.50's deserve a buff

[_Zekken]

@dovah4

No I didn’t. stop putting words in my mouth. I have continuously stated and even SHOWED that it’s a two hit kill on average. You made that argument. Not me.

If the basis of your argument is you getting my claim wrong I’m not bothering.

I acknowledge that you said that, I went back and couldn’t find anywhere you said 1 hit, so my apologies on that. I must of parroted someone else (Or maybe SpeclistMain1 said it)

but there is also reason for my confusion, being that M2 brownings 2 shot modules as well. In fact an M2 browning will reliably 2 shot the engine of a plane, whereas the Ho-103 HEF-I round won’t, infact it struggles to even penetrate the cowling sometimes:

This is what comes of having 3mm of penetration, it can hit a surface and explode before it gets to anything actually critical. (Its also something that happens with 20mm HEF rounds occasionally)

I can’t even get the HEF-I round to reliably make the Pilot on this Spitfire die, partly due to that fragmentation. the API-T on the M2 browning does though. I never said that the Japanese 12.7 HEF rounds don’t snap wings. I said they aren’t as reliable as you claim at it, and aren’t any stronger than the M2 browning.

this yet again comes down to different guns doing damage in different ways. Yes the HEF-I will be a bit better at snapping wings, but its worse in causing structural or module damage, where the M2 excels.

Also, this is before we get to the fact that the most you ever get on a Japanese plane is four of them, that being the Ki-44 Hei.

@dovah4

The videos I made of japanese 12.7mm completely support my claim. Despite you and Percussion cap trying to split hairs.

You posted two clips. Only one of them completely supported your claim.

While I was showing the damage of M2 Brownings, I’ve posted about 20 different kills now, all of which showed consistent performance.

Im not going to deny the Ho-103 can and does snap wings, again. Spaded the whole tech tree. I also played a few more games in the Ki-44 Hei this evening. But It doesn’t take any less shooting than it does to cripple an enemy with quad M2 Brownings. (Also in one of the games I got completely and utterly styled on by someone in a P-51C, despite having an altitude advantage against him at the beginning)

[viski253]

whoah. its like im back in 2016 again.

[SpeclistMain1]

@PercussionCap

Only counting prop fighters/interceptors/etc with 20-23mm guns. Heavy fighters generally not counted if they’re just flying bricks (Dorner 217 and the likes); Hornet and F7F still counted; Wyvern also counted as an exception because it’s the fucking Wyvern

I tried to do the same range of types of vehicles while not including the jet BRs, but what’s the list when you only look at BRs where having 6x .50 cals or more is a thing? There’s a lot of single 20mms below ~3.0 where the first 6x .50 cals are. I went through Germany, the USSR, and Great Britain since I kept getting captchas lol.

@KillaKiwi

They are tiny bullets with merely 1g flash powder.

That translates to ~1/3g of TNT, though, or about 1/3 the damage of a Japanese 12.7mm HE round. The M23 incendiary should have ~3x the TNT equivalent of a Japanese 12.7mm, or about a 1/3 of the TNT equivalent of a 20mm HE shell (going off of the Hispano Mk.II).

[RedEye_ツ]

@dovah4

Why is this video considered proof of good guns while Zekken’s clips were dissected with 10 different excuses on why his kills weren’t really good enough… cuz it was either fire/engine fire/pilot snipes/fuel tank explosions…etc when in reality the TTK is literally similar or even faster in some of his clips?

It feels like you would be more satisfied if .50cals ripped more wings n tails regardless if it takes the same amount of time to kill as the ‘‘lucky’’ fires, pilot snipes and engine fires.

[PercussionCap]

@SpeclistMain1

but what’s the list when you only look at BRs where having 6x .50 cals or more is a thing?

Doesn’t really change much. There’s not many planes with a single 20mm, it is mostly P-38s, Yaks, and 109s. The P-40s being at 2.7 already enables all except the very first Yak-1 at 2.3.

@SpeclistMain1

There’s a lot of single 20mms below ~3.0

For who? Unless we’re talking about france (and they don’t have that many aircraft to begin with) they’re almost all at 2.7 or above.

[SpeclistMain1]

@PercussionCap

The P-40s being at 2.7 already enables all except the very first Yak-1 at 2.3.

