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.
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.
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.
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:
Just try to watch some replays and you will see some patterns:
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.
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.
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…
Great I will put in a service ticket because they forgot to nerf that one
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.
One easy change could be (on modern bombers) ECM/Jammer pods.
bombers now explode much too often by beeing hit in their bombload - its a additional nerf to them…
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.
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:
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.
Destroying the German fuel industry, holding back u-boat and other general production, bringing the war to a swift end with Japan, diverting a major proportion of German AA and fighter defences away from the front lines.
none of which are relevant to WT of course!!
of course they are not relevant, thank you for pointing that out! I was worried I had forgotten, of course. :) However - there is no reasonable way that they would have continued making bombers whatosever if any one of them could be slaughtered and turned inside out by a simple fart in the wind by a 20mm autocannon. You do know that right? Do you need me to spoon feed it to you?
If somebody makes twenty large airplanes, but somebody can destroy one large airplane with the mild suggestion of a few tiny rounds that cost very little to manufacture, do you know what happens?
People make airplanes that can climb as high as the bombers, and just use those tiny rounds. If warthunder was even close to the reality, then Germany would have won and we wouldn’t have to suffer with warthunder being the ‘only’ mass-multiplayer, easy access mass-vehicle simulator. Among a few other ‘unsavory’ things. Does that make sense?
Do I understand correctly that you are switching to tail gunner?
I tried this in AAB, on various bombers, including those with fairly powerful defensive weapons. But if I play as a gunner, I can’t maneuver at the same time. As a result, I just get shot down faster than when I play as a pilot and try to actively maneuver, albeit on a heavy bomber.
Whereas when actively maneuvering, for example on the Pe-2-31 (aces crew + all defensive skills 10/10), AI gunners periodically shoot down inexperienced players, sometimes even two per match. While I’m spinning like a squirrel, at the same time trying to get to the base or ground targets.
disable ‘autopilot for gunner and bomb sight mode’.
In ARB or ASB, AI gunner goes nearly blinded and barely can shoot 210m in 75lv+aced crew
So, use of gunner view is ESSENTIAL when you play ARB.
Especially when enemy fighters are going to shoot 20mm at you more than 2km away.
Situation in AAB seems a lot much better when AI gunner can shoot 800m with their eye when 75lv+aced crew.
Short version:
You are spreading myths created to tell a certain narrative which is misleading at best.
I am not following this narrative which is simply trying to hide the brutal truth of war: Hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted in a war of attrition. So i see this from two sides: The airmen which were sent to (almost) certain death without having the necessary accuracy to hit their targets - and the civilians burned to ashes if they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Long version:
The US oil embargo forced JP to die either slowly due to a lack of oil or violent in a prolonged war they could not win. That’s why we saw Pearl Harbor (as a high risk gamble) which was solely aimed to neutralize the Pacific Fleet in order to get a negotiated peace.
The Germans were stupid, but not that stupid - google the vid “WW 2 War for Oil” by TiK. The war was lost latest mid 1943, others say in 1942 as they were unable to conquer the oilfields in the Caucasus. The RN sea blockade prevented oil imports and Romanian oil plus their synthetic fuel was never enough to allow any offensive operations after mid '43. Even the Battle of the Bulge was a one-way trip as they thought they could capture US fuel depots in order to keep their tanks operational.
U-boats: Look up the french civilian casualties in the fruitless attempts to bomb the U-boat bases in France.
General production: Another myth - depending on which sources you want to cite the industrial capacity of Germany remained to 75-85% intact. Bomber raids killed mainly logistic infrastructure like railyards which had the additional benefit that they could flatten residential areas as the most logistic hubs were in city centers.
So even in case that allied bomber fleets hit here and there a tank, u-boat or aircraft factory - the Germans never had a real shortage of equipment, they simply had no fuel to train soldiers / airmen / tankers and operate them. I mean there is a reason why the Italian Navy was parked in harbors, they had no fuel to operate them - and the LW had in March 1945 the highest number of available fighters in the entire war…
I recommend looking up the total amount of bombs dropped on JP and Germany. You find out that the majority was dropped after the LW ran out of pilots and fuel or because JP had no effective home defense fighters vs B-29s at day and night.
Swift end:
The Casablanca Conference in January 1943 determined the goal of unconditional surrender (the allies were fully aware that they outproduce and outfuel the axis and had already won) which prevented a negotiated peace with the axis powers and was extremely helpful to keep the US war machine running and delivering supplies to the USSR in order to allow them to die whilst taking the majority of combat casualties.
I agree from a holistic perspective.
This is the only way to fight in bombers.
Imho this:
… is just 50% of the solution:
As long as you stay in mouse aim mode the plane tries to auto center itself which makes evasive action way less effective.
This:
is a common misconception.
A reply from an older thread:
And this is still valid today.
I watch frequently my replays if i got hit by gunners - and in >90% of my bomber kills i killed them whilst their player was in bombardier view and the ai gunners were still able to get a few shots off…
I mean just try to use common sense and remember the bomber bot invasion - you saw B-25 / B-18B / Ju 288 bots with thousands of matches and hundreds of kills. Even the biggest fighter noobs have enough gun time to kill a bomber before they close in to 210 meters, so it is logical that the effective range is way higher.
Btw: I met frequently a guy in a PBJ (for several weeks now) and a B-18 B with bot scripts. The PBJ is quite successful as long as enemies approach from behind. Ofc i watched the replays (no manual player input, checking pilot view - option 2) and reported them weeks ago…
Damm these are good tips
