This is a common misconception - based on plain wrong values in the crew overview.
I had even a sug mod agreeing to me - read for yourself:
His bug report (like almost everything regarding bombers) is, ofc, not processed - but in this case it is actually a good thing for players as the gunners would have been even more useless than today…
You can test this by yourself - watch replays of live matches and you will notice this too - i have done this years ago when Air RB was flooded with B-25 / B18-B/Ju 288s with bot scripts.
Seeing this topic “bomber survivability” as a whole - a short reminder:
And the core message is actually correct:
WT is a plain vehicle based shooter (with an ultra strong grinding aspect) and the “classic” bomber role (PvE) in a PvP environment (like in a classi air mode like Air RB) is technically seen an anachronism.
Why? The idea being allowed to progress in a PvP dominated video game with PvE action requires imho a trade-off between the interests of PvP players (imho the overwhelming majority) and PvE players which are just in combined arms game modes actual PvP players.
That’s why a large portion of this thread looks like “Grounhog Day” (Time loop comedy) - all points were discussed several hundred times - for ages - and sounds familiar.
What i noticed:
Gaijin has a long history of being unable to balance prop bombers. From my pov they gave up latest May 2020 when they introduced respawning bases. Imho a direct reaction to the F-4E Phantom IIs ending matches even faster than 4 Tu-4s/B-29s/Me 264s…
This topic “survivability” is imho just dealing with thousands of forum posts addressing highly unrealistic damage models - without mentioning that gaijin created these effects on purpose. All you have to do is to watch older Air RB vids from various content creators to notice that bombers were way more robust 8 years ago.
Before that there were a hell of delayed (B) kills - classic example was “lost tail control” - and gaijin replaced these B kills with instant (A) kills in order to satisfy the majority of their PvP player base to ensure that enough dopamine gets released - way earlier.
So trying to create a narrative like here (“we looked at historical evidence”) looks nice on paper - but is imho not really convincing as gaijin proved long ago that they are fully aware of that they did a way better job in the past. Referring to historical data makes zero sense - there is a reason why the USAAF lost 10,000 bombers in Europe - or the RAF BC the same amount.
The idea to reduce the whole topic “bomber survivabilty” to damage models is deeply flawed - survivibility is a way more complex topic and consists of way more important topics.
What gaijin misses is that the sole purpose of aerial warfare is centered around either supporting or defending own ground troops in their clash with enemy ground troops.
In other words: War Thunder should try to look how they advertise the game:
What game modes are available in War Thunder?
The great diversity of missions and modes allows players to choose their desired level of difficulty. The simplified Arcade mode best suits rookie warriors who want a quick tutorial in combat and winning battles. Realistic Battles and Simulator Battles, on the other hand, are tailored to those who wish for maximum historical accuracy. All three modes see players fighting each other in team battles while completing objectives that include capturing and holding special points or destroying/defending designated targets.
Sorry to disagree here, but a high number of absolute losses can simply be due to an overall greater number of sorties or aircraft deployed, this does not by itself reflect how lethal the interceptor fighters were. In 1943, even before Allied escorts were widely available, bombers recorded a loss rate of barely 3.6% per 100 direct engagements with German fighters. More still, the Luftwaffe needed to deploy almost 7 fighters in the air per bomber to statistically achieve a single bomber kill!
NP - Deviating opinions are essential for an interesting exchange.
This is imho a perfect example why playing with irl statistical data (or irl events) can’t be used in a video game. The absolute claims (3.6% and “direct engagements”) needs clarification / a definition as on a stand alone basis they say nothing.
Your underlying logic is based on data which are as reliable as the sources of the data. If you dig deep enough into the web you find the same quality of data in enemy fighters shot down by bomber gunners (the same source). Those data are highly inflated (to be polite) and not reliable at all.
In other words:
The loss rate data of 3.6% does not pass the “common sense” smell test - otherwise the USAAF wouldn’t have stopped daylight bombing after the Black Thursday (October 1943) with a loss rate of >20%. The LW losses were reported as 186-27-89 (kills-probable kills-damaged) which were actual just ~ 40 total losses.
They’ve done it before years ago, but they went overkill with it and the aircraft AI gunners were basically what we have now with the ship AI gunners. We need something in between.
