[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;52821290]I've been playing this pretty religiously, find it really fun. I like the absence of a pause mechanic, honestly micromanaging what you need to isn't hard at all - except for how finnicky it can be to click/select exactly what you want (especially on the front equipment rack). Only when you're going in on a bombing run at the same time as having fighters to tag or a fire to put out is it truly detrimental. But I like that, it forces you to make a choice - Do I take the damage and get the bombing run done with, or do I deal with the fighters now and risk having to make another pass which puts me in danger for longer?
What I don't like is how there are few real choices in terms of progression, that it's pretty much linear once you've worked out how to optimise weight vs firepower, armour, subsystems etc.
Honestly, crew equipment doesn't matter too much as long as they all exceed 20 armour. Once you get the toughened survival vest (I'm sure its stats, the fact that it's as protected as a heavy flak with less drawbacks AND survival stats must be an oversight) you can focus more on speeding crew members up.[/QUOTE]
This is pretty much my thoughts so far. I love the art style and missions and the sense of panic the game has, but it really needs more choices. More planes would be the ideal, but just more sidegrades to what's there would be good. Defensive cannons would be nice to have, for example
I think for a first, sort of proof-of-concept attempt, its genuinely great. They just need to keep working over the idea and develop it more is all.
[editline]26th October 2017[/editline]
Cause there are a lot of ways you could offer more choice and variance in what you do. Like Spitfires, you could make those customizable. Could give them bigger weapons that do more DPS but they are much more limited on time so they take longer to arrive, cooldown, and linger for less time. Or could have components that make them cooldown faster but take longer to arrive, fuel tanks for longer lingering but reduced damage. That'd be a nice little secondary customization track. A bit more influence over crew skills perhaps could be nice as well. And I love all the customization options for crew, but aside from the Engineer and for me the nose gunner, everyone else can just wear the absolute heaviest armors and just sit in place, especially once the tail gunner has ammo feeds.
I think I managed to bug my game. I did the critical mission where you have to fly between the radar sites and not get spotted, did so and bombed the target. On the way back I triggered every radar site there was cause shooting down fighters is fun, but it failed the mission for me apparently (Guessing this is an oversight - the point of dodging them is to not spook the target). I've flown 5 more missions since and haven't got the critical mission back yet.
Hmm, I tagged a radar site on my return I'm pretty sure and nothing happened.
uuhhh...
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/xMrotOf.png[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;52826002]Hmm, I tagged a radar site on my return I'm pretty sure and nothing happened.[/QUOTE]
Well, all my crew are maxed out and the mission's back, so I guess I'll just play it "properly" this time.
I think a cool mechanic would be paying for refit between missions. 36 missions in and I have nothing to spend the dosh on, except the radar mk6 which isn't worth the extra 500lbs(?) and as others said, different sidegrades. Being able to customise the spitfires would be really cool, but there's way more than that they could do. You have coastal radar to buy/upgrade that, at lower levels, just marks enemy wings on the map periodically, while at later levels it will auto-tag fighters in the channel and/or send spitfires to intercept them, while another option could be aiding you with mid/high-altitude navigation. Speaking of which it's an absolute pain in the arse, for one there's virtually no reason to fly at anything but low altitude (especially since a lot of fighters seem to ignore you if they're at mid), but on top of that 90% of the time it makes navigation impossible.
Being able to determine how much fuel you bring would be nice as well, at the start of the mission you have 70% in each tank - it'd be nice to fill them entirely at the penalty of speed, or fuel tank vulnerability. They could even have jerry cans as one of the equipment rack options.
It'd also be cool if you could bring an extra crewman, or larger ammo belts at the penalty of fuel usage.
I would love to see the ability to bring multiple bombers on missions too, upgrading them alongside your main one, but it'd need AI to manage everything. Missions to make them necessary and worthwhile too of course.
