Cannons doing too much damge

[iegaatdao]

@FeetPics

I think if you look at the thread you’ll see there is a strong correlation amongst what people choose to fly and what they think about damage. Most of the damage nerf advocates are people that predominantly play German aircraft and very little of anything else. And most did not play anything else when damage RNG was poor for other aircraft cannons.

It seems like its true for what I checked ( I am a german main because I played 109s so much)

But even the mg151/20 or even mg151/15 (I believe that’s the name for the 15mil variant) are way too powerful, I feel like a lot people that just want to nerf every cannon and keep the previous ones untouched, since the mine shell is apparently this wonder weapon that can evaporate enemies out of the sky, when it reality it couldn’t and you still needed AP rounds to actually get to the vitals bits of an aircraft (granted 90% of those bits are missing in WT)

I personally want to cannons above 20mm to not be outclassed and I also want for other rounds types to be allowed to serve a function instead of being seen as a smudge on a otherwise fully yellow belt of rounds.

I believe that explosive cannon damage should be toned down to the current damage of the explosive 50cal rounds in-game (said rounds can drop a little power too).
Will it completely screw some weapons and need BR adjustments? Yes 100%, but said nerf would make that those specialized higher caliber weapons to be in a same boat as A2A weapons and not simply as “TRUCK VAPORATOR 9000®” to use in tank battles.

You can trade ammo and firerate / ballistics (some +20mil cannons sacrifice firerate or ballistics) for far mightier punch per buck or you can keep your all-rounder 20mil cannon

[FeetPics]

@iegaatdao

Will it completely screw some weapons and need BR adjustments? Yes 100%, but said nerf would make that those specialized high weapons to be in a same boat as A2A weapons and not simply as “TRUCK VAPORATOR 9000®” to use in tank battles.

We have already had this in the past. When ShVAK damage was really poor / inconsistent the Yak-3U ended up all the way down at 5.3BR. The BI (the tiny rocket plane with 60rds ShVAK) was at 6.3BR as well, and would have likely moved down if ShVAK damage remained what it was. This is also not limited to just the “OP” Russian planes that German mains like to complain about; the J2M2 was at 3.7BR at one point and it still is in Air Sim.

We actually still have some of this in the form of the F8F-1 being at 5.0 battle rating for whatever reason in Air RB. But this is also a byproduct of “realism” insofar that Gaijin has “accurately” modeled the rudder compression for the F8F and basically not for any other plane; so a plane that is good for boom and zoom is actually far worse at hitting anything compared to its counterparts.

Planes with quad cannons have also been doing fine as far as the game is concerned. The FW-190 A-8 was just moved up recently in spite of the plane being mediocre in the flight performance department.

[Morvran]

Im still gunna stand by my core argument on this. I dont think cannons are inherrently doing too much damage, but rather that damage models are just too low fidelity.

Even a strong round like the Mine Shell shouldnt be knocking off the entire tail or wing of an aircraft with only a few hits, especially a heavy bomber. They need to significantly increase the number of parts that each aircraft is made up of, so for example, instead of wings being just 3-4 parts, they should instead be more like a 3x5 grid, that way damage to the centre of the wing (like having a hole punched into it) cna be modeled. Likewise for the tail, fuselage, etc. combine with more internal structures being modeled, and the damage from canon rounds change heavily. They should do a lot of damage, plenty of evidence showing what kind of damage they can do, but they shouldnt be turning aircraft into confetti but tweaking round damage down to the point where you have to land hit after hit to bring something down isnt good gameplay. So instead making aircraft models more realistic, where damage is more localised and accurate, now that sounds like a good change to the health of the game

[iegaatdao]

@FeetPics

We actually still have some of this in the form of the F8F-1 being at 5.0 battle rating for whatever reason in Air RB.

Seriously why is that plane at 5.0?

[FeetPics]

The game heavily relies on rudder inputs to correct aiming in mouse aim. Most planes in the game can basically pivot 20+ degrees left and right while at high speed with rudder. There are a few planes in-game like the F8F and P-51D that do not have this ability and because their role is primarily “boom and zoom” planes…it means that most people are not going to hit anything in that boom phase. Couple this with the F8F-1 having only 4 .50 cals, the average American/Allied team, and it is a recipe for a plane that will do poorly on average.

