(skip this part if you want none of dem fillers)

Veteran players may remember how stupidly cheap Bomber Crew’s lategame stages were the week after the game came out. Play critical mission, get swarmed by 15-18 jets, either ragequit and try again or grind back for 5 hours risking to lose it again, etc etc. Following the outrage, devs changed the pace of the game and providing all the tools to overcome the challenge, for example, slow-mo, hotkeys, ammo feed, fast start after failures, and so on.

But what if I told you, that in the end, only changing of pace is what made the ultimate transformation from “tedious and dumb” to “fun and challenging” possible, and all those flashy things on top did not change anything?

Personally, after my first playthrough, I came back, crashed a few planes for giggles, and then started a new game just to see how far can I make it with just one plane and one crew using nothing but my experience from back when the game was cheap and unfair; any losses would mean that I give up and do something else. Little did I know that I’m into this game from the start and until the credit roll, without ever finding any use for anything new, except maybe “reload” hotkey and ammo feed turrets in the very late game.

Throughout its updates, of all things, the game drastically improved payoff for correct decision making. There are now even more enemies on your missions, their damage didn’t go down a single bit, neither your powers improved (as I said, I, personally, found the new slow-mo confusing, so I never used it). But you are now challenged throughout the mission, and not just at one point of it, and grand total of your correct decisions decides if you win or lose, allowing you to consistently avoid or counter all the RNG-based cheap encounters without having to force through them. This is where conditioning comes in.

Using your decision-making to create a perfect situation that minimalizes your chances to lose your crew or your plane is by far the most important part of the game, period. Bomber Crew, unlike somewhat similar games like FTL, does very little to punish player if he plays it the right way, but punishes extremely hard for making several mistakes throughout your mission.

If you ever find yourself in need of quick actions, like slow-mo, moving tons of people around without planning, having to repair lots of stuff in order to not lose the very next second, etc, then you are doing something drastically wrong and your next mission is going to get even worse if you don’t change your strategy, create right conditions from start to the end.

This whole guide is focused on creating said right conditions, rather than advising on improving your APM to Korean levels to get out of situations you called upon yourself, who would’ve thought.

You and what army?

Your crew is what this game is all about. Duh. Guys and gals you control are operating British Avro 683 Lancaster during Battle of Britain and further into WW2. Also they are the total badases responsible for eliminating Hitler himself during your final mission, Operation Nemesis. In this part of my guide, I’ll explain how to prepare your crew members before flight, rotating between stations will be explained in altitude section of this guide. Please note that everyone should get Advanced Oxygen bottle and electrical boots/mittens as their gear, no exceptions.

Pilot gets the best and heaviest accessible body/head armoring and is always chained to the pilot seat in every mission. You don’t also really want a secondary role for them, in order to level their primary faster. Your pilot ever leaving their seat or getting downed is the opposite of what you should be aiming at.

Engineer is not only your LEAN spammer, but also your main repair buddy until the middle of your game. They should get their secondary role as a gunner, which won’t be used until the very late stages of your game where you will need 4 manned gunner stations. Give them combined body armor and leather flight helmet MK2, as with less speed they may suffocate if they ever need to repair two engines at the same time.

Navigator gets their second role in engineering and the same gear as your engineer. They will be your repair guy/gal pretty often in later game stages, and sometimes will replace engineer on their station at high altitudes when your course is set. Why not make them secondary gunner instead of engineer, you ask? Well, because making secondary navigator (out of engineer, in that case) is the worst idea one can come up with, that’s why.

Radio operator gets engineer gear for extra speed and secondary into medicine. Not only they are going to heal the entire front of your plane, but they also become less and less important later in the game. Why not make navigator into the medic instead, you ask? It’s because medic only has 4 levels, and levelling radio operator’s skills at full speed after their secondary is maxed is much more important in mid game. Navigator’s most important milestone is being able to use star navigation, as you can (and will have to) create custom waypoints anyway, so auto-course speed bonus barely matters.

Gunners are obviously getting the heaviest body and head armor. Both of them can be spec-d into medics to pick each other up faster and with more health, it’s a good idea, but I usually spec mid/vent gunner into engineer for faster system repairs in earlygame and midgame. I never found any use to their engineering in lategame, however. Give tail gunner ammo feed, but mid/vent gunner can do without it just fine until he gets .50x4mk3 ammo feed, as they have the same damage as mk4 anyway.

Aimer specs into a gunner, gets the same armor as one, and ammo feed. They instantly switch between two stations and never ever go anywhere else, dem fat lazy lardo.

