Then apply the buff to everything that is not a Fighter, intentionally leave all single-engine fighters with glassy DMs, and go from there. For too damn long all the twin-engine interceptors have had little to no purpose being constantly up against planes that can fly circles around them in every respect. It’s not just a bomber issue or even an attacker one.
Fighter whine is what gutted bombers and attackers in the first place, thus it is overdue for the diehard “fighter mafia” types to suffer for that whining until they fucking LEAVE the game for good. PvP alone should not be able to win matches under any circumstance, otherwise there is no room to make nonfighters useful. If some people refuse to understand this concept, they must be shown the door, first politely, then forcefully.
Fighters need to rely on nonfighters to win matches, and nonfighters need to rely on fighters to survive. Even with the buffed damage models, bombers do in fact die. Even the BV238, Be-6, and Qing-6. I suppose damage from fires can be increased, and underperforming incendiary effects of all non-.50cal guns can be increased using .50cal M20 API-T as a baseline to standardize things by. As of more recently, fire damage got buffed, but only for the already-strong .50cals. Other guns, not so much.
Some people cannot be reasoned nor compromised with without ruining the game for everyone else. We cannot possibly please everybody - if some people want nothing but “skillful fighter dogfights 24/7 w/o interruptions” who look at players using anything that isn’t a fighter or something multirole in a non-fighter role and see them as subhuman, tell me, what exactly is there to compromise with regarding such folk? I see nothing.
Gaijin’s attempts to placate such folk are why bombers were in such a miserable state for an entire decade. And why bomber as well as attacker objectives are largely irrelevant today. My hostility comes from seeing this firsthand over the past eleven years. I have less than zero respect for such folk, and frankly want to see the game dragged in the exact opposite direction to where the actual non-PvP objectives reign supreme, partly to make every plane class always matter and partly to intentionally spite the folk who created this mess in the first place. Gaijin sure has some blame, but much of what we blame them for was them reacting to extremist sects in the playerbase - therefore I blame those sects and their pseudo-religious fervor to their causes way more than I do Snail.
So wanting all plane classes to actually matter, and wanting to rightfully get revenge on the folk whose whining created the prior decade-long shitshow makes me “extremist”?
You wonder why I arrived at that point? Because I plainly recognize that unless the ability of the “fighter mafia” to counter-whine any positive changes for Bombers/Attackers is permanently crippled, they WILL steadily scream the positive changes into irrelevance again. Therefore, they must be broken so completely that such “watering-down” is impossible.
Yes… it also makes you a hypocrite so your argument falls flat…
All you’re doing is counter-whining and pretending you have some kind of moral high ground, spoiler alert: You don’t, you’re just as bad as they are, other side of the same coin.
The bomber DM changes aren’t a positive btw I hope you realize that someday. There’s just something about awful players being the ones defending the current state of bomber DMs.
I would agree that the B-17, B-24 B-29 and other similar should be as tough as the new update made all bombers. It does feel proper for a B-17 to be able to shrug off a fighter or two. But medium and light bombers should not. They did need a buff but not as much as the one they got. I think light bombers should be about as weak as fighters, medium something in between. And heavy fighters should get a buff as well. Their wings come off too easy ATM.
Read your history, this is such a garbage update it is literally ruined the game…Un escorted bombers that this game is based upon were murdered wholesale to the point the allies were going to halt daylight bombing due to the high losses…They came up with a solution but it was not armored sky battleships, it was escort fighters, like the P-47 with drop tanks and the P-51, 800-1200 per raid, and still they lost bombers…They were not armored except for specific crew points, the skin was about as thick as a credit card and a mechanic could easily punch holes in it with a screwdriver…This is the worst update I have ever seen in the history of my gaming which started when Pong first came out…
Oh they are a positive - the sort of fighter mains used to being all that matters are screaming bloody murder because suddenly…they are not all that matters.
Air RB blatantly needs total reformation of its objective setup, but that isn’t going to happen when there are a bunch of obnoxious fighter mains conditioned to thinking only they deserve to matter because “muh SKILL!”
All planes can PvE, but not all planes can PvP. Having PvP be a win condition in and of itself ensures PvE planes either never matter at all or only matter in extreme circumstances of people runway camping, climbing to orbit, or running away endlessly. So no - the fighter mafia needs permanent decapitation, and has for many years.
