If I am mistaken in things, I would like to learn the right thing. Regrettably I am not at my PC to see the differences in some 20mm AP mass/velocities to compare them since I trust the game more than the wiki info.
Thanks. I will have to take a look at all these things.
Except it puts U.S. planes at an inherit disadvantage. So either unrealistically buff the .50 damage output like 20mms have, not to be as strong as a 20mm but just more damage than the .50’s currently output. Or fix all damage models or nerf cannons or both. You can go into flight test with the German Bf-109 F-4 with air targets belt. Fire one round to remove the AP so you have access to the 3 other HE rounds that are in the belt, go up to one of the Bf-110s or the Bf-109s and fire a single shot. You will find that a good portion of the time that HE shell will completely split that A.I. Bf-109 in two. That’s the issue. these 20mm cannons are having absolutely cartoonishly cracked damage. Legitimately, the only reason your plane sparks, is that you hit on the outermost edge of an aircraft’s wing that the fragments weren’t able to propagate and cause sufficient damage, or you hit them with an AP round.
There is literally no argument to be made to defend just how utterly insane 20mm cannon damage is.
“There’s no problem with 20mms guys! trust me!”
Blows P-47 in half with 3 20mm shells
“There’s totally nothing wrong with this!”
I know you’re a Japanese main and you love your cannons, but I say ‘there’s no way to defend it’ because no one has actually given an actual argument to support the utter insane damage output of a single 20mm cannon round being able to literally blow planes in half with 1 shell. Your little ‘gotchas’ mean nothing because you argue nothing of substance. It’s either people going ‘Buh, buh, realism’ or they misinterpret the argument by saying “We shouldn’t buff .50’s to be stronger than 20mms” even though no one has made that point besides maybe an ‘Ad absurdum’ comment to point out how ridiculous 20mms currently.
Btw, never said I was wrong. Just that No one even made an honest argument to support the amount of damage 20mms output. You’re the one who’s putting words into my mouth.
There don’t need to be changes.
Each weapon type has a trade off. 20mms usually trade range, fire rate, and # of cannons for damage. .50s trade damage for volume of fire and range. I don’t see any issues with that.
Plus, .50s aren’t bad enough to deserve a buff.
You don’t realize despite me being a Japan main I’ve flown the P-47s, P-51C, and P-51D-20NA so you can’t use that claim “Oh your Japan, your claim is nothing”. Since I have the backing to prove I’ve used the gun and know what I’m saying.
Now if you want to put words into my mouth and claim something that is so far from the truth then you’re funny to think that. While I do enjoy cannons, my preference is the Light to Heavy Machine Guns. I rely on those guns far more than I do with cannons.
So to prove you wrong->
Here is .50 cal gun footage from 2 different planes from irl on how .50 Cals work and give you a hint they perform the same as they do in.
I tried to spade the J2M3 the last two days and the damage from the 20mm guns was rather underwhelming.
However in one match I was jumped by a P-51 H-5 and boi, did he disassamble my plane using his 6 .50cals.
He just put in one good burst and my plane fell appart.
WT damage model and guns are just incredible bad. There is so much wrong that I don’t even know where to start.
But that seems like a general problem with almost every game. The devs just don’t have any understanding how guns damage a plane and just base it on some assumption how they think it should work.
Like in WT, every API is like some fantasy firearrow. It will just set a fuel tank on fire, regardless the range and how far the fuel tank is away from the bullet impacting the plane.
So you can set bombers on fire from 1-2km with .50cals, which would be impossible in real life.
Advocating this .50 cal damage is just 🤡
Ah… Wish the 20/23mm and 37mm cannons in the Jet BR worked like this video.
Ah, I love how people like you squirm when you get caught with your foot in your mouth
“Oh no! I got caught putting words into people’s mouths! I gotta accuse him of the same thing so I don’t look as much like an idiot.”
Again, I don’t get what the footage is supposed to show. “S-See! .50’s don’t do as much damage as 20mms!”
