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What it does?

That is for a fast firing cannon, often mounted on a plane.

Any information on what rpm necessary to have that option on?

Hi Dili,
I don't have the editor in front of me, but precisely what are you asking?
I think ALL aircraft mounted machine guns and cannons are under the device type 'aircraft cannon'
(now then, not having the editor in front of me - I may be wrong, but that is how I remember seeing it)
But I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for?

There is on/off tick field that says "Cannon is MG" just asking for what for is it and to what is applicable.

Ahh, well, without the editor in front of me to view at this time - I'm afraid I can't give you any better information at the moment (I'm on the road for work...traveling out of town).

One of your earlier questions asked RPM relevancy or Rounds Per Minute/Rate Of Fire - I assume.
I can tell you that - that is used to define a weapons accuracy as a device.
The Accuracy rating is the square root of a weapons rate of fire, expressed in rounds per minute.
So, for example, on an A6M2 Zero - its main armament were two Type 99 Mark 1 20mm cannons.
The Type 99 Mark 1 had a rate of fire of 520 rounds per minute.
So the accuracy of that device would be the square root of 520 = 22
Now that you have the accuracy worked out, you would probably click the field that says - Cannon is MG (applicable for aircraft main armament).

I hope that helps shed a little light on it.

B [:)]

ORIGINAL: Dili

There is on/off tick field that says "Cannon is MG" just asking for what for is it and to what is applicable.

I think this is for Army Weapon type cannon

such as the Japanese Type 96 20mm AT/AA gun.

It says this is a high rate of fire weapon whereas a normal
cannon isn't. While you do put ROF data in (as accuracy) -
when used for land units and naval units - normally it assumes
a low ROF. As I recall, there are two different rules to use
for accuracy - maybe this tells code which rule to use?

No idea about army weapons, defer to Big B or Don on that.

But for aircraft weapons:

20mm and above are considered cannon.
Everything below are considered MG

That is how the db is coded consistently. I have long conjectured that it has to do with whether the munition was a slug or had HE effect. MG no effect, cannon has effect.

Munition experts can debate this, but my study would support the devs on this: generally during this era the amount of explosive involved in munitions under 20mm was so small that the most of the damage was the result of the mass of the slug more that the explosive potential of any charge. At 20mm, this becomes the opposite where the explosive charge began to represent a significant portion of the damage.

We haven't been told what this (the Cannon is MG switch) does within the model, and my testing years ago didn't reveal any huge impact. My guess has always been that the "effect" variable (or one of the other variables) is likely neutered with the flag set. I only tested with game values, and didn't see any noticeable impact with the flag set and unset. I did not test a wide range; higher values may have revealed more, but that wasn't my purpose.

I can confirm. I checked in editor and all aircraft MG have that option ON while cannons don't. So i think it should be ticked for all aircraft machine guns. The options is not ticked for AA guns and Army weapons in the extent i checked.