If you want to get good at shooting, and want to do so quickly, then do this:
- Turn your scaling off on all axes.
- Turn your dampening to zero.
- Turn your deadzone down to zero (unless you have a loose joystick or a joystick that won't truly return to zero).
These simply serve as crutches 99% of the time and teach bad gunnery habits; with the exception of the deadzone, they all inherently promote sloppy control of the joystick. There are some players who have legitimate uses for them, but those cases are rare and far between.
The aim small, miss small idea of trying to hit specific areas of an aircraft does not work either. It works fine in non-combat and training situations, but the second you introduce stress, you'll find it becomes unreliable. In a higher-stress situation (such as the adrenaline rush from wanting to win a dogfight), fine motor control goes out the window. All that is left is coarse motor control. Want to see this in action? Run for 30 seconds and then hold a pen, as if you were trying to write with it, and attempt to keep it perfectly still for 10 seconds - you can't. This is loss of fine motor control and it happens when you undergo stress, regardless of whether it's for positive or negative reasons.
Take that same pen, grip it in your fist (like a hammer), and try to hold it still - you'll find this is much easier. This is coarse (or gross) motor control. You will fall back to your default level of coarse motor control in a stressful situation.
Not surprisingly, this is also what is taught in most real-life advanced weapon-manipulation training courses.
What you want to do is make your stick ultra-sensitive with a direct input ratio (i.e. no scaling). You'll find that it will feel very jumpy and almost unusable at first, but you'll also discover that, after a bit of practice, you can quickly adjust to rough guesstimates and be able to hold them rock-steady. Because of the direct scaling, there's no "learning" curve - it's intuitive. Half-stick, half-deflection; full-stick, full-deflection; and so on. Once you have this down, simply pull lead, then walk your shot in. Leave tracers on for this reason. This is the same method that was taught for using the F-16's cannon back in the 90's.
Do not do the unloading trick - that teaches bad habits that, while making it easier to get some shots, puts you in a less advantageous position should you miss your shot.
TL;DR - Summarized: Take out all of the post-processing of your joystick input - it simply serves to "confuse" your natural reflexes and makes it harder to learn what is somewhat intuitive. Focus on quickly pulling the "rough" amount of lead needed over the center mass of the aircraft, fire, and then walk your shot in. You'll find it immensely easier to learn to shoot.
