Tailgunners don't like to fire

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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79

Despite i share your view on most of your points, some things need clarifications:

  • I pretend nothing - wt is outside Sim a plain shooter.

  • From a holistic way gaijin tries to create the illusion that bomber game play in the classic sense (=PvE) would be a viable option in a PvP dominated environment.

  • In addition they do everything in their power to weaken bomber game play and declare whilst introducing the (s)kill bonus that “the ultimate goal of playing wt is to kill other players” - i am too lazy to look up the exact wording.

  • The key to a successful bomber game play was always to choose the right route to target and to avoid enemy contact. And if caught by fighters to keep them as long as possible inside their gun range, but outside of the gun range of incoming enemies.

  • That gaijin allows up to 7 interceptor spawns per team (not sure if there is a limit at all) vs 4 incoming bombers just proves their attitude towards bomber players. I mean what can 3 Pe-8s and me in a B7A2 do vs 4 XP-50s, 1 P-61 and 2 VB 10s?

  • And even if you would have cloud cover - do you really believe that the way too low setting of contrails was an accident? 5.400 meters on a medium temperature map is a joke, even the 6.400 meters on some pacific maps are way too low.

  • This is all hand-holding for the average point and click fighter rookie to avoid being undetected as a bomber pilot. The bug report about too low contrail altitudes is acknowledges for a year now - nothing happened.

  • No offense - but no clear minded bomber pilot flies out stuff above BR 4.7 in Air RB. Even legends like fmt3 with >900 days bomber game time plays around 4.0.

  • I was so stupid to spade the BR 5.7 Tu-2S-59 added to the Italian TT.

  • Why? Because you have almost zero chance to survive and you have almost zero game impact - you might kill a base or two for 300-600 tickets - the same effect has a plain fighter killing a single ai plane and 5 ground units.

  • And the fellow player you are referring to has his most sorties (49) in planes with turrets in an A-20 G (an attacker) at rank 2.

  • It is not about my view on how things are - my contribution is simply to remind people that there is no free lunch.

  • The bomber pilot is and was always the weakest part in a team, but before May 2020 (introduction of respawning bases) he had the chance to win battles - either by killing the airfield or killing ground like tanks / pillboxes in order to win by tickets.

  • I fought and flew B-29s (with ~ 75k SL repair cost) when they were at BR 6.3 - and i flew all bombers except the Tu-4 on my old account and managed to fly more than 5.000 Air RB battles in the nerfed 5.7 version of the Ju 288 - not to grind, just for fun.

  • But i stopped playing wt shortly after May 2020 for a while because bombing respawning bases was pointless - Gaijin deleted the win condition “airfield kill” as a result of their inability to manage bomber BRs and base health at the same time.

  • As gaijin rejected to transfer my planes from my old MS account to this new one i started from zero again, so my overall game experience is way higher than you see at this account. But i would not even fly a Ju 288 for free as there is above 4.3 not a single bomber able to create fun and contribute to the effort of your team to win a match.

And regarding my experience feedback:

If somebody plays 3 hours bombers in Air RB and has about 35 matches in real bombers he has simply not the necessary experience or credibility to claim changes for bombers if he has not proven his willingness to learn basic things like aerial gunnery or tactics to make his plane effective.

Imho you scratch the main issue here - but just on the surface.

  • When was the last time you saw a B-17 flown properly? So flying a detour and coming in with top speed above 7km? And making use of the turbo-superchargers allowing them to to extend the time a fighter needs to get in his gun range whilst peppering them from 2.5 km with AP-i bullets?

  • I see this in 1or 2% of the matches.

  • And this is the core problem of wt - too many people think that base bombing in props is easy - it is not. It requires above BR 3.0 actually more than the average “point and click” fighter pilots needs to score.

  • That is also the reason why i am so tired to see threads like “please shorten base respawn time” or like here “please buff ai gunners” - the overwhelming majority of these claims come from tankers or grinders on selfish tours to earn SL/XP for their next tank or their next jet.

  • Bombing is reduced to an almost useless tool to grind. If i view replays of friends addicted to high/top tier jets - i see lobbies full with fighters with max bomb/rocket loadouts…

Hope this clarifies some things.

1 Like
80

This isn’t changed with the increase of tailgunner efficacy, it just provides some cover for planes with tail guns and turrets.

All of this just agrees to say bombing is pointless in Air RB and continues to be pointless. If it’s pointless then there is no harm in gunner efficacy being increased. Nothing is changed. They still can’t win the game.

1 Like
81

The important clarification is here:

Because you are speaking from descriptive not prescriptive stance.

Me and Vamilad are prescribing how we think the game should be.

