Barrel damage not stopping the firing of guns

Suggestions Gameplay
1

Hello,
Here I am suggesting that in Ground-RB, damage to the barrel of guns in any form does not make it so that gun cannot be fired. Instead, the amount that the barrel is damaged adds a level of dispersion to the gun, similar to Ground Arcade, based on a couple of factors until it is repaired. With this change, naturally taking barrel damage would not stop or delay the reloading of the gun either.
Firstly, where the barrel has been hit to cause it damage matters, the closer to the breech, the more the dispersion increases. Secondly, the level of damage the barrel has taken, so if it is Yellow, there will be less dispersion than if it is Red.

This change is aimed to decrease the frustration of playing vehicles with particularly long reloads and particularly large barrels, as it will now be harder for players to effectively take you out of the fight without doing more severe damage to the internals of your vehicle. This change would make it so that light vehicles with autocannons are not able to completely neutralise a gun tank as a threat, while still keeping their ability to inhibit the gun tank’s effectiveness. The change would not change breech damage at all.

The Disperson will be represented in a % increase on the base dispersion of the gun, so for example, if you are using the Panther A, and you take damage to your barrel, about half way up, and your barrel is orange, it will add an additional 20% dispersion onto the base dispersion of your gun.
Therefore, if the base dispersion for the Gun on the Panther A is 10m at a distance of 500m, and you take the damage I have described above, then the dispersion would increase to 12m at a distance of 500m. To work this out, I am simply taking the % of the max dispersion incurred by each factor, adding them and dividing by two. So, in the example I have included, I have used 40% as the max dispersion possible, and because the barrel is damaged about 50% of the way up, and it has taken orange damage(50%) I am doing 20+20=40. then 40/2 to give 20 giving the total % dispersion incurred.

I hope this explanation of the method is ample, and the specific numbers can be changed to whatever the developers believe best fits the game for balance purposes.

I have included an image of how this could be visually represented to the player in game.

image

Thank you for reading.

Would you like to see this change implemented?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
5 Likes
2

I think the barrel damage thing is silly and should be removed.I suggest it is there to force balance in the up tier to try and make the unfair fair.

The chances of hitting a cricket ball sized target with a tank gun from 300 feet is ridiculous.Same silly physics they have with the M1 and the tiny gap between the turret and the hull. The physics of War Thunder world.

4 Likes
3

i do not think is a good idea.

just for the gameplay, it would be unfair for smaller vehicles would just have no chance to survive at all causing a lot of balance issues. and for historical accuracy, it would be unrealistic

fire a gun with a damaged barrel leads to many consequences

  • if the barrel is not allowing the projectile to go through(because the deformed side might block the projectile), the breech might backfire and kill the crew behind the gun. this consequence is going to happen most of the time.
  • If the barrel is not straight or shortened, the accuracy will be greatly reduced. when I say a lot, I mean it could go 15° sideway
  • and if the barrel is not straight or shortened, the projectile will have nearly no acceleration. giving a muzzle velocity that could be 300 m/sec instead of 1500 m/sec for an APFSDS.
2 Likes
4

Fair enough

Light tanks are already some the most useful vehicles at the lower and mid teirs, have mechanics like scouting, and usually have excellent mobility and are smaller targets. That is how they should be surviving, using the mobility and size to avoid being spotted and accurately targeted. If you are head on with any medium or heavy tank that means you have made mistakes in your positioning, or that the game is over and there is nowhere to go. This change isn’t specifically designed to nerf such vehicles, and it wouldn’t effect the majority of them that much as most are not auto cannon vehicles. This would more negatively effect spaa’s, however these vehicles should be balanced based on their AA capability, if an spaa is changing br because of it’s tank killing capabilities, or lack thereof, then this is a mistake, with a couple of exceptions.

The current system is also unrealistic, I do not think that gaijin can effectively simulate exactly what would happen in each situation so that it is exactly what would happen in real life as there are too many variables and different situations may play out differently based on incredibly minor things that cannot be simulated in game. Therefore, a compromise must be made, and I think the current compromise is very frustrating for a lot of already weak vehicles, and gives many other vehicles and effective way to neutralise vehicles that they otherwise would have to flank or scout and immobilize for a teammate to destroy.

This is a major part of the suggestion, as it should be easy to implement as it is already in the game in ground arcade. The values I have given are placeholders, what it would be set to if the change was implemented is up to Gaijin, and what they think meets the ‘historical accuracy/gameplay’ balance.

If the change was implemented, I see no reason why this could not be implemented along with it. I have specifically included in the suggestion variable degrees of negative effects based on the damage to the barrel, and this could be added in the same way.

Happy for the feedback, thanks for commenting.

5

it remain that almost every external damage will cause the breech to back fire and explode in the face of the gun’s crew.

the issue is about the SPAA mostly. and every scout vehicles which only armament is an autocannon.
their chance of surviving in higher rank will be next to zero causing them to fall in BR and plague lower ranks,.

no actually, it’s a way better choice to just consider the gun as disabled than try to fire it. 90% of the time damage on the barrel that is serious enough to break the barrel will deform the barrel enough to make the projectile to be stuck inside. even when there is a big hole in the barrel there is still enough deformation to make the projectile be stuck inside. if the barrel is airtight with the primer still exploding inside the breech, the energy and the gas will just cause the breech to explode and likely kill the crew. and the projectile will still be in the barrel…

and if there is just a hole it might still kill the driver in the chassis if it’s just below it. the Swiss have a pretty nice picture of those tests. notice how little energy come out from the muzzle compare to the holes. that is almost all the energy that is normally used for the projectile acceleration that is leaking.

the primer is 3-4 times heavier than the same HE filler of the HE rounds it would push in the barrel.
if you fire a 120mm and the projectile gets stuck in the barrel, it’s like if a 155mm HE round explodes inside the turret.

