Hi Andy
Only one nation was faced with tens of thousands of well armoured fast tanks and they made most of these weapons. They arnt wonder weapons nor am I saying they are. What I am saying is that they are underrated in the game wich you agree with. However you are arguing that game mechanics prevents the weapons getting there correct pen values, but im not so sure.
To be exact there are 4 of these weapons in 30mm 37mm 50mm and 75mm calibres mounted in about 13 different planes. However after v6 of the game they all had there HE/Ap kill factors reduced to the current, incorrect low values. These weapons did play a large part on the eastern fornt.
Heres a quote from
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/gen9.htm
but please read the entire article.
"Rudel's squadron of nine tank-busting Ju-87 G-1 was assigned to support of the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf". On the first day of the Operation Citadel, during his first mission, Rudel knocked out four Soviet tanks and by the evening, his score grew to twelve"
I did some tests
I used a 7.5mm Bcannon in a JU88 with HE AP Kill reset from 13 to 17. I shot at 12 KV tanks each tank had its 6 adjacent hexes occupied by infantry or size 4 trucks (half half). Result, no casualties and no trucks damaged in the adjacent hexes, some rare pinning. So Im not sure what you mean by "mass destruction"? I repeated the test with the adjacent hexes filled with more KV, again no damage to adjacent tanks, some rare buttoning. It would appear to me that increasing the HE/Ap kill factor to the correct values doesnt cause "mass destruction".
Also something else that doesnt make sense to me, if its no problem to have the 7.5 Bcannon at a HE/AP kill of 13 then why cant you change thr 3.7 Bcannon to its correct value of 14? If the "mass destruction" of 13 is acceptable for the 7.5 Bcannon why is the "mass destruction of 14 not acceptable for the 3.7 Bcannon?
I have gone to mobhack and for the 75mm BKannon given it a sabot penetration of 17 and sabot range of 25 and changed the HE kill and HE penetration to 0. I then put this into a ju88, unit 934, (class 243 "ground attack") for this unit I changed the HE value to 1. changing it to 0 unfortuneatley removes the unit from the bombardment screen.
If the target is correctly identified as armour it will fire the sabot round. However it seems that a poorly aquired target will be shot at by the "default" HE round. So maybe very close to a workable solution.
Would you be able to tell me the diferences between the two classes? 44 and 243? Ive read the help which doesnt tell me a whole lot
It appears there are two good approaches either simply increase the HE/AP kill value to the correct values or possibly with some work, allocate the sabot ammo.
Best Regards Chuck