The mg151/20mm have been fixed recently and are back to being a glorious weapon. Use a stealth belt always (much higher velocity compared to other belts), learn the trajectory and lead in test flight, don’t expect to hit anything reliably past 600m until you achieve got tier level proficiency at shooting them
D-13 > D-9 for me, controls better in a dive, making aiming and landing shots much more comfortable. Also, D-13 has advantage vs most planes at high alt, while D-9 has no real advantage at any alt, it’s decent but not better than its opposition
They haven’t been fixed in any way, and they continue to not explode on Soviet plywood-covered aircraft (just like almost every other HE in game, currently, though). They deal way less damage per shell than Type 99 Mk2, and Shvak outperforms them in every metric possible.
I’ve been using stealth for years, thank you very much. I appreciate you giving me advice, who am I, just a guy who played Warthunder since beta, what do I know?
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Didn’t mean to disrespect you, I apologize.
But my experience has been different. If I’m unable to take down a plane, it’s because ive missed most of my shots.
I also know for a fact, that if I land a few shots onto the same area - any regular fighter plane is as good as dead.
Even in a g-6, shooting only the 151/20mm, I can take down several targets no problem before I have to reload
My friend, in Fw 190 I do a lot of high speed passes vs maneuvering enemies. In such cases, your time on target is extremely limited. It doesn’t help German aircraft can usually only get good time on target if enemy is energy trapped/surprised etc.
Anyway, the thing is, vs f.e. jets, MG151/20 performs horribly. It turns a part of a wing slightly yellow and fails to damage fuel tank it hit directly.
Vs prop fighters - damage per shell is decent, but to remove a wing you need 4-5 M-geschoss. You need a single Type 99 Mk2 shell to remove P-47’s wing. You basically need 2-3 Shvak shell for the same job.
Except Shvak fires faster, it’d easier to aim due to vastly superior ballistics and things like Yak-3U have insane maneuvrability on top of climb and energy generation, which means creating good shot opportunities is fairly easy.
I’d take a single Type 99 mk2 over 3 cannons Ta-152H has.
The only thing MG151/20 does well is killing bombers. Thing is - it is pretty random as Type 99 Mk 2 can 2-shot B-25 if you hit the wing at an angle, so there’s that.
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I can only speak for props, I have jets researched up to 11ish BR but don’t care about them at all.
Still, I can absolutely see how mg151/20 are horrible vs jets
With props, I don’t know why, but I have much better time with mg151 compared to Japanese cannons since the recent nerf
With mg151/20 it does take several hits to take off a full wing. But it takes me 1, max 2 hits to blow off a wing tip, 90% of the time at least. You have to remember that 2 out of 5 rounds are AP that do very little to a wing
I mostly aim for center mass (fighter wings are too small of a target for such low velocity guns, imo), it’s not hard landing several hits to center mass in succession if i lead them right, and it’s guaranteed to take em out of a fight at the very least
Deflection shots are indeed difficult but it’s a matter of practice. The time on target is very short for sure, but it’s enough with good aim, for me personally. On my bad days, when I can’t get those deflection hits, I go into test flight and practice until I get the mojo back
That said I have to admit that landing hits in head ons is still very difficult, no matter how I much I practice, esp since it’s a stealth belt and it has unique ballistics
The longest killshot I got was at 1km range, and I only got a few of those so far. With the old ballistic model, I could snipe with mg151/20 from 1-1,5km range no problem. With mk103 I still can
But 2 out of 5 being AP is a part of the problem.
HE is not good enough to compensate for the fact you have 40% AP in belt, while Soviets have 100% HE belt.
I have failed to remove a wingtip off G.55 with a direct MK108 hit, I have shot P-51H several times in the wing and it stayed attached fully.
German guns are not consistent, have worst ballistics and are not hitting harder than competition. In other words, nowadays they are just simply bad.
I mostly aim to hit anything, unless firing at bombers or at people who are energy trapped.
Mind you, I have been in top 50 highest kills per battle in Air RB for months, so I am highly effective. I’m just realistic about my aiming ability. I am fairly good in succesfully scoring hits while having very small windows of opportunity, I am fairly smart about positioning. But I’m not going to tell anyone “oh just aim for x and y” because that’s just fantasy talking for over 99%of the playerbase.
If you have time to land “several hits” while fighting enemy fighters in Fw 190 or even Bf 109G6 , then basically it doesn’t matter what guns you’re using, because when the firing opportunity is that long, something WILL work. So it’s not an argument in favor of these guns, because I’m fairly certain you’d kill that enemy even wirh C.202’s armanent of 2 Breda 12.7 and 2 7.7mm MGs.
Edit: And my point is, Fw 190 should not get a long firing opportunity vs moderately aware enemy, as you should be going faster than they are and your ability to slot yourself behind somebody for extended period is barely existent and creates huge issues down the line.