Even people that agree the plane is over-powered for the battle rating agree that it is a chore to actually use.

[iegaatdao]

That is one way to fix too.

I believe most aircraft have 2 or 3 if lucky “sections” per wing and 1 section with I am led to believe 2 more drops of hp for 1 section dedicated for the tail

Wing are separated in:
1-Wing root
2-Middle Wing
3-Wing tip
4ish- Spars which itself can be split from 1-3 parts (take into account that the spar will always be one, no matter if visually one can see multiple running inside the wing like many planes (for example A5M)

Tail sections are split in:
1-Tail
2-Air

One can place the 2 20mm rounds needed to destroy a tail +3meter aparts in extremes cases and it will make the tail fall off

Or one can have a super wide wing like a spitifire where 1 shot lands in the leading edge and the other will land in the opposite corner of the sections and still make the wing snap off.

I’d say for a model fix, add a parallel split for wing so we duplicate the sections, and add a new perpenticular “cut” for a fixed amount of distance (bombers would recieve almost double or even triple the sections than most planes for example)

For the tail, more sections, make them also calculating distance from the end of the wing to the stabilizers, so probably 3x the sections, also add tail spars if you want.

If you want to snap off a section of a plane, black out a certain amount of “mini sections” from one of the old sections

Cut the wing tip by blacking out 4 sections instead of 1 for example.

[Morvran]

@iegaatdao

I’d say for a model fix, add a parallel split for wing so we duplicate the sections, and add a new perpenticular “cut” for a fixed amount of distance (bombers would recieve almost double or even triple the sections than most planes for example)

Definetly, this is something that drives me nuts with the current damage models, something small and something massive have the same number of parts in most cases. That just seems really stupid to me

But overall. yeah, you’ve gotten the idea i have in my head (and really need to write a suggestion for at somepoint) perfectly.

Just its a colossal undertaking that I doubt Gaijin will want to do.

[PercussionCap]

@KillaKiwi

Oh so the largest plane in the game is now a standard for not dying to a single hit from a 20mm?

I know the Sabre Dog is big, but it’s not THAT big. And there’s no way I got hit just once.

@KillaKiwi

Or tell me how exactly are 23mm or 30mm cannons better than 20mm cannons?

They have advantages and disadvantages. 30mm cannons usually hit harder and have better ballistics, with the exception of the MK108. In return, ammo count and rate of fire are lower until the cold war revolver cannons came into service.

@KillaKiwi

What exactly is the point of 50mm cannons over 37mm cannons against bombers and why should you ever want to use anything other than 20mm cannons instead?

Range. But again, with mouse aim we can stretch the effective range of 20-37mm cannons far enough that the 50mm stops mattering.

@KillaKiwi

Why is no one using a 30mm MK 108 that could destroy a Spitfire pretty much anywhere in one hit

Because it’s an MK108 and has abysmal shell velocity - they’re one of the reasons why the 262s are so hated. Personally I’d rather have two MG131s instead of a single MK108, because I can be confident those fly a little faster than a potato thrown by the pilot.

@KillaKiwi

Especially in case of a Bf 109 with merely a single 20mm cannon, the 30mm should be an immense improvement. Yet it isn’t.

…Because the shell velocity is abysmal and many would prefer being able to hit their targets over a mostly theoretical damage advantage. The ammo count doesn’t help.

@FeetPics

He is in an F-86 or J-32B in his screenshot.

F-86K and CL-13 Mk5 respectively. The Dog finally got to shine with all the bombers around.

@iegaatdao

I personally want to cannons above 20mm to not be outclassed

This will remain so because their magazines are just too restrictive for the vast majority of players. The MK108 in a 109 has just 65rds vs the 200 of the MG151s, and that is not a good pairing with its lower hit probability.
The Ki-84 Hei used to really shine because the 30s were amazing (and that’s why it’s 6.3 still), but that’s changed long ago and now you are giving up decent all-rounder 20mms in the wings with 150rds each, for a pair of slow-firing 500rpm cannons with just 60rd each. Much better ballistics than the MK108 but still shares every other issue.

