Fixing bombers

[guncrasher]

The problem is that you are focused on the K/D ratio and are ignoring the gameplay aspect.  If you make bombers into singles and essentially free kills then why should you ever take a slow flying, slow climbing B-17G with 6,000lbs of bombs when you can take a P-38L or P-47N that have ~3,500-4,250lbs of destruction (not counting guns) and can do two, three or four sorties in the time the B-17G does one and are more likely to make it to the target?  Fewer level bombers means more suicide jabos.

Do you want to see bombers in the game or do you want that diversity eliminated?

Also consider new player retention.  New players frequently start out in bombers as they can participate and have some successes and useful contribution in them whereas if they are forced into fighters they are just killed over and over and over with little or no reward.

problem with bombes is that everybody seems to think that bombers are only useful from 20k up.  for example I have seen bombers at 10k or more trying to sink cv's.  the optimal altitude is 5.5 to 6k altitude, you may get an oil leak from ack perhaps every other sorty but you will live. 

I really dont like going to target above 10k.  over most targets there isnt fighters at that altitude anyway.  no reason to go to 20k unless you already know there's fighters at that altitude.


semp

[Scca]

problem with bombes is that everybody seems to think that bombers are only useful from 20k up.  for example I have seen bombers at 10k or more trying to sink cv's.  the optimal altitude is 5.5 to 6k altitude, you may get an oil leak from ack perhaps every other sorty but you will live. 

I really dont like going to target above 10k.  over most targets there isnt fighters at that altitude anyway.  no reason to go to 20k unless you already know there's fighters at that altitude.


semp

I am a bomber hunter, that's my thing.   I only go after fighters if there are no bombers or they mess with me.  The majority of bombers I encounter of late are above 15, usually 18K.

A good 5" gunner can take out a formation of bombers running under 8K before they can drop on a CV.  Be cautious. 

With a proper approach and patience, even 999000 is downable. 

[guncrasher]

I am a bomber hunter, that's my thing.   I only go after fighters if there are no bombers or they mess with me.  The majority of bombers I encounter of late are above 15, usually 18K.

A good 5" gunner can take out a formation of bombers running under 8K before they can drop on a CV.  Be cautious. 

With a proper approach and patience, even 999000 is downable. 

99% of the time, the gunners are busy shelling the field with the 5in.  I actually pray for gunners to be on the cv as that's the easiest way to find it .


semp

[kvuo75]

most effective method I used to use against cv's was a set of 234's screaming in at 1000-1500 ft.

100% effective in my experience. usually would lose a drone or two to the ack.. so it could get expensive if you did nothing but kill cv's.

[BnZs]

Despite your extrapolations of statistics, bombers are no match for fighters. 

My statistics show that when a box of bombers controlled by the average MA single player meets a fighter controlled by average MA single player, on average the guy with the buffs is the last one left standing at least as often as the other way around. This is inarguable, the numbers clearly show it. This is the definition of bombers being a match for fighters.

Again, I remind that reader that many bomber "deaths" are essentially suicide, a sizable proportion of the of kills awarded to fighters aren't actually victories at all, but involve pinged bombers bailing/auguring/deliberately flying through ack, etc. If these deaths could be filtered out, no doubt buff formations in AHII would be demonstrated to be even stronger relative fighters.

All it takes is patience and the fighter pilot will win almost every time.

The statistics do no support this assertion. There is of course some truth to what you say, but ultimately it is as meaningless as saying "With sufficient skill, a P-39 pilot can defeat SpitfireXVIs almost every time". This statement is just as true as yours, but it has nothing to do with the reality of what on average happens when the typical MAer clashes with another typical MAer.

With sufficient "patience", i.e. a willingness to never engage unless the odds are in your favor, a pilot in most any fast fighter can rack of a k/d of Skies-The-Limit/Naught vs. all plane types. Funny how this is called "skill" when engaging bombers, but is called timidness/lack of a boredom gene when it comes to other endeavors in AHII... However, while you are showing "patience" with that buff box, often as not it just leveled a base and has completed its objective. If you destroy the entire thing instead of letting them RTB, why that just gets them back up in a fresh set of buffs more quickly.

