The state of bomber gameplay

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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Since the event has almost ended and many players are excited to try out their new B52/Tu95 bombers, please allow me to ruin your mood.

Bombers in this game are unusable! They are not not-meta or not-OP, no they are NOT-USEABLE.
They are in such a bad state, that if you queue up to play as a bomber, then you are actively griefing your team. This is bad for everyone involved. The others will lose because you are useless, and you will have a miserable time playing. Let me take you through the average bomber experience.

You spawn in with your bomber and you pick a bombing point that you will try to bomb. You begin to bee line towards it and you are praying that you get there before the P51/BF109/La/Mig players, that are climbing at 70° and somehow still gaining speed. Mind you that if they catch you, they will rip you to shreds with a single burst, because contrarily to numerous documented events from WW2 where bombers survived with gaping holes in their wings and fuselage, in war thunder bombers are made of paper. Of course, the unrealistic fragility of bombers has been further amplified when gaijin added the “munition detonation” mechanics, where now a single lucky shot from a 50cal can detonate your plane. But let’s imagine that the enemy team allows you to bomb in peace. You will then have to fight with your teammates.

In ARB there are 4 bombing targets on the map initially. If you have more than 4 bombers this already causes problems, but even if all the bombers have their own targets, you can get fucked over by some fighter/attacker who decides to steal the bases from you. And now what??? You are 4-6 km in the sky in a flying brick; you are not going to bomb the small mowing targets that’s for sure. Just wait for the bases to respawn? Sure, that’s your best hope, but that’s a very boring, unrewarding and passive gameplay, and you can get killed while doing that or the match itself can end.

So, to sum it up. Playing as a bomber is a high-risk low-reward and RNG filled torture experience. So what’s the point of playing bombers if a fighter/attacker can do all this AND MORE, AND BETTER

And the most ironic part about this is that the one and only actually fun and viable bomber gameplay style at the moment is to ditch all the bombs, equip gun-pods if you can, and use your high-altitude bomber spawn and be a makeshift fighter/interceptor, and ruin the life of other unlucky bomber players XD.

Possible solutions?

Re-work solution: Drastically rework how bombers function in the game. For example, allow air-rearming and repair for bombers above the airfield or at the edge of the map, introduce bombing targets that only strategic bombers can destroy etc.

Separate game mode solution: Create a PvP/PvE game mode for bombers. For example, escort a bomber squadron and bomb some city or some “big” target, and the AI bots or players try to stop that. IDK get creative.

Nuclear solution: Just remove bombers from the game. Admit that they don’t fit into the game and cannot be balance and just take them out.

Gaijin solution: Ignore the player base and the glaring problems with your game and release 20 more premium F16/Mig29/Lepoard2/T80 variants, preferably in 500 $ packs

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Gaijin’s solutions:
Rework bomber damage models. [In progress.]
Work on game modes. [In progress.]
Etc.

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I never understood this about the usual bomber player. Why are they actively killing themselves?
I remember watching a video on youtube of an instructional movie for bomber pilots, where they needed to take a special path to avoid getting hit by flak. In-game, why not take a path that avoids enemy fighters?
Go to the side, go behind your team, go above clouds, go behind mountains, do ANYTHING to become a harder target to hit (whether by making others an easier target, or avoid detection, or any other way). Recruit a player to be your squad escort.
“But my bases will be taken!” Don’t they respawn?
If I’m not wrong, destroying a base is worth 1 player kill, but so is destroying 8 stationary small ground targets. Bomber pilots should consider them too, I think.

As for your suggestions:

That’s not going to change much, the same problems exist as the base case (when battle starts). Rather than doing that, what if landing your bomber and leaving the battle (finishing your mission, in essence) would double your rewards?

That sounds great. I would suggest adding an effect that would cause airfield reload and repair to be slower, letting your team get advantage, beyond just ticket drain.

Sounds fun, but we already have Ground RB for bombers to have a more meaningful role.

Or players could just not use the bombers if they are unusable, and leave them to players that are willing to put in the effort to master them.

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Show me a game with more than 4 bombers please.

Serious suggestion: Try Air Arcade. Most bombers work there, if played correctly.

