MK103 currently has 2 actually useful for Air-to-Air belts:
HVAP due to best ballistics (the damage is… well, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t).
Air due to having shells that can kinda rival Shvak 20mm FI-T with 6g of TNT equivalent hitting power.
Problem?
While air belt outranges Shvak a bit, while rivaling its damage capability, it is 3xM-geschoss, 1xSAPHEIT.
The latter shell deals basically as much damage as 7.62mm AP bullet, unless it hits something thick, then it explodes with an energy of a firecracker, and spall acts like confetti. Best case scenario, you get similar damage to 13mm MG HE bullet with 1,5g of TNT.
Worst case scenario - no damage at all.
While in the past MK103 indeed was “the gun” that was just out-damaging everyone, nowadays it’s no longer true.
Shvak deals way more damage per second due to higher ROF. MK103 due to low ROF oftentimes lands 1 shell on target, and if it strikes f.e. Yak-3 wingtip even with M-geschoss, it could have as well missed entirely, as Yak-3 flies without wingtip better than Fw 190 intact.
US AN/M2 can do exactly what Mk103 does with way better ROF. Range is basically the same (the difference as can be seen below is largely inconsequential below 1200m, GL hitting people from further away) but US cannon has better belt composition.
So, with MK103 having no real advantage over 20mm, outside a bit shorter flight time on longer-range shots, maybe we should reconsider making the Air Belt 100% HEI-T (M-geschoss with tracer)?
Right now it’s ridiculously annoying. I fire at P-47 in a head on - hit. I fire at him again, trying to help my teammate “hit”. I’m fairly certain it was SAPHEI-T? But maybe I just got gaijined (happens WAY more often than you guys think with high caliber low ROF guns)? No idea, no way to tell!
With full HEI-T belt MK103 at least will be more reliable. Or easier to bug report. Right now there’s plausible deniability - sorry, you hit him with potato shell, try again!
Easy to say where EVERY plane with Mk103 flies like a goddamn brick. Which further exarcerbates the problem.
Well, yeah, but I won’t be hoping Gaijin somehow buffs this shell, that has worse ballistics than Japanese 30mm because “reasons”, and if you manage to hit J6K1s engine at 709m in a head-on, this is what happens:
We were both going fast at a few thousand meters, I checked the shot blk and:
speed:r=809.27
So it was going faster than “normal” muzzle velocity, and still failed to kill the engine. If I didn’t hit this guy with several HE, he would have flown back to base and repaired.
At this point I’m just trying to raise awaraness among the “community”.
Instead I’m raising my own awareness that community DGAF.
The funniest part is, there’s a huge WT community on Reddit and they seem to NOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING, but it’s similar to some bike repair forums - a ton of dudes who never held a screwdriver in hand trying to come up with a solution to a problem so obvious it almost hurts to see them struggle.
Once there was this guy Liniyka on Youtube, who got some things right…
…then managed to get everything wrong and kept claiming cannons were doing next to no damage before the Real Sh*tter for MG151/20 patch and that there existed .50 cal meta for several months and I somehow missed it because I guess I’m just THAT bad.
Maybe Gaijin is right, and no effort is the right amount of effort?
Just keep cashing in checks?
Maybe I should just play C&C Tiberian Sun and enjoy life like it’s 1999 again?
German WWII Cannons were significantly Nerfed with Realshatter
Realshatter Disproportionately Buffs Shells wirh little explosive mass and Lots of Fragments, like the Russian ShVaK and Gsh 23, and pretty much nothing else
German HE shells focused on Explosive mass and Incendiary action, Explosive action is Fully Ignored in the Realshatter damage system and Incendiary action only works when you directly hit a Fuel tank
so MGFF/M, 151/20, MK 101/103/106 recieved a MASSIVE Unrealistic Nerf
this system Clearly Favour Russian guns, but it also brought Hispanos onto the table again as Hispano guns use a Kind of Mix between explosives and Fragments, which bit them hard in the Old system that focused only on Explosive mass
a better system would combine the Explosive damage of the Old system with the Shatter damage of the new system, this would make Russian guns less punchy in comparison but heavily Favour Hispanos, DEFAs and German guns again
Yeah, some sort of realShatter mechanic that simulates the dispersion, size and energy of fragments from a fast moving shell 😂😂
Instead they basically just turned every explosive shell into Mineshells.
Another issue is of course is that incendiary performance has been completely ignored all these years.
Not only do we not have incendiary filler modeled but damage to fuel tanks makes also no sense.
37/40mm HEF-T is either going to damage your cooling system to the point where you’re going to lose your engine within 5 minutes, or damage the fuel tanks enough that you’re either run out of fuel or it’s just going to get set the tank on fire from the rest of the tracer element burning up.
But instead they just break wings and tails of any plane, even larger bombers, like 50/55mm Mineshells were supposed to do.
15mm and 20mm Incendiary ammo was supposed to increase the lethality over regular explosive-incendiary shells, in WT they were always the worst type of shell.
Even Japanese 20mms have HEF-I in their default belt, like it’s somehow worse than HEF and HEF-T.
Useless HE? This is new to me. Unless we’re talking low caliber HE in ground RB, it’s indeed underwhelming and M-geschoss is the best shell for strafing open tops.
Wait, what are you shooting with these Hispanos that makes you think HE is useless? Are we talking about ground attack?
Because vs planes HE is the best shell, which beats everything else by a mile. It’s not even close.
That’s one of the most wrong things I’ve read in this forum regarding in-game weaponry.
Single HE shell can and will take out a fighter aircraft if it hits tail or wing or pilot or engine, not always, but very, very often. Ripping off entire tail with 1 shell is fairly common.
Single AP in most cases deals some negligible damage and you have to count on hitting the pilot or engine, but if you hit engine with HE, it will also get taken out anyway so there’s that.
Basically there’s this absolutely ridiculous gap between HE and AP effectiveness vs aircraft. It’s not even close, when it comes to 20mm.
