my maps but he clearly had my position on his map! So it was really easy for him to surprise me.

Ok, in these cases the usual explanation of brown-nose players is: it’s just because you didn’t look in the right direction whereas he or one of his comrades caught saw of your tank, so your position were recorded on enemy team maps.
Wrong, at least in this case.

In Kuban map there is a long and narrow valley that runs from spawn point to C point and I used that valley to reach C staying covered, in a very short time because I used a blazing-fast tank. And I checked that no enemy tank could have seen me.
Could have been an enemy plane? Yes, there was an enemy plane flying (not my enemy, he didn’t’ flew), that could have seen me when I was starting my run after the spawn. But he started to see my tank several dozen of seconds later, so I can’t make a link with that plane.
Moreover I don’t know any statement by Gaijin saying that planes in GF can communicate to the ground team where enemy tanks has been spotted. Finally, one thing is spotting a tank in one position, another thing is giving a position thirty seconds later without having had any direct sight.
If you check tank visibility, you often see their positions fading after a while they are no more in direct sight (this is a right behaviour and it’s clearly visible on WT TM app). On the contrary, in this case my enemy had a full, clear position of my tank without having never spotted me before and even while I was covered by the cliff!

So the conclusions are:
- local replay and server replay can show a very different tank visibility on maps.
- about reproducing visibility you had in battle, local replays are more accurate than server replays.
- in battle you could be unable to see your enemy whereas at the same time your enemy can see you, both in direct sight and on maps.
- about this issue there is no difference between standard tactical map and WT Tactical Map App: the App won’t save you from invisible tanks and from be spotted by invisible enemies.
- the whole WT visibility/spotting system in GF is very likely bugged/unfair and WT Tactical Map App can’t do anything about it: the App can just use data WT gives it. As usual in IT, “garbage in, garbage out”.
Or “unfair in, unfair out”. The likelihood that visibility/invisibility is used by Gaijin to advantage some players over others, well beyond the declared “Keen Vision” and “Radio Communication” parameters, is high.

So it’s better you realize that WT Tactical Map App is not a panacea and can’t fix WT bugs, idiocies and unfairness, please try don’t be caught off-guard because of it!

A warning: especially if you have troubles and experience slowness, keep the App upgraded to the latest version.
For example, according to my personal experience the responsiveness of that app worsened a lot after WT patch 1.75, but after upgrading (in my case) from app version 1.63 to 1.65 things went back to good performance (app smooth and responsive again).
Another thing you can do, if you have troubles, is to clean app cache, using the command from OS GUI (if your Android or iOS have it).

o

Driving a tank can be easier than you think.

Try “Driver assistance mode” and map the best keys to use it: it makes tank driving much easier, while you keep pressed the dedicated “Driver assistance mode” key and at the same time move the mouse.
But remember, there are a few counter-indications: the first one is forcing turret to point the same direction of movement during driving in this mode.
The second one is that for some tanks, especially tanks with underpowered engines, while you accelerate in a standing start the tank can move slowly and with difficulty, just as if it were struggling to speed up. Same if you turn the tank at very low speed or if you turn while climbing a hill. In these cases, release the key just for an instant and let the tank speed up, then you can resume driver assistance mode.
Both of these are a minor inconvenient and in my opinion using this assisted mode is totally worthwhile, but you should judge by yourself.

o

You could just hate planes in GF, much better is to use them!

Especially if you are good with planes, take advantage of that and use planes any time you can, even if “air battles” in GF are really demented and very different to true AF.

As you should expect if you know WT GF, FM of planes in GF is fully different from AF and much worse.
It seems to me that Gaijin tried to give to GF players a more arcadish FM, likely thinking to facilitate tank gamers. Really, I think that GF’s FM is not easier, for example its responsiveness is lower and it’s more likely to crash on the ground after a bombing or strafing dive: always pull up forcefully in that case.
Moreover turn times of the various planes are a joke, without even respecting Gaijin’s declared values, so you could find to be unable to out-turn a Ju 88 with a Yak-1.

You can kill tanks with planes, gaining score, and killing a plane with your fighter gives you a score similar than killing a tank with you tank. Moreover it usually needs just a few hits on an enemy fighter to get a kill when he crashes (again, absurd and very different from AF, but that’s GF).
So, always shot at enemy planes, even farther than you usually do (even just when lead indicator appear, at 700-800 Mt) because just one hit can give you a kill if after that the enemy crashes by himself!

Not only that, shooting at tanks with plane’s MGs it’s a good tactic too, even with a fighter!
Just as is with planes, if you hit a tank with just a few bullets and that tank is destroyed by a comrade of yours (tank or plane), you will be given an assist! And assists are quite well rewarded in GF.
So, a smart move is shooting at those enemy tanks that are near comrades’ tanks and can be engaged by them in a short while.

This is a good tactic if the plane has 12.7mm MGs or cannons, as it was at the beginning. Then Gaijin, “Masters in Idiocy” as usual, had another silly idea when after 1.75 patch they introduced Hurricanes with 7.7mm in GF air battles, fully useless against tanks (apart maybe open tanks and SPAA) and almost useless against other planes.
So, if you are so unlucky to be assigned to a light-gun Hurry you’ll be able to do very little anyhow.
The usual brainless Gaijin …

Inversely, if you have been hit, even slightly, you have to know that if you crash or if you bail out (to save time and return to the ground battle) an air kill will be given to the enemy who hit you (plane or tank), helping the enemy team too.
Quite absurd and ridiculous but that’s how planes in GF work. Anyhow, often these tiny “air battles” are more respectful of player’s skill than the fight on the ground!

Just like in AF and especially if you are skilled with planes, avoid head-ons: many tank players are not very good when riding planes and mindless head-ons are their best opportunity to kill you.
Otherwise they could kill you because they are experienced/paying players (even just with tanks) and in WT an experienced/paying player is advantaged even in head-ons (just like in AF).
So don’t accept head-ons, manoeuvre and kill them using your superior aerial skill (if you have it).

Unfortunately, bombers in GF have the same snipers gunners than in AF, so their gunners make the work even for poor plane pilots: if you fly a fighter, beware them. Obviously, if you are so lucky that a dangerous plane, such as a B-25, has been drawn as your bomber, you could benefit from frequent kills by its gunners, that is no-skill victories just like in AF.

