Real shatter 1.0.....2.0....3.0?

dоt · July 28, 2023, 8:21am

Yes but that requires community to push Gaijin as they have totally forgotten those guns it seems

Yes maybe bad example, but you can do the same with a single MG151 if you hit it right (at least I had no issues whatsoever flying the 109 with single 151 yday). The MG151 has barely any armor piercing properties (on the HEI rounds) so they just explode on the surface and still have that huge outwards ball of shrapnel like they always had, which from a direct 6 position is crap because the tail of enemy and the angle of wings makes 1 shots very unlikely. This is how it currently is, you need deflection shots at reasonably close range to max your damage with those shells. Whereas non 151 shells seem to have shrapnel flying inwards the enemy plane and shrapnel deals more damage on those shells because they just changed that with this update… but they have far less shrapnel than the German HEI rounds

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 8:28am

Well, tails are extremely fragile in WT.
1 shell will often remove so much from control surfaces, you can stop firing.
Of course you have to keep firing to avoid killsteals, but you know what I’m talking about.
Even if he doesn’t crash - he’s out of the fight for like 7m, which is a good deal for 1 shell if you ask me.

My shots are in overwhelming majority deflection shots.
I often watch replays - my teammates just casually shoot the enemy flying straight and not seeing anything.
I come in?
Expect some EPIC dodging action even if we’re talking about 45% WR guy. I just don’t get it!
It doesn’t help them usually. But makes me amazed.
But the thing is - MG151/20 often ripped wings too easily in my opinion.
Now every cannon does that.
Yes, MAYBE with 1 shell, MG151/20 will create a bit bigger issue due to larger are of damage.
But with 2-3 - every 20mm cannon right now will take your wing clean off.
And this is just wrong.
We can’t

Look at .50 cals - they require some serious clobbering. Should they be worse than 20mm, becausse IRL damaging engine was enough for a shotdown, and here AF is 15km away and you can get back to safety almost every time?
Sure.
But the difference got gigantic and I’ll take 2 Shvaks over 8 .50 cals any day for a snap-shot.

Also look at this - I mentioned that IMO Shvaks do more “point damage” - it seems like it’s really the case. Bomber wing has so much HP it won’t go black from 1 shell. And what do we see?

And rear fuselage - I was getting a mix of yellow and dark orange from both, but the scenario below is pretty damn common:

Shot both 20 times nd to be honest - I see no difference.

dоt · July 28, 2023, 8:35am

All cannons do that now, much more inwards damage… all except those that weren’t included in realshatter. But sure, I agree, many cannons outside of ballistics feel the same when they hit. The only difference comes with higher shrapnel (and related damage) as caliber goes up (ie. 20 vs 23mm+).

I’m not sure how (or if) actual explosive mass does anything right now when it comes to destructive power. They should possibly link TNT equivalent to chance to generate max shrapnel or something along those lines. F.e. if shrapnel count for cannons is 1-5 (and this seems quite random now), then TNT equivalent sets a minimum amount to this random number. Not sure, I guess they’ll do something with it eventually.

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 8:38am

It seems explosive mass, kinetic energy, mass of the shell are largely irrelevant.
Which is ridiculous.

Now some comedy gold, I love facing EDIT: premium (because others seem to be more fragile) jets with MG151/20 because this really happens, I could not, in 30 shots, get the same result with Shvak, I’m attaching the absolute worst I got (the part that turned yellow wasn’t even the part the shell struck, I did not move the pointer)

And worst for Shvak:

Right now it’s all busted.

EDIT: A bit further down, these are not the worst results, but what I was getting quite consistently:

I think problem becomes evident once we try to impact module with large HP pool. Couldn’t get that part black even once, I adjusted the angle to 45 degress for MG151/20 too, BTW while testing
Shvak indeed hits harder.

T3ddy4 · July 28, 2023, 8:49am

Realshatter is just a different way of calculating damage as opposed to the arbiter of how much damage a shell does. In the old system there was just another algorythm that worked out the fragments, splash damage and so on, and realshatter is simply a differrent algorithm. Ultimately, Gaijin controls completely the damage guns do, so if they want to decrease the damage they can and did, and now they have increased the damage. Realshatter was never the problem, the problem was what gaijin wanted the damage to be and what players want the damage to be. As for testing it now,from what ive seen the simulator in the hangar gives complete nonsense results, but also only for a single shell, which is not more often than not what would happen in a match, and testing in a custom game is also unreliable because the survivability of an aircraft is effected by the modifications you have on that vehicle, and the pilot obviously has the vitality skill, and there is no way of telling what state of modification the vehicles in the custom battles are.

