War Thunder's Bomber Problem... 

I have played bombers nearly exclusively since the launch of the game back in 2014 and i can clear up a few things for you. Years back a lot of Bombers like the B-17 used to be much, much more tanky with their airframes and reasonably so. Leading to a healthy environment where Bombers and fighters usually ended up duking it out when being intercepted by an enemy fighter, And when i say tanky i mean back in the day the PBY-5 used to be able to be simultaneously strafed by multiple fighters and keep going. A lot of the current state of bomber pilots disgruntlements deal with a few things: 1: Bombers used to have a lot more rewards for destroying ground targets and bases, Almost on par with plane kills actually. That has been slowly degraded over the years to where its next to nothing unless you rack up like 23 ground targets destroyed, even then it usually wont measure up to 2 Plane kills. Even though one has massively more ticket value than the other. 2: Most ground targets used to have massively higher ticket value in the missions in ground strike missions. Meaning if you wiped out most of the enemy ground forces, that's it, the enemy team loses. Meaning it was encouraged to try and cover in your Bombers taking out the enemy bases and targets as the main focus of the missions, not dogfights in Air RB. Hence the missions being called "Ground Strike" 90% of the time. It's left over from a meta Gaijin let die instead of trying to fix. 3: Most bombers die rather.. quickly compared to how they used to perform years ago, Partly due to game engine changes, and partly due to direct changes by Gaijin. As currently you can completely cripple an entire bomber if not outright kill most even mediums in a single good pass. Back then this nearly never happened and forced the fighter to actually engage for a duration of time with the bomber to fully take it down, giving each party equal opportunity to kill the other and not just *bam* pilot snipe as so often happens now. This isn't exclusive to planes like the PBY or B-17's either, almost every single bomber in the game used to be able to take 20x the punishment they can now. For what class is "supposed" to be the main deciding factor of Ground strike missions, there's little to no incentive to fly them anymore outside of enjoying the planes themselves or your own personal attachments to specific ones, Their reward rates as vehicles aside from a few premiums are negligible given how little actually doing your job actually rewards you, This lead to a series of events i don't know if you were around for called the "Gunship" era of bombers in WT, Where Bomber pilots would take their bombers straight into hordes of fighters (typically in air AB and sometimes RB) to become low to the ground flying gunships and just duke it out with as many people as they could before they got shot down, using both the AI gunner aim, and manual, Since this was around the time Gaijin started nosediving the rewards you actually got for base destructions, and ground target kills ~early-2016 or late 2015 if i recall correctly. Leading to the amount of people actually playing bombers outside of the very very early ranks rapidly decline over the next few years. Leading to a situation where the original intended focused class of a mode was slowly left behind purposefully by its own developers ironically enough. It's not as if gaijin doesn't realize the place bombers are in now, as sadly they're actually the main reason for the state they're in now. A class that for a time was basically abandoned by the devs, just look at how many dozens of dozens of bombers are still missing proper cockpits, years after their inclusion. The bitterness from the bomber community got to the point were yeah, I'll admit i was a avid advocate for J-ing out when a fighter would come to try and snipe you to deny the kills, and honestly? I'm not really ashamed for it at the time. A lot were bitter for the gameplay style they enjoyed and started playing for left behind and utterly disregarded, left both generally unviable anymore by a forced change from the developers, without any proper alternative. Hell years ago i used to love going on gun runs with the A-20 Havoc, lighting up shipping with the bombs before making a mad dash out at low altitude. Because for a lot of the older community that kind of strike run IL-2 Sturmovik style gameplay is fun. That or taking out the Swordfish to try and race in and torpedo a ship and see if i can make it through the Flak alive, stuff that used to be a heavy impact into a win or loss. Yet in todays WT, it's just devolved into a death pit style circle of the map full fighter teams scramble for Air to Air kills.. leaving the spirit of what the game was dead in the past. Genuinely I wouldn't mind a splitting of air RB into a Ground-strike RB and a Dogfight RB, A Dogfight one for people who want to queue into a more Fighter Focused experience, and Ground Strike one for people who want to fly out aircraft like the IL-2 and go strike Panzers and such on the ground like you're actually in a WW2 Combat sim, like how it used to be. As genuinely there is a portion of the community who actively prefers this kind of gameplay over dogfights like myself, one of my favorite things in the past two years is putting on a VR headset and flying out planes like the IL-2, the Bf 110, and others and just focusing on the immersive experience of being a attacker pilot in the second world war... up until a fighter usually comes along hungry for a kill and ruins it..

EC RB was the only game mode that 1 was different to the Team DM of RB and 2 Made useless vehicles like Bombers have a place in the meta. EC RB needs to come back.

3:09 In the past Gaijin would occasionally put on an event mode called 'Flight of the Swallows'. It was basically an bomber escort mission for the allies and interception mission for the axis. The only problem was that the gameplay was frustrating for both sides, since axis had too little time to intercept the bombers while allies were always outnumbered since half their team were bombers.

