The issue with air ab is, that the objectives (NPC convoys) are quite often almost under the enemy airspawn. Its a bit meh. The frontline maps are ok. The advantage of air AB is the pace of the game. Maps are small…alot respawns mean target rich enviroment. Ammunition respawns as well. So you can rack up alot more kills than in RB. Means its number one choice for tasks and event missions. Its much quicker to do kill tasks in AB than RB.
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Just had a fire spread from the inner engine nacelle of my b52… to the outer undamaged nacelle, but not the wing joining the two (???)
They are aware of the issues and working on fixing them.
Spoiler
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Meanwhile wings remain ridiculously resistant to multiple R4M or 50mm HE impacts.
They are “tweaking” things, while there are problems in the very basic assumptions, like “bomber wings are semi-indestructible”, and the only reason bomber tails are destructible is because paper tail syndrome affects every plane in game and even boosting tail HP 80 times doesn’t help enough, lol.
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This is the list of planes which received “bombers” DM (from update changelog):
Spoiler
- A-29
- Ar-2
- B-17 (all variants)
- B-29A-BN
- B-10B
- B-18A
- B-24D-25-CO
- B-25 (all variants)
- B-26B
- B-34
- Be-6 (all variants)
- Beaufort Mk.VIII
- Blenheim Mk.IV
- B.R.20 (all variants)
- BV 138 C-1
- BV 238
- Do 17 (all variants)
- Do 217 (all variants)
- Yer-2 ( all variants)
- Fw 200 C-1
- G4M1
- G5N1
- G8N1
- H6K4
- H8K (all variants)
- Halifax B Mk IIIa
- He 111 (all variants)
- He 177 (all variants)
- He 115 C-1
- Hampden (all variants)
- Hudson Mk V
- IL-4
- Ju 188 A-2
- Ju 288 C
- Ju 88 (all variants)
- Ki-49 (all variants)
- Ki-21 (all variants)
- Ki-48-II Otsu
- Ki-67 (all variants)
- Ki-109
- Lancaster (all variants)
- Lincoln B Mk II
- Martin 139WC
- M.B.162
- Me 264
- P1Y1 mod. 11
- P.108 (all variants)
- PB4Y-2 (all variants)
- PBJ-1 (all variants)
- PBM-1 Mariner
- PBM-5A Mariner
- PBY-5 Catalina (all variants)
- Pe-2 (all variants)
- Pe-8
- Potez 633
- PV-2D
- S.81
- B18B
- T18B (57)
- SB-25J
- SB 2M (all variants)
- Shackleton MR.Mk.2
- S.M.79 (all variants)
- Stirling (all variants)
- Sunderland (all variants)
- Tu-2 (all variants)
- Tu-4
- Wellington (all variants)
- Z.1007 (all variants)
- A-20 (all variants)
- A-26 (all variants)
- Boston Mk I
- DB-7
- Havoc Mk I
- Ju 388 J
- Pe-3 (all variants)
- Su-8
- TIS MA
- Tu-1
- Ar 234 (all variants)
- B-57 (all variants)
- B-52H
- B-66B
- Canberra (all variants)
- IL-28 (all variants)
- S.O.4050 Vautour (all variants)
- Tu-14T
- Tu-95M
- Yak-28B
- DB-3 (all variants)
- TB-3M-17-32
- F.222.2
- Martin 167A-3
- M.B-174A-3
- N.C.223.3
- LeO 451 (all variants)
- Potez 630
- Potez 631
- B18A
What other aircraft can get it in the future? All twin-engine planes? Single engine bombers/attackers?
From russian forum, translated:
3 Likes
So basically by virtue of having more than 1 engine plane’s module HP goes up 100+ times. Makes perfect sense.
I find it hilarious that Gaijin first makes everything made of paper, than turns aircraft selectively into absolute tanks.
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Not 100 times, they stated that there are many factors to that. Engines count, material type, size…
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Doesn’t the airframe need to be reinforced to fit more engines?
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Yes and no. Single engine aircraft are made plenty strong. Things like F-82 do not have some kind of magical reinforced wings. Is Potez or Pe-3 a stronger airframe than P-47?