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 9:00am

Right now damage is pretty much not connected to:

shell’s kinetic energy
shell mass
shell explosive filler.
But it’s largely dependent on shell caliber.
Which greatly benefits Shvak and Ho-5 and works to disadvantage of everything else.

Right now, thx to Gaijin’s decisions, Shvak and Ho-5 deal more damage (module HP) than MG151/20, which can be seen on a high-HP module of F-89’s wing.

This is wrong on so many levels.
Props are torn to pieces with 1-2 shells. .50 cals are largely useless.

Current situation is greatly detrimental to the game, destroying any resemblence of balance we had.

dоt · July 28, 2023, 9:30am

Bit of a hot take there, MG151 still does a lot of damage and prior to this update, I would sometimes struggle to kill an enemy with Shvaks, Ho5s, Type99s, B20s, Hispanos, and so on because I just keep getting hits and a crit. Changing to any plane with MG151s and I’d instantly stop struggling because you could actually reliably kill enemies without having to sacrifice much of your position or energy.

MG151 still does the same damage it did before this update, you can still kill reliably.

Sure you’re right that they do less damage than other 20mms now but lets be honest, it’s not a massive difference, and lets not exaggerate that “all resemblance of balance is gone”.

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 9:46am

Many planes were balanced around the armanent. Right now every plane with cannons has enough firepower for 1 and done passes. Furthermore, as you can see, it’s easier to destroy a module with Shvak/Ho-5 than with MG151/20.

So planes which relied on having lots of dakka are now on equal grounds with those that were armed much more poorely. In Fw 190 D9 pushing a head-on vs La-7 made sense.
Right now it’s a mutually assured destruction, with La-7 needing 1-2 shells on target for the kill because you can no longer shrug off FI-T shell to the middle of a wing.

Plane toughess also went out of the window. No prop is anywhere as tough as F89B. Ans F89B gets black wing part from a single Ho-5 hit, reliably.
Some planes were tanky in a way that made no sense (cough P-51H cough) but F2G was notoriously tough. Now they are clicked out of the air. I can’t aim Shvak because I’m not used to ballistics being that good. But when I do land? Oh boy.

It used to be like that: Fw 190 D9 scored kills quickly, La-7 was way more maneuvrable but worse armed, which meant good D9 player could create numerical advantage vs good La-7 player and win even if good La-7 player was able to take advantage from extremely tight high speed turns and good low-medium speed maneuvrability.

Right now both planes are in a one and done category, where even when target is hard to hit, as long as you land a few shells, enemy is out of the fight or dead.
Both can remove the enemy with a snap shot.
Which means both have similar ability to quickly kill the enemy.
And I don’t consider this truely balanced.

Similar story with Ta-152H vs Yak-3U or Ki-84 Ko the 5.3 one vs Bf 109 K4 with gunpods vs Yak-9UT vs F4U4B.

And then you have US planes where even P-47 is at best matching the time-to-kill of Ki-43 and probably Ki-43 actually needs smaller firing window still.

dоt · July 28, 2023, 10:08am

Someone hits you, you should not be able to just “shrug it off” because lol shvaks/ho5/etc. Funny you bring the D9 up, at 5.0 is insane. And sure, if shvaks/B20 stay like this and you can get 10 kills out of a single 120 shell ammo load reliably with good aim, then some BR changes will be due, particularly those at the lower BRs (say, 4.3 and below) and a few in the higher BRs (La7/3P/9U) but it’s no surprise that flight performance wise, there were plenty of Russian planes sitting too low.

Not that they are the exception, plenty of undertiered stuff everywhere… Just to name a few… P51C, XP50, 109F2/E4, 190A1, Ki44, Wyvern, etc.

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 10:18am

It seems a bit like you consider aircraft performance the only truely important factor. In a team game.
Unless someone has .50 cals, then to hell with him because he will struggle even with good aim to get kills quickly enough.

You absolutely should be able to shrug off single hits and that’s what exactly Fw 190 airframe did. And P-47 airframe, maybe even to a bigger extent (and other big murrican planes).

