So .50cal API can certainly set a tank on fire in one hit. I burned down 10s later.
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he shouldn’t of had to even had hit you once, American 12.7s are unusable need buff
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I would just skip it. You have to be very passive even when you get to high altitude because the engines aren’t great, and that’s no fun.
Neither of us were trying very hard. P-38s just give you kills on a silver platter.
This isn’t surprising, china players have middling stats generally.
P-38K is a GE premium and last month it was on 2.39 K/D. It is straight up the BEST performing american plane in the entire nation in terms of K/D.
If we filter for JUST USA and for each BR with a P-38, the P-38L is the best performing 4.7 by far; P-38J is only behind the two OP premiums XP55 and P51D10 (Bong’s P-38J is identical); P-38G is only behind the premium XP-38G (which is identical).
I don’t need more than 40 games in the P-38L to see it is pretty OP. I was just doing whatever the hell I wanted and winning.
I was getting these results in most matches. The stats YOU POSTED show 39 kills to 6 deaths in the L alone; 14 kills to 0 deaths in the G in only 6 matches. P-38s make the game too boring and easy, so I don’t play them much.
Thank you Captain Obvious, nobody would have noticed despite both our names being yellow and me clearly stating “me nor my friend are pros”.
A “good streak” of 17+6 games? Across multiple days? In different region servers? At different times of day? Localized entirely within my account somehow? lol
He claimed it could not win dogfights ever, “especially against Bf109”. I found a screenshot of me doing just that. He claimed it somehow gets outclimbed easily (it doesn’t) - I found a screenshot of me sitting above the entire enemy team for free.
I used to think P-38s were bad because all my experience with them was from shooting them down. Playing them completely changed my mind.
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p38k can hang with the p47m in terms of extreme high altitude performance, even longer since the p47m had 14 minutes of wep
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I half wonder if most of “X ammo sucks” experiences can be traced back to “server issues.”
I’m getting increasingly consistent patterns of “If I play on high ping server in SB EC that’s over an hour old, my guns spark a LOT using the same technique of shooting. Whereas on low-ping before the first hour, I get some neat shooting.”
This is further enhanced in suspicion by literally observing aircraft rubberbanding randomly up close on certain servers - very same servers where my guns get very, very unreliable even if using 20mm guns.
I’m not sure how it translates to RB since there’s no lobbies for easy comparison, but some RB lobbies in GRB are waaay weirder than others in terms of performance so maybe ARB shares the SB weirdness?
Thats just a general problem.
The game is never 100% consistent, particular when you have a crazy amount of rounds in the air and planes fly and maneuver at crazy speeds.
Just a 0.1s delay can totally mean you miss all your shots or you hit but the game thinks otherwise.
But this rubberbanding issue started happening a couple of patches ago, when players would get randomly kicked out of battles (they fixed the kicking and inability to spawn, but not the rubberbanding). If the servers are uncertain about player positions, then it could be that they are having trouble with hit registration too.
It can happen. But it’s not statistically the norm, it’s enough to be an event but it’s not some 1/1000000 hyper rare chance. It’s just uncommon.
Friend downloaded War Thunder on his steamdeck and helped me test. I used both self-sealing Bf-109 F-4s, HE-111 and non-selfsealing Bf-109B.
Fires were common against non-self sealing aircraft at close ranges. This goes down hill when you have any kind of barrier in the way or some kind of distance (Around 300m)
He-111s can take an extraordinarily large amount of shots I’ve gotten 5-8 shots, to light up. There were plenty of times where the fuel actually drained out of the tank before it could actually light it up. There are instances where you get one shot fires. Like this:
But I find there are more instances where this happens.
Bf-109 F-4 is variable. Sometimes there’s a one shot fire, other times, it can take up to 4-6 hits to light a target.
Any kind of barrier whatsoever full on adds a required 5-6 rounds to light the target. It could be even as small as a control cable right beside the fuel tank with less than an inch of gap in between.
I’ll need to upload more testing footage and do more tests to make up for the lack of accuracy in some of them as my friend has some trouble aiming especially with the small steam deck screen and also the intrinsic inaccuracy of the gun as well, but it’s really a huge tossup on what causes a fire. Sometimes you get it. Sometimes you don’t. From the limited testing (I was strapped for time). You one shot a fire, or you take a lot of shots to light him up. No inbetween.
In sim, the difference doesn’t matter when you can just park on a guy’s ass and just rip into him. But when you’re in RB making small deflection shots where 1-2 rounds hit. It’s where I think the custom convergences for planes would REALLY REALLY help and the .50s need to have their flame chances reevaluated.
In fact, when I dig back further in the thread to look at screencapped replays of damaged aircraft
There are many instances where the guy should be on fire but never caught alight.
They don’t because they are already literally the best in causing fires. And exactly because the game doesn’t simulate any actual damage, there’s no difference whether a tank was hit by 1 or 5 .50cals or even 20mm rounds, or at what range.
The fires are always random and can be lethal or not.
This seems to be mostly based on the airplane and not the guns or the fuel tanks.
As Japanese planes somehow very frequently have their fuel tanks drained and the fire stop or Ju 288 extinguishing their fire with so much consistency that you can only see the premium aura surrounding it whenever it happens.
What you want .50cals to be is literally how 20mm shells should act.
But 20mm instead deal the structural damage of 30mm rounds instead.
