Sanders once had a nice test pic of this. But no, focus fire means that a shot that missed the accuracy role might do damage to models in proximity.
But that's as much knowledge as there is out there. No one has tested it properly to try to find out how it works exactly.
I think this "projectile" is only a visual representation. If it is calculated as a projectile, then it had no meaning to the actual gameplay as far as I know.
I have done some testing and it does appear that "focus fire" is a weapon property, and not a squad property, as I had thought it to be. Are you sure it's the case that "missed" shots can strike nearby models, though, and not that accurate hits are spread across models instead? The former would imply that "focus fire: True" (That Obsersoldaten K98s and their MG34 seems to possess) is a negative quality rather than a positive one, and that weapon accuracy isnt actually strictly useful to calculate DPS. I'm assuming in this case that focus fire being "true" is the quality of damage NOT being spread, because that's the most logical way to talk about it.
I was usually of the mind that the tracers that units fire are indeed just visual, and not meaningful in a gameplay sense, but the fact that a squad can damage intervening obstacles when firing implies that there is some "projectile" calculation being done for small-arms.
Let me clarify something:
1) Mortars and similar units as far as I know do not go through accuracy checks at. For instance the pack howitzer has an accuracy of 1 and it would always hit if did go trough accuracy check.
As I already have pointed outed different weapons types like "ballistic", "explosion", "Big explosion" and the projectiles behave differently.
2) Focus fire is weapon property and not squad property and it does allow the damage to spread to more than one model. You can clearly see this with kubel that damage more than entity when it fire.
3) Small arm do not have projectiles because it would really mess up the engine to calculate the thousand of round fired in 4vs4 game. They can damage world objects PTRS destroying cover is prime example but that was done by the engine without a projectile being involved.
3) Shared veterancy is gained when the unit near gain veterancy (as far as I know) and since the target unit gain veterancy for taking damage the unit with shared veterancy would also gain.
The shared veterancy does not work with all units but specific units like infatry, hmg, mortars. Else units with shared veterancy near a tank would gain XP like crazy
4) Think faust bug is improved but not fixed completely.
Hope this helps.
1) Fair enough, strange that Lelic decided to do it that way. If I were designing it I would probably just have given these units zero accuracy instead, rather than having them skip the "accuracy" stage of firing. Perhaps there's some reason they do it like this.
2) Interesting, it does seem to be the case that it is weapon-based, rather than squad-based. Read the reply to Hannibal for further thoughts. Giving a BAR, for example, to an Ober squad does mean that that Ober model will start to spread damage, rather than it be focused on a single unit like his squadmates. Very interesting.
3) There's still a "projectile" (Not literally a physical projectile, I'm talking about a hitscan raycast, "projectile" is used for convenience) calculation being done when any model fires a weapon in this case, as the engine still needs to calculate whether there's an object in the way, and whether the squad "hit" it. There's no real way to get around having a raycast or some other calculation done here.
3(4)) I'm aware that there are tables defining what units/actions an unit can gain shared veterancy from, I was just unaware of the specifics for various units (And that model deaths give experience but cannot "level" shared veterancy, which from further testing appears to be the case for any unit. Damage taken/models lost can give veterancy, but you cannot gain a "level" of veterancy through taking damage or losing models. You must do damage to an opponent to level veterancy)
4(5)) I haven't seen it happen since the supposed "fix", but if it isnt yet gone entirely, I'm all for further tweaks.