.50's deserve a buff

[dovah4]

@lynx15

pretty much a dead plane already

It was a 1 v 2 at that point. he actually landed it. Game didn’t consider it dead and he tried to literally drive over to my forward air base and kill me.

Only other guy was a P.108B

@lynx15

im actually like 100% sure that guys wing fell off right after that pic was taken
and even if that didnt happen hes basically dead with this dmg

If the engine fire didn’t occur, This was not only more than survivable, but you could easily fly back to base from this.

Here’s the thing though. These are supposed to be good bursts. I’m trying to show the stuff that should’ve been a definitive kill.

I got shredded by 2 people in multiple passes and I was still fighting against them. I was the only one left on my team so I basically just said screw it and went out fighting. I actually struck the Pucara and P-51 several times. But guess what? The guns don’t actually do the thing they’re supposed to do very well.

He should be dead, and he was making it back to base when he got finished off by a P-47.

The guns just aren’t making fires like they should and fuel tanks are WAY too durable to the point that there’s literally no reason to have them there.

[PercussionCap]

@dovah4

Here’s the thing though. These are supposed to be good bursts.

Are you sure about that?

[ScimitarsCurse]

what belts are you using? as that was a really long time to kill for 6 .50 cals

i usually use the universal belt (if its only incendiary and incendiary tracer) or tracer if its all m20 API-T and i usually one or two burst vanquish anything

[dovah4]

They were tracer. Fuel tanks just take an inordinate amount of fire to catch alight now or you get a really lucky dice roll. 99% of your fires will be engine fires, to the point that even non API rounds like regular AP can catch the engine alight.

It becomes an issue because you effectively have it where fuel modules don’t like to light up and they just won’t burn. Look at this video from Bo back in 2014.

- YouTube

This is where you can more definitely tell what was a fuel fire and what was an engine fire based off the purple hue instead of just positional.

He even mentions in the video “I’m surprised he didn’t burst into flames.” on an A6M that survived a few rounds in it’s fuel tanks. (9:30)

You can see he also lights a B7A2’s fuel tank on fire easily at 5:50

To give credence to what I’m saying.

Here’s me using an F4F with ground targets to light a Bf-109’s engine on fire.

No API. Just AP

[coffee_can-psn]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[dovah4]

Spoiler

@Spil1tia-psn

you are saying that aiming at a target and hitting it is “throwing shit at the wall” are you dumb like i really dont know what you want me to say

let me walk you through the process of aiming in warthunder because you dont seem to understand.

infront of me is an airplane, i would prefer if this airplane did not exist

to accomplish this we will shoot at it, we make a guess based on the distance between us and the speed he is going and fire a short burst.

HOWEVER we can see from our tracers that our shots are falling short this is no good!

based on this information we can assume we are under leading our target so we will adjust and fire again.

and this time SUCCESS!

i hope this helps you understand.

So I should be fine then, since I recorrected my aim and hit everything that mattered, but it didn’t do anything but somehow it’s my fault because I got a terrible dice roll and you just like to treat people terribly who disagree with you.

[Spil1tia-psn]

Yeah but like you adjusted and then missed again

[Omarb13legends]

.50cals don’t transfer as much energy as 20mms nor deliver the destructive power to do so. There is a reason there was a switch made to 20mms late war. You’re going to do more internal damage than exxternal damage, but it’s not going to be instantaneous damage ethier just because you landed a burst.

[PercussionCap]

@dovah4

since I recorrected my aim and hit everything that mattered

“everything that mattered” except the half a dozen things that would have killed him instantly, and you “recorrected” into missing again several times

.50s work great when you actually hit your targets

- YouTube

[dovah4]

I’m don’t even want to snap wings. I want to know why there was no fire here.

Why was there no fire? That’s the issue I’m having. It’s annoying hitting parts that should be completely lethal while the enemy makes a mistake and he gets away with less risk meanwhile you can’t make the same mistake in a U.S. props lest one 20mm completely ruins your day.

If I hit a dude in the fuel tank. It should have a high likelihood of a fire.

At 550m it should be around 20% to light a fuel tank in a single shot with M20 API-T. This is for FULL fuel tanks, meaning that this would be the hardest for them to light as there’s no ullage to detonate.

