Perking Bomb load out's

[SEraider]

The OP is correct to point out that bombers are a problem in this game. They are the single biggest factor in moving the map. Virtually *every* fight that ends is decided by the use of buffs to toolshed the other base into submission.

I see some here have repeated the absurdity that unescorted bombers are defenseless. Hardly. In point of fact, they are more dangerous to attack than the average AH stick in a fighter. American heavies especially are death-stars from every reasonable attacking angle. Yes, buffs that come in below 12K tend to get ganged to death eventually, but not before taking out hangars and some hapless noobs trying to attack them from a position of altitude disadvantage.

Now a Jabo with a heavy bomb-load out, THAT is a defenseless target up until it pickles the ordinance, at which point its mission is busted, thus the interceptor has accomplished its primary function.

However, I do not think perking  bombs or formations is the way to go. A four-pronged plan:

1. Unlink the defensive guns in a formation so an interceptor fighter diving is being fired at by 6 .50s, not 18. This will still make attacking bombers dangerous, equivalent to strafing an M-16 or HOing an A-20, but not the absurd suicide run it is for a lone fighter against even mildly competent gunner.

2. Introduce some shifting wind currents, starting at 8K, to make bombing more difficult. A layer of randomly shifting wind every 5K or so would greatly reduce J-DAM like bombing precision. It should be a *VERY* lucky thing to hit a hangar from 15K or higher. Thus, the issue of forcing the buffs to go to 30K would be deflected by the fact that IF they go that high, they might not even hit the base, much less the hangar.

3. As a general measure, I think hangars should be hardened, it would be nice if one jabo couldn't take one out.

4. With the stick, a carrot. I think we should decent strat targets for buffer to carpet bomb. See Krusty's wish...

I like the wind idea the best.  More realistic IMO.

I think hangers are fine though.

[Karnak]

BnZ,

Your post is not backed up by the evidence.  K/D ratios say that bombers are very easy to kill, certainly that was my experience, even against the likes of 999000.

Implement your suggestions and watch the already silly pro-jabo aspect go even further nuts.  When you call jabos defenseless until they pickle their bombs you use the same argument that the RAF used to say the Mosquito would be helpless.  In actuality the speed of the Mosquito in rality, and jabos in AH, makes them far, far more likely to survive to hit their targets.

[simshell]

I think perking the more rare loadouts on fighters would be a better idea


infact I would like to see more bomber usage

its not like giving you all slower targets would make anything harder

and if you perk bombers, then all your going to get is Suicide jabos which unlike bombers can be almost unstoppable

[LLogann]

Bah...... Give it a year, have over 12,000 perks, then you will really want something more then a 234........ 

...I have been playing 3 months and have over 500 perks. I hate buff running tooo.....

[oakranger]

Well, you can get the B-29 and perk it like a 262.

[Anaxogoras]

BnZ,

Your post is not backed up by the evidence.  K/D ratios say that bombers are very easy to kill, certainly that was my experience, even against the likes of 999000.

The low K/D ratios of the B-17 and B-24 are due to how they are used, not an inherent lack of defense.  I'm nothing more than a moonlighter when I fly bombers, and even I kill more fighters than the number of bombers I lose (B-17/B-24).

My solution will displease you even more than BnZ's: disable drones in the main arena.  One player, one aircraft or vehicle.  Now there's an elegant proposition.

[moot]

Biased for fighters. Bombers are dead meat without the two drones' extra guns. Unhistorical and unfair. The drones are the only simple and elegant way to accomodate the bombers' design, which was made for WWII, not AH's MA.

[BnZs]

BnZ,

Your post is not backed up by the evidence.  K/D ratios say that bombers are very easy to kill, certainly that was my experience, even against the likes of 999000.

999000 currently has a K/D of 79/79 in B-17s, and that is a bad month for him. 1/1 kill loss ratio for unescorted bombers strikes you as realistic?

Me and a squaddie of mine both achieved a kill  2-3 kill loss ratio against a horde of  37MM birds while flying Ju-88s in Kursk FSO, the outstanding fact being here that he isn't all that great a gunner and I am terrible at shooting in general and not a buffer. The fact that the inexperienced gravitate to buff flying tilts the k/d ratios somewhat.

I've tried every approach imaginable Karnak.

When approaching a buff formation, you can choose 1 of 2 options. You can choose an approach which gives you a decent chance of a killing gun solution, or you can choose an approach that *doesn't* carry an extreme risk of collision and makes you *less* vulnerable to defensive fire. You can't completely avoid pings from a good gunner though so even if you choose option 1 and try to work patiently, you are likely to get pinged down before you can slowly saw the whole formation to pieces.