Tbh I forgot that the P-40s in the US tree had 6x .50 cal and not 4x .50 cal and 2x 7.7mm. They’ve got the garbo early (early) belts, though, so I’m not exactly sure if that counts in our discussions of .50 cals (since they don’t have API, and at best get one incendiary per belt). The F4U-1A would count, though, as they get some belts with only one non-incendiary-something round.

@PercussionCap

For who? Unless we’re talking about france (and they don’t have that many aircraft to begin with) they’re almost all at 2.7 or above.

Some deal of 109s, some He 112s, some Yak-1s, some MiG-3s, some LaGG-3s, the float plane Zero, the float plane N1K1, and a handful of French planes. If you include the heavy fighters (or strike aircraft that are really heavy fighters), it’s probably ~25 planes.

Separately, why do some post-Tier-I British props only get 2x 7.7mms. Bruh.

@RedEye_ツ

Why is this video considered proof of good guns while Zekken’s clips were dissected with 10 different excuses on why his kills weren’t really good enough…

@RedEye_ツ

It feels like you would be more satisfied if .50cals ripped more wings n tails regardless if it takes the same amount of time to kill as the ‘‘lucky’’ fires, pilot snipes and engine fires.

Except the whole point of breaking down the videos is to point out what would’ve happened with a cannon or HE 12.7mm too, as opposed to anything a .50 cal only could do.

The breakdowns showed that at least half of the kills would’ve happened regardless of the gun (bomb explosions, engine hits, pilot snipes), and most of the remaining kills happened due to waiting until fire decided to do something. Meanwhile cannons and HE 12.7mms can also set things on fire, but they are the only ones who can do structural damage outside of the most optimal scenarios.

[PercussionCap]

@SpeclistMain1

They’ve got the garbo early (early) belts, though, so I’m not exactly sure if that counts in our discussions of .50 cals

The P-40s have very good firepower. The downside with them are the engines and high weight.

@SpeclistMain1

Some deal of 109s, some He 112s, some Yak-1s, some MiG-3s, some LaGG-3s, the float plane Zero, the float plane N1K1, and a handful of French planes. If you include the heavy fighters (or strike aircraft that are really heavy fighters), it’s probably ~25 planes.

All the single 20mm 109s are 2.7 or higher. There are only two Yak-1s, one 2.3 and one 3.0. MiG-3-34 has two ShVAKs. LaGGs have at least one 2.7 model. All Zeros and N1K1 have two 20mm cannons.There is just one He 112 with a single 20mm, with all others either not counting (7.92s only) or having two 20mm.

@SpeclistMain1

Separately, why do some post-Tier-I British props only get 2x 7.7mms. Bruh.

Such as?

@SpeclistMain1

The breakdowns showed that at least half of the kills would’ve happened regardless of the gun (bomb explosions, engine hits, pilot snipes)

You don’t know that. A 20mm MIGHT have hit the pilot or engine, but volume of fire is so much lower that the shell in question might have never been fired in the first place.
A plane with 6x M2 .50cals is putting out 4500rpm, 750rpm per gun. Almost all 20mm cannons fire slower than that per gun even before we get into how many each plane has.

[RedEye_ツ]

@SpeclistMain1

Except the whole point of breaking down the videos is to point out what would’ve happened with a cannon or HE 12.7mm too, as opposed to anything a .50 cal only could do.

Yea I mean of course the 20mm and 12.7mm filled with HE got the superior punch…?
Meanwhile US .50cals have a superior spray potential and range compared to cannons, that’s also something only the US .50cals can do over the rest of the guns, but you seem not to count it as any sort of advantage.

It’s what KillaKiwi said above: What do you expect them to do? They are tiny bullets with merely 1g flash powder.
In essence 20mm will just do everything .50cals can but better and when you really want to cause structural damage, you’re going to need Mineshells for that or simply a larger caliber.

He also mentioned how damage to other systems is lacking, same with a proper incendiary system.
If that’s the issue that has to be addressed, I hope we can have a bug report on it soon.
If that makes them behave like crazy flamethrowers, that’s fair, so be it.
Other than that .50cals shouldn’t have the same hit power as a 20mm’s.

