Can M240's burst length be increased in the future patches?

[radioman999]

The m240 seems to be putting out about the same amount of fire as m249 even though it is a heavier machine gun. Granted the rounds from m240 are more powerful than 5.56mm and it would be too inaccurate if it went on full auto, but the m240 gunners seem to fire off longer bursts in most of the combat footages I've seen. In the game, a burst from m240s is usually about 4~5 rounds. Is this realistic?

[JonS]

Yes. Yes it is.

[theFightingSeabee]

3-5 round bursts are standard for machine guns (not including the minigun). Fire off too many and it can ruin your barrel or even start a cookoff of the rest of your rounds. But if it comes down to whether your gonna die or not, hold down that trigger and don't let up until the enemy isn't moving any more.

[JonS]

Fire off too many and it can ruin your barrel or even start a cookoff of the rest of your rounds.

Or, more likely, run out of ammunition.

[Cpl Steiner]

Is this a change from WWII then, when things like MG42s seemed to spit out lead at an astonishing rate, or is this all Hollywood hype from movies like "Saving Private Ryan"?

[radioman999]

You're right, the overheating would be an issue. I just feel that the machine gun would be more effective if it fired longer bursts for suppressive fire. Sometimes it's hard to keep enemy infantry suppressed when there is only one machine gun doing the job.

[JasonC]

In my day when it was M-60s, we were trained to fire 6 to 9 round bursts. FWIW.

As for Ryan depiction of MG42s, maybe some outliers like that but can't have been the norm. Simple math says so.

5000 men were killed or wounded at Omaha. There were 4 German battalions behind the beach with around 200 MG42s on strength. Maybe only 150 were present, in that range, won't change the conclusion. Mortars and arty got many at the seawall, where they were safe from the MGs and spent a lot of the time, which was quite protracted. As there was little effective reply fire before the 2nd wave and many lasted for hours on end, all the MGs got their licks in, if some for longer periods than others.

And they have to average under 25 men hit each all day, probably more like 15. As an average, of course, some higher and some lower etc.

If you think of depictions of single long bursts hitting 3 to 5 men in a matter of seconds, and imagine it is the norm, you'd reach the total losses actually sustained all causes in 5 to 10 bursts from each gun, which would take around 30 seconds. Instead it took hours and other causes got many of the men hit.

Ergo, most of the firing was at single men, much of it flat missed, some probably fired blind at beach zones already swept, etc. There may have been period like that but they had to be exceptional in space and MGs having the chance, as well as in time. Otherwise you'd vastly exceed the men actually hit.

The main reason being even short periods like that swept the immediate area of targets and there wasn't any opportunity to repeat it.

[Guinnessman]

Is this a change from WWII then, when things like MG42s seemed to spit out lead at an astonishing rate, or is this all Hollywood hype from movies like "Saving Private Ryan"?

IIRC the design philosophy for the MG34 and 42 was based on German experience in the latter part of WW1, when infantry tactics changed from 'walking slowly towards enemy positions' to the eminently more sensible 'running then going prone, then getting up and running for a short dash', and so on.

The Germans realised they were only going to have a short time to fire on such difficult targets and so designed their new MG's to put as many rounds as possible downrange in the time they had available, thus increasing the chance of a hit.

So the modern M240 has a rate of fire of between 750-950 rounds per minute whilst ye olde MG42 clocks in at 1200 rounds per minute. Hollywood is correct in as much as the MG42 fires faster....Im not sure what training WW2 German machine-gunners were given re burst length, but if JasonC was trained to fire 6-9 round bursts using a 550 round per minute M60 it must have been a real bugger trying to get ammo expenditure down with an MG42 firing 20 rounds per second!

Of course, at Omaha beach the Germans would have had pre-positioned stockpiles of ammo for their weapons so they could be a little more free with the trigger!

[Bigduke6]

It is also axiomatic that troops under actual fire shoot off ammo faster, and with less control, than on the firing range; and that the more dangerous the actual incoming fire is, the less likely troops are to keep to the officially-set volumes.

Troop quality matters in the equation, which is why they call it fire discipline. But it is worth remembering that even excellent troops under little threat will, if left to their own devices, often just unload on a target rather then squeeze off nice controlled bursts like they were trained.

It would be pretty cool if the game could simulate that, do a .wav for a short burst when the unit is fresh and happy, and a long burst .wav when it's rattled or close to pinned, and adjust ammo expenditure and casualties accordingly.

