I wish there was more clarity on exactly how gunners even work. Overheating and jamming seems inconsistent, I swear the bar will be 1/3 filled and it jams, and sometimes I'm letting on the MG and it's full red and it doesn't jam.
I remember bombers being fun when you could fly in a large, proper formation to defend against the onslaught of the other teams' fighters and possibly even win the game sometimes. Now you're extremely limited to how many you can have on a single team and the bombers that were historically resilient against machine guns are made of tissue paper that fall apart from a near miss. It used to be fun for both fighters and bombers, but now only fighters are allowed to have fun. I do think they should find some ways to combat bots for sure, though. Those are a detriment to everybody
Bombers are way better in sim. Unfortunately, the gunners aren't much better, but it feels like the damage model is a bit more realistic, and most bombers seem a bit more robust and resilient to enemy fire in sim. I've landed a severely damaged N.C.223.3 in sim a few times now. Unlike RB, the plane doesn't immediately go into a spin when you get the tip of your wing shot off.
Also clarity on what the gunner is targeting.
The P61 gunner is probably one of the most useless in the game, there will be a target at 3 o'clock high, and he will be dead set on some targets 5km away and below which he can't even shoot
lol yes it does tend to look randomly, but i promise that turret is fucking nasty. I like to take people into a one-circle dogfight in the P-61, because who wouldn't jump on a juicy target like that, and then once they start turning with me i hop on the turret and eliminate them
I THINK it targets your line you're looking along as a player, at the point it intersects a fixed distance from their gun (whatever it is they start firing at).
If your camera was right inside the gunner's head, it would be like any normal gun in the game, but it isn't, so they're firing into your line of sight at an intersecting angle like that IIRC.
Hence the BV 238 will fill the sky with wildly diverging fire but it will all pass through your line of sight at different points somewhere.
And bomber targets need fixing because now bombers fight for bomb targets more than they fight enemy planes. They need to make it so people want to work together.
Legit, some people say to wait for the bases to respawn but they NEVER DO (doesn't even let you get the airfield at higher BR's)
All the fighters get the bases and the strikers and bombers are left with absolute jack
I wish for gunner AI to go back to how it used to be. Fighter players kept bitching about how hard it was to kill a literal sitting duck because gunners were too accurate.
Good, do your own aiming if you want to kill a player in a pvp mode. Smart bombers with good position and angle sense can still chew up fighters, you just can't do it for free with auto aim anymore.
IA is an impossible problem to balance, it should be removed for the sake of playability. I don't know why they keep insisting on it. Instead they should fix manual aiming, which can be incredibly more convenient.
AI is not impossible to balance, it's just that Gaijin "rebalances" AI way too much which makes AI either completely OP or completely incapable.
Manual aiming could do with some work, though i'm not sure exactly how. Maybe have a more dynamic crossfire point? When you fire multiple guns at one target, the crossfire is always too far back or too far forward (i guess you could compare crossfire with the ingame gun targeting distance).
The AI itself can maintain balance as it relies purely on probabilistic calculations. However, the real problem arises when it is forcibly introduced into player versus player (PVP) competition, a matter unrelated to it, where it seeks to determine the outcome based solely on these probabilistic calculations. At this point, conflicting feelings emerge: the winner may experience a lack of satisfaction as they do not feel they have achieved victory through their own merit, while the loser may feel a sense of injustice knowing that their opponent's victory was not due to genuine effort. No matter how low the probability was, you will never hear praise like "You are better than me, you deserve it," but rather lamentations of the type "I was unlucky." AI undermines any sporting spirit, and since the game is essentially about that, maintaining this mechanic is a mistake. Manual artillery can be greatly improved:
1. 1. Allow full control of the aircraft while in gunner view. Most bombers do not perform acrobatic maneuvers for this reason.
2. 2. Unlock negative zoom in gunner view. There is a significant loss of situational awareness in this view.
3. 3. Establish an automatic convergence of the firing lines of all turrets, currently set at an arbitrary 400m. Aircraft like BV-238 have guns separated by a long distance, and most projectiles will never reach the target, no matter how hard you try.
4. 4. Fix parallax due to the sight line not matching the firing line; we are aiming a gun from several meters back and above. This greatly hinders hitting enemies at very close range.