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I think he means fighter-bombers

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He talks about them seperately in a very entitled way:

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Almost every game between 8.7 and 12.0 has at least 4 people bombing, with many of those “bombers” being fighters carrying napalm. It makes for a bad experience in dedicated ground attackers because they are often worse in A2A combat, and often slower than actual fighters carrying napalm.

Take the B-52, B-66, or Vautour: All of those planes are at a BR where there is very likely to not get any bases because faster fighters/attackers got to them before.

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The distinction is clearly made by the poster. He refers to bombers as in bombers, not to fighters/attackers as in fighters/attackers.
He also believes bases belong to bombers and not to fighters/attackers:

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He could also be inconsistent with his titles.

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Game will be over before they respawn which is the issue

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The bombers are BR’d based on each other, which is an issue because while bombers aren’t compressed, 9.3 fighters are.

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The game will occasionally be over even before some bomb carriers even reach the original bases, if they don’t bee line to the bases. The higher up in BR you go, the more frequent this seems to be.

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Manny games have 2-3 bombers and if you include all the dual purpose attackers and fighters then you can have 6+ people who are trying to bomb bases.

You sound like the type of person who would intentionally take the disabled parking slot then give a fat middle finger to the wheelchair guy because you got there first. It’s not like they physically need it because their limited function or something.

Of course, there is no written rule that says that bases belong to the bombers but its basic courtesy to let them have it. And it’s very obvious why! It’s because the B17, B29, Tu4, etc. are not going to be able to bomb the mowing small tanks or the individual artillery positions from 6 km altitude. Maybe as a backup plan after they have descended to rearm but definitely not on the firs run.

Of course, this would not be an issue if there were dedicated targets for these unlucky miserable bomber players that they can bomb.

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F-104C/Su-7B 'napalm bombers’ with naplam bombs want to say hi

It won’t matter when gamemode itself is doomed, and traditional bombers have no role but being manned bait.

Yes, it is, Simple Science.

So, in conclusion, you want to keep those bombers worthless, at least for two years.

Because, Compression is bad, Gaijin never would move those supersonic jets in 9.3 to a higher, in this level of compression.

You hadn’t changed from B-66B threads
You want to sactifice bombers, in the name of bombers.

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Bomber = strategic heavy big flying school bus dedicated and built for one singular purpose which is to carpet bomb large stationary targets

Small multi-purpose fighter bomber = I lump them into the attacker category

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I already explained why bomber players do this and why your suggestion would not work

But to sum it up, ARB is played like a call of duty team deathmatch, unless this fundamental issue is changed then ARB games will be all about kills, kills and more kills. You don’t have the luxury to play passively and take your time.

A couple times when I got tired by the mindless top tier missile spam meta, I decided to take my F15 and go for a small flank, legit small not a tour around the map. By the time I arrived to the center of the map to shoot people in the side the game was already over and I finished the game with LITERALY zero mission score and received like 9 SL and 3 RP. This is why you always need to rush in, because unfortunately this is the only viable play style

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It’s not over if you take care to keep yourself alive

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But 4 is the maximum, so you will have difficulty to find one with more.

Don’t project. Not everyone feels entitled to bases.

Says who? The bomber pilot?
Why not play the mode where bombers can win games? Where they matter! In RB, the side with more bombing planes usually loses the game.

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The match ends because your team wins.

Also if you are the last person alive they will “blind hunt” and kill you, if they don’t get you before that

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Bombers in WT do kinda suck, regardless of that one guy here going like: “Erm if you actually try to learn how to play by going to the edges of the map and then turning in to drop your bombs instead of trying to normally go to a base” ☝️🤓 and then him trying to gatekeep bombers by also saying if you dont use his strat then you should never ever even touch bombers, they are pretty useless in Air RB as they stand. They dont have any advantage over using a fighter with napalm to bomb a base.

There is no scenario where i would ever unironically take a bomber over a fighter or fighter-bomber or even a strike aircraft. If they actually got their ECM back in air rb and ground rb along with stand off munitions when applicable i would be more than happy to play them, but thats unrealistic to expect. They really need to overhaul bomber gameplay with those bomber-only objects, perhaps bomber only spawns, etc etc. to make them worthwhile and useful to play

1 Like