Yes fighters were brought down by defensive buff fire...but in reality buff drivers didn't have perfectly steady laser guns on rock-like platforms. And obviously every gun in the formation wasn't being aimed a single point..

 They were firing recoiling, vibrating, flex mounted weapons from a platform floating on a sea of air. Fighter pilots in AHII have to face the challenge of steadying a flying machine to aim with forward-firing guns, but gunners in buffs should have a platform equivalent to a ground gun? I don't buy it.

Odd how there have been a million perk the WW threads yet folks think it odd to complain about what amount to flying WWs...

Then there is the easy mode bombing...

Most experienced fighter pilots have learned these lessons, and simply don't tackle formations, except in gangs or for the free "in the bombsight view" kills. At which point its too late of course.

Implement your suggestions and watch the already silly pro-jabo aspect go even further nuts.  When you call jabos defenseless until they pickle their bombs you use the same argument that the RAF used to say the Mosquito would be helpless.  In actuality the speed of the Mosquito in rality, and jabos in AH, makes them far, far more likely to survive to hit their targets.

According to the website,the top speed of a B-24J at 10K is about 262mph. This is not all that inferior to a fully loaded Jug at that alt (305-310, easily caught by most any co-alt fighter), and the formation carries alot more ordinance.

A suicide jabo and a suicide buff and a suicide everything else are problems in this game. But that is another subject entirely. You can't disable more than one hangar with a jabo though, you can't just follow a simply 3 step process to guarantee accuracy with divebombing, and you can't do anything about a fighter closing on your six in a Jabo except pickle the ords and fight.

[BnZs]

Biased for fighters. Bombers are dead meat without the two drones' extra guns. Unhistorical and unfair. The drones are the only simple and elegant way to accomodate the bombers' design, which was made for WWII, not AH's MA.

The fact that unescorted buffs are by far the single largest factor in moving the map right now and that air-superiority is semi-meaningless is not my idea of balancing.

Another thing that should give you pause about comparing the AH MA to reality too closely is the non-existence of attrition. The destruction of a single-seat interceptor means the (possible) loss of one trained pilot and one fighter. I say possible because by definition a interceptor tends to be fighting over his own territory. Whereas the loss of a multi-engine bomber meant the probably death/capture of ten trained men and the loss of a more expensive aircraft. Yet another factor is the total lack of high altitude AA fire, except auto ack around CVs. Which seems to preferentially chase fighters anyway.

A good buff gunner can destroy 1 or nearly 1 fighter plane for every bomber lost...in real terms that means that if you had one team flying nothing but fighters and a team with equal numbers flying nothing but buffs, the latter would conceivably "win the war". Madness!

[moot]

Attrition (lack of) is the same for all vehicles.
The 1:1 gunner:destroyer comparison isn't linear, the same way you dont have 2:1 fighter duel being the same odds as 14:7 team furball. A pack of 4 fighters/destroyers will wipe out bomber formations much larger than them, if they follow proper tactics and there aren't any escorts.  Unescorted buffs do as well as you say they do (if they do; taking your word for it) because players don't follow proper tactics. Whereas drones slaved to the player bomber are perfectly disciplined.

[BnZs]

A pack of 4 fighters/destroyers will wipe out bomber formations much larger than them, if they follow proper tactics and there aren't any escorts. 

Which tactics consist of climbing to what are otherwise absurd altitudes for AHII combat, and sitting there waiting for the buffs who may or not be coming (you don't have the sort of forewarning you would really have had), then sending the new player, that kid who wears a helmet all the time and eats paste, to distract the death-lasers while you happy three successfully destroy the formation, unless one of them warps in front of you causing a collision.

But seriously, do you realize what you've just said here...you are basically stating that it takes 4 organized and disciplined players to be effective against one player with a buff formation. And you don't perhaps see anything slightly wrong with that? 

Unescorted buffs do as well as you say they do (if they do; taking your word for it) because players don't follow proper tactics. Whereas drones slaved to the player bomber are perfectly disciplined.

I'd say they put bombs on target at least 75% of the time...give me a box to click that automatically gives me two perfectly disciplined wingmen to take with me and we'll call it even.

[Karnak]

All I know is that no bomber group I ever ran into was effective against me if I set up proper attacks.

I'll grant you I only recall meeting 999000 once while on different sides, but it was 3-0 in favor of the Mossie over the B-17s that time.  Yes, bombers in AH have a far better K/D ratio than the real ones did in WWII.  If gameplay was corrected for historical accuracy you would see bombers entirely abandoned as anything other than a curiosity.


