Triple Buffs Should GO

[4deck]

Originally posted by hubsonfire
With more bomber deaths than kills, I'd say you present a greater threat to yourself than others.

Well hub you are more then welcome to come greet me. Coming to a city near you soon. Where would like your easter present?

[SkyRock]

Originally posted by Lusche
Only if someone is close enough to get the proxy kills, which is rarely the case with bomb'n'bailers.

nope, if you bail over enemy territory and are captured, whether or not u get the message:  Someone has killed you..... u still get a death!:aok

[bozon]

ok a few interesting points in this thread:

1. Buffs fly too fast compared to what they did historically.
2. Buffs have almost no weight considerations or fuel management when loading the plane and in flight.
3. Buffs can drop a bomb on a mouse from 16k.

Suggested so far:

1. Increase fuel burn multiplier for buffs:
Pro: Conceptually already in the game for all planes via the areana FBM. This will force buffs to load more than 25% and actually monitor the fuel load, RPM and throttle. Trade off heavy climbout and fast cruise vs. lighter plane and economic (slower) cruise.
Con: Loooong climb out with heavy fuel load. The vertical dimention is not scaled as the distance between fields (the same fighter argument from the 2.0 FBM debates).
remark: Allow also smaller bomb loads to improve climb out and range at the cost of damage potential. This is also historical.

2. Add wind sheers:
Pro: Mechanism already in the game. Natural way to reduce bombing accuracy. Interesting tactical consideration as the wind direction dictates a prefered bombing line for better accuracy (to minimize cross winds). If wind is sheered in direction as well, it creates prefered cruising alts depending on the direction you are going (minimum up-wind component).
Con: Problematic at low altitudes for takeoff and landings. The sheer has to be gradual (several layers) and moderate (small vector difference in wind velocity between layers) or it has a terrible effect on dogfighting. Wind is global and therefor will put the country up-wind at an advantage. The accuracy is not reduced if calibration is right and flight direction is not modified, since the bomb does not actually "feel" the wind sheer (I think...). It will be slightly harder to bring the target into the crosshairs in a cross wind (plane flies a little sideways).

3. Calibration accuracy as function of speed - Adding random error on calibrated speed with standard deviation proportional to the speed.
Pro: Reasonably realistic. Encourages slower bomb runs for better accuracy, but does not slow down climbout and cruise. Allow full manual calibration for the skilled buff pilots who can do better then the random deviation - Same as with the stall limiter, the training wheels can come off.
Con: Requires programing and testing by HTC. Too much scatter in calibration and buff pilots will start dive bombing again.

[Lusche]

Originally posted by SkyRock
nope, if you bail over enemy territory and are captured, whether or not u get the message:  Someone has killed you..... u still get a death!:aok

Yes. YOU get a death. But your death is not recorded on the STATS page, so the stats brought up in this thread do not include people bailing without any enemy getting the kill.

[Stoney74]

Originally posted by Oleg
B-17G: Performance: Maximum speed 263 mph at 25,000 feet, 300 mph at 30,000 feet (war emergency). Cruising speed 150 mph at 25,000 feet.

http://home.att.net/~jbaugher2/b17_16.html

OK, did some math.  150 TAS at 25,000ft is 100 IAS.  That's about 5 mph above landing speed for the B-17.  Add in the weight of fuel, the guns/ammo, and the bombs, and also take into account that they aren't flying with flaps down and I'll tell ya that they aren't flying a mission at 25K doing 100 IAS or 150 TAS.

According to the Flight Operations Chart for the B-17F, recommended cruise power settings for 25000 feet is 2300 RPM and 32" MP, giving a plane weighing between 65 and 60,000 pounds and IAS of 170 or so.  TAS at 25,000 at an IAS of 170 equals 255 TAS.  Even at lower settings and altitudes, the chart doesn't show anything below 150 IAS, which is still 225 TAS.  (source are performance charts listed on Zeno's Warbirds site)

[SkyRock]

Originally posted by Lusche
Yes. YOU get a death. But your death is not recorded on the STATS page, so the stats brought up in this thread do not include people bailing without any enemy getting the kill.

yes it does affect your stats, as does ctd's!  If you run out of fuel and noone has so much even knicked your plane with a bullet and noone is around to get your proxie,  if you do not bail in friendly territory and you are captured, it counts as a death on your stats page!

[Lusche]

Originally posted by SkyRock
yes it does affect your stats, as does ctd's!  If you run out of fuel and noone has so much even knicked your plane with a bullet and noone is around to get your proxie,  if you do not bail in friendly territory and you are captured, it counts as a death on your stats page!

Trust me, it does not.  Yes, you will get one entry showing "death" in your scorepage, but not under killstats! For example, I lost 10 Tempest this tour so far. My stats only show 7.  I lost 4 262s, 2 of them without any enemy getting the kill. Guess what? My kill stats only show 2 262s lost...

[hubsonfire]

Originally posted by 999000
Stoney good information Sir!.....so even with formations the kill to death ratio is still isn't even close to ONE!..........ok now what you think the kill to death ratio would drop to with single formations???.20?
Maybe we should be talking about making Bombers Stronger?
999000

999 sir, please make note sir, that the K/D was markedly higher before formations were added. This supports the argument that most folks use them as manned cruisemissles, exactly like you do! This may come as a surprise, but any kamikaze missions are going to enjoy very poor K/D ratios, because they die every time! Crazy isn't it?!

