Bombers one shot in half...20mm craziness

[Meltdown75 9]

Thats it for me flying bombers and attackers. Flying bombers is now the worst it has ever been. You spend half the game climbing to avoid the lower fighters and hopefully most of those that have bothered to climb but there only has to be one and thats your lot. The AI gunners only fire half the time and when they do they couldn't hit a barn door. One hit from a 20mm (sometimes smaller guns) from distance and your fuselage departs company with the cockpit.......EVERY TIME.. BULLCRAP......Gaijin fix it please.........you buffed up the guns on fighters and reduced effect of bombs and increased the amount of damage needed to destroy enemy airbases.....WHY?

Flying bombers is now just a lottery on how long you live, skill has no effect, I have even been shot in half (JU 88) by a bi-plane more than once. idiotic...    Fighters now have all the advantages,  they are spawned too high (or bombers too low)... and as an aside how about letting us choose if we want to go into a domination match. Having a lineup of bombers and being put up against fighters is just suicide and stupid and definately not fun.

You go in bombers to BOMB!!!!! not to get one shotted or pilot sniped. One game i had 5 bombers all pilot sniped....wouldn't mind as much if the co-pilot took over !!!!. Thats what he's there for after all.

Come on Gaijin fix this .... please. make bombing fun again.

[Mortiferum 17,061]

You do realise you were probably not one shotted, but whacked by quite a few more shells right?

 

Remember that each "visible" shot is followed by 4-5 invisible rounds with no tracers. Most fighters have guns that fire 600 rpm+, you kinda die quick.

 

My recommendation is still to fly with buddies who can clear your six, anyone that is chasing a bomber is easy prey.

 

PS: JU-88s are faster than most Bi-planes in a straight line. In that scenario just fly straight and disappear from his sight.

[cashmeowsidehbd 1,269]

i saw one 109 shoot down five heavy bombers in less than a minute today. Absolute xxxx. That's why i leave so many missions. Why waste my Sl's for this crap.

[*Music-AMG 16]

maxing the crews helps a lot for the AI gunners too.   Not always, but, makes a difference..

[sardinha08@psn 3,179]

5 hours ago, Meltdown75 said:

you buffed up the guns on fighters

Including the ones that bombers have. 

 

5 hours ago, Meltdown75 said:

skill has no effect

Actually, it's precisely the opposite, right now it takes skill to survive in a bomber. 

 

5 hours ago, Meltdown75 said:

Fighters now have all the advantages

Including a weaker DM and broken FM. 

 

5 hours ago, Meltdown75 said:

and as an aside how about letting us choose if we want to go into a domination match. Having a lineup of bombers and being put up against fighters is just suicide and stupid and definately not fun.

Bombers are crucial in Domination matches, someone has to kill the ground targets before they capture the airfields for the other team. 

 

5 hours ago, Meltdown75 said:

make bombing fun again.

I would say more, make the game fun again. 

[ziggi57 242]

As a side note: I am currently spading US jets in PVE facing TU4, G8N and B29. As a matter of fact it is now easier to kill them with stock guns instead of spaded ones because they spray more (although hey jam quickly). I don´t Need to aim properly. A short burst with 20mm stock ammo from 1000m and they just fall apart, most times losing wings and tail. I am pretty sure that most times it´s really a single HE Shell that does the Job on a crucial component. I am not sure that it´s the guns overperforming, I think it´s the generally weaker DM´s of every (!) plane now. Especially this "tail blown off" is complete bs. Even touching the ground slightly with your tail will now break the fuselage in half. They should fix the DM´s ASAP.

[ziggi57 242]

Side note 2: Look at this Report and you see something is seriously wrong with the DM´s

 

https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/430804-incredibly-silly-and-fragile-damage-models-for-aircraft/

[Pat_McGherkin 2,074]

The op is pretty much spot on. To get sliced in half from 1.5km in a heavy bomber is laughable. And it is just one round, because that's all it takes to slice an entire plane in half..