[Karnak]

My statistics show that when a box of bombers controlled by the average MA single player meets a fighter controlled by average MA single player, on average the guy with the buffs is the last one left standing at least as often as the other way around. This is inarguable, the numbers clearly show it. This is the definition of bombers being a match for fighters.

No, the B-17G is, perhaps, a match for the average fighter player.  The Lancaster certainly is not.

Again, I remind that reader that many bomber "deaths" are essentially suicide, a sizable proportion of the of kills awarded to fighters aren't actually victories at all, but involve pinged bombers bailing/auguring/deliberately flying through ack, etc. If these deaths could be filtered out, no doubt buff formations in AHII would be demonstrated to be even stronger relative fighters.

Really?  You have evidence to support this?  I've never seen it.  Every bomber I've ever seen suicide did so well before getting pinged, before my fighter was even within range to be granted a proxy.  If the bomber hangs on long enough for the fighter to be in range of pinging it then the bomber is going to fight it out.

The statistics do no support this assertion. There is of course some truth to what you say, but ultimately it is as meaningless as saying "With sufficient skill, a P-39 pilot can defeat SpitfireXVIs almost every time". This statement is just as true as yours, but it has nothing to do with the reality of what on average happens when the typical MAer clashes with another typical MAer.

The statistics do bear that out.  The outcome of a bomber vs fighter fight is far, far more in the hands of the fighter player than it is of the bomber player.  Look at Lusche's states.  Every time I have encountered 999000 he has lost aircraft to me, I have never been killed by him.

With sufficient "patience", i.e. a willingness to never engage unless the odds are in your favor, a pilot in most any fast fighter can rack of a k/d of Skies-The-Limit/Naught vs. all plane types. Funny how this is called "skill" when engaging bombers, but is called timidness/lack of a boredom gene when it comes to other endeavors in AHII... However, while you are showing "patience" with that buff box, often as not it just leveled a base and has completed its objective. If you destroy the entire thing instead of letting them RTB, why that just gets them back up in a fresh set of buffs more quickly.

The nature of the bomber vs fighter fight is different than the fighter vs fighter fight.  When I am in a bomber and the fighter takes the time to setup proper attacks I never feel like he is being timid or wasting my time.  Its not like I'd be going anywhere else anyways.  This comes from the fact that the bomber's purpose is to hit things on the ground while the fighter's purpose is to shoot things in the air.  So if I am in a fighter and a P-51D is being so cautious of engaging me that essentially nothing is happening for many minutes, well, I could be elsewhere killing aircraft.  When I am in a bomber and an Fw190A-8 is taking his time to set up a proper attack, well, that just gives me something to look at and calculate a response to as I fly towards my target, and flying towards my target is all that I'd be doing if Mr Fw190A-8 wasn't there.


This still comes back to you wanting to eliminate bombers from the game.  Take away their formations and the B-17's 2.5 deaths per kill suddenly means most bomber sorties are complete wastes of time.  Not only do they take much longer to do than a fighter sortie or fighter-bomber sortie, they are also accomplish a lot less on average than a fighter or fighter-bomber sortie.  Bombers are often the first place that new players find fun, some success and some contribution that encourages them to sign up and pay to play.  Further, gutting the effectiveness of bombers is likely to lead to even more kamikaze fighter-bombers.

Your desire to gut the ability of bombers to succeed would be very harmful to the game if actually implemented.

[guncrasher]

With sufficient "patience", i.e. a willingness to never engage unless the odds are in your favor, a pilot in most any fast fighter can rack of a k/d of Skies-The-Limit/Naught vs. all plane types. Funny how this is called "skill" when engaging bombers, but is called timidness/lack of a boredom gene when it comes to other endeavors in AHII...

nice burn on the so called "fighters"   .


semp

[BnZs]

The problem is that you are focused on the K/D ratio and are ignoring the gameplay aspect.  If you make bombers into singles and essentially free kills then why should you ever take a slow flying, slow climbing B-17G with 6,000lbs of bombs when you can take a P-38L or P-47N that have ~3,500-4,250lbs of destruction (not counting guns) and can do two, three or four sorties in the time the B-17G does one and are more likely to make it to the target?  Fewer level bombers means more suicide jabos.

