RealShatter Should Never Have Been Implemented on Aircraft and Should Be Removed Immediately

[sushi_vlogz 23]

Since the last update, Gaijin has for whatever reason decided to "update" all aircraft autocannons 20mm (excluding German 20mms and 30mms) and above to have more "realistic" damage output. This involved both modifying the shrapnel cone emitted by High Explosive bullets as well as, most importantly, reducing the number of shrapnel fragments released by shells breaking apart. This change instantly reduced the damage output of every single affected round to the point of uselessness, resulting in laughably absurd amounts of High Explosive ammunition needed to inflict any significant damage to an aircraft.

 

Interestingly enough, smaller caliber guns (12.7-13mm) were not affected by this change, leading to ridiculous incidences of aircraft at lower BRs with traditionally "worse" armaments outperforming their more cannon-heavy variants. (Yak-3 vs Yak-3P, Ki-84 Ko vs Ki-84 Otsu, etc.) However, this will also change in the next update. As found in a Dev server datamine, Gaijin now wants to apply the same absurd mechanic to the lower caliber guns now. This change and the one preceding it not only make playing aircraft extremely frustrating to play, they have the potential to truly ruin the game.

 

RealShatter completely ruins the playstyles of many aircraft in the game. For turnfighters such as the Zero that rely on quick snapshots before the enemy runs out of range, it becomes impossible to kill a faster enemy unless they throw away every advantage and bleed their speed into a turnfight. For aircraft that rely on energy, they only have a small window of opportunity to shoot an enemy before they have to break off to maintain the energy advantage. With RealShatter, even a couple of well-aimed shots will not kill or even significantly cripple an enemy. This leads to an extremely annoying outcome: An enemy will be hit but due to RealShatter will not be significantly damage and will then instantly dive away to their airfield. The person who hit them is left with two choices: Stay at altitude and get robbed of what should have been a kill, or dive down to secure their kill and lose their energy advantage. This plays into the next reason of why RealShatter is gamebreaking.

 

With Realshatter, significantly more ammunition is required to down an enemy plane. This means players need to spend more time and resources, as well as energy, to maintain the same SL gain from kills that they had before RealShatter. Furthermore, HE shells no longer overpressure non-modeled AI tanks, reducing the viability of groundpounding, whether to win a long-fought game or just to earn SL. RealShatter appears, then, to be a hidden nerf to SL and RP gain from Air RB. With the recent challenges to the economy, shouldn't this change also be addressed?

 

It's really a simple fix. RealShatter involved changing a single value in the game, the Shrapnel Fragmentation multiplier, from 0.7 to 0.3. Change it back, and Air RB will be much less frustrating to play. 

 

 

 

 

 

[DouggieMacArthur 50]

I wish Gaijin would listen, but no. They refuse.

 

My guess is they want to give some premium players amnesty from bullets, because "if you're getting shot at, you've already lost" is a sentiment that probably turns off a lot of wallet warriors.

[Morvran_ 661]

Ah fun, so they've even further nerf things like Hispanos?

[_Pterodacty91855 193]

"Lets make all different kinds of belts for aircraft!"

 

"Then lets implement a mechanic that makes all but 1 worthless."

 

- Gaijin

[Fireraid233 4,274]

Ah no wonder Japanese cannons feel absolutely useless 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Fireraid233

[Morvran_ 661]

Was flying the Spit Mk24 this evening, I normally just run stealth rounds, but  an Me262 survived around 200-300 rounds. So I now run Ground attack belts, and was reliably taking down aircraft with short bursts again.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Morvran_

[DocProfit 2,663]

13 minutes ago, Morvran_ said:

Was flying the Spit Mk24 this evening, I normally just run stealth rounds, but  an Me262 survived around 200-300 rounds. So I now run Ground attack belts, and was reliably taking down aircraft with short bursts again.

 

I think the point is we shouldn't have to rely on AP rounds to do consistent damage to planes.

 

HE and frag rounds were used against aircraft in WW2 for a reason.

 

Why would the German's go to the hassle and expense of creating mine rounds packed with HE if they could get better results firing cheap, solid metal rounds instead?

 

Gaijin has REALLY messed real sh*tter up.

[Morvran_ 661]

8 minutes ago, DocProfit said:

 

I think the point is we shouldn't have to rely on AP rounds to do consistent damage to planes.

 

HE and frag rounds were used against aircraft in WW2 for a reason.

 

Why would the German's go to the hassle and expense of creating mine rounds packed with HE if they could get better results firing cheap, solid metal rounds instead?

 

Gaijin has REALLY messed real sh*tter up.