As to your claim that 310mph is no better than 262mph, that is silly.  First you are granting that which normally in AH has to be clawed for, co-alt with the incoming bombers or jabos.  In the three to four minutes it takes fighters to take off and reach 10,000ft the P-47 will have traveled 1.5-2.5 miles closer to the target.  Once co-alt you need to accelerate to speed, climb speed is usually about 180mph, time to gain 130mph gives the P-47 even more distance.  Once you have matched speed you need to overtake the P-47, which takes even longer and all of this assumes the P-47 does not punch WEP and go into a shallow dive.  It also assumes it is a P-47 and not a faster P-38, P-51, Typhoon, Bf110 or Mosquito.


You may think I am lying, but the Luftwaffe found it extremely difficult to effect an interception of Mosquito B.Mk IVs which cruised at about 300mph.  Your insistence that speed does not matter does not bear up to actual results.

[moot]

Which tactics consist of climbing to what are otherwise absurd altitudes for AHII combat, and sitting there waiting for the buffs who may or not be coming (you don't have the sort of forewarning you would really have had), then sending the new player, that kid who wears a helmet all the time and eats paste, to distract the death-lasers while you happy three successfully destroy the formation, unless one of them warps in front of you causing a collision.

Second part of the argument is loaded. First part doesn't favor anyone: both bomber and fighter players have the same restrictions (none) on climbing to crazy alts.  It's not that hard to see em coming. You might make a mistake every now and then, but it's fairly easy to predict.

But seriously, do you realize what you've just said here...you are basically stating that it takes 4 organized and disciplined players to be effective against one player with a buff formation. And you don't perhaps see anything slightly wrong with that? 

Nope to the last question, it accomodates the bomber:fighter player ratio in the game pretty well. If we go back to no drones, bombers will be trashed like they were. As things are (like I said above) we already have pretty even odds, and pretty historical too. It would be even more difficult if we had no drones. You'd have more players per bomber (since now it's at most 2: pilot+gunner per formation). And gunning a moving bomber is really laggy. So: lower player density in the planes, and aiming hampered by lag. No advantage there.  To that, you add the fact that without escorts, something like a 10+ bomber formation (I can see twice that with very well trained platoon) stands no chance vs a pack of 4-5 attackers.  You know as well as I do that you can take a 152 and drop 3 formations of the best defended models easily, provided enough fuel, single-handedly.  Bombers are just too easy to kill to not get drones.
To the bolded text: you don't even need that much, like I said just above. One player in a fighter can kill a 3-ship everytime, no matter how aware the bomber pilot, so long as he plays it right. 999000 wouldn't even make a difference if he didn't have his external view to exploit.  So the tally is that even with three ships, a bomber player can't survive a fighter player, or at the very least, can't drop his load without exchanging it for his bombers' lives.

I'd say they put bombs on target at least 75% of the time...give me a box to click that automatically gives me two perfectly disciplined wingmen to take with me and we'll call it even.

I was saying that strictly on the fighter-bomber combat aspect. Bombing should be more difficult, but for that to be worth it, the MA needs correspondingly historical targets (to match historical bombing circumstances, e.g. dispersion, weather, turbulence, calibration, etc etc).  And again.... The bomber drones can be as disciplined as they are, they're still stupid freakin dummy planes with a fixed convergence and no mind of their own. The point is that any comparably disciplined 2 (not even 3) player group of fighters will decimate a 3-ship bomber formation. Historicaly, there was a lot more than just one man in each plane, behind all those guns.  Even with two drones, the odds are well on the fighters' side. All that cannon fodder, nothing to complain about.

[Ack-Ack]

We aint using bomb perks for anything else and AR-234's are not exactly in high demand.

This could cut down furball killing high altitude bombing and ruining others fun.

When we got the B-25H, it was brought up at the time with Pyro why we didn't have any rockets for it as an ordnance option.  That's when Pyro mentioned that they were looking into some type of ordnance perk system where we would be able to use (I'm guessing bomber perk points) for certain ordnance packages.  But I haven't seen anything from Pyro or anyone else from HTC about it since then.

Hopefully, it wasn't just a passing thought on their part and is something they are actively working on to implement in the arenas.  That would give players something to spend their bomber (if those are the perks to be used) perks on something other than relatively useless jet bombers.


ack-ack

[Ack-Ack]

BnZ,

Your post is not backed up by the evidence.  K/D ratios say that bombers are very easy to kill, certainly that was my experience, even against the likes of 999000.

Yep, bombers are very easy to shoot down in here.  There are certain angles you can dive at them from where they won't be able to track properly and the end result is a dead buff formation.  Definitely a lot easier than the Deathstars of AW.


ack-ack