We also don’t have enough targets that would benefit from having such large cannons. You could make an argument for flying these aircraft out if bombers were a little tougher and far more common, but they’re capped at 4 in Air RB.
Even post-WW2 the 20mm was still the de-facto anti-fighter caliber though (see: M39, M61), 30mms came more for shooting down strategic nuclear bombers since you had to make every shot count in the narrow interception window you’d have. The british went so far as to put FOUR such guns in many of their fighters and interceptors, and the ADEN is no slouch at 1200rpm. The french were a little more conservative and in the Mystere, the 4x 20mm armament was replaced by two DEFA 30mms.

@FeetPics

We actually still have some of this in the form of the F8F-1 being at 5.0 battle rating for whatever reason in Air RB.

It’s even lower, actually. One more BR change and it might be unable to get uptiered into the late Zeros, which is hilarious.

But yes, armament has a huge impact on battle ratings. It’s quite possibly THE greatest factor.

@Morvran_

They need to significantly increase the number of parts that each aircraft is made up of, so for example, instead of wings being just 3-4 parts, they should instead be more like a 3x5 grid, that way damage to the centre of the wing (like having a hole punched into it) cna be modeled. Likewise for the tail, fuselage, etc. combine with more internal structures being modeled, and the damage from canon rounds change heavily.

This would be nice, but part of the issue is that ‘non-critical’ damage just does too little, and when you get “Hit” there’s no visual feedback that you actually did any damage. Even if you blacked out their wings, there’s nothing really showing you this, and I believe that’s why gaijin made wings and tails fall off when they are considered to be too damaged to remain in the air, that’s a clear indication the enemy cannot keep fighting.

[KillaKiwi]

You see, the issue is that there’s no difference between Mineshells and regular explosive shells anymore.

Explosive shells deal damage mainly from their fragmentation effect, which means they can damage components in a wide area.

But the amount of fragments has been heavily reduced, while those fragments deal complete nonsensical structural damage.

You can see it with AHEAD ammo, which in reality works like a shot gun but the tiny fragments deal massive structural damage.

This makes Mineshells useless because structural damage is the their bread and butter.

Every ammo has its advantages and disadvantages.
But right now, explosive shells make AP and Mineshells irrelevant because they are just as destructive as Mineshells and because they are so destructive there’s absolutely no point to rely on engine or pilot hits when the plane falls apart from hits against 80% of its area.

[KillaKiwi]

@FeetPics

You might want to read his post again. He was not in the B-52…he got shot by the Vulcan tail gunner from the B-52. He is in an F-86 or J-32B in his screenshot.

Ok so survive getting hit is going to prove what exactly?

Defensive guns are super inaccurate. They hit all over the place and Jets are, for whatever reason, are more damage resistant than props against explosive rounds.
Should become pretty apparent playing both props and Jets.

ShVAKs hit like laser beams but one match I fought a Strikemaster and hit him several times before finally managing to break his wing.

That was much more difficult than firing a 4-6 round burst and then see WW2 props fall out of the sky from a wing or tail getting shot off.

(Fun fact: I hit him from like 1km flying at his 7-8 o’clock with a short burst I didn’t expect to hit. But it did and blew his wing tip off. He then RTBed and I fought him again later)

Single instances of guns not doing what expected, either because of misinterpretation, desync or some bug, aren’t going to matter in the grand scheme, where they do exactly what you expect 90% of the time.

Are we just going to ignore all the videos from bombers with 20mm or 23mm guns completely shredding enemy fighters?

Or all the instances where a Bf 109 or Yak-3 with a single 20mm destroys a four engined bomber in a single pass from wings or tail getting shot off?

Heck, I killed a PB4Y-2 once with a stock Bf 109 G-14/AS before the Mineshell buff, sawing off his wing in a single pass from his 11 o’clock.

Thats with 1/4 Mineshells fired at 700 RPM.

Maybe my aim was so fantastic that I ended up hitting two on the same wing section.

Should that happen? No.
In fact no bomber should get blown to pieces by puny 20mm shells.

You have to put like 30 rounds in the same wing and also not all over the place. Good luck with that.

Either you destroy the engines, pilot snipe them or you set them on fire.
Maybe in a rare case you jam their tail controls but that’s completely unrealistic to expect.

