Why I like playing the underdogs (Commonwealth, Free French, etc.)

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

Within the 200m though the lmg42 on its own has the same firepower as half an american infantry squad (1bar+4m1).

Eyeballing the graphs in Drifter Man's report, it looks to me as if the LMG42 has a firepower of around 0.35 at 192m range, while 1xBAR and 4xGarands would have a total of around 0.48

0.075x4 for the garands = 0.3

1.8 for the BAR

 

[Bulletpoint]

11 minutes ago, holoween said:

How is 80-100% moe firepower compared to a normal lmg only slightly outperforming?

 

Because it's not 80-100%, but 40%.

At 312m, Bren: 0.1, LMG42: 0.14

Edited January 10, 2021 by Bulletpoint

[holoween]

40m bar+4 garands 3.75 vs 1lmg42 4.4

80m bar+4 garands 1.45 vs 1lmg42 1.45

120m bar+4 garands 0.8 vs 1lmg42 0.8

160m bar+4 garands 0.55 vs 1lmg 0.46

192m bar+4 garands 0.44 vs 1lmg 0.34

Note this is against foxholes which provide some of the best cover ingame.

So at relevant small arms ranges its overall similar with the lmg doing better at shorter ranges. Note that supression isnt factored in here.

312m  bar 32rpm vs Bren 44rpm vs lmg42 71rpm so assuming each supress as much per round youre still left with quite a bit higher supression.

Supression reduces rate of fire so even a slight advantedge quickly compounds to give a massive one. So overall the lmg42 gives a german infantry squad the firepower advantedge. This wont matter much against ai which wont hold fire until targets are in effective range and let themselves get destroyed by heavy weapons but against human oponents that edge does matter massively.

 

 

 

[Drifter Man]

I'd say Bren and BAR on the one hand and MG42, MG34 and M1919A6 on the other represent two different "leagues of the LMG" the way they are portrayed in CM, but yes, their results are of the same order of magnitude.

None are particularly effective against troops in foxholes at 300m+ range but as @holoween said, against exposed infantry they can produce better results.

 

[Drifter Man]

On 1/11/2021 at 2:27 AM, Erwin said:

Another psychological issue to consider is why did the Allies fear the MG42 and were intimidated by it so much if it was not much better than the Bren?  How many accounts are there that the Germans feared the Bren?

None, because none of the Germans who encountered the mighty Bren lived to tell the story

[Erwin]

Good answer...  but...  

[Drifter Man]

22 hours ago, Erwin said:

Good answer...  but...  

Yeah, silly... I agree.

[chuckdyke]

On 1/9/2021 at 12:54 AM, Bulletpoint said:

My point about the LMG42 not being massively better was in fact based on your tests.

There's this myth of German superiority, but when I look at your tests results, I see that while the LMG42 is slightly better than comparable LMGs, it's only by a margin that doesn't really mean anything in practice.

It makes a lot of noise and sounds scary, but it's not that accurate, and it doesn't dominate ground. It boosts squad firepower at rifle ranges. At longer ranges, you can suppress with it, but you can do that with even rifle squads.

 

It was not meant to be accurate; its effectiveness was in the beaten zone. It is the idea of a crossfire, two fire cones overlapping the result is a wall of lead. Its weakness are the barrels eventually the crews run out. That's what happened on Omaha beach. Positioning of the weapon is everything, two MG42's doesn't make it twice as effective but ten times as effective. In the HMG Mode you have a HQ and 2 MG42's for that reason. 

[Erwin]

The rate of fire make a big difference.

The MG42 is fed by a metal link belt at a cyclic rate of fire of 700–1,300 rounds per minute. It is air-cooled and has a quick-change barrel.

The Bren was a gas-operated weapon firing at a rate of between 480 and 540 rounds per minute (rpm), depending on the model.

The MG42 has about twice the rate of the Bren.  The cone of fire increases as range increases.  That means that the MG42 can put almost twice as many bullets in that cone as can the Bren.  The MG42 has a much higher likelihood of hitting something.

[Bulletpoint]

7 hours ago, Erwin said:

The rate of fire make a big difference.

The MG42 is fed by a metal link belt at a cyclic rate of fire of 700–1,300 rounds per minute. It is air-cooled and has a quick-change barrel.

