Welcome to RAMJB's War Thunder Academy.
Let me first introduce myself. I'm a 35 year old Spaniard whose main hobby and interests have always been related to warplanes and history. For years those interests have brought me into many games, both computer based and board games, especially those related with simulation.
My first steps in the online simulation world were taken in Aces High, a multiplayer only WW2 air combat title published in the late 90s. Back then it was obvious to see that air combat was much more complicated and less straightforward than I previously had imagined, and that good virtual pilots seemed to have an instinctive grasp of many concepts I couldn't even start to understand back then. So I set myself on a trek to learn how to be a good virtual fighter pilot and in due time I think I achieved it.
Later on I used the skills I learned and honed in Aces High to move on to other online titles and to take on the virtual skies as a fighter pilot - always being pretty successful, always learning stuff as time passed by.
Fast forward to 2013. A new F2P title, still in Beta, hits the streets. Its name is War Thunder. War Thunder is not a hardcore simulation, even while including a Full Real mode that would qualify as such, it's most popular gamemodes don't. Most War Thunder players are flying in 3rd person view with the option of using controls that aren't really compatible with a real flight simulator (mouse and keyboard) through an instructor system that won't allow them to lose control of their plane, stall, or spin.
All those features instantly disqualify the game as a flight simulator in those gamemodes.
Still, even in the most relaxed realism game mode (Arcade) War Thunder includes enough realistic features, physics and mechanics to bring it close to real air combat fighting in the WW2 era - while it's relaxed realism settings make unrealistic maneouvers and tactics possible in Arcade, real world tactics work, and work well there. And once the step into Historical Battles is taken, with most relaxed realism features deleted, those real tactics are virtually the one and only way on to success.
As such, newcomers to this kind of game usually are lost at what to do or how to be successful at it because they know little or very little about the factors involved in air combat. Knowledge about aircraft is very limited in players who have never really tried a "flying game" before, and is seriously contaminated by highly questionable, from an historical point of view, documentaries that can be found both in television or internet.
As a result the newcomer to War Thunder expects planes to behave in a way they never will and don't have the basic understanding about how they flew - and how they fly in the game. And here is where I stepped in, to use my many years of online flying and knowledge about the actual planes that flew during WW2, and about the tactics and inner workings about air combat, to help people understanding the game better, improving their quality as players, and to, hopefully, give them the tools to better enjoy themselves while playing War Thunder.
This Blog is one of the tools I'm using to achieve that goal, the others being my YouTube channel and my Facebook group. So be welcome to this Academy, be sure to check those out as well, and enjoy your stay.
All the best:
Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ramjb
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/ramjb.warthunder
