So this april fool event added the Tu-95M and B-52H, and they have been intresting to play, and i look forward to seeing them In-game. But it also reminded me about bombers in war thunder as a whole.
The history of bombers in War Thunder has been… interesting.
They started out as hard-to-reach game enders for the average player, with AI gunners capable of instantly one-shotting pilots from a distance. Over time, however, they’ve turned into little more than easy targets—something players flock to for a quick kill. Even when a bomber survives, it contributes very little toward actually influencing the outcome of a match.
There was a time when bombers could spawn, head toward their targets, and then proceed to destroy the enemy airfield to secure a victory. Admittedly, this system could be unbalanced—especially with fast bombers carrying large payloads that could end matches quickly. But now, bombing objectives feel largely insignificant in terms of their impact on the game.
At the same time, AI gunners have been heavily nerfed. In larger bombers, gun convergence is also an issue, with defensive guns often failing to effectively focus on a target. While the developers have made improvements—such as allowing gunners to better follow the player’s aim instead of snapping back to default positions—these changes haven’t made a significant difference.
So, that’s the current state of bombers.
Below are a few ideas and suggestions I have, and I hope other players can share their feedback as well.
Reduce explosive fragility
Expand Here <--
Bombers are notoriously fragile in-game. Even light machine guns (7.62mm / 7.7mm / 7.92mm / 8mm) or heavy machine guns (12.7mm / 13mm / 13.2mm) can easily tear off wings or tails with a short burst.
While it makes sense for heavier cannons (20mm, 37mm, 40mm, etc.) to deal significant damage, bombers should require more deliberate, well-placed shots, such as hits to engines, wings, or the cockpit. to be taken down effectively.
Mid-air crew relocation
Expand Here <--
A common issue arises when a gunner is knocked out, leaving an entire angle of attack permanently exposed.
In reality, bomber crews could often reposition to cover more critical defensive positions. Introducing a system where crew members can replace fallen gunners would improve survivability. This should only apply to bombers with more than two gunners and should exclude crew stationed in isolated sections of the aircraft.
Reintroduce base destruction mechanics (with limits)
Expand Here <--
The old bombing system had its flaws—it could be abused and often depended heavily on whether the enemy team could intercept bombers in time.
However, the core idea of bombers contributing directly to victory should return in a more balanced form. For example:
Require players to destroy multiple bombing targets (e.g., three bases twice)
Only then unlock the enemy airfield as a final objective
This would prevent early match wipes while restoring bomber relevance. It could also reduce situations where players stall matches instead of engaging objectives.
Rework gunner mechanics (remove AI gunners)
Expand Here <--
A major improvement would be replacing AI gunners entirely with player-controlled systems tied to crew skills such as gunner accuracy and targeting.
Instead of AI aiming for the player, the game could:
Automatically prioritize the closest enemy target and set gunner divergense based on their position on the aircraft
!! Let the player handle leading and firing manually !!
Provide a lead indicator in Arcade mode only
(Could also include replacing the AI gunner crew experience with Convergence and Accuracy)
So please lend your feedback below about these ideas and shoot your own ideas aswell for what you believe. I mainly focused on the survivability and game impact of bombers since they are at the moment, poor.
an artificial explosive damage nerf for calibers below 30mil is the way to go
We can also add the removal of artificial spread added onto defensive armaments.
I personally dont think the issue is the rounds themselves. I think they are actually dealing the correct damage, or maybe even not enough. The issue is the damage models. Rather than a round hitting the tail and making a hole, serious damage, but not enough to necessarily bring down the aircraft irl, the entire tail falls off in-game. So I think the first step is to break all aircraft down into smaller parts, allowing for damage to be more isolated and the effects of that damage to be better modeled. Obviously I dont think the game can handle being super complex, but I think it can handle more than we currently have.