Bigger aircraft should be stronger and more resistant to lower calibrt weapons.
So f.e. Spitfire should get some serious damage from 2 20mm M-geschoss to a wing. A 50% bigger plane should f.e. require 4, as the durability vs explosives is not linear.
Gaijin seems to not be able to just give shells a damage modifier based off target module, so f.e. Soviet FI-T deals damage in a fairly consistent way (but loses power while running out of kinetic energy) while M-geschoss has certain threshhold where it works very good and then it starts dropping off, getting relatively ineffective vs bigger compartments, like f.e. bomber (or f.e. P-61) fuselage and wings, while retaining effectiveness vs ailerons, rudder and elevator to some degree.
Etc. Etc
3 Likes
The Pe-3’s wing structure actually needs to be substantially more robust to support not only its own weight, but also the engine blocks and wing fuel tanks (much larger moment arm) on top of handling its design G-loads during maneuvers.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean higher damage tolerance, which mostly comes down to structural redundancy.
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P-47 can support 1000lbs bomb under each wing, on top of being a goddamn fighter able to maneuver at high speed and at high G-s, that Pe-2 will most likely not be able to pull anyway.
Also, that’s beside the point, as anything PAST the engine (most of the wing) has no reason to be stronger anyway.
And even if Pe-2 wing is indeed stronger than P-47, it’s basically related to aircraft weight and wing area. I have no issue with Pe-2 dying f.e
in 8 shells as opposed to P-47’s six.
By that logic, Zeros should be much more difficult to kill instead of flying tinderboxes
Well, Zeros should burn and they have no armor, but wings should be quite strong due to superior aluminium alloys. But not super strong, Zeros were light and could not turn well at high speed, so the load on the wings was not that great.
Pulling 13Gs at 670 IAS is just Gaijin being Gaijin.
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Structural strength is not a simple function of “role” or “number of engines”.
It is set by the specific load cases the aircraft was required to meet: design speed and dynamic pressure, positive and negative G limits (including dive pull-outs), mass distribution, the moment arms (leverage) of engines and fuel tanks, external payloads, and the safety factors applied by the designers.
A side note looking at Pe-2 vs P-47 exchange:
- A Pe-2 needed a robust wing because it was a dive bomber with engines and substantial fuel tanks in the wings.
- A P-47 needed a robust wing because it was a very heavy high-speed fighter that also carried large external loads.
- One is not automatically “stronger” than the other in every respect, and neither automatically translates into higher combat damage tolerance.
This comparison demonstrates the severe weakness of gaijin’s approach:
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Damage tolerance depends more on redundancy, spar and skin arrangement, and which structural paths and parts are critical when hit.
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Ranking airframes by role or by engine count therefore misses the actual engineering drivers.
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Gaijin’s current approach (distinct configurations mainly by engine count, size and “bomber or derived from bomber”) is basically the $1 shop solution for a $1,000 challenge.
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Even acknowledging that this is technically an improvement over the old paper-airframe model, it remains an approximation that cannot correctly represent the differences between airframes that were designed to very different load cases.
It boils down that gaijin’s announcement to extend this approach to other twin engine aircraft makes it even worse as (even when they have the same roles in wt) the underlying design requirements lead to different load factors.
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Also extending this to twin engined aircraft while keeping single engined aircraft in its current state is just ridiculous. And all of that is done while keeping the absolute disregard towards shell design, filler type, chemical and kinetic energy, which results in Shvak hitting harder than Hispano and 30mm incendiary being unable to “knock out” pilot or tank crewman, on top of dealing next to 0 damage to the airframe.
Gaijin creates real sh*tter and decided that instead of fixing it, they’ll just adjust entire game to stop HMGs hitting like cannons and 20mm cannons nuking aircraft.
But especially hilarious is the fact, that 20mm with 6g of TNY and 30mm with 90g of TNT are super close to each other. Which results in bombers shrugging off 100+ 30mm hits. Because under real shatter 30mm does maybe 50% more damage. So if bomber wing can tank 300 20mm shells, it will happily tank 200 30mm shells.
