You would be dead 50 times over if you have to get that close.
You didn’t hit where the bomb is
I didn’t say anything about hitting the bombs, just where should be fuel
Your comment is from my pov one of the most debatable takes in this entire thread as it showed a highly questionable core message - and proves why sometimes distinguishing between own perceptions and actual reality depends just on your perspective. Your history overview looks way too one-sided.
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As as FR (full real) pilot in IL-2 from day one i always followed the development of wt - and from my pov your whole comment is a mix of wild guesses & assumptions and paints a way too distorted picture of actual reality. Even as i stopped playing flight sims for more than a decade (due to a lack of time) i followed the development of Air SB and Air RB long enough to notice this.
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War Thunder was always way more an arcade shooter than a serious flight sim - the fact that you can control an aircraft with a mouse and fly more or less on autopilot is the most obvious issue. That is the main reason why a lot of people of the rather small simulator community still laugh about wt Air AB and Air RB players whilst they see themselves as pinnacle of human evolution - just because they fly with FR (=full real) controls.
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I shared some of these views but my own preferrences changed played 2018 for the first time on xbox (ofc with a Hotas) and found out that Air RB had its flaws but also some benefits compared to other flight simulator games and offers (seen as a whole) an attractive alternative to other products.
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These requests were addressed as bombers as a whole were so op that players could take care of their laundry during a match as ai gunners eliminated most threats whilst the actual task (drop bombs on a base or airfield) is so simple that they can be done by a bot script.
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The further deterioration of bomber damage models was gaijins reaction to a clearly visible deterioration of the average (fighter) player skill. Gaijin forgot their initial positions (“we have no plans to introduce supersonic jets”) and reacted to the gazillions of plain shooter driven players flooding the game (covid) - happy to spend money for stuff which granted them an advantage in a PvP fight.
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On top of that: Gaijin needed an easy to use grinding tool for players eager to research shiny jets and they proved for ages that they can’t balance bombers. Balance not regarding the game impact - balance regarding average SL/RP income which is essential for steering player progress.
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The pure fact that they were unable to implement dynamic base and airfield health (HP) forced them to face reality what happened when Mach 2 jets with gigantic payloads (bombs and rockets) entered the scene (March 2020 - F-4 Phantom II).
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So deleting the win condition “enemy airfield destroyed” whilst introducing respawning bases (May 2020) killed the whole purpose of playing bombers - but on the other hand bombing a base is way easier than to make it through the fighter / interceptor screen to the enemy airfield.
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The same guys who die today totally brainless in 6 o’clock low attacks tailchasing a bomber existed in the past too - and subsequently bombers were nerfed in a long process: Damage models, artificial bullet spread and increasing bomber BRs (whilst reducing fighter BRs) were just training wheels for the classic grinder too lazy to improve and incapable of anything else than point & click.
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As described above: Bombers had a purpose, but gaijin reacted to the deteriorating player skill on average by “dumbing” down the game play so that the gazillions of shooter driven kids flooding the game mode could be satisfied. Part of these efforts was the ability to kill a bomber with two 20mm hits or four to six API-T 0.50 cal hits. Outside of cannon armed bombers the risk for getting killed by a bomber kill was ultra low for an experienced player.
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Air RB (and i talk about nothing else) had always (at least in theory) a tactical / strategic component as main difference to Air Arcade. This component (partially displayed as mission goal / tickets) was lost a long time ago and Air RB was transformed into a glorified Air Arcade+ as low skill grinding tool.
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Slowing down the pace of game play is a classic argument of players which demand instant action in order to satisfy their dopamine addiction. Every decent long term player remembers epic 1 hour long matches on Norway.
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Your conclusion of keeping them “unplayable” is imho wrong. Even as the BRs increased and repair cost went through the roof the incentive to bomb respawning bases remained intact: A base kill still provides 2 or 3 times more RP than a player kill, that’s why you see Mach 2 jets bombing bases.
This quote explains your views - my views on your views:
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Every smart player kept bombers (at least one) alive as they had at least in the last 6 years no game impact. Farming ground units / ai planes in a fighter / strike aircraft in a 1 vs 1 vs a bomber as last players alive was the easiest way to score during grinding events, complete daily / special tasks or to maximize wager income in order to farm SL/RP for loot boxes.
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There is no need “to end” the match before the timer runs out and you can control the tickets - and as a matter of fact your RP increases which enables you to get your ace qualification much earlier.
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I do agree that that certain bombers (or strike aircraft with bomber damage model) flown by experienced players became now almost unkillable and especially their fire resistance (together with the insane HE resistance) looks like that gaijin just let an intern fiddle with damage parameters. Losing at least a dozen matches vs a bomber in a 1 vs 1 (as last guys alive) is ultra annoying - but it is like it is.
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Your entire “little effort” argument worked until this update exactly the other way around - the only difference was that in bomber you could survive just a few hits whilst the artificial gunner spread and imho artificially lowered damage output (noticed Q4 2022 in my B18-B) made it much harder to kill chasing fighters at your six. So before damage output and accuracy nerf one or 2 hits with the Swedish 13.2mm Akan cannon killed a fighter - after the nerf even ultra fragile (and omnipresent) XP-50s survived 7 hits without getting slower.
