Bomber gunners need a buff and is backed by history

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
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Hello everyone!

Today, I’m here to discuss how US Ai gunners in War Thunder are EXTREMELY nerfed compared to the real life training. Now, before everyone jumps me, same argument can be said for other nations, but I simply don’t have the technical and training documentations to back that up. I do agree that they also require a buff seeing how useless they are and if you have the information, PLEASE add it in the comments.
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So to start out, here’s a chart for different skill levels for the Ai gunners in War Thunder as of 14DEC2024.
War Thunder gunner skills
So, let’s place us in a scenario. You’re in your B 17E/L and heading to target at 200mph (ground speed) when you notice a Bf 109 G14 lined up for a head on attack from 12 o’clock, slightly above level and coming in (let’s assume 300 mph ground speed). Since you’re about to hit your target, you say screw it and let your gunners do the work since they’re aced. Surely they will do a good job and you’ve got a duel 12.7mm turret on top that can swing around and do work. Well, let’s do the math for your assumption.

The closing speed of this intercept is 500 mph ground speed (244.4yards / second). With this, the gunner has just shy of 3 seconds to react and has to spin 180* around to engage. With this, the gunner can only turn 159* so congrats, you’re dead and never got a round fired off from your top gunner.

But let’s say the interception isn’t perfect and comes from your 9 o’clock from the same altitude and attitude for a “blast through” intercept. With a closure rate of about 300 mph (146 yards/second), you’ll have plenty of time of tracking of 5 seconds and guns will be on target! However, you only get 1.6 seconds of target in the firing range so only 1.18 seconds of gunfire due to the skill limitation, if they even fire at all (due to the Track and Fire chance).

Now before everyone jumps around going
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think about this. You have to spend skill points, Silver Lions and either grind a vehicle or spend GE to get to ACE. With this, they SHOULD at least be useful right? I mean heck, I don’t know about y’all but I can spot aircrafts on the ground several miles out. You mean to tell me when your job is to LOOK for enemy aircrafts to protect your and your crewmates lives, you can only see 0.41 of a mile? Well, good thing actual training disagrees since the engagement range is about equal to the current tracking range.

The following screenshot is from the “Gunner’s Information File, Flexible Gunnery” page 136 ( Gunner’s information file : flexible gunnery. · The Museum of Flight - Digital Collections
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At a minimum, gunners should be opening up at 600 yards on a passing aircraft if the gunner is on target, and as the training shows, up to 900/1000 yards if a nose on attack (aka the fighter is flying AT the target).

So, this is my recommendation. Increase the BASE firing range to 600 yards and ACED to 1000 yards with tracking range somewhere in the 1500+ yards. If Gaijin is worried we’ll get the gunships we used to, they could increase the angle of divergence for the Ai so the spread is more while retaining a tighter spread in manual control.

What do y’all think?

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This should be added.

I also think the gun accuracy in manual control should be increased too. Currently, the guns are incredibly inaccurate, and I’ve had many situations where no bullets connect because they all went around the enemy plane.

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I too would like the game to play itself for me.

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Its autoaim, gaijin has another game called crossout that almost died when they gave in too much to the autoaim crowd (drones and turrets). No one wants to play a game with a lot of autoaim, winning doesnt feel as good and it feels downright bad to lose to it.

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If this is done, it should have strongly different mechanics for ARB and ASB.

While A.I gunners are pretty anemic even in air sim, with manual gunnery certain turreted/tail-gunner armed planes can become legitimate menaces that gunboat their way around air supremacy points for far less effort than it takes achieving the same in a fighter aircraft. I’m talking the likes of P-61C, B-25j, B26s.

Even approaching at high aspect with fast closure, a At-The-Keyboard B-25 or P-61 will likely knock your engine out or at the very least leave you leaking oil and forcing an RTB. This is extra fun if you torch the plane in question, cut a wing or tail off and it is still spraying towards you with questionably high accuracy.

Even the PBM from the battlepass can be an effective gunboat (at least until angry p-38s start spamming you with rockets, and that plane is a joke.

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I mean, the point of playing a bomber is to… BOMB. If I wanted to play gunner simulator, I’d play IL-2. Besides, what’s the point of crew skills on them if they don’t even shoot 9/10?

