Ammo (WoWP)

Ammo Types

Ammunition types can improve battle performance by improving certain traits of the shells a planes guns fire. Ammunition is loaded for each weapon type at once (forward firing, turrets or ordnance), so if you have multiple forward firing weapons groups you only load 1 type of ammuntion for them. The same goes for bombs and rockets.

Available for all forward firing weapons:

• Standard Ammunition - No benefits. Automatically loaded (empty ammunition slot).
• Universal Ammunition - Increased chance of causing a fire. Increased chance of inflicting critical damage.
• Incendiary Ammunition - Maximum chance of causing a fire. Increased chance of inflicting critical damage.
• Fragmentation Ammunition - Increased chance of causing a fire. Maximum chance of inflicting critical damage.
• High Explosive Armour Piercing Ammunition - Increased chance of causing a fire. Increased damage when shooting at ground targets.

Available for all turret weaponry:

• Standard Ammunition for Turret Gun - No benefits. Automatically loaded (empty turret ammunition slot).
• Universal Ammunition - Increased chance of inflicting critical hits with the turret.
• Special Ammunition - Maximum chance of inflicting critical hits with the turret.

Note that changing the turret ammunition type is sometimes only possible after unlocking the specialist mode. Before this, only Standard Turret Ammunition may be loaded.

Available for all aircraft with ordnance (bombs and/ or rockets):

• Standard Fragmentation - No benefits. Automatically loaded (empty fragmentation slot).
• Improved Fragmentation - Increased blast radius of bombs and rockets. Increased damage of bombs and rockets.
• Improved Explosives - Maximum blast radius of bombs and rockets. Increased damage of bombs and rockets.
• Heavy Warheads - Increased blast radius of bombs and rockets. Maximum damage of bombs and rockets.

Note that changing the fragmentation type is sometimes only possible after unlocking the specialist mode. Before this, only Standard fragmentation may be loaded.

Cost of ammunition All standard type ammuntion is loaded for free. This goes for all tiers/ periods. Universal ammunition types (Universal ammunition, Universal Ammunition for Turret Gun, Improved Fragmentation) cost credits, and the remaining types can be purchased only by gold or earned as a reward.

Prices are as follows: (For period I/II/III) (For tier 1-4/5-7/8-10)

• Standard types: 0 / 0 / 0 credits
• Universal types: 4.000 / 6.000 / 10.000 credits
• Any other type: 25 / 25 / 25 GOLD (or discounted: 10/15/25 GOLD)

Caliber

In general the game assigns higher armor penetration values to higher calibers. Shooting a heavily armored target with a low caliber will result in very low damage or possibly no damage at all. It's no where near as extreme as in World of Tanks, but it's still an important consideration. There are a few points to be made in regards to this statement:

• What the game refers to as "caliber" is the diameter of the barrel the cartridge is fired from. For simplicity, the game lists ammunition for all nations in millimeters, even though they did not historically use the metric system. The one exception to this is the .303 British.

• Different planes and ground targets in the game have varying amounts of armor. It isn't listed anywhere, so there's no way to quantitatively compare one plane to another. In general, heavy fighters and attack planes have the strongest armor, in addition to having the most hit points. Armor also generally increases along with tiers. Ground targets are marked as light, medium, or heavy.

• We also don't know if the game looks at muzzle velocity in regards to armor penetration. It does list muzzle velocity, but it may just be there for bullet travel calculations.

• We do not know if the game considers cartridge length (For example, does the game consider the American and Soviet 7.62 mm the same, or does it know that they're different lengths, with the longer one being more powerful?). Play testing leans towards the game considering them the same. Unless the Devs tell us though , there's no way to be certain.

In any case, we know that beyond the first two tiers, low caliber weapons such as 7.62 mm quickly become incapable of doing much damage. On some planes, which have larger caliber weapons and a few small caliber weapons, the player can use incendiary ammunition on the low caliber weapons. Since they don't do much damage anyway, losing some damage won't matter, but the chance of lighting the target on fire remains, regardless of armor.

Range

The exact effective range varies depending on the weapon, but in general machine guns have the shortest effective range, followed by heavy machine guns, with autocannons having the highest effective range.

Caliber	Effective Range	Maximum Range
Light MG (.30 cal/8 mm)	400	550
Heavy MG (.50 cal/13 mm)	500	700
20 mm AC	700	1000
30 mm AC	800	1200

• Maximum Range is defined as where the projectile vanishes from the world and does no damage.

Full Names of Machine Gun Ammo

7.62x51 mm - USA. Historically known as ".30 cal." Sometimes referred to as "7.62 mm NATO" in modern times. Seems to be the weakest in the game.
7.62x54 mm R - USSR. Originally developed for the Maxim machine gun. Hard to see any difference from the 7.62 used by the USA in the game. However, at low tiers, the USSR planes have more guns.
.303 - UK. Somewhat more powerful than either of the 7.62 mm.
7.7x58 mm Arisaka - Japanese. Virtually identical to the .303 rounds (Wikipedia says they started by copying the British .303).
7.92x57 mm Mauser - Germany. Seems to be the most powerful non-12.7 mm machine gun round.
12.7x99 mm - USA. Historically known as ".50 cal." A much more powerful heavy machine gun round.
12.7x108 mm - USSR. Might be slightly more powerful than the 12.7 used by the USA, but seems about the same.
13 mm MG-131 - Germany. Designed to replace 7.92mm machine guns on German aircraft for increased armor penetration.

The USA and USSR were the primary users of heavy machine guns. The UK, Japanese, and Germany began using autocannons earlier instead. The USA in particular made extensive use of heavy machine gun armament. Germany did use some heavy machine guns, but not extensively and only as secondary armament.

Judging from Wikipedia, it does not appear that the USSR ever used their popular 7.62x39 mm cartridge on aircraft.