@SpeclistMain1

The breakdowns showed that at least half of the kills would’ve happened regardless of the gun (bomb explosions, engine hits, pilot snipes), and most of the remaining kills happened due to waiting until fire decided to do something. Meanwhile cannons and HE 12.7mms can also set things on fire, but they are the only ones who can do structural damage outside of the most optimal scenarios.

Right, just like many cannons kills would’ve happened if u were using .50cals as well but in a different way with a slight higher TTK depending of your aim. With the exception of snapshots.

There’s no waiting for fire to do something, you can literally spray people down until they become ashes, or their pilot gets deleted from existence or you disable their engine completely and rip their wings from time to time.

[dovah4]

@RedEye_ツ

It’s what KillaKiwi said above: What do you expect them to do? They are tiny bullets with merely 1g flash powder.
In essence 20mm will just do everything .50cals can but better and when you really want to cause structural damage, you’re going to need Mineshells for that or simply a larger caliber.

You’re repeating things not understanding what Kiwi is saying

flash powder has been shown to be Brisant and reactive. and the ‘1 gram’ is API. When my focus is on pure incendiary because currently it’s implementation jack crap and should also be emulated to have a tnt equivalence. As well as the fact that there’s barely any of it in U.S. belts.

U.S. belts are consistent mostly of AP you’re having to get most of your kills be pilot snipes. having to hit a single specific target versus some guy with the same caliber machine guns and LESS of them being able to hit you anywhere and severely damage you and/or snap your plane like dry spaghetti is honestly BS. ANY AP round in this game sucks. It’s why people, if they can have it available, pick the belt with the most high explosive.

The thing is, you’re having machine gun rounds with literally barely any explosive mass in the game causing outright massive damage.

Gaijin doesn’t balance off of realism. They focus on gameplay purposes. If everyone is getting guns that can tear you apart easily while I have to spray and hope I hit somewhere important. That’s dumb.

Here’s an italian ‘HEF’ round.

Literally half a gram.

It’s iffier of course and gets gaijined a bit more than japanese 12.7mm. But if we went by the tnt equivalency calculations for M1 and M23. M1 would have the TNT equivalency of Italian 12.7 HEF and M23 would hit like Japanese HEF.

Now. I floated before, the idea to reach a compromise. The U.S. having an Air-targets belt. consistent of API-T and and majority incendiary. Without touching ANYTHING in regards to how the cartridges perform

@dovah4

Late-war:

• API-T, I, I, I, API-T I
  Or
• API-T, I, I, I

Early-war:

• T, I, I, I, AP

But I don’t recall anyone making a response as this would in theory make the .50s better to use.

@RedEye_ツ

Why is this video considered proof of good guns while Zekken’s clips were dissected with 10 different excuses on why his kills weren’t really good enough… cuz it was either fire/engine fire/pilot snipes/fuel tank explosions…etc when in reality the TTK is literally similar or even faster in some of his clips?

Because his entire crux of his argument was “See I sprayed a near perfect burst directly into the fuselage of this one guy. There’s nothing wrong at all”
Any gun in the game with a sufficient burst can rip any plane apart. a Hurricane Mk. II can shred a Ta-152 if it gets most of its rounds on target. Now get it where you’re having a dodging enemy with both of you going 400-500kmh and you can only get a few hits at a time. My rounds will tickle The enemy unless I get a VERY lucky shot while he just needs to hit me once for crippling damage.

Again. Get the mindset of ‘Cannon’ out’ve your head and just think of U.S. .50 cal vs japanese .50 cal.

@_Zekken

I went back and couldn’t find anywhere you said 1 hit, so my apologies on that. I must of parroted someone else

So you don’t fully read what I type and/or you make assumptions.

[Marshall_Aviator]

i think what these people need is 155mm PF on a plane

[_Zekken]

@dovah4

Because his entire crux of his argument was “See I sprayed a near perfect burst directly into the fuselage of this one guy. There’s nothing wrong at all”

@dovah4

So you don’t fully read what I type and/or you make assumptions.

HUH???

The pot is very much calling the kettle black here.

Ive said now I think THREE TIMES. With M2 brownings I AM NOT AIMING AT ANYTHING!