I suppose we all broadly agree that the gunner AI is underperforming

I am that.

I want CAS planes and I enjoy 4th generation jet fighters. Prop gameplay and early jets don’t interest me.

Death-star gameplay does, however, but since it’s not practical then I just use bombers to grind all the trees.

I think if we want to bemoan lack of teamwork then we need to discuss the incentive structures.

I think this is the core point.

Gaijin sets up a game which rewards only killing blows in essence. Zero-sum game - Wikipedia

Gaijin should seek to create a Win–win game - Wikipedia where ALL behaviour which broadly and holistically contributes to victory is rewarded.

There can be free lunch since this is a video game and the only scarcity is completely artificial.

To recap.

Bombers are obviously crippled and I think we all agree they shouldn’t be.

There may be better ways to play bombers, proper ways, but they’re not worth it with all the aforementiond handicapping.

At least all I and Vamilad ask is that playing planes with turrets, even with experted max level crew, doesn’t seem like you’re just a target drone for fighters to mindlessly click on.

Manual gunnery with turrets is just so crippled with all the parralax and other issues fighter players don’t have to deal with, but I think there’s no good reason that the AI gunners shouldn’t be at least capable of downing planes at distances of a few km if they get very lucky.

Fighters should be scared to engage well defended bombers instead of simply see all bombers as free lunch.

1 Like
82

This was together with this quote:

at least an honest message why you request changes. I appreciate that.

For me it boils down to 2 different kind of goals which might have a similar approach (strengthen bomber game play with specific improvements) but fundamentally different intentions:

  1. Having fun whilst playing Air RB and enjoying the mode in itself & being a valuable part of your team with having a significant game impact

vs

  1. Accelerating grind by lowering requirements & necessary skills to make a prop bomber more viable by using Air RB base bombing as a tool to get somewhere else.

From my perspective there is nothing wrong with both views.

  • But imho it is not about what intentions or which goals we might have whilst playing Air RB - it is about what the overwhelming majority of incoming fresh new players wants to have when downloading the game and get trapped within the hamster wheel of the eternal grind.

  • In order to satisfy the needs of this player base looking for a plain shooter and a suitable grinding tool gaijin created this kind of symbiotic game play in which one part tries to farm SL & RP with actually useless tasks like base bombing (=PvE) whilst the other part tries to farm these PvE players by killing them (=PvP).

  • By setting the wrong incentives (via SL and RP rewards) you have depending on your plane similar SL rewards for a base kill and a player kill, whilst RP rewards are on average 2-3 times higher for a base kill. In addition almost all bombers make a net profit even if they got immediately got shot down after the drop.

  • So gaijin manages to create a win-win situation, the tanker on a grinding run in a bomber vs the tanker in a grinding run in a fighter. The necessary skill set in a bomber is reduced to pressing space bar, and in a fighter to point and click with a mouse.

  • In addition to the total absence of any kind of useful tutorials gaijin added stuff like brain dead map design or 16 vs 16 lobbies which are purely aimed to accelerate PvE and PvE interactions in order to further lower the skill floor to participate and to shorten matches. The sooner you are back in the queue, the more you might see the need for buying premium stuff.

  • So if you try to take a step back - the game looks like how the overwhelming majority wants it to be - a plain shooter with a strong grinding component.

Therefore my intentions (enjoying the here and now) and your intentions (accelerating grind to get somewhere else) to strengthen bomber game play are totally irrelevant for gaijin.

  1. If they would increase the difficulty to shot down a bomber there would be an outcry from point and click fighter pilots and they would extend the average match duration. Both are not desired goals for gaijin.

  2. By nerfing bombers with various open and hidden “adjustments” and placing them at BRs at which there is no realistic chance for the average player to contribute and to survive (=BR 4.7 and higher) the strategy of gaijin is clear: They are just there to push the number of playable aircraft and to be food for other tankers in fighters.

Finally:

So you might see that i have no hostile intentions towards other players which do not share my passion to fly at WW2 BR ranges.

