Sounds great, I am looking forward to bombers and other heavy aircraft being more viable in Ground and Naval.
Are these changes going to affect all aircraft in general or only selected types? If only bombers, how about aircraft that are inbetween hybrids, like frontline bombers, strike aircraft and interceptors?
Yeah, if we went into the systemic issues around the game’s design and how it ignores aircraft role in favour of air quake, we’d be here for the next 3 weeks. But you are very much correct.
Or add the deep strike event targets to ARB.
There are so many options, instead we have the same HP based bombing targets from a decade ago
I did manage to win a match via bombing bases in the Buc S2, but did about 4 sorties taking out 2 bases per sortie, and the other team was just farming ai targets and not even trying to catch me.
But yeah, in a typical match, you are not doing anything useful
Would require matches not to be over in the time it takes to prepare a sandwich, or for them to be fought on maps that do not make shoe boxes look like prime acreage.
I love these changes! If we can add some better gunners, then I think bombers might become more popular!
Are we going to eventually see a damage model rework for aircraft besides bombers? If that’s the case I’d rather wait for the changes to be rolled out to all aircraft types at once so we don’t have a patch or longer of bombers benefiting exclusively from what are seemingly universally applicable principles.
Good start - however still need:
Gunners to actually be useful - I get that video probably has the gunners turned off, still about as effective as my in-game gunners that are literally fully trained I just don’t have ace qualification yet (sorry, not spending the GE on that). I get we don’t need or want the good old days of the Po-2 being broken because it’s gunner could pilot snipe from insane angles over 1km away, but especially in Arcade when some guy is sitting within 500 meters, shoots, runs out of ammo, and just sits there waiting on his guns to reload in the firing arc not moving, his plane should be Swiss cheese.
Bombs in the bay need to not be set off constantly - hopefully that’s fixed with these changes too, but of not, seriously, I should not constantly have the bombs in my bay getting detonated. Seriously nitroglycerin is harder to setoff than these things.
harder to get ‘daisy chain’ kills/bomb destroyed after drop kills - I get to some extent where you were going making it easier to destroy bombs and all mid-flight, but none of these changes will matter if some guy spraying .50cal rounds as I bank hard right away from the bombs I just dropped hits one of them through blind luck, that then destroys all of them, coming back up to my plane and blowing it up as well.
or to TLDR it for people - bombs need to get blown up by guns less and fighters shouldn’t be able to just sit there and fire guns like the gunners aren’t even there.
And just to cut off anyone saying ‘I want my bombers to be all powerful’ or something like that, in part because of how bad they’ve been for a long time most of my crews are trained to fighters. I’m just not afraid of having to attack them head on, from below, or it being a risk to tail one unless I know I can knock out gunners from outside their gun range.
Stupid Michael Bay" barely occurs. Also, we have a lot of different footage where it has occurred.
I agree to an extent. Gunners are stuck firing at reasonable ranges while mouse controls mean fighters are shooting at twice the range they normally would if not more. However with gunner controls you can do the same thing back. The design philosophy seems pretty simple in the sense that you can risk letting the other guy shoot you in order to drop your bombs properly, or shoot back and miss a chance to bomb. I think that would be a fair trade and allow fighters (interceptors especially) to perform their role of blocking bomber attacks without necessarily needing to one tap bombers. Meanwhile the fighter’s tradeoff is that he is not attacking other fighters/strike aircraft. However, bomber impact on the course of a match (in RB anyway) is so low that it kinda doesn’t matter right now. I’m kind of rambling now, but my point is changing gunners doesn’t really change the dynamic of how players interact.
I agree with the bombs though, it’s pretty stupid how many destroyed bombs you see in the kill feed. You’d think these things could be set off by breathing on them.
Until dispersion kicks in and in spite of leading correctly, you score 1 hit out of the 2 dozen in a burst, whilst they’ve landed the dozen of their burst setting engines aflame and condemning your bomber to the dirt below.
Don’t forget some bomber gunners are still broken->Staring at you, Ki-49 II.
Better thing to do, but you know Gaijin
Finally
Only took like ten years
Bombing gameplay is too boring, except when enemy opposition makes it somewhat exciting (which is why space climbing is the most boring thing you can do). There’s no challenge, nor does it require any technical or tactical skill to perform the role. The mechanic is just pressing spacebar once you see the circle. What’s engaging about that? Does anyone even know what we’re bombing to begin with?
In my opinion, the target indicator should be removed and replaced with manual visual identification. Targets could also be split into modular building with unique properties, making bombing accuracy and bomb selection actually matter.
Go play Sim then, unless you’re advocating the removal of markers for the rest of the roster in RB, as visual identification and friend or foe verification is a missing skill from the majority of roles and would be on parity with the change you’re advocating for bombers here.
Mechanically, there is no skill engaging a bomber, especially as the ratings tend to optimise for high speed fighters that do not struggle to intercept bombers past 2.0. The engaging party also lacks the macro understanding required for striking bombers to path around probable approaches for interception.
Now all that’s needed is just to decrease base respawn time so the bombers can get targets after the strike aircraft nuked them from the face of the earth.
I don’t mean removing markers from other players… I mean the bombing markers on the ground. Visually identifying the exact factory or city you need to bomb. If you can’t spot something that huge with the naked eye, you’re basically blind or a cloud got in the way (try again later)
I know what you mean, and given that it removes the primary metric bombers use in realistic to engage their targets and plan approaches; then it follows that under the current climate it is only sensible to remove markers from objectives for the rest, introducing a need for visual identification and friend or foe decisions without the use of markers.
After all, if we want to move only knowing where the target is to the map, fighters can make those verification efforts likewise. Or they can adopt the same visual identification you propose for bombers. Proposing it should only apply to bombers is pretty nonsensical when half of them cannot turn to engage a target if the client side clouds block the view, whilst the foe has full clear identification of them.
