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Cmon Slappy, everyone knows that even the owning player cant even see his OWN finnish ski troops. All he sees is the enemy russian units first appear as a red star, followed by screams, that turn into corpses before your eyes. The human player just stares at the screen and his units, having that mythical Sissu quality, plot their own moves, pick their own targets and get 100:0 scores every time! They end every battle with more ammo and weapons than they started and luckily, oh excuse me, skillfully capture trucks so they can move everything back to the campfire (that doesnt give off smoke). Lewis

I again ask the question to Bren users: How long does it take to change the barrel? How many barrels would a 'Heavy' Bren team carry? The Bren was not that light a weapon. Its accroutements were not light either. The tripod was 30 pounds also. The US 1919 ACMG was only 41 pounds for the gun and tripod. I really think the whole squad automatic/LMG thing is hinged on ammo. The full powered cartridge was the design problem. It was either try to lighten the weapon and lose firepower or make it heavy and lose mobility. This was not solved till either using a kurtz type round or a 5.56mm type round. Lewis (i) To strip. 1. See that the moving parts are forward. 2. Push body locking-pin out to the right as far as it will go. (This pin is in the top of the body just under the aperture of the backsight). 3. With left hand holding the backsight drum, pull back the butt group as far as possible with the right hand. The return spring rod will then be seen protruding forwards from the butt through the buffer. 4. Holding the return spring-rod to the left with the thumb of the left hand, pull the cocking-handle backwards sharply. This will slide the piston and breech-block out of the back of the body. These can then be grasped and removed together from the gun. 5. Slide the breech-block to the rear until the claws at the front of it disengage from the grooves on the piston. 6. On the left of the gun, just in front of the magazine opening, will be seen the lever of the barrel nut. Press the spring catch on the underside of this and raise the lever as far as possible. This frees the barrel which may now be removed by moving it forward until clear. 7. The raising of the barrel nut lever also allows the butt group to be pulled father back and removed from the body. 8. To remove the bipod from the body lift the front of the body with the right hand, and with the left hand pull the left leg of the bipod towards you as far as possible and then slide the bipod sleeve off the front end of the gas cylinder. (Note. The bipod of the Mark II cannot be removed.) 9. To remove the barrel nut, lift the lever as far as it will go and depress the small stud just in front of the magazine opening cover. (This may be done by easing the magazine opening cover forward so that it just covers the stud). The barrel nut may then be lifted out vertically. To replace push the barrel nut down into place with the lever as high as possible. It is usually necessary to press down the stud when replacing the barrel nut. This is from the Bren site. It really makes me think that the 'quick-change' barrel was not a Bren combat procedure but rather a nice maintence prodedure. Its time for another 'auto-analogy'. Two vehicles have spare tires. Mine, has a full sized spare on the rear of the vehicle ready to be taken down (I own a 4x4). Yours, is a donut sub-sized barely inflated factory dry-rotted orb, buried under tools and boxes and a cheap floor board inside your trunk. Who can change faster? [ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: Username ]

The reciever components pictured here also act as a heat dissapation sink. The barrel guard will soak up heat generated in the gun and the heat will run from the barrel to all metal components in contact with one another, and maximize surface area. a design goal would be to have maximum surface area all over the weapon. As I posted in another thread, MGs are like motors. Forced air cooling on a motor (electric motor) can get you continuous torque about 10 percent above normal rating. Water cooled can get you more but you need some kind of chiller (heat exchange) to get a 20-30 percent improvement. If the elaborate water cooling scheme breaks down, you fry the motor. Water cooled MGs basically bathe the barrel in water at a boiling point temp after awhile. The water usually does not go through a chiller because it would be impossible to carry. It is usually ejected in the form of steam and vented into a can so that when it gets liquid you can reuse it (or make tea). Water cooled MGs usually do not fire at high automatic rates. I read of US troops experimenting with this (upping the rate of fire through bolt lightening) because in the pacific, the HMG 30s would be facing down suicidal charges at very short range, ie, they would never live to overheat due to terrain restrictions but would rather mow down japanese point blank while they could. Some claimed the HMGs would fire smoothly at this high rate, like a car engine smooths out at higher RPM. Anyway, the marine corp was serious about its defensive MG power. Theres no governor on MGs. Many stories about glowing guns come about because immediate danger overcomes any thought about fighting later. Most positions are given up because of lack of ammo instead of concern for a gun.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian: [/qb] The problem is that you assume that because someone calls something a HMG, as in the case of the MG42 on a tripod, its directly comparable to a .50 cal, despite the two being very, very, different weapons which were employed in very, very, different ways. Ditto for the Vickers and the .30 cal. The Bren and the BAR.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> But the game, CMBO, is at a stage of development where most 'machineguns' behave about the same. They have firepower values and 'weight' (movement) and ammo loads. In the future, the MGs will be differentiated because of things like go for broke, grazing fire, target switching. So the CLUMP will be spread into shades of clumps. The 50 cal might not have swivel about very well. Its grazing fire might not be as effective as a water cooled weapon. The go-for-broke capabilities of a magazine fed weapon might be very short in duration and subject to jamming. So lots of people are calling for change not realizing change is on the way. Also, weapons characteristics will be better defined and learnable. Realistic use of weapons and tactics should be the benefits. Lewis

