[Cranker]

can anyone recommend a good starting set for planes? I'm doing fine on tanks but I was looking at the starter packs for planes and to be honest I have absolutely no experience in them, plus the 15 day premium and the extra gold thingies are nice.

[Jackie Weaver]

I've never purchased any packs or premium planes in War Thunder so I wouldn't know. The normal non-premium planes and tanks work perfectly fine for me

[Cranker]

I've never purchased any packs or premium planes in War Thunder so I wouldn't know. The normal non-premium planes and tanks work perfectly fine for me

The tanks I'm already getting into the tier 3 ones, but planes I am basically a big fat nil on, some of the starter packs looked decent with the bonus premium days and the bonus xp and money. I do wish I'd gone with German tanks though, but the American ones seem to get better as they tier up.

[Kerry Malone]

Depending on what you're looking for depends on what country you should work with. In the beginning, all the Bi-planes are pretty much the damn same, so any country works fine. Once you start cracking T1, thats where the differences come in.

USA
US planes are slow at turning, but they're fast and they're quite well armed. Once you start down the research tree, you get some fantastic planes. The Aircobra in particular is pretty snazzy.

UK
British planes are the middle-of-the-road variants with average turn rate, average speed and average firepower. The Spitfires are pretty decent, although you do need to work on your Gun Allignment for best effect. The Hurricane is a fantastic aircraft, but stops at Tier 2, so don't get too attached to it.

Japan
Japanese planes turn on a dime, and are extremely manouverable, but they are weak as hell and suck in the firepower department. However, you can outrun and outfly most anything out there.

Germany
German planes are very nimble, and extremely well armed. The early T1 and T2 variants of the Bf are not as good as their T3 and higher cousins, but they're still very decent aircraft. The Fw's are where you see some real interesting combat at lower tiers, but don't undervalue the Bfs. From T3, the Bfs and the Fws all sport 30mm cannon, with the Bfs starting with one, but with upgrading, you can increase that to three. The Fws start with four plus a machine gun. They are seriously well armed.

Russia
The Yak's are one of the most OP planes in the game. They're nimble and they have very impressive ordinance from T1 onwards. They are harder to research, but they are worth the hard work, they really are. However, they do have their disadvantages, so bear that in mind.

Something else to bear in mind is that some factions have wing mounted weapons, and some have nose mounted. A couple have both. In the case of wing mounted weapons, the Gun Crossover is vital to your gameplay. This is where the two weapon-streams meet before the aircraft. If you're a fast flyer, and you get right in behind them, you want it pretty damn close together. Whereas if you try to fire at extreme range, you'll want the crossover further away. I would advise about 400m and work from there based on your comfort.

Planes with nose-mounted weapons, which are your Russian, German (Bf109s), Japanese & some American planes don't really need this crossover, so you can set it at 800 or whatever you want. In the case of some planes, they have both wing and nose mounted weapons - in this case, crossover applies still.

Another thing to note is that there are two distinct weapon types in dog-fighting. Machine Guns and Cannons. Machine Guns don't do amazing damage, but they're consistent and they can do damage over time. Cannons are big heavy shots, and these are affected by both your airspeed, your direction of flight and where you are aiming. However, if they hit, they'll do considerable damage. Some planes just have MGs, some have MGs and Cannons and there are a few that have just Cannons.

Flying style is also very important.

I'm not even going to cover the bombers, as there's just so much to cover

[Jake Tyler]

Just starting properly playing this the past couple of days. Thanks for that breakdown KerryMalone, certainly worth a read, very helpful.