New Bombing design too frustrating for Average Pilots

[Virage]

The Jury is out.  Bombing is too hard.  What can be done to bring Buffing back to the masses?

[thrila]

what jury is this then?

[Puck]

No, the Jury is in.

The new model is more or less fine, just needs some tweaks (like lateral separation in the formation).

Define "average".  I consider myself below average, and I managed to figure it out with a bit of effort.

[Revvin]

BS! the bombing system is fine, I'd like to see Puck's idea for separation but apart from that it's fine it just takes practice.

[Revvin]

And the funny thing is 'over there' in brand 'W' they'd love a more complex bombsight, something that takes a little skill but the dev team don't seem bothered about introducing it whilst here the dev team have introduced such a system and there are some in the community that want it taken away

[Virage]

Define "average".  

Average:  

Generally has less BBS posts then me.

Can't hit much despite what the experts say.

Are venting their frustration in Text channels.

Aren't flying Buffs anymore.

[Karnak]

New layouts for the targets are comming in the future (1.11?) that will address the shortcommings than bombers currently labor under (95% of bombs doing no damage at all).

Hold your horses and wait to see the new layouts and their effects on the game.

[Hornet]

Trying to shoot fighters that move around is hard, can't believe HT would program such BS.

[ramzey]

Trying to shoot fighters that move around is hard, can't believe HT would program such BS.

How do u know its a BS?
Are u fly on any bomber as a gunner in RL?

No ?
Im sure in RL was much harder then here and gunning here must be more harder then now to be more real;)

Practice, practice, practice and once again practice

greets

ramzey

[Innominate]

Bombing now can be difficult but it's not impossible, the problem is that it's a one-pass event, there are no second chances, there is no way a buff can do noticable damage to a field.

It doesnt matter if you can kill two of a fields fighter hangars, if it doesnt affect the operations there, the bombing run was a failure.  And while multiple bombers ARE able to disable a field, it's usually more efficient to bring a few jabos, kill the hangars, and vulch for a while.

The field layout's are obviously designed to be something of a challenge to kill for the old precision bombers.  The effect of strat is minimal(except for HQs)..

While playing around on the test server, and as it noticable in some of the scenario maps, there are "old" fields which consist of two fighters hangars next to each other, and a bomber hangar.

What if we changed our current maps so that the fields were laid out like that?  Instead of many hangars well spread out, replace them with a few tightly grouped hangars(maybe 2FH/1BH for a small field, 4FH/2BH for a med, 6FH/3BH for a large, in groups of two for FH's and alone for the BH's)  The damage required to kill the hangars could be increased so that the total damage needed to kill the hangars could be raised a bit to keep the total tonnage to disable the field equal.

Essentially the same bombload would be required for a field, bombers with an accurate drop could help with field capture, precision bombing is gone, but buffs can still hit the fields, and deal noticable damage.

Fields could be arranged so that each type of object can be killed in a single pass, i.e. FH, BH, fuel, ammo, barraks, radar, etc, but so that ONLY that object(Or half of two types) could be killed in that pass.  So if you went after FH's, there wouldnt be any fuel along that bombing path.  Since fuel is so crippling, and so slow to rebuild, it could be set up to take two passes instead of just one to kill.

Really though it comes down to a question, Was the problem with bombers the fact that it took no skill or practice to laser-bomb a field like so many people whined about.  Or is the problem just that furballers dont want to be interrupted by a buff they didn't bother attacking?  Is it WRONG of me to try and think that buffs can be involved in field captures?

[Imp]

Good idea Innominate

Another idea is to make runway destroyable.
Bombing in WW2 was innacurate so they had to use big targets
Luftwaffe attacked airfields allot in BoB (It was the main targets)

[samu1]

It would give the buffs a big enough target to effectively hit, and if you give a runway a few craters you ain't gonna get many planes taking off from it.  But this might make it too easy to close a base, maybe implement a quick repair time??

My 2 pennies

[gatso]

I'd like to see some new airfield layouts too. While I suppose there are advantages to having all large/med/small fields the same I would like to see more variety, change em around a bit.  As already stated there are some interesting bases on some of the scenario maps so it can't be impossible. Make some easy for buffs to kill, make some hard, but easy for JABO to kill.

Best airfield BUFF target IMHO is the large grouping of FH on a large base.  Lets have more of that.

My  £0.02

Gatso

[MRPLUTO]

Virage,

Check out Kweassa's post on how to bomb.  It's well written with many illustrations.

I regularly bomb from 20,000 to 28,500 feet above the target, with consistantly excellent results.  I never go above 28.5k, because that's the highest operational mission I've read about for a large formation of B-17s.  I know Mossies bombed from 30k+, and occaisionally 17s and 24s did too.  But the crews got real cold and the guns often froze up.

How do your drops miss?  Long, short, left, right?  All of the above?  It may be just one simple thing you're doing or not doing that's causing you to miss.

  MRPLUTO  VMF-323  ~Death Rattlers~  MAG-33

[Samm]

Originally posted by Hornet
Trying to shoot fighters that move around is hard, can't believe HT would program such BS.

Man I wish you were searious, this would be a shoe in for the Whine of the week .