Are Bombers now too fragile to play?

Game Discussion Arcade Battle
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218

You can reload without landing in AB.

Although this would be intriguing, it would give specific benefits to certain countries and make the others worthless to play.

For example: the submarine mode (which I wish they’d add subs).
Everyone just played USA since they made it too easy for them, while anyone playing Germany suffered.

Also, Maus was captured in 1945 if i remember correctly, so it could’ve seen T-54s (1947, 1949, 1951) technically, along with the IS-3, IS-6, and IS-4

(To add, the maus wouldn’t have been able to take out the IS-4 frontally, XYZ simulations even showed this on the drivers hatch (common weak point to kill the tank) vs a 128mm from the maus).

219

oh please, no 🫤

but of course it does … 🤣

But back to topic - are you satisfied with the current bomber survivability ?

220

No, I said that many comments ago

221

Indeed, as you said but I think there is a lot more that could be done, including structural buffs. They could make bombing and interceptor missions more integral to the game to eliminate what many seem to feel is stale gameplay. Different maps with interesting bombing missions, e.g. dam, strategic targets, where some roles are mandatory such as escort. Or historical missions as well. I’m spitballing here, but I think the game is becoming just more of the same with different vehicles. In this regard, resurrection of bombing and Bombers could be way more fun.

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222

Hell no! I would rather not see more AB reward nerfs, and BRs do vary based on whether you can reload or not. An aircraft with lower ammo count is absolutely going to have shifted BRs in AB, same as an aircraft with two very good missiles, but only two.

Ideally RP/SL per hour across all modes should be about the same, with perhaps a slight advantage to sim. Your mode should not be forced by what the most effective way to grind is, but by what you want to play.

223

You are fundamentally talking about altering a PvP game mode to cater to a class of aircraft best suited for PvE. The problem with bombers is that there is no way to actually balance them since they are objectively the most efficient way to bomb out bases. However, the merge-based nature of air arcade creates the following dichotomy:

  • Bomber X does not have enough performance to reach bases before the merge occurs. Bomber X is consistently shot down with zero game impact and is thus considered useless.
  • Bomber Y has enough performance to reach bases as the merge occurs, so fighters are forced to fight enemy fighters before engaging bomber Y. Bomber Y can use this opportunity to escape and thus is allowed to bomb outside of the reach of enemy fighters, who are focused on ground attackers. Bomber Y thus consistently ends games and is considered overpowered.
  • Bomber Z has enough performance to reach bases before the merge occurs. Fighters are physically unable to protect the bases in time due to bombs inheriting the velocity of the bomber, meaning that the bomber only needs to get close to the bases before dropping the bombs. Bomber Z consistently ends games and is considered overpowered.

There is no balancing these bombers because the fundamental difference between these three bombers is quite literally maybe 50 kph of top speed and rip speed. In 2020-2021 the Do-217 was the strongest bomber in the game because it was fast enough that fighters could not get into defensive positions in time. Games would consistently end within six minutes, which means you would often spend as much time in actual matches as you spent queuing up for those matches. At the end of the day air arcade is a PvP environment and bombers are not designed to fight other aircraft, so bombers will either be underpowered or overpowered.

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224

Essentially you are of the opinion that bombers shouldn’t exist at all. You obviously are entitled to that opinion. However, a fairly large number of the fanbase, (Polling has shown at least above 50%) does not agree with you, and contrary to your opinion believe that bombers should be buffed. So by the same logic, you also think that the only meaningful gameplay is dog-fighting as well. You don’t agree with me that’s fine, I respect that. However, I think that your view of the air arcade/realistic gameplay is stale, unimaginative, and frankly boring.

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225

mean while all bombers having roblox cockpits and only ones that dont are nuke vehicles or reserves

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226

They do have some legitimate points on how hard balancing AB bombers can be, but their position that they shouldnt be viable is, quite frankly, stupid. And it isn’t even like they can point to ground like some RB folks do - you cant use these bombers in GAB.

An interesting proposition would be reducing spawn height but giving massive buffs to airframe durability and defensive armament - they could be intercepted at will, but it would be harder to take them down.

