I think one thing a lot of german players dont seem to take into account, is that, at least in some instances, they have less cannons than other nations have. Bf-109 has 1 whilst the Spitfire as 2. Even if they did identical damage, the spitfire is at an obvious advantage. So short of halving the damage of the spitfire to match, then it will always be imbalanced when looking exclusively at “damage dealt”
1 Like
To be fair mineshells do have a substantial amount of explosive filler and that should be reflected. I think it won’t make much of a difference anyways because War Thunder models pure HE poorly compared to HEF. The exception being when everything went to real shatter where, as bad as HE and HEI was, it was substantially better than rounds that relied primarily on fragmentation.
yeah, the difference shouldnt be significant, though it may be a factor. I’ve seen someone complaining about something with 6x cannons and it being OP. Well. Im not surprised
It is a bit funny that, for the first time in years, the Spitfire Vc being at 4.7/5.0 actually makes some sense.
Still wouldn’t catch me dead dlying the thing though… well, I suppose more accurately you would only find me flying it and dead.
Though I really don’t know what the “nerf party” actually want. How big a difference do they actually want. I reckon at the moment, It takes around 10-20 rounds to get a kill. How many do they want? 100?
Yeah, im loving the MkIX again. is actually fun. Before it was dump all my ammo into a Ju-288C, maybe get a kill, then RTB because I was out of 20mm ammo
That issue should be solved once they implement Mg151’s to realshatter so it receives it’s deserved buff.
For now we can only wait, hopefully they are working on it.
I expect eventually, all ammo to be added to the system, regardless of size. Im sure even something as small as the 303 rounds would eventually benefit from more “realistic damage”. Yeah, it never did a lot of damage IRL, but certainly might be more consistant at least. But definetly things like 50cals would probably benefit.
Yeah. It is hard to tell, especially when I’m willing to bet a good chunk of them have ulterior motives just like me with APHE. Some are probably bomber players who miss not being one tapped by everything (fair enough but also piss off nothing should be immortal), some are axis players or US mains who probably liked having the only effective armaments in the sky, some are probably people who simply got saved more by super poor damage than screwed by it.
No I’m not bitter about real shatter completely screwing the prop meta and making missiles the only effective weapons in nets. Why would I possibky be bitter?
Yeah, I think these changes have a net positive result. More aircraft are viable/fun to fly these days than aren’t. Damage model improvments certainly would be good, but wont necessarily mean you survive any longer, just maybe you’d die “more realistically”
I tried the Spitfire Mk24 in a SQB match a 2ish months ago, was dogfighting against 2x Me262s and holding my own. Dumped 100 rounds into one, got a few crits, (nothing overly essential though) but no kill. If he had gone down, or especially if he had gone down a lot sooner, then I might have won that 1v2, but he didnt and I died because I was on his tail firing for a protacted period of time
Longer time-to-kill means that planes with better performance are favored to an even greater extent. I don’t understand why you cannot see this.
Going head-on should require skill to dodge or just not take in the first place.
P-51H will never reach 6.0 or 5.7 because 6 x .50 cals with API-T is still an extremely solid armament.
2 Likes
The difference that it makes is:
- You carry limited ammo → You might run out of cannon rounds or already have against other targets
- The time to kill is different → You might get engaged by other aircraft before you can shoot him down
- You need to get closer to increase the number of hits instead of sniping a plane out of the sky
You see, as you progress the tree aircraft armament increases.
When 2-4 LMGs is enough to take out planes at 1.0-2.0, especially when they don’t have armor for the pilot, at 2.0 and higher you enter the territory of .50cal and 20mm cannons.
With the pilot is protected by armor, LMGs become severely lacking, not to mention their poor ballistics.
So (high velocity) .50cal negate the pilots armor and allow you to hit at longer ranges, with the trade-off of having lower RoF.
An early Spitfire has 8 LMGs, a P-47 has 8 HMGs.
If we discount armor penetration and ammunition, it’s a trade-off between RoF and range due to better ballistics.
Now for the Spitfire to be competive it needs a weapon upgrade.
You could trade 8 LMGs for 4 HMGs, which allows it to defeat armor and knock out pilots more frequently again, with only a minor increase in weight for the armament.
Now we know that they went with two 20mm Hispano Mk II cannons with 60rds each instead and kept 4 LMGs. Which is heavier than 4 HMGs.
Since the LMGs are very ineffective, you are basically limited to the cannons and since you want to be able to pierce armor plates (protecing pilot and fuel tanks) you will be carrying 1:1 or 1:2 AP (or Ball) shells for every HEI.
So you get on an enemies 6 and you only require one 20mm hit with ball or AP to kill the pilot, just like a 7.7 or 12.7mm. Only problem is you only have two guns that can pierce armor and half the ammo is HEI. So while it’s obviously possible to kill the pilot with the 20mm rounds, you’ll mostly spend a large number of rounds to score such hit in the first place.