The Bren was a gas-operated weapon firing at a rate of between 480 and 540 rounds per minute (rpm), depending on the model.

The MG42 has about twice the rate of the Bren.  The cone of fire increases as range increases.  That means that the MG42 can put almost twice as many bullets in that cone as can the Bren.  The MG42 has a much higher likelihood of hitting something.

You're arguing from the real war; I'm arguing from how it works in this game. At shorter ranges, all the bullets in the burst hit the same spot on the ground (not much spread), while at longer ranges, the MG42 hits nothing because of the weird aiming behaviour in the game.

Try lowering the camera to the level of one pixeltruppen firing his MG42 and look in the direction of the tracers. You'll see that it looks like he's doing his best not to hit anything (same behaviour goes for all the small arms in the game)...

[mjkerner]

Don’t forget that a lot of the animations are abstracted. What you see is not always what you get.

[FlemFire]

My anecdotal experience suggests that the MG42 is the deadliest MG in the game by far, and I'd rather be shot at by almost anything else (as far as MGs go). It is remarkably deadly, accurate, and suppressive. Again, that's more observational than anything.

 

As for cause of casualties, you have to be very careful with things like that as you're often drawing data from the entire scope of a campaign instead of from the 'small screen' which would be scenarios like CM depicts. From the big screen, where you have interdiction and all sorts of artillery exchanges happening, yes, the vast majority of damage accrued over time would be from explosives and not all of them inflicted on combat-oriented units. We can tell the difference pretty easily by just looking at combat units themselves, which often have egregious lossrates of 50%+, wounded and killed -- basically, being the actual guy doing the fighting is an insanely dangerous job (no surprise). If the army as a whole had rates like that it would be drawdropping amounts of casualties.

 

But as for bullets specifically, John Ellis's book has this remark about it:

Quote

Many smaller samples from individual theaters give a significantly higher proportion of wounds from bullets. Two British divisional samples from NW Europe in 1944 gives 25.2 and 31.5%, an El Alamein (Oct '42) corp sample gives 42.8% and a US Boungainville/New Georgia/Burma sample gives 38.4%.

 

[THH149]

Try playing the Syrians as the underdog, its a new way to experience modern war, and the experience will develop new skills that you never knew you needed. Even if your total force gets shot to pieces, learning to get the hard kills is valuable.

THH

[Bulletpoint]

11 hours ago, Khalerick said:

My anecdotal experience suggests that the MG42 is the deadliest MG in the game by far, and I'd rather be shot at by almost anything else (as far as MGs go). It is remarkably deadly, accurate, and suppressive. Again, that's more observational than anything.

My anecdotal experience suggests the opposite. It sounds dangerous, but unless you're extremely close, it's unlikely to do much damage, if any at all.

The only times I see it being really effective is house to house fighting where it just can't physically miss, and where the large bullet output means a high chance to get lucky with the dice roll to kill an enemy soldier in cover.

[chuckdyke]

2 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

My anecdotal experience suggests the opposite. It sounds dangerous, but unless you're extremely close, it's unlikely to do much damage, if any at all.

The only times I see it being really effective is house to house fighting where it just can't physically miss, and where the large bullet output means a high chance to get lucky with the dice roll to kill an enemy soldier in cover.

Bridge No7 in battle for Normandy is a good test. You can move a platoon of paratroopers to a distance of 600 meters before a fire team suffers temporarily of combat stress. Tactic employed quick dashes of 15 seconds per turn. The AI which has some MG42's firing can suppress but can't stop the movement of a platoon. 

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Bridge No7 in battle for Normandy is a good test. You can move a platoon of paratroopers to a distance of 600 meters before a fire team suffers temporarily of combat stress. Tactic employed quick dashes of 15 seconds per turn. The AI which has some MG42's firing can suppress but can't stop the movement of a platoon. +

Sounds like those are HMGs?

[chuckdyke]

Just now, Bulletpoint said:

Sounds like those are HMGs?

 

Yes, a game I already played and using it to test future tactics. The short-term objective is to place my medium machine guns in buildings to suppress the HMG's in the blockhouse. It is area fire only as no contact icons are displayed. Route of approach is the shoulders of the main road with the squads split up in fire teams. They rest 45 seconds before sprinting for 15 seconds. Only at six hundred meters a fire team was fired on. 

