Revert ARB Bomber changes

Surely by now you’d have learnt that if your hyperbole can be taken out of context to be forced into a different position, it will be on this forum.

This place is blighted.

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When will this blighted place be dealt with?

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To quote one of the Star Wars New Jedi Order novels:

“Arguing with fanatics only makes them more fanatic.”

Some people will never understand, because they have made up their minds on what they deem “good” and “evil.” It is a waste of time interacting with such folk.

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Shaming them does wonders though, and unfortunately, if you don’t address them they’ll keep putting words in your mouth. As evidenced by literally every thread mentioning something underperforming for Sweden, Britain, or France. This forum does not have the high brow souls open to sound discourse that you would hope.

Would be nice if it did, but alas.

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Playing a fighter can’t be a solution for the worthlessness of the bomber.

It is somewhat like that
You ordered PizzaExpress, but got Domino’s instead.
:/

And if nobody cares if you go and shame someone, then it only gets you riled up and leads to you shooting your mouth off. Then you, not your target(s), get called out instead.

Literally all you can do is ignore them, and maybe calmly refute their BS.

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Actually i have a certain level of understanding for your way of thinking.

I watched dozens of replays in which whole teams with Mach 2 capable jets wasted their potential with base bombing - and since this year i see even non-US props like 109s or I-185s (sometimes even premium Ki-43s) base bombing with incendiary or iron bombs.

May 2020 (respawning bases) was gaijin’s answer to face the challenges of the rapid growth of vehicles especially thx to their decision to add Mach 2 jets and the masses of shooter driven minors flooding the game.

In other words: Gaijin sacrificed the mode Air RB in order to facilitate the needs of rookies using aircraft in gaijin’s main mode Ground RB. Giving incentives like 3 times the RP amount for a base kill compared to a player kill is just another indicator that PvE game play is in gaijin’s interest.

But imho you missed some things:

  1. By tricking rookie or Ground RB players into Air RB with this bombing of respawning bases nonsense they added more or less free kills for fighter purists - in other words the have a symbiotic relationship.

  2. The idea behind offering a game play which requires zero skill to progress is a direct result of the extraordinary growth of the player base which is trapped in the eternal grind for top tier jets, so the downfall of Air RB was fully intended as gaijin needed a cheap grinding tool and added respawning bases.

  3. Nobody denies your freedom of choice of how you want to play wt - but you might acknowledge that other people have other intentions when they play Air RB.

This is nonsense - from 2 angles:

  1. The whole idea of aerial warfare is to support own troops (aka as “boots on the ground”) by covering them from aerial threats whilst destroying enemy resources (tactical and strategic targets) which allow enemy ground troops to reinforce or just to continue defending their territory. Without bombers there is no need for a fighter.

  2. The setup of Realistic Battles includes either capturing ground or defending own troops by killing enemy troops. The role of bases were implemented as tactical targets and the enemy airfield as strategic target. Even today gaijin states this on their website (FAQ):

Realistic Battles and Simulator Battles, on the other hand, are tailored to those who wish for maximum historical accuracy. All three modes see players fighting each other in team battles while completing objectives that include capturing and holding special points or destroying/defending designated targets.

From my pov any pilot using mouse aim in Air RB should be aware of that the zero skill claim works both ways. The instructor flies the aircraft and the (fighter) player has to use his mouse to aim and click…

…and the 4.0 ITP with its 37 mm - from 1.7 km…

Years ago you could kill bridges and got the kill rewards for all vehicles passing that bridge - and out of nowhere you get just the small RP reward for the bridge kill and the destroyed vehicles on it give you zero rewards.

You find such a bridge on the old Korea map (around 5.0 BR) - stay alive and and kill the bridge to verify this.

Yes and no - i do agree that manual gunner control is mandatory - but at least in Air RB gaijin has added an artificial bullet/shell spread at the end of 2022.

The only bombers still able to kill you at 1.5 to 2 km are the Pe-8 and the G8N1.

As i play currently below 5.0 i had not the pleasure to meet the Chinese Be-6 version, but bombers (thx to the absence of game impact) are usually targets for late/very late game. We will see how it goes, but the Be-6 was always a rather nasty target. The Tu-4 is way above WW 2 BRs, so i don’t play there.

See above - i enjoyed flying the G8N1 and attack Pe-8s just from 12 o’clock high, they are extremely dangerous when you not extend in a dive.

Correct👍

Yes - as they did irl when attacked in broad daylight. Even if the British bombers would be from the USSR - even gaijin can’t compensate their conceptual disadvantages.

On the other hand - i run every few months into lobbies with this totally insane Lincoln pilot - way more than 5.000 kills in it - and you will get the pure bomber version of the Mosquito.

Spiderman Funny GIF - Spiderman Funny Laugh - Discover & Share GIFs

You forgot the 2.3 MiG-3s with airspawn , the guys in the Potez 630/33s and the Yak-2 KABB clowns. Even a plain LaGG-3 (at 2.0) or a MS 406 kills any bomber extremely easy.