 

But it's not just bombers, and it's not just the ridiculous damage models. The guns have been buffed so much that everyone wants to head on because it's just not worth risking taking a hit without getting your hit in first.

I see the self-proclaimed best pilots in the game doing their usual leave after 1 death, departing the game with 2-3-4 kills..if they've been hit, they've been killed.

 

But the worst of it all is that it is wringing out what little skill is left in the game. If things ever go back to how things were, you know, when the game had a tiny element of fun, there will be an entire generation of war thunderers that won't even know what a dogfight is. 

 

Air AB truly is in a pitiful state right now and has been heading downhill for months. I don't see the trend ever being reversed because I can't even remember the last positive change that was made.

 

It's a shame.

[DocProfit 2,663]

I uninstalled the game a week ago.

 

Every update makes the game less fun, hardly any good BR changes, air AB stagnant for years...

 

When your suggestions keep falling on deaf ears you have to walk away.

Edited November 16, 2018 by DocProfit

[sardinha08@psn 3,179]

4 hours ago, Pat_McGherkin said:

It's a shame.

It is a shame to have a game with such potential being ruined by Gaijin's decisions. I've basically stopped playing air AB cause it's not fun and have been mostly playing tanks but I'm already getting sick of the ridiculous map rotation, the Conquest mode spam and all the complete nonsense I see there.
 

3 hours ago, DocProfit said:

I uninstalled the game a week ago.

 

Every update makes the game less fun, few good BR changes, air AB stagnant for years...

 

When you're suggestions keep falling on deaf ears you have to walk away.

I'm sure that you will be an happier person than those that keep playing this frustrating game.

It's not that they don't hear the playerbase, it's more that they don't even care about their own game and I'm pretty sure that most of them don't even play it, or else, they would understand what we feel about this and would, at least, have tried to make it fun again.

[rd_ 170]

On 08/11/2018 at 21:37, *sardinha08 said:

Actually, it's precisely the opposite, right now it takes skill to survive in a bomber. 

 

Skill, or insane luck/patience? If you're a bomber and an enemy fighter points his nose at you and begins flying in your direction, your life as a bomber has been given an expiration date that is 98% guaranteed the moment he reaches you. There isn't much skill that enters into it.

[sardinha08@psn 3,179]

1 hour ago, rd_ said:

Skill, or insane luck/patience? If you're a bomber and an enemy fighter points his nose at you and begins flying in your direction, your life as a bomber has been given an expiration date that is 98% guaranteed the moment he reaches you. There isn't much skill that enters into it.

Luck is always a factor with everything, patience is something you should have when it's needed. You don't play alone in your bomber, as the enemy fighter is not only facing you, you have teamates and some are in fighters too, and some of them climb next to you, so you should be skilled enough to be able to use that in your favour. Unless you're talking about those situations when no one else in your teams climbs but the enemy does, then you start understanding why air superiority should be the first objective to fulfill in every match. What takes no skill is to dive from spawn directly to ground targets kill as many as you can before you crash or get killed and then repeat, that is just outsmarting the game but it's not skill. I've done it alot and gets the job done, that's why everyone knows what you need to play to win matches, right now it's tougher but it's still bombers or planes with bombs that win them.

[rd_ 170]

4 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

Luck is always a factor with everything, patience is something you should have when it's needed. You don't play alone in your bomber, as the enemy fighter is not only facing you, you have teamates and some are in fighters too, and some of them climb next to you, so you should be skilled enough to be able to use that in your favour. Unless you're talking about those situations when no one else in your teams climbs but the enemy does, then you start understanding why air superiority should be the first objective to fulfill in every match. What takes no skill is to dive from spawn directly to ground targets kill as many as you can before you crash or get killed and then repeat, that is just outsmarting the game but it's not skill. I've done it alot and gets the job done, that's why everyone knows what you need to play to win matches, right now it's tougher but it's still bombers or planes with bombs that win them.

