Cannons doing too much damge

[KillaKiwi]

@FeetPics

Effectively this means that everyone that enjoys quick time to kill would have to play MG.151 mobile or similar.

It doesn’t. It means you have to hit, fuel tanks, pilot or engine, which will reliably and quickly result in a kill, instead of turning planes into overly large targets, where all you need is to hit their giant wings in a deflection shot.

Or in other words you just need to have good aim.

A lot of planes also have ammo and fuel in the wings, which gives you a larger area to hit.

Like I said, during realistic realShatter period, it was no problem to kill other fighters with a Yak-3 with two high velocity 12.7mm firing API and a 20mm ShVAK that also fires API and additional fragmentation shells to hit components even not in direct line of fire.

If I didn’t kill the pilot I would set them on fire in a burst.

But I also knew that I would just waste my ammo, if I sprayed at someone during a high deflection shot from 600m, unless my aim was perfect.
Which now isn’t a problem. I’ve killed P-47s from 1km just with 12.7mm explosive bullets cutting their tail.
And I can happily spray at targets from range because I just need to land one round for a kill.

The MG 151/20 Mineshell deals high structural damage but also is ballistically inferior to practically any other fighter armament.

Even the Type 99-2 is going to have an easier time to hit moving targets from 300m or more.

And since a 20mm Mineshell isn’t going to be any better against twin or four engined bombers you are going to be actively worse against them compared to using other ammo types or other cannons.

20mm API and IT shells didn’t exist just for fun and neither did Hispano SAPI.
Which should easily one shot a Bf 109 or Fw 190 from behind.

[Loofah]

- YouTube

- YouTube

I don’t really hit single shells most of the time, currently I mostly play Italy and Germany.

But even if you look a few posts up - Do-335 wing mid goes black EVERy time from Shvak and like 6-7 out of 10 for MG151/20.

@PercussionCap

Found it. 30mm M-geschoss (night fighter’s belt) vs Spitfire.
But hey, 30mm damage is so good and it never happens to you.
Well,.it happens to me.

- YouTube

[Loofah]

@PercussionCap

Buff bomber DMs then.

Laughs in Pe-8, G8N1, Tu-4 and Ju-288C. Also laughs in B-17, because while .50 cals don’t one shot, id you have to slowly clobber to death a bomber with synchronised 3-plane stabilised superhuman gunners, you’re going to get hit a lot. Oh and laughs in P-61C if it also gets buffed. If not, tough shit I guess :(

Essentialy that would simply make German and Italian team outside of Do-335B2 and similar planes, bomber food. US can at least fire from 1000+m away, Soviets would have some issues, but still their planes are smaller, their guns better and plywood bug 2.0 protects better than the Emperor of Mankind.

You can’t just “buff bomber DM” while fighters are absolute paper and have shit ballistics.

In Ta-152H I actively run from G8N1s who oftentimes try to hunt me down. Interceptor my ass.

@PercussionCap

Did not do too well.

Il-2 did just fine, since it’s not “disabled”, so it was expected to be still able to fly fairly well.

So far you have only proven plywood planes do NOT fare well against any kind of explosive shells, while MG151/20 was an absolute menace vs wings and most likely also tail controls and stabilisers.

Would love to see M-geschoss at 400m vs La-7 engine in 2 scenarios: direct hit (perfectly possible due to fuse delay) and cowling impact at 30 degrees to the plane’s longtidual axis and explosion inside the cowling towards the engine 15cm away from it. I just wonder if such explosion would actually damage anything inside or if WW2 engines were shielded from explosives to some extent. I mean, stuff like wiring, spark plugs, push rods should be fairly easy to damage, but who knows.
Maybe one day someone will be able to simulate this.

[PercussionCap]

@KillaKiwi

It has like two times the wing area of a P-39 with less wing loading.

That’s a blacked out wing section right there. Seems like the in-game damage is quite realistic. There’s no huge fragmentation spread.

@Loofah

And regarding Ho-5, why is it worse? Because Gaijin decided to arbitrarily make it worse, as there’s no real consistency to their decision-making.

That’s irrelevant. The fact is that it IS worse, but not so incredibly worse that getting kills becomes a real challenge and you have to RTB after two.

@Loofah

I disagree that playing field is “level”. Quite the opposite, whoever has smaller planes, certain guns and performance, has an advantage.

Which in a scenario like WT, is realistic. Why would you make your plane bigger if you never need so much fuel?

@KillaKiwi

A Spitfire returned with a 20mm Mineshell hit.

