The Israel Defense Forces were created on May 26th, 1948, during the Arab-Israeli War, uniting the existing paramilitary groups. They began with no aircraft and with merely three tanks, but soon evolved into one of the most professional and well-armed armies in the world. In all conflicts involving Israel Defense Forces they emerged victorious.




“Israel Defense Forces” decal.

Complete the task in random battles, except for Enduring Confrontation missions and [Assault] mode.

Track your progress in the hangar by clicking Nickname → Achievements → Holidays → Israel Defense Forces Anniversary.

You can find the decal in the “Holidays” tab in the Customisation menu.





Israel Defense Forces Day bundle: 30% off

• Ezer Weizman's Spitfire Pack;
  
• M-51 Pack.

We prepared a discounted bundle of a tank and a fighter plane to commemorate this anniversary! Ground vehicles are represented by the Super Sherman — a medium tank on a reliable M4A3 chassis equipped with a 105 mm gun with AP shells capable of piercing 400 mm of armor! And for aircraft fans there’s a Spitfire LF Mk.IX that was flown in the 1940s by Ezer Weizman, an ace pilot who later led the Israeli Air Force and even became the country’s President. This fighter with powerful 20 mm autocannons is capable of impressive vertical maneuvers and also boasts decent suspended weaponry.

The new J-8F is an upgraded version of the famous Chinese jet fighter, equipped with helmet-mounted sight and advanced weapons! Meet one of the champions of the upcoming La Royale update!


Features:

• New fire control system
  
• High max speed and climb rate
  
• Deadly all-aspect PL-8 missiles
  
• Drains energy in turn-fighting

The modern J-8F jet fighter will become China's new top-tier aircraft, which will be available in the upcoming La Royale major update. Today we will tell you about this wonderful aircraft, and also reveal the plans of the War Thunder development team for long-range air combat missiles.

So, the new J-8 series aircraft comes as a remedy for those imperfections the previous model the J-8B had. The J-8F received modern avionics - a new, more reliable and sensitive radar, as well as a new fire control system, which includes not only the HUD, but also the pilot's visor. From the previous model, the new J-8F receives very good PL-5B missiles, however, the new all-aspect PL-8 with a launch range of up to 18 km will become the main weapon for air combat. The high G-tolerance of the PL-8 missiles, combined with convenient sight via a helmet-mounted targeting system, make the J-8F one of the best interceptors in War Thunder.





The J-8F is also equipped with new engines with slightly better thrust ratings. The fast fighter becomes a little faster - now its maximum speed at high altitude is about 2350 km/h (~M 2.25). In the La Royale update, both J-8 aircraft will also receive differential elevator deflection, which significantly improves roll speed. Excellent maneuverability for its weight, one of the distinguishing features of the series, has become even better! It is worth remembering however that the aircraft tends to bleed speed quickly in sharp turns, so altitude and speed are still the key to success for the J-8F.

Despite its primary purpose as an interceptor, the J-8F can also be used in mixed battles. To kill armored vehicles, the fighter is equipped with new high drag bombs and Type 90-1 HEAT rocket pods. As usual, the weapon configurator will help the pilot to configure the aircraft for any combat mission!




The J-8F fighter, nicknamed “Handsome Sky Lad” in China, will be added to rank VIII of the Chinese aviation tech tree in the La Royale update, which is almost ready. We can’t wait, just like you!

• The accuracy of SPAA vehicles in vehicle convoys and in the fields of ground battles has been reduced.

The current provided changelog reflects the major changes within the game as part of this Update. Some updates, additions and fixes may not be listed in the provided notes. War Thunder is constantly improving and specific fixes may be implemented without the client being updated.

The BTR-80A armored personnel carrier is one of the iconic vehicles originating from the Soviet army. Meet the workhorse of the Russian motorized infantry in the incoming La Royale update!


Features:

• 30mm auto-cannon
  
• High max speed
  
• Amphibious
  
• Huge profile
  
• Poor armor

The BTR-80A comes to the game as a new Soviet mid-rank light tank. The iconic profile of the APC will appear in the hangars of Soviet tankers with the La Royale update!

The BTR-80A armored personnel carrier was designed for delivering troops to the combat area and providing them with fire support, including against lightly armored vehicles. The vehicle is armed with a 30mm 2A72 automatic cannon and armor-piercing shells with a maximum penetration of about 60mm. The gun has a good rate of fire, heats up slowly and is fed by belts.




