Yes, it is accurate because the hole isnt everything. Think of the energy that round delivers.
Ripping off the tail requires far more energy then a 37 delivers. And the 37mm HEFI shell is fundamentally not designed to do that. It’s in the name. It’s designed to send a ton of incendiary fragments throughout the internals. It’s going to do a lot of physical damage, but nowhere near enough to rip the tail clean off
It’s also a Mineshell, while the Russian or US 37mm is a regular HE round.
Which doesn’t make it necessarely any better. As the target grows in size, explosive power becomes less important, since it just takes a lot more to deal enough structural damage to bring the target down.
Just because the Mineshell makes larger holes, doesn’t mean the bomber is going down. While the fragmentation from the HE round can damage systems outside the range of the Mineshell.
There’s like a sweetspot where a Mineshell is more effective against a specific size of target, after which it’s not going to be any better.
For a 4 engined bomber, a 50mm Mineshell had pretty good chance to bring it down in one shot, while 50mm HE round might have slightly lower chance, since the Mineshell had a high chance to cause an instant structural failure, while 55mm made any hit practically lethal.
It’s rather comperatively unlikely to bring down a B-17 with a 30mm Mineshell due to structural damage but with a 0.5-1m fuze delay and firing 30mm Incendiary rounds as well, the chance to cause a lethal fuel fire with a good hit was much higher and the same applies to 37mm HEI rounds.
The armament of the B-29 is not better placed, and in practice, it doesn’t truly have 6 (or 13, if you want) effective machine guns. The tail turret can only cover up to -30 degrees below the horizontal; below that angle, only 4x12.7mm guns cover. However, this is still misleading, as the divergence in their trajectories means there is almost no overlap. At 500 m, the distance between a bullet fired from the rear turret and one from the forward turret is 20 m when you aiming at -90º, or 15 m at -45º.
At 700 meters, the situation worsens, with a separation of up to 35 meters at -45º.
To give you a visual idea, this is how far apart the paths of your bullets are. You have practically one less turret.
It’s clear that the firepower of the B-29 is actually inferior to that of the G8N1, so there is no way its armament can justify its permanence in such a high BR.
I have done some reasearch ( played some bombers for a few days) and basaed on my experience (+ the fact that i would say that i can use defensive armament a but better than the average player due to exessive training) the only reason why I survived in bombers is 1.1.becasue the Enemy doesnt attack me (statistically useless) or 1.2. the enemies who did attack me failed to hit me and i killed them before they could ( either missing or not shooting at me before coming into my effective gun range but that happened only one). Every other engagement I was either 2.1. able to kill the enemy but i die due to fire or crashing or 2.2. I die but the enemy crashes later or 2.3. the enemy killed me and he survived.
Putting them into perspective how often these things happened in percentages:
1.1: 30%
1.2: 3%
2.1: 4%
2.2: 3%
2.3: 60%
(statistics have been rounded up or down for your viewiong convenience)
To top my research off i would like to add that the encounters are mostly based on the skill (or lack there of) of the fighter engaging the bomber anf the bomber is mostly at the mercy of the fighter. Also Tailsitting outside the bombers effective range is a suprisingly save spot unless you get to close, but the happened 1 time (in my entire time playing this game i might add)
To conclude my findings: the people who complain about bombers being OP just have massive skill issue and it shows.
And? Should defensive armaments always be much worse than their offensive contemporaries?
Well you’ll be waiting forever since the majority of the fighters the B-29 faces have bulletproof glass cockpits.
It literally will not at 700m+, nor do most aircraft that the B-29 faces have much fuel in their wings.
Exactly.
Any props uptiered into the B-29 will have no frontal protection. Many jets have no protection either (La-200 is another one, and i’m not gonna look through the whole early jet list to find out how many others don’t), and even the ones that do, like the MiG-9, you can still hit the pilot AND the engines easily.
Which here in War Thunder just means the fire will keep burning for longer. Fuel tank fires only go out if they have no fuel or if you’re a Ju 288.
At 500m it still has so much pen it easily goes through the wing spar. And it’s not like the B-29 is only firing one or two of these, you can easily get 3 turrets firing at anyone.
At 800m it now gets stopped by the wing spar, but still turns it orange. The wings are NOT “impenetrable”.
And the 8.0 jets are also lacking in protection. The Meteors’ 12.7mm of armor in front of the pilot will be easily penetrated at 500m (and since both aircraft will be moving, the distance at which you can penetrate it will be greater). None of the Vampire, Venom, Sea Hawk, Attacker FB, or Swift F1 jets have pilot armor. The R2Y2s don’t have armor. The Sabres don’t have armor. The Me163 is extremely fragile and its armor does not protect the fuel tanks.
