Pistols vs Truppen

[c3k]

First test:

Targets were 12 men US Squads, Fanatic, +2, totally out of ammo.

They were in a 350 meter long, high walled, cobblestone lane. At the end. The only opening was at the far end.

The 5 man, .45 armed, regular, regular, 0 US Sherman crew entered. They'd up-ammo'ed from a truck and had 95 rounds.

The crew advanced to 100 meters. They were told to "TARGET LIGHT".

Oh, there were 20 lanes.

After 1 minute, there were 1,227 rounds of .45 expended. The US took 102 casualties. (5 were yellow, but, c'mon, a hit's a hit.)

On average, 12 shots per hit on a man-sized target at 100m. No incoming fire, no suppression. (Everyone out of command.)

Next up, some riflemen.

(Oh, this kind of testing is not fun. Ugh.)

Purely a test a accuracy.

[sigop22]

I noticed this last night playing a scenerio with the common wealth guys.

My pioneer section of five snuck up on a Jagdpanther and threw a satchel onto it's back. The resulting explosion knocked it out of action.

Out jumps the crew and they proceed to shoot four of my pioneers and take one prisoner. I had a section of three try and get into a building next to it, and the crew just shot them to death. Two crew were left after the firefight.

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't the crew be impaired and all messed up from the resulting satchel of explosives that detonated over their heads? Maybe the issue is a combination of both accuracy morale of tank crews. Having just jumped out of a broken tank after a big explosion should shake anyone up.

I don't remember their stats though.

[acehammer]

I noticed this last night playing a scenerio with the common wealth guys.

My pioneer section of five snuck up on a Jagdpanther and threw a satchel onto it's back. The resulting explosion knocked it out of action.

Out jumps the crew and they proceed to shoot four of my pioneers and take one prisoner. I had a section of three try and get into a building next to it, and the crew just shot them to death. Two crew were left after the firefight.

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't the crew be impaired and all messed up from the resulting satchel of explosives that detonated over their heads? Maybe the issue is a combination of both accuracy morale of tank crews. Having just jumped out of a broken tank after a big explosion should shake anyone up.

I don't remember their stats though.

I would think so. I,m thinking at least some of the crew would be suffering somewhat from the concessive effect , maybe even killed, I could see another one or two being picked off exiting the vehicle with one or two survivors more than willing to surrender. Was their other german units real close by ?It could be that its more than just an issue with pistol range,maybe crew survival ,morale, and sidearm ammo, should be addressed, you would not think such a thing could happen after a satchel charge .

[sburke]

The AI just taught me how to prevent the uber crewman phenomena. It hit my tank and then continued to do so as the crew bailed. It brewed up killing several of the crew that survived, then for good measure it fired another round at the wreck that took out one of the two remaining. The remaining crew member was now panicked and eventually fled to my side of the map.

Talk about getting the door slammed in your face, dang. And it never wasted a single round on any of the infantry mulling around trying to warm their mittens on the resulting flames.

[acehammer]

The AI just taught me how to prevent the uber crewman phenomena. It hit my tank and then continued to do so as the crew bailed. It brewed up killing several of the crew that survived, then for good measure it fired another round at the wreck that took out one of the two remaining. The remaining crew member was now panicked and eventually feld to my side of the map.

Talk about getting the door slammed in your face, dang. And it never wasted a single round on any of the infantry mulling around trying to warm their mittens on the resulting flames.

Ok I get it now just smother them outright.

[sburke]

Ok I get it now just smother them outright.

Pretty much, talk about feeling spanked...and by the AI no less.

[slysniper]

I noticed this last night playing a scenerio with the common wealth guys.

My pioneer section of five snuck up on a Jagdpanther and threw a satchel onto it's back. The resulting explosion knocked it out of action.

Out jumps the crew and they proceed to shoot four of my pioneers and take one prisoner. I had a section of three try and get into a building next to it, and the crew just shot them to death. Two crew were left after the firefight.

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't the crew be impaired and all messed up from the resulting satchel of explosives that detonated over their heads? Maybe the issue is a combination of both accuracy morale of tank crews. Having just jumped out of a broken tank after a big explosion should shake anyone up.

I don't remember their stats though.

Ok, I retrack my statement about them tankers being superhuman right from the second they exit the tank. so they are possibly that also. Plus the test of hitting a man in 12 shots at 100m is waaaaaaay too good.

The sad thing is, are we going to get BF to look into and adjust this.

[YankeeDog]

On average, 12 shots per hit on a man-sized target at 100m. No incoming fire, no suppression.

