Originally many years ago, before missile packing jets, before naval existed, Bombers, like the B17 and Pe8 were kings of the air. The BV238 in particular was an invincible beast to be feared. Admittedly they were OP in some regard, and as time marched on, they (and their gunners) were progressively nerfed to achieve balance. Fast forward to now, where flying one is almost an act of masochistic suicide that really bears no resemblance at all to historical record (e.g. WW2 Flying Forts returning with one engine, no tail and no landing gear).
Some time back in the old forum, several polls were conducted regarding the new weak bombers and the majority concluded each time that they were over-nerfed.
Note these are two of a few from the archives, and statistically speaking the sample size on the second to achieve population convergence for proper mathematics, is unsatisfying.
However the trend is noteworthy - hence the topic; Is it time to rebuff the bombers? Are they just too weak now ?
The problem is there’s little chance you’ll find any support for buffing them, because fighter pilots are very simple creatures who simply think every other plane has to be a fighter plane or a free kill.
Bombers, as it stands now, have absolutely no impact on outcome of a match. This is opposed to back in the day when a group of bombers could win the match by eliminating the enemy airfield, and when destroying bases actually resulted in a siginificant ticket drop for the enemy team.
In this previous setting, the fighter pilots argued, they had to be given the chance to stop the bombers from winning the game, which is why bombers had:
a) gunners nerfed
b) flight model nerfed
c) damage model nerfed
d) earning nerfed
e) spawn altitute decreased
f) repair costs increased
g) interceptors added at in-flight spawn points
Yet as anyone could tell, this didn’t solve the issue, because fighter pilots didn’t care about the impact of bombers on the result of a game, but instead about the fact that they just wanted an easy kill.
And so, right now, you can bomb as many bases as you want (the amount required to destroy a base, has of course gone up), but you still won’t have an impact on the game, and you still won’t be able to win the game by bombing the enemy airfield. So, as it stands now, you’re entirely useless, hoping you’re lucky enough to drop your bombs to get your measly earning before some German plane with 18 cannons comes and shoots you out of the sky.
If they were to “buff” bombers, they’d have to rework their entire purpose, not just the damage model, and I can guaranteee you that any attempt at making bomber gameplay viable will be loudly shouted down by the fighter mafia.
Agreed, the “Fighter mafia” indeed is generally a spoiled lot who only want free kills, free RP, free SL and so on. They have no respect for the tactical challenge of the game and are almost always no-clan point and click rando brats, whose primary argument is to stomp their feet and demand any challenge be nerfed. However, bombers are an essential rock paper scissors part of the game, especially ground attack. Further, it used to be reasonable and feasible to win the game with base followed by airfield bombing, and made the game more fun and interesting for fighters and bombers. Now also interceptor classes such as the F82 are a hammer in search of a nail. Gaijin shot themselves in the foot catering to the no skill nerf whiners because now some premiums, like F89 and BV238 are a complete waste of money and no one will buy them.
The point is, it doesn’t matter much if they are fragile or not. They will only succeed if they avoid combat. And for that, they don’t have to be sturdy. They have to be flown right. Of course, there is no guarantee that one stays clear of interceptors, but it is pretty likely in many matches.
Good luck with that 😑 And word of advice … If your going to smoke mind altering junk mixed with dogfood make sure it’s at least fresh dog food so you can have a chance of returning to reality.
BV268 is still beast. Same for Be-6. I had some troubles with Mitchells.
Unfortunatelly every other big bomber is just free kill for enemy fighter. Gaijin acts like we are flying B-17s in full squadron formation like they were during WW2. But in most situations, you end up completely alone.
Yeah no, you just want to have fun and ear nmassive SL in your premium 0 input bomber that require no particular skill to fly, let alone play. Bar pressing “Spawn” button and pushing your mouse up and right or left slightly when the rest of the playerbase has to actually stick their right hand to their mouse to even survive.
If this actually happens 6.0 will be a dead BR with the current forced 6v6 gameplay they pushed on to the playerbase to feed bots and low skill 6.3 US GRB mains in 288 and P-51H / Bearcat 1B / Corsair 4B, if you want to make bomber a stronger unit then rework the matchmaking complately by classifying more single engine aircraft as Interceptor and give them appropriate airspawn to counter the bombers, while at the same time adding the maximum amount of bomber per game, and add more base to bomb even if we’re going to play war thunder in a way that sun never touched.
Bomber as of now are a problem because their player are detriment to the team, either by the way they play or by the virtue of being played by bot, currently we have Be-6, Tu-1, Soviet Mitchell and Havoc, German Welly, Ju-288, Japanese B-17, and other plane capable of demolising a base with a single bombing run riddling matches all over the BR range being played by bot.