1 Like
6

Their chances of surviving in any situation is more dependent on the positioning on the map and the team they have, this is already the case. If you are worried that spaa’s are going to drop in BR because they are unable to shoot the barrel on certain specific tanks, this will not happen to vehicles just because they become unable to stop a vehicle from firing and rarely has caused moves in the past, most spaa are balanced based on their ability to destroy planes, with a few exceptions such as the Zsu-57-2 and the Falcon.

What you are saying here doesn’t make sense in regards to what I said, and you have contradicted yourself immediately with the next statement.

It is not realistic that the gun cannot be fired full stop, which is how it is implemented in game. Here is an example of barrel damage not causing the gun to be unusable to show that while what you have said may be true, but also can not be depending on the circumstances. https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/gap36m/so_i_just_found_this_picture_of_a_damaged_tank/?rdt=36777

Firing a damaged gun may cause more damage like you have said, but the 90% figure you have given I assume you have just made up, and even if that is a value given from testing, I do not know of any tests where the muzzle break of a gun was shot with a 20mm auto cannon for example, or where a barrel was bent a small bit by a nearby explosion, so the real life testing that did happen will not give an accurate idea of what might happen with the damage caused in game in many situations.

This is how it used to be implemented a while ago, but it was changed to the current system as randomly dying when you try and shoot might be realistic, but it isn’t a very fun mechanic, as it adds rng to situations. It isn’t fun to die not because of a mistake you made or an outplay, but just because of the roll of a dice.

I am not arguing that my suggestion is any more realistic than what is currently implemented, both are not, however I believe what I have suggested would make for more fun and less frustrating gameplay overall, while still combining elements of realism and simplifications for consistent and repeatable gameplay.

7

as someone that doesnt buy modules on tanks and often times has to abandon their tank due to a broken barrel and no teamates willing to help, this would be a welcome change.

8

you don’t get improved parts???

9

German WW2 Krummlauf and Mythbusters Testing showed better results.

10

Not stock I don’t 💀 it’s the first thing I research. But when your barrell is broken within seconds of a game starting, it’s hard to research anything 😔

11

what vehicle are you playing? I don’t remember even having that much trouble in T95

12

Well I’m into tier 7 of Russia, germany, and usa, and it’s across the board for me. It only lasts a few matches before I get the parts but man is it frustrating.

13

yes but normally no tank crews fire with a broken barrel gun, its dangerous.

14

war thunder only let stock tanks to fire with broken gun, in real world, when barrel is broken, crews will not use the gun anymore. the shell/ammo can be exploded inside broken barrel

15

Does anybody know whether modern MBT guns have the same accuracy model as WW2 in this game?

How about we introduce wind physics into the game to decrease accuracy. I mean it would be more noticeable at WW2 APHE levels than maybe modern rounds but it would require more thought and judgement than just hitting a gun barrel with rifle like precision from a 1000m . We might not need the gun barrel damage model so much then.It’s a very fictional element to the game.
Same as the ridiculous chance of hitting that tiny space between the hull and turret of an M1.

16

the gun damage physics is there purely so stuff that cant pen you frontally can bully you
example: 75 jumbo vs Tiger 1
Example 2: almost any autocannon vehicle

17

I don’t think dispersion alone is sufficient for this to work.

Barrels exist to provide a close environment for the shell to accelerate through the expanding gas.

If the barrel is damaged, the shell should not obtain the same amount of kinetic energy due to both gases leaking out and in case of banana - shorter barrel.

Penetration needs to decrease and shell drop increase/velocity decrease.

18

I know

19

BIG NO. This would make a large number of tanks in the game going from having a single option to survive an engagement to having zero ways to survive an engagement.

20

+1

Barrel damage is frankly a bigger cheat allowed ingame than CAS could ever be claimed to be. If you cannot frontally penetrate something, and you got stuck in a terrible position on the map, you did not plan for needing an escape route and should be rightfully deleted as a result.

Many tanks with terrible guns are overtiered because of barrel damage. Particularly the Jumbo Shermans.

SPAAG and IFVs are an absolute menace that get massively overreacted to because of their ability to spray-'n-pray the barrels dead of any tank they run into.

Large-caliber tanks are unfairly punished by barrel damage, as are any guns with large muzzle brakes (10.5cm Pak46 L/68, 90mm T15E1/2, 105mm T5E1, 120mm T53, 122mm D-25, among many others). What commonly happens is you run into someone who you know cannot easily pen your front, you try to push them, they barrel you, then rush your side and delete you. It relegates heavy armor to being almost an afterthought, and definitely not the “breakthrough tank” idea exemplified by the Churchill series, Maus, Tortoise, Black Prince, Object 268, Ho-Ri TDs, IS-3, IS-4M, and others. Either your opponents have LOLpen shells that render your armor irrelevant, or they shoot your gun barrel - there are currently zero options for heavy armor to be relevant except as a “haha git gud newb and aim better!” sorts of BS when someone bounces by accident.

Barrel damage NEEDS this reform, BADLY.

And anyone who disagrees with the proposed reform is only doing so to protect the utter idiocy of light tanks and IFVs being anti-everything.

Indeed, provided the shell shoots through the barrel side at a far down enough location. The closer the barrel hit is to the breech, the more the gas leaks, and the lower the velocity of the shell from the damaged barrel.

So long as shooting the tip of someone pointed at you does intentionally nothing, then I am on board.

And these situations are why SPAAG are so horribly BR’ed. Causing a cascading series of related problems and contributing heavily to the CAS debate at large.

1 Like