http://www.milparade.com/1996/18/50-52.htm http://www.milparade.ru/security/24/131.htm http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/may19/nocera/nocera.html#refbody4 http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/may19/nocera/nocbox.html http://www.winterwar.com/Weapons/artyinfo.htm#Artillery%20projectile%20blast%20effect http://srd.yahoo.com/goo/Shell+fragmentation/19/*http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/faq/shrapnel.htm http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq96-1.htm http://www.westviewpress.com/fireinthesky/bombercombat.html http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/es310/dam_crit/dam_crit.htm http://www.cfonews.com/alr/d040297z.txt Heres some good reading. I especially like the russian inovation in tank shells. Oh rexford, this is a bump, how about some of that book preview?

Being from the US and firmly against moving fire from tanks, I guess I would stand out. In instances like Abram's (the guy not the tank) sherman battalion that trained extensively and specifically to fight on the move, maybe. But to give a converted late war towed AT unit moving on the fly talent because of its recently aquired M18 vehicle is just stupid. But I digress. You have a big chip on your shoulder and whining wont change history or the game. Put up some info. I , and others, called for this in the Bren thread (to back up the claims for tripoded Brens or support Brens) and it fell off the board like an old scab. The rifle grenades were well supported by rune or moon. I forget. But they put up the info aand not the complaining. Lewis [ 08-29-2001: Message edited by: Username ]

By the end of the war the M36 was the TD of choice. It outnumbered M10 and M18 battalions.

From another thread... The MG42 should not get a high rate of fire after awhile. The weapons firepower hinges on its high rate of fire and quick change barrels. The weapon sytem might have 3 barrels, 1 on the gun and two in the holder. The weapon would then display a surge capability. That is, when firing from a cold state, it could put out a tremendous amount of firepower. It would rapidly heatup the first barrel and then be swapped a new cold one, again the drill is repeated till the third barrel is hot. The weapon would then be back to the first barrel. It would have decreased in temp but not back to an ambient condition. If it kept firing at the initial rate, the barrels would have to be swapped more regurlay. This would decrease the rate of fire. Eventually the 3 barrels would reach a steady state and the gun would be limited. It is beyond the scale of the game to model this exactly but maybe an abstraction can be made. In real life, since the germans always thought they would be attacking, a drill could work around this. They could support an attack, get hot, pack up, move to another position, allowing cooling, and fire again. In fixed defensive positions, perhaps a bucket of water would be handy. So the german system is really built on surge. The watercooled weapons are built on 'continuous' 'slow' machinegun fire.