If not for the ability to bomb bases or attack ground targets I NEVER would have stuck with War Thunder long enough to get good enough to be just ok at prop air to air combat. I am a very old gamer without many of the things most take for granted like functional hands or a sense of touch. As I was still able to grind out planes by using the before mentioned tactics it helped with the frustration of getting slaughtered all the time when I tried flying a fighter. I lost count of how many times I almost quit for good because I cannot compete with all of you. After a short time I realized this is a game where thinking and planning goes a long way to success. I even started winning games as a bomber or ground attacker. I applied that knowledge to fighters in such that as long as I set my plane up right by climbing high and focus of just being a support guy I do now indeed get a kill or two. After two years I got my first Ace game in Air RB. So young man I respectfully disagree those planes kept this old man playing and now I am even trying jets. I know many of you are wired for the quick fix that most COD deathmatch type games give but this game was first designed to be won in several ways as again I won as a bomber by killing bases or bleeding tickets as an attacker. It may well morph into a kill all or be killed in all the modes. Certainly that seems to be the way top tier is. FearTheRabbbit Edit BTW I really appreciate your content I get a useful nugget of knowledge out of everyone of your vids I've watched Thanks

I really miss those days when the only one jets was those from 1946 and players tried (not always) to escort my bomber. I don’t play bombers in anymore since years…

As a bomber main I respect that we as a community are not dead (yet)

they're wicked good fun in arcade, but yeah practically unplayable in rb, you make some really good suggestions, I'd totally play bombers in RB if the snail implemented them

You mentioned in-air rearming points for bombers in Air RB, and I agree, it would be a good change. The thing is, they DID have theses, or at the very least, wanted to add them. The devblog was many many years ago, but the backlash they got was so great that they simply never added it and dropped the suggestion.

Create a PvE bomber mode, a variant of EC. Have it as a great SL grind mode, you can either go for large targets like whole city blocks which would give a decent reward, or you can got for "key" targets that are much smaller requiring you to be much more accurate but give much higher rewards

I think that a bomber interception game mode would be really cool as it would make interceptors and air defense fighters more viable options

They could add a feature for bombers where after they drop their bombs, they can fly to a designated, "exfiltration" area where if they succeed in entering it, they can make additional SL/RP, damage the enemy's ticket count and automatically be removed from the game / return to hangar. RB is oriented towards fighter aircraft and not bombers, so a feature like this can prevent people from climbing to space or engage in any other activity despised by the community.

I’ve also thought bombers should be given escape corridors. Like the objective rings in single player missions. Once a bomber drops it’s payload, it could fly to this point(s?), exit the battle without being forced to pay the repair cost for a destroyed plane. Wouldn’t make bombers more useful, just punish them less for being played, and would eliminate space climbing because they’d have an escape that didn’t cost lions.

Dude, 100% agree. I also think that gunners should get an update. Bombers like the b29 had lead indicators built into the gunsight and I think that would be something that could be implemented

crazy idea but, bombers come in and attempt to bomb their objectives whilst followed by escort (interceptor class) and, the results will give bombers mid rewards and interceptors more for successful drops. (bombers) can then land and well go find another match while the fighters left can duke it out like the noble men they are... and interceptors, cirppled against fighters but still have an advantage will have regular gains after said successful drops

I think that that it would be better if they lowered the BR of many of the bombers (including the B-29 and TU-4) to where your just playing prop planes and not flying around with me262s and he162s. The other thing they could do is make bombers be able to have armor as many of the bombers did back then. B17s did have some armor in the wings and body that would protect its crew from some MGs. Thank you for reading this but I think we all know Gajin won’t do anything.😢

As someone that plays bomber mainly, so that i can unlock fighters for ground RB, I can say, no matter how high you go, there will always be that one guy that gets to you, you can't outrun them , they WILL find you, and you will be shot down before you can even drop your first bomb

My only issue with bombers is how easy it is for a single fighter to literally melt you

Honestly I wish Air RB was like Tank RB. No names, no ranged and you have to use your eyes to spot.

The bomb reload point should be as far away as their spawn but as low as about 1KM to 3KM alt so that its very easily reachable Also, bombers only. TBH twin engine interceptors, multi engine bombers, and attackers are in a very niche place right now and tends to pull toxicity from fighter players because all they care about is having another pilot in a single engine fighter at low tier and a missile bus at high tier. There's also the option of bringing back Air RB EC or a long form game in the events menu which one can enter and exit any time.

Meanwhile me with the BV238 going into to dogfights and coming out with like 2-3 kills

Some of the heavy bombers have an rearm air spawn where after landing and reloading they spawn above the AF. At least with the PB4Y it was (hope is) like that. Dedicated game mode would increase wait times, would prefer to put that time into BR decompression or longer match timers.

I wish they added more bases to each match 4 isn’t enough because at top tier there’s so many people bombing

Or what about a PvE mode where you and your team are a formation of Bombers have to strike a target. You just have to make it through AI fighters?

Way back in the day, events were what you described with fighter escorts. It was basically actual battles that you could only take aircraft that took part in said battle, and you had the same objectives as what took place in real life in the battle. It was fucking awesome, but often super unbalanced. queue times were crazy because everybody wanted to play the beat stick side, historical match ups like ki-84's and a6m5's vs f6f's and f4u-1a's, i know which side sounds more fun to play in that match-up. I remember one event in particular, when bombers where invincible. It was rank 3-4 germans vs rank 3-4 USA. P-51's and p-47's escort b-17s's to a bombing target. Both sides got air spawn @ 5000m. This was a really fun match up, and even with the state of bombers at the time (they have gone from made of paper, to only being possible on paper more times than i care to recount) germans wiped the floor with American pilots. Both sides of that one was really fun to play. I would love to see historic battle events return, but i think the addition of ground forces is when it started to die.

