.50's deserve a buff

Still fighting over this BS?

Not arguing about .50cal damage but this random fire and extinguish chance is a complete BS mechanic.

When I shot an La-7 with Japanese 20mm HEF-T I set him on fire and the fire went out after 5 seconds while here my plane goes from completely undamaged to destroyed from a few .50cal API rounds.

There is just no logic when it comes to fuel fire. When you shoot non self-sealing fuel tanks and they catch fire, most of the time the entire tank is just drained and the fire stops, as if the was just ejected into the air.

Going off of the report titled “Airplane Vulnerability and Overall Armament Effectiveness” (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA800394.pdf), I was able to find data (on page 23 of the pdf) going over the probability of a single bullet of different calibers causing a kill resulting from the structure of a P-47 failing. It more specifically describes the type of kill I was looking at (an “A” kill) as any damage that would cause an airplane to become uncontrollable within five minutes of the hit, which was the closest analogy to a kill in War Thunder I could find. Essentially the math I am doing is taking the probability of kill that they found from their initial conditions, multiplying that by the fire rate of each type of gun (to get the amount of kills each caliber should be getting if aimed perfectly), then comparing the values of different configurations of the 0.50 cal’s and other guns.

I am planning on going into the protection analysis later to check to see if the amount of damage done by each type of gun/ammo matches those found by the report, but before I go through and do all that I’d like to make sure the math I was doing is correct; I used a way too complicated formula in the hope that it would be easier to use but I probably just made myself look at Excel documentation more than I ever have. Could someone here check the math on these calculations? I used the higher probability of kill ammunition for each type of gun to save on time, as well.

General Formula:

image

Excel Sheet Results:

Very Confusing. Shouldn’t one of the fields for German 30mm/.50cal read MK 103 instead of MK 108?

Also shouldn’t the RoF for the 20mm M2 be 600 RPM instead of 750 and for the M3 750 instead of 800?
I also don’t get how in the comparison row with .50cals the M3 fare so much better when according to the data you show the difference is mere 50 RPM difference (looking at the 2x and 4x column).

Yeah it should, that’s my bad. Somehow the values are actually correct, I think the formula I used is messing that up (although the value seem to be correct, just referenced wrong). My initial formula pre-fixes for the 30mm German guns is this:

German 30mm Guns Formula

=INDEX(Table1[[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],MATCH(IF(OR(COLUMN()=4,COLUMN()=5),$D$12,IF(OR(COLUMN()=6,COLUMN()=7),$F$12,“Error”)),Table1[Gun]),MATCH(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(13,COLUMN())),LEFT(Table1[[#Headers],[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],2))) / INDEX(Table1[[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],IF(OR(OR(ROW()=14, ROW()=15), ROW()=16), 1, IF(OR(OR(ROW()=17, ROW()=18), ROW()=19), 2, “Error”)), MATCH(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),3)),LEFT(Table1[[#Headers],[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],2)))

I’m working on fixing the formula now, I’ll update when it’s done.

From this source, no (at least from the values they gave):

image

I believe this is due to atmospheric conditions? In their testing they sprayed for 20 seconds, but I don’t think it was all at once since otherwise the barrels would melt. At altitude I believe it would be fine (remembering this from a Greg’s Airplanes video, not anything concrete).

Alright it’s fixed, here are the values I got now:

And then for anyone who wants to know (for some reason), here are the formulas I used:

German 30mm Formula

=INDEX(Table1[[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],MATCH(IF(OR(COLUMN()=4,COLUMN()=5),$D$12,IF(OR(COLUMN()=6,COLUMN()=7),$F$12,“Error”)),Table1[Gun],0),MATCH(LEFT(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(13,COLUMN())),2),LEFT(Table1[[#Headers],[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],2),0)) / INDEX(Table1[[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],IF(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),2))=“M2”,1,IF(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),2))=“M3”,2,“Error”)),MATCH(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),3)),LEFT(Table1[[#Headers],[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],2),0))

American 20mm Formula

=INDEX(Table1[[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],MATCH(IF(OR(OR(COLUMN()=4,COLUMN()=5),COLUMN()=6),$D$22,IF(OR(OR(COLUMN()=7,COLUMN()=8),COLUMN()=9),$G$22,“Error”)),Table1[Gun],0),MATCH(LEFT(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(23,COLUMN())),2),LEFT(Table1[[#Headers],[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],2),0)) / INDEX(Table1[[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],IF(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),2))=“M2”,1,IF(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),2))=“M3”,2,“Error”)),MATCH(INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(),3)),LEFT(Table1[[#Headers],[1x PASSS/min]:[8x PASSS/min]],2),0))

Odd. Maybe 650 for the M2 but 750 seems weird.
On the other hand it is a US built Hispano so maybe they just buffed the RoF.

It always confused me how the French Hispano 404 has 700 RPM while the British Mk I and II have only 600, at least in-game.

137lb (62kg) for the M2 is also super chunky :O

I think it has something to do with reduced powder loads and RoF for belt feeding but dont take my word on it

Could be. Instead of feeding the cartridge directly into the gun via drum the belt feed mechanism is actived by the recoil to pull the belt and cartridges into the gun, which takes some energy from action.

Same with propellant. More recoil would increase the RoF and the lighter barrel of the Mk V or AN/M3 naturally results in higher RoF, like the lighter barrel of the aircraft M2 vs the ground based heavy barrel.

But that makes it especially strange that the document lists the 20mm M2 with 750 RPM while the M3 with the substantially shorter and lighter barrel would only do 50 more.

My man angry that his bug report was acknowledged

.50 BMG is known to be able to destroy engine blocks from quite a distance

There’s 0 excuse for 20mm HE to 1-shot wings/tails why .50cals take 20-40 (depending on the plane) to do the same.

That makes perfect sense, 20mm is higher velocity, has more mass, and can hold more explosives…

Also, if depends on if the airframe is under stress or not, if it’s under high stress, even a .50 can make a wing pop or tail brake.

Inb4 he complains a 57mm doesnt do as much as a .50cal

I find the concept of high explosive inside of shells doing more damage offensive.

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Not when it took ~12+ on the same wing of most small fighters to take them out.

Yes, yes, it does make sense, learn basic maths and physics and run a calculation then come back.

Oh sorry, I thought you were actually being serious. my bad.

You literally can’t be taken seriously when you think a .50 caliber should deal more damage than a 20mm.

Here’s a size comparison if you think I’m the insane one…

image

who said it should deal more damage? You?
what I want is for 20mm HE to be realistic in taking ~12 shots to take off a wing piece, scaling with wing size aswell.

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