The most realistic chance is setting them on fire

[KillaKiwi]

@PercussionCap

This will remain so because their magazines are just too restrictive for the vast majority of players. The MK108 in a 109 has just 65rds vs the 200 of the MG151s, and that is not a good pairing with its lower hit probability.

In the past players actually had a reason to bring 20mm gun pods for Bf 109s because planes required a lot more hits to bring down.

Especially strategic bombers, which you could only tickle with a single 20mm.

But P-47 and IL-2s also were much harder to kill because planes didn’t had their wings and tails blown off constantly.

But guess what? The 30mm also didn’t do that.

Which actually made it still worse against fighters than the MG 151/20.

Instead they had huge fragmentation blasts and were very effective with setting B-17s on fire.

I would run a G-6 with three MK 108s and had a blast intercepting B-17s.

Going head-on or turning around for an attack from behind, blasting their cockpits from the front of wings from behind with 30mm salvos.

Back then you wouldn’t even think about targeting a B-17s tail.
Instead you wanted to hit engines and fuel tanks.

For 20mm cannons, players would use AP shells for going after bombers, to be able to hit their engines from behind.
Not blowing their wings or tails off by landing just a couple of explosive shells.

Of course the damage system then and now is still flawed because many shells don’t have the effect they should have.

Kinetic shells should cause more serious damage to fuel tanks and cannon HEFI and especially Incendiary shells should be a lot more effective in setting fuel fires.

Fragmentation damage and behavior in all game modes is severely lacking, and has been mostly replaced by blast-damage/overpressure.

Instead we have tails getting blown off by 1-2 explosive shells and spars breaking from a single 20mm AP round.

@PercussionCap

The Yak-3 was only recently moved to 4.7, while the La-7 still remains at 4.7.

The Bearcat doesn’t turn all that well but loses a lot of speed doing so.

It’s got speed but it’s difficult to use as an advantage other than running away.

So other planes in the BR range can be a lot more active and aggressive.

It’s the perfect counter for Bf 109s and Fw 190s that you can chase down and that have no way of defending themself against it but when others can evade you and you have to bleed a lot of speed to even get a high deflection shot it becomes a problem.

A P-47 has twice the firepower, can go fast and has very good energy retention. So you can simply BnZ good turning planes but also every attempt puts out twice the damage.

A Zero might have zero performance but it can always swoop in and clean up people too busy to notice them.

You can pull inhuman deflection shots and destroy every fighter with your 20mm cannons that are actually 30mm Mineshells.

Meanwhile the Bearcat dishes out far less damage, can’t pull as much and when you bleed your speed you’re quite vulnerable.

So you can’t trade energy for massive damage.

So Bearcat can’t influence a RB match in the way as other fighters can.
And using it correctly requires a lot of skill.

@PercussionCap

Range. But again, with mouse aim we can stretch the effective range of 20-37mm cannons far enough that the 50mm stops mattering.

How exactly would mouse aim play a role for range vs reality?

The 50mm was designed to require on shot to bring down a four engined bomber but in WT a 37mm will damage a bomber in the exact same way.

So it makes no difference whether you try to open fire from long range with a NS-37 or a MK 214A.

It’s written black on white that it requires 20 20mm Mineshell hits to bring down a bomber like the B-17, but just 4-5 with 30mm Mineshells.

That isn’t the case in the game.

Mouse aim affects all guns equally and allows you to be more accurate, even from long range.
But it doesn’t make 20mm guns hit like 30mm.

And is completely irrelevant for sim mode anyway.

[FeetPics]

@KillaKiwi

Ok so survive getting hit is going to prove what exactly?

Defensive guns are super inaccurate. They hit all over the place and Jets are, for whatever reason, are more damage resistant than props against explosive rounds.
Should become pretty apparent playing both props and Jets.

It is a single turret firing at 6000 rounds per minute. It is not inaccurate at all.

@KillaKiwi

ShVAKs hit like laser beams but one match I fought a Strikemaster and hit him several times before finally managing to break his wing.

That was much more difficult than firing a 4-6 round burst and then see WW2 props fall out of the sky from a wing or tail getting shot off.

