It’s why I started a suggestion for improved damage models.
Still pending tho.
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I am sure many people think that, but it’s still unrealistic
It is also unrealistic that wings are almost entirely hollow in the game (no ribs).
It is also unrealistic that we have a magic fly-by-wire (instructor) system that lets you keep flying even with severe airframe damage that would down you IRL.
It is also unrealistic that you can go back home and repair severe damage in a few seconds.
It is also unrealistic that you are always so close to your airfield, and can easily return to it even with severe damage.
What I’m getting at is that realism is not always conducive to good gameplay. It is very frustrating when you get a good burst on someone and they can just go back to repair. It is frustrating that you damage someone to a level that would down them IRL, but they keep flying as if nothing happened.
Yes, the damage is way higher than IRL, but so is your survivability, and the high gun damage makes of for this fact. Looking at IL-2 or DCS, planes can go down without losing any parts, their airframes/tanks/engines are simply crippled, and it’s very hard to remain stable without the magic of the instructor.
Seriously, try it in those games! Your wing may still be attached but your damaged airframe makes stable flying impossible. Meanwhile in WT, the same amount of damage is but a scratch.
Realism =/= Good
Picture the following scenario:
After a long and arduous fight with an opponent, you finally get the upper hand, the enemy team approaching rapidly, you need to kill him now and get out of there. You wager your entire positional advantage for the shot. It works. Your opponent approaches your crosshair. You’ve won! You press the trigger and… it makes their wing airframe red and they just turn around and kill you.
Or it could go like this:
You wager your entire positional advantage for the shot. It works. Your opponent approaches your crosshair. You’ve won! You press the trigger and… you did it, you outplayed your opponent, and are rewarded with a nice kill.
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Disagree, you can still dogfight ppl.
You just can’t commit the same mistakes you could before. Just like IRL… if you managed to get hit by your enemy’s 20mms first you pretty much lost the dogfight right? That’s what’s essentially happening in War Thunder right now, replicated in a game-like way.
Of course IRL the damage wasn’t like that, cuz the amount of rounds that one could land in a dogfight was much lower as well and most importantly… cuz you also did not have the benefit of mouse aiming with a crosshair in 3rd person, War Thunder is a game lol… guns never been so rewarding for the players, it’s very satisfying and challenging.
Also regarding the way War Thunder DM replicates the damage:
[credits to the dude who said that in a different thread]
“Due to a limitation on the game engine to actually properly simulate damage to those parts when instructor is involved … so instead of making your plane unflyable due to major damage to the fuselage/airfoils, they instead just cut the entire section off and have you crash like that.”
If you use the “historically accurate” logic on everything in the game, then there’s planes that shouldn’t even take off to begin with lol. It wouldn’t benefit gameplay a single bit.
I find it really hard to believe that anyone actually knows how historically accurate or not a weapon damage is. That’s such a difficult thing to get right.
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1- Which is in all simulators. It’s realistic enough.
2- This isn’t unrealistic, cause it’s still doable even without “instructor”.
3- It’s more along the lines of you’re swapping aircraft.
4- This is false. Combat radiuses would be anywhere from 60km to 300km IRL, which is accurate with WT as well. Even if 300km is not a thing in WT, it was also rather rare IRL except for bombers.
5- DCS has a simplified damage model like WT.
Fair, yeah.
Its difficulty goes up ten-fold without the instructor. Yes it is theoretically doable, but a computer is much much better at it.
I love that you can swap aircraft as many times as you want.
In WT, you rarely go beyond 20km away from your airfield (in props). You’re often within 15km, even.
That is true, however, I still feel like damage considered minor in WT is crippling in DCS.
Point is, realism isn’t always good. In this case, I believe that very strong armament is conducive to more enjoyable gameplay.
agreed but how one unrealistic thing existing make another unrealistic thing acceptable?
This is a video game…yes one unrealistic aspect balancing out all of the other unrealistic aspects is perfectly acceptable.
People shouldn’t be able to just full commit head-on things and expect to get away with it just because they’re in a plane with a tanky damage model or because the other guy has “bad” guns or because they are immediately near their airfield and can instantly repair/replace their airplane.
