I’d say that what makes the MG151s good is the aircraft they’re on more of less counter their weakness in range. Bf109s and Fw190s excel at energy fighting, meaning the aircraft they’re targetting are almost always slow and flying in predictable, easy to intercept paths. This makes the relative difficulty in aiming much less relevant, and allows it’s incredible damage to shine (Although the difference in damage isn’t nearly as great as it once was).
But put those guns on something that can’t energy trap opponents, and they become more of a detriment than an advantage. Sure, anything you hit with them will usually die, and with a lot fewer rounds than a .50 cal. But it’s a pretty sizable struggle to pull the deflection you need to lead them in a merge, they’re a liability in tail chases where your opponent is faster than you, and they’re not great in headons if you lack the ability to quickly pull out of the way.
Basically, they’re a solid option for aircraft that can cover for their primary disadvantage, but a serious detriment for those that can’t.
Airframe performance matters less when doing anti-ground runs.
See Tornado vs Typhoon. Both are GBU buses, it matters not that the Typhoon can out-dogfight everyone, it only matters if the Tornado doesn’t face plant.
Airframe performance is quite literally what makes the Yak-9K so OP. It is able to always do vertical runs against tanks, compared to other CAS which cant.
So Me-410 is OP by your own argument, not your words, your rationale.
Either acknowledge them all, or you’re clearly fanboying over a specific country’s equipment.
I claim the same for the me262 with the 50mm. I was flying my “boat” of a TU-1 and a very terrible player flying an me262 shot like 15 rounds at me trying to kill me. And one hit blew me in half.
I couldn’t out run him, or out turn him. And my inferior defensive machine guns were only “hitting” him. (Yes I was manually controlling it).
Meanwhile, in my XA-38 vs the Yak, I have a good chance to out run it, and possibly light it on fire. Not to mention I can drop my x4 500 lb bombs to get him off my tail.
Yes, that is what happens when you meet another attacker a full BR above yours. You usually lose.
Only if you already started near your top speed, which is almost impossible to do if ground attacking. 9K has much greater acceleration and can keep you away from the battlefield indefinitely by simply not allowing you to fly back in, because it is a fighter. You can’t turn against him because he is a fighter. You can’t outclimb him because he is a fighter.
What’s weird, is with my bombs, and cannons in my boat I was able to score 6 kills. What’s weird is the other day I played the XA, and scored 7 kills with the bombs and cannons.
The XA gets the unusually strong option for the tier of 4 individual bomb drops, while still retaining reasonable flight performance. The only other one that comes close is the massively slept on P-61, which gets larger bombs and a cluster of 20mms for strafing, at the cost of worse flight performance.
However, they have this capability at the cost of a massively larger profile and worse retention, meaning they’re relatively easy for SPAA or CAP to intecerpt and destroy.
The Yak-9K can kill that many or more in a single flyout with good trigger discipline, while being a tiny fast target which can outdogfight most other common planes in the air and is a fairly tricky target for SPAA too. The kills they can manage is far more consistent, and not reliant on being left entirely alone in the air.
The first two should probably go up in BR as well, but the XA is a somewhat uncommon premium and the P-61 is enormously slept on so the problem isn’t as apparent as with the Yak. There are a lot of lower tier CAS that weren’t touched when they did the BR split between air and ground, they mostly focused on the really egregious examples at the higher tiers like the A-4E. There’s a lot of CAS that’s pretty laughably strong at the lower tiers at the moment (The F6F having 3 individual 1000 lbs bombs, 4 HVARs, 6 .50s and competant flight performance at 3.3 is hysterical)
A-1H and A-2D are still far more egregious Im my opinion. With these two typically being more “boat like” than the twin engine.
A-2D gets a 4000 lb. Bomb
Meanwhile the A-1H has so many weapon types. Now if it was any good with the Zuni rockets I’d have one hell of a stat, but 18x 500 lb bombs or taking 2x 2000 and 6x 500 lb bombs with a couple Hvars is mighty effective.
Yes granted it’s a different br. But it’s not be all end all with the yak as everyone claims. Especially when ULQ only plays one plane to test his theory (confirmation bias).
I am with you in general - and specifically for the usage in Ground RB, but i want to point out that your assessment depends strongly on the model of the 410, the chosen game mode and the circumstances of an engagement.
Hidden as imho off-topic:
In the last 4-6 months i saw a hell of excellent fighter pilots in Air RB which used primarily the 109 F-2 at 3.0 and some of them even the 410s at 2.7, 3.0 and 3.3 - with astonishingly positive results.
I watched those replays in order to analyze their tactics.
Even admitting that these successes were mainly based on superior pilot experience, the 410s are thx to the way different combat setup of Air RB not really helpless. It depends mainly on the ability of their pilots to force those Yaks to accept rather unfavorable terms for a fight and to keep the initiative.
The 410s come with a strike aircraft spawn and climb at lower BRs surprisingly well - it is possible to fly the aircraft with infinite WEP and merge with any Yak-9K with a significant altitude advantage. If the 410s are able to keep the fight above 4 km they are from my pov slightly faster and can dictate the fight to a certain degree for the first minutes.
I revisited the 3.3 410 A-1 and was actually very happy with it - so happy that i aced the plane (by playing it) as an alternative for my beloved SM 92 to fulfill daily tasks with a Rank III strike aircraft.
Whilst the SM 92 excels with outstanding high alt performance & turn fight abilities (i use HOTAS only), very good high speed handling & dive performance (rip speed 860-870 kmph TAS at higher alt) the 410s fly rather like a brick - but is able to outdive a Yak in a very shallow dive whilst using the defensive MG 131 effectively up to 2 km - the (manual) defensive gunner is responsible for about 25% of my kills.
In case of getting totally surprised, a 90 degree dive whilst playing with my air brake saved me quite often, the Yak pilots assess any 410 as free kill and underestimate their acceleration in dives and rip their wings very fast.
Unfortunately this does not work against any P-39/P-63, but you can’t have it all.
Well there is 47mm Aphe, for the 3 pdr gun, tho quite early on discontinued for the 2 pdr iirc.
And they would propably shatter (irl) from the high power vickers.
Just got a game where without even a single landing in the airport I was able to gather all the needed SP from something around 0 to 2500 by just simply flying Jak-9UT.
I might need to check them out again. Last time I played the lower BR ones my impression was that they were good for heavy fighters, but still not very potent against most single-engine fighters.
But yeah, my statements for the Me 410 in this discussion are specifically for the 50mm variant; while some of those may hold for 410s in general, the 50mm gun does cause (to my knowledge) a relatively potent drop in flight performance.
