I play because i like the World War II era bomber, and I’ve kind of finished the American line already.
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hot take (for ARB), A buff to bomber health or defensive armament wouldn’t make a difference.
If you plan your routes carefully and shallow climb you should be able to reach bases 80% of the time.
The problem with bombers come after they drop their bombs and need to reload.
They need to drop at least +4km of alt, bombers produce lots of lift believe or not and they usually don’t dive well.
Even then landing and rearming doesn’t help, since now you need to make a bomb run with no alt, no time, no speed, no climb… and with the enemy blind hunt active.
Bombers need a way to rearm mid-air since they take so much time do descend and line with the runway that the battle just ends.
Bombers would also benefit from a rework to bases, No more bases spread out all over the place, only 1 base with infinite health would provide with an infinite ticket drain, you could choose 2 extremes with bombers:
1-fast but low payload(usually around and below medium bombers), reliably reaches bases but needs multiple runs to make a difference
2-slow and heavy payload(some medium bombers and up), to reach a base may be riskier but it will pay off pretty well.
also even now, some bombers need to sent a little up in BR. (almost all of them german funnily) specially bombers like Ju-88 A-1, he-111 h-3, Me-264, B7A2, SB2C-4 / 5. last one is either remove bomber spawn or push BR.
Of course a lot more of them could come down too
And of course like 90% of planes, bombers would benefit from the removal of spotting via allies and also longer battles.
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Arcade not so good. The fighters usually know where you are because of the weak fog-of-war.
Surviving is often just luck if the fighters just can’t be bothered to climb.
Agreed. Every time I’ve tried to re-arm, the battle was over before I could take off.
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There‘s really not a lot to do for bombers other than fly straight, drop bombs and open fire against attacking fighters.
Since their purpose is to drop bombs, while for fighters it’s to shoot down other planes, their play styles don’t match very well.
Destroying all enemies equals a win while bombers can’t really win games anymore.
When they could the outcome was basically decided at the start of the match.
Realistically the mission should just end with no winner or loser.
You just get rewarded for accomplishing objectives and doing well.
or bring back the good bomber maps like the one where you had to fly across the English channel to bomb targets, that was great in big heavy bombers.
It used a version of this map, but with more land on the France side:
Lots of time to climb to altitude or to descend to the runway. I think last time I played it I did 3 or 4 RTBs, games are just ending too fast these days, especially with the “everybody gets an air spawn” nonsense.
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Tbh I feel in sim 6.3 is dead enough that people won’t bother you.
Well.
You’ll have Ju-288s show up and gunship you down. That BR range is dominated by Ju 288s.
I do recommend sim though for lower BRs. Stuff under 6.0 avoids Ju 288 hell and flying high OR very low (avoiding detection) both work quite reliably if you aren’t predictable. Plus if you’re highly aware and proactive with gunners, you’ll be able to swat a lot of fighters away because firing ranges and accuracy in sim is MUCH lower for fighters than AB/RB. Some more experienced fighter players can hit you from farther out but you’re still at advantage usually.
Also I recommend joining WingalingDragon’s Team Sim discord. He & Krabb_Nation organize custom battles centered around B-17s (big dynamic campaign) and also B-17 (and other bomber/attackers) flyouts in public matches in formation.
Reload -
This is imho a major problem of bombers in gaijin’s alternative reality in Air RB.
From a holistic pov bombers are designed to carry a heavy payload over a longer distance. This required large air frames for fuel, bombs etc. In wt Air RB there are no long distances to cover therefore they carry dead weight. The short distances allows a plain strike aircraft to perform multiple attack runs whilst landing a 4 engine bitch takes ages and 2nd runs make no real sense.
Imho you overestimate gaijin’s ability to implement such a rather complex topic, especially as most bomber players are rookies and survive not even their initial attack run.
From my pov heavy bombers are “one and done” aircraft - meaning that multiple runs are pointless due to more or less non existing survival rates.
So instead of circumventing the reload issue it would make way more sense to increase the mission score and SL income (like 20%) in case that a aircraft designed to play PvE manages to finish a bomb run in a PvP setup by landing and repairing - as a kind of a bonus. If the player tries then a 2nd run and gets killed without any game impact he should lose this “mission completed” (base drop and rtb) bonus AND the “i got killed” 135 points mission score.
This might help to reduce the number of free bomber kills late game.
You might think this through. Technically seen are base markers nothing more than hints where enemies will pop up. At least in theory 4 bases spread over a larger area increases the chances that a smart bomber pilot can drop.
A single bombing point is an invitation to a turkey shooting, all you have to do as enemy fighter pilot is to wait around this point - classic. “Lions camp the only water hole” scenario.
As soon as bombers get realistic damage models and gaijin eliminates the artificial gunner spread of defensive turrets we can talk about bomber BRs.
The problem with BR increases of bombers is not the performance at a 0.3 higher BR - it is connected to the BRs with base health changes (like 2.3-2.7 or 4.7/5.0) which triggers higher TNT requirements AND the full uptier frequency.
Example:
I would have zero problems with a BR of 4.0 for the BP B7A2 - simply because it would kill most of the extremely annoying BR 2.7 (B-29 & I-153P) or BR 3.0 (Yak-1B spam) downtier scenarios AND enemies get less nimble and therefore easier to kill at 5.0.