Nobody knows for sure If and how player’s experience, level and paying counts for GF planes performance and if tank crew level counts too.
This is unknown, being undeclared by Gaijin just as a lot of other things in WT.

However, after having observed a lot of things and fought a lot of air battles in GF I can truthfully say to you that YOU SHOULD TAKE FOR GRANTED that the same mechanism Gaijin uses to separate “winners” from “losers”, “aces” from “cannon fodders”, also works for air battles in GF.

And I’m pretty sure that tank crew “skill” is transferred to his “flight skill” when using a plane, so having an head-on using a level 10 crew is almost a suicide against any other just average player, much more than having the same duel using a level 40 crew.
Unfortunately, in many cases it’s difficult to avoid head-ons since a lot of air fights starts with an enemy going straight toward you at 300 m …

Another possibility is that Gaijin computes your “strength” in GF air battles using hidden parameters, the same that make you a “winning ace” or a “doomed loser” with tanks.

I don’t know which mechanism is used, by for sure you can’t hope that GF air battles are “more fair” than tanks’ GF battles.
The difference is likely just the fact that in air personal skill matters much more than on the ground, so if you are skilled enough with planes you could have better performances in GF air, even if you have been classified by Gaijin as a “cannon fodder” player.

Head-ons are not the only issue.
For example, you’ll find in GF air battles the “strange” differences in agility you often see in AF, where if you control an Hurricane you are easily overturned by a P-36 flown by a squadron player whereas if you pilot a P-36 you are easily overturned by an Hurricane flown by an expert player. And all this even if you are a good plane player an you know how to turn your plane.
Just as with tanks and their guns, ammo and armours, there are often in GF air battles some inexplicable behaviour in vehicles’ capabilities and this is especially evident when the opponent is an experienced player (you can easily detect that if your enemy is a squadron player).

So an experienced squadron player can be more dangerous than a middle-level player (for example, being very effective in head-on shooting thanks to his crew, just like in AF).
It’s unlikely to be wrong in thinking that the same player that is dangerous (advantaged, over-performing thanks to paying, etc.) with his tank is equally dangerous when he jumps on a plane in GF.

This is another reason why a beginner or intermediate player will much more likely lose head-ons than win them at high tiers, where usually “aces” stockpile.
Since air combat mechanics is in itself much more skill-respectful than ground mechanics, even a “normal” player, if skilled, could win against them, at least at lower and middle tiers, just as in AF.
However, always expect to find many “aces” and “wallet aces” even in GF air mini-battles.
Similarly, always expect to lose air battles in GF when having very low level tank crews.

o

Capturing zones is good both for you and your team.

Always try to capture zones: capturing gives a good amount of points and can be done even by weak vehicles.

Reward changes according to an undeclared calculous (no officially declared amount, AFAIK) but, according to my observations, at present in AB a cap can give from half the SL usually given by one vehicle destroyed to the double of one kill. This is a rough evaluation and could change from many factors, such as how many tanks are capturing the zone, and change in further patches, anyway the reward is significant enough to make worthwhile trying the capture.

Fast SPAA, for example truck-mounted, are usually very good to quickly reach and capture zones, although there is an high risk to be immediately destroyed by almost as much fast but better armoured enemy tanks reaching the zone at the same time. So if you have a weak tank you should (if possible) select zones which is practically sure enemy can’t reach at the same time (for example the lateral cap zone in Jungle map nearest to your team’s spawn point).
Best tanks for capturing are those being at the same time fast, strongly armoured and with good guns (to defend themselves once arrived in the zone), T-34 is one example, Cromwell I is another.
But if you have a very fast tank, ensure that some of your comrades follow you at close distance: reaching alone a zone and finding you are in front of three or four enemies it’s not a pleasant happening!

Of course there is no sense in trying to capture alone an heavily defended zone but in the most of the battles there are several occasions to capture without risking to be immediately killed.
Catch them.

I’ve seen one very experienced player (one of the usual infamous “paying camouflage aces”, I suppose …) saying (in a very arrogant way, speaking to a beginner) that “brainlessly rushing to a cap and getting killed is not smart at all and doesn't do your team any favour".
Although, of course, nothing done “brainlessly” is right, on the whole that statement is the usual pure bullshit given by a so-called “expert” in WT Forum.

Capturing a zone is almost always good because it gives you enough score to risk your tank and after the capture it immediately starts consuming enemy tickets, so being very good for your team too. In many cases a single tank capturing a zone instantly attracts comrades to the defence, the same comrades that were timorous and stationary around the zone until then, so the capturing player is not necessarily doomed even when he captures alone.
In particular, a beginner with unspaded tanks and weak crews can find in capturing one of the best possibilities to gain points whereas if he remained hidden and covered he would have gained very little and if he faced enemies in duel would have been likely killed without getting any victory.
For example an American M24, fast as it is, is excellent for capping whereas it’s cannon-fodder in duels: having to use it, would you give up to a possible cap and would just wait to face an enemy in duel? You would be a fool to do that.

So, why that “camouflaged moron” said that? I think, especially after having read his “reasoning”, that was for the usual reason driving camouflaged morons’ behaviour: the infamous KDR (Kill/Death Rate). Just like in AF, those funny people are obsessed by KDR (so much to judge other players’ performance just on that, they are the typical players so stupid to rely on Thunderskill’s web stats too!) and capping is for some of them too much “risky”. Since they exploit the P2W nature of WT and know to have a marked advantage in duels, they focus on seal-clubbing and give up to capping unless they are practically sure to survive the capture at least for a long time. In other words, they play just for themselves, not for the team.
Then they even made a “philosophy” about it on Forum (just like spawn campers do, BTW).
I’ve already warned you how many ridiculous advices from ridiculous “experts” you can read on WT Forum. This is just another example.

o

Stay covered!

Sheltering is important in GF and is one of the major differences between GF and AF.