 

Even in the best case scenario where fighters are actually escorting their bombers, bombers are so fragile that an enemy fighter will likely kill your friendly bomber before you kill the incoming bandit. Altitude superiority is a team effort and it is essentially a coin toss whether or not you get a team which climbs. What skill is a bomber player supposed to have that makes him more successful? It's entirely luck whether he gets a team that covers him, or happens to slip past enemies unnoticed. A bomber's ability to affect the game is entirely out of his hands.

 

But by diving on ground targets, a Bomber gets to choose his destiny, and whether or not their life in a bomber ends with 0 RP and big negative SL repair bill, or actively contributing to a match and not being a free RP pinata. It's the only winning choice. The alternative is to climb and very likely achieve nothing. It is an absurd quandry bombers are stuck in, and it is furthermore completely unfair to demand bombers play "with more skill" and with significantly more patience than what any other type of vehicle demands, while simultaneously giving them rewards that leave them worse off than before they even started the match. Absolutely absurd, and completely broken game design. The FPE/parts debacle in ground forces is absolutely nothing compared to the flaming wreck that is air AB right now -- you can't even buy your way out of it with GE.

Edited November 12, 2018 by rd_

[sardinha08@psn 3,179]

8 hours ago, rd_ said:

Even in the best case scenario where fighters are actually escorting their bombers, bombers are so fragile that an enemy fighter will likely kill your friendly bomber before you kill the incoming bandit. Altitude superiority is a team effort and it is essentially a coin toss whether or not you get a team which climbs. What skill is a bomber player supposed to have that makes him more successful? It's entirely luck whether he gets a team that covers him, or happens to slip past enemies unnoticed.

That enemy plane must really be skilless if he focus on the bomber first and only then on the friendly fighter, and the bomber is also not very skilled if he puts himself between both figthers and not behind the friendly one, this would give him time to fly away or even dive while both are dogfighting. Enemy fighters don't appear at guns reach from you, you can see them climbing at the distance and turning towards you, if you think it's a suicide mission to proceed then turn back and dive if you have to instead of just heading their way, you know you will die if you do. That is not only skill but to be smart. And like I said, if your team secured air superiority first you would be able to bomb your targets freely and without any effort or risk, can't have it every game don't you think?

 

8 hours ago, rd_ said:

A bomber's ability to affect the game is entirely out of his hands.

Still they decide matches while figthers would hardly affect the outcome of any.

 

8 hours ago, rd_ said:

But by diving on ground targets, a Bomber gets to choose his destiny, and whether or not their life in a bomber ends with 0 RP and big negative SL repair bill, or actively contributing to a match and not being a free RP pinata. It's the only winning choice. The alternative is to climb and very likely achieve nothing. It is an absurd quandry bombers are stuck in, and it is furthermore completely unfair to demand bombers play "with more skill" and with significantly more patience than what any other type of vehicle demands, while simultaneously giving them rewards that leave them worse off than before they even started the match.

Where were you between 1.59 and 1.79? When bombers seemed made out of reinforced concrete, when their gunners were very deadly and they would end matches in less than 3 minutes. Fighters never really counted for the game's objectives, air kills wouldn't count for ticket bleed, and no bomber pilot were complaining about it. It was easy and almost free to play bombers. What could fighters do when most didn't had time to get 1 kill? And don't think I like the game as it is right now cause I don't, I'm not even playing Air AB basically cause I don't find it fun, it takes no skill to spray your guns hoping to do some damage to your enemy's plane or to injure their pilots, but that is how the game is right now. I know it's much harder to play bombers right now, but it's also harder to play fighters and not fun to play both, still are bombers that decide matches and not fighters.

 

8 hours ago, rd_ said:

Absolutely absurd, and completely broken game design.

