How do machine guns work in real-life and in CM:SF?

[Flanker15]

I've always been critical of the way the machine guns work in CM:SF but I thought that it might be wise to check that I'm not being dumb since I have not much knowledge of modern MG usage.

Ok as you know the MGs in CM:SF fire in a rising vertical line which will always miss targets unless the line is perfectly aligned with the enemy. I thought that MGs (atleast medium and heavy ones) fire their shots in a spread (manually or just through shot deviation) so that they cover an area of ground to maximise hitting chance? Is this right for modern MGs?

Also the other thing is: are those shots I see when a MG fires in CM:SF the actually shots that need to hit a target to work or are their invisible shots that spread out more?

Basically:

How do SAW fire their shots in real-life and is it like CM:SF?

How do bigger MGs fire their shots in real-life and is it like CM:SF?

Do the tracers that I see represent the actual bullets being shot?

Bonus question! Is their a deviation model for bullets in CM:SF, all the auto weapons seem to be able to fire in perfect vertical lines with no horizontal drift?

[theFightingSeabee]

Flanker15,

I was a .50 cal gunner for 2 years, and worked closely with, and am trained in, the use of lighter machine guns.

Mounted or "deployed" machine guns have are clamped down. When you adjust your aim, you turn you elevation knob, fire a few rounds, and adjust again. There is, however, also a Transverse knob, that lets you slowly adjust left and right. Really the only time you want to free gun it is in close quarters or in a narrow valley or something where you need to move the mg quickly.

The bullets will naturally fire in a cone shape, a cone of deviation. Since the bullets are flying nearly parallel to the ground, the cone becomes an elongated oval along the ground. This area where the bullets hit, is called the beaten zone. So yes, the up and down adjustments and the elongated beaten zone could be considered authentic. Zero left and right deviation is not authentic. But still the beaten zone is vertically longer.

Generally, tracers are positioned every 4th or 5 round. Meaning there are 3 or 4 bullets between each tracer. I do not know if cmsf has this properly modeled, but that's how it is in real life. Also, you generally won't see tracers used with a rifle. They can be, but not likely, unless a squad leader wants to point out targets or something.

The SAW is used to spray bullets. For that reason it's good for suppression. It's basically used properly in the game. Think of the SAW as a beefed up m16 with a belt instead of a mag.

The tactical usage of larger mg's are not fully realized in cmsf. For example, there is no grazing fire order. This creates a wall of bullets and is extremely useful in defense. I guess you could simulate this by manipulating target arcs.

For the most part, cmsf does a great job. It's not perfect, but for a game it can't be beat.

[cmfan]

I've trained with Heavy and light machine guns as well and agree with what Seabee states. The machine gun modeling is not perfect, but its pretty good all things considered.

There is one point that Seabee brings up that I've wondered about but haven't thought to ask until now: why all the tracers in the game? Particularly, for small arms like the M4?

Even artillery seems to have a tracer effect!

Did BF just want to add more eye candy to the game or did they feel it would help the player with identifying where troops (friendly and enemy) were firing?

[PSY]

Did BF just want to add more eye candy to the game or did they feel it would help the player with identifying where troops (friendly and enemy) were firing?

Personally I think it's very useful to see who is firing at whom.

[Battlefront.com]

Yup, tracer fire is more of a game convention than an explicit simulation of reality.

Steve

[MikeyD]

I recall very early in the Beta they tried testing the game without tracers. A bad idea - a VERY bad idea. The thing is the game can't simulate simple things like detecting the direction of incoming fire from the sound or taking note of which direction people are looking. In real life you hear a pop to your left and people within your line of view look towards the upper floor of the building to your left. There's no way of recreating that in the game. Hence the tracers.

[cmfan]

I recall very early in the Beta they tried testing the game without tracers. A bad idea - a VERY bad idea. The thing is the game can't simulate simple things like detecting the direction of incoming fire from the sound or taking note of which direction people are looking. In real life you hear a pop to your left and people within your line of view look towards the upper floor of the building to your left. There's no way of recreating that in the game. Hence the tracers.

You can located the source of fire if you have surround sound speakers (or good headphones) and sound is localized to the position your viewing from

Now that I think about it I've obtained a good sense of where fire is coming from by sound alone more than a few times. I do cheat however as I will hit replay a couple of times and change my orientation to triangulate the sound. Probably the equivalent of a squad sitting under cover asking each other "did you hear that? what direction didn't it come from?"