The 8x8 design allows the BTR-80A to perform well even on soft terrain. On paved roads the BTR-80A can reach speeds of up to 87 km/h.

The cons of this APC are its size and poor protection. The long hull and high profile make the BTR-80A visible from afar and hard to hide - and hiding is vital for this vehicle, since its armor can only protect against shrapnel and light machine guns. Any .50 machine-gun with armor-piercing bullets would pierce this giant quite easily.




However, the charisma of the legendary BTR-80A is much stronger than its shortcomings! In the La Royale update, we invite you to test the BTR-80A, as well as dozens of other new vehicles, in which you will be able to see new locations, new game features and improvements to your favorite game!

• Pantsir-S — incorrect animation of the folded radar has been fixed.

• A bug has been fixed that caused incorrect data display after switching off the HUD interface (rеport).

• PT-658 — 3rd person view zoom camera position has been fixed.
  
• Dynamic water line has been added to the naval hit camera to show current depth, trim and heel of the ship.

• A bug has been fixed where the helicopter vortex effect on the ground or over the ground surface was not visible to others.

• A bug has been fixed where rapid toggling through nations might cause vehicles on the Premium vehicle pad to remain from the previously selected nation instead of the current.

• A bug has been fixed that prevented a refresh of the countermeasure selection after editing of the user weapon setups.
  
• A bug has been fixed that prevented help with the repairing indication on squad member vehicles.
  
• Shortcut conflict has been fixed while opening personal tasks with a gamepad in the spectator’s mode.
  
• Players are now able to open personal tasks from the statistics window.

• A bug has been fixed where the system cursor was visible in the game.

The current provided changelog reflects the major changes within the game as part of this Update. Some updates, additions and fixes may not be listed in the provided notes. War Thunder is constantly improving and specific fixes may be implemented without the client being updated.

The French 155mm Au F.1 SPG built on the chassis of the AMX-30 main battle tank and features an autoloader with 36 round mechanized ammo rack!


Features:

• Timed fuse shells
  
• Huge automated ammo rack
  
• High rate of fire
  
• High profile
  
• Mediocre protection

In the La Royale update, the Au F.1 self-propelled gun will become a new French vehicle at research rank V. The huge turret accommodates a long 155 mm gun with an autoloader and mechanized ammo rack for 36 (sic!) rounds, which provides a rate of fire of just 7.5 seconds per shot!

The Au F.1 lacks armor-piercing shells and the player starts researching the vehicle with high-explosive fragmentation rounds that contain 6.8 kg of TNT. This is a quite effective weapon that often leads to the destruction of the crew by the overpressure and almost always heavily damages enemy modules. However, after researching the time fuse shells the Au F.1 reveals new combat opportunities. These rounds feature more powerful explosives and detonate above the roof of the tower or engine compartment of enemy vehicles, which are always protected much weaker than the front and sides. The rangefinder is of great use here, it is time to master it, if you haven’t before.




Au F.1 is built on the chassis of the AMX 30 tank and has good speed characteristics for its dimensions, but if we talk about survivability, then these same dimensions become the main drawback of the vehicle. The massive breech of the gun, a huge ammo rack for large-caliber shells, the autoloader and crew seats require a lot of space. The Au F.1's turret is truly gigantic, while being protected only from shrapnel and partly from autocannon fire. The Au F.1 is difficult to hide and very difficult to survive under enemy fire.




You can research the charismatic and dangerous Au F.1 self-propelled gun in the next major War Thunder update called La Royale. In the meantime, we will continue to introduce you to the most interesting news of the upcoming update. See you soon!

Dear players,

Firstly, we would like to extend our sincerest apologies to each and every one of you. We deeply regret the fact that our actions have let you down, and that we have failed to adequately address the concerns you have voiced over time. We share your passion for the game, and it pains us that our decisions have not lived up to your expectations.

Over the past week, we've been diligently analyzing the feedback you've provided. We acknowledge and agree with your concerns regarding the balance of the economy (Silver Lions and Research Points), as well as modification research. We have therefore prioritized addressing these issues as our immediate concern.

We are in the process of creating a plan to tackle these problems. While we have made some initial progress in understanding the scope of these issues and potential solutions, we anticipate providing a more detailed roadmap by the 14th of June.

