What's the rationale behind splitting the a certain portion of on-board guns by primary and secondary fire triggers in AH?
I've never given this a serious thought before I realized that spitting up the pairs of guns by primary and secondary may be responsible for granting perhaps some ahistoric advantage to planes that were not able to fire individual sets of guns. They not may be big advantages, but in field of combat even the smallest of advantages could effect the outcome of the fight.
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The most obvious advantage IMO would be the ammo saving effect. I know for a fact that quite many of the ace pilots in AH fire separate sets of guns in multi-HMG or multi-cannon planes to maximize their firing time.
Usually only the planes with mixed armament would have two (or perhaps even three) triggers, most likely separate buttons for MGs and cannons. Spitfires or 109s, Yaks, P-38s would fall under this category. In the case of the Fw190, the outboard armament had varied options according to the mission as they would either mount 20mms or 30mms. Therefore the primary trigger fired the cowl MGs and inboard 20mms, while the secondary fired outboard cannons.
However, in AH things are quite different. For example, lets look at the F4U-1C. The Hispanos are the deadliest cannons in the game and in most cases firing only two 20mm cannons is more than enough to bring down a fighter. In effect, by firing two guns at a time the F4U-1C doubles its firing time from what should be 22 seconds total to maximum 44 seconds(data from ACES HIGH¢â FIGHTER PERFORMANCE COMPARISON).
I am unaware if the F4U-1C has two triggers on its control column or only one, but to my knowledge most WW2 fighters in general which were armed with multiple sets of identical guns seems to have had only one primary fire trigger which would fire all guns simultaneously. The P-51 fired all four/six guns, the P-47 fired all eight. I would guess it was the same for planes like the Typhoon also. In effect, the P-47 doubles its firing time from 32 seconds total to an woppin' 64 seconds, the P-51 can extend upto 50 seconds firing time, from what should be only 30 seconds (with one set of guns running dry before the other two sets).
Ofcourse, despite this very generous trigger setting in AH, many people consider it more important to maximize firing power than sustain a longer firing time, so often they would voluntarily fire all guns simultaneously in the 'historic fashion'. But I am not interested in individual preference to the current setting, but rather the fact that some planes are given an ahistorical, lenient choice when it comes to judging how much firepower the pilot needs for the task at hand.
A most clever pilot in a plane such as the P-47, will be able to fly wiser than most people, and use only four guns in general combat, firing the maximum salvo of 8 guns only when he feels he has the perfect aim, or perhaps in close quarters snapshots. By such management, he is allowed to save much of his ammo in situations which he shouldn't be able to do so, and thus increasing the combat effectiveness of his plane of choice.
Perhaps a second, possible advantage may be in aiming and firing the guns itself. I am not sure how gun recoil and dispersion is treated in AH, although the visual indication of the gun vibrations seem to be purely cosmetic. If we assume that AH indeed does have some kind of a recoil effect when firing heavy gun loads, that may effect the overall ballistics of the individual round fired, then in theory (using the P-47 as an example), would firing four guns only not provide a much better aim than firing all eight simultaneously?
Then this presents a certain problem. In many cases planes armed with multiple sets of identical weaponery, tend to have massive ammo loads (such as the F4U-1C, P-47, P-51.. etc.). If firing limited sets of guns does in fact provide better ballistics for the guns than all guns firing simultaneously, then by doing so the plane is not only able to save considerable amounts of ammo, but also be provided with better accuract (however slight it may be) than it should be.
Although it may be far-fetched, perhaps this is one of the reasons which may attribute to the frequency of long ranged kills happening in the game. The pilot is first provided with numerical info on exactly how much rounds he has left (which encourages him to view 'spraying' or 'sniping' long distances as an acceptable risk, since he has exact information on his ammo state), then he fires only limited sets of guns (which minimizes the risk of firing too much ammo against targets too far away), and then his action is rewarded with slightly better accuracy (since gun recoil/vibraton is halved by firing only half of his guns). While it does take a skilled marksman to hit long distance targets, perhpas not all of his feats of shooting down planes at 600 yards is due to pure skill. Who knows?
A third potential advantage might be the decluttering of views, in some of the cases when the pilot prefers using tracer rounds. (Although it is likely that a pilot who prefers uncluttered views would be more likely to not use tracers at all).
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In conclusion, I really don't understand why some of the guns were split by triggers in the first place. Some of the advantages gained by some planes with such trigger setting may not be much, but in the case of ammo conservation this is a significant advantage over planes which cannot split their ammo load by different triggers.
Imagine a three cannoned La-7 that uses two cannons for primary fire, and one cannon for secondary fire. The pilot would be able to double his firing time by using each of the triggers separately, perhaps using only one cannon while spraying or sniping or attacking in a "sure kill" situation(such as against a C-47), while using two cannons in more general combat situation.
The Soviet cannons are generally very fast firing, and with it comes the inherent problem of firing time. The La-7 has only 13 seconds of firing time. It is one of its weaknesses, both in the historical, and in the game. However, if the pilot is given an ahistorical choice to use different sets of guns, and uses them according to the situation at hand, he may be able to double his firing time in the La-7 to maximum 26 seconds. A single 20mm is weak, but it is still very potent enough to bring down a fighter. In this assumption the La-7 is provided the ability to choose the amount of ammunition used according to the task at hand - an advantage which should not have been given to, in the first place.
If that be the case, why do all multi-HMG, multi-cannon planes in AH use different sets of triggers to split their gun salvo ahistorically? Why are some planes, like the La-7, left out of this then? I'm not implying its a bias. I'm simply implying that it is wrong, and may be controversial.
Perhaps the "user-friendly" nature of the initial versions of first Aces High made it necessary for the developers to think of splitting triggers and weaponery. Perhaps they wanted to make it possible for the gamers to"map" some of the guns to the secondary fire button on their stick, so its more fun and convenient. However, the more recent changes seem to indicate that perhaps HTC is rethinking the importance of historical representation and immersion levels.
Then would it not be a good idea to "rewire" the trriggers historically? Especially if it would correct a potentially 'illegal advantage' situation in some of the plane. As I understand, many pilots of AH seem to be proponents for the game pilot being able to fire separate sets of guns by different triggers. But I serious doubt they would feel the same if the importance of conveninece is to override reality in other matters, such as FMs, DMs, or whatnot. Then the protests against 'wrong models' would probably go off the scale.
So why should it be any different? Modelling how the guns are fired by triggers, is as much a reality-model issue as any plane FM or DM is.
* Suggestion: tedious process it may be, but I suggest the developers "rewire" every plane guns and triggers in the game, to their original/historical capacity.
