Supply Bases & Supply Lines

This page describes the concept behind supply bases and the experimental proposal of supply trucks to represent supply lines

Supply Bases

At this point you might be thinking "what's the point of supply bases if map control is so much more important and why are they called "supply bases" in the first place" and that'd be a legitimate question.

Supply Bases, while they do not make the enemy team lose that much tickets (unless you control all of them), are actually very important because of their key difference with the regular strategic points in Domination and Conquest modes:

• Supply Bases are able to resupply everything, shells, bullets, crew members, fire extinguishers, smoke grenades...

• This is what i meant when i said reduce the "a tank eventually has to die" phenomen at the beginning, not making sure to destroy a hostile vehicle gives them the chance to repair and fully resupply and while it may be less of an issue on the frontlines, it becomes more troublesome when attacking a supply base

Supply Crates Characteristics & Behavior

Now we're getting to the behavior of crates once they touched ground

Crate Appearance

How would crates look like on ground (example design)

Extinguisher Icon

Fire extinguisher icon over crate indicating it contains fire prevention equipment

Shell Icon

Shell icon with names on the right indicating what shells in this crate are compatible

So for each compatible equipment/ammo, an icon will appear over the crate and another one will appear on the minimap. As the shell icon needs to display more information, it should use the same system used for teammates marker (usernames, vehicles...):

• >250m: Only the shell icon is displayed if an ammunition is compatible

• 250-125m: The type of each compatible ammunition is written on the right side of the shell icon

• 0-125m: The amount of compatible ammunitions of each type is displayed along with the type (like: APCR x 5)

Crates have the following characteristics:

• Crates have two possible state: friendly or hostile

• Crates dropped from an allied aircraft are by default friendly

• Besides lower probability of compatibility, nothing prevents hostile vehicles to use friendly crates

• To refill, a vehicle simply needs to stand still next to the crate, just like on strategic points

• You can only refill one type of shell/modification at once

• Players can however prioritize what they're refilling first by pressing the F key, which will start refilling another thing (as such, rotating between each ammo type/equipment can be achieved by pressing F multiple times)

• Like on strategic points, what is currently being refilled will be highlighted with a progress bar on the bottom bar listing the shells and equipments

Animation of when a vehicle resupplies from a crate

• Friendly crates cannot be destroyed

• Hostile crates can be destroyed by applying sufficient and appropriate firepower on it, or, if they are on the ground, by colliding with it with a sufficiently high momentum

• Starting to refill using an hostile crate instantly makes it friendly, at which point you cannot destroy it anymore but the opposite team can

• Crates can be loaded on supply trucks if the additional mass doesn't go over the maximum additional mass a truck can support

• To make calculations easier and the overall process much less of an headache, how much supplies a crate can contain may be calculated using mass only, as it is already sufficiently accurate

Standard Crate Characteristics

Knowing how much additional mass a vehicle can carry is not enough, we also need to know how much mass can a crate contain. Unfortunately, i couldn't find any historical document specifying a standard for supply crates size so i'll just make one up:

• 1.5m x 1.5m (visual only)

• 200kg of max capacity

The amount of such "standard crates" that can be loaded should then be calculated based on how many crates are needed to contain all the selected supplies

Supply Trucks

Part of this proposal has been edited from the initial one in the 1.1.0 version following kamikazi21358's feedback

(Edited Image) Supply truck carrying supplies in crates

Supply trucks , due to their relatively high impact they can have on the battlefield, are limited to players with no vehicles left and not enough spawn points to spawn in vehicles of their secondary line-up

They are entirely unarmed vehicles meant for support only, with relatively high speed but extremely low survivability.

However, while they may seem pointless, they make supply bases even more impactful:

• They carry supplies in crates, said crates can be dropped to be picked up later, either by another supply truck or by an helicopter

• They are basically a moving supply base that can replenish itself by going back to the friendly supply bases

• They can help repairing, but while they contribute more to repairs than medium tanks, heavy tanks and such, they contribute less than light tanks

As they help friendly vehicles, supply trucks generate score, rewards and a moderate amount of spawn points

Resupplying Interface

The biggest challenge with this feature is to make resupplying a supply truck fast, easy and intuitive. To achieve that, this proposal suggest a categorized interface, giving global and local overviews:

Global Interface

The resupplying interface supply trucks have

Local Interface

The resupplying interface with the "Light Tanks Equipment" category expanded

Detailed Local Interface

The resupplying interface with the "Light Tanks Equipment" category expanded with markings

1. The equipments category

2. The amount of vehicles using equipment from this category

3. A minimap to keep players updated while resupplying

4. The caliber of the shells in this sub-category

5. The amount of vehicles using this specific shell

6. currently loaded shells/max amount of shells of this type that can be loaded (remaining amount of shells of this type that can be loaded while taking into account the already loaded shells of other types)