Objectively false. The bias in what planes get them and what ones don’t is bad, and the entire damage model is just absurd and unfair. A bomber shouldn’t be a better at A2A combat that a dedicated fighter.
I completely agree.
Not hard for them to think that when the bombers only skill is pressing the space bar while also not contributing to the match.
What’s wrong with wanting to fight planes in a mode based around PvP?
For the record I really want more PvE opportunities in WT for RB and SB (helis too), but hating people who want PvP isn’t going to do anything.
Fighters have 20-50x higher shooting accuracy than in reality, therefore for Bombers to not fall apart like glass, they kinda need to be buffed well above their real durability to compensate.
To an extent the bias in what does and doesn’t get them is bad. Many twin-engine heavy attackers, especially armored ones, and even armored single-engine attackers do not get this change. P-61s, IL-2/8/10, XA-38, FC.20bis, Bf-110s, Me-210/410s, to name a few. But fighters deserve to remain glassy until the mentality of “but PvP!” is thoroughly purged from the community.
But what such selfish players don’t realize is that if nonfighters matter so little to match outcome that nobody flies them, then Snail has little to no reason to give them any more intelligent and creative objectives to perform. The buff had to happen first to make them popular, to then justify to upper management that its worth giving them better objectives.
There’s nothing wrong with having PvP be one of several objectives.
There is everything wrong with having PvP alone be able to end the match by itself. This one objective is what renders nonfighters irrelevant and has for so many years unless extraneous circumstances occur such as spaceclimbers, runners, and persistent AF campers (though the Bomber DMs enable tanking runway AAA quite easily so theoretically a bomber could kill all the AAA with ease and leave the AF vulnerable to everyone else).
Please understand the difference - the folk I am pointing out as the cause of the prior decade of glassy bomber DMs are the sort who think “only PvP should matter because it takes skill!” without recognizing “but if nobody uses them Snail won’t ever make them have anything skillful to do.”
Well, I certainly didn’t expect this little thread to get so much attention! ☻
After spending quite a bit of time flying bombers in both Realistic and Arcade, I have to say, Arcade is just downright comical at times. LOL But you know what? I’m having a blast! I’ve found myself flying and spading all kinds of bombers I barely knew existed, aircraft that would have otherwise continued collecting dust in the hangar. And judging by what I’m seeing in matches, I’m certainly not the only one. It’s actually refreshing seeing some of these forgotten aircraft getting flown again.
Now, I absolutely understand the fighter and strike aircraft side of this argument, too. spending 6.9 minutes climbing to altitude, finally catching that lumbering beast, dumping practically your entire ammunition belt into it, setting a little birthday candle on its wing, only to watch it casually continue toward its target like you’ve mildly inconvenienced the flight attendant. Meanwhile, you’re out of ammunition and heading back to the airfield wondering what life choices brought you here… I get it, guys. I really do.
And no, I don’t believe bombers should be indestructible. There’s obviously some balancing to be done, particularly between Arcade and Realistic. A well-placed attack with the appropriate weapons should absolutely be rewarded. Nobody wants flying concrete bunkers any more than we want bombers made of wet cardboard.
But I do want to give Gaijin some genuine credit here. I think this was a pretty forward thinking change. Instead of leaving an entire category of aircraft largely neglected, they’ve given players a reason to revisit them, experiment with different aircraft, and enjoy a part of aviation that hasn’t always received much love. That’s a good thing for the game, even if the initial implementation needs some fine-tuning.
Hopefully, Gaijin continues listening to both sides and makes thoughtful adjustments without swinging the pendulum all the way back. There’s a happy medium here, and I think we’re closer to finding it than we were before.
Anyway, thanks for all the replies and different perspectives. It’s been a fun discussion, and I’m glad to see so many people passionate about these old birds.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve apparently got another 1940s apartment building with wings to spade. 😂
That’s not the problem. That’s part of the problem, but not the main problem. The main problem is when you don’t climb and mind your own business, covering allied fighters in their dogfights, straffing ground targets, whatever, and then a B-17 just casually descends from low altitudes straight at you. Its move is, to say the least, risky - statstically, it will miss you by a large margin, spray and pray with its machine guns, if you see it coming early enough, your chances of eating a stray mg in the face is low - not null mind you, but low - and you’ll be able to reposition yourself onto him easily. Now the bomber is in a disgusting position, with you, the fighter, easily able to turn onto him and spray him.