I am aiming IN THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF THE ENEMY! Im not being accurate AT ALL! BECAUSE I DONT NEED TO BE!

I fire ahead of them and let them fly through the rounds. I am literally not aiming at any specific thing BECAUSE I AM EXPECTING TO HIT EVERYTHING ON THEIR ENTIRE PLANE. my rounds are going to hit their engine, and their pilot, and their wings, and their fuel tanks, and their fuselage, and their control surfaces. EVERYTHING.

And yet again I said that 20mm cannons NEED TO BE AIMED SPECIFICALLY. Pinpoint aim is what YOU NEED WITH 20MMS, NOT WITH M2 BROWNINGS.

Thats literally what my videos are showing. They are showing me spraying in the general direction of an enemy, and that enemy being ripped to pieces.

I do the same thing in Air RB. The reason I did it in ground RB is because It would have taken 3 times as long to get the same number of kills to show if I played air RB. Heck, the reason you are getting small single hits is probably BECAUSE you are trying to aim for specific areas. You have 4500 rounds a minute. USE IT.

So the whole crux of your argument is apparently misinterpreting my argument then?

[_Zekken]

@SpeclistMain1

Except the whole point of breaking down the videos is to point out what would’ve happened with a cannon or HE 12.7mm too, as opposed to anything a .50 cal only could do.

Cannons and 12.7 HEF are going to do different things.

Am M2 browning API-T round is going to enter the back of the fuselage, fly through the entire thing, and damage everything in its path. Fuel tanks, pilot, engine. The engine is going to be the only thing that stops it.

A 12.7 HEF round is fused, its going to hit the surface, explode, and damage whatever is in the near vicinity. Sure it will do more damage to whatever is in that vacinity, but if it hits the wrong place it wont do much.

As I have said multiple times now. The types of damage and what they are good at is different, not better or worse than the other. Its going to more reliably snap wings, less reliably damage engines, fuel tanks, and kill pilots.

Just because you think that that type of damage is inferior, does not match reality. Nor have you ever provided any evidence to support any of the claims you have made. Because let me tell you, in the ~5 days now we have been having this discussion, Im at around 50 kills using M2 browning equipped aircraft, and I am yet to have an enemy aircraft that I have set on fire, manage put it out before being destroyed.

Im going to ignore everything you say about 20mms because you want one M2 Browning to be equal to one 20mm for some reason.

[WolfgangTheSecon]

In fairness, I remember the pilot damage being extremely annoying. It was realistic, but it was frustrating and not very fun to me to have my pilot get yellowed and suddenly all the controls are stiff.

It might still be worth it to bring it back if it genuinely improved balance, but I think we should try and find some old posts to see what people used to think about it back when it was around before we float the idea as a proper solution/improvement.

[coffee_can-psn]

ragepost lmao, American 12.7s are some of the easiest guns to use in the game, you can easily get a fire on planes even if just a few rounds hit, meanwhile they seemingly made mg151s shoot confetti

[KillaKiwi]

@SpeclistMain1

That translates to ~1/3g of TNT, though, or about 1/3 the damage of a Japanese 12.7mm HE round. The M23 incendiary should have ~3x the TNT equivalent of a Japanese 12.7mm, or about a 1/3 of the TNT equivalent of a 20mm HE shell (going off of the Hispano Mk.II).

The TNT equivalent is maybe the destrutive power of the explosion, the brisance.
Blast perfomance would be equal or better but the pressure from 1g of either flash powder or explosive isn’t going to do all that much to an airframe.

20mm rounds create roughly 15-20cm sized holes in an airframe from the pressure with a multitude of explosive filler.

Spoiler

Just check this out. On the left image you can see the result of a 20mm Mineshell with impact fuze, striking a He 111’s vertical stabilizer. On the bottom the exit hole.
The round explodes on the surface and the blast carves an entry hole of around 550cm² and an exit hole of rougly 200cm².

That’s with a round that has 18-20 times the explosive filler of a .50cal API and still 8-9 times of M1 Incendiary.

If the round explodes with a delay inside the stabilizer, like in the picture on the right, the pressure built-up causes massive damage within.

Just shows, how even 20mm explosive rounds would just tickle a bombers structure.