Spookston LARPing lol great video

Interesting to see someone talk about bombers in war thunder, I used to only play bombers in rb and fighters in arcade when I started playing this game and I totally agree with you, new gamemodes focused on them would totally be amazing, with enough effort from gaijin bombers could be a great and fun way to play the game and grind, maybe even make the grind easier, who knows. Amazing video as always Ethan and this topic in particular is quite nice, I think we should all think of different ways to improve the game instead of just asking for new planes and tanks.

3:20 there are 2 event maps in the game that let you play either as interceptor, bomber or escort plan. one is called flight of the swallows with p51, me262, b17e,b24 and b17g but i cant remember the name of the other ones. Aerial Rearm Points are already in World War Mode you cannot get them right now dunno if they removed them

I personally really enjoy playing bombers. Granted im only at 3.0 sweeden yet but bombing around then dropping down at fighter level to kill with the tail gunner while trying to get back to the airfield is fun. Especially with friends. Edit: oh and almost forgot, playing bombers is super chill compared to the rest of the game.

0:52 and this is where I suggest using planes meant for hunting tanks to chase bombers, especially twin engine ones that are built on frames meant to stay at the same level as bombers. Hell, us other bombers that have guns on em to hunt em down

Ace Combat has a mechanic in it's games called a "Return line", essentially an airborne rearm zone on the friendly side. They've been doing it for years.

For Bombers Pilots here's a couple tips. For 4 Engined bombers (Depending on the Repair Costs) like the B-17 Series, British Bombers, take the bomb load which, Can let you kill a single base, I.E. 8x 500lbs bombs, or about 1500kgs to 2000kgs bombs (I.e 2 or 3x 800kgs bombs, 2x 1000kgs bombs), depending on the map. Depending on your bomber's rip speed, once you spawn in (MEC is recommended) put your plane in a -10 degree descent and call out the nearest or 2nd nearest base, once you ditch your bombs, and depending on how weak your wings are (i.e. your wings rip at 3G Overload) either do a 180 degree turn, or go up NOT TOO FAST, and do a 180 degree turn vertically, by the time you turn back. Either A. there won't be any fighters yet, or B. There are a couple fighters, but your either low enough and going pretty fast, so they won't bother catching you or they will and in that case just try to go back to the secondary Airfield as fast as possible, when you turn back continue the descent this time at -10 to -15 degrees, or at redline speed. And depending if your team kills majority of the enemy team, then when you land REPAIR and REARM first, then when you spawn at the beginning of the AF, you can safely J out (you can only do this ONCE) and pick the largest bomb load or more bombs, and you can respawn and take out more bases. For fast 4 engines bombers (can only think of the Me-264) (sideclimbing is recommended) usually what you can do is, put the plane in a 10 degree climb with WEP engaged, and by the time you reach the bombing point you should be above most planes aside, from the "occasional" Xp-50 or F-82, and similar planes. For twin-engined bombers, like the B-25's, A-26's, Ki-67's, The Ju 88 Series, usually they are decently fast and don't rip their wings at 3g's (cough G8N1 cough b-17 Cough) now these bombers can take a full base (aside from the Japanese bombers), and you have speed to work with so just put the plane in a -10 to -15 degree climb and you can usually reach bases before the other bombers can reach and fighters, are still climbing. And be wary of groundpounders, like the Wyvern, Do 335's, or any decent fast ground attackers. For other tips: MEC is recommended, so for planes like the B-17 whose engines overheat at 100% throttle, you can have MEC and control the radiators while at 100% throttle. Be aware of your surroundings, it always helps to look around to see if you're spotted, and if you're under attack, and please, don't stay in a straight line. If your under attack going up or down (in large bombers) and just maneuvering for medium sized to light bombers, can thwart attacks or minimize damage. Also find a proper key bind so when your engines get set in fire you can put it out. (be sure to research the FPE mod) And for Bombers I DON'T recommend playing, (unless you're a masochist) are, because they have poor performance, can't defend themselves, can't turn at all, and the only "saving" grace is the bomb load. Are the Fw-200 Condor, G5N1, if you can avoid playing all the Yer-2s, (maybe) the Wellingtons (never had a good time with them in Air RB), and to a degree the Ki-49's. And for the expensive bombers like the B-29, the Tu-4's, and the Lincoln and Shackleton, and similar bombers, if you can spade the plane within 10 battle using the tip at the top then go for it, if not then either get premium, use boosters when play them, or get a squad with fighter's to help defend you. Hope these help you, and see you in battle. o7

There is always the third choice. Going full gunship on the enemy team. It's not always certain that you will make many kills, but you will be useful to the team. And considering the current economy, it's more profitable to make at least one kill, than to drop successfully your bombs on the bases. Oh, and you were lucky with the enemy here. B-17 most of the time just rips apart from 1-2 HE shells. And believe me, I played enough on it, to say that for sure. One case of tankyness, where you are lucky, doesn't throw out of the window, the fact that in most cases, you will get a one shot from a random italian or german plane.

