Weird, when I test flew the B-17, the gunners opened up at 2km.
I actually manned them while the auto pilot flew me in a straight line to the mini-base while I waited to push the space bar.
Why don’t bomber pilots want to actually play the game?
You literally have nothing to do for several mins, I would think shooting at fighters would be the most fun part of it?
whaaat? where? when? how?
pls tell me.
Turn off ‘camera from gunners sight’ in settings
This doesn’t corroborate with my experience in RB, the gunners will not engage until it is already too late. This is further backed up by what the crew skills state for RB/SB. The game has previously have had discrepancies between live matches and the test drive.
As per my suggestion, the goal isn’t to make bomber pilots not “play the game”. Its to make gunners a worth while investment of crew skill, and serve as an effective deterrent. Because to be frank, there is zero reason to put crew points into gunners right now.
A maximum level gunner with Ace skill (Which is likely paid for with GE if you have it) can only begin shooting targets within 0.21 km’s. There is also other scenarios where having some level of AI control is beneficial, if you’re attacked from multiple directions, the increased ranges will allow gunners not in the players manual command based on LoS to engage targets. Other commenters have also posted that bombers are especially vulnerable during the actual bomb run when they’re in there bombsights. This also will allows gunners to engage while the aircraft is under light maneuvering conditions (Based on gunner G-Tolerance).
This isn’t even a hard ask to bring it up to historical engagement ranges. Bombers are currently more or less RP/SL pinatas and they deserve some semblance of defense or deterrent. Ill reiterate once again, that if the concern is gunners just lasering fighters down, accuracy can be reduced with the Fire Scatter skill.
This is a common misconception.
No offense, but everybody repeating this nonsense is fooled by this value - the actual range is much higher. Imho you are way too experienced to repeat this.
Regarding ranges and ai gunners:
Are we finally going to fix the gunners? - #11 by Uncle_J_Wick
Regarding tests of “aced” ai gunners in bots:
AI gunners - #16 by Uncle_J_Wick
I see this poll as a futile exercise as even if you would count 500 “yes” votes (just look at the poll with the base respawn timer) gaijin won’t change anything - they fully support this brain dead behaviour of tail sitting fighters.
From my pov the artificial spread of gunners in manual mode is actually a much more annoying issue. Every player with long term (3-5 years) experience has noticed a severe accuracy drop thanks to increased bullet/shell dispersion.
Last, but not least, historical references and wt are not compatible. Technically seen gunners in combat boxes had a range advantage vs tailchasing fighters (as they had to close in <400 meters) - but in wt you are able to hit tailchasing fighters with (ofc manual) gunners up to 2.5 km - whilst fighters can hit you (depending on speed and alt) up to 1.8 km. This depends, ofc, on used weapons & convergence settings.
Good day Uncle J Wick,
Thanks for bringing this to my attention; I tested it in live matches to confirm that the firing range is indeed the tracking range rather than the fire range skill. Based on current firing ranges the gunners will engage at more or less the proposed ranges on aced full crew (+ 30 meters). However the actual range in which the turrets move to track a target is the same range as the firing range; this means that turrets don’t have enough time to properly face approaching targets, and thus may not engage until they’re much closer.
Ill leave the suggestion up as is, however I will also be filing a bug report as there is a serious discrepancy between what the crew skills are, and their descriptions of what they do.
As written earlier in this thread - manual gunning is a skill factor. I just came out of a match in which a friendly Ki-67 bomber (BR 4.7) killed 5 fighters without a scratch:
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/217173432186949604
So just watch and enjoy. To be fair - he dropped his payload right after spawn, so he was not really on a “bombing mission”.
That this was no accident is obvious - this player has a K/D of ~ 8:1 in this plane…
you keep repeating those numbers everywhere and have yet to see you provide hard proof that gunners will actually do anything
here’s a recording of what gunners will do in ARB even when maxed out and expert (i aint paying for something useless)
the gunners ignored the target on the first pass, and only started shooting when it was about ~500m away and turning back to strafe me, managing to score a single non critical hit then another non critical hit when the target was 150m away and on the perfect position to be gunned down as all turrets would have had a shot
with all due respect, stop yapping and spreading false info about how gunners can do something
as they currently stand, gunners in ARB are completely useless and a sinkhole of crew points
they should track targets at 1,5km and start shooting at 1km with reduced accuracy
if a fighter manages to be 500m from you, you’re toast and i’d love to see you try to justify that
cheesed regards
To be fair the Ki-67s are some of the few Japanese crafts that can take a hefty beating. Hopefully, they fixed the front gunner glitch where it only pointed upwards and couldn’t do anything though was my fondest memory since several planes tried, several failed, ran out of ammo, and never was shot down. Though I was a Zombie.
