Although agree in general with the need of strengthening bomber game play - imho the spawn altitude is fine right now; we have around 3.500 for tactical bombers and 4.500 meters for strategic bombers. On certain maps with higher ground level both have 1.000 meters more.
The question is always what kind of bomber you fly and if you are willing to climb or not. You see every 50 or 60 games a B-17 used correctly - those guys climbed above the 6.500 meters mark when their conceptual advantage of turbo-superchargers makes them comparably fast and the closing speed of enemy fighters is rather low.
I recommend that you take your time and get used to certain maps and enemy fighter approaches in order to be better prepared. I recommend the B-18B as a medium bomber with very good climb and speed and “ok” defensive guns. I flew 11 missions today and lost just 1 plane due to own stupidity - whilst scoring 6 kills, 2 with gunners, 1 with bombing and 3 with the single offensive 13.2 mm cannon.
Imho you can beat almost every enemy fighter above 7-8 km - as long as they don’t outclimb you to a large margin and come in too fast.
So just the P-47 D-28 and the I-225 are actually serious threats - you outrun all japs and most German fighters above 8km - or their closing speed is too slow; so they can decide to fly straight and get peppered from 2.5km or they fly evasive and they can’t get into their gun range. XP-50s can be annoying, but if you spot them early enough they have to tailchase you - with all consequences.
In order to see how difficult it is to catch a B-18B - you might can have a look at the replay of my last match - i got chased by a 109 with gun pods and he had no realistic chance to even hit me. I lost this match cause i missed the 2 109s when i bombed the enemy runway and i realized too late that there was just 1 enemy left - my fault, but nobody is perfect…
The fragility issue is currently nerfed by real shatter 3.0 - but here i also agree that the damage from one or two cannon shells seems highly unrealistic.
This is the exact point of of the topic, if bombers are so broken they can’t be played then it’s long past due to buff them. ALL of them. ESPECIALLY American ones, and lower the BR of the B29 to 6.0 where it should be.
Ground realistic? Not to be off topic, but lets face it, the tank tech tree needs a MAJOR huge BR overhaul, starting with USA vs USSR vs Germany … but that is outside the scope of this discussion.
After years of playing, I think a different set map should come for the bombers…
The maps are predictable, everyone knows where all the airports are, all the bases… You fly to the center of the map and sooner or later all players are enlightened with markers…
Players have no sense of flying in formation - 3 bombers in a box, it’s just about getting to the target before the others and before the opponent…
If the players were able to come to an agreement in the chat, then maybe it would be possible, but in the chat there is mostly nonsense and swearing…
The US bombers are the best, the British are the worst, even in reality they flew at night and they knew why…
Either you fly very high and hopefully no fighter will come for you, or you sneak near the ground like an explorer and also believe in luck…
The simulator has the greatest application and effectiveness, but experienced players cannot be easily fooled…
I was thinking that bombers with glide bombs might make sense… e.g.
Fritz x + He 177
V1+ He 111
Aeronca GB 1;4;5 - B 17
HS 293 - Do 217
Comet KS 1 + Tu 4
And other gliding bombs that are being developed to this day (they are now very popular on the Ukrainian-Russian border) …
Otherwise, overall, it seems to me that bombers are in the game only because they are well-known planes, they have no other meaning and, above all, sophistication in the game so far…
It’s absurd seeing how dumb are the arguments of fighter mains in this comment section.
Yes, bombers in War Thunder (and many Strike Aircraft too) are far too fragile compared to what they were IRL. A B-17 IRL could tank multiple 20mm Minengeshoß rounds without even flinching, whereas the B-17s ingame will have their tail completely sawed off if a few 7.92mm machine gun rounds hit it. I’m not saying Bombers should be capable of tanking 100 20mm rounds or 20 30mm rounds, but taking down bombers should not boil down to “hold W (or whatever button you use for WEP) until you are 500m away from a bomber’s rear, then hold Mouse1 until he dies”.
The defensive gunners were also nerfed beyond uselessness, they only begin to function if an enemy aircraft is closer than 200m, and that is provided you have a lvl75 ACE crew.
The fighter mains bitched that they could not simply kill bombers without activating their braincells, so they cried in the forums until bombers turned into the pitiful shadow of their former selves.
Edit: lots of spelling corrections, originally made this post on my Android phone with its tiny keyboard, but now fixed all the horrendous spelling mistakes thanks to the power of a proper computer keyboard and Grammarly.
The defensive gunners were also nerfed beyond uselessness, they only begin to function if an enemy aircraft is closer than 200m, and that is provided you have a lvl75 ACE crew.
