About autocannon effectiveness

[Hijong park]

Having been playing AH-94 about a week, I like the everything about VTOL VR, especially the carefully tamed level of realism like the old microprose flight sim series, but there is one exception : way too powerful autocannons.

The autocannons in this game, like GAU-94 and m230 are capable of destroying main battle tanks with several shots over 5 km away, and both has way too plenty 1200 rounds. There's no need for using rockets and missiles most of the time, I can just use turret to destroy everything.

In other helicopter sim-lites such as gunship 2000, LHX attack chopper, or even more advanced realistic sims like janes longbow, arma and DCS world, or EVEN complete arcade games like battlefield 2, the helicopter turrets are pretty much melee weapon compared to missiles (not very good over 4km), and 20mm can't damage main battle tanks. 30mm sometime can, but still need so many hits and it's usually a waste of ammo.

Eventually i learned modding and made a 'more realistic ah94 turrets' mod, which I simply changed the damage, disperson, and capacity so 20mm can't kill tanks and both turrets won't be very effective over 4km.

I found this simple modification a lot more enjoyable than vanilla as I need to switch to missiles and rockets more frequently.

Since now I modded it myself, the issue had been fixed for me. But what you guys think about the autocannon effectiveness? Should it be nerfed like my mod or just fine as it is ?

[Zero]

honestly,
damage in arma isn't what i'd call realistic either at times.

30mm (the gau-94) was literally strapped to some engines to give us the A-10. its main purpose is destroying tanks.

and the 20mm used in vulcans can still penetrate modern tank armor.

[Elijah1]

Only thing id change would be range honestly
In reality both 20mm and 30mm can pen tank armor
But you wont be seeing an apache use its gun from 5km away

[Hijong park]

Originally posted by Elijah1:

Only thing id change would be range honestly
In reality both 20mm and 30mm can pen tank armor
But you wont be seeing an apache use its gun from 5km away

Yes I also think disperson is the most important stat that need to be changed, especially m230 to make The area weapon system effect.

[Hijong park]

Originally posted by Zero:

honestly,
damage in arma isn't what i'd call realistic either at times.

30mm (the gau-94) was literally strapped to some engines to give us the A-10. its main purpose is destroying tanks.

and the 20mm used in vulcans can still penetrate modern tank armor.

Then I wonder why dcs world made ka-50 cannon and apache m230 cannon pretty much useless against MBTs.

Gazelle's 20mm is waste of ammo against tank as well.

[wuD]

I only use the 30mm for AH because it´s OP
even tho´i aggree, from qameplay-perspective i´d make sense to nerf them a bit
but then..looking at some real-life footage shows the devastating effect
of this insane weapons-platform.

I am no ballistics-expert, but i like the way it feels/plays, ingame.

[Hijong park]

Originally posted by wuD:

I only use the 30mm for AH because it´s OP
even tho´i aggree, from qameplay-perspective i´d make sense to nerf them a bit
but then..looking at some real-life footage shows the devastating effect
of this insane weapons-platform.

I am no ballistics-expert, but i like the way it feels/plays, ingame.

Yes I think the developer can keep the current damage of 30mm if he wish, but should at least add more disperson so it won't have insane effective range.

Just look at attack helicopter guncam footages, these turrets are never accurate.

[wuD]

Well, the effective range of the m230 is 1.5km while the maximum kill-range is at about 4km
Then again, a real AIM120 has 55km and upwards of range.. so.. yeah
Realism=/=Engaging Gameplay
I am okay with a 20mmGatling nerf and maybe a slight increase in dispersion for m230
I´d have to pack more ordonance then

[Hijong park]

Originally posted by wuD:

Well, the effective range of the m230 is 1.5km while the maximum kill-range is at about 4km
Then again, a real AIM120 has 55km and upwards of range.. so.. yeah
Realism=/=Engaging Gameplay
I am okay with a 20mmGatling nerf and maybe a slight increase in dispersion for m230
I´d have to pack more ordonance then

Missiles carry a lot less rounds than chain gun that using these at soft targets can be waste of ammo.

Instead of just using turret to destroy everything in the whole mission, using turret against soft targets in close range and then switching to missiles or rockets for long range / hard target attack is what i call 'engaging gameplay'.

Gunship 2000 for example. This game is not realistic even for 1990s standards compared to falcon 3.0, pretty much an arcade shooter.

But turrets in this game have very short range and cannot damage tanks, so I need to carefully switch the weapon to hellfire and pick the several most dangerous units first as I still need to keep some for objectives and other sudden encounters.

After using some hellfires to remove tanks and SAM, I switch to gun, carefully approach to other less dangerous enemies using terrain, then fire some chain gun rounds from 1.5km away. That's really more fun gameplay wise, not just being realistic or not.

My 'more realistic ah94 turrets' mod is perfectly replicating this so I'm always using it when I fly AH-94.