Everyone flies at 30% capacity so nearly every shot should cause catastrophic fuel tank damage. Even against tanks that had fuel inert gas systems wouldn’t necessarily fix the issue as you may survive the first shot, but the second shot will cause oxygen to flood the tank as you would be leaking the inert gas and the projectile itself is able to bring in oxygen when entering the tank.

This was a UH-1B test where a .30 cal incendiary blew up the ullage of a fuel tank and it literally destroyed the tank.

.50 cals can’t even do this in multiple shots in-game.

.50s are inconsistent weapons where you can grind a dude into paste and he’ll eat it and survive or you get a random instant snap on a wing.
It’s annoying for an enemy to make a huge mistake and then just get a slap on the wrist because the only things that matter are you hitting the spars, pilot, or engine instead of the giant blocks of fuel that are supposed to do something.

@PercussionCap

.50s work great when you actually hit your targets

I did hit him. I legit don’t care if I expended 1 million rounds. The end result shows that he somehow survived something he shouldn’t’ve and I hit everything that should’ve been lethal.

You showed it yourself in your video with the P-80. You expended a huge burst on the dude and if you didn’t hit his pilot. you wouldn’t’ve done anything.

What’s the point, not even realism wise, but gameplay wise for a spitfire to be able to instantly punish somebody within just a few shots meanwhile with .50 cals it’s literally just ¯\ (ツ)/¯

and to answer your question.

My mouse pad has stitched edges,
so when I jerk like that, my mouse hit the edge and I instinctively raise my mouse which slams the cursor in another direction and place my mouse biased towards the left side.

[PercussionCap]

@dovah4

You showed it yourself in your video with the P-80. You expended a huge burst on the dude and if you didn’t hit his pilot. you wouldn’t’ve done anything.

The one using default belts where 3/4 of it is not APIT? From a straight 90deg deflection shot, the worst possible aspect for .50s? With bad aim on top of it? What else did you expect to be damaged? 262 fuel tanks are huge and well protected.

@dovah4

I did hit him.

So why does your gameplay look different than mine? You too can see all those people getting instantly set on fire or taken apart with very few hits for how much ammo all these planes have.

[dovah4]

@PercussionCap

262 fuel tanks are huge and well protected.

30% fuel is 70% fuel vapors. I already showed what happened to a UH-1 fuel tank when the ullage goes off. Huge tanks with lots of empty space and fuel vapors is not a good combination.

Self-sealing fuel tanks is to stop a leak, as once a leak starts. it won’t stop, and to also add structural rigidity to the fuel tank due to ullage detonation and the pressure wave of the round going through the tank. It’s why fuel tanks are all rounded off with no sharp corners.

Thing is, you can only go so far before it gets massive, cumbersome and you lose too much space. The less fuel there is, the more dangerous it becomes as your fueltank becomes a bomb. If I recall, to add self-sealing fuel tanks to the P-38. Nearly 60% of usable fuel space was used to make the tanks self-sealing.

The reason why you’ll see Bf-109s explode in combat footage was highly likely due to the fact they were low on fuel. Flight TWA-800 went down due to an ullage detonation. Again, not every shot should be an instant explosion, but enough to cause catastrophic damage to the fuel tank that the next round should cause massive fuel hemorrhaging

@PercussionCap

The one using default belts where 3/4 of it is not APIT? From a straight 90deg deflection shot, the worst possible aspect for .50s? With bad aim on top of it? What else did you expect to be damaged? 262 fuel tanks are huge and well protected.

Even with Default belts—which to be fair, if I recall, late-war defaults don’t include ball anymore—you’re still having more at least more than 10 API rounds ripping through the fuel tank, and the incendiary round should be penetrating and doing something too, but again. Gaijin makes incendiary rounds dead rounds.

@PercussionCap

So why does your gameplay look different than mine? You too can see all those people getting instantly set on fire or taken apart with very few hits for how much ammo all these planes have.

For one, I’m not showing 5 kills matches where I do everything right that doesn’t illustrate the issue I’m trying to show. From your perspective. Imagine if in Real Shatter 1.0 someone just showed them insta-killing somebody all the time and said “Nope, no problem here. Cannons are fine.” You’d think that’s bull, right?

