Well… Soon™
How is that a bug, if the damage makes the most sense since the very inception of this game?
The only thing that’s truely broken right now is German shells (M-geschoss and 13mm HEIT) not fusing on aircraft skin of most nations - it worked like that vs Soviets for years, bbut apparently someone accidentaly gave multiple fghters same skin thickness value, value previously reserved for aircraft Gaijin wanted to be surprisingly tough, like the bane of my existence, Yak-3 (that thing could takena huge beating without sustaining major damage since M-geschoss could pass through large part of the plane without exploding or dealing any damage).
Ok, this is too weak indeed. But twin engined planes, like B18B, were ridiculously hard to kill for quite a long time too.
1 Like
Well, he was on fire after half of the shots.
For some reason players always want to shoot a plane to pieces so that it just falls out of the sky or is cut in half.
Of course it’s not realistic, nor was it before when 5 hits would take the wing off a two engined bomber.
It’s a long way before guns will have realistic performance.
1 Like
Warthunder is a game, and whether the aircraft weaponry is realistic or not, it shouldn’t undergo changes that take away the inherent fun of the game. While it’s appropriate to adjust the strength of the weaponry, in the more simplified third-person perspective that generally makes it easier to hit targets, machine gun firepower should feel more potent than in reality. Considering that the power of the machine guns is almost the same across all modes, in the Realistic Battle mode where it’s easier to hit with the machine guns, it feels appropriately stronger than its historical counterpart. PLZ FIX 20mm CANNONS !!!
3 Likes
I didn’t even use up all my my ammo.
1x Berezin with full API-T
1x ShVaK with default belt
5 fires including one Pilot snipe. That’s how it should be.
Now only cannons:
2x ShVaKs with Default belt.
Two kills by fire. One with structural damage, having the wing tip shot off and the last a Pilot snipe.
In general the guns work pretty much how they did before realShatter was implemented.
It’s not perfect but at least planes don’t instantly have their tails and wings shot off anymore.
In a match where beginners of lower ranks are abundant and planes are easier to hit with machine guns, personal experiences like achieving 4 or 5 kills in one match using the currently most powerful machine guns don’t hold significance in the debate about appropriate firepower. It’s just a matter of good luck and a job well done, nothing more.
2 Likes
Absolutely not, if anything it’s equal to when they upped the amount of fragments while still having the issue where they passed through the fuselage/wings without spreading or doing any damage.
2 Likes
The damage is actually fine because now M2 API-T and MG151 are back in their rightful place at the tippy top of viability and I will no longer die in foolish head on to inferior players.
1 Like
Not really. It shows that, a few rounds can take down a plane when you hit, with the main factors being loss of engine, pilot, controls or due to a fuel or engine fire. Not due to structural damage that makes the plane disintegrate on the spot.
What kind of argument is that? Due to no longer absurd damage from HE rounds, I’m able to kill beginner pilots but you’re no longer able to kill skilled pilots?
So do you need 20mm to hit like 30mm in order to take down skilled pilots by just spraying into their general direction and have any random hit turn into a kill?
You’re using stealth with 3/4 HE shells vs. Jets.
The guns put out 3400 RPM. It has one of the lowest burst masses for any Jet.
A M61 Vulcan has almost twice the RoF, dealing twice the damage.
On your first target you spend a mere 48 rounds and probably hit with 4-6 and he crashed like 20 seconds later, so what argument are you trying to make?
That a plane should explode everytime you get some hits?
A Jet is like the opposite of a bi-plane. They are extremely sturdy to allow flying at these high speeds and the trust from the engine is enough to keep it flying like a bullet with the structure having little impact on keeping it in the air.
I’m flying Cobra’s at the moment - 37mm don’t care about no nerf!
Well the 37mm doesn’t have realShatter. It completely shrouds a vehicle in fragments.
You hit the elevator and the whole tail section of a fighter turns black.
So the guns damage wasn’t affected by the recent change.
That guns are terrible right now, as they aren’t working properly as I stated before lol. You can get hits and useless crits on people that are stalled out infront of you.
That I don’t wanna waste 85% of my ammo to take down a single enemy thus making planes with little ammo load borderline useless.
I personally don’t find that type of damage very fun.
https://streamable.com/mhqzm7
No, but they could work instead of giving me useless hits whenever one hits a proper burst of HE rounds.
War Thunder has a DM kinda limited when it comes to simulating detailed structural damage when instructor is involved.
The majority of the time, if you don’t rip somebody’s wing or completely kill their engine they just fly back to their base as if nothing happened, sometimes even without a wing too.
