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
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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).
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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.
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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?
- Very small (and rather rare) old map (Frontline Korsun) which limits the chances of getting intercepted before a bomb drop.
- Extremely bad weather (dusk/dawn, storm, very thick clouds) rendered markers almost useless and the enemy interceptors lost track of the 2 bombers.
- Both bombers were smart enough to choose the best bomb loadout (8 and 4 C 250 Flamm bombs) which produce way higher base damage than standard GP bombs like the SC 250. The He 111 killed a base with 2 out of 8 C 250s, a third Ju 88 killed the other 2 bases before.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Quite true, fighters were invented to intercept the early recon planes and thd earliest bombers in WW1.
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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.
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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?
1 Like
…a short feedback regarding the readability of your post:
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You massively overestimate the attention span of the average forum user. I mean the reason for this thread is that they love bombers too, but your way of presenting your opinion embedded in a wall of text makes it extremely hard to read.
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Besides that: More structure, bullet points and paragraphs would help your issue - same as grammar and punctuation.
And a short feedback regarding the content of your post:
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A lot of your issues are Air AB related.This thread deals with Air RB. I am quite sure there is a running thread discussing bombers in Air AB and i saw a lot of very experienced players there, maybe worth your time to look into it and to post Air AB specific issues there.
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As you had issues with bomber game play in Air RB a few friendly advises related to tasks regarding bombers. Base bombing daily and special tasks (1/6/20 basekills) are a milk run in Air RB - all you need is the right bomber and the right strategy.
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Research the B7A2 (BR 3.7) and the B-18B (4.0) - these are the best bombers you can get within the TTs, extremely high survivability, very high high chance to drop and (if flown correctly) a real pain to kill.
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Put both in your crew slots with the highest crew points/xp and buy the expert qualification. Get familiar with both on test drive map and learn to use the air brake close to rip speed.
With the B-18B you will need your gunners, therefore reload speed is important. Don’t use mouse aim & auto pilot in gunner mode, u need to be able to use gunners and evade incoming fire at the same time. The Swedish 13.3 mm cannon outranges the US 0.50 cal at high speeds, you can get reliably hits and crits >2.2 km. -
Specific for B-18B - never use external loads, the additional drag reduces one of your main strengths: High top speed at high altitude. Climb with 250 kmph IAS - with WEP. Use MEC as soon as water is at 99° Celsius, u fly with infinite WEP just with both rads at 50% - above 6,5 km switch back to AEC, the engines won’t overheat.
You outrun most enemies above 8 km - the average 109 pilot with gun pods has hard tiume to get in his gun range at high speeds (~700-900 meters) thanks to the mine shell bug.
The 2 x 600 kg M50 bombs kills most of your base targets.
The plane (without bomb load and undamaged) is good enough to outturn most single engine fighters, the 2 T-18Bs are way heavier and less nimble. Do not try to turnfight a B7A2 - you will get clapped. -
Specific for B7A2: Climb with 280 km IAS up to 5 km, above with 260 kmph and keep your engine in the white temp range.
The best bombload is 10 x 60 kg - 9 x 60 kg kills every base, even in full uptiers. Most B7A2 pilots use the 800 kg bomb, they waste SLs & RP as the bomb is not killing a base. So in most cases you can get 2 base kills in one match if another B7A2 has dropped a 800 kg bomb - your 10th bomb will finish those bases.
The plane is a beast and outturns all planes with IC spawn - the performance is good enough to kill an enemy bomber on your way to a base and you are still able to drop.
Have a good one!
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Man, I tried, but only made it half way through before your comment hurt my eyes too much.
You don’t need to capitalize the first letter of every word. Some commas or full stops make big paragraph’s infinitely more legible too.
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Won’t be useful for events, but the He 111 H-3 and Ju-88 A-4 are also fantastic, for a more typical bomber usage.
What events???
Both are just rank II, 2nd stage daily and special tasks (plus BP challenges or specific mission score challenges) require always rank III bombers.
Strongly disagree.
Both (He 111 BR 3.3 and Ju 88 3.0) are ez prey & imho not able drop when correctly intercepted by an experienced player. You might get away with a dive attack for one or two bases with the Ju 88 A-4, but only when not running into the omnipresent SB2C / A-36 / Firefly spam. Otherwise a plain MiG 3 or P-39 ruins your day. The performance is not good enough vs fighters / interceptors at the same BR. Same as defensive armament.
The Ju 88 A-4 was for years stable at BR 2.3 - and got uptiered to 3 .0 with 2 BR rounds (7 or 8 months) when the Finish version was introduced. I stopped playing it when it reached 2.7.
Making this readable:
As someone who loves bombers it’s sad to see the state they are in - especially above 4.3-5.0 BR.
It takes a long time to grind to the main bombers of WWII, and once you there you realize you only have a 50/50 chance to actually bomb things due to half of the maps being fighter oriented. In the Capture game mode/type, bombers are pretty much useless and (for bombers) the match devolves into who can get to the ground targets first.
From 4.0, 5.0, and especially 6.0 onwards climbing is usually a death sentence due to the fast-climbing props like the Bf-109, the fact that there are no dedicated escort fighters, bomber gunners are useless, and even with manual aiming the defensive armament of bombers is often heavily outmatched by a single fighter. In my experience, it takes an order of magnitude more bullets from a bomber to defeat a fighter than vice versa (where bombers usually die in one pass).
To actually get to a base you either need to dive for the base as soon as a fighter spots you or you have to do a 180 degree turn and climb for 5-10 minutes, but even then a fighter could just climb up to you anyways. Ground pounding at such high altitudes is also inaccurate in a long-range bomber, so you’re better off just using an attack aircraft instead.
My suggestions for fixes:
- Make air superiority matches a toggle (so you can block all air superiority matches if you want to play bombers)
- Spawn bombers around 1.6x-1.8x higher than they do currently, as well as possibly moving the bomber spawns further back.
- Make separate gamemodes, one that is fighter-focused (the type of matches we have now) and one that is bomber-focused - where the objective is to bomb bases if you are a bomber, and to defend and/or attack bombers if you are a fighter
2 Likes
Yes that’s what I said.
And also yes, they offer a more typical bomber playstyle where gunners and speed are your main defenses, plus both are quite durable and have great bombloads. A Ju 88 A-4 can be fast enough to where your enemies will take themselves out of the match for quite a bit by barely gaining on you. The 111 H-3 is quite durable and will get downtiers somewhat often.
The non-bomber Ju 88 C-6 is also a good challenge to actually impact the game in.
Lmao - if i read your initial reply again, we see the power of misunderstandings based on direct references.
As your statement directly refers to my recommendation with 2 specific aircraft, i was actually wondering how the hell you (as highly experienced player) could describe the B7A2 & the B-18B as “not useful for events”.
Sry & have a good one!
To the rest of your reply regarding the He 111 and Ju 88:
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I agree to a certain point that both have higher bomb loads and can be flown as “Schnellbomber”, but if I refer directly to the essay i was replying to, the fellow player struggles obviously with bomber and gunner game play in the classic sense.
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There is actually no need to use the B7A2 or the B-18B as support fighter - if the average player is solely interested in bombing bases, he can use both of them without the need to engage enemies; fighting other players in an active role is just an option.
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So it is up to the player: If he is just interested in getting to a base (and safely back to his af) in oder to fulfill tasks or events, he has to decide if he kills one or two bases with a very high success rate - or if he gambles to get through with the option to get more base kills without a guarantee to drop.