I'd say a great bomber that's a middle ground is the B-34. Can take out a base and a few ground targets, its fast, and has an amazing dual 50 cal turret with 360 coverage for the top, which just shreds most people that come in from the top. I like to bomb high, dive low, take out ground targets, then fly around being a nuisance with the 50 cals, staying low so no one can sneak up underneath me where my guns are bad. And it's decent in sim too, not too hard to fly, doesn't yank too hard on takeoff and it gets a bank angle and sideslip indicator, which is nice for trim

The game mode you're talking about is the Guardian Angel event, where allied bombers and fighters had to push through axis fighters intercepting them. I'm not sure if the event has been around in the past couple of years. Gaijin has dropped the "historical" idea anyway which is a blessing and a curse but the core issue for anything but playing fighters is still mission design.

I'm a player who plays a lot in TU4, it's my favorite plane, and I don't do any of the things mentioned at the start of this video, when I'm done bombing the bases, I come to help my allies, trying to attract attention on me and it works very well and I often end up with 2 kills (I still have 572 games in TU4 🙃)

I think this could be easily fixed by introducing a new game mode Bomber escort The team which drops the most Kg of bombs on a point wins the game (Meaning more bomber players and people protecting them)

i try to force my self to enjoy bombers, i play the b 29 , witch i enjoy but the fact is if i dont spend 10 min running away then coming back hight and far to start bombing, the 7.3 jets just one tap u because they saw you and just zooming climb, then after i dropped my 6.5 TOns of bombs the game just over for me, and, i get only 12k silvers lions ? for a 15k repair cost ? i also played the b57a, witch was my first bomber jet, with no guns at all ? in 8.0 ? if i dont go far away and climb like hell for 7 min a random jet come at 900km/h and launch a missile that i can'"t even avoid ? and when i dropped my loadout and i go refill, im just a free kill when im going to another base cuz my plane just 700km/h and the others 900(with missiles), and also 13k repair cost for a 10-11k sl in a match ? lol, i also grinded the b57b for the guns but like, its a brick, with no missiles anyways, and slow, and just no chance to kill anyone, just lose 10k SL... I like bomb gameplay but i just can't enjoy it due to the repair cost / gain of SL .... Edit: if they remouved the repair cost i think it would make all the bombers players try way more to engage players or do way more combat ( but they never gonna do it anyways )

I definitely agree that bombers don't really have a place in Air RB, and that a different gamemode would be nice. As you said, the lack of bomber groups (save squadrons) takes away from what the bomber experience should be. What I think would be cool is having a mode where it's fighters vs bombers, and you (as a bomber pilot) have 1 (or maybe more) AI plane with you that you can swap into once you die in the original bomber. That way, you don't have to go to the airfield immediately and it's not something unrealistic like a specific area of sky where you can re-arm. But alas, good video, heavy bombers really deserve some love considering how historically significant they were!

I would love an Escort game mode, I love flying bombers especially the B-17, and I love flying Escort. So a game mode centered around that would be amazing.

When i first stared playing war thunder i went right to researching the nearest bomber i could find, in the end i gave up and am now entirely dedicated to ground RB

I agree that the tipical bomber gameplay is broken, execpt with german high speed "schnell bomber" such as Ju 288 / He 177 / Do 217 / Arado 234 Those bomber are hell'a fun , fast and intensif gameplay straigth into the action, and u must plane where to go and gunner skill I still hope for new game-mode too, the idea of intercepting USA / British bomber formation in a BF 109 just hype me up

I don't know why gaijin is so keen on not making new gamemodes or even bringing back old ones A gamemode where you have to escort a flight of bombers to their target and protecting them from being intercepted, or being the bomber itself and flying in formation with several other bombers, seeing your escort flight of fighters flying above you would be so cool and would give bombers something of a purpose in the game, as they aren't useful in air rb, air ab or even ground rb (aside from the pe-8 with its monolithic mini nuke) I've always thought it would be cool to escort bombers in a fighter but that never happens in normal gameplay except for the one in a hundred chance a chad bomber pilot decides to spawn in on the airfield Or if you squad up with a few friends

I enjoy the bombers honestly. It adds a pretty cool vibe to air RB even if annoying

Air refueling for bomber, fighter escorting bombers rewards ( killing enemy planes near a bomber so its no easily abusable) , make bomber kinda like a objective and perhaps give vision of enemy players

Gaijins just should not make the bases resawn but get the AF destruction map logic back to all maps. The fighters have to hunt for bombers instead focus on killing fighters.

They gotta buff the gunners' accuracy and maybe a little extra damage.

Ok, So I have one major complaint about bombers. Firstly, being a British Main, the fact that the Merlin engines (this goes for all their aircraft) Most DEFINETELY do not output the power they should. The B-17 for example, IRL had a top speed of 287 Miles per Hour, empty load. With bombs it would have to go around 182mph to make it anywhere worth while. Whilst the Lancaster B Mk I (not the III which was faster) had a top speed of 282mph and a cruising speed of 200 miles per hour.lets not even get started on the othwr things that gaijin gets wrong. the B-17G for example goes over 300mph In game, yet even wikipedia tells us it does not. Nowhere near this. And if this is balancing, why doesnt the Lancaster go 20mph faster? (Ive played both planes btw. The B-17 is definitely faster and performs better in game) Now survivability is a piss take. A single 7.7mm wipes out a bomber. And bomb load is always the excuse for bombers with so little gunners being such High BRs, when Gaijins model makes them perform the same as planes a lower BR. While other bombers of the BR have so many gunners they could fight you and win. Then you have the Junkers 288... yeah lets ignore that. Anyways, thanks for reading my rant. Im just waiting for someolne to start saying Im Wrong. They usually do.