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227

Balance in Warfare are incompatable by there nature and meaning, The Number one thing your trying to achieve in Tank combat and by larger extent war is to gain advatage, The game shouldn’t be Balanced, it should be fun for everyone, But Arguebly the game is less balanced (in a fighter-Bomber) then before, i wasn’t around that early but i bet that the reason Bomber were “OP” was because they were realstic, in WW2 planes didn’t go from a random direction and strafe bomber but that happens in war thunder,they were actually shooting them from the sides,Up and Bottom Which we all know doesn’t happen in war thunder since people in fighters die to the Tu-4 in a downtier.

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228

I recall having fun years ago, both on bombers and against bombers. Simply gunners were more effective…so attacking slowly from behind was suicidal…
Fighter would have to manouver into a good position, knowledge of gunners positions was useful and firepower was very important! Using undergunned fighters was also suicidal as bomber would fire back for long…

Many said this wasn’t “realistic” and i am not sure…but was fun…particularly when several fighters engaged a bomber…

Admit it also made it easier to play bombers…as they would often survive and get kills…but a good fighter would “always” get the bomber, even if at the cost of damage to itself…

And also admit it would make it harder to use fighters vs bombers…but it also felt too easy the last time i played…any fighter could bring down any bomber on most engagements…game became a race to see which fighter got there first.

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229

Attacking tail sniffing from behind is still suicidal - but imho you refer mainly to the ai range. So not the player - the ai controlling the gunners was effective. This is a major difference - and that is also the reason why some guys had more than 10.000 kills when flying a B-29.

No serious player in a PvP environment wants to fly across the map doing PvE tasks and let the ai work for him at the PvP part.

The problem is that gaijin nerfed (with their typical stealth nerfs) manual defense gunnery into oblivion - they added artificial spread various times, but most severely in Q4 2022.

Before that time it was zero problem to kill any low skill fighter pilot at ranges up to 2.7 km. But all of a sudden it was (almost) impossible to hit anything reliably even within 2 km - with the Swedish 13.2 auto cannon.

On the other side of the spectrum you see semi-decent bomber pilots flying Pe-8s and smashing enemies with gaijin’s preferred weapon, the 20 mm ShVak, up to 1.5 km whilst extending (!!!) from them.

And that is the main issue here:

Gaijin reduced the necessary skill level to progress within the game with the tool base bombing to (almost) zero - but they had their focus always on the guys (kids) willing to spend 50-80 € for a fighter jet - and not on guys with a passion for classic bomber game play at prop BRs.

Basically they increased the repair cost (until the riot in May 2023) and BRs of any half-most decent prop bomber (and nerf their defense capabilities) whilst they downtiered a lot of very capable fighters and made their weapons more effective (except MG 151/20 / mine shells).

Imho this describes the three main issues of bomber game play:

  1. Clueless average bomber pilots on average
  2. Clueless average fighter pilots on average
  3. Gaijin enforces interactions of both

Just try to watch some replays and you will see some patterns:

  1. Most of the unskilled bomber pilots die when in bombardier view
  2. Most of the unskilled fighter pilots die when they attack bombers from behind if the bomber pilot uses his turrets.
  3. Gaijin creates daily tasks with rank III requirement - with the options 10 fighter kills or 2 bomber kills (amongst others). So it is logical that the unskilled noobs in a fighter go for bombers first

If you check this replay:

Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On

You see a B-25 doing the right things - he got chased by 3 fighters (after he killed a Do 335 tailchasing him), kept his speed high in order to keep them as long as possible outside their gun range whilst they were in his gun range and fought like you have to fight vs multiple opponents (fire at all of them, but focus on closest enemy and keeping them together to avoid multiple angles).

He killed 2 of them and just the 4th guy was able to get in cannon range - he got killed, but his attacker died on his way back. 4 kills of an experienced bomber pilot vs average fighter pilots.

I got chased at high alt by another fighter noob (he went for a B-26 first) doing exactly the same: Approaching from behind whilst being completely outranged by my defensive guns. I mean if your closing speed is way too low and your are outranged it is logical that you will die - so did he.

230

The reason bombers were nerfed was because clueless fighter pilots thought they could treat them like fighters—shooting from all sides except the front. As a result, for the average pilot, bombers became too hard to kill (since it required more than two brain cells). So, they were deemed ‘overpowered’ and ended up getting nerfed into the ground—literally.