Agreed. Same has Spitfire's broken FMs, Yak's broken FMs, F8F-1s broken FMs, most italian fighters broken FMs, and I could keep going with different things like some of the cannons/mg's and every DM on this game.

 

8 hours ago, rd_ said:

The FPE/parts debacle in ground forces is absolutely nothing compared to the flaming wreck that is air AB right now -- you can't even buy your way out of it with GE.

Also I partially agree with you here, FPE/Parts never seem a really big issue at lower tiers and their RP price got reduced a lot on higher tiers, so in a couple of matches you can get them. It's very frustrating to play stock tanks and probably every tank should have them from stock but it's so much more frustrating to play planes that get their pilot injured and become flying bricks or that lose their tail surfaces completely with a few shots and only fly straight down. About buying your way with GE, just NO, as for in tanks we don't need medkits in this game or other type of bought modifications, and they were going to be sold in the Gaijin Market where not all players have access to(PS4, XBox, Netherlands, Belgium,...), that would definitively kill this game as a free to play game.

Gaijin is getting too greedy lately and honestly, and after investing so much time and money in this game, I really don't like where it's heading, they should focus in bringing the fun back to Air AB and fixing what they have broke on the last years instead of just adding new vehicles to the game. It's not helicopters or ships that made this game great.

[rd_ 170]

11 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

That enemy plane must really be skilless if he focus on the bomber first and only then on the friendly fighter, and the bomber is also not very skilled if he puts himself between both figthers and not behind the friendly one, this would give him time to fly away or even dive while both are dogfighting.

 

Are you sure you play AB? AB players are like seagulls when it comes to bombers. Once a fighter sees a bomber, the sole purpose of their existence becomes pointing their nose at the bomber and traveling in a straight line until the bomber is dead. 9/10 times if I'm near a bomber, an enemy fighter goes after the bomber, not me. And if we're going to be real, I go after the bomber too, not the near-by fighter. Why should I waste my time dog fighting when there's a slow lumbering RP pinata? Not to mention it's a race against my own teammates to be the first to claim the free kill.

 

11 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

Enemy fighters don't appear at guns reach from you, you can see them climbing at the distance and turning towards you, if you think it's a suicide mission to proceed then turn back and dive if you have to instead of just heading their way, you know you will die if you do. That is not only skill but to be smart. And like I said, if your team secured air superiority first you would be able to bomb your targets freely and without any effort or risk, can't have it every game don't you think?

 

And if your team doesn't claim air superiority at altitude, you die, earn nothing, and get a repair bill for the several minutes of effort. This basically just circles back to 1) bombers have no control over their ability to deliver a payload and 2) it is insanely unfair that a vehicle has to go through that sort of trouble -- which no other vehicle in this video game is expected to go through.

 

11 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

Still they decide matches while figthers would hardly affect the outcome of any.

 

If the enemy fighters graciously give him that choice, then sure.

 

11 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

Where were you between 1.59 and 1.79?

 

If my post history went back far enough, you'd see me complaining relentlessly about the broken overpowered state of bombers. Nothing has changed since then. The game is still broken, but now its in reverse. The problem is the game mode and they just wont touch it.

[sardinha08@psn 3,179]

10 hours ago, rd_ said:

Are you sure you play AB? AB players are like seagulls when it comes to bombers. Once a fighter sees a bomber, the sole purpose of their existence becomes pointing their nose at the bomber and traveling in a straight line until the bomber is dead. 9/10 times if I'm near a bomber, an enemy fighter goes after the bomber, not me. And if we're going to be real, I go after the bomber too, not the near-by fighter. Why should I waste my time dog fighting when there's a slow lumbering RP pinata? Not to mention it's a race against my own teammates to be the first to claim the free kill.

If the enemy fighter goes for the bomber he will become a free kill to the friendly fighter, and if you decide to do the same when in a fighter, don't be surprised if you get killed by that fighter you just ignored. Why whould you ignore the biggest threat you have up there, I really don't know, I guess you decided to prioritize your bigger threat as the bomber that may help enemy team win the game since you can always respawn if that enemy fighter kills you. In real life I'm pretty sure that any pilot would prioritize his targets by the threat they represent to him first and to his "team" next, since real pilots can't respawn. 

