.50's deserve a buff

[SpeclistMain1]

@RedEye_ツ

Cuz they already perform well enough to torch ppl out of the air, snipe pilots, kill the engine with a couple rounds, etc. But you want them to rip wings, break tails n see things falling apart as if they had HE filler. (Lowkey already happens from time to time)

I’m not really sure how saying this is disproving anything. Any round can do pilot snipes, any round can kill the engine. The issue is that .50 cals - outside of those lucky cases - have to really on a mechanic that takes extra time, is inconsistent in damage, and inconsistent in even doing any damage, while also not being able to do basically anything to structural components despite how blatantly illogical that is.

@RedEye_ツ

So why are you so dissatisfied w it? He didn’t kill them hard enough?

Because at best half of the kills he showed weren’t pilot snipes, engine hits, bomb explosions, or fuel explosions - with the majority of the remaining half relying on an inconsistent mechanic that is just straight up worse in every way than how HE shells are modeled.

@RedEye_ツ

x4 .50 cals doing a terrible job apparently:

I-185 (M-71) - Multiple direct hits to the wing spars at a perpendicular angle. I’m glad in the literal most optimal circumstance you can get .50 cals will do structural damage sometimes, even if getting the outcome in the optimal circumstance is inconsistent.

Bf 109 G-6: I’m extremely surprised the tail came off, extremely. If the outcome was anywhere near mildly consistent that’d be great.

@RedEye_ツ

In order words, point your cursor to the target and one of these will happen.

In other words, this is much less likely to happen than the instant kill condition for a cannon/HE 12.7mm, even when factoring in the increase fire rate of .50 cals. This also means .50 cals cannot do structural damage except for extraordinary circumstances.

[_Zekken]

@dovah4

The thing is, you’re also competing against more well-rounded aircraft who’s weapons are for the most part, superior to yours while having only a few setbacks.

But thats not correct, American planes are mostly pretty fairly BRd. You are fighting aircraft with usually pretty similar flight performance.

I played an air RB game in the P-51D-5 last night, with a friend. It was a 4.3 game, I got 7 kills, my friend in his P-51D-20 got 3. (I didnt record it, would have to give you the replay) I admit I wasnt expecting to get that many, but I did not once during that game feel in a disadvantage airframe wise nor firepower wise. For example I went head to head with two different Bf-109 G-2s. The first had altitude on me, he dived, I dodged, and forced him to burn his energy which let me kill him. the 2nd was a climb battle. I was able to out climb him despite starting from lower down, and when we merged due to the more well rounded performance you get in the P-51, I won the turn fight.

I even took a load of cannon rounds from him, which contrary to popular belief, did not instantly end me. They oranged the rear half of my fuselage and broke an elevator off. I was still able to out turn him with this damage, and as he tried to run away to reset I sprayed him with MG fire starting at ~800m away, and he got to about 1.2km before I got an engine fire on him and let him burn out. (More examples of botu the advantages of .50 cals over cannons, and fires being beneficial and not any worse than wing snaps) cannons would not have been able to do that.

@dovah4

If I have to be hyper specific where my guns hit, and no one else does. Why is that fair? I’m not even talking ‘realism.’ if everyone is broken why can’t my guns be?

Ive already both explained and shown this multiple times, you can afford to be LESS accurate with .50 cals. Cannons require MORE precise aim.

Im up to I think nearly 20 different kills now Ive shown in this thread. Look at where I am aiming. Im not aiming for any specific spot, Im aiming to hit the plane. Because when you have lots of high RoF guns, you have A LOT of lead in the air, and some of it is going to connect.

Again, aim ahead, let them fly through the rounds. You aren’t trying to hit specifically the engine, you are trying to hit the plane. And you WILL hit him. You’ll hit along the whole length of his aircraft.

Im not sure why I have to explain to you a third time now why this isnt true.

With cannons I make sure I am lined up and use as few rounds as possible, heck even with other nations .50 cals (such as the Ki-44) I have to do that due to still having lower ammo counts. I dont have to do that with American .50 cals. Just fill the sky with lead and they die. Its that simple.

[RedEye_ツ]

@SpeclistMain1

The issue is that .50 cals - outside of those lucky cases - have to really on a mechanic that takes extra time, is inconsistent in damage, and inconsistent in even doing any damage, while also not being able to do basically anything to structural components despite how blatantly illogical that is.

You cannot expect .50cals that have 0 explosive filler to chainsaw wings like that man.
I wouldn’t have issues with Gaijin getting incendiary rounds to work properly ( I believe there’s a report on it btw) but you cannot have the same punch as a 12.7mm filled with HE or 20mm round does. It makes no sense.

