New bomber damage models and their effect in Simulator Battles

Game Discussion Simulator Battle
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As you may already be aware, Gaijin has just announced that bomber survivability will be significantly increased based on historical documents and available data.

Looking at the bigger picture, this is a positive change for Simulator Battles. Most of us want the mode to provide a more realistic representation of aerial combat, and improving aircraft behavior and survivability based on historical evidence is certainly a step in that direction.

However, this change is also likely to make an already long-standing issue with bombers in Simulator Battles considerably more problematic.

For years, bomber mechanics have been a controversial topic within the Sim community, particularly because of the exploit commonly referred to as “bomber IFF” or “bomber RWR.”

For those unfamiliar with it, a player can quickly switch to the gunner view and back to the cockpit, causing the AI-controlled gunners to orient themselves toward the nearest enemy aircraft within their detection range. By doing this repeatedly, the bomber pilot can effectively determine both the direction of nearby enemies and whether an aircraft they are looking at is friendly or hostile.

In practice, this gives bomber players access to a form of situational awareness that no actual aircraft system is providing. It functions almost like an artificial RWR combined with IFF, even on aircraft that historically possessed neither capability.

With bombers now receiving a substantial survivability increase, I believe this is the appropriate time to finally address this exploit.

The proposed solution is not new — it has been suggested many times over the years:

In Simulator Battles, force bomber gunner control to use the existing first-person gunner view instead of allowing third-person aiming.

The first-person gunner option already exists in the game, so this would not require designing an entirely new mechanic. It would simply need to be enforced specifically for Simulator Battles.

Conceptually, the implementation would be as simple as:

If game mode = Simulator Battles
Force first-person gunner view = ON

This would preserve the ability of bomber players to manually operate their defensive armament while removing the unrealistic third-person situational awareness and the ability to use AI gunner movement as an improvised enemy-detection system.

If bomber survivability is going to be made more historically accurate, their defensive systems and situational-awareness limitations should ideally follow the same philosophy.

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I might have a potentially unbalanced and stupid idea, but what if when in gunner view, you can switch to other gunners. To compensate for when multiple gunners firing at multiple targets, the AI for the gunners that you are unable to control while in first-person of another gunner view get more accurate the longer you are in first-person gunner view, and reset once leaving to cockpit.
I don’t know if that’s followable or whether that would be balanced since first-person gunner reduces so much FOV as well as making it harder to control other gunners, especially the ones that are unable to face the same direction the player is facing. idk hopefully it doesn’t buff gunshipping

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Personally I am going to get the Qing-6 as soon as the bomber damage model buff goes through. Can’t wait to gun toxic fighter mains out of the sky with my flying tank!

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Soon as the update drops, I’m testing the bomber survivability with my Bf 109G-14 w/ triple MK 108s. Got to see what the new limits are after the update!

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J7W1 with four 30 mils will be a great option, as a toxic fighter main.

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I admit I might just be too pessimistic but I dont see Gaijin reworking gunners anytime soon. My personal experience tells me most people actually like the 3rd person view and see no issues with it. They seem to favour it so much, I’ve encountered my fair share of hostility for even suggesting there might be something unfair about it. I think we simply have to accept that we are at the mercy of ARB and GRB players whims and fancies, and that a significant portion of the sim playerbases primary worry is sim leaning further into the genre of its namesake. People want ARB with cockpit-view, and the rest of them just want a gamemode where they can quickly grind CAS planes. God knows what Gaijin wants out of sim.

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Hm, what might also be considered as an argument: In a bomber - especially a well defended one - you don’t have only the cockpit crew looking out for targets, but depending on the bomber a good dozen additional eyes whose sole job is to detect enemy aircraft that may pose a threat to you (and engage them). So the “IFF aspect” - while possibly exaggerated - is not necessarily intrinsically bad/wrong…

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Counter arguement:
1: You cannot “Force” 1st-person gunner views, since how do you do this for multiple turrets?
2: Realistically, this causes its own problem cause it means bombers go from being run by 1 player to having a full bomber squad of players, either randos or actual people

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It, however, is for anyone who isn’t a bomber. Though most in this game lack both situational awareness and common sense. So, more or less depends on those who know what it is.

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I think in the end it comes down to what one considers to be “fair”. Should planes without turrets but two or more crew also get third-person view or some other aid to account for the second or third pair of eyes? Though I doubt many would say yes, some probably would. The tricky part is striking the right balance between the material reality of one plane or another ( a bomber having multiple crew for example ) and the fact that this is a game and we’re fundamentally asking ourselves whats fair, balanced, fun and reasonable to ask of two people “fighting” eachother. Personally I think the answer lies in relinquishing control of turrets in the sim gamemode to a reworked and more competent gunner-ai, but I’ve also been told that this is “mechanically unworkable”, so perhaps its impossible.

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ARB player here:

I don’t like the 3rd person view, I do use it but I think it will be unfair since I can just loop and roll while my view is completely stabilized on all planes.
I can play the H8K, do all kinds of crap and I will not feel the effects of my plane being rocked around.

But from my sim experience (My plane’s nose is still very wobbly) bombers just have a lot more range and in sim you can’t make such aggressive manouvers to avoid fire.

