The Naval research tree in War Thunder differs from Air and Ground forces, despite visual similarities.

Aircraft and ground vehicles are divided into ranks by (as a rule) production years: the later production year - the better the combat efficiency is, the higher the vehicle’s rank is. A ship’s battle efficiency, however, depends not only on the production period, but on the ship’s class itself. Early testing showed that players prefer different classes of ships - some like destroyers, others prefer the nimble torpedo boat, or mastering all types of vessel. Every ship’s class has unique gameplay, naturally.

Entering the closed beta test, we took these baselines to create a different approach to researching War Thunder ships. Vertically, or rank-wise, you research different classes of ships - from boats to light cruisers. Horizontally, or class-wise, you master more powerful, modern and capable units of the given class. You are free to choose what gameplay you like more: skip boats, relatively fast progress to heavier classes, like destroyers, or cruisers; or focus on the light classes to unlock the most powerful light ships and boats in the game. Requirements and prices to unlock new ships consistently grow both vertically, and horizontally. Research time to unlock all ships of a nation will be similar to aircrafts or tanks.

Currently, we have 4 ranks of ships. We plan to add more ships of higher ranks during CBT and OBT. New heavy classes of ships are also possible.


Unlike air and ground battles, destroying a naval unit requires more effort and time. Often, many players will attack a single target at the same time. If we apply the trophy formula from air or ground battles, the majority of the reward will go to the player, who finishes the enemy, and it may be far from fair in the amount of inflicted damage.

This feature of naval battles caused us to rework the existing trophy system. The more damage you do to your enemy, the better the reward will be. These are the basics:

Every naval unit has its own reward value in Silver Lions (SL) and Research Points (RP)

The reward value splits between players, taking enemy value down, by amount and intensity of damage that they have inflicted. A hit, an assist, and a kill counts separately.

The final (fatal) hit has a minor bonus aside from the unit’s reward value.


Example 1
A ship’s reward value is 1000 Silver Lions (SL)

• Player 1 does damage for 20% against the crew. He gets 200 SL for the hit.
  
• Player 2 does damage for 40% against the crew, and gets 400 SL for the hits.
  
• Player 3 does 10% damage against the crew, and the enemy ship is considered destroyed, because it does not have enough crew to continue the battle. Player 3 gets 100 SL for the hit, and a 100 SL as a last hit bonus (that’s not included in the original reward value). Total is 200 SL.

30% of the crew remains on the damaged enemy ship, and 300 SL that is left from the reward value is divided between all three players:

• Player 1 gets 85 SL for the kill assist
  
• Player 2 gets 170 SL for the kill assist
  
• Player 3 gets 45 SL as a bonus for destroying of a ship

In total this is calculated as:

• Player 1 gets 285 SL for 20% of damage he did to the enemy ship
  
• Player 2 gets 570 SL for 40% of damage
  
• Player 3 gets 245 SL for 10% of damage and the last hit bonus

Example 2

• The reward value of enemy ship is 2000 SL
  
• Player 1 does 20% damage to the crew and gets 400 SL for the hit
  
• Player 2 launches a torpedo and destroys the enemy. Ship is sunk, so the rest of the crew counts for Player 2. Player 2 gets reward for 80% of the crew - 1600 SL, and last hit bonus - 100 SL.
  
• Reward value remaining is 0, and Player 1 doesn’t get an assist reward.

In total:

• Player 1 gets 400 SL for 20% of damage to the enemy
  
• Player 2 gets 1700(1600+100) SL for 80% of damage and the last hit.
  
• Reward value and last hit bonus depends on enemy ship’s class.

• Critical hits are turned off for naval battles
  
• AI-controlled air defence guns (AAA-guns) don’t earn hit rewards against aircraft. Assists and kills count though.
  
• In naval battles, aircraft kills count by the same rules as in air battles.
  
• If in a naval battle an aircraft attacks a ship, the aircraft receives the reward using naval battles rules.

