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
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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?
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
The risk/reward will be non existent now, maybe a month of premium would get players to attempt to kill bombers.
Jokes aside, people will probably stop approaching them at all. It’s easier to wait for them to attempt to land and crash.
honestly a quadruple reward increase with be on the lower side, you need to use like 8 times your bullets and considering that some planes already get a low amount and cannons are as it seems completely innefficient…
Not really. A pure blast wave (without fragments) from an M-Geschoss impacts uniformly across the entire affected surface, tearing, deforming, or ripping it completely away from its joints through overpressure - plus, if the shockwave gets confined, its destructive effect is basically doubled. In contrast, a small fragment applies a point force over a tiny, localized area, producing only a puncture. Even a dozen of these small punctures aren’t remotely comparable in terms of damage or percentage of surface area removed. In fact, frames often feature factory-made lightening holes without compromising their strength, so a few isolated punctures would act in a similar way.
Even though these punctures may serve as stress risers and eventually propagate cracks under continuous stress, this is a rather slow process. Generally, a damaged aircraft will land immediately instead of continuing to stress it
The primary focus of kinetic projectiles was to inflict lethal damage on the crew or vulnerable components, not the airframe. There’s a reason why German APHE fuzes were calibrated for steel plates thicker than 3mm (for instance, to explode inside the crew’s armored compartment). They were useless against the light plates of the airframe.