Oh oh Slappys taking off his mitts. For those interested, see the JasonC MG thread about MG42 ammo and also the Brian use of MMG threads. I am really surprised that BTS would not have some input into these threads. Just from the standpoint of what all this hulabaloo is about could be part of CMBB. I think that tero and Brian as well as Aitkens stance about the American slant is way off base. BTS is taking a modern view of all the weapon systems and fitting them into a game system. I doubt anyone in this forum has much real infantry battle experience in terrain similar to CM. Theres a mix of vets and gun fans and historians and casual gamers, etc. So tero thinks that Finns are great and Brian thinks that Vickers were on par with nothing made before or after. Its to be expected. But dont try and play the anti-american card. It wont go anywhere. Lewis

Thanks for clueing in rex. Fragment "quality" is usually a function of size and velocity. High velocity small fragments usually scrub their speed quickly and are not much good beyond the explosives own deadly effects. they are deadly dust and soon fall away. This brings up a good point. Ricochet firing a shell to an height will also reduce the explosive 'inverse-cube' effect. The killing ability of the HE falls off quickly. Hence, another reason that being shoulder high is better than 30 feet off the ground. I have data on the US 75mm by the way. Number of fragments (the author describes the ideal ones as being a 1/4 inch I beleive) as well as a picture of a 75mm next to the fragments piled in groups by size. Ideally, you would want the shell to have a minimal mass of powerful HE that fractures a maximum amount of metal into these 1/4 inch shapes with maximum velocity. Reality is different. The back of the shell as well as the front are stronger material and there is a distribution of weights/velocitys. Having very strong case metals leads to very powerful HE being needed and large splinters. case shape can lead to long splinters. Most shells fracture along the sides and thats where the killing is done, orthoganal to the axis of the shell. Perhaps rex can post something from his book about this. Didnt you include something in your book similar to this thread? 75mm beats out everything! (Hypothesis are usually posed in the form of a question). Lewis [ 08-29-2001: Message edited by: Username ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fishu: Germans did do indirect fire in World War I as described in first post by the brits. If the 'barrage' hit good area, it would been lethal as soldiers would throw in prone, which would actually make them more vulnerable to this indirect fire than standing. This is due to bullets dropping from the sky, not coming directly. Prone soldier can offer larger hit zone than standing soldier in this case.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, not exactly. Prone soldiers would not be as safe from indirect fire but would still be better off than standing! The indirect fire bullet's angle is not that great. Bullets ricochet alot. Standing would put a person in danger of those as well as catching many "on the way down". Lewis

Which doesn't exist as a classification in military terminology, Lewis. I am making a point that names dont matter. Performance and functionality do. Comparisons can be made. Compare it to a heavy-barreled M1919 air cooled 30 cal. hows it compare in weight? Surge firepower? Compare it to a HMG42. (I wouldnt.) What other weapons system would you compare it to? What names are you giving to these systems? Its like a 10 year old girl in high heels. Lewis

The MG42 should not get a high rate of fire after awhile. The weapons firepower hinges on its high rate of fire and quick change barrels. The weapon sytem might have 3 barrels, 1 on the gun and two in the holder. The weapon would then display a surge capability. That is, when firing from a cold state, it could put out a tremendous amount of firepower. It would rapidly heatup the first barrel and then be swapped a new cold one, again the drill is repeated till the third barrel is hot. The weapon would then be back to the first barrel. It would have decreased in temp but not back to an ambient condition. If it kept firing at the initial rate, the barrels would have to be swapped more regurlay. This would decrease the rate of fire. Eventually the 3 barrels would reach a steady state and the gun would be limited. It is beyond the scale of the gaem to model this exactly but maybe an abstraction can be made. In real life, since the germans always thought they would be attacking, a drill could work around this. They could support an attack, get hot, pack up, move to another position, allowing cooling, and fire again. In fixed defensive positions, perhaps a bucket of water would be handy. So the german system is really built on surge. The watercooled weapons are built on 'continuous' 'slow' machinegun fire. Anyway, in the future, support weapons will be bought by formation. Lewis [ 08-29-2001: Message edited by: Username ]

Then I would suggest that you and they are [bOLD]wrong[/bOLD]. Is BTS aiming to create an historical or ahistorical game of the period? Again, how would you classify the Bren on a tripod? An LMG or an MMG? If we used modern classification it would be a GPMG. It would not though, qualify as an SFMG. [/QB]

Simple things being the scientists specialty.

tero, not that I am saying that I would like you to go somewhere else, but it really sounds that maybe a CC type game could suit you best. Have you put forth your ideas to them?