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not in game mode called “simulation”. We already have balancing using BRs which makes 1944 planes fight 1939 planes in certain brackets.
No more BS “balancing”
Ahh yes the full fidelity simulation mode where you are no more than 5 minutes away from a friendly airfield, where damage models are basically completely hollow and you can easily fly back to base with massive amounts of damage, and where you can fully repair and replace a damaged aircraft in 30 seconds? The simulation game mode where half the planes don’t even have properly working gauges? The simulation game mode where you can stick your head outside of your cockpit in VR? The simulation game mode where opening the cockpit allows you to detect enemy props from around 1km away?
Yes…guns doing damage really is immersion breaking. That’s the real issue. Sorry but getting “hits” on some guy who is going to run back to his airfield and immediately repair his P-47 is a lot less realistic than cannons “overperforming”.
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Because realism isn’t the be-all and end-all of gameplay. Given the circumstances, unrealistically high gun damage arguably makes the game more enjoyable.
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Hiked up damage is also a thing in tanks with APHE shells having 360° shrapnel spheres, but I’ve not seen anyone arguing for the damage to brought down to their historic, recorded performance. Quicker time to kill guns provide for a much smoother gameplay experience where you’re not chasing enemies from 4km to the deck and back to their airfield and instead reward good aim, maneuvering and target prioritization.
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but this thread is aimed to discuss unrealistic behaviour of HE shells from cannons not that it would’ve been fun to play rocket powered BF 109 that shoots lasers.
I understand you and others can think that unrealistic is fun but that does not make it any less unrealistic and that’s what I am trying to point out.
And we’re not trying to claim it is realistic. We just think that high damage guns are way better gameplay-wise. We’re aware that it is unrealistic.
We are also not trying to say that unrealistic = fun. That’s just taking it to the other extreme. All we are saying is that sometimes we need to prioritize other things over realism.
We are arguing that trying to prioritize realism over gameplay experience is not a good idea.
However, in Simulator Battles, I believe that a reduction in damage could work nicely.
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this thread is a follow-up to a bug report.
We can have discussion if we can have some leeway to get more fun (personally I am supporter of realism) elsewhere.
I wanted this thread to be discussion about realism because, based on what i’ve found we have problem with lack of realism but GJ wants more documents.
I’ve also created it to have “peer review” of my claims. If people can find proof to contrary they could show me I am wrong, etc.
I am 100% aware there are lot of people who think this is more fun (as well as those that think it’s worse).
I was aware that majority (as confirmed by Smin to no one’s surprise) prefer it this way to what we had before.
I personally prefer this to what we had but I’d prefer more realistic damage even more.
I beg to differ. The OP is using current damage of Mg.151 as being too excessive as being above the upper end of what 20mm cannons should be capable of. Damage models in simulator mode are identical to RB mode so what he is advocating for is essentially returning to damage levels less than the bugged realshatter damage that we have just gotten rid of.
Basically if you nerf current HE damage from MG.151 by a mode 10-15%, it also means that every 20mm cannon shell should perform significantly worse than that nerfed version of MG.151. It means that we are back in the same boat of the only viable planes in Simulator being US planes that carry M-20 API-T…which would probably suit the OP fine since that seems to be the kind of planes and playstyle he prefers.
But in the mean time everything else would just suffer because US planes can already tank damage in sim and still remain faster than almost everything. The way that OP enjoys sim is by prioritizing never ever dying which means all of the normal tricks you would see in RB match; basically longer time to kill only benefits fast planes and passive players because their mistakes cannot be punished.
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Right now there are no tanky damage models other than bombers.
There are also no well armed and worse armed planes. 2 shells = ded.anyway.
No longer I have to smoothly move my point of aim. If enemy crosses my stream of shells - he’s dead or crippled.
Head-on is a death sentence if enemy lands anything. No longer I have to be caught in a burst. I just have to catch a single shell and I’m either dead or.forced to RTB.
Right now the only thing that counts is performance.
Unless of course you’re flying something with .50 cals, then you are shafted.