Another part is literally dice roll and the amount of rounds you put into somebody. It’s why it’s easier for P-47s to light fires, especially on convergence because you’re probably having 20 or so API rounds smack a fuel tank directly. You can still get fires if you put inordinate amounts of rounds into somebody. The problem is that there are many times where what is a passing hit, you actually did decent damage to their fuel tanks but nothing happened, it’s why I check my server replays and there are many times I struck their fuel tank and did nothing.

Again, .50s should be fire starters. It should be just as scary getting grazed by .50s as it should be by 20mm because 1 hit could light you up in the same vein 1 hit by a 20mm could instantly disable you.

It won’t ALWAYS happen, but like cannons where it happens commonly enough you can snap people’s wings off with literally single shots with shells. The same, but with fires, should happen with .50s.

You also need to remember that not all fires are fuel fires. engine fires can be lit even by non API rounds.

[PercussionCap]

@dovah4

I already showed what happened to a UH-1 fuel tank when the ullage goes off

The fuel bladder, you mean. It’s not a rigid fuel tank, and being in a helicopter the material is much thinner. So much so that a .30cal bullet passed straight through.

Compare this with for example, the self-sealing tanks in USN fighters, which were made of two very thick vulcanized rubber layers, with a layer of natural rubber on the inside between them. These were known by their crews to be extremely resilient and could be safely re-used even after taking hits and plugging the leak.

@dovah4

.50 cals can’t even do this in multiple shots in-game.

The equivalent is just turning the fuel tank black, which they are more than capable of.

@dovah4

If I recall, to add self-sealing fuel tanks to the P-38. Nearly 60% of usable fuel space was used to make the tanks self-sealing.

This is obvious when you look at the P-38.

All its fuel tanks are very slim. If you want the self-sealing walls to have enough thickness, you rapidly decrease how much fuel they can carry.

Compare that to a 262:

They are very large in every direction. The volume loss isn’t nearly as significant as P-38’s.

@dovah4

I’m not showing 5 kills matches where I do everything right

“everything right” isn’t my tail getting cut clean off by a plane with a measly four .50s, a level of armament which P-40 pilots complained about being downgraded to

@dovah4

Imagine if in Real Shatter 1.0 someone just showed them insta-killing somebody all the time and said “Nope, no problem here. Cannons are fine.” You’d think that’s bull, right?

If it was just one instance, it’s a statistical anomaly. If they show several consecutive kills where that happens (like with my video) then there’s something else in play.

@dovah4

The problem is that there are many times where what is a passing hit, you actually did decent damage to their fuel tanks but nothing happened

Because these are not cannons and you must actually HIT something.

An explosive shell can get away with not directly hitting modules to deal damage.

A .50cal cannot. If I hit here I shouldn’t expect any meaningful damage unless I put dozens of rounds here.

@dovah4

because 1 hit could light you up in the same vein 1 hit by a 20mm could instantly disable you

they already do that

this was a kill

- YouTube

@dovah4

You also need to remember that not all fires are fuel fires. engine fires can be lit even by non API rounds.

I don’t care where the fire is coming from. They’re getting shot down, in many situations faster than what cannons can. Very often you don’t even need fires since .50s are much more capable of hitting pilots or perforating other sections of the enemy to hit something else like the engine and wing spars.

[dovah4]

@PercussionCap

The fuel bladder, you mean. It’s not a rigid fuel tank, and being in a helicopter the material is much thinner. So much so that a .30cal bullet passed straight through.

Compare this with for example, the self-sealing tanks in USN fighters, which were made of two very thick vulcanized rubber layers, with a layer of natural rubber on the inside between them. These were known by their crews to be extremely resilient and could be safely re-used even after taking hits and plugging the leak.

Documents talking about the fuel tank’s construction still refer to it as a fuel tank/fuel cell. Tomato—Tohmato. It’s a ‘bladder-design’ but it’s still fair to call it a fuel tank. Secondly, it didn’t have vulcanized rubber. They used a cloth inner layer, a middle layer made out of soft raw natural rubber that’s meant to seal shut, while also adding a “gap” for fuel to leak in to instead, and a synthetic rubber outer layer. But again. This doesn’t necessarily make it impervious to leaks, especially if a round enters obliquely

Secondly, I presented the test to show the dangers of ullage detonation within the aircraft. Especially as the test used JP-8 fuel. This is less about “leaks” and more about destruction of the bladder itself. The AH-1 test is to show a worst case scenario of what can happen, complete evisceration of the tank.