7. The mass added by the currently loaded equipment and the maximum additional mass the truck can support

Note that most of the values shown in this example are completely random

Inner Workings

When opening the resupplying interface (which can only be done on supply bases), 6 categories are shown:

• Light Tanks Equipment - Contains the equipment (mainly shells) light tanks (but not exclusively) use

• Medium Tanks Equipment - Contains the equipment medium tanks (but not exclusively) use

• Heavy Tanks Equipment - Contains the equipment heavy tanks (but not exclusively) use

• Tank Destroyers Equipment - Contains the equipment tank destroyers (but not exclusively) use

• SPAAs Equipment - Contains the equipment SPAAs use

• Universal Equipment - Contains equipment that is mostly universal to all type of tanks, such as

  • Fire Prevention Equipment

  • Smoke Grenades (of all calibers)

How much vehicles currently use part of this equipment is shown at the right of each category, under the vehicles type icons

Clicking on a category makes it expand to show its equipment, following specific rules:

• Only calibers and shells that are used by the team are shown, this includes:

  • Currently deployed vehicles

  • Not yet deployed vehicles

• Calibers sub-categories are sorted by how many deployed vehicles use them

• Shell types in each sub-category are also sorted by how many deployed vehicles use them

• If all vehicles using a certain caliber or shell type cannot spawn anymore (not even through the use of spawn points for air players), the caliber/shell isn't displayed anymore

How much vehicles currently use each equipment (shell/fire prevention equipment..) is shown at the top right of each equipment card, under the vehicles type icons.

Content of the expanded "Light Tanks Equipment" category in the resupplying interface

You may have noticed that the amount of shells that can be loaded (in this case, the white numbers) are different for each type; This is not completely random, they do have different limits:

A 152mm APCBC shell is 25x heavier than a 57mm APCR shell, and as such, a supply truck should not be able to load nearly as much 152mm APCBC shells than 57mm APCR shells.

The maximum amount of shells a truck can carry is therefore limited to the maximum additional mass the truck can support

If we were to take the interface example where the maximum additional mass for this truck is said 800kg, then it would only be able to carry a few of the 460mm shells shown above, contrary to the example numbers

Just like tanks, carrying the maximum amount isn't necessarily the best approach as:

• Carried supplies are physically represented as crates, the more crates, the more visible a truck becomes, and the more crates, the higher chances of a detonation are

• Because the mass of the supplies is added on top of the mass of the truck, the truck's power-to-weight ratio is decreased

The interface can also be used to unload some of the currently loaded supplies.

In the cases where a vehicle of a different class uses a gun caliber that is usually used in another class, the caliber will simply appear in both categories

Supply Airdrops

This proposal was added as of the 1.1.0 version following kamikazi21358's feedback

Players will be able to spawn in a transport plane able to carry supplies if the following conditions are met:

• If the player's main line-up is their air line-up, they may spawn as a transport plane as long as they didn't spawned twice in one yet

• If the player's main line-up is their ground line-up, they can only spawn as a transport plane once and if they earned the required modest 50 spawn points

Ideally, transport planes should be based on historical model such as the american Douglas C-47 Skytrain

Douglas C-47 SkytrainWikipedia

Supplies will be in the form of physical supply crates and should of course be limited to how much the plane can carry, ideally also based on historical references like the following:

Boeing: Historical Snapshot: C-47 Skytrain military transport

Historical reference showing the C-47 could carry up to 6000 pounds of cargo (roughly 2721 kilograms)

The standard crate (as defined up above) being able to contain up to 200kg, that means the Douglas C-47 Skytrain would, in-game, be able to carry up to 13 full crates and a half-full.

However, that is the theoretical amount. Planes, due to their high-speed flights nature, should not carry the maximum load possible to ensure the plane can still be controlled. This margin of safety should range between 10-20% of the plane's max capacity.

For the Douglas C-47 Skytrain, for example, i set the margin of safety to 500kg. Meaning the Douglas C-47 Skytrain would be able to load up to 2221kg of supplies, roughly 11 standard crates

A mass will need to be given to all modifications/equipments for this to work (smoke grenades, fire prevention equipment...)

Dropping Process

(Edited Image) Transport plane air-dropping supply crates

The dropping process should follow the historical methods, more particularly the Low-Velocity Airdrop as defined by wikipedia:

The delivery of a load involving parachutes that are designed to slow down the load as much as possible to ensure it impacts the ground with minimal force. This type of airdrop is used for delicate equipment and larger items such as vehicles.