If this was a duelling game - yes, you’re right. But this is a team game, where different strengths should apply to different planes. My Fw 190 D9 can force a HARD dodge from enemy plane, leaving it at lower energy state. But my Fw 190 D9 turns like a brick. My Fw 190 D9 can one-and-done the enemy, while enemy La-7 needs priolonged combat to make sure enemy stays dead. And this is fine. Different planes, different strengths and it worked like that IRL too.

There’s plenty of undertiered planes, but right now we have created a whole new balance to the game, where Ki-84-Ko armanent is now on par with Ta-152H (or SLIGHTLY worse) or Re.2005 because either plane can remove the enemy with short burst (and Ki-84 gets superior ballistics).

Also the "firepower superiority’ has been my playstyle of choice for years and gave me great results even vs 3-4-stacks of v. good players (they did not expect suicidial head-on from Fw 190 F8 as much as they should,. lol). You can no longer do that because EVERY 20mm armed plane in game will now ruin your day effortlessly.

Once again - Shvak FI-T is kinetic-energy based and it doesn’t even hold that much kinetic energy because the shell is v. light for 20mm.
Ho-5 is even worse.
They should be nowhere near as powerfull as AN/M3 (kinetic energy/explosive + fragments due to mass - a balanced shell that should be good at any range) or MG151/20 (mostly explosive mass, way less reliant on kinetic energy, way less fragments - but some big ones for sure, especially from the nose part of the shell - the hardest hitter, but less damage to the sides and a bit less damage at v. short range compared to AN/M3 maybe).

dоt · July 28, 2023, 10:45am

I wholeheartedly disagree… people who take bad lines or lack awareness and place themselves in front of anyone’s guns should find themselves in the hangar or severely crippled. Otherwise they don’t learn. It should not be the exclusive right of Germany and some Italian planes to be able to kill planes quickly while tanking incoming rounds. There are plenty of planes in either of those tech trees that have phenomenal flight performance if not straight up better than nearly all other planes at their respective BRs.

I’m not sure you tried the ballistics of Shvaks or Ho5, they aren’t better than mg151 and nowhere near things like ANM3/Hispano.

You can still do your “lol I have more guns” with FW190s, just now you can’t go retard and just stick the headon because you can withstand tickling, and really, such playstyle shouldn’t be rewarded one bit. Plenty of that going around as it is.

Play stupid, die easily. At least some incentive to learn what to improve.

Also this, totally depends on how good you are as you have the exact same strength:

Time to adjust) Make a mistake = cough up the SL.

If this change ruins your 190F8 spam, then maybe time to fly something else…) 190F8 with its forward airspawn wasn’t really enjoyable anyway… just fly to enemy and bnz them because lol. Fun for a few games, but a little braindead

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 11:07am

Shvak is way superior to MG151/20.
MG151/20 can’t hit a plane flying 600km/h from 700m away, because M-geschoss gets literally outrun.
I’ve been hit by Shvak at 900m at low alt and it was still flying FAST.
I can pull a lot less lead with Shvak than with MG151/20.
But what do I know. I have only killed thousands of planes with MG151/20 since the ballistic nerf, surely I can’t tell if it’s worse now than the competition. You can also check the “drag coefficients” Gaijin has given German shells. They are insanely high, while Shvak and Ho-5 got full benefit of the doubt and get some excellently low drag.

Once again - you just don’t like the idea that armanent can also be a balancing factor. You have a mindset of a duelist.
In Air RB duelistis get 3rd partied because someone in Fw 190 A8 could kill their opponents faster thx to more guns, high skill and good aim.
And that’s the assymetric balance I enjoy. It gives planes with worse performance a role to play too.
When everyone (but planes with .50 cals because who the hell cares :D) can end everyone else with ease (unless it’s MG151/20 which is by far the easiest to dodge outside of 250m) it’s ALL about performance. The whole point of planes like Fw 190 A8 or D9 is gone. D9 is fast but if it goes head-on with goddamn Ki-43 or A6M5 - it dies a fiery death. No longer plane strength plays any role, because 1 Shvak shell will mess you up.
In boxing sometimes being able to absorb a hit to deliver your own wins fights. And people who can use their superior toughness can fight a bit differently than people who are more suspectible to getting rocked. That’s a part of the sport. And that’s a part of real life air combat - pushing a head on can be a legit tactic.