So instead of, you know, adjusting damage so 30mm just hits harder in general and size of bursting charge makes a difference, they are creating some arbitrary modifiers for larger calibers to be useful, as fixing real sh*tter would be Gaijing admitting to failure, and as we all know, Gaijin is ALWAYS right.
2 Likes
Too bad this game aint made to be real now isnt it?
If you want to play a simulator just go play Arma and complain there
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This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.
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I share the general direction, but we are looking at the same problem from different angles.
If we agree that Gaijin’s current approach to structural strength is fundamentally wrong (it is determined by design load cases -VNE / design dive speed, limit load factors, mass distribution and material- and not by size, weight or number of engines), then extending that approach to more twin-engine aircraft makes the situation way worse, not better:
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Rolling out a flawed categorical model to a larger group of aircraft changes gameplay more than people realise. Damage resilience strongly influences vehicle impact in both Air RB and Ground RB. The TIS MA problems already visible in Ground RB (and often in Air RB too) will have clear equivalents in Air RB.
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The current bomber survivability change is not bad by definition. The problem is that it is still applied by role / engine count instead of by actual airframe design parameters. A dive-capable bomber (Ju 88, Pe-2) should have a meaningfully stronger structure than a pure level bomber of similar size (B-25). The current system does not reflect that.
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Bomber slots are limited to four, so pure bombers remain manageable. The real issue starts when popular twin-engine fighters receive the same treatment. Matches in the 3.7–4.7 range already show how problematic that becomes when you meet 4 Bv 238s and 2 TIS MAs. As strike aircraft have no slot limits (10 Wyverns were observed) Air RB matches will become quite interesting…
Regarding twin-engine fighters specifically:
- Size and weight alone do not justify higher damage resilience. Structural requirements come from the intended combat envelope.
- The frequent claims that the P-61 should be treated like a bomber because of its size follow Gaijin’s logic, but that logic is the problem. A night fighter does not need the same high-G structural margins as a day fighter designed for sustained maneuvering.
- High straight-line speed and especially high-G maneuvering at speed are what actually drive structural reinforcements - not the physical dimensions.
Regarding single-engine fighters:
- Lightweight turn-fighters (Yak-3, A6M, early Spitfires etc.) were designed with minimal structural margin for maximum agility. They should be significantly more vulnerable to structural failure than heavy, high-speed fighters (Fw 190, P-47, later Spitfires) that were designed for higher dive speeds and higher limit loads.
- The current model does not reflect this difference at all.
Regarding the damage output:
I agree that the relative effectiveness of different shells is distorted.
Simply making 30 mm “hit harder across the board” would only be another band-aid. As long as airframes are not differentiated by their real design load cases and materials, the relative performance of different projectiles will remain wrong.
The root issue remains the same: Gaijin is still using a categorical approach instead of modelling structural strength from the actual engineering requirements of each airframe.
5 Likes
Also, look at Gaijin’s implementation of.overpressure.
Magicalky at 170g of TNT overpressure happens.
Caliber, shell wall thickness, charge weight to shell weight?
Insignificant.
German 30 and 37mm SAPi has better HE to shell weight ratio than most HE shells in game around these calibers.
Do you know, how much blast damage they deliver?
0.
Because we have arbitrary limit of 170g for anything with “armor piercing” in its name.
Because in 2026 we can’t have parameters changing depending on variables in a smooth fashion.
No, it has to be 0/1.
P-61 by sole virtue of size and weight and speed will jave tougher wings than most other aircraft. It can also carry a considerable bombload. Things are complicated. As you mentioned, dive bombers should be a bit tougher.
And what we actually got? If bomber then add a gaijinton of HP to modules. If not - die in 2 Shvak shells, loser.
I would love to see planes react differently to damage at speed. spitfire is diving at 650 IAS and I deliver X damage to wing? It breaks.
But same damage at 400 IAS and it stays attached and pilot gets audio and visual clues that if he goes faster and pulls Gs, it falls off. But hey, dynamic airframe reactions to damage is too much to ask for :(
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