You want a bullet from m2 bmg that does 750/min to do same damage as as MG 151 cannon that does 700/min but with less velocity, half the ammo count and less of them fitted? Also cannons have recoil and can slow a plane
A .50 cal armed plane with good aim can get a burst into an oncoming 20mm armed plane several seconds before said 20mms are in range, let alone fire off their burst. .50 cals have a flatter trajectory, more range and a faster travel time (not to mention enough ammo to spray), you have all the advantages in your favor to get a burst off and pull off before the enemy has a chance to get a burst into you. Not to mention .50 cals tend to be comparably effective in a headon, as the majority of what you can hit is either the very flammable engine or the pilot.
Depending on the closure speed, I’ve pilot sniped targets from bursts fired while they were almost 2km away from me. That’s not something the a 20mm armed plane can pull off.
Though, I won’t lie, the early war belts do suck. It’s one of the reasons the Swedish P51 is one of my most hated planes I ground out. The experience of doing everything right, getting a shot, only to get nothing from it because the belt contains almost no useful ammunition is demoralizing. That and the P51s notoriously lazy rudder made that plane pretty miserable to grind through in my experience.
Mid and late war belts though are solid up until jet tiers.
2 Likes
Again, I’ve seen no luck with pilot snipes what so ever, despite the ‘advantages’ the .50’s have, they’re very rarely useable outside of sniping bombers and tickling them with the extra range. 1 shot with a 20mm will insta end me. 1 shot with a .50 will do nothing.
And which planes are you struggling with using here? I’d bet you’re using early war belts, which do seriously suffer in terms of damage. That or just generally poor belt selection on the mid/late war belts. API/APIT rounds with longer bursts do just fine in my experience.
If 50 cal got the buff you want it will be game over for every thing else, you do relise there is a reason why the British spitfire went from 7.62 to 12mm and then 20mm?
I am using late war belts. My rounds simply miss, or if I do hit, they do absolutely no damage in comparison to the enemy who can just go “lol 20mms go” and crit me anywhere they please. The amount of damage they offer—unless you can get a concentrated focused shot on them—is honestly completely heinous. I would offer you my most recent replay but I have no clue how, nor do I know of a way to do so as the file is ‘too big’ to post.
Again not really a good point when it’s about how Gaijin gamefied the damage of cannons to such an extensive degree that one shot is usually a deathknell while .50’s didn’t really get that treatment.
Again, how would you feel if you dumped all your ammunition in a Fw-190 into a P-47 and it still didn’t die, then went back to airfield to repair, only for you to die when a .50 cal hits your 20mm ammunition detonating it and insta snapping your wings?
.50s aren’t 1 shot guns. They have a much higher fire rate, and there are more of them. They are guns you can spray with, and constantly shoot at a target with.
.50s do not need a buff, they are already super good.
2 Likes
I just meant in general, thats why i did not specify a certain belt thats my favorite. Therefore, as much AP-I/AP as possible for me, please!
1 Like
You have not presented a very good argument you’re self have you?
They are not super good, they are absolutely trash compared to 1 tap cannons. If I have to sustain large amounts of burst fire onto an enemy while I can severely damage an enemy just with one click, that’s an issue
You’ve been jumping the “Muh realism” train for the longest time while I’ve been saying 'I don’t care about the realism" Because you can’t seem to understand that Gaijin has admittedly buffed guns to such a degree for gameplay purposes. Cannons have been buffed further and further.
Bring back spalling to .50s
If you think cannons are even REMOTELY good in modern war thunder, you are either using the three cherry picked examples (Hispanos, AN/M2 20mm or the 30mm russians).
.50s are consistently the best and most reliable air to air weapon outside of proper jets (7.7+) and are notorious for overperforming for YEARS. In my and many, many, many peoples experiences, .50s consistently one shot every fighter in the sky, set fires easier than any other weapon, and do more crits/severe damage than anything else. Meanwhile, 20mm does almost nothing. Just tonight I had minengeshos score ELEVEN “hits” on an F4U-1, and i got hit exactly one time as i was running to the base, out of ammo, from extreme range (1.3km). Instant red engine, which blacked out within 30 seconds.
The match before that, i used my entire 150 round 20mm belt on a B-25, ignited both of his engines, killed half his gunners, broke his tail into four pieces, he hit me ONCE as i pulled off, my tail lost a piece and i bricked into the ground. HE FLEW HOME AND REPAIRED.
