The issue with big round under performing is another issue, It’s related to real shatter I think but it’s not a issue with the mechanic, mostly the parameters. IE 30mm round with realshatter don’t produce enough fragment AND said fragment don’t travel far enough.
I said real shatter was improved because back 2 years ago you’d need to fire non stop with 20mm to just get a crit. Right now, it still happens (But I think it’s linked to server issue) but a lot less.
As a bonus, here what the 20mm MG-151 in the soviet ground tree does, go figure:
Now imagine, you are in a 190, a spit managed to catch you off guard and is diving on with much more speed. You fight like hell to reverse him, And when finally by pure skill and luck you get a angle.
You aim the most perfect burst (Despite the 151 horrible ballistics). And… “hit 33SL 29RP”. You check the replay. no damage at all
Ho-5 explosive shell. 84.5g going either 740 or 800m/s
Unknown ShVAK shell. 91g going 815m/s.
For the ShVAK I moved the firing times by 100m, so that it shows the times starting at 100m instead of 0m. I estimated it would lose 80m/s going from 0 to 100m.
The German shells are heavier and feature a tracer which improves ballistics due to the base bleed effect. It loses 60m/s going from 0 to 100m.
Ignore the data for the ShVAK (incorrect)
As it can be seen, according to the ballistic table, the lighter ShVAK shells are still superior to, what should be, ballistic superior German shells.
Yet only after 800m the German rounds catches up.
Which to me makes no sense, unless the unknown ShVAK shell, this table was based on, was in fact the 20mm Tracer shell.
But even the even lighter Ho-5 shell stays pretty close to the larger German shell. So not sure what is going on.
From what I can see here they’re back to being overpowered again. There was very little difference on that medium bomber on your pass between the 20mm and the 30mm.
Your pass and the attacks on the American AI bombers which as you rightly state yourself are tougher than some others in game show that they’re punching a bit too much. Watching your ammo counter you start hitting after 13 rounds (187) and the bomber’s wing evaporated after expending just 9 rounds (178) remaining. The way the rest of the bombers fell apart right in front of you from just 1x MG151 from the direct 6 o’clock position where the bomber should be if anything the toughest is also not a good sign at all. The Luftwaffe stated in their somewhat generous (in my opinion going by gun cam footage etc) calculations that it took 20 20mm rounds to down a bomber.
If a well known pretty strong bomber can be dismantled in as little as 9 rounds then what will a fighter be like? I pray we haven’t gone back to the nuclear death shells from a few years back.
I’ve discovered that I made a mistake in the calculation.
The adjusted ShVAK performance starting at 100m should be:
Range
20mm FI-T (117g)
20mm AP (117g)
20mm Ho-5 (84.5g)
20mm ShVAK (91g)
20mm ShVAK (96g)
20mm HS 404 (~124g)
v0
720m/s
720m/s
740m/s
~735m/s (100m)
~720m/s (100m
738m/s (200m)
100m
0.145
0.146
0.14
0.14
0.1
0.14
200m
0.303
0.306
0.30
0.30
0.3
0.30
300m
0.477
0.483
0.48
0.48
0.5
0.47
400m
0.666
0.679
0.68
0.69
0.7
0.66
500m
0.874
0.898
0.91
0.92
1
0.86
600m
1.101
1.143
1.16
1.18
1.3
1.10
700m
1.348
1.415
1.46
1.6
1.35
800m
1.616
1.716
1.76
1.9
1.61
900m
1.905
2.047
2.08
2.2
1000m
2.215
2.407
Thanks to @Ghostmaxi I got German data for the HS 404 cannon and added it to the comparison as well.
Now the ShVAK shell performs actually the worst out of all cannons, even though the difference up to 400m is basically neglectable.
Which is still odd, since the ShVAK shell is so much lighter than the HS 404 shell.
At the same time it’s now slightly worse above 400m than the very light Ho-5 shell but maybe the Ho-5 ballistics are actually for flight times at altitude and not sea level.