But the base health jumps from 4.7 to 5.0 (=imho no base kills possible then) and you multiply Yak-3 opponents. In addition i can’t wait to face 4 B7A2s and 4 J2M2s when fighting JP at 5.0…
Edit: I face the base health issue every time when i use the 4.0 B-18B. Including BR 4.7 a single 600 kg bomb kills every base, and i have 2 of them. At 5.0 i need both to kill a single base and i have a lower mission score and SL/RP income…
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safe exit zones from tank arcade can be modified for said purpose.
Bombers players simply need to learn about route planning, to avoid or at least don’t be such convinient SL during the initial climb and contact. Once a bomber reaches the backline and the bases (maybe 1 base isn’t the best), IF no enemy decides to chase a bomber all the way to the backline and let their team die and/or sacrifice kills on the long run (which I found very rare personally idk about other people experiences), the main furballs of enemies have probably dropped almost all altitude and the bomber could just fly in a line towards the rearm zone and do a second run without sacrificin so much time since a lot of enemies are ground pounding, RTB, dead and in some unfortunate case climbing back up but now even closer to map center, which means less time to intercept.
In short, bomber players must stop seeing bombers as automatic SL farms and more of a sidegrade in gameplay focused on tactical pathfinder towards objectives on the initial moments. they must realize not all bombers are like JU-288 Cs, where you fly to a base, bomb and maybe not die.
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Delete “bomber” - the player base is progressing (up to rank III) way too fast and is unable learn basics of Air RB.
Basically in every match i see plain stupid actions (like landing on undefended forward airfields or spawning at airfield due to not disabled “bad weather spawn” or head-ons in clear energy advantage - just to name a few).
You can’t force people to learn - just give incentives to act in a “better” way. WT is like irl - just assume that most people around you are retards.
Same here - there is no “must” - Air RB is designed to be attractive for casual players, the whole monetization / reward structure is evidence enough…
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A perfect example of a bomber player playing a great match in a 4.7 B-17E in a full downtier:
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/451151916054728164
Sideclimbing above 7 km, staying out of the center, using the non-existent contrails, showing a high level of situational awareness, trying a 2nd run and shooting down a T-18B with good gunner skills.
His only mistake was that he tried to bomb bases despite his team had a irrecoverable ticket lead. All he had to do was to stay alive, bomb some stuff in the center and avoid getting near a base.
With sheer luck i survived a high risk attack from 9 to 6 o’clock low and got him 40 seconds before the timer ran out.
WP!
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And another example of a great heavy bomber game - here by a Pe-8:
Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On
Both teams went low and the only threat for him was an XP-50 at high alt. He flew a detour so that the XP-50 went for me (in a B7A2) and XP-50 paid the price.
The Pe-8 pilot killed 5 bases uncontested (and based on the replay he is obsessed with watching his bombs hitting bases😎) and used the rather high top & dive speed of the Pe-8 to retreat - he fended off a F4U-4 and won the match for us as he killed their best fighter (a Pyörremski) with his gunner.
This kill was decisive as the Pyoerremski was the only fighter able to win a fight vs my B7A2 - the remaining Swedish J26 (5 kills) and the F4U-4 (2 kills) are no match in a 1 vs 1 even if flown to it strengths if my energy disadvantage is not too large. The J26 offered a good high speed fight but lost, the F4U-4 ran out of fuel.
We won by tickets as our 7 basekills produced a large enough ticket lead.
As a side note: I finished the special task “20 base kills” with 4 base kills in this match with just 7 x 60 kg bombs. I finished a base with one and had to drop the remaining 3 under my wings in order to outturn the XP-50. I dropped then 4 to finish another base and dropped after that one on each of the two available bases - knowing that the Pe-8 would kill them and my single bomb on each will be counted as base kill.
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Dont fly in a straight line to a base.
99% of bombers just spawn and fly directly into the enemy team or are extremely predictable.
I have alot of success with bombers still.
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How do you come to this conclusion
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Not if enemy fighters actually climbed instead of diving into the furball. Bombers, because of the neutered AI gunners, have little chance once spottted.
We need a mode where you can ONLY win by destroying tough land objectives. Gives bombers something to do, and fighters will have plenty to do as well fighting each other and having the incentive to search and destroy the bombers who can help decide the game.
Maybe new players do this. But do veterans?
Problem is, it takes so long to side-climb and get into position to drop the load. There are times battles are pretty much decided before the bombers are in a decent position to participate. Especially if the bombers are stock or close to stock. Unlike fighters, bombers HAVE to enter player vs player with stock vehicles.
Now this is from perspective of prop planes. I have no experience with faster jets.
You mix up a challenge with a problem 😎
Playing a bomber stock is painful, yes, but imho just a test of your patience.
You might find this interesting:
Summary
Have a good one!
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I’ll have to try this strat.
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GL! Use internal bombload only - external load produces a hell of drag and has a severe impact on climb and speed!
PS: I used this strategy ~150 times with the Ju 88 A-1 (here with max load 1.900 and then 2.400 kg) and lost just 2 planes (one to midfield AA😂) but thx to the bomb load i was (almost) always able to kill the enemy airfield - 80% WR.
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I’ll keep that in mind! I’m trying to get back into air, I spaded the P-36-A last week, so literal baby steps. I may send you a DM every now and then asking for advice if you don’t mind, mate :D
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