Weak bombers, and useless

[luridello666]

I would like to suggest a critical rework regarding the current state of heavy bombers in War Thunder. Currently, these aircraft suffer from a combination of highly unrealistic damage models and a complete lack of tactical impact on the match outcome, which leaves bomber pilots frustrated and makes an entire class of vehicles virtually useless in the current meta.

In the current game state, heavy bombers are incredibly fragile. A short burst from 20mm or 30mm cannons is usually enough to instantly detach an entire wing or snap the fuselage in half. This does not align with historical combat reports. During World War II and the Cold War, heavy bombers proved to be remarkably resilient, often returning to base with massive structural damage and multiple dead engines. In War Thunder, mouse-aim allows fighter pilots to concentrate all their firepower onto a single pixel of a wing root from long range. Combined with a fragile damage model, wings snap off instantly as if they were made of wood, completely ignoring the structural redundancy built into these aircraft. Gaijin should increase the structural integrity of bomber wings and fuselages against kinetic and high-explosive rounds, ensuring that damage results in severe lift loss and control degradation rather than instant structural failure.

Furthermore, even if a bomber successfully navigates the map and drops its payload, the reward for the team is negligible. Air Realistic Battles are currently decided almost entirely by killing all enemy fighters. Destroying enemy bases yields far too few Victory Points, meaning that a bomber player can perform perfectly and still watch their team lose because base destruction does not drain enough enemy tickets to pose a real strategic threat. Fighters treat bombers as free experience points because ignoring them carries no tactical penalty. To fix this, Gaijin should significantly increase the ticket penalty for the enemy team when a strategic base or airfield is destroyed. Making strategic bombing a viable win-condition will force the enemy team to intercept bombers out of tactical necessity, restoring a proper balance between bombers, interceptors, and escort fighters.

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[Rupert64]

@luridello666

In the current game state, heavy bombers are incredibly fragile

and in addition the bomb load explodes by any gun hit causing bombers to pop like balloons - since about 1 year ago

[Morvran]

@luridello666

In the current game state, heavy bombers are incredibly fragile. A short burst from 20mm or 30mm cannons is usually enough to instantly detach an entire wing or snap the fuselage in half. This does not align with historical combat reports. During World War II and the Cold War, heavy bombers proved to be remarkably resilient, often returning to base with massive structural damage and multiple dead engines. In War Thunder, mouse-aim allows fighter pilots to concentrate all their firepower onto a single pixel of a wing root from long range. Combined with a fragile damage model, wings snap off instantly as if they were made of wood, completely ignoring the structural redundancy built into these aircraft. Gaijin should increase the structural integrity of bomber wings and fuselages against kinetic and high-explosive rounds, ensuring that damage results in severe lift loss and control degradation rather than instant structural failure.

One is apparently in the words according to the Q&A but we dont know when it will arrive or what it will do.

@luridello666

Furthermore, even if a bomber successfully navigates the map and drops its payload, the reward for the team is negligible. Air Realistic Battles are currently decided almost entirely by killing all enemy fighters. Destroying enemy bases yields far too few Victory Points, meaning that a bomber player can perform perfectly and still watch their team lose because base destruction does not drain enough enemy tickets to pose a real strategic threat. Fighters treat bombers as free experience points because ignoring them carries no tactical penalty. To fix this, Gaijin should significantly increase the ticket penalty for the enemy team when a strategic base or airfield is destroyed. Making strategic bombing a viable win-condition will force the enemy team to intercept bombers out of tactical necessity, restoring a proper balance between bombers, interceptors, and escort fighters.

Part of the issue for the poor rewards is:

End the diminishing Returns mechanic

Do you want to see this mechanic removed? poll Gaijin has long had an extremely negative opinion of ground attackers and have consistantly gone out of their way to ensure that ground attackers are less viable than fighters or fighter-bombers, this can be seen in a number of ways, from how they balance them via BR, how the gamemodes are designed and built, the rewards given, etc etc. But the most egregious in my opinion is the diminishing returns mechanic. This mechanic needs to be removed. Th…

But the rest is just bad gamemode design which needs an overhaul