I can keep going.
The props/early jets that have no frontal armor (that the B-29 would face if it was put at a proper BR for it) would just make the B-29 actually usable, since its armament would be able to do more than hit tiny weakspots.
Not true, and plus there are fire suppression modifications.
Yes, I will correct myself: no critical components are damaged at 500m+, and even less are damaged at 700m+. As for how many bullets you can get onto the tiny area of the wing, it will likely not be multiple due to the already mentioned terrible dispersion.
Of which the lack of armor might be the sole benefit to these planes, even though they are all much, much faster with much, much better armaments.
Fire supression modifications which will destroy the engine when used, and none exist for fuel tanks. For a single engine fighter, they pretty much guarantee you’ll die anyway.
a stronger damage model and better ai gunners is all i ask
it’s the only advantage - and it’s not that big (especially in VR) of an advantage. I do think that you need to lose your stability when you’re spinning, it’s embarrassing that spinning bombers can just get kills because their aim point maintains the same point (you), coordinating all the gunners, who should be either G-LOC’d, stuck to the floor or bailing out out (and not shooting at you with perfect coordination).
I just came out of a match in which a rookie (regarding play time in Air RB) in a B-26 killed 4 (!!!) even bigger rookies in fighters which thought tailsitting behind a B-26 is a smart move. We talk about fights at medium alt (3.5 to 5 km) - so at optimal alt for fighters.
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His last victim (P-51) shot out an engine and the left undercarriage (landing gear) whilst already on fire. The B-26 made it back to base…
I killed him late game attacking from his defensive blind spot (12 o’clock low) without any effort.
There is simply no urgent need to buff ai gunners or the damage model if a rather new player is able to defend himself with manual gunners. If you watch replays you see that most of the bombers get killed whilst being in bombardier view (at least from my pov). So it’s mostly about the timing of the bomb run…for everything else i refer to this post.
Bombers defend themselves by keeping distance from fighters. Usually as a long range bomber I turn away to keep the bandit(s) to more than 1km(or well out of max gun convergence) and shoot as they lose speed trying to climb up to me. If you’re a frontline bomber or a strike aircraft you have to just practice gunning more since you have no altitude or airspeed advantage.
Another positive example of successful bomber game play at low tiers (BR 2.7 to 4.7) in Air RB:
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2 friendly bombers (a He 111 and a Ju 88) killed the enemy airfield with dropping 6 (He 111) and 4 (Ju 88) C 250 Flamm on the first run. 10 C 250 were exactly the required payload to kill the airfield.
How this could happen?
I saw a similar outcome yesterday (also whilst using C 250 Flamm) when a single Ju 88 finished alone the enemy airfield on the Frontline Mozdok map. Only difference - he needed 2 runs and got killed after his second drop by af aaa. All i had to do was to keep the last 2 enemy fighters busy and distracted so that he could land, rearm and drop a second time.
Matches like these show that determined bomber players can decide matches (if circumstances are perfect) - but gaijin has killed this opportunity with these plain stupid respawning bases on newer 4 bases maps at higher BRs.
Heck, when I tried to suggest that gunners call out incoming fighters (as they did in pretty much EVERY air force, so far as I can tell) that suggestion wasn’t approved for review.
Lower tier is nowadays more fun because you still have some old maps. Really Gaijin is soo lazy, many people did like the airfield objective. Gaijin just did not want to deal with it in any way and just remove them on all newer maps going forward :(
When it still works it are usually either the incendinary bombs or the naval mines that do the trick.
Fighters exist because bombers exist. But Gaijin things the game is more realistic by letting fighters have a furball without any objective. Call of Duty in the air, just team deathmatch.
Quite true, fighters were invented to intercept the early recon planes and thd earliest bombers in WW1.
We will never get a new bomber. The bomber line is now reserved for strike planes like F-15E or Su-34 or sub trees. It’s nothing new, but now it’s officially over.
Gaijin abandoned them, since to an average player they are just boring and would be an annoying chore for fighter players - the target audience - if they were in any way relevant.
Bombers haven’t been made completely irrelevant in sim, because Gaijin abandoned sim too. Sim players are not Gaijin’s target audience either. They didn’t even try to make a naval sim.
