It's small arms still

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[dima]

Adam, can you make savegames or/or replays of the issues you mention? This would help better understand for the rest of us.

[hellfish]

Or just screenshots with notes. I haven't noticed this behavior.

[hoolaman]

Hi Adam,

There are a few issues you mention. And as I understand the variables in the engine your assessment that there are tricks or predetermined outcomes with small arms accuracy is wide of the mark (bad pun intended).

Firstly, aiming accuracy is modelled, and sometimes appears to be unrealistically bad, especially if the firing unit is highly experienced and misses at close range. But mostly I think it gives a good overall effect, expecially at medium/longer ranges.

Second there appears to be a height that infantry in the game will try to aim to get kills. There are of course a myriad of situations that an enemy could be in, and it may be that in many situations you find units aiming at chest or head height as you say when that might not be appropriate.

I think the issue with HMGs could be as much about rate of fire as about aiming. MGs seem pretty leisurely about squeezing off pathetic little three round bursts sometimes.

Then there is cover, which I believe is given based on what you see visually, along with the possibility to give some abstract value to open ground.

So there are a few variables that are simulated in complicated ways, and if the interaction of these do not seem perfect at the moment, I don't think that's due to tricks or abstractions. Higher lethality from firing low at buildings might be simply a bug.

You also mentioned concealment, but playing around with my own little LOS scenarios I have noticed pretty good concealment while prone in thick forests and such. It might be some sort of thermal imaging effect giving the advantage to Strykers.

[Cpl Steiner]

What do you mean by foxholes? I've seen trenches in the game, and troops on the defending side sometimes have shallow "shell-scrapes" but I've never seen a true foxhole as far as I'm aware.

[Hev]

another point with regards to hiding troops, in previous versions of the game troops would get shot while the squad was hiding but if you look what the soldier was doing it tends to be the case that he was "spotting" and hence exposing his melon to incoming fire.

[flamingknives]

I think that's a question worth asking.

Adam, what's the effective rate of fire for a HMG?

And what do you mean by "HMG"?

[JasonC]

All the Russian make HMGs have a 600 round per minute cyclic rate of fire. 12.7mm and 14.5mm. The PKM medium has 650, essentially the same. So that is a 10 round burst in a second. The larger ones typically load 50 round belts.

US 50 cal has variable timing, between 450 rpm (standard) and 600 rpm. Call it 8-10 rounds per second-long burst.

Sustained rates of fire are lower than cyclic, in the sense the gun will overheat if the triggers are depressed continually. The belt will usually give out before that happens, though, resulting in some down time to load another. If you have a loader continually hooking up new belts to the old, you could fire long enough to overheat the gun. Then it would probably jam.

The recommended sustained rate of fire is around 120 rpm, or a burst every 4 or 5 seconds.

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[flamingknives]

I was rather more interested to know what Adam's perception of that was, as I think it may be key.

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[flamingknives]

So what we want here is grazing fire?

ISTR a discussion about that before CMSF came out. Don't recall how it came out, but BFC were involved.

Effective rate is germane to this situation, because it's that which may create those "silly aiming pauses" Effective rate is entirely different to cyclic rate.

So, for example, an FN-MAG has a cyclic rate of 700-900 RPM. Sustained rate, which might be considered effective rate, is closer to 200, so it will typically be firing for one quarter of the time, or the pauses will be three times the length of the firing. If you are specifying area fire, I would assume that the team would go for sustained fire rates.

If we are talking in accepted conventions, however, HMG means something larger than rifle calibre, so for the US, it's an M2. Sustained rate on that is in the region of 40 RPM. So it's only firing for eight percent of the time.

Note that sustained fire still requires barrel changes and the like, for a GPMG.

It sounds like it would be nice to co-ordinate MG teams such that they alternate their firing to keep up a more constant stream of fire.

When we go back to WW2, weapon heating and effective rate should really matter, because that's what sets a Vickers apart from an MG42.

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[flamingknives]

Point of note, tripod MGs were only really HMGs towards the latter part of WW1, following the introduction of "light" MGs, like the Lewis gun. After WW1, heavier calibres, like the 0.5", came into service in a bigger way, and these became the HMGs, while the tripod mounted weapons were Medium MGs.

With WW2 and a bit after, this persisted but at the same time the German MG34 and 42 started the concept of GPMG in the sustained fire role, which has since been adopted by nearly every army.

[/Mr. flamingPicky mode]

Tripod MGs will be mostly concerned with heating - any sighting adjustments can be made whilst pausing to let the gun cool.

