A Small Arms Firing Mechanics Question

[Chad Harrison]

It has happened to all of us, I am sure of it. You have men firing at a squad of some sort in a building. Right after your squad 'shoots', the enemy squad runs in the open to another building. This is a perfect time to catch them in the open! Casulties will be high for them!! But, alas, you men just rotate and watch them run into the other building, and then fire.

From what I can tell, the CM codes small arms fire/MG fire/ect as a single occurance each time they 'shoot'; ie. it is not continous firing.

Why? Am I mistaken? I can see how it makes ammo counts easier, but I feel like I am playing an old board game where we each make our 'attack', one at a time.

Any word on how CMBB will be with regards to this? Can we expect to see the same mechanics? Or will we get continous firing? ESPECIALLY with machineguns. IMHO, that is the biggest downfall of CMBO MG's; they just dont shoot fast enough when they are being rushed.

Any helpfull insight would be appreciated!!

Chad Harrison

[SuperTed]

Chad,

Actually there will be absolutely no shooting in CMBB. Somebody could get hurt. :eek:

[BloodyBucket]

Combat Mission: Beyond Belligerence, a game of daisies and sunshine depicting the actual events of the Eastern Front in a stunning 3-D environment that focuses on building self awareness in a positive, nonviolent atmosphere.

Phooey.

[Bullethead]

Chad Harrison said:

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>From what I can tell, the CM codes small arms fire/MG fire/ect as a single occurance each time they 'shoot'; ie. it is not continous firing.<hr></blockquote>

Yup, that's how it works. Gotta live with it.

[Chad Harrison]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by SuperTed:

Chad,

Actually there will be absolutely no shooting in CMBB. Somebody could get hurt. :eek: <hr></blockquote>

Ted,

I was afraid of that. All this talk of tanks, trenches, cool graphics, ect ect ect;

but never any talk of shooting! I cant believe that BTS went passive . . .

[M Hofbauer]

Chad,

as you suspected yourself, CMBO models small arms fire with periodical volley fire.

This will not be changed for CMBB.

[JasonC]

It is periodic volleys, yes. Two things to notice about the subject in addition, however. First, the time between the volleys is lower when the range is very close, ammo permitting. And second, since the volleys are not "time synchronized", if multiple shooters have LOS to the same spot, they are much more likely to hit a unit moving over a certain open area.

The effect is that "short rushes" often work against limited defenders, as a way of crossing limited patches of open ground. But if you have e.g. 3-4 MGs, or a platoon, covering the same bit of open ground, chances are nobody will get through it without being shot. If half of the shooters are suppressed then the rush becomes feasible again. And rushing right onto an enemy position is harder than crossing their LOS without moving next to them, because of the rate of fire change in the latter case.

All of which is good, IMO. Better than "continuous" application of firepower, certainly. To prevent short rushes, you need more guys up and looking (instead of ducking), from more angles of view. Lone units have little ability to defend ground, and not great ability to defend even themselves.

Incidentally, to see that continuous shooting is simply not physically possible, just look at the ammo loads the men actually carried in rounds, and the cyclic rate of fire of the weapons. Many units have only 30 seconds of firing, and even the largest ammo load HMGs only have enough for a few minutes.

Sure, a couple of rifles might be firing at a different time, but the fire of a squad or MG has to go in flurries and lulls. And the men have lots of other things to worry about the rest of the time - reloading, shifting positions to see a moving enemy or to get better cover against the most recent shooter, running messages or orders, etc.

Realistic fire and movement tactics of the period stressed short rushes of less than 5 seconds by part of a squad, combined with cover fire by the rest, to keep enemy heads down during the rush. Then a pause of varying length, then the next part jumps up "level" with the earlier group, etc. Sometimes defenders would "catch" such a rush while "up", other times they wouldn't.

[M Hofbauer]

JasonC,

to accept and live with volley fire in CMBO because with the cuirrent engine there is no other way to do it is one thing, but to go so far as calling it more realistic than nonvolley fire is plain ridiculous.