When attacking a cap point located behind a hill, never, never, NEVER climb up the hill to have a “good view” of the zone! You would be perfectly visible and will be almost certainly killed at once by one of the many enemy waiting on the valley, especially if the point has already been captured by the enemy team and especially if your crew has low Vitality (as it likely has if you are a beginner). A crew at level 20 can be easily one-shot killed even at lower BR and if the enemies firing are more than one you couldn’t endure more than five seconds.

Always try to have a side view of the zone where enemies are, better if sheltered by a rock or another obstacle. When approaching to a cap point or another risky zone, use paths into valleys, never ridges.

If you really have to cross open spaces exposed to enemies, for example trying to cap a zone, plan your path towards a refuge at the end and run like hell.

Remember that at any Tier, if you are a beginner or you aren’t a paying player, you are at high risk of being easily one-shot destroyed, especially if your crews’ Vitality is lower than what is needed for that BR.

So, staying covered is very important and essential against the much advantaged paying players. If you have been put in a battle against experienced players, worse if advantaged players, it’s very likely they’ll one-shot kill you as soon as they see you.

Always think that the enemy can quickly kill you even if you are tempted to believe it can’t kill you while moving fast or just half-a-second after you expose your tank.
The enemy usually can, especially because amongst them it’s likely there are “paying aces” (squadron players etc.).
If you expose yourself to many enemies at the same time, you are surely dead because at least one of them is very likely a “superman” being able to one-shot kill you, at least if you are a beginner/intermediate player who hasn’t friends in high places.

WT GF is NOT a fair game, don’t forget it, and some players can do “superhuman” things …

o

Don’t be too much stationary!

Since aiming in GF is difficult, especially when having stock or almost-stock tanks and low-level crews in targeting and rangefinding (as usually beginners have), newbies often find a “good” position, sheltered or partly sheltered, and try to stay there for long, carefully preparing to open fire against unaware enemies passing in front. This is good for tank destroyers and could be good sometimes for tanks with turret but often exposes them to dangers.

A stationary tank became an obvious target for enemy artillery and enemy tanks can prepare to shot at it as soon as it uncovers itself. Any player in AB has the on-screen mini tactical map (and likely the most of players beyond beginner’s stage use things such as Tactical Map app too) and can easily see where nearby (and not only nearby) enemies are and a tank staying for long in the same position is easy to detect.

Moreover, being stationary in GF AB means being unable to take enemies by surprise (although a stationary sheltered tank that seems innocuous could surprise nearby opponents by suddenly moving!).

Even less advisable is, of course, being stationary in front of enemies!
Although there are sturdy tanks (such as KV-1s and Churchills) being able to sustain repeated enemy shots (within a certain amount), a beginner with a weak crew will be very easily one-shot killed when doing that, regardless his tank.
So, if you face one enemy, you should try to move after having fired, while your gun reloads, to make things difficult for the enemy. If you face more than one enemy, you could try to destroy more than one but you’ll succeed just if they are all weaker or less experienced than you, so after having hit the first is better to move immediately to avoid (if possible) the shot of the second.

This thing is another issue that markedly differentiate GF from AF: in AF moving is unavoidable, being intrinsic to flight dynamic, whereas in GF moving is “optional”.
If you could learn to fight while moving in tanks, you would have a great advantage in GF.
But, realistically, this can be achieved just if having extremely good crews in fully spaded tanks, so it’s almost precluded to beginners.
Anyway you could try to improve this skill.

o

Withdraw when needed.

If you realize that your team is doomed and the battle is surely lost, my strong advice is to withdraw, i.e. to quit the battle, without losing more tanks.

Too much often I remained in an already lost battle, trying to desperately help comrades and to get some personal achievement (kills, assists, hits …) to improve my position in final battle rank, but I regretted having done it in 90% of cases.
When enemy is steamrolling, it’s much more likely to be immediately killed than to gain some more points and SL.

This is even more true in an unfair game such as GF WT, where skill counts very little and battles are often unbalanced.
So the wiser thing to do is to withdraw without deploying more tanks.
Just try to understand if the battle could still be won, if not and enemy is dominating then quit.

This is an advice I would never give about WT Air Forces and, really, in AF I usually stay in battle until the end, even if I’m sure we’ll lose.
Why? Because AF is a much more fair game and I know that with planes I could at least have a good personal performance without being quickly destroyed (and it often happened to me).
Not so in WT GF, “the Idiocy Game”.

But there is another reason why you could be sometimes advantaged withdrawing before battle end.
Let’s suppose you want to spade a single tank or to increase XP on a single crew: if you fight with three tanks and three crews, at battle end RP and XP earned points will be spread on all three, slowing your grinding. On the contrary, if you fight just with that single tank, all points will give to it.
If you start battle with that tank and do well enough, after it has been destroyed is often convenient to quit the battle, having already maximized the result.
And if, at that time, your team is losing is usually very convenient to go out and not to risk further very likely tank losses.

So, if your team is clearly losing (even more if you had realized it’s a bad team), at least think not just one but three times before throwing another tank in the fight.
You’ll soon find that you’ll regret not having followed this rule!

What to do if you had re-entered into the battle with a new tank and just after that you realize it was a mistake because your team is hopelessly losing?
Of course, exiting voluntarily the game would be no more an option, because you would lost the thank just if it would have been destroyed by an enemy.
So, will you bravely fight, knowing to be doomed, or will you try to survive?
Well, the wisest thing to do, albeit depressing, would be hiding and trying to survive until battle end. This is often difficult to do, even staying near your base, because the advancing enemy is usually able to reach you.
Your realistic goal should be to destroy at least one enemy tank before being killed: put focus onto one of them, which are likely advancing in mass towards you, and try to open fire before any enemy shot. Sometimes it works, because triumphant enemies often made hasty decisions, expecting to be there just to kill and not to die.

There is no safe rule, but in general those are quite good guidelines.

o

Squadron players, paying players etc.

Just as in AF, but even more, pay attention to squadron players (likely good players, even more because both experienced and usually paying), players with evident signs to be paying players (e.g. using paid camouflages, bushes and decals) and even players with “painted” tanks (likely addicted to the game, so being very expert).