The P-47D-40, probably the most popular bomb truck, had a k/d of .80 in tour 167.  This of course includes instances when it was *not* flown as a bomb truck, these cannot be filtered out. And no one had two extra P-47Ds flying along with them after their first one got shot down. These numbers strongly imply that level bombers are at least as likely to place ord on target as the P-47D40, but alot more of it.

 In cases where the the single jabo is shot down, the mission is over. In cases where the jabo is forced to dump ords to defend itself, the mission is also over. This is a common MA experience-jabos encountered a reasonable distance from the base are burdened enough that they are easy to run down, and easy to kill. They must either skin ords or die, and likely still die. Whereas buffs can and often do *kill a fighter or two* and still deliver between 6000 and 18,000 pounds of ord to the target.

If some sort of attack aircraft allowed a single player to actually fight its way to target, rack up what amounts to a 1-1 k/d doing so, and still deliver at least 6K and as much as 18k ords, there would be cries to have it perked. But that is exactly what buffs boxes amount to in AHII.

However, it is not an either-or proposition. Correctly me if I'm wrong, but I believe you have proposed that 1000 pound bombs on fighters be lightly perked, and I would also support that.

Do you want to see bombers in the game or do you want that diversity eliminated?

I actually don't favor eliminating formations, but taking certain other steps. But let's run with your logic here anyway...

Certain fighters like the 109E are difficult and relatively unrewarding to fly in the LW MA. You almost never see them. Therefore I think we should allow anyone who ups an Emil to have two drone "wingmen" and F3 mode...it would make things more "diverse".

Seriously, it is unlikely that bombers would ever be completely eliminated. But what we have is not really diversity. The buff formation is what moves maps in the MA, it is about the only mission profile that really matters. Interception is an exercise in masochism and escort is irrelevant. It would in fact be grand if there were fewer buffs being flown in the MA and more fighters being flown to escort them so that said buffs would stand a decent chance of reaching a defended target.

Instead we have a situation where 6 players in single fighters attempting to defend a base from 6 players in heavy buffs must shoot down 18 almost ludicrously tough aircraft defended by, if I calculate correctly, 216 .50 caliber machine guns, and carrying 108,000 pounds of ordinance. If even one or two of those 18 bombers get through, it carries enough to level a base and essentially win the fight. And it is demonstrable that average MA buffer vs. average MA fighter pilot, more than one or two WILL get through. Offense/defense are ridiculously mismatched in this case, to the detriment of game play IMO.

(Average MA buffer vs. "leet" buff hunter, the "leet" buff hunter will use his "patience" to set up and eliminate the buffs long after doing so does his side any good, then poo-poo any suggestions that heavies are a bit unbalancing in the MA by crowing about his k/d vs. buffs   )

However, I don't think boxes will ever be eliminated, for aesthetic reasons if nothing else. My most conservative suggestion is lowering the ENY of the big heavies to 5. The last thing the outnumbered side needs is waves of bombers taking their hangars away. That is the most boredom inducing non-fight imaginable.

My other suggestion is to limit single players to controlling single defensive positions on buffs. Three tail guns firing at an incoming attacker is still a lot of discouragement, but not ridiculously so. It is also my perception that the individual gunner positions are very hard to kill, even when pouring fire directly into them, and this should be looked at. Maybe 30 millimeter cannon fire walking down the fuselage of a buff shouldn't bring it down, but it should probably kill/disable every theoretical "human" inside.

 Also, were it possible to coad, I would throw bomber pilots a bone by allowing them to fill all gunner positions with additional players beyond the one gunner currently allowed. Hey, if your bomber formation is a death star because you got 6 really skillful gunners to join you, more power to you. This is teamwork, this is what MMO games are about, but this is NOT an overwhelming flotilla of destruction that is unfair to the poor devils trying to defend.

Also consider new player retention.  New players frequently start out in bombers as they can participate and have some successes and useful contribution in them whereas if they are forced into fighters they are just killed over and over and over with little or no reward.

This is highly speculative at best. You could just as easily speculate that we lose noobs who are looking to shoot down bombers for easy kills but who (correctly) call horsehockey when they get buzz-sawed to death by another can't-fly noob in buffs because of the overwhelming firepower given to single players by buff formations vs. driving any other plane or vehicle.