Sure volley fire is realistic and historically correct - but only for Napoleonic-type warfare.

The comments you made about the soldiers not always having their head up, and reloading, cowering etc. are correct - however, in a squad of twelve, spread over a small front, not all are doing everything at the same time.

The total amount of ammo available which you cite as another reason "for" volley fire does not apply either. First of all, volley fire should stop completely when the ammo is gone, not continue at reduced frequency. Second, the soldiers don't just blast away all their half minute worth of ammo (which btw is wrong, ammo for example an MP-44 would last for a practical time span of about 5 minutes of effective fire, with a Kar 98k it would be considerably more) like that, instead they wait for opportunities to fire it at targets that present themselves. Which in this case would mean that if 12 people cross pavement in front of an enemy squad, then they shopuld be engaged by at least some of the soldiers in the squad which happen to be "up" at the time, and not reach some place else before the enemy reacts.

You are probably envisioning the gratuitous use of ammo in a spray and pray manner, as we are plentifully shown in poor Hollywood war movies and MiamiVice.

I refer to real-world usage SOP as outlined for example in the WSS document Nr. 392/44 - Merkblatt 34h5 Nr. II/6061/44 and the addendum to the DV 1854/2, Doc. 393/44 72a Nr. II/12100/44, both referring to the firing policy w/r/t the MP-43 / MP-44;

quote from the first document, E.1. (rough translation by me):

"Fire bursts are only to be fired at large and rewarding targets, they consist of 3 to 4 rounds. Auto fire is never to be used under no circumstances, they are waste of ammunition. The soldier must know to use carefully aimed single shots at favorable temporary targets of opportunity."

In other words, instead of blindly firing their weapons at the enemy in the other house every ten seconds, they would tend to wait for moments of opportunity and then open fire with aimed shots.

Your idea that a realistic portrayal of continuous firing ability would lead to a depletion of the ammo within half a minute is therefore hilarious, just like your praise of volley fire.

Again, I accept squad volley fire as a current part of the abstraction in CM, but to call it the best thing since sliced bread is simply ridiculous.

Please note this refers to a fully automatic assault rifle, and not some sniper bolt action rifle.

[JasonC]

In order to conserve ammo, they must fire only now and then, exactly. That is what the ammo limits show, that they have to pick their shots. But no, they do not have the ability to magically foretell the future and know that the enemy is about to rush across the street, so picking shots at the apparent targets in the windows of that house over there is a comparative waste of ammo.

And knowing that they are only going to fire from time to time, and picking their shots, they spend much of their rest of their time under "total cover", heads down, crawling from A to B, etc. During which periods they are not going to blast at every target of opportunity, precisely because they had not planned on shooting at that moment.

And no, none of my impressions of the matter come from Hollywood or visions of spraying and praying for 30 seconds. They come from crawling around in MILES gear in tall damp grass and peeping through iron sights at briefly visible shapes in windows, or blurs right along the grass line. Anybody who tries to tell you a squad of men can always fire all its weapons whenever a short rush occurs, in realistic conditions, simply hasn't ever done it.

What is going up and down periodically, allowing only periodic fire and thus allowing short rushes to often evade fire completely, are heads. LOS while fully prone is generally non-existent. You have to expose yourself to have even an opportunity to fire, and nobody exposes themselves that way continually - even in mock combats, let alone in the real thing.

[Andrew H.]

Given the abstract nature of small arms combat in CM, "volley fire" probably produces more accurate results than continuous fire would.

To be really realistic, CM would have to completely rewrite the code to track and model the fire of individual soldiers. Fire in this case might be continuous, but it would generally not be continuous fire by the entire squad; it would only be continuous fire by those soldiers with LOS, a clear shot, and who actually decided to fire their weapons.

So in the above example, if some soldiers darted between a house, they might be shot at in a way that wouldn't happen with "volley fire," but they might only be fired at by one man. And the game engine would have to choose whether the man was the one armed with the rifle, the smg, the mp44, or maybe the mg42.