 

10 hours ago, rd_ said:

And if your team doesn't claim air superiority at altitude, you die, earn nothing, and get a repair bill for the several minutes of effort. This basically just circles back to 1) bombers have no control over their ability to deliver a payload and 2) it is insanely unfair that a vehicle has to go through that sort of trouble -- which no other vehicle in this video game is expected to go through.

What about if you are in a fighter facing half enemy team up there? You try to fight them with a big disadvantage, you die, earn nothing and get a repair bill for the several minutes of effort.
1) It's not you against all enemy team.
2) It's not you against all enemy team.
When you talk here, it sounds like it's your bomber against the entire enemy team of deadly fighters, but it's not. You have a team backing you up, with deadly fighters too, and like you said they want to get those enemy bombers like enemy fighters want to get you, but they also want to get enemy fighters cause they are the biggest threat to them. Sometimes your team gets the advantage and sometimes it doesn't, I'm sure you don't complain when your team gets air superiority and you can keep playing your bomber until the end of the match without any effort or risk, just grabbing all that free RP and SL in a way that no fighter can.
 

 

10 hours ago, rd_ said:

If the enemy fighters graciously give him that choice, then sure.

Again, you consider that it's always you against the entire enemy team but it's not.

 

10 hours ago, rd_ said:

If my post history went back far enough, you'd see me complaining relentlessly about the broken overpowered state of bombers. Nothing has changed since then. The game is still broken, but now its in reverse. The problem is the game mode and they just wont touch it.

I'll take your word, but I just mentioned that cause sometimes the game favours bombers and others fighters(not in DMs right now), and bombers have been favoured since 1.53 when their gunners became way more deadly than before and then on 1.59 when Gaijin decided to buff their DMs to a point where they seem to be made out of reinforced concrete, just to make you see how the game was back then, I was doing the WW2 Chronicle events 30 kills task by flying bombers in a straight line while dropping my bombs to get the other 2000 points and 10 wins tasks done, and it wasn't just me doing this, some of my friends who are great pilots were doing the same and laughing about how easy it was to play bombers like that.

Again, I'm basically not even playing Air AB anymore cause I just don't find it fun and I 'm not against players that enjoy playing bombers, but right now the problem is not bomber exclusive, for me the problem has to do with a general DM weakness(to not call it something else), I see weird damage being done on both my fighters and bombers and I think it ruins the game.

[HochgeborenKlown 1,276]

On 08/11/2018 at 15:17, Meltdown75 said:

Thats it for me flying bombers and attackers. Flying bombers is now the worst it has ever been. You spend half the game climbing to avoid the lower fighters and hopefully most of those that have bothered to climb but there only has to be one and thats your lot. The AI gunners only fire half the time and when they do they couldn't hit a barn door. One hit from a 20mm (sometimes smaller guns) from distance and your fuselage departs company with the cockpit.......EVERY TIME.. BULLCRAP......Gaijin fix it please.........you buffed up the guns on fighters and reduced effect of bombs and increased the amount of damage needed to destroy enemy airbases.....WHY?

Flying bombers is now just a lottery on how long you live, skill has no effect, I have even been shot in half (JU 88) by a bi-plane more than once. idiotic...    Fighters now have all the advantages,  they are spawned too high (or bombers too low)... and as an aside how about letting us choose if we want to go into a domination match. Having a lineup of bombers and being put up against fighters is just suicide and stupid and definately not fun.

You go in bombers to BOMB!!!!! not to get one shotted or pilot sniped. One game i had 5 bombers all pilot sniped....wouldn't mind as much if the co-pilot took over !!!!. Thats what he's there for after all.