You fail to see the point of the analogy. My point proves that an entire team in CM can't move a gun and its ammo in one trip. If it's possible for members of an AT team to make a second trip to get ammo, then it's possible for members of a MG team to make a second trip to get ammo. Seems reasonable since battlefield resupply isnt modeled and the rest of the crew are not firing personal weapons.

I think the arty was also responsible for the german tank battalions short histories in the west also. In the east, the tank battalions would often find themselves very rarely at full strength. After months of battle they would be slowly worn down but as they got to lower number of runners, they would maintain a certain level. More than likely, tank retrieval and the canabalizing of parts allowed a quiescent point to be maintained. In the west, after disastrous attacks by panzers, the field was denied by arty , mortars, allied infantry. later in the west, as in the bulge, there werent proper numbers of panzer retrievers at all. heavy tanks became very expensive due to loss soon after use. many tactics used by the germans in the east did not pan out in the west. the typical infantry counter-attack they used was often smashed by arty in the west. Russian troops never had as responsive artillery as the west and there the german tactics made sense because they didnt want the russians to dig in. the germans should have adopted a fighting withdrawl in the west. Always falling back onto their heavy tanks and inflicting a blood-letting toll to wear down the allies. Space should have been used as a substitute for diluting the enemys artillery. They allowed formations to be smashed and were hastily raising new ones who never attained the same combat power. Lewis

I think that theres alot that needs to be known about the test. Rex is going off on his well known tangents to stretch anything to back his assumptions. The height of the ricochet might not matter as much as he thinks. The targets, if square, flat wood might be lined up like grave stones. The shell might be fired at the broad sides of the lot and when it bursts, the sides of the shell is spraying its lethality at 'thin' targets. To be precise, the targets are not dimensionally correct and dont approximate a human body well. Again A. 105mm with delay 100 rounds fired, 95 effective, 65 wooden targets hit and incapacitated (65% for effective target hits/rounds fired) B. 75mm with delay 38 rounds fired, 29 effective, 33 wooden targets hit and incapacitated (87% for effective target hits/rounds fired) 95/100 vs 29/38? The data is too vague and it is worth persuing. It isnt worth making conclusions about. Lewis PS put a link to the site if you can [ 08-28-2001: Message edited by: Username ]

Did the Commonwealth countries ever field this weapon (besa) as a 'medium'? It seems that it would have been well suited to use in one of those carriers instead of the bren.

BTS should sell video cards and memory chips at this site too! Write a specific driver for the card so its CM-optimized! This website costs money as does the other reseach, etc. maybe they will cut the cost after CMBB to kill off the remaining stock.