We understand the urgency you feel for changes to be implemented, and we assure you, we share your eagerness. However, given the scale and complexity of a project like War Thunder, some time is required to ensure that any changes we make are both effective and beneficial to the player experience.

We are also continually reviewing the vast array of other feedback and suggestions we receive. Rest assured, these are important to us and will be addressed, but at this moment, our first priority remains the game's economics and progression.

We are truly sorry for the disappointment and frustration that we have caused. We commit to you that we are doing everything we can to improve the game, and regain your trust.

Thank you for your understanding and patience during this time. We value your continued support and your dedication to the game we all love.

The experimental Israeli Magach 6R medium tank equipped with Hydra rocket pods is going to clear the battlefield in the upcoming La Royale update!


Features:

• Hydra rocket pods
  
• Lacks of reactive armor

In the La Royale update we will introduce a new tank from the Israeli Magach family - a modification of the Magach 6 with Hydra rocket pods mounted on the turret. A great option for close combat in the narrow streets of urban locations!

The experimental Magach Hydra entered testing as a modification of the Magach 6R with dismantled ERA protection. The tank carries two rocket pods with 19 rockets each on its gun mantlet, left and right from the main gun. The pods are elevated at a slight angle relative to the position of the gun, so to hit targets at distances closer than 500 meters, the gun barrel must be lowered down. The Hydra rockets have a HEAT warhead and all 38 rockets can be fired in a few seconds, unleashing a real rocket hurricane on the enemy - one or the other will definitely find a weak spot in the protection of an enemy tank!




Even with the ERA removed, the Magach 6 remains a good tank - rounded sides and a strong forehead on the turret, as well as the front armor plates of the hull brought together at a large angle, still give a high chance of ricocheting and not being penetrated by kinetic rounds. The 105mm cannon has excellent flatness and a good selection of available rounds, including HEAT rounds and APFSDS shots for heavily armored enemies and HESH rounds for light and medium vehicles.




The new Magach Hydra in the La Royale update will be grouped with the Magach 6R, which means it will not be an obstacle for those who want to research the top tanks of the series as soon as possible. However, having researched the rocket Magach, Israeli commanders will have their hands on an effective and unusual tank that will be of the greatest help in urban battles and other close quarter combat situations, including at the higher ranks!

Your screenshots from last week were impressive! We enjoyed getting to see so many different vehicles in action. The three most popular and three selected by us will get 300 GE. See the winners down below!


Create a stunning screenshot and submit it on the War Thunder Steam Community Hub with the tag #WTscreen68. You have time until 26.05.2023 to submit your screenshot.

After that date, 6 winners will be selected (3 of which will be the highest rated by the community and 3 selected by our judges), each of which receive a reward of 300GE.

• This week is open for all submissions! Any screenshots from War Thunder you would like to share are welcome.
  
• You must add the #WTscreen68 tag (title cannot have any other text in it).

[/b]

Screenshots need to be compliant with the War Thunder rules.

You need to be the author of the screenshot.

Screenshot needs to be new. You cannot use those which have previously been published or used in other competitions.

We will only accept raw screenshots from the game. You cannot use any editing software nor any other visual enhancements (like Nvidia Ansel filters).

You can use filters and settings built into War Thunder.

You can use the replay functionality built into War Thunder.

Rewards will be delivered to the author's account within 14 working days.

[/list]



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2976173844
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975336795
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975428400

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2897218403
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2977106379
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975447024

Each winner will get 300GE! Congratulations and see you next week!

Dear players! We see that you have many questions and observations about how the economy and progression work in War Thunder. Kirill Yudintsev, creative director of Gaiijn, is best suited to explain all of this

Player progression is essential. You can't give a player everything at once, because it will overwhelm and make the game very difficult for them and they will just leave it either immediately or almost immediately. This has been tested by us many times in different ways. When applied to our game, later vehicles are almost always more difficult to learn and play tactically, in the controls and with its capabilities. Progression provides opportunities for gradual learning and engaging the players. Without it, the game will lose players right from the start.

In addition, progression serves as one of the basics of how a game makes money (basically players pay for acceleration of progression).

The fundamental difference between paid games and fair play free-2-play games is that you don't have to pay to play free games, and most players don't actually pay.

Most War Thunder players - about 80% - have never paid a dime into a game, whilst playing for months or years. Many of those players who have paid for something in the game don't pay every month (and sometimes not every year) either. Nevertheless, all of the maintenance to the game, all of its development, servers, and support, is provided by those players who pay.