Briefly: A German purpose-built anti-aircraft barge equipped with a fearsome combination of light and heavy AA cannons, ideally suited for blowing your opponent out of the sky and water alike!

Conceived as a makeshift landing craft intended to be used for the planned naval invasion of Britain, the Siebelfähre was a modular German transport barge, often equipped with heavy weaponry, tasked with assisting landing troops. Aspiring captains will have the opportunity to command the intimidating Siebelfähre in the upcoming closed beta testing of War Thunder’s naval forces!

The Siebelfähre was designed by Friedrich Siebel, owner of a lesser known German aircraft manufacturing company bearing his name. Siebel’s idea was to provide the German army with a much needed easily mass-produced and effective transport vessel for the planned invasion of Britain.





Closed beta testers of War Thunder naval forces will have the chance to be among the first to experience the devastating firepower of the SF 40 very soon. Until then, calm seas captains!

For more information, read the full Dev Blog article on the Official War Thunder Forums!

In short: an American artillery vessel available in the navy closed beta test. Armed with a 76 mm cannon and an excellent set of auto cannons, her dense fire literally chews up small ships and aircraft!

Artillery support ships of the LCS (L) landing craft support class received the amusing nickname “Mighty Midget” due to the impressive firepower they could release on enemy shore fortifications.

During World War II, the American military took a big gamble on landing naval infantry and armour – the Americans used the strategy of quickly capturing coastline using landing ships in all three theaters of war. The landing ships and boats themselves had light armaments and could not fully cover their marines during landings, so the question arose about the creation of a small maneuverable gunboat with enough firepower to support naval landings against enemy infantry, lightly armoured fortifications and fire positions. The LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) designs were used as a basis, with the addition of a 76 mm gun with an armour screen, two twin 40 mm cannons and four twin 20 mm machine guns.





Your Mighty Midget is waiting for you in the dock, commander! The closed beta test is just around the corner!

For more information, read the full Dev Blog article on the Official War Thunder Forums!

Interesting: The ship were used to carry the royal family of Luxembourg, who had escaped from Nazi occupation in their country.

USS Trenton is one of the ten American Omaha-class light cruisers constructed during the interwar period and will be among the first light cruisers to set sail under the banner of the U.S. Navy in the upcoming closed testing for War Thunder’s naval battles.

In the early 1900s leading up to The Great War, conflicting views and opinions on cruiser design among the U.S. Navy’s top brass led to not a single new vessel of this class being laid down. With the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1914 and the later involvement of American forces in the conflict, the U.S. Navy had every opportunity to gather the needed experience for creating a new cruiser design.





The USS Trenton is steaming at full speed towards the closed testing of War Thunder’s naval forces and participants of these tests will be among the first players who will have the chance to command this powerful warship in battle. Time to raise the anchor and leave the comfort of calm seas behind you, captains!

For more information, read the full article on the Official War Thunder Forums!

https://youtu.be/QsA2_e-u1yM

We have named our update “Project-X” not only because of the upcoming release on the Xbox One. Among the interesting features of this update, there are many “X” related items: XM-1 (GM) and XM-1 (Chrysler), XM803, AMX-40 and Fritz-X guided bomb. In addition we have added new locations and missions, hugely reworked sounds for aircraft and added many other changes that made the game even better.

Check out the full list of changes here!

13 new ground vehicles and 17 new or updated aircraft. A few examples:










This function will allow you to check selected armoured vehicles directly from the hangar. Choose a vehicle from which you want to attack, check the range and one of the available shells and explore the weak spots of your opponent!


Italy — New location for combined battles.

Ladoga - new location for air battles and two missions for the location: “Frontline” and “Air Supremacy”.

Check out the full list of changes here!