There is no indication that the Strikemaster would be especially resilient to cannon damage in a way that later props are not. Early jets will experience similar component damage to props. This is just your own bias at work.

This is just the normal amount of damage variation at work. I have survived hits from ShVAK in WW2 props and been able to win fights just fine. I have also had the experience of being “1 shot” where it seems like a single shot removes a wing. This has always been the case with the game; even when ShVAKs and Hispanos were “bad” they would occasionally 1 shot a plane.

@KillaKiwi

Single instances of guns not doing what expected, either because of misinterpretation, desync or some bug, aren’t going to matter in the grand scheme, where they do exactly what you expect 90% of the time.

The instances do matter when you are insisting something happens 100% of the time when it in-fact doesn’t happen 100% of the time. These instances also matter when the “solution” that you are advocating for is essentially a return-in-force to an old damage system that caused many guns in the game to effectively do no noticeable damage at all and under a much wider variety of circumstances.

You might stop and wonder why most old War Thunder YouTubers did not cover Russian props in all that great of depth. It was because comparatively the guns were impossible to use for most patches.

@KillaKiwi

But P-47 and IL-2s also were much harder to kill because planes didn’t had their wings and tails blown off constantly.

This is also nonsense. MG.151 have been the most consistently powerful cannon throughout the entire history of the game.

This is old DEFYN gameplay from 6-7 years ago.

P-51 wing removed in first pass. Single MG.151. Around 1-4 hits.

Spitfire Mk.V both wings removed in first pass. Single MG.151. Exact same story.

P-38. One hit to engine and it is on fire. Another kill in a single pass.

Bf.109. Hit on tail removes half the elevator/horizontal stab. Very similar to 23mm damage on Ta-152C shown earlier.

Next hit removes the tail. It pops off.

One pass on Spitfire. Both wings and the tail removed. Single cannon by the way.

P-51 on fire and looks like wing crit in single burst. Plane is stalling out. But another kill in single attack with single gun.

Pilot snipe. Single cannon. Keep in mind he is damaged from the 20mm from the Spitfire. Look how little it mattered. In this instance he basically pitched up and stalled in front of it while winning the gamble that cannons wouldn’t damage him.

Spitfire with both wings removed in single pass. Again no gun pods.

Yak-9 with wing removed. This one took more hits than the others by about +1-2 cannon shells but also shots started on wing tip.

F4U with wing removed as soon as MG.151 connects.

[KillaKiwi]

@FeetPics

It is a single turret firing at 6000 rounds per minute. It is not inaccurate at all.

What does RoF have to do with accuracy?

The gun is so inaccurate that at 800m out of 100 perfectly aimed shots 98 are going to miss, as they are flying all over the place.

[FeetPics]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[KillaKiwi]

Because that’s what an accurate gun looks like?

It’s a cloud of shells.

@KillaKiwi

The gun is so inaccurate that at 800m out of 100 perfectly aimed shots 98 are going to miss, as they are flying all over the place.

Ok it was exaggerated but just because you have a high RoF that doesn’t mean you’re going to hit a maneuvering Jet every time with dozens of shells.

Btw, you realize that the B-52s default belt is 2/3 AP shells?

So literally zero relevance when discussing how HE shells can blow planes to pieces in 1-2 hits.
Since you don’t know what actually hit your plane.

Also videos say more than just images so how about this:

37mm vs. the largest bombers

https://youtu.be/Xq7gqhVGk9Y
https://youtu.be/iCxxIQb_ejM

23mm vs. Fw 190 A8

https://youtu.be/4cWRJw7mHN4

51 23mm rounds fired, 8 Fw 190 destroyed. Cause:

• 4x wing shot off (one double wing)
• 3x tails shot off
• 1 pilot snipe/fuel fire

That’s 15% hit rate and 6.4 shots fired to one shot a plane. Of course it can also happen that it requires several hits, because a round hit the fuselage or a tail control.
But 23mm HE has no business dealing this amount of structural damage.

Btw, 7 years ago cannons still had fragmenation spheres, so while they didn’t rip plates apart like today, they would pilot snipe a lot more in comparison.

I still remember when Italian and Japanese 12.7mm HEF bullets would constantly pilot snipe due to the insane fragmentation range. Which made them just as effective as 20mm cannons for killing single engined fighters.

