SelfLoadingRifle
-
Posts
223 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by SelfLoadingRifle
-
-
Hi, SLR!
I'm live in Moscow, near with your new location - at Yasenevo. This is the area just north from you. So we can meet personally. And, of course in Internet - just visit our russian community site - www.combat-mission.ru
Hi Denis,
I have now surfaced in Butovo and I really think I should join the Muscovite CM community.
Do you fancy meeting up for a drink? Week-ends would be best. my email address is
All the best,
SLR.
-
The MG 42 replaced the MG 34 mainly because it was cheaper to produce and had lager tolerances in production which made it less prone to problems in the field.
You raise an interesting point. Coors and Miller Lite will mess up the innards of just about anything. Brews such as Herforder and Lowenbrau are what the manufacturer actually recommended. Budweiser would be acceptable ONLY if it came from Eastern Europe:D
SLR
-
Beevor is a former soldier and is probably the best military historian around right now. His works are detailed, beautifully researched and also extremely readable. I find them difficult to put down.
Stalingrad would be a good book to start on.
SLR
-
1) Firepower was (and still is) the name of the game. The MG34 in the hands of a well trained gun team (unlike those gents in the video) will beat the BAR every time. In the same way, much as I loved the old magazine fed LMG (Bren re-chambered to 7.62 Nato) the belt fed GPMG was the better weapon due to its higher sustained rate of fire.
Unfortunately, we Brits binned both LMG and GPMG from the section and replaced them with 2 LSWs. The LSW was a long barrelled and bipodded version of the SA80. Essentially it was an arse about face BAR (also with fixed barrel) that fired from the closed bolt. You had to be a contortionist to reload it in the prone position, you couldn't sustain a decent rate of fire and if you tried, you would a) burn the thing out and
risk cook-offs as a round would always be left inside a red hot chamber. I hated the bloody thing.After I hung up my boots, we Brits saw the error of our ways. We now have the Minimi. which of course is a belt fed open bolt weapon with a quick change barrel.
Plus ca change.
SLR
-
I agree and I disagree
As I was trying to point out, for most people in that situation you are correct. But i also know there are those out there that do have ice running through their vains, Born Killers is one word for them. In situations like this there is no massive adrenaline rush. they can handle the situation and focus on doing what is needed to kill someone. For them that 10-15 yard shot is very makable and very high chance of success. And there is plenty of stories to prove there is such people out there.
But back to the game, it does not reflect that aspect at all So cannot be a direct factor of what to expect from the game.
I hear what you are saying. However I think that men in any army with both the nerve and the marksmanship abilities of Audie Murphy are rare as hens teeth.
SLR
-
For something completely unrelated to CM I have recently been researching pistol accuracy and I believe that at 25 yards most decent shooters could shoot a 5 inch grouping of bullets in perfect conditions. Thus, at 50 yards, you are talking about a 10 inch grouping. As already said though, that's target shooting, taking your time to aim without anyone shooting back. For combat conditions I'd probably double or even treble the group size, giving a 20 or 30 inch grouping. That's approaching a whole yard. So yes, 50 yards should be pretty inaccurate and beyond that, almost impossible
It should be noted that accuracy with any firearm in an adrenaline rush situation is degraded by at least 50%. Also, as other members of this thread have noted, the pistol is NOT a shoulder weapon. Perhaps for this reason it is also a weapon that novices find very difficult indeed to shoot accurately. The 1911 Colt also kicks like a mule which encourages aforementioned novices to flinch, which of course degrades accuracy even further.
Under real conditions it is perfectly possible to miss at 3 yards with a pistol. At 10 yards you would probably connect less than 50% of the time and at 15 yards you would be unlikely to hit anything at all.
SLR
-
Dear All,
This is to announce that on Tuesday the 21st of August, I am re-locating from Chipping Norton in England to the Yuzhnoye Butovo borough of Moscow where I will be commencing work as an English teacher.
If there are any Muscovite or Russian members of this forum who are reading this, I would be delighted to play any CM game with you (I have them all) and would also be happy to meet up for a drink or two - or three:D
Please contact me on this thread or by personal message for my contact details.
Best regards,
SLR:)
-
Dear All,
This is to announce that on Tuesday the 21st of August, I am re-locating from Chipping Norton in England to the Yuzhnoye Butovo borough of Moscow where I will be commencing work as an English teacher.
If there are any Muscovite or Russian members of this forum who are reading this, I would be delighted to play any CM game with you (I have them all) and would also be happy to meet up for a drink or two - or three:D
Please contact me on this thread or by personal message for my contact details.