But a round entering the tank still causes a weak spot and makes it liable for tears and ripping or stretching if there is sufficient fuel vapors, ripping it open even wider.

@PercussionCap

The equivalent is just turning the fuel tank black, which they are more than capable of.

I’ve shown fuel tanks being turned black and not burning.

@PercussionCap

“everything right” isn’t my tail getting cut clean off by a plane with a measly four .50s, a level of armament which P-40 pilots complained about being downgraded to

Even that can take a sizable amount of fire—again, this is relative to how short the TTKs in this game are which can literally be “instant”—to accomplish. Unless you grind them down with a P-47 or something.
Still, reduce it par 2014 era where that wasn’t really possible and the only parts you could shoot off was the control surfaces. I.e. make fires more common place than structural damage.

@PercussionCap

Because these are not cannons and you must actually HIT something.

An explosive shell can get away with not directly hitting modules to deal damage.

You’re not understanding. I did hit something. That’s what I’m getting at. I’m not talking about the general super structure of the aircraft. But as in I struck something important but nothing happened. I’ve already shown Fuel tanks with the Bf-110 taking 10+ hits and not anything happened. Blackening it’s fuel tank. but nothing else.

@PercussionCap

A .50cal cannot. If I hit here I shouldn’t expect any meaningful damage unless I put dozens of rounds here.

I agree

@PercussionCap

they already do that

You can still have the dice roll in your favor at times. I’ve had a lucky single hit fire on a J-26 recently. But just because I’m lucky sometimes doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist.

- YouTube

This is still an issue where it can require 10+ rounds on a fuel tank to catch it alight shouldn’t be a thing.

@PercussionCap

If it was just one instance, it’s a statistical anomaly. If they show several consecutive kills where that happens (like with my video) then there’s something else in play.

Elaborate. Because I’m trying to say “Making selective videos won’t work out because it doesn’t illustrate well”

@PercussionCap

.50s are much more capable of hitting pilots or perforating other sections of the enemy to hit something else like the engine and wing spars.

The only parts that honestly matter at that point are the spars, engine and pilot.I don’t want .50s main mode of damage be trying to snap people’s wings off firing at spars that can be literally pixel thin.

[PercussionCap]

@dovah4

Secondly, it didn’t have vulcanized rubber. They used a cloth inner layer, a middle layer made out of soft raw natural rubber that’s meant to seal shut, while also adding a “gap” for fuel to leak in to instead, and a synthetic rubber outer layer.

Those are the ones that rapidly delaminated and rendered Wildcats unflyable. Later types did use vulcanized rubber.

@dovah4

I’ve shown fuel tanks being turned black and not burning.

boo womp, unlucky

but at that point they’ve already taken debilitating damage

@dovah4

this is relative to how short the TTKs in this game are which can literally be “instant”—to accomplish. Unless you grind them down with a P-47 or something

grind what down? if you’re actually hitting them the 47’s noob guns will instantly atomize anyone

look at that yak3 in the head-on that was hit by what, half of my guns? and it didn’t exactly take very long for my tail to get cleaved off

@dovah4

This is still an issue where it can require 10+ rounds on a fuel tank to catch it alight shouldn’t be a thing.

Have you verified through datamined game files that the ground .50cals are the same as those mounted on aircraft? Otherwise not using an aircraft is a big mistake. From my own gameplay I cannot see this as representative.

@dovah4

Because I’m trying to say “Making selective videos won’t work out because it doesn’t illustrate well”

@PercussionCap

If it was just one instance, it’s a statistical anomaly.

what else is there to understand

you can pick and choose engagements, but if I have one session with several matches where I am consecutively taking enemies apart and setting them on fire basically every time I open fire at the correct range, that’s not being selective at all.

Whereas in realshatter 1.0 you’d see maybe one enemy getting shot down as they are right now, and the next 10 barely even feel it. You could of course cherrypick a series of those events to pretend cannons are doing fine, but anyone actually playing the game would tell you otherwise. I did to spade the P-51K and P-47D-30, and found they’re even better guns than I thought.

