The P-47s are in a difficult place, and they have always been. They have monstrous flight performance at high altitude, with insane speed and horse power up high, yet abysmal climb rate leaving them unable to actually use it in most battles, given that they end before the Thunderbolts can get to altitude. This is ironically made WORSE by moving them down in BRs, since at lower BRs battles happen at lower altitudes and end faster, leaving the thunderbolts unable to effectively contribute to the match early on.
The solution to this is simple: give the P-47s an air spawn and a significant bump in BRs. The jump in BRs itself must be significant, basically a full 1 BR for all thunderbolts across the board. Personally I play mostly the US P-47s, so focusing on them I would imagine that the D-22 would go to 5.0, with each subsequent thunderbolt model a 0.3 BR higher, with the N-15 at 5.7 and D-28 at 6.0.
This, in my opinion, benefits everyone. The P-47s get to more effectively get to altitude, allowing them to be used in an environment where they shine best, while also facing opponents much better equipped to handle them.
Hell no. I agree on the air spawns but that is just ludicrous to put them a whole br step up. They cant really dogfight and they hardly climb. The D-28 especially would get stomped on by super props at 6.0 never mind the heavy and slow N-15
The P-47 starts at 20 meters per second climb rate and increases to ~23 meters per second before dropping again.
Its climb rate is rather good in-line with other planes.
It’s just not the 24 meters per second of some planes.
and search for the countless threads dealing with the P-47s when they had an air spawn - they dominated Air RB.
You have ~ 300 matches in US P-47s - with mixed results which is imho just based on the wt meta (fast matches and mid to low combat), your nation choice (US) and the rather questionable BRs (Yaks) or flight characteristics (A6Ms etc) of your opponents.
You might agree that the first problem of US P-47s is being an US plane - the more US players you have in your team, the more likely it is that you end up with a dead team whilst you are above everyone. That’s also why CHN and IT P-47s perform better and the almost identical (missing air brake) US D-28 saw an imho undeserverd BR reduction to 4.7.
Playing a D-28/30 at BR 5.7 or 6.0 requires way more skill and patience than the average wt player has. Your main goal in such matches is always to get as soon as possible above 6 km to be safe from the Yak-3U spam (and to keep your alt & speed advantage at all cost) - whilst your team does not sideclimb or bomb bases…
If i see how poorly P-47s performs on Pacific maps (some of them have airspawn for all land based fighters) you might agree that the average US pilot struggles there even in full downtiers, mainly based on wrong tactics & lack of experience.
Imho your proposal as whole (airspawn + significant BR increase) is not really suited to change anything. The wt meta and the lack of player skill on average prevents the P-47s (like the Fw 190 Antons) from being successful. Even if you take the 2 airspawn Fw 190s (A-8 and F-8) as example you see that just a few pilots are able to make them work.
This is also a meta from ~7 years ago that is no longer relevant and would not necessarily repeat itself through the massive changes the game has experienced since. Just sayin’
Once you get to ~6.0 other aircraft start to outperform you at high altitude, so I’d say at most 5.7 for any P-47. Maybe 4.3 for the D-22, 5.0 for the N-15, and 5.3 for the D-28.
From my pov Air RB (“the game”) saw various changes - but the meta (fast climbers which can turnfight dominate) is basically the same.
What changed dramatically is the average pilot skill - so it became extremely rare to see any kind of experienced US main able to use US planes to their strengths.
I invested some time to “ace” the US D-28 - compared to doing the same with the UK D-23 and the IT D-30 it was a nightmare.