4 Likes
231

For the G8N1: A clear yes!

My own experiences - I played 96 matches in it:

75% WR
34:22 kills

The problem is:

I was actually shot down just 11 times (mainly due to gunner reload times and my potato aim); the other 11 plane losses were the result of my own stupidity as i was (and partially still am) unable to adopt my play style to the very limited g-loads the airframe can withstand. So as soon as i went into the offensive and was too ambitious i ripped my wings at 2-3 g loads.

I was killed:
3 times by a 335 B-2
2 times by a 262 (1 x 50 mm, 1 x 30 mm)
And 1 time by:
F-89, F-80, A2D-1, P-51 H-5, 109 K-4 and a BI with a suicide dive whilst i was repairing on the main airfield.

2 Do 335s and the A2D-1 & 109 K-4 survived their attack unharmed, 1 Do 335 survived a hit in his front engine - but all others got killed by my return fire.

My other victims were all kinds of aircraft - Do 335s, Hornets & P-51s excelled as main source of kills - followed by a few B-29s and He 177s. On top of that i was able to kill the last enemy in 3 cases by playing gunship at 1-2 km alt near my rip speed.

As soon as you are able to reduce the excess speed of your attackers even jets are not that much of a threat - so using the rather high rip speed of ~ 700 kmph saved me more than once. Fires at the inner engines tend go out and i brought a lot of totally yellow and partially red planes back.

From my perspective my high survival rate is mainly based on the rather good JP teams in this BR range in combination with flying detours allowing my own fighters like Ki-83s to engage their counterparts before i was chosen as target.

As a side note: I met 2 times a Lincoln pilot with more than 5.000 air kills…

232

Great I will put in a service ticket because they forgot to nerf that one

233

They just increased the BR from 6.0 to 6.3 - with a 3 x 800 kg or 2 x 1.500 kg bomb load. You need all 3 800 kg bombs to kill a base…

I predicted an additional stealth nerf. I keep you updated.

234

One easy change could be (on modern bombers) ECM/Jammer pods.

235

bombers now explode much too often by beeing hit in their bombload - its a additional nerf to them…

3 Likes
236

Bombers are absolutely way too fragile. They crumple if somebody farts in your general direction with anything over 7.92mm in caliber. Are they tougher than that historically? Yeah. Could they actually survive engagements with hostile aircraft for longer than 2 seconds IRL? Yeah. If they didn’t, then I don’t imagine that the USA or England would have bothered to make… oh, around 57100~ bombers if we just go off of some of the popular ones - the B-29, B-17, B-24, B-25, B-26, and Lancaster to name a few.

However, do I have news for you; Gaijin knows the truth of historical accuracy! Turns out, all those nations must have been incompetent morons, because making those 57k+ bombers and who knows what else was absolutely worthless! They did nothing, they hurt nobody, they could only hope to shoot down a fighter if it was hit by a meteor first. That’s the truth plain and simple; bombers absolutely suck, and Gaijin knows it all.

It’s never gonna change. Just buy another top tier jet and go screw off.

3 Likes
237

Irl and wt have nothing in common - u play a video game optimized to be played by kids.

If you would have invested your time doing some research you would have found out that bombers were just good for 3 things:

  1. Bombing of population centers due to missing accuracy
  2. Sending out thousands of airmen into certain death
  3. Creating jobs in the US, UK & Canada & making the producing guys rich

The myth of B-17s or Lancasters being more than death traps for their crews is nothing else than a modern fairy tale. If you look up actual combat losses of the USAAF and the RAF BC in the ETO you find out that they were rather easy targets - the comparable low loss rates were achieved after they were sacrificed in a war of attrition, so spring/summer 1944 when the main threat were mainly aaa batteries.

WT is unable and unwilling to provide asymmetric lobbies or historical scenarios as nobody wants to fly with 37 Me 262s vs 1.200 bombers and 600 escorts like on March 18, 1945.

From my pov there is no way to play a bomber successfully as long as their pilots are not experienced and successful fighter pilots - whilst i fully agree that anything above BR 4.0/4.3 (in Air RB) requires not only exceptional pilot skills - u need a hell of luck too.

1 Like