If you cannot replicate what I showed, the issue is on your end. I recently had to delete a lot of automatic recordings to make space, and came across some ground battles I had a while ago. With both F-80A and F2G, whoever I got my guns on was shot down in a very short time, often with more than one cause at the same time - pilot knocked out, engine knocked out, wings/tail gone, huge fires. That doesn’t scream “buff .50s NOW” to me.

[coffee_can-psn]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[dovah4]

@PercussionCap

Those are the ones that rapidly delaminated and rendered Wildcats unflyable. Later types did use vulcanized rubber.

I was referring to the Me-262.

@PercussionCap

boo womp, unlucky

but at that point they’ve already taken debilitating damage

The point is to show the severity of how bad it can get. Even orange damage should be catching enemies alight.

@PercussionCap

grind what down? if you’re actually hitting them the 47’s noob guns will instantly atomize anyone

If you have all your rounds hit the empennage then yeah it will break it, but again, you have to aim specifically at that location. Or you have a habit of shooting very short. And you’re not going to get time to start picking a certain part of the aircraft when you’re doing a 500kmh deflection shot.

@PercussionCap

Have you verified through datamined game files that the ground .50cals are the same as those mounted on aircraft?

For the statistic that matters it’s the same, the only significant difference is a slower ROF and a higher velocity. It’s the same percentage for incendiary

M2HB API-T Round

AN/M2 Late war API-T round

@PercussionCap

but if I have one session with several matches where I am consecutively taking enemies apart and setting them on fire basically every time I open fire at the correct range, that’s not being selective at all.

I have matches where I tear enemies to shreds and matches where my rounds just go through doing nothing. The rounds are very inconsistent because they’re more reliant on hitting structural components than actually hitting anything worth burning. That’s neat if you get a good burst and you hit his spar. It sucks when you hit someones fuel tank and it’s up in the air on if you get a fire or not.
The matches I did good in, most of my kills were from pilot snipes.
But the second I can’t hit the pilot, the components don’t really matter, because I have to just try and buzz saw somebody, and having to “aim” for weakspots makes no sense when the whole point of the .50s were to put a huge field of fire on hitting something important but Gaijin deemed it that U.S. props all used point convergence for some reason???

This was from @Real_K_Soze with a link he gave me to one of his replays. And this was the result of several (around 4) passes. Hitting the fuel tank of this guy should’ve straight up been the end of him. If he didn’t have the Fireball to carry him, this Yak would’ve been absolute hell to deal with.

Someone could do the same showing consecutive matches of them tearing enemies apart with Real Shatter 1.0 and argue that there’s nothing wrong. I’ve isolated it down that the incendiary factor has a problem of taking too many rounds on average to ignite. Same way people isolated down the reason cannon shells weren’t making the damage that Gaijin promised due to shrapnel spawning within itself and then instantly despawning making it where the explosive itself was the only thing doing damage.

I mean, it should be a bigger problem that incendiary rounds in general don’t even penetrate but just do super structure damage.

[Irregular23]

Soviets and Japanese Ki-84 got inerted gas tank, especially Yaks got super inerted one.
Germans got armors around their tanks, so if you were putting 50cals from behind they mostly do nothing.

This currently situation made the Allied planes (Brits and U.S.),to be the most vulnerable to 50cal fire if you consider the fuel tank iginition, however they are the main clients for 50cals which make things funny.

[dovah4]

@Irregular23

Soviets and Japanese Ki-84 got inerted gas tank, especially Yaks got super inerted one.
Germans got armors around their tanks, so if you were putting 50cals from behind they mostly do nothing.

It would work with after the first round and depending on impact angle. You would still have the initial ignition of the mist spray, the inerting helps with ullage detonation, but subsequent rounds would cause the inerting gas to leak and a round entering would reintroduce oxygen into the fuel tank. That’s if the inerting system was able to get the Oxygen levels to go lower than 9%. Even with civilian aircraft such as with airliners, they only go down as far as 12% which would reduce the intensity of the ignition but not stop it.

@Irregular23

so if you were putting 50cals from behind they mostly do nothing.

They were specifically designed to go through german armor plating to hit the gas tank.

[ScimitarsCurse]

not a single kill there was accomplished by any other round than the M20 API-T i can 1000% garantee it