Air Realistic Battles needs more bases to bomb

Buc S2 is of perticular note as it may be the only British Jet that has suffecient sources to get Napalm and be on the TT.

At the moment only the Strikemaster and Harrier Gr1 have Napalm and both are premiums.

Buc S2 and Sea-Vixen are the only 2 jets with napalm specifically stated in the manuals.

Jaguar, Phantom, etc. Dont but likely could and would if needed as Britain reserved the right to use it

phantom i could see getting napalm considering its extensive history on US phantoms, which should have no difference preventing use of napalm bombs

Yeah, and thus we get this wierd situation/double standard where sometimes gaijin religiously sticks by what a nation could use (British Phantoms not getting Napalm) but then allowing all nations to use a weapon system that htey didnt use (Only the British Typhoon should have Paveway IVs)

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its always the dumbest things too, napalm is actually really useful, but the other EFT already have Laser + GPS bombs anyways

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My solution for bombers is simple and realistic: there should be a single target so that bombers can fly together in formation to bomb. This would put an end to the race for bombers to reach a base. The target should have a lot of air defenses to prevent attack aircraft from stealing the bases. The targets should be relevant to the game. Currently, bombers are excluded from the game: they don’t drop tickets, and it’s just a race to the base with a quick dive, which is unrealistic.

Relevant targets could be radar stations that allow the detection of all enemy planes, as was done during World War II. We could also have jamming stations that prevent the use of radars, with aircraft like the F/A-18 Growler capable of jamming enemy systems.

Wouldn’t it be exciting to see bombers in formation, flying at high altitudes? And finally, it’s unrealistic that planes have to take off every time; it would be more realistic if they all started at high altitudes, as was done during World War II. For example, the high-altitude bombing missions of the RAF over Germany.

To illustrate this, let’s take the example of the P-51 Mustang and the P-47 Thunderbolt. Aerial combat involving these planes often took place at altitudes between 7,000 and 9,000 meters. For instance, during the bombing mission on March 6, 1944, known as “Big Week,” P-51 Mustangs escorted B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator bombers at combat altitudes of around 8,000 meters, engaging enemy fighters such as the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

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you would be to get more actual knowledge about the game set-up in Air RB and historical facts.

Asking for realism in wt is futile, you play a game optimized for kids with access to credit cards. There is little to zero connection to reality or realism.

Imho reading some books would close your know-how gaps in aviation history - the stuff you see on yt, movies like “Red Tails” or TV series like “Masters of the Air” are made for entertainment purposes.

A few examples:

The only known high alt missions flown by RAF BC were with a few lend-lease B-17s called “Fortress I” and were stopped after a few attempts with small groups without any remarkable success. It is reported that they used them actually at 30,000 feet.

Multiple mistakes:

  1. Operation Argument (aka as Big Week) happened February 20-25, 1944

  2. The results were not sustainable losses:

    RAF:
    131 bombers[3]
    USAAF:
    226 heavy bombers[4]
    28 fighters[4]
    Over 2,000 aircrew killed or captured[4]
    Luftwaffe
    262 fighters[4]
    250 aircrew killed or injured,[4] including nearly 100 pilots KIA

  3. The raid on March 6, 1944 with target Berlin (aka as “Big B”) was so successful that 60-69 bombers were lost that day. Even the unreliable site wikipedia is aware of that:

    Fierce battles raged and resulted in heavy losses for both sides; 69 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses were lost on 6 March but the Luftwaffe lost 160 aircraft. The Allies replaced their losses; the Luftwaffe could not.[37]

Do some research how often and with which effects (usually zero) Chain Home was attacked in 1940. The allies were unable to destroy German radar station too.


So imho you show a lot of passion - but as soon as you realize that you pursue a dream without considering that most of it makes no sense or can’t be realized you might change your mind.

Have a good one!

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Your entire reply is just strawmanning and semantics, like the part where you go “actually it wasn’t 8-9 kilometers, it was 8-9 kilometers but in feet!” or the part where you go “oh but there were loses!!”

Cool man, how’s that relevant to what he said?

A complete rework of Air RB would be a great idea.
It really has nothing to offer for players who like strike aircraft or bombers, at least reliably.
even if the bases are not bombed before your reach them, you are almost always a free kill for fighter aircraft.
I recently purchased the SU25K just because its an interesting plane and i like playing it.
But “playing it” is where the problems arrive. I cant have fun in this plane most of the time because i feel useless and rarely get to fight ground targets. I have looked at tactics like head ons and such but i cant make this thing work. I have also never really survived a single AAM in this thing, i dont know where the supposed survivability is, but thats a different topic.

So yes, different options to grind and have fun for people like me would be nice.

I pointed out that the relevant post showed a huge gap between what actually happened (irl) and the assumptions of the fellow player what wt can offer.

I support everyone who shows passion for aerial warfare in WW 2 - but the fellow player is not realizing that the setup of wt gameplay prevents realism in the first place and he is somehow trapped in his vision of WW 2 bombing which is not even close to reality.

It has nothing to do with semantics if somebody is referring to irl events and is not accurate.

  • So the RAF BC is known for some bold low level attacks, carpet bombing of residential areas / cities and extremely high losses of airmen - and not for performing useless attacks without any effect but with 40% losses of early B-17s; they had ~20 of them.