Of course this only really affected fighters, while bombers were naturally a lot tougher, which isn’t the case anymore, but the fragmentation spheres also made fuel fires much more cmmon.
Which is still the case with the MG 151/15, which doesn’t have realShatter implemented and still produces large fragmentation spheres.

Non realShatter ShVAKs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ytuM0xKCo

90% of his kills are pilot snipes, at high deflection shots.

There’s also this masterpiece from 2018, patch 1.41:

- YouTube

B-17 getting completely clobbered with 20mm MG 151/20 shells and it’s not falling appart other than getting set on fire.

[PercussionCap]

@KillaKiwi

Ok so survive getting hit is going to prove what exactly?

That you can get hit by the evil oneshotting cannons and live, easily? With 6000rpm firerate it is arguably advantageous to have a little spread as you don’t need to be perfectly accurate and have the volume of fire to more than make up for it.

@KillaKiwi

where they do exactly what you expect 90% of the time.

This is good, actually.

@KillaKiwi

Should that happen? No.
In fact no bomber should get blown to pieces by puny 20mm shells.

You should tell that to all the bomber crews IRL that were shot down by 20mm shells.

@KillaKiwi

The Bearcat doesn’t turn all that well but loses a lot of speed doing so.

It’s got speed but it’s difficult to use as an advantage other than running away.

So other planes in the BR range can be a lot more active and aggressive.

It’s only difficult because USA teams have no presence, and this applies to the entire tree making almost every plane very unenjoyable to play. I had a great time in the chinese P-38L, but the american one felt horrible.

@KillaKiwi

Meanwhile the Bearcat dishes out far less damage, can’t pull as much and when you bleed your speed you’re quite vulnerable.

So you can’t trade energy for massive damage.

So Bearcat can’t influence a RB match in the way as other fighters can.

4x .50s is below average but by no means unusable, it works great with P-51C. Put a .50cal bearcat in a minor nation and its stats will skyrocket.

@KillaKiwi

How exactly would mouse aim play a role for range vs reality?

The 50mm was designed to require on shot to bring down a four engined bomber but in WT a 37mm will damage a bomber in the exact same way.

And you can find 37mms on planes people actually use instead of one mediocre attacker and one overweight jet. Even if the 37 took TWO hits to bring a bomber down that would be inconsequential.

@KillaKiwi

It’s written black on white that it requires 20 20mm Mineshell hits to bring down a bomber like the B-17, but just 4-5 with 30mm Mineshells.

That isn’t the case in the game.

The case in-game is that it is far easier to hit 20x 20mm than 5x MK108. Even in simulator you benefit more from more trigger time and not being borderline unusable against a maneuvering fighter.

@KillaKiwi

Btw, you realize that the B-52s default belt is 2/3 AP shells?

Wasn’t this what you guys were saying would be optimal? After all, AP should punch through my plane length-wise and hit everything worth hitting, like the pilot and engine. And this plane has very little armor, at most a bulletproof windshield and seat armor.

@KillaKiwi

B-17 getting completely clobbered with 20mm MG 151/20 shells and it’s not falling appart other than getting set on fire.

That sure doesn’t look like 20 hits for a kill to me.

[FeetPics]

@KillaKiwi

Because that’s what an accurate gun looks like?

Yes. Do you think machine guns in real life completely lack dispersion? Do you think they just fire a steady stream of bullets with 0 deviation?

https://youtube.com/shorts/CFQPAjwFaGk?si=iLGMZChvX4_vymsg

It seems to work fine to me. But apparently realism is when machine guns have the accuracy of Olympic target rifles?

@KillaKiwi

Btw, 7 years ago cannons still had fragmenation spheres, so while they didn’t rip plates apart like today, they would pilot snipe a lot more in comparison.

7 years ago damage worked far differently. Heck even in the game that predates War Thunder that Gaijin made, ShVAK at one point was quite good. There is also a point in the games history where ShVAK did basically nothing depending on RNG / whether or not the server decided to track the fragments.

@KillaKiwi

Of course this only really affected fighters, while bombers were naturally a lot tougher, which isn’t the case anymore, but the fragmentation spheres also made fuel fires much more cmmon.
Which is still the case with the MG 151/15, which doesn’t have realShatter implemented and still produces large fragmentation spheres

Bombers have never been tough in regards to MG.151 or even other 20mm.