One small step for man...

Many people refer to earlygame and lategame as first two critical missions and last two critical missions correspondingly, midgame being in between. I usually refer to missions you can brute force as earlygame, missions with one dive and low-altitude return (brute-ish forcing) as midgame and “ever go any lower than highest altitude only above your airfield” as lategame missions, only based on player’s skills, so their earlygame can last until they start getting swarmed by jets.

High altitude (sometimes comically referred to as “Space”, “Low Earth Orbit” and so on) is your semi-safe haven, which for a period can be made absolutely safe (explained in gunning part). This is where you start rotating your crew (medications, repairs, switching to secondary stations) or sipping your British tea without any rush. This is also where radio operators and navigators become less necessary on their stations as you basically just fly forward and can always expect to have moments of respite, as jet interceptors and attack planes (your only threats up here) usually don’t spawn consecutively, and if they do, you can still mark them without spotting them by your radar: interceptors leave big visible trails, and attack planes love to go close and personal for your tail or your belly. Unless you do any sudden manoeuvres, your engineers are relatively safe to repair broken engines and fuel tanks even under attack.

As long as you set the right course, you don’t ever need to update it until you finish your current objective. You spot your major targets even with 0% ground vision, while radars and FlaKs, as well as optional photograph targets can be spotted by “Radio for recon” ability. You can also place custom navigation courses as long as you have at least 1% vision on either ground or stars, so even a shortest dive can give you such opportunity, and, if you get better at it, you can change course by purposely skipping the target and going for the second run after 180 degree turn.

At high altitude, there is a small chance of missing your bomb, especially until you get used to recognizing your targets through two layers of clouds, but trust me, if you want to play fair and never ragequit, failing your mission and returning back safely is far more time saving in the long run than completing it and losing your crew and your plane. And that’s exactly what’s gonna happen if you are caught even on mid altitude during your critical lategame missions.

ICH BRAUCHE BENZIIIIIIN

Spam “LEAN+”!
...
Ha-ha, don’t worry, I don’t think you are stupid or something, for sure you know how to preserve your fuel in this game as good as the next guy.
(But please note that during D-day mission you get almost empty fuel tanks and have to be really careful with it)
What I’m going to say is something that the game probably still doesn’t teach you to this day. Did you know that not only your bomber and your spitfires have finite fuel? That’s right, enemies have fuel meters as well! Think of them as their aggro meters, because that’s pretty much what they are. Allow me to explain.

There is just so much time a particular enemy can chase you around. After several minutes they lose “interest” (fuel) to continue the chase and will fall back and despawn, just like your spitfires! They can only retreat, however, as long as they can target your plane – this is the most obvious if you get a huge “mob train” beneath you on high altitude, fly to your objective for a couple of minutes, and then lower your altitude, only to see your enemies scatter and flee, just like cockroaches when someone turns the light on in the kitchen.

Why do you need to know this? Well, first, is that you don’t have to deal with that huge mob train as long as it followed you for sufficient time. Second reason are jet interceptors, which, for historical reasons, are the fastest to deplete their fuel, and the hardest to kill directly, therefore it is important to play around avoiding and controlling them rather than fighting. How, you’d ask? Then the gunner part of this guide is just what you need!

This is my .50, this is my gun.

Do you use gunners’ DEFENSIVE skill very often? I assume you don’t.
But what if I told you that it is more strategically important than FOCUSED?

To fully understand my point, let me explain how gun turrets work. Gunners perfectly lead their targets, shooting where it will be when bullet catches them, only considering bullet travel time versus enemy plane travel time. Their skill eliminates spread, and FOCUS ability almost nullifies spread on target, but they never predict where target will be, they only shoot where it is supposed to be if it keeps moving without changing speed or direction.

Practically, the only reliable way for a gunner to kill an enemy plane is when it charges straight at you, preparing for an attack; while it dodges your fire, you shouldn’t rely even on hitting them, let alone taking them down. Also their attack windows become smaller and health pools become bigger as they get better, with jet interceptors becoming almost invincible flying fortresses.
This is where DEFENSIVE ability comes in. You will barely ever need it until the very few last missions, but during jet fights, it might be your best tool of survival. What it does is, upon activation, your gunner stops current attack attempts from any plane they can possibly shoot from that angle, preventing further attempts for a short period afterwards. Which means, you can easily buy some time against jet interceptors to do crucial repairs, or, if done correctly, just drain them out of fuel and force them to retreat, as they only have around 3-4 go’s to take you down until they run out anyway.
Attack planes are a bit different story. They have tons of fuel and may sometimes ignore your defensive gunners and proceed with their approach, but they give you large windows for taking them down. Your gunners would mostly prioritize easier targets, such as attack planes, so do not struggle to FOCUS (he-he) them down.