All i ask you to do is trying to take a step back and look at the whole picture:

  1. The main reason why non-pilots flood Air RB lobbies is a result of the abysmal slow and painful grind in Ground RB due to way too low SL/RP income.
  2. Planes in Ground RB are (outside specific BRs) just an equivalent to a power-up in a plain shooter. The way gaijin made tanks and planes playable for masses created a significant demand for aircraft in Ground RB.
  3. This demand drags those tankers into Air RB - just in order to to research and spade their aircraft to strafe tanks in Ground RB - and there they got clapped by actual pilots (there are still a lot of them) exclusively active in Air RB.
  4. Imagine it would be the other way around: Experienced Air RB pilots would flock into Ground RB as there would be a way better economy. They would kill all tankers in planes within seconds and bomb the living hell out of guys trying to play tanks. The only things which prevents this are:
  • Abysmal bad economy = no income driven need
  • Lack of challenge I = way too easy air kills vs tankers
  • Lack of challenge II = way too easy ground kills whilst flying a plane
  • Lack of air targets = simply less air targets compared to Air RB
  • Extremely low WRs in Ground RB on average = ruining stats
  • Lack of air markers = decrease of situational awareness

If you think about this as a whole package you might agree that your or my view or intentions and/or requests to strengthen bomber game play in Air RB are futile - gaijin won’t change anything within their approach to treat bombers as they would weaken their business scheme:

Dragging masses of minors with access to credit cards into a PG12 f2p game with shiny top tier vehicles which need either a hell of time or money to get them. The set-up of Ground and Air modes (outside SIM) is optimized to have dependencies in order to earn money - plain simple.

Have a good one!

2 Likes
84

“gunners should be able to hit planes flying in a straight line behind you”

“gunners should be able to kill planes near your bomber”

How do you extrapolate the second sentence from the first?

1 Like
86

I would not call them rant posts - they address imho comprehensible requests.

It simply depends on your general pov on things.

So if you see the forum as a kind of pulse check of rather experienced players it is actually not surprising to see a hell of similar topics regarding RB:

  1. Passionate and experienced tanker address their issues like CAS or ODL which have severe impact on their game play experience.
  2. Passionate and experienced pilots address their issues with 16 vs 16 lobbies and bad design of game play / maps which nullifies core elements like skill or tactics to a very large degree.

Both have in common that their issues are ignored by gaijin. Mainly as they do not represent their target group of customers.

88

Sure you can say that but everyone who knows sim knows you are talking BS.

Sim was the catalyst for the current situation.

I agree that it should never have spilled over into RB. But that was a decision by Gaijin, that i cannot understand to this day.

In Ab and RB yes.

In SB they are still overpiwered, just not to the extent it used to be. It is managable now and they need to use the gunners manually. Ehich is still mouse aimin lg BS with 1.5km of range, but at least they can be caught off guard, unlike the 1.5km AI death sphere.

So sim is still bat just not as bad as it used to.

But RB sure, bombers are hopeless in defending themselves. The issue is that Gaijin seems to think that RB is more like sim than AB, so the Sim fix was applied.
In reality i would say that compared to sim RB is pretty much AB+ and it needs the AB AI gunner mechanics.

89

Well, I’m not exclusively just playing air RB to grind. The parts of the gameplay I want are just locked behind grind or not possible.

I don’t really like prop gameplay but I enjoyed some of the turboprops, they’re usually just unfun because they’re comically overpowered and I just don’t really enjoy that.

I want to play flying fortress gameplay, I would enjoy flying around “airfield AA” sometimes I wish that modern planes would include some designs like stuffing a CIWS into a large plane.

That’s just a way I’d want to play. It’s more fun and appealing to me than the traditional prop climb fest and energy state gameplay which is ruined by certain planes just having outright superior characteristics.

I have really easily noticed that Air is an insanely easy grind, I really don’t like how ground and helicopter are ridiculously slow by comparison.

It’s not like I’m turning up and ruining the fun for the air players, I’m a competent air player, but I can’t really enjoy it when the top gameplay skill is picking a good nation, then a good plane. Ground just doesn’t have an equivalent to, say, a plane which just outrates everyone it can fight but doesn’t really have any downsides.

To be honest I don’t really care how futile something is, I’m not writing here for a pragmatic or cynical reason.

Nothing would change for the better if nobody complains, the more people complain, the feedback is visible and developers can choose to ignore it or take it on board.

Bomber turrets should be better because right now they can only reliably destroy those who can’t aim at basic ranges?

It does seem that way. I want to like Air Sim, but it really seems you need a VR headset and HOTAS in order to be in any way basically competitive. Maybe if I’m suddenly rich.

90

You don’t.

There are certain Advantages but also disadvantages.

I started WT in 2013, with just ajoystick. With that Equipment i joined “Aviators of War” which was WT roleplay campaign with really good sim pilots. I was competetive there. I bought a TrackIR in 2016 iirc.

Track IR is better than VR, but not as immersive. Spotting with VR is tricky compared to TrackIR.

TrackIR was helpful i am not gonna lie but with the right setup you can use the joysticks coolie hat to similar effect but track ir will be more effective. But you need some time to get into the WT control setups since the default ones are terrible.