@KillaKiwi

90% of his kills are pilot snipes, at high deflection shots.

Yeah so back then one class of planes you had to run default belts and hope for pilot snipes while MG.151 had to vaguely get somewhere on the plane and remove both wings. I wonder why all of the old content creators featured far more US + GER aircraft back in the day.

@KillaKiwi

B-17 getting completely clobbered with 20mm MG 151/20 shells and it’s not falling appart other than getting set on fire.

There are also clips back in the day where B-17 would have tail removed by single MG.151.

[KillaKiwi]

@PercussionCap

You should tell that to all the bomber crews IRL that were shot down by 20mm shells.

It’s no longer about whats wrong or right, it’s simply taking anything I say and turn it into an argument against me.

Did I say that 20mm cannons shouldn’t be able to kill a bomber or did I say that 20mm cannons shouldn’t disintegrate bombers, ergo rip their wings and tails off, which is like the whole discussion of this topic?

@PercussionCap

4x .50s is below average but by no means unusable, it works great with P-51C. Put a .50cal bearcat in a minor nation and its stats will skyrocket.

4.0 is where the fist Bf 109 gets a MG 151/20 and Spitfires get Hispanos.

You won’t see a lot of 20mm cannons until 4.0.

Germany gets low velocity MG FF/Ms, Fench planes are limited to 60 rounds and only Soviet planes get their ShVAKs as low as 2.0.

So four .50 cals is decent for 3.7 but severely lacking for 4.7 where nearly every plane has 1 or more 20mm cannon and blows a plane up in a single pass.

@PercussionCap

And you can find 37mms on planes people actually use instead of one mediocre attacker and one overweight jet. Even if the 37 took TWO hits to bring a bomber down that would be inconsequential.

No clue what you’re trying to say.

@PercussionCap

The case in-game is that it is far easier to hit 20x 20mm than 5x MK108. Even in simulator you benefit more from more trigger time and not being borderline unusable against a maneuvering fighter.

Not true and it’s also about the damage and not which gun is easier to hit with.
If you fire 65 rounds of 20mm Mineshells or 30mm Mk 108 shells, you won’t get 4 times as many hits with the MG 151/20. At best it increases your chance to hit inside a specific range window.

You see the topic is called „cannons deal too much damage“ and it’s certainly doesn’t take 20 20mm Mineshells to down a bomber when 2-3 hits break a wing appart. A 30mm just needs one.

So neither case is true for War Thunder and cannons deal in fact too much damage. Surprise!!

@PercussionCap

Wasn’t this what you guys were saying would be optimal?

Wasn’t me.

@PercussionCap

That sure doesn’t look like 20 hits for a kill to me.

True but it’s more about not falling apart from 20mm shells.

Again, the issue is not that 20mm shouldn’t kill planes it’s about that 20mm shouldn’t act like Mineshells that disassemble planes structure like every shot being 50g TNT into the target.

Hit fuel tanks, with the right ammo at the right angle and the bomber is on fire and will go down.

But don’t expect that a 20mm on full auto is going to slice a bomber apart like some laser beam.

Two ShVAKS, maybe even one, kills a bomber much easier than a single MK 108 when the damage inflicted should literally be light years apart.

@FeetPics

Yes. Do you think machine guns in real life completely lack dispersion? Do you think they just fire a steady stream of bullets with 0 deviation?

https://youtube.com/shorts/CFQPAjwFaGk?si=iLGMZChvX4_vymsg

It seems to work fine to me. But apparently realism is when machine guns have the accuracy of Olympic target rifles?

Said it before, don’t turn this into some contest for disproving my arguments when I never said anything like that.

So let’s just drop the discussion about a B-52Hs Vulcan because it’s not relevant to the discussion anyway.

@FeetPics

7 years ago damage worked far differently. Heck even in the game that predates War Thunder that Gaijin made, ShVAK at one point was quite good. There is also a point in the games history where ShVAK did basically nothing depending on RNG / whether or not the server decided to track the fragments.

Ok?? And?

@FeetPics

Bombers have never been tough in regards to MG.151 or even other 20mm.