One problem with this system would be that it would often turn out that a squad in a particular location would not have its men disposed in the way the player would like -- that is, the player might want to cover a certain area, or might expect an attack from a particular direction, but the computer may have determined that the MG42 and MP44s were covering another area, leaving only the riflemen to deal with the expected threat area. Players, of course, would then want the opportunity to place individual squad members where they wanted... and then CM is no longer a squad based game.

Given that the game doesn't model individual soldiers, I think that the full-squad-fires-in-volleys system more accurately models realism than a full-squad-fires-continuously model would. I've never had a problem with how the volley fire mechanism works, since soldiers did not automatically fire at every target that presented itself. But it's at least conceiveable that the volley-fire mechanism could be tweaked to permit extra volleys under certain conditions...such as against particularly vulnerable targets, especially if the targets are not likely to return fire.

[Gyrene]

You all disappoint me.

If any of you had paid any attention to your historical documents (John Wayne westerns & Star Trek battles) you would realize that all firefights are accomplished like a tennis match.

I go, then you go.

Your squad cannot return fire at the retreating troops simply because it is the opposing troops' turn to fire.

It was good enough for Napoleon, so it's good enough for you.

Huzzah!

Gyrene

[JasonC]

I wouldn't mind seeing "hot MG" behavior linked to target cover state, which might fit with what Andrew is suggesting. I do think that would be an improvement, and especially that it would be better than rate of fire dependent only on range, or the same for all unit types. You'd see the crew served weapons (much more likely to be ready to fire whenever they aren't moving) suppress attempts to cross open ground better, which I think would add to realism.

[CombinedArms]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Gyrene:

You all disappoint me.

If any of you had paid any attention to your historical documents (John Wayne westerns & Star Trek battles) you would realize that all firefights are accomplished like a tennis match.

I go, then you go.

Your squad cannot return fire at the retreating troops simply because it is the opposing troops' turn to fire.

It was good enough for Napoleon, so it's good enough for you.

Huzzah!

Gyrene<hr></blockquote>

Gyrene,

You've left out one other really important fact from your historical sources (i.e the movies).

I mean, of course, that the "bad guys" never hit anything!--except sometimes a minor hero in the arm. I've found that the high degree of accuracy of enemy tanks and AT weapons against my AFVs is one of the most lamentable and unrealistic features of CM. I'm really looking forward to seeing that changed in CMBB.

PS. (I'd love to see the gunnery classes attended by Star Wars' imperial storm troopers. "Ok, men, now aim your phasers just to the right of the target. That will produce a really satisfying bounce off that protecting wall....")

[ 01-24-2002: Message edited by: CombinedArms ]</p>

[Runyan99]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Andrew Hedges:

To be really realistic, CM would have to completely rewrite the code to track and model the fire of individual soldiers. Fire in this case might be continuous, but it would generally not be continuous fire by the entire squad; it would only be continuous fire by those soldiers with LOS, a clear shot, and who actually decided to fire their weapons<hr></blockquote>

This is what I would like to see for CMII-The Engine Rewrite. More detailed modeling of the weapons within the squad. It would be great if every weapon in the squad fired individually, AND the ammo tracked for each man/weapon in the squad.

Imagine brigning up the detailed info on a squad (Enter Key) and seeing a name for each man in the squad, his assigned weapon, his current ammo loadout, and his current action (firing, reloading, panicking, dead, ready, wounded, etc).

Even if none of this was represented GRAPHICALLY, it would be a big step forward for the CM engine if the computer were keeping track of it.

Imagine then, the aforementioned situation where the German squad in the builing suddenly runs out in the open. My American squad, which has been firing on them, might now fire on them in the open, based upon the number of men in the squad who are ready to fire. If the squad BAR is jammed, two riflemen are dead, the squad leader with the Thompson is busy giving orders, and two more riflemen are reloading their weapons, then there are maybe 4-5 soldiers with M1 Garands ready to fire at the Germans as they rush into the street, and the CMII engine could have them each fire at the enemy, resolving each of their fire individually.

That would be much more realistic, and WAY COOL.