Very interesting thread 👍

I summarized my thoughts about the upcoming changes here:

As the post is part of the Dev server communication it might be read by a dev…

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Yeah, while there are some situations where ordinance is useful on even props like these, base bombing most certainly is NOT usually one of them. About the only rare case is if tickets are already down to the wire and there’s a mostly-dead bombing point which would win the game if killed, and all the remaining ground units are too thorny or well-defended to reach and strike successfully.

I knew the numbers were skewed, but good lord… It’s that bad?! It’s the same as the whole “Ersatz TD vs AA Duty” debate about SPAAG all over again…

Free kills do make grinding easier, but once you’ve played this game for enough years, the feeling of grinding gets kinda “yeah, whatever.” At least that’s how its become with me - my interest in jets is limited to WW2-ish ones as the underlying core gameplay mechanics become fully broken with all the advanced weapons present on jets higher in BR than about 8.0 tops.

Sounds like the game badly needs something other than grind as its motivation for the average player. Unfortunately, I doubt such motivation will ever be realized until the game’s official servers eventually die and it gets rebooted on private servers like happened with several other MMOs in the past decade & a half.

Agree 100%. There is nothing wrong with enjoying dogfights - I do too sometimes. I just read lots in history books and yearn for gameplay where there’s something else to go do after the dogfight is concluded, which is how most real battles played out. Your comment below illustrates this point perfectly:

Now snail’s claim on the other hand is frankly no longer fully true, but like a lot of gritty details in the game, has been forgotten and needs updating.

Real battles do not end the moment air superiority is achieved. Rather, that is just the beginning.

Air RB’s core problem in my eyes is this disconnect - air superiority is the objective instead of an enabler for the actual objective(s) like it usually was.

The only times air superiority was the sole objective was either in a purely defensive fashion (British side of Battle of Britain) or as a preemptive measure to clear the way for vulnerable craft (US fighter sweeps ahead of bomber formations).

Likewise - from what I gather folk like him simply enjoy a good dogfight and the ability to use various tactical maneuvers to outsmart other fighter aircraft. And there is nothing wrong with this, either.

Players like him deserve to be included in the discussion on how to truly improve Air RB, so long as they don’t seek to disenfranchise players who have different goals or preferences. Hatred is the most useless emotion known to man, and it’s clear he harbors quite a lot of hatred towards players using nonfighters and doubly so players using CAS loadouts on fighters. And it’s only burning him up inside, while never reaching the people he claims to hate.

And in cases of discussion on specifically fighter vs fighter balancing, people like him are THE source we should turn to in many cases, due to sheer accumulated experience.

By altering surprisingly little about the foundational architecture of the game mode, there can in fact be room made for all these types of people without one group existing automatically stepping on the others.

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British bombers held the advantage in payload capacity. Which is unfortunately punished in this game, so Gaijin could easily account for the disadvantages in defensive armament by putting it British bombers at BRs where the defensive armament is at least passable, or they could stop punishing bombers for incredibly heavy payloads by decreasing the reward for successful sorties when using those heavy payloads.

I think that was moreso because of the endless amount of complaining from the fighter TDM community

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The complaints were the reason for the changes, yes
But the complaints themselves don’t change the game

Where do you want them to be? A plain BR 2.3 MiG 15 (or Yak-2 KABB) or a 2.7 P-39 or 3.0 Yak-1B or a 3.3 410 A-1 or a Rank II P-38 G at 3.2 or… etc is able to kill a Lanc without efforts.

This makes technically seen way more sense (for Air RB) but it won’t solve the issue of low chances to drop.


Imho your points are valid, but distract from the main reason why @Morvran created this thread.

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I think most of players don’t realize that the reward for destroying the airfields, and due to some reason, if the Base couldn’t respawn over and over again, that means bombers will lose over 70% reward

Would they?

Last time I played a heavy bomber. I got 1x base kill in about 4 or 5 matches and then sat with the rest of my bomb load with nothing to drop on. 2 of those matches in which I got nothing wasnt because I had died, but because all the bases were already dead and there was nothing to drop on. Before they had respawned and I traveled to them, the match had either ended or I had been killed.

Most of the time in the weaker, jet bombers like the Buc S2, Jag even the 11.7 Tonka. Its not uncommon for much the same. Take X amount of bomb load, and then be left dropping them on ai tanks. High capacity bombers are entirely nerfed due to the lack of appropriate targets and diminishing returns mechanic.

A large, semi-permament target (heck even more than 1), on top of the current 4x respawning base system, would gurantee something that can always be bombed. Now that doesnt have to be the AF. There are other options like a base with 10x the health of a regular base or the new deep strike oil refinery or something. Just anything to drop bombs onto besides howitzers if all the bases are killed. Especially for aircraft that should have max bomb load as a strength, instead its almost treated like a weakness.

