On August 4th, 1954 the Lightning jet fighter, developed by English Electric, took to the skies for the first time. Outfitted with two vertically stacked Rolls-Royce Avon engines, it could reach a top speed of over Mach 2 and perform a sustained supersonic flight without using an afterburner. Due to its amazing speed and rate of climb pilots have described flying it as "being saddled to a skyrocket".




Lightning F.53 jet fighter from the British research tree will be available for purchase for Golden Eagles.This export version of the aircraft was used by air forces of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; its main distinction from the standard F.6 version is its ability to carry ground attack weapons, such as bombs and rockets. In air battles Lightning uses various missiles and incredibly powerful 30 mm cannons.

In this digest we would like to tell you about our continuing work on improvements and fixes in the game. You can find information about all updates that have been released in War Thunder in the website special section.




Today a change arrives in air events in Ground AB that we already told you about a short while ago — fighter pilots will no longer see ground vehicle markers.

This change will reduce the frequency of so-called kamikaze attacks that annoyed many of you — when fighters who were meant to escort bombers chose to instead attack light vehicles and SPAAGs with open turrets. This will also motivate interceptor and escort fighters to stick to their jobs in the sky and not try to imitate strike aircraft.

We’ve detailed this idea in the discussion linked above — thank you for your participation and feedback!



If a helicopter or an aircraft receives critical damage, a countdown starts that leads to the pilot ejecting from the vehicle and the player returning to the vehicle selection screen. But something went wrong: as the timer reached zero, nothing happened.

Pilots of aircraft could still bail out manually using the corresponding button. Yet this error allowed for unsportsmanlike behaviour for helicopter pilots in Tank RB: they could land on an enemy helicopter landing pad and keep shooting at spawning enemies.

Well, enough of that. The pilots now bail out properly by the end of the timer, and the players are returned to the vehicle selection screen.



Beam-riding missiles are a delicate matter. How many missiles can you launch into the beam before they start missing the target?

The players used to find this out empirically, but we decided to make it easier for them: now after launching a beam-riding missile a timer will pop up indicating how long you can keep launching more missiles without causing the first one to lose its guidance. This feature was added for ground, aircraft, and helicopters!

For aircraft missiles with a laser seeker or a semi-automatic guidance system (SACLOS) we are making the indication of a missile launch window during third person play more helpful. Now it’s linked to the aircraft axis and is visually displayed for the player: make sure the target is inside the launch window — and fire!



As an aircraft goes over the speed of sound, a vapour cone surrounds it due to the Prandtl–Glauert effect. If it maintains the necessary speed, the condensation cloud follows it continuously — but in the game this obstructed the player’s view, which was detrimental, especially during manoeuvres. So we decided to change the algorithm of the effect. Now the cone will appear in the same speed range (0.98 — 1.02 Mach), but it will last for a limited time and will reappear after a certain pause. This way, if an aircraft maintains speeds close to the specified range, it will no longer “blink” with vapour.


We recently detailed the problem with bots in War Thunder and how we deal with it. Your reports remain a key element in finding the accounts that break the rules — and, to make it easier for you, we’ve added a special category to the report window. Now you can choose the “Using bots” category for your report to tell us about suspicious accounts.

You can also do that on our website in the replay section. Use it well — and help us make your gameplay more enjoyable!


You’ll find the full list of improvements in a separate patch note — there are lots of interesting things! Helicopter pilots no longer receive erroneous messages about the possibility of repairing allied ground vehicles, the “watch the battle” button returned to the “messages” tab in the battle results, and cross-platform play for Xbox users now operates correctly.


Once again, many thanks for all your bug reports that you submitted using our special service.

• Stormer HVM — a bug has been fixed where the missile was able to penetrate any obstacle at dart separation distance (app. 320 metres).
  
• M4A4 (SA50) - a bug has been fixed that prevented damage to some modules of the ammo rack.
  
• Dardo - thickness of the material of the coaxial machine gun has been reduced from 10 to 5 mm.
  
• H.39 - animation in the Mle1938 shell data card has been fixed (report).
  
• Char FCM 2C - the commander’s camera has been shifted to the commander’s cupola.
  
• Freccia - fording depth has been increased.
  
• QN506 - track thickness has been increased from 15 to 20 mm.
  
• 9M133 ATGM - explosive’s type has been changed from A-IX-2 to OKFOL (report).

• Mirage 20005-F, Mirage 2000D-R1, Mirage 2000C-S5 - a bug has been fixed that disabled the drag chute. The drag chute was available only with “Chaff/Flares” modification disabled.
  
• SAAB AJ37 - a bug has been fixed where the drop tank was always visible in x-ray mode (report).
  
• G.91 R/3 - a missing launcher for the AS-20 NORD missile has been restored (report).
  
• Lancaster B.Mk.I, Lancaster B.Mk.III - icons in the secondary weapons menu have been fixed.
  