[WolfgangTheSecon]

Speaking again as a former Fw 190 main, changing the guns will not make this aspect of US planes easier. That’s the nature of it. If you do what I described, then even them following you to the ends of the earth gives you a decent chance at worst, and a definite chance at best of killing them without dying in the process. If you’re fighting enemies at a higher BR, then that’s just the nature of an uptier, .50 cals vs cannons still won’t change that.

My favourite planes are all Fw 190 variants, the He 162, recently P-51s, etc. I find consistent success in these planes that are high-speed, low-turn, and if anything I’ve been having an easier time with the P-51, because it has better performance BR for BR, and the guns are significantly easier to use. The only times I have trouble are in uptiers, against Yak-3s, or when my entire team dies, and all of those things will apply to all other aircraft.

[SpeclistMain1]

@RedEye_ツ

You cannot expect .50cals that have 0 explosive filler to chainsaw wings like that man.

A .50 cal should not be doing essentially no damage when not in the perfect circumstance when hitting a wing spar directly, that just doesn’t make sense. Regardless, setting a fire is still inherently worse than HE in game because at best you’re waiting for a fire to maybe do something. I’m not really sure how you’re disproving me here.

@_Zekken

Ive already both explained and shown this multiple times, you can afford to be LESS accurate with .50 cals. Cannons require MORE precise aim.

You can be less accurate for hits, but you have to be more accurate to actually do damage.

[PercussionCap]

@SpeclistMain1

I wouldn’t really count this as having a good climb rate for the BR, from what I remember.

It’s no P-38G, but it’ll happily climb quite high.

@SpeclistMain1

those are pretty much the only aircraft with good climb rates

They are some of, if not THE best climbers at their BRs.

@SpeclistMain1

meanwhile literally every fighter or interceptor in every other tree will have good climb rates

“Good” isn’t good enough to compete with P-38s and XP-50s. Other trees have plenty of aircraft with bad climb rates, e.g. Ki-61s and Fw190s.

@dovah4

Can you blame the Italian players not flying the D-30 as often compared to their other options?

The Italian D-30 is a very good plane. China gets it too, with the only fast climbing backup being the P-38L.

@dovah4

Mixed with the understanding that twin-engined fighters are much worse than single engined counterparts.

They are not. I haven’t played the P-38G much as it’s too easy for my likes and spading it was exceptionally quick. P-38J only brings a challenge thanks to the horrible teams - so far a 36% winrate despite having a very positive k/d and k/b.

@dovah4

Why do you think you see a crap load of P-63s?

They are also competitive, and bring a change in pace to the USA tree with decent maneuverability.

@dovah4

Can you blame british players for not flying the Brigand or whirlwind compared to a Spitfire??

The P-38 is closer in performance and use to a single engine fighter, unlike the overweight Brigand and other heavy fighters.

@dovah4

I’ve been playing multiple matches of the D-22 and I only see one Xp-50 every 3-4 matches.

Wow, seems like XP-50 players really hate it when their plane gets nerfed and goes from the best 4.0 to the best 4.0.

[dovah4]

Here’s the thing, .50 incendiary bullets were explosive too.

When bullets get small enough, it’s just you packing explosives and slapping it against a wall to detonate.

This is what it looked like on the inside of a plane’s wing when you smacked it with incendiary.

To my knowledge, this is the M1 incendiary round.

Now, the game isn’t balanced off realism when it comes to damage. That was a Gaijin admitted thing.

The U.S. doesn’t have any functional belt that would take advantage of the incendiary round, while at the same time, the filler is balanced so astronomically bad it actually suffers the real-shatter bug and gaijin doesn’t consider the fact that the round physically exploding against an object even though that’s the semi mechanism of detonation russian and jap 12.7s and swedish 13mms work.

0.6 grams of PETN can magically cause fragments to strike other parts of the aircraft with 5.8 grams of incendiary filler doing basically nothing.

@RedEye_ツ

You cannot expect .50cals that have 0 explosive filler to chainsaw wings like that man.
I wouldn’t have issues with Gaijin getting incendiary rounds to work properly ( I believe there’s a report on it btw) but you cannot have the same punch as a 12.7mm filled with HE or 20mm round does. It makes no sense.

As above.
Ignoring any talks about ‘realism’

To fix the issue, give the U.S. an ‘Air-targets’ belt. Fix incendiary filler as it’s affected by the real-shatter bug where U.S. incendiary fragmentation can’t even leave the ‘explosive’ it creates.

[SpeclistMain1]

@PercussionCap

Other trees have plenty of aircraft with bad climb rates, e.g. Ki-61s and Fw190s.

Other trees have a handful of aircraft have poor climb rates, the US has a handful of aircraft that climb well.

[PercussionCap]

Then just play the planes that climb well.

[WolfgangTheSecon]

They are not. I haven’t played the P-38G much as it’s too easy for my likes and spading it was exceptionally quick. P-38J only brings a challenge thanks to the horrible teams - so far a 36% winrate despite having a very positive k/d and k/b.

