Autocannons, are they as good as they look on paper?

[sigeena]

Is it just me and my incredible bad luck or do autocannons generally miss even at high probability?

They look really nice on paper, ACC in the low 20s, 4-6 PEN, but they can't seem to hit the target at 300m.

Do they still have splash damage on surrounding hexes?

[Kritkeen]

I can't speak for all autocannons in the game but my experience with Pz-II autocannons is opposite. I tend to get a hit at least every 2 or 3 shots under 500m on another tanks of similar size like Polish 7TP or Vickers. And maybe get 50-50 change on damaging or outright destroying them.

But against soft targets I only get good results at 150m or less.

As for splash or blast-area chance damage, some versions of the autocannons have that but not all. Early SdKfz 222's have that from the top of my head.

[sigeena]

Okay, must be me playing russians and their godawful vodka-assisted targeting then.

[Imp]

Cant think of any Russian autocannons other than AA but as Ruskies problem may well be low experience & poor fire control rangefinder values.
Russian experience levels in the early years make tank combat in particular a risky business.

[Mobhack]

The soviet T-60 (assuming you are talking vehicles, not planes!) has a decent 20mm cannon, and is an excellent support weapon for grunt bashing - I like a pair operating with each rifle company. They hide til the nasty nazi tankies are dealt with by the KVs or T-34s etc, then pop out from the wood or ridge they were hiding behind and run forward to biff the grunts up. The weapon does splash damage and the HE supply is reasonable. Naturally, as with the MMG teams, one selects targets that have other grunts in ajacent hexes if one can so those get to share the joy.

The German PzIIs are same, but with a very limited ammo supply. Better to use the ealy model PzIV with short 75 and a decent supply of HE for grunt bashing duties.

Italy has an armoured car with a 20mm autocannon (I think), and a light tank ditto - not had much experience with those other than on the receiving end as British, when they simply end up as kill markers for anything with a 37mm or 2 pdr.

None of these fare well in the face of enemy armour greater than little scout cars - and even those can off them e.g. the German one with a 2.8cm squeezebore will usually off a T-60 with ease and daimler armoured cars deal with PzII and the italian jobs.

And if the enemy has bought some ATG, unless you lucky then they will die quickly if exposed in the open. If lucky and the ATG miss then if you have cover to evede to or make smoke etc, then at least thay provide some intel for the arty to deal with the ATG nest.

[Kiwikkiwik]

Hello, just a note on the German 2cm autocannon, I would suggest that you change the ammo loadout for these guns when mounted in the Pzkpfw II from 36 bursts to 180 shots and for the rest of the 2cm autocannon vehicles maybe leave the HE in bursts but change the AP fire to single shots (multiply current AP loadout by 5). This is because aircraft are engaged in bursts and ground targets are engaged with single shots and all these guns were capable of single shots, please read on.

In his book Leicht panzers in action, Uwe Feist states that as mounted in the PzKpfw II the kwk 30 is semiautomatic. The comprehensive website wehrmacht-history.com confirms this but is unfortunately presently under construction. So kwk 30 doesnt qualify as an autocannon when mounted in the PzKpfw II. I think some confusion has been caused by the guns origin from flak 30 which is usually also listed as automatic but in fact fires full automatic and semiautomatic. Flak 30 has two pedals, one fires automatic one fires semiautomatic, see German medium flak in combat by Muller or Jentzs Panzertracts 22-1. Flak 38 can also fire semi and full automatic, it has a selector switch on the gun body. Obviously 20mm flak was given single shot capability to engage ground targets. Doubtless the kwk 30 and kwk38 retained the ability to fire semiautomatic as they were also engaging ground targets. Terry Ganders book Military vehicles in detail 8x8 armoured cars provides this quote when comparing the rate of fire of the kwk 30 and kwk 38 'The increased rate of fire made a considerable difference to the effectiveness of the anti-aircraft weapons but made no practical difference to the Gunners on the sPzSpWg SdKfz 231 (8-rad)... as they usually fired the cannon on single shot (semi-automatic) only, to improve accuracy' Jentz confirms that sdkfz 231 can fire semi-automatic in panzertracts 13-2. Obviously when engaging a ground target, a single shot is fired, fall of shot registered and then a further shot is fired.

Regarding the PzKpfw II it makes sense that it couldn't fire automatic. It doesnt engage aircraft and ammunition carried isn't enough to support full automatic fire. After all the tanks role was actually MBT. Nearly all early panzer division had 20 PzKpfw III, 24 PzKpfw IV and 138 PzKpfw II. If you look on Utube at WW2 in colour, Series one, episode 9 overlord
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mTrXFUgP4A
About 30 seconds in you will see very clear footage of two PzKpfw IIs each firing a single shot. There is other footage of Pzkpfw firing the MG alone which obviously is fully automatic but there is no footage I can find of a Pzkpfw II firing the 2cm cannon on automatic. Reconnaissance vehicles (231, 222) on the other hand avoid battle rather than seeking it out and so allow full automatic fire on the same ammunition load. The SdKfz 231 (8-Rad) could also have its 36 bursts changed into 180 shots and the 231 (6-Rad) changed from 40 bursts to 200 shots as neither can engage aircraft.

The remaining vehicles with 2cm kwk guns have them in open topped turrets capable of engaging aircraft so these need to fire bursts to do do so but obviously dont fire AP at planes. So as all the 2cm guns can fire semi-automatically and do so to correct fire according to fall of shot then the AP ammunition should change from bursts to single shots. In my opinion it would be even better to change HE ammo loadout number from burst to single shots as well as the vehicles in question will be engaging many more ground targets than air targets and can't fire all that many shells at a fleeting aerial target anyway. So rather than giving them too little HE ammunition versus the ground target, maybe allow them to spend not enough ammunition when engaging an aerial target which I think is by far the lesser of the two alternative evils.

PanzerTracts 15-3 gives 251/17 600 2cm shells you have 350.
PanzerTracts 15-1 gives 250/9 230 2cm shells you have 200.
For some reason German units 70 and 71 kwk 30's have no HE ammunition?
PanzerTracts 13-1 gives the ammunition loadout to each SdKfz 222 as , 450 Sabot, 350 AP and only 100 HE. The low HE allocation suggests to me that they weren't firing a lot of HE on full auto. If they were shooting at a lot of planes they would have had a bigger HE allocation. The proportions of these AP HE allocations differ markedly from those in the game.
Unfortuneately I couldnt find anything relevant on the T60s autocannon.

[Kiwikkiwik]

On the basis that a picture is worth a thousand words, in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igev98b0dBE
Just after 1minute 37 seconds into the clip it looks very much like an early KWK 30 armed sdkfz 222 firing a single shot.