There’s nothing like flying across almost the entirety of the map, sneaking past enemy fighters and avoiding the death AA of the aircraft carrier, then avoiding your victim’s anti aircraft fire to then drop a bomb that does no damage.
I’ve been using the Firebrand lately for a bit of fun and it seems like 50% of the time you drop a 1000lb bomb it does either zero damage whatsoever (despite clearly exploding on the deck) or it’ll cause insignificant damage.
As for AP bombs the Firebrand can lug around a 2000lber that you’d imagine would one-shot most things maybe barring the larger ships if they get lucky, Nope. I’ve had the heavy AP bomb penetrate clean through ships and explode underneath it which of course caused zero damage… despite there being what should be a rather large hole in said ship.
Next up we have the cargo ships. These should be sinkable by aircraft with large enough guns let alone bombs and rockets yet at times they feel like the toughest vessels in the game. I may be wrong but I think this may be because they’re modelled completely empty so bombs explode in a void in their hull causing zero damage (and ignoring the fact that such an explosion would rip them in half).
The biggest issue with all of this is that despite how much more difficult it is the kill ships now there’s no real change to the rewards as far as I’m aware. You get more points for spraying down a fighter in a 0.5 second burst than you do making repeated sorties just to cripple a destroyer enough to sink it.
If you can please go back to the old basic ship damage models for AI where bombs could actually kill them in a single hit (as large bombs should) and as for the cargo ships stuff them full of fuel and munitions as they should be please. This way not just bombs but larger aircraft cannons like the 57mm Mosquito can actually fulfil their realistic roles.