Playing the devil’s advocate here, heavy fighters like the P-38 do tend to be a lot more floaty, which can make it harder to actually secure a kill if someone know how to dodge. That still leaves you in a position where you’re consistently able to always be in the advantage though, even if it is more difficult to follow through on an attack.

[PercussionCap]

@WolfgangTheSecon

That still leaves you in a position where you’re consistently able to always be in the advantage though, even if it is more difficult to follow through on an attack.

Although that’s true, you’re still preventing them from climbing and if on the offensive, forcing them to dive away from you because at that altitude the P-38 holds almost all the cards. You don’t HAVE to kill everyone, just make them avoid you and go to lower alts where they’ll be easier targets.

edit: of course, forcing enemies to lower alts only works if you have a team which while playing USA… you won’t.

[_Zekken]

@SpeclistMain1

I played the videos in the highest resolution and frame rate youtube allowed me to. The IL-10 was definitely damaged by fire as the first fire did not instantly go out, the second fire popped up right before the severe damage, and then the last fire happened during/after the tail breaking off. The F4U was also definitely fire damaged beforehand due to the left landing gear taking damage after the burst.

This is why I asked if you usually play on low graphics

Those puffs are NOT fires. If you are not used to seeing them in your game (because you play on low graphics and its not rendering them for you), I can see how you’d maybe assume that seeing them on my footage (which is with graphics fully maxed out) would be a fire, when they aren’t.

@SpeclistMain1

The P-51D took a while to die, though. With HE it would’ve been instant and the death would be a sure thing (rather than unsure in the case of fire).

Doesn’t matter if he took a while for the game to consider him “dead”. He was out of the fight and no longer a threat right as my rounds hit. Sure this was GRB and so he could have nosed down and maybe gotten some suicide bombs/strafe off, but in ARB that wouldnt be the case. He was out.

This is the exact same case for every other plane that didnt immediately get “aircraft destroyed” in all of those clips. It doesnt matter what (limited) control they still had. They were out. The only one that was not true for was the Yak9K, which as I said happens just as often to cannon armed aicraft and honestly I think is a glitch with the severe damage system rather than the guns of the plane - I myself have been considered “severely samaged” just an orange wing before.

@SpeclistMain1

I mean, yes? How is having to either take longer in terms of time or bullets while also not having as many options to kill in general supposed to be a good thing?

More bullets? Yes. More time? No. Less options? Also no.

You have 2000 rounds in 6 guns. Who cares if it takes 100 of them to kill, you have 1800 left. You are talking about conserving ammo as if you have 20mms with 120rds each, and applying it to .50s which you are SUPPOSED to spam. Yet again as I have said before, you are supposed to use them differently!

[RedEye_ツ]

@SpeclistMain1

A .50 cal should not be doing essentially no damage when not in the perfect circumstance when hitting a wing spar directly, that just doesn’t make sense. Regardless, setting a fire is still inherently worse than HE in game because at best you’re waiting for a fire to maybe do something. I’m not really sure how you’re disproving me here.

You have to test it properly in-game with somebody to say that for sure it does 0 damage.
Protection analysis cannot be your ultimate source for this.
For example: Enter a custom battle with a friend and tell him to tap fire while turning or going straight or simulate a Air Rb scenario, up to you. There’s no way .50cals do 0 damage.

Protection analysis also show that MG151/20 does nothing when hitting wooden built aircraft which is not true at all. But it’s concerning.

But I will say that if anything deserves a buff its the MG151/20. It still uses the old formula but even if it’s intended by Gaijin, they should atleast buff the values accordingly cuz it’s performing worse than pretty much any other 20mm while having 5x the explosive filler.

[RedEye_ツ]

@dovah4

0.6 grams of PETN can magically cause fragments to strike other parts of the aircraft with 5.8 grams of incendiary filler doing basically nothing.

Yes cuz it uses realshatter, it has HE so realshatter will make that happen. Idk why they even implemented it in the first place, it’s very messy.

@dovah4

As above.
Ignoring any talks about ‘realism’

To fix the issue, give the U.S. an ‘Air-targets’ belt. Fix incendiary filler as it’s affected by the real-shatter bug where U.S. incendiary fragmentation can’t even leave the ‘explosive’ it creates.

But am with you when it comes to fixing Incendiary rounds, I saw somewhere that they are practically useless. So ofc am down to fixing it.
And they don’t get affected by realshatter at all, they don’t use it. It’s probably the incendiary rounds just being poorly implemented.
I just cannot vouch for making .50cals have the same punch as a 20mm. It would be absurd.

[_Zekken]

@SpeclistMain1

A .50 cal should not be doing essentially no damage when not in the perfect circumstance when hitting a wing spar directly, that just doesn’t make sense.

They literally do not.

@SpeclistMain1

You can be less accurate for hits, but you have to be more accurate to actually do damage.

