The good old days in War Thunder, when flying in a simulator was really fun.
Alternating maps, different missions, fair players, and a decent reward in Silver Lions.
I really loved War Thunder, but times and the gameplay have changed so much that nothing reminds me of how well the sim players were treated back then.
Today there is only ongoing confrontation, nothing else, it’s sad, very sad.
The video shows a replay from about 8 years ago when War Thunder was still interesting for sim players, you only flew, dropped the bombs, and never used the shooter view, because that’s what the shooters were trained for.
You mean the gunners that insta lasered anything that got inside death zone of 3km
Now bombers need to atleast learn how to aim instead of just fly straight kill base laser anything that wants to get close
I haven’t found evidence of ai gunners shooting outside of 1.0km, even in videos from seven years ago, and in my search the majority of the videos were showing how easy it is to kill bombers regardless due to blindspots.
I miss the old random matches with a single life, fast paced but most of the time with a lot of action. It was not easy, forcing a lot of players to really learn how to properly dogfight.
But the bombers were a big problem, just search about the sky police and you could understand how bad the situation with the laser guns was, the outturning capabilities of the bombers or the diving in a suicide bombing run to the base finishing the match leaving everyone else without points.
EC can be fun for top tiers with missiles (fast jets and multiple spawns) and bombers, but imho for only guns aircrafts would be better to have random matches (small, fast paced matches with a lot of dogfights).
I found Orangefan’s video, the only engagement I saw that showed the ranges of the shots was when a meteor was able to crash into the B-17G without getting shot at once. I looked at some of his other videos:
B24 on Berlin (Apr. 14, 2014) - The gunners would only really focus on one enemy at a time, and only switch targets once someone else got within about 0.6km
NavDaddy *Still*… (Apr 24, 2014) - The gunners didn’t even point their guns at a guy when he was at 0.8km of his bombers (well within historical firing range)
Can Gaijin Explain How… (May 2, 2014) - The gunners don’t shoot at an Me 410 that is 0.9km away right on hit tail
If anything it just shows that the problems that bombers had in the past had nothing to do with the gunners and were (supposedly, I didn’t play back then) busted only due to their damage models. Coincidentally, bombers are paper now, so this shouldn’t be an issue anymore.
lol, first you don’t play sim battles so it will be harder for you to understand.
Second, yes WT has been through many changes (most of them quite good) and I’m not saying we have the same problems as we had 11 to 8 years ago.
Third, use any 5.7 and above aircraft and try to do a gun run or low alt bombing carpet into a convoy in EC, to put you in perspective, the old bombers are the convoy. Is it doable? yes but you’ll die a lot.
Fourth, not all the bombers were gunships or death stars (DM, FM, Bullet damage, # guns, “BR”). I was hoping for you to search the old forums for you to understand the sky police thing, but ok, search the sky police with mingles with jingles, he explains who the sky police were, what they did and how it ended. A symptom of many problems in SB at those times.
But that’s a good thing, bombers are supposed to be good at defending when a convoy of them face a much smaller amount of fighters. For every other gamemode in War Thunder, that never happens. If anything they should revert things back to the way they were while changing only the EC bombers.
Oh I actually did see that video, I just couldn’t play it out loud at the moment so I skipped over it. But by the looks of it, Gaijin should’ve just decreased the accuracy of the AI gunners in Sim only and then it would’ve fixed everything.
I miss old sim. Taking off with one life made you really concentrate and it was common for people to stick around and watch the last few players duke it out. I had some seriously sweaty palm moments when I was the last guy on the team.
What about the operations battles? I liked those too where each crew slot counted as a life and when each of your vehicles were gone you were out. I liked the maps too. It was great fun when we had fixed vehicle lineups and we actually had some historical accuracy on the go. Anyone else remember fighting in the Pacific maps with Zero’s vs Wildcats? How about the Battle of Britain with Spitfires and Hurricanes vs 109E’s etc? We need this back… I’m sick of fighting in these stupid mixed nation rooms.
the wonderful Sim Operations mode was a good alternative to EC. then Gaijin shortened the Operation Battles to 15 minutes. because 15 minutes was of course too short, nobody played Operation anymore. then Gaijin removed the whole Operation mode in parallel to the introduction of Usefull Action in EC.
Gaijin’s reason: “Nobody plays Operation!” a joke. Gaijin shortened the mode to 15 minutes beforehand so that nobody would play it anymore. these are Gaijin’s methods. it’s unbelievably brazen. I’m still angry about it. Gaijin could have simply increased the operation mission duration to 45 Min - 1 hour again. probably the mode would have been successful. but Gaijin wanted to destroy the operation mode with sneaky methods.
You romanticize the random battles. On many tiers the missions were over after 6 minutes because the bombers just wiped the map and just lasered everything down within 1km.
Fighters couldn’t “use their brain” too much because they had a couple of seconds to decide what to do. Either fly into the guns and try your luck or sacrifice an objective and fly a proper approach.
There were bomber bum-rush matches but that was mainly late WW2 tier. It was also only a major issue on some of the smaller maps. Off memory even at the Bulge my Me410 could still get above the bombers half way across the map.
It’s a shame though as there’s no denying that the fights were way more intense back then. I just wish they’d bring Operations back or the Historical EC.
I have a mission on tape on Bastogne which was over after 5 mins. Here at the beginning of that light hearted montage.
And then yes, you had ocasionally tense fights, but at the same time you had guys just flying away and hiding around the airfield, or fighter in space dragging the entire mission out way to long. Planes which thrive in a more open eviroment were hamstrung by the entire setup. The Bf 109 K-4 or the Fw 190s, P47s etc. All planes essentailly which require more space to thrive.