Thanks for running that test.

Yeah; that's WAAAY too accurate for pistol fire. Am I correct in assuming that most or all of the target squad was prone? Even hitting a fully exposed, standing and stationary man at 100m with a pistol would be a very lucky shot. But hitting a man lying prone, even if he is lying on hard ground with no relief or cover, would be even more difficult.

I suppose the fact that shots might occasionally hit someone in the target group other than the intended target might up the hit % a little bit, but even factoring this in, I still think 1 in 12 hitting is way too high, probably by something like a multiple of 4 or 5, maybe even higher.

I have a complementary test partially set up that involves shooting an exposed, but moving target. Unfortunately, it will probably be a few days until I can get to running it because I'm a little OBE at the moment, but I'll post here when I do.

[dieseltaylor]

This looks interesting

WO 291/479

Optimum rate of aimed rifle fire.

"It has for some time been the practice at the School of Infantry and elsewhere to demonstrate a rifleman firing his rifle at a very high rate (up to 25 rounds per minute), and it has appeared to be questionable whether such a rate is worth while attempting."

A trial was conducted with 8 Guardsmen and 5 Canadians firing from the lying position at 25 yards.

The average minimum and maximum rates of fire were 12.7 and 22.7 rds/min for the Guards, 13.2 and 19.5 rds/min for the Canadians. The results were adjusted to give the following expected number of hits per minute on a 5ft X 1ft target at 200 yards:

Rate 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26

Hits 3.8 4.5 5.1 5.7 6.2 6.7 7.1 7.5 7.9

[c3k]

Here's a link:

It shows a guy - unknown - shooting and hitting a man-sized silhouette with a 1911 at 100 yards. (Caveat: I have NO idea what was edited, if anything, or if the "ding" was faked. You pays your money and you takes your chances. It's youtube.)

Holdover doesn't seem extreme. MV/load is unknown, etc., etc.

[slysniper]

This looks interesting

So at that range it appears it went from a little better than a 1-3 to almost a 1-4 rate of hits, not bad since they more than doubled the number of rounds shot.

as for our test, could compare it to a rifle test, not much for the pistols which is the main concern.

[slysniper]

Here's a link:

It shows a guy - unknown - shooting and hitting a man-sized silhouette with a 1911 at 100 yards. (Caveat: I have NO idea what was edited, if anything, or if the "ding" was faked. You pays your money and you takes your chances. It's youtube.)

Holdover doesn't seem extreme. MV/load is unknown, etc., etc.

Very Nice, now lets see you do it, when you do it, then we know the adverage guy can.

Actually, watching that, whoever that was, he is very good. look at his stance and how he is holding the pistol, how steady he is. This guy is a professional pistol marksman, so I am not totally suprized. But you cannot use someone like that to compare with the typical soldier of 70 years ago.

It is like trying to compare a modern Sniper to a req. rifle man of that era.

[Bartokomus]

Sorry, for some reason I was thinking Browning High Power because that's what the CF uses today. The pistols are so old and magazines so beat up that accuracy is only good at throwing distance and the magazines cause frequent jams. It's better to use to wave in the air in the direction Afghan kids throwing rocks at your truck than actually trying to harm someone.

Sigop those are probably the same damn Browning's we used 20 years ago; we relentlessly hunted sea snakes in the Persian Gulf during the first gulf war with those, up on the bridge or down on the quarterdeck. if a snake was being particularly hard to hit, we sometimes pulled out the C7...

[YankeeDog]

Here's a link:

It shows a guy - unknown - shooting and hitting a man-sized silhouette with a 1911 at 100 yards. (Caveat: I have NO idea what was edited, if anything, or if the "ding" was faked. You pays your money and you takes your chances. It's youtube.)

Holdover doesn't seem extreme. MV/load is unknown, etc., etc.

Sure. Highly experienced user with a very high quality pistol he is intimately familiar with, under firing range conditions, firing at a precisely known distance (so he knows the exact amount of bullet drop), firing at a standing man silhouette, taking a full 7 seconds to steady and aim the shot (I timed it).

Also note that the guy who is in the video replies to some of the comment, noting how surprised he was to make the shot on his first try. It's clear that even he thinks luck played a bit of a role.

Put me on the same range with my 5 1/2" bull barrel Ruger target pistol which I've been firing for 15 years, and I could probably make that shot, too, as long as there was no wind. Maybe not on the first try, but I'm pretty sure I'd get at least one hit within the first clip.

