Hello everybody,
I've been an old timer gamer and supporter of the CM series since the first Combat Mission, even though I rarely posted on this forum with my older account.
As soon as CMFI went available to the public I hurriedly bought it , as I was really eager to try out the royal italian army, my country of origin.
The game is fantastic and the new version of the CM engine is just superb.
Also, attention to detail is amazing, as it has always been though.
I only think there is a problem with the Reloading times of these following weapons, the Breda 37 MMG and the Breda 30 squad LMG.
Breda 37 Medium Machine Gun
As soon as I was trying the Italian Campaign and I set up the heavy Breda 37 to cover my infantry, I noticed that there was something wrong.
A squad of american infantry closed up on the MMG, and as soon as they were at 50 meters distance, I noticed that the Breda was firing so slow that I closed the zoom on it just to realize what the problem could be....
I realized that the reloading time was very very slow, and fundamentally wrong.
Also, in other battles, I found out that I could never fire many bullets at all and the gun was always full of ammo for the entire battle, even though I made it fire from the beginning to different (supposed) targets.
I try to explain the problem.
The "37" used a simple 20-rounds strip, which had the (un)famous characteristic of expelling the spent rounds directly into the same strip as soon as they were fired.
It was not a very bad solution as it may look though, as the loader could insert a new strip just after the last one was exhausted, and thus it was possible to have a continous ROF.
In the game, after the Breda has fired the 20 rounds from its strip, the gunner and the loader slowly try to reload the gun. It looks like they would remove a kind of magazine, attach another one in place, check the reloading handle and fire again.
I tested it out in a mission I made especially to test these weapons.
I instructed a team to fire at a distance of 30 meters ahead, as to fire as fast as possible, and... I found out the 37 takes in average 16-19 seconds to reload each strip (!), which is far from the reality of this weapon could do. It's just too long.
It was regarded as a very good and sound weapon, quite fast and it could lay down a quite dense and continous fire on the enemy (I've read countless of Italian soldiers' first hand accounts regarding this weapon). It fired an excellent and heavy 8mm round, and in general it was the only weapon which could suppress an enemy position quite well. Too bad there were not so many of them in each Italian divisions.
If someone of you may already start to look at me like an "herectic" for having said something wrong about our beloved game, I hereby attach here a very interesting video.
Look closely at 0:40 and you will see what I am talking about.
Simply, the fire could be continous. For sure, it could not take 16-19 seconds to reload each strip...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txCG23HEfb8
And then, the other opposite problem, the reloading time of the Breda 30 LMG.
Now, this was not a very good weapon, it was quite fragile, the troops didn't really like it, it used some kind of oiling system for each cartridge that entered the firing chambre, and stoppages were frequent (especially in Africa). All in all, it was not the best LMG fielded in WW2, and actually it could be said that probably it could have been the worst.
But... one of the worst problem of all, was its reloading system.
The Breda 30 had a permanent magazine attached to its right: inside this magazine, the gunner or loader had to insert a special 20-rounds clip, after he had turned the magazine towards the barrel. After that , he had to remove the clip as soon as the bullets were inserted in the magazine, close the magazine, arm the gun, and fire.
All in all a very bad reloading system, which required quite a lot of time to be completed.
As such, the practical ROF was not very high.
I tested the gun also in the game and... I found out that it takes in average 5 seconds to reload, which is just too quick compared to its real life counterpart.
Again, I put here a small video which illustrates how long could it take to reload the "30"...
In a practical game then, the Breda 30 LMG can deliver more bullets per minute and suppressive fire to an enemy position than the Breda 37 MMG (which was made especially for this reason though...), which is quite wrong.
Maybe a small solution could be to swap the reloading time between the 2 weapons to better simulate their different mechanics?
Cheers
Rick
p.s. If some of you could read italian, HEREhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/69417813/Mitragliatrice-Breda-Mod-37-8mm-1940 there's the manual for the Breda 37 MMG.
