Durability: not as great as I'd hoped. It doesn't take much to rip off a wing.
Is this aero or gun damage?
Snailman - Sorry I never got that topic up. I kept having one thing after another to do and it's just my luck that this time the new plane was released sooner than usual.
... Or maybe it's not too late:
There are not many that have the necessary excess power / performance at 30K and above: F4U-4, Spit XiV, P-47M&N, Ta 152, 109K4 (to a lesser extend maybe Spit 9, 38L/M and P51D). At 35K+ things get really very difficult for all of those too (109K drops out first), at that altitudes it's mostly reduced to Ta152 and 47M/N and maybe still the Spit XIV. But with the technicalities of ultra-high combat flying, the 29 holds almost all the cards up there.
You need climbrate to get up there in the first place. You need speed to catch up with a 360mph plane without running out of fuel), and then you still need a lot of power/climbrate to get into favorable attack positions (crawling up low six vs 20mm rear gun no good idea). You need good maneuverability at ultra high altitude (that's just relatively spoken - players that usually just furball down low will find themselves alternating between stall and compression) and you need firepower to bring it down.
Reading this I still immediately think that a plane like the 410 (ie the punchier ones - ideally BK5 or 2xMK103 or at least 6xMG151 (and A2A rockets; did the 410 carry any?)) that can make the most of each single pass is a good solution to the problem the B-29 presents to destroyers: it's so fast and well defended, especially if we compound these with thin air.
How about the chog's high alt performance? The reach and volume of its guns might make it competitive if it's not too wheezy up there (edit - by AH perfcharts it looks like it's got enough performance left around 30k). I'll try and put the topic up by this weekend.
Oldman -
We also don't have any of the Japanese fighters that were used to attack the B-29s when they flew high. I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed by this update. Only new plane is the B-29, which will end up seeing next to no use. Not even useful for scenarios, since we don't have the Japanese planeset to go against it. I keep thinking every new update is going to be the "big one" with some Russian or Japanese planes to fill the chasms in the planeset.
I'm still going to sign up though, just like I always do . Maybe some day the WW1 planeset could get some attention too, that'd be cool.
Hey Steve,
Not implying anything but just commenting: the B-29 was always gonna be a dev resource hog, from what HTC said.