the mg151 for most German and Italian aircraft is useless. and definitely needs a buff so it can compete with the hispano or the shvak. its completely unbalanced compared to the other 20mms and by the time you’ve killed someone with them almost all of your ammo is gone already. compare this to the shvak where only a short burst is needed to completely rip both wings off an enemy plane. or the hispanos where they can penetrate the roofs of medium tanks and some heavy tanks. a rework for German cannons is needed
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I’m here to co-sign this in case anyone ties to claim skill issue, mg151 are the worse 20mm in the game without a shadow of a doubt, shavks do WAY more damage while having little less than 1/3 the explosive mass with WAY higher velocity, but you get 80 less so I guess copers will call that balance, ignoring the fact that’s easily enough for 5 kills
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wink wink
Look at the cannon damage thread, people just want one-shots they don’t deserve
Cannons doing too much damge - Machinery of War Discussion / Aircraft - War Thunder — official forum
Technically ShVAK is actually slower (if you use stealth belts in your mg151/20), but just doesn’t lose speed since it isn’t filled to the brim with explosives, but should make it deal less blast damage and more fragmentation damage but people want their cannons to one-shots so I suppose “fuck you any cannon with more than 6g of TNT, you went overboard”.
Let me tell you, it doesn’t get better, those early jets with mk-108s and mk-103s will make you miss that dinky mg151/20.
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MK-108 hits like a 13.2mm Akan :(
Taking into account how much speed bleed mg151 has vs the shavk utterly negates the small initial velocity advantage.
20mms on German planes seem fine for me. They suck on the C.205 though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a Hanomag v.s Sd.kfz.251 thing.
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no it doesnt
shvaks used to be the number one spark machine, they were so bad, it was such a stark contrast when i got the fw190d13 with the 20mm they did so much more damage than shvaks like 5 years ago, now theyre probably closer together than they used to be
now the mg151 is objectively worse in every regard besides ammo count
The problem is that the developers have unrealistically given the same damage to everything while maintaining other realistic stats. The MG151 has worse ballistics but significantly more damage than the Shvak, yet in the game they’ve made it deal the same damage, so the Shvak ends up being a much better gun. If the developers did that with the damage, then they should make all guns fire bullets that weigh the same number of grams and travel at the same speed. If they’re going to make Arcade damage, then everything should be Arcade damage; otherwise, it’s unfair to certain weapons whose philosophy was based on dealing significantly more damage than others at the cost of requiring you to get much closer.
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I dont know about every regard, but definitely the biggest thing is the mine shots just really dont seem like they actually have 6 times the explosive mass of the shvak HE
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And people defend it
Even if now 20mils powercreep the fucking 23,25, 30,37 mil cannons.
Even some SPAA are screwed over, M42 duster/M19 is actually pretty mid for AA duties, since an italian M42 beats them all in just firerate.
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It simply breaks the realism. Depending on the weapon’s design and ammunition, in reality they have different performance characteristics with their own strengths and weaknesses, creating a balance and preferences for use. For example, with the M151/20, you would have to get quite close to the enemies, requiring more precise aiming due to bullet drop and loss of velocity. It’s very good against light aircraft and quite good against larger planes, although it requires a significant number of shots against tough aircraft and bombers. In contrast, the Shvak would be easier to aim and have a longer range, at the cost of being effective against light aircraft, while against heavier aircraft and bombers you would need to aim for critical damage such as destroying engines or setting them on fire. This is why the Soviets developed the 23mm cannons, to solve the problem of the low damage output of the 20mm cannons.
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And german and japanese engineers made the various 30mm cannons, because even the mg151/20 was no wonder weapon that split planes in half.
yup, both those cannons are simply outclassed because their one important upside is given away for free
literally what are they better at?
I really wonder if its a symptom of damage models being rubbish rather than shells inherrently performing better or worse than they should be.
Correct me if im wrong, but MG151 and specifically the meinshells were designed to pen the target and then explode right?
under those conditions, in war thunder, they probably do less damage than an impact fuse round like a Hispano.
If damage models were better, with more detailed internal models and more complete external damage models, then the shells would probably balance out quite a bit and you’d also end up with a far better end result than just tweaking the damage of rounds until they feel right even if not historically accurate
I can consistently get a kill with my mg151/20 in 8-10 rounds. This translates to approximately 0.5-1.0 second trigger time.
Stealth belt, fired from 300 to 500 yards at the fuselage or wing root.
Divergences are observed when firing from dead six (the rudder can tank surprising amount of shots) or during terrible server conditions (when aircraft are flickering/fluttering back and forth. Which I assume leads to the explosion not being registered close enough to deal enough damage).
Example of flickering 1: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw9mLapDKqs)
(notice the F8F-1)
Example of flickering 2: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM-7PdvV-7s)
(notice the aircraft’s spatial uncertainty in the downward scissors.)
1 Like