[caldera]

My statistics show that when a box of bombers controlled by the average MA single player meets a fighter controlled by average MA single player, on average the guy with the buffs is the last one left standing at least as often as the other way around. This is inarguable, the numbers clearly show it. This is the definition of bombers being a match for fighters.

Again, I remind that reader that many bomber "deaths" are essentially suicide, a sizable proportion of the of kills awarded to fighters aren't actually victories at all, but involve pinged bombers bailing/auguring/deliberately flying through ack, etc. If these deaths could be filtered out, no doubt buff formations in AHII would be demonstrated to be even stronger relative fighters.

The statistics do no support this assertion. There is of course some truth to what you say, but ultimately it is as meaningless as saying "With sufficient skill, a P-39 pilot can defeat SpitfireXVIs almost every time". This statement is just as true as yours, but it has nothing to do with the reality of what on average happens when the typical MAer clashes with another typical MAer.

With sufficient "patience", i.e. a willingness to never engage unless the odds are in your favor, a pilot in most any fast fighter can rack of a k/d of Skies-The-Limit/Naught vs. all plane types. Funny how this is called "skill" when engaging bombers, but is called timidness/lack of a boredom gene when it comes to other endeavors in AHII... However, while you are showing "patience" with that buff box, often as not it just leveled a base and has completed its objective. If you destroy the entire thing instead of letting them RTB, why that just gets them back up in a fresh set of buffs more quickly.

You are comparing apples to oranges.  A fighter engages the bomber when and where it chooses.  The bomber can only be defensive.  Most fighters lose to bombers because they spend 10 minutes climbing up to them but can't wait another few minutes to get above them for a proper attack run.  Lack of patience causes their demise.  They don't need to improve their piloting skills one iota, in order to greatly increase their success against bombers.

I just follow the same routine every time and have been overwhelmingly successful at it: high speed passes from  11/1 O'clock high.  Use the speed built in the dive to pull out ahead and climb back up to a perch.  Rinse and repeat.  It's more of a technique than a skill.

ACM versus other fighters is so much more complex and ever changing, requiring BFM skills, marksmanship and strategy.  My success rate against other fighters pales greatly, compared to the relative ease of killing thousands of bombers over the years. 

[BnZs]

Your desire to gut the ability of bombers to succeed would be very harmful to the game if actually implemented.

OTOH, I think the near certainty that bombers WILL succeed in their mission under MA conditions, to the point that buff flying is practically the only mission profile that matters, is harmful to game play. I think putting such a massive amount of firepower and ordinance, unlike that found in other planes/vehicles in the hands of single players unbalances offense/defense in a deleterious manner. I think changes that would encourage cooperation with other bomber pilots, make fighter escort useful, and interception non-masochistic would help gameplay in a MMO about WWII aerial combat. As it is fighter air superiority is somewhat spurious and buffs do more to end combat rather than promote it.

[lyric1]

I bomb a lot, and I do agree with some of this.   4-engine bombers are not dive bombers, and their bombs should NOT release unless the autopilot is in level flight and the player is in the bombardier position.  Period.  The driving of lancstukas from the pilots position in F3 mode and carpetbombing the gvs is just playstation gamey.  That said, there are plenty of twin engine bombers (JU88s, A20s, B25s, B26s, etc) that did dive bombing and attack missions, and these should be gone thru on a case by case basis to see who should be allowed to bomb from the pilots seat.  (Somebody check me, but I don't think the Betty or the Ki-67 did dive bombing).

That said, the gunnery is just fine as it is.  You have told them what I DO get - let me tell you what I DO NOT get:
1.  I don't get 8 sets of eyes searching the skies for enemy fighters.
2.  I don't get gunners in multiple planes engaging multiple targets at once.
3.  I don't get the ability to have my gunners actually engage anything while I am in the bombsite over the target.

So if you are insane enough to try to crawl up by B-17s tail, I can step on the rudder and turn right & left, but I am not pulling some high-G split-S on you.   I may go ahead and nose up or down to make you have to climb up to catch me, or give you a longer tail chase, but that is about it.  