Even better would be the ability to manually control stations, though being able to fly manually would make the navigator somewhat redundant. But often enough, the gunners don't engage the optimal target, the micromanagement of nav marker > tag to try and out-maneuver the Me110s is inefficient. It'd just be a cool feature.
[editline]27th October 2017[/editline]
The fuck, I did the mission again, and it failed again. Didn't cut into a single radar site on the way in or out. I'm gonna shit
[editline]27th October 2017[/editline]
Fortunately the save files are very easy to edit
It'd be nice if the turret upgrades were less linear too. Hispano turrets could have high damage but extremely small ammo pools, for example, or you could have shit like this
[t]http://aviadejavu.ru/Images6/MY/MY86-10/4-3.jpg[/t]
Which would have an extremely low fire rate but instantly kill whatever it hits. Different types of escorts would be cool, too. Pathfinder Mozzies could lay down markers for you to follow that would lead you around hazards, but there could be a chance that they're intercepted, or maybe they could bomb small targets like flak cannons for you. Loads of potential for cool stuff, can't wait for this game to get expansions and the like
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;52824669]I think for a first, sort of proof-of-concept attempt, its genuinely great. They just need to keep working over the idea and develop it more is all.[/QUOTE]
Bomber Crew 2: Nippon Boogaloo
[url]http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=537800[/url]
[quote]Hello everyone!
OK, straight to the most important stuff - Jon and myself have been working non-stop on a Bomber Crew update, and it's available now!
Brew a pot of tea, butter your crumpets, sit back and check out the new features in Flakfire's guide.
Here’s what’s new:
‘Slow Time’ - Hold Ctrl
We think this is a good compromise for the players who like their action a little less intense at times, while retaining the urgency of the situations crews found themselves in.
By holding ‘Ctrl’, time will slow, allowing more breathing space for quick decisions. A small bar in the top left of the screen will show how much longer time can be slowed for. Once the bar runs out, it will fill again over a short period. The Slow Time feature can be used even when the bar is not fully filled.
For those of you who are hardcore #nopause advocates, a bonus is rewarded at the end of each mission if you do not use the Slow Time ability. And if you really dislike it, it can be switched off entirely in the options menu.
‘Quick Peek’ - Hold Shift
Quickly move the camera to view inside the bomber! This was in the previous release, but somewhat hidden. Especially powerful when used along with ‘Slow Time’!
Camera control keys - ‘W, S, A & D’
The camera can now be zoomed in/out with the W/S keys, and moved left and right with A/D.
This is especially useful in ‘Quick Peek’ mode!
Hot Keys!
We’ve added a few hotkeys to make some trickier actions a little more straightforward in the heat of battle!
Hot Key: Reload Ammo - ‘R’
Select a crewmember and hit the ‘R’ key - they will immediately head to the ammo box and grab a fresh belt. If they were manning a turret when the command was issued, they will return to it and reload!
Hot Key: Heal at Rest Bed - ‘F’
Select a crewmember and hit the ‘F’ key - they will head to the Rest Bed to regain some health.
Hot Key: Go to Pilot Station - ‘P’
Ever get that sinking feeling during a sortie? It’s probably because your pilot has wandered off!
Now you can simply select a crewmember and hit the ‘P’ key - they will go straight to the pilot’s station and grab the steering yoke!
Difficulty Balancing
We have made some changes to difficulty based on your feedback.
Later in the game, you’ll now receive higher level recruits and replacement bombers featuring better upgrades.
Improved Options
Volume for music and effects can be independently adjusted.
You can now flip the camera’s Y axis in the options menu.
The controls options have now been moved to the pause menu’s ‘Options’ page.
Happy Halloween!
We’ve included a few free special livery items for you to celebrate!
Various bug fixes and improvements
We’ve chased down many bugs, fixed a bunch and *think* we’ve fixed a few more.
We’ll try to address specific issues in the forums. Please do keep reporting anything you happen to find, we very much appreciate it!