4:30 I disagree to your disagree. B-17 survivable? u sneeze they die, don't even have to kill them, damage to control panels is enough to make them fall out of the skies, straight into a deadly dive. Just look how that poor Raiden managed to fuck you up. And he only had two 20mm and two 7mm.

I agree with you in having a mode where there is a squadron of bombers that their fighters are trying to protect And the enemy is trying to stop the bombers.

What they could do is make maps more adjustable for bombers and fighters, better spawns, many different targets that require heavy bomb pounding, and an adjustment to SL and RP gains in matches for grinding

people have been complaining about the lack of bomber gameplay for so long, that i dont think gaijin will ever give it to us

I feel like War thunder error was to add modern things WHILE abandoning the old things I am a old player, but since I'm a free2play player i don't have any jets, but i do see that we got a lot of same models with minor differences, like, i got my first Yak-9 in early tier 2, and I'm still stuck with a Yak-9 in late tier 4, if i had stained in the Soviet tech tree in land i would have the same problems, and i would have the same problems in others techtrees like the German, American and British We should be able to grind less easily with the certain updates in game, but as the guy right there said, it's unprofitable, and as long as we have dumbfucks buying everysinglefucking late game premium jet or premium tank gaijin launches we will stay like that until the game dies

I miss going on hour long bomber raids with my friends in the late 90s in one of the first big online games, Air Warrior

So true.. this is my take: 1. Friendly fighters that shoot down planes within say 2km of a friendly bomber earns badges and extra SL and research points for bomber escort. 2. Game can only be won if your team destroys at least one base. The team that destroys the most bases at the end wins the game. If both team had no planes left and no bases destroyed, then it's a draw... simple. Want to win? Escort the damn bombers and shoot down theirs. (Isn't this the whole point in the war? To escort bombers or to shoot them down... why would fighters just fight? It's stupid... bombers need to take out strategic targets, they should be the core of the battle. 3. Bombers have an exit point in the map whereby after a bomb run, they must make it to that exit point. If they do, the screen fades to black and the bomber respawns at the starting point with full bomb load but not damage fixes. Escorts also earn extra SL for flying to the bomber exit point for bomber escort, they also respawn at the starting point with bombers, rearmed but not repaired. 4. Repairs still should be airfield landing. Bam wam... that should be the game.

3rd option where I dive to gunship for the fighters

He's talking about the "flight of the swallows" special event mission where p-51 cover bombers against enemy me-262. I do really miss that mission.

The problem isn't the bombers, it's how people play them. I literally grinded the U.S., British, and Italian tech trees with bombers. Lol They can be fun and take actual tactics to get a decent score but it is so satisfying once you become an expert at it. Some of us truly like the slow tactical pace as opposed to all the fur-ball team killing and kill-stealing... Much less annoying to me.

It’s somehow even worse for bombers on Air AB (My preferred mode). You’d think unlimited ammo re supplies mid-flight would help the bombers, but it actually does very little. The problem on AB is that fighters also get air spawn. This means that the bombers, which have horrible climb rates, have to try and outrun fighters during their sky-climbs. This eventually turns into a race where fast bombers (Like the A-20) or ones with good climb rates, manage to outrun the fighters and drop their bombs before either A- They get killed by the High Climb Rate American Fighters chasing them OR B- They’re so high up no one on the enemy team can be bothered to chase them. This ends up screwing over basically every bomber without the traits mentioned previously (Wellingtons, He-111s, Z1007s, etc). The easy solution would be to have team mates escort you, but since it’s fairly boring very few people will agree to escort you. Overall, what this means is that unless you’re playing a fast bomber like the A-20 or Mosquito, or you have friends to escort you, you end up getting demolished by enemy fighters and wasting your time. This cycle almost never ends, because in order to get the modifications needed to increase speed / rate of climb, you need to do well! It can be infuriating at times, and I hope they fix it somehow.

I would say that the main problem for niche vehicle types is the lack of asymmetrical battles, the idea for the pacific maps is great(one team defends an island and the other is a carrier group), but it runs into issues where the team size is 6v6 and over half of one team not being able to resupply due to not having arrester gear severely impacts it. there are many simple concepts for gamemodes that could be slapped together that could greatly improve the gameplay loop and playing and certain aircraft types, such as- preparation, land fighters/bombers defending against a carrier group midway, two carrier groups dueling escort, a land group going against a convoy and its escort fighters profit or loss, one team tries to do more damage to bombers and the other tries to do more damage to ground targets and this could also apply to ground battles and a form of mixed battles(ie. some players are solely aircraft, some are solely ground, and some are solely naval)- breakthrough, one team of mostly medium tanks and SPAA tries to defend a battleline against mostly heavy tanks and bombers landing, one team of mostly medium tanks and SPAA tries to defend a beachfront against mostly light/amphibious tanks, seaplanes, and coastal ships fire support, ground battles but you also bluewater ships iwo jima, bluewater and carrier aircraft try to destroy bunker bases whilst fighting a team of land aircraft and coastal ships taffy, bluewater trying to sink transports whilst the defenders have low rank bluewater and carrier aircraft plus high rank costal just think of a battle and you can turn it into a gamemode, russian bluewater against japanese costal in the english channel for all I care.