Come on Gaijin fix this .... please. make bombing fun again.

Fun as in bombers in 700 mph dives to destroy a base in a single pass before J'ing out and respawning to repeat until the match ends in 1:00???...So sorry, but I think not...Your problem is your fighters don't bother to climb coupled with you bombers never consider waiting until the initial merge is done and almost every fighter is diving away or diving after another fighter...Bombers all fly straight at the incoming fighters and complain when the fighters do what they should do which is to decimate your numbers...Cannot remember the last time I saw a bomber drop its load on spawn either, bombs are heavy and you all just lug that load all the way across the map rather than dropping and flying empty as long as you can...The problem is the vast majority of fighter pilots are idiots now days and dive as soon as they spawn, bombers are no different, you never change course from flying straight over to the base opposite you and when you have a friendly fighter that is up high and trying to help you, you dive as soon as an enemy fighter gets within 3 miles of you...Do you really think I am going to spend all my time climbing to try and help you out and then follow you down to the furball because you cant be bothered to look around and change direction, cause I'm not...

This game frustrates me also, which is what gaijin wants...I am tired of climbing only to see every fighter on my team dive because a 109 or a J2M2 is above them...1 v 4 is most sucky, but as long as all the 12 year old xboxers can think of only diving at spawn and fur balling, this is what is on the table...Stupid players these days...

[rd_ 170]

5 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

If the enemy fighter goes for the bomber he will become a free kill to the friendly fighter, and if you decide to do the same when in a fighter, don't be surprised if you get killed by that fighter you just ignored. Why whould you ignore the biggest threat you have up there, I really don't know, I guess you decided to prioritize your bigger threat as the bomber that may help enemy team win the game since you can always respawn if that enemy fighter kills you. In real life I'm pretty sure that any pilot would prioritize his targets by the threat they represent to him first and to his "team" next, since real pilots can't respawn.

 

Except the enemy fighter is not a free kill. Unlike the bomber, he's small and maneuverable. The bomber will die within a short burst, and then you can just simply re-engage the fighter, or dive back away towards friendly planes. Whether the correct threat is being prioritized is irrelevant, I'm trying to earn RP and SL, and it's a competition against my teammates for it. Blame the xxxx kill/assist system. And regardless of whether it's realistic, this is the mentality of 95% of players in AB. The Bomber is almost always killed unless the assaulting fighter is intercepted before getting anywhere near the bomber. Always.

 

5 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

What about if you are in a fighter facing half enemy team up there? You try to fight them with a big disadvantage, you die, earn nothing and get a repair bill for the several minutes of effort.

 

Oof, I'm not even sure you understand the argument. Fighters are fast, can turn, and they have big guns on the front of them. Bombers don't. Fighters at minimum can trade themselves 1 for 1 with a suicidal head on. (most) Bombers literally only carry bombs. They haven't done anything until they've flown over an objective and dropped bombs on it -- which is the hard part; surviving long enough to even get yourself in a position to drop bombs. If you think fighters have it as hard as bombers you're crazy.

 

5 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

Again, you consider that it's always you against the entire enemy team but it's not.

 

That's the beauty of how xxxx the new damage models are. All it takes is 1 enemy fighter. I don't know where you're getting this "entire team" nonsense from. Your teammates will engage other enemy fighters, sure. Very rarely a teammate might even try to stay near you and protect you. But all it takes is exactly 1 fighter to slip through (which will happen 95% of the time) and now you literally have no choice but to dive and inevitably die. No choice whatsoever.

 

5 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

I'll take your word, but I just mentioned that cause sometimes the game favours bombers and others fighters(not in DMs right now), and bombers have been favoured since 1.53 when their gunners became way more deadly than before and then on 1.59 when Gaijin decided to buff their DMs to a point where they seem to be made out of reinforced concrete

 

The problem is really the game mode ground strike, and not bombers. Bombers (and attackers) are the only vehicles that can eliminate objectives, so when they're overpowered, fighters suddenly have very little ability to impact the outcome of a game. The only way to "balance" bombers and fighters so they're equally effective is to nerf bombers to being near worthless, which is sadly the lazy and ignorant solution, showing that Gaijin either isn't aware that air AB has been broken for years, or simply doesn't care.

