Ver Haff All Zee Bombers Gone?

[muckmaw]

Bombing is my business. That's what our squad does. Now here are the problems associated with level bombing:

1. Patience: most people in this game want fast, instant action, and lack the patience to climb to safe alt, and fly a 1 hour sortie.

2. Targets: Anything you can do in a heavy, can be done faster with greater accuracy in a JABO. HTC is in the process of making the field towns 4 times larger, and hopefully hardening the buildings.

3. Drones: There are bugs here. Lead A/C is destroyed, drones go into a death spiral, following the lead if you do not jump fast enough. If your in a gunner position, as one usually is when fending of fighters, you must jump to the pilots seat before you can bail/change planes. By this time, you've lost precious alt. Another bug, if one plane loses a gun, all 3 lose the same gun.

4: Poor ammo loadout: A b-17 is helpless when the tailgun is out of ammo. I suggested once before that pilots be allowed via a dot command to move ammo from one gun to another on the A/C as long as the guns use the same ammo. 10 second delay while ammo is transferred is fair.

5: Poor bomber durability: I do not kow how historically accurate these AC are as far as damage models, but they seem to be made of tissue paper.

6: Difficult base launchs: This only applies to the PIzza map, where many hihg alt fields are surrounded by hills and mountains, that a bomber cannot ascend. Also, many fields have hills around them that throw off the bombsight, causing extreme variance in the impact point.

7. Bombsight: Not as difficult as one may think to master, but daunting enough to keep would be bomber pilots away.

These are just some of the problems that immedietly sping to mind. I'm sure other seasoned bombers can add to this list.

And I think Lazs' idea of perking bombs for fighters would really help the situation. I'm not sure if he was serious, but I think it's a very good idea.

[Joc]

Muckmaw really said it all for me,those are the reasons I dont fly buffs anyore,now I use Mossies or Tiffies for attacking installations.

[MotorOil]

You said it mukmaw, I use to spend half my time in a bomber and thought it was great.  Now I can only hit the target half the time.  Can't do more damage with three bombers than I could with one.  I do fly lower (10k)and slower which makes me a nice target.  I find it is harder to gun now also from the bombers.  Convergence plays a huge roll and the bomber you decide to gun out of.

[Nifty]

Make the towns larger, more spread out and impervious to gunfire under 30mm calibre.  Buff formations with smaller eggs and larger delays on their drop can then carpet bomb the town getting much better results than a Jabo fighter.  It's gamey, but the whole concept of town destruction, put 10 troops in the map room for capture is gamey to begin with.  

[Midnight]

Originally posted by Shiva


Fuel bunker, ammo bunker, and the barracks. Pork fuel lightly, eliminate external ordnance, and keep them from running troops out of the field. Done at the right time, it can make a big difference.

The same can be accomplished in a heavy fighter much faster, and then you can stick around to kill the enemy.

To hit all those individual strat targets on a field, you have to make at least 3 bombing runs, calibrating for each run.. way too much time.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Nifty
Make the towns larger)

Surely you already know this is already planned right?

[LePaul]

Muck hit all the biggies.

Sometimes I climb real high...sometimes I try the mid alts.  Anything lower and you get torn up fast.

I've traded in my Ar234 and Lanc runs for P-47 runs or Fw190-A8 runs...love that potatoe-gun 30mm.

Its a sad day when I have boo-koo more fighter perks than bomber ones!  

[PENYL]

I used to fly buffs almost exclusively in WB.  Some of the high altitude encounters were great, and the scenarios were awesome.

Buffs seem "silly" in AH.

1)  Defensive gunnery lacks realism (a real bomber has mulitple, manned positions)  It's just silly to give up all your defenses so you can make a bombing run.  To be realistic the buff should be modeled with a reasonably skilled crew.

2)  The formations of 3 are just silly.  It's just too bogus for me to even want to take them up.

I can live with a more realistic gunsight and carpet bombing.  Unfortunately the other aspects of bombers in AH are not setup in a way that makes me want to return to that part of game play.

[Alpo]

We also run the heavy missions and although the bombing has become a little tougher since the 1.10 mods, I find it more satisfying to see that "Building destroyed" or "Fighter Hanger destroyed" messages.

Of all the issues discussed, I think town/building hardness frustrates me the most.  It was just a couple of nights ago that I answered a call to arms that Rook HQ was under attack.  I climb in a G10 to grab like crazy for what I thought would be high B17s or Lancs trying to drop HQ.  As I arrived, I find clear skies above and about 3-4 Me110s strafing the stuff down .  

Unfortunately, until there are targets that only bombers can destroy, a heavy fighter will be the choice of many.  Heck, a couple of light Typhoons work just as well.  So go ahead and put the Komet at HQ for "special defense" HTC, I just hope they are good on the deck.

BTW... a weather alert for you... Hell has officially frozen over as I'm agreeing with Laz and the perk ordinance idea.  

[JimBear]

1)Bombers can carry a gunner to assist when on the bomb run, no thanks if the idea of AI gunners is being floated (the best idea I have seen  is an auto check6 to alert a lone pilot)

2) Why would anyone expect an unescorted bomber to last long in any enviorment with enemy fighters?

[Sabre]

While Lazs' suggestion would help the situation, Niffty's suggestion is the best one I've seen so far (and one I've made on more than one occasion).  I'd go one farther and suggest that anything smaller than a 37-mm be ineffective against large structures and ammo bunkers (because these are hardened targets).  Fighters could still carry bombs and rockets, but would be much less effective against towns, cities, hangers, and strat-targets in general.  Once its bombs/rockets were gone, a fighter would be completely ineffective against these larger and harder targets.  Then, the greater ordnance weight of the heavies would come into its own as the weapon of choice for heavy-duty mud-moving.  Couple this with larger field-towns and strat-targets, and you give the heavies back their role in AH.

[vorticon]

i dont fly the big bombers because the most im gonna get befpore i get shot down is one hanger and i can get that in a JABO with a 38

lancaster is always fun though if they base is completely ignored by everyone on all teams

[lazs2]

You could do any of a combination of things but for now... the simplest solution is to perk bombs over 250lbs and make it so that you only got fighter bomb perks for a sortie you survived.

I have allways asked for huge cities for the fluffs to carpet bomb but that might take a while and be hard to do..  
lazs

[muckmaw]

I really don't know abything about programming, but how hard could it be to just quadruple the size of the cities we have now?

It's not like HTC would need to program new graphics. I'd imagine the only place where it would be bothersome is fitting cities that currently rest on a hill, etc.

I like the idea of the Perked Bombs. Anything to end the reign of the suicide jabo would be an improvement in my book.

[Puck]

Harden the hangers (so that only 500lb and up will even damage them), quad the size of the town and harden the buildings, then perk heavy JABO bombs and you have nicely solved the insta-cap raid.  Pretty much have to coordinate your heavy bombers, jabos, top cover, and goons.

Problem is will whether or not this would cost HTC too many gamers for the benifit of the simmers.