Similar story with G6 though thanks to its energy-fighting MO, and better maneuvrability, it gets longer firing opportunities. But still, both are greatly affected by German gun relative weakness.
Relative, as basically all 20mm should be nerfed, some more (Shvak, Ho-5, Type 99 Mk2) some less (Hispano and MG151/20).
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Look, for the most part, I don’t disagree with you. Although, I don’t think the mg151/20s are bad, it’s rather that brownings and shvaks are overtuned.
Maybe I’m just used to the mg151/20 more than to any other gun. To me, if I aim right, I’ll get a kill with 1 burst more often than with any other gun. As long as I can get consecutive hits, which can be challenging indeed, especially zoomed in
The AP rounds is the reason I aim for center mass, they do alright hitting the weakspots
Mk108 I remember being very unreliable before, that’s for sure. Recently though, with night belt I can’t remember not getting a fatal blow in 1 hit. Which belt are you using (universal has that pesky weak round at the end
Night.
I stopped for a while to avoid the self-destruct, because in head-ons it often doesn’t matter if the round is slow, when you’re both flying towards each other, it’s “fast enough”, but that HEFI is so bad (it’s real shatter 3.0, so it’s barely better than 20mm) I simply decided I’ll take the delf-destruct instead, especially since 20mm self-destruct invalidated my longer-range head-on chance anyway.
Because hey, MG151/20 is the only gun where you are stuck with self-destruct that is coded in a way to MAXIMALLY limit your effective range. It should be time-based, instead it’s hard coded distance. So head on at 5500m, you fire from 1900m away, you’re going fast, enemy is moving at moderate speed towards you, you aim well, but oh so sorry, shell reached 1300m or whatever that number was, time to explode despite the fact self-destruction was time based, so if you are going fast and/or at higher alt, the shell should travel way further.
Now, the new range based self destruct thing, that shit is annoying for sure.
But ballistics do matter in head ons also, it’s not just velocity, but also weight and drag, mg131 and mg 151 drop off very badly past 500-600m, it takes approx 0.5s for HEI round to travel 400m, than another 0,5s to reach 600m, and then another almost 1s to reach 800m.
The round also loses a lot of speed, so on targets retreating away from you at decent speeds , it’s almost impossible for the round to catch up to them past 500-600m
I can sometimes hit deflecting shots on targets at 800m-1km but the lead it takes, both horizontal and vertical, is ridiculous
And yet, I still love these guns, just feels more skill demanding and thus rewarding to land those shots
I played them with old and new ballistics. I have killed several thousands enemy planes with MG151/20 (7000 between Ta-152H and F8 alone, now add a few thousand for rest of Bf 109 and Fw family and Italian techtree and we end up around 11000 air kills with this specific weapon). No need to tell me about ballistics, I know full well they are horrible.
When I’m telling you my head-on game suffered because of self destruct, it’s because it does.
I can deal with ballistics to some extent in a head-on (MK108 doesn’t bleed speed that badly so any added speed helps a lot). I can’t deal with self destruct. That’s the entire point. And nowadays it’s not even worth trying because as I mentioned elsewhere, A6M5 1-shots you, you can’t 1-shot A6M5.
Anyway, right now I’m not even playing Air RB. I drive Tigur in ground RB and then I spawn Ta-152H and roflstomp clueless Ground RB scrublords, because in such setting it doesn’t even matter Shvak is overperforming and Soviet fighters being magically partially invulberable to HE - if I can land 20 shells, something WILL work.
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Imho you should consider that almost all cannons have certain RNG effects regarding their damage output - but if you use the main 3 (ShVak, MG 151/20 and Hispanos) frequently it is imho more than obvious these RNG effects play a rather decisive role.
There is a reason why claims about inconsistencies of damage output are a frequent topic - but they focus in the 20mm class mainly around MG 151/20 and to a lesser degree to Hispanos - whilst ShVak complains are rather rare.
Even without wearing a tinfoil hat am convinced that RNG and relative success whilst playing the game are connected. That’s why your guns work fine in one match and in the next match (like after a win strike) you score hits, hits, hits and a single 7,92 hit sets your plane on fire. Or you fly casually towards an enemy and a plain heavy aaa piece (midfield aaa) sets you on fire.
Gaijin has (years ago) openly committed that they adjust RNG factors on player level.
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What I’m certain about at this point, is with stock vehicles you get some insanely bad matchmaker.
You know, we can both work around plane weaknesses. But then I’m flying something stock and all of the sudden my team absolutely melts, no matter how many kills I get, loss, loss, loss, loss.
But then I unlock 150 octane/engine injection, and I can die with 1 kill and win every 2nd battle, even when I’m tired, slow, sleepy and making horrible decisions.
It can’t be a coincidence. It’s very consistent, I mean, not 100%, as I was able to get some epic wins with mostly stock aircraft, but it usually required enemy team to just screw it up, because sometimes people simply do that.