Now what about 20mm HEI? Obvously it won’t cut off the wings or tails of the plane in a few hits or firing Ball, AP or SAPI wouldn’t even be neccessary.
What it can do is to actually set fire to fuel tanks unlike the 7.7mm, since self-sealing tanks are pretty tough to damage with .30cal bullets. A direct hit would be catastrophic.
Shell fragments also can injure or knock out the pilot as well as pierce any fuel- water- and oil-lines and tanks.
You see, it’s quite possible for a single 20mm hit to be fatal, it just needs to hit critical components.
But just like with LMGs you need to actually hit.
And since you’re only carrying 60rds per gun with half the RoF of LMGs, getting these hits can be difficult.
Making it unlikely to down more than 1-2 aircraft realistically and 2-4 in the game with the cannons, while at the moment you could easily shot down 10 aircrafts, if all rounds were HEI.
And while it’s easier to down a plane with cannons, it’s more likely to get more kills had the Spitfire 4 HMGs instead of just the two 20mm cannons with limited ammo.
Now of course this changes drastically when you increase the 20mm ammunition carried like with later variants.
In your example given you would easily be able to take out the Bf 109 with your two 20mm cannons spending maybe 10-20rds and getting 4-6 hits in which would probably be lethal.
Remember 1 hit, can be enough, if an AP or HEI kills the pilot. Otherwise the plane will probably start to burn or at least be heavily damaged to the point where it will be going down shortly.
What’s not going to happen is the Bf 109 losing its wings or tails after getting hit by 1-2 HEI shells.
And while LMGs are kinda underpowered, it’s still possible to take out planes that decide to expose their pilot and engines in a turn or even penetrate armor plate at close range.
It’s just less likely to get a kill shot in a short amount of time compared to 20mm cannons that deliver a much bigger punch in a short period of time.
Of course it wouldn’t hurt, if the ammunition was reworked to actually have the expected results.
1 Like
No. They are nor favored even more, when their armanent is inferior.
Re.2005 used to be pretty bad at 5.7 but at least it was outgunning Yak-3U.
Nowadays? It’s getting outperformed and there is no real difference in firepower.
Firepower has been removed from equation.
Really good gunnery is no longer needed.
Planes do not feel anything like real machines, they are extremely fragile, like made of wood and paper. Ta-152C3 and Ki-10 can withstand same amount of punishment essentialy.
MG151/20 is right now by far the weakest 20mm. And it was hitting too hard already.
P-51H has extremely horrible armanent right now. It requires a ton of hits. Anything with 20mm requires 2.
Pushing head-on has become a lot more solid tactic for people who can’t aim, because if 1 shell lands, the enemy is crippled anyway and good players will have to dodge every time if they don’t want to end the game with 1 kill. And very often dodging is not fully succesful or done very narrowly. I see even very good players getting nicked by single shot here and there. Which further proves my point that good and consistent gunnery should matter, as it gives reliable effects unlike bad gunnery and barely getting guns on target for a milisecond.
After the extreme superbuff, 1 shell and their performance is crippled to the point that RTB ASAP is the only option.
My KPB decreased. Why? Because in many tight situations (and I’m talking even pre-real shatter when Shvak was still hitting too hard) I was indeed taking some damage, but it allowed me to get guns on target seconds later. Because I was able to deny a good shot to the enemy. But I was getting spammed with shells anyway.
The Re.2005 is moving up to 6.0 BR in large part because of the firepower advantage that it had over other planes while having mediocre performance. The firepower not being the main selling point anymore might actually force it to go down in battle rating for once.
That is also false. You can just hit a smaller number of shots from longer ranges now.
You are playing a video game. If planes felt like real machines then all sorts of additional damage would be modeled like hydraulic fluid leaks, air compressor leaks, etc would be modeled where even light damage would make you combat ineffective and compel you to return to base.
I’ve already shown a plane taking 5 hits of 20mm to kill with 4 of them being in the same area.
P-51H also has performance far and beyond anything at it’s BR that it really should never be at risk of being hit in the first place.
Then maybe the meta for good players is to no longer take head-on’s because they are more risky.
If the enemy hit you then you didn’t really succeed in denying them a good shot…you were just relying on luck and consistently lower damage to survive.
You’ve shown literally the best performing non-real shatter cannon requiring twice the amount of shots on target real shatter cannons need.
Which has proven what? That the best performing cannon pre-real shatter was not hitting anywhere as hard as any 20mm hits today? Wow. That was some serious failure at making your point.
Immersion is an important part of the game. Proper cannons give nice feedback, you see a series of explosions, then finally a kill. That’s how it should work. Instead it’s “click-dead” with planes crumbling like they’re made of paper, with no real mass to them.