No duh, not asking for that. But Why do 20mm shells, especially German and russian shells with the HE rounds have the capacity of blowing a plane in half with a single shell. You can literally go test it out yourself in test flight or make a custom mission. Planes that are known for their ruggedness get utterly obliterated in 1-2 shots. So if Warthunder allows Cannons for most planes to have cartoonishly unrealistically cracked amounts of damage compared to real life, why won’t they buff .50’s slightly more? All you showed to me is that .50’s are indeed like flamethrowers based off that N1K2 example—but I don’t know what that 2nd video was supposed to show because it was for the most part ground strafing?
What I’m saying is, why aren’t .50s cartoonishly buffed to give cracked damage like 20mms are? Why not let .50 API and I spall or have real shatter? Not even asking for the 7-12 pieces of shrapnel that cannons give out. But like… 3 pieces. Heck, look at any .50 slow-mo footage and you can see spall shoot from multiple directions with API producing the most. Currently as it stands .50 produces absolutely NO spall or shrapnel when you can clearly see it does.
Bro you’re still going on with this thread? Just hit your shots and use tracer belts lol
Oh wow, someone actually being honest in their input and not filled with utter snark.
I would agree on the range, .50’s have superior range and this does give the aircraft the ability to shoot and force aircraft running away to jink and change direction. I will concede on that, and that is a distinct advantage of .50s that no other aircraft has. All your points are decent points.
.50’s aren’t terrible, but the issue I have the most is 20mm cannons having insane amounts of damage they can output in a single shell. Now not all cannons are equal. Japanese cannons being some of the worst in the game. But for prop planes, the utter insanity of Russian and German cannons and general DMs of aircraft need to be looked at. Other people have had the same issues with Bombers going down like flies by a few cannon rounds. Aircraft known for ruggedness are literally split in two with a single 20mm. That stuff shouldn’t be happening. In fact going by the protection analysis of most aircraft, they actually make the Fuselage structurally weaker than the wings. So if this can be reconfigured by fixing aircraft by changing the DM and not touching cannons, I’m all for it. Even if you don’t agree, at least understand the point I’m getting at.
I cut off a Yak-3’s wing with a burst a few days ago, from a P-47. Then killed a Bf-109 in a few shots. API-T rounds are fucking powerful. I say you use them. The higher volume of fire helps increase that damage too. I haven’t felt like my guns were just WAY worse than everyone else’s since I was a new player.
When I hit my shots and I’m stuck doing “realistic” damage against aircraft with .50s but a german or russian player just needs to score a single hit to my plane to utterly split my plane in half. This is unrealistic. That’s the problem. Cannons for the most part with some exceptions produce utter insane amounts of damage for a single cannon round. The whole argument I’m making is “If these guys can have unrealistic cracked damage, why can’t I?” And so far, no one gives a good counter argument besides @Ion_Protogen Because he at least lists the specific qualities of .50s that cannons don’t have and he thinks those are good tradeoffs vs the one-shotting potential cannons have without being a dirtbag in his delivery.
Almost everyone else is trying to argue ‘But then the .50’s won’t be muh realistic’ but just ignore the fact that Most cannon shells have the ability to snap wings and tails off planes in a single round. It’s like watching someone stick their fingers in their ears and go ‘La la la I’m not listening!’ because if they admit that fact, then they admit I’m right in terms of 20mm damage potential.
Because it doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t be playing your ALUMINUM airframe around ABSORBING damage. You should treat every round being fired at your plane like its a 155mm howitzer shell. Don’t get hit and nobody’s gun damage even matters.
Also, .50s may not have the quick BLOW APART potential that cannons have, but they can DESTROY ENGINES, cut off wings, and set multiple fires. Hell, they’re notorious for it. You don’t need a plane to blow apart and explode 7 times to guarantee a kill. I’ve set fires and cut wings off as well. It may be a severe damage, but it guarantees that plane to die.
