War Thunder: Nearly Every Aircraft Can Now Douse Fires in Drone Age Update

By Benjamin Paraggua Published 09/16/22 EDT

War Thunder received a pretty large content patch recently. The Drone Age Update not only introduces UAVs to the game but also implements significant changes. For instance, most aircraft can now douse fires on their own, thanks to a new game mechanic.

Aircraft in War Thunder can catch fire when they’ve taken a considerable amount of damage. When the plane is burning, the aircraft will take damage every second and the player has to eject in time, otherwise, they die in a fiery death. To help players address fiery situations, a huge number of planes and helicopters in the game are now equipped with fire extinguishing systems.

There are two types of fire extinguishing systems for aircraft in War Thunder. The first is the automatic fire extinguisher system, which activates immediately after the destruction of a particular capsule inside the plane due to engine fire. The second can be triggered manually by pressing the “Toggle Extinguisher” button. Activating the system this way will make the engine inoperable for a few seconds because it takes time to put the fire out.

The manual fire extinguishing system can only be used in the event of an engine fire. This is to prevent the accidental toggling of the feature that will lead to unintended engine shutdowns during flight.

Here are some of the other aircraft changes implemented in the Drone Age Update:

Aircraft with the HUD camera for guiding missiles with the laser seeker now able to switch to this camera when the missiles are depleted.
If the weapon selector is used, the secondary weapon is no longer automatically switched to the next type when the last weapon of the selected type is launched. A player has to switch weapons manually. This prevents accidental launches.
Game option “Seeker automatic stabilization” was added. If the option is disabled, seeker stabilization of the weapon with optical guidance is enabled and disabled manually in the same way it is done for targeting optics and TGP. If the option is enabled, seeker behavior remains the same: automatic activation of automatic seeker stabilization after switch to seeker camera and deactivation after exit.
If an optical seeker can track both units and point at the ground, point tracking is indicated by text in the seeker status bar on the HUD.
The autopilot of all air-to-air missiles has been re-configured to provide better precision against maneuvering targets.
Modification “Replacing helicopter blades” has been moved to Tier II for all helicopters.

The full patch notes can be found on the official site.