None of the above.
For SAC bombers you need big maps and fighter escort.
Then you load them with stand off weapons and wreak havoc.
Can’t wait to try Tu22 vs CVBG.
What we need for Bombers is a broader overhaul of how objectives work in Air RB.
It’s what I have said for years at this point - allow no single objective to auto-end the match by itself. Does not matter if we are talking A2A PvP, PvE CAS, or PvE Bombing - all three are equally unbalanced in concept.
Instead, use something roughly like the following:
- Remove all auto-end ticket bleeds.
- Killing all aircraft, player AND AI, would bleed only 50% of the ticket bar in incremental chunks.
- Killing all ground units would bleed only 50% of the ticket bar in incremental chunks.
- Disable base respawning, add a larger initial number of bases, and have the sum of their efforts also bleed only 50% of the ticket bar in incremental chunks.
Bomber checking to see if the Earth is round? Kill his equivalent ticket value in ground units or bombing targets, and pull the rug out from under him.
Fighter hiding at his runway AAA? Again, kill his equivalent ticket value of ground units or bombing targets to pull the rug out from under him.
Fast brick fighter running all day long? Same story as above.
As there are 16 players per team, and to my understanding 10 AI planes per team, that would imply we need 5200 tickets. Each player and AI plane is worth 100 tickets apiece, when they die via any means, regardless of what killed them. Ground units could be similarly plentiful, with at least 52 if not 104 per team worth 25-50 tickets each to again total 2600. Same sort of story for bombing targets.
This is not meant to be an ironclad fix, it is meant to be a new framework to build something better on top of. We can and should have the gunner reworks, damage model reworks, and other stuff @karnitin75 suggested. But until its impossible for PvP to stomp out all relevance of PvE, Gaijin has zero incentive to add flavorful objectives for PvE when its currently possible to ignore them and still easily win the match.
AI gunners definitely need a rework…lately I have noticed that they won’t even fire at enemies following the aircraft at short distance.
There needs to be a middle ground between gunners being the lethal snipers they were when the game was launched and gunners just loitering around in the aircraft playing poker while there are enemies nearby…
Also bombers need to be a lot more durable.