...What game are you playing? Heavy fighter smash and grabs move far, far more mud than these unstoppable 30 buff formations you are imagining.
You are talking about the advantages of surprise and overwhelming numbers, which things tend to guarantee success whether the equipment used is fighter, bomber, or vehicle. This truism is irrelevant to what I'm discussing, which is the unique amount of power buff boxes as modeled hand to an individual player vs. any other aircraft or vehicle.
I am going to use simplified numbers because reducing the variables serves to illuminate the point. Ten players decide to set out on a jabo raid flying P-47D-40s. IIRC, this aircraft can carry about 3,000 pounds of ord, giving this team of ten collective total of 30,000 pounds of ord that can be dropped on target.
If they are bounced at a typical intercept distance, say about a sector out, by a conveniently equal number of defenders, they are in real trouble because the ordinance has slowed their jabos down to the point that most LW fighters can catch, especially the ubiquitous P-51D. (Any average MA pilot will tell you that a fighter loaded down with ords, unlike a box of heavies, really IS generally an easy kill for the average pilot.)
To defend themselves, these P-47s have a total of 80 .50 caliber machine guns at their disposal, guns they must maneuver to bring to bear. And to maneuver for their lives means that they must almost certainly skin their ords. Mission busted right there.
To stop this attack, the defenders must manage to shoot down a total of 10 aircraft. Now the Jug is tough for a single-seat fighter, but nothing like one of the big heavies. If the defenders manage to force 9/10s of the Jugs to skin ords and/or shoot them down, then the surviving 1/10 can deliver about 3,000 pounds of ord to the defender's base.
Moreover, if most of the Jugs skin ords and go to fighting,a furball has broken out. If that doesn't make you
, maybe you should be playing some other game.
Now let's look at what happens if those same 10 attackers take B-17 formations....
The same 10 players who could only cart 30,000 pounds of ord in their Jugs will now be toting a whopping 180,000 pounds of ord. These same ten players, who were effectively helpless in their Jugs until they dumped the ordinance, will now
360 .50 cal machine guns which they CAN bring to bear effectively in their defense without ending or altering their bomb run one iota. The 10 defenders, which previously had to shoot down 10 single-seat fighters, will now have to instead shoot down 30 almost ludicrously tough bombers before they complete their bomb run. And in this case, if the fighters manage 90%, (an unlikely figure in their circumstances), 18,000 pounds of ord will still be dropped on their base. Enough to effectively toolshed the defense out of the fight. Yawnfest.
The numbers don't lie. The big heavies give an individual player almost ridiculous amount of strategic power vs. anything else.
The stats in the main reflect that very few people in the MA actually do this though, instead creeping from dead six making crappy attacks and dying a lot. That's on them, it's not the game design's fault. If you make it so the guy creeping from dead six has an equal chance against the buff, a decent attack will be completely unsurvivable.
Wiley.
The stats in the MA reflect that the average pilot in fighters is unlikely to prevent the equally average bomber pilot from completing his mission. You can cry "But if they were SKILLED..." all you want, but that doesn't really mean anything. There are players on this forum who can go into the MA and kill Spit16s flying P-39s and C205s all day long, but we still acknowledge that the Spit pilot has inherent advantages by virtue of the ride he's in. Sufficient skill overcomes huge inherent disadvantages. This does not change the fact that in the current MA setup, average players doing buff offense have an enormous advantage over average players on the fighter defense side.
