Playing around with the mod tools, by accident I got a decent idea how focus fire works:
Every bullet that rolls a hit, gets re-rolled to potentially hit another model nearby. What means "nearby"?
Turns out the scatter values of small arms are not just there for calculating where the tracer should go visually. They define the area which models are considered "nearby".
MGs in the game are actually a prime example of a weapon that is able to deal high damage to singular models in order to take them out early. While some MGs in the war were very accurate, their main task was to get fire superiority and suppress a large area rather than taking out one soldier after the other.
This could be simulated by increasing and adjusting the scatter values of most automatic fire units. Currently, most weapons have such weird scatter profiles that the chance of another soldier being in the scatter area is fairly low, unless the target is in cover. Iirc, the HMG42 has an angular scatter of 3 degrees, which basically means that a second model should be closer than 2 meters on most ranges. Additionally, The scatter ratio values are set in a way that mostly models behind the actual target can be hit, but not in front of it. This makes some sense since a machine gunner will not aim towards the feet and recoil will make the weapon kick upwards. But in the end this leads to these weapons often focusing all of their DPS on the same model instead of using the damage spread mechanic that is in the game. There are some exceptions like the BAR that has 12 angular scatter, but from the weapons I checked most of them behaved as described above, both Axis and Allies.
Obviously I have no intention to mess with in game balance that much at this point, so please consider this more of an idea than an actual discussion about balance (hence why this is posted in the gameplay section).
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#Steam AliasWL%Streak
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