War Thunder: Closed Naval Forces

Beautiful way to die.

I would’ve written about this the last time the closed alpha was up (restricted timed alpha) but at the time I was unlucky with my timing as I could only play about 5 minutes before it was shut down so I felt it I didn’t get a full grasp of everything. But now I have accounted for the time difference and have a (general) grasp of the game including the awesome (OP?) Japanese Yugumo Destroyer.

Yes recently I did a review from Cold Waters so if you noticed anything is that I love naval combat, especially the classic “aim-and-hope-to-hit-the-target” classic battles like WWII. So long ago when War Thunder said “we’re doing all vehicular combat of WWII” including warship, I was extremely eager for that to happen. Granted that was a long time ago so we’ve had to wait a long time. World of Warships came out in that time and while I like it (its the only game out that does warships) it feels too arcade to me, it’s more of a “keep hitting them until there health reaches zero” or of course RNG decided “one shot one kill” then just having to wait for your favorite ship to “come back from battle.” There are a number of things I don’t like about WoWS but that’s another story (for not another time) and I keep playing it mainly for the whole “it’s the only one like it around.” BUT…now we have War Thunder to contend with. Granted right now, like the title says, it’s in closed alpha but it’s on its way and I had a chance (multiple full matches, not just five minutes) to test out all the Destroyers they’ve added so far.

Fletcher takes on two Tribals and survives.

Now for simple summation of classic (WWII) battles of classes of ships just so you know the difference between them all when I mention them down the line. Battleships are the heavy weapons. They have big gun, lots of armor, can take a beating and give just as much as they take, but they’re slow and not the best Anti-Air (pre and early WWII Battleships only.) Cruisers are the meat of the fleet. Not as big, tough or powerful as battleships but they’re typically known for speed and lots of damage for there size. They can be multipurpose (can take on air and ships equally) or they can be specialized (really powerful against ships but not air or vise-versa) but overall they’re typically either a fleet of themselves (cruisers and destroyers) or screening a battle fleet (battleships and aircraft carriers.) Now this is what applies to War Thunder (as of now,) Destroyers, are the smaller, sometimes specialized versions of cruisers. Being so small they’re not exactly aircraft killers but they can hold there own. They can dish out damage above there class (cruisers & battleships) with there torpedoes, fast and agile, and the ability to stalk and kill submarines with depth charges.

With all that in mind, for those people out there hoping to have a realistic sim of battleship on battleship combat (myself included) it maybe me a long time, if ever, when we get that. Since World of Warships changes all the stats of ships to make it accommodate there game (decreased range, faster speed, etc.,) I don’t believe War Thunder would be willing to to sacrifice that much authenticity to make battleships work but that’s just me speculating. So as of now we’re stuck with Destroyers and oh boy are they fun.

Fletcher Class Destroyer.

Starting with my favorite destroyer, the Fletcher class (yeah yeah country bias I hear ya.) Since it’s in closed alpha, you don’t get the classic War Thunder loadout when you start the game. You can’t buy upgrades or check out stats or anything like that, you just drop into the map and choose a vehicle (aircraft or naval) they give you and start. So we’re all on equal terms in every respect. The only thing you can choose is which country you sail with. And with only five navies to choose from, USSR, UK, US, and JP. Germany has only torpedo boats but were disabled for this particular testing time. So as of now this Fletcher is fantastic. One complaint I have is the fact that when you take control of the AA guns (yes you can manually control secondary and AA guns) they seem to “get stuck” half way down trying aim at low flying aircraft or torpedo boats.

Tribal Class Destroyer

While the British Tribal class only have 4.7 inch guns (unlike the other destroyers at 5 inches) or as many torpedoes as the other ships, her having the smaller guns means she can fire slightly faster than the rest, having the majority of guns forward meaning she can’t get hit as easily and still do a lot of damage and having a heavy secondary gun (top most gun aft in the screenshot above) means shes on par with the other ships.

Yugumo Class Destroyer

I don’t know if this was intentional or not but the Yugumo only has HE rounds but with that in mind, the description of her says “Has DP main guns,” which means her main guns can turn into flak guns against aircraft. In real life the Fletcher also has this but as far as I can tell neither ship can actually do that right now. Whether they add this in the game or not we’ll have to wait and see but it seems like they might because why else would they mention it. But right now, the Yugumo is bristling with AA guns and to see all the tracers leave the ship is in itself very pretty and very satisfying.

Yugumo AA guns trying to shoot down a Typhoon.

The overall functionality of all ships is the same. You start out controlling the main guns and can switch between secondaries and AA guns. The AI ONLY controls the secondaries and AA meaning when you switch off the main guns, they won’t try to shoot at things and will stay aiming at at the bearing you left it at. However if you’re in the Yugumo and switch to the AA guns, the main guns switch to AA mode and you control them as well but the AA won’t take control of them to shoot.

Going for the “headshot” in naval battles is hard but extremely satisfying. For those that don’t know the critical hit of a ship, or the “headshot,” is the ammunition storage. Hit that, it detonates, the ship is lost. There are two storage lockers on ships, one forward and one aft. The one way to detonate it is to hit it directly but the only way to do it is to shoot under the water line which means you need AP rounds or you can use HE rounds and start a fire above deck that will hopefully reach the lockers but that takes time and fires can put out.

Project 7U Destroyer

The Project 7U Soviet Destroyer has the biggest guns of all the current destroyers but only has four of them. I am not a fan of her simply because she may be powerful but my luck with her has been: “Get hit, fire. Seagull shits on the deck by, fire. Water splashes on deck, fire. I get up to take a piss, fire.” I don’t know if I’m just that unlucky but she seems to be made of gasoline. But her AA guns are very cool to watch, especially in ship-to-ship combat.

But as of now, War Thunder is heading in the right direction. I have wanted a Sim naval game (or anything close to it) for a long time and it’s finally happening. I really do hope they go as high as cruisers in terms of class of ships they add. I love the way destroyers are now but I really would love to have my Cleveland/Atlanta class come into the mix. I mean ground forces in the game have dedicated anti-air vehicles, why not the Atlanta? She’s just a floating flak gun. But that’s just wishful thinking but even if they don’t add those ships, I would love cruisers of any kind, I hope they get that far.

As of now, the Naval Forces in War Thunder are “Pre-Beta” which means not everyone’s going to get there hands on this, unless you buy the starter ship packs in the store. That’s up to you whether or not to buy something to get access to it but at the rate they’re going it’ll be in Open Beta soon enough.