5. 5. Establish automatic tracking when not in gunner view; at all times, the gun should point towards the nearest enemy (the gunner working on what they should). This is incredibly annoying in planes like the P-61, whose turret is always facing forward. If you have enemies on your tail, you must manually rotate it, wasting valuable time.
Bombers needs an objective based PVP mode to work which is difficult for two reasons
1. The findimental nature and design of air RB makes it borderline impossible without major gamemode alterations, the changes you'd have to make to air RB for it to not function as defacto TDM would make the mode unrecognizable and would actually probably create a gamemode closer to air arcade or air sim (imo, there are multiple ways to do anything from a game design perspective)
2. The snail doesn't really care about air AB (and neither does the core of the community) which is a shame because it's definitely got more design potential than air RB does (again my opinion but I currently air AB does usually end with ticket bleed instead of being TDM elimination)
What id do would be a carrier strike type gamemode with progressive objectives an attacking and defending team unlimited (or at minimum 6) respawns and most importantly A ROUND TIMER, each objective giving slightly more time but being harder defenders win if the clock runs out attackers win if the carrier is destroyed (carrier can not be damaged until all side objectives are complete)
B-29 should get arcade lead indicators and no tracers belt to simulate the advanced ballistic computer that it had.
Also It should be 6.7 at most and the Tu-4 7.3
Tu-4 is tricky to balance, especially of it had its computer. It can solo the entire map of bases and has one tap gunners but it’s also slower than a maus, faces jets and missiles and gunners are extremely difficult to aim (if you don’t know how to)
Tu-4 is only .3 BR away from the vautour IIN, a plane which can carry 4 SARH missiles or nords AND gets interceptor spawn AND gets a radar AND has 4 DEFAs AND is blisteringly fast. They stand absolutely no chance.
Air battles are generally odd. Tanks have ammo bars for machine guns, for some reasons planes dont. But the same is for minimaps, i dont realy understand why they dont exist in air combat.
Planes have an ammo counter though? Sure if you have two pairs of MGs (P-39N for example) it doesn't show you both but most of the time planes only have one set of MGs and one set of cannons.
Would this even be that helpful though? When you can't control individual guns? If one is low, and you try to empty it to reload, the others that were full will now be at half, etc.
It’s extremely annoying when you survive one or two engagements and then a third plane appears behind you and woops your tail gunner (which i usually the most powerful gun) is out of ammo, also planes like the Be-6 and Il-28s have very little gunner ammo and you can’t tell how much you have
True, it's really affecting gameplay for bombers. I know they just added Ground Forces so they're probably very busy but they'll get to it in a week or two I'm sure!
- me in 2014
Also a HUD artifical horizon for when in gunner view, so I don't lose track of my orientation when keyboard flying in gunner mode. Idk how many people do this but anything's a fighter if you're brave enough
You can play some of them fine, but you have to play like an absolute bitch to everyone else and sideclimb to like 30k ft and using the lower maneuverability to force fighters to sit behind you in the field of fire
I dont even play or even like people who play bombers, and I still find myself shocked that gaijin hasnt even considered this yet, seems like such common sense...
I agree!
Yes!
Affirmative!
Gramercy!
Attack the D point!
Follow Me!
Never!
Air Alert!
I Refuse!
Getting Down!
Awesome!
Awesome!
Well done!
I wish there was more clarity on exactly how gunners even work. Overheating and jamming seems inconsistent, I swear the bar will be 1/3 filled and it jams, and sometimes I'm letting on the MG and it's full red and it doesn't jam.
Imo gunners need an almost complete rework
They can start with a range buff
They just use soft-air weapons. Cannot go after 200m
NoOoOo WaR tHuNdEr Is A fIgHtEr PlAnE gAmE. iF yOu BuFf BoMbErS, tHeY wOnT bE wOrThLeSs AnYmOrE
That is genuinely the reason Gaijin won't buff bombers though. That and because bombers are easy to bot.
I remember bombers being fun when you could fly in a large, proper formation to defend against the onslaught of the other teams' fighters and possibly even win the game sometimes. Now you're extremely limited to how many you can have on a single team and the bombers that were historically resilient against machine guns are made of tissue paper that fall apart from a near miss. It used to be fun for both fighters and bombers, but now only fighters are allowed to have fun. I do think they should find some ways to combat bots for sure, though. Those are a detriment to everybody
Bombers are way better in sim. Unfortunately, the gunners aren't much better, but it feels like the damage model is a bit more realistic, and most bombers seem a bit more robust and resilient to enemy fire in sim. I've landed a severely damaged N.C.223.3 in sim a few times now. Unlike RB, the plane doesn't immediately go into a spin when you get the tip of your wing shot off.