Hotas+pedals is really only useful for top tier. Because you need all those buttons. Pedals are somewhat worse than a joystick with a wrist turn axis. Because most people are more accurate with their hands than their feet. So a hotas doesn’t really give you an advantage. The one undeniable advantage is TrackIR…

That aside, of you tried sim you know you can’t take the same shots that you would take in AB and RB, it’s just not feaseble. So i hope you understand that giving bombers the same 1.5km deathray gunners caused a massive revolt… Which in the end won. Even though all participants were banned.

91

There has been a slew of things done that have rendered most bombers worthless to play in the game.

This nerf was one of the first few, including turning the damage models into cardboard. Both nerfs need to be undone, though in regard to the AI gunner ability a full reversion wouldn’t be ideal. I’m very confident a happy medium can be accomplished here, but Gaijin has simply written off bombers as to forevermore be nothing but fodder to the fighter jocks.

That’s why I recommend that nobody should waste their time bothering with bombers. There’s simply no ROI on them. Period.

2 Likes
92

Agreed.

Agreed with a few exceptions - as soon as tactial prop bombers have some air-to-air capabilities the can make the difference, at least around BR 4.0.

And i am not talking about those very few guys with insane gunner skills like Hitman or KomaZZ - a good flown B/T-18B, Brigand, SB2C or B7A2 are a pain to fight if the pilot knows what he is doing.

1 Like
93

No, it can’t be this simple. Since DMs and mechanics are shared a simple solution will not work.

Also bomber DMs are not too weak, it is mouse aim allowing to much accuracy resulting in higher effective damage.

In terms of rounds boombers are able to soak up they seemly to be roughly compliant with US research.

Just undoing the “nerfs” will just result in another revolt. Bombers are still OP in SB and buffing them will create another tense Situation. The sim Community has already shown that they are ready and willing to take action… So that’s not the solution.

Ab better solution is,

1.unbind the SB ai gunners from the RB Ai gunners then increase AI gunner effectiveness in RB and only RB,

2.remove mouse aim from SB gunner view.

The DM is sadly global, making it gamemode adjustable would be a step that needs to be taken first.

DMs are not gamemode specific, so adjusting them always has to take every mode in mind.

As said before SB was the catalyst, SB needs to work for any solution to be possible in RB. Since for gaijin and in terms of programming they are sadly linked.

Your fix will not work because of this.

94

I will admit outright that SB’s woes are of no concern of mine as I do not play SB. However, the unfair ruining of bombers is very much due to SB.

I understand your position, but on a fundamental level I disagree that bombers should stay near-completely unplayable just because they are hard to contend with in a game mode type that most of the playerbase simply does not bother with.

Bombers deserve a place in this game that doesn’t revolve around them being fodder. Simple as.

4 Likes
95

Sure, but it is of concern of gaijin. So what you think does not factor in. Ignoring the fact that gaijin has to juggle 3 modes that share some mechanics isn’t something a solution can ignore. If you kike it or not.

Nope it is due to gaijin thinking RB is more like SB than it is like AB. Which is wrong of course. There is nothing stopping gaijin from giving AIngunners in RB the same effectiveness as in AB without ruining SB.

But you can fix it without ruining sim. By just not thinking of simple nerfs and buffs. I made a map.above which would solve the issue.

96

@Pacifica are these kinds of comments allowed?

2 Likes
97

Are these the same bombers which are more fragile than an F-5A/C/E?

You’ll see bombers get sawn into pieces by the same bursts that make fighters turned yellow.

The same manual aim with huge convergence, random bloom and arbitrary dispersion?

Bomber guns are about as accurate as stock 45mm guns fighters sometimes use.

Defensive armament is so insanely gimped even with manual aim, all to keep fighter mains from having to put effort in, so they can save their effort for energy trapping some worthless plane which somehow sits at the same BR.

2 Likes
98

I don’t know of any research regarding vietnam era jets.

I know of research done regarding ww2 planes. And it doesn’t look good for them. They were indeed very fragile.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA800394

Here is the research done by the US after ww2.
The damage is not cumulative, so you need to keep that in mind.

As i said, the issue isn’t, that the bombers are too fragile. It’s that real pilots with proper controls, have a much harder time to hit anything, than people pointing and clicking with a mouse. Therefore the percentage of rounds hitting in a burst is far higher compared to real life.

So the problem is the effective firepower not the DM.

99

Not really…

I will remind members to keep things civilized!

Never any need whatsoever to insult others on our Forum…

4 Likes
100

Although i agree with point 1 - number 2 is not really the core problem. Having a few friends which somehow enjoy the extremely boring set-up of 3h EC matches in Air SB, they provided me from time time replay links.

