Ammo expenditure at long range

[Juardis]

Was thinking on the best way to beat SMG teams given that SMG teams are murderous at 100m or less. Ideally, my rifle squads would engage at 200m or so where I have the firepower advantage and not my opponent. The problem of course, is that I would run out of ammo way before killing one of his squads let alone a plt.

Anyway, that got me to thinking that not all weapons in a squad can fire at all ranges. Yet when one guy fires his LMG from 400m away, the ammo count for the entire squad just decreased by one. Now I know the ammo count is an abstraction, but theoretically, you could fire 40 rounds from 400m and have a squad left with no ammo. And this when only one weapon in that squad was fired. Needless to say, I disagree with this.

So here's a solution. Since the data is already included and tracked internally in the code (firepower ratings), perhaps the ammo count should also be tracked internally so that if only 1 weapon out of a 10 man squad is fired, the total ammo count is reduced by 1/10th. If 5 weapons are fired, then the remaining ammo should be reduced by 5/10ths. If a 13 man squad, then firing 5 weapons reduces ammo count by 5/13. You get the idea. You may not necessarily see the ammo counter for that squad decrease since the counter is integer format only, but internally fractional ammo counts would be kept.

Furthermore, this explains one of the mysteries where sometimes I'll order a squad to fire at a target and they won't even though a target line is drawn. Well, the reason is the long range rifles/LMGs have been lost already and all that's left are the shorter range SMGs.

Of course, if this solution is implemented, it'll likely help the SMG squads more than a rifle squad thereby making SMG squads that much more powerful, but nevertheless, if it's broke it needs fixing.

[Michael Emrys]

In a rifle squad, the expenditure of ammunition by the rifles is trivial compared to that of the LMG. So having the rifles drop out due to range would not effect rate of usage much.

SMG squads are admittedly a different matter. As soon as a target came within their range, ammo consumption would rise dramatically. So you would have a case there.

I think American squads might fall somewhere in between. The semiautomatic Garand might be expected to have slightly higher ammo consumption than those armies still using bolt action rifles, but as the BAR had a small magazine and a somewhat slow rate of fire, it might be expected that its contribution to ammo consumption by the squad to be a little less.

Then of course there are those German squads equipped with assault rifles...

Surveying the complexities involved, I think I can kind of understand why BTS opted for an abstraction.

Michael

[JasonC]

I think an adequate solution to this issue is to raise slightly the ammo allowance for rifle-heavy squads, while lowering slightly the ammo allowance for squads with all, or mostly all, automatic weapons.

The automatics are the weapons with the highest ammo consumption. The rifles tend to fire more at the longer ranges, and thus lose out ammo to this cause. The result is paradoxically that the SMGs, with 3-5 times the modeled rate of fire (and only about twice the historical bullet load), have more shots to expend in close than the rifles do.

I've suggested this before (in a very lengthy argument). It has the advantage that it can be implimented voluntarily today, by those who choose to do so. My recommendations are 50 shots for plain British and US rifle 44 squads, as well as the German squad types with only the LMG and at most 1 other automatic weapon (some pioneers e.g.). US rifle 45 and the typical German rifle squads can get 45 shots. Use the default 40 for squads split about evenly between automatics and rifles, 35 for automatic-heavy squads, and 30 for the pure automatic types (VG SMG, VG Hvy SMG, VG Fusilier SMG).

This effectively gives the longer ranged squads some ammo "cushion" to engage in long range plinking, within reason to be sure. It still leaves the automatics with far more overall firepower in close, as well as dishing out what they've got faster. But it avoids the quandry that rifles can't afford to fire half their ammo at range, when enemy SMGs save everything for the closest range, most effective blasts, and outlast the rifles ammo-wise to boot.

Any scenario designer can do it, just by dialing in the altered ammo level. If you don't like it, roll your own...

[xerxes]

That's a great suggestion Jason. SMGs having the same ammo consumption as regular rifles had disturbed me for a while.

-marc

[Redwolf]

This last thing I heard about this for CMBB is that long-range rifle fire will have less than 1 ammo consumption point per shot.

I think that would require more thoughts about the LMG and the other long-range weapons in the squad, in reality the LMG is be the only really effective weapon at range, while the rifle would be more efficient (less effect than the LMG, but *much* less ammo consuption).

I wonder how real life units handled this, when did they use the LMG to take a chance and when did they restrict themself to single rifle shots?

[Juardis]

Good idea JasonC. I hadn't considered the rate of fire using up ammo faster or slower, depending on the rate. I was just frustrated that I could not take advantage of longer range shooting for the rifle squads without running out of ammo.

[Chad Harrison]

i agree that the infantry ammo seems screwie to me (not to mention the inability to hit anything and take out a man at over 100 yards. its rare that i ever loose a man at over 100 yards to infantry fire. good thing those boys dont know how to aim down the sights of a rifle!).

rifle squads at ranges of over 100m would fire how many rounds accuratly a minute? geez, if i were there and saw a platoon out in the open coming towards me i would chose my shots wisely and carefully. 3 or 4 rounds of well aimed shots a minute? i hope that of all things BTS fixes how infantry ammo is used.