Edited November 13, 2018 by rd_

[_retro__gamer_ 400]

7 hours ago, *sardinha08 said:

If the enemy fighter goes for the bomber he will become a free kill to the friendly fighter, and if you decide to do the same when in a fighter, don't be surprised if you get killed by that fighter you just ignored. Why whould you ignore the biggest threat you have up there, I really don't know, I guess you decided to prioritize your bigger threat as the bomber that may help enemy team win the game since you can always respawn if that enemy fighter kills you

Well I do that when I have a destroy X bombers tasks and always works. No matter how good the fighters try to protect the bomber, if I have the speed I will kill it. And then I'll probably die to the fighter, of course.

 

3 hours ago, HochgeborenKlown said:

Fun as in bombers in 700 mph dives to destroy a base in a single pass before J'ing out and respawning to repeat until the match ends

If anything has boosted this crappy tactic like anything else, it has been turning all vehicles and specially bombers into glass and ruinning their meta. Given that 90% of the bombers are easily outclimbed by a lot of fighters in their BR, sometimes suicidal divebombings is all they've got.

 

3 hours ago, HochgeborenKlown said:

Your problem is your fighters don't bother to climb coupled with you bombers never consider waiting until the initial merge is done and almost every fighter is diving away or diving after another fighter

When in a bomber, only 1 out of every 20 battles I get some random to cover. And I feel sorry for him because most part of the time he has nothing to do and he's not rewarded for it. Again, bombers meta is broken.

 

3 hours ago, HochgeborenKlown said:

Bombers all fly straight at the incoming fighters and complain when the fighters do what they should do which is to decimate your numbers

I don't know what bomber players you get in your games. In mines some do that but some try to sideclimb, just as I do. But map edge warnings as soon as you turn 180º from spawn don't help btw.

3 hours ago, HochgeborenKlown said:

Cannot remember the last time I saw a bomber drop its load on spawn either, bombs are heavy and you all just lug that load all the way across the map rather than dropping and flying empty as long as you can

Funny you say that. Some days ago I posted an example of negative SL income after a battle due to doing this (to illustrate bomber meta problem), and the only recommendation from a technical moderator was: don't drop heavy payloads in the middle of nowhere.

 

3 hours ago, HochgeborenKlown said:

The problem is the vast majority of fighter pilots are idiots now days and dive as soon as they spawn, bombers are no different, you never change course from flying straight over to the base opposite you and when you have a friendly fighter that is up high and trying to help you, you dive as soon as an enemy fighter gets within 3 miles of you...Do you really think I am going to spend all my time climbing to try and help you out and then follow you down to the furball because you cant be bothered to look around and change direction, cause I'm not...

This game frustrates me also, which is what gaijin wants...I am tired of climbing only to see every fighter on my team dive because a 109 or a J2M2 is above them...1 v 4 is most sucky, but as long as all the 12 year old xboxers can think of only diving at spawn and fur balling, this is what is on the table...Stupid players these days...

On that, we agree. But as I said in another post, there's only so much you can expect when every player is pursuing different goals (grinding, tasks, etc)

Edited November 13, 2018 by _retro__gamer_

[ChuckYeahgurrr 68]

On 11/11/2018 at 17:19, *sardinha08 said:

Luck is always a factor with everything, patience is something you should have when it's needed. You don't play alone in your bomber, as the enemy fighter is not only facing you, you have teamates and some are in fighters too, and some of them climb next to you, so you should be skilled enough to be able to use that in your favour. Unless you're talking about those situations when no one else in your teams climbs but the enemy does, then you start understanding why air superiority should be the first objective to fulfill in every match. What takes no skill is to dive from spawn directly to ground targets kill as many as you can before you crash or get killed and then repeat, that is just outsmarting the game but it's not skill. I've done it alot and gets the job done, that's why everyone knows what you need to play to win matches, right now it's tougher but it's still bombers or planes with bombs that win them.