As A Person Who Used To Love Bombers It’s Really Sad Bombers Are Beyond Useless In Arcade You Are 100% Dead 4.3 5.0 And Above Idk About Late Tier Cause It Takes A Fucking Eternity To Get There. To Elaborate NUMBER 1 ITS A 50 50 If You Even Have The Chance To Do What You Are Built For Why? CAUSE GAIJIN IN THERE INFINITE FUCKING WISDOM Decided To Make Half The Maps You Play Fighter Oriented Meaning If You Get A Base Capture Map You Are USELESS Because You Are In A Map That Is Meant For Fighters What The Fuck Are You Supposed To Do With A B-17 IN A MAP WITH NO BASES TO BOMB NO GROUND TARGETS ENLESS YOU DROP YOU’RE BOMBS FIRST And You Might Ask Why Not Bring A Bomber In You’re Fighter Line-Up Well Let Me Answer CAUSE IT IS A WORTHLESS PLANE WHEN YOU ARE LIMITED TO 5 LIVES WITHOUT SPENDING MONEY I’m Not Gonna Flip A Coin Every Time I Play A Match And Bomb I Get 10 Kills On Average 25 My Max That Is 2 Less Enemy Fighters Dead On Average Cause I Brought A Useless Bomber. Now If You Are Like Me If You Are A Bomber You’re Line Up Is Bombers NOT FIGHTERS Makes You Really Fucking Useless In A Base Capture Map I’m Not Gonna Loose Those 2 Kills Because I Wanted To Bring A Bomber Line-Up And Gaijin Decides To Give Me A Base Capture Map Sorry But That Was Really Fucking Aggravating Since The New Bug In This Update Where Only Bombers Get To Play Some Matches.
Now Onto The Maps Where You Can Have A Effect If You Don’t Die First. Number 1 Issue In This Mode 4.0 And Up 5.0 6.0 If You Climb 9/10 YOU ARE DEAD Before You Even Get To Drop You’re Bombs Because Bf 109s Can Climb Ridiculously Fast Not Faulting The 109 That’s Its Job From Spawn Pretty Much Any Germany Plane You Can Climb To Bomber Spawn And Well It’s Effectively Over If You Don’t Have A Fighter Escort Which You Rarely Have And Even Then It’s A 50 50 If You’re Escort Wins Number 2 Especially B 17 Bombers Gunners Are Useless Manual Control Might Be My Own Skill Issue But Probably Not If You Can Aim A Fighter You Should Be Able To Aim You’re Gunner’s But No. If You Get You’re Guns On Target Rarely For Me You’re Bullets Don’t Do Anything Endless You Unload 100’s Of Bullets Into Them If You EVEN HAVE THE CHANCE Of Shooting You’re First 200 Bullets Without Being Killed Or Crippled By A Fighter Which Is Stupidly Easy As A Fighter. As A Fighter Main Since Bombers Became Beyond Useless Bombers Are Free Kills And They Are Usually Done For In My First Burst. Just To Give You An Idea There Gunners Usually About 80% Of The Time Can’t Even Get A Shot Off At Me. On The Bomber Side Of This This Leave You With 1 Viable Option To Bomb Take You’re Bomber And Dive And B Line It For A Base And Even Then It’s Not A Guaranteed Strategy Ehh 40% Chance Of Failure If You Know What You Are Doing Buuut Pretty Much As Soon As You Drop You’re Bombs The Enemy Fighters Have Caught Up To You And You’re Dead From My Experience Now The Second Path I See. You Start The Game And Climb If You See Any 109’s Near You’re Level Aka About 3,000Ft Below You Climb Climb To Ridiculous Heights Over 20,000 Feet To Be Fairly Safe Just To Reinform You If You Forgot But Most Of The Time Bombers Spawn Between 10k Feet And 12k Feet Usually Somewhere In Between The Only Way To Climb This High Without Being Instantly Gun Runned By A 109 Or Do 335 A-0 Is To Do A Complete 180 On Spawn Climb Till You Are Over 20k Feet Then Turn Towards The Enemy’s Bases And Keep Climbing Till You Can Drop But Even This Isn’t A Guarantee Cause While It May Take You 5 Ish MIn To Climb To That Altitude A Fighter Can Do That In Less Than Half That Time Meaning You Now Wasted 5 - 10 Min Of You’re Life Climbing When A Fighter Can Reach The Same Altitude A 2 - 5 Min And Don’t Even Think Of Ground Pounding With A Bomber To Be Semi Accurate At The Altitude You Need To Be Relatively Safe You Need A 500 - 1000 Lb Bomb On A Stationary Target Which You Can Only Cary A Few Rightfully So. If You Want To Ground Pound Bring A Strike Aircraft Or A Fighter With Bombs Cause You Will Be 1000% More Effective Than A Bomber Because You Can Actually Fight Back
How To Fix Bombers Or At least Make Them Playable Again In My Opinion
NUMBER ONE MAKE IT SO AIR SUPERIORITY MATCHES CAN BE TOGGLED WITHOUT PAYING FOR PREMIUMN AND EVEN THEN YOU DON’T GET TO BLOCK ALL THE MATCHES THAT ARE AIR SUPERIORITY Aka Base Capture Maps This Will At The Very Least Give Bombers A Small Chance Of Doing There Job This Is The Only Option I See Without Majorly Disrupting The Current Game Balance Like Making Ai Gunner Ridiculous Or Something Like That, Which Is Stupid It Should Of Been A Free Choice Since Day 1 This Removes The Coin Toss That Decides Weather Or Not You’re Completely Useless To You’re Team Or Semi Useless To You’re Team.
