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Rate of ammo expenditure in close combat


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I dunno, seems plausible to me. In a life or death situation, which I take close combat to be, a lot of shooting might go on. At the end of which, one cares for the wounded, rounds up prisoners (if any), lights up a fag, sends somebody back to report the situation and collect some more ammo, and generally waits for one's nerves to calm down. I don't generally get the impression that a squad of guys who had just been through that were necessarily in a rip roaring mood to immediately have some more (exceptions noted). So a squad or platoon that had just been through a round of heavy fighting might have been content to secure their immediate vicinity and then take a break for a period equivalent to the remainder of a typical CM battle, this to include getting and distributing more ammo. I guess it all comes down to how heavy the fighting was and how long it lasted.

Michael

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This has been discussed before, in detail. If you do a search on the CMBB forum, you should be able to find the thread.

FWIW, I agree with you, at least in the case of SMG squads. Currently, it is quite possible for an SMG squad to use more or less its entire ammo load (20-25 'shots') in one turn. As an example, German soldiers carried around 200 rounds for their MP40s. While the cyclic ROF for the MP40 is around 500 rounds/min, I'm skeptical that a soldier could reload seven times AND shoot of all 200 rounds within a minute in a close combat situation. Maybe on a firing range, but not in close combat.

I certainly agree that ammo consumption should go up at close range, I just think the current model takes it a bit too far, especially given that squads with a high proportionn of automatic weapons are already penalized with low ammo loads to reflect high consumption. Soldiers at close range are also generally engaging in activities like throwing grenades, hand-to-hand, etc, which would reduce the amount of small arms ammo they could fire off.

Anyway, it's been discussed already. No sense in repeating myself now.

Cheers,

YD

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I played Elite forces just recently (I hardly ever play elite) and was surprised to see they had a much better handle on ammo expenditure than lesser quality troops. It appears that green and conscript troops tend to shoot at just about anything and miss. Veteran and elite troops tend to watch what they shoot at and hit what they aim at.

;)

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Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

I don't generally get the impression that a squad of guys who had just been through that were necessarily in a rip roaring mood to immediately have some more (exceptions noted). So a squad or platoon that had just been through a round of heavy fighting might have been content to secure their immediate vicinity and then take a break for a period equivalent to the remainder of a typical CM battle

Michael

Micheal,

I am not speaking of the men going onto another fight (that part would be controlled by the battle condition of the men), but that they cannot continue with the current fight as they have run out of ammo sometimes within 2 minutes. This is a greater issue playing the Germans with the low ammo counts compared to the other forces. I feel that the close combat uses excessive ammo.

Which makes attacking in close range a non viable option.

I am not sure that it is possible to fight a small close battle in this game.

Though I am alawys willing to listen and learn.

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in cmbb and cmak all squads with many automatic weapons have to save ammo. its quit easy, give them the orange arc on 40m or less. then they kill every enemy platoon with only 2 of 25 shots/ per squad. for long range use the hMGs, which can route and kill much enemy infantry on open terrain, brushes or scattered trees. enemy inf at 100m or more in woods or houses you can only kill with he-ammo of guns and tanks. i prefer in this case the 150mm sIG, esp. in the Brummbaer.

in my opinion you need in ak and bb far less inf then in bo, so use them only to seize and defend flags. all other warfare has to be done by other units.

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Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

It would be interesting to see figures on exactly how much fire dicipline depends on the actions of the player. There is an obvious difference between different experience levels but how much does player action really affect the outcome.

In a CMBB QB vst the AI on a Stalingrad map, I found that firefights in factories at 10-40m lead to high ammo expenditure. A few turns and the ammo is gone - without killing the enemy. Suppressing the enemy and overrunning (advance/assault) him with other squads gets faster kills and saves ammo. Of course there is a certain risk with this tactic.

Gruß

Jaochim

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Do we have anyone on the board who knows someone who's been in a truely hot situation (Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, Iraq) who can comment on ammo expenditure? I figure in a life-and-death situation you wouldn't be rationing your ammo just in case you might need it a half hour later.

But I may be wrong in that regard. A well documented major problem with U.S, troops in Europe was simply getting them to use their weapon during a battle! If you fire your weapon you open yourself up to

A: getting return fire from the enemy

B: getting friendly fire from panicy green troops around you

C: running out of ammo at precisely the wrong moment.

A LOT of post-war boot-camp training is dedicated to conditioning the men to actually use their weapons.

[ February 04, 2004, 05:23 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

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G'day Troops, I can only speak from my own experiences in Korea (1950/1951). Fire disipline is one of the primary responsibilities of the squad leader & platoon sgt.

We had many battles against the Korean & Chinese "hoards". In our first few battles our fire disipline was terrible! But we learned quickly. A well organized unit with good leadership well seldom run out of ammo. Another primary responsibility of squad leaders & platoon Sgt's is to listen for the call of "AMMO", and deliver it to the troops in need.

