Thank you to everyone who helped me sort ammo out. It is a bit confusing. For newer players, here are some quality guides from the WT forums. Tank Ammunition: http://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/145355-tank-shells-and-choosing-your-loadout/ Plane Ammunition: TBA
This is also a useful chart for the ammo. War Thunder mechanics seem to adhere pretty closely to it and it's actually an interesting read.
Okay, that was helpful. Thank you Magnus! Any advice on ammo load-outs? How much of what to take, for various tiers and such?
Oddly enough, the AP "capped" rounds that most German tanks start with are actually the best ammo to take in most situations (APHE is the best, but few German tanks use it)... with three exceptions: If you are using a short stubby gun (mostly lower tiers), the AP capped rounds don't always offer enough penetration, in this case, use HEAT rounds instead. If you are going up against a hardened target (such as a higher tier opponent or a KV), use APCR (or pretty much anything with an "R" in it); they won't usually kill your target in one shot (because the round has no explosive element), but at shorter ranges they have significantly higher penetration power. Also, don't bother shooting at hard targets from long range... unless you just want to annoy them. When you get into late Tier, consider using HE. With the largest guns, penetration becomes much less of an issue; at that point, you want maximum explosive power to help guarantee the one-shot kill. I'm only up to Tier 2 so I will speak for that: I usually take 2/3 APC rounds (or HEAT if the gun sucks). The last 1/3 I fit with the best short range penetrating round I can find (usually APCR or APCNR) for killing those pesky KVs at shorter range. Pro-tip: try to flank them so you can get a few shots in before they notice you. You could also take a dozen or so HE rounds for the random soft target that occasionally pops up, but I usually find APC is almost as effective.
It's worth noting that a lot of the tank rounds in the game fail to include the HE part in the modifications description. To see whether or not a shell has an explosive component to it, look at the "fuse delay" section of the description. If the fuse delay is anything other than zero, then the shell will explode inside of the tank. Standard HE rounds are an exception to this rule and appear as 0.0m because they are always set to explode on contact, rather than inside of a tank.
My last post there is specifically targeted at German tanks. Despite the ammunition not listing HE in it's description, most of the default shells DO have HE. You can just use the my post above to determine that if you ever have any doubt.