Before that it was no problem to score gunner kills at 2.5 km…
As a summary:
I respect your opinion, but from my pov you are describing a history that either happend not like your recollection or is totally irrelevant as the recent history (=May 2020 - bombers lost their purpose and Sep 2026 - bombers became op)
proved that they were way too easy to kill and just food.
You individual preferences (like fast game play) are comprehensible and are shared by a lot of other players and saw subsequently that gaijin acted to facilitate these wishes. But this is your business and not mine - from my pov everybody is free to play what he wants and how he wants.
I do share some of your thoughts regarding the way too exaggerated bomber damage model as the fire resistance is a joke and the HE damage resistance looks like an intern was in charge regarding the HP resistance slider.
I even can imagine that the current situation was deliberately chosen to push (long-term) players out of prop BRs as gaijin earns way more with jets.
My view:
We had these unkillable bomber beasts for at least 6 months and nobody cared:
So i kindly ask you to see my comment not as personal attack - just intended as a clarification about wt history from a different perspective. How you play wt is your thing ant not my business and i share your thoughts about the “way too much” bomber buff.
Have a good one!
3 Likes
I managed to finish an air assault game today. The current meta is AP for everything, so load tracer or ground target belts. They’re still tanky, but you can get through.
HE is currently useless, as bombers are wrapped in a skin of ahistorically thick armour that completely negates them.
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If you don’t think this is a major overcorrection you really don’t play much GRB. It was more accurate before than it is now. They can take multiple direct hits from SAMs now like it’s nothing.
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Watch this video then see if you think this is even close to accurate.
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Strange you can get wing-wiped by 1 shot, or the structure can tank 10 shots by ADATS in a Canberra. But in either case, your engine gets destroyed and burns up very easily.
They mis-modelled the impact HE damage and over tuned the API damage. No way a F-86 can burn down a B-29 in one strafe, but MiG-15 and can’t.
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Were bombers incorrectly modeled before? Absolutely.
Are bombers way too tank-like now to the point that they are even more incorrectly modeled than they were before?
Absolutely.
I think our expectaction just got skewed, because an out-of-control or burn-down plane in real life can take 5 minutes to hours to crash, and basically all AA shells are designed to destroy the fuel tank and control surfaces, but not directly destroy the wing or fuselage structure.
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If you think a TU95 should withstand more than 6 direct hits from a SAM then I don’t know what to tell you.
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Withstand more than 6 direct hits from a SAM for what:
fuel tank burning up, loss of all engines, loss of control, wing wipe, fuselage broke up, or catastrophic kill. Our expectation gets skewed by the previous bomber DM to think that anything less than the latter three doesn’t happen immediately would not count as withstanding a hit.
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This update is terrible. Set a bomber on fire and it just burns for 10 minutes.
Lol very cute demonstration. Now would you like to recreate this while i pilot the B-29 and after that in 3.7 - 5.7 planes against me in just a B-17?
You proved nothing, used high caliber cannons against planes that are flying in a pre-determined path and most importantly aren’t shooting back.
You see durable bombers wouldn’t be such an issue if they didn’t shoot back. But they do, and their turrets aren’t exactly hard to aim with wide FOV view WT gives you.
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Doesn’t help that fighters are so weak a single 20mm instantly rips a wing/tail off/a .50 killing an engine. Meanwhile 20mm HE can’t even damage bomber engines.
This change has made it so useless to even attack bombers because they’re impossible to really take down unless you are headon or get lucky.
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What you will hear from the people defending this state is either:
a) It’s easy just get good.
While providing no actual proof of how easy it is.
Vague videos in optimal circumstances without being shot at.
Or they just say “I did this and this to a bomber, and it died for X reason. It was easy. You just have to trust me”
b) Just leave bombers alone.
Probably because for some reason they should deserve rewards, for no other effort than using the amount of time it takes to reach a bombing target, releasing bombs on time and flying back.
c) “mUh bOmBeRs sUfFeReD fOr YeArS”
Which is the worst argument. You don’t fix sonething by breaking something else and celebrating it when it suits you.
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yes, just get good… easy, and also only play fw190 f8 with x4, as its the very single plane that actually can fight those bombers from a distance + fighers + ground targets for tickets.
At least thats the only plane that i have in mind that can engage from safe distances at piston BRs. But u need to be very good or die very fast… pretty easy no? :D
Or you play one of the buffed planes yourself and stop bombing with it… fight the fighers or do ground… u dont win by bombing the bases… but somehow people really dont understand this…
The most reliable way to bring down a bomber (outside of low tier where Ki-109 exists, and still requires multiple hits) is to bring your own bomber and gunship them lol
They made these changes to bombers without even THINKING about sim.
Bombers still get their magic 3rd person camera and baby mode mouse aim for gunners while now entirely invincible.
These changes need to be reverted for Sim until they balance it.
Or remove 3rd person gunning/mouse aim for gunners. Add a Mouse Joystick system for gunners, anything really. Sim has become unplayable at anything under 9.0 due to people just abusing bombers now. This has made everything just worse.
2 Likes