If you’ve stumbled across this article, you’re probably wondering what type of vehicles or battles you should play inWar Thunder. Should you go for massive warships, shooting from 16 canons at the same time, skillful dogfights where a carefully placed shot can take down an enemy airplane, or rush into a classic tank battle and get the feeling of ground warfare?
Each type of vehicle and its battles have pros and cons. Your choice comes down to personal preference and the type of combat you’re interested in. If you’ve ever wanted to see a breakdown of all 3 modes in War Thunder, you’re in luck because that’s what we’re here to do.
Things To Know When Starting War Thunder
Before we analyze each section of War Thunder, here are a few general things that you need to know about every type of vehicle.
Options
War Thunder is incredibly detailed, and it has one of the biggest Options sections out there.Almost everything can be adjusted for your vehicles there, so make sure you check that out. There’s even a search bar that makes everything easier.
New vehicles
You get new vehicles by researching themwith pointsyou get from completed battles in the Research tab. However, the first time you join War Thunder, one line of vehicles will be selected for you automatically and if you don’t change it, you will keep getting the vehicles you haven’t picked yourself.
Battle Rating
Battle rating represents an overall grade your vehicle hasfor its combat capabilities. As you play, you will be getting more powerful vehicles with higher battle ratings and matched with similar players. But, there’s a catch.
Matchmaking will put youin a pool of players with a +/- 1.0 battle rating from yourbest vehicle. This means that if you have vehicles with battle ratings of 1.0, 1.3, 1.7, and 3.0 you will be matched with players who have vehicles anywhere from 2.0 to 4.0. As you can see from our example, your general lineup is mostly a 1+ battle rating and if you were to join a battle with these stronger players you wouldn’t have a good time.
Play Assault mode whenever you can.This is a cooperative mode where you and other human players compete against AI-controlled vehicles and is usually a given task like defending an area. Playing it when you’re a beginner offers a great opportunity for you to get extra practice as well as Silver Lions and Research points for your vehicles. Thefirst match of the dayin this mode will give you abattle trophy reward.
Tanks
Tank fights or ground battles arethe closest thing to an FPSin War Thunder. If you decide to jump in a tank battle, you’ll be faced withhigh-risk, high-reward situationswhere players frequently kill each other with a single shot in a tank’s weak spot.
Even though the ground battle mode is often described as a tank fight, there are vehicles outside tanks in the ground battle mode, like anti-aircraft guns and artillery.
Pay attention to every vehicle’sstrengths and weaknesses through the Armor optionyou have on your homepage. Tank destroyers/artillery usually have great armor at the front but very weak or no armor at the back, so you’d want to face your enemies at all times with this one.
On the other hand,some tanks have very weak frontal armor, so you’ll want to face your enemies at an angle when driving them.
Tank battles can be fast or slow-paced, depending on your game style. However, for a big portion of the time, you will be moving around cover, peeking behind walls, and trying to catch your enemies off guard. You can’t get outflanked easily as tanks aren’t that fast and tiny (especially early models) and there’s no such thing as punishing campers. But beware, asyou are visible to the whole enemy armyonce one enemytags you or damages you.
Airplanes
Air battles are a much more skill-orientedmode that puts you into a very fast-paced environment — you can quickly get outflanked or find yourself near the enemy base. Planes are much faster thus making it easier to lose the feeling of where you are on the battlefield and become alone with no teammates around.
Being the mode that requires more skill doesn’t mean that it’s not for beginners. It just means thatthere are more things to pay attention towhen compared to ground and naval battles. Every plane has its own advantages and drawbacks that you will get to know as you play.
For example,dive bombers can rush directly to a ground targetby pointing their nose to the ground, approaching the ground closely, dropping the bomb, and then flying back up. Many other planes, including bigger bombers and fighters, wouldn’t be able to dive like that and then simply fly back up afterward.They would simply crash in a stunt like that.
Since you won’t be able to stand in one place as you’re able to with tanks and ships, you’ll need tothink carefully about your movement as well as your plane’s speed. You can easily find yourself out of position and too close to danger.
The fun part of air battles is that you will often get tasks to destroy both ground and air targets, giving the whole matcha more authentic, real battle, feeling. Also, being in adogfight up in the skiesand trying to outsmart others who are chasing you or knocking down a bomber that was destroying your base is in itself like an action movie.
Pay attention to theG force that will trigger and darken your screenif you make any sudden upward movements. This is a realistic element that is added even in arcade battles that simulate the pilot fainting from too much pressure.
Ships
Naval battles are the only ones thatsplit in two ways, with bluewater and coastalvehicles being separated.
Coastal battles are usually faster, using smaller to medium boats and ships that have machine guns and torpedoes. Bluewater fleet, on the other hand, will take you to longer battles where you will shoot at enemies that are a couple of miles away with powerful cannons.
Bluewater mode brings plenty of calculations for youas the player and more complex aiming as your projectiles travel faster, and yourloading times can often be 40 seconds or more.
Another thing to point out is thatbigger destroyer ships are pretty resilient, meaning they can take plenty of shots before they’re sunk.This givesyour match a much slower tempo(unless everyone is running around with coastal small boats).
One advantage that veteran naval players point out is thatship battles are a great place to farm Silver Lions. If you’re unfamiliar, theSilver Lion is the currency that you get after every War Thunder match,which allows you to purchase different vehicles or vehicle parts once they’ve been researched.
Since naval battles offer strong ships that can take plenty of shots, and you get Silver Lions every time you deal a normal hit, critical hit, or destroy an enemy, it’s natural that plenty of in-game currency awaits you here.
