This isn't exactly true. Players in the game were allowed buff formations to account for the lack of six individual gunners (in certain aircraft) that could all fire in different directions at different targets at the same time. Even in the current formations they lack that ability.
6 gunners would be fine, *IF THE EFFORTS OF 6 PLAYERS* were being taken up gunning for that plane. Of course, those six players could not simultaneously be effecting the combat elsewhere while gunning, which is perfectly fair. But that is not how it is in AH. With formation and bomber modeling as it is, one individual can essentially effect the combat in a way that in reality took the efforts of 3 pilots and multiple other crewmen. Meanwhile, one guy upping a single-seat fighter has one plane that it took one guy to fly. One fighter pilot can have the effect of...let me do the math here...yep, 1 fighter pilot. Tanks in reality did require multiple crewmen and AH makes some compromises so one person can effectively operate them, but at least each GVer still gets only one GV. When you look fighter/attack planes, GVs, and level bombers, one of these things is not like the other.
Then Zimme comes along and claims that himself alone sitting in his computer chair being able to control 3 planes that in reality took 30 men to crew is NOT enough. No, he thinks bombers ought to be handed enough reality-compromising advantages that his lone self can have the same effect as
ONE HUNDRED bombers which in reality required thousands of crewmen to operate!!!
There is absolutely no difference between this and me asking for up to 999 AI wingmen to accompany me on fighter sorties, which is to say both notions are completely absurd. But most people do not think deeply especially when it comes to the status quo, thus they fail to judge the bomber modeling with the same consistency.
Bombers have been handed so many compromise arcade-mode advantages over F/A and GVs that really, if you are doing anything to effect the "war" OTHER than piloting bombers, you are most likely wasting your time. Now if one doesn't care about the war this won't bother one personally, but surely the fact that the outcome fighter-on-fighter engagements
is almost irrelevant to who wins maps compared to bombing inanimate objects can't be good in the long term for a WWII air
combat game named "Aces High".
That said I'm all for the return of the deathstar. It's been far too long. That was a really really fun aspect of AW although it could tie up eight people in a single buff (six gunners plus pilot and bombardier) making fights in the arena even harder to find.
I highly favor multiple gunners being able to join a bomber. That would be handing each individual player a position that was handled in reality by...drumroll please...ONE individual. That is perfect as far as I'm concerned. BUT, if multiple players were allowed to join a bomber, I would expect some compromise back in the direction of reality, such as as one player no longer having every single gun in the formation with a line of sight to the target under his control. One player could jump between controlling the 3 tail guns, the 3 ball turrets, etc. Letting one person control 3 positions on the 3 separate planes is still a big compromise, but an acceptable one IMO. With two players, six of the positions in the formation could be fired simultaneously (and independently, no less). Would this make bombers with 8 players joined more effective and less vulnerable than bomber formations with only one player in control, on average? Yes it would, and this how it SHOULD be, because you would have the efforts of 8 players tied up in that formation instead of driving their own bombers, flying F/A, or GVing elsewhere, and that is a fair balance. As currently modeled though, bombers self-defend so well with only one person that there is hardly any point in having even one person join a formation to gun.