Best regards,
SLR:)
-
How about a buddy aid involving killed and wounded enemy where for example, Lugers, MP40s MG42s etc get "liberated"? There are many documented cases where troops who were low on ammo picked up enemy weapons and used them to good effect.
Just an idle thought... probably not practible.
SLR
-
I recall a comment made on the Breda 30 - I think in Virginia Cowles's The Phantom Major (I may be wrong) that it seemed to be a light well designed weapon that we couldn't get to work, even under ideal conditions. Hopefully Battlefront will re-work their coding for it in the next patch.
SLR
P.S. I also note in CMN that their reload time for the Bren, a weapon I am extremely familiar with, is completely wrong. (The weapon fires, the weapon stops. Cock weapon, mag off, look in. Empty mag: new mag on, go on.) Two seconds max when working with a no 2.
-
To digress...
After I first installed CMFI, I (of course) ran the program immediately, or at least attempted to. This didn't work because my trusty Norton anti viral system had taken it upon itself to decide that the CMFI exe file was a serious viral threat and in consequence quarantined it. After I had sorted that little problem out I had no more trouble.
Has anyone else had the same thing happen to them?
SLR
-
I am no expert on this, but there are two things that should be said.
1)The noun 'tank' means many things. In CMFI, German tanks are -in most cases - pretty formidable; American tanks are probably less so, but are still a force to be reckoned with. Italian tanks - again in most cases - resemble upturned bath tubs mounted on tracks and are very ineffective indeed. How were you supposed to come up with an effective armoured doctrine with totally inadaquate equipment when you were stacked up against Shermans? Printed words in a manual would count for very little under those conditions.
2) There is a well known saying that: "There are no bad soldiers, there are only bad officers." I believe that I am right in saying that both the Germans and the Americans placed a far higher emphasis on both leadership and junior leadership than the Italians. Without wishing to sound disrespectful to many gallant Italian service personnel, their armed forces were to find out from the earliest days of the war that without proper leadership from squad/section level upwards, fine words printed in a manual, again, counted for very little.
SLR
-
I have just played "Beyond the Belice", at elite level, real-time playing Italian against the AI. I suffered a tactical defeat.
My first impressions of the Itis: Infantry - no effective LMG and only those ghastly Mannlicher Carcarno things = not nearly enough firepower. Breda HMGs seemed to work ok. The Brixia seemed much more promising if I could only manage to deploy either it, or my FOO within yelling distance of each other and in sight of the enemy without getting their heads blown off which in this instance was easier said than done. Scout cars were pretty much useless. Use them at anything closer than long range and you lose them as I found to my cost. The tankettes had a very successful first outing and ate the US half-tracks for breakfast.
As a general comment, hardly any radios = big command and control problems. This is a challenge to which I will have to rise.
Fun, fun fun!
SLR
-
I had the same happen to me earlier this year when I loaded all the CM games onto my new laptop. I did this using my CM CDs. Many of the user crafted scenarios failed to register. This was because they were designed for later versions of the games than the early software taken from the discs. Once I had patched all the games to the most up to date versions, hey-presto, the scenarios registered!!
I hope this helps.
SLR
-
There are a number of alternative King Tiger skins that have been posted in the CMN (Commonwealth Forces) repository. The one that I would recommend is by Aris.
http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2100
If Battlefront come up with a better version than this in their next patch, I will be very surprised!
SLR
-
When do we get the other half? (British & Commonwealth)
SLR
P. S. I have pre-ordered:D
-
I play RT H2H at (about) company level. In terms of command & control, this is manageable. I can (just about) give the necessary orders to my units without losing my overall perspective of what is going on. A live opponent will always make for a more entertaining game than one played against the A.I. Also the fact that you are playing in real-time without pausing gives another dimension. When sh*t happens, you have to deal with it. Re-running the previous turn is simply not an option.
These days, I reserve WEGO for solitaire games against the AI and I also play it in the larger scenarios.
Multi-player RT? YES, YES, YES! (Pretty please with sugar on top Battlefront.) Anytime in the next couple of weeks would be fine.
SLR (age 53 and a half)
-
I had a tank commander who refused to bail out of a brewed up Cromwell. He just sat there in the turret and (presumably) fried. The uber-marksmanship by German soldiers recorded on this thread might just offer an explanation!!
SLR
-
In the Brookwood military cemetery in Surrey lie the bodies of a number of Americans who before Germany declared war on America, voluntarily crossed to the other side of the world, joined up and died serving in the British Armed Forces.
God bless you Yanks!
SLR
-
Kursk.