@KillaKiwi

So no, I‘m sure that a P-47 won’t have trouble with 0.3m^2 of missing wing area in 5 different places and it probably won’t even feel 0.125.

Do you know how wings work?

@KillaKiwi

Like you need to hit very specific parts of the plane

@KillaKiwi

Five 20mm hits gives you a good chance to cause all sorts of damage, including a lethal fuel fire.
But you won’t rip the wing nor cause any major control issues.

Instead you lose control because there is nowhere near enough wing skin left.In other works, the same as losing a wing.

@poopooo

On the other hand, regarding the planes returning to their airfield, it’s very simple: destroy ground targets and you win the game.

So your suggestion is to give up all your altitude, a lot of your speed, AND expend ammo (which at this point, if you’re been hard carrying, you might not have much of) because some guy is doing the Mozdok 500 around his airfield. Right.

@poopooo

It would also be good if the maps were larger, with the main airfields further apart, so that not everyone would be stuck with only 20 minutes of fuel.

At that point just go play sim. Oh wait, this thread was started BECAUSE of sim!

@KillaKiwi

It doesn’t. It means you have to hit, fuel tanks, pilot or engine, which will reliably and quickly result in a kill, instead of turning planes into overly large targets, where all you need is to hit their giant wings in a deflection shot.

Or in other words you just need to have good aim.

Why would I aim better when I can go play a different plane or nation that actually has working guns?

@Loofah

Found it. 30mm M-geschoss (night fighter’s belt) vs Spitfire.

@KillaKiwi

And Mineshells can overpen due to their fuze delay. Simply exploding on the other side of an airframe.

This is wholly possible though.

@Loofah

Laughs in Pe-8, G8N1, Tu-4 and Ju-288C.

I shot down a Ju288 in a single pass yesterday. G8N is very fragile. So are B-17s. Aim for the wings and it’s much easier.

@Loofah

Essentialy that would simply make German and Italian team outside of Do-335B2 and similar planes, bomber food. US can at least fire from 1000+m away, Soviets would have some issues, but still their planes are smaller, their guns better and plywood bug 2.0 protects better than the Emperor of Mankind.

Attack from the front then.

And/or use one of the 30mm+ cannons that you say are so useless and irrelevant, but would enable you to take them down with just a few hits.

@Loofah

Il-2 did just fine, since it’s not “disabled”, so it was expected to be still able to fly fairly well.

You can fly with a blacked wing section just fine, but the damage is there from a shell with “just” 9g of TNTe (if the in-game one is accurate).

They also didn’t mark this:

As disabling the aircraft though, when it would probably have forced an emergency landing or severely limited how fast you could fly, otherwise the entire thing might be torn off from the hugely increased drag.

@Loofah

So far you have only proven plywood planes do NOT fare well against any kind of explosive shells

I didn’t know this before, but apparently La-7’s wings are partially metal. They didn’t do any better. A Corsair also has wood wing parts so it would be highly vulnerable as well.

@Loofah

Would love to see M-geschoss at 400m vs La-7 engine in 2 scenarios: direct hit (perfectly possible due to fuse delay) and cowling impact at 30 degrees to the plane’s longtidual axis and explosion inside the cowling towards the engine 15cm away from it.

I don’t know about mineshells, but a Hispano HE hit to the engine disabled it.

[poopooo]

@PercussionCap

So your suggestion is to give up all your altitude, a lot of your speed, AND expend ammo (which at this point, if you’re been hard carrying, you might not have much of) because some guy is doing the Mozdok 500 around his airfield. Right.

My suggestion is to do whatever you want. You can attack ground targets to score victory points, risking the enemy turning around and attacking you. You can follow them, gaining altitude and circling near their position, waiting for time to run out if you have more points. If not, you risk attacking them or simply wait for time to expire and lose the game, surviving. If it’s several against one, one can go destroy objectives while another follows the enemy.

@PercussionCap

At that point just go play sim.

Or you could go to Arcade, since if you want fast and intense matches, Arcade is the place. Anyway, I’m sure the bullet damage needs a review, and also the accuracy of the long-range cannons, since it’s quite ridiculous to be killed by shots at 800 or 1000 meters, when at 600 meters it wouldn’t be advisable to shoot because of wasting bullets.

[RedEye_ツ]

@Loofah

Found it. 30mm M-geschoss (night fighter’s belt) vs Spitfire.
But hey, 30mm damage is so good and it never happens to you.
Well,.it happens to me.