Oh really? Because I remember that bombers wouldn’t fall appart the moment a fighter looked at them.

They would go down with a number of good hits but they most certainly weren’t one shot killed by 37mm shells.

You could bring multiple 30mm Mineshells into a B-17 without it falling out of the sky but instead burning up or starting to corkscrew into the ground from the structural damage.

Now all you need is one hit and it’s an instant kill.

@FeetPics

There are also clips back in the day where B-17 would have tail removed by single MG.151.

Maybe. But it’s a fact that bomber were much more survivable.

Now 20mm cannons is all you need.

All sorts of larger cannons or even air to air rockets are completely redundant.

Schräge Musik was never effective in WT, even though according to Military Aviation History, iirc, both types of attack were equally effective and up to pilot preference.

Normal MG 151/20 were loaded with a 1:1:1 ratio of HEI, IT and API.
Schräge Musik with just Mineshells. Wonder why?

Well, hitting wings from below, right below the fuel tanks is why you just need Mineshells while an attack from behind is much more effective with shells that can actually go through the wing.

But when 20mm shells hit like 30mm Mineshells you can shoot down any bomber with ease.

[FeetPics]

@PercussionCap

That you can get hit by the evil oneshotting cannons and live, easily? With 6000rpm firerate it is arguably advantageous to have a little spread as you don’t need to be perfectly accurate and have the volume of fire to more than make up for it.

Your making the core mistake of thinking that guns should do damage to things when you shoot them. There is actually no fun camera footage of the FW-190 being shot down because you never see it crash. Ergo it should be immune to bullets.

Obviously the game was much better when the primary defensive tactic was to fly back and forth through someone’s guns and rely on good damage roll and tanky damage model.

[dannaryan-psn]

@PercussionCap

Good! Again, why should we encourage standing in front of someone shooting at you from within 1km? Especially a plane which last I checked has three cannons?

It isn’t encouraged, the chap in the video clearly took damage that I’m sure he wished he didn’t. The issue is (and lots of modern games suffer with this) War Thunder players seem to want instant gratification over historical accuracy or balance. If we just want arcade point and click adventures then why not remove the detailed ballistics etc and just have health bars or make every round 3 hit kill everything? We’re almost there now… after all if I get behind you I should shoot you down and get my dopamine hit.

A quick edit, the 190’s were known for their toughness. Isn’t it nice to see a tougher aircraft actually survive something without falling apart? Russian pilots complained that the Shvak wasn’t enough to shoot down 190F’s at times… having that level of damage is more accurate, not less.

@FeetPics

I think if you look at the thread you’ll see there is a strong correlation amongst what people choose to fly and what they think about damage. Most of the damage nerf advocates are people that predominantly play German aircraft and very little of anything else

Not at all. I play for Britain, Russia, Italy and Germany and across the board they’re overperforming. But the Shvak is by far the worst considering how weak the round should be. The same with the Breda’s, I’ve shown videos now demonstrating what they’re doing. It’s more than silly now.

@FeetPics

Note how the tail is removed from 1-3 hits of MG.151. This is on a video that is 7-8 years old at this point.

The MG-151 had it’s stupid moments back then and it has always been a finicky round due people reading the explosive filler and then not understanding how it’s supposed to work. Back then one cannon could be borked. Today everything is. In that video I shared from years back you can see the hits and the bomber is still in the air, compared to today as mentioned that bomber was dead in my first pass. Tail gone.

In the other video I shared you have to ask why take a 30mm when a piddly Shvak round can dissect a bomber in as little as four rounds? I’ve ripped bomber wings off with 8x .303’s in a single pass. I wouldn’t mind starting fires etc or destroying control cables but that’s just completely silly. I don’t know what the RAF were complaining about.

Plus especially in SB imagine you’re the bomber pilot that has climbed sometimes for as long as 10 minutes to get instantly shredded in less than a second by even a poorly placed burst by someone like me. Heck one of the draws of flying something like a heavy fighter is that you should have a bit of toughness about you. Can you honestly tell me you’ve felt a difference in the time it takes to be shot down between a heavy and a normal fighter? Because I seem to die/kill them in the blink of an eye.

Tail cut loose.