This is a topic I find interesting to discuss, as it touches on the issue of balance in the game.
I recently discovered that some bombs in the game apparently received nerfs according to the community.
In your opinion, are these nerfs good or bad for the game? Do they ruin or balance the gameplay? (Note that Gaijin most likely took balance into account, given the map size, so this should be considered).
Here are some examples cited by the community so you can get an idea:
12.000 lb bombs
The 12,000 lb bomb went from a radius of approximately 114 m to 54 m. Since the area depends on r², this means the area of effect dropped to approximately 22.5% of the previous figure—a reduction of about 77.5%.
FAB-5000
This is likely one of the changes you were noticing.
The FAB-5000’s radius for destroying armored vehicles went from approximately 105 m to 49 m. This reduces the area from approximately 34,600 m² to 7,540 m².
12,000 lb - Lancaster
The situation is practically the same. The Lancaster still carries the 12,000 lb H.C. Mk.I, but its current radius appears to be around 54 m, compared to the previous ~114 meters.
I agree. I think they should take into account that some of these planes only carry one of these large bombs, making it more valuable and necessary for the match in certain situations.
All of those bombs were lobby wipers in ground battles, that was the purpose. It used to be super practical and a good way to punish people being dumb and grouping together like along the same ridge, but that’s gone now. They were also just hilarious and frankly pretty balanced because those bombers are HUGE targets for AA and fighters and very impractical to fly, but with the new bomber buffs making them supposedly unbalanced I’d say just nerf their guns range and stuff, make it so if you attack wrong you die but if you hit them from the right angle with good guns you stand a chance. Also the bomb model against tanks is SO bad right now, I can already see people mentioning how inconsistent bombs are against ground vehicles, even at close range. I frankly either want to die or not take damage, I don’t wanna sit for 40 seconds repairing, especially considering I’ve noticed heavily nerfed top tier repair times recently.
Ya no, those bombs didn’t punish anyone, they just killed everyone who wasn’t sniping, and generally did more damage to the team who dropped it 9/10 times than it did to the enemy team.
Also this whole game is about team working and playing around your team mates, now you introduce a weapon that punishes that same act. This is called poor game design when you’re doing two completely opposing ideas at the same time.
In my opinion terrible, specially for some vehicles like the Tu-95M that—in contrast to the B-52H instead of saturating an area with huge payload and a lot of ordinances it relies on a lower payload but equal destruction power in one or four drops depending on your load. This change clearly benefitted quantity over effectiveness—so bombs like x1 FAB-9000 bomb is, in practice, worse then x9 2000 lb bombs.
that is likely because of public liability, they would get sued if anybody got even an ear ache from it, so the safety zone if FAR beyond what would leave people “combat effective”.
The FAB-9000s with 4.3 tons of TNT had a lethal radius of 57m and disabling radius of 225m, but given they are more designed to penetrate the target they may have been digging pretty deep before detonation while was eating a lot of the blast and fragments.
there seems to be an issue where is the bomb hits anything other then the ground it bounces around and spins and dose little to no damage when it detonates
Punishing teamwork? What? Stuff like the british lakemaker usually does get at least one TK by accident, but it’s by no means detrimental to the friendly team without intention, and a decent bomber player can get at least 4 or 5 kills per drop. They’re meant to be an obscure and impractical weapon, powerful when used well but hard to use as such. Nerfing them not only takes away from the absolute hilarity that was making a literal lake and getting 8 kills with one bomb but also takes away from what was a very useful weapon, one of those on spawn campers or a group of enemies holding a point both benefited the team and the specific user.
Yeah, obviously wouldnt be effective at thoes kinds of ranges, but you can work backwards a little bit, a 4000lb needing that kind of radius, a 12’000 would be even larger.
I doubt it would do nothing to a tank more than 50m away
They are ALWAYS bad for the game’s health at large. The people whose crying the nerf was meant to appease only briefly pause their temper tantrums before finding something else to cry about soon after, because their tantrums are about dying PERIOD, regardless of source.And you can’t fix, buff, nerf, or rebalance stupid.
Meanwhile everyone else is left picking up the pieces quite possibly for years afterwards.
Just by doing some quick Google Searches, on average bombs of all sizes are missing half or more of their effective lethal radii. War Thunder models physical destruction of vehicles, but completely neglects the fact that the meat-bags inside the metal coffins are way squishier than the coffin itself, and can be incapacitated at ranges where the coffin is still operable.