Lancasters perk them?

[bozon]

No.  Bombers are too vulnerable and the  time investment to use them too great.

That is simply inaccurate. Bombers have a K/D of about 0.3--0.4. This means that PER FORMATION they have a K/D of 1. Given the abuse of bombers and drones especially as kamikaze, I'd say that they are doing well against fighters.

[Karnak]

That is simply inaccurate. Bombers have a K/D of about 0.3--0.4. This means that PER FORMATION they have a K/D of 1. Given the abuse of bombers and drones especially as kamikaze, I'd say that they are doing well against fighters.

Bombers are free kills.  Take away two thirds of their firepower and durability and they will simply not be used in favor of P-51Ds.

Is that really what you want?

[Fish42]

That is simply inaccurate. Bombers have a K/D of about 0.3--0.4. This means that PER FORMATION they have a K/D of 1. Given the abuse of bombers and drones especially as kamikaze, I'd say that they are doing well against fighters.

Look at A2A kills only for some of those bombers as they get alot more kills on GVs. IE the Wirble makes up around 20% of the Lancaster kills, where as the B-17 has a much higher A2A ratio.

Also last month the Lanc had a .2 K/D ratio, where as the He111 had a K/D of .08!

The only non-perk bombers that can, on average, trade a Formation for a fighter, are the US heavy bombers and the Ki-67.

[bozon]

Bombers are free kills.  Take away two thirds of their firepower and durability and they will simply not be used in favor of P-51Ds.

Is that really what you want?

No, I did not say disable formations, I said put a perk price tag on them. It could be as low as 1 perk point each, just something to give an incentive to bring them back. Bomber perks are easy to get even for the noobies and such a price is easily affordable. If however a player regularly loose his drones or perform suicide attacks the costs will add up till it stings.

A single suicide lancstuka is still more effective than a P-51D kamikaze in all relevant cases.

Look at A2A kills only for some of those bombers as they get alot more kills on GVs. IE the Wirble makes up around 20% of the Lancaster kills, where as the B-17 has a much higher A2A ratio.

Also last month the Lanc had a .2 K/D ratio, where as the He111 had a K/D of .08!

The only non-perk bombers that can, on average, trade a Formation for a fighter, are the US heavy bombers and the Ki-67.

There are fighters with very low K/D as well. All planes are not equal in A2A. Lancs specifically are the most abused bomber in the role of GV carpet bombing and CV kamikaze, which pushes their K/D way down. In general, also consider that the total time-in-game of the average bomber pilot is probably lower by a significant amount then the total time-in-game of the average fighter pilot, as noobs gravitate more to flying bombers till they accumulate some experience in the game. There are the dedicated veteran buff pilots of course, but we are talking averages.

It would be interesting to check the K/D of the top bomber pilots. The only problem is how to define the "top". By bomber score perhaps, as meaningless as it may be? Drone abusers will tend to have a lower score because of the damage/death category I think. Perhaps selecting the top 10% in damage/death and average their K/D?

He111 defensively are just one notch above a C47 defending itself with the pilot's 0.45 pistol. A 1939 level bomber in a 1945 arena... I would not expect any better K/D for that one. 1939 fighters can at least fly circles inside a phone booth before they shoot paper clips at a 1945 plane that ended up on the deck with no energy after fighting someone else.

[Karnak]

Putting a perk price on free kills is tantamount to disabling them.

[BnZs]

free kills

[BnZs]

As a point of fact myself and many other veteran players consider taking on a heavy buff formation guaranteed death or RTB due to oiled engine/pilot wound and often avoid them. Here's a hint: When really, really, really outnumbered at a base he's defending, SHawk will up from another base and drag a box of B-17s through the red cloud in lieu of a Tempest, 262, or other possible option. It tends to be deadlier. I've seen him do it, and I've seen a whole crowd of players pointedly ignoring those 3 "free kills" when he does it, for good reason.
The fairly common phenomenon of fighters sheltering in buff defensive gunfire (it has even happened in FSO before) is as strong an indicator that something is wrong as one could imagine.

A jabo is as good as a free kill if you fly anything with speed, a formation is not.

[Karnak]

As a point of fact myself and many other veteran players consider taking on a heavy buff formation guaranteed death or RTB due to oiled engine/pilot wound and often avoid them. Here's a hint: When really, really, really outnumbered at a base he's defending, SHawk will up from another base and drag a box of B-17s through the red cloud in lieu of a Tempest, 262, or other possible option. It tends to be deadlier. I've seen him do it, and I've seen a whole crowd of players pointedly ignoring those 3 "free kills" when he does it, for good reason.
The fairly common phenomenon of fighters sheltering in buff defensive gunfire (it has even happened in FSO before) is as strong an indicator that something is wrong as one could imagine.

