When we loose ailerons, rudder and elevators. Isn't that Hitech taking an easier approach to the outcome of shot up control cables?
Currently we lose those control surfaces when X weight of rounds needed to knock them off hit *directly* on said control surfaces.* But control cables would actually represent more areas on the plane that could be hit and result in jammed/disabled controls, potentially with only a round or three. Ditto for the fluid lines and other goodies inside an airplane. Currently there are large areas of the plane which are essentially "hollow" and which simply drilling holes through does nothing until you put in enough weight of fire to reach the gross structural limit and make the part fall off completely.
This modeling is arguably disadvantageous for a gun package firing a smaller round but making a larger number of holes versus a gun package tossing bigger rounds in lesser numbers.
For instance, if you compare a 6x.50s to two Hispanos, both packages are putting out roughly the same amount of damage per second. However, the .50s are making MANY more holes than the Hispanos, usually over a wider area. Each Hispano round is roughly as destructive as three .50 rounds. By definition, each Hispano round is putting its full weight of damage on a single part. Let's say an aileron gets hit. A Hispano ping or two can and does make the aileron go away. Three to six .50 pings to the aileron potentially does the same thing. However, it is much more likely that some of these .50 rounds will hit somewhere besides the aileron, say the wing. Currently there is ZERO chance of these widespread holes on the aileron and wing inflicting any disability whatsoever on the enemy airplane. You either get in enough weight of fire to knock off an aileron and/or outboard wing portion or you get nothing. But more complex damage modeling would represent some chance that this larger number of holes spread over a greater area would pierce something at least somewhat debilitating. Make sense?
A comparison can be made to shotguns and bird hunting. If shot had to either hit the heart or literally tear a wing off to bring down that bird, shotguns might not be very good bird-hunting weapons at all. If that were the case folks might have better results using .22 rifles. But because birds are actually chock-full of structures and organs vulnerable to pellet hits, it is a virtual certainty that accurate fire at reasonable range will hit some of these structures with pellets and bring down the bird. Thus shot guns are good bird-hunting weapons, far better than rifles for small moving targets at close ranges.
The other consideration is using shot large enough to have adequate penetration for the size of bird you are hunting at the ranges you are firing. As long as you have adequate penetration, you are better off having more smaller shot to make more holes with, right? Well, at typical combat shooting ranges .50s have more than enough penetration to get the job done, it is just the "birds" they are shooting at have such large areas where punching holes will do absolutely nothing.