.50cals structural damage would basically be insignificant in comparison.

Only against wooden structures the blast effect can be quite effective:

Spoiler

This kind of damage shows how the 13.2mm FN explosive bullet was supposed to destroy a plane with a single shot. Since at that time the transition from wooden to metal aircraft just started.
And why Germany decided that 20mm Mineshells were necessary to defeat the next generation of full metal fighter aircraft.

[dovah4]

@_Zekken

HUH???

The pot is very much calling the kettle black here.

Ive said now I think THREE TIMES. With M2 brownings I AM NOT AIMING AT ANYTHING!

I am aiming IN THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF THE ENEMY! Im not being accurate AT ALL! BECAUSE I DONT NEED TO BE!

HUHHH A GENERALIZED STATTTTMEEENNTTTT??? WHAT’S THAT???

You need to learn to read fully or fully comprehend what you read. Because no one is saying you said that.

Here’ I’ll reword it for you.

Because his entire argument boils down to “See I sprayed a near perfect burst directly into the fuselage of this one guy. There’s nothing wrong at all!”

On the opposite hand you DIRECTLY SAID I CLAIMED this.

@_Zekken

Your claim is that “the HEF round from the Ho-103 consistently breaks wings with one hit”

When it was literally the EXACT opposite of what I said.

@dovah4

12.7mm HEF can blacken a wing in two shots. Now from other angles, it can be a bit iffy but it’s mostly consistent that a good chunk of your shots will do a lot of damage, and I believe that some rounds not doing anything is not ‘as gaijin intended’ but a weird quirk as I believe most of the damage is coming from fragments that strike the same surface, doing more damage. This explains why you’ll sometimes take shots that do minimal damage while others you out right obliterate the guy.

There’s a difference between. A GENERALIZATION and claiming someone said something they DIDN’T

Your arguments GENERALLY go ‘Well I hit him where he turns into a burning wreck.’ Now, because you take generalized statements and act like I’m saying you said those exact words. I’m ITERATING SPECIFICALLY. THIS IS A GENERALIZATION. YOu are constantly talking about fires or engine damage. Something you SPECIFICALLY need to hit. Compared to any other country’s 12.7mm to 20mm where you can hit almost anywhere and do something that either cripples the enemy aircraft or out right obliterates it. ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE WING MOUNTED WEAPONS THAT ARE MORE LIKELY GOING TO STRIKE THE WINGS. Your videos literally show that your bursts go ALL into the fuselage because you fired into mostly slow opponents and you matched convergence. The only time that was admitted that .50 can actually do damage.

@_Zekken

And yet again I said that 20mm cannons NEED TO BE AIMED SPECIFICALLY. Pinpoint aim is what YOU NEED WITH 20MMS

No you don’t. Because I still gotta hit in two spots and hope I set you alight or kill your pilot. WHILE matching convergence. Meaning I have a narrow window to hit a dude where it hurts compared to almost any other gun where you just have to hit SOMEWHERE

You have to be pin-point with .50s. Not 20mm! I don’t recall .50s snapping wings in a deflection shot with a single round compared to almost every other single gun in the game.

[GALWAYLION-live]

American mains demanding to be buffed and more powerful than everyone else again.

[_Zekken]

@dovah4

There’s a difference between. A GENERALIZATION and claiming someone said something they DIDN’T

Your arguments GENERALLY go ‘Well I hit him where he turns into a burning wreck.’ Now, because you take generalized statements and act like I’m saying you said those exact words. I’m ITERATING SPECIFICALLY. THIS IS A GENERALIZATION. YOu are constantly talking about fires or engine damage. Something you SPECIFICALLY need to hit. Compared to any other country’s 12.7mm to 20mm where you can hit almost anywhere and do something that either cripples the enemy aircraft or out right obliterates it. ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE WING MOUNTED WEAPONS THAT ARE MORE LIKELY GOING TO STRIKE THE WINGS. Your videos literally show that your bursts go ALL into the fuselage because you fired into mostly slow opponents and you matched convergence. The only time that was admitted that .50 can actually do damage.

Ive literally read this through 5 times and I still am confused by what you are trying to say with most of it.