And there’s no diversity to armanent. Everything takes 2 shots to wing/tail and ded.
Longer range spam brings nothing valuable to the game.
Removing good gunnery - because yes, it largely removes good gunnery - a bad player can now score twice as many kills (before it was a big limiting factor), and he doesn’t have to conistently lead the target. Just keep firing at a point where the enemy plane will happen to be, if you have 2 Shvaks - blam, instadead.
Removing the ability to not die in a f.head on or to make even a smallest mistake makes the game way less exciting. That’s no longer plane combat, where you have tough machines that require force to fail. Right now it’s a game of tag.
And Re.2005 went up because during early real shatter, real shatter cannons did next to no damage, while Re.2005 had 2 MGs and 3 cannons that actually worked. + It could turn.
So yeah it went up because of overwhelming firepower, which I would compare to post real.shatter Yak-7B armanent.
A6M5 is now the flying death due to the ability to almost always push a head-on. It may die, and so will anyone in front of its guns.
Many WW2 pilots either chose or were forced to continue fighting in damaged aircraft because a simple hole in a wing or fuselage was not really that big of a deal.
There are some.damageable parts missing (weapons, ammo, hydraulics, electric system - althought this one takes so little space it’s hard to hit) indeed. But such is life, Gaijin is not good enough of a game developer to properly model such details (or f.e. make fuselage destructible). But I can live with this. MG151/20 was already badly overperforming, even toned down by a few % it would still be way better at demolishing planes than IRL.
Of course tails should be buffed definitely even with overal dmg of MG151/20 getting only slightly nerfed.
Every other cannon should be configured according to its damage potential. With Shvak and Ho-5 dealing maybe 60% of MG151/20 damage at medium range, 70% up close and 50-55% at long range etc.
That would be a compromise and planes would require multiple hits to come down.
Instead their wings keep snapping like twigs.
If.luck is consistent, it’s no longer luck. If I win 6 out of 7 head-ons, I’m not relying on luck, because I quite consistently win.
Lower damage should be a norm. And risk should have its payoff.
When the enemy only nicks my plane, it means I avoided everything else. He came close to landing good shots. But he didn’t, he landed a single shell, that should NOT cripple my plane. If it does - now that’s some being lucky.
Right now single shot takes you out of the game every time, because planes are no longer combat effective without wingtip, half a tail or black wing part that causes extremely assymetric lift.
Define “Inferior” because your talking in circles. Either every single cannon in the game is too lethal right now (and functionally all the same) or they aren’t all guaranteed one shot one kill weapons and they need to be more carefully buffed and nerfed. If it’s the later, which ones? Because based on your comments so far, my understanding of your opinion is that every single cannon in the game is over performing and needs to be nerfed. Except, of course, for the glorious Mg 151 which is actually under performing and needs to be buffed! Which, considering your overwhelming preference for German props, is an extremely suspect opinion to have.
So which is it? Are cannons over performing and all identical to each other? Or is there a gray area and you’re exagerating performance because you don’t like having to actually stay out of someones firing arc?
There are few aircraft you could have picked more poorly to illustrate your point. The Re.2005 has: A legacy BR since about half a year after Regia Aeronautica when it was previously a menace that stomped whole lobbies, very good armament with 3x Mg 151s (two wing mounts one engine mount) and 2x 12.7 Breda SAFAT which gets a HEF round (very rare for a sub 15mm armament), the minor nation tax, and is a 5.7 axis aircraft that is firmly inside the 6 v 6 6.0 Ju-288 blackhole that has been plaguing high tier props for more than 4 years now. The few 2005s you actually see running around now a days are played by very, very good players who can exploit the plane’s minimal advantages at that BR and stomp allied players looking for free kills. That’s why it’s getting shoved up to 6.0 when it ostensibly has no reason to be higher than 5.3 and even that’s probably pushing it.
Demonstrably false, bad damage rewards poor flying and poor gunnery I’ll get to why in a minute.
Ah, my apologies, I should have read more carefully, didn’t see this until now. So what I’m understanding now is that the Mg 151 is too weak relative to other cannons and still too strong anyways. Are cannons just… not supposed to be lethal anymore?
First off.
Holy shit someone unironically saying the P-51H suffers who isn’t a level 38 whose primary ARB experience is flying the F-5C… I genuinely thought I would never see this day.
Second of all the P-51Hs armament is more than adequate and has one of the lowest skill floors of any armament in the game with that insane 6x 750 rounds/min burst. There’s no gunnery involved, just hold down M1 and point your plane along the flight path of the enemy. Having the most optimized belt in the entire game (pure API-T when other aircraft have T, AP, or I rounds jostling around in their most effective belts provides unmatched consistency).