Although fully unbalanced battle happen often, not always are so shamelessly unbalanced as the one here depicted: one full four-players squadron just in one team!
Have I really to say which team won, by a large margin? I could have easily predicted since the beginning that red team would have been the winner (to be honest, in AF the particular advantage of squadron players is even more marked than in GF).



Since in GF player’s experience/paid status is more important than in AF, identifying expert opponents is really useful. You always have to remember that in GF a paying player will always have a marked advantage over non-paying players (better tanks, better crews, likely untold advantages that make him much less vulnerable to shots too etc.), that’s why so often you can hit him first and nevertheless being one-shot killed after an instant.
And if you see a tank with special camouflage or bushes you can be practically sure (at 90% at least) he is a paying player.

Of course, you can verify enemies’ experience by examining player cards of gamers of the enemy team before entering the battle but will you do that?
And you should remember that player’s level doesn’t tell everything oh him, on the contrary often it’s misleading: a Level 100 is for sure very experienced, but a level 30 could be as much experienced gamer using a second nickname and/or having a crew as much as experienced just having paid to have it.

So, when you check player’s card pay attention to any enemy having “victories/battles ratio” higher than 55% and “average position in team” higher than 65%: they are the most dangerous players, with the best tanks and high level crews, and an average gamer will lose 75-80% of duels with them.

Those stats are typical of the most of Level 100 players but can be found even for Level 10-15 player.
Do you believe in Santa Claus? So you could think that they achieved those results just by their skill, even having just 300 battles fought.
As for me, I don’t believe in Santa Claus.



I’ve seen things you people wouldn't believe, such a level 6 (six!), with camouflaged tanks of course, being able to kill 12 (twelve!) enemy tanks in just one battle (plus 5 assists), with crews fully resisting to shots by Pz IV from 10 mt, losing at the end just one vehicle!
For sure, when you see a level 15 or 20 player being able to kill 8-10 tanks in a battle, you know he and his crews are experts, point.
And very likely he paid for that.

So don’t be surprised when you see some “superhuman” behaviour from many “aces”, don’t be surprised when you’ll be one-shot killed at 800m or killed by a long-range deflection shot while you were moving really fast, don’t be surprised when your close-distance shot won’t make any significant damage to the enemy notwithstanding the declared armour/penetration data.

That's WT GF, baby.
WT GF! And there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing!

o

Learn the maps.

Knowing GF maps (sniper places, hiding places, blind alleys, strength of buildings, hill slopes, buildings that can be penetrated etc.) is at least as much as important than having good aim or following “strategies”.

o

Buildings can be not just obstacles.

Some kinds of building (wooden or with weak walls as in Korea map) can be pierced by gun shots and tanks “hidden” on the opposite side can be damaged or destroyed. Please remember this both for offensive and defensive actions.

o

Beware of friendly fire when using planes in GF.

Even if Gaijin has disabled friendly fire between tanks, i.e. with your tank you can’t damage or destroy a comrade’s tank (maybe because tankers are so stupid that at battle beginnings they could start shooting one another instead to limit themselves, as is today, to shoot in air, making a mess with smoke grenades and bumping comrades!), this is not true with planes: a GF plane can destroy friendly tanks and friendly planes!

And a tank can shot down a friendly plane too.
Once, in my SPAA I was shooting to an enemy tank when a comrade’s plane “kamikazed” it. But doing that he inserted in my line of fire and I got a “friendly kill” penalty! I had to view the replay to understand that one of my bullets hit the plane when it was just 50cm above the ground, a nanosecond before the crash!
On WT Forum I’ve read of similar happenings to other players.

So, in a GF plane pay attention where to drop your bombs and rockets, you could kill a tank of your own team, and when in a plane you shoot at an enemy remember that you could shot down a friend too.
Finally, in a tank or a SPAA avoid shooting to friendly planes!
Penalties for friendly killing can (rightly) be substantial.

All this could have some sense (it’s friendly fire disabling between tanks to be quite artificial!), however it’s another example of inconsistency in this game.

o

Just like when you played with scale model tanks …

You could setup some Custom Battles (just with bots, setting a password to avoid other human players get in).
Custom Battles are practically useless in AF, on the contrary in GF there is some use: making practice and learning some maps. In AF knowing maps is almost unimportant, on the contrary in GF is important.
In AF bots are almost harmless, on the contrary in GF the dumbness of game mechanics makes bots much dangerous, so playing GF Custom battles can teach something (even if not much and just in the beginnings).

o

Guns are not everything, they need ammo too!

Choose the right ammo for any tank.

Read WT forum and WT Wiki to have info and advices about that.

BUT be aware that, as usual, in WT GF there are so many abnormalities that very often ammo effect isn’t what you could expect reading its data in game ammo chart.
It’s a really common happening being unable to seriously damage enemy tanks even with perfect shots at close distance, making those penetration-vs-armour charts ridicule. Some ammo are evidently bad designed in game, such as the M67 shot for the almost useless 105 howitzer of M4A3 (105), whose effectiveness is usually very poor and, however, quite unpredictable. And shrapnels (fragmentation shells) against light and open vehicles are much less effective than many advices given on WT Forum maintain.
Many players will tell you that unexpected fail to destroy enemy happened just because your ammo wasn’t the right one, that you didn’t point at the right part of the enemy tank etc.
Although in some cases this could be true, be aware that it’s also the usual conditioned response of naive and brown-nose players, blindly believing in Gaijin’s “perfection” and/or willing to defend even the worst pieces of junk in game.

Anyhow, in general AP-only (ammo with just Armour-Piercing capability, no explosive) are much less effective than APHE (Armour-Piercing High-Explosive ammo), because it’s more difficult for an AP to kill enemy crew members. Since your tank is lost for “Crew knocked out” when ALL crew members are dead, many precise AP shots are usually needed to kill them all, one by one with a long series of shots, whereas an explosive shell (APHE) can kill them all just with one shot, especially if crew members have low Vitality.
So choose preferably APHE. Unfortunately many British tanks have just AP ammo, the other nations are better and have APHE for practically any tank (although in some cases you have to spade the vehicle to unlock APHE ammo).
Shrapnels (HE fragmentation shells) can be useful just against the crews of open vehicles so they are useless at least 90% of times.

