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Minor accuracy point that is bugging me


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In the game the Syrian SPG-9 takes 5 minutes to set up and 1 minute to pack up. This is exactly the same amount of time it takes to set up/pack up the Saggers they accompany.

Is this accurate? The SPG-9 is a tripod mounted weapon which shouldn't take much time at all to set up and even less to move off again. IIRC the 'official' set up time was 1 minute which seems more accurate to me.

Any thoughts? There might be a very good reason why they take so long to set up

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Well I dug out a source to confirm it:

The SPG-9 can be transported on its removable two-wheel carriage or carried in an APC. It takes about 1min to set it up for firing.

Isby, D. Weapons and tactics of the Soviet army. London: Janes Publishing Company ltd. 1988

Wel there you have it! I can see why it takes longer to deploy the Sagger though, the deployment sequence seems to involve a bit of assembly (At least 5-9 parts).

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I suspect the SPG-9 is being broken down so several men can share the load. The barrel alone weighs almost 105 lbs, with tripod the weight increases to 131 lbs. According to wikipedia setup is closer to one minute than 5 minutes, but that sounds like they're working with a practiced crew and a stopwatch. I supposed BFC is assuming a "Chinese fire drill" (excuse the old phrase) during redeployment, a lot of movement and yelling and remarkably little efficiency. ;)

[Hah! I see hcrof got his answer in seconds ahead of me! :D]

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you guys got a point there!

funny thing is i played the Assault on Precint(sp!?) 13 (reworked for patch 1.08! :D ) again once more some days ago and you have 2 SPG-9 there. they even take 1.9 minutes for packup, i think. at first i thought 1 but if you look closely it says 1.9 i think.

looks odd when they want to "flee" but dont flee befor they didnt packed up the weapon properly in 1.9 minutes and flee afterwards. needles to say they are mostly dead in 1.9 minutes of beeing under fire :)

maybe the much longer setup time was choosen for the tripod weapons becouse they would kick serious US butt if they where as highly mobile as they should be. however actually i think this is an unlikely thing to do for BFC but well things can happen.

however hopfully it can be corrected.

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The setup time should be longer than breakdown time because part of setting up is getting the thing set in a proper firing position, getting orientated, prepping ammo (which is not ready to fire until prepped), etc. When packing up it's simple rote disassembly and buggering out. Experience should influence how quickly the team does either action

The times given for setup are often a bit of a problem to deal with because they often don't provide critical piece of information. Is "1 minute" the amount of time to get a weapon which has already been assembled (i.e. a SPG-9 on wheel mount) to fire, or is it for something which is completely disassembled and carried by several soldiers? Is the number "best case" or "typical case"? Is the source of information perhaps biased (manufacture's data vs. real world data)? That sort of stuff is very important to consider :D

The truth is a heavy weapon like the SPG-9 is most likely dead once it's fired a few shots. The reason is that even if the team disassembles the weapon extremely quickly, it had better have a vehicle right around the corner for it to load into or it's going to be fairly easy to track down and kill. In urban settings, of course, things can be different. But my experience with you gamers is that you think the best time to reposition is AFTER incoming fire starts :P

And no... we never purposefully distort data to make something easier/harder than it should be in real life. C'mon... we should ALL be comfortable with that by now :D If it can be shown that we have the time wrong for a particular weapon, based on viable and comparable data, we can make changes for future releases without much difficulty.

Steve

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AT-4 takes minute or bit above, while going into positions. This includes rush to actual positions (100-50 meters). And ATGM-system is ready to fire when this time has been passed. In CMSF we can ignore rush so minute should be pretty close, with well drilled team. If there is no additional whistles and bells (Thermals and countermeasure-detector) it's less than minute.

Pack-up time is matter of seconds, before men rushes away from their firing positions. Basically gunner flips sight down, and lifts launcher up. Loader and leader takes missiles which are remaining. Only after rush to "safe-zone" launcher is "undeployed", tripod collapsed and laucher put into carrying pack. While missiles might be attached to carrying frames. We are speaking of around 10-20 seconds of additional time in here. Thermals and countermeasure-detector will slow things bit, but Syrian don't have them in their AT-4 so it doesn't matter.

Fix that :) And i dont' think any other AT-4 kind ATGM-system (Saxhorn, Kornet for example) is worse, because they basically are the same.

Overall i won't say that SPG-9 is dead meat once it fires... Right now it basically is, because first time it changes it's positions it's useless for way too long time, but well positioned SPG-9 is painful needle in opponent's flesh. It's all about guality of firing positions.

Ps. Oh yeah i happened to ask this from actual user, that AT-4 thing. ;)

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But my experience with you gamers is that you think the best time to reposition is AFTER incoming fire starts

Erm, I'd like to take issue with that one there - I regularly move ATGM's after one shot if I feel like it is a high threat environment for them. I find it very satisfying to have concentrated mortar fire aimed at a spot that I vacated seconds earlier :D A pair of ATGM's can cover each other as they move around and effectively deny the enemy large areas of the map

My opponants have begun to do the same thing much to my annoyance...

Edit: Very interesting Secondbrooks, I love to learn about the practicalities of using weapons. I should join the Army or something :P

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