I’m opening this post to share my frustration with you. I love playing bombardier, but the more time goes by, the more I feel like I’m getting my fingers slapped with every update.
Let me explain, starting a game and running to a base to destroy it while looking back to see if an ally is going to TK me or go faster to take my objective at the last second is frustrating, or being the slowest of my team and waiting 2 minutes for the bases to reappear is even more frustrating (2 minutes is a very long time (especially with radars and missiles at all angles looking for you). Don’t even get me started on the behemoths that have to be destroyed on the ground - the points they give are ridiculous.
I remind our dear developers and map designers:
(Aircraft most often seen in game)
Thank you for reading this post, I hope to get things moving because I’m no longer amused by all the trolls who TK or tell you you should have taken another plane to be faster.
This is why I play SB exclusively these days, especially in Interdictors like the Tornado. ARB needs complete total overhaul for them to be effective or usable. But they are highly effective and usable in SB as there is always a target to hit with bombs
They should have long replaced this system and come up something that took longer than 5 seconds to come up with and create, dumb bases randomly placed at the worst locations, I especially despise the arcade bombing where they place them at the enemy spawn.
how can researching better missiles or bombs help make bomber game play more fun? when the F4 was released, the airport destruction party was withdrawn because the game was over in 2 minutes. since then, time has passed and ideas have been developed, like modular airfields, which might as well be installed.
Bases should scale a lot better, or even get rid of tonnage and just get a percentage based system where you can do x% of damage based on your payload or try anything… as it’s a dumb system currently, it heavily favors the US, as where Japan cannot even bomb bases with how few capable bombers they have, which then turns them into a fighter nation which then turns into high winrates for Japan because they keep fighting US CAS planes that do not even bother to fight because they’re attacking ground targets.
Germany also gets screwed with the Ju288 and it’s a big waste of time for everyone.
For my part, i think we need more target which are more distant to distribute the players on all the map. And maybe make something for the bombing gets more impact on the game apart from impacting tickets, only a few games ended by tickets and only because an A10 or similar plane have destroyed all the ground target in the middle/end of the game.
But the idea to get base with infinite life and who give point by the percent of destruction can be a good idea for a first step.
Or a mission vs IA who will really engage player to fight and make air cover to attackers, to replace the actual assault mode where we just defend to enemy waves, and which is pretty boring.
Im really interesting to have the back of the strike airport to have an other choice after all bases are destroyed because if you stay to have the respawn of the base you die.
Its a valid target in SB still and is a usual go to for me if there isnt a base up. It would be the simplest solution. Add an extremely high HP pool target (Could be AF or could be something else) which would maybe be almost unkillable, but just give you something that you can reliably hit with bombs and other A2G weapons.
describes the dilemma of Air RB as a whole quite accurate.
In May 2020 the full roll-out of maps with respawning bases altered the game play and the purpose of bombing completely. If you read the changelog of the Starfighter update - and the comments - you see that nobody realized how much these effect will alter the game play.
Basically gaijin gave up their attempts trying to find the right balance between tnt drop capability and base & airfield health. Some props like 4 B-29s or 4 Me 264s (BR 3.7 those days) could also end games very quickly - not only the F-4 E.
As a consequence bomber game play in props became borderline useless as without killing the airfield they lost their win condition. And the insane bomb load of multi-role jets combined with a much better chance to get a base or two made basebombing even more attractive with them - the respawning bases made base bombing even more attractive.
Don’t get me wrong, but bombing on maps with non respawning bases was always a thing of high risk vs high reward - killing a base was never a challenge, killing an airfield outside matches with planes with incredible bombloads was difficult in case you needed 2 - 4 runs as your chances to get killed increased with every run.
So as using jets with high bombloads solely for base bombing require objectively seen way less skill than using them vs enemy fighters - they are therefore just offering a solution to participate in Air RB without contributing to the numbers game or able to decide matches due to the lost win condition.
In other words Air RB was degraded to a grinding tool - with all consequences regarding player skill, used planes, goal of players within the match, outcome of the match, etc.
If you try to reassess Air RB prior to May 2020 - there was always a mix of passionate pilots looking for PvP action and tankers focusing on grinding with PvE actions. But there was also a kind of “natural” balance within matches as there was a common understanding that the number of more or less free SL/RP with base bombing was limited - just based on 3 non-respawning bases.
And it was obvious that sacrificing speed, positioning and flight performance with strapping on max bomb load made you an easy target, so players were forced to improve tactics and overall air combat skills in order to avoid getting shot down and leaving the match with the loser score of 135 points.
Seeing your screenshots of lobbies full of jets optimized for PvE is the same as entering a prop lobby with 9-10 Wyverns and 4 heavy bombers in your team - it puts an insane amount of pressure on the guys looking for PvE as they are all going for the same targets. And the guys looking for PvP can either slaughter whole lobbies or are totally outnumbered as their team consists of 10-15 PvE players.
And on top of that - most of the PvE players coming from Ground RB are used to die as this is part of their mode - as long as they kill a base or two they make a profit and getting killed doesn’t matter, they simply jump to the next game. So in most BRs the match result is determined how many PvE players are in your team.
If you follow the forum for years - or just look at recent threads (like F-111) - you might acknowledge that the majority of threads simply discuss ways to improve PvE game play in Air RB by increasing the number of bases or ground targets - and not to play the mode as intended; so being part of a team with different plane classes which could all contribute by fulfilling win conditions (TDM, ticket win, airfield kill).
Without adding realistic win conditions for PvE players in Air RB by reinstalling “killable” airfields there is no real purpose in bombing bases. And actually also no reason to use planes like a Tornado IDS designed to kill high priority and well defended ground targets like airfields far behind enemy lines.
Don’t get me wrong, but seeing so many PvE players in a mode like Air RB designed for pilots (with mixed goals PvP and PvE) is simply sad.
Just ask the experienced tank player in Ground RB how he would feel if full dedicated pilots would spam their matches. The skill floor for getting a few SP to spawn in a pure fighter is rather low - but by flying CAP and killing enemy CAS those pilots are able to alter the outcome without being good at tank game play and even without killing an enemy tank just by killing enemy planes.
There are just 3 things that prevent that:
Lousy economy in Ground RB compared to Air RB
Lousy winrates on average (50-60%)compared to Air RB
Lack of Air markers like in Air RB
So as a summary:
This mess in Air RB is fully intended by gaijin. Killing win conditions like Airfield kills changed the game play and the introduction of respawning bases made it easier for less experienced pilots to participate. From a holistic pov PvE players are basically just easy kills for PvP players and matches are mostly decided by the number of non PvE players in your team, so by the MM.
Complaining about base respawn timers, number and location of bases or ground targets and enforced competition within teams are comprehensible, but just a symptom of the severe illness of Air RB. Fighting symptoms won’t heal Air RB.
I agree with you, but for me having several ways to win is good because it adds spice:
1 kill all the opposing team (instant)
2 kill all ground targets (loss of ticket for each kill)
3 destroy enemy bases and airport (loss of ticket on each kill or periodic loss of ticket on final destruction)
I think we need to review the bombing system because at the moment most of the bombardier or jet players play bombs most of the time and yes only have 3 bases while there are 6 players on your bombing team.
So yes we need to review the bombing system