(Which just made Mineshells irrelevant)
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and High explosive ammunition are doing insane amounts of damage. More than most rounds realistically would. If we go by that weaponry vulnerability report. 20mm HE is doo-doo and the money maker is actually 20mm incendiary. But gaijin just has an adversion to adjusting any of these rounds.
Not just airplane. Core flame mechanics are ganked. I.e. the fuel mysteriously disappearing into thin air.
I’m asking for .50s to at least behave like what’s described in the ammunition handbook. And currently the average of 1-2 rounds is not showing up in this game.
Other flight sims don’t have this insane fire chance either. Look at DCS or Il2 gameplay with P-51/47 and you won’t see instantaneous combustion either. It’s always about a 1-2 second long full burst that leads to kills.
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Me when i lie:
You were NOT getting 9k every game, or anywhere close.
You know what. lets assume you were. That means you got 4 9k games in 16 games? Whatd you do the other matches? Nothing?
Then i would exclude a 9k game if it was squadded.
Me when i lie:
You played 1 more game between the 15th-23rd
Your bulk (16 games) seem to have been on the 9th or 10th.
So, it was on a singular day. MAYBE 2.
Since Feb of 2025 to Today, the L is the only P38 you have played in the last YEAR.
The rest were played at unknown times. Though given low game counts, id assume were also in single sessions.
While Idaho does fall on the “pro” side, being one of the best U.S plane pilots in sim…
His channel demonstrates the potential of P-38s and F6F-5s and other U.S aircraft very well. These are not easy aircraft to fly and have a fairly high skill floor, but folk who know how to work them can achieve incredible results.
Never said they were bad, just not “OP”
I dont play sim, nor was the person i replied to. So i have no idea how they are in sim.
This is the same as pointing to steel beasts as a source for modern tanks.
I full on trust the handbook more than what other sims show. The engineers of these rounds and top-brass saw countless gun cam footage of these rounds used in combat specifically to ascertain each round’s effectiveness.
When you consider the guns are converged in a box pattern, mixed with higher inaccuracy, and pilots reporting firing at long ranges
I will gladly take pilot testimony as well as the fact that the guncam footage of these pilots were reviewed to ensure that these rounds did the damage, at the range, at the altitude that they said they did.
Should it always be a 1 hit fire? Realistically? No. But when you have HE capable weapons hitting like 30mms, then I’d say let the rounds have a guaranteed chance. Just heavily reduce AP’s capacity to damage external super structure.
As stated, the M1 incendiary was still a better anti-air round. Which is why the rounds were usually in conjunction cycling between API and I. In fact, I made a bug report on this exact issue. as the handbook actually states the usual belt linkage both pre-1943 and post 1943
In WT you are either on fire or not.
There’s no distinction between fire severity.
You are set on fire and take full damage as long as you are on fire.
If you buff .50cal incendiary likelihood more, .50cals will again beat out cannons with their bullet density, range and ballistic performance.
Sure there’s like a 50% chance they survive but even when they do they are probably severely crippled.
And you still have AP damage against engines and wing ripping that happeneds way more frequently than in reality.
In those pilot reports they generally fired 300-400 rounds per target, and they hit all over the place compared to WT where .50cals are far more accurate than in reality.
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All AP is overperforming against engines. Look at 7mm rounds hitting an engine.
Though .50s should be pretty good at causing engine damage. Like I said before. Nerf the external superstructure damage. Keep the control surfaces weak as those were weak spots IRL in general.
I mean. IRL .50s in efficiency matched with 30mm. It’s why I suggested to heavily nerf AP damage to the super structure.
Yes, less accurate. Not counting how they have the guns converged, Unless you’re scraping close you’re going to have just one or two guns at a time hit a target and that’s enough to light someone up.
Again as I showed, these pilots are hitting up to 300-900 yards, with one or two guns only really hitting the target at that point and yet they still burst into flames.
And you smack an american plane in the fuselage or wing with an HE round, you’ve heavily damaged their turn performance or their ability to run. I’ve been hit in the D-28 where I can barely sustain 430kmh flat. Even with no engine damage.
There’s just one account where firing range was 900-600 yards and it just says Bf 109 destroyed. Not how it was destroyed.
All other instances were at 400yd or less.
And not all of them mention that that the plane was set on fire, but generally that they could observe more impact hits when firing just API.
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It’s why I said 300-900. As many of the report encompass that range
Again. I default back to this statement.
The testing supports that these rounds require few hits to ignite (consistent performance up to 600 yards)
The gun cam footage that was reviewed supports the claim,
pilot testimony supports the claim.
Even if every single kill wasn’t a fire, the testimony there still supports that the rounds are very willing to ignite.
Even the vulnerability report shows that if API-T doesn’t light a fire in the first hit, it’s highly likely to score a fire in the next shot. Which lines up with the testing for API. Which was just a singular .50 machine gun attached to a turret.
In fact, M23’s primary purpose was to make a higher velocity incendiary round that can reach out to 600 yards faster for better deflection shots. Lighting jet kerosene was a secondary happy accident.
Using the API range charts The amount of rounds required to light a fuel tank at 1000 yards is roughly the same where I tested in-game at 300-600 yards.
Today I pulled out the firecrest for a spin, and I know they’re M3 Brownings, but damn .50’s hit like a TRUCK. I was able to take down everything I saw in one burst bar a G4M1 and an airfield camping Yak-1B
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