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Gaijin used to have better gunners in the game but nerfed them to their current state because fighters would sit behind gunners and slow speed and die (as they would IRL). Ironically enough, blame the fighter mafia for what they are now.

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I may be one of the rare ones that don’t think we should have gunner control in ASB. I’m here to bomb targets, not fly around in 3rd person and shooting fighters locked in first person with a stick. However, the Ai SHOULD punish fighters who sit behind a bomber

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Agreed. There should be a perk to shift to manual aim outside of having the gunners work. It sucks having had seen bombers be useful before but the fighter mafia got them nerfed to where they are now because fighter players would sit behind and slow behind bombers.

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Agree. Used nowadays bombers, and the gunners are almost useless. Actually all type planes, strike and bombers, have almost useless gunners. I suggest to give more range and a bit more accuracy for higher crew skill, for an ace crew a significant defense capabilities and aim.

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This topic is almost dead… Sadly, because the bombers are now even worse.
A lot of bombers has no chance for even get to one target to bomb, and can’t defend themself.

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Sadly. Love how they added the B66 and STILL haven’t added the radar system back for the gunner to make it at least SOMEWHAT viable in the early missile age.

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Bomber AI gunners USED TO be excellent. I remember flying around my boomers before tanks where added and coupled with a high/maxed level crew slot, they were perfectly effective. But got nerfed over and over again through the years. Such a travesty. ESPECIALLY wrong on boomers like the B-29 that had targeting computers for their turrets.

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Gotta love that fighter mafia that just sat behind bombers at the same air speed XD

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Bigger problem is that the same mechanics are used in air arcade, air realistic and airsim.

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxscQO69InNql4y0CpYAyDAOxRUZMukazy?si=F0gLsRNVaiaENsXZ

In this clip, I see what looks like an enemy and begin to dive on them. Before I finish levelling out of the dive its tailgunner starts firing at me (player controlled I presume) and hits me from quite a significant range, taking out my engine and forcing me to RTB and land.

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At this point, I assumed it’s a fighter at co-altitude.
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I wasn’t sure what it was, but I assumed it was an enemy.

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Diving. I try to cut throttle to tighten my dive but he saw me and began to climb, making me overshoot.

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It starts firing while my canopy frame blocks view.

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I see it’s firing and try to evade

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It knocks out my engine, I go inverted to use my plane as armour to avoid getting pilot sniped and glide back to airfield.

I’ve no idea what shot at me. I haven’t had the chance to try and ID it beyond “probably enemy” and “it had a tail gunner”. Maybe a Me 410 or Bf 110? It looked smaller than the typical german bomber at 4.7-5.7

Video from a much better player than I on the topic:

We need a proper separation of bomber gunner controls and behaviour between Air arcade, Air realistic and air simulator before we buff the gunners.

People already kind of abuse third person point and click gunners in sim with things like P-61 and we don’t need to buff it.

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If I’m being honest, it almost looks like a Beaufighter. Do you know for certain it was a player b/c the Ai bomber gunners are cracked out. Was that your first or second match on Maginot Line? I can watch the replay in game and tell you

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It’s been a pretty long time ago, and can’t be a beaufighter as UK is always allied.

https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/442107260389482340

This is the replay but these tend to glitch out for SB games. It should be ~90 minutes into the game.

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was this plane.

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Surprisingly, that was the Ai gunners but that’s my point. You came in from behind and below with about the same air speed behind a bomber with a gun that fires 1800 RPM. Realistically, you should be punished for that. I did notice the server replay had the tracers WAY off from you though so don’t ask me how they actually connected.

To be fair, if you remove the 3rd person control and NOT buff them at the same time, you just make bombers unable to defend themselves.

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Could make it work like in Il2:GB where you use joystick controls to direct the gun(ners) towards your target rather than a 3 axis stabilized mouse that functions even while in heavy maneuvers or worst of all - while helplessly spinning.

I’ve been also shot by a bomber (it only yellowed me, but it’s the clip I saved) whose tail I cut off:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxEjef3EI-Rd3DNgASkjzMcXHkcaNfcqCw?si=_9nz5Iky5uVPAQbC

Squishface talks of it in his own video I included with his own examples.