Germany HVAP belts?

Machinery of War Discussion
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What is the deal with Germany and it’s HVAP belts, they’re filled with random garbage… why would belts dedicated to ground targets only have 50% HVAP in them like in the Ho 229?

Yet the same Mk103 cannons on the Do 335 can have full HVAP?

Even worse with the Kugelblitz, only 1 out of 3 is HVAP, and with a 200 round belt that’s 134 useless rounds in there and only 66 once that actually pierce, 77m HVAP at 7.0.

But in the M53/59 for example there are pure HVAP belts no problem, 91mm HVAP at 6.3.

Why the difference between nation and even the difference between identical weapons?

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Ho 229 used to have full HVAP belts, and it was way too good as a consequence, so they nerfed it to 1/4 HVAP on top of making the cannons less accurate. Now they have made it 1/2 HVAP and the cannon accuracy nerf has been removed, so it’s a bit better. Besides, the rest of the rounds in that belt still penetrate 58 mm of armor, which is more than enough for tank roofs.

On one hand it’s quite a bit of double standards from Gaijin, on the other the Kugelblitz is closed top, and its HVAP belt nerf comes from when the round still had 95 mm of pen. Still, should be reworked.

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While the M53/59 has german origin guns, they are not the same. But indeed the Kugelblitz should get more HVAP, perhaps 1-2 HVAP and 1-2 Pzbrsprgr. L/Spur (ApIhe-T with same pen as Ap-I, but also has he filler and cap, which is allready on planes but still unfixed with only 2mm pen…)
Overall the 3 and 2 cm Pzgr 40/H-Pzgr should (and perhaps 3,7 cm Pzgr 18 with just 49mm compared to the back then 65mm, also Velocity of it is also still too low, the 0,7kg Naval round does get 815m/s allready.) get an K-Factor adjustment like allready the Dshk, KVPT and Mg 151/15 have gotten.
I mean they both have now more pen than the 2 cm Pzgr 40 which has a bigger core and same or more velocity. And you cant even go though Kw 1 Turret side anymore from a distance like IRL was the case.

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Ho 229 used to have full HVAP belts, and it was way too good as a consequence, so they nerfed it to 1/4 HVAP on top of making the cannons less accurate.

This is like what, 2017? The 229 has an absolutely horrid flight model and is now irrelevant anyways as we have 262’s and such with Mk103s with full HVAP and a functional flight model, instead of trying to fly the nerfed dorito because it was good like 6 years ago and neglected ever since… this was before we even had radar SPAA.

On one hand it’s quite a bit of double standards from Gaijin, on the other the Kugelblitz is closed top, and its HVAP belt nerf comes from when the round still had 95 mm of pen. Still, should be reworked.

Kugel is also a Panzer IV chassis at 7.0, and with how poorly Gaijin models open crew vehicle it’s way less survivable than the M53/59 anyways… a 1/3 HVAP belt at 7.0 with 77mm of pen vs full HVAP with 91mm of pen at 6.3 seems very much like double standards.

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Well not so much the same gun as just a similar weapon where one has a massively nerfed belt and the other gets full HVAP belt at a lower BR and with extra pen, and arguably a more survivable vehicle from my experience.

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Of course, i didnt state anything against it.

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I’m not saying that these things are not true, I’m just explaining why these nerfs are there which is one of the questions you had.

I agree with you that Gaijin should absolutely rework them.

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I know, I’m just arguing the points themselves before someone comes in and pretend those things are justified.

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If we wanted an accurate historical solution, every German WW2 belt should be max 1/4 HVAP, especially ground 20 mm vehicles.

M53/59 is postwar, different story.

The Germans were desperate for tungsten throughout the war. All you have to do is look at total tungsten ammo produced to see how unlikely it was they’d let 20 mm guns spew it all over the place. We’re talking on the order of one round made per Pz2, total, not whole belts of the stuff.