[Krusty]

Stoney, you've got 2 major flaws in what you've said since I last checked this thread:


1) kills/deaths


Mean jack. I've seen so many dive bomb, suicide pickle at 2k, fly directly over an enemy runway to vulch with bombs, suicide dive on CVs, to know that the vast majority of the deaths bombers receive is because most of their pilots are rejects.

On the other hand, look at the kills. In ANY situation, scenario, or even just MA play, a bomber pilot can safely get at least 3 kills (if not 6 or more) before landing.

These numbers were UNHEARD of in the war. Bombers accounted for almost 0% of the enemy fighters downed in the war, but in this game ...??

12,000 for the B-24 alone? MY GOD, man, that almost rivals the P51D and N1K2!!!!!

Do you have any idea how ABSURD that is????

2) Fighters didn't run FFT either.

They did. Fighters were designed to cruise to and from a fight (p.s. their "cruise" speed was still much more than the bombers' full speed), and in the fight they'd be full throttle, if not WEP, for the entire duration.

Bombers NEVER flew at full throttle. Not even in form-up and climb. They flew reduced speed even when climbing. When flying to a target at alt, they were throttled way the hell back. Guess what? When the fighters engaged them, they weren't. The fighters would attack at FFT/WEP, and the bombers would stay slow.

You argument doesn't hold. Just saying "fighters also have no limitations in this game" -- well the fighters don't gain such a substantial boost as the bombers do with this current system. Fighters fought at full throttle. Bombers often defended themselves at minimum throttle.

[Lusche]

Originally posted by Krusty
Stoney, you've got 2 major flaws in what you've said since I last checked this thread:


1) kills/deaths


Mean jack. I've seen so many dive bomb, suicide pickle at 2k, fly directly over an enemy runway to vulch with bombs, suicide dive on CVs, to know that the vast majority of the deaths bombers receive is because most of their pilots are rejects.

You can say that for the fighters dying by buffs too.
Yes, a decent  buff pilot can rack up kills, but only because most people dying to buff gunners are just flying plain stupid. We all know the sight: a B24 formation with a tail of fighters following it, all attacking plain, simple and dumb from 6 oclock. How many fighter jocks in this game do actually take their time to set up a proper attack?

If you consider all kills against & by fighters only, in this tour Lancs have a K/D of 0.196, B24s one of 0.384

[Krusty]

And it's nearly impossible to set up a proper attack unless you are already above and in front of the bombers. After 1 attack, due to the increased speed of the bombers, you will fall behind into a tail chase, even if you weren't there to begin with. If you have enough surplus speed or alt you might make 2 attacks before being a sitting duck behind the bombers.

No, I think you can't count on the deaths, because the majority of them are meaningless. The pilot doesn't want to survive. There's no intent other than to die as quickly as possible after bombing something. I think you CAN count the kills, because there's active attempts to shoot the bombers down, and the end result is the fighters die and the bombers survive.


Oh, and I've seen 3 fighters go after bombers in a dead6 attack. They often shoot the bombers down if there's enough of them to distract the gunner.

12-frakkin'-thousand kills. That's more than all the 109K-4s. Almost as much as all 190Ds. Totally unheard of. With fighters you might be able to cherry pick, kill-pad, vulch, something that would boost the score a bit, but with bombers, the determining factor is usually a fighter attacks a bomber, and the bomber kills it.

I find that highly disturbing.

[4deck]

Hey Krusty did you get shot down by the bomber in a previous life. First you want to perk em, now you want em handicapped. I mean cmon bro, the game rox, period. I think the speeds are just fine.

Cheers

[Krusty]

The perking was an idea so we'd have something (anything other than the crappy Arado) to spend bomber perks on. Totally removed from this debate.

[moot]

Krusty, setting up a foolproof attack on a formation is only difficult if you're chasing Ki67 in a very slow plane... in which case you are attempting to solve a problem with a method expressedly made to solve a completely different problem.

It doesn't take much effort (less than bombers to set up a good bombing run as safely as they can) to improve an attack strategy from good to best.. all you have to do is save your speed.
2 fighters are enough to shred a formation easily, 3 if the pilot and gunner are exceptionaly good.. that sounds about right, in terms of realism.

If it took genius and extraordinary ACM and gunnery skills to ensure shooting down one formation alone, I'd agree the bombers would be advantaged, but it doesn't.
Bombers should get more bomb dispersion, a slightly more difficult calibration method, and 2 extra drones for a perk cost.

[999000]

Hub, I'm not really sure what your problem is......I don't have a problem with anyones opinion.   However I do take exception to you trying to blatant slander a player...To say I fly my bombers as a "manned cruise missle...and then Kamikaze" is not true and you know better!!!....
It is my opinion that the vast majority  of bomber pilots fight like hell to get to and back from their target.
Krusty a small foot note...I have bombed the runway (usually annouced ahead of time) instead of taking out all the  FH out of respect to fighter pilots game play.