1:40 you forgot the one chad that clutchs the game playing a bomber as a fighter.

I haven't had a match with space climbing bombers in weeks. Even when I play a bomber. They always drop their bombs and RTB to get more, then go back out and drop more, until they get shot down.

As a long time member of the Sim EC community, I really appreciate the shoutout to a couple of the problems in our game mode. Its sad really, because we are like the forgotten group of players gaijin keeps trying to kick under the rug and pretend don't exist. We don't have nearly the RU-vid or media presence like all the RB and AB players out there so its hard to make our voices heard.

Saw folks talking about "useless planes" in chat. It took me a while to realise, that they were talking about bombers.

Remember when bombers got nerfed that a single 7mm bullet can rip the wing off?

Started playing Air warfare myself recently. Decided to specialize in bombers. Loved it at first, I was a flying tank, a lotta people would chase me, shoot at me, can't kill, then try to fly into me and die. Yeah, it'd slow me down a lot, but that actually helped, fighters would zoom past me afterwards, and I'd just keep chugging along, readying the next load, turrets firing away. Now there's always 2-3 guys chasing after me after getting to higher tier, and 3-5 of my team mate fighters and interceptors chasing 1 guy. Someone.. _Help_ me! I can do my best, but damn dude, I can't try to shake them off (I turn really slow) and DMG them enough to actually turn and get back on target, so I miss my bombing objective and die to them!

Does anyone remember a game called air warrior? To fly a B-17 you literally needed 10 people. You needed all the gunners co-pilot etc. Or you could run around in a flak tank try and capture bases with paratroopers and make missions with 12 bombers and fighter escort you have 100 people in One mission that game was awesome and another thing is you just didn't click into random battles the game was ongoing 24 hours a day and never stopped so there was someone always playing

“Bombers do not make sense in warthunder” - my Chad Boston MK1 bomber shitting on all props at 2.3

Bombers used to play very differently before the great bomber nerf of 2014. They were generally incredibly hard to kill and AI gunners were terrifyingly accurate, scoring kills out to 900m regularly. But everyone had an airspawn, so fighters had a much easier time getting to the bombers in the first place. I generally preferred those actual flying fortresses to the brittle cardboard boxes they are today with gunners that can't hit the broadside of a battleship unless you take manual control.

Aces High did bombers right. Each player had an option to take two AI "wingmen" that would follow them in a Vee and act as extra lives in case the lead player-controlled plane was shot down. A formation auto-pilot feature would hold your position relative to another player's aircraft automatically, freeing you to take a piss or use the defensive guns while holding formation. The map was huge and made for up to 600 players, so a bombing mission would necessitate careful flying around radar stations or sending strike aircraft to destroy the radars before the formation flew over. These could take several hours, but could cripple the enemy team for a long time if successful. It was also pretty cool seeing expensive Me-163s and Me-262s appear as you neared the enemy city and factories. War Thunder kind of attempted to bring this gameplay in EC with the airfield module thing, but it's really half-assed and doesn't contribute to the EC matches that only last 45 minutes to 90 minutes tops. Doing literally anything else contributes much more to the team and takes less time. I don't believe the airfields can even be destroyed anymore anyway. That got broken years ago. In fact, a lot of "current" (for the last 3 years) RP/SL exploits could be solved simply by removing this part of EC entirely instead of using convoluted and passive behavior-encouraging wage systems. Right now, I'd like to see how EC would play out as-is with a full 64-player match on a 128km map and no ticket limit, only time. Preferably with slots designated by type, so X amount of bombers, X amount of fighters, etc. Though EC really isn't a great gamemode anymore, it would be nice to get some conclusions from such a test. Realistically, I think the only thing they have a remote chance of doing is providing aerial reaming for bombers in RB like you mentioned. EC is just too dysfunctional and they want to keep matches as predictable and repetitive as possible to throttle player progression and encourage spending. If they offered an interesting dynamic campaign similar to the old 90-00's WWII MMOs for free, people might just play for fun and we can't have that anymore.

The best game that implemented bombers perfectly was Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, capital domination game mode for me. 2 teams one as the invading forces and one as the capital defense force. The ground is covered with AA tanks and SAM missiles, the team that wipes the ground AA first gets to call a bomber and actually deals damage to the Capital or the ships/aircraft carrier, it takes 2-3 attacks depending on the skill of the bomber player. Its hella good

Honestly, it's why when I play bombers I shoot for Arcade mode. A bit more relaxing, except when we get the damn capture the airfield ones.

the bomber formation mode was a special event when Red Tails movie came out if I remember right... b-17's &mustangs vs 262

I feel the problem is that they spawn above and especially in front of fighters. If the spawn lower and behind the fighters, that fighters go ahead and that they can be covered by them as well. The best bombers currently are the fast ones that can bomb bases before the fighters rape you, without fighter cover… I usually turn back before even going for a run, has given me a much better chance at defending myself, as well as being able to pick off some fighters together with the fighters in my team.

