That was before Gaijin applied real shatter to it. Some rounds still use hitpower calcs and due to server desync you can have the explosion spawn way farther than it needed to be where you’re essentially only hit by the farthest reaching shrapnel.
Now, it’s super strong, and overperforming as well. It’s doing effectively over double it’s actual damage
Because it’s gaijin fixing the problem in the worst way possible.
Like when people complained about Stock shells for top-tier tanks how some vehicles got default APFSDS while others got stock HEAT. And so gaijin, instead of giving everyone stock APFSDS. Just forced everyone to use stock HEAT.
Similarly, when gaijin said they were going to add more modules for more accurate rendering of the internals of tanks. They decided that NATO turret baskets are somehow linked to the entire system instead of the hydraulic pump that controls the turret. So you have it where a literal empty box meant to hold .50 ammunition and Jolly Ranchers is now integral to the functioning of an Abrams.
What they should’ve done was just made the incendiary rounds in 20mm actually effective at causing fires.
“So hey, we made it where you can’t just rely on blowing people’s wings off all the time, to counteract this and make it realistic, you also have way higher chances to cause fires too.” It honestly feels like they purposely bait the community of this game by implementing a good change in the most broken way possible to steer the playerbase where they want.
To my knowledge Kiwi’s goal is to get the game to be near 1-to-1 in terms of damage modeling following the Optimum Caliber Program’s assignment of how damage works with “A” damage “B” damage “C” damage and finally “E” damage. The problem is that “B” damage is vague as that could be within literally seconds after that 5 minute timer or on the very end of that timer. “A” damage implies the plane will die within 5 minutes. Of which the researcher notes. That’s really hard to ascertain if a plane would go down within 5 minutes and found “B” damage to be more reliable as it’s basically within 2 hours. Ballistics Research laboratory Memorandum Report 437 supposedly offers much more detail on what counts as an A kill, B kill and so on but I can’t find it online and a FOIA might need to be done.
Another thing is that multiple hits to fuel tanks would exacerbate as what matters is how much fuel is feeding the fire. Which is why 20mm has a better ability of igniting the target, simply because the round is bigger.
Another thing to be aware of is the fuel-to-air mixture within the tank, because if it’s lean. You won’t have a fire; the tank will just straight up explode—and what do most players fly with? 30%
Handy little chart showing shots from above and behind and below and front.
My issue is that it can over complicate. Because this isn’t real life, and your life is not on the line. Having a Yak-9 chase you on fire for 3 minutes, would not be not fun. You could have a fuel leak in your wing, but because it was lean enough in your wing, the next shot literally fuel detonates your wing, blowing you up.
That’s literally what we’re doing in-game except. Lol. The only difference is that some guns don’t spit the HP damage required and fuel fires are rare.
What I see it as is this:
You have several rounds in the game, whose main job is to catch things on fire. They don’t work at all. They don’t even function like they should. So we got these options
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Turn every incendiary into a penetrating round that has it’s optimum fire chances, increase the fire chance of all incendiary rounds to have their realistic flame chances they would’ve had with the calculation provided in the Incendiary effectiveness paper. This would mean making some .30 cals actually be scary. M20 API-T would have a 40% chance instead of a 20% (M8 API would effectively be the same) M23 gets 60% fire chance, Berezin API would presumably get a higher fire chance, anything 20mm would at least be in the 75-80% range. British 7mm Incendiary would actually be viable up close if it penetrates. Nerf the damage of HE to more realistic level (real shatter 1.0 or close to it) to make up for the fact that now you don’t just have dead air in your belts and your API and incendiary rounds are now actually functional and if they impact the fuel tank, you’re basically lighting the fuel tank up regardless. Keep the simplified DMs we have now
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The above change, but completely rework Damage models and how fires start using a more advance system simulating fluid and vapor droplets within the aircraft relying much on the work of the Optimum Caliber Program and the associated studies around it.
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Leave every incendiary as a pseudo HE (basically how it is for machine gun incendiary rounds) then rework belts for some countries to use incendiary ammunition more then adjust the damage for some incendiary rounds so they are effective. This would basically be a buff to nations like the U.S. and Britain.
Having wet paper damage models mixed with HE cannons is a disaster meanwhile aircraft that rely on AP rounds are essentially rolling the dice on if they actually do anything or not and incendiary rounds literally have no thought in the game. That shouldn’t be a thing.
