At least Arlo is doing this in a classy "tongue in cheek" way.
1. - Since the damage area was reduced to the silhouette of the target, complaints about kills with the MG have been on the rise.
Many other contributing factors impact MG gunnery. Hitech has introduced the historic 1200ft effective range. Many players never really develop the skill to hold MG on target long enough. Many players don't really understand refining their controllers to eliminate bounce and jitter which introduce dispersion to their MG gunnery. Players don't understand how to turn off processes before logging onto the server to reduce CPU congestion. Some players don't understand how to aim in an air combat environment along with any ACM skill.
The upshot is the MG is a canary in the coal mine to your deficiencies related to gunnery and ACM. Where the 20mm is like a blind hog can always find an acorn.
2. - Observations that the easy mode killing ability of the 20mm is driving game play and ride selection. The 20mm is more like the old days of the game's hit modeling and it's ability to reward even the newer players with kills.
The AAF reviewed 701 combat films that resulted in the destruction of 186 german planes. Of the 701 pilots, 39% of those pilots shot down the 186 planes. All 39% of those pilots had one thing in common. The were firing inside of 1200ft. It has been observed that the Germans went with cannons precisely for the "bling hog will get an acorn" reason. And why the spitfire family is so successful in the game for new players.
I suspect as is, to increase the lethality of each 50 cal impact would increase the overall lethality of all rounds against aircraft. That would become rather gamey over night, along with unrealistic kills at will out to 1000yds like the very early years of our game because of how hits were determined by the program.
Offline the 50 cal works as specified in the WW2 gunnery manuals. But, online players are not compliant drones and the internet and our game equipment hates us all. So the real question becomes, are you requesting Hitech fudge the 50 cal so you don't have to work as hard at using it? Even though you are all proud to point to Aces High for it's physics realism versus the gamey aspects of all the other competitors.
All the AAF non-38 aces shot inside of 1200ft knowing the limitations of the AN\M2. And our P47\P51 top players are fitting the AAF numbers of who killed the 189 planes out of 701 pilots. Sooo, Aces High Thunder and an xBox controller anyone.......piu, piu, piu......