Your ammo abilities are pretty much the same, their main usage is to extend your magazine. Sometimes you’ll want to improve your damage output, especially with AP ammo against attack planes and high-tier aces, but other than that – just use when you need your gunner to shoot longer. Don’t bother extending DEFENSIVE usage, because as long as your turret is not completely dry, it will keep doing its job even during reload period.

To put it simply, during brute-force missions you will need your turrets to kill stuff, while in harder missions you might want to control your enemies more than killing them. Also use your fuel knowledge to make mob trains beneath you flee so your ventral turret doesn’t waste precious time on them.

Please note that if your bomber flies straight forward, the only reliable way to damage attack planes on your tail is from your tail turret. If your tail gunner is down by this point, walking your middle gunner there might be suicidal, you might wanna use manoeuvres like EMG DIVE to get the enemy off and use bought time time to fix the problem.

Do a barrel roll!

By far your best plane-controlling abilities are custom markers (for avoiding radars, fighters, spotlights, for faster getaways and so much more), EMG DIVE (besides its prime functions, it extinguishes engines and does everything CORKSCREW does without setting you off-course), and LEAN (for obvious reasons). BOOST is ever needed only for faster climbing back to high altitude after uncalculated dives, it is not necessary in any of your missions, nor it helps with dodging enemy fire. Dodging FlaKs and flipping corkscrews is pretty much useless and changes your course every time you do these manoeuvers.

The most important plane controlling skill any player should master as early as possible is to always fly in the right direction between your objectives without updating your flight course. The game tricks you into thinking that always having vision or updating your course is important. Trust me, it's not. In harder lategame missions, you shouldn’t spend more than 10 seconds any lower than highest cloud layer to set up your marker. Ideally, you can turn by mentioned earlier second bomb run, it doesn’t require you to change altitude at all.

...and how it can be destroyed.

I highly recommend using the “mainstream” plane setup with full armored fuselage, armored inner engines and lightweight outer engines.
Your primary GAME OVER condition will be the loss of your engines.
Your engines will be the most vulnerable to punishments for your mistakes no matter how heavy they are. You should not make your systems or your crew more vulnerable because of that. Prioritize repairing engines during your moments of respite, even under attack of small groups of enemies by using everything you’ve learned about controlling them in this guide.
Set up 3-piece equipment racks, one in nose, and one in tail, each should contain 2 medpacks and 1 extinguisher so your medics/handymen don’t have to walk downtown to grab one.

Downgrade your oxygen system and radar to save some weight, Ox system is forgiving when it breaks (and mk2 hadn’t once break for me anyway) when you have high-tier Ox bottles, and top-tier radar is the worst waste of big amounts of weight imaginable. Don’t bother with survival stuff or racks for parachutes either.
Don't waste your time on installing self-sealing fuel tanks as well. Mk3 tanks don’t break with well-armored wings, and when they do, use your safe conditions to repair them.

>Most of recon photo targets can also be bombed afterwards for extra crew experience. Just make sure you have enough bombs to complete the mission.
>There are many other bomb-able ground targets, but they are much harder to approach as they don’t have course markers, so don’t bother.
>Spitfires struggle with mob trains under your plane just as much as your turrets do. Only call them for brute-force moments, or save them as “get out of jail free card” against high altitude jet gank.
>Make sure to have ventral turret and AUTO TAG ability before your first critical mission.
>Just as a reminder, it’s much more profitable to fail your mission and return in one piece than to complete it and lose your crew.
>You can Alt+F4, you won’t lose anything. You should not. But you can.
>Emergency dive may not always get you to 1% visibility, you may want to target medium altitude to fly even lower until you are able to set your course and fly back up.
>If possible, set up your escape markers and turn around before the bomb hits the target.
>Your pilot can abort mission and fly home whenever you want. Use it if you are sure you are about to lose.
>With 2k+ range on your radar you can spot patrols before they spot you, and avoid them all together by setting custom markers.
>Spotlights, unlike radars, do not spawn new enemies, they just direct patrols within a large area towards you.
>If you don’t want an ace to gank you with all those jets in high risk lategame runs, hunt them down in easier missions.

I hope you’ve learned anything new and important from this guide, or at least enjoyed it. If you want to see/share some info on the topic, say so in the comments. Please and thank you.