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In my experience this feels driven by the match’s network quality. Playing ASB, I know ahead of time what match I’m going into (CIS, EU, NA) and being a player from eastern europe I favour CIS but sometimes join NA as it’s the only lobby available at the BR I want to fly and with a normal map with good numbers.
Consequently, I find that in higher ping situations (150-200), I score far more hits even when doing the exact same kind of shooting and hit the same places (which is easy to see at SB engagement ranges of 100-300 meters and the power of the REVI gunsight). This may be driven by server sync and how the game predicts the location of aircraft. I believe this assumption to hold water given that the HE bug was caused by server network issues (relative placement of the explosion compared to where the impact was supposed to register - ergo, your mg151 shell hits the wing or engine but explodes behind them dealing practically no damage.)
Similarly, lobby length seems to correlate with success. As also observed by others, notably WingalingDragon, certain servers (in ASB meaning those whose matches have been running for over 60-70 minutes at least) demonstrate greater instability and tendency for stuttering and desync than others. Indeed, looking into replay mode for my last NA game that I joined that matched this description (perfect storm of things going bad), I saw planes actually “slewing” (Like MSFS “Slew mode”) around as if rushing to catch up clientside with their server position.
Now of course RNG may well still exist on top of this but I feel quality of server makes a more significant impact before RNG. Especially if we’re talking about flammability of engine/fuel tank hits - there’s games where a short burst is sufficient to fatally torch enemies, there’s games they put it out harmlessly and there’s games all I get is a big black smoke without actual heat despite mostly hitting around the same location.
I agree. The only way to circumvent certain RNG effects via the MM (like for bad teams, stupid weather, painful stock grind, etc) is to play on less populated servers.
But the RNG effects regarding gun damage (own and enemy) work imho independent from team composition adjustments.
That’s also the main reason why i do not attack bombers or ai planes in Hellcats or P-47s if i can avoid it - after watching a lot of replays my chances to get set on fire by a single bullet actually increase if the enemy player is not in gunner view. My SM 92 receives in general hits by ai gunners more or less exclusively in one or both engines but catches way less fires…
This doesn’t look like a coincidence.
I do agree that ping & PL plays a role too - but i play on CIS (ping 50-60) and NA (~ 110) servers only. And these ping values are stable for at least 2 years.
Before that i would have fully supported your opinion - simply because i played more or less exclusively on the SA server (because i like the small matches on Pacific maps) and ping was ~160-200 with all the effects you described. So whilst you look for more populated lobbies i look for the opposite.
But in the last 18 months i noticed a significant increase of matches with a PL even before spawning. As this PL tends to increase in a running match i refuse to spawn and quit the match - next nation. Same with bad weather - stupid thunderstorm / thick cloud cover weather severely affects my fps, turn rates (plane feels heavy and way less responsive) and my situational awareness.
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Yeah, about that…
With Shvak it goes black every time.
With M-geschoss around the same spot (not in the screenshot, but I just don’t care, you can test it yourself) it goes orange every time I’ve shot from this angle:
I’ve found spots where it sometimes goes black or consistently red. With Shvak going black is basically guaranteed. The difference is losing wingtip vs basically remaining combat capable.
Does it make any sense?
Nope. This is exactly the scenario where M-geschoss should shine. Well, it doesn’t.
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Protection Analysis at the moment is not translating exactly what happens in-game, mostly for the realshattered guns. I think that the hitpower ones (Mg151) are more in sync w it.
Many of them will black out the components 100% of the time in prot analysis but in-game it’s been completely different since Leviathans.
There may be a net code issue going on this time, often times you see holes on the aircraft airframe but 0 damage to it as if it was never registered server side.
Both 109’s n 190’s rely hard on it’s guns since their playstyle is not exactly very easy, and given the current guns situation… this kinda makes flying some of them an infuriating experience.
Italy is punished in a slight different manner, the planes are easier to fly for the most part but are overtiered and the guns are now zzzzzz.
I mean, with 37 and 30mm SPAAs that utilise real shitter I can see holes and then I see minor damage. There is damage. It’s just absolutely dogpoop.
But thing is, I’ve been 1-shot by real shatter 20mm so many times I’m willing to believe PA on this one. I basically do not survive head ons any more, because while my enemy dies because I can pelt him with several shells, all it takes is 1 randomly sprayed 20mm to ruin my day.
But it may not be as reliable as in PA indicates indeed.
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It was accurate until Leviathans. Now it’s rng, but when it works the damage is still better than Mg151’s is what I mean.
This is what x4 Stealth Hispanos did to this guy after 2-3 passes:
There will be times where he will get the instant wing rip too, like I said it’s rng.
All guns need to be looked at. For 20’s especially MG151/20 and Mg FF’s.
There’s always a chance the game decided only SAPI landed. And SAPI is like launching wet noodles at the enemy.
Also BTW if rhat’s K4 (no idea, I’m bad at identifying planes) it has some.plywood parts that will not fuse HE :P
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