They also do more damage than the current German Mineshell which is funny (atleast for Air Rb).
However the amount of fragments it produces is incredibly low.
Do you know the logic behind the fragmentation here? I know that the fragments have 0 to do with TNT equivalent. But I have no clue what actually makes one round generate more fragments than the other.
Unfortunately not. But I think it’s based on weight and filler/weight ratio.
Which in reality determines fragment size, amount and energy.
In WT the fragmentation damage seems to mostly come from weight and fragment size.
So while Soviet FI-T is lighter than Hispano HEFI, it deals pretty much the same damage, maybe more, even though Hispano HEFI fragments seem to have more range.
I cannot tell you about how WT models things, but I can tell you a bit about how actual projectiles perform (and fragment).
With respect to fragmentation - projectile shape, jacket thickness, jacket taper, jacket hardness all play a role. Whether or not that jacket features scoring to weaken it, or rings/bands that strengthen/thicken parts of it will also impact performance. The ogive and meplat are also key characteristics in terms of how the jacket experiences impact. Most anything with a fuse (or an open tip) will feature a meplat conducive to fragmentation, provided the ogive is not too sleek/thick and impact velocity is sufficiently high.
The so what of all that is that projectiles with wider meplats, softer jackets, less aggressive ogive shapes, and higher velocity are more prone to fragmentation… and the more mass the jacket has, the more (or heavier) fragmentation it can produce.
I think it was @KillaKiwi that mentioned in another thread that many nations moved away from HE fill because the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze compared to using incendiary fill and physics ;-).
The signature feature of the Mineshell was that Germany managed to hollow out a shell casing that much that it had very thin walls, but still remained intact after firing.
This had two main consequences:
Other shells with less filler and thicker walls did almost no damage in comparison, due to low explosion power and less fragments. Thats why mineshells were quite famous and even after the war MG151 was used by some nations.
Guys I appreciate the explanation behind the real Mineshells or how real projectiles perform, that’s actually cool to know!
However I was asking about how Realshatter works in terms of fragment generation xd, since most guns use the same fragment coefficient in War Thunder. (Shouldn’t be like that)
I was wondering what makes one round produce more fragments than the other since it’s not the TNT equivalent.
Maybe it’s weight, idk. Makes no sense.
I just tested the British 20mm HEI and german 20mm HEI (M), and while the german one causes orange structural damage and a lot of times doesn’t kill an engine upon direct hit, the British consistently annihilates the wing and destroys the entire engine plus radiators. In conclusion Minengeschoss is just worse and its only benefit is having a larger AOE (completely disregarding the horrible muzzle velocity).
Imagine have more HE than other 20mm, but give the most less damage than other 20mm. Anybody already make report about this?
There are plenty, I made one specifically about this here:
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/fsQsRgkWZkcc
We also added plenty of clips of it on the main gun damage thread here:
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/yNSVIDHLOnwd
Related question:
How much am I handicapping myself running the tracer belt?
I cannot aim the 151 to, quite literally, save my plane. I am slowly improving, but I am crutching hard on the tracer belt right now because I have no intuitive feel for where the rounds are going.
I am slowly, and painfully, trying to teach myself how to fly the FW 190 D-13… it’s an “OK” plane, I think, but held back by my inability to land shots when it counts.
A massive amount. It’s like you’re using a 9mm SMG while everyone is firing .50cal HMGs.
But if you want the historically accurate experience, then go for it ;)
Gaijin dropped new bug fixed news, none of them included German 20mm :3
Makes me wish I knew how to aim the German 20mms!
Well, just use stealth belt and then use 7.92mm or 13mm tracers.
The 20mm are significantly worse than 7.92mm Tracer but around the same as 13mm.
So aim to hit in front or above with 7.92mm and roughly on target with 13mm.
I recommend to use test flight maps (and train with friendly bombers) in order to get used to them.
As a basic rule:
Everything further away than 800 meters flying with high speed is impossible to hit.
If you like to turnfight / scissoring with enemies a rather high convergence (with vertical targeting enabled) allows snap shots as the shell drop is partially compensated.
Downside of high convergence: Complicated to score hits in a tail chase (direct at enemy’s six & same alt) in critical range 500-700 meters due to extreme bullet drop.
If you struggle with MG 151/20s - try the MK 108. Basically a short range grenade launcher😎
Have a good one!
Sadly for me, the FW 190 D-13 has only 20mm cannons. It’s all or nothing there.
I have come to realize that one of the reasons I dislike the Bf-109 so strongly is that I am missing (almost) all of my 20mm shots and only hitting the 8mm.
I’m not sure what has a Mk 108… Do 335 A1? That’s got a pair of 30mm at least. I don’t fly anything else with 30mm though. My performance in the 109s/190s has been so poor generally, that I have not attempted most/any of the mid-BR props.
The 109 G-6 for example (and many others MK 108 (30 mm) - War Thunder Wiki) - u can switch the center mounted MG 151/20 into a MK 108 - and add 2 more under the wings😂
Whilst it is amazing to hit a B-17 with that - a real challenge to hit a fighter aware of your presence…
Use the gun selector if you wanna try to hit your 20mm only, I recommend it mostly for the variants that do not have the 13mm tho, cuz the 13mm carries the 20mm in terms of damage unironically.
