So the invincible bomber fleet really went to SB to exploit their advantage, AGAIN! Who would have thought about that, when this already happened before, right?I guess people does never learn from previous mistakes.
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Fifth best prop aircraft is the Qing-6 K/D and K/S wise. (Exclodung rare premiums and event vics)
As we all know, bombers had the highest K/D in WW2 and only let escorts fly with them so the toxic fighter pilots could have a bit of glory too.
It was actually bombers alone that won the air campains.
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They’re still tanking 37mm shots.
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I love exactly that part - as it is a benefit for aircraft which shine mid / last game which were borderline unusable before the upgrade - like a P-47. If you tried to gain alt advantage - most of your team was dead before u were at 5 km - you couldn’t go low because you get bounced.
I played more or less exclusively the French prem P-47 on purpose - every match facing Bv 238s or almost unkillable TIS MAs altered the game play, yes i agree, but prop Air RB was extremely boring before that too.
Everything was centered around a few meta planes at their BR - and now we have way longer matches with another kind of meta planes which are at least somehow manageable to control.
And every long-term player agrees that the chances of having an actual game impact increases with fewer opponents mid/late game - so at least for my niche prop Air RB the changes created way more opportunities to have challenging matches.
I scored a lot of bomb kills in the last 2 weeks - as this is besides 0.50 cals or large AP rounds the most effective way to kill even experienced bomber players as even they play way too often suicidal and land on forward airfields.
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Of course, opinions on match duration may vary, but personally, I’m not a fan. While the fatigue factor might be lower for aircraft with plentiful ammunition—like those equipped with .50-caliber machine guns—it was honestly a terrible situation for aircraft with limited ammo. I also still find it hard to grasp why .50-caliber machine guns firing armor-piercing (AP) rounds outperform large-caliber cannons (like 20mm or 30mm) when it comes to intercepting bombers. One thing is certain: even after the patch, the bombers’ damage models (DM) remain a mess.
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Long matches with last minute / second wins (either by PvE or PvP) are after self-created 1 vs 1s my main driver to continue playing even after 30k prop Air RB matches - but i am aware of that i am not representative for the classic prop player.
An example of playing 1 vs 4 for 23 minutes and winning 1 vs 3 with a single player and a single pillbox kill:
Summary
I finished a match (replay link) showing a typical Air RB match:
- More or less uncoordinated player actions leaving me playing a 2 vs 4 after 8 minutes and 1 vs 4 after 15 minutes. In classic shooter a clear defeat especially considering that my P-47 faced 2 BR 3.7 Spit Mk Vs, a 4.0 Ki-43 and a 3.7 Ki-44 - those guys fly circles around me below 6 km and my sole advantage is a way higher top speed above 6 km and a way higher dive speed.
- My B-25 did his best to defend himself vs 3 attacking aircraft and damaged 3 of them (thx to bomber damage model upgrade) but the most dangerous opponent tried to pitch up which denied me to thin out their numbers by strafing them when repairing - i could have killed one or 2 repairing on the undefended airfield but resetting my energy advantage vs the Ki-44 would have taken too much time.
Based on my experience the only way to win was to drag all enemies above 6 km and away from my ground units, kill one or two of them and use my superior dive speed to turn the tickets very late game denying the enemy team to counter this move.
Worked perfectly:
3 guys went for me, a single Spit groundpounding wasted his ammo and killed just one pillbox (which granted me the option to win by tickets with a single pillbox kill) and i killed a Mk V Spit at around 6 km alt (22:58 game time). All i had to do was to fly a large loop to keep the Ki-44 behind me, use my superior dive speed and time my pillbox kill so that the Ki-44 and the Ki-43 could not catch me before the timer ran out.
I killed the pillbox at 24:39 game time whilst both JP planes had zero chance to catch me before the game ended after 25:10 game time.
Let’s see, i am on vacation and will test this after my return.
Have a good one!
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Heh, 37mm
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Been using Ki-93, been quite effective.
The Ki-108 has also been quite effective. So this is more of a single-engine fighter than a twin-engine.
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Bombers have been a laughing stock for too long. A flying SL piñata no more - at long last the bomber meta approaches.
Everybody flies bombers, since the only way to down one is go full on broadside in a bomber of your own. The rare fighter planes are instantly obliterated on approach. Those who survive have to hide and scrape the ground, praying that they do not incur the wrath of the war machines above.
Yeah, that could be fun. It would be interesting to see a game mode that relies on team work.
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Currently it is the other way around - the fighter pilots tend to run immediately to their bombers when in trouble / attacked by a fighter - so they use bombers as escorts…
That means that you have not only to consider the distance to his af aaa and estimate the distance to an enemy bomber at the same time and predict the time-to-kill very precisely - you also have to ensure keeping your speed high enough to outrun the bomber outside his gunner range when he gets closer.
