I’m generally talking about real life.
Here’s your nuke bullet in action:
He fired 22 bullets from ~800m, which broke my wing in an instant. I was questioning whether it was a Ki-43 III with Ho-5 but then I remembered “No, I’m 2.7, so it can only be a Ki-43 two 12.7mm”.
That was a 0.73s burst.
I mean I also shot off the tail from a P-47 with the Yak-3 form 1km before, using the just 12.7mm.
0.5s burst and the enemy is dead. Makes no sense to even have API bullets.
I’ve got another clip of my might C.202 with 2x Breda’s vs an La-7 in SB. One small burst and his wing vanished.
In the video clip I provided earlier you can see a Stuka, an aircraft that was built fairly tough… go down in literally two Hispano rounds. The wing folded instantly.
Idk, is it unfair that a P-47 is supposed to not explode the moment it gets shot by a Bf 109 F-4, with a single 20mm?
It is so unfair that American plane with 50cals can be extremely risky even to have a head-on with the A6M, currently the A6M can racklessly abusing its no-limit super G ability to force a head-on from any angle, and you don’t want to take the risk to be deleted by a single shot of Type 99-2.
“GAME” should never be an excuse for pursuing magical effect in the game, as we are playing War Thunder, not Ace Combat or something else, reality and historical accuracy is a big part of the game. With the legacy gun damage model the game went extremely well few years ago so why don’t people aggre to have the gun damage fixed.
That’s the same as when you boom and zoom at a plane; it dodges and gets within range of you at a lower speed, but since you’re still around 500 to 800 meters away, it fires at you with its super-accurate weapons and kills you at those distances. Something that in reality was completely impossible, since at 500 meters it would already be a pointless waste of ammunition, and at 800 meters you probably wouldn’t even hit a fighter.
Sure, aircraft guns in War Thunder tend to be much more accurate than they were in real life, with far less dispersion. When that is combined with generally inflated gun damage, I think it becomes both a balance issue and a historical-accuracy issue.
A better approach I was thinking about years ago would be to introduce some kind of dynamic random-seed system, or more precisely, a dynamic terminal-effect probability model. My impression is that WT still follows the old IL-2 logic in some ways: whenever a round hits, the game generates a random value, and that value helps determine whether the round does “the magic” — pilot snipe, fire, structural failure, fuel tank detonation, control damage, and so on. The current RealShatter system also seems to rely on randomization for fragment generation and damage distribution.
The key point is that this randomization should not be completely static. It could be linked to the tactical situation, and to some extent it could work as a comeback mechanic for the disadvantaged player.
For example, if one player is already in a strong energy and positional advantage, such as boom-and-zooming from above, the random seed that controls the chance of catastrophic damage could be slightly less favorable. This would not mean that BnZ attacks become weak. A high-speed attack against a slower target still has its own physical advantages: higher relative impact velocity, greater effective projectile energy, better penetration potential, and often a cleaner firing geometry. However, the game would no longer make those attacks produce overly reliable instant kills every time a few rounds connect.
In contrast, if the disadvantaged player manages to force a close scissors, perform a defensive reversal, bait an overshoot, or land hits on a disengaging target, the terminal-effect probability could become more favorable. In those situations, the player has already earned a rare firing window from a weaker tactical position. Increasing the chance of a serious damage event would make reversals and counter-kills more dramatic, without simply giving free kills to the weaker player.
So I would not describe this as pure RNG manipulation. A better way to frame it is a context-sensitive damage-probability model. It would consider range, closure rate, deflection angle, burst duration, hit density, target maneuver state, impact angle, hit location, and the relative tactical situation. The goal is not to punish energy fighting, but to prevent positional advantage plus overly accurate guns from becoming too deterministic. Strong energy tactics would remain strong, but defensive reversals and desperate counter-shots would have a better chance to create memorable, cinematic outcomes.
What you’re saying reminds me of what’s happening in the GFs. As a general rule, if you ambush an enemy from their side, you have a huge advantage, but thanks to RNG, a situation with an overwhelming advantage can end with you losing your tank because your shot didn’t do what it was supposed to, and the enemy was able to turn the turret and kill you with the first shot.
Getting back to the topic, I remember when I started using the Fw190D13, facing planes like Spitfires, Yaks, and F8Fs, and I remember it was quite frustrating because I would either do dives at extreme speed, locking my rudders, or the enemy would have time to evade the dive, turn, and kill me at around 600 or 700 meters before I could get away in time.
You can also add that aircraft with instructor mode are A LOT more stable and with far easier to aim noses
I mean, we’re at the point where Ta-152H armed with 3 Berezins with pure IAI belt and 250 RPG would be superior to the current iteration of the same plane in every way possible, because MG nuke bullets are just SO DAMN GOOD.
I mean, 2 Berezins with pure HE belt would also outperform Shvak by quite a margin. The only thing holding those back is 50/50 belt composition.
Sad but true
Everyone will get worse. Japan and Russia will just get much greater amounts of worse while Germany will be the only one with relatively good cannons.
Okay let’s have historical accuracy. I get to fly Me.163 against P-51D-5. How long do you think that would last? You think players will stick around for that?
This isn’t about historical mm.
This is about making explosive fillers an actual factor in WT
The Hispano will also be very effective along with many other cannons and machine guns. Realistic damage doesn’t mean we want aircraft to fire mints at each other, it means we want them to behave realistically. Shvak’s although weak can still bring aircraft down with a sustained burst as it was back in the old days of War Thunder.