The U.S. B59 A Canberra is one of my favourite aircraft to pkay if i wanna slow down. Even though it is unarmed, playing cautiously you can avoid enemy players. Its also good at avoiding gunfire and lesser missiles if you do come across that. It has an expensive repair cost but you can get up to 3 bombing runs a game.

Another issue is the way gaijin tracks battle activity simply doesn’t work for bombers as the vast majority of there gameplay is chilling at 5km dropping a bomb load and then being deleted or sometimes not even being able to get the bomb load off

from my experience playing bombers there's no shortage of players who chase me into the stratosphere

I agree with everything u said . Yes . Now that u mentioned it . I do recall seeing a youtube video of a bomber mission on war thunder just about the time I was thinking about playing it but it had not come out on xbox just yet .

as a bomber in arcade you either get lucky and hit your targets or get instantly shredded. And it’s much easier to play fighter and get kills to rank up. they seriously need a game mode where bombers are more important

I used to play a ton of bombers and I never did the space climbing strat because I also find it very boring to wait a million years to either get intercepted or for the match to end; Instead, I would rather dive to the base immediately after dropping all bombs or I would gunship around

We've gotta have a bombers vs fighters game mode where players on one team fly in bombers and bomber formations with either AI controlled fighters or player controlled aircraft to bomb a specific target and defend against player fighters. Each player has a specific squadron of players so it's proper communication between each squad. I'd absolutely flip out if this was a new game mode because this is the way these bombers were meant to be used. This would make them so much money also. A fully realistic mode where actual tactics used by both fighters and bombers would be incredible. We've already seen that players managed to put a limit of 64 players in custom battles. Imagine a massive Bomber formation vs 15 to 25 fighters which are advanced enough to balance out the fighting where both sides have equal advantage and each team has to actually communicate and check fire. I think a mode like that would bring the immersion and realism to a whole new cinematic level.

I got so bored playing strat bombers, I started playing attackers to make things a bit more exciting. Great takes in this video, really hoping they implement SOMETHING to make ground attacking more rewarding!

Aerial rearm would be a good addition for me as a bomber player. I find it really frustrating taking off with no teammates to help me survive my next bombing run.

Ah yes... I haven't played WT in 5 years but I remember the Bomber problem being a generation-old issue. I remember how long it took for the snail to address the immortal B-17s that plagued Realistic and Sim battles for MONTHS. Who else remembers the revolt of the Sky Police in Sim battles?

Some changes that i'd like to see with bombers is.... 1) add more bombing points than just 4. Half the time I can't get to the bombing zone because somebody else already destroyed them and I have to loiter for several minutes for them to pop back up. 2) Perhaps do something what Mechwarrior Online does where if you stick near your teammates, you get a "in formation" bonus. 3) Keep the same amount of points\SL from bombing zones, but drastically increase the health on them so it encourages a group of bombers to focus a target together so they stay in formation then just everybody splitting up to tackle their own bombing zone. Once a zone has been destroyed, give a large reward for it since it took a lot of pounding to destroy. 4) Add some new bomber focused game modes, even if it's a brief rotation like once a week.

I realized something the other day. The reason why higher rank bombers suck SOOO much is because at low tier the performance of the fighters is lower and you're air start gives you enough altitude to be relatively safe if you climb. Once you hit about 4.0 the fighters will climb fast enough to shoot you down before you drop your bombs EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I have said it before and I say it again. They should add one game mode, which I call interception. It is an asynchronous game mode where the one who starts a mission gets a goal to bomb or photograph an area. You are mean to avoid enemy defences. Dodge radar, spotters and patrols. If you do it right, you're in and out without detection. But if you do get detected... Well now your game is flagged and interceptors can join. Players that will fly and shoot you down. This also allows for a lot of planes that are an ill fit for the game now. Like scout planes and spy planes like the SR-71 and heavy interceptors like the MiG-25, which you know a lot of people would love to have in the game. This is just of course the beginning seed to this game mode. There thing on how all the parts are going to be handled. It meant to be a slower game mode. But a lot of people just like to take a bit of a break and do something a bit more careful. I would also like a planning stage to this. So you set up if you want some wingman or invite your friends. But that also opens you up for more counters. You can try to make a quick push, ignoring the defences for a quick game. But also get more resistance as you do. So it up to you if you want a big bomber formation with safety in numbers or not. The key here really is that it is an asynchronous game mode, which means it should not cannibalize from the other game modes. No waiting for a match to start it up. And there should be an easy flag system that makes people that queue up for interception quick and painless. But I am not going to lie. It would need a lot of work to get up and running. I estimate that it is doable. But is not a game mode you get up running in a weeks time (Though prove me wrong anyone out there.)

I've been playing the Mariner and Catalinas in AB where it's still fun. The bombers aren't quite so fragile at 2.0 so you're tail doesn't blow off the first time you get hit. Quick reloads and you can dogfight without ripping the wings off. I just let the gunners do their jobs while I fly trying to keep as many on target as I can. Yaw is good to let the side gunners .help fire behind. My Mariner crew has over 1000 player kills and a 67% win rate.