It’s easy to say ‘don’t get hit’ when you’re flying a big airplane. Energy fighting in the P-47D you’re going to get close to enemy guns at some point, maybe you’ll just be hit by their machine guns or not at all, but if you’re unlucky and get a single hit with a cannon on you, it’ll instantly spell doom. My point is to not have planes act like flying tanks, it’s that you have to be tapped only once for your plane to be a falling wreck. What I’m saying is, don’t make it so punishing to get tapped in an area that should structurally strong. Don’t have 20mms have the destructive capacity of 500lb bombs.
Just previously in a match, I got shot once (I checked replay and sensor mode) by a bf-109 F-4 and my plane was split like this
IRL this took a 500lb bomb to do. According to Warthunder that’s just a round or two from a 20mm shell. Do you not see the issue?
Which is “If you’re going to have 20mms act this way, why don’t you have .50’s acting completely cracked?”
My favorite ww2 prop in the game is the P-47D-28. Go ahead and tell me about it, i guess. I’m very aware of the difficulty of avoiding the hit sometimes. However, just like Yak 3’s and Bf 109’s have blown my wings off, I’ve set them ablaze and destroyed their engines with my .50s. I’ve also blown their wings off, to settle the score.
I’m not sure what planes are acting like flying tanks in your book short of the [Su-25].(https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/1elhpsh/i_know_stingers_dont_have_that_much_tnt_but_cmon/)
In the same spot that will blow off your wing from a 20mm, a good small burst of accurate .50 fire will blow off a wing, crit the wing root, making fighting nearly impossible, set a fire most fighters cant put out, or even destroy an engine, which im sure you know is unrecoverable in flight.
Sure, round for round you won’t do the damage of a 40mm round. However, the volume of fire kinda equalizes that because of the sheer amount of incendiary rounds you can fire.
Proofing that War Thunder only knows two extremes.
Extremely over the top or just extremely underwhelming 😂
Okay, we’re both P-47 enjoyers, so we have common ground here
I agree about the fires, hell, you could see the video example above that even IRL the .50s were fire starters with the N1K2, and under concentrated fire .50’s do get the job done. But do you not see an issue with people literally being able to 1 tap you out of the sky with a single round? I’m not saying that 20mms shouldn’t cripple you, but to have a small glancing blow rip your plane in half, get sent back to hanger and then wait for another 5 minutes or so to get to an acceptable altitude. While you need to have a concentrated concerted effort to achieve the same result? Again, I have to mess up once and let my plane get within their sights for less than a second and then I’m dead. Doesn’t matter how overbuilt my plane is or how rugged it is they literally just have to get one round off of me and I get split into two. They can make more mistakes in the mean while as my plane makes glancing blow after glancing blow and if they have center mounted fuel tanks, it makes starting fires improbable unless you get lucky.
I’m not asking for 20mms to be nerfed to .50 caliber levels of performance. It’s just that they shouldn’t be 1 shot death machines.
Also, I’m not referring to specific planes as flying tanks.
Which, I must say, tragic. If a burst of .50s were to hit you similarly, they’d set you ablaze or even knock out your engine, which you’re EQUALLY dead. I’m not sure what to tell you. EVERYONE dies when they get hit, whether its as soon as the rounds impact, or if they just damage you enough to compromise your dogfight performance.
You’re not understanding the point I’m making. What I’m saying is that in events where singular shots hit you where you get “Hits” all the time with your .50s and you do no appreciable damage—this is even worse if the enemy doesn’t have wet wings. In cannons, you don’t need to have to worry about any kind of follow up shot, fires or whatever on the enemy. You don’t even need to worry about getting 2 shots on the enemy. All you have to do is just get one shot and the enemy has been split and torn into two because your 20mm shells are as strong as 500lb bombs. Cannons should be stronger than machine guns, but they shouldn’t be as powerful as shooting 500lb bombs.
In fact when real shatter was bugged and shells weren’t producing fragmentation, I think those were more realistic and more balanced compared to the stuff we have now.