[SlapHappy]

Back to Mg's for a moment.

Will there be any changes for WWII game which will enunciate the power of the Heavy German MG's? I'm talking about the tripod mounted 34 and 42's with optics.

If so, any chance of BFC letting a few cats out of the bag about this one small topic?

I was really disappointed with the way the Heavy MG was treated in Theatre of War.

[Apocal]

Back to Mg's for a moment.

Will there be any changes for WWII game which will enunciate the power of the Heavy German MG's? I'm talking about the tripod mounted 34 and 42's with optics.

I was under the impression that as a HMG, the MG32/42 was rather average.

I was really disappointed with the way the Heavy MG was treated in Theatre of War.

Most games undermodel the effect machine guns have, especially HMGs. I can understand in FPS where developers don't want to place the majority of the combat power into relatively few, boring "support weapons" and have the gameplay stagnate but in wargames it's something of oddity.

CMSF isn't necessarily perfect in that regard, it does better than most and I do more often than not find myself thinking in terms of getting GPMGs and HMGs into advantageous positions when fighting an infantry battle.

[Flanker15]

Thanks guys that helped!

So support MGs still work like they did in WW2, I guess that's something I can hope for in later CMx2 games. I guess it was allot easier in CMx1 where you just hit a point and then a "hit" area was drawn around it, then any squads in the area were checked for casualties.

Maybe the MGs will get an upgrade in the Brit mod or WW2?

" there is no grazing fire "

That sounds strangly familiar.

[Falconander]

Seabee,

Good recount of machinegun use. I was an M60 team leader and this is all dead on.

Flanker15,

I could swear that area fire causes the machinegun to traverse/sweep back and fort hacross a target area. Had a BMP area fire my snipers i nthe bush one time. Son of a gun could not see me too well but that area fire swept around a bit and kep them pinned until they were dead.

As far as grazing fire goes, I would love to hear of someone who has deployed this in actual combat and how effective it was. Plus a guess at the rounds they put down range for this.

Grazing fire was always on the range card but I rarely used it.

[SlapHappy]

You may indeed be right about area fire...I use it so little except on buildings that I wouldn't be the most authoritative on that topic.

I guess it's important to keep in mind there are actually 3 types of fire in the game:

Targeted Fire

AI Fire

Area Fire

In my perfect CMSF world, traverse MG firing would be supported in all 3 types. AI fire would have to be situational, of course, which could lead to some tricky coding solutions.

EDIT: I've actually heard of situations where MG fire is used in INDIRECT fire situations, which is of course not currently supported in any form in any game I know of, including CMSF.

[19Kyle72]

I just wish that the tracer rounds were tinted (red for U.S. and green for them). Maybe in the next update?

[theFightingSeabee]

I'm 100% positive that grazing fire has been effectively employed in every major war and most small wars since ww1. Grazing fire is quite common. Maybe most of them didn't draw up range cards before hand, but it's used all the time in combat. It could be as simple as an iraqi dude set up on a corner in falluja. Knowing the Marines are crossing the street 5 blocks away, he's shooting 3-5 round bursts down the street, creating a wall of bullets down the street that may cover several blocks.

I think there are ways of accomplishing this in cmsf, you just have to have a little imagination. You could area fire a building down a road and let the enemy try to cross the road. There are more complex forms of fire, but we don't necessarily need all that in the game. The tools they provide in the game are good enough to be able to use VERY realistic combat tactics. That's why this is my favorite game.

Realistic tracer counts would be cool to have (as an option), but I do like seeing all the fireworks!

Edit: Hell yeah, colored tracers for each side would be great!

[19Kyle72]

theFightingSeebee,

I totally agree with you (and myself, "ironically") for wanting to have realistically assigned tracer colors. It would make it a LOT easier to make sense of the chaos. Does our brilliant consensus add up to only two votes, or three (including my previous vote from before?).

Yeah, my wife doesn't think that my humor isn't all that brilliant either.