Before battle you’ll choose the number of shells for any kind, depending on ammo effects and personal preferences.
In my experience shrapnels are of so little usefulness that I just give them no more than 5-6 shells, loading the most to the better APHE and second the better AP (which are nevertheless useful against heavy tanks, when having a great penetration effect).

The vulgate in WT Forum and some advice from Gaijin’s Wiki say that it’s dangerous to fill all you ammo rack, i.e. to use all the ammo you can load into the tank, since an explosion for an enemy shot is more likely.
So many players advice to keep racks filled just for half or about.
In my personal experience, I saw no advantage in doing that, my tanks with half-empty racks still go on exploding as much easily than with filled up racks.
My statistic could be too limited, so you should check for yourself.
However, even this it’s in my opinion a hint that the vaunted DM could be much more rough than propagandized (if not just a smoke screen for mechanisms deciding of “life” and “death” according to other undeclared parameters).

o

Lies, damned lies and the gunsight cross.

Don’t trust too much the colour of the gunsight cross!

Being green doesn’t always mean that you’ll kill the enemy and being white (and sometimes even red!) doesn’t always mean that the enemy can’t be heavily damaged or even one shot killed.

Here you find a video example, a tank that “couldn’t” have been perforated, so showing red (!) cross, that is actually one-shot destroyed: https://gfycat.com/MiserableCalmDutchshepherddog



So, if you are at close distance and the cross is still white, is usually convenient to try a shot: in several cases you’ll see the cross “magically” turning to green only after the shot!

Inversely, sometimes you’ll have not even a simple hit (!) with green cross, at least with medium or long-range shots.

It’s seems to be another silly faults amongst the zillions GF have, but there is another possibility.

In fact, I have to say that I’ve started to strongly suspect that this strange behaviour could be another example of WT being a Pay-to-Win game: if Gaijin would want to advantage certain players (e.g. paying players, as it’s very likely) they could easily do that by turning the cross to green on a larger tank area, at the same time making the enemy tank more vulnerable.
Please remember that Gaijin says that GF post-shot replays are just an approximate depiction of what happened, so they could show us what they want, within certain limits, especially for long-range shots where the player haven’t a detailed view of the part he is aiming on the enemy tank.

This would have three immediate effects and would be significant especially for long-range shots.
First, the player would be ready to fire at instant, just after having pointed the gunsight, because he would immediately see the “green”. On the contrary, a “pariah” player has to wait for some frightening seconds while he struggle with the mouse to point to the “right” part of the enemy tank and wait for the cross becoming green, believing to what Gaijin says i.e. they have a “sophisticated” DM (damage model).
Second, the enemy tank would be likely destroyed, if the “green” is on a larger area. A “great performance” for the paying player …
Third: the player, who has killed the enemy, often with a wonderful one-shot, would think that his performance is due just by his skill (“what a great aim I have!”). Another example of the smartness of Gaijin’s tactic to give us a P2W game, taking care of paying players’ loyalty, without making it evident to players!

It would be a mechanism easy enough to implement, very effective in giving an advantage, “hidden” to anyone (including the advantaged player!) and able to explain many “superhuman” behaviour of some gamers, being able to point, shoot and one-shot kill the enemies just within one second.
An almost perfect P2W mechanism.

If this theory would be right, the two aiming-related crew XP parameters, i.e. Targeting and Rangefinding, could be involved, possibly with an hidden “boost” of them.

Otherwise, we should conclude that Gaijin has designed a “sophisticated DM” which works very badly with the aiming system, for sure a possibility in a quite bugged game but maybe less likely than the possibility of a P2W mechanism (since there is a lot of reasons to think at WT as a P2W game!).

o

Lies, damned lies and the enemy markers.

Don’t trust too much the visibility of enemy markers.

The enemy could be in range and you could be still unable to see it! This is especially true after patch 1.65 which introduced us to “invisible tanks” (you detect them just when they hit you, even at a few hundred meters). This is true even using the mini-map on-screen and even using tools such as WT Tactical Map (see my Air Battles Beginner’s Guide).
It’s just another idiotic faults amongst the zillions GF have. So be always careful (as much as you can).

o

And now, let’s see again in slowmo …

You can use GF battle replays and examine the short in-battle replay of your “deaths” trying to learn something but don’t overestimate the usefulness of doing that. This is not AF, where there are tactics to learn, is GF i.e. a game with rough tactics (if any) and almost no logic or fairness.

Likely the most useful thing you could learn from GF replays is to have the definitive proof that WT GF is NOT a fair game!

For example, after a battle I noticed that in my team there was a Level 96 player, who had about a 70% victories/losses ratio and got 17 kills in that fight. So I went to check the replay to discover in which way he fought to have such a performance.
He used two Achilles in that battle (the second being evidently a backup tank). An Achilles is a British tank destroyer that has a great gun but a quite weak armour.
Gaijin’s Wiki says: “Protection is not good. The sloped armour and the track links added to the front will protect you from some low calibre shots but the vast majority of your enemies will be able to easily destroy you. Side armour is paper thin. The high profile and the very slow turret traverse (man powered) are not good for close range combat so avoid deep flanking tactics”.
Well, he did exactly what Gaijin says to be too much dangerous: close combat!
And even if he was lucky (or maybe, in part, watchful …) for having being hit a limited number of times, notwithstanding he thrown its tank almost into enemy crowds!, he was however hit more than one time, from very close distance.
But those hits, even on the “paper-thin side armour”, made practically no damage to that tank and its crew!
A couple of times he lost just one crew member but didn’t even waste some time to replace him, since tanks was still able to fight at full capabilities!
It was incredible to see a weak tank being almost invulnerable, whereas I perfectly know that it couldn’t have been the same for me (Level 61, not paying), even facing the same exact situation. I know what would have happened to me, in the same tank: I would have been immediately stopped and disabled at the first suffered hit and very likely killed with just a second shot.

I have to add that previously, on battle chat, I read his opinion that WT GF is not P2W: evidently he is not aware of reality and thinks that his performance is basically due to his own skill!
So I have to make a correction: the most useful thing you could learn from GF replays is to have the definitive proof that WT GF is NOT a fair game (but a P2W game) and that a lot of WT “aces” don’t even suspect that they bought their “skill” or, in the best case, they play so well just for having fully developed crews and tanks, facing much weaker beginners and average players’ crews and tanks.

