This has always been the only solution, bombers have never fit into the fast-paced PvP meta of air RB.
In early 2014 they were buffed to comparable levels, and just like now it completely destroyed the flow of the game, until they were eventually nerfed into the ground after never-ending complaints.
Notice, bombers being overly weak was an intentional community-requested feature, not a bug. If gaijin is incapable of producing a gamemode where bombers have a purpose and do not slow down the pace of gameplay to a crawl, then keeping them unplayable is the next best thing.
Even before the patch I saw killing bombers as a boring chore needed to end the match, now it is horrendously tedious and against a competent bomber pilot it is virtually impossible. It takes minimal effort to point your tail at approaching fighter and absorb their entire ammo pool while you pepper them with gunners
Oh and don’t even talk about Air Assault or Air Sim which are completely unplayable now, thanks Gaijin. At this rate the Sky Police will be reborn, and it probably should
Yesterday I one-shot B-17, iirc, with Yak-9K. Hitting its cabin with aphe shell. It was awesome.
Sadly, there is a bug when bomber crew sits in place instead of fleeing the falling bomber when the pilots are dead. So they just continued to fly slowly into the ground… Not really cinematographic.
I still do not understand why people moan about slow games when the entire game’s premise is that the longer the match lasts and the longer you live, the more RP and SL you get. I would rather one 15 to 20 minute game over 10 five minute games.
They don’t need much purpose, as there is always bombers in the match. They need a better integration into a match with better interaction with them.
Gaijin can make an economic stimulus to encourage players to interact with bombers. Either shoot them down, defend them or fly together. Right now they are kinda separate from others. Well, right now every player is separate from others in the whole game, besides, maybe, light tanks acting as recon vehicles.
Would you play a game where you fly AFK in a straight line for 15 minutes to earn SL/RP?
This is what chasing after a space-climbing bomber feels like at the end of a match. Before you ask, going after ground targets isn’t much more engaging
I have more than enough RP/SL, I play to have interesting fights, and there is absolutely nothing interesting about fighting bombers
In fact, bomber gunners are anti-fun because they have no counter. If you get close enough for your shots to effectively damage a bomber, you are necessarily in the no-escape zone of gunners, and a well aimed gunner will hit you. Going after a bomber always comes with a low risk of death no matter how good you are, it just isn’t the case with fighters
So bombers waste a lot of your time, require a lot of ammo to kill (prompting boring resupply runs) and can kill randomly you even if you do everything perfectly: playing against bombers has always just sucked, and it is more apparent now than ever.
I for one am sad that ARB EC hasn’t been available in such a long time. I loved it back in the day, and everytime the event was on, i played it exclusively for the whole duration, even as someone using a fighter.
Would i play it exclusively if it was always available? Probably not, but it would still be a fun alternative to have.
I like longer matches myself too, and hate that year by year WT seems to be going towards shorter and shorter average match times.
I am sure that you do not play the same game as us. I am sure that you do not know how the fire works for the “new” damage models on bombers. I am sure that you do not know where to aim at bombers to kill them.
Going for a pilot snipe from any other angle but the rear has been my approach to kill them since i started playing War Thunder a very long time ago.
But that’s not the average players approach, and takes learning to accomplish reliably.
Which is why i think it’s unreasonable to demand such things from the average player. After all, even BR’s are adjusted from the average of the whole playerbase, not the very best performing people for any given vehicle.