And you know, who will be affected the most?
Solo players, because they have way less options.
Some will jump into 4-stack and just happily obliterate the enemy, because they’ll never be forced to trade and they’ll never taste the truely fun gameplay of Germany 5-6.0 as the only fighter or 1 of the 2 on the team vs full fighter allied team.
I will no longer be able to remove the absolute pain in the rear of Yak-3U because it will just casually end me or cripple me on a regular basis. And then what? Back to AF to camp with 3 enemy fighters above?

4 stack thunder is the most uninspiring gameplay possible (tried playing in a duo with Me_163_Komet and it was just a slaughter, really, can’t imagine how easy it would be to have 2 more guys like that on my side), so guess what, I care about my solo gameplay way more. And the higher the chance to die from a single shell, the less fun it becomes.
Of course I can just keep playing Yak-3U and get 75% WR eventually (right now I’m kinda horrible) because it matches the firepower and maneuvrability of Ta-152H with better speed and climb. But where’s the fun in that?

dоt · July 28, 2023, 11:45am

You’ll be hard pressed to hit those with shvak or ho5 as well, you’d have to aim quite a lot above the enemy and hope they keep their mouse steady or you’re going to miss. This is same from MG151. All their ballistics suck, especially with light shells and high drag. You aren’t really wrong here, MG151 was hit hardest by that drag increase and it’s a little lame.

Yup, same.

Nah, doubt that. Last I dueled was back in 2018 or so. Though I do like my dogfights much more than doing the conservative safe route to victory

After I got bored with the F8, which was quite soon, I took the A8 to maybe find more of a challenge… but nah man. After getting nearly 300 kills with something like 25 or 26 deaths over some 80 games by just tossing myself at the enemy it gets boring too. People just have to headon or stall themselves out. It’s the unfortunate truth and it has always been as such

There’s no reason you’d have to headon a Ki43 or A6M5… but heck, I headon them, and I don’t die some “fiery death”. I’m pretty sure you don’t either(?!)

I play mostly solo. Used to squad a lot, sure, but that’s long ago. Only squad these days to do dumb shit or some real challenge play (9.3-10.3 without flares or so, or queue Japan+Germany at 6.0 in a 2 man which gives you absolute trash team against stacked US team 6.0-7.0 – and this forces 12v12+ matches too) because otherwise it’s just clubby and no fun if all to jump into the latest and greatest FOTM. Compared to the old days, the WT playerbase is significantly worse these days unfortunately and its hard to feel challenged playing in squad. Some games yes, when you need to carry 2v8+ and some decent pilots on enemy side, but mostly, meh, not worth the time.

Why not? That’s also quite a steep ask from a FW190? But you know there are other planes in the game as well? Not sure what a 3U has to do with this… also not sure if you refer to the FW190 here at all. Even with the old damage you aren’t going to win against a 3U in a 190 if he isn’t a complete moron, the whole gun damage thing is moot as it just outperforms you in every metric except roll rate and can dictate the entire fight. Very few things can honestly really hang with one below 3000m if the pilot is good. Those things can be annoying as hell.

3U is crazy, sure, go play it as it’s quite a bit less maneuverable as you may think it is. Rather its insane engine below 3000m is what carries it through maneuvers, not quite a property of the airframe it has. It shouldn’t sit on 5.7, rather 6.0/3, but I guess that’s no secret. Personally, I’m not a fan of the plane. I like to play most planes in the game, even way off meta bad stuff and see how to make it work. Need to have fun, somehow, can’t do that by spamming something which just gets me a load of kills but no satisfaction like energy fighting P51Cs and 109s in a Brigand B1 or something along those lines which I was doing earlier today

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 11:58am

I mean, MG151/20 M-geschoss physically can’t hit because it’ll slow down below the speed of target before it covers the total distance which will be way over 1000m, and remember the plane chased is usually faster than the one chasing and the faster both go, the worse for MG-151/20 because the rate of speed bleed is increased exponentialy due to v. high drag coefficient.
Other shells keep their speed a lot, lot better. Shvak will overtake the target at 1000+m even. But hitting it will be a matter of huge luck anyway. But it’s possible.

dоt · July 28, 2023, 12:15pm

I dunno, just tested in a test flight shooting at a vehicle from basically stall speed (like 170 kph) with landing flaps down at 1200 meters with both shvak and MG151 and either was easily able to hit the target. From 700 meters at 600 kph IAS should be possible and I’m pretty sure I’ve hit those shots just I have no recording of those because basically killing a blind enemy. We can test in a custom if you want.

