They’ll need to rework manual gunner control, specifically the viewpoint.
Currently it is stablized on all 3 axis, If you make it like the “attached” camera on replay, rolling over or pitching would tilt your view too, making it harder to fire back while manouvering.
For the bomber to fire back it needs to stay still, which leaves the enemy a small window they need to use very quickly to fire at the engines or nearest-to-center fuel tanks (the ones that carry the most fuel) to take them down.
So now both the bomber and interceptor have time to line up their shots on equal terms.
Or just shoot at the bombay and have it explode because that’s lovely of course (it isn’t)
But it is very alarming just how many players just “shoot” at the bomber instead of somewhere vital and really park themselves behind you and expect to come out alive, really felt in lower tiers in stuff like B-25s or Ki-49s
Those 20mil armed bombers will take a lot more victims with them for sure.
You can also try to calculate section health based on volume per section/module.
You’d have stuff like the think wing sections of the B-24 be less durable than the B-17’s sections.
Or hampden’s very thin tail be more fragile in comparison to a let’s say a LeO 451.
By the way, since Tu-95 is a prop, there is a funny little button called “I” that makes you immune to all IR missiles. At least, it works for me every time in my Tu-4. Love to see the occasional Sea Vixen trying desperately to lock onto my room temperature plane.
Radar missiles are still a death sentence though …
That’s it until Gaijin return Tu-95Ms’ Meteor-NM electronic countermeasure complex, which I doubt. Still, ECM is in very early stages from what I can remember in the Nuclear Thunder april fools, seeing how Gaijin may handle this, only higher battle rating airplanes will have access to proper electronic countermeasures or may never been implemented.
The B-17s (and USAAF bombers in general) are romanticised due to propaganda reasons - there is a reason why the USAAF lost 10,000 bombers in Europe. Yes, you find noteworthy exceptions like the Memphis Belle or Old 666 - but the pure data shows that surviving in a bomber irl vs determined fighter opposition was based on luck - and nothing else.
Thw wt game play boils down to unescorted deep penetration strikes leading to 1 vs 1s (in the best case) vs enemy fighters. And in opposition to irl bombers like B-17s fly in wt too low (which makes it easier to kill them) and way faster than their actual cruising speed - which makes them harder to kill.
Besides that: Your Bf 110 G vs B-17 vid is ai modified and shows just 20mm surface hits, no 30mm used - and German gun cams never had audio…
This rework is nothing more than a long overdue damage model reworks of components and is basically the rework attempt of gaijin’s own decision a decade (?) ago to replace B kills (=delayed) with A kills (=instant) as gratification for dopamine thirsty (fighter) players.
Successful bomber gameplay at prop-BRs was always centered around avoiding getting spotted and attacked in the first place - and not about the amount of punishment you can take.
So gaijin addressing that they rework damage models might be helpful for a niche mode like Air SB but won’t change anything regarding the outcome for Air RB - as the bomber “problems” are rooted in:
No real game impact when flying a classic base bomber (with just a few exceptions) means than no experienced players (except real fans) fly bombers without offensive capabilities as the risk attached to flying bombers compared to rewards or actual game impact is way too high. The way too low ticket impact of base kills makes them dead weight even for the PvE aspect of Air RB.
The cannon damage buff of 20mm cannons like ShVaks increased massively the damage output whilst gaijin added artificial spread to return fire fom LMGs/HMGs - that 20mm cannons as defensive weapons are still incredibly dangerous is nothing new - that’s why just rookies tailchase a Pe-8 or G8N1.
Base bombing in Air RB became mainly a RP grinding tool - meaning less experienced pilots flood the mode and teams collapse way earlier than years ago - leaving you in a heavy bomber flying a detour either flying 1 vs 6-8 even before you drop - or the enemy team is dead before you can drop.
That means that balancing bombers require substantial changes in the setup of the game play - a damage model rework might help to delay a bomber kill, but the role of bombers in general is way more decisive.
this dvd set, which ive watched roughly a decade ago, has alot of gun footage and historical footage of b-17 and b-24 b-29 over europe.