If you would be not positioned at the lower end of the reading comprehension distribution curve - you might have noticed the post of the fellow player @Miki_Hoshii who was able to confirm my claims.
Deliberately using a wording like “yapping” fits perfect to the rest of your rather amusing post.
Posting a vid combined with false claims regarding firing solutions is logical. If you would have checked (and analyzed) the replay of your match you would have noticed your errors.
After watching this replay of you in a B-29:
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/220173359468546933
your request:
is comprehensible, but is purely aimed to compensate your very poor manual gunner skills.
I mean you failed to kill a La-200 stalling out 500 meters below and behind you - whilst shooting with 3 12.7 mm twin turrets at him - you missed as you fired without any lead.
There are 2 words left. The first is skill…
ok, and?
my point still stands, gunners and gunner experience are useless
i was within the supposed firing range with a maxed out crew and they did nothing
oversimplifying and chucking bad design to “skill issue” and digging through my games to throw personal attacks says more about you than me but go on bud
Unfortunately the replay does not work (thx to the update) - but i wrote “without a scratch” - so the fellow player got these kills without getting hit.
Iirc 3 kills were scored with his front gunner shooting on targets below and in front of him…
seeing how bad bombers have it rn in every regard (survivability, lack of ticket bleed for destroyed bases…) they should absolutely get some firepower back
this is a sad attempt at an “achually”. You clearly don’t play bombers in air rb…
10.775 battles in planes classified as “bomber” in Air RB is fully supporting your assessment:
https://warthunder.com/en/community/userinfo/?nick=Uncle%20J%20Wick%40live
FYI:
Then how you can claim bomber gunners serve any use currently is beyond me. They only shoot when the enemy is literally flying tight circles around you like an idiot. At that point you are usually long dead
If you would have read my posts and linked posts you would have realized that i never claimed such things.
In order to avoid endless repetition loops:
What most guys flying bombers / strike fighters with gunners fail to understand is that playing those vehicles is above BR 2.3 simply much more demanding than fighter game play - simply based on the fact that you can’t extend in almost all bombers whilst being attacked.
So instead of asking to make things more convenient for you i recommend to deal with the cards you have.
I do agree that outside reload time and maybe gunner stamina the gunner XPs are a waste. After flying several thousand matches in planes with ai gunners, i would guess that less than 20 kills were achieved by ai gunners, and those were imho rather “accidents” whilst dogfighting with fighters or i was focused on flying the plane at very low alt.
Your main goal whilst flying a “non-fighter” with gunners is to avoid being shot at - and if this is not possible to keep them as long as possible inside your, but outside their gun range.
And the ability of flying the plane (autopilot off in manual gunner mode) dodging incoming fire whilst using your gunner with your mouse is a key skill like situational awareness and relative / absolute positioning vs potential threats.
The fellow player above is right - everybody who has ever flown a Bv 238 will agree that the convergence settings for multi turrets are a joke. Same with belts - a lot of defensive weapons had highly / more effective belts irl that wt is willing to offer.
Imho you should adress the fact that manual gunner received some hidden nerfs over the years most of the community barely noticed. I stopped playing B-18B due to other reasons, but whilst flying them it was obvious for me that gaijin added artificial spread to gunners and nerfed the damage output. Long range kills >2.5 km are now impossible - and if an XP-50 survives 6 hits and a crit within 2 km without getting slower there is something wrong…
My whole view on ai gunner discussions is that i don’t see any need for ai mechanics in a PvP game in the first place. If you feel the need to fly a bomber with turrets - you should have the necessary skill set to fly and use your gunners simultaneously - and not expecting that an ai gunner is doing your job - that’s all.
I fully agree that flying a prop bomber is a real pain and gaijin could do a lot of things to strengthen the game play for really passionate pilots. But the most posts i see (i exclude the OP / suggestion here) are more or less pure selfish requests by rather low skilled pilots which sees bombing just as a cheap way to grind.
Most of those guys shouting the loudest are exactly those guys flying straight to a base and got shot down whilst in bombardier view - you see rarely very experienced (and successful) bomber players asking for extended ai gunner ranges as they are using their gunners manually.
Highly agree! But at longer distances the gunners need accuracy nerf, but in closer combet, make them deadlier!
i have that skill, but no ai is bs. In large vehicles such as bombers and ships, ai makes absolute sense. Even if just to punish people for being dumb enough to fly within 800m distance to the rear of a bomber.
And having historically accurate ai doesn’t suddenly make us experienced players unable to use the gunners ourselves…
+1 especially if there is a way to ramp up accuracy depending on the distance the fighter is from the bomber. I primarily play fighters, and I’ve always mained fighters since I started playing in 2013. I remember back when bombers were gunships ruling/ruining Air RB but those days are long gone, and bombers could use any bit of help they might get. I definitely think they’ve been nerfed too hard