No doubt, Gaijin made a smart P2W mechanism that hides itself to the eyes of the privileged players, making them thinking to be real “aces”!
In other words, watching replays you’ll also have a further proof that there are a lot of morons amongst WT players (no surprise here, though).

However, from time to time is useful to play battle replays.
When you want to have a more reliable view, especially if you need to look at details, it’s usually better to resort to server replays, not local replays (there are two separate menu items for choosing that).
But this is not always true! At least about “invisible tank” issues, local replays seems the only trustable kind of replay! (see my close examination of the issue in this Guide).

o

Tossing a coin with wagers.

I advise you that, if you are not only a beginner but even a more advanced non-paying player, using GF battles to play important wagers such as Golden Eagles wagers you’ll be at the mercy of game idiocies and unfairness and almost without the support of your skill (not much significant in GF). In other words, you have just to hope to be drawn in a lot of good team with good and winning paying players, otherwise you’ll waste your wager.
It will be just as tossing a coin.
If you are good enough with planes, bet on wagers with AF that, at least, is more respectful of you skill: if your team will be defeated you can at least partly blame yourself!

o

Bullshits, bullshits everywhere …

Always take with a grain of salt any statement or advice given in WT Forum. Although (strangely?) tank players seems to me, on the whole, less prone to give bad advice than airplane players (maybe because they more easily become aware of the intrinsic unfairness of the game and better realize that their performance is given more by their crews/tanks level than by their “ace” skill), even about tanks you could read a lot of wrong statements.

One of the most wrong advice I’ve seen in WT Forum (which in general is full of bad suggestion!) is “in GF the most important thing is to hit first”: fully wrong, at least for beginners and intermediate players below BR 5, since usually expert/paying players are able to endure perfectly placed shots, suffering just a temporary crew handicap and quickly turning against the sufficiently skilled but weak enemy, one-shot killing him. On the contrary, in GF the most important thing is to have skilled and strong crews!

In another case a newbie (less than 100 battles fought so far) asked about a very classical happening for a beginner: how do I avoid being one-shot killed, with my crew suddenly destroyed when my tank is hit by any shot?
Eight very experienced players answered.
The answers were the usual blah-blah so often found in Forum: first don’t be hit, angle your tank, don’t take a full ammo load etc.
In practice, almost useless advices and for sure partial, if not silly.
On the contrary, nobody, I stress: NO-ONE-OF-THEM!, even mentioned the need to have a good crew Vitality! No one of them.
They eruditely talked about angling, armours and tactics while the issue for a beginner is that he has a too weak crew to resist even to peashooters’ shots.
All this while other beginners, in the same thread, rightly expressed their disbelief that those were the reasons for their deaths.

Just as with AF you can read a lot of bad advice about planes (“climb, climb, climb!”, “use Boom-and-Zoom!”), with GF you can read equally bad or useless ones, such as “learn tactics!” (there are almost no tactics in GF and, anyhow, tactics are not at all the most important thing).

Another bullshit is “any time you are killed it means you made some mistake”. This isn’t true even in AF (you have to take risks in AF AB and being sometimes destroyed is not only almost inevitable but could be even convenient if it gives you more score), certainly not in GF.
Of course, if you make mistakes you’ll be likely killed but if you are a beginner you will be destroyed a lot of times just for having tanks+crews weaker than your adversary, even having fought well and better than your enemy.
This is the crucial difference between AF and GF.

Remember that many assertions and suggestions are given by expert, often paying players, living in a completely different world than a beginner. There is very little in common between a non-paying newbie with level 20 crews, stock tanks and a long-time player, often paying (Premium or not), himself level 90 or 100, with all spaded vehicles and level 70 crews
I’ve seen some of them entering in GF some months after me, then after just one month they had level 70 crews, in less than half of the time my crews barely reached level 30! Of course, they paid for that …
But if you ask them, very likely they’ll tell you that, no, they found no advantages in paying!

Beware: sad to say, in WT world, especially in Forum, there is also a significant number of liars and storytellers!
You can recognize them by checking against facts you know and by gathering the large amount of clues they leave on their messages.
Some of them likely lie even to themselves.

Also remember that advices given for RB and SB could be possibly not applicable to AB. For example, there are ground vehicles such as ASU-57 that are good in RB or SB but very weak in AB (in this case, because in AB anyone can easily spot any other tank and a vehicle with virtually no armour such as ASU-57 is dead when spotted).

o

Performances and stats: how much do you care?

Remember that using stock or almost stock tanks or using tanks with low BR compared to enemies will make your performance dramatically drop, much more than in AF. Please remember this if you, like me, are used to spade almost any kind of vehicle, even the not-so-good ones and the weakly-armoured ones. If you care your “stats”, don’t do that.
The same, obviously, if you are overtiered by a bad choice of your BRs and lose a lot being overwhelmed by much stronger/skilled/advantaged opponents: your stats will drop dramatically.

If you are a good AF player and choose to play GF it’s better if you forget your overall stats: being a game disrespectful of skill it’s almost sure your overall stats will suffer for a long time, unless you pay to quickly “became a tank ace” (crews with accelerated experience, fully spaded tanks by paying).
Luckily, at least Gaijin recently separated AF and GF stats, so you can look at them separately. Even being now not strictly unified, playing GF is what definitely convinced me not to worry at all about stats.

In the end, my advice is: do what you feel right to do and fuck off the silly stats of a silly game, WT GF.

o

Set your goals.

Especially if you are a non-paying player, in a game so promising but so stupidly designed and programmed and, above all, being P2W, it’s in my opinion important to have goals going beyond mere winning.
So you could (and should, IMHO) set your own goals, e.g. spade all vehicles of all nations, raise all crews experience to a certain level (e.g. at level 20, then level 40) etc., all largely achievable regardless extra-performances and, at the same time, useful to grow your skill, experience and scores.
This could give you some additional satisfaction even in a game treating non-payers like a dog.

o

Can a silly game be played in a smart way?

