The aircraft in World of Warplanes can be armed with a variety of machine-guns and cannons, which are distinguished by their characteristics and the amount of damage dealt. The damage you deal largely depends on the type of ammunition you choose.
Here are the most common types of ammunition belts that you are able to mount on your aircraft:
- Standard – standard ammunition belt type
- Armor-Piercing – one of the most damaging type of ammunition, with no additional effects
- Incendiary – this ammunition has a high chance of causing your target to catch fire, however it does less damage compared to other types
- Armor-Piercing Incendiary – this is a combination of the two previous types, dealing high damage and having a chance to cause the enemy plane to catch fire. The drawback is its high cost.
There are also other kinds of ammunition you will find on aircraft, including High-Explosive, High-Explosive Incendiary and Solid Core type and others.
When inspecting ammunition belts you can see the values of damage they can inflict:
For machine guns and medium-caliber guns the damage range is pretty large, the maximum damage can be up to 3.5 times higher than the minimum (here you can see the values for a 7.92 mm caliber machine gun)
A similar range of damage values for rounds of 7-8 mm caliber is due to the fact that the maximum damage is achieved at a distance of about 100 meters when on a collision course with another aircraft. If you are behind an enemy at the same distance, the damage will be lower, and damage will continue to decrease the further the enemy is from you. You will achieve the lowest damage at the border of your machine gun’s effective range, which is about 450-500 meters away from the target.
For large-caliber cannons you will have much less damage variation (example values for a 37 mm cannon)
The damage caused by a projectile fired from cannons has two components to it:
- Ballistic damage – the magnitude of which decreases with distance on the same principles as with a machine gun
- Chemical damage – applies its full damage value regardless of distance
For example, the damage caused by a 20mm cannon outside of its’ effective range will still apply the chemical damage component, even though the ballistic damage has already lost all of its impact.