AirdropWikipedia

Each crate will therefore have a parachute, slowing its fall down enough to prevent damage to the fragile equipment it carries. This is an excellent way to balance it as well since the opposite team will have two ways to deny the other team's supplies:

• Fire high-explosive shells at the crate to destroy it, or even regular armor piercing shell hoping that it will be enough to detonate the shells stored inside

• Fire directly at the parachute while the crate is still relatively far from the ground to make the crate fall much faster, effectively destroying it on impact

That second option would be even easier with accurate machine-gun fire so it would be possible to efficiently deny a team's supplies.

While an obvious way to prevent the opposite team to shoot down the crates while they're in the air would be to drop them at low altitude, it would in fact result in an airdrop failure as drops from too low altitude wouldn't give enough time for the parachute to slow down the fall

Equipment In Crates - RTNC Method

The RTNC Method (Real-Time Needs Calculation) term will be used to talk about the algorithm right below, but also more generally variants of this algorithm that also calculate the distribution of supplies in a crate based on how much they are needed

Unlike for supply trucks, players won't be able to select what they load, it will be calculated automatically based on the current needs of the team. As it's a multi-step process, i'm gonna write the raw algorithm as JS instead of a formula:

// Declare a variable that will be incremented while counting
// That variable is arbitrary and gives the same value to everything,
// Be it smoke greandes, high caliber shells, low caliber shells, fire extinguishers...
let totalNeededSupplies = 0;
// Declare a variable that will list all supplies needed and their amount
let suppliesNeeded = [];

// Iterate over each player in the friendly team
for (const player in firstTeamMembers) {
    // Filter out un-deployed players, supply trucks and aircrafts
    if (player.vehicle && ["SPAA", "TD", "LT", "MT", "HT"].includes(player.vehicle.type)) {
        // Increment the variable for each smoke grenade/fire prevention equipment used
        for (const mod in player.vehicle.installedModifications) {
        
            // Filter out any modification that is not air-droppable
            // (Everything but smoke grenades and fire prevention equipment)
            if (["FPE", "SG"].includes(mod.type)) {
                // Declare a variable to keep the result in order to avoid 
                // race-conditions by only calculating it once
                const amountNeeded = (mod.amount || 2) - mod.amountUsed;
                // Increment the variable by the amount of smoke grenades
                // Or by 2 if it's FPE as fire extinguishers always have two usages
                totalNeededSupplies += amountNeeded
                // Add the information to the detailed list
                suppliesNeeded.push({
                    type: mod.type,
                    // Subtract the base amount by the amount of uses
                    amountNeeded: amountNeeded
                });
            }    
        }
        
        // Merge ammunition type list from all of the vehicle's guns
        // (primary, secondary, MGs..)
        let allAmmoTypes = [];
        for (const weapon in player.vehicle.weaponry) {
        
            // Filter out weapons that may not be regular
            if (weapon.ammunitions) {
            
                // Merge this weapon's ammunitions list in the allAmmoTypes list
                allAmmoTypes.concat(weapon.ammunitions);
            }    
        }
        
        // Iterate over all ammos and fill the lists
        for (const ammo in allAmmoTypes) {
            // Declare a variable to keep the result in order to avoid 
            // race-conditions by only calculating it once
            const amountNeeded = ammo.baseAmount - ammo.currentAmount;
            totalNeededSupplies += amountNeeded;
            suppliesNeeded.push({
                type: ammo.type, // (ex: 120mm_APFSDS)
                amountNeeded: amountNeeded
            })
        }
    }
}

// Now that all the relevant data has been centralized
// the global calculation can be done
for (const equipment in suppliesNeeded) {
    // Give an importance level to the equipment by calculating what percentage
    // It represents against the total amount of supplies needed
    equipment.importance = equipment.amountNeeded / totalNeededSupplies * 100;
}

//We can now precisely know how much supplies of each ammo/equipments need to be loaded
//Though perfect accuracy cannot be achieved due to the amount of decimals some
//percentages are bound to reach
//Because of that, how much of the equipment will be loaded will be as close as 
//possible to the exact percentage, but not any higher 
//(so the plane won't ever go over it's max cargo capacity, but usually lower)

So as an example, once we've done this calculation, let's say that 7% of the supplies needed are 120mm APFSDS shells, then 7% of the plane's cargo space will be loaded with 120mm APFSDS shells

Note that for SPAA's ammunitions, the amount of belts is used instead of the total amount of singular ammos; Basically, the ammo belts are considered a single shell to more accurately represent the need of each ammunitions based on their size, and thus weight.