The mouse aim of SB gunner view is imho the minor part of the problem - the 3rd person view whilst in gunner mode is way more annoying as it gives them a clear spotting advantage vs cockpit view fighters.

So setting up ambushes or lightning attacks are way more difficult vs bombers than vs fighters, the mouse aim in itself just amplify this advantage - i mean if you can reliably hit at ranges >2 km with spraying 0.50 cal defensive HMGs and you have to close in to 400 meters to score kills the problem is obvious.

No idea if they solved this in the meantime as i simple refuse to play there exact due to this reason. It makes for me zero sense to fight hordes of B-25s & P-61s with thousands of air kills with very high K/Ds just based on this advantage. The same pilots suck in Air RB like everybody else.

So killing the 3rd person view whilst manning a turret should be the first step.

In any case - the discussion regarding Air SB is imho off-topic. Even if it is done with good intentions it distracts from RB. Thx for understanding.

For Air RB i would recommend 3 steps to deal with gunners/ai gunners:

  1. Warning of incoming enemies triggered by ai gunners at around 2-3 km like “fighters incoming fast, 5 o’clock low” - this should encourage oblivious bomber pilots to go into manual gunner mode.
  2. Gaijin has to reverse the hidden nerf of artificial gun spread for defensive guns, add realistic and useful gun belts (= more AP-I, less tracers) and has to solve this ancient problem of useless turret convergence.
  3. A slight increase of the range from the 0.21 / 0.66 km values (which are based on my own observations effective up 0.8 km) to 0.31 / 0.99 values (which should increase the effective range to up to 1.2 km) whilst becoming 100% deadly at ranges <300 meters if attacked from behind - combined with complete deactivation of ai turrets when getting killed.

Allow me some explanations:

  1. As you can see - i am not a “Death Star” advocate and i want to avoid that bombers become automated gun ships killing real players way too easy. But i acknowledge that something has to change especially regarding gunners & ai gunners.

  2. Any further restrictions which would create artificial “dead zone bubbles” around bombers are simply out of question. Gaijin will not sacrifice rookie fighter pilots to those dead zones, and those pilots don’t want to get killed by ai in a PvP based game.

  3. Reasonable fighter pilots see the need for a planned and correct set up for attacking a bomber with good turrets/guns. So there might be some kind of understanding and acceptance for such a change as soon as they realize that the same rules as for attacking ai planes apply: Fast approach in turret dead zones. No problem for a good pilot.

  4. If you play prop BRs you see the classic rookie flying straight to a base and getting killed whilst in bombardier view - either because they know it not better (=lack of tutorials) or because they simply don’t care.
    Frankly spoken: I see not a single reason why such guys deserve to be protected by ai gunners. Either they learn or they die.

  5. The warning of incoming fighters looks useless, but it encourages rookies to develop situational awareness and to use manual gunners. If they then do the right things like flying away from their attackers in order to maximise their firepower and to use manual gunners it would prevent way too easy kills. If they continue their path and get killed by fire from dead zones or attacks with high speed from the front - that’s life.

  6. The reversal of stealth nerfs to manual gunners, the usage of useful and accurate belts and this annoying turret convergence issue are self-explanatory.

  7. The limit of a 100% dead zone of 300 meters just for attacks direct from behind is aimed to kill ass sniffing rookies, prevent ramming attacks and shall prevent actually skilled bomber pilots to farm fighters with ai mechanics just by closing the distance whilst chasing a fighter.

  8. And as head-on attacks were a viable strategy irl: Creating an automated dead zone for frontal attacks would be unfair. Deactivating ai gunners when being killed but not dead (=tail shot off) shall avoid automated post mortem kills whilst floating to mother earth. I have zero problems with keeping ai gunners active for flat spinning (but not killed) bombers - as the guys attacking those bombers are basically kill “stealers” and try to benefit of the efforts of others.

I hope that some of you could consider this as viable suggestion!

And just to be clear: This deals with ai gunners only. Giving bombers back their role pre-May 2020 should be discussed in another thread.

1 Like
101

It depends, controlling a single gunner in first person view would be fine, tripod gunnery should be similar to standard mouse pointed guns.

The issue with mouse aim is rather the autostabilization that comes with it. If the plane manuvers it shouldn’t be autocorrected, but the correction should be done manually.

So with mouse aim i meant the gaijin control method of that name, not the act of pointing via mouse.

It has not been fixed. The ammo was limited, so the bombers no longer have infinite ammo.

The issue is that the mechanic are linked. You cannot ignore the other modes when looking for the solution since every change would effect them as well. So a solution would have to work on every mode.

In addition SB is the reason for the current situation.

Maybe the first steep would be to seperate the bomber mechanics per mode.