.50's deserve a buff

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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610

Again, “heres all the ways that .50 cale were doing damage”

The Su-9 had lost control surfaces. He was dead anyway.

Would you like another video? Heres some more: and these were 2 kills in the french P-39Q-25 running Ground target belts (no Incidiary) at 4.3 I think it was, and the rest with the 3.7 chinese P-51C, which I was flying with a 6.0 GRB lineup using the M64. Both of these planes only have… FOUR .50 cals. (The P-51C has the same belts as the P-51H, which is what I was using)

I also made the clips a bit longer to give more context of the fights.

Su-6: just got ripped apart, no fire.
Spitfire: Ripped his wing off+engine fire (non extinguishable)
IL-10: ripped his tail off, no fire
Do-335: crit probably his engine, left him to die as the 190 was engaging me. (Put it in there just so you could see where the severe damage assist in the 190 clip came from)
FW-190D: Engine fire, non extinguishable.
F4U-4B: ripped his wing off, no fire.

The last two I forgot to save for some reason, so went into the replay and included the whole thing:

First pass, tagged the Yak9K and damaged his engine+flap which apparently counted as severe damage, but looped back around, and went for the P-51D since he wasnt crippled, short burst into him resulted in engine and wing fire, left him to burn out. Looped back on Yak, missed my pass, looped around again, followed him in and ripped his wing tip off to finish him, no fires.

And honestly, these kills havent even been cherry picked. These were back to back games, with the kills in chronological order. I didnt include 2 pilot snipes, and there was one or two I forgot to save because I was too focused on flying and fighting.

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611

The other part of this is angles, in real life high angle deflection shots deflection shots were some of the hardest to make. In war thunder they are one of the easiest to make, and give you the best possible profiles to hit.

612

Yeah. Even beyond joystick vs mouse aim, it’s extremely difficult to hit a high deflection shot when you’re looking through the cockpit, because for most of that time they’re hidden by your own aircraft, and you usually have to start shooting when you can’t actually see them.

I think I’ve only hit two or three proper high deflection shots in Sim battles; almost everything else is either catching someone by surprise or getting them too slow to manoeuvre (or one person loses track of the other and flies straight to reorient, allowing for an easy shot).

613

Su-6 was a pilot snipe. His tail was still there. Game I know said you took off his flap, but like before. The game will always favor saying you ripped off a flap even though you may have completely blew him to pieces with a 37mm. That’s just a game thing. After matches, you need to check your hits. That little button you click to see where the bullet goes. Because that was a definite pilot snipe.

But your F4U-4B clip is honestly a good crux to show the issues I have with your videos showing Ground RB matches is that it’s ultimately easier to get kills in these matches when you’re attacking people who are unaware or they’re at extremely low altitude. The enemy is focusing on ground targets or they’re focusing on another enemy close to the ground. So you have shown yourself having a massive advantage over targets time and time again. I’ve taken P-36’s in matches and stomped on Yak-3s simply because I had more energy and I came down on a dude who’s only 400 feet in the air. So he can’t really do anything besides just take it. Anyone on your tail is a massive threat and will be hard to shake off. Especially so when you’re skating the dirt

Repeat these in a match where everyone is at altitude and you’re fighting Yak-3s who are hell-bent on killing you while you have multiple people around you who also want you dead and they know where you’re at.

614

I’ve too much of a headache to comment on anything else, but I think Yak-3s should be removed from the discussion as a point of comparison or enemy, because they’re just too far beyond anything else to be comparable or useful to the discussion.

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615

I’ll keep bringing it up because it shows my point. Zekker is playing a gamemode that intrinsically forces everyone to the ground with no name tags. So you’re almost always going to have an easier time.

A concentrated burst with almost every gun in this game will kill anybody when you’re in an advantageous position at all times.

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616

It is true that its easier to get into an advantageous position in GRB. To be fair, I main GRB and actually main CAP - I normally fly planes in GRB with the specific intent of fighting other planes, rather than Ground vehicles. The reasons I chose to use replays from it where because the argument wasn’t supposed to be about positioning or flight performance or anything. It was supposed to be entirely based on whether, when the enemy gets hit, the M2 browning does damage or not.

Along with this, the thing is that even in Air RB, your entire goal should be to be putting yourself in as an advantageous position as you possibly can. I won’t lie and say its just as easy to do as in GRB, since you can see markers and what plane they are in in ARB and plan ahead accordingly, but you should still be doing it. Trying to fight from a disadvantageous position is never going to end well even if you have quad 20mms or something.

I agree with that, the Yak-3s are such absurd UFOs of an aircraft that comparing them to basically anything else is not even fair. They are genuinely the most stupid aircraft in the game, you could easily put all 3 of them at 6.0, 6.3 and 6.7 and they’d still succeed.

I don’t for a second believe that their flight models are realistic, and Gaijin needs to seriously look at them.

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617

I added them.

618

Interesting to see that in terms of Incendary rounds none really come close to Mg 131 and AN/M2.

619

Yeah but I wouldn’t focus too much on the 13mm Incendiary without tracer.
Similiar to the 13mm API it would have incredible poor ballistics, they might have been more experimental.

You would need to get really close to even have a chance of hitting and the ballistics wouldn’t match the tracer rounds but fall short.
Even though it’s a similiar problem with 20mm Mineshells.

But yeah, both contained the most incendiary filler, while the Ma-102 and the MZD-3 have some larger explosive content in comparison.

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620

Who needs guns anyway?? XD
a poster that says glorious nippon steel plane wings sharp like katana on it

Simply difference in skill.