Few days ago, i set a P-47 on fire THREE TIMES and i still went down before him because guess what? I got clipped by a sherman .50 as we were manuevering over 1km above the battle. Set me on fire, which i did the exact “put it out” method, it continued to burn after my fuel was EMPTY.
So yea. The buff doesnt need to go to the planes that are already consistently one shotting targets from 1km ranges and reliably tanking repeated 20mm HEF hits (and 23mm, and 13mm, and 12.7mm if you count my russian and german plane experiences alongside my swedish ones.)
Also PS, i have 6.7 in USA. one of my most played planes is the premium 5.7 P-47, and im confirming from all three sides that .50s are severely overperforming and 20mm cannons are underperforming (except the AN/M2s and Hispanos, conveniently).
2 Likes
You probably aren’t using them properly then.
You’re forgetting that cannons often have worse velocity, worse fire rate, and sometimes are inconsistent.
20mm cannons don’t 1 tap planes very often at all, only 30mm cannons do. 50s also have a much longer range than cannons. Planes with .50s usually have 6-8 of them too, while planes with cannons only have 1-3.
“Three cherry picked examples.” No. Just about all cannons in warthunder are OP. The Russian, ShVAKs, the MG151s, and even Hispanos to a lesser extent. I am on average clipping off wings with ease, like in my F6F example. Like I said before, Gaijin heavily buffed them to the extent that you can shear off entire super structures with singular cannon rounds.
your example with the P-47 showed that all you did was hit the engine, or fuel tank below the pilot multiple times, that doesn’t rip the plane it two. Every plane is seemingly ‘invulnerable’ when you hit their engines multiple times.
The fires are the only thing I have seen with fifties that are somewhat consistent.
Fifty calibers aren’t OP, you’re just bad.
Hey, since we are doing buffs can we get more ammo and a higher pen on the 151 cannons?
Maybe add a few more cannons raise the RoF to match the 50 cals.
I’m getting consistent kills in the D-22. It’s the fact I have to unleash a full burst onto an enemy to score even a smidgen of the damage a single 20mm shell can do in a glancing blow. If a single 20mm shell can easily snap off entire wings, then that’s an issue. What I’m wanting is for my .50’s to also have tangible results on glancing blows as well,
Fuselage, not often, yes. On the wings? If you don’t snap the wing in one shot, you’ve caused enough damage to the plane to hamper it’s flight performance greatly, by either snapping off the wing tip or turning a wing almost completely black making it a near death sentence for aircraft, or it throws them into a spin. The amount of guns matters less when you have the potential to game end an aircraft with 1 shot. 2 cannons are great enough, the only thing you can really argue for is the inconsistency of cannons from country to country such as the A6Ms cannons being utter dog water.
REplay is in the files - give us hte link…
im just a realist, dream on!..you get more guns, more ammo, more range, flatter trajectory and most of all you get more time on target, this is not talking about real life or explosive filler, this is how it is and you want more, talk about gluttony. Keep dreaming and have some more cake…
Well, they are different so different results should be expected. Also, those 20mm cannons are actually explosive filled, so a “glancing blow” is actually a 20mm explosive round applying a blast wave and shrapnel into an airframe already under the massive amount of stress that flight requires.
If .50 caliber rounds exploded instead of shattering, this could be the case. These .50 caliber rounds do not carry explosive filler, so any glancing blows will only result in penetration or richochet.
Warthunder’s physics are not going to allow a non-explosive shell (Incendiary, now that I know they simply shatter) to act like an explosive shell (High Explosive Incendiary or APHE. Britains Hispano 5 universal 20mm contains APHE rounds that penetrate the skin of the plane and detonate, destroying the airframe within with a blast wave. The .50 calibers best chance for internal damage is the API-T that has to penetrate the wing AND pass through the frame in order to damage the wing enough to take it off. The example with the Hispano’s differs because of the massive stress load applied to the airframe instantaneously, along with the standard stress of flight, overloading the airframes capability, similar to a wing rip when speeds are eceeded.
If you aim for wings with a .50 cal burst, then you can clip wings really easily, but not with one round. You wanting it to work like that isn’t “realistic” (I know you don’t care, but Gaijin tries to use close to real physics so it matters more than your opinion about realism), but Gaijin isn’t going to make non-explosive things react like explosive things because you want them to. If you want gameplay where contact fused rounds detonate on wings, then you should probably use vehicles that have contact fused explosive rounds in their ammunition belts.