I just had a pilot chase down my ME410. He was firing from a way back, but stayed on my tail until he got me, just before the base AAA got him, too. In all that time, I heard one burst that I think was my guns firing, but I was watching my plane via 3rd person, and never saw AI gunners fire.
This isn’t a shortage of crew skills. Are they any use at all?
At one point, I did try to suggest they add air crew reporting of enemy fighters. (Especially ones in full view of the gunner that were firing at your aircraft!) It wasn’t approved for review, though.
Why would any crewman NOT report a nearby enemy fighter? It could be so simple as putting a dot on the minimap.
They have been nerfed to hell
A his gunners were off, B he was manually using them and waiting for you to get close. Several factors to take into consideration.
It was my gunners that weren’t firing. I’ve never done anything to turn them off, but we have cats that are not opposed to stepping onto keyboards…
The AI gunners are pathetic, they dont fire even max level and experted till like 500-400m, and fire super short crappy bursts.
You gotta use manual mode if you want anything to happen with rear gunners
I think, the last time an AI gunner actually did something to protect me was at least eight years ago…but Gaijin keeps finding ways to continue nerfing them. Now they barely open fire at all even with maxed crew skills.
AI gunners are entirely useless.
8 years ago they were great
Spaded B-17G crew couldn’t kill a 109K despite being in range (<.6km) for around a full minute
AI gunners? What AI gunners? Those are mannequins.
I do remember bombers being practically unnaproachable for a while without being absolutely lasered from 1.5-2km away by AI gunners.
This ^
Used to be able to actually kill for you but now nah. Gotta actually use them to get kills, Ai will barley do work. If it does, its rare now. Nerfs only happened because so many players cried about it :/
Low skill level then. You are better off manually controlling them.
In RB, they have a range of about 300m with ACE I think (maybe not even that high).
Gaijin cant model AI gunners to be fair. Its either totally OP (look at naval AA or Sim SPAA) or cant hit a barn door at point blank range.
So they just dropped the range down to nothing. Even for me in a Spitfire, where Id usually hack and slash with bursts at more like 500m. Its never the AI gunners that fire back.
I hope I’m not the only one that thinks this sucks. At least they (as air crew) could warn you of an approaching fighter.
Bombers need an overhaul. Its not just you
After that stuff like:
can be considered for further buffs.
It’s 600m which is still way too low
Contrails are fine
I don’t think BRs are influenced at all by ground performance, the only bombers really useful in ground are the Pe-8 and Lancasters, which are at BRs comparable to BRs of similar bomber aircraft (in terms of air performance). I mean, the Lancasters didn’t see a BR change when the tall boy was added.
Higher spawns or overall slightly lower BRs (.3-.7, ironically bombers suffer from DEcompression at the higher ranks) would be great. But I think the biggest problems with bombers is the useless AI gunners and lack of targets. I remember way back when airfields could be bombed. Nowadays there’s enough bases for a single bomber to kill- all others have to circle around for several minutes for them to respawn (if they manage to survive so long…)
They track at 660m but wont fire until 210m
There has been several good threads on this. In essence, they often spawn too low and too consistantly. Also they are too visible at long distances.
Lancaster always had the 4k bomb, which was pretty powerful and 14x 1000lb is no small impact either. Aircraft like the Pe-8 are a full BR lower than the Lancaster, with superior turret coverage and 20mm cannons instead of the Lancasters 7.7mm MGs. Also the B-17 at the same BR as a load of 50cals.
Overall the Lancaster and most of the WW2 heavy bombers especially those in the British TT are probably at least 0.3-.0.7 BR too high, maybe even a full BR too high.
This is the main change Id seek for a short term improvment, just make the AFs a perma-target, even if it didnt affect tickets. Just guaranteed reward if you made it through. Would be huge for all BRs, including stuff added this update like the GR4
Just a waste of points, invest them elsewhere because tail gunner is sleeping all the time until you switch to them.