If they were to buff AI gunners on planes, people would just start complaining that bombers are somehow overpowered, because they get shot down by the gunners.
They won’t care about the fact that bombers have blindspots, they won’t accept that there are ways to destroy bombers from a safe distance and they won’t listen to you when you tell them to ignore bombers until enemy fighters are dealt with.
On top of that, fighters and strike planes with turrets would also be buffed, leading to even more complaints.
Improving the behaviour of the AI gunners and fixing certain problems should be enough. The AI gunners should just be there as a deterrent, manual control is what really needs improvements.
I agree that historical data shouldn’t always be such a major factor when deciding how to balance aircraft or how we enjoy the game, nor should it always be taken as reliable and comprehensive data. That’s precisely why bringing up a vague figure like “10,000 losses!” to try to measure the lethality of fighters against bombers can be misleading. Just like looking at overall mission loss percentages, it can lead us into the fallacy of attributing every loss to a single variable (let’s not forget about Flak!)
Hmm… I don’t know, mate. That seems awfully presumptuous. What makes you so sure Gaijin wouldn’t do it? Or that the player base would react that way if they did? For years, a lot of players had been saying Gaijin would never fix bomber DMs, either, mind you.
In any case, the situation is worse now than that would be. AI gunners for aircraft NEED to be made more effective. They’re absolutely abysmal right now even with max Crew Skills and Ace Qualifications, and players shouldn’t be forced to constantly take manual control of them just to have a chance. That defeats the whole purpose of having AI gunners in the first place (not to mention, having a set of Crew Skills specifically for gunners).
…only come to play when these data support gaijin’s view on things - otherwise they are rejected (or just ignored), you heard about “this is not a bug” exchanges.
My last posts tried to create an awareness that especially in the ETO aerial warfare was centered around fighting or defending bombers - and to show the weaknesses of certain irl narratives / war propaganda and gaijin’s inability to implement the irl role of bombers in their video game war thunder.
If you replace “aircraft” with “bombers” just a few points to make it clear why gaijin reversed the irl role of bombers (from very important) to target practice as wt is designed as a shooter and not a simulator. In order to increase bomber survivability way earlier in the process:
If you want to get 5 points BP progress in Air RB you run into the task “kill 30 enemy fighters” or in the task “kill 8 enemy bombers”. If we agree that shooting down a bomber is actually way easier than to shoot down a fighter this task design choice makes bombers a preferred target. Reversing the numbers would put away a lot of pressure.
The historic 4 bombers per team limit made sense in the “pre-May 2020” era when killing the enemy airfield was a win condition. Most players have not realized that there is a non official limit of 5 interceptor fighters plus at least 2 fighters with the 1 km higher air defense fighter (ADF) spawn which they can face. Even after 30k Air RB battles i could not identify a a limit of ADF fighters greater than 4 - gaijin should reveal these internal limits.
So i met often 5 XP-50s plus 2 P-61s. Try to get to a base through this screen and add a few B7A2s to it. This imbalance is obvious - the solution: All gaijin has to do is is to ensure a better balance of team compositions.
Currently bombers trigger small lobbies (6 vs 6 minimum) with the old axis vs allies MM. This created the infamous “Ju 288 black hole” and still creates extremely one sided matches. Same as one team stacked with bombers and CAS planes facing pure fighter teams. All gaijin has to do is is to ensure a better balance of team compositions.
Bombers play from my pov just in very specific conditions a decisive role - and this just on very old and not bugged legacy maps like Norway, Malta or Britain (3 bases maps) - and this just when experienced players participate. I won or lost several thousand matches thanks to friendly or enemy bombers making the right decisions on those maps (and opposing teams making bad decisions) - that means that their ticket impact of killing bases (not airfields) was decisive - despite systemic imbalances as described in points #2 & #3. All gaijin has to do is to adjust their map design like in the good old times in order to give flying a bomber a real purpose for their teams.
Summary:
If you look at these four points you might agree that the points 1, 2 and 3 are quite easy to implement as survivability starts way earlier in the process.
The game has a severe lack of immersion and provides just in 5-10% of my matches the theoretical possibility to use a bomber with a real game impact.
From a pure technical pov just very old legacy maps give them a purpose - and even then you have a way higher game impact and survival rate in a fighter if you know what you are doing.
