One thing I noticed in my play test game yesterday, at least compared to Bag the Hun, is the feeble fire power which makes it difficult to score any significant damage. Using the revised fire factors in the expanded lists, I started out with only three dice, adding a handful for range and positioning, so few that an opposing saving roll often wiped out any potential hits. This made it extremely tough for the attacker, even when tailing at close range, although my terrible dice rolling also had an impact. 

To remedy this, at least in part, I’m going to go back to using the fire factors in the original aircraft lists from the rules. These give a fire factor of two for each gun, so that a Sopwith Camel has a factor of four instead of three, for example. It’s not much of an increment but enough to make a difference. I’m also going to give rear gunners with twin mounts a fire factor of four, instead of three, as I don’t see the logic in a reduced rate of fire even though the number of guns is effectively doubled.

This minor tweak should give attackers a slightly better starting point when rolling for hits, countering the defensive dice roll of the target, which can be quite high if the target aircraft is very manoeuvrable. A more radical approach would be to double the fire factors in the supplemental aircraft lists, to give a fire factor of between four and six dice in most cases, but I’ll leave that as a last resort if switching to the original fire factors doesn’t cut the mustard.