[Cougar_DK]

I was in the Royal Danish Air Force in 1990 and was in basic training assigned as a MG helper, i.e. the guy that carries the ammo and extra pipe for the light machine gun M/62. The M/62 fired 7.62 and was built on the Maschinengewehr Modell 42 firing 7.92 ammo.

We were taught at that time to control our burst to 4-5 shots at the firing range, something really difficult with this beast and 10-15 was more likely. And for the fun of it we also tried firing single shots (very difficult).

[radioman999]

It would be pretty cool if the game could simulate that, do a .wav for a short burst when the unit is fresh and happy, and a long burst .wav when it's rattled or close to pinned, and adjust ammo expenditure and casualties accordingly.

Yeah I like that idea, similarly it would be cool to see TacAI tweaked so that it uses shorter burst for specific targets and longer for suppressive/area target

[Secondbrooks]

I've used LMG firing 1000-1100 round minute and with that thing it was 2-3 rounds back in -99... But we currently are thought (or atleast i was half a year ago) to "douple-tap" with two short 2 round burts. Fire remains controlled and rate of fire as high as possible.

But i'm not trained machinegunner. It can be that they get more training on how to handle and fire LMG. What i fired wasn't suppressive fire or anything, just pop-up targets in livefirerange or lasersimulator in quite heavily wooded and brushed terrain. no reason (or even possibility) to fire suppressive fire. And usually i had to conserve my ammo, as it's was something like one 100 round belt full + few boxes of spare rounds.

[ShaneO]

It would be pretty cool if the game could simulate that, do a .wav for a short burst when the unit is fresh and happy, and a long burst .wav when it's rattled or close to pinned, and adjust ammo expenditure and casualties accordingly.

Yeah, it would actually. I was in the pub the other night with a group that included a bunch of the people I'd gotten into Beyond Overlord back in the day and I started on about Shock Force, and people who didn't know what we were talking about asked about it, and I noticed that the stuff that people were telling stories about wasn't what units are included, or what battles recreated or any of that, but the cool little things. The way your guys would misidentify enemy units, or how troop quality would affect how they respond to different situations, or how you can ride a small team on the deck of a tank.

It's those details that make a good game great, and from the looks of things, that make the sale by word of mouth. I think I've got a number of old Beyond Overlord fans on the hook now, I just need to reel 'em in and I'll have a good stable of opponents in the area.

Anyway, my point is that I agree that adding in something like long bursts when morale is down isn't necessarily just a worthless bauble - it's the kind of thing that people describe enthusiastically in the pub. And that's one place new players come from!

[BlackSwan]

I think during the War in Afghanistan a Canadian soldier used a .50 cal MG as a sniper weapon and killed an insurgent. Can't remember the details now, though...

[hoolaman]

Yeah, it would actually. I was in the pub the other night with a group that included a bunch of the people I'd gotten into Beyond Overlord back in the day and I started on about Shock Force, and people who didn't know what we were talking about asked about it, and I noticed that the stuff that people were telling stories about wasn't what units are included, or what battles recreated or any of that, but the cool little things. The way your guys would misidentify enemy units, or how troop quality would affect how they respond to different situations, or how you can ride a small team on the deck of a tank.

It's those details that make a good game great, and from the looks of things, that make the sale by word of mouth. I think I've got a number of old Beyond Overlord fans on the hook now, I just need to reel 'em in and I'll have a good stable of opponents in the area.

Anyway, my point is that I agree that adding in something like long bursts when morale is down isn't necessarily just a worthless bauble - it's the kind of thing that people describe enthusiastically in the pub. And that's one place new players come from!

Good post.

[radioman999]

Yeah, it would actually. I was in the pub the other night with a group that included a bunch of the people I'd gotten into Beyond Overlord back in the day and I started on about Shock Force, and people who didn't know what we were talking about asked about it, and I noticed that the stuff that people were telling stories about wasn't what units are included, or what battles recreated or any of that, but the cool little things. The way your guys would misidentify enemy units, or how troop quality would affect how they respond to different situations, or how you can ride a small team on the deck of a tank.

It's those details that make a good game great, and from the looks of things, that make the sale by word of mouth. I think I've got a number of old Beyond Overlord fans on the hook now, I just need to reel 'em in and I'll have a good stable of opponents in the area.

Anyway, my point is that I agree that adding in something like long bursts when morale is down isn't necessarily just a worthless bauble - it's the kind of thing that people describe enthusiastically in the pub. And that's one place new players come from!

Second that!