• Tzefa B - AN/APR-39 radar warning system has been added.
  
• Bf 109G-10 - a bug has been fixed where the 20mm MG 151 gun pods were always visible in xray mode (report).
  
• A bug has been fixed that prevented helicopter pilots from automatic bailout after the timer expires while crash landing on the enemy helipad in Realistic ground battles.
  
• A bug has been fixed which prevented automatic bailout after the timer expired in a critically damaged aircraft.

• GIS 811 — The flag in the ship card has been changed from Italian Navy to postwar Italian Navy.
  
• MC 485 — A bug where bridge armour wasn’t displayed has been fixed.

• In aircraft events in Ground Arcade Battles, fighter pilots are no longer able to see markers of enemy ground vehicles. CAS pilots are still able to see enemy markers.
  
• A bug where the cockpit of the aircraft could not be displayed when viewing a replay has been fixed.
  
• A bug where clicking on the icon of a minimised promo block in the hangar did not lead to its opening has been fixed.
  
• Erroneous appearance of the message about the possibility of repairing an ally when repairing allied ground vehicles was required for the helicopter pilot has been fixed.
  
• A new category to allow you to complain about a player using bots has been added to the player complaints window.

• Imbalance in the location of the air respawn points in the “[Conquest #2] Mozdok” mission has been fixed.
  
• The defence zones of ground respawn points in the mission “[Battle] Abandoned City” have been corrected.

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.

In order to adjust and improve balance in battles, we have made a planned change of Battle Ratings for fleet and aviation - and in ground vehicles, we focused on a specific BR range from 7.0 to 9.7 - vehicles that are from the time when a qualitative transition has been made from one means and types of defense to other, more advanced ones. For example, ground vehicles abandoned homogeneous armor in favour of the active use of dynamic protection and with that, combined multi-defense armor. Regular kinetic ammunition has been replaced by HEAT-FS, fin-stabilized , and guided weaponry. Finally, laser rangefinders, stabilizers and thermal imagers have appeared.

Thanks to these changes, early era vehicles based on the principles of simple armor and simple sights will become even less common with vehicles more relevant to dynamic protection and advanced fire control systems. Intersections will remain of course as they were in reality but this is another step towards reducing them.

Click for table

With these changes we also continue to “pull up” the units of lower ranks following the increased maximum BR of top ranked vehicles. The announced changes are truly global: they affect more than 100 units! That is why, in the future, we will adjust BRs again but in a more precise way - following the statistics to see which units will become more or less effective under new conditions and your valuable feedback! In the future, we may also change not the BR of such vehicles but their characteristics: for example their fire rate or ammunition nomenclature.

• T-54 (1947) — Fire rate has been changed from 7 to 8 shots per minute.
  
• ZTZ59D1 — Fire rate has been changed from 7 to 8 shots per minute.
  
• Type 69 — Fire rate has been changed from 7 to 8 shots per minute.
  
• ZTZ88B — Fire rate has been changed from 8.4 to 8 shots per minute.

Leave your BR feedback here

Each year China celebrates its army on the 1st of August. Today the People's Liberation Army is the largest in the world — over 2 million serve in it. As a part of UN missions, Chinese soldiers participated in peacekeeping missions across the entire world: from Lebanon and Sudan to Haiti and Mali.

From August 1st (12:00 GMT) until August 4th (12:00 GMT), the T-69 II G medium tank from the Chinese research tree will be temporarily available for Golden Eagles.

The T-69 II G is the export modification of the Chinese Type 69 main battle tank that serves in the armed forces of Bangladesh. With its well-armored turret and great ballistics, it’s perfect for the role of a sniper — and thanks to the proximity fused HE DTB-1 shell, it can not only pick tanks, but also helicopters as targets!

From August 1st (12:00 GMT) until August 4th (12:00 GMT)

Play 3 battles using Chinese ground vehicles (rank III or higher, with an activity of not less than 70%) to receive the “People's Liberation Army” 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 → PLA Day.

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

We’d like to address an issue that has become increasingly prevalent in our community: the issue of bots that some of you encounter during battles, primarily due to their unnatural behavior. There are also player accounts with strange stats that raise a few eyebrows. We feel it is essential to keep our community informed about the nature of these bots and our plans to combat them.

Firstly, we want to express our sincere gratitude to all of you who have reported this problem and continue to do so. Your proactive participation is what makes our community strong and resilient. The recent surge in the number of bots operating in our game has been a concern for all of us and we’re working hard to tackle the problem.

Over the past few months, we have been conducting a comprehensive study to understand how these bots operate, what motivates their creators, and, most importantly, how we can most effectively combat them. This is not an easy task, because in many cases, real players move and fight in battle similar to how these bots do, not identically of course - but we need to be careful and eliminate any margin of error, and make sure we can avoid any false positives when detecting them.