My convergence is set to 500m, now since most of those clips are in GRB, how many of those kills were at 500m? Most of them were well within 300m. Heck you can even see in especially some of the P-51C clips the rounds going wide because its closer than my convergence.

Then there is this kill: https://youtu.be/QzS6VS6pkYE

Thats in ARB, Try doing that with a pair of 20mms, its a lot harder to do, and you chew through your ammo doing it.

@dovah4

You have to be pin-point with .50s. Not 20mm! I don’t recall .50s snapping wings in a deflection shot with a single round compared to almost every other single gun in the game.

You have to be pinpoint with ONE .50 round. Yes, if you are firing one or two you need to be accurate.

But you AREN’T firing one, or two, or four. You are firing SEVENTY FIVE rounds every second. With such a high RoF and such good ballistics, in most cases where you hit one round, you are almost always hitting at least two, unless you hit the very back of the aircraft/surface with the first, which as I said you shouldnt be. Because you should be aiming ahead and letting them fly into the literal wall of lead you are putting out

As for cannons, yes you can get one or two hit wing snaps. Because you need to have some benefit to the drawbacks of low Ammo capacity, and ballistics. Even the Ho-103 has noticably worse ballistics than the M2 browning in exchange for its HEF rounds - you again would struggle to make that same 1km snipe on that bf109 in the video clip above with those. There is genuinely no better gun than the Brownings for making those types of shots.

And thats another reason people are arguing against you. You havent used enough of these guns to see their drawbacks. You only see the strengths of them causing you to explode. You dont see how much more lead they had to pull to hit you than you need to, and you don’t see the fact that a few short bursts to kill you used up a significant portion of their ammo.

[RedEye_ツ]

@dovah4

You’re repeating things not understanding what Kiwi is saying

That’s pretty bold of you to assume that I did not understand what he said when he was literally telling you why .50cals shouldn’t do what you want them to do. Also telling you that they in fact do structural damage. And yea I am repeating things that someone else pointed out while indicating that am not the author… aka quoted him.

@dovah4

Gaijin doesn’t balance off of realism.

You right, they don’t balance off of realism, that doesn’t mean that they should magically come with HE filler for US .50cals. Rather they should just get Incendiary shells to work properly.

@dovah4

If everyone is getting guns that can tear you apart easily while I have to spray and hope I hit somewhere important. That’s dumb.

Yes, it’s one of the trade off’s of having .50cals that do not have HE filler? Thousands of ammo that do less damage with the benefit of ROF and immense spray possibility?
You don’t have to hope that you hit something important, you just point your gun towards the enemy like in any other plane n spray lol.

@dovah4

But if we went by the tnt equivalency calculations for M1 and M23. M1 would have the TNT equivalency of Italian 12.7 HEF and M23 would hit like Japanese HEF.

Emulating them to have TNT equivalence is a terrible idea. Probably cuz you are not seeing how it would be implemented.
That would mean moving US .50cals to Realshatter and having them not only chainsaw wings and tails but also having the ability to torch planes, pilot snipe, kill engines, ground pound, immense spray capability, crazy ranges and amazing ballistics.
You magically have the best gun in the game.

@dovah4

You have to be pin-point with .50s. Not 20mm! I don’t recall .50s snapping wings in a deflection shot with a single round compared to almost every other single gun in the game.

No you don’t, you can spray all over the place. You do not recall seeing .50cals snapping wing in deflection shots cuz they shouldn’t do it at all lol. Even for cannons that’s not common, it usually takes 6-10 rounds atleast and more than that for an average player.

@dovah4

Again. Get the mindset of ‘Cannon’ out’ve your head and just think of U.S. .50 cal vs japanese .50 cal.

You are trying to compare a 12mm HEF-I that has 3.06g of TNT equiv to API-T or I that has no HE filler, why?
If you wanna properly compare them use the same round atleast?
You only see fragments there (pictures you linked) cuz they have HE filler as they had IRL and due to how Realshatter handles HE rounds that use it.

[Irregular23]

It was annoying because the airfield AA in air RB always deducts a small amount of HP value for all parts of the plane every time, including the pilot. That was not caused by an actual hit, but rather a game mechanics. It could be made that the pilot starts to lose pull only after the HP has been downed below 50%, the same should go for the control rod damage.