The "bomb and bail" problem is not limited to bombers - I see plenty of P-51 base porkers that do the same thing.  A quick suicidal bomb run, strafe a couple of strats until the ack gets you, then rinse & repeat.  The disappearing bombs solution you propose would do nothing to stop either one, as I could just wait until bomb impact then then fly into the dirt and crash instead of bailing out.  A lot of coding by HTC for no benefit at all.   The problem is that there is very little benefit to me flying home (in either a bomber or a fighter) unless I need perks, and I usually don't.  If there was some other benefit to actually bringing a ride home that might change (and there have been some other proposals in the forums about that).

$.02

AR-234B was almost completely used as a dive bomber the horizontal bomb sight was only on the flight leaders aircraft & the rest of the squadron would drop on his command.

[BnZs]

You are comparing apples to oranges.  A fighter engages the bomber when and where it chooses.  The bomber can only be defensive.  Most fighters lose to bombers because they spend 10 minutes climbing up to them but can't wait another few minutes to get above them for a proper attack run.

And in the time you do all this patient setup in the MA,  like as not the bomber formation renders the hangars of the base you are attempting to defend level. The MA is not a scenario, whether the bombers are destroyed by you or stagger back to base after getting their ords off is irrelevant to the ebb and flow of combat. In fact, destroying bombers on RTB simply increases the number of sorties per hour the bomber pilot can fly.

 Lack of patience causes their demise.  They don't need to improve their piloting skills one iota, in order to greatly increase their success against bombers.

You are trying to explain away the fact that the average a single player in a buff formation is in fact a match for the average single player in a fighter. It just doesn't work, anymore than claiming P-39>SpitXVI because you or or some other elite pilot kill spixteens regularly in P-39s works.

The reality of the MA is that large numbers of average fighter sticks will tell you that they avoid attacking buffs and stick with engaging other fighters because engaging buffs (piloted by players generally at least as "average") is so masochistic.

[Ack-Ack]

With sufficient "patience", i.e. a willingness to never engage unless the odds are in your favor, a pilot in most any fast fighter can rack of a k/d of Skies-The-Limit/Naught vs. all plane types. Funny how this is called "skill" when engaging bombers, but is called timidness/lack of a boredom gene when it comes to other endeavors in AHII... However, while you are showing "patience" with that buff box, often as not it just leveled a base and has completed its objective. If you destroy the entire thing instead of letting them RTB, why that just gets them back up in a fresh set of buffs more quickly.

There is a big difference between an attacking fighter showing "patience" in setting up their attack on a formation of bombers and a player in a fighter that isn't willing to fight.

ack-ack

[BnZs]

There is a big difference between an attacking fighter showing "patience" in setting up their attack on a formation of bombers and a player in a fighter that isn't willing to fight.

ack-ack

There's really not too much difference. Both involve racking up a large k/d at the expense of time. A fighter pilot born with a boredom gene and simply out for fun will avoid the masochism of attacking bombers and simply play with other fighters, as large numbers of pilots in the MA do. A fighter pilot interested in the "war"/base defense/keeping the freakin' fight from being toolshedded out of existence will often end up making "bad" approaches, not out of stupidity but because taking the time to be smarter else means that the buffs will get their bombs off. If he is smart, he'll also ignore buffs that have already dropped because their RTB simply increases the amount of time it takes to bring back more bombs. Escorting and the fight for air superiority will continue to be an irrelevant sideshow as far as map moving goes, that will be decided mostly by the buff pilots on each side. All of that is not such a bad thing that it ruins the game, but it is not exactly a good thing either.

[LilMak]

The bomber guys have a pretty tough gig in the MA. No adjustments to the gunners or F3 are needed. They have resonable defensive ability versus average MA pilots. My biggest issue with bombers is their ability to fly with the throttles firewalled and somehow maintain formation (a guy who owns an RV should know better). That's a nearly impossible feat in reality as the trailing planes would be unable to make corrections and still manage to keep up. I do agree with earlier posts that bombs should only be able to be released from the bombardier posisition in 4 engined bombers and only from smaller bombers if they have no drones.

To sum up and keep it simple... No bomb release from the pilots seat if formation is enabled. Formations limited to 90% power.