It’s a Major Issue. I have been playing as a bomber main since 2013 when I started playing the game.
The issue is that currently from prop bombers up, bases respawn instead of within 30 seconds or so after around 5mins. This means since top tier maps are quite small if you use upper tier or top tier jet strike aircraft for bombing only (as further jet bombers have not been added yet), F-4 aircraft and other incredibly quick strike aircraft kill bases. So the rest of us bombers move to circle wide, however because of the cramped space teams are annihilating eachother in 5minutes at top tier, so whilst you have to wait another 2-3minutes before bases respawn so you are flying around gaining no silver lions or rp points the enemy could have obliterated your team and you get jumped by 7 enemy players with you left on your team.
To say the least this is rediculous. Since jet strike aircraft have been added to the game and war thunder has worked on their mechanics, BOMBERS and Bomber Mains whether prop or jet have been completely ignored or nerfed into the ground in terms of combat effectiveness:
First matches where reduced from 1hr to 24mins to stop bomber players getting large amounts of rewards for suviving for long periods of time and playing the bomber mechanic.
2nd they made it so that you practically have your sl and rp halved unless you land and rearm. With the time frames of tiny maps making you only earn 10-20ksl and rp, 30 if your lucky compared to fighter players or those going after ground targets.
3rd maps were not increased effectively with speed changes for some vehicles, meaning slower ones lose out on bases that take almost half a match to respawn, or if you live long enough you can only effectively do two bombing runs since after flying all the way there and back for rearming and bombing theres just enough time after that initial delay for 2 runs.
War Thunder need to make AIR RB Base’s respawn after a couple of seconds constantly in a match or else tonnes of bomber main community members may just start to leave the game. For the last year I have been almost secluded to Pilotage in custom gamemodes, because though I love bombers and jet bombers, the main game mechanics don’t let me enjoy bombing with them because of base respawn timers and tiny maps with tiny match times, so I only play fighters to grind bomber research, then only play them to spade them to use them for events or the rare time to check how the vehicle performs other than flying and see if air rb has been fixed.
I know this may have seemed like a rant post but it really isn’t. I absolutely love this combat simulation game with it’s quite accurate models of aircraft. The lack of bomber cockpits and new bombers each year aside, the game is amazing and hopefully soon these issues with bomber mechanics in terms of bombing base respawn timers getting smaller and match times increasing might happen. And like I have mentioned for reasonable map sizes for aircraft speed to be taken into account so that it’s never a 1v7 because your team is dead, you have full bombs not a single one dropped, and your waiting for bases to respawn after phantoms destroyed them.