Cannons doing too much damge

[PercussionCap]

@KillaKiwi

But they are only competetive because US planes also have two or three times as many .50cals as on their planes.

P-51C is perfectly effective with just four.

@KillaKiwi

If you want to hit the pilot with AP, you’re also going to hit the tail with HE, at which point it doesn’t matter, if you kill the pilot or instead break the tail.

And in my experience (with far more games in these aircraft than you), firing HE at the tail is a great way to waste all your ammo, when you could instead kill their pilot or engine and move on.

Just yesterday I was firing from behind at a Spitfire Mk9, which was flying while missing an entire wing! :

Barely missed his pilot, but hit his engine and took it out before a friendly behind me destroyed his other wing. It took this much effort (and at least one of us sacrificing ALL their altitude) to kill a target that had ALREADY lost an entire wing.

Why is he flyable? Why isn’t he flatspinning? Why should I want lower gun damage, when clearly missing entire wings still leaves you perfectly capable of returning to base and being a threat again in… two or three minutes?

@KillaKiwi

Of course you get A LOT OF pilot kills when you use ammo that is mostly going to damage a pilot instea of break the structure.

It’s half HE, half AP. According to you their tail should be falling off every time before the pilot or engine dies, but this is not the case.

@KillaKiwi

Edit: I pulled the trigger once with a Ki-61 firing just 12 bullets (air tragets) and took off the wing from a Firefly. Only had 40 rounds, so I wanted to make them count.

Good, otherwise the Ki-61s would be way too low in BR. This plane does not belong down at 2.3 or 2.7. It must always be much higher.

@KillaKiwi

What should have happened is the fuel tank catching fire after striking it with the HEFI bullets, not the wing getting shot off from bunch of fist sized holes.

What difference does it make, other than this P-51 flying around for a while with a burning wing? He only has those two fuel tanks, so they’re guaranteed to have a good amount of fuel in them. The fire won’t go out before the wing is completely damaged, and it will likely spread to the other tank.

[FeetPics]

@Loofah

Hey, but at least thanks to plywood bug 2.0 Soviet props still eat shells like crazy and no one seems to complain.

They seem pretty killable to me. Especially with Mickey mouse aim mode.

[Loofah]

@PercussionCap

Why is he flyable? Why isn’t he flatspinning? Why should I want lower gun damage, when clearly missing entire wings still leaves you perfectly capable of returning to base and being a threat again in… two or three minutes?

I hope you do realise we want general damage overhaul, which should include reviewing damage impact on flight model.

But currently everything is wrong. I remember chasing Yak-3U with 1 and a half wings missing. He was hauling ass and managed to rtb and land. In another case I barely caught the guy while flying Do-335 B2 myself because damage to wings has little effect on Yak-3U speed. Of course it’s wrong!
But it doesn’t make nuke-firing MGs and cannons right.

[KillaKiwi]

@PercussionCap

And in my experience (with far more games in these aircraft than you), firing HE at the tail is a great way to waste all your ammo, when you could instead kill their pilot or engine and move on.

You’re not going to “insta kill” a pilot with that kind of damage:

@KillaKiwi

shot 2026.06.03 07.36.361920×1080 413 KB

@PercussionCap

Good, otherwise the Ki-61s would be way too low in BR. This plane does not belong down at 2.3 or 2.7. It must always be much higher.

It’s just a heavier Bf 109 E-4 with larger wings and a bit better top speed. It used to be 3.3 or 3.0.

There are a lot of US planes that are basically untouchable by same BR planes.

@PercussionCap

What difference does it make, other than this P-51 flying around for a while with a burning wing? He only has those two fuel tanks, so they’re guaranteed to have a good amount of fuel in them. The fire won’t go out before the wing is completely damaged, and it will likely spread to the other tank.

The difference is that one plane has fuel tanks in the wings and another doesn’t.

That doesn’t mean that 12.7mm HEFI should blow both planes wings off, just because the one with wing tanks would potentially die to a fire.

@FeetPics

They seem pretty killable to me. Especially with Mickey mouse aim mode.

They are not unkillable. They just have an unfair advantage. And the damage system is non sense anyway.
You can have 20mm HE round explode on a IL-2s armored fuselage and the damage is still big enough to reduce the wings hit points by more than 50%. So you can break a wing without even needing to hit wing directly, since blast damage has become irrelevant.

[PercussionCap]

@Loofah

we want general damage overhaul, which should include reviewing damage impact on flight model.

@Loofah

But it doesn’t make nuke-firing MGs and cannons right.