You literally don’t

@SpeclistMain1

Other trees have a handful of aircraft have poor climb rates, the US has a handful of aircraft that climb well.

We’ve gone away from the misinformed and reached fantasy land. Of all the US props, only the P-47s are not good climbers within their BR. And the F6F. Though as we discussed that things flight model is borked and has been since beta

[dovah4]

@RedEye_ツ

I just cannot vouch for making .50cals have the same punch as a 20mm. It would be absurd.

Never said make .50s hit as hard as 20mms. Just have U.S. .50s match the .50s of other nations.

@RedEye_ツ

And they don’t get affected by realshatter at all, they don’t use it. It’s probably the incendiary rounds just being poorly implemented.

Some don’t that’s true.

But U.S. .50s do get affected by Real Shatter. For some reason.

You can see the fragmentation.

@_Zekken

They literally do not.

Speclist is right about that. They don’t do damage unless you hit the wing spar.

@_Zekken

You literally don’t

Speclist is right about this again. Unless you get a lucky fuel fire. You don’t have enough incendiary to actually do any sort of meaningful damage to the structure of the wing. You basically have to hit the fuselage or else you’ve achieved nothing. compound this with the fact that API-T is not as much of a firestarter as it used to be, you’re banking on getting your convergence right and hitting the guy where it hurts, or you’re reliant on lucky fuel fires.

The only time wing shots are detrimental is if you hit your opponent with multiple incendiary. You can see this with Stealth as wing snaps are a lot more common and you’ll damage your opponent’s wing a lot more quickly.

[SpeclistMain1]

@dovah4

Here’s the thing, .50 incendiary bullets were explosive too.

When bullets get small enough, it’s just you packing explosives and slapping it against a wall to detonate.

Ok I finally found something that could maybe give the .50 cals good damage. Going off of this suggestion for IL-2, flash powder (a similar compound to the Ba(NO_3)_2 used in IM-28) has a RE factor of 0.36±0.12, with the highest actually being 0.56. The TNT equivalence for the US incendiary rounds would be:

M8 API and M30 API-T (0.97g for both):

• Worst case: 0.97*0.24 = 0.2328g TNTeq
• Mid case: 0.97*0.36 = 0.3492g TNTeq
• Best case: 0.97*0.56 = 0.5432g TNTeq

M1 I (2.2g):

• Worst case: 2.2*0.24 = 0.528g TNTeq
• Mid case: 2.2*0.36 = 0.792g TNTeq
• Best case: 2.2*0.56 = 1.232g TNTeq

M23 I (5.8g):

• Worst case: 5.8*0.24 = 1.392g TNTeq
• Mid case: 5.8*0.36 = 2.088g TNTeq
• Best case: 5.8*0.56 = 3.248g TNTeq

Meanwhile for the Japanese 12.7mm round: (PETN’s RE factor is 1.66)

• 0.6*1.66 = 0.996g TNTeq

In summary, API and API-T in the best case scenario would have a little over 50% the effectiveness of the HEF 12.7mm shell, the M1 I round would have between ~50%-~124% the effectiveness, and M23 I round would have between ~140%-~326% effectiveness

[RedEye_ツ]

@dovah4

But U.S. .50s do get affected by Real Shatter. For some reason.

They don’t, the code still uses HitPower (old formula). I can link you the code to them.
There’s just not any sort of fragmentation applied to any of the rounds. What you are showing me is just the hitpower, I think any ball round behaves the same way.

Rounds that use realshatter have a specific line n code to them. So guns that do not use it cannot be affected by it at all is what I mean.

[dovah4]

Link to the DTIC document btw

[SpeclistMain1]

@_Zekken

Those puffs are NOT fires. If you are not used to seeing them in your game (because you play on low graphics and its not rendering them for you), I can see how you’d maybe assume that seeing them on my footage (which is with graphics fully maxed out) would be a fire, when they aren’t.

I play in 4k (99Hz with DLSS).

@_Zekken

He was out of the fight and no longer a threat right as my rounds hit.

This is not always obvious, especially when they can still control their plane.

@_Zekken

More bullets? Yes. More time? No. Less options? Also no.

You have 2000 rounds in 6 guns. Who cares if it takes 100 of them to kill, you have 1800 left. You are talking about conserving ammo as if you have 20mms with 120rds each, and applying it to .50s which you are SUPPOSED to spam. Yet again as I have said before, you are supposed to use them differently!

More bullets when factoring in fire rate, more time just generally (unless you get lucky with a pilot snipe or engine kill, where the .50 cal only matches the 12.7mm HEs/cannons), and less options because you can’t get structural kills outside of the most optimal scenarios.

@RedEye_ツ

Protection analysis cannot be your ultimate source for this.

I’m using by experiences in AAB (a while ago) and in ARB (the past couple of years).