If for absolutely nothing else, having to equip rounds designed for and clearly labeled "Ground targets" over belts designed and clearly labeled for "Air Targets" is a sure fire way to confuse newer players and result in them have a worse time than they should be. Resulting in more people just quitting at lower tiers. I've got 2k hours, and my default thought wouldnt be to equip rounds meant for ground targets in air to air role. 

[Real K Soze@live 407]

On 11/06/2023 at 03:51, sushi_vlogz said:

Furthermore, HE shells no longer overpressure non-modeled AI tanks, reducing the viability of groundpounding, whether to win a long-fought game or just to earn SL.

 

Despite i liked your overall post and fully support your proposal to remove real shatter - the fact that a 20mm HE with max 25g of TNT could kill an ai Sherman or Tiger tank from the front was one of the biggest jokes in wt in the last years. I mean they advertise with realism and it took them months to reverse this stupid mechanic. Yes it was helpful to avoid ticket defeats, but it was far away from any reality.

 

On 11/06/2023 at 03:51, sushi_vlogz said:

However, this will also change in the next update. As found in a Dev server datamine, Gaijin now wants to apply the same absurd mechanic to the lower caliber guns now. This change and the one preceding it not only make playing aircraft extremely frustrating to play, they have the potential to truly ruin the game.

 

Imho the game is already ruined at certain BRs. After the buff of the japan 0.50 cals last year some planes like the Ki-44s or Ki-61s are now dominating Air RB if their pilots know what they are doing.I flew the 4 x 12.7mm Ki-44 for a few matches an was able to get kills up to 1.2 km with them - just with a few hits. And before that buff you needed half of your ammo for a single kill. Years ago the same caliber in the Ki-84 was useless. Seeing now Ki44s or Ki61s with 4 to 6 kills with one ammo load is not uncommon these days, so the introduction of this absurd mechanic below 20mm would just level the playing field. 

 

Btw - the Swedish 13.2 was nerfed (at least 2 times) last year without any notice. Range and damage out put were severely reduced - i noticed this as a gunner of a B18B. Some time ago i was able to get kills up to 3.7km, this range dropped to 2.8 and then to 2.3 km. And now i score 6 hits and a crit on a highly fragile plane like an XP-50 below 2km without noticeable effects or a kill....

 

 

On 11/06/2023 at 03:51, sushi_vlogz said:

RealShatter completely ruins the playstyles of many aircraft in the game.

 

Fully agree, i stopped playing the B7A2 due to this. The AP rounds simply do less damage than HE before the nerf, it takes much longer and you need much more ammo for a single kill than before.  Either you have to break off to avoid getting 3rd partied or you need to rearm very soon. 

 

Have a good one!

 

[Fireraid233 4,274]

Is this anything significant?

https://warthunder.com/en/game/changelog/current/1504

• The fragments generation template of ground vehicles and aircraft HE shells has been changed. Piercing capability, spray and damage has increased.

[DocProfit 2,663]

Ho103's and Berezin's got the treatment with the update.

 

IAI and HEF produces low fragments/damage.

Edited June 14, 2023 by DocProfit

[supersaiyan9751@live 366]

Someone posted a video comparing the damage before and after real shatter was implemented for a certain cannon. I will leave it here for you to look at. 

 

[C0caC0laEspuma 1,404]

tbh I would like to see the threshold for fuel tanks to explode lowered instead of removing RealShatter and happen even at 20mm cannons like old War Thunder.

[SXTREME 1,501]

18 hours ago, supersaiyan9751@live said:

Someone posted a video comparing the damage before and after real shatter was implemented for a certain cannon. I will leave it here for you to look at. 

 

 

I don't know who modeled this but clearly he doesn't understand explosive fragmentation damage, if this was even slightly realistic I wonder who would use calibers below 30mms on airframes.

Edited June 16, 2023 by SXTREME

[Real K Soze@live 407]

6 hours ago, SXTREME said:

I don't know who modeled this but clearly he doesn't understand explosive fragmentation damage, if this was even slightly realistic I wonder who would use calibers below 30mms on airframes.

 

Without going into detail of the changes - imho the main problem of this whole issue is that gaijin wants to improve realism in a small area without considering the rest of highly unrealistic parameters.

 

Anybody with some books about WW2 air combat knows that cannons were better - as they simply produce more damage in the main combat range of 50 to 350 meters in the very small windows pilots were able to score hits. The gun convergence of fighters with wing mounted guns were adjusted to these ranges.

 

After reading hundreds of WW2 related books - the only thing i actually remember regarding longer combat ranges were some 110s in 1943 peppering B-17s from 1km or more to avoid their return fire. War Thunder allows the B-17 gunners to score hits and crits up to 2.4km and 110s can barely score hits > 1 km due to balistic nerf and way too high cruising speed of the B-17s compared to irl events.