Why would they redo like 90% of FMs when they can just increase gun damage to the point that staying undamaged enough to fly back on one wing is very rare?

@KillaKiwi

You’re not going to “insta kill” a pilot with that kind of damage:

It’s certainly not instakilling the tail either.

@KillaKiwi

It’s just a heavier Bf 109 E-4 with larger wings and a bit better top speed

I love the 109 E-4, but it has NOTHING on the Ki-61 in terms of handling. It’s a huge difference and readily apparent when flying the two.

@KillaKiwi

There are a lot of US planes that are basically untouchable by same BR planes.

Unlike the Ki-61, US planes trade climb rate and maneuverability for top speed. The Ki-61 does not, only climb rate is slightly affected vs a 109 E-4. Its other attributes are equal or superior, and it only loses out on top speed against F models - those overheat badly and unlike Ki-61 cannot easily counter it with 90% prop pitch and effective radiators.

So you’d have a plane that can outspeed, outturn, and in many cases outclimb its enemies all at once… with the simple downside of having to aim a little harder. No thanks, I’d rather it move up to 3.7 instead of ruining my favorite BR with another OP plane, even if it is in a nation I main.

@KillaKiwi

They just have an unfair advantage.

I have never had a japanese 20mm HE shell fail to do significant damage to a soviet plane in recent matches. Protection analysis seems to disagree for the Type 99-2’s but only when set to too short a range and/or aiming at the thinner wing sections with high angle of impact. Otherwise they work as expected.

[KillaKiwi]

@PercussionCap

It’s certainly not instakilling the tail either.

Still doesn’t change the fact that it’s much easier to damage a planes structure that is much larger than the single pilot thats inside it.

Which makes AP pointless when 50% of the time it won’t actually deal damage.

@PercussionCap

I love the 109 E-4, but it has NOTHING on the Ki-61 in terms of handling. It’s a huge difference and readily apparent when flying the two.

It turns better but the E-4 climbs better.

The Ki-61 outturns pretty much any non Japanese plane but the E-4 doesn’t turn half bad either.

@PercussionCap

I have never had a japanese 20mm HE shell fail to do significant damage to a soviet plane in recent matches. Protection analysis seems to disagree for the Type 99-2’s but only when set to too short a range and/or aiming at the thinner wing sections with high angle of impact. Otherwise they work as expected.

There’s an entire topic on this issue, if you’re interested

[Loofah]

@PercussionCap

Why would they redo like 90% of FMs when they can just increase gun damage to the point that staying undamaged enough to fly back on one wing is very rare?

Because I don’t want to get instant-nuked from 1200m away by a single shell and I want higher calibers to actually have an advantage. I want planes to have different levels of survivability based off armor and construction/materials. I want weapons/ammo types to have different strengths and weaknesses. Right now everything’s paper, there’s barely any difference between Me-410 and Yak-1, both get hit with 2-3 shells and they are usually GONE, but Me-410 is way easier to hit, and HE is superior to everything while incendiary is super crap.
If incendiary was as hilariously broken as HE, fuel tanks should be set on fire each time an incendiary hits within 1m from the tank.
But hell no, this can’t be, but 1-2 Type 99 Mk2 HEF shells breaking P-47 wing? No issue!

Also I want more realistic damage models instead of pure fantasy, which is what pew-pew shooter guys are forcing upon us in this topic.
WT was supposed to not be yet another pew-pew shooter, but we’re already in the magic plasma blasters and cardboard planes territory.
What I find absolutely hilarious is Gaijin “fixed” ballistics to make guns more realistic, but somehow deliberately made damage as unrealistic as possible. Why the hell?

[RunaDacino]

@iegaatdao

(that also intervenes in simulator just in case just to a lesser extend)

Unless simplified mousejoy or some other thing, I’ve not ran into any instructor behaviour in Warthunder. If anything, planes in Warthunder are far twitchier and harder to control than their equivalent brethen in Il-2:Great Battles (I cannot speak for DCS as I cannot run it, but I’d love to compare my 109 and P-47s thru it as well.)

In fact, I personally find myself able to confidently dogfight in a low altitude furball with Il2 Spitfire Mk IXs on combat box while in Warthunder spitfires still terrify me.

On note of Il2:GB -

Cannons ought do more pilot damage.

Once in Il2 I was flying my Mustang D. My canopy gets hit by a gustav’s cannons and my pilot blacks out from the shockwave. I almost crash and die before recovering my conciousness the last second and pull out to bail from my damaged aircraft. It led to one hell of a cinematic moment (literally waking up with trees filling my front canopy!)