Wing break needs to be implemented in AB for all planes, but not as realistic. A renewable health bar that bleeds under pressure with optional sound so folks get the point. This would also help bring the p47 and some other planes under control while allowing the bombers to have a higher altitude at start - because dive == die. 
I find it funny that AI bomber crews are better aim than my bomber crews that have 2/3 skills.
When I see folks flying bombers I know that they have not gotten the memo. At least with the jugs I can get some ordinance on target and still dish out some pain better than any of my bombers especially heavies. 

[*Bilibutch 243]

23 hours ago, rd_ said:

Are you sure you play AB? AB players are like seagulls when it comes to bombers. Once a fighter sees a bomber, the sole purpose of their existence becomes pointing their nose at the bomber and traveling in a straight line until the bomber is dead. 9/10 times if I'm near a bomber, an enemy fighter goes after the bomber, not me. And if we're going to be real, I go after the bomber too, not the near-by fighter. Why should I waste my time dog fighting when there's a slow lumbering RP pinata? Not to mention it's a race against my own teammates to be the first to claim the free kill.

 

bombers are playable, you must play them smarter than before and try to stay invisible. yesterday, I took out my He 111 H-16 because I saw thick clouds. I bombed three bases and returned to mine to land without a scratch. And I almost never play bombers.
if you are seen, you are dead.

[sardinha08@psn 3,179]

For those that still think the problem has more to do with fighter's guns than with DMs, here's an example of a bomber jet losing it's entire tail section by a 7.62mm tank machine gun from more than 1km.
 

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by *sardinha08

[rd_ 170]

3 hours ago, *Bilibutch said:

bombers are playable, you must play them smarter than before and try to stay invisible. yesterday, I took out my He 111 H-16 because I saw thick clouds. I bombed three bases and returned to mine to land without a scratch. And I almost never play bombers.
if you are seen, you are dead.

 

Smarter effectively translates to: You must invest significantly more time and effort than what any other player in a different type of vehicle is expected of in a video game. How realistic and sustainable do you think side climbing and hiding on the fringes of the map hoping no fighter sees you is supposed to be as a solution to the broken state of air AB?

 

And if you "almost" never play bombers, then play them some more to regress to an average rather than feeding pointless anecdotes which contradict the experience of the vast majority of the playerbase (in arguably what is one of the few "decent" bombers, if any bomber can be called decent right now).

Edited November 14, 2018 by rd_

[glock991 1,005]

If you think i cant change the outcome of the game with a lineup of American fighters brimming with bombs and rockets( which now reload 10 times faster) your crazy, most if not all the time it isnt about bases, if you want to end games quick you go for tanks and pillboxes

[*Bilibutch 243]

On 14/11/2018 at 05:25, rd_ said:

And if you "almost" never play bombers, then play them some more to regress to an average rather than feeding pointless anecdotes which contradict the experience of the vast majority of the playerbase (in arguably what is one of the few "decent" bombers, if any bomber can be called decent right now).

 

reading your message, I thought I might have been lucky playing my bomber.
But actually not really ... example on my FW 200 that I'm grind.

Fw 200 C-1 Battles9+1 Respawns8+1 Victories4+1 Defeats5 Deaths3   Overall air frags0 Ground frags / battle0.2+0.1 Ground frags / death0.7+0.4 Overall ground frags2+1

 

most of the flights I was able to bomb three bases before returning, one of those three deaths is because of AA

I think it's necessary for some to understand that there are good times to get out a bomber ... and not want to use them when:

 

- early in the game

- the whole sky is covered with red plane

- there are no natural elements to hide your progress.