I don’t really mind that it’s there in some quantity, but there’s a reason the Germans stopped using Pz 2 after 1940 as their MBT and the game doesn’t reflect that currently.

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This is such a weak argument though, we are going to have vehicles in game that never fought in a war, they never made it beyond a prototype stage, that were complete garbage and prone to just catch fire, poorly engineered, if not vehicles that just never existed at all, fighting in wars they never fought in, in location they’ve never been to, time traveling to create bizarre matchups, but then we are going to draw the line at realistic ammo based on historical circumstances?

If Germany can’t have HVAP belts, then it also cannot fight post war vehicles in unrealistic and unhistorical matchups and scenarios.

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Ordinarily I’d agree, let the possibilities of hypothetical matchups play out.

I would personally draw the line when what’s proposed could only happen if there were fundamental changes in things like physical constants… Like the mineral balance of the Earth. Obviously if there were THAT much tungsten to play with a lot of other things would be very different too, and especially when it leads to weird in game outcomes like Pz 2s being better tanks than Pz 3s. If that’s the result your game ruleset produces, you’re not accounting for something pretty big in your model.

In this case, limiting 20 and 30 mm tungsten rounds per belt to 1/4 would still be way more than they’d ever have in real life, but would do a lot towards balancing those vehicles down to their real life capabilities. Win win.

See, the thing is, if your German tank models assume a world where tungsten is so common that it could just be shot away by autocannon by the trainload, then logically the Allies would have had a lot more of it to play with too. You think they wouldn’t have made tungsten belts for .50 cals then and 20mm Spitfire cannon then too? What’s the argument against those being added to game, to even things out again?

Anyway the whole ammo cost model is a mess, and this isn’t even the biggest problem with that, but people saying the Germans don’t have enough tungsten rounds yet aren’t really helping.

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Well, it’s a good thing the world got resupplied by aliens after WW2 to ensure that the M53/59 could have full HVAP belts at least.

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The thing is, I’m pretty sure those weren’t tungsten rounds? Other sources call them AP. The M53/59 30mms seem to be just really high powered (1000 m/s Mv). They might have had tungsten cores, I honestly don’t know.

Obviously a lot of tungsten was and is used in other larger AP rounds, including a lot of APFSDS. I just think a game that is at least trying to give a sense of the relative capabilities of real historical weapons, early-game decisions to give Germany 20 and 30 mm tungsten rounds in large quantities, rounds that in reality were never actually fielded, more or less, doesn’t really help itself there. That’s all.

That by the way, is why I think the Horten is probably fine with 50-50 belts. It’s a largely imaginary plane, why not give it largely imaginary rounds. If the Germans had conquered enough of the world that they’d have a fleet of Hortens, they might have had enough tungsten too. But the Pz 2 was a real thing, and there the in game performance (where it always uses 100% HVAP) is very different from it’s real world performance (where it never could).

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Real world performance isn’t really relevant in the game, as many many liberties are taken with that anyways, this cherry picking of what features are and are not modeled in the game based on nothing is obnoxious and just ridiculous, real world capabilities matter when it’s convenient for them and it’s just a game when it doesn’t.

Mk 103s should just have full HVAP belts, if for some dumb reason it cannot have it, it should open the biggest can of worms and tons of vehicles need nerfs, limitations and be outright removed from the game.

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You’re just replacing their own slightly non-arbitrary standard (historicity, imperfectly realized) with your own completely arbitrary one then (“whatever makes Miragen happy”). But hey, you do you, boo. My own equally subjective standard says it should all be removed. So it seems we are at an impasse.

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Nothing arbitrary about an equal and fair application of rules across the board, not a reality where one nation, conveniently Russia, gets to have full 91mm HVAP at 450 RPM, but Germany cannot have 77mm HVAP at 450 RPM without making 66% of it useless because reasons.

Or one where we can’t have a Maus because it’s difficult to balance supposedly but all the similar heavies in the Russian tree get to stay there just fine, and like that we could easily find a 100 vehicles in the game that are more difficult to balance than a Maus.