One of the scariest of jobs (in my opinion) for a platoon sgt is to haul bandoleers of ammo to the various foxholes in need during a fire fight. I always dreaded that job. Usually the places that you had to haul ammo was to the ares of your front that were seeing the most action. Now get the picture the guys who need the ammo are in two man foxholes or lying down firing while you (the brave platoon sgt) must get out of your foxhole, grab a dozen or so bandoleers or a case of granades and at a running crouch deliver them where they are needed. Being an infantry platoon sgt was not all that it was cracked up to be. The pay was NOT that much better! Needless to say I really insisted that all of my platoon practise good fire control.

If your platoon were on the attack it just meant that the guys who needed ammo were not as easy to find, as they were usually strung out behind any cover that they could find.

I'd like to put in a plug here for Combat Medics or Corpman. Thier job was even more dangerous. They had to go to a wounded troop and fix them up or haul them off. Now if a guy gets wounded at some location it can't be a very safe location, but the Combat Medics always came through. What a super bunch of guys! By the way many of these Combat Medics were conciencous objecters (go figure).

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By the way I forgot to mention that many of these battles might go on for several hours. The gooks liked to start thier battles shortly after midnight. they would continually attack until around daylight when they would pull back to avoid our air support which (if they were going to show up at all) came after daybreak.

Speaking of air support, the best that we had was usually from the USMC, the Australian AF,and the Union of South Africa. The Aussies and Africans flew P-51's, the Marines flew Corsairs. The USAF flew mainly F-80's. The F-80's did not get as low nor fly as slow as the other units. My only experience with being strafed was from a flight of F-80's (not an experience that I would like to go through again) At the time we had our "Air Panels" out, and an FAC was talking with an AT-6 that was "supposed" to be directing the whole attack! They only made one pass at us, but it was enough to make a believer in air power out of me.

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Let's not be unfair with CM, they do not run out of ammo after they shot their allowance. With ammo == LOW thay are still reasonably able to defend themself or overcome a weak unit.

But still, the SMG squads do fire out their normal alloance faster than even the worst discipline unit could. The last thread has all the details.

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I've seen fairly rapid ammo resupply of attacking infantry in CM... but only once. Finns of course in CMBB. They successfully attacked an objective, stopped and sat on the objective and their ammo load bar could be seen slowly creeping up. Then they'd be able to attack again (brave Finnish sargents I guess).

I don't know why I haven't seen that happen at other times.

Thanks to BARMAN1950 for the very enlightening anecdote. Would that be 'BAR' as in the weapon or 'bar' as in the shack down the road from the base? ;):D

[ February 05, 2004, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

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Originally posted by MikeyD:

I've seen fairly rapid ammo resupply of attacking infantry in CM... but only once. Finns of course in CMBB. They successfully attacked an objective, stopped and sat on the objective and their ammo load bar could be seen slowly creeping up. Then they'd be able to attack again (brave Finnish sargents I guess).

I don't know why I haven't seen that happen at other times.

Maybe you stopped drinking bathtub gin?

:D

That's...ah...an interesting report there, Mikey. Be sure to let us know if anything like that happens again. Or if you spot Santa Claus appearing during a battle. This kind of information is important, you know.

Michael

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Originally posted by MikeyD:

Do we have anyone on the board who knows someone who's been in a truely hot situation (Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, Iraq) who can comment on ammo expenditure? I figure in a life-and-death situation you wouldn't be rationing your ammo just in case you might need it a half hour later.

But I may be wrong in that regard. A well documented major problem with U.S, troops in Europe was simply getting them to use their weapon during a battle! If you fire your weapon you open yourself up to

A: getting return fire from the enemy

B: getting friendly fire from panicy green troops around you

C: running out of ammo at precisely the wrong moment.

A LOT of post-war boot-camp training is dedicated to conditioning the men to actually use their weapons.

Are you talking about the SLA Marshall study on 'ratio of fire'? Because that study has since been proved to have been based on highly questionable methods that fatally flawed the study.
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"Mikey. Be sure to let us know if anything like that happens again. Or if you spot Santa Claus appearing during a battle."

Believe me, when I saw it happening my jaw dropped. Never saw it before. Never saw it simce. Maybe the Finns were using weapons compatible with the Russians were able to scrounge ammo clips or something.

-----

"Are you talking about the SLA Marshall study on 'ratio of fire'? Because that study has since been proved to have been based on highly questionable methods that fatally flawed the study."

My sources, if you want to call them that, were vague recollections of second-hand mentions from unnamed studies. But they were backed-up by a few combat anecdotes I've been told about the dangers of firing a round off while your buddies are sleeping in foxholes around you. Talk about unregulated ammo expenditure, you'd be in danger of being peppered with blind fire from your spooked neighbors!

