Not going to lie, this entire discussion only reinforces my thesis that War Thunder is fundamentally a power-fantasy game.
A large portion of this “discussion” consists of either malicious or incompetent mischaracterizations of historical sources, questionable math, and subjective rhetoric presented as if it were objective analysis.
Nearly 70% of the discussion seems to revolve around baseless arguments over bomber survivability. I have seen very few people actually advocate for a genuinely realistic implementation of the mechanics involved. Instead, most of the conversation has devolved into people defending their own interests, whether they are pro-bomber or anti-bomber.
There are plenty of reasons why this happens, and I could excuse some of them, but I won’t. I will play devil’s advocate for Gaijin here, though: they are actually paying attention to this discussion, and at some point they have to extract something useful from it and make a concrete balancing decision that works for the wider player base without immediately catching even more flak from one side or the other.
That becomes considerably harder when so much of the discussion is driven by factionalism, selective interpretation, and people arguing toward the outcome they personally want rather than toward a consistent standard.
At this point, the player base is so intellectually dishonest that half the posts here may as well have been written by ChatGPT.
I highly doubt they were direct hits. They have a 12m proxy fuze distance and again, unless they hit the fuselage from underneath, they won’t kill a bomber most of the time.
This 75mm cannon was developed specifically to one-shot a B-29; we also have seen an AIM-4 Falcon oneshot a B-17 in one hit with its contact-fused warhead.
I don’t know the exact details of how War Thunder calculates spalling from proximity fuzed shells, but from what I understand, doesn’t it work somewhat like APHE in that the projectile’s initial velocity isn’t properly factored into the fragmentation pattern? At least judging by the damage simulator, the fragments seem to expand outward as a roughly spherical “death orb.” If that’s actually how the game models it, then calling the behavior merely “wonky” seems too generous it would be fundamentally inaccurate, wouldn’t it?
NOW THAT YOU DO MENTION IT, Yes, Spall does get carried forward by APHE, and in a tank for example it would be more of a “Cone” distribution, Gaijin is aware of this, and they’ve even brought it up. AND THE COMMUNITY SAID NO! Because they’d have to actually aim! So they sacrificed realism for “gameplay” and making things easier for the aggressor, and now these same guys are here trying to do the EXACT same thing in the air. Its hilarious
There IIRC severities of fire damage are based on the rate at which fuel is leaking out of the tank, lemme get shot by the 37mm ostwind for bigger holes and see what happens
Every shell, bomb, etc that explodes just uses a spherical damage orb with spherical shrapnel cloud.
No consideration on velocity at which the shell is detonated, the form of a shell, etc. They had a vote about more realistic aphe - players voted no, so we will continue to live in this cursed world that we made.