I love it!
Try bombing them with a fighter - u get a hell of fan mail after a such a kill.
You need 1,000 lb class bombs exploding near the cockpit area. My attempts to bomb Bv 238s with carpetbombing the runway in the USSR A-20 G-30 showed no real success with FAB 250 and 20 FAB 100s bounce off and produce just flesh wounds.
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I really enjoyed the new survivability of bombers. I often found myself descending from the sky with zero throttle looking for trouble. If they still perform too well after the new nerfs, I think we should adjust their spawn altitude instead.
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I will not copy and paste my thoughts again on this subject and try to summerise.
Trying to have all these iconic bombers in the game is a mistake, their main role was strategic, bombing infrastrucure miltary, industrial and civilian. Unfortunately WarBlunder is not a stratgey game, it is a timed kill em all shoot em up, these bombers have no real place in the game with very limited objectives and usefulness.
Hence we get this yo-yo roundabout of buffs and nerfs from all too powerful to fragile as fine china, it is a diificult if not impossible task to balance as they do not fit at all in the gameplay.
Best to just remove them or have a seperate strategic game in which they can be used. They were rarely used to bomb individual units, pillboxes and machind gun nests,
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That’s right, I think so too; bombers need a new mode.
Or use a Twin Engine fighter cause they were nerfed, not too long ago, but not nerfed to the point of being pretzel sticks.
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Working as they should. A bomber shouldnt just fall in half because a fighter threw a couple HE shells at its fuselage.
so its a player skill and co-operation issue rather than a vehicle issue? sounds about right. not a bombers fault.
the “community” is a mess.
Im not a bomber main, ive played bombers other than canberras and buccaneers only a couple times but Im glad ARB isnt just a last man standing deathmatch thats over in 5 mins now because bombers arent free RP targets anymore.
I do think that planes like the TIS MA shouldnt have gotten such extreme survivability as they currently do right now, and there is a need to overhaul fighter/strike plane damage models too alongside a rebalance of sub 15mm rounds (especially .50 cals) being more potent than 25mms are in order next
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You’re right, of course; the situation was pretty dire before the durability buff. However, there are still issues—in fact, I’d argue the current state is even worse. Bombers can slaughter fighters even in the hands of average players, whereas taking down a bomber with a fighter requires a high level of skill. Frankly, bombers are just too punishing for the average player in public matches; they still tear through the typical players on one’s team. This doesn’t align with the intended role of a bomber, and if the average player base can’t handle them, a nerf is the right move (just look at the case of the Zero).
In my opinion, while nerfing the .50 cal, 20mm and 30mm cannons should be made more effective than they currently are at intercepting bombers.
There are plenty of people who enjoy the current deathmatch-style format (personally, I like the original deathmatch style myself), though naturally, there are those who don’t. The current patches are ruining the deathmatch-style Realistic Battles (RB), yet this doesn’t mean bombers can actually excel in their intended roles. Since it remains a deathmatch format, bomber players act as if dropping bombs on mini-bases is merely a side objective, while hunting down fighters is their primary mission—often, they don’t even carry bombs at all. Ultimately, bombers simply don’t fit the current RB this isn’t a new issue—it has always been the case, but the topic has resurfaced following recent buffs. We need a new game mode where bombers can truly shine in their actual roles.
It’s never the fault of us fighters for not knowing how to aim!
It’s always the bomber’s fault for having too much durability on non-vital parts of their aircraft!
It would be nice to see a more minor version of the DM revisions to the heavy fighters that where heavily armed and armoured specifically to counter bombers, after the revision the biggest issue I’m having is that your fighter is still vaporized from a single hit from the bomber turrets, while that’s not much of an issue in regards to Zeros and Spitfires that where fragile planes it would be nice if things like the P-47 and FW-190 got some of their famous survivability, not to mention twin engine interceptors like the P-61s and Beau fighters.
I think these changes could potentially be great for the game giving lots of forgotten aircraft rolls to fulfill, if Gaijin handles it properly and doesn’t cave to one particular group of players or the other and rather uses a little common sense and goes for a system where different aircraft have different rolls rather then one just dominates everything else.
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Please… I really hope you read my posts and comments. Besides, in SB, you’re in the cockpit view and don’t have an instructor to help, which makes intercepting bombers much harder. If bombers weren’t OP, why would everyone be using them in SB?
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Ad populum fallacy.
Popularity doesn’t determine anything.
They’re popular because there’s a lack of skilled interceptor playerbase.
You have to remember damage models for aircraft are going to be overhauled for more than just bombers.