That was a few days prior to the HE rework that dropped in the Line of Contact update.
In this footage Mk108 still had the issues most other cannons had in terms of damage (when it affected every gun) and on top of it it had it’s own issues with the old formula and fuze sensitivity as well that I was reporting for like 3 years.

Fixed in 16th of December 2025
Right now that Spitfire would probably be disassembled entirely.

[Loofah]

@PercussionCap

Which in a scenario like WT, is realistic. Why would you make your plane bigger if you never need so much fuel?

Because IRL bigger plane can take more damage and carry more effective weapons.
In WT neither is really true.

[Loofah]

@RedEye_ツ

Fixed in 16th of December 2025
Right now that Spitfire would probably be disassembled entirely.

It still happens.
I quit playing Ostwind when Yak-9K took a “hit” and on another battle I hit A7M1 twice, in both cases he proceeded to ground pound and RTB. 37mm M-geschoss is a joke.

[KillaKiwi]

@PercussionCap

Why would I aim better when I can go play a different plane or nation that actually has working guns?

Very funny.

So working guns means to you that a ShVAK should have a higher RoF, better ballistics AND deal as much damage as 20mm Mineshellls.

Because when you don’t 1-2 tap a wing or tail it’s too much to ask for.

Killing pilots, engines and setting fuel tanks on fire is not good enough. lol

German ammo documents literally say: Replace IT shells with API and use up to 50% API shells for attacking IL-2. Instead of the normal 1:5 mix.

But no, just use 100% Mineshells instead, because PercussionCap thinks it will blow an IL-2 out of the air by hitting the wing once.

It’s supposed to take on average 8-9 23mm explosive shells and 18 MG 151/20 / Hispano / B-20 HEI shells to bring down a plane that has enormous wings and control surfaces while being covered in armor that will prevent and fragments from damaging internal components.

And then you look at the smaller fighters that aren’t covered all around in armor and notice that 20mm explosive shells are still going to be extremely deadly to them.

It literally takes one 20mm API to a Bf 109 fuel tank from behind to rip a huge hole into it and another 12.7mm to set it ablaze. Or the 20mm alone could be enough.

Other planes might not be killed so easily but it’s stupid to pretend that 12.7mm and 20mm guns aren’t capable of bringing down other aircraft without ripping them apart with explosives shots hitting the same component once or twice.

[poopooo]

I’m doing tests in the test drive, and it’s funny to kill the Mig 15 that comes out with a small burst from the two 12.7 and 7.7mm cannons of the Mc205. I’ve also noticed that with the Shvak with FI-T you can kill the Mig15 with a single shot and that curiously it withstands more shots from the German cannon (maybe by coincidence).
PD:I no longer know if the test drive plane has less life, because I tried with the HE-100, and I destroyed it with a short burst from the 7.92 machine guns, in fact I set its engine on fire and broke a wing.

[dovah4]

@FeetPics

I do not think you have any idea of how lift and drag works. It is not simply that just the holes in the wing vs missing area is going to approximate how much lift is missing. Those big holes are also causing a bunch of drag and also disturbing the airflow around adjacent area as well.

Being able to easily control the plane up to near stall speeds with no adverse effects is not realistic at all.

We already do this with the instructor. The Mig-21 is pulling AoA at times it has no right pulling without suffering from a snap roll yet in-game the plane gets away with it because the instructor handholds the aircraft as much as humanly possible, even doing inhuman stuff to support the aircraft. At the same time, the instructor is tuned to be as dumb as humanly possible with some aircraft. If I recall, the F6F is missing almost 3 degrees of instantaneous AoA because the instructor dials back how much you pull too much.

Say if a P-47 has a 1 foot diameter hole in it’s left wing even with scrap bits hanging out. Yeah, it’ll create low-pressure zones causing drag. that doesn’t mean the wing is completely unusable

I’m pretty sure these guys got hit in battle and still kept going, unless they believed they weren’t going to make it.

Killer Mike brought his P-47 beat to hell back all the time. As long as the main functions of the aircraft worked, I’m pretty sure some pilots still had confidence in their machine working even after being hit several times.

According to Gaijin, that entire wing panel should be the equivalent of having no skin at all.

@FeetPics

The first condition means that in order to be satisfied we would have to set the damage that MG.151 does to below the lowest point that it has ever been in the game. Consequently this means that in order to preserve the effectiveness disparity that you seek we would also have to set every other guns damage to the lowest that it has ever been in the game. Not only that but we would have to increase the scope of the disparity between various guns as well.

