I ran some tests on the 190 d9 and its ability to seemingly take rad damage at will, what I found out is that the nose spinner is set to trigger a radiator hit, you are actually less likely to get a rad hit by shooting at were the radiator actually is, with the top half of the cowling surrounding the radiator being less susceptible than the lower half, the front part being very susceptible and the spinner being a dead cert.
Problem is that the game doesn't take into account the angle the shot is fired from only that it has registered as a 'hit' the propeller is not modelled to take damage from weapons fire, given the size of the hub spinner it makes a very large target and even shot from behind and the side can register a hit anywhere even shooting the very tip of the hub.
50 cal it did not matter what distance it was fired, if it hit the spinner with just 1 round you had a radiator hit. Just for a laugh I bailed out and tried again with my .45 it takes 3 rounds of this ammo to register a 'hit' on the spinner.
Although it makes sense for me with frontal shots I am presuming this is were I am getting these 1k spraying radiator hits from, its like pressing a button, even from the front would a 50 cal round be able to penetrate the hub and spinner or even make it through a spinning prop every time to the radiator?
I heard WW1 was a testbed for a new damage system, is this purely cosmetic? Ie holes showing etc or does it take in to account were it has been hit from? That was over 2 years ago, is there any update or plans for a reworking of the damage model in the pipeline?
Put into the context of the game, this simply means because of the simplistic modelling holding down your fire button and hoing a D9 is a viable tactic, it only takes 1 of those thousands of rounds to ping the spinner and 2 minutes later its game over.