Bots are primarily used to artificially boost accounts, which are then sold for profit - a practice which sometimes also involves the illicit use of stolen credit card information. There are also cases where bot software is sold to those who wish to boost their player accounts themselves. All these practices breach our game rules, and hurt both our players and the game as a whole.

At present, our immediate response is obviously to detect and ban any bots we encounter. For example, last weekend we studied hundreds of player reports and banned 215 accounts that were definitely using bots. Hence, we’d like to emphasize that purchasing bots or boosted accounts will - sooner or later - lead to an account ban, meaning the loss of both money and in-game progress. We’re also kindly asking you to report all bots via the in-game reporting system. Your support will allow us to get rid of those bots even quicker.

We acknowledge and deeply regret instances where some past reports did not result in user bans as expected. Your voices do matter to us, and every report is critical for maintaining the game's fairness and integrity. To address this, we're currently in the process of overhauling our report processing system to ensure a quicker and more effective response time. Furthermore, to streamline our understanding and handling of the bot problem, we will be introducing separate categories specifically for bot reporting in a few days.

However, we fully understand that banning each individual bot-linked account is a temporary solution and are, therefore, dedicated to finding a long-term solution to ensure a proper gameplay experience in War Thunder is maintained. We are exploring various options and are even prepared to implement drastic measures such as CAPTCHA (before battle or in battle) for accounts that we identify as suspicious, if necessary, to curb bot usage.

We will have a clearer understanding of the timeline once we release our next major update and Economy Roadmap updates that currently require most of our time. Rest assured that our commitment to resolving this issue remains unwavering and our efforts are geared towards implementing these countermeasures as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience, understanding, and continued support. We look forward to sharing more updates with you soon.

Work to preserve fair play in War Thunder is carried out in several directions, amongst which is the fight against the automatization of gameplay. Such combatants stand out for their passive behavior and simply low efficiency. They let the whole team down.



This list will be available for two weeks after its publication date.

Set a strong password for your account and enable two-step authentication in your profile - this will protect your account from fraudsters. Don’t use forbidden client modifications and never share your account information with anyone!

Greetings, fighters! We continue to work on making our game better in all aspects, and today we’d like to present a new article type: In Detail. It will include both player suggestions and our ideas that we’d like to elaborate upon and discuss with you.


We’d like to disable ground vehicle markers for pilots of fighters and interceptor helicopters during air events in Ground arcade battles. The markers will remain for strike aircraft, bombers, and helicopters with air-to-ground rockets and ATGMs.

Air events are a rather old mechanic that was adapted to new vehicle ranks by including more and more modern aircraft. But with more powerful payloads, more advanced fighters with front-mounted cannons appeared in the sky. Such aircraft were intended to escort or destroy strike aircraft (depending which side they’re on), but, beginning at the mid ranks, the fighters often prefer to rush to the tank battlefield and attack low armored vehicles.

As a result, we believe, gameplay suffered for both ground vehicles that had to fend off 2-4 aircraft instead of one serious aerial opponent, as well as the strike aircraft that were left with no cover while costing many times more.

Besides, after the middle of the battle the dominating side started to actively use air events for massive air attacks, lowering the comeback chances of the side that was already losing.


Fighters aren’t the “main characters” in air events: you can infer that from the fact that you can’t initiate the events as a fighter. Effective escort/interceptor fighters costing one point are meant to improve the chances of the strike or to counter it — depending on the side.

Fighter pilots that aren’t tempted by highlighted positions of the ground targets will concentrate on their immediate task, the tankers will clearly see their main target in the sky, and kamikaze attacks that annoy many of you will happen much less often.

The screenshots you shared with us last week of your allied vehicles were very nice! This week we would like to focus on vehicles operated by the axis nations. 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 #WTscreen78. You have time until 04.08.2023 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.

• Your screenshot must include a player vehicle from one of the following axis countries: Germany, Italy or Japan.
  
• You must add the #WTscreen78 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=3008884498
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008332034
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008166116

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008382829
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009637649
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008944637

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

From July 28th (12 GMT) until July 31st (12 GMT)

The main calibre of the “Stroyny” is the four 130mm B-13 cannons with three types of shells, effective against different types of enemies. The 76mm auxiliary calibre is also quite powerful for its class and six 37mm anti-aircraft guns will ward off any enemy aircraft and boats.


“Neustrashimy” on other hand has only two main calibre turrets but wait! ±180 degrees of traverse, an impressive fire rate and excellent ballistics make these 130mm artillery guns truly versatile. The 45mm anti-aircraft guns can protect not only itself but also any surrounding allies and the running characteristics also allows captains to freely change flanks in the battle.

From July 28th (12 GMT) until July 31st (12 GMT)

“Great emblem of the Russian Navy” 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 → Russian Navy Day.

You can find the decal in the “USSR → Ships” tab in the Customisation menu.

• An error that caused the game to freeze when opening the contacts window if the player had over 1000 friends has been fixed.

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.