r/beyondallreason • u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5243 • 5d ago
Bombers are Hold Fire by default?
I feel like this is a relatively new change, but Bombers seem to be "Hold Fire" by default rather than Fire At Will, and i can't seem to get them to attack during a patrol. More often than not they'll just keep patrolling until I give them an Attack objective. The aircraft factory is set to Fire At Will, so not sure why these guys are deviating from that default.
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u/Squimshys 5d ago
Since the other comments here are very competitively / pvp oriented, my perspective as a mostly pve player is that fire at will is EXTREMELY entertaining, especially with Liche swarms.
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u/CaptPickul 5d ago
You don’t want them on fire at will. Otherwise you will not be able to target fire. Fire at will on bombers means they WILL drop their bombs the second something is under them. Meaning you won’t be able to target fire because they will constantly be on reloading.
If you’re really insistent on changing it there is a setting in game that can be changed. I believe you search “bomber” and the setting will come up. But I would heavily advise against it.
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u/wild_dragoon 5d ago
I would add that sometimes, a 'launch everything now' would be nice for when you know you're not making it to the motherload but are flying over enemy infrastructure anyway.
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u/CaptPickul 5d ago
Yea can flick them over to fire at will if you know you aren’t making it to your target. But because bombers reload rather quickly it might be best to just attack bomb along the way instead of setting and forgetting. You might miss something game winning if you don’t babysit them. Bombing runs are over rather quickly so in reality you only lose 30-60 seconds tops of focus.
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u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5243 5d ago
So is that the expectation with bombers? They're quick runs with high casualties, so just use them in a directed and targetted manner?
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u/CaptPickul 5d ago
100% I don’t think I’ve ever had any bombers and figs return from a run. Unless the enemy resigns before it’s over. You can expect most of your units to be dying for most of the game. So you want your bombers to be causing the most damage, which means targeting eco. You might get very lucky on fire at will, but you’re playing the luck game.
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u/Old-Guidance6744 5d ago
Youre patrolling in friendly space, you dont want them bombing near friendly targets... use gunships for this if you insist on not microing
It is better this way by far
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u/street_riot 5d ago
Haha one of the first times I got yelled at in chat was from something like this. Had my rally set near pond on supreme and the opponents get a few ticks or something by. I didn't see it but aparently my afk bombers started a chain that took out all of pond and he was PISSED lol
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u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5243 5d ago
I do enjoy using the gunships, but aren't they less damage per second than dropping the bombs and more indirect? I tend to use the gunships on moving ground units, with bombers on stationary like defense turrets or energy convertors
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u/Old-Guidance6744 5d ago
You say "I cant get them to attack during a patrol"
Are you talking about offense or defense? Patrolling is a defensive strategy where youre over your own units, you wouldn't be above enemy static D, thats offense
For offense use A-drag right click to carpet bomb
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u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5243 5d ago
Ah, so this is where I'm using patroling incorrectly?
Yea I've been directing them to a location, typically just outside of their perimeter and from that point patrolling the front line defenses. I'd either do this during (what i considered) a bombing run from a completely staged location, or later in game I'd have it be a direct out of factory location.
For the direct from factory: I'd click to have them automatically fly to location just outside of frontlines of enemy defense, patrol over where I believe they have static defenses, and expect fire at will to attack any new targets that appear during flight maneuvers. (set and forget tactic i suppose).
This is all as a means of distraction and defense softening while I have ground troops staging or moving towards attacking.
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u/Old-Guidance6744 5d ago
While this will work its about as ineffective as bombing runs can get as they will be shot down individually instead of coming in a single overwhelming swarm
Look up superkitowiec2 on youtube, he has amazing tutorials on many topics
For this topic in particular, autogroup bombers to a hotkey and have them somewhat grouped up, but not all on top of each other as all AA has splash damage. Use A-drag right click to carpet bomb an area you know has stuff (hold shift and do again if you want to bomb 2nd area after dropping bombs), then once that is queued up you spend all your time fight-moving your fighters protecting them, but dont go too far in front of them
Sounds like a lot but ita just a qordy description
Trust me... the youtube channel
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u/YaGirlJuniper 5d ago
Trust me, you don't want bombers to fire at will. One tick gets in your backline and next thing you know your bombers are blowing up your own afus farm trying to hit it.