Or one where we cannot have a Coelian because a wooden mockup isn’t good enough, or a Panther ll/Tiger 105 because it wasn’t realistic, but here’s 40.000 ton of bullshit we came up with in the form of a ship that was never going to be built and even if it was ever going to get built, it would never be build to the spec it is in the game.

If equal application of the rules is completely arbitrary, I don’t know what to call Gaijin’s approach.

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You dont mix belts, Pz II were given 2 Magazins and tanks were given 5-15 rounds depending on current stock available on front

Guess what, the .50 cal AP round has a tungsten core.
The 20mm Hispano just didnt need tungsten ammo for its purpose and britain doesnt really have it.

The Horten belt is pure ballancing, all the Aircraft manuals about the ammo state, against ground AND ONLY ground to use a pure Apcr belt.
Also russia didnt really have tungsten, thats why they tryed to use steel cors, then shorten the cors and add a steel back, then just use small cors and give it a big steelbottom, even some early APDSFS were made with steel.
Your whole argument is false, double standart, not in line with history and from an in game perspective also not correct.

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Afaik the Armor Piercing M2 round uses a steel alloy core, seemingly with tungsten (found this image that says “Tungsten Chrome Steel”).

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We gonna do this?

Ok, let’s start:

Yes. They’re called SLAP rounds, and they were first used in combat in the Gulf War in 1990. .50s from the time period and BR range we’re talking about did not (note: tungsten <> “tungsten steel”)

Yes, the little tungsten they had was saved up to give some APCR to 37 and 50 mm guns (the 5-15 rounds you mention). That’s why 20mm APCR production dried up after the initial allotment of 90 rounds per gun in early 1941, which was all exhausted by early 1943. It was never given to non-tankbuster aircraft and rarely if ever to AA weapons to save as much as possible for the light tanks, so those vehicles should likely not have it in quantity in game, if we’re being purely historical. As I said, I would make an exception for the Horten 30mm because the only way you end up with a lot of Hortens is an imaginary world where Germany also has a lot of tungsten, so it’s imaginary all the way down anyway.

Funny, I remember being VERY precise of the order of tracer and other “special” rounds when I loaded my magazines and MG belts in the military. And clearly in WT you “mix belts”, on nearly every single belt fed gun in game, so I really don’t know what game you’re playing. I’m quite confident if I was commanding a Pz II and was down to my last couple APCR rounds in 1943 I’d have mixed them in even if I didn’t have a full mag.

Ok, you want “in line with history”?

The Horten would likely have been armed with the MK 108 cannon, in 30x90RB caliber. APCR was NEVER produced for this weapon, historically, muzzle velocity of the shorter cartridge was too low for it. (The use of MK 103s by the game version of the Horten is itself quite ahistorical).

APCR ammo WAS produced for the MK 103, in 30x184B caliber, the much higher-powered weapon of the Hs 129B, Do 335 and the FlakPz IV. You are right that those weapons’ users were told not to waste their APCR shooting at aircraft. Because you’re basically destroying your country’s war factories, machine tool by machine tool you just frittered away, with every round, when you wasted tungsten that way.

Like I said, the Horten is imaginary so give it whatever. But HVAP instead of AP in those German 20mm AA platforms (in a mixed belt! I thought you said they couldn’t do that!) is dumb and ahistorical, and giving those mixed belts instead of pure HVAP ones to post-1940 20mm light tanks and the like would give a more realistic take on what the Wehrmacht’s real world capabilities against the French and British and Russian armor they would have faced would have been.

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You and in general Mg belt are very well mixed, but not Ww2 Apcr, because as i allready wrote, by the manual, that Apcr is of high value and must only be used on tanks, and in for example Mg 34 the gunner must unload any remaining S.m.K. H rounds, a mixed belt would be plain waste of ammo.

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