Before update 1.79 Project X, it was possible to obtain information about the design of your tank’s armor and the location of its parts, assemblies and crew with the help of armor viewing and X-ray. This means the player could find out lots of useful information about the protection of any ground vehicle and its design. However, the information obtained about the armor thickness, angle and effective armor could not be directly compared with a shell’s armor penetration to get a clear result on whether a certain type of shell will pierce a certain type of armor or not.



As in reality, the process of penetrating armor with a shell is more complex than simply comparing the effective armor at the point of contact with the shell’s penetration strength. Shells of various designs and shapes overcome different types of armor obstacles in different ways: for example, sloped armor was a more difficult obstacle than vertical armor for early APCR shells, while for modern finned APCRs with long solid cores, it’s the other way around. For HEAT shells, armor piercing at an angle actually can be calculated based on the armor’s effective thickness, but one must take into account the presence of screens, the dispersion of the shaped-charge jet, and its loss of penetration as it flies through the air (a HEAT shell loses 100 mm of penetration power for every 1 meter of flight in the game). All these subtleties lead to the fact that it was impossible to precisely say whether a target would withstand a shot from a selected shell type. To find out, the situation had to be played out in the game – whether in a user mission or on the proving ground with friends.

The description of the defenses on post-war tanks with complex armor obstacles adds yet more complexity – composite armor, spaced armor or explosive reactive armor. The current implementation showing the defense equivalent and the frontal angle in X-ray mode was not informative enough, since the defense equivalent was shown for a specific type of shell, and when other types of shells were used on the tank, the overall defense could change – just like in reality. When the player compared the defense metrics in X-ray mode with the results of real in-game shots with different shells, it led to confusion and misunderstanding.

In update 1.79 Project X, we’re adding a new option to the ability to view armor thickness and tank design – “Protection Analysis”. This function will let you select the tank, the type of shell used by the vehicle, shot range and in accordance with specified data, check the armour protection of the selected vehicle.

This game function uses all the complex calculation algorithms for armor penetration in the game and provides the same result that the game engine does in battle. Apart from the calculated defense equivalent for the ammunition chosen, the player also learns which modules and crew members might be damaged from such a shot.

To use this function, you must enable armor viewing mode, then a new button will appear. When you press it, you’ll see a menu for choosing the attacking tank, the shell it uses, and the range of fire. In calculating the point and angle of collision, it is assumed that the shell flies from the center of the screen in the direction of the cursor’s projection to the tank model. Select the strike angle and its point with the mouse cursor and you’ll get a result immediately!

After this functionality is implemented, the equivalent defense values for tanks with complex types of armor will be removed from X-ray, although we will leave the data about the type of the special armor and its composition.

Check out the full article here!

In short: an aerial bomb whose flight can be slightly corrected to hit targets more precisely. A fundamentally new weapon in War Thunder!

The PC-1400X (Fritz-X) isn’t just the first guided bomb in our game, but the first bomb accepted into service that was used in combat conditions to destroy a surface target. The German scientist and inventor, Max Kramer began developing a means to increase the accuracy of aerial bombs back in 1938. The engineer insisted that, to achieve high accuracy, the bomb must be equipped with remote control. After the arrival of Dr. Kramer to the science laboratories of the Ruhrstahl company, the warhead of the PC-1400 Fritz bomb was selected as a basis for the new bomb. By the beginning of 1942, the first prototype models of the experimental Fritz-X guided bomb were delivered to the Peenemünde training ground, and a few weeks later, tests were performed in Italy. The tests showed that the bomb’s variance was under 28 metres, and in 1943, the wonder weapon was put into service.



In our game, the Fritz-X bomb will arrive with update 1.79 Project-X, and for now it will be accessible on two bombers – the He 177 and the He 111H-6. The guiding system allows the bomb’s flight course to be corrected slightly. It is suitable for destroying larger ships. Particularly skilled pilots can even try to destroy tanks with the bomb – even an indirect hit will be an unpleasant surprise.

For more information, read the full Dev Blog article on the Official War Thunder Forums!

