Step off the runway and crew a battleship's big guns
Not everyone wants to be in the cockpit. So we built a whole second way to play: take over a battleship's main battery and reach out across the map — even over the mountains, even at targets you can't see.
A different kind of seat
Flying is a contest of reflexes. Crewing the big guns is a contest of patience and reading the map. When you jump into a battleship's main turret you don't get a crosshair to swing around — you get a plotting chart, like a real fire-control table. You pick a spot on the map, the ship works out the shot, and fifteen seconds later a salvo lands where you called it.
That delay is the whole game. A 16-inch shell is a slow, heavy thing. Learning to read where a moving column will be when your salvo arrives — not where it is now — is the skill, and it feels completely different from chasing a tail in a dogfight.
Shoot over the mountains
The part that surprises people: you can hit things behind hills. Real warships carried different powder loads so they could choose a flat, fast shot or a high, looping one, and your gun does the same. If a ridge is in the way, the ship automatically backs off the charge and lobs the shell up and over — a slow, plunging arc that drops into the valley on the far side.
So terrain isn't just scenery. A target tucked into a dead valley that no fighter can strafe cleanly is still yours if you can find the arc. Some of the most satisfying kills in the game are the ones where you drop a salvo onto a flak nest that thought a mountain was protecting it.
Range isn't the only question. The shape of the land between you and the target is half the problem — and half the fun.
You need eyes on the target
There's a catch, and it's a good one. Past direct-fire range, your guns won't fire at a target unless a friendly plane is loitering near it as a spotter. That turns long-range bombardment into teamwork: one pilot orbits over the enemy position, and you — sometimes kilometres away on the water — walk your shells onto it.
And having a spotter doesn't just unlock the shot, it tightens it. Salvos land in a much smaller pattern when someone's calling the fall of shot, so a coordinated pair can go from "area bombardment" to "precision strike." It's the kind of moment that makes a random lobby feel like a crew.
And for the bombers
The same care went into level bombing. Climb into a heavy bomber and you get a real bombsight: a pipper that shows exactly where your bombs will fall if you release right now, sliding around live as you bank, speed up, or fly into a crosswind. Line it up, hold your run, and pickle when it crosses the target. It rewards a steady hand instead of luck.
Why we built it
Warbirds is a flight game, but a battle should feel bigger than the planes in it. Giving the ships real, crewable guns means a fight has roles: dogfighters overhead, a spotter threading the flak, a gunner forty kilometres back raining steel onto the objective. You can have a great match without ever pulling a trigger from the cockpit — and that's exactly the point.