Quote:
Originally Posted by Suhiir
I got to thinking about gatling guns the other day and started wondering why non-aircraft mounted versions have an AP Penetration rating (vice the HE Penetration used by aircraft mounts).
But ... do any gatling guns, anywhere, have a dual feed system?
Does anyone, anywhere, carry separate HE and AP ammo for a gatling gun?
Wouldn't it make more sense to just give all gatling guns an HE Penetration and just HE Ammo?
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Since nobody has answered this question yet:
Rotary guns usually do not have dual feed systems, but mixing AP and HE (or "ball" in case of rotary machine guns) ammo in the same feed is quite common practice. That cannot be modeled by the game adequately as such, so automatic weapons with a single belt feed are often given separate AP ammunition to approximate that practice.
Using HE Penetration value for the same purpose is much less suitable, since HE Pen is not affected by range, but has very large random element, which also depends on the Warhead size. It is acceptable for aircraft since there is no alternative for them.
HE penetration has traditionally also been used in the SP games to model AP ammo with 12.7mm/.50 cal machine guns, although IMHO that is not very good practice either; nearly all 12.7/13/13.2 mm machine guns developed after WW1 could penetrate at least 15mm of armor steel at 100m range at 0 degrees with AP ammunition and often about 20mm. Certainly all which have been used widely after WW2 can. Using HE Pen value to simulate that means that penetration at short ranges is very erratic, but penetration at long ranges can still happen at the
same erratic probability. In my opinion that is much worse modeling than sacrificing some HE ammo for proper AP penetration calculations. However, it appears that Andy and Don do not agree with me on this.
Gatling Guns
Linear Mode
