We all know that all bombers in game are made out of paper. Especialy when you compare them to their IRL counterparts that manage to take a massive beating and still manage to get back. So that is one buff they need. They need to be much more durable. And the second problem is the horrible AI gunners on them. My lvl crew on bomber is max (75 lvl) with expert crew, and my gunners are still sleeping even when evemy is 500m behind me. They need to buff the reaction time of gunners nad their accuracy.
Thanks for reading my pep-talk about thing that Gaijin will never fix.
Gunners have been nearly completely disabled for a long time now. Because AI gunners can not be balanced properly. Either they are useless (right now) or OP (previously).
They ruined RB and Sim matches by simply being able to always see the enemy (a problem which every AI has) So they would gift free kills for just flying.
The durability is however a joke. Some Twin engine attackers can withstand 20 to 50 23mm HEI shells with ease while others implode after a single hit to the center.
The legends of invincible bombers is never going to translate into war thunder. People love to talk about the ones that came back with nothing else but a wing and some chewing gum but forget the tens of thousands that didn’t make it back. In the real world individual bombers weren’t going 1v1 or 1v 3 with advanced fighters with third person view, lead indicators withcomabt zones the size of a postage stamp. You want realism get a thousand bombers in close formation in sim vs a couple fighters at 6km altitude.
“Of the 12,731 B-17s built, about 4,735 were lost during the war.”
1/3rd of all B-17s were lost during the war
They’re not as survivable as you’d think. What saved them was herd tactics and fighter escorts. War Thunder does not encourage this style of gameplay thus the plane is presented as “made of paper”.
“Of the 15,683 P-47s built between 1941 and 1945, only 3,499 were lost in combat.”
So 1/4 for the P-47. Does your number include losses to accidents?
Loss figgures are also not telling. The F4U had only around 1000 losses out of nearly 13k build. And only around 100 of those losses occured during air to air combat with the rest happening in the close air support role.
We know for a fact that a Lancaster could survive multiple 20mm hits to the wings and fuselage quite consistently. Anything but a fire, dead enignes or missing wing could be survived. Literal man big holes in the wings and fuselage did not kill a Lancaster. Yet ingame 1-3 hits of 20mm to a wing will 100% kill the Lancaster.
I think bombers need like a 10-20% increase in HP. the PE 8 alredy has more HP than most others in its wings despite the fact that it was a far less durable bombmer when compared to the B25s and Lancasters. And i feel like a PE 8 is still fairly durable while not being an unkillable arial tank.
Ignoring any historical arguments, the problem with bombers in ARB is that they’re not fun to play. Manual gunner mechanics need an overhaul, plane durability needs to be looked at, and BRs need to be rebalanced across the board.
I don’t understand why people reach for sketchy historical arguments when we’re playing a game; bombers are terribly unfun, if there’s no willingness on Gaijin’s part to try to make them more fun for both parties, then they should be removed.
After reading several biographies of night fighters: they especially aimed for the wings as this was a guaranteed kill due to the resulting fuel fires. And they avoided the fuselage as they feared they would hit the bombs…
The loss rate of Lancs was extremely high - google it. What i can confirm is that i read about post-war analysis that they concluded that putting away armor for the crew to the engines and fuel tanks would have been more effective. No clue where i read this.
About 8 years ago, people complained that Bombers were tough, and the AI gunners are very OP because they can shot any air target from 1km, like the naval Ai, then gaijin nerf it.
The damage model consists of areas,… which is far different than IRL.
Those areas on bombers are large and big, easily hit, and not considering real impacts.
I would refurbish Damage bombers of the game like the following:
Light bombers (SBD-3 / Ju-87 /D3A1 for exemple) would remain as it is today, it is fine since they’re maneuvrable and of similar size than fighters
Medium bombers(B-25/Ju-88/He111), would recieves: 2 more sectors of fuselage, and 2 more sectors per wings.(which make 4 sectors for fuselage, and 5 per wings)
Large Bombers (B-17/He219 Pe-8 and higher), would recieves:
4 more fuselage sectors, and 3 more wing sectors
(Which makes 8(/9 for B-29 and similar) fuselage sectors, and 6 per wings)
This will re-allocate the damages more locally, thus enhancing the survivability in-game, because the pilots do not aim good enough to keep on a single sector against a defensive target.
(I estimate such change to be done overtime, and improving survivability of medium bombers per 25% and large bomber by 15%)
That’s not really over in my opinion. While flying 7.7 jets and encoutering a PE-8, I always end up having critical damage and most of the time to my engine.
The defences of this plane and the TU-24 are just insane while the gunners are also perfect shooters. You need at least two runs to down a PE-8 while it can just down you with ease with it’s AI gunners.
I will disagree. IRL it was needed work of both plane intercepting and AA fire to get the thing down, but even then theres cases where PE-8 was able to do emergency landing on close field, thus surviving. There were 93 PE-8 produced total,with production stopping in 1944, while to 1943 only 27 were lost, and most of losses were due to bombing on airfields, engine failures. Number of PE-8 used at same time was also low, the most being 24 used in 1944 (compare that to 77 B29s used at 5th June of same year)
I don’t want to be a jerk, but Pe-8 was used as a night bomber - coming from a more or less undefended side of the German Reich as their (and the few Il-4s) attacks were not assessed as a threat.
I do agree that the Pe-8 in wt is a rather difficult target - so having the choice between a B-17 and a Pe-8 - i always attack the B-17.
