Tailgunners don't like to fire

The statement is true. I would like their efficacy to be increased, more than tripled really.

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They don’t like to fire until the target is much closer than effective range.

With maxed crew AI gunners are not toned to be effective. Gaijin wants you to take manual control. This is fine for high altitude bombers but it leaves dive bombers with no effective cover despite sacrificing the weight to put a machine gun and extra crew member in the rear. It’s something to do with the tail I believe they want to wait to fire more than they need to so it doesn’t clip your tail.

Not a bug but an intentional choice by Gaijin which I believe should be changed.

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i know the good old times where the fully leveled catalina killed 5+ people with its gunners

Bugs and features are the same thing in Warthunder.

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Its because people complained about AI gunners being “OP”. So they dont fire until about 200-300m. You can see their firing ranges in the crew skill page

Screenshot 2024-04-01 031053

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You can thank all the crying babies that were flying in straight line behind you and die to gunners so we got overnerfed gunners ages ago. Never to be touched again - so anything bomber like is a free RP/SL piniata and a waste of team slot
Gunners are a waste of skill points now

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Even if bombers is the worst class in game. Someone still thought it is OP?

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It was pretty ridiculous we had bombers flying into furballs and having the aimbot gunners kill the fighters

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And thy were right. However the complaints came from SB not RB. Just Google “Skypolice War Thunder” to understand the extent of the problem.

Why gaijin also implemented it in RB is beyond me.

Somehow gaijin thinks RB is closer to AB than SB. While in reality RB is more like a slower slightly more tactical AB+.
So the gunners in RB should work like in AB but SB.

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They still are… In SB.

As said before the change was made for SB. The complaints were from the SB Community as well.

For some unexplainable reason Gaijin thought “we change it for RB as well”.

That’s not what happened.

There was an entire player revolt in SB called the skypolice, that caused the change.
And it was a needed change… For SB.

This entire issue was an SB issue.

But Gaijin implemented the fix for SB and RB… Even though RB didn’t have the revolt or the problems.

Yeah i played air SB on B-17 and it is OP cuz you can see whole sky from gunners view, you know. But tbh what % of all players plays Air SB regularly? Depending on this logic they might have fired map designer long time ago

As i said, the change only kade sense in SB.

I have nicht clue why gaijin thought it should be in RB as well.

ABusing gunner view in SB still exists and bombers are still OP but jot to tge degree we had in 2014. we are talking about the AI gunners here however.

For sure, but like irl every crewmate in bomber should do his job. Pilot (you) shouldn’t even care about those who are on ur 6, it’s gunner purpose (ai gunner). People can get used to it

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Sure the entire gunner mechanic doesn’t make sense for SB, which created the Problem in the first place.

The only solution is an overhaul. The same control mechanic in AB/RB/SB at the same time is Impossible to balance.

This is what created the mess.

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I was there i know how it started - still crybabies most of ppl in rb/sim wanted to sit safe right behind tail gun…
The ai was a bit to accurate at long range but nerfing it to oblivion was a huge mistake.

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Sorry man, but repeating this stuff is complete nonsense - and imho you are way too experienced to repeat this myth.

  1. Ever wondered why the bot player invasion(B-25, Ju 288, etc.) we had in the past in Air RB had any air kills? If your claim would be true, than these bots using ai gunners kill would habe been unable to score a single kill. But - these bots had thousands of matches (and therefore maxed crew slots & ace crews) and dozens to hundreds of air kills…

  2. So even if the displayed values are extracted from the game itself - you refer to the wrong line - the probability of simultaneously tracking and firing of 0.66 km is decisive.

  3. My own tests, reviews of dozens of replays and in-game experience prove that it is no problem to get killed by ai gunners within 0.5-0.8 km if you attack multi turret enemies from wrong angles and without sufficient excess speed.

  4. Every experienced prop player had the chance to test it - so it would be great if we won’t see those statements every 2-4 weeks.

I tried to explained it here in detail - and imho nobody of the guys claiming this 0.21 km nonsense put any effort in testing this value:

Next topic:

I am not sure if you got my (ok rather subtile message) whilst replying to your OP so i decided to make it clearer:

  1. If you would have followed your quote you might have realized that you made already the same claims in the past.
  2. It is therefore simply not comprehensible if an experienced player feels the need to open a new thread, despite he contributed in an almost identical thread recently.
  3. This whole thread is unnecessary as we had a hell of recent threads dealing with the same topic and therefore opening a new one is actually a waste of time.
  4. Don’t get me wrong, i share the general view on things that gunners got nerfed, but it is extremely annoying to see often claims by players which are simply not able to understand basic things within bomber game play:
  • If an enemy gets that close that ai gunners would be useful ( it doesn’t matter which distance) he made basic mistakes regarding route to target, relative and absolute positioning vs enemies and situational awareness.
  • Reguesting longer ranges of ai gunners are requesting that the game plays for you and not the other way around. Without using manual gunners you are dead anyway.

Mate - if you have read this post you might agree that this whole thread is identical to a hell of similar threads. A bug report is imho useless as the result is intended.

The fellow player above is correct - if you try to play Air SB at around 4.0 you will meet a hell of guys racking up thousands of kills with very high K/Ds in stuff like B-25s as they exploit the spotting advantage in gunner view and the artificial stabilization of their fire…

A main nerf of gunners around 18 months ago became way more annoying and is from my pov almost never addressed:

  1. Gaijin added a kind of artificial spread to your gunners when you use them manually. This happened ~ September/October 2022 - all of a sudden i was unable to score long range gunner kills (=>2.5 km) whilst using the B-18B.

  2. Together with real shatter 1.0 coming shortly after the Swedish 13.2 mm autocannon became extremely ineffective - so you were unable to score kills in my preferred range 2.3- 2.8 km and the nerf of damage output changed the weapon from a one hit killer to a water pistol - i mean if a paper plane like an XP-50 won’t lose speed even if you scored 5-7 hits you might get the point.

  3. Real shatter 3.0 improved the damage output of the shells with HE filler, but they are still providing less punch than before.

  4. If you wonder about the ranges: Yes AN/M2 0.50 cals and the 13.2 autocannon derender at ~ 3.5 km, whilst most 20mm shells disappear at ~ 2 km. So at high alt with high TAS values you can outrun 20mm if those guys come not closer than ~ 1.4 km. US 0.50 cals (if fired at you when u get chased) are harmless if you can keep a distance of 1.8 km at high speed as the AP rounds lose their penetration values…

To show an example of why this topic get so annoying you might want to read this post. It displays a reply to a rather new bomber player which does some things right, others not.

In order to show him that you can survive as bomber pilot when you use the right plane with the right strategy, i added a replay link in this post showing me playing with a P-38 pilot for 17 minutes without a scratch.

Have a good one!

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It is not a “claim” to say ai gunner efficacy is based in crew skill. That’s a factual statement.

The reason I made this thread was to advocate for said efficacy to be increased from where it is now. My comment in reply to yours gives my idea of roughly what is necessary, triple the current efficacy.

What is the “efficacy” of an ai gunner? Well there’s the range at which it begins firing and how accurate that fire is. Currently it’s far too short and far too inaccurate in my opinion. Range shouldn’t be increased much as mentioned by other players bombers could become mobile gun platforms. It should give the ai enough time to engage someone in a pass near you. The accuracy in my opinion should be lethal if the fighter engaging you isn’t doing so from a proper angle of attack at speed.

There will always be duplicate threads. It’s a good measure of the importance of an issue.

You need to buy premium crew upgrade

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