Cannon damage below 30mm is being done wrong

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
,
10

The american 37mm HE also has considerably less explosives than the german 30mm.

so the irl answer to ripping planes apart was explosives… lots of them.

Yes the explosive structural damage is indeed at the cost of other damage. Easily visible due to the fact that even though the Structural damage is extreme to the M54, the overall probability of a kill is lower. And again this is “A”-Kills were structural damage has a higher impact.

This is also a lot due to philosophy, why the german guns were actually more about ripping the enemy apart.

  1. a dying bomber that can still limp to the target and drop bombs, remains a thread. A crippled fighter that can stil fly for 10 minutes is out of the fight. So the americans and especially the british weren’t that interested in big explosions. They only had to protect bombers, not stop them.

A good comparison is stopping power of rifles. a 5.56mm is as good at killing you as a 7.62mm however the 7.62 has way more stopping power. Since you won’t die immidiately from either, the 7.62 is much more likely to throw you on the ground on impact stopping you from fighting while a 5.56 wound will not immidiately stop you. Same with the german guns, they weren’t just interested in killing the plane they wanted to stop it releasing it’s bombs. While the US and the british were fine with just killing the planes.

The reason i said that the british were special in this case is that like their attitude with their HESH rounds for tanks they had their special aircraft rounds “SAP-Rounds” those are interesting and horribly modelled in wT due to the Micheal Bay effect.
So instead of explosives, they filled their 20mm with incindiary liquid. In game they are modelled as slightly weaker HE shells than their regular HE shells and not as a special round only the british used.
The other allies didn’t like them because even for them just spraying liquid and ingiting it into a plane with a 20mm was to slow for a kill. And yes it took it’s sweet time to kill, but it did kill planes very reliable, it actually was comparable to the german 20mm Mineshell in damage, it just took longer.
Again horribly modelled in WT and if someone asks himself how the hispanos of the brits feel weaker than of any other nation, it’s because of how SAP rounds are modelled in WT.

But thats not all, there was a second reason the germans used so much explosive filler:

  1. The eastern front. The russians early planes were built from wood, that if treated correctly was similarly sturdy to impacts and resistant to heat damage as aluminum is. But it really doesn’t like to be shattered, it didn’t react well to being shattered like an explosion would do. So russian planes when hit with HE should desintegrate far more frequently than other allied planes. And since the germans were more interested in dealing with the eastern front, this is the way they went. But it didn’t made the german shells better, just more spectacular.

So yeah at least for the western allied and the german planes wing rips etc. happen way to often.
Since for russian and wooden planes no research exists this might be harder to assess.

3 Likes
11

Ultimately nothing is going to be perfect. But I’m sure getting rid of the Michel Bay wing and tail rips will make the game much better. especially for sim pilots and people who want to bring crippled planes back.

12

The damage from the round is incorrect, in that the way its doing damage is physically impossible

13

Well yes, but i would be careful.
We are only talking single hit damage as there is no data on cumulative damage and we usually hit the same spot with several rounds.

I doubt that the amount of hits needed for a kill are an issue in WT. Especially if younconsider B kills as well. Which you should.

So it will create.longer suffering until death but the survivability shouldn’t really change.

14

We don’t hit the same spot several times though. For most 20mm cannons, the dispersion is usually large enough to cover 1/2 of the aircraft. Commonly when using the F4U-4B, I find myself blowing off both wings with a short burst. And frankly, having wings not get ripped off may not be the most important statistic in air RB, but it can be the difference between dying and limping back in simulator battles. And even if we do hit the same spot with several rounds, it should not rip the damm wing off.

As for kill hits, it’s a lot more important. Not so much for fighters but for attackers and bombers. Not having your wing ripped off, only damaged, can give you enough time to shoot back or survive until friendlies get to you.

Why would we consider B kills? If you look at the data, the two biggest factors in a B kill are engine and fuel, which does not matter in war thunder due to how close the airfields are.

That’s my reasoning for why these changes need to be made.

15

@DerGrafVonZahl
Very nice summary - fully agree to your first post.

I do not understand why these kind of discussions (wt vs reality) are popping up from time to time. I mean besides this “severe damage” disaster (as it has imho just negative effects) the arguments / opinions are always the same.

Hidden as imho off topic - I am not sure if your 2nd post is on the right path

First of all the stopping power examples are imho misleading.

  • The 5.56 in rifles were based on post-war analysis of actual combat ranges, actual hit probabilities and ammo capacity/weight of ammo.
  • The idea was to bring as much bullets out of rifles in the short time the enemy is visible / in sight - so lower calibers increase fire rate and aim due to less recoil - and the soldier could carry way more ammo.
  • The long range accuracy of higher caliber full power ammo was seen as unnecessary for the standard /average soldier.
  • The Mauser 7,92 x 33 in the StuG 44 was dealing with stopping power, accuracy and “controllability” due to way less recoil than the 7,92 x 57 in actual combat ranges very successfully.