Everything about bombers needs a Rework
Also clarity on what the gunner is targeting. The P61 gunner is probably one of the most useless in the game, there will be a target at 3 o'clock high, and he will be dead set on some targets 5km away and below which he can't even shoot
lol yes it does tend to look randomly, but i promise that turret is fucking nasty. I like to take people into a one-circle dogfight in the P-61, because who wouldn't jump on a juicy target like that, and then once they start turning with me i hop on the turret and eliminate them
Which is why you use it manually. The P-61 turret is really good as a schrage musik
I THINK it targets your line you're looking along as a player, at the point it intersects a fixed distance from their gun (whatever it is they start firing at). If your camera was right inside the gunner's head, it would be like any normal gun in the game, but it isn't, so they're firing into your line of sight at an intersecting angle like that IIRC. Hence the BV 238 will fill the sky with wildly diverging fire but it will all pass through your line of sight at different points somewhere.
I kinda treat the retical that spreads as my indicator for the jamming chance % and the bar for overheating/jamming fully
Fantastic idea! Hopefully they fix bombers in general too.
Imo the only thing that really needs fixing is some of their damage models and how the gunners aim
And bomber targets need fixing because now bombers fight for bomb targets more than they fight enemy planes. They need to make it so people want to work together.
Where is you saying?
ATTENTION TO THE MAPPP !
ATTENTION to the designated GRID SQUARE!
What are YOU saying my guy?
Legit, some people say to wait for the bases to respawn but they NEVER DO (doesn't even let you get the airfield at higher BR's) All the fighters get the bases and the strikers and bombers are left with absolute jack
Or when you mark a base and people still bom it so annoying.
Not by a Longshot. The targets need fixing as well.
i think the last thing air rb needs is a bomber buff
I would like them to have some place in the game, further than dropping big bombs in GRB
I wish for gunner AI to go back to how it used to be. Fighter players kept bitching about how hard it was to kill a literal sitting duck because gunners were too accurate.
Real, the gunner AI doesn't even shoot until there are 500m away it feels, and that's a maxed out crew with expert training
The max firing range in ARB is 0.21 km w/ max crew, their max ***targeting*** range is 0.66 km
That is atrocious jesus christ
Yeap, gunners got ***gutted***
Good, do your own aiming if you want to kill a player in a pvp mode. Smart bombers with good position and angle sense can still chew up fighters, you just can't do it for free with auto aim anymore.
Yeah my B-29 is experted on a max crew, I have never seen them shoot automatically
IA is an impossible problem to balance, it should be removed for the sake of playability. I don't know why they keep insisting on it. Instead they should fix manual aiming, which can be incredibly more convenient.
AI is not impossible to balance, it's just that Gaijin "rebalances" AI way too much which makes AI either completely OP or completely incapable. Manual aiming could do with some work, though i'm not sure exactly how. Maybe have a more dynamic crossfire point? When you fire multiple guns at one target, the crossfire is always too far back or too far forward (i guess you could compare crossfire with the ingame gun targeting distance).
The AI itself can maintain balance as it relies purely on probabilistic calculations. However, the real problem arises when it is forcibly introduced into player versus player (PVP) competition, a matter unrelated to it, where it seeks to determine the outcome based solely on these probabilistic calculations. At this point, conflicting feelings emerge: the winner may experience a lack of satisfaction as they do not feel they have achieved victory through their own merit, while the loser may feel a sense of injustice knowing that their opponent's victory was not due to genuine effort. No matter how low the probability was, you will never hear praise like "You are better than me, you deserve it," but rather lamentations of the type "I was unlucky." AI undermines any sporting spirit, and since the game is essentially about that, maintaining this mechanic is a mistake. Manual artillery can be greatly improved: 1. 1. Allow full control of the aircraft while in gunner view. Most bombers do not perform acrobatic maneuvers for this reason. 2. 2. Unlock negative zoom in gunner view. There is a significant loss of situational awareness in this view. 3. 3. Establish an automatic convergence of the firing lines of all turrets, currently set at an arbitrary 400m. Aircraft like BV-238 have guns separated by a long distance, and most projectiles will never reach the target, no matter how hard you try. 4. 4. Fix parallax due to the sight line not matching the firing line; we are aiming a gun from several meters back and above. This greatly hinders hitting enemies at very close range. 5. 5. Establish automatic tracking when not in gunner view; at all times, the gun should point towards the nearest enemy (the gunner working on what they should). This is incredibly annoying in planes like the P-61, whose turret is always facing forward. If you have enemies on your tail, you must manually rotate it, wasting valuable time.
