Not peer reviewed yet, so calm down. Just because Daddy Elon says it’s so, doesn’t mean it is.
Of course!
I have another here with the B-17 that should really help drive that home
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Buddy you ARE the bot lobbies in question pipe down
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Il-2 1946 really has a much better damage model than WT, crazy lol
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I read through the first ~800 replies on this thread. Read through some absolute rediculous dung flinging, and some hilariously bad takes.
I Downloaded the dev server, and tested the apparently now “re adjusted” damage models of the bombers. Stuck without the ability to play a random game (idk if this is normal for dev) and with no friends available to test with me, I was as well stuck shooting at the bot B29s and Ju-88s in the test flight. I am aware that their damage model isn’t as good as a players so I was firing and then flying over the plane to check for damage that looks like it would have knocked a player bomber down as well.
And honestly, its ridiculous. I tested at least a dozen different aircraft and weapon setups. I flew at these bombers from as many angles as possible trying to hit as many different parts of the aircraft as possible. From behind shooting at various parts, from above strafing the top of its fuselage or wings, or both. In front, below, I aimed at every single little part of the plane, and also tried just blanketing then in lead to see what was damaging it where, and what the quickest and most consistent way to kill it would be.
I came to the conclusion that in a live battle, there is absolutely no possible way that any fighter at prop BRs could engage a bomber and be able to shoot that bomber down before the bombers gunners were able to shoot the fighter player down. Even if this was possible and the bomber pilot had the aim of a blind Stormtrooper, it takes on average most of your ammo load to do it, so in a live game it wouldn’t be worth even bothering to go after the bomber honestly. This is not a skill issue, this is not a “learn to aim” There is physically nowhere on the aircraft you can aim to kill it quickly enough without it costing your entire ammo load or your own aircraft, short of a pilot snipe.
There was some inconsistent success and occasional quick bursts that exploded the bomber, but only with 30mm and larger cannons. 20mm and lower theres no chance short of a lucky pilot snipe.
I also tried guns and aircraft that were specifically designed to kill bombers as well - Like the Japanese Ki-44 with the 40mms. full load of the 40s into the B29 did not knock it down. It took 2-3 hits from the HS-129 on average to knock it down as well lol, though I havent unlocked that plane so was stuck with the default belt.
I tried both HEF and APT belts on multiple different planes, they did not seem to make much difference.
I flew my F-2A around as well testing it against them. it took a full load of all 512 vulcan Rounds to maybe knock it down. Not always.
The ARH missile Damage against them seems bugged maybe? It was taking on average 2-3 AAM-4s to knock a B29 down, but suprisingly I was relatively consistently knocking them down with only one AAM-3. So Sidewinders are doing more damage than AMRAAMs to them apparently? Yes this was with the missile flying directly into the fuselage of one plane, not proxy detonating between them. Both the AAM-3 and AAM-4s were scoring direct hits on center mass of these planes.
I found M2 Brownings were consistently lighting fires in the engines pretty much immediately on hitting the plane, which would eventually burn it out if you lit up all four engines… sometimes (the fires often went out after a while), but would do practically no notable damage to the airframe itself outside of whatever the fire would do.
I would like to note: When I say I knocked the bomber down, I do not mean I got the “aircraft destroyed” text in every scenario. I mean the bomber took enough damage that it slowly started falling out of the sky. sometimes they took a full 10 minutes to eventually crash. So while technically you are “destroying” the bomber, in a real game them slowly burning out and losing altitude isnt how Warthunder attributes a “kill” in the game.
In regards to the whole “realism” argument, Even if this damage model “is” realistic (it absolutely is not), This is not real life. This is a game, it is a game where everything needs to and should be fairly balanced as much as possible to be fun and fair for everyone. While I was fully supportive and excited to see Gaijin wanting to buff bombers as they definitely need a buff. This is absolutely not it. This is an undeniably terrible thing to implement and will be awful for gameplay in all situations.
This will result in bombers being effectively invincible in game. Anyone who tries for any length of time to kill them will be destroyed until everyone learns that and no longer bothers to even go after them. Air RB will become a game where everyone else fights each other, then ignores the bombers and mindlessly grinds down ground targets until the game times out. Though bombers like the Ju-288 which already went through periods where they single handedly ruined their entire BR bracket for years will likely do the same but make it even more unplayable.
Air Arcade I can imagine will end up similar to the last time Bombers were horribly overtuned and have entirety of both teams filled with them and end games in 2-3 minutes like they did many years ago (when I still played Arcade)
Personally I think the people advocating for and defending this change really just want to be able to sit in their OP unkillable bombers and farm enemy players, at least until everyone learns to ignore them. I don’t see how anyone with a reasonable understanding of fair game balance could look at this and think its okay.
TLDR: Its overtuned as hell and is bad for gameplay even if realistic, I think bombers desperately need a buff but Gaijin went way too far with it.
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I think its something to do with prox fuse radii and the missiles exploding further away since the changes where they detenoated based upon the position of the closest part of the aircraft, not the aircraft centre point.
I think the structural changes are mostly fine. The issue is that the rest of the damage models is sub-par. The correct thing to do is add more to the damage models, and refine other aspects of it first, before then adjusting the numbers of the structural changes.