A jabo is as good as a free kill if you fly anything with speed, a formation is not.

Huh.  One the rare times that I play, I still consider bombers easy kills. While I may get pinged a bit they are distinctly easier to kill than fighters.  I'll grant you that the only truly free kills are the rare B-25C, Boston Mk III, G4M1, He111 and Ju88 along with the common Lancaster Mk III.  The B-17G, B-24J, B-26B and Ki-67 need to be treated with a bit of respect and damage is expected, but in the end they die.

I am not particularly good, but every time I have fought 999000 he has lost bombers to me and he has never shot me down.

I find your claim that "many other veteran players consider taking on a heavy buff formation guaranteed death or RTB due to oiled engine/pilot wound" to be even more of an exaggeration than my exaggeration of calling them free kills.

[Lusche]

Thread has left the hyperbole region and is now firmly rooted in the country of comedy.

[BnZs]

I find your claim that "many other veteran players consider taking on a heavy buff formation guaranteed death or RTB due to oiled engine/pilot wound" to be even more of an exaggeration than my exaggeration of calling them free kills.

Then you haven't paid much attention to either the MA or to the BBS.

Of course everyone's view is warped by their own perspective, you fly a plane with 4 freakin' nose mounted Hispanos as your main ride, the best A2A gun package in a configuration that helps counter the ridiculous range and accuracy of buff gunners. The vast majority of the MA does not fly the Mossie however, so perhaps it is your own view that is a bit skewed.

I am not particularly good, but every time I have fought 999000 he has lost bombers to me and he has never shot me down.

You are either very good indeed (and bragging about it through understatement) or lying. I tend to give you the benefit of the doubt and go with the former, especially considering the Mossie will help.

[BnZs]

Thread has left the hyperbole region and is now firmly rooted in the country of comedy.

And this guy...I love him, but he's one of the premiere shooters of the game (whether or not he will admit it), and most of his buff kills this tour appear to be in either an Me-163 or a Ta-152. An experten flying 30mm-packing dedicated interceptors talking about how easy it is to kill buffs does not quite represent the whole story.

[The Fugitive]

I have shot down 20 vs the 4 that have got me. Looks like I get more than I get got, and I fly planes with 50 cals most of the time.

So ya I think your exaggeration is a bit out there.

[BnZs]

I have shot down 20 vs the 4 that have got me. Looks like I get more than I get got, and I fly planes with 50 cals most of the time.

So ya I think your exaggeration is a bit out there.

You have all of 7 kills this tour of B-17, 6 flying F4U-1A and 1 flying the P-51D, against 1 death. That's not many for a whole tour, you must be ignoring buffs a lot of the time for whatever reason. Also the raw stats don't tell me much about hows of these kills, such as whether you had help in attacking the formations or not, whether or not you pulled off when the defense fire proved too accurate, how often you RTBed with oil out, or what have you. My own K/D against B-17s and B-24s combined is 9-0, but I will flatly tell you that comes from the simple expedient of only attacking buffs in good situations and pulling off of them if the gunner is too apt.

Against B-24s you have 2 kills, both in ship guns. Your single death to B-24J is in a P-38J, a better than average buff hunting plane, strongly suggesting you did run into a competent buff gunner and it wasn't a "free kill" at all.

Against the more lightly defended Lancasters you have 9 kills, all but one of them in the P-38J. The P-38J is quite a bit better than average for buff-hunting, packing a 20MM cannon and 4 fifties in the nose for concentrated firepower and no convergence issues. And yet you, a relative "experten" in this game, still died twice in your P-38 against Lancaster formations. I suspect that what happened here was you trying to prevent Lancs from from reaching some important objective such as hangar destruction and you were forced to adopt a less-than-perfect approach to do so in a timely manner, as happens often in the MA. But there is now way of knowing.

The story of your stats is that you don't hunt buffs that often, when you do it is often in a plane that is above average for taking on buffs, and even though you are an experienced pilot, they still get you regularly. Pretty good demonstration of what I'm saying.

[BnZs]

An interesting bit of perspective-My K/D against P-51Ds this tour is 13 to 2, better than your K/D against Lancasters Fugitive. So obviously going by that, P-51Ds are free kills, in the same league as Lancasters   My k/d against Lancs? 13/1. Against B-26s? 2/2.  Since it is obvious I am always trying to kill and not get killed, it rather looks like form these states that engaging P-51Ds is not much more dangerous than engaging lancs, and that B-26 boxes are significantly more dangerous than P-51Ds.

[Karnak]

You are either very good indeed (and bragging about it through understatement) or lying. I tend to give you the benefit of the doubt and go with the former, especially considering the Mossie will help.

Last time I encountered 999000 I was in an La-7 and while he oiled me I destroyed one of his bombers.  The others were all gone before I could make another pass.