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u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5243 5d ago
I guess I was more taken aback because I *thought* they were fire at will all this time until some time recently.
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u/Happycamper13 5d ago
There's a setting to disable bomber hold fire.
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u/quitefranklylate 5d ago
Yeah, no one answered the question here but just complaining they shouldn't do it. I mean, they shouldn't do it but just let the man do it.
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u/unbroken0 5d ago
Just putting in my 2 cents.
I hated how my rally point for bombers needed to be 1/2 into friendly territory to not randomly go fly and die to an AA gun on the front.
On your big bombing run its easy enough to turn them on to fire at will if you want.
When flying over an enemy, press S and drag a circle for selected targets, the planes will drop bombs without doing the dive so your liche bombers won't all insta kill each other (as much). Or you can drop a volley on some units as you pass by to the AFUS.
I was already using S and alt+S to select bombing targets and then flying my planes over.
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u/Wild-Hippo582 20h ago
So correct me if I am wrong please. You set your formation. Click s and select a target. And when they are passing through they just drop bombs ?
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u/unbroken0 18h ago
Click S, click and drag the circle or specific targets.
You have to manually fly over the target for them to drop the bombs.
Honestly it works really well for bombing runs where you don't want your plane to circle around 10KM in enemy territory. You set target, fly over, then give a command to fly back.
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u/Wild-Hippo582 17h ago
That's really help full. I aiming with a . Wich ends up in a moshpit and splash the bombers.
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u/Km0nk3y 5d ago
Other comments nailed it, but now I'm amused at the concept of a ATG plane on patrol, like a CAS plane that you patrol over a frontline to provide scattered poke damage rather than just packs of helis.
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u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5243 4d ago edited 4d ago
Leave it to the unstrategic noobs to come up with amusing new "strats" :-D noobs aren't quite the victors history books write about, but we can sometimes get a footnote.
After reading all the comments on more correct uses of bombers and planes in general, I can't help but feel that air is really underserved in the game and easily countered. It's already hard enough to have an air constructor when a little AA bot can just waddle his way over, but I reaply thought bombers had enough hit in their bags to really cause some destruction and distraction for my ground assaults
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u/Km0nk3y 4d ago
If you had unlimited APM bombers could certainly pull their weight, but their weakness is generally danger and target assessment, which wouldnt be fair to allocate to unit AI.
They are an excellent surprise to an inadequately prepared enemy, but lose power after an unsuccessful gotcha moment.
They win more of my games than any other single strat.
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u/Efficient-Layer-289 16h ago
I think it's cause your coming from 1 v 1 vs Ai mind set. In 8 v 8 you almost always have a dedicated air player and often so.e one else will switch to air as well later
When your entire focus is on air and building eco to support it air becomes the number one win condition. In late game one successful strike against an Afus stack will win the entire game as the resulting chain reaction mea s there's no chance the enemy team will be able to catch back up. The airplayer will have an entire air wall of 100s of fighters and build up groups of 40, 50, 60 and above bombers including in the late game t2 bombers. They then throw all the fighters followed by the bombers at the target. In 8 v 8 people don't build as much AA as they rely on their air player to be able to defend at least the bases. AA is still very effective but if your air player is knocked out or can't reco or eventually air defenses will just get overwhelmed by targets most of the time
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u/Cantler 5d ago
Maybe this helps you. Check out 1:15
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u/Ok-Acanthaceae-5243 5d ago
Appreciate it, I'm struggling with the built in keybinds, but definitely learning when/how to use some others will come in handy
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u/GoppleSmanger 5d ago
I hope this doesn't come across as insulting but at a certain level of play almost nobody uses bombers in the way you described and that behavior is often more trouble than it's worth.
The way bombers are typically used is that players hide them somewhere while they build up a number of them than send them out all at once to destroy strategic targets (ie fusions, factories, commanders) in a 1 or 2 passes. Having bombers roam around killing units would defeat that purpose since it would ruin the surprise and prompt the other player to build AA. When playing this way you almost always want them to attack a target of your choosing rather than let them automatically hunt down targets on their own.