50cal Too Effective?

[PzKpfw 1]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Minnesota Joe:

2. AP weapon!? The thing could take the head off an elephant at 1000 yards dammit! If you wanted to kill infantry, youd set up a .30 cal so you get bullets off faster and so you could move around more because the 30 is much lighter and sets up quicker.

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Heh,the 50cal not supress ? you ever been under fire?. The 50cal despite its 'slow' ROF will chew a person up or any light armor itll eat thru a logged sandbagged bunker or an urban wall, even some cement, itll burrow into a foxhole. It'll send Inf running screming for cover, and that qualifies as a supression effect, in that when ones fireing at you you eat dirt hell you try to tunnel.

Quad 50 AA HTs were real popular with grunts,cause they'd just chew up Inf & prepared positions alike, and SP 20mm German AA was just as popular with German troops, where again in the wargame mindsetan MG34 or 42, or 30cal would be chosen because of the higher ROF.

PPl can compare what MG42's 30cals etc do on paper all they want but if your a grunt on the recieving end you don't care much what calibre it is thats fireing at you, you just know it can ruin your day.

Regards, John Waters

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People who can smile when things go wrong

have found someone else to blame.

[Von Brizee]

The fact still stands. Whether you have an infantry screen or not, the 50 cal is WAY too good at nailing light vehicles. They are close to useless now in QB's if the Americans have some 50 cals.

[Supertanker]

I have a few comments to throw in about the M2, though keep in mind I've never used one in Real Life .

First, regarding accuracy. In Vietnam, Carlos Hathcock was credited with a sniper kill at 2,500 yards using an M2 on which he mounted a telescopic sight. In my (admittedly limited) experience with modern day rifles chambering the .50 BMG cartridge, sub-minute of angle accuracy is common. I believe part of this is that there is more room for error with the cartridge scaled up like that, and part of it is that the long bullets have a better ballistic coefficient. The .50 BMG cartridge is as accurate as its user. Shooting on the move is one thing, but if that weapon is stable and not moving, fear it.

Second is regarding power. M2 ball ammo fires about a 700 grain boat-tailed bullet at over 2500 feet per second. This generates around 12,000 ft/lbs of muzzle energy That is a *lot* of energy, and it would blow through you and me while just barely slowing down. Now that I've written all that, I found a link that has some .50 BMG history and a head-to-head comparison with the .308 Winchester (aka 7.62 NATO): http://www.gunnery.net/warwagon/history.html So, roughly 12,000 ft/lbs for the .50 compared to 2400 for a .30 cartridge. IIRC, in How to Make War, James Dunnigan said that the M2 isn't really an HMG, it is more of a semi-portable machine cannon. However, based on that link, it appears it was intended as a long-range anti-personnel weapon.

So, I expect the .50 to be very accurate and to hit very hard, and CM models it that way. To paraphrase the zombies in Return of the Living Dead, "Send more halftracks."

[Dan Weaver]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by PzKpfw 1:

Heh,the 50cal not supress ? you ever been under fire?. The 50cal despite its 'slow' ROF will chew a person up or any light armor itll eat thru a logged sandbagged bunker or an urban wall, even some cement, itll burrow into a foxhole. It'll send Inf running screming for cover, and that qualifies as a supression effect, in that when ones fireing at you you eat dirt hell you try to tunnel.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

LOL! Great post.

Dan

[Guest grunto]

I think that the MG42 isn't deadly enough. If it were a little bit deadlier the .50 cal wouldn't appear to be so powerful.

Maybe raise up the MG42 effectiveness just a tad and lower the .50 cal, also just a tad.

Those would have to be 'small tads' though in my opinion.

The .50 cal was a really terrifying weapon to face, from what I hear. The Germans dreaded that sound.

It meant - at best - a limb torn off if you got hit. Now I'm sure 30.06 was no fun to get hit by either, or for that matter the MG42 ammo (7.92 mm?). Still the .50 cal would easily go through stone buildings, and

light armor.

In CM I'll have to admit that perhaps the Jeeps' firepower is too accurate. For the time being an infantry screen does put a quick stop to those jeeps dashing to and fro behind your lines.

I would say leave the T8s and M3A1s the way they are. They're plenty realistic.

Maybe beef up the German halftracks and armored car just a tad against .50s.

As it is I've seen a jeep .50 do rings around 4 german AFVs and destroy them all. One one of them even shot another by accident!

Sometimes when I design a scenario I'll put in "R.P. Duke" as a Jeep driver and make him Elite.

The R.P. is for "Rat Patrol."

I know that for the time being it is much more difficult to use German light armor than it is American. You can go up against a Puma or PSW234/1 with a T8 and feel reasonably confident of winning. Against German halftracks the T8 is supreme.

The 75mm on the SPW251/9 and SPW250/8s is very hard to bring to bear in a '.50-cal-heavy' environment.

Is this realistic? You tell me.

As it is now with Germans I'm inclined to go with 37mm AA, PZKs, MGs, and 75mm infantry guns, instead of Pumas and SPW251/9s. In late war I'll add recoiless rifles and PAWs.