Yes that is the risk of taking a head on, in fact real shatter promoted the excessive use of head on more than lethal cannons have because, frankly, people who can’t aim are substantially more likely to lose a head on compared to people who can’t. And people who do know how and, more importantly, when to take a head on are less likely to die to them. Perfectly executed head on by both players has both of them spray about a 0.25 second burst from a long distance (1.5km or later in props, at least 2km or 2.5km in jets), maneuver away from each others paths of flight, and then extend away from each other or turn around and commit to a proper engagement, with both players having taken no damage. If you are taking any damage in a head on you are either firing too late, dodging too soon, allowing your target to follow your path of flight, or some combination of the three.
You have a funny way of valuing consistent gunnery as your grievances seem to be the 12.7 browning which has some of ballistics and fire rate which makes it have next to nothing to learn, and the Mg 151 which has poor ballistics and high lethality which in term rewards good gunnery for being able to put a difficult round on target.
Skill issue. If you’re getting shot, you are the one who screwed up and allowed for a solution to get on you. It doesn’t matter if it’s some plane that wildly outperforms you, I don’t care if they had an altitude advantage that you couldn’t overcome, everybody has gotten screwed by that one ShVAK round sprayed wildly that clips your elevator and destroys your tail controls. But it doesn’t matter, you were unable to stay out of your opponents firing arc which meant you died. That’s how it currently works in War Thunder, that’s how it works in every other game on the planet, that’s how it works in real life. You screwed up, you got punished, and expecting the game to just let you live ‘because’ is hilariously entitled.
Which brings me back to this line.
I first started playing back in late 2014. Back when 9.0 was top tier and being skilled was much more common. Good gunnery was highly appreciated, and few skills were as valued, difficult, and coveted as being able to consistently utilize deflection shots.
The skill of being able to take a MiG-15 into the sky, perfectly track your target, set up into the right position, and send 4 23mm FI-T rounds hurtling through the sky to a distance as far as 1km, and swat an F-2 out of the sky as if it was the one with a 0.7 br disadvantage and not you. Despite the speed of your target constantly changing, despite needing to recognize the opportunity being present well before it actually shows up, despite the horrifically awkward ballistics of the NS-23, despite your opponents most minute movements being able to sometimes radically change the flight path, being able to set that all up and be rewarded for it was a beautiful thing that is sorely missing now a days in props and especially in jets every since Supersonic introduced the missile meta.
It is also, something that is completely impossible to perform with poor gun damage.
With poor gun damage, deflection shots make no sense, neither do snap shots. Long range shots? Don’t count on them you’re just wasting your ammo unless they’re afk.
The only shots that make sense are to ride the ass of your enemy and put lead into them for as long as you can hold down the trigger, utilizing a superior air frame as opposed to a good understanding of accuracy or ballistics, or dubiously effective BnZ tactics that, while minimizing your time on target, maximize your ability to completely disengage from your target if the rounds do not turn out to be lethal. Because if you’re needing to BnZ against a target, odds are good that they will be able to ride on your ass unopposed and hold M1.
The MiG-15 in that previous scenario can never win because on top of having a worse speed/acceleration, poorer rate of turn, and more difficult ballistics compared to the F-2, it also has shit damage which makes any small moment of a firing window and mistake that you can exploit much less valuable.
Sitting behind someone who can’t escape you isn’t the peak gunnery you seem to think it is.
Edit: Having posted this and realized that it is incredibly long if someone can PM me how to create a spoiler block I would be happy to condense these paragraphs.
3 Likes
How low do you want it to be?
Because as-is I can tank half a dozen of Mg.151 shells and make it back to base…and that is above the upper end of what you want.
Personally I do not like water-pistol levels of damage when airfield defenses are less than 5 minutes away from the battle zone in any game mode.
Basically what you are advocating for is that MG.151 does worse damage than it does now…and then everything else be adjusted so it does 30-50 percent less damage than MG.151.
Did you even play anything besides Ta-152H or Fw-190 F-8 for the past year? I honestly think I could add up all of your games in non MG-151 fighters and it would still come to less than the number of games than you have played in a single plane.
What you are advocating for is making cannon damage worse than the bugged version of real-shatter that we had. Do you realize how much worse this makes the game for everyone else? Surely you should realize that flying a Spitfire is quite miserable because even someone with as much skill as you claim to have can only average 1 kill per battle in one of the best versions of it.
Making planes tankier or making guns do less damage just means that your gameplay loop is going to be more time spent babysitting people at their airfield. Even in Sim EC mode you can get from one side of the map to the other in about 5 minutes.
And how many ShVAK, etc hits you can tank?
You admitted that MG151 are now worse than most so you giving 151s as example of ALL cannons not 1-tapping feels like cherry pick
1 Like
The first example that you gave of a cannon over-performing was the MG.151.
Loofah even said he wants other cannons to do 30-50% less damage than a nerfed version of current MG.151.
How is that cherry picking?
But you are not discussing with me currently