I havent found it elsewhere yet but maybe that could be of use
Yeah, but last time that happened the Tu-4 jumped from 6.7 to 8.7. If this rework follows the same “good old days” logic, I bet a lot of people will end up complaining about it too.
If they actually put in the effort, they’d probably do something like that. I seriously doubt it’ll get much effort though, given Gaijin’s recent track record, but I could see it working out if they did.
I think that’s partially why they quietly removed EEGS from the Tu-95M and are ignoring my bug report about the missing radar and gun laying radar. For some reason they’ve currently put any radar guided bomber’s radar sighting on hold indefinitely. That could be because of an incoming rework, or it could be that BVVD just has some kind of vendetta against bombers. Honestly, I don’t know why.
Thankfully, most of this could be solved by Nuclear Thunder, if they’d actually let you spawn in with the B-52H or Tu-95M, which sadly they don’t.
I mean… it depends? If WT Naval is of any consideration it falls pretty much in two categories with nothing in between: “Cant die/Cant ammo rack them” and “Die from a mere suggestion of near magazine shot”
As they should ngl. Not only most bombers have poor defensive armament (like the british ones until you get to like 5.7+ and you get 20mil cannons out of nowhere), and Air RB literally being a completely hostile environment that renders their role completely useless (sometimes you get maps with ZERO (0) targets to bomb), at least make them survivable.
Yeah exactly. I don’t hate the maps, it’s just why the hell would the matchmaker put 4 bombers on my team on that map and also proceed to give none to the enemies? As if the game isn’t onesided enough, matchmaking lowkey deciding who wins and who loses.
MM with wild team compositions on standard & legacy maps
Both show that the guys in charge for triggering lobbies, the guys in charge for map design and the guys in charge for aircraft mechanics don’t talk to each other - i would even claim that they don’t even play their game.
Most of the Pacific maps are very old and were initially designed for 12 vs 12 matches in the classic JP vs US/UK (axis vs allies) setup .That means also that most of these maps have certain mission objectives which require simply more aircraft to fulfill own or deny the enemy team to fulfil their goals. This is borderline impossible as the MM creates as soon as both sides have 6 Aircraft in the BR range a lobby - no matter what kind of aircraft are in the queue.
This creates often (depending on which side has bombers or not) ultra one-sided matches when average players meet each other as also the quality of bombers is decisive. So if you can convince your US team on certain maps to sideclimb they can outrun, outclimb and outspeed any JP/Thai Helldivers and it ends in a turkey shooting - or your US/UK bombers use their rather good working defensive turrets vs JP paper planes flying high and very fast.
But the main problem is still the bombing part as the average bomber player has not the necessary experience to hit a stationary target from 5-6 km altitude - if he flies higher, the accuracy gets worse, if he flies lower he becomes a way too easy target.
On top of that - bombers have also different time spans between dropping the release button and the actual bomb drop - so depending on speed and altitude it gets extremely difficult to hit a pillbox or cargo ship if you don’t have the necessary experience. And even if you have it - the artificial bomb spread denies even with an aced plane and a level 75 crew often a hit / ground ai kill.
Some map (like Saipan) have even severe design flaws allowing you to win (as US/UK bomber) with doing nothing - just to stay alive as your own ground ai captures A or B point (old) and friendly ai aircraft (F6Fs) murder JP tickets like there is no tomorrow granting you a ticket win after ~13-15 minutes. The map is so large that you can’t get caught if you reverse climb - and no enemy player was smart enough to anticipate this move.
That means when playing for JP u have to check the enemy team for very experienced players aware of this flaw and pre climb if you identify one of them and activate a blind hunt / avenger order at the right point in time - otherwise you will lose by tickets.
That the MM decides most matches is not limited to Pacific maps :-)
In my last match a JP/That SB2C killed a JP carrier (Shokaku, marked as US / enemy with 2 escorts) for a mission score of 312 (12 for the 2 x 1,000 lbs hit plus 300 for the delayed kill) points. Ticket reduction: 100 points, same as a plain arty / aaa target 😎 This is just another sign of imbalance…