The Lynx looks like an interesting price point for a recon tank but I'll bet the mobility is bad compared to American vehicles of the same type in general.

Perhaps the Wespe at 56 points is the answer?

Andy

[Skurg]

Fellow Soldiers,

I have fired the .50 cal from an M1 Abrams. The first round is accurate because of lack of smoke and recoil. After the first round of a burst, an area is sprayed but without pin-point accuracy. The gunner then lets off the trigger to reacquire target, reaim, and fire another burst.

The accuracy of the burst depends upon the stability of the firing platform and range.

WWII tanks needed to stop to accurately fire the main gun (unless moving over a perfectly smooth surface or target is sufficiently close). The same difficulty would apply to a jeep or halftrack trying to hit a point target. And, of course, at greater range the burst will spread over a much larger area than close range.

Half-tracks and jeeps had .50 cals mounted in anti-aircraft mounts. The bursts were less controllable since the gunner would absorb more of the recoil. Tripod-mounted MG's, with vertical and horizontal controls, are more controllable than anti-aircraft mounts.

So the first round of a burst can be accurate. Subsequent rounds are mainly for area fire/suppression. In a single burst, you might acquire multiple hits if large target is close enough or through luck.

Thanks,

Skurg

[Pascal DI FOLCO]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jarmo:

Hmmm... what if about 10 of us would try driving past

MG placements, the others would fire the cars with .50cal.

Then we'd just count how soon the cars would have to be abandoned.

Any volunteers?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh yes, I volunteer for manning the MG !

Who should be in the cars ?

[PatAWilson]

Some really good points have been raised here. IMHO firing ANY MG from a moving vehicle should usually produce suppressing fire, with direct hits being rare.

The point about how seriously the AI takes a .50 cal threat is also an excellent one. If the AI saw them as having AT capability it might be a little quicker to suppress the .50. My experience with .50s is that they are deadly but not invincible. In a recent PBEM my opponent drove his Puma up to my .50 and engaged it. The result was that two of the .50's crew were lost and the rest retreated. Obviously the key to this battle was that the Puma took the .50 seriously and engaged with its main gun (no doubt because it was told to by my opponent). If the AI would do the same automatically we might have fewer complaints about the .50. A little later my .50 recovered and was attacked by a halftrack. It shredded the halftrack and its crew from about 50 yards - IMHO perfectly legit.

As for the accuracy of the .50, yeah, Carlos Hathcock took somebody out from 2500 yards but there are two important things to remember: first, his fifty was stationary, sandbagged, and mounted a telescopic sight. The second is that Carlos Hathcock was shooting the gun . If anybody wants a good read pick up "Marine Sniper", what this guy accomplished was unreal.

[Claymore]

Everybody should take a look at Skurg's post.

When comparing real world experience with a 50cal in automatic mode to CM performance it is painfully clear that it is far too powerful. Vietnam Marine snipers aside (read the book and see how long it took him to set up that SINGLE shot), the 50cal on the back of a moving vehicle will spray lead all over the place. A conservative estimate from my real world experience would be AT LEAST +/- 10 degrees in any direction during a normal burst. Do the math...that is nowhere near enough stability to hit the preverbial SIDE OF A BARN at 300m. I've fired the M2 in single shot from a tripod and it does have GOOD first round accuracy over iron sights, we are not discussing this in CM.

Cheers

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he which maketh the first assault doth endanger himselfe most (sometimes)

[IntelWeenie]

Taking a guess at how CM models this (someone correct me if I'm really way off), but could part of the problem be the way MGs 'to hit' compared to heavier guns' 'to hit'? All AA, AT, main armament (including 20mm cannon) are computed as a single shot. If it hits, damage is assesed. Is this process handled any differently for small arms? Or do they directly apply their firepower rating to the targeted area ('to hit' being factored into the FP)? If this is the case, .50 cals are bypassing the normal AP 'to hit', thus making them seem extraordinarily accurate.

Well, seems like a good theory to me.

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"Belly to belly and everything's better" - Russian proverb

[Supertanker]

I agree that Hathcock's shot was extraordinary, I only mention it to show the inherent accuracy of the round. Like I said before, shooting on the move is a different thing. However, I did have a game vs. the AI where an elite .50 team never moved and knocked out 10 251/1 at ranges between 150 and 500m (good field of fire, that one). That seems reasonable to me, but I agree that some of the long shots from moving vehicles may be a little much. Try playing M1TP2, and shooting at BMPs from the cupola while on the move. That's almost impossible, and surely the real thing is much more difficult. That game lets you turn a stabilizer on for that gun, but that option is a "cheat" they included for game reasons.

[Jeff Heidman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Supertanker:

So, I expect the .50 to be very accurate and to hit very hard, and CM models it that way. To paraphrase the zombies in Return of the Living Dead, "Send more halftracks."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Supertanker, everything you said was true, except for this conclusion.

Mainly, where you are wrong is in assuming that the M2 is an extrmely accurate machine gun.

