Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to the War Thunder developers.
My name is Giovanni, and first of all, I’d like to express my compliments and appreciation for the game — it’s truly outstanding.
I’d like to share a few observations and suggestions specifically for players who enjoy using bombers, particularly in the turbo-prop class. I’m not sure if the same points apply to jet bombers, but my feedback here is based entirely on my experience with turbo-props.
Observação
- Bombers are very vulnerable:
Bombers are extremely easy targets. Even in the game tips shown during loading screens, players are advised (especially fighters or interceptors) to aim for the engines, since bombers rely heavily on them. This makes bombers high-priority, easy kills — especially at lower altitudes.
- Performance at different altitudes:
Not all bombers perform well at low altitudes, such as between 8,000 to 16,000 feet. They tend to fly more efficiently and safely at higher altitudes, around 20,000 to 23,000 feet. At this range, many fighters can’t keep up, either due to performance limits or simply because they’re not willing to spend that much time climbing.
However, reaching that altitude takes time. And often, by the time a bomber gets there, the match is already near its end.
- Common strategy at the beginning of matches:
The most used strategy among bomber players at the start of a match is to choose a direction (left or right) and fly straight toward the edge of the map — until the “Return to Battlefield” warning appears. The goal is to gain as much altitude as possible before heading toward enemy bases.
Unfortunately, this strategy doesn’t work well. Bombers are slow, have poor maneuverability, and climb very slowly compared to fighters and interceptors, which can reach the bomber quickly and take them down with ease.
- Fast match progression:
Even when using powerful bombers that climb faster, the match tends to progress too quickly. When we finally reach a safe altitude and approach the enemy base to drop bombs, the game is already nearly over.
In several matches I’ve played, our team successfully destroyed all enemy bases and started attacking their airfield. Meanwhile, our own bases were still partially intact, and our airfield hadn’t even been opened for attack yet. Still, we lost the match — simply because the enemy team focused on destroying a few armored columns and scattered anti-aircraft systems.
This is frustrating, especially since the primary mission objective seems to be to destroy bases and then the main airfield. But the game seems to favor — or allow quicker wins — by destroying ground targets.
Suggestions
- Adjust the timing of the first aerial encounters:
The idea is not to delay the start of the match too much or allow bombers to reach 20,000+ feet before engaging — that would slow down the gameplay.
Instead, the time before first contact should be tuned based on the climb rate of bombers in the match, giving them a fairer opportunity to execute their role. Another idea could be allowing players to start at different altitudes depending on the map, or to have all bombers start at a higher base altitude, with fighters/interceptors adjusted accordingly. This would maintain balance without affecting game dynamics too much.
- Improve scoring and objective logic:
Destroying enemy bases and the airfield should carry more weight in the mission progress bar than simply destroying armored convoys or anti-aircraft sites. This would bring more consistency with the mission goals and give proper value to strategic bomber roles.
- Higher initial altitude for bombers:
Another alternative is to let bombers spawn at higher altitudes, already partially climbing. Fighters and interceptors could also spawn accordingly, keeping balance but improving the bomber’s ability to fulfill its mission.
If these suggestions are considered and implemented with care, I believe the experience for bomber players will become much more strategic, enjoyable, and balanced.
Thanks again for your attention.
Warm regards, and congratulations once more on the excellent work with War Thunder.
From Brazil, playing on Steam
Sincerely,
Giovanni
1 Like
Few things to consider:
There are no turboprop bombers in the game. We may get something like the Tu-95 in the future, but I wouldn’t hold my breath as big postwar strategic bombers don’t fit the meta.
The tip about “aiming for the engines” is extremely old, from a time when fighters actually had to aim for weakspots on bombers because guns in general were much weaker. They nerfed damage models sometime around 2016 to where they are now. Considering it’s been nearly a decade since that, the chances of any buffs to damage models are slim to none.
In the past most maps had three bases and a destructible airfield and bombers with sufficient tonnage could destroy them. The result was that fighter players complained about their team deathmatch meta being interrupted and the destructible.
My advice would be playing sim mode where bombers are actually playable. With the team deathmatch meta, AB and RB are just not viable for bombers.
One thing is also heavy bomber light bomber spawn height difference.
Tu4s have no chance at this point.
Yeah, that would help too
Reading your text as a whole and reflecting on your observations a short feedback:
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Referring to things like airfield destruction is an indicator that you focus on very low BRs or Air AB. At higher BRs in Air RB you face respawning bases without having airfields to destroy, so the main point of playing bombers (=killing a strategic target like an airfield) as a win-condition vanishes. Even as af kills are still a valid target in Air AB i agree with a previous post that Air SB might be a better choice - mainly due to the 3rd person view whilst in gunner view as this gives you a severe spotting and aiming advantage.
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If you play at very low BRs as bomber (Air RB) you need to have some experience - mainly to “read” a match and to adapt to what is happening - or just based on certain map specialities. Sometimes it makes sense to change your plan (if you have one) and delay attack on bases (was never a challenge) or airfields (challenge if u need multiple runs with decreasing survival chances) in order to increase you win chances.
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Regarding airfield (Air RB): Attacking the enemy airfield successfully depends either on the TNT damage output and remaining payloads of the still alive bombers - or the chances to get a successful 2nd run. So if you know the max TNT output and airfield HP you have to assess if it makes sense or not. If your bombload is too weak to kill the enemy airfield you have to switch targets.
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That’s when experience comes into play - so you can delay your drop on an untouched airfield in order to catch some repairing enemies, drop just a few bombs to give enemies a false sense of security and encourage them to land and get them with a 2nd run - or you use your remaining payload to bomb vehicle clusters (=playing just another objective).
Regarding the rest of your suggestions & observations:
Imho most of them are correct & comprehensible.
You might invest some time searching the forum with bomber-related topics. Have in mind that:
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The purpose of this game is to earn money for gaijin, not to create an “exiting game play experience” as advertised.
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Gaijin has clearly demonstrated that they are not really interested in classic prop bomber game play - since May 2020 they increased the difficulty for playing bombers by relegating bombing as a pure grinding tool for PvE players whilst bombers fulfil the role of easy targets for PvP players.
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WT is mainly a vehicle based shooter - so the player base as a whole is PvP driven and increasing the difficulties to kill a bomber is neither in their, nor in gaijin’s interest.
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Gaijin has a long history of giving small improvements whilst sneaking in actual nerfs (open or hidden, with & without delay). So just in the theoretical scenario that they would follow some of your suggestions they would use this increase of potential SL & RP gains of bombers as reason to cut the economy somewhere else.
As a final remark:
After a look at your service record i recommend to stay away from anything above a BR 3.3 in Air RB. It makes no sense for your to play anything higher as your focus on US aircraft has 2 main disadvantages:
- There is no US prop bomber with the necessary performance to survive the slaughter in Air RB. The few guys able to make the B-34s or PV-2Ds work are often experienced fighter pilots, are able to dodge / evade incoming fire whilst being in manual gunner mode and have usually a level 75 crew and an aced plane which reduces the gunner reload time to 7.5 seconds.
- US dominated prop teams tend to disintegrate very quickly - whilst B-17s and PB4Ys (or any other heavy bomber) either are unable to make it even to a base or are the last survivors without having a chance to land and leave.
Without better crew points (pilot skill & gunner reload time) you won’t have fun.
Have a good one!
This is imho one of the most underestimated bomber nerfs in the last 5 years.
Have a good one!
MG-151 missing real shatter on all models
That would nerf many bombers rather than buff them 🤣
But does need to be sorted. Though I’d argue that giving all aircraft new damage models would only help balance ammo types and could resolve some of the issues with the MG151