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Good questions. Unless theres some limitation within the architecture of the game though, theres no reason to think you’d need to introduce multi-crew. One player + gunner-ai is perfectly reasonable imo. Same goes for the first-person view. A similiar PoV to those on many two-seaters would suffice along with some new keybinds to easily switch between positions. Would this be as simple as the current system? No, but it would be a skill to learn and hone just like learning how to manoeuvre defensively and aim your turrets when attacked, is in the game currently.

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My guy, why would I want to have even more keybinds just to control each gunner? Leaving very open blindspots cause the gunners do nothing and will not retaliate; this completely nullifies the point of bombers being a threat. In fact, the more I think about this argument, the more I realize it’s the same as everyone else who cries about gunners being too hard to fight. Meanwhile are trying to engage the enemy bomber at point-blank range. Since they want the kill and refuse to accept that sometimes you just have to take the assist, even if it doesn’t really pay out as well, far less than reasonable.

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As far as im aware, theres no reason to think such a change couldnt also involve an improvment to the gunner-ai! :) If you dont find the prospect of individually controlled gunners fun; thats fine! Its a perfectly valid argument, theres no need to get agitated and turn this into a childish “skill issue” insult-match. I could turn the same insult back at you and neither of us would have made any good use of our time here.

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1: No i didn’t, however typically when someone brings up that point, it always becomes an arguement, cause it is the same pointless repetitive and exhausting arguement with the same conclusion of: Just make the player forced to swap between each gunner.

As someone who has had this bloody game since 2017, this is not, nor will it be, the last time I see this failure of an idea be brought up. The result is that it is not a good solution.

It weakens the point of bombers being a threat and also dumbifies players, encouraging them to care little for their own well-being. Meaning the kill they get becomes nothing but a statistical number, with its payout being taken from the amount the aircraft costs to spawn it. In simple words you killed the bomber but get bread crumbs worth of silver lions.

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Well that is the typical proposal people have for solving this perceived problem. I think its popular because other games in the combat-sim genre do it that way; I am mainly thinking of the IL-2 series. The “remove player-control and improve gunner-ai” is another, and im sure others have thought of different ways to rework bomber-gunners.

Regarding your dumbifying point, as someone who has played this game since 2014, I have to disagree. I take great care to plan my routes when I play a bomber, doing my best to avoid interception in the first place. But honestly, how many do you see do the same? How many dont just fly in a straight line from their airfield, right on over to the enemies airfield or bases and then J out. How many dont respond to their teammates calls? How many arent tabbed out or afk? In my personal experience, quiete a few! I dont think we’d see as much of this kind of behaviour if it wasnt for the greater situtational awareness afforded to these players. I’ll freely admit that I too do just the same; most of my flights are spent in 3rd person, scanning and listening for targets. I believe it is perfectly fair for ai-gunners to have this greater awareness, to simulate the real conditions of a bomber, but I think it makes no sense whatsoever for a player to have that advantage, and I think the 3rd person view does more to encourage laziness in the gamemode than removing or reworking it would do.

My overarching opinion can summed up like this; bombers should be very, very difficult for a single fighter to take down in one attack, but this does not mean the player in the bomber should have every card, except size, stacked in their favour. If they introduced a magical gunner-ai that could snipe a fighter from 5km away with perfect accuracy, every time it shot, while removing or limiting player control over turrets, I’d be wholly and fully in favour of it. As I mentioned in one of my other comments, the fundamental question we’re discussing here is what we think is fair. To me, a completely broken, aimboting ai-gunner is leaps and bounds fairer than a player having full and seamless control over their turrest with almost perfect 360 vision and hearing. For me, it is not a question of whether or not bombers are difficult to kill or not (you are free to check my stats; most of my kills in the two Tempests are bombers. I feel the need to mention this in case you dont believe me) , bombers should be very, very difficult to take down :)

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Which is not a good comparison, as often those are single-seat or optional multi crewable vehicles.

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Dont quite follow you there, im afraid. All planes in WT are “single-seat”, are they not? Do you mean that the fact they can be multi-crew in IL2 makes it a bad comparison?

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Conseptially is this possible? Essentially cycling through the gunners available in first person? Im not familiar with this even being possible. If it is thatd be great but i feel like that is a ton of backend work for devs to model all the possible gunner pods and views. With sim getting as little attention as it does and dozens of already unfinished cockpits i just feel like thats alot of work to ask for.

Again unless these are already available, im just not super familiar with props.

Maybe theres a simpler solution like adding a basic “3rd person” view with appropriate angle limitations for each gunner. Similar to the virtual cockpit view when in RB, you have the typical 3rd person, cockpit, and then the virtual cockpit view with just the horizon line and point indicator(i dont know the official name of the view). This would still restrict each gunner to a pov from the gunners pos, but require significantly less back end work and modeling.

Tell me if im crazy though, but this seems like a decent middle ground between whats being asked and minimal dev work.

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Buffing bomber damage models is a superb change. They were far too weak and literally 1-2 20mm cannon rounds can rip your tail clean off. That said we also badly need a fighter update as well.

Fighters at the moment are also incredibly weak and I’m sure all of us have been victim to your tail and wings going walkies at the slightest touch.

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