 

If gaijin strongly increases the irl very low hit probability and strongly increases effective combat ranges in their game in order to make it playable, the ballistic changes and this realshatter stuff is simply counterproductive regarding the overall realism...

 

[HighRiskNoReward 473]

Warthunder is assist town now

[_RemiliaScarlet__ 355]

Short answer, yes, nos not only are a lot of Radar missiles very bad, but all IRs being a 1 flares, so it seems thay guns were to effevtive, now top tier is a mess with perpetually confused radar missiles, IR missiles with the guidance of a moth, and cannons that fire nerf darts.

[_Pterodacty91855 193]

WT Realistic Air went from something really cool and unique to feeling like I am playing World Of Tanks in the air.  Game went from having realistic damage to HP bars it feels like.  

 

Why gaijin wants to be like World Of tanks with HP bars I will never know.  This change is one of the dumbest changes I have ever seen from them.  Literally turned their game into some arcade game with HP bars.  

[Fapadoska 21]

On 11/06/2023 at 03:51, sushi_vlogz said:

Gaijin has for whatever reason decided to "update" all aircraft autocannons 20mm (excluding German 20mms and 30mms)

German guns were also affected compared to a few months ago.

[anyuser 5,136]

The problem is not real scatter.

The problem is, that Gaijin fought the high damage output they implemented and our (compared to reality) high accuracy with tougher planes, so that planes take more hits then in reality to be taken down, but not that much more time. Not to speak about our Hulk like pilots who can take a .50 to the chest.

Now damage from weapons is down for more or less all weapons (maybe 7mm stayed the same) while at Gaijin nobody had the idea to take a look at the other side of the equitation.

 

Just the same fuckup they always do.

They change to make something more realistic, but forget to review the counters to the unrealistic behavior of the past. It is like they got a lot of people working on small things, but they are missing someone who got an overview for the general situation.

Everything needs to be less durable again and we are good again.

Maybe someone will notice in 2 years or so...

Edited June 17, 2023 by anyuser

[Fapadoska 21]

4 hours ago, anyuser said:

The problem is not real scatter.

The problem is, that Gaijin fought the high damage output they implemented and our (compared to reality) high accuracy with tougher planes, so that planes take more hits then in reality to be taken down, but not that much more time. Not to speak about our Hulk like pilots who can take a .50 to the chest.

Now damage from weapons is down for more or less all weapons (maybe 7mm stayed the same) while at Gaijin nobody had the idea to take a look at the other side of the equitation.

 

Just the same fuckup they always do.

They change to make something more realistic, but forget to review the counters to the unrealistic behavior of the past. It is like they got a lot of people working on small things, but they are missing someone who got an overview for the general situation.

Everything needs to be less durable again and we are good again.

Maybe someone will notice in 2 years or so...

I am not playing as much CAS now as I was before but I would imagine german CAS has probably suffered quite a bit, if they also make airframes weaker a single poorly playing allied AA could deny even more easily all of the airspace above the playing area.

[VikernesVarg 1,525]

The realshatter problem is giving me PTSD flashbacks of 2014, when autocannons below 30mm were essentially just machine guns, especially against American 4-engined bombers lol. But yeah I believe its the overwhelming sentiment among air RB players that we would rather have short time-to-kill than be able to resist excessive damage. Your defense in air to air combat should be all in your initial positioning and then your defensive maneuvering, not in some magic armor that makes aircraft guns unrealistically ineffective.

[DocProfit 2,663]

The problem is intensified with 16 vs 16.

 

You need to kill planes quickly otherwise:

 

1. A team mate(s) will come in to finish the kill to 'help you out'.

 

2. Enemy(s) will come in to 3rd party you while you watch - 'hit' 'crit' 'hit' - pop up on your screen.

 

 

[anyuser 5,136]

1 hour ago, Fapadoska said:

I am not playing as much CAS now as I was before but I would imagine german CAS has probably suffered quite a bit, if they also make airframes weaker a single poorly playing allied AA could deny even more easily all of the airspace above the playing area.

Afaik Real Scatter is there for those guns too...

 

And the even more importend question would be - and?

[Fapadoska 21]

35 minutes ago, anyuser said:

Afaik Real Scatter is there for those guns too...

 

And the even more importend question would be - and?

As far as I know Real Shatter was implemented because idiots were complaining that they were being killed by CAS using cannons (even tho they have the upper hand with godlike AA and roof mounted mmg), also Real Shatter does not affect player AA or top mounted machine guns.