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The original was posted on /r/battlefield2042 by /u/rainkloud on 2023-07-18 02:07:33+00:00.
If you're a frequent reader you've probably seen posts like this and this recently decrying the ability of the 20mm AA cannon to annihilate infantry in droves, especially on Breakthrough maps. For some, including myself, this was a bit puzzling as I had previously tested the AA cannon vs infantry and found that it did a paltry 5 damage to the chest and 7.5 to the head with no blast damage to speak of.
After some discussion with friends at the Sym.gg discord, they suggested I re-try my tests at max range as it appeared that was a common thread in the videos we'd seen and during our own personal experiences.
Here were my findings:
- The direct impact damage stayed the same at 5 regardless of distance
- No blast damage was detected when firing next to the ground or a wall
- At max range (200m) however the shell automatically explodes and this is where the problem occurs because unlike material blast damage which is non-existent, this auto detonation that occurs when the shell time to live is expired does inflict blast damage
- The blast damage from the end of life explosion is 10 at its closest and the radius is HUGE - perhaps 10m or so. This means that with virtually no precision you can deal splash damage with an extremely large net to catch anyone in the vicinity.
- As a result, any area that can be pre-zeroed in on like a flag or spawn point is easy pickings to set up a giant kill zone.
There's a couple of methods that I can think of that can be employed to fix this:
-
Remove the blast damage against infantry for the EOL explosion
-
Remove the EOL explosion altogether and have the flak only explode in the presence of air vehicles
I think I like number 2 best as it addresses another complaint from players, that the flak explosions are really loud and distracting. Number 2 would also allow the flak explosions to damage infantry so long as they were in the vicinity of an air vehicle that was, for example, on the ground and being repaired and I like that idea.
Thanks to SORROW and Motoko for their help with this testing. If you're in to small arms weapon stats please check out SORROW's award worthy compilation here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UQsYeC3LiFEvgBt18AarXYvFN3DWzFN3DqRnyRHC0wc/edit?usp=sharing