We’ve also made various improvements, such as speeding up the crew survival wheel at the end of the missions.
That’s all in this first update! Please keep the feedback and suggestions coming, we are listening!
We’d like to say thank you to everyone who has helped make Bomber Crew such a great success. Your messages of appreciation, criticism and suggestions have been invaluable to us, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Please keep sharing your opinions, your heart-wrenching war stories, and especially the pictures of your bombers, they’re incredible!
Dave & Jon.[/quote]
hotkeys fucking hell yea
That's a very pleasant set of changes and additions honestly. It's good to see them updating the game further. Shame it feels so much like an early access game, I fear updates may be too little too late without some actual content addition in them soon. You only release once after all.
[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;52826065]uuhhh...
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/xMrotOf.png[/IMG]
[/quote]
i know its really petty but since they based it on a real world event this bothers me as well, im not denying that non whites served in the RAF but even in 2012 only 2.2% of the RAF was of ethnic origin when the crews in this are majority blacks and women its fucking ridiculous
pretty sure they're randomly generated with equal rates
[QUOTE=waylander;52829844]i know its really petty but since they based it on a real world event this bothers me as well, im not denying that non whites served in the RAF but even in 2012 only 2.2% of the RAF was of ethnic origin when the crews in this are majority blacks and women its fucking ridiculous[/QUOTE]
It's also a charicature of those historical events. If this were a game that took its self seriously and proclaimed to be historically accurate, then it'd probably bother me too. But it doesn't.
I made a big thread of suggestions in the steam forum. If there's anything you'd like me to throw in let me know
[url]http://steamcommunity.com/app/537800/discussions/0/1479856439033375033/[/url]
[quote]I've been really enjoying Bomber Crew these last few days and the new update is a good start. My biggest complaint with the game though, is how little choice it feels there is. For example, the gun turrets' damage scales linearly, with the only choices being relevant when you take max weight into consideration (And with lightweight engines, can be maxed out to accommodate 4x.50 Mk3s on every turret), the only remaining choice being whether you sacrifice DPS (Depending on unlocks) and further weight to have the tailgunner not have to manually rearm.
As for crew equipment, the general consensus is that everyone but the engineer should be as heavily armoured as possible (I disagree - I keep fingerless gloves and plimsolls on my tailgunner and bombardier in addition to full mobility on eng except toughened survival vest).
The point here is that there are few genuine choices in how you equip your aircraft and crew - The options that are there are almost entirely linear, the only considerations to be made being how much you can maximise firepower/survivability/reliability versus your current maximum weight. The weapons are all practically the same, the portions of the fuselage you decide to up-armour are quite obvious and uncostly in terms of weight, and specific each crew role has an optimal level of armour vs mobility, and an optimal secondary skill.
A few suggestions then (I'll word these rather imperatively, but they're nothing more than that).
To preface, I'm suggesting these as someone who's never actually been shot down or run out of fuel - personally I find the game a little too easy at the minute because in my opinion, the upgrades don't scale well with the danger you face. Also note, I grinded the hell out of the early game. But without further ado, open suggestion-bay doors:
Aircraft equipment & configuration:
Gun turrets:
Distinguish the .303s from the .50s by accuracy vs RoF in addition to raw damage per shot, and give the player the choice earlier on (By the time you unlock the .50s, you have .303s that do higher DPS)
I would imagine the .303s, especially 4x, to be good for "accuracy by volume", while with the .50s shots ought to be made to count. This could even make them more/less effective with each gunner skill, eg. .303s are better for defensive fire, .50s have better focus.
More variety in turrets:
A 20mm cannon that has greater range and much more damage than the MGs, but a low ROF (300rpm-ish), low magazine capacity and relatively high weight.
A 40mm cannon that can target ground defences and ships, and has an explosive payload - will one-shot most fighters and possibly take out any but an extremely low ROF and capacity. This would be a specialised piece of equipment, sacrificing anti-air defensive capability for reducing the danger posed by flak cannons and AA MGs.