And generally degrading pilot performance from injuries. A yellow or even orange pilot seems to fly just a swell as a healthy one.

[iegaatdao]

True

If cannon damage recieves a rework then pilots must be made a lot more fragile/sensitive to damage.

Currently they can survive 20mm AP rounds if they are behind an armor plate and the cannon manages to penetrate and barely be affected.

Also would make fragmentation rounds more likely to kill pilots, which currently due to how cannons are modeled the’ve all been turned into very concentrated High explosive, funnily enough, mg151/20’s FI-T round still behaves like a fragmentation round.

[poopooo]

I have a question. I haven’t played ARB in a while, but I’ve been watching GRB lately. Is it possible that fires on planes are much less significant than they used to be? I remember that a fire used to be almost a death sentence, since it rarely went out, and if it did, it had caused so much damage that you could barely fly. Now I see that fires go out quickly and, on top of that, they hardly cause any damage.

[Loofah]

They have changed a few things to fires a few years ago. But generally I find them pretty deadly if started by 12.7mm+ weapons. I have some planes that do survive those, but I die like 9 out of 10.

[Gnza10091441]

If we base this on the high prevalence of armor for the pilot, then it should definitely be considered one of the most vulnerable aspects of an airplane.

But if we want to reflect this properly, then the crew damage model should be segmented. It doesn’t make sense that a shot to the foot would have the same instant lethality as one to the head. Otherwise, why have a head plate at all, right?

[Loofah]

Meanwhile 30mm incendiary to the face: “It’s just a flesh wound”.

[KillaKiwi]

@RunaDacino

And generally degrading pilot performance from injuries. A yellow or even orange pilot seems to fly just a swell as a healthy one.

Yeah that makes fragmentation very inconsistent.

Before realShatter Italian and Japanese 12.7mm would constantly pilot snipe because they made such big fragmentation clouds.

Now they often won’t even damage pilots when they explode right in their face because the fragmentation amount is so low.

Pilots and fuel tanks are both very poorly modeled.

[KillaKiwi]

@Gnza10091441

If we base this on the high prevalence of armor for the pilot, then it should definitely be considered one of the most vulnerable aspects of an airplane.

But if we want to reflect this properly, then the crew damage model should be segmented. It doesn’t make sense that a shot to the foot would have the same instant lethality as one to the head. Otherwise, why have a head plate at all, right?

One problem is that bullets start to tumble after impact, which isn’t modeled.

10-12mm armor protecting the pilot will generally stop a .50cal AP bullet, while in WT they go through and the deal light damage to the pilot.

Cannon shells can also lose a lot of penetration, or hardly any, depending on the design.

Next is that HE shells and fragments are lacking armor penetration.

When a 37mm explodes, big chunks of the fuze and tracer assembly are going to travel forward, punching through armor plates that would stop LMG or even HMG bullets.

[PercussionCap]

@KillaKiwi

Still doesn’t change the fact that it’s much easier to damage a planes structure that is much larger than the single pilot thats inside it.

Shooting into the direct rear of a P-63A-5. Remember, my belt is still half HE, and a lot of the hits went straight into the tail.

But it was his engine and pilot that were taken out long before the tail or wings fell off (they didn’t at all).

@KillaKiwi

It turns better but the E-4 climbs better.

Does not climb better enough to compensate the huge difference in handling. And E-4’s cannons are pretty poor unless you are very close to the enemy. It may be my favorite plane but it has plenty of weaknesses that make it noticeably worse than the Ki-61.

@KillaKiwi

There’s an entire topic on this issue

I am aware. But every time I’ve shot at one, my shells have done exactly what I expected.

@Loofah

Because I don’t want to get instant-nuked from 1200m away by a single shell

Dodge better.

@Loofah

and I want higher calibers to actually have an advantage

They do have an advantage in damage.

@Loofah

I want weapons/ammo types to have different strengths and weaknesses

They… do? .50cals have the best ballistics, higher gun counts, and very deep magazines. 30mm cannons rarely require more than one hit to bring someone down, and with the exception of the MK108 also usually have better ballistics than other cannons, at the expense of being rare and having small ammo counts. 20mm cannons are a middle point between the two.

Even just loading more AP or more HE makes guns feel substantially different. AP always makes kills from directly behind much faster.

@Loofah

If incendiary was as hilariously broken as HE, fuel tanks should be set on fire each time an incendiary hits within 1m from the tank.

Go play an american plane with APIT belts and come back to us.