Slightly More “Changing The Current Game Balance” Without Completely Breaking The Game Spawn Bombers Around 16 - 18k FT This Means Any Fighter That Wants To Hunt You Will Have To Climb To You’re Alt And Maybe Bring Bomber Spawn Slightly Further Back From Fighter Spawns So Bombers Don’t Drop There Payload Completely Uncontested. But Any Fighter That Wants To Hunt You Down They ABSOLUTLY CAN Climb That Alt Relatively Fast But This Is A Double Edge Sword Let’s Be Honest Here Most War Thunder Players Are Not The Brightest Bunch Around And This Will Make It So About 90% Of The Time Fighter’s Are To Annoyed To Hunt You Down I Can Speak As A Fighter Main My Self I Sure As Hell Aint Gonna Waste 3 - 5 Min Climbing For 1 Kill When There Are 8+ Enemy’s You Don’t Have To Climb For So How To Fix This Issue Make Separate Game modes One For Fighters Only Doesn’t Mean You Cant Bring Bombers But Like It Is Now If You Bring A Bomber You’re Gonna Be Near Useless And The Second Kind Of Game mode Aka Separating Ground Strike Missions & Base Destroying Missions Into There Own Playlist And Reward Fighters Far Far Far More For Protecting Bombers As A Fighter There Is Literally 0 Incentive To Protect Bombers Idk Make It So You’re Objective Is To Protect You’re Friendly Player Bombers And For The Bombers To Well Do There Job Bomb Shit With Excessive Force Obviously This Would Be Needed To Be Finetuned As I’m Litterly Spitballing Ideas But These Ideas Sound A Hell Of A lot Better Than What’s Currently In The Game This Means For About The 30% Of People Who Play Objectives Will Have A Reason To Protect There Bombers Let’s Be Real About Half The Players Don’t Even Know There Is A Objective It Seems BUT NO MATTER WHAT MAKE IT SO BASE CAPTURE MAPS ARE ENTIRLY SLECTABLE Cause Let Me Tell You The Most Annoying Thing In This Games Is You Bring A Bomber Line Up Pure Bombers And Guess What You Get Base Capture The One Mode You Are 100% Useless. In That Is A Game I Could Of Gotten 10 Kills But I Didn’t Get ANYTHING ABSOLUTLY NOTHING Because I Wanted To Do Some Bombing Or FAR MORE FUCKING ANNOYING You Have A Battlepass Mission To Destroy Said Amount Of Bases So You Obviously Bring Bombers But Nooooo You Get A Map Where Air Superiority Is Key So You Get Nothing For Being A Bomber My 12 Year Old Fucking Sister Who Doesn’t Even Play Games Could Of Though Of This Soo Kindly What The Fuck I Came Up With These Ideas With Less Than 2 Min Of Though I Could Come Up With A Full Game Mode But I’m Doing A Job That People Get Paid For With Apparently Less Foresight That A Monkey.
Inshort Fix YOU’RE CURRENT GAME BREAKING BUG CAUSE WITHOUT IT I NEVER WOULD OF BROUGH THIS UP LIKE THIS If You Cant Tell I’m Fucking Annoyed Rightfully So Cause If You Don’t Bring A Bomber For This Bug You Straight Up DO NOT GET TO PLAY And I Will Not Be Forced To Play A Plane That Is Useless 99% Of The Time
These Suggestions Are For Arcade I Don’t Really Know Much About RB But The Last Time I Played It Bombers Could Alteast Drop There Bombs And Have A Fair Chance Of Getting Home So It Seemed Ok If You Want Me To Elaborate On Any Of My Ideas Ask And I Will But This Is Getting Long Winded As It Is So This Is Where I End This Rant/Suggestions/Anger Relief Over All I Actually Like The New Update Sure It Needs Some Tweaks But Over All It’s Good It’s Cool They Are Bringing Back The GE Wager Of Sorts I Think It Is Different From The One That Used To Be In The Game Before But Cool Nonetheless Don’t Think I’m Here Hating Just To Hate Just Annoyed Over This And Well This New Game Breaking Bug Was The Straw That Broke The Camels Back To Say
…what?