Buc S2, B-66, Lancaster, F-111 etc etc are all aircraft that would greatly benefit from having something, anything to carpet bomb and actually get half decent rewards. If they have made it to the target, in an environment designed to be bad for them. Then they should always get something. Sure, the old 3 bases then AF might not be the best option available. But it beats out the 4x bases that are taken by lighter faster aircraft.

How much impact on the match outcome said “heavy” target should have… Is a seperate debate to be had, with the current ARB implementation… Probably not much, beyond a good chunk of tickets. But could be far more dynamic in long haul gamemodes like EC.

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We should probably not confuse the issues of “bombing in fighters” and “bombing in actual bombers”, they are separate issues, although the removal of win conditions for (actual) bombers is likely related to the influx of fighter-bombing, that would end matches far to quickly, especially at 9.0+.
The issue is “how to you let bombers be effective without having fighter-bombers abusing the mechanics to end matches too fast (and likely still before bombers can do anything)?”
I can only see 3 options short of a complete game mode redesign:
#1 hardened bases that actually require a full heavy bomber load outs to damage
#2 assigning targets to each bomber when it enters the match, and those targets are only marked for that bomber
#3 After base destruction, the airfield becomes a target, but rather then being destructible, damage causes ticket bleed, X tons of bombs causes Y ticket lose, that can be adjusted up or down to make it as easy or hard as Gaijin wants to make it to win that way.

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I’m a fan of this one.

I think that the current airbases when bombed should open up a new objective with more HP behind it that is either immune or takes less incendiary damage. A bomber could take out the first tier objective and still have bombs to damage the 2nd tier.

Destroying tanks/troops should give more rewards too for strike fighters loaded with AT.

I don’t think I’ve ever really seen an ARB game end with ticket bleed. What’s even the point of tickets in ARB with 1 respawn?

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Could lead to objectives for actual fighter bombers in higher BRs. E.g. su 34.

Would be nice to use the modern strike platforms for y’know, strikes.

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I must completely destroy AF/Base will get additional rewards. I know it is hard to achieve, but still pretty important, considering that the more bombs we take, the reward will be less, it is another huge nerf for bombers because you need at least 10 ground targets, then equal to 1 bases reward, and it is much more risky. Basically, Gaijin just hope bombers and strikers to suicide to get a little reward, Air Conques is the evidence: not only less bases we can bomb, but also less bonus for destroying bases, and these bases respawn pretty slowly

Imho it is not a matter of confusion - and this whole thread exists because there is a fundamental connection between them - it is a matter of game impact of base bombing in general.

So the switch from becoming a valuable tool with the possibility to end a certain match to have little to zero ticket impact.

Subsequently just individual player benefits (SL/RP) play a role - whilst having no impact on the dominating win condition TDM puts a hell of (felt) pressure on PvP mains eager to win every match.

The connection is obvious if you look at the third word of the next sentence:

  1. The first point “has been removed, as it is not used at later ranks” is technically seen a “Nothing-burger” as the reasons for this “non-usage” is mainly based on 2 factors:

    • The removal of the win condition “Enemy airfield destroyed” had nothing to do with bombing bases - it was clearly evidence enough that gaijins/was unable to introduce dynamic HPs for bases / airfields (in order to adapt to threats) and that they needed just a plain grinding tool.

    • There are no real “bombers” at high/top BRs -therefore the *maximum 4 bombers per team MM rule does not work with multi-role jets bombing bases in infinite loops.

  2. Newbie battles
    I mean i played on Malta a few weeks ago in a 5.0- 6.0 match - and Malta is also a 3 bases map with a destructible airfield.
    So when these BRs are called now “newbie battles” it is imho more than obvious that the someone is not playing their own game.

  3. There are now more bases to bomb (4 at the start instead of 3) and bases now respawn"
    Very low tier BRs (up to BR 2.3) have already usually 3 or 4 bases and a destructible airfield. But there are also 4 bases maps with respawning bases at BR 1.7 - i know this because i flew there half a year ago with the 1.7 He 115 to check a claim by a fellow player.

If you see this thread and the announcements regarding changes as a whole there are 2 main conclusions to think about:

  1. Gaijin wants to streamline their game mechanics and some data analysts found out that there are still a lot of matches won by a non TDM win condition.
  2. Gaijin thinks that their players are not interested in anything else than grind and the thought processes for a proper setup for a second or third attack of the enemy airfield is too complicated

I see this as a compromise - which is basically nothing more than a dynamic airfield health combined with a slight increase of “usefulness”.

In order to have a significant role bombers/strike fighters/multi-role fighters across all BRs should have the possibility to temporarily disable the runway. This would have at least the effect that min fuel spamming fighters would have to rethink their strategy and would add immersion for highly specialized aircraft like the Tornado IDS.

Have a good one!

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