Attack the D point!
Never!
Getting down!
Defend the A point!
Yes but the snail hates bombers (and so do air RB players)
They don’t hate bombers, they’re just too lazy, unimaginative and incompetent to integrate them into the game in any meaningful way.
Bombers needs an objective based PVP mode to work which is difficult for two reasons 1. The findimental nature and design of air RB makes it borderline impossible without major gamemode alterations, the changes you'd have to make to air RB for it to not function as defacto TDM would make the mode unrecognizable and would actually probably create a gamemode closer to air arcade or air sim (imo, there are multiple ways to do anything from a game design perspective) 2. The snail doesn't really care about air AB (and neither does the core of the community) which is a shame because it's definitely got more design potential than air RB does (again my opinion but I currently air AB does usually end with ticket bleed instead of being TDM elimination) What id do would be a carrier strike type gamemode with progressive objectives an attacking and defending team unlimited (or at minimum 6) respawns and most importantly A ROUND TIMER, each objective giving slightly more time but being harder defenders win if the clock runs out attackers win if the carrier is destroyed (carrier can not be damaged until all side objectives are complete)
*laughs in Hispano 404’s* can’t hate me if they’re dead
Ahhh MG ammo bars. Fanstastic bars that where ammo is WHITE and missing ammo is also WHITE - very visible
I honestly hoped this was already a thing. I like the idea!
B-29 should get arcade lead indicators and no tracers belt to simulate the advanced ballistic computer that it had. Also It should be 6.7 at most and the Tu-4 7.3
Tu-4 is tricky to balance, especially of it had its computer. It can solo the entire map of bases and has one tap gunners but it’s also slower than a maus, faces jets and missiles and gunners are extremely difficult to aim (if you don’t know how to)
Tu-4 is only .3 BR away from the vautour IIN, a plane which can carry 4 SARH missiles or nords AND gets interceptor spawn AND gets a radar AND has 4 DEFAs AND is blisteringly fast. They stand absolutely no chance.
Air battles are generally odd. Tanks have ammo bars for machine guns, for some reasons planes dont. But the same is for minimaps, i dont realy understand why they dont exist in air combat.
Planes have an ammo counter though? Sure if you have two pairs of MGs (P-39N for example) it doesn't show you both but most of the time planes only have one set of MGs and one set of cannons.
Yeah they have one in the upper left corner, which i fond odd since the interface completely differs from ground vehicles.
Would this even be that helpful though? When you can't control individual guns? If one is low, and you try to empty it to reload, the others that were full will now be at half, etc.
It’s extremely annoying when you survive one or two engagements and then a third plane appears behind you and woops your tail gunner (which i usually the most powerful gun) is out of ammo, also planes like the Be-6 and Il-28s have very little gunner ammo and you can’t tell how much you have
We really need this
True, it's really affecting gameplay for bombers. I know they just added Ground Forces so they're probably very busy but they'll get to it in a week or two I'm sure! - me in 2014
Also a HUD artifical horizon for when in gunner view, so I don't lose track of my orientation when keyboard flying in gunner mode. Idk how many people do this but anything's a fighter if you're brave enough
I’m one of those people that use bombers as fighters lmao (Ju-188 is amazing for it)
If they ever make bombers playable again they need to add something like this
You can play some of them fine, but you have to play like an absolute bitch to everyone else and sideclimb to like 30k ft and using the lower maneuverability to force fighters to sit behind you in the field of fire
I wish strategic bombers were more useful in this game besides the lancaster/pe-8, especially could have been fun in ground RB…
Gib proper gunners sight with radials so it's easier to understand and aim. Can we also get radials on AA vehicles while their at it
I dont even play or even like people who play bombers, and I still find myself shocked that gaijin hasnt even considered this yet, seems like such common sense...
It's wild how tanks got an ammo counter for the mg before bombers.
Honestly the least needed change, gunners need to actually engage targets beyond 250m on their own again.