Here is my rankings for anything under 14.5mm
Top-3
Air to Air
Air to Ground
Overall
Bottom-3
Air to Air
Air to Ground
Overall
So is the MG 131 the best of the worst or the worst of the worst?
worst of the worst
and it’s not even close
Pretty sure the Akan M/40 is much worse.
It’s the Italian 12.7mm without explosive rounds.
2 things of note about that
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’s actually the Sakeen at 3.3
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.
How are you rating Ho-103s so low? They’re really good.
They are the worst in every respect.
Just as bad as the SAFAT because they use the same ammo, which is the very worst HMG ammo in hte game.
There’s no way you have ever used them, because they hit very hard and always have high ammo counts.
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.
Italian 12.7mm air belts shred.
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