I also adjusted the table for the TNSh 96g shell. The table isn’t very accurate, with only one decimal point, but somehow the heavier shell has even worse ballistic performance.
Edit: I changed the HS 404 shell weight from ~130g to 124g. I think that French Hispano ammunition was lighter and fired at 880m/s while the later British ammunition had a weight of ~131.5g and was slightly slower.
The heavier Hispano shell should slow down a lot less than the lighter ShVAK or Ho-5 shell.
But here in the comparison the difference is very minor.
The MG 151/20 117g FI-T shell seems to be very similar in ballistics to the ~130g Hispano shell.
I expected a bigger difference from the German shell having a tracer, reducing drag.
While the much lighter Ho-5 and ShVAK shells don’t fare that much worse, especially compare to the data from the TNSh cannon which fires a slightly heavier ShVAK shell.
I could also add data for the German 20mm AP rounds, having a weight of 117g and no tracer and I‘m pretty confident that the Ho-5 and ShVAK ballistic, from the data that I have, would still match them, despite being lighter.
But don’t these devs just never get tired of making mistakes? And we have the ground forces, which need a complete overhaul of the damage model for practically all bullets, an adjustment to the penetration model and armor. And now they’re also destroying the air forces. They have no restraint when it comes to making their own game a piece of garbage.
As expected, the lighter (117g) shell is slightly inferior to the heavier Hispano shell (124g).
While the data for the 91g ShVAK shell is hardly worse, despite the even bigger weight difference.
Since the data for the TNSh shows the heavier ShVAK shell with inferior performance, it means that either the data is wrong or that the 91g shell is indeed a Tracer shell, which would then explain the superor ballistic performance.
Another explanation could be that the data from the TNSh cannon is simply incorrect. It’s not very precise in the first place.
The ballistic of the Ho-5 and 91g ShVAK shell match very closely and the weight difference isn’t very large, slightly smaller than the German 20mm AP shell compared to the Hispano Ball shell, which don’t differ that much in ballistics either.
I changed the HS 404 shell weight from ~130g to 124g. I think that French Hispano ammunition was lighter and fired at 880m/s, while the later British ammunition had a weight of ~131.5g and was slightly slower.
With this the difference in ballistic are very close to the 20mm AP shell weighing 117g which has a pointed nose and should be more aerodynamic.
The more I get used to mg151/20 ballistics and the more I try other guns, the less sh*tty 151s seem to be, honestly.
I just had a game, where a yak 9t ate a ton of shots from 6x browning m2, all scored as hits (at least 5), he had 3 leaks, and continued to fight close to normal.
I might’ve gotten an unlucky hit with 20mm mineshell maybe once, but I would’ve surely taken him down much faster
Shvaks/type99mk2s do have better ballistics over range than 151 and they are deadly, but 151s have a slight edge at close range in terms of muzzle velocity and rpm. And even with very little time on target, landing a burst from 151s is the most consistent in scoring fatal hits, for me at least
Well, it was about the ShVAK ballistics and the FI-T and AP are similar to other 20mm cannon shells, while the Mineshell is unique to the MG 151/20.
The ballistic performance is also incredible bad.
Range
20mm Mineshell (92g)
20mm ShVAK (91g)
20mm HS 404 (124g)
v0
790m/s
815m/s
880m/s
100m
0.136
0.13
0.12
200m
0.294
0.27
0.24
300m
0.479
0.43
0.38
400m
0.696
0.61
0.54
500m
0.952
0.82
0.71
600m
1.249
1.05
0.90
700m
1.588
1.31
1.10
800m
1.965
1.59
1.34
900m
2.371
1.89
1.59
1000m
2.792
2.21
1.85
I was originally under the impression that ShVAKs overperform ballistic wise and that there was something odd with the ballistic table but maybe I was wrong about it.
But it’s also difficult to say how they perform in the game.