So for example, rather than the wings being 3-4 parts down the length of the wing, it should instead be a 3x5 grid of segments, allowing for damage in the central segments to create both the visuals and effects of having a hole in the wing. For the wing to fall off 2 or 3 segments in a row need to be damaged. The Tail could be mutliple parts, the fuselage should be mutliple parts (id do it with left and right hemispheres too) even the control surfaces could be more than one part. The bigger the aircraft, the more segments. This would give heavy bombers the feeling of being more resistant to damage because they straight up are. (its stupid that a single engined fighter and a heavy bomber have nearly the same number of parts currently)
It would enable more realistic damage and survivbility.
This along with better modeling of things like control veins, wiring, etc etc. Making more parts damagable (like in this instances, what if the ball turret could be destroyed?) and more internal parts generally. Would help make damage feel more realisitc and more isolated. I also think all aircraft just need a flat damage reduction ontop, based upon things like contruction material, but inversely also modeling things like the Swordfish cloth construction not providing enough resistance for HE shells to actually explode.
Spoiler
I like this idea, though should also be limited to guns where the crew can actually access the guns, iirc, some couldnt be accessed in midflight?
I dont necessarily think it would do much on its own, but as part of a larger overhaul, then yes it would all add up.
I think we just need a straight overhaul of PvE in War Thunder. Ground up rebuild. Get rid of bases with HP and instead have bases with actual buildings, as we saw in the Deep Strike event and Nuclear Thunder event. These could vary in size and amount, and even bomb resistance, with smaller targets being fine for smaller bombs, but heavier targets needing bigger bombs, this “protects” targets from fast strike aircraft and ensures there is something to attack for the bombers which is the number one issue at the moment imo.
Also airfields actual targets in ARB like we’ve had in ASB for years, just straight up, attackable, modular airfields. A major issue is that even if you make it to the enemy backline, there is nothing to bomb from high alt. Even if it had no impact on match outcome, just having something you could always bomb, even just to use up left over bombs, and get a reward, would be a huge buff to every ground attacker
Include other ground targets that we use to have like bridges and trains, and anything else that would be appropriate and this would fix a number of issues that ground attack aircraft at all BRs have had for a long time.
(Whilst not totally relevant to this thread, new bases would also add real meaningful value to GBUs in ARB which currently there is 0 value for)
I think AI gunners are fine, and can definetly be tuned to be balanced. We have seen changes to naval AA that I think has been succesful in making AA good but not OP.
I think the single biggest buff/change I would love to ssee for AA is the ability to aim from a turret. The Parallax makes accurate aiming impossible, especially as you also have to deal with convergence too, if we could pick a gun and fire from it specifically, whether the other guns were left AI controlled or fired on the same point roughly, I dont know, but being able to aim one gun accurately would be a huge buff to bombers. This could also be taken 1 step further and add first person aiming as an option (forced in ASB)
Some bombers also have wierd extra spread, but not on all. its really dumb, so that needs to be removed too
So overall, I agree with your PoV, but I dont 100% agree with your solutions.
A few additional areas to consider to help better balance bombers
Remove diminishing returns mechanic - This screws over any ground attacker that can take a decent amount of bombs, despite the negative impact of taking more bombs in the first place
Significantly better balance bombers vs everything else. They still have legacy BRs back when bombers matter, too much emphasis is put on their bomb load and not on their defensive suite. British bombers feel this perticularly harshly. Also, if im not mistaken, no heavy bomber has been placed on the split BR system yet, and so are balanced in both ARB and GRB at the same time, which is really stupid imo.
Pro-actively adjust spawn alititude and maybe even relative position to give bombers more safe time. I dont know how much is needed, but I think it is too low currently.
reduce or even maybe remove ARB spotting markers for enemies. This really needs a long dedicated test event, as I just dont know if it would be good or not, but heavy bombers especially suffer from not being able to evade the enemy team, they know where you are and you are hunted the moment the match starts.
Ai controlled bomber escorts or something. A big issue for heavy bombers is that they are not meant to fly solo, but instead in formations. I have no idea how this could be modeled or even if it should, but is certainly something that could be considered.
IMO, too much drama. Once strategic bombers get properly loaded with cruise missiles and such, they’ll be very useful. ATM, I agree, without proper stand off weapons, the are mostly useless.
