ok... who switched my B-17's armour for papier maché?

[House MD 221B]

seriously.... I wanna know... they could sustain MASSIVE amounts of damage, they've landed without tails, without nose cones, without 3 out of the 4 engines.


so why oh why does it fall apart as soon as a few bullets clip it.

I've tried arcade, realistic, AND simulator, and on all 3 its punishment threshold is that of a scared anaemic vole!

the bomb loads are awesome, the flight model is perfect, the model is great, the gunning turrets are great (APART from the fact the upper turret cant face forwards and neither the upper or ball turrets can shoot vertically up or down)

this stinks of lazyness on the developer's part... IL-2 on the PC was all about realism and accuracy... did they think we wouldn't notice? what the hell.

and i'm not just talking about this, there are SO many aspects of the game that just reek of "5 to 5 on a friday"... IL-2 was a pillar of the PC flight sim world, it was brilliant to the last detail... did they think that PC users dont own consoles? that we wouldnt catch on?

but back to the B-17... please PLEASE as part of DLC turn it into the plane it was manufactured to be... not a card-board cutout replica. and PLEASE for the love of god add an auto-feather option, so that as soon as 1 engine goes the entire plane doesnt instantly lose control or explode.

otherwise as MANY of you know i love this game, its beautiful, and its the best the console will probably ever see for this era of flight.

but the developers either really sold out for the publishers (ala front cover of the box) or just couldn't be bothered to produce the same level of quality for the console as they did the PC. I get there arent as many buttons, that fine, but like i said make auto-feather etc. we wouldnt mind automated systems, so long as they are there to begin with.

anyway rant over.... im understandably pissed that after 8 hours of strike matches the ONE plane i wanted is less than the historic aircraft it's meant to be. Just needed to vent, and hopefully a Dev will see it and perhaps consider some options for improvement.

[Marchochias]

Yeah, the damage models can be a bit crazy. Even on Simulator, a few shots from a 7.62mm machine gun can bring down He 111s, and as you say, B-17s.

Whereas other aircraft like the IL-2 can take 30 mm rounds almost indefinitely.

Hopefully they fix it up with patches.

[PantherAttack2]

Really?

I've pumped a ton of lead into a B-17 with my Hurricane's 12 machine guns and it wasn't close to falling out of the sky.

[Ancient Seraph]

Can you imagine how many complaints there would be when the B17 was invincible as well?

[P-51]

probably hit your engines! That's how i take them down, that and diving from above in the blind spot

[MorgothNL]

The B-17 can take a lot more punishment then most other bombers in the game (when hitting the same spots on different bombers). But yeah, it could take way more punishment. But I gues that is balancing. I think it is 'ok' like this, it is pretty hard to take down, has a lot of guns,and a huge payload.

Making it even harder to take down would ruin the game by making the B-17 even more overpowered than it allready is. Just this night, I was in a strike game 4 vs 4. They had 2 b-17 and a blenheim (and a fighter). We had 3 A-20G's. our 700 tickets were gone within 5 mins, and they still had 530.

If you would ask me if they should change the B-17, then yes, but for the sake of gameplay I would say it should be nerfed.

[mattd27]

The other day I took down a B-17 with a 109 easily. I was so surprised as I thought it was going to be impossible, but me and another pilot ganged up on him and he never scored the whole flight!

[Marchochias]

Originally Posted by PantherAttack2

Really?

I've pumped a ton of lead into a B-17 with my Hurricane's 12 machine guns and it wasn't close to falling out of the sky.

To be fair, those Hurricane guns take forever to kill anything. I tried flying perfectly straight and level in Simulator to let a friend of mine try to shoot me down with the machine guns....they took so long that he actually used a rocket instead

[Steyr_amr]

Sort of agree with this, have played games where a single B-17 ended the whole show in minutes. However also remember fighting against a team with 2 fortresses skillfully piloted in the Emil and getting 6 kills on them. I was rather impressed with this (by my own meagre standards), however they still won the game.

Also remember watching guncam footage of a Zerstorer pumping cannon fire into the engine nacelles and wingroots of a B-17 from 6oclock, massive puffs, flashes and even chunks of airfame coming off it and still it plodded along until the 110 had to duck under it to avoid a collision.

Seems as though if they up-gun and up-armour the B-17 they need to reduce it's bombload to maintain balance.

Has anyone been using 262's against them... might be a thought...

[Voyager]

Well, from a balance standpoint, it sort of seems to me you're screwed when you're trying to balance a side that built heavy bombers against a side that just didn't. If you really want to balance bomber vrs bomber missions then you really have to limit the Allies to medium bombers, just the A-10 and B-25, etc, and even there, the Germans really stopped seriously developing bombers after around 1941-42.

My thought would be, bring in the B-25, have it unlock with the B-17, and then limit heavy bombers to asymmetric scenarios built to handle them.