And you can’t punish him. You entirely salvo plants a good dozen of 20mm shells in the B-17, which merrily shrugs them off.
I’m fine with being dove on and killed by a bomber, mind you. If he managed to catch me off guard, good for him. I’m less fine with bombers just being able to make 7 passes back to back at fighters with no better tactical idea than “go towards fighter, shoot in general direction” because with the current damage model, they’re in all likelyhood not getting punished for the outrageous risks they take. And bomber players very much understood this. They dive on fighters, give up on their altitude, sometimes outright ignore bombing entirely to go dogfight and strafe at low altitude because they know they’re not getting punished for the misplays even if their idea doesn’t work out and they get in a bad position.
I’ve just had a lovely game spending the last 7 minutes repeatedly chased and shot at by two A26. I’m in an A7M, provided I use a couple neurons to manoeuver, they weren’t hitting me much unless they coordinated. You think they tried to cover for one another or something ? No, they didn’t even try to not get into my line of fire after every missed attack, or do anything defensive or evasive. But I’m not a good enough player to snipe the pilots at will, so I might aswell have had no ammo at all. Not like any other hit did anything.
Bombers don’t pay for misplays or ill-taken risks right now, so they do whatever. That’s the problem. Yes, it’s probably very fun to be nigh-immune to most anything, and again, the old ways of bombers being balloons to pop even when they didn’t really make any mistake wasn’t good either. But right now is not making for very engaging or interesting gameplay. Don’t blame me if I stall endgames to win with points when only bombers are left. I’m usually all for more action, but I’m not gonna dive through a target’s defensive fire if I already know I’m not gonna get anything out of it.
they system dose need some tweaking, things like engines catching fire and still being operational after it burns out is a bit ridiculous and I think internal modules like hydraulic systems need to be modeled to make up for the increased structural strength, but it was a necessary change and I’m not going to begrudge bomber players enjoying it after the sorry state they have been in for the last few years.
And now there is actually a point to flying the heavy fighters with the big guns now that you cant just saw bombers wings off with 7.7mm MGs, although those heavy fighters sort of need the DM rework too, they are a bit to vulnerable to the turrets IMO.
So basically, good change, but still needs some work to balance things out.
I really couldnt care less for how tanky bombers were IRL, I think it is very silly to assume people have to literally spray their cannon to even get a crit on a bomber loaded with cannons is an acceptable game mechanic, some bombers have the engine power and the FM to run trains on fighters (you spawn above 5000m, not a lot of fighters are capable of climbing anywhere close quickly)
Tell me now, how am i to “spread my fire” around a Ju-288 whizzing past my (insert any prop here) as the ju-288 can comfortably fly at 600+ kph at that alt? what about the Me-264? what about planes with mediocre cannons, or low ammo count?
a group of competent players in powerful bombers like the Qing-6, or the 288, or in any of the jet bombers are more than capable of ruining an entire lobby, this should not happen.
they were capable of tanking 7.7’s and 12.7mms, IDK where that comes from, the old damage model was fine, yeah if your jet gets peppered with 30mms or a sidewinder, odds are you’re not making it back to base in one piece…they should be reverted, as there wasnt nothing wrong with them, especially after the wave of cannon damage nerf that happened semi-recently
I strongly recommend to use AP rounds - classic HE does not work. I see them and basically all bombers dying to pilots using the right ammo and attack patterns - the USSR 37 and 45 mm AP rounds and plain US 0.50 cals with AP-I works fine for pilot snipes.
I strongly disagree. I flew the last weeks deliberately mainly various BR 3.7 P-47s which became previously borderline useless for a fighter vs fighter combat due to the flap nerf of P-47s.
Deliberately because i face basically in every match a bunch of Bv 238s and more than i like the combination of Bv 238s and TIS MAs which creates challenges. Depending on BR and enemy nations i pick often two 1,000 lbs bombs to bomb them when rearming on small airfields.
This is one of the most obvious impacts of the damage model upgrades - as bombers survive heavy battle damage the number of 25 minute matches went through the roof - and as a P-47 shines mid to late game this supports your strengths.
Besides that: In a lot of cases you can’t even land and leave - in a lot of matches bombers killed airfield aaa and try to bomb you when landing…
From my pov ruining of entire lobbies is not limited to bombers. A group of competent fighter players is even today able to do the same. There is pretty much nothing you can do as solo player vs coordinated enemies in a squad.