Scouts taking third of squad's ammo?

[Bulletpoint]

I noticed that when I split off a 2-man scout team, they take with them 400 rifle bullets out of the squad's 1500 rounds. Maybe it would be nice and more appropriate to have them take only 100-200 bullets?

Not sure how many rounds a WW2 soldier would normally carry with him, but I'd guess it would make more sense to travel light when scouting, and leave more bullets with the automatic rifle...

[Combatintman]

The Army and sense are not good bedfellows.  The scouting scenario you describe I presume is when you split squads which we all know is a mechanism to allow players to micro-manage their squads to a degree to offset squad AI movement behaviour.  In RL a section may well have designated scouts who generally will be at the front of the section/squad formation and possibly move 1-2 bounds in front of the section/squad.  The amount of faffing around that would be involved in them handing over the squad/section weapon spare ammunition bandolier that generally each man carries before going forward to scout would mean that nothing ever gets done.  Bottom line, in my view there is nothing to see here.

[womble]

Which formation are you splitting from? 400 does seem a lot if they're the C team of a 12 man Ami squad; it's more "reasonable" if it's a split out of a 6 man squad.

[womble]

2 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

The Army and sense are not good bedfellows.  The scouting scenario you describe I presume is when you split squads which we all know is a mechanism to allow players to micro-manage their squads to a degree to offset squad AI movement behaviour.  In RL a section may well have designated scouts who generally will be at the front of the section/squad formation and possibly move 1-2 bounds in front of the section/squad.  The amount of faffing around that would be involved in them handing over the squad/section weapon spare ammunition bandolier that generally each man carries before going forward to scout would mean that nothing ever gets done.  Bottom line, in my view there is nothing to see here.

I started off thinking like this, but then realised that the game does simulate that sort of division of load in some cases. Specifically, if you Admin-Assault Team or Admin-AT Team as your first split, the split team gets handed the lion's share of the squad's hand grenades. We know from this that the grenades are not all being carried by any one man in either team, so some abstracted "redistribution" of the loot is definitely occurring. And actually, I would expect two guys being sent to "Go have a look round the end of the wood" to at least sometimes hand off at least one of the two Bren/BAR mags they're carrying to the rest of the squad, and maybe even ditch their knapsack into the care of a squadmate. In German squads, the leader wouldn't send the guys carrying an ammo box each off to scout; they'd stay with the squad MG(s), so the Split-Scout Team "ought" to take less than a linear proportion of the squad's ammo with them.

[Anthony P.]

Agree with Combatintman, as when I tried it, the scout team only had a little shy of 300 rounds. That matches the 8 rounds in the rifle + 80 in ammo belt + 64 in bandolier x 2 pretty well. Never seen them get up to the region of 400 rounds though. Was it maybe a 3 man scout team you saw?

[Combatintman]

Well if it was a US Squad the numbers would probably look something like this ....

http://www.trailblazersww2.org/history_infantryload.htm

So yes 400 rounds is about 144 rounds more than it should be, but certainly not out of the ballpark. However I still maintain that your observation is conceptually flawed and is in the category of 'nothing to see here' ... and this is why ...

As I said before all of the faffing around that would be involved (and remember you are talking about a squad not a battalion) in the scouts handing over ammunition before going forward is just not worth the bother.  I think that you're thinking like a gamer who wants to ensure that the minimum amount of ammunition is lost if the scouts get slotted.  In real life the squad/section commander just wants to find the enemy as quickly as possible.  The basic section battle drill in the British Army has it as

Locate the enemy

Win the firefight

Attack

Reorg

Or if you want to look at the core functions in combat ... FIND, FIX, STRIKE.  So locating the enemy is important right the way down to the section/squad context.  However, a section/squad scout team is not going to go that far forward - the US Army Manual on the subject from 1942 puts it at no more than about 400-600m.

https://ia800301.us.archive.org/34/items/Fm7-10/Fm7-10.pdf

Do you routinely send your scouts that far forward?

As I said in my first post - if these guys are moving a couple of tactical bounds forward of the remainder of their squad/section (which would be the norm) then the rest of the squad and particularly the squad leader is not going to be mucking about playing the pass the ammunition game before the scouts go forward.  Even if you send them 400-600m forward, if I was the section commander I would be inserting a boot up the thing that scouts sit on if one of them said 'hey Cpl, I'm just going to drop off my bandolier with one of the guys'.  How it works in real life in those squads/sections that share out ammunition loads (particularly for the LMG) is that the guys carry what they've been given and if the gun group is going to set up a base of fire prior to an assault they will drop the LMG ammo then.  After the assault, in the reorg phase of the section battle drill mentioned earlier, the section/squad inform the section commander how much ammo they have left and as a result the section commander will organise redistribution and if things are desperate will contact higher to get a resup of the required natures.

So IMHO, a lot of this comes down to thinking like a gamer not a RL section commanders who just needs to get stuff done but also this is all part and parcel of the routine grumbles that surface about the squad bunching behaviour of the AI and the split squad mitigation work around.  The split squad thing has permutations as to whether you split into halves or split assault teams first or whether you want scouts or whether you want anti-tank teams.  Overall it is a fudge but there it is. I personally would not get excited about it.

 

[Bulletpoint]

54 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

I think that you're thinking like a gamer who wants to ensure that the minimum amount of ammunition is lost if the scouts get slotted.

In fact I'm not, quite the opposite. I always try my best to keep everybody alive. But I don't have a military background like you do, so I'm wondering about many things that you probably take for granted.

 

[Bulletpoint]

10 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

Agree with Combatintman, as when I tried it, the scout team only had a little shy of 300 rounds. That matches the 8 rounds in the rifle + 80 in ammo belt + 64 in bandolier x 2 pretty well. Never seen them get up to the region of 400 rounds though. Was it maybe a 3 man scout team you saw?

I should have mentioned it was a 2-man scout team split off from a British squad, I tried it a couple of times and ended up with a bit different ammo loads. Usually a bit more or a bit less than 400 rounds. It probably depends on the exact number of guys and bullets in the squad before the split.

[Michael Emrys]

28 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

It probably depends on the exact number of guys and bullets in the squad before the split.

That might be the key, especially if they had earlier acquired ammo from a vehicle or dump or had buddy aided a casualty.

Michael

[Combatintman]

3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I should have mentioned it was a 2-man scout team split off from a British squad, I tried it a couple of times and ended up with a bit different ammo loads. Usually a bit more or a bit less than 400 rounds. It probably depends on the exact number of guys and bullets in the squad before the split.

In which case the magic figure for a two man scout team should be 212 rounds according to the relevant pam ...

http://wartimecanada.ca/sites/default/files/documents/Infantry Training- part VIII_0.pdf

So 400 rounds would be a fair way off the mark.  Mind you in your first post you mentioned a figure of 1500 vice the 1160 that the pam above states as the standard issue (Section 16 Organization and Equipment of the Platoon, Page 39 refers).

[StieliAlpha]

7 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

In fact I'm not, quite the opposite. I always try my best to keep everybody alive. But I don't have a military background like you do, so I'm wondering about many things that you probably take for granted.

 

And, one has to admit, Bulletpoint loves to dig into the detail. ?

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, StieliAlpha said:

And, one has to admit, Bulletpoint loves to dig into the detail. ?

Way too much, I know

[StieliAlpha]

37 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Way too much, I know

Don't worry. We all have our handicap. ?

[Michael Emrys]

14 hours ago, StieliAlpha said:

And, one has to admit, Bulletpoint loves to dig into the detail. ?

Of course. That's where the Devil is.

Michael