I’ll say up front this is a vent, and I know it’ll draw flak — but a bomber buff was needed. The problem is how it’s been done, because it doesn’t hold up in A, R or S. The buff is simply too strong and needs dialling back, particularly the defensive gunners’ accuracy (and the convoy and shipping AAA while we’re at it).
I get the counter-argument: most losses were mission failures, not shootdowns, so the survivability problem was real. But a 50+% attrition rate, read against the research and analysis done at the time, suggests the current situation is over-egged.
The knock-on effects are what concern me most. Since the buff, pilots around my skill level — below average — have moved almost entirely onto buffed bomber airframes. That’s removed bomber hunting as an option for me, even in dedicated interceptors like the J7W1, AI bombers and a lot of attackers included. It’s also thinned out the fighter population: the ones left are either raw beginners or aces I’ve got no hope against.
So my practical options have narrowed to fast attackers or fighters that can take a base. CAS doesn’t click for me for some reason, and anti-shipping is low reward and high risk. Honestly, this buff has borderline killed my enjoyment of sim.
Imo, any airframe durability should be based entirely upon gameplay. We love to pull up propaganda photos of a B17 with a million holes still flying, or a B17 missing a wing from a flak hit, but at the end of the day, realistic scenarios are impossible to create in this game.
Any plane should be able to destroy the other one in a 1v1 situation. This is the case in fighter vs fighter gameplay, where 1 good burst usually takes out opponents. This is not the case in fighter vs bomber, where the effort the fighter player has to put in to destroy the bomber is vastly greater.
Failure to kill fighters is usually met with “know your plane better” and “get good”. Failure to kill bombers is now met with “Ignore them because your plane literally cannot do it” or “set up a perfect opportunity to get a full perfect accuracy burst in the most vulnerable part of the bomber while they just have to sit there holding the trigger on you”
Bombers should have no business being this survivable. I’ve seen Ju 288s extinguishing 5 fires (after spending all of my ammo on each one) in a row and still making it back to base, as well as Pe-8s tanking X-4 missiles from the Fw 190 F-8 and 37mm cammo from the Ki-108. Sometimes the only viable option is to ram them.
Considering to buff their damage models was the right choice, but the execution is bad, probably unrealistic.
