I saw this question and was surprised to see that this thread was locked.
I mean the goal of this thread was to get an official response and not to discuss if this is a bug or not, so i have my problems to follow the reasoning for closing like “Forum is not the right place for bug exchanges” as this was not the goal.
I actually appreciate anything which is suited to increase realism in wt. But for me it looks like that this Real Shatter stuff is counterproductive as this implements (maybe correct?) realism without considering the effect if other stuff remains highly unrealistic.
The point off having cannons is simply to get more lethal firepower output in a shorter time frame in realistic combat ranges. We talk here about max 350-400 meters of WW2 planes.
The problem of wt is that their compromises (in order to make the game playable for masses) artificially increases combat ranges and accuracy to totally unrealistic values. Together with the ballistic nerf last year, it is depending on the used aircraft cannon far easier to get long range kills (>1 km) with a HMG than with a cannon.
So an official reply (as requested by the fellow player quoted above) of actual gaijin employees (Devs or Mangers) is highly appreciated.
Whole reason I made the thread is because an actual bug report on cannon damage got closed and deleted. It just seems impossible to get an actual straight answer on this.
I mean there are lots of issues without official statements, but i hope they will reply someday.
The Real Shatter issue made a lot of planes unplayable as it simply takes too long to kill enemies before getting swarmed. And often enough you have just one single chance for a reversal when getting jumped - it is simply sad if you manage to get the shot (and you are able to score hits) but your cannons produce no damage and you subsequently die (Type 99, mo 2 - HE or AP)…
The low damage is intentional. If you look up the gun files, there is a countPortion attribute. This attribute is set to 0.3 on aircraft guns. It controls the amount of fragmentation created. 0.3 means that the gun creates 70% less fragmentation than normally.
People have already tested this and changing the countPortion to 1 seems to bring the damage back to previous state. This can be tested by starting up a custom mission.
I legit prefer the 12.7 Ki-43 to the 20mm Ki-43, at least I know I’m not crazy. It feels more damaging, probably because it gets more rounds on target and they do damage.
Context:
I had ONLY my 20mm selected (A6m5-Ko), so all the damage shown comes from that.
The Yak3P that was running from me unloads the majority of his ammo on the Me264 in vain… as his shells basically do nothing to the 264.
around 0:56 I run out of 20mm ammo and start shooting the 7.7mms that ironically deal more damage than the 20mm’s.
HE shells aren’t fragmenting properly and their damage is borderline non existent…to a point that many players are using AP shells instead of HE ones to take down enemy aircraft.
This should be looked into, as RealShatter in it’s current state broke most 20-30mms in the game and is terrible for gameplay.
Problem is, it’s not realistic at all. A single mine shell (minegeschoss) from a mark108 cannon to the fuselage of a bomber should create hundreds of fragments absolutely OBLITERATING it left, right and centre. But sadly due to this ‘‘mechanic’’ no one asked for, we have 2 splinters for a round containing 80 grams of explosives
Well I do not care what the devs consider. I call a pot a pot and Realshatter is bad and the least realistic HE/fragmentation mechanic they added since the implementation of APHE. “Real” is only the fact that Realshatter has nothing to do with how guns work in reallife. Gajin devs have prooven that they have no idea about what is good or bad for the game.
Right now at this very moment, MONTHS after the implementation of Realshatter all british and american 20mm cannons are useless and playing a plane like the Tempest or AM-1 is a waste of time as their 20mm round deal beyonmd 0 damage. Just today I needed well over 200 hits on a Zero to kill it. I had to count in a slowed down replay. It took atlest 20 HE hits to knock off the wingtip.
“The devs do not consider that the damage is to low?” Sorry but I do not consider the opinion of the Devs valid right now. They have shown where they stand and we know what is needed to get this fixed. So Gajin devs either fix this issue or we will see each others on Steam and other platforms again and again.
PS Maybe read a book about aircraft cannons and learn a thing or two about what kind of damage a 20mm HE cannon shell deals to the fuselage of a plane as long as it has time to arm itself
Even 30mms are unrealistic as hell, I shot a mark 108 straight into a bomber and it probably ruined his plane but it dind’t split it in half, like it realistically would. On testing ground in America they tried the Me262 with the mark 108 on a B24 liberator, and a SINGLE shell hit causing hundreds if not thousands of fragments and it basically split the thing in half, now imagine if the thing hit was going at 400km/h. That would’ve straight up turned it into mush, along with the air crew, but the devs just add big hole for impact and make the fuselage not split in half but yellow or something
Another example of HE failing to do damage.
The J6K1 literally has x6 20mms, and even that is not enough to finish the enemy in a short burst at the moment. The amount of sparks/useless hits is insane.
It’s incredibly bad for gameplay.
I think you misunderstood my point or i was not clear enough.
As far as i understood them they see this real shatter as realistic feature but purely did not understood which decrease of damage output would follow their change or way of thinking.
I mean all the guys here know the pictures and and are aware of the effects of German 20 or 30mm Mineshells - the question is why the devs are not adjusting their theoretical approach to match real life results - arguing that damage output is fine for them and there is nothing wrong with HE shells is imho just ignoring the fact that their efforts were just suited to increase player frustration.
I mean any publication of HE shells vs Aircraft relies on splinter/shrapnel effects of critical components or just by penetrating fuel tanks and to ignite the fuel with very hot metal.
And when i meant counterproductive you have to see the context.
It makes from a realism pov no sense if they try to implement realism (from their pov) with real shatter or “improved” ballistics if they do not realize that the other parameters like real combat ranges or hit probabilities remain that unrealistic as they currently are.
So if the way more effective 20mm cannon gets a ballistic and HE nerf resulting in being far less effective inside and outside real combat ranges of 3-400 meters compared to a HMG due to mouse aim, 3rd person view and zoom it is counterproductive to the overall extremely low realism of wt.
Just fly the 5.3 Ki-84 - after the second match you see the wing mounted 20mm just as emergency reserve as you can reliably kill opponents at around 1km distance with a few rounds of your 12.7 mm…
In addition - if gaijin still favors fast wars of attrition - less functional / useless cannon ammo just extends game duration as a hell of players either escape just slightly damaged and a hell of others need to rearm as they were forced to use all ammo for a kill - in both cases these guys are at their airfield, soo out of the fight.
I already witnessed that in Naval with unkillable AI and certain matches even 1000 lbs did almost no damage at all. Waisted a lot of time doing a task. The gameplay is really screwed up. Why is gaijin, once again, using us as Guinea pigs for their untested garbage? Wasted my time and paid premium.
It is quite simple 12.7mm and 7.7 is working ok. Maybe a bit to well against heavier post war planes but otherwise fine. Buit if Cannons using RealShatter where realistic not a single plane in this world would be armed with anything bigger than a 50cal and most would use 303. The Devs are just stubborn and refuse to revert their change
The RealShatter mechanic needs serious review and either serious adjustments or complete removal until they can get it right, because as it is right now is completely detrimental and harms gameplay.
Is this “realsharter” thing some kind of payback for the recent review bombing?
The way it’s going, I’ll be glad to leave this game for a year or more. No point wasting my time waiting for gaijin to make things right.
Another issue is there is no easily accessible, if any, real-world data about fragmentation round effectiveness against aircraft.
There’s only a hint that frag rounds weren’t good cause they don’t exist in modern belts.
