I think the point is…
How many rounds from a BF109 should it take to down a Spitfire?
How many should it take from a Spitfire to down a BF109?
I think it will be easiest to find information from the battle of britain, so these aircraft are good choices
1 round?
A Dozen?
50 rounds?
Usually these aircraft fired a 1-2 second burst and that burst was likely enough to severely damage a target, but more than likely, enough to down it entirely. If we consider the rate of fire on these weapon systems, then that is a lot of potential rounds fired within that burst window.
Spitfire MkIX:
2x 20mm Hispano Mk.II - ROF 600/Min
4x 7.7mm Browning Machine Gun - ROF 1000/Min
1 second burst is 20 rounds of 20mm and around 70-80 rounds of 303/7.7mm.
BF-109 G
1x MG 151/20mm ROF 700/min
2x MG 131/13mm 900/min
1 second burst is 12 rounds of 20mm and 30 rounds of 13mm.
I believe 1-2 seconds of fire from either aircraft with a fairly standard mix of HEI and other rounds would be more than enough to destroy most single engine fighters. Regardless of how much explosive filler was in each round. Though I doubt these were significant differences.
In my opinion, this is near enough what we have (within 10% I’d say), at least from the perspective of a MkIX Spitfire pilot. Some aircraft might be different, but I doubt they are massively different.
So the question is, if what we have now is not correct, why is it incorrect? and what should it be?
Please provide evidence for either why its not correct and what it should be instead and please be specific with what aircraft/gun you are talking about. Its hard to keep track in this thread sometimes.
There are certainly some issues with the damage model, no one is denying that, but those are seperate issues to real-shatter and I think some aircraft need tweaks to their damage models and not necesarily to their cannons. (though some might need minor adjustment, but on an individual basis) However whether we are talking about blowing an aircrafts wing off, or just destroying control surfaces, controls veins, etc. Then the results are the same. Just the kill is confirmed a lot sooner, and so less chance of killsteals