ARCADE - Average Battle Rating System
Hello,
For those of you who are unaware, War Thunder uses a battle rating system. When you play arcade, there is an AVERAGE battle rating system. Please read the below for enlightenment on this subject. Hopefully, this will stop bickering/arguing on TS about, "What you're flying."
BATTLE RATINGS SYSTEM
The matchmaking system in the War Thunder uses
the Battle Rating system as of version 1.45 to group
players into matches, and it is important to plan your
lineup around it so that you are not fighting planes
with vastly superior capabilities compared to yours.
Each plane has its own Battle Rating (BR) to
indicate its effectiveness in battle and appears
in steps of 0.33, thus the sequence of BR
appears as 1.0 (lowest), 1.3, 1.7, 2.0, 2.3 and
so on (rounded off) all the way up to 9.0.
For arcade air battles, the weighted average of the
top 3 BR values of your planes is used to calculate
the player’s BR. The formula is: Player BR = A x 0.5
+ B x 0.25 + C x 0.25, rounded off to the nearest .3, .7 or
.0, with A, B and C representing the top 3 planes’
BR in descending order (with A being the highest).
Players are matched up with other players with a
maximum difference of 1.0 in their player’s BR.
There is, however, a cap for the difference
in BR of the top 3 aircraft. If the difference is
2 steps (BR value difference of 0.6 or 0.7) or
more, the player’s BR will simply be (A – 0.33)
rounded off, with A being the highest BR. This is
to prevent players from bringing in planes with
extremely high BR into a battle by supplementing
the lineup with planes of much lower BR.
What does this all mean? As planes in the
Tech Tree are not arranged according to BR,
some planes at lower tiers might actually have
very high BR due to their effectiveness. Bringing
such aircraft causes you to be matched against
much stronger planes, and you might not have
planes in your lineup good enough to fight in
those battles once that top-of-the-line aircraft is
destroyed. It sometimes may be tempting to bring
a shiny new aircraft you’ve just researched into
the next battle, but it can be unwise to do so.
This is a big problem that new players always face,
as the inner workings of BR and matchmaking are
not explained clearly right at the start. Newer players
often get frustrated when being matched up against
far superior planes that they can’t handle with
their mostly reserve lineup when they inadvertently
bring themselves into a higher BR match.
For example, putting the new PBY-5 Catalina
(BR2.0) you have researched into your lineup (which
is actually the default option the game picks for
you) with P-26 Peashooter reserve planes only
(BR1.0) could actually set you up with battles with
much better planes, as the PBY-5 would raise the
player BR significantly. There is a chance that the
matchmaker may match the player up against
players with better planes like the F4F-3 (2.3BR),
A-20G (BR2.7) and P-40 (BR2.7) because of the BR1.0
range when finding players for matchmaking.
The planes more suitable to supplement the
P-26A Peashooter in the lineups would probably
be the OS2U-1 Kingfisher (and the OS2U-3 as
well) and the F2A-1 planes, which are all at
1.3BR, much closer to the P-26 Peashooters.
Eventually, the player would have to move
on to using planes with a higher BR. To utilise
the PBY-5 Catalina, the most effective way is to
supplement the lineup with better planes such
as the P-36A (BR1.7), P-36C (BR2.0) and SBD-3
(BR2.0) which are closer to it, providing a more
credible counter to the planes it can potentially face.
(Note: These values are accurate as of Dec 2014)
Therefore, a good way is to research a few new
planes (at least 3) of similar BR before bringing
them into battle all in one go, with your older
aircraft as a form of reserve. When it comes to
researching new planes, instead of choosing the
most mean-looking fighter (with a ridiculously
high BR) you can lay your hands on, choose one
that allows your lineup to gradually increase its BR
without facing significantly more difficult foes.
In layman's terms, you join a channel & they say, "We're flying 6.0, do you want in?"
"Ok, let me get my lineup set."
Lineup:
P-51D-30 (BR 5.0)
F8F-1 (BR 5.0)
F8F-1B (BR 6.3) (A)
B-17G (BR 6.0) (B)
FW 190 A-8 (BR 5.7) (C)
"Hang on! We're flying 6.0, you can't bring your 6.3 Bearcat!!!"
Well, actually, in ARCADE, this lineup IS A 6.0! Take your three highest BRs (A, B, C) & use the "Pro" formula:
C + B = X
X divided by 2 = Y
A + Y = Z
Z divided by 2 = AVERAGE BATTLE RATING!
5.7 (C) + 6 (B) = 11.7 (X). 11.7 (X) / 2 = 5.85 (Y). 6.3 (A) + 5.85 (Y) = 12.15 (Z). 12.15(Z) / 2 = 6.075 (AVERAGE). Round to the nearest .0/.3/.7 = 6.0.
You can read about this in Issue #1, Pg. 43, of the WT Community Magazine!!!