But don't think it's particularly useful to compare this to the combat capability of Joe tanker in CM with a government issued Colt M1911A1, at all. That's like comparing what Carlos Hathcock could do with a rifle vs. what a Regular experience rifleman in CM can do.

[dieseltaylor]

I think the rifle info is relevant to whether pistol toting crew win against rifles.We have been talking off the amount of lead downfield from the Browning but the lead coming back is not trivial - admittedly a Kar is probably not quite so fast and has a smaller magazine.

However these are extrapolated at 200yards - I imagine at 100 yards they are more lethal, ditto at 50 yards

[slysniper]

Well, I just had another event tonight as to how crazy it is presently.

Halftrack pulls to 75 m of one left crewman with a pistol, He aims and within 6 shots takes out the MGunner. The Mg, gave him a couple of burst in reply. And missed of course.

That is my pistol hero's, BF your more than welcome to look into this at any time.

[Migo441]

Does anyone see significant drawbacks to these tests?

YankeeDog's low wall test showed that the pistoleros are the equal of standard armed teams at ranges of ~ 45m. That seems too far a distance for any legitimate parity.

c3K's pure accuracy test shows that regular Sherman crews with Colts can hit, on average, every 12 shots at a range of ~ 100m. We know that expert marksmen can do this and better (stationary targets) but WWII tank crewmen against human targets?

This seems to vindicate players' frustrations with the "pistols of doom."

Another much less scientific (but possibly more dramatic) test would be a scenario pitting a force armed ONLY with pistols against a force with standard load outs. On a map with typical engagement ranges of ~ 30m, might the pistoleros have a distinct advantage?

[slysniper]

Well, since this thread started before the CW mod, we might need to test somethings again just to prove it still is the same in the new Mod. But from what we found out on another thread. We might need to test huge number of runs before they look into it. Even if it seems common sence lets you know how off it is at the moment.

[poesel]

This is just one anecdote so not much of testing. Anyway - I had one british para behind a hedge with a SMLE fighting it out with two grenadiers (kar98 and MP40) over a street (about 10m). Everyone is already in bad shape so after 5(!) minutes of gunfight no one is hit but the MP40 runs out of ammo. He then pulls his Luger and kills the para with one shot.

Bang - end of game.

[Dorian911]

I confirm same bug with pistols for me.

I bought CMBN 55$ there is 8 months and only one patch.

I bought ArmA 2 45$ there is 3 years and they still deliver regularly patchs.

This game have a big lack of update !

[Vanir Ausf B]

There are 2 patches for CMBN. At least there will be when the next one is released in the next week or so.

[Guest]

Thanks all, for the testing and discussion. Sounds like it might be a bug.

I confirm same bug with pistols for me.

I bought CMBN 55$ there is 8 months and only one patch.

I bought ArmA 2 45$ there is 3 years and they still deliver regularly patchs.

This game have a big lack of update !

In about a week it'll be two patches and an expansion pack in eight months, which is fairly respectable. Also... you realize that Arma 2's team is gigantic and super-well-funded compared to ours, right, and that quite a few of those "many" patches of theirs were to fix game-breaking crash bugs?

So: they've got more money, and have had a heap of really nasty bugs to fix. (Seriously, you're comparing pistols being possibly too accurate to the horror that was ArmA 2 at release? I worked on a review of that game for Armchair General and... I was a sad panda to put it mildly.) End result: they produce more patches.

[MikeyD]

For your amusement hunt down one of the initial CMSF title's patches just to read the ReadMe text file. The patch list is a mile long! CM:BN is a continuation of the same game engine so you might say CM:BN really does have five years of super-intense game-altering patches backing it up. And that's counting 'lessons learned' from CM:Afghanistan as well.

[c3k]

I've run a few preliminary handgun tests. I also tried some testing with the game.

Real life will lighten up, in a relative sense, after Wednesday. I'll fine tune my parameters and then post my results, hopefully on Friday. Ish. (It takes close to 30 minutes to just begin one test run. Ugh. The test and collection takes about 45 minutes. That's one run, one gun.)

Ken

[Dorian911]

Thanks for your quick replay Phil ans MikeyD.

Well I started the experience with CMBN so I dont know how the team works. BIS team was a small Czech team at begin (OFP 2001, ArmA 2007, ArmA 2 2009) and still a small team compared to big majors compagnies.

ArmA and Combat Mission are both good games with unlimited time of play.

I really like CMBN, I played it hundreds of hours but I would like to see more updates between two commercial releases. Anyway I'm happy to see those patchs coming and i hope they'll fix some bugs and performance issues too.

Edit: and now I bought the CW mod.