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Yes, a game I already played and using it to test future tactics. The short-term objective is to place my medium machine guns in buildings to suppress the HMG's in the blockhouse. It is area fire only as no contact icons are displayed. Route of approach is the shoulders of the main road with the squads split up in fire teams. They rest 45 seconds before sprinting for 15 seconds. Only at six hundred meters a fire team was fired on. 

My point was mostly about the LMG version of the MG42. The HMG version is more capable. Sounds like your approach to the mission is good though. Just be aware that at 600m against enemies in a blockhouse, you need a very heavy volume of fire to suppress them.

[chuckdyke]

Yes, I have an article about how the guys did it for real. I placed eight .30 Browning machine guns in the houses of the town. You can plot area fire on the individual floors using camera position one inside the blockhouse. Two machineguns are used at a time. Two platoons will be used to take the blockhouse objective which are approaching using the wheatfields for concealment. Fire superiority is achieved by using a L formation. One-line of the L advances the other line suppresses and change roles intermittently. I have a machinegun platoon on overwatch.  There is no danger of friendly fire that way. Two .30 Brownings have the same volume of fire as one MG42 but can fire from two different directions and can join their beaten zones in a crossfire. A good game for machinegun tactics. In the game the HMG version is not capable of indirect fire neither are the allied HMG's on tripods. A pity because their platoon commander is supposed to be the spotter. Frost at Arnhem bridge kept the Germans at bay using that tactic. We can't use the MG as mortars against the troops behind the dike. We jast have to make do with the 60 mm mortars. 

Edited January 14, 2021 by chuckdyke

[Erwin]

2 hours ago, THH149 said:

Try playing the Syrians as the underdog, its a new way to experience modern war, and the experience will develop new skills that you never knew you needed. Even if your total force gets shot to pieces, learning to get the hard kills is valuable.

THH

I highly recommend the "Zawiya Uprising" campaign for a Red vs Red experience.  Your side features a good mix of units, it's not horribly hard and no "tricks" seem to involved - so one can focus on learning good Syrian tactics.  

[chuckdyke]

Here is one German complaining about the Bren. It may be more accurate than the MG 42. I almost gave the Sniper the credit as I heard a single shot on replay. But it was the scout and his Bren. 

[SpitfireXI]

On 1/1/2021 at 1:06 PM, John1966 said:

People say that a British squad's firepower isn't that dissimilar to a German one.

All I'll say is that in one of my early experiences playing the Brits, a full 10-man squad found themselves in a building opposite three Germans across the road. With excess of a 3:1 advantage I thought they've got superior firepower and left them to it. Two minutes later the Brit squad had been wiped out and the Germans had taken a single casualty.

So I removed the Germans with a tank.

That's sort of how I find Brit scenarios go.

I always fear fighting in cities with CW forces for this reason.  Is there a guide for using CW forces in a built up area?  Its one thing when you can call in artillery or tanks but what can you do on the attack when the streets or buildings prevent you from calling on this support?  

[mjkerner]

On 1/1/2021 at 12:06 PM, John1966 said:

 

So I removed the Germans with a tank.

 

German removal by tank is Tight!

[Erwin]

3 hours ago, SpitfireXI said:

I always fear fighting in cities with CW forces for this reason.  Is there a guide for using CW forces in a built up area?  Its one thing when you can call in artillery or tanks but what can you do on the attack when the streets or buildings prevent you from calling on this support?  

From what understand the Brit/CW tactic was to obliterate the objective with arty and air HE.  HE was the main killer.  Theoretically, the Brit inf should have been able to simply walk in over the rubble and corpses.  Of course, it didn't always go that way.

Most designers are American (I think) so they tend to design scenarios without taking into account that the Brits always planned to have massive HMG and HE support.  The designs reflect more the way the US fights.  US troops were more able to function independently.

Similarly, Russian attack scenarios tend to de-emphasize their massive HE barrages.  

Of course smashing your oppo with HE is not fun, so designs try and make the match-ups a "fun challenge" - which may not be typical of reality.

Edited March 22, 2021 by Erwin

[SpitfireXI]

So are there any scenarios which more accurately depict the CW way of fighting?  Id like to play those.