I love the buffs and climbing to intercept them at the beginning of the match.

My favorite bomber is T18B, by far one of the best in game. Rush in, bomb a base, intercept enemy bombers (T18B is fast as hell), casually molest an XP50 or a Spitfire that lost it's energy in a vertical, rearm, bomb another base, die in a head on.

The trouble with aerial rearming is that it would destroy the illusion of realism in realistic. A better option would be to remove the markers that tell you where enemies are. A bombers primary defence is not being seen, and those markers ard unrealistic. Most bombers never even live to reach their target as it stands now.

It’s been a long time since I played wt but in my opinion there are two problems. First gaijin either never listens to the player base or they only listen to the most vocal minority of players and make a half hearted attempt at appeasing those players. The second issue is that (again it’s been a very long time for me) bombers really only come into their own in sim ec mode. While a lone bomber in that mode has a better chance of being useful to their team, it’s next to impossible to get any fighters on your team to escort you to your target because the map is so big and they want action. Even if you are in a squadron that only plays sim mode it is extremely difficult to get your squad to agree to escort your bombing missions because they won’t get anywhere near as much xp, sl, or gold as they otherwise might, unless you are intercepted by enemy fighters. Players and gaijin alike know that this is how the meta is and so bombers get played less and less in favor of faster fighter bombers that have little hope of surviving the absolutely ridiculous aaa fire over enemy bases. The only bombers that do tend to show up in sim ec are ai ones, occasionally that have escort and again their gunners seem a bit too op for the meta. I doubt gaijin will ever do anything that actually improves the game and the meta within it because they seem to only be focused on profit. Also, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call wt a sim since the most commonly used mode uses mechanics and flight models that don’t seem particularly realistic, like using wep until your engine temps are red and then just throttling back until the engine cools and throttling back up again. In more realistic sims, use of wep is limited, and if you have water ethanol injection, once you’ve used your supply, that’s it until you land and rearm/repair. At this point, changing anything to improve war thunder and improve the meta would likely break so much stuff in the game that it would probably be easier to build a new game from scratch anyway.

The funny thing Is that bombers are useful only in realistic GROUND battles

I'd love to have a bomber defense game mode as well. Something else I've mentioned before on other videos but it would be cool if after you died you got a chance to play as a teammates or squad mates tail/waist/ball turret gunner. Or give ppl the option of playing together in a bomber. Tail gunner AI isn't the greatest from my experience so having a buddy join in late match to help instead of being stuck at the spectator screen or going back to hangar before the match ends. Team speak on headsets would definitely help with that. I'm sure there would be a lot of kinks to work out but overall I think it would be a cool option. And yes they need to bring back the bomber formation game mode

It’s funny cause I never run into this playing bombers, there’s always and I mean ALWAYS somome that climbs to meet you

We need EC RB back ! Actually they sometimes do fit in the current rb mode, what i mean with that is that on certain maps bombing the bases to smitherines unlocks the enemy airfield to be bombarded, once that is destroyed you achieve a "bomber victory", sadly gayjin (i know it is written wrong) changed this at one point in time so that newer maps from then on only featured infinitely respawning bases. A way to make them valid again would be to return to the old system with the addition that if a bomber victory could be achieved, then the winning teammembers would recieve something like 10-30k sl, that would most likely be enough to convince the fighter morons to for once not just go for braindead team death match but for somewhat strategic defence and offence actions in unison with their bombers. If they add 1-2 respawns in the mix that could easily make air rb a lot more fun and engaging. Also one way to do it currently: grow some balls and fly bombers in gunship mode once you gotten rid of your bomb load, that is sometimes how i do it. Also your argument of the team having to suffer from a bomber taking one possible fighter of the team is semi invalid as most of the time (if they can aim good enough) they swat some anoying flies of the enemie team bevore they go down ... If they don't make it back to the airfield that is. Also sorry for crappy english but it is 7am after a long and anoying night shift, my brain is toast by this point.

Bombers also could be like, not made of paper, some litteraly crumple in a few 20mms, i was in an Me-264 and passed a B-17G broadside at about 2km, i hit him once and his whole tail came off, pretty sure i put the clip on my channel for proof

I'd say for bombers 1 make gunners more accurate. 2 make ground targets pay more, alot more. 3 make the game more about fighters protecting bombers. And less about killing every thing. 4 add 2 respawns per game. Still 1 aircraft. But respawn twice. In dynamic campaigns you have 3 "squad mates" that fly with you if your in bombers they follow you in a formation, if it's fighters they will follow in formation untill enemy are close enough. They will eventually reform once the threat is gone or if you fly far enough away.

Enduring Confrontaion is the bst gamemode i ever saw in a game like this and it would be nice to see it also in RB because not everyone has a joystick n stuff to play and learn Simulator

Honestly a RB game mode that actully focuses on bomber gameplay, like the main objective is to destroy a airbase, with one side attacking and the other defending

A game mode built for bombers would be just fantastic but as a bomber fan but I would be just so happy if they made the wings snap les often and bumped up the gunner damage a touch. To balance this out I also think that fighters should get a larger reward for taking you down.