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 1:32pm

Remember, the target velocity is contant but the shell slows down very rapidly (we’re talking about low altitudes of course, below 500m) which is realistic. What is not realistic is no other shell slows down anywhere as fast as M-geschoss.

Look at this:

As you cans ee, the time to 700m is 1,6s if fired from stationary emplacement.
While the shell is fired at higher velocity (+150m/s), we can do some estimation and just decide by the time it reaches 100m it’s back to 790m/s (it’s a bit pessimistic, but that’s why we’ll use 0,1s time to 100m to account for any excess speed above 790).

We can now do some simple math, and we simply use the 100m number as our 200m number etc.

We arrive at 1000m after 2,471 s.
At this point the target is at 1112m.
MG151/20 shell is going 241 m/s
The rate of closure is at 74m/s and dropping by 7m/s every 100m.
At this point the vertical speed of the shell is already around 25m/s.
It only goes faster, so more vertical correction is needed. Which makes the shell’s arc and the effective distance to travel longer and longer - because we do not have alt advantage to just fire it horizontally. More on that later
Speed is already pretty low and stability may become a problem.

Lets assume the effective closure rate for the last 112m is 60m/s. It means the shell has to fly almost 2 more seconds to reach the target and cover 450m more and it has to cover 100m in vertical to drop directly at the target. I won’t even try to calculate, how much longer is the path of a shell fired upwards compared to shell fired horizontally from 100m and allowed to drop, but it surely adds some meters to the equation.
And since the impact horizontal velocity difference between the shell and the target in this scenario is below 50m/s, we can really safely assume 700m is too far and probably the shell can be outrun.

And even if I made some errors or we want to assume equal speed then maybe the distance will rise to 750m, maybe to 800, but no way anything above that… Remember Gaijoob used German ballistic data to establish the drag coefficient.
They may have calculated something wrong.
But data indicates that with firing distance of 700m, shell has to cover twice that distance to catch the target, and IRL it would probably lose all accuracy and stability and speed somewhere along the way, lets not even mention issues with the fuze and the fact the shell would (if it would) explode outside of aircraft skin.

dоt · July 28, 2023, 1:56pm

Yes that’s a paper, but not necessarily exactly works like that in game… there’s nothing physical about the air or other objects in WT

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 2:03pm

Gaijin has claimed they have adjusted MG151/20 to historical data. This is historical data.
THey have adjusted Shvak and Ho-5 to way above historical data parameters probably assuming boat-tailed shape and what-not. Of course neither should be noticeably better. The tracer on Shvak may have given it some advantage (tracers in low caliber shells work to SOME extent like base bleed in artillery), but generally Shvak’s muzzle velocity is most likely overestimated anyway. And in case of Ho-5 - tough luck.

Another funny thing is, Shvak’s steel core penetrator was a bit of a sub-calibre affair. Which should mean less performance vs angled armor and a bit less damage than for German full-caliber AP punching full-caliber hole.

KillaKiwi · July 28, 2023, 9:59pm

I don’t think that should be possible. Looking at the ballistic table, the M-Shell should easily catch up to the plane.

And that is considering that the plane is moving at 600kph away from a static cannon.

However in air combat, the distance the enemy moves away from you is negated by your own speed.
So, if a static firing MG 151 M-Shell catches a plane at 700m going 600kph, going 500kph yourself would easily allow the shell to reach the target before it can get away.

Hitting the enemy from that kind of range however is something completely different, since the shell will take more than 1.6sec to hit the target as well as drop by huge margin.

Even in ground combat it would be hard to hit a moving target at 700m with the ballistics of the 20mm M-Shell.

Loofah · July 28, 2023, 10:09pm

I did the math partially and it would take around 4s to reach the target and that’s basically a very close call, it may as well not be able to, because shell very quickly sheds the additional speed.
I made some assumptions, but my main source were ballistic tables.

If you think I’m wrong - just point out which part of my post explaining the whole.process is inacxurate and what adjustments would you make.

Even if the shell is able to catch the enemy from 700m.away, if we increase the distance by around 70m we remove any chance of this ever happening, especially since the rate of fall of the shell is increasing rapidly as the time passes, and more flught time means higher aiming to compensate for drop, and higher aiming = more flight time.