And i struggle to follow other claims like:

  • Your argument that the LW tried to intercept bombers before drop and therefore needed explosions is imho not backed by any source.

  • The fact that all nations used cannons is imho just based on the fact that the usually short time of a firing solution should be used with maximum effect. As even 20mm HE struggled to kill bombers quick we saw the up-gunning with calibers up to 50mm.

  • The US had very interesting bomber interceptor concepts long before WW2 (you might remember this aircraft from 1937) and were fully aware of the need for cannons. But they relied on the 37mm M4 (as seen in P-39) and struggled to make the AN/M2 working as wing mounted guns. The wide usage of 0.50 cals in P-51s/P-47s has therefore nothing to do with “just protecting the bombers, not to kill them”.

  • The wing mounting of batteries of 6 or 8 0.50 cals with large ammo pools had significant advantages for the standard/average pilot as it created a deadzone (area converging, nor point converging) 3-600 yards in front of the aircraft - and required way less marksmanship than a single center mounted cannon.

  • The Hispano 404 and its versions are usually recognized as one of the best 20mm cannons - and Spitfires used them even in 1940 in the BoB as they realized that rifle bullets were not effective enough. So i cant follow the logic of this quote too:

  • In any case - have a good one!

Sorry man, this is a common misconception. Just read this thread and learn why:

https://forum.warthunder.com/t/severe-damage-did-nothing-to-fix-kill-stealing/84776

From a holistic perspective the new mechanic even increases the possibility for kill stealing (especially for non-fighter targets) as instant kills were reduced to pilot snipes and cutting the tail off.

I share most of the views of this fellow player:

Last, but not least:

I struggle to understand your obsession with A and B kills. You play a video game with little to zero connection to actual reality…

Edit: Added 2 lines to make clear that this post was addressed to 2 people

16

I mentioned A and B kills so people understand what the graphs mean. Also love the fact that you respond not to the post itself, but to me replying to someone else.

1 Like
17

Producing one post instead of 2 is a problem? Jeez…

Dude - i responded to the first post of @DerGrafVonZahl as this was a very nice summary of why we have certain effects in wt.

And in this response i added a quote of you to clarify your misinterpretation of the severe damage model and i added that i was wondering why you try to connect irl stuff and wt - emphasising A/B kills implies irl thinking which wt is either unwilling or unable to provide.

18

emphasising A/B kills implies irl thinking which wt is either unwilling or unable to provide.

I know perfectly well that warthunder is about as unrealistic as can be. What I was trying to do is show that 20mm cannons are massively overperforming in terms of structural damage, and that the way they do damage is fundamentally wrong. The optimum caliber program is probably the most scientific way of determining damage we have access to, especially for WW2 era guns.

19

I would disagree here.

The A/B kill distinction is relevant if you want to assess how close the WT Damage modelling is to real life.

Of course it isn’t applicable to AB and RB where the instructor can hold an aircraft in the air, where a real pilot would fail. Similar to how a fly by wire system can keep very unstable planes stable.

But for the Sim Community it would matter.

1 Like
20

And I would argue that it would still be a net boon to air RB, as weapons like the Mk 108 would go from being memes to actually having a risk-reward tradeoff, instead of being completely overshadowed by 20mm cannons

1 Like
21

Also yeah, you are right on the new sever damage system. The threshold needs to be raised significantly, if not outright reverted back to the old system

1 Like
22

Agreed for sim from a holistic pov.

But where do you want to stop? If you go this far for structural damage you have to consider hydraulic damage way more realistic too. You might argue that these “control cable damages” are considering hydraulic damages to a certain degree, but you would have to make certain planes with electric steering of control surfaces way more survivable and all others way less…

I share your view regarding Air RB and instructor, it is way too easy for those mouse aim pilots to keep damaged aircraft in the air. Putting the instructor off in case of hits with delayed effects(simulating hydraulic leak and comple failure) might be a way.

This looks reasonable on first sight - but you can’t stop with cannons then.

As long as you have these totally unrealistic combat ranges for 0.50 cals in wt you would simply nerf the 20mm cannons and make 0.50 cals op. And you would have to get rid of mouse aim and non-hisorical convergence settings to compensate this, etc - an endless circle…

That’s why i always have problems with being more “realistic” for specific issues as it makes no sense to pick just one aspect without looking at the broader picture.

23

I can’t say I’m right but from my point of view, the opposite is the case.

When Germany developed Mineshells, like with many nations, they looked at their own planes to what they considered to be the weapon of the future.
Instead of light Biplane designs or planes built from wood, they considered monocoque full metal planes to be the future, with good structural integrity and high straight level and dive speeds.

