This might be a bit of a controversal opinion, do not be mad at me, but I largely do not fully follos the hate for using bombs in planes outside of bombers. And i do not wish to spread it myself further.
In a prop, for example my french f8f, that already carries a good gun arnament internal that cannot be removed, if i then put bombs on that and use it on a base i do not lose its fighting capabilities. Then whats the issue of me bombing then in case all the bombers/strike planes are already dead, its free rp then.
Obviously when bombers/planes are in the match you coordinate with those and do not steal bases, they already have a hard enough live as it is and take priority in selecting their targets.
Additionally I of course get the idea of dropping the bombs in a dogfight since there they weigh you down but outside of it, or at the end of a game where theres no one really fighting, is there really a neccesarity for hating on people this much?
Yet if i for example play the EF or ICE phantom i need to dodge and notch enemy missiles to not die and due to that already pass a large distance away from the main middle combat. If i then now pass over a base on my way back to the fight, whats the harm in me bombing a base and carrying on into the combat with my missiles i still carry anyways regardless. Does that really warrant as much hate as it gets in the forum and other media?
Isnt it at the end of the day “play however you want” instead of being forced to do what others force on you because of Meta?
Current ARB format does not accomodate for strike craft/ bomber and ground strikes in general.
By bombing in fighter, not only you are taking away from strike craft / bombers by going after their targets, you take away from your team as a whole by putting yourself in worse position in air to air combat, which increases chance of loss, which takes away SL and RP from your team.
Sure you earned your RP by bomging a base in a game without any dedicated bomber, but the entire time you were doing your attack run, two of your allies had to fight three enemies.
Imho using “hate” seems to be way too strong. From my pov it is just a matter of your individual goals and if and how they contradict with the goals of your team mates.
So if you play to win a game it is especially at prop BRs extremely disappointing to notice in the loading screen that you (depends on nation) you are the only fighter in your team without bombs. Just by this view (and their aircraft) you can predict the outcome of 90-95% of your matches.
In other words: Those bomb carry fighters (prop BRs) influence the outcome significantly (as they are rather easy targets) and put an insane pressure on those guys trying to win the air battle as they are playing outnumbered.
On the other hand: Gaijin designed this base bombing trap on purpose. As long as you get 2-3 times more RP for a rather simple task like dropping bombs on a base than killing an enemy aircraft it is rather comprehensible that players choose the easier way to tet RP.
The fact that the majority of RP is generated by time (if you have killed a player or a base) requires actually that you stay alive - at best for 25 minutes. Most of those base bombing fighters at prop BRs never see this way higher RP income as they get swarmed by enemies.
It boils down that Air RB was degraded to a plain grinding tool with just a few passionate pilots.
in terms of playing “optimally” the issue with doing something like that on a fighter is opportunity cost
while you may think you do not lose fighting ability, you actually do, especially at prop and low jet BRs, because your aircraft is heavier you are less able to climb which means you will have less energy advantage over the enemy when you begin engaging, at high jet BRs its more about the loss in acceleration/top speed that comes from carrying bombs which used to be a bigger problem when we had to take off
ultimately it simply comes down to carrying bombs often puts you in a less advantageous position
and sometimes there comes a point where you may have to dogfight but you arent willing to dump your bombs to be able to do so properly
imo some aircraft like the phantoms, which are already largely a very fast truck with good match endurance and gets access to flamebombs dont really lose anything noticable from carrying the two flamebombs needed to kill a base so its largely worth it to carry them specifically for those incidents where “oh im already over a base that nobody else has taken, may as well put my bombs there”
the other thing to remember is 90% of the time its only worth carrying enough of a bomb load to take out one base as if you carry more your multiplier for bases decreases and your flight performance decreases even more, and theres only 4 bases between like 12-16 people, its kinda cringe hogging them
I remember being an utter zomber in the mig-23ml, all I did to get to top tier was bomb using the fire bombs then using the r24rs are score free kills.
It’s a super easy, fast and braindead way to get to top tier. I think it’s fine to go bomb as a fighter
Top tier is the most boring piece of shit bracket I’ve ever seen, I don’t why kiddies rush everything to get there. Ooo! look at my shiny new toy, spam me missiles, get me rp, die to the foxy-threes, rinse repeat.
There’s no pizazz or charisma to it., My most enjoyable moments when I played top , was at late-game where it boiled down to a handful of players. The stakes, the mind-games, the positional battle.
