SAPHEI-T in MK103 Air Belt makes 0 sense, lets remove it

[Loofah]

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.

What do you guys think?

[Ghostmaxi]

If it wouldnt be incorrectly made an SAPHEI-T, it would be quite good.

[KillaKiwi]

Problem is that Gaijin hardly ever addressed any gameplay issues.

Asking them to change some cannon belts is going to be just as likely as them fixing shells that don’t work or are worse than in RL.

So it’s basically just hopium, thinking if Gaijin doesn’t do this, maybe they do something that is slightly less work.

[Loofah]

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 760m 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.

[Loofah]

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?