So yea, I personally prefer the consistent strong damage that we had 1 patch ago over the current, as it’s way less rewarding and fun to fly with some nations compared to others atm.
You know, you can shoot down aircraft without having to spent all your ammo till they break appart.
That bomber would probably have crashed after half the ammo you spent.
Also we seem to be playing different games.
Edit: Ok let me try that again without the LMGs.
Basically the same result:
The last bomber crashed after 1 and a half minutes.
Very curious if any Pilot during WW2 shot down four 4-engined Bomber with 240 rds of 20mm ammo.
Turns out when you pump 30-40 20mm HE round into a large bombers tail, you’re not really hitting anything critical that would make it crash immediatly.
Even your clips show how inconsistent damage from cannons can be.
It’s bad from a gameplay perspective because it adds a significant element of randomization based on how well the damage RNG of your burst happens to be. It also imposes significant limitations on planes with low ammo count if they also have bad damage.
Does it matter? No because battle ratings will always eventually be adjusted based on the average effectiveness of the plane against other players. But it will just lead to situations where planes with ridiculous performance will be down-tiered because their cannon damage is effectively randomized. It’s already happened in the past with planes like the Yak-3U going all the way down to 5.3 BR.
2 Likes
What is that suppose to mean? I agree that realShatter is a bad mechanic in the way that it just makes RNG fragments appear, randomizing damage, instead of that 360° sphere of damage, which is also dumb.
Other than that, how is it inconsistent damage?
A bomber consist of 80% structure 15% fuel tanks and 5% crew and engines.
Of course the result will vary depending where you’re rounds are going to hit.
Yesterday, I went head-on with a B-17 with the J2M5, firing 20 rounds of 30mm ammo at him.
I looked back, and saw three fires, which were put out immediatly.
I thought: What kind of bullshit is that. Certified GJ moment.
Than I looked in the Server Replay and saw that I instantly destroyed 3 of his engines. He wouldn’t have made it back to base.
The difference between and instant kill and a kill after 5 min is just that I hit his engines instead of fuel tanks that would have made him burn up much earlier. Same, if I actually had killed the Pilots instead of two gunners in the front.
But that’s just how the RL works. It’s not an FPS where you shoot people in the head from 20m.
We’re spraying our guns from several hundreds of meter at targets flying 300kph and more, so the result will be “random” in a certain margin.
Firing 30mm cannons is just rolling dices with higher stats than 20mm. You’re chance of failing with 30mm is lower but that doesn’t mean that the 20mm can have better results in some cases.
What the game needs is more realistic behaviour of shells.
At the moment we’re just back to HE are no wonder weapons anymore compared to AP while every round that isn’t AP or HE is still pointless.
Using a mix of 50:50 AP and HEI is pretty much the ideal scenario for 20mm cannons.
quote=“KillaKiwi, post:287, topic:12931”]
What is that suppose to mean? I agree that realShatter is a bad mechanic in the way that it just makes RNG fragments appear, randomizing damage, instead of that 360° sphere of damage, which is also dumb.
Other than that, how is it inconsistent damage?
[/quote]
The clip you posted showed widely different time to kill between all of the bombers that you killed at point blank. Also from the looks of things the faster ones were just pilot snipes. And that is under ideal conditions.
5 minutes is more than enough time to RTB and land on pretty much any map. You should see video I posted earlier in the thread where I ram a guy with a closure speed of over 400mph and am able to RTB while missing a wing while being on the opposite side of an EC style map.
1 Like
AI units are considered destroyed when you set their fuel on fire.
Which I was able to do very frequently with the guns.
That’s not the point. First of all, it’s very unlikely that he would have made it back with 3 destroyed engines. We’re talking about a Bomber with no speed near an enemy bomb point afterall.
Secondly the point is that results will always be different.
Do the same scenario a 100 times and I would have shot down the B-17 80% of the time, either due to a fuel fire or simply from Pilot snipes. The other 20% he would either crash later or get cleaned up.
The 30mm will shred fighter planes but there will be instances where they will survive getting hit, that’s just how it is.
If you shoot an Elelephant in the leg with a 30mm round, you will also see different results than when you shoot his body.
If a single bullet hits you’re oil, you’re engine is going to burn up and you’re steadily loosing performance unless you RTB and are out of the fight.
That’s just how air combot is.
Before the update there was no point in planes having 30mm or 37mm cannons since 20mm and 23mm would instantly demolish any target in seconds and at range because you only needed to land 1-2rds.
20mm is just at the point where it makes sense to have explosive rounds, that doesn’t mean that 20mm HE rounds should rip appart planes like there is no tomorrow.
1 Like