This is probably the biggest nonsense in the game that exists…
In reality, there were so-called death zones for fighters that attacked bombers…
To give you an idea, for the He-111 or Ju-88 it was around 500-600 meters, for the B-29 it was around 1000 meters. The death zone, meant that was the effective range of the bomber’s on-board gunners…
Effective range, of course not absolute 100% kill…
The 210 meters for the gunner’s automatic fire, especially when the bombers fly alone in the game, is complete nonsense…
But of course, imagine that shooting down bombers wouldn’t be such an easy kill as it is at the moment …
I can already hear the cries and wails of the players who play fighters…
Everyone wants to be like Hartmann or Kozhedub, bomber pilots and gunners are mostly unknown…
Those are bots, the 0.21km max engagement range applies to player-controlled aircraft only. It would be nice if Gaijin would at least make AI gunners on player aircraft on the same level as the ones on AI aircraft.
Dude - when i write B-25 and A-20 G bots - it is logical that i mean player controlled aircraft with bot scripts, gaijin banned a lot of them, but you see still a few. The 0.66 km value (probability & tracking) value is decisive. That’s the reason why so many idiots (including me) got damaged or killed by them.
Btw, there are no B-25/A-20 ai planes in the game. The closest are B-26s starting at 5.0 in Air RB.
Totally agree but gaijin wont listen.
Without the others help the survivalbility of bombers in AB ≈ 0,many of the time you can’t even drop your bombs way out.And there are some gamemode that bombers can’t play at all such as capping point.Gaijin hate bombers so much,so why didnt they delete the bombers?Pathetic.
They always were, and rather pointless in both Arcade and Realistic Air. You do not survive a battle, ever, with exception of one ro two planes and BRs. Reaching your bombing point is uncommon.
There is not really any point of playing Bombers in WT. Suggests that a new mode should be brought in for them - using some creative thinking.
Just read the whole thread and use your experience advantage and you can be decisive; but bomber game play is simply too demanding and for most guys just boring if you are not smarter than your opponents.
The fact that bombers were nerfed to death is true. In addition a lot of highly capable fighters are way too low in their BR, and i agree in general with your pessimistic view on the actual state of bomber game play.
Nothing more relaxing than playing the Ju 88 A-1 (BR 2.0) in Air RB.
I flew just for fun ~ 140+ sorties in that plane - and i still can remember the 2 times i got shot down in it; the first time i was killed by bugged mid map AA, the second time by a stat padder in a premium JP 109 (with around 170 days fighter experience) clubbing at rank I & II.
If you watch this replay - you might see why i have a 80% WR in it. I just flew it to test the new customized payload options as i saw that the max load increased from 1.900 kg to 2.400 kg.
Battle summary & tactic
Right after spawn i flew away from enemy bombers, trying to stay outside the 9km spotting range and flew a large detour. Skip to 19 minutes - i spent 12 - 15 minutes to climb with 2 meter/second to pull my plane up to 7.500 meters as i am helpless vs undertiered US trash like the P-39 N (BR 2.7 in Air RB). So by climbing i could exploit the only weakness of the P-39 (poor high alt performance), whilst giving me a realistic escape chance back to my airfield.
Perfect bomb run, leading to a massive ticket ticket lead late game in a pure 1 vs 1. High speed dive back to my airfield and forcing this wannabe clubber (look at his vehicle stats) to overshoot 2 times by using my air brake whilst dodging incoming shells.
My plan worked and finally he died thx to my af aaa.
Depending on his positioning another way to win would have been to fly away from him when he was approaching and just stay high and fast - my only job was to stay alive for 3-4 minutes in order to end the game by tickets after 25 minutes, so instead of flying to my airfield there was a high probability that he would have not been able to catch me in time if i had chosen another route away from him…
I couldn’t agree more, despite Wick’s penchant for nits, you have resonated with the central topic. The fighter mafia stomped their feet and cried until the Great Snail caved and transformed Bombers from interesting fun challenge to bad joke - To appease the brain dead gimmie brats.
I’d actually offer to give bombers their old 2013 damage models as well as 2013 gunner performance and give a special increased kill reward for specific bombers like the B-29 specifically in order to incentivize fighters to invest their time preparing to make a proper attack, rather than giving it up because it’s more efficient to kill 2 fighters and a couple of ground targets than chasing one bomber for 15 minutes.
I really don’t see the point of the argument of “but 4 B-29s can end a match alone if they work together!!!”, well, yea, so do fighters! If 4 highly experienced P-51H-5s work together, and BnZ the crap out of anyone who approaches them, they can completely dominate a match. I think this asymmetrical fight scenario of lots of fighters hunting 4 really dangerous bombers is really unique and interesting compared to the giant furball matches we have now.