"The "single bullet only" problem isn't unique to the P-38; I can do this for certain in the P-51's. I believe it is a quirk of the gunnery model and can be done with any of the aircraft in AH."
All planes do this, by tapping the fire button lightly shoots off a single bullet. I may have not been clear in my first post... take the P-51 and the P-38 gun systems as an example. Each have an primary and a secondary gun bank. (like all other planes).
In a P-51, the primary gun bank consists of 2 .50 cals (or 3 .50 cals in the 51D), the secondary of the other 2 (or 3) guns. The P-38's primary gun banks are the 4 .50's, the secondary is the 20mm.
Now, if you have your stick button # 1 mapped to fire the primary and button #2 to fire the secondary, the moment you click both the P-51 fires off TWO bullets at a time.. 1 from the primary gun bank, one from the secondary gun bank (the remaining guns fire in quick succession, but always 2 at a time). On a P-38 by comparison, firing the primary gun bank fires off ONE bullet a time, a 50% hitpower in comparison to the P-51B.
If you have your joystick mapped to fire both banks with 1 button, you're robbing yourself of 50% hitpower your plane can dish out!
Since the 38's guns allegedly fire "at convergence" in AH at any range their punch should be the same as a bpony's punch hitting at its convergence. Problem is, it isnt. The bpony hits twice as hard at convergence, because for every shot, its sending TWO bullets, the 38 sends one at a time. Bpony kills much, much faster. The 38's nose gun package punch is effectively nullified by it firing off 1 round at a time. The ammo load on the 38 also lasts much longer (low ammo load of course) because of this.
Sending the command to fire a gun bank should tell ALL guns in the bank to fire. Granted, each individual gun will not fire at the exact same nanosecond, but they will fire off, and each gun's refire rate is not identical either, but it will still be more than 1 gun firing. It should be that for every tap, all 4 mg's in the 38 receive the command..maybe 2 or more guns fire off at a time with the remaining guns firing a split microsecond behind..the bpony's the same).In AH each gun seems to receive its fire command per time you hold the trigger down..they seem to cycle, thus you can lightly tap the trigger and fire off 1 round..tap it again and the next gun in the cycle will shoot out 1 bullet...when every tap should make all guns in that bank fire.
Now, if the guns were fixed to fire all guns in bank per fire command, the P-51's hitpower and the 38's hitpower (in .50's) would be equalized.. because no matter if the 51B fires both banks at the same time, it will be 4 .50 guns firing off...same as the 38.
Pros (for all planes, not just the allied .50 armed planes):
Increased damage per burst. Heck, the LW may even get a HUGE benefit from this, their cannon rides would be lobbing out 2+ cannon rounds at a time instead of the 1-at-a-time-making-each-cannon-hit-woefully innefective). Heck maybe even the spitv's 4X .303's will hit as hard as ONE .50 cal for once.
cons: ammo wont last as long.
Another little thing that has me VERY curious on the 38 is its drag (or whatever, read below).
If you lign up with the runway going 200mph or less, full flaps down, kill the engines (turn them OFF) and attempt to land, the 38 will "float" over the runway without losing any speed...you actually have to pull the nose down and bump the plane into the ground to make its wheels hit the dirt in order to slow down with the wheel brakes (which btw, has very crappy brakes lol).. and even then the plane will take a looooooooong time to slow down. I can understand the loss of drag from the props no longer braking the plane, but to lose almost NO speed at all with full flaps down, elev trimmed fully down? Thats just weeeird.
