Machine gun test

[Fūrinkazan]

Hi all,

With the same method as for snipers, i did a little test with mg and i was a little disappointed.

Less killed and wounded and less suppression.

With 2 light mg : less than 16 men down and only 6 missing for a company of 90 Syrians (opened fire at 1000 m)

With four .050 cal much more suppression but not much dead and wounded.

(Opened fire at 2000 m)

I noticed that it was possible to hit at least two soldiers with the same burst when they were one behind another.

So i changed little things on my test.

Instead of a line, syrians were in 3 columns.

I put the 2 machine guns at ground level on the buildings.

I started to open fire at 800 m.

I started to fire at the last groups of the 2 first columns.

The first guys who were hit were those in the front of the column not those of the rear that i was targeting.

Men were killed or wounded in all the groups.

I could see bullets flying all the way true the columns and sometimes they touched a man in the front or rear.

The most important is that there was much more suppression. Quickly i was unable to give them orders.

The last column was intact. Stopped at 470 m of the mgs.

I targeted the first group. Result in one minute :

2 men hit in the first group at 470 m

2 in the second group behind at 518 m

1 in the third group at 524 m

They were all pinned down. No way to give them orders and this only in one minute:eek:.

After 20 mn :

13 killed

18 wounded

but 45 missing for 90 men at the start.

All this with the fire of only 2 machine guns.

For maximum efficiency of mgs shooting through groups of soldiers is the best way to obtain good results.

If the enemy is in line, certainly try to shoot from the flank.

I have seen a documentary about WW1. One veteran said that they were searching machine guns in the frontand couldn't find them but they were on the flank to kill a maximum of men. I think it's true in the game.

Maybe by starting to shoot closer, i would have surprised with more effect the advancing syrians. They were stopped at about 400 m and could not return fire.

In the attack, the line was much better and i could not suppress enough groups to block them.

I did not try but i think they would have reach my position and destroy the mgs.

So the position of mgs and the formation of the attack seems to be very important and can change the results dramatically.

Hope this will be useful to other players. Personally, i learned a lot from those little experiments.

I would like to say a big thank you to beta testers. I had a little taste of what this job can be and i really prefer to play .

[SlowMotion]

Thanks for these also! If you feel like doing still more testing, it would be nice to see the results for grenade launchers. My guess is that those might be the best infantry stopper from long range?

[donnieitaly]

I read a 50 cal can take out a BTR,

Care to try that?

[Thomm]

Thank you for those interesting tests!!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Fūrinkazan]

Thanks to all for you interest.

To donnieitaly,

I did a test against a BRDM 2 on the sniper efficiency trade.

At about 400 m from the flank i counted only 1 burst of five bullets to destroy it. The 0.50 sniper rifle could only do light damage (optics) in the same conditions.

The machine gun forced a bmp 1 at 600 m to pop smoke because of damages on optics, tracks etc..

I saw that the armor of BTR is 7 to 9 mm. No doubt that it would be destroyed like the BRDM.

When i was doing research on the sniper rifle i found that a marine during the first gulf war took out a bmp1 at 1100 m. Don't know if this was luck, but i still believe that the sniper rifle is not powerful enough against vehicules especially civilans and non armored.

During all my test i found that infantry can be spotted by other infantry at about 2000 m in the best conditions. I don't know how far you can spot a squad with binoculars in real life, and if it's correct in the game.

I will try to find the time to test grenade launchers, but i think that weapon is less difficult to employ because of the area effects of grenades. I think the Russians employed them with very good results, better than mg in Afghanistan. No doubt that they will be very efficient on infantry and vehicules.