Love the changes to the damage models of the bomber planes, really revived this dead class after 10 years of suffering (I am a bomber main)
Not sure about the realism part though, the planes now tank better than some ground vehicles lol
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It’s currently overtuned, B-29 can even survive direct hits from 6 Zunis and only really dies after it burned down minutes later.
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The main changes are fine. (needs to be broken down into smaller parts, and the resistance split accordingly…) But there are a load of secondary changes needed. Like better internal module modeling, overhauls to fire damage, etc etc.
Without that, there is just too much dead space where rounds dont do anything and even the “weakspots” are too inconsistant.
What Id change:
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this bomber update would be fine if fighters were also made to be equally invulnerable. It is a video game, after all, not real life - we don’t have squadrons attacking bombers, usually it’s just you (and maybe if you’re lucky 1 other) vs one bomber, in most scenarios. Plus, historically, plenty of accounts of fighters ripping through bomber squadrons and shooting them out of the sky with just one burst — surely they weren’t all “warthunder pilot snipes” … bombers are very overtuned and it’s shameful that this made it through dev testing into official warthunder servers.
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Though likewise you dont have large waves of bombers with interlocking fields of fire. So in that regard, it balances out
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there are youtube videos freely accessible to anyone which demonstrate just how overpowered the new models are. hyper-realistic damage models for bombers, paper fighters against them. how does that sound to you? i can imagine the only way this seems reasonable is from bias. i understand bombers have had a difficult run of things for the past (long) while and i empathize, but overtuning them in the opposite direction is not better? you cannot even kill these things. seriously. go ahead and attack the critical components, there is no skill issue, although you can say that — it does not make it so – it does not make it true – these things don’t go down anymore. lol
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They’re all wrong. The issue was never the damage models- bombers historically were actually quite fragile despite the few lucky exceptions that recieve so much attention. Bombers don’t work because they’re invulnerable, they worked because they were used in overwhelming numbers in tight formation to overwhelm and fend off air defenses. People always want to bring up photos of B-17s riddled with holes, but no one seems to mention gun camera footage of B-17s downed in a single burst.
So really what bombers needed was not a damage model change but gameplay changes, such as spawning with a couple AI wingmen perhaps.
And Gaijin didn’t even really change or refine bomber damage models either. They just made them take basically no HE damage- you know, the type of shell most effective against heavy aircraft. AP shells still cut right through spars.
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Just saying, spawning with AI wingmen will solve nothing.
If we assume Gaijin doesn’t update bomber durability and keeps it legacy, just for argument’s sake.
Your wingman’s AI turret gunners will open fire at the enemy fighter within 200 m, while the enemy fighter snipes you directly and snaps your wing at approx 1.2km+
Then they will just fly alone toward bombing targets while the bomber player loses their main plane, neutralising the main threat let AI bombers fly straight with no effort.
(You can shoot fighters with your gunner manually, alone, but well, it is the same as current, no?)
They even could possiblly can destroy three bombers in one pass.
That idea eventually led to a buff to fighters’ average reward netting by presenting more targets. Not buffing bombers.
They need to refine the bomber’s damage model, but not like this.
I agree that improving gameplay might be more urgent than ‘just make it strangely durable’.
But zero improvements?
Not sure if you have noticed that this alleged “damage model update” centers around an artificially increase of resistance vs HE shells - at least based on my observations.
Best evidence for this: In this replay (replay link) you see late game an enemy Bv 238 flying multiple times low and slow above my main airfield and casually wiping out my airfield aaa.With basically zero damage from the hit scan aaa.
Bombers die mainly due to pilot snipes or (long term) damage based on often multiple fires - and amongst the best weapons against them is a plain US 0.50 cal with API-T.
Despite share your passion for a more methodical game play when playing a bomber - i assess the current state as not favorable for real and passionate bomber players as the systemic disadvantage (=game impact in their actual role to destroy strategic or tactical targets) is still there.
And also based on my anecdotal evidence i see mainly non-bomber players (often in 4-men squads) and often pure fighter mains trying to play PvP whilst they totally ignore game objectives - and have zero clue about game mechanics.
That’s why i enjoy the current state of the bomber damage model in a fighter - by playing around bombers. So i go for the fighters smart enough to avoid wasting their HE ammo on bombers - and play PvE when just enemy bombers are left as their attempts to play PvP are severely limited by their speed.
It’s really not they’re way too tanky
If you made them as slow as bombers then yeah, maybe.
Imagine dog fighting for a few minutes, you finally get the lead on the other guy and spray em down with 20mm shells and he just lol zooms away.
While I generally do not like to make assumptions, I am fairly comfortable in assuming there is even less gun camera footage of B-17s having wings blown off by a single burst of 7.7 AP then there is of tank crews continuing to operate their vehicles after taking a penetrating hit.
I think the issue is less that the bombers have excessive structural integrity, but rather they got it without all the little things that can be damaged to cause issues if not out right destroy the plane eg fuel and hydraulic lines that can be cut to shut down systems and cause fires, oxygen tanks and electrical systems that allowed the crews to survive at the alts they operated at and so on being added as well.
And hell, after all the suffering they have been doing, I’m not going to begrudge them a little extra tankiness
That’s the correct way to play it. In my last games i play Me210Ca (grinding whatever lower tier Italy i haven’t done and for pretty mindless farming for the event).
I can easily go 3K points if things go my way…
First i avoid bombers completely , i go bomb a base …by that time the others are already in a dogfight, i’ll keep as much altitude i can and then gain some going towards the ball. Meanwhile all of them are at the deck… i start supporting friendlies that are in trouble and then go kill the AI attackers that bleed our tickets (if someone else hasn’t already) . Then because ( ALWAYS) there are enemy bombers left , i take the extra time and kill GTs en mass… You can’t lose if it goes there, as soon as you get air superiority everything else is farming points.
I don’t know why people get so fixated with bombers… You can’t lose a game to them , except if you go and die to them which again in the end if you have numerical advantage is easy to kill them, just go in angles they don’t have many or at all guns , why tailgate them ?.
People insist headbutting the wall of tailgating them , instead of just play objectives, make a craptone of points and win their game…