Wood is very brittle and cracks easily while metal structure will deform but stay intact.
A hit with fragmentation rounds will create lots of holes in either strucutre but wood is more likely to be severily damaged from fragmetns cutting through it.

So the Mineshells actually work particullary well against the full metal structure, because the pressure from increased amount of explosive is trapped like a balloon until it bursts, causing catasthropic damage. So in oder to destroy these kinds of planes, Germany developed Mineshells to increase the lethality against them.

Wood would immediatly shatter from the pressure, releasing it without the same amount of pressure built-up.

Of course that doesn’t necessarely mean that wooden structure is less vulnerable to Mineshells.

On my research for HMG caliber bullets I came across an image that supposedly depicts a Yak-9 wings that was hit by a Soviet 12.7mm MDZ explosive-incendiary bullet which carries 1.5g of PETN + 1.2g of Flashpowder.

17233354
172333541003×475 107 KB

I find that kind of damge very hard to believe but it could proof the point that wooden airframes are infact very vulnerable to explosive force, since they can’t absorb the blast by deforming and break appart instead.
The Soviet Union deployed 12.7mm explosive and later explosive-incendiary rounds, perhaps for the same reason as Germany did develop Mineshells, that these rounds are quite effective against their own planes, which for them served as the gold standard for fighter planes.

In contrast to US and British 7.7-12.7mm ammunition, which didn’t use explosive rounds but just incendiary, since metal planes would not be as vulnerable to the damage caused by a small blast.

As the war progressed we see a design philospy change in all nations, with a switch from explosive ammunition to incendiary ammunition, or at least replacing pure explosive ammunition with explosive-incendiary ammo.

This is also mention in a German ammunition study from WW2 where they say that “(…) the desire to add additional incendiary effects to fighter ammunition can be observed in our enemies as well”.

Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union all deployed fighter planes at the start of the war that would be more vulnerable to explosive bullets and they all used explosive bullets for their light and heavy machine guns.

24

This is in contrast to a quote from:

(…) The high explosive incendiary bullet MDZ-3 ignites gasoline in unprotected fuel tanks only. When fired into a duralumin aircraft wing, the MDZ-3 bullet creates an entrance opening with a diameter of approximately 20mm and an exit opening of up to 110mm diameter. (…)

From this quote the damage against duralumin is much lower than what we see against the wooden YaK-9 structure, where the entrace hole is around 4-5cm and the exit hole 30-40cm or more and quite catastrophic.

Going from the 12.7mm to the 20mm ShVAK came with many disadvatages, like lower RoF, increased weight and worse ballistics. However one important advantage is the greater inflicted damage to full metal planes that could be damaged by the larger fragments of the shell, where the destructive power of the 12.7mm comes mostly from the blast.

At the moment the damage mechanics of WT are still super simplified and are tuned more to feel satisfying instad of making any sense.

I guess instead of working on changing gun damage, it’s more important to adjust the damage model of planes and how damage is going to effect their flight performance.

Remember when pilot damage effected flight performance? The pilot is like the most important element of a plane so guns need to be able to have some effect on them, just like armor needs to actually protect them when it should instead of pilot sniping them from 1km through the entire airframe.

2 Likes
25

My personal view is very relaxed on the topic. We have some information about how much damage a single shell does. So if planes are similar in survivability that they were irl i am fine.

I am more interested in the amount of shells needed for a kill being correct rather than the portrayal.

So while i support the suggestion, it isn’t a dealbreaker if it doesn’t happen.

26

You might discuss this with @Loofah - he asked for years to change the fuze sensitivity of mine shells as the settings by gaijin prevented this effect to a high degree as the shells passed through wings and exploded too late…

Same here, but i refused to reply to this after sharing my pov regarding US/UK planes as i assessed this as off-topic in the broader sense.

Same here.

27

Actually they were failing to explode at all. Eventually the issue got so bad even MG131 stopped working since gaijin increased fuse threshold to 0.25 or 0.3mm.

The problem got “fixed” by increasing the skin relative thickness on planes covered with plywood, so it engages German fuses too.
It still doesn’t make sense for German fuses to being so insensitive, while Japanese bullers with no fuse at all explode on contact with a sheet of wet toilet paper, but such is life.

Right now it seems that real sh*tter is not producing any fragmentation at all. So it’s bugged again right bow.

3 Likes
28

Severe damage doesn’t help with killstealing at all.
All it does is incentivise people to chase around burning wrecks for a “finished off” kill.

1 Like
29

It means the person who did severe damage has already taken the majority of the rewards for the kill, and won’t have it reduced to less than half by someone finishing them and giving you just an assist.