Disclaimer: I've been flying B-17s a lot lately to gain AH bomber perspective. I've enjoyed it. I think gunning for yourself is fun and challenging. This is just something that harkens back to my time doing tabletop war games (something I have neither the time nor patience for with both family obligations and the advent of PC games and the internet). I remember keeping track of my bomber crews and it added an element of sophistication that I appreciated (something I appreciate in Silent Hunter IV with my sub crews).
So here goes - AI bomber gunners - just a discussion is all.
What if ... our bombers did indeed come with AI gunners? Every position filled - single bomber or formation, the game mimicked you having a crew. What if their skill level varied per gunner? Let's say, initially, if you never spent any perks on them they represented rookies that could hardly hit anything at all and wasted a lot of ammo? We'll call that skill level 20. You could fly around with them and they would at least spray tracers in fear and desperation (that's sometimes enough to daunt the less skilled would-be aggressor). Players could still man a gun as well. Specifically
a gun. No control of other gun positions on their plane (or on the other planes in a formation). Let's say you'd like to increase your gunner's skill (individually or as a whole). You could spend perks to do so. Perhaps a perk point bumps up one gunner by 10 points of skill. Spend six and you max him out at 80 (representing a gunner that's pretty much a crack shot and wastes less ammo). Spend 30 points and you can make a single B-17 quite a bit more dangerous. Spend 90 and you cover a full flight 'Dead-eye Richards.'
Now, as the illustration states, lose any of those gunners and their replacements are rookies again. Lose the whole plane (or a whole flight) and training (or, well, buying) begins anew. It would also be fun to give them individual names and such (imo).
This isn't a necessity by a far margin and I still Like the game, as is (not to mention, though I am, that I don't really know the code versus fun versus sacrifice of other potential fun things. Just a thought I'm sharing.