Yes, it was used as a sniper weapon, and yes, the .50cal round has outstanding ballistics. But you are forgetting that firing a single shot (very possible due to its slow ROF) with the weapon mounted on a tripod and steadied with sand bags on top of a hill at a point target (in this case a boy on a bicycle) by one of the finest snipers ever is not really comparable to firing a burst or several bursts at a moving target from a moving target by some random person.

The reality is (and yes, I have fired one before) that the M2 is an extremely powerful weapon that bucks around like you would not believe. This might not be a problem firing single rounds, or mounted in the wing of an airplane, but I seriously doubt I could hit a moving vehicle with the thing at any significant range without several bursts to aquire, and even then only if I was not moving myself.

Now, taking it up against some infantry, that is another issue. I actually think it is incorrect to say that the .50 is less powerful than the MG42 HMG (which is how the game models it) when engaging infantry, because this does not account for the vastly greater ability of the .50 to ignore whatever cover the target might enjoy. But that is probably an issue of how the game implements cover.

Jeff Heidman

[silentsniper]

As far as range goes, I've heard of the .50 cal. being used as a sniper rifle in the Vietnam war.

[Guest Michael emrys]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by KiwiJoe:

I find 80% of the m2's light armour kills are from abandonments. It could be balanced by allowing crews to re-mount after the threat is gone, or be making them abandon less in the first place.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I am coming to strongly agree with this. I have no statistics on what the rate of abandonment of vehicles under fire was in WW II so I could be 'way off base here, but I get the feeling that what we see in the game is greatly exaggerated. In all my years of reading on the history of the war, I have yet to come across an instance of a AFV crew abandoning their vehicle when it was neither immobilized nor at immediate risk of brewing up. Absent those conditions, they felt much safer inside all that steel. This was not an entirely irrational feeling.

What they would do is button up and either bring their attacker under fire or move out of the way. It would be nice if the AI would behave similarly.

Soft vehicles are a different matter. It was common for the riders of jeeps, trucks, and similar vehicles to bail out whenever they came under fire. But then as soon as fire ceased, and assuming their vehicle was in running order, they would remount and continue on their way. I've seen far too many CM battlefields get far too littered far too quickly by abandoned vehicles that are apparently still in running order.

Michael

[Claymore]

Unfortunately the CM software is not constructed to allow for re-crewing abandoned vehicles or weapons. BTS had very good reasons for doing this and I'm convinced that they have valid reasons for not allowing it in the game engine. The M2 fix can be more readily accomplished by downgrading its performance to a area suppression device and/or downgrading its accuracy and/or modifying how its FP rating is applied. How or if BTS will implement this is another matter. CM stands today as the unique small unit actions simulator.

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he which maketh the first assault doth endanger himselfe most (sometimes)

[von Lucke]

The easiest fix would be to make AC / HT crews less likely to bail when under fire. v10.4?

[Guest Big Time Software]

Everyone,

Good points. I'll check into these issues for the next patch.

Charles

[PatAWilson]

Supertanker:

I actually agree with all of your points so I hope that last post didn't come across too badly. About the 10 HTs being knocked out, again, that's possible as long as the opponent allows it to happen. No different than letting a 75mm go unmolested. OTOH if the AI treated the .50 as a target worthy of lots of suppressing fire then it probably shouldn't happen too often.

[Supertanker]

Thanks to the voices of experience, and thanks to Charles for taking up the issues raised (and raised in a courteous fashion by all). Man, I love the Internet! Do you know how long it would take me to find someone, if anyone, among my friends and acquaintances that has fired a Ma Deuce? Here, we got two in a day.

[danielh]

I totally agree in the over-effectiveness of the M2 especially it's accuraccy. Compare it's effectiveness to real "small" calibre AT-guns like the 5 cm or 7.5 cm Inf gun WITH protective shields.

The AT-guns can seldom fire more than 2 shots before being abandoned (I had instances were an Inf-squad took one out (digged in of course) in best cover (darkest possible blue LOS in a forest from around 400 m without having fired a shot). The M2-squad on the other hand with NO protection needs wagonloads of ammunition to be spent on. (Of course the AT-guns for instance in a forest dugged in and camouflaged, were very hard to spot, and when fired on, the crew was protected by the dig in holes AND the protective shield).

So FIRST, small AT-guns (not moved) should be nearly as durable as digged in inf-squads (One only think about the laughable effective Recoiless AT-guns). Until now AT-guns are a waist of points, the only exception is the M2. (Ask Rommel how he was able to beat the british tank masses with he's big 8.8 AA gun-batteries in the desert...).

Greets

Daniel

[KiwiJoe]

I just forced a vet hetzer crew to abandon their tank from 1 .50 cal burst directly into their side armour at 404m while they were fast moving. I actually feel sorry for my enemy, there is no way a .50 cal could penetrate 20mm of armour at 400m, or any range for that matter.

Why would a VET crew abandon under such a small amout of fire? I guess anything can happen in battle, but this type of thing seems to happen far too much. German light vehicles/armour stand no chance under current conditions if the allies have purchased units armed with the MURDEROUS .50 cal.

I'm not debating the penetration power of this weapon at all.. just its fearsome abilitly to force crews to panic and run like girl-scouts as soon as they hear it rip off a burst.