In any game players play only when they have fun. But in a f2p game, players only pay if the game really entertains them. The player is already playing, already having fun, and pays if they want to support the game, or try something new, which is, at the same time, not necessary to enjoy the game (otherwise they would just quit playing and not pay at all).

Hence the unobvious conclusion: the less you have to pay to play the game, the more differently priced paid options it should have, so that those who can afford it can spend more, and those who can't or don't want to can play for free and have fun.

There are many progression and economy options in F2P games. Not all of them are suitable for our game, because War Thunder is about real combat vehicles, which are not equal, differing in power and capabilities.

To quickly and roughly summarize, the general principles of economy and progression in our game:

• vehicles should be unlocked gradually, from simpler and older to more complex and later
  
• the total time to get the first "top" vehicle should be a balanced (not too long not too short) number of game hours
  
• the player should at the beginning of the game route (while mastering the game) get new in-game equipment often enough
  
• The game has to earn money, otherwise it will be closed. And it must make money without a pay wall, so you can play indefinitely without paying anything (so there is no deception that the game is "free" when in fact it is not). Income should provide everyone the opportunity to play a multiplayer game with multiple modes and features
  
• Progression and economy should, as far as possible, provide a variety of vehicles encountered in battle, otherwise it's just boring. I.e. there should not be too many "farming" vehicles, and especially if they are statistically stronger in battles (otherwise only the same popular vehicles will appear in battle).
  
• In a game with so many vehicles and modes it's impossible to manually adjust the in-game economy (it's important that it obeys specific rules, and manual changes to them would skew a vehicle’s effectiveness, making some vehicles "bad" and others much better than average, and thus affecting their occurrence in battles).

On the basis of these theses the economy is “adjusted” (algorithmically based on statistics).

About once every couple of years we revise it globally, as new vehicles are added to the current trees, and the rest of the time, to a lesser degree, "correct" the economy, using accumulated statistics.



The current progression and economy system is not the only possible system for game economy principles. There are also, for example, systems based on randomness or on the exchange of virtual objects between players. However, without even considering the limitations on different platforms associated with these options, any such significant changes are unlikely to be well received. After all, our community is formed of people who accept the current economy and progression in basic principles, or rather they may even like it in general.

So it turns out that the main key parameter that we can change without significant harm to the game and players is a revision of the total time to reach the top and get the whole line (with some smaller tweaks like modification research speed, balance of repair\gain and so on). We have already done this kind of revision three times, and it's probably time for the next one. This work takes many weeks, so we will probably show the planned changes in the second half of the summer.

We are no doubt open to other suggestions (and we have many of our own), but we doubt that a complete transformation of the progression into something completely new will be accepted by many players, no matter how much we would like to do it ourselves. We'll still try to come up with something new in the progression, and we'll definitely consider all of your suggestions.


https://xkcd.com/1172
Separately, a few words about review bombing as a method of communication. As many of our players know - we've repeatedly reverted both planned and already released large and small changes (including in the economy and progression). Due to threads on reddit (where much of the western English-speaking community communicates) and with threads on the forums and comments to articles on the site. We value our players and our game, not our updates and changes. If we know that the majority of the community doesn't want an update, we cancel or revert it immediately. Even if some part supports and some part opposes - we prefer conservatively the "do no harm" principle - keeping the current status quo.

Of course, a review on Steam is also a platform for expression. However, the majority of new players just look at the score evaluation, and do not read the text of reviews and do not go into what they were left for. So review bombing does damage to the game in that new players simply won't try it, while it doesn't raise their awareness of the problems you've noticed. If your goal is not to hurt the game, please use other, less destructive ways. For example, leave feedback in our forum, and suggestions specifically about the economy we are inviting in the feedback form. Also, review bombing will not cause modifying or nullifying in-game prices - if the game is shut down, no one wins.

Radical, revolutionary changes in games that have been around for years are always very difficult to make, because they will almost certainly break gameplay for a significant part of the players. We try to proceed according to the principle "do no harm" and change the game carefully. However, if a topic receives a lot of support from the community - we do everything possible to support the players. We commit to follow the feedback even more carefully in the future and take it into account when defining our plans for the development of the game.

If you still have questions - ask in the comments, and in the future we will try to clarify all unclear points.