Recently I’ve been playing a lot of aircraft with 30mm cannons like the NR-30, Akan m/55 and Type 5, running the HEF belts.
It has been ridiculously ineffective despite a 30mm high explosive frag round being expected to do a lot of damage with one round. Repeatedly I find myself getting "Hit"s over and over despite landing them on critical elements. This isn’t reflected in the X-ray analysis of the rounds either, whenever I test it 9 out of 10 times, no matter where the shot lands, it results in a severely damaged aircraft. What gives?
Remember that 30mm tend to be slower and fewer in quantity
I don’t think war thunder simulate each shot individually, but “group damage” based on fire rate, 20mm guns has the potential to look and be more lethal than some 30mms.
If yes, are you using vertical targetting and shooting near convergence range?
At longer ranges, your calibers might end up diverging and you’re actually hitting with the 7.92mm rounds rather than the cannon shells. This is fairly common with bf109s since the cannon is usually on the lower part of the plane’s nose while mgs are on the top.
Another possibility is impact angle. Landing flush onto a wing might be insufficient material to fuze your shell and it passes through harmlessly, while in damage analysis you are using a more oblique angle that does fuze it.
Another possibility is mixed belts and low RoF. Bf109s have this issue in particular where using the air targets belt, you shoot 2 AP rounds without explosive mass whenever you see tracers and only the third shell has explosive mass. (IIRC it’s AP-I, HEI, HEI, HEI, AP-T? Can’t remember number of HEI shells but it gets the idea across)
Tend to agree. Been playing with DEFAs recently as I grind the French air tree, and their damage is incredibly bipolar. Sometimes they’ll onetap a plane and detonate their fuel. Othertimes you can dump several dozen rounds into someone at point blank range and only do minor surface damage.
There is one constant though. They never do decent damage in headons. Ever. It’s not an exagguration to say that I’ve never managed to kill a plane in a headon. It’s always a hit, or at best a non-lethal crit.
Imo the biggest problem is the angle. From straight behind very often you only get hits while hitting your enemy in full profile you shred everything.
Another problem is real shatter. The bigger the caliber the worse it become.
I can’t speak for the others, but for Type 5s you should use Ground Targets belt. Since you’re using the Kikka, damage will always be unreliable thanks to very low RoF, but belt choice still matters.
30 mm and 20 mm Nato cannons are lacking guess what is happening years now belts suck and HE rounds don’t make spalling at all except ofc Rus and China 23 mm and 30 mm difference again is in Belts Ammo if you see inside APHE idiotic Round check the Protection analysis you will see what happening
I dont know about the other 30mm but since the change to the fuze senstivity to stealth rounds on the type 5 and ho-155 i have been also getting hits with no real damage done. even the tracers for the type 5 have not done as much as i expect lately
idk, i fly the IIC a lot and the guns on that thing absolutely destroy whatever it looks at, same on the F1 etc
i dont want to be a yumyucker but the DEFA’s depend on your bursts hitting center mass and your aim being on point, personally it took me a couple hundred matches in french jets to get it, once i did i never had “Hit” problems again