Fuselage & engines:
Increase the weight of armoured fuselage/engines, decrease the armour of lightweight fuselage/engines.
The issue this would address is the absence of necessary sacrifice in balancing firepower vs survivability vs capability. If I want to keep those quad .50s on every turret, I should have to make up for it with lighter armour for example.
Equipment racks:
Add ammo as an option. Ideally (for balance reasons), you wouldn't be able to pick up ammo from the box, go over to a rack, then pick-up and put back one of the items on it to leave ammo at the nose or tail so your gunners don't have to spend so long reloading.
This would make it a game-sponsored option, but require again, that you sacrifice something, and limit the number of times you can do it. Right now the ammo feed is made redundant by this exploit (Imo it's redundant anyway due to reduced DPS depending on unlock status, and mobility equipment for the tailgunner/bombardier).
Jerry cans - Allow the crew to replenish ~5m of fuel mid-flight.
Fuel tanks:
I believe the player should be able to configure the amount of fuel they bring. Right now they're at ~70% capacity at the beginning of the mission - At the cost of additional weight, and increasing the vulnerability of the tanks (-5% armour per 10% extra fuel). This would allow you more freedom to use the engineer for different tasks on longer missions instead of slaving them to lean mixture. It'd also allow you to buff up other parts of the aircraft if you're going on a short mission.
I'd also like to see the ability to pre-configure the mixture, trading flight-time for speed and vice-versa, with the engineer abilities factoring in.
A couple new classes of aircraft upgrades:
Bombsight - Allow the gunner to change zoom level on bombsight. Would be great for mid/high-altitude bombing runs.
Periscope/telescope(?) - Aids navigator in seeing ground/stars at medium altitude.
Optics - faster tagging, tag multiple targets at a time
Hydraulic & Electric subsystems:
In line with the suggestions regarding fuselage and engines, I believe your choices here should be durability vs reliability, also factoring voltage/hydraulic power, though I don't know what they actually affect.
Bomb bay:
Allow the player to configure their payload, eg. one tallboy and 4(?) sets of normal bombs. This'd be good for missions where you know you have one target the tallboy's needed to destroy, but also has recon targets you can also take out for extra cash (See below, navigator)
Additional crew:
Bring on an additional crew member or two at the penalty of weight. Would be nice to have the nose and ventral turrets manned at all times. These guys could be entirely unskilled, or maybe have basic gunnery training with no progression, no equipment configuration and not have the ability to be revived. Would make secondary-skilling your bombardier and engineer still valuable, but generally allow you more flexibility.
Non-aircraft/crew upgrades:
Support aircraft:
First, a different type - the Mosquito. When called in, these would passively bomb tertiary targets - particularly AA and radar sites, but they'd be vulnerable to enemy aircraft.
Customisation:
And again, options. Basically a balance between loiter time vs firepower vs armour.
British coastal radar:
This would be an unlock with two different routes - Giving you cover over the channel (and beyond, per upgrade), or helping with navigation. In both cases, they'd mark enemy wings on the map periodically, with higher levels giving more precise updates at shorter intervals. With the latter, you'd be able to navigate whilst within its radius, regardless of visibility. Former, the range at which spitfires will be despatched to shoot down enemy fighters would increase.
Crew:
Gunners: make their ammo type abilities a choice (per-mission). Right now, having all three available is a little too powerful imo, especially when they interrupt ammo usage and can be used consecutively.
This is getting into AI, but it'd also be cool if gunners would prioritise targets better at higher levels. In other words, I often saw my gunners engaging targets that were evading as others were coming in on attack runs. It'd make them that much more effective against untrained crew in gunner positions.
Pilot: Custom altitude. Simple enough - sometimes, being between medium and low altitude can be desirable due to ground visibility vs flak. This should be quite early in the pilot's tree imo, in regards to the other suggested upgrades and abilities.