You only get that out of like 1 out of 8 or 10 games. It’s all snowball and sub-10 minute matches at the rest. It’s all so tiresome, you learn nothing of it.
And then people want the F-22, Su-57, F-35’s. New toys with the same broken game mode. No change, they want the big shiny rod of doom that kills all planes past 3000kmish or some shit.
The issue, is that a fighter, something like a Phantom is usually very competitive for the BR in terms of A2A performance and is more than capable of doing well running just A2A missiles. A strike aircraft at a similar BR, is not. At least, no where near as effective.
Think F-4S (12.0) vs Tornado GR4 (12.3). In that fight the Tornado GR4 is usually outclassed and yes is a higher BR. So its really really really annoying when the F-4S runs napalm, kills the bases and then leaves the GR4 to go and dogfight. Ive had this more than a few times where I just had to ditch my bombs because I had nothing to drop them on because fighters took all the bases. I left the match with nothing, the fighters left the match with base kills and A2A kills.
Then as Beeschurger put it, whilst you were focusing on base bombing, the rest of the fighters on your team were outnumbered. Even worse when you have someone in something like an F-4S that doesnt run any missiles at all, and just Napalm, so after they have dropped the bombs, they are just quit or go off gunstrafing Ai targets.
The gamemode is designed to punish aircraft who’s job it is is to drop bombs. Period. Its a gamemode issue, not necessarily a player issue, but the frustration is real from both the perspective of someone trying to play a strike aircraft and from the perspective of someone actually trying to play a fighter
Not saying you are incorrect or something. You only did mention fighters with bombs as contributors to loss here. Arent people who picked bombers/strike aircraft, clearly inferior aircraft compared to fighters, sabotaging their team as well by putting it in disadvantage? And its even worse than fighters considering fighters with bombs will always have more chances to kill enemy than bomber.
depends. if they are going to ground targets, they can actually help win the match. if they only go for bases, they are not helping at all.
the game mode needs to be changed so that ground pounding and bombing have a larger effect. even just added the af bombing back into the game would help a good bit.
I find it more depending on br then anything, something like a 12.0 phantom is ok for bombing because there arent a lot of strike aircraft/bombers at its BR, and those that are are most of the time are faster.
In lower tiers however you have bombers which can do nothing to help except to distract and bomb bases and strike aircraft most of the times dont have the airframe for dogfights.
The irony though is that I usually end most matches in a strike fighter like the Tornado with the most A2A kills too.
But the game limits the number of strike aircraft per team if im not mistaken. But if all the fighters are base bombing, then that doesnt really matter.
But they arent deciding factor in most cases. Either your fighters do the job and win or enemy overpowers them and comes to you with blind hunt orders and stuff. Only time its useful is when some spacex su7 is hiding in space and you need ticket bleeding.
Also fighters can sometimes excel at ground target killing as well. And even if they dont they still retain ability to bonk enemy coming for them. While bomber can only accept its fate.
the fact they are going for ground targets means that they are still trying to win. i would rather have a strike fighter trying to clean up ground targets on my team than a fighter that zooms straight to a base while ignoring the enemies diving on him.
still, game mode needs to provide better ways for cas/bombers to win matches.
I guess they are but that doesnt bring victory anyway.
That fighter will still have more chances to impact game outcome than bomber/strike aircraft. Because fighter retains air to air capability. And can choose between doing air to air combat or becoming smb elses frag. Both after or before base bombing.
Problem is that historically fighter-bombers were a pretty significant thing.
F6F, F4U, P-47, P-51 in British service, P-38, Typhoon/Tempest, Fw190, P-39/P-63 all have significant historical presence blowing up railways, railyards, locomotives, trucks, artillery positions and boats.
I cannot speak for air RB,
but in air sim in a competetive lobby where both sides want to win fighter bombers have a major and significant contribution to victory through ticket bleed.
And in the other airplane game, Il2:Great battles on both Wings of Liberty and Combat Box fighter-bomber actions kind of form the bulk of activity that actually contributes to victory (last Kuban campaign was in large part won because Fw 190s make better fighter-bombers than yaks and La-5s!)
I can understand people bombing in strike aircraft if theyre trying to research it to playable state for GRB; otherwise why would they subject themselves to playing strike aircraft in ARB?