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.
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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:
- If you would have followed your quote you might have realized that you made already the same claims in the past.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
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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.
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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.
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Real shatter 3.0 improved the damage output of the shells with HE filler, but they are still providing less punch than before.
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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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There are planes besides high altitude bombers which have ai gunners. I make specific note of this.
AI should not as you say “do the work for you”. It should be an effective deterrence to running in a straight line though. Currently it is not.
Rather than increasing the range at which AI control works I’d prefer to see accuracy increased.
A fully aced crew is still not efficient enough in my opinion.
It was nerfed years ago due to gunners being broken in AB and SB. Gaijin has made it clear they have interest in reversing or modifying the nerf. So better off controlling the guns yourself.
this is not a bug, this is a gameplay decistion. So closed for not a bug.
This is a suggestion to better balance stuff, since unlike reallife, we aren’t lying the bombers in box-formations, but solo
Gunner nerf applies to all game modes as it was applied directly to gunners. Also it was a problem in AB as well.
You rly thin this is my main account?? Ita actually my kid i just don’t bother switching to write on forum. And its always funny to se ppl checking the name and trying to insult others.
The ranges were reduced by gamemode though.
And the problem really existed only in SB to an extent that warranted drastic measures.
Also the changes were a direct result of the SB protest. SB was the only Community to stage a revolt.
It was the revolt that caused the change not forum complaints.
You need to fly slower
I can follow your logic - but most of the players are not even experienced enough to use simplified flight controls which allows then to dodge incoming fire whilst shooting at the same time - ofc with autopilot off.
I agree that the current ai gunners have major flaws, but these flaws have imo their roots with some settings:
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If you fly a multiple turret bomber and you aim manually for a target at your high six (like in a B-17) your other turrets which which have no firing angles should be controlled by an ai - allowing them to shot at incoming enemies from below and from the side. This would be helpful in those cases you lost situational awareness or the target at you high six is the bigger threat (like a 30mm cannon armed enemy high and a 0.50 cal armed enemy coming in low in a zoom climb).
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The duration of ai gunner bursts are too short and the intervals between bursts are too long. Best way to check this is to fly below and in front of an enemy ai plane (200-500) meters with a level 75 crew and ace plane, it takes say too long to kill these planes…
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Imho the ai gunner settings of some ai planes are way too op - you see every 3 or 4 matches own fighters dying to highly accurate fire of some ai planes like Il-2s or Bf 110s. Some of them can one shot you if you attack from below (outside their turret angle) and you shoot a wing of, they flip on their back due to one sided lost of drag and kill u in a split second.
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Some ai gunners are imho op - if you ever flew an aced P-61 you might agree - in case of overshooting all u have to do is to fly parallel and allow your top turret a firing solution - game over for your opponent. Same when you chase a low enemy and try to kill them with your 20mm - if he tries dolphin dodges your ai gunner kills him if he gets too high - at range around 500 meters.
Even with using manual gunners you might agree that:
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Gun convergence settings for gunners are a joke. Everybody who has ever flown stuff like a Bv 238 will agree. Even in a B-29 or a He 177 you see this when you aim and fire at targets coming in from 3 or 6 o’clock high, usually 1 of your top turrets is useless.
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I already mentioned the artificial spread - i doubt that i lost in a few days my ability to aim, even if i can’t prove my observations. But you find even in the new forum a few guys which noticed that too.
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If you check the thread “Custom ammo belts” you will see that turret belts have usually not accurate belts, some have too much useless bullets/shells, others way too much tracers which is also not accurate.
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Imho this is a target conflict in itself - especially if you combine this with your mentioned dive bombers with a backseat gunner and your horizontal stabilizer denies you a firing solution if you get attacked in the gunner dead zone.
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So flying in a straight line is in itself a recipe to get killed - your requested deterrence would require either an increase in range and/or accuracy - this is pointless in a 2-seater with just one horizontal stabilizer as long as the enemy stays in your dead zone.
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With a plane with 2 horizontal stabilizers you can use your gunners manually. I don’t see your problem.
Regarding this point i like to share this post with you:
Do a testflight with this plane and check the firing angles - you might agree that they are covering all from 4 to 8 o’clock…
Imho your assumption would make sense if we would have a reason to believe that the number of threads would draw the attention of gaijin to this topic.
If i count the number of the threads regarding Team Killing, CAS, ODL, af or midfield aaa, etc and try to identify actions of gaijin (or even responses) the result is rather disappointing (in oder to avoid the word non-existing).
I might consider to change my mind if gaijin would continue the policy of the old forum to merge identical threads, but currently this looks rather out of question.
It took ages until the mods followed my recommendation to pin the team killing policy thread - if this topic is that kind of important for you - i encourage you trying the same for this topic; maybe a “bundled” thread will change something.
Read. The. Context.
There’s an innate issue here. Gunners should not need a plane to be inside the firing arc to begin firing. Bullets themselves act as deterrence as players don’t immediately know where the deadzone is.
Gunners should fire short bursts towards the enemy if they’re just inside the deadzone.
Mate this statement (together with your tail-gunners in your OP) for ai gunners makes zero sense.
- Starting shooting at enemies outside of actual firing angles is waste of ammo. Even with lev 75 crews in an aced plane the reload times of some defensive weapons are way too long. So if you come back to manual gunning you run out of available ammo way too quick.
- There is no deterrence if ai gunners try to shoot inside their firing angles but without having a chance to hit the enemy. Inaccurate return fire is rather encouraging to continue attack runs.
- Hoping that incoming enemies would be not aware of actual firing angles is contradicted by ai gunners spraying like you requested - the amout of (imho way too much) tracer rounds in gunner belts would allow even a noob attacker to get an idea of dead zones.
- Shooting barrage fire was irl proven as waste of ammo. You might want to check the video i posted in this thread - it explains besides the tracer topic how actual aerial gunnery worked.
- I see no convincing point in your whole argumentation that your requests can not be fulfilled with manual gunning.
I agree that ai gunners have weaknesses (like described in my previous post) but i have serious doubts that your requests are actually useful (but i agree to disagree) and gaijin would even think about them longer than 5 seconds.
In addition to my last posts - imho bombers with small caliber defensive guns have a serious disadvantage as their ammo de-renders way too early.
Especially the 7.7 -8 mm guns are harmless at around 1.2-1.5 km. At least in theory the quad tail guns in British bombers should be effective up to 1.5 (effective firing range) to 1.8 km (if you consider an incoming enemy chasing the bomber is flying towards the bullets).
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I am not worried about the 3000 rounds of turret ammo running out.
Yes hence this thread advocating for accuracy increase I don’t understand why you’re repeating this point.
You can already do that with the current system as the gunners will stop firing.
This is just an ignorant statement.
Manual gunning is better, it is not what the purpose of a tail gunner was for. The tail gunner is meant to defend the plane while it’s bombing and in bombing action. If it can’t fulfill that purpose then why is it even modeled ingame?
This is nonsense - gunners in general are added to plane classes which are based on their designated purpose slower than pure fighters - in order to defend themselves. This has nothing to do with defending whilst bombing.
If you get caught in bombardier view by enemy aircraft you simply messed up your target approach or lost situational awareness at the most important time.
Dude - u played 3 hours in bombers in realistic battles.
All your points are showing that you have little to zero experience how to fly a bomber and how to use gunners - it is pointless to repeat your povs over and over again if you deny basic weaknesses in your logic.
I mean it’s a free world, so feel free to post whatever you want - but if you post such views in a public forum, you have to be prepared for feedback - even if you don’t appreciate it.
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???