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It would seem from the reply's, and the little that I know that troops carried enough ammo and could control themselves for an extended battle of 20+ minutes as compared to the 2-5 minutes in CMAK.

This is as I mention in another thread a greater issue for the Germans where their ammo count low compared to that of the allies, a lot of units at 25, 29 to a few at 39 and 1 rifle unit (?) at 50. The yanks are 60+.

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All you need for slaughter is bullets and water.

Both in short supply all the time in any combat that I have ever read or heard about.

Has anybody ever heard anyone who was in a firefight at close range say: 'Ammo? Plenty of that. Wasn't even worried about burning it off in two minutes flat. I pick my shots me.'

I should like to meet such a man. Shake his hand. Maybe buy him a beer.

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If you want to control your ammo expenditure effectively in CM, don't worry about rates of expenditure, worry about enemy cover and range, and whether the target needs shooting.

You don't care if you've run out of ammo if before that he runs out of men. You will only get into trouble if you shoot in situations where you are unlikely to do lasting damage.

Can an SMG squad fire off all its ammo in 2 minutes in close enough combat. Yes. It can also eliminate an entire enemy squad in 2 bursts, if it catches them in a street outside its own building, trying to get in.

Under ordinary conditions, most infantry can kill their own numbers before running out of ammo. And break as many more again.

What wastes ammo? SMG fire at 100m or more. LMG and rifle fire into cover, beyond 200m, or even into the open, beyond about 300m. Personally, I give SMG squads 70m 180 degree covered arcs on the first turn, routinely. The same with HQs. LMG and rifle squads get 200-250m arcs if defending with open ground ahead, and more like 150-200m arcs on the attack.

I won't fire at range into cover. I won't area fire with infantry squads, other than to suppress a known and fully located shooter who has pinned, a unit behind a stone wall, etc.

If you do that you can still face ammo problems, particularly for a point platoon and late in a fight. But not serious ones. The enemy will run out of morale before you run out of ammo. Yes some units have lower shots. They have higher FP to match.

They do their damage faster, which is good (less time to rally, fewer own men hit, etc), but all can do damage over their whole ammo loads, and about the same amounts if each gets their shots off. Not surprising, since they can all carry about the same amount of ammo - some weapons just throw it faster than others.

The other thing that can get you into trouble ammo wise is fire that just "taps" but never "smashes". If you hit a unit in cover with low firepower again and again and again, it will keep rallying as fast as you add the suppression. You are burning ammo for essentially nothing in return when you do that. Wasting it.

Instead, hammer them then move on. You can do this by e.g. group selecting a whole platoon and giving them one target. They will actually hurt it. Next turn shift to another, if the first is heads down. It takes a lot longer to recover from one deep pin or break, than from a lot of little visits to "alerted" or "cautious".

It is also a waste to pour huge amounts of fire onto already broken men, especially units that have only 1-2 cowering men remaining. Target units that are "up". Units that are "down", you can "pursue by fire" with one MG or other high ammo shooter, to prevent rally. But you don't have to, and can't really afford to, fire gobs of ammo at the last cowering man in every position.

The ammo supply in CM is generous. In the real deal the men fired very little by comparison. A single load often lasted the men several days or a week, while in CM it often lasts only 15 minutes. And they needed around 10,000 bullets fired to generate one casualty, on average. Casualties per battalion per day ran 5 (average) to 50 (very heavy action), most of them from HE not small arms.

I regularly see the former from single squads, and the latter from best platoons, in half an hour of CM shooting - which works out to about 10 times the average real level of accuracy per bullet fired.

It is enough, *if* you shoot only where you have any business shooting (in range and cover terms), and shoot to break, not to merely annoy nor to annihilate last routed survivors.

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JasonC makes some good points. I see the most damaging of of my many failings as a commander is my incompetence at getting a handle on ammo expenditure. How many times have I gone back to a map after a game to check the stats and found squads depleted of ammo but without any kills? That might have something to do with my ordering them to fire on that mg nest 300m off in the rocks for four straight turns. On this point the AI appears to do a better job than me.

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Many times I've had to rope in a squad or MG that was wasting precious ammo on a target that was too far away and/or under sufficient cover that they might as well have been blowing soap bubbles at them, or at broken units fleeing off the board. Covered arcs can help here, but you may also need to key x to get them to un-target.

Michael

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Originally posted by MikeyD:

How many times have I gone back to a map after a game to check the stats and found squads depleted of ammo but without any kills?

Well, they don't necessarily have to be scoring kills to be doing something useful with their ammo. If they are suppressing an enemy squad long enough for one of your own squads to close in for the kill, they've done their job. But wherever possible, this suppressive fire should be delivered by MGs and HMGs that come with lots of ammo to burn. Tank and HT MGs are especially plentifully supplied, and can move around the board quickly too. Just don't get them nailed by anything that can hurt them.

Michael

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