A really important thing: remember that an IDIOTIC AND UNFAIR GAME can’t really been played in a smart mode and sometimes couldn’t even be convenient to play it in a “fair” mode. So don’t expect much from a game designed and developed in such a pitiful way and feel free to play the way you want to your own interest.

For example, exiting the battle before the end if your team is clearly incompetent or unbalanced or exiting just after having spaded one vehicle. I disapprove doing that in AF but in the much more stupid GF is another matter: it doesn’t deserves more respect than it gives to players.
Quite frequently I regretted my decision to stay in a battle even when there was no hope to win and almost no hope to have just one more kill, being overwhelmed by enemies: the outcome was another death, other SLs lost in repairs.
Never do that, learn to identify lost causes and avoid losing even more.

Another thing that you could do, to your own interest (but, unfortunately, usually damaging your team) is to plan to use just one tank for the battle, for example because you are spading that particular tank or increasing the experience of that particular crew or both.
There are cases when doing this is useful. For example, you could have a lineup of three tanks, BR 4.3-3.7-3.7 (you couldn’t manage to make it better because you have no other tanks at 4.3 for that nation, it often happens) and you want to spade the 4.3 tank and increase its crew experience.
If you battle with three tanks you’ll be at a marked disadvantage: the 4.3 tank is stock and its crew is weak, the other two are, on average, overtiered by enemies. So you could decide to use just the 4.3 tank, avoiding losing SL for the very likely repairing of the second and third tank too (without having much chances to gain SL since they are overtiered). If your team win the battle, you could easily earn more than 1500-2000 SL even if you had a mediocre performance with the spading tank.
If, on the contrary, your team lose the battle, with just an acceptable performance you could anyway earn, let’s say, about 1000 SL even after having repaired your single destroyed tank, moreover you won’t have to pay 2000-3000 SL for repairing the other two tanks too.
There is no sure and fixed rule to decide if battling with just one tank is worthwhile but it could. And, moreover, if you are spading just one tank and training a particular crew, doing so you don’t “waste” time fighting with the other two tanks and crews. You should check the possibility and decide if you want to do that.
Of course, fighting with just one tank both your team and your stats, e.g. average position in team, will suffer.

o

Playing WT Ground Forces? Isn’t it better to get a life?

In the end, my humble but strong advice is: please AVOID CONSIDERING WT GROUND FORCES AS A “SECOND VIRTUAL LIFE”, especially if you have no intention to pay to have a “satisfactory life”!
I know that there are reasons to consider the game as “another world” to live for a few hours any day (and myself often “suffer” for that idea!) but consider that, for an inexperienced and/or non-paying player, it’s a very frustrating existence. And I don’t think anyone would be happy to live a miserable life as a “virtual cannon-fodder”.

It’s better to take WT GF light-heartedly, knowing in advance it’s unfair and has stupid mechanics, and focusing on personal goals such as spading vehicles, improving crew experience above a certain level, fighting tanks with SPAA etc.
So, my advice is to establish realistic personal objectives, especially if you are a non-paying player, such as getting stats in average relative position in team > 50% (or any other target you like), and don’t worry too much for the rest.
WT GF has been designed by stupid and presumptuous people and you have to live with that, willing or not.
If you really want to live WT as a “second life”, at least turn to WT Air Forces, follow the advices I gave in my AB Air Battles Guide and stay under Tier IV.

o

I almost forgot …
Oh, by the way: have I already told you that WT Ground Forces is a DEMENTED game that seems have been designed and developed by MONKEYS?

BIG QUESTION ABOUT LIFE: WHY I SO OFTEN WIND UP IN TEAMS WITH MORON COMRADES?


Being frequently surrounded by idiots in your team in a WT ground battle is a sad and sure fact of life.
Just if it wasn’t enough to look at their behaviour, you had to endure them on battle chat too.
Why?
Frankly, I have no sure answer.

Maybe it’s just the ground battles mechanics, so much different from air battles (slower, with the same comrades standing side-by-side for a longer time), to make more evident when a player behaves in an imbecilic way.
Or, on average, tank players are dumber than plane players. But since many gamers plays with both tanks and planes, I think the first hypothesis is the more likely one.

Comrades’ stupidity manifests in several ways, from the innocuous shooting to the air at battle beginning (often done just for mistake) to the more annoying bumping friendly tanks (again, in many cases being just fault of the spawn mechanism).
Another particularly stupid and unfair behaviour is cutting in front of you when you, with a faster tank, are trying to reach a zone to capture it.
And, of course, we can’t forget the morons playing with chat at battle start, shouting an endless series of “Attack A point!”, “Attack B point!”, “Attack C point!” (given from the same player and even if only A point exists) or the wonderful “Leading for landing”.
Worse are players seeking protection behind you (in some cases just starting from the spawn zone, without having asked you!) but impeding your movements in doing that.
Another very irritating behaviour is the comrade that without any justifications bumps your tank during the battle, without saying any “sorry” and sometimes just when you are aiming to the enemy.

Then we find the most serious bad behaviours, such as pushing your tank out from a shelter to expose it to enemy fire. These, except some cases of mistakes or bad driving i.e. made in good-faith, are the equivalent of teamkilling in AF. This is the only kind of possible teamkilling in GF, since Gaijin wisely decided to deactivate friendly fire for tanks, maybe realizing that a so widespread stupidity in GF players would have done an unbearable damage to the game and endless quarrels and recriminations!

A different issue (even is some cases related to idiocy) is team incompetence:
- players camping near the spawn zone when the battle is still hanging in the balance, without giving any contribute to the team
- players never checking, it seems, the locations of comrades and enemies on the map
- player rushing ALL, at battle beginning, to the same cap point in a three points map, leaving at once two to enemies (it could be a viable tactics just on some maps and with a team able to move together in a coordinated way to reconquer the other two points, an event almost never happening)
- players without any initiative to capture or recapture a cap zone
etc.

This is just an example of a battle that my team lose notwithstanding we weren’t on average worse than our opponents, on the contrary we were likely better.
But a lot of my comrades remained camping near our base or at safe places far from the action for a large part of the battle, so the enemies managed to hold two cap zones out of three all the time.
I tried to capture it, killing enemy tanks that were defending the point, but no comrade, although near the cap zone, tried to took advantage from that.
At end we lose, for that reason, a battle which we could and should have won.