I dont speak for BTS but I would guess it is by weapon weight. That is, the whole weapon system is heavy. I would sort them as follows (US, German and British, Soviet): WCHMG: water cooled HMG. Maxim, Vickers, Browning. All tripods, break down to multiple loads (with one heavy load being the gun itself) and cant fire on the move. JAM potential small and rotate speed limited. Volume of fire is characterized by Rounds per minute (not cyclic). Long range due to fixed mounts. All belt-fed. GPMG/HMG: MG42 on tripod with accesories. Breaks down to multiple loads. Limited fire on the move as it retains GPMG/LMG form when broken down. High peak firepower due to cyclic rate and belt feed. Volume of fire is slightly reduced by barrel changes intermittantly. Long range due to fixed mount and optics. Overall firepower limited to ammo and number of barrels. JAM potential offset due to main gun part being the german GPMG/LMG in squads/HQs. weight of gun starts to be challenged by weight of ammo. ACMG: Heavy barrel belt-fed air-cooled weapons on tripod mounts. US 30 cal and 50 cal and possibly russian 50 cal. Firepower is limited to barrel overheating, JAM potential higher than above weapons. Firepower in moving fire usually not possible. Firepower is characterized by bursts and low cyclic rates. These weapons being belt fed could still put out firepower similar to WCHMG for short durations. Lighter ACMG like the 30 cal break down easier than WC and can keep up with forward elements of an attack. 50 cal weapons exhibit great range and cover denial. Limited anti-vehicle properties depending on time frame. 50 cal really best supported by weapons carrier vehicle. 50 cal is really an ACHMG and 30 cal a ACMMG. Machine guns are very similar to electric motors. They have what can be described as peak torque and continuos torque. The water cooled can be described as very high continuous torque. The MG42 a very high peak torque. In putting down a grazing fire line, a high peak torque would have its benefits. Motors btw are water cooled and air cooled sometimes! Water cooling being the best (with a heat exchange). But changing the motor on the fly would be nice too. The names, light medium and heavy mean nothing really. Its semantics. The weapons are characterized by what they can do, not what they are called. Lewis [ 08-28-2001: Message edited by: Username ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by rexford: I have read a report where a defensive M-10 in Normandy was able to knock out 3 of 4 Panthers in a column on a road with a few shots (side and rear hits), without any return fire. This was at very close range. The fourth Panther escaped because of the camouflage, the M-10 did not see it. Things change at close range.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> While this is simplistic there is some truth in it. The US did a study about tank losses and combat. They found that the sherman losses did not matter as to range. They examined as many tanks as possible and determined the range at which they were KOd. In the catagories short, medium and long (dont have the numbers but can get them), they saw almost 1/3 in each. looking at the german tanks, they saw something like only 10 percent of the german tanks lost at long range. It was soemthing like 50 % and 40 for short and medium respectively. The germans fought the russians at ranges they could choose. Even in attack, they could use manuver and terrain to apply the basic advantage premise, that is, Shoot at them effectively with them having a smaller chance of firing back effectively. Also, try to get a local numbers superiority. Even if you are out numbered, focus your numbers against as small an enemy force as you can. Defeat the enemy in many small battles. The conditions and terrain in the west didnt cooperate. long range plinking was hampered by terrain. The allies air force would intervene and the artillery was just obnoxious. The allies had great numbers and the terrain was not open like in the east. In the east, attacking could still use range advantage, in the west, it was not that easy. using range advantage needs time and that would allow the allies to recover/call in air strikes/etc. The east did not have an adversary with as many light AT weapons like the bazooka. tanks became fragile in the face of built up areas. The german tank advantage became a defensive advantage. The germans tried to use the armor to attack in poor weather conditions in an attempt to offset airpower. This led to disaster on many occasions too. Fog at Noville and in arracourt being examples of wasting tanks. Lewis

I suspect that tero is just rooting about for another forum for his "tales of the great SMG in the woods" theories. perhaps CM7 (Revenge of the Finns) will have a sleep state for Russian troops. This will allow the Finnish skiers of lore to swoop down and lay waste with SMGs on the fly. Each skier, as per historical facts, will move as an independant entity and with perfect synchronized skiing abilities with his patrollers. the russian troops will be hampered in using withdrawl because they will be tripping over their own weapons (which they dropped when they woke up). I see this thread as a battle of fuzzy logic vs stale ideas. There is no common ground to people living in uber-worlds. The game is at a certain scale and limited by technology. There are abstractions. The game system is trying to model MOST WWII battles. I dont think the scale is such that jungle battles (or deep woods) would be worthwhile or enjoyable. I mention these because thats where squads would not be the best discrete element for troops. A better level would be fire teams, individual leaders, etc. Lewis

The test seems to be comparing HE effectiveness from ricochet (delay fuze) and airburst (time fuze). I agree that maybe you can compare the 105mm and 25 lbr because they both fired 100 shells. even then it depends on some data being explained. Part of the problem at looking at data like this is that all the test parameters arent present. Effectives is not defined. Did they, fire one round. Stop the test and walk around to all the targets? Did they circle the hits so that the next round wasnt counted as a loser because it hit an already hit target? Were fresh targets put down once they were hit? What is an effective? A round that got at least one hit? Whats that say about the 75mm then. Is an ineffective a fuze that does not detonate the shell? Ricochet firing is optimized by having the shell angle up. The side of the shell ideally is pointing down at the targets like some flying claymore. It will then deliver a decisive blast. Unfortunately, they wont ricochet after a certain angle. In WWI, the real shrapnel shells were like shotguns and you wanted the front of the shell to be pointing at what you wanted to kill. The timed airburst does not want this but rather to fly past the infantry targets and go off actually behind them. Interesting but needs more work. Is this from your book? Lewis