I agree with Loofah that the weakest the MG 151 has ever been is also the most accurate it’s ever been. In the other thread we already stated a compromise for fixing U.S. .50s would be to reduce their structural damage so they couldn’t snap wings or structural pieces. No more empennage snapping after dumping a 2 second burst into a dude’s tail. At a minimum keep it where they can still blast control surfaces off because IRL they have been shown to do that repeatedly. Make all incendiary rounds actually PROPERLY penetrate and behave similarly to API rounds. make the gun spread of the .50s realistic.

You can emulate this yourself by turning off the upgraded gun modification on any .50 caliber equipped plane. I did testing and turning that modification off almost makes it 1-to-1 in accuracy. @KillaKiwi and I came to that conclusion after some testing.

It can still be “Simple” by having all rounds work at their most optimum. That way there shouldn’t be any stupid dud rounds. But having it where just about any round with “HE filler” is hitting 2-6 times harder than they should be is insane.

@FeetPics

Effectively this means that everyone that enjoys quick time to kill would have to play MG.151 mobile or similar. And that anyone that enjoys planes with something like ShVAK would have to anchor themselves on dead six-o-clock and have to hit the majority of their shells into 1 area to get a kill.

In this hypothetical. Don’t run an ammo load that has majority HE in it And honestly, if you’re using sim as an example. Mg151s Mineshells would only be so effective to an extent depending on the aircraft. A6Ms, Spitfires and Yaks? Sure. IL-2, Typhoon, P-47, P-38 and Lavochkins? That’s iffy

If all ammo ran it’s most optimum, and incendiary was fixed. Just about every incendiary round. Yes, even some .30 cals, should be able to score fires within just a few hits.

Of course, we know it wasn’t that easy. Bullets and shells can get caught on pieces and tumble and not pen. But with a simplified model, and we had all ammunition running optimally. Everyone would have the ability to light one another on fire easily if using incendiary in theory.

[KillaKiwi]

@dovah4

If all ammo ran it’s most optimum, and incendiary was fixed. Just about every incendiary round. Yes, even some .30 cals, should be able to score fires within just a few hits.

I think in „Flying guns WW2“ it’s written that British .303 Incendiary set a Ju 88 fuel tank on fire about 20% of the time, while the German bullet did so half the time. Most likely referring to the B-Patrone because it’s written that the 7.92mm API didn’t cause a single fire.

So you still need to be very close and fire quite a lot off shots.

.50cal is just so much better when it comes to effectiveness.

Bf 109 Fs, potentially even E models had this layered dural armor designed to stop rifle caliber bullets before they could hit the fuel tank but .50cals could still punch through.

[dovah4]

@KillaKiwi

I think in „Flying guns WW2“ it’s written that British .303 Incendiary set a Ju 88 fuel tank on fire about 20% of the time, while the German bullet did so half the time. Most likely referring to the B-Patrone because it’s written that the 7.92mm API didn’t cause a single fire.

It depends on the incendiary. U.S. .30 caliber M1 was possibly the most brisant incendiary .30 caliber round in the war. It had muzzle burst problems making it bad for overhead firing, but in an Air-to-Air role. it had similar performance to .50 M1 incendiary, albeit I assume at closer ranges.

So if they fixed incendiary rounds, Planes like the P-39 could honestly move up because .30 actually can light fires now and the excuse “bad armament” doesn’t mean anything if your .30 cals are now actually dangerous

[FeetPics]

[qu

@dovah4

ever been is also the most accurate it’s ever been. In the other thread we already stated a compromise for fixing U.S. .50s would be to reduce their structural damage so they couldn’t snap wings or structural pieces. No more empennage snapping after dumping a 2 second burst into a dude’s tail. At a minimum keep it where they can still blast control surfaces off because IRL they have been shown to do that repeatedly. Make all incendiary rounds actually PROPERLY penetrate and behave similarly to API rounds. make the gun spread of the .50s realistic.

You can emulate this yourself by turning off the upgraded gun modification on any .50 caliber equipped plane. I did testing and turning that modification off almost makes it 1-to-1 in accuracy. @KillaKiwi and I came to that conclusion after some testing.

It can still be “Simple” by having all rounds

I have followed this argument for a long time; even before it was about MG.151.

Back on the old forums the argument was that .50 cals and Berezin should be nerfed because they were causing too many fires.

