30mm fixed gun armament belt options

[WinterH]

Hi, I'm pretty sure this is planned, but wanted to voice my desire anyway.

It seems we currently have a ammunition belt that is either exclusively, or almost exclusively AP for the 30mm GSh-2-30K. And it is really great in dealing with any sort of vehicle, it can even damage tanks from sides! ...with the caveat of requiring direct hits.

 

I'd really love an ability to switch between ammunition options for the gun when rearming like many other modules do. 30mm HE shells would be really handy to have, especially against softer targets, most noticably infantry. It's almost integral to support gunship kind of roles Hind would be good at.

[Northstar98]

+1

 

AFAIK these are the ammunition options:

• OFZ (HEI)
• OFZT (HEI-T)
• BR (APHE)
• BT (AP-T)
• ME (fragmentation? shotgun-like?)

 

source 1

source 2

Edited June 25, 2021 by Northstar98

[Blinky.ben]

Does anyone know if 30mm HE rounds are going to be a option? Or is AP rounds all the Mi-24 would carry?

 

edit: sense my post got merged with this post it answers my question. Thanks

Edited June 26, 2021 by Blinky.ben

[applesinduck]

Bump. This is such a basic thing I don't know why it's not part of EA. Now it seems like AP round is forced at the moment.

[S. Low]

+1 hope HE ammo comes soon. Dakka dakka dakka 

[LooseSeal]

HE ammo combined with an updated splash damage system = nightmare potion for all infantry. 

[WinterH]

7 minutes ago, LooseSeal said:

HE ammo combined with an updated splash damage system = nightmare potion for all infantry. 

Yes, but to be fair, even without an overhaul of damage system, HE rounds make a lot of differencce already as it is. Ka-50' 30mm 2A42 and 23mm GSh-23L found on many modules work quite good on infantry with HE. NATO 20mm also, but to a lesser degree. So I'd rather not wait for whole rework of damage system before we just get access to some HE rounds too  They should do the trick really

 

51 minutes ago, S. Low said:

+1 hope HE ammo comes soon. Dakka dakka dakka 

Yep, WAAAAAAGGGGHH!!! :))

[Blinky.ben]

Is it the same round as the Ka-50 30mm HE? Cause then it would be just a cut and past would it not to add this round to the Mi-24 gun?

[paco2002]

Bump!

[Picure]

I would love to have HE ammo too, but as for now, its a good chance to give the grenade launcher and dispensers a crack at dealing with infantry.

[evanf117]

so we got new ammo types, they are only HE and AP but and nether are really HE

Edited September 18, 2021 by evanf117

[AvroLanc]

Anyone know the ratios of HE and AP in the 'combat mix' option?

 

What about the ratio of tracer in the normal loads vs the 'more tracers' option?

 

Nice to see these implemented, but detail lacking.

[AeriaGloria]

There is a website that states HEx4, HE-Tx4, and AP-Tx4. Only odd thing is ED gave it a non tracer AP round, where as there doesn’t seem to be one in real life

 

http://www.russianammo.org/Russian_Ammunition_Page_30mm.html

[Northstar98]

On 9/23/2021 at 1:35 PM, AeriaGloria said:

There is a website that states HEx4, HE-Tx4, and AP-Tx4. Only odd thing is ED gave it a non tracer AP round, where as there doesn’t seem to be one in real life

 

http://www.russianammo.org/Russian_Ammunition_Page_30mm.html

Unless the AP round in DCS is actually the BR APHE round?

I just flew with "30MM AP" selected for the gun, and every now and then there would be a tracer, so maybe it's a mix of the BT AP-T and BR APHE round.

One thing though is that this does highlight nicely why it would be better to just name the actual round and the acronym of the round type, instead of how its currently named, which leaves it pretty vague and ambiguous IMO (also, in the case of "30MM HE" and "30MM AP", isn't the "30MM" redundant?).

For instance, instead of "30MM HE" -> "OFZT HEI-T" or "OFZ HEI".

For the belt described above you could do something like "4x BT AP-T + 4x OFZ HEI + 4x OFZT HEI-T".

Edited November 4, 2021 by Northstar98
formatting

[Enduro14]

I agree, for all aircraft I wish we had a Ratio listing, aka 4 ball to 1 tracer as example....

[AeriaGloria]

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

 

Unless the AP round in DCS is actually the BR APHE round?

 

I just flew with "30MM AP" selected for the gun, and every now and then there would be a tracer, so maybe it's a mix of the BT AP-T and BR APHE round.

 

One thing though is that this does highlight nicely why it would be better to just name the round and the acronym of the round type, instead of how its currently named, which leaves it ambiguous.

 

For instance "OFZT HEI-T", for the  belt described above you could do something like "4x BT AP-T + 4x OFZ HEI + 4x OFZT HEI-T".

Perhaps, here is the LUA for non tracer AP round https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/shells/GSh_30_2K_AP.lua. It is not listed as explosive, so if it’s APHE they have simply not modeled the explosive part, maybe DCS can’t do AP and HE in one round so they went with AP since the combat mix is already HE biased

[WinterH]

2 hours ago, AeriaGloria said:

Perhaps, here is the LUA for non tracer AP round https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-lua-datamine/blob/master/_G/weapons_table/weapons/shells/GSh_30_2K_AP.lua. It is not listed as explosive, so if it’s APHE they have simply not modeled the explosive part, maybe DCS can’t do AP and HE in one round so they went with AP since the combat mix is already HE biased

I would expect APHE shells in DCS to not really act like HE, but do more overall damage to a vehicle after a successful penetration than pure AP.

Upcoming HEDP shell in Apache should have both anti armor and HE capabilities to some degree, and most HEAT rockets etc are also like that. But since APHE is usually meant to go off after going through some armor, I think in the context of DCS those will mostly be modeled as "AP shells that do more damage if they can pen". I don't really know it for sure, but I'd be surprised if APHE shells work well at all as HE substitutes IRL in most of the cases. In softish earth they'll probably bury themselves before going off, and against hard surfaces they may shatter before fuse doing its thing.

 

Looking at the files listed there however, there seems only to be AP and AP tracer, and taking a cursory look into their data, looks like they are almost exactly the same apart from one having a tracer. Their damage factor is listed the same too, so it doesn't seem like one is AP and other APHE from the current data.

Regardless, I'm very happy that now we get both AP and HE shells available at last

Edit: took a look at MiG-19's AP vs APHE, and (I know, not an ED module), it looks like it's not modeled in that case as I thought, instead they seem to have same damage factor but APHE has some HE content.

Edited September 23, 2021 by WinterH