It’s already a slog playing 2v5 as german or italian fighter especially stock, now you want to make our activity score lower because they can drag the fight longer than it already is as we’ve been dead long ago, being dived by P-51H and Spitfires? i’d rather get eaten and left half alive and die of blood loss and bacterial infection by Wendigo before I witness 4 bot 288 dragging a match to 25 minutes because they can’t be damaged.
As always - i love your really funny way of how you describe things and especially your irl comparisons. Always a highlight in the forum!
But in this case you are a little bit too far away from reality. If your claim “Ju 288s bots are dragging out matches to 25 minutes as they can’t be damaged” would be true, this would led to the question why the US/GB fighters playing this BR range even spawn into the match.
In case they meet “suspicious players” it requires no advanced strategies to kill them as all of them don’t climb and fly highly predictable - so if they have an IQ above room temperature it is quite easy to outclimb them and to attack from 12 o’ cloch high - no defense there.
And there were various hidden nerfs in the last 24 months regarding durability and fire resistance for Ju 288s - so if a match lasts 25 minutes with just Ju 288s left, the only conclusion is that the allied fighters are plain stupid, or (more likely) they use the chance for undisturbed farming…
From my perspective there is no need to add more interceptor spawns - simply based on the fact, that even a bomber is able to kill a usually respawning base, we talk about a ticket loss of 200-300 on maps with 7600 tickets and he will be caught in any case.
There is no need for free kills for more players going for bombers instead of fighters due to their ic spawn - most of them have zero skill in fights vs fighters and are forced to fly ic spawn fighters as they would have otherwise no chance for a kill.
I think you are a just following a myth with your irl comparison. There is a reason why B-17s, B24s or Lancs were slaughtered - they were designed to bomb things and got killed by fighters designed to kill bombers. Quite simple.
Gaijin has simply given up their attempts to balance bombers like other plane classes - they decided to implement respawning bases and adjust their BR mainly due to TNT damage. B-29s at BR 7.3 is a joke - besides the fact that the whole game has nothing to do with reality or realism - except the look and the skin of planes.
This particular statement was made with the “bomber damage, flight and gunner model” buff in mind, so my takeaway on Ju-288 capability is exaggerated to meet the requested “Buff” per OP standard of how a bomber should perform, we’ve seen how tanky B-17 is from war stories like Old 666, Ye Olde Pub, Little Skipper and Nine Lives, All American, Tondeleyo and many other unrecorded story of this bomber durability should at least give us an Idea of just how strong bombers really are in spite of Minengeschoss 20mm existence, if this was the performance standard of all the bomber in WW2, and being applied to War Thunder, then we might as well see the bombers that usually dies from 1 37mm tap now tanking shots it should not have tanked.
And these Interceptor spawn was to stuff like J7W and other Interceptor designated aircraft that did not get their Interceptor spawn simply because they have single engine, as far as I know only the 152’s, 190A8 and 4.3 Ki-61 got this treatment, with one of them being done like this because their climb rate is inadequate.
Well true, there was the Me262, F-86, MiG etc. yes. Which is why the B-29 at 7.3 BR is insane. To put that in a correct context before “Supersonic” that is to say. The point was that Bombers used to be viable and now they are not.
I gave up flying british heavy bombers. You are too slow to get anywhere, you have basically no turrets and if an enemy fighter sneezes on you, you die. With contrails stealth is now no longer an options. They have basically removed bombers from ARB. Its a shame.
YES ! And this is exactly the point. Never ceases to amaze me the number of passionately negative and toxic answers that come from the fighter mafia, including commentary that being a bomber pilot requires no skill (Even though they never fly Bombers because they are too ‘easy’ … so how do they know?)
Yep, i pretty much only fly the Tornado Gr1 these days in SB (Though upcoming bug fixes for the Tornado F3 might see that getting used more) but bombers are very hard to fly. I think most have experience fighting against the stronger bombers like the Ju288C and assume that is the case for all but for most bombers, getting the target isnt dependent on skill. Its based upon luck
Totally 95% agree, save the luck part. Depending on your tactics, there is high altitude, dive, and low altitude technique’s that vary widely and for which approach and route tactics matter considerably. A good bomber man knows exactly how to employ flaps and stall at high altitude (above 17K feet) in order to precision hit a target and what bombers he can or cannot use ( e.g. Lincoln vs Shackleton vs B24) for the targets he intends to strike. Not to mention understanding what ordinance you should choose for the job. Additionally if your a console player, it takes tremendous skill and hand eye coordination as opposed to a no-skill PC mouseketeer weenie who points, clicks and pushes function key buttons. This they do while eating chips and scratching their junk in a robe and boxers, all whilst looking at multiple monitors.
I play PC and i dont find it easy to kill targets with turrets. Though with something like a lancaster you have such a small turret coverage area 9/10 times you cant actually hit anything