The IL-28Sh is an experimental attack version of the Soviet IL-28 jet bomber, developed in the late 1960s as a replacement to the MiG-15 in its fighter-bomber role and to complement the Su-7. Soon, all War Thunder pilots will get the chance to pilot another unique, and more than usually destructive, version of the IL-28 in the upcoming update 1.79 "Project X"!

In short: an assault variant of the IL-28. Up to 3 tons of bomb load, gunpods and up to 192 of unguided rockets!

Development work on the IL-28Sh (Sh = Shturmovik; attacker) began in 1967 after it became clear that the main fighter-bomber of the Soviet air force, the MiG-15, had insufficient combat loads. As a result of this, Soviet engineers once more began looking into the possibility of converting some IL-28 bombers into attack aircraft. This resulted in the creation of the IL-28Sh, a regular IL-28 modified to fit 12 external pylons suspended underneath the wings. This allowed the IL-28Sh to carry, in addition to its standard internal payloads, a large number of suspended ordnance options ranging from rocket-and gunpods to additional bombs.





Get ready to catch the enemy by surprise and rain down death and destruction with the new IL-28Sh, coming to War Thunder in the upcoming update 1.79. What do you think of the IL-28Sh? Are you excited for it or is there something else that already caught your eye? Let us know in the comments below. Until then, pilots!

For more information, read the full Dev Blog article on the Official War Thunder Forums!

In short: The new French “top” continues with the traditions of the AMC-30 series. A fast tank, with a 120 mm cannon and 20 mm anti-aircraft machine guns, is also equipped with an excellent gun stabiliser (finally!).

Development of the AMX-40 began as a private venture of the French GIAT company in the early 1980s, with the aim to create a new export vehicle, in anticipation of an increased demand for military equipment from middle eastern countries. GIAT engineers decided to base the new vehicle off the AMX-32, which itself was an improved export version of the successful AMX-30 main battle tank. However, compared to his predecessors, the AMX-40 was to feature vastly improved firepower, mobility and protection. As a true first in the French postwar tank development history, the AMX-40 would receive a two-plane stabilizer for its 120mm smoothbore cannon. Although the tank’s turret and cannon were mostly adopted from the AMX-32, increases in weight from new components led to the fact that the hull of the vehicle had to be redesigned from scratch. The work on the first prototype was nearing completion in 1983 and the vehicle was first shown off at the Eurosatory exhibition in the same year.





Make sure to check out the new AMX-40 main battle tank coming to War Thunder in the upcoming update 1.79. Stay tuned to the news for more information on the next major update for War Thunder. Until then, tankers!

For more information, read the full Dev Blog article on the Official War Thunder Forums!

The Messerschmitt Bf 110 owes its most valuable asset - versatility - to the development of countless modifications which were adapted to fit nearly every imaginable combat role. With update 1.79 "Project X, fans of German aviation will have the chance to better experience that renowned versatility with the addition of some new modifications on the Bf 110. Let’s take a closer look!

The first new modification we will talk about is a close relative of the Bf 110 already present in War Thunder, namely the Bf 110 C-7. Entering service with frontline troops in 1941, the C-7 was a further developed fighter-bomber version of the Bf 110 intended to increase the aircraft’s efficiency when used as a tactical bomber. This was achieved by expanding the Bf 110’s payload options; giving it the ability to carry an increased bomb load under the fuselage as well as adding additional 50 kg bomb racks underneath the wings. To cope with the added weight coming from these changes, more powerful Daimler-Benz DB 601N engines were installed, increasing the power of each engine up to 1,175 horsepower.





Meet some of the most anticipated modifications of the Bf 110 heavy fighter in the upcoming update 1.79 "Project X. In the meantime, be sure to keep a close eye on the news to stay up to date with the most recent development news regarding the next major update for War Thunder. Until then, happy hunting pilots!

For more information, read the full Dev Blog article on the Official War Thunder Forums!