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621

Ancient war thunder meme, but still checks out

622

Btw do you practice Kendo?
(since the name “zekken” )

623

Video of french P51C’s 4x0.5 cals cutting off a Bf109’s wings showed up in my feed.

TTK (if we consider hit ratio) doesn’t seem that much worse to me than with BF109s w/ mg151/20.

624

He hadn’t lost his elevators, unless the cables had been taken out by the fire or a stray bullet.

On the AM-42: Tbh I have no clue why this was counted as a kill, at most it looks like a fuel tank was set on fire (with no explosion). The right flap was mildly damage, maybe the elevator too, but essentially the whole airframe is intact.

On the Spitfire: Engine damage, also fuel fire going off of the visual effects.

On the IL-10: The first hits were on the left and right flaps but they did little damage and the fire went out within a second or so, but the plane was destroyed when the tail was snapped off from what appears to be an initial fire just in front of the empennage combined with another hit in the same area which causes an even bigger fire. I’m not sure what could be hit there to cause such a big fire, is there ammo or something back there? Still, it likely only happened due to the initial fire damage combined with the near-perpendicular shot (meaning the kinetic energy of the bullets do more damage).

On the Do-335: Tbh there wasn’t much to go off of besides maybe the fuel lines to the back engine getting severed, or the back engine getting hit? The aircraft took basically no structural damage, though. It also seems like it was able to fly for around 30 seconds after getting “severely” damaged.

On the Fw-190 D: Basically hit right in between the engine and cockpit, probably destroying the controls and even starting a fuel fire. He was still able to fly, though, until the fire damaged the right wing.

On the F4U-4: The left wing came off, but that required the left landing gear (and the parts of the wing near the fuselage) to already be damaged by fire from the earlier pass (which also required absolutely spraying the wing to damage enough to fall off).

On the P-51C-20-NA and Yak-9K: Firstly, you “severely” damaged the Yak-9K with him just being able to fly completely fine. Secondly, the P-51D was set on fire, was severely damaged by the fire, and shot down by the fire. Thirdly, the second pass on the “severely” damaged Yak-9K did nothing besides damage the right flap (of which is was fully intact), and the third pass on the “severely” damaged Yak-9K finally took it out, but only by cutting off the very tip of the left wing (which was likely already damaged by fire going off of the fires seen in the first and second pass).

I mean all these really show is that if you hit an engine you don’t have to rely on fires, but that’s the same with all higher-bore guns or 12.7mms with HE shells. These just prove that .50 cals at best can kill with direct hits to very specific modules (engine or pilot snipe), but most of the time they need to rely on fires to either weaken an airframe over time or just rely on the fire to kill outright.

Meanwhile cannons and 12.7mms with HE shells can just hit anywhere and do a million times more damage.

A video of a Bf-109 getting its wing cut off after getting set one fire once, then getting set on fire again and the wing fuel tank exploding.

625

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.

a fight at 4000m where everyone will be in the 300-400kmh range is different than a fight where you’re going 500kmh, the guy you’re gunning for is 400 feet in the air and he’s slower than you.

Similarly, you can still be in danger in an advantageous position. I mean, look at Ki-44s or A6Ms. I can run forever, but trying to engage them is nightmarish when I know they can at least critically damage me, if they hit anywhere, while I’ll need to strike directly into their fuselage for anything appreciable.

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?

Similarly, most of U.S. belts consist of AP anyway. If U.S. incendiary got a buff to at least push the fragments out a little further instead of literally glitching inside itself and suffering the realshatter bug like the other guns did before the fix like with the images I posted of U.S. incendiary. Why would that be a bad thing?

626

And the fire was caused by…

627

Speclist is getting at that using ‘fire’ as a cause when every gun can cause fires easily (arguably easier than .50s due to fragmentation) as many cannons have HEF-I rounds is a moot point.

As stated before. Every gun can do massive damage if you’re able to get a good position over your enemy to just dump rounds on target. Especially in Ground RB where it’s exceptionally easy to get the enemy where you want him. and when you’re locked on somebody’s direct rear while they’re slower than you, there’s not much you can do in that regard. Zekker even admitting as such.

Now do this in a match where you have to climb to altitude and you have enemies who are in much higher energy states than what you may have whilst they have machine guns and cannons that do massive more damage than your guns.

628

Engine fires are not extinguishable without FPE, which also kills the engine.

You won’t believe how many times I’ve hit someone with “20mm onetap shells” and have them keep flying like nothing happened.

This is completely separate to .50cal damage, it’s US teams sucking so badly they all die in the first 5min and you can’t play the game 1v16.

Most planes are covered in fuel tanks. Hornet engines are pretty small compared to most. This one has relatively few of them.
image

Much greater volume of fire, higher inherent chance of setting a fire, and APIT ammo capable of penetrating fuel tank armor/wing spars or travelling a long distance through the plane to hit fuel.

629

My two cents in this discussion is that for me, .50 cals can be very bipolar in performance. One match I can score amazing kills with one burst and score myself into the leaderboards. Then I start the next match and all of a sudden fires are completely nonexistent and the only thing im shooting off are flaps.

What .50s are really weakest at are snapshots. Its completely down to luck for a half second or quarter of a second burst hits the engine or fuel tank (which doesnt guarantee a fire) or just turns the structure of the target yellow. With the playstyle of american planes, you’re gonna be doing a lot of snapshots.

You can really see this struggle with F8F bearcat and the P-51C mustang. Despite having amazing performance a mere 4 .50 cals usually require more than one pass on a target.