Everything they could add to nerf the DM, without changing a thing theyve already done
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Whose second account are you?
The big problem right now is that missiles have to hit very specific spots to deal meaningful damage
A smaller proxy fuse radius helps a lot, which is why Sidewinders, AAM-3s and Magic IIs can somewhat reliably kill the bombers in testflight, but larger missiles can’t.
The weakest point of the B-29 right now and the spot that the missile has to hit is the area between the wings and the tail and while testing I found that it has to be from below, not above.
Smaller missiles lack the explosives to destroy the tail section and larger missiles explode too early. The AIM-4s can destroy the tail, but they tend to miss the bomber entirely.
While I can’t tell how strong the bomber durability is in PvP on the dev server, from what I can see in test flight, the buff is still too strong. One thing that needs to happen is fire dealing more consistent damage paired with a more reliable EFS.
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That’s not a second account
Which is one of the changes I would propose making. Whilst I agree bombers are overperforming. I dont think the only solution is nerfing the structural changes theyve made
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It might help if there is more stuff to physically damage, and if fires did more than the apparent nothing they currently do - which honestly on bomber engines they still do on live. I’ve landed bombers that have had multiple engines on fire for 10 full minutes in sim before.
I dont think we should be instantly blowing tails and wings off, sure. But it shouldnt take 500 rounds of 20mm before it slowly starts to lose altitude and eventually crash 10 mins later.
I feel like a slightly less extreme durability buff paired with more reliable fire damage would be a healthy compromise between what we have on the live servers and what we have on the dev servers.
The fighters would have a reliable way to kill bombers without too much effort, but the bombers would also have a solid chance to complete their objective and actually fight back.
Maybe. I think its difficult to judge without haivng said other changes in-place first.
Setting fire to an engine for example is fairly easy .
Yeah. its a balancing act. Especially given the state of ARB
20 g is more than what any 20 mm shell contained. As I mentioned, the M-Geschoss contained 18.6 g, while the Hispano HEFI contained only 5.9 g.
Neither fragments - which lack sufficient size and mass- nor isolated perforations from kinetic projectiles have a significant effect on the airframe. The article itself points this out: “Even in aircraft with more than a hundred hits, a reduction in strength in the load-bearing structural elements was rarely found to be severe enough to cause a static failure” (that is, the collapse of the wing)
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Hispano fragments absolutely would have effects on Do-217 airframe. MG152/20 - not so much, due to thin walls and big explosive charge that guaranteed almost all.fragments were small. Also as mentioned, these are not 20 shells, and the belt is not 100% HE anyway.
What article mentions 100 20mm hits, what weapon and vs what target?
I’m asking whether you think that a front aspect AIM-7M hitting the wing root directly would take out the wing spar that is right behind the leading edge and tear open the fuel tank
No, the difference is that the SAPHE version deals an extraordinary amount of direct damage.
The Falcon missile that oneshot a B-17 has a regular HE fragmentation warhead.
currently there are zero planes suited to go bomber hunting
here’s your dedicated night interceptor bomber hunter with six cannons, four of them being 30mm, the caliber that would take “4-5 hits in a relatively small area” to guarantee the crash of a 4-engine bomber
And yet when faced with hundreds of 4-engine bombers to shoot down, the germans found that ~450g of HE packed in a small area was guaranteed to bring said 4-engine bombers down
Nothing like the instant destruction you see in the video. And yet again zero fuel fires.
still cannot replicate a B-17 being oneshot by a Falcon btw
noticeable lack of a wing
the entire front end is gone
“historical” like tanking 3x the damage they should be? Fuel tank fires which were specifically singled out as one of the easiest ways to bring them down quickly being all but impossible?
Cool so when are we getting the huge catastrophic fuel fires that are clearly caught on camera
Post video proof
name a WW2 plane that can catch up to these bombers and has 50+ modern rockets that we are using
Meanwhile this is the kind of rocket that was used IRL to break up formations. Not to bring down an individual plane.
bomber players still act like you threw acid on them when you ask them to play the game instead of relying on chatgpt to shoot for them
I’ll take that as a “no”.
Titanium usage only became a thing in anything but the most exotic prototypes and experimentals in the Cold War period
Currently the only actually vulnerable parts are the crew inside. You can just forget about trying to set deadly fires (they just go out in the case of engines, or never even start in the case of fuel tanks) or splitting wings unless you are willing to dumb a few THOUSANDS of shells into them.
That also leaves them fully able to just glide back to the airfield.
Which due to the explosive type, has a TNTe of ~29g…
According to german information, effectiveness of 20mm compared to 30mm was about 1:4; 4-5 hits of 30mm in a small area would guarantee the crash of a 4-engine bomber. From this we can extrapolate that ~20x 20mm hits in the same area would cause some catastrophic failure.
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considering this shouldn’t they also increase the reward for killing a bomber so that there is an actual incentive to kill them besides the 3 tickets lost on the enemy team?
Getting the dopamine hit from kill and +1 on kill score is more than enough for the absolute most of people
it is now considering we don’t risk getting nuked or losing all our bullets, but with the changes to their survivability it’s a whole nother matter and in my opinion the rewards should be doubled if not quadrupled