Community Update No.11: Nuclear Escalation, Sound Mods & More

Hey everyone! Today we’re back with another Community Update, we’ll be giving you some details on Nuclear Escalation, Sound Mods, the upcoming major update and our plans for vehicle events until August. So sit back, grab your favourite beverage and read on!

Nigel is always among us. If you didn’t manage to get this decal last year, enter code NIGELWASHERE here to redeem it.

The decal code will remain active from the publish date of this news until May 28th (10:00 GMT).

The annual April Fools event this year showcased Nuclear Escalation, a new mode that featured brand-new nuclear bombers. We saw the great response to this mode from the community as well as your constructive feedback and today we would like to show you some statistics from the event that you may find interesting:

We would also like to make a return to Nuclear Escalation, and it’s not that far away from coming back. Our current plan is to bring this mode back after the release of the next major update on a temporary basis. This will be to test, refine and make it as good as possible. It will return in a similar event layout as Bullet Hell and SEAD, whereby there are no tasks to obtain any reward vehicles. The two nuclear bombers will also not be available to use during the new event. This is because we’ll be testing this mode at a higher Battle Rating range, more nations, with different ground targets and some tweaks and improvements.

We’ll have some more detailed information coming soon in a news post where we’ll cover all the changes and event schedule, so keep an eye out for that!

In March, we had to disable the use of sound mods after making changes to the audio engine, causing an increase in game crashes and other issues when sound mods were enabled. We fully understand the frustration this has caused to sound mod creators and players who use them, so rest assured we’re working every day on a solution to bring them back as soon as possible. Some good news here is that we plan to return the use of sound mods this month. We’ll let you know in a changelog, so please keep an eye out.

We really appreciate your patience regarding this.

The Japanese G4M1 cockpit is in the works to be updated with stunning details, with more cockpits to come throughout the year. This updated cockpit is coming in a future major update, not the next one.

Here is a sneak peek of the G4M1, check it out!

It’s fast approaching summer, and we’re ready to give you all some information on what to expect regarding events from now until August.

Let’s take a look at what’s coming after the dust settles from celebrating the victory of the war in Europe, where you can expect a naval event with a rank III boat for France at the end of May.

In June, we honor the events of D-Day with a slightly unrelated vehicle to the real life operation, but still pretty cool nonetheless. We’ll be celebrating with a certain British aircraft that will hopefully “float” your boat, if you catch our drift. This will be the last vehicle event before a month-long vehicle event pause.

The 2026 World Cup kicks off this June, and what better way to enjoy the summer football vibe than with Tank Football? In July, during the latter stages of the World Cup, we’ll be temporarily bringing back Tank Football for you to enjoy as a cosmetic event (meaning no vehicle reward). This is sort of a one-off-special for the World Cup, as we usually only run this event annually every February / March. So, if you’ve never played this mode before, be sure to give it a try in between the real-life World Cup matches to make the most of the football atmosphere!

After the month-long vehicle event pause following the D-Day event, we return with a British ground vehicle event in July. This quick “single-edged, curved sword” vehicle is sure to leave devastating slashes on your enemies.

And lastly, as the summer heat reaches its heights in August, we will have a naval event, this time for a First World War era Soviet ship.

That’s all we can share for now in regards to events for the next 3 months, we’ll talk about what’s to come after August in the next Community Update in the late summer! 

The next major update is around the corner, and with it new vehicles and improvements to the game. As always, not everything coming is mentioned here; we don’t want to reveal everything in advance. Definitely keep an eye on the upcoming dev blogs and dev server for everything that’ll be coming!

In real life, the Turm III is a unique vehicle in that it has a 3-plane stabilizer. However, this is something we haven’t implemented into the game... until now! 

Here is some more context from one of our programmers who worked on it:

With that said, in the next major update, the Turm III will get its 3-plane stabilizer, and will be the first tank in the game with this kind. In simple terms, this means the turret will now sit level, even when the vehicle itself is on an incline. This won’t be a radical change by any means, but it will make your shots more accurate in some cases, as the reticle will almost always stay vertical. An example:

Before / After

In principle, this new window works similarly to how the Shell parameters window works for tank shells. The Missile Simulation window allows you to see the telemetry of missiles in flight, including speed, distance covered, distance to targets, and overload. It also allows you to compare multiple missiles visually in a graph, learning how different missiles perform in flight compared to each other. Hovering over points on the graph in flight allows you to see the missile’s telemetry as well.

Here are some mock-up images of how it will be designed:

(Click arrow to change screenshot)

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We’ve added lots of details to the damage models of several top-ranking jet aircraft, including several F-15s, F-16s, MiG-23s, MiG-27s, and more. Here are some examples:

MiG-27K

F-15A

MiG-23M

Quite the mouthful! However a common suggestion from you that’s quite a big Quality of Life update for radar control. With this new feature, you will be able to use a mapped cycle button to select the targets when in manual acquisition mode. This feature offers some more flexibility for pilots who want to use some snappier responsive key binds to quickly lock targets up while still retaining the ability to use the target cue for a more precise radar control when needed!

The feature only affects the manual mode, so when the cyclic target switching is enabled, the radar still works as it used to.

In addition to more detailed damage models, we’ve also worked on creating some more authentic MFDs (MultiFunction Displays) for aircraft, including the Tiger HAC, F/A-18s, F-15s, and more. Here are some examples we can show:

MiG-29

Guess the aircraft...

What can you expect in terms of vehicles in the next major? First off, let’s start with aircraft. For the USA, we’ll have a magic aircraft, with its namesake being able to communicate with spirits. Can you guess what it is?

The RAF Washington B.1 for Great Britain will be making an appearance, as well as another British aircraft which you’ll have to look out for, this one loves high altitudes! For other nations, there will be two revshare planes, some premium packs and some attack aircraft.

Next, let’s see what you can expect for ground vehicles. Japan will be receiving some Indonesian tanks, including the Leopard 2RI, while Sweden will be getting Norway’s NOMAD SAM! There’s still more ground vehicles coming, and all will be revealed soon...

Lastly, let’s take a look at Naval stuff. You can expect to see the Chervona Ukraina for the Soviets, plus the USS North Carolina for the USA. As with ground vehicles, there’s still more ships and boats coming, big and small, and all will be revealed in good time!

Thanks for giving this Community Update a read, we hope it gives you some things to look forward to in the next update, see you soon!

The War Thunder Team

The Skilled Pilot Pack is available in the store, check it out if you haven’t already got it!