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[thewood]

What I have noticed (not scientific or statistically valid) is the area fire seems to all over the place. Should it be spread around 15 of 20 ft. or more concentrated. It is also high a lot.

[Battlefront.com]

Sorry I haven't weighed in yet. Been a tad busy and not had the brain power this past week. Still don't

I will correct one misconception... tripods improve accuracy when firing full auto, but you still need to have fire discipline to be effective. I've fired most WWII MMG/HMGs myself and I can tell you that the tripods aren't that heavy. They just keep the MG from jumping completely out of control. I've got footage of a M2 being fired from a tripod on hardpack dirt and man... if it weren't for the half dozen sandbags packed on the front of the tripod I think after every shot the tripod would walk to another county. That SOB really wants to be on a vehicle

But I digress a bit. The point is that tripods aren't some magical counter balance to the effect of recoil. They are better than a bipod, but they still have limitations. Add to this the smoke and dust that get kicked up and obscure vision (at least in a dry, dusty place) and the effective ROF is kept downward. Ammo discipline, overheating, etc. keep it down even further.

So one question is... how effective is the average tripod mounted MG in an arid environment at keeping up towards its theoretically max ROF? The next question is how much is accuracy affected as the pull of the trigger is maintained? Last question is how many times could a MG go "balls out" within the space of a CM sized battle under typical combat conditions?

We think we have it about right, but there is always room for discussion.

Grazing fire, BTW, is also heavily dependent on range. The longer the range, the more the rounds are arced, the less they "graze" and the more they "plunge".

Steve

[Zwolo2003]

Steve,

how about the "fire into the ground in front of the building to kill people inside"-effect reported by the OP? That one can't be a design choice.

Zwolo

[Darkmath]

Where is the problem?

CMSF let you choose the fire mode :aimed or grazing by ordering a area fire in front of building. How wonderful! Odd but better than aimed fire only.

[Zwolo2003]

Read the first post. The problem according to the original poster is that ordering area fire in front of a building does not result in grazing fire, but wall-piercing (or wall-avoiding) fire. Apparently it is better at killing people in the building behind the walls than fire directed at the building itself.

If true, this would be allow a gamey way of going around the proper protection that buildings ought to provide, which is obviously a problem.

Zwolo

[Guest]

Well, it might not be so much "wall-piercing" as it is well-directed. If you know an enemy is mostly down low in a building, would you order fires at torso-height (as directly targeting the unit might be doing) or baseboard-puncturing fire, as ordering low-angle area fire would do?

Seems like ordering low area fire just puts the bullets where the soldiers are more likely to be.

[Zwolo2003]

That's actually all the more worrying!

It would mean that the game combines very detailed mechanics of hit resolution with very crude targetting routines. Consequently, fire effects would be very random, more so than necessary(and randomness to me includes the situation where you can only properly fire by employing an arcane and unintuitive solution, such as targetting a patch of ground rather than the actual target).

The same would likely apply to use of cover such as trees, bushes, etc. I am starting to wonder whether the "more abstraction/uncanny valey" crowd got it right...

Zwolo

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[JasonC]

I've fired entire belts of 50 cal ammo from tripod ground mounts, and the recoil is not a serious issue for accuracy. The gun is quite smooth. If you want fire lane fire, you can bolt the barrel down with a limited "play", or with none (screw tight). It is SOP to create fire lane plans with known screw settings as part of battery area defense in the field artillery.

[JasonC]

For those who don't know what I mean about screwed firing locations or arcs, start by looking here -

http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/mg/M2.html

Scroll down to the "ground mount" subsection.

Notice that dohickie between the two back legs in the picture on the right? That is the traversing and elevation screw. It locks onto the traversing bar, that thin one between the two back legs of the tripod. The top of it fits a guide on the bottom of the gun itself.

As the section below that explains, you can then presight the gun, fire sample rounds, dial in corrections until you put rounds on target, and record the elevation and deflection settings that hit. Those are then recorded on a range card left with the gun. You can have multiple presights like this.

When the gun is locked with the traversing screw and the previous elevation and deflection dialed in, a burst will hit the same beaten zone as before. Within the guns normal dispersion, to be sure - you sight in for whole bursts.

In CM terms, TRPs and MGs would work together just fine. Equally, it is always possible to set any serious MG for zone fire, knowing exactly what area you will hit, and be able to hit it without regard to visibility conditions. This is absolutely essential for night defense, for example.

No jumping guns in the hands, rocking about randomly, involved.

For what it is worth...