@Loofah

Also I want more realistic damage models instead of pure fantasy, which is what pew-pew shooter guys are forcing upon us in this topic.

And what would be “realistic”? Planes losing control from a blacked wing section instead of losing the wing entirely? That’s just the same thing. You do enough damage, they lose control.

@poopooo

Is it possible that fires on planes are much less significant than they used to be?

Fire lethality depends mostly how full/empty the fuel tank was when hit and set on fire, how bad the damage is, and if it is self-sealing or not.

For example, a plane with many non-self sealing tanks, that gets hit in a fuel tank that was almost empty, and it is blacked out immediately, will just burn and leak out all the fuel before lethal damage can be done. Whereas if you set a late 109 on fire with its single, large self sealing tank, surrounded by armor (so it will take less damage), will 99.9% of the time be a guaranteed kill.

The only exception is if you are firing a big enough shell to detonate that fuel tank. This is restricted to 30mm or larger shells. For example DEFAs can do it pretty often.

@KillaKiwi

Now they often won’t even damage pilots when they explode right in their face because the fragmentation amount is so low.

I’ve also never experienced this. Just the other day I shot down a P-51C with a hit directly into the cockpit, and a Hellcat with a wing root hit that took out the pilot (but somehow the instakill HEF didn’t take out his wing, ain’t that funny?).

[poopooo]

@PercussionCap

Fire lethality depends mostly how full/empty the fuel tank was when hit and set on fire, how bad the damage is, and if it is self-sealing or not.

For example, a plane with many non-self sealing tanks, that gets hit in a fuel tank that was almost empty, and it is blacked out immediately, will just burn and leak out all the fuel before lethal damage can be done. Whereas if you set a late 109 on fire with its single, large self sealing tank, surrounded by armor (so it will take less damage), will 99.9% of the time be a guaranteed kill.

The only exception is if you are firing a big enough shell to detonate that fuel tank. This is restricted to 30mm or larger shells. For example DEFAs can do it pretty often.

I haven’t played with planes in a while, but I often use SPAAs for their intended purpose, and I could safely say that 95% of the planes I set on fire survive without problems and return to combat, until I break their wings or tail in the following bursts. On the other hand, I remember that a few years ago (when I played ARB) being set on fire was quite dangerous, since you either lost almost all your fuel almost instantly and the fire went out, or you ended up losing the plane to the flames, and only in very few cases did the fire go out when you shut down the engine and gained speed.

[KillaKiwi]

@PercussionCap

Go play an american plane with APIT belts and come back to us.

They just saw wings and tails off.

I rarely get kills by fire nowadays. Instead a short burst and their plane falls apart.

@PercussionCap

Shooting into the direct rear of a P-63A-5. Remember, my belt is still half HE, and a lot of the hits went straight into the tail.

Wow a plane with an engine mounted behind the pilot has its engine destroyed from shots in the back. Never expected that.

@PercussionCap

And what would be “realistic”? Planes losing control from a blacked wing section instead of losing the wing entirely? That’s just the same thing. You do enough damage, they lose control.

Enough damage is the point.

You think it doesn’t matter whether a wing gets hit by a 20mm shell with 5, 10 or 20g of filler?

You think you lose your tail controls from 2-3 20mm explosive hits?

The main reason a 20mm is going to take down a bombers, is because it sets the fuel tanks on fire.
Not saw off wings or tail with a couple of hits.

Not long ago I shot down two B-17s in a Yak-3 and still had 55 20mm rounds left.

One lost its wing, the other the tail.

65 FI-T shells, thats just 265g of explosives. For two flying fortresses. Thats peanuts compared to 350-380g expected by the Germans. And I probably only hit 20% of that at best.

If that’s all it took, the MK 108 wouldn’t make any sense at all.

You can just load a 20mm HEFI shell with 5g explosive and flying fortress no more.

Better Ballistics, higher RoF. Mineshells made redundant.

Don’t even need to invent 20mm Incendiary shells. Why set fuel tanks on fire when you can just blow the wings off? lol

40mm Ho-301?
Pointless. Two 12.7mm is all you need.

37mm Ho-203? No bro, just give me a 20mm Ho-3 with 100 rounds instead.

[FeetPics]

@KillaKiwi

Don’t even need to invent 20mm Incendiary shells. Why set fuel tanks on fire when you can just blow the wings off? lol

Why invent wings when planes can fly without them?

[iegaatdao]

They can’t fly very well without them

Both in real life and in-game

Spoiler

You already showed that you can’t tell apart a wing tip from a wing root so please leave.