It boils down that on most 3 bases maps the airfield will not become a bombing target when all bases are gone as the bases won’t respawn as their destruction is a mission goal / objective.
In other words:
Even if you made the right decisions in a bomber (like flying a detour to avoid contact with enemy fighters) or used manual gunner skill to scare away some “mine, mine” folks at your six, you wont get SL/RP for dropping payload on the airfield (when all bases are gone). You can then try to bomb ground (tricky from high alt) or try to bomb some enemies repairing on the main airfield…
They got rid of that mechanic some time ago and I don’t really understand why. Guess the fighter mafia was complaining too much.
But no, I wasn’t aware of that report, I’ll give it a +1
In general, they should reintroduce airfield destruction, even if it’s just for the forward airfield. We need more meaningful targets for bombers and strike aircraft.
It was May 2020 - and this looks rather easy to explain:
Gaijin’s inability to introduce a dynamic airfield damage (HP) system
Gaijin’s growth strategy and the necessity to create a grinding tool
The former (still existing on not bugged 3 bases maps) win condition “enemy airfield destroyed” is not easy to balance if your devs add dozens of aircraft with high TNT payloads every few months - and trying to balance airfield HPs with BR limits (for airfield HP) is a dead end if half of your team (including fighters) carries bombs like in Ground RB.
That means that at prop BRs 3 or 4 bombers could often focus on the enemy airfield because 3 or 4 very fast strike aircraft wiped out the 3 bases. The introduction of the F-4E (March 2020) made top tier games ending faster than today as their insane payload allowed winning PvP matches with PvE actions way too often.
In addition: Gaijin’s growth strategy required an easy to use grinding tool - so by getting rid of the win condition “airfield destroyed” they offered a tool which allowed progress by bombing respawning bases and way more potential targets in the way more profitable Mach 2 jet market (outside prop BRs) for PvP players at the same time.
Depending on your aircraft you earn 2-3 times more RP for a base kill than for a player kill - this is a design choice to steer player behavior / actions and support premium sales of Mach 2 jets with high payloads…
The mechanic was still present in low BR battles until somewhat recently, games just never lasted long enough for bombers to even be able to destroy the airfield.
Not entirely - there are still a lot of not bugged 3 bases maps (like Malta, Norway, Stalingrad) on which bombers (can) make a difference if used by experienced players.
Either by a significant ticket reduction (as mission objective “destroy enemy bases” is fulfilled) or by the ultimate goal “enemy airfield destroyed” win condition.
It is still active on some maps.
The last time i saw an airfield actually destroyed was months ago - and about 6 weeks ago i almost lost almost my airfield (HP circle down to ~3%) in a 3.7- 4.7 match on the Britain map.
I do agree that at BR 5.0 or above it gets way harder as base HP and airfield HP increase strongly from 4.7 to 5.0…
Even still, I can’t see how the player base being bias against it would be an acceptable reason to not address a very real in-game problem.
I’d fully agree with your second point if the aircraft AI gunners were at least semi-decent with stock Crew Skills, but even with max Crew Skills and Ace Qualifications, they’re practically worthless. I do agree about improvements needing to be made to manual gunner controls, though. I just don’t believe that’s enough.
I fly bombers (and attackers) quite often, too. I love 'em, and I want to see their potential fully realized without breaking balance. I don’t want the aircraft AI gunners to be godlike (which is a major issue with ship AI gunners ATM), just more effective than their current state.
I am not sure if you have the right perspective on this topic - the ai engagement range would be still far below your engagement range with manual gunnery.
Most people are not aware of that their survival in a bomber is connected to keep chasing enemies as long as possible inside their gunner range (up to 2.5 km) but outside the effective range of their fighter opponents (0.50 cal = 1.7 km, 20mm cannons up to 1.5 km, higher calibers even >2 km).
Yes (in general) and no for reload time - i aced a lot of aircraft with gunners with lev 75 crews. The only really useful crew skill is the aced reload time of gunners (like 10 sec for 0.50 cals and the 13.2mm Akan cannon) which allows you to put constant pressure on enemies, force them to dodge (losing speed & extending your time to pepper him).
The main problems of manual gunnerey are:
Convergence of multiple turrets (best example Bv 238)