[slug88]

The long bursts under duress thing is already in...I've seen a panicked conscript squad unload all their ammo at full auto on the first target they see, many times. I've seen this behavior in vehicles too. One of the more memorable moments in this game for me was controlling a BMP-2 in urban combat; the BMP rounded a corner and found itself face to face with an enemy Bradley. It seems that the crew must have been as surprised as I was, because they proceeded to dispense with the usual business of two-to-three round bursts and just continued firing at full auto until the cannon ran out of ammo (at which point they fired off the At-4 and the Bradley exploded).

[Uedel]

Trained in Germany Army on the MG3 (which is almost identical to the MG42 except a lower Rate of Fire 900-1000 IIRC).

Usually u fire 3-5 Rounds per shot, but there is something called "Storm-Defense-Fire" in this Case u Hold the Trigger and aim by the Hit marks/Dirt blows of your Bullets.

Don´t Care about the Barrel on MG42 it is exchangeable like it is also on the MG3 which means you can swap it out in about 15 seconds one swaps out the Barrel (the loader) while the gunner puts in a new belt of ammo means that in extreme cases and Ample Ammo i can fire sustained about 500 Shoots a minute for about 3-4 minutes depends on outside Temperature and the amount of extra Barrels u have but usually was 2 Barrels per MG.

Hollywood might not be so far away with Situations like the ones on the Beach, because in such situations u give a **** about the MG Barrel might get broken after u finished, because u know if u don't keep them buggers on their flat face down in the dirt the come to kill you, because they hate Machinegunners........

[Guinnessman]

Usually u fire 3-5 Rounds per shot, but there is something called "Storm-Defense-Fire" in this Case u Hold the Trigger and aim by the Hit marks/Dirt blows of your Bullets.

Now that there ladies and gentlemen sums up why I've always had a special place in my heart for the German military. Nobody else could give such a tactic a more cooler name..... 'Storm-Defence-Fire'......... hell yeah!

[LongLeftFlank]

Uedel's version sounds about right, and is corroborated in many LiveLeak vids of US troops in Iraq hosing down targets with both short and long bursts, depending on their stress level (and ammo availability).

Also, I may be spouting myth here (and would be happy to be corrected), but didn't WWI watercooled Maxim HMGs fire more or less continually, with the trigger locked down and the gunner tapping the handle to shift the nonstop stream of lead?

Of course, you couldn't manage this kind of sustained fire using aircooled MGs (except perhaps in subzero weather), but there are other well-known MG tactics as grazing or interdiction fire which almost by definition require longer bursts.

[Battlefront.com]

Slug88 is correct. I can't remember when that was added, but if I had to guess it was around v1.05 or so.

Udel, what you are talking about is commonly called "final defensive fire" IIRC. That's when the risk of jamming and/or overheating and/or running out of ammo is far lower than the risk of someone coming into your defensive position and rapping you on the head with his rifle butt! We had something like that in CMBB/AK and we should make sure we have it in CMx2 going forward.

Steve

[JonS]

... didn't WWI watercooled Maxim HMGs fire more or less continually, with the trigger locked down and the gunner tapping the handle to shift the nonstop stream of lead?

No. Short bursts for them too.

What they were able to do was fire for exceptionally long periods of time (24 hrs in one case that I'm aware of) with little or no maintenance.

[LongLeftFlank]

You never answered the previous inquiry... why do you get to use the "Special Forces" moniker? Huh dad? Why? Why?

[Battlefront.com]

The main advantage of the water cooled MGs, in the early days, is that gun designers hadn't managed to come up with a good air cooled MG that could offer the same sort of overall performance and reliability (what JonS refers to). That changed, especially during WWII, and water cooled MGs fell out of favor because their drawbacks were significant.

The primary limiting factor to MG fire is ammo supply. Air cooled, water cooled, urin cooled ... whatever... there is still the same amount of ammo and it is usually only found in massive abundance in fixed positional warfare where the defender has good resupply opportunities. Therefore, disciplined gunners and junior leadership try hard to not get carried away. No point of defeating an attack at 0600 with all your ammo if a second attack comes in at 0900!

LLF, in answer to your inquiry about "Special Forces", that has something to do with JonS' tester status. But I honestly don't remember how that all works!

Steve

[Huntarr]

Fire Discipline is the main issue with man portable MG's, like Steve and others have stated. The MG42 had an amazing ROF but what's the point if you shoot a guy with 300 rnds and then his ticked off buddies overrun your position because your outta ammo. Long bursts look good in the movies but Fire Discipline is much more important.