@dovah4

In this hypothetical. Don’t run an ammo load that has majority HE in it And honestly, if you’re using sim as an example. Mg151s Mineshells would only be so effective to an extent depending on the aircraft. A6Ms, Spitfires and Yaks? Sure. IL-2, Typhoon, P-47, P-38 and Lavochkins? That’s iffy

If all ammo ran it’s most optimum, and incendiary was fixed. Just about every incendiary round. Yes, even some .30 cals, should be able to score fires within just a few hits.

It depends on whether or not they make every gun into basically a flame thrower if it hits a fuel tank or if they also get the engine damage / components buff that they want.

[poopooo]

Speaking of incendiary weapons, the game doesn’t include the 7.7mm b.mk.vi dixon ammunition for British machine guns, right?According to what I read, it was an extremely effective incendiary ammunition, since it first pierced the tank and ignited inside, as it had certain penetration capabilities and a fuse that was activated upon impact.
It would be the bullet on the right, in which a small ball can be seen at the tip.

[skultew1234]

In game any “special” 7.7mm caliber rounds are missing

For example missing many HE-I 7.7mm rounds which was in service in several countries.

Need to check datamine but looks like small caliber incendiary round is same for any gun

[KillaKiwi]

It’s simply 7.7mm Incendiary.
The game doesn’t care enough about incendiary ammo to distinguish them.

In fact no incendiary filler is modeled for Incendiary, API or explosive-incendiary rounds.

[dovah4]

@FeetPics

Back on the old forums the argument was that .50 cals and Berezin should be nerfed because they were causing too many fires.

That’s literally what machine guns—especially the U.S.—specialized in. The whole point of M23 was to have a super powerful, super high velocity incendiary that would ensure your enemy caught fire.
Even germany began figuring at the end of the war they needed to swap to incendiary because blowing your enemy apart is really hard as you’re relying on physically breaking the plane or destabilizing their aerodynamics enough that they go down.

Like, you’re literally saying “I want their guns to stop being good at what they’re designed for.” At that point man it sounds unfair. I know what you’re getting at. You want low TTKs for fast paced gameplay. But if that’s what you want. Give incendiaries way higher fire chances and make them actually work because currently they’re in such a sorry state they don’t even penetrate the vehicle. At that point, everyone’s guns needs to be broken a bit.

And add in that suggestion for custom convergences so machine gun armed aircraft can have different convergences for a more even field of fire. The suggestion was accepted, so there shouldn’t be a problem with adding it in.

@poopooo

Speaking of incendiary weapons, the game doesn’t include the 7.7mm b.mk.vi dixon ammunition for British machine guns, right?According to what I read, it was an extremely effective incendiary ammunition, since it first pierced the tank and ignited inside, as it had certain penetration capabilities and a fuse that was activated upon impact.
It would be the bullet on the right, in which a small ball can be seen at the tip.

It was talked about in the book. It was stated to be very effective but had low velocities.

Literally a chart of it too.

The M1 incendiary was basically a complete upgrade over it. You can read in the bottom left corner where I posted the .30 cal M1 excerpt.
Mk VI went 2270 fps. U.S. M1 incendiary went 2950 fps whilst having more filler.

[KillaKiwi]

@FeetPics

Back on the old forums the argument was that .50 cals and Berezin should be nerfed because they were causing too many fires.

Well, they were causing too many fires while 20mm cannon’s didn’t.
Since Gaijin, to this day, never implement incendiary content and they have frankly no clue about how they should work.

So 20mm cannons are stuck with literally the same incendiary chance as .50cals, which of course makes no sense.
Which now doesn’t matter since they just blow wings off.

The saddest part is that 30mm Incendiary were actually one shot kills against fuel tanks until Gaijin had the amazing idea to remove that feature and turn them into confetti shells instead, since in their eyes default ammo must suck.

[FeetPics]

@KillaKiwi

Well, they were causing too many fires while 20mm cannon’s didn’t.
Since Gaijin, to this day, never implement incendiary content and they have frankly no clue about how they should work.

So 20mm cannons are stuck with literally the same incendiary chance as .50cals, which of course makes no sense.
Which now doesn’t matter since they just blow wings off.

The saddest part is that 30mm Incendiary were actually one shot kills against fuel tanks until Gaijin had the amazing idea to remove that feature and turn them into confetti shells instead, since in their eyes default ammo must suck.

So once again we are not just advocating for a change to explosive damage and replacing it with incendiary damage. We are also advocating to reduce incendiary damage in conjunction with whatever massive damage nerf is done to explosive shells.

My point still stands. At this point might as well just entirely remove damage to aircraft and replace it with a large pool of hit points because any damage that actually causes your plane to die is just not realistic because we can find examples of planes surviving it in real life.