;-D

By the way, I don't want ALL firing effects to be color coded, just the applicable small arms fire. Few things are more confusing and terrifying than having your forces getting pounded by artillery rounds that are landing over your head at just about the time your expecting your OWN artillery to start pounding their positions. Is it THEIR artillery hitting you, or your OWN artillery hitting you?!

I'm all in favor of keeping the fireworks, as it is about the only chance we have at figuring out what's going on, but please, oh PLEASE tint the small arms stuff accurately.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that it isn't just small arms fire that's color coded, but that canon fire is as well. Not sure though...

Good night!

[Flanker15]

Yes if you area fire the gunner will target spots all over the action spot. However they still fire bursts in straight lines so it's not very good at hitting still.

Here's my nice little diagram based on what I've picked up here, showing three bursts and the units they can hit. (distance not modeled):

[dan/california]

They may be compensating a little for the way that squads bunch up more than they would in real life. Just a guess on my part.

[C'Rogers]

They may be compensating a little for the way that squads bunch up more than they would in real life. Just a guess on my part.

I'm pretty sure Steve has said there are compensations in the game for exactly that.

In this thread he does say that there is compensation for explosives.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84640&page=21&highlight=bunching

[Flanker15]

That does make sense.

Will the mighty battlefront add its wisdom to this?

[Apocal]

I'm not going to claim as much experience as FightingSeabee, but in my experience, we tried to keep horizontal deviation to a minimum, while "stitching" (the term we used) the rounds through the (point) target. The reasoning was that it's much easier for the human eye to gauge direction instead of range. The beaten zone for a 240 isn't terribly wide, maybe eight feet wide if you're talking 800yards. But at that range it can easily be 50 feet deep (or more, if the gunner so chooses). For area targets (which we rarely trained for) there was a technique we called "cutting Zs".

I'll go look right to see how "wide" the beaten zone in CMSF is. As far zoomed out and elevated I play, I could easily mistake what I think is laser straight for 1 or 2 meters wide.

[Wiggum]

I have a video from the Bundeswehr, where you can see a MG3 firing in Night Combat Training.

The Targets are 250m away.

And you can see the tracers (every 5 bullet) in a realy straight line.

If you fire at a target you see you can use the MG nearly like a normal rifle.

In Combat Shooting (Gefechtsschießen) the MG Gunner Makes the differend. A good MG gunner can easely take out targets 400m away with one ore two bursts.

But area fire (supressive fire) is a different thing, the gunner will handle his weapon in a other way to cover the area with bullets.

So i think there should be two options for the MG in CMSF, "Normal Fire" and a "Area fire" where you can select the target area like with a artillerie strike.

I have to say, i can only speak for the german MG3 in "training" situation, never saw combat.

But my grandpa was MG42 gunner in Normandy, told me some similar storys.

[Apocal]

Just looked in-game, there is jorizonal deviation.

[hoolaman]

Area fire in CM will fire short bursts across an action spot in random directions.

I have witnessed MGs in CMSF firing at fairly long range at infantry and missing unless the burst was right on target so there may be some truth in Flanker15's little diagram.

Having said that generally the results of MG fire seem ok to me so I don't know if its worth messing with.

[marsod]

I am a former machine gunner.

With the FN Minimi (m249/SAW) i didn´t move my weapon sideways during firing. I shot with it like with a rifle, but with bursts. Just took a aimpoint and fired at it. Lenght of burst depended on situation. If i fired at enemy, 6-10rounds. If you didn´t have an exact position of the enemy 8-20round bursts. The recoil will help you spread the bullets. =) Then if you are about to supress the enemy, i used 8-20 round bursts and moved my aimpoint around after every burst.

With the Fn MAG (m240). I shot more suppressing fire aproximatly 8-12 round bursts on an fixed aiming point. Sometimes (becouse you actually can with this wonderful weapon) i moved the firing sideways (mostly) to cover a larger area. I would offcourse use shorter 3-4 and longer 20+round bursts sometimes. This is a really great weapon!

Btw, we only used Bipods to our mg:s.

[Combatintman]

Light role with a bipod a lot of it is to do with your No2 - if he gives you a bad call (talking about the firing range here) you aren't going to be that accurate. All that said though - what is this debate about? Bottom line the MG is mostly about suppression - it is like asking the question - a battery of M-109 (or Wespe/Hummel if you prefer) is firing - how is each round modelled?