109 G6/G14/G10/K4 and D12 have 30mm Mk108
I kept playing Ta-152H till I fell in love with MK108 via Stockholm syndrome.
Here’s a Youtube channel that has two great videos showing what the real world damage of German 20mm and 30mm Minengeschosse was:
https://www.youtube.com/@WWIIUSBombers/search?query=minengeschoss
In real life they were pretty darn devastating to bombers and fighters alike.
The Warthunder game used to represent that kind of damage done my the German cannons fairly accurately before things somehow change completely for whatever inexplicable reasons.
Now a single .303 browning armor piercing incendiary bullet will somehow magically burn your entire plane up within 2 seconds. It will also magically pass through any armored glass designed to stop exactly this type of round and instantly knock out your pilot.
50 cal US bullets really are little nukes compared to anything in the German fighter arsenal, even the mighty 50mm BK5.
I understand that Warthunder probably had to cater to inexperienced players of the British and US tech tree barely able of landing any shots on enemies. It really and rightfully was somewhat difficult to score kills with 6 browning guns the way early WW2 allied fighters were commonly armed, simply because these guns required some time on target and a bunch of lead, whereas German 20mm and 30mm cannons had a much lower rate of fire and comparably poor ballistics, but those really could take out a Spitfire with a single well placed hit.
The general issue arising from the changes in the game however is that heavy twin engine fighters have now become completely obsolete and utterly uncompetitive.
These are planes that in real life could dish out a lot of damage but in turn they could take a serious punch, so to say.
They weren’t nearly as nimble and agile as single engine fighters but they certainly required a lot more .303 hits to bring down, and they carried cannons which dealt a lot of damage, especially to bombers.
Before Gajin completely changed the gun damages, twin engine fighters like the Bf-110 or Me-410, as well as the Mosquito , Firefly or also the P-38, these planes would all have a very reasonable place in the game and rightfully so. They were good against bombers and they were inferior against single engine fighters, less maneuverable, often a bit slower, but however they were basically ‘flying tanks’ and required several hits to bring down, realistically and rightfully so.
Now with the absolutely insane damage outputs Browning MGs and .50 cal bullets produce, all planes pretty much become ‘easy single shot kills’. A single hit or two will now simply do the job.
This practically robs any robust airplane on the game of the advantages they had in real combat.
A Fw-190, a P-47, and a F-4U corsair are now just as easy to shoot down as a Bf-109 or a P-51 are, even twin engine P-38s or a BF-110s are now practically just as quick and easy to shoot down as a Japanese Zero is.
The significantly reduced and now very limited damage output of the German 20mm and 30mm mine-shells is one issue, the much bigger problem is the insane and utterly unrealistic damage output of small caliber guns.
I don’t want to complain too much, and a game is a game and reality is reality and those are two fundamentally different things with fundamentally different goals.
However, comparing a massive 50mm BK5 that can barely penetrate a lightly armored vehicle, with .303 browning MGs blowing the same vehicles up just as quick and easily while carrying far more ammo to do so, is plain absurd.
Aside from that, let me mention that the Me-410 A1/U5 and the B2/U4 variants carrying this 50mm BKW gun were designed and ever used for one single task only which is to snipe B-17, B-24 and Lancaster bombers out of the sky from a mile away.
That is why it had a telescopic gun sight for the BK5 similar to what the game models on the HS-129 with the 75mm gun.
Instead of catering to the true and historic intent of the Me 410 /U4 versions Gajin more and more tweaked it into a ground pounding attacker, which the plane is actually pretty terrible at in the game and in reality.
The 22 shots of slow firing 50mm ammo just don’t allow any reasonably skilled player to rack up a lot of kills on ground targets and any other Me 410 or BF 110 variant carrying bombs or rockets will (rightfully) be far more effective.
As it is now, the Me 410 A1/U4 and B2/U4 (which were quite successful and effective in WW2 despite their low production numbers) have become almost completely unusable in the game.
the 50mm AP and HEI rounds don’t do nearly as much damage as they should and did in reality. The (absurdly) removed tracers from the 50mm air target belt combined with the lack of a telescopic gun sight (which the real WW2 plane had) make it nearly impossible to hit anything other than at close range.
This is not supposed to be a rant, but this used to be by far my favorite plane to fly and with skill it allowed for some amazing long range bomber kills.
The Me 410 /U4 was always challenging to use, and was typically disadvantaged in many situations (rightfully and realistically so). It always required quite some serious skill, to use efficiently, but it was a lot of fun to fly despite and exactly because of all this.
Now in the current version of the game the Me 410 U4s really became nothing but an utterly useless death trap.
Any other type of Me 410 , Bf 110, Mosquito, Firefly and many other heavy fighters have become similarly useless and overly vulnerable to the insanely OP damage outputs of smaller caliber guns.
Not 20mm one, but I think a high explosive shell with 102g TNT equivalent should not work this way…