This is my personal ranking for aircraft MG’s (thus excluding the 14.5, it was never used in air)
Akan m/39 - good ballistics, larger caliber and explosive rounds, very effective overall
Type 3 - all of the M2’s good points, but a little more punch due to 13.2mm caliber
M2 Browning - good ballistics, mid/late war aircraft get flamethrower belts
Ho-103 & Breda-SAFAT - weak ballistics but makes up for it with strong explosive rounds
Berezin UB - good ballistics, okay damage like an M2 with less punch
M3 Browning - better than the M2 on paper, but its the fact that they only appear in jet BR’s where autocannons have a more significant advantage in instantaneous damage
MG-131 - they are total dogshit compared to every other air HMG in game lmfao. Poor ballistics and poor damage
I’d just like to clear up the the Type 3 is a 13.2.99 Hotchkiss and not a 13x64 it doesn’t share any mechanical similarities with the German MG131 13mm, the Type 3 is based off a Browning m2 design while the Type 2 is based off of the MG131
The german 13 mil used to be a god of prop RB dues to cracked filler in IAI, sad that those days are over lol.
The SAFAT took over that role in a fantastic way, if you’re good enough to use it ofc.
Firstly it may be an error on Gaijin behalf by forgetting to add the Explosive rounds and secondly if the exclusion of the explosive rounds was intentional it only affects the J11 & J20’s which are at low enough BR’s that they are still somewhat useful (BR’s 1.3 and 2.0 respectively)
MG-131’s on the other hand only really start being commonly used [as a offensive weapon around] Tier III onwards. If i’m not mistaken the first aircraft to use MG-131’s as a offensive armament is the Me-410B-1 which is a full 1.7 BR above the J20 and a full 2.3 BR’s above the J11
It doesn’t disprove my point that you finally get the MG-131 as an offensive weapon it is massively outclassed. Also the MG-131’s poultry performance is the least of your issues in the context of the Sakeen
Idk. I rather have MG 131 then MG 17s but for the Akan M/40 I rather take a 7.7mm MG.
They just don’t improve the performance over LMGs.
MG 131 match the ballistics of the MG 151/20 pretty closely and their explosive shells deal a ton more structucal damage than MG 17s.
So if you hit the enemy with one 20mm Mineshells and two 13mm explosive rounds in wing or tail, it’s probably over.
HEF bullets make them quite decent especially at low tier, unfortunately defensive belts don’t have them apart from the standard one, which also has too many other useless bullets types.
Alternatively I’ve spaded everything in all 3 modes in all nations up to Tier 4 and I have a very good idea of just how they perform viz all the other heavy MG’s.
And I still regularly play T2 Japanese air with various a/c where they are the heaviest gun the a/c has
They are certainly better than the 7.7mm, but among the heavy machine gun population they are the worst performers.
High ammo count is a feature of the aircraft - not the gun.
Yes at low tier they certainly outshine the various rifle caliber guns - as they should - but that’s not the comparison being made - the comparison is between the various heavy machineguns.
Another thing to add is that you pretty much get Breda SAFAT’s right away as Italy while you have to wait until a little bit before they start being used on aircraft as a common offensive armament first appearing on the Ki-43 & Ki-45 which are BR’s 2 & 2.3 respectively