It’s not possible to give general judgements, in some cases behaviours that seem wrong could be justifiable (for example a light tank could be forced to flank being too weak for a direct attack to a point of capture, a lightly-armoured tank destroyer could need time and space to find a good place to position itself before entering into the fight, a player could be justified not to waste another tank when the battle is hopelessly lost etc.).

In some cases a team apparently inept can later reveal itself a good team, which (on purpose or by chance) let enemy vent their attack just to counterattack, reconquer cap points and winning.
So remember that in some cases even almost desperate situations can be overturned, often it just need a brave and coordinate actions of three tanks.

Some consider “impolite” to complaining on chat about team’s ineptitude but my opinion is different: if nobody express unhappiness, those players will never learn they are making mistakes.
So, in the most evident cases shouting on chat is not only right but useful too (just try to be “constructive” and explain what are the mistakes).

There is another possible issue related to “bad teams”: losing strikes because of team unbalancing, just in AF (see my Arcade Air Battle Guide).
Since it’s quite clear that Gaijin makes its best to divide players between “paying aces” and “not-paying cannon fodders”, it would absolutely logic that they on purpose unbalance battles to further advantage the formers.
This would easily explain why a non-paying players suffers so many battles in poor teams.

The following was, for example, a very bad battle for me, notwithstanding I finished first in my team (but when I finish in the very first positions in tank battle rank I know I have been in a poor team and usually we lost!) .
We badly lose, soon losing all the points, and if you look at individual results you can notice as much inferior we were.



BTW, this followed a streak of other bad battles for me and I almost wasted here a 150% SL one-mission wager.
Maybe I’m wrong but so much often I’m induced to think that Gaijin purposely starts a “losing streak” when they decide that a particular player “has to start losing for a while”.
Without any “programmed losing” it’s difficult to think at a “fair game” and just a random happening when you lose 22 of the last 28 battles, such I noticed in a particular losing streak of mine!

Anyhow, probable Gaijin’s dirty little secrets apart, you’ll often find a lot of bad conducts that reveal cowardice, foolishness, puerility and poor respect for other team’s members.
Of course, big heads and brown-lickers never back down in chat, from the “L2P, noob!” to “this is a wonderful game and you have to respect its developers!”.

Consider that another shortcoming in GF, which in AF is at least, less evident and annoying.
GF is already a demented game, when in addition you find comrades’ stupidity it makes things even worse.

HEY, I’M DOING BETTER NOW! AM I BECOMING A TANK ACE?

In WT, both AF and GF, player’s performance improves with the passing of time. If that doesn’t happen, it’s likely the player is doing something really wrong or … it’s not a game appropriate for him!

Apart some improving of skill and tactics, crew and tank improvement counts A LOT.
So, if you find you really got better, I suggest you to make some honest soul-searching: why you improved? What changed?
I could bet that you started to play with much better crews and always spaded tanks, staying about at the same BR level (i.e. without going to upper Tiers/upper BRs).

Yes, likely you fight in a better way now, being able to better judge situations and circumstances, driving better, covering better, knowing the maps, choosing the right ammo etc.
But even this personal improvements could not explain why your average position in battle raised from 12^th to 4^th.

I examined my personal story and found that the turning point was when I started to play with strong and spaded (or almost spaded) tanks and with crews having level > 40.
Sure, I improved some tactics, such as defending my robust but slow KV-1 against a nimble T-34 at close distance, but if I hadn’t a much stronger crew, able to resist to some shots in a strong tank I’d have been quickly killed however. Just as happened to me when I was a beginner.
And, in fact, going back to unspaded or weaker tanks and/or weaker crews my average position dropped again.
This is the same happening in AF but, as usual, in GF this is much more marked, personal skill counts much less and tanks and crews count much more.

So, be rightly happy for “your” improvements. After all, you are enjoying now what the game deprived you of when you were a newbie!

But remember that it’s not just you, it’s the combination player+crew+tank and you are not the most decisive element of the trio, unless you are a real Michael Wittman … or, on the contrary, a hopeless player in this game!

You (as a “human player”) were not “so bad” when, at your beginnings, you were regularly one-shot killed by expert enemies, and you are not “so good” now that you kill often less experienced players with weaker crews and tanks.

There is almost no more skill needed than hitting well and first an enemy. When you do that and, even if using a good explosive ammo, you can’t make any significant damage to the enemy tank notwithstanding declared armour/penetration data, it’s not your “bad skill”: it’s a bad game.
Inversely, if your crew miraculously resists to a well-placed enemy shot and you still can move, turn the turret, aim, shoot and destroy the opponent, it’s not you “good skill”: it’s a bad game.

Where “bad game” means at least that: the winner is not necessarily the more skilled player but, as it usually happens, the player that uses the best “drone” (crew+vehicle), generally got by paying.

I’ve seen some very experienced players forgetting that or, worse, not understanding that.
Or willing to deny just to convince themselves they have become real “aces” just for they own merits.

A final note.

This page had the “honour” to be censored in WT Forum.
A Forum moderator invited me to “share my ideas in a civil and constructive way” and to avoid posts being "insulting and/or inflammatory by deed or intention".

So the following message has been “censored”, link to this page included.

https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/353855-many-kills-lots-of-rp/#comment-6811056

In all fairness (and without any sarcasm, I swear) I had to say that, in this case, I really understand this censorship.
I can’t approve it but I understand.
I’ve been really heavy-handed on my judgements on WT GF, both here and on the Forum, and it’s not surprising they took offence. For sure it’s unpleasant to be so harshly criticized.
Maybe I really should make changes to this page to make it less “tranchant” (many times I wanted to do it, but every time I play GF I become more and more convinced to leave it just as is now …).

But … now try to understand my point, because it’s a very instructive case.
Please carefully examine on WT Forum the original copy of that “censored” post (link is above) and tell me if I’m not right when I say at this point I have no hope in Gaijin being able to fix anything.

Anything.

Not even when doing that would be just in their own interest.

Could you see it?

CloCloZ