Preview: Introducing a New Aircraft Class

Pilots,

Now that the Public Test has been well underway for a while, the time has come to highlight another one of the new version’s most interesting features. As you may have already seen yourself, or heard from fellow players in-game or on the forums, Update 1.6 is going to introduce a new class for a select group of aircraft. These aircraft, that all feature a very particular profile, will now be called Multirole Aircraft.

All the other classes – Fighters, Heavy Fighters and Attack Aircraft – remain in the game of course. The “new” Multirole Aircraft class is composed, for now, of 28 planes that used to be designated as simple Fighters before. Before we explore the reason behind this change, let’s take a look at which aircraft are concerned and how this will reshuffle the individual nation’s tech trees:

TECH TREES

USSR	US	Japan

	UK	Germany

So why separate these fighters, you ask? The answer is, in order to better convey the universal nature of these special aircraft. As you can see from the pictures above, Multirole Fighters are planes that are situated somewhere between Fighters and Heavy Fighters in terms of their profile. While they are fast and nimble enough to be considered Fighters, they also feature the possibility to carry higher-penetration guns or explosive outboard weapons (rockets or even bombs). However, in order to show that these aircraft need to be played differently if you do decide to strap on this extra payload, our designers elected to put them in a separate class, which will prepare you for the new game style from the get-go.

As such, every nation’s tech tree is now going to begin with such a Multirole fighter. Flying one of these universal planes, newcomers will be able to experience the best of both worlds right from the start of their World of Warplanes journey. The new Tier I Multirole Aircraft allow you to pursue enemies in air-to-air dogfights (albeit a bit less effectively than with a pure Fighter) or focus on ground targets instead by using your superior variety of armament options – all without having to switch to a different plane!

If you’re sceptical, reading all this and thinking to yourself that these Multirole Fighters sound ‘too good to be true’, consider the fact that they will also have drawbacks that pilots will need to keep in mind on their missions. In general, Multirole Aircraft won’t be able to match regular Fighters in terms of manoeuvrability or speed. They also won’t be as high or fast-rising as a Heavy Fighter can be. Compared to a classic Attack Aircraft, a Multirole Aircraft will be less durable – making it more vulnerable to AA-gunfire from the ground. Therefore, it’s easy to characterise Multirole Aircraft as all-rounders, capable of doing a bit of everything quite well, but nothing in spectacular fashion.

Still, their versatile nature is what’s going to set them apart from the competition and make them interesting to fly both for newcomers and veterans who like to switch it up.

YOU WANT MORE INFO?

If you’d like to know more on this subject, head over to our Developers’ Blog, where Game Designer Kirill Gladsky delves deeper into the matter of the new Multirole Aircraft, explaining the reasons behind their introduction by means of a gameplay- and historical analysis.

Look forward to the “new” Multirole Fighters in Version 1.6, pilots!