As such, ammo belts are loaded in the crates as well instead of single ammos

Airdrop Rewards

• Delivering an airdrop gives 100 silver lions and 40 spawn points if:

  • The airdrop is successful (not dropped at too low altitude to prevent crates from crashing)

  • The airdrop is in the ground battle area (what good would a crate be if the ground forces can't reach it)

• For every friendly vehicles within a 100 meters radius of each crate, 50 silver lions and 10 spawn points are given (as only rewarding based on if the ground forces use it would be unfair considering it's not up to the player)

• Each friendly who refills one shell or equipment gives a 10 silver lions reward (very small because of how much it can be if a friendly refills a lot)

Helicopter-carried Crates

A US Navy helicopter carrying supplies to an aircraft carrier

Source image

Unlike the dedicated transport planes, any helicopter can carry crates as secondary load but at the price of much less capacity than transport planes.

The goal is to make helicopters more relevant (especially utility helicopters) as currently most of them are just food for the enemy anti-air

Loading Crates

Helicopters cannot carry nearly as much supplies as a transport plane. Because of this, it would be inefficient to have them load supplies like planes do. The proposal is to instead have them load specialized crates and give them more versatility over both trucks and planes

Cargo Loadout Selected

Helicopter deployment screen with a Cargo loadout selected

Cargo Loadout Selection

Helicopter deployment screen when selecting a Cargo loadout

This example only shows 3 different supply crates, but there are actually 5 (one for each class: LT, MT, HT, TD, SPAA)

Also, note that, just like the supply trucks resupplying interface, the amount of fielded vehicles currently using some of this equipment is indicated (here, at the bottom left of each option)

Helicopters have 6 options for their Cargo loadout:

1. Light Supplies Crate: A crate containing equipment that light tanks use (but not exclusively) distributed using the RTNC method

2. Medium Supplies Crate: A crate containing equipment that medium tanks use (but not exclusively) distributed using the RTNC method

3. Heavy Supplies Crate: A crate containing equipment that heavy tanks use (but not exclusively) distributed using the RTNC method

4. Tank Destroyer Supplies Crate: A crate containing equipment that tank destroyers use (but not exclusively) distributed using the RTNC method

5. SPAA Supplies Crate: A crate containing equipment that SPAAs use distributed using the RTNC method

6. No Supplies: No supplies at all, equivalent of the currently in-game possibilities

As you may have seen, helicopters cannot carry as much supplies as both supply trucks and transport planes, however, they can make up for it with their extreme versatility:

Supply Bases

Helicopter loading a crate containing medium supplies on a supply base

Aircraft Carriers

Helicopter loading a crate containing medium supplies on an aircraft carrier

Airfield

Helicopter loading a crate containing medium supplies on an airfield

As airfields are quite large, helicopters shouldn't be able to just land anywhere on it.

Similarly to how resupplying and repairing a plane takes longer if it didn't land properly on the airfield, helicopters should take more time to load the supply crates the farther they are from the hangars (depicted on the picture)

Battlefield

(Edited Image) Helicopter loading a crate containing medium supplies on the battlefield

Thanks to their ability to land anywhere as long as there is just enough open terrain, helicopters can load supply crates from pretty much anywhere, including crates that are already on the battlefield (airdropped crates or crates that have been left there by supply trucks).

(Edited Image) Helicopter carrying a supply crate

Unloading Crates

This however doesn't mean helicopters can recklessly move supplies around, quite the opposite in fact:

• Like currently, the higher a helicopter flies, the more likely it is to get shot down; On top of that, the crate would inevitably be more exposed, and should a shell detonate it, the supplies would not only be lost but the explosion would also destabilize the helicopter

• Unlike transport planes, as the crates carried by helicopters do not have parachutes to slow them down, dropping them at high altitude is extremely likely to break them. Any crate dropped above 15m has a good chance to break, forcing pilots to be careful when delivering supplies.

• Helicopters cannot load crates on the battlefield if a vehicle is currently resupplying from it

Gameplay

Helicopters were never meant to primarily fight tanks, they are too slow and make too much noise to fight armored vehicles carrying heavy armament. In real life they are mostly used for recon, transport and rescue operations; War Thunder doesn't have infantry, making helicopters close to completely pointless.

This feature aims to fight that by allowing them to be useful in the second lines, where they can deliver supplies to friendly vehicles and punish light tanks trying to sneak around.

Differentiating Each Vehicle's Needs

This wouldn't work too well if supply trucks, helicopters and transport planes didn't have at least a rough idea of who exactly needs the carried supplies; I've already mentioned the existence of a specific marker above the friendly vehicles that use some of the carried equipment, this same marker may be used to also indicate how much supplies a vehicle needs

Minor Needs

The marker above friendly vehicles with slow pulsations

Moderate Needs

The marker above friendly vehicles with frequent pulsations

Major Needs

The marker above friendly vehicles with fast pulsations

Both the marker above friendly vehicles (shown above) and the minimap markers pulsate. The faster it pulsates, the more supplies the vehicle needs.

I've thought of using different colors for it at first, but i think this is a good way to do it that also works with people suffering from color-blindness