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In order to complete the trifecta of land, air and sea-based warfare, War Thunder developer Gaijin Entertainment will be introducing the latter to the game later this year with a whole range of different ships for each playable nation.

Patrol and missile boats, along with cost guard vessels and artillery are all set to be included with the so-called Knights of the Sea expansion, but if you were hoping to see giant battleships and aircraft carriers included along with the speedier variety of standard naval military hardware, don’t get your hopes up – they won’t be appearing.

Why not? Well, Gaijin’s Kirill Yudintsev explains (via VideoGamer) that such warships are simply too slow for the established gameplay players are used to.

The high level of realism is one of the key design features of War Thunder. Vehicles are as close to their real life counterparts as possible. Classic large ship battles during the war were contests of patience and planning, where engagements could last from several hours to several days. In War Thunder, where all kinds of vehicles fight in one battle and players can control aircraft, tanks and ships, it is not possible to change the size of the ships or make time run faster, as everything needs to remain consistent.

Our internal testing showed that battles with large battleships were too long and slow or required design changes that made ships entirely unrealistic. For this reason, we are leading with fast attack-based craft, which are rarely reproduced in games. Ships, that are more suitable for the formula of our game. These fast, agile and dangerous ‘Knights of the Sea’ are worthy contenders for aircraft and tanks on the ground.

Fair enough – it’s hard to argue with such reasoning. Besides, if naval combat on a grander scale is your sort of thing, then Wargaming’s World of Warships already does a pretty good job of doing exactly that. Gaijin hasn’t provided a firm release date for Knights of the Sea, but it does plan to hold a closed beta in the coming weeks.

Pre-ordering either of the game’s Starter Packs (details below) will grant you access to the test servers as soon as they’re turned on, and here’s what each of them include:

Starter Pack One: Includes a Soviet Project 1124 Armored River Boat. The T-34 turret located in the bow of the boat and two 12.7mm machine guns allow the gunboat to efficiently eliminate enemy ships and low-flying aircraft; but the main destructive power of the Project 1124 lies in her M-13-M1 unguided rocket launcher, the legendary Katyusha.

Starter Pack Two: Includes the famous American PT-109, a motor torpedo boat on which the future US President John F. Kennedy served and performed acts of wartime heroism. During one of the operations the boat was subjected to a surprise ram attack from the Japanese destroyer, Amagiri. In War Thunder, this boat is a fast and manoeuvrable ship destroyer. Her four torpedoes, each weighing almost 1,200 kg, come in handy for destroying large naval targets, and a direct hit against a small enemy vessel will immediately send opponents back to the dock.