  • Same with high alt attacks in general - the combat altitudes of 7-8 km had the obvious disadvantage that there was little to no precision possible with the aiming devices available - that’s why carpet bombing was used.

  • You see this best demonstrated by the switch from high alt strikes at day to low level runs at night by B-29s bombing Japan - high alt strikes were not accurate enough.

And this is not even considering the fact that wt in its current form is unable and unwilling to provide any realism.

So we have a fellow player following certain myths and a way too optimistic view on what wt is.

Have a good one!

Additional info:

Regarding WW 2 bombing:

War Thunder could be adapted for bombers. First, let’s get one thing clear: the primary goal is PVP. Otherwise, there’s no point in multiplayer. So War Thunder is supposed to be PVP, but it’s just a race to the base among allies. What’s the point of limiting the number of bases and delaying the respawn of bases if destroying a base doesn’t contribute to the game? It’s completely incoherent. We bomber fans want to fly in formation and contribute to the game’s victory. But it seems too complicated for most easy-kill fans to understand. I can still hear their baby cries: “The turrets are too strong, the bombers are too resilient, they fly too high…” 😊

I’d say bring back the near instant base respawns.

I prefer to have multiples ground targets that allow a team to win by ground striking, not just by an arena for destroying planes.

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Just bombing bases ain’t PvP though

Bomber Mains:

It is sad that there is a whole class which are just useless in the game.

Not in the game, just in THIS mode.

Wdym
They are also useless on Air Arcade too.
‘Air Domination’
‘Domination’ (Airfield capture by landing)

That was one of the main reasons why I quit playing Air Arcade. Pal.

‘Area denial by large bomb’ on the ground realistic?

Both Blockbuster and FAB-5000 are limited to a few selected bombers.
So it won’t be a game-changer for bombers for being useless.

Absolutely not, they are essential to most maps, except AirDom and stuff like that chinese airfield domination map, where the ground targets can’t cap. And since you can pick your spawn vehicle in arcade, you can use them when it makes sense. You don’t end up with a bomber on the wrong map.

But that was an internal “you” decision. If they were useless, I would not have obtained win rates of around 70% in some of them during the last air event.

As far as I know, there are also smaller bombers with dive ability. I am pretty sure I see them about when I play realistic ground every once in a while.

And in naval, they do matter on convoy maps or against older ships. Their effectiveness against large ships has been decreased somewhat lately.

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Bombers are pretty inconsequential in air sim as well - at least at prop brackets. It takes some serious overwhelming coordination for one team to sway a fresh lobby’s tickets through bombing ground battles (“Arrows”) and bases. Bombing airfields does nothing until significant tonnage dropped.

For grinding, it pays well for the effort and the “useful actions” economy works well for bomber sorties (fly out, drop bomb, RTB lines up pretty well with 15 minute reward and landing bonus cycles). but the match impact is not very significant.

The lack of significance is less due to the amount of tickets bases and ground units drain on destruction and more the scripted/RNG nature of ticket drain in sim EC: Convoys are impossible to destroy with their terminator AAA and if left undisturbed will drain tickets automatically. On some maps and brackets, A.I bomber/spy plane/attacker formations either suicide into airfields/AAA and automatically drain tickets or they’re way too fast for any aircraft to intercept at that bracket (128x128 maps in early jets).

In the final 10-15 minutes of the match for evenly matched tickets, bombers do shine. At this point, the rate of tickets drained by bases and ground unit destruction far outweighs the RNG scripted buggy mess that are EC objectives. These tend to be the most fun periods as escort/interceptor - once witnessed a gang of Il-2s and their escorts basically win the match by going all-out on any ground targets that spawned when we only had like 5 or 10% tickets left for both sides - was glorious.

Ironically, they’re most impactful as flying gunboats outside of “end-of-match push” because third person fully stabilized mouse aim gunners are a serious threat against stick & rudder cockpit fighters without proper approach and firepower.

We need base respawning times to be reduced to at most 2 minutes. It is tiring to play bombers, be outpaced by strike aircraft and fighters… Circling around the battle area, where your aircraft can be targeted… Then even having the battle end before based respawn due to the brevity of many Air RB matches.

At least for prop bombers (not strike aircraft) the issue has 2 aspects:

  1. Limited game impact of destroying bases (=180-300 tickets per base kill)
  2. Little to zero (on average) experience of players flying bombers

So even 10 bases or infinite and immediate instant base respawns will not solving the issues of racing to bases vs strike aircraft or increase the average skill level of bomber pilots.

Imho gaijin created extremely convincing the illusion that a 7 year old toddler would be able to participate in Air RB as there would be no skill needed to play PvE in a PvE game. From my perspective it is the opposite: Only when a player has some experience in PvP as a fighter he is able to play a bomber somehow successfully - meaning payload delivered and safely landed at his main airfield.

Just watch replays - you will see that the majority of bomber players fly straight to a base and get killed whilst in bombardier view. Even admitting that it is extremely challenging to make them somehow work it is not solely gaijins fault that they die like flies.

The limited game impact of classic bomber game play and the extremely low survival rate of bombers is well known, so requested changes of base respawn times won’t solve any of the core issues in Air RB.

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