Artistry, juzz, artistry. HOw many bomber pilots do you know that can pull off that crap?
We have a laser bombsight here. Bombing starts off easy, and ends easy. There really isn't much depth to the art of dropping bombs here. Historically, that depth would probly have been provided by navigation, the ability to command a crew in adverse conditions, the skill of using properly the bombsight, being able to maintain tight formations, and finally being able to nurse a seriously damaged ship back to base. Here we don't have navigation or crews, the bombsight's a cakewalk, formations are nowhere as big as IRL, and the damage model makes limping home less challenging.
So, you turn off the autopilot on the bomb run. Most people will keep it on. But true artistry is being able to intuitively fly the plane while looking down a zoomed-in bombsight, and make the bombs fall backwards.
Call me a nut, but think of it this way: currently bombing is easy. Bombing effectively isn't much more difficult. If we allow the bombardier to disengage the autopilot, we will permit a single, highly skilled bomber pilot to be very effective. This would raise the "plateau" of Buffing above the reach of most current pilots. It'd give them something to learn. We'd retain more bomber pilots, and perhaps have a bomber squad or two if we gave bombers a reason to practice.
In short, it ain't realistic, but nothing about level bombing in AH is. This is true largely for gameplay concerns. Bombers need something analogous to all the missing elements mentioned above to make experience count.
[This message has been edited by Dinger (edited 11-10-2000).]