SLR
-
For the record, the Bren/LMG has been deemed too accurate - by some- for maximum effect. (With the change lever on rounds it is as accurate as a rifle.) The argument goes that what makes a gun effective is the beaten zone - or BZ - which is the elliptical area in which the fired rounds land. A larger (within reason) BZ = more enemy heads kept down. Personally, I don't think there is anything such as TOO accurate. Others may beg to differ:D
Firing the Sten (or Stirling) from the hip is best done by putting the butt firm into the gut so that the weapon is central to the body, keeping a firm hold in the pistol-grip and bearing down hard on the mag housing or hand-guard to prevent the weapon climbing.
The pistol results do not surprise at all. Most people cannot hit a barn door from inside a barn with one:eek:
SLR
-
The Lee Enfield, in its various forms is the best battle bolt action rifle in the world bar none, and I speak from considerable first hand experience.
It is possible to sustain a rate of fire of 15 aimed rounds per minute. with this rifle This in fact was the minimum standard required by the British soldier in the First World War.
With a Mauser or a Springfield (which is a Mauser with knobs on) it is much harder to sustain this rate of fire because the bolt-stroke is considerably longer. Also Mauser action rifles cock on the opening stroke of the bolt which slows things down even more due to the extra leverage needed. Lee-Enfields close on the closing stroke which requires no extra force at all due to the momentum of the bolt going forward.
For those of you who are shooters, please take note that a Lee-Enfield that has had a significant number of cordite rounds put through it will not perform well with modern ammunition. This is because cordite burns at a different temperature and wears the barrel in a different way. I would strongly advise that you either shoot the rifle using old cordite ammo, or get the rifle re-barrelled and then use something like Privi-Partizan. Greek surplus ammo is non-cordite and I have had some excellent results with it.
I have also had great results with cordite ammo shot through an original barrel. However the primers of the '41 dated ammo I was using were not 100% reliable. Cleaning the rifle was a real b*gger as well, involving kettles of boiling water poured through the thing. The primers were very corrosive as well, and particular care had to be given to the firing pin and the face of the bolt-head. The barrel of the rifle also sweated and had to be pulled through again a couple of days or so later.
Thats my pennyworth!
SLR
-
At ranges of ~30m, a team of armed with semi-auto pistols probably should have an advantage over a similarly-sized team armed with bolt-action rifles.
With the greatest respect, what is possible on a range is not always possible in action. The Wesley Hardins and the Jelly Bryces are very much the exception, not the rule. Also take note that most people cannot shoot any kind of a pistol for toffee.
In action, maximum range for any service pistol would be no more than 15 yards, probably even less. Please note that in an adrenaline rush situation it is extremely easy to miss completely at 3 yards.
At 10 yards or less the pistol armed team might have a chance against rifles, but please remember that a single pistol round will not usually take someone down. A rifle round most definitely will.
We Brits pretty much perfected the service pistol in the late 19th century.
1) It had to be of a calibre heavy enough to stop someone who resembled Mike Tyson armed with an assegai who was charging straight for you.
2) It had to be completely reliable.
3) It had to be accurate to 15 yards.
4) It had to be robust enough to perform double-duty as a club.
The (eventual) result was the Webley Mk VI. The Yanks (God bless 'em) produced the 1911 Colt which also satisfied these vital criteria.
SLR:D
P.S. I agree, pistol effectiveness in CM needs a drastic reduction.
-
This is a completely trivial nitpick that will not affect the game in the slightest, and I apologise in advance... so here goes.
When the Bren is fired from a stable position, the carrying handle is always folded down to the left. The animation in the video shows the Bren being fired with it in the upright position which is wrong.
How do I know this? Back in '79/80 my unit actually had the 7.62mm version of the Bren, which was essentially a converted Mk 2. (Great weapon) We also had a couple of D.P. (drill purposes) Mk 1s.
Apologies again.
SLR
risk cook-offs as a round would always be left inside a red hot chamber. I hated the bloody thing.
Which one to buy Fortress Italy or Normandy
in Combat Mission Fortress Italy
Posted
At the moment, CMN will give you far more bang for your buck. Not only does it have the Commonwealth Forces module, but there are large number of CMN user generated scenarios and campaigns available for download (at no cost) from the Battlefront repository, not to mention an impressive array of maps and mods.
CMFI is much more limited in scope at the moment. There are currently no Commonwealth forces (which as the game is set in Sicily makes for half a Husky only) also the number of scenarios and campaigns that come with the game are limited. At the time of typing, mods available are very few and user scenarios are nil. Mind you, things will improve with time.
I hope this helps.
SLR