This is a completely different topic. But we actually used to have historical battles in Sim and we’ve been crying out for them to come back for years. We had an event where one team were flying Mustangs and had to protect a bomber stream from other players in Me-262’s and it was actually seriously good fun.
Then you had historical EC’s which were also great fun.
Not to mention that the implementation of the Me 163 isn’t realistic to begin with, being able to change the thrust of the rockets precisely.
With a realistic implementation the best case scenario would be giving it AI bomber formations to attack, same with most German WW2 Jets actually.
I have already shown multiple times that the way that the game handles damage means that most damage short of the wing or control surfaces being removed results in a plane that is plenty fightable and in most cases can easily RTB.
I have played the game since before it came out. The only people who really enjoyed damage system with high amounts of variability and high disparity were people that chose to never play aircraft that were not overwhelmingly good in that regard. Hence all of the nostalgia in the thread for a time when “MG151s actually mattered”; i.e when you could even fly through the guns of an F4U-4B and expect to come out the other side with minor damage.
Nobody that will actually play the game has been crying out for them. In fact Gaijin made a whole entire game that leans into aircraft and a more historical battles premise. They then promoted the hell out of it on YouTube and gave a bunch of WT CCs a stick and throttle setup. Heck they even got Gregs Airplanes And Automobiles to advertise it as well.
Look how successful that is. It’s dead. Died the second it came out.
This is the first look someone sees of Aces Of Thunder
Then sees the reviews:
Common complains include: No crossplay, just reskinned air arcade, skewed FMs, UI issues, even one floating around about how some planes are after a pay-wall.
Mostly just problems with the barrrier for entry (cost money and deathspins)
Also think what did AOT market towards US, WT players,
“WOW LOOK, 3 PLANES FROM WW1”, no news ever since, until one launch trailer.
Just marketed like s###.
For a 1000 times, Its not about “can RTB”, it is," can it actually fight back reliably now?"
The F6F can fly without both wing tips and thus can RTB, but can it, y’know, DEFEND itself.
Just chase the damn beaten up plane
Wings removal + control surface removal is exactly the kind of damage that prevents it from fighting back normally.
Reducing gun damage to the point where it only does moderate effects on top speed means that the plane will tank far more damage and require much much higher threshold to render it combat ineffective in the game.
This would be enormously beneficial for my play style with planes like Re.2005 that have tons of guns and don’t rely on top speed to be effective in the game.
Basically I can fly into furball and just focus on killing things and not have to worry about guns like ShVAK because I can probably just absorb the damage, out turn the attacking plane, and kill them as they fly away. Or just kill them in full commit head on where they have to hit my pilot.
Gaijin had basically every major Air RB content creator make an Aces of Thunder video shortly after it dropped.
Also they even had channels like Greg’s Airplanes hyping the game up when it was in alpha testing. And praising the AI and the flight models.
The game is just old Air SB matchmaking repackaged with a new VR interface. People in sim thought it was going to kill the game mode because AOT would be more popular. It turns out that the whole premise of AOT was crap and there isn’t actually a market for it at all.
Like all of the guys that promoted it basically cashed the check and then went back to playing WT or playing other flight sims.
Because it sucked.
It’s literally WT but in VR with hardly any VR worthy features and the same crappy damage system we have in WT.
Literally no point to play it when you can play WT Sim and get 100 times more vehicles for free.
It’s simply no competition for Sim WW2 flight games on PC.
No it’ll result in damage that results in a crash… or you could… you know… give it another burst? Tougher aircraft if they aren’t shot down in one pass with weak cannons like Shvak’s will still be crippled and unable to fight back. But they still have a chance to make it home as they should. Finally less popular aircraft that sacrifice some performance for survivability might actually be worth something now.
As have I.
Utter nonsense.
If that’s the case then why were people screaming about Russian bias when the game first came out? Why was the Yak-3 the boogeyman aircraft that it still is today for some? I’m willing to bet a quick Google search will show posts from years ago about the Yak-3 being OP.
Here’s one for you from 2016 when the guns were “weak”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/4d852p/can_we_talk_about_the_yak3/
More nonsense.
AOT is an absolute abortion of a game that lacks the simulator aspects of WT. The reason no one is playing it is because it serves no purpose.
…Wing damage…elevator damage…control cables destroyed…engine damage…radiator leaks…
If you fly carelessly in your Re-2005 you’re dead just like you would be today. But wouldn’t it be nice if your historically fairly tough Italian aircraft could actually take a little battle damage without being dissected instantly? You’re still far from invincible and a burst from Shvak’s would still stop you being able to turn fight properly but there’s at least a realistic chance to limp home or at least somewhat evade your attacker until help arrives.
No you’d die… I don’t know why you keep thinking you’d be invincible. None of us are asking for that and we’ve never had it like that.
No we didn’t you can literally find the thread where almost no one was excited for it once we discovered that it was RB in cockpit view. Again, nonsense.
It’s almost like 20mm shells aren’t wonder weapons. A single rifle caliber round could take out a fighter or you could have 200 hits without getting a kill.
It’s the same with 20mm shells.
You can load 20mm AP and have hits that deal practically no damage or have a single hit that takes out the pilot or engine from behind.
You can load 20mm HE an have many hits that aren’t going to be lethal, some that put the plane on a timer and a few that will instantly set it on fire or take out the pilot.