More maneuvers would be nice but I don't have any suggestions off the top of my head.
Navigator: Custom waypoint. Would allow you to set a static waypoint as opposed to a heading.
Tertiary targets - Allows you to go on bombing runs against recon targets after having photo'd them.
Crew equipment:
I don't have many suggestions here, except to perhaps make the flight helmets increase survivability, and rebalance the toughened survival vest because it makes flak vests and specialised survival vests redundant.
Mechanics:
Weight vs speed:
The heavier your plane is, the slower it should go for the same fuel usage rate. This would be based off current weight vs. max weight (engine power). Again, has you make some conscious decisions about how to configure your plane for its intended mission. If you're going on a long, high-risk one it might be worthwhile to stay heavily armed and armoured at the expense of using your engineer to manage fuel the whole way. If it's a short, high-risk mission, you might want to drop some weight and use the speed it affords you to minimise the length of time you're in danger. Again, meaningful choices through sacrifice.
Reserve bombers & crew:
Being able to purchase, unlock, or just have a reserve bomber (or more) would be cool. You could alternate which bomber (especially useful with more meaningful configuration options) and/or which crew members to bring on a mission, which would soften the blow of losing a crew member if you've already been taking potential replacements on missions.
Game mode: "Hardcore"
About mid-way through the game I found myself racking up funds with nothing to spend on. A nice addition would be a mode where you have to pay for refuel, repair, rearmament and recruitment. This mode could also feature limited "incap lives" for crew, either per-mission or across the campaign. Each of those features could be a separate option too, for people who like some but not all.
Mission procedural generation:
Now we enter the realm of replayability. In my experience with this game, I've never been truly surprised past the learning stage, and each playthrough of each mission is more or less the same, player performance notwithstanding. So the suggestion is a bit more randomisation to the placement of recon objectives, enemy aircraft numbers and composition, and more variety to the difficulty of each mission. The ultimate objective could stay the same for workload's sake.
Ace procedural generation:
Fighting the aces is one of the highlights of the game to me and is the closest I've come to being shot down at any point. But once you've dealt with them all, that's it, you don't encounter any more and depending on how quickly you go for the critical missions, can make the rest of the game dull.
Again, the suggestion is for procedurally generated aces past the first eight. Randomised aircraft, ammo type, attack pattern.
If there were to be difficulty modes, some missions could have multiple aces present at higher ones.
Quality of life:
Return to designated station hotkeys. One would have the selected crew-member return to their original station, while the other would have the entire crew do so at once.
Fast forward - Allow it at any point during the mission. Hotkeys to control it, and a toggleable option to have it drop out on enemy contact (air & ground, air or ground). The initial and final portion of each mission can be very tedious due to limited enemy presence, the distance you have to travel etc.
So that's about everything I got so far. There are obvious things like a selection of different bombers, being able to manually control crew stations (particularly gunner/pilot), but they've probably been repeated enough by now.[/quote]
Yeah it's a chibi bomber "simulator", realism isn't what they're going for.
I just really feel they need a lot more content. Plane types, bomb types, everything types.
How do you deal with swarms of jets in the later missions? They always fuck my shit up even when I'm managing focus/special ammo on the gunners, using evasive maneuvers, and calling in Spitfires to back me up.
Also those Search and Rescue missions are a real easy way to cheese the Aces since they will always come at you alone in a straight line, leaving plenty of time for your nose and upper mid gunners to focus and tear them apart with special ammo in one long burst
Hey, so a DLC is coming out Oct 23rd. It adds the B17, a North Africa/Mediterranean theatre, a bunch of new aces and enemy planes and seaborne threats.
Bomber Crew
The B-17 DLC dropped, and it's pretty fun for anyone who is still curious about the game.
The B-17 missions throw you into it from the start, though. First mission I ended up losing an engine and having to crash land back at the airfield. Snapped the tail right off.
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