P-51H will eventually reach 6.0 or 5.7
Regarding cannons - now everyone got “standard shells” with different ballistics, but same damage. So no longer any variety here, unless we count Germans who have to land twice as many shells for the same effect.
So your argument is:
90% of bombers are now easier to kill so it’s a good change
While 10% of bombers with cannons that will disentigrate fighters from 1km away are fine.
Why is every discussion always black or white?
Saying “Too much damage is better than too little damage” is not an argument in a discussion about that cannons deal too much damage.
How about we just settle with “cannons shouldn’t be that powerfull but also not worse than a .50cal with explosive or incendiary rounds”
20mm cannons aren’t automatically better than belt-fed .50cal MGs.
A cannon with a mere 60rds might deliver a bigger punch but is also limited by the number of rounds.
200rd of .50cal deliver roughly same burst mass as 60 20mm rounds.
And just like with .50cals you wouldn’t see planes losing wings and tails but rather get set on fire, or have pilot or engine knocked out, in addition to structural damage which reduces flight performance.
To knock out a bomber due to structural damage with 20mm explosive rounds is far less likely than to knock out it due to a fire staring. A bomber is simply to large to easily fall apart or suffer from lose of control compared to suffering damage to it’s very large fuel tanks.
Hello! o/
I’ve been arguing for the damage to brought down to their historic, recorded peformance.
I am also a British main (branching out into Germany and Soviet recently in ground, damn near everywhere except China and France for air) and thus have an obvious incentive to get the round neutered. Though in that case APHE really does have an extreme advantage over every other round, hence why it’s extremely common to keep taking APHE on the T-54/55 even as advanced sabots and even early darts are showing up with way more penetration. Because any penetrating shot, even a poorly aimed one, is horrifically more crippling compared to even the most center massed kinetic or most explosively packed chemical round. Take the classic ‘high skill’ cupola shot. A lethal shot that will kill most if not all of the turret crew for APHE, but one of the worst consistently pennable shots to aim at for literally any other round.
I’m getting off topic though. Every cannon is currently fine as is because, while probaboy a hair overtuned, they are all overtuned instead of just one cannon/round being viable which is where the comparison between aircraft cannons and APHE breaks down. Damage models should be updated to a new system ideally, it has been several years, but that’s a much longer solution than simply buffing Mg 151s in the meanwhile to bring them up to par.
I think they’re still fine damage wise personally and that the majority of complaints are just the unceasing malding from axis mains not having their 2013 instant death laser beams anymore but whatever. Mg 151 not being hit by real shatter has turned from the most oppressive advantage in props seen in years… to a somewhat mild nerf relative to everything else. Get it on the real shatter system, or whatever “fix” Gaijin claims it to be and shut up about it.
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But cannons SHOULD do a lot more damage. That was entire reason why countries like britain opted to fit the spitfire with Hispanos instead of 50cals. They did a lot of damage, especially against bombers which were very common in the european theatre. Countries like the US, rarely had to worry about heavy bombers in the pactific, so 50 cals were a far more sensible option for many of their fighters as they were mainly fending off other fighters.
In the case of bombers. The issue is rarely what guns they have, but their gun coverage is. Lincoln as 20mm guns, but basically no coverage and I reckon is far less dangerous than a Ju-288C with mostly 13mm turrets that can fire in almost any direction.
But i’d rather be in the situation, where cannons were a little over-tuned, but killed reliably, than being under-powered and actually lakcing the necessary firepower to take on heavy targets like bombers or even be in the situation where I have to spend a protracted amount of time chasing someone because i have to put 50 cannon rounds into them.
If im in a spitfire, on the tail of a Bf109 at low alt, there is nothing they can do, they are dead. So what difference does it make whether they die in 1-2 seconds of fire, or 10 seconds. They’ll die either way. But to me, in the event of it taking ages, not only is that really bad gameplay, but im also using up most of my ammo, limiting what I can do against the next guy but also potentially problematic in a furball against multiple targets. I shouldnt be punished for that
That being said, again this is mostly an issue with damage models, not how much damage the shells do.
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