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Ammo - lots and lots of ammo...


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A question for those with knowledge of military history...

Does anyone know if it is realistic for the last man in a Panzergrenadier squad to be carrying 361 rounds of 7.62mm ammo? Seems like an awful lot to me for one man to be running around with.

Closing the Pocket (Axis)

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Was the Panzergrenadier in the same spot as his fallen Squadmembers? If so , thats why hes showing that much ammo. It's basically showing the ammo he has access to in his vicinity. I think though that if he moves fast enough from the area that number should go down.

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361 rounds of MG ammo isn't too ridiculous if he's not carrying anything else too large and bulky -- off the top of my head, that would probably be something like 30lbs of ammo. For an ammo bearer, that's not too bad.

Now, if he's carrying all that ammo, plus the MG42, plus half a dozen grenades and a couple of Panzerfausts...

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So he's carrying carrying maybe 250 rounds of belt ammo for the MG42, a 75-round snail drum for same, and about 8 5-round stripper clips for his personal firearm.

Again, not too ridiculous. Personally, if I was the last guy left in the squad, and the MG was no longer around, I'd probably ditch the MG ammo. But being a well-trained German soldier, he'll probably continue to carry the ammo.

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Maybe the algorithm automatically reassigns part of the ammo from casualties to the other soldiers - apart from medical aid. Then the last survivors of a team end up with a lot of ammo, if they have spent ammo slower than they died.

Maybe the ammo is not even recorded for individual soldiers, but only at the team level.

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Who is carrying what ammo is actually recorded at the individual soldier level (was this way in CMSF, anyway, and I don't see why they'd change this).

However, there is also an abstraction that allows squad members to share ammo, so you'll never see one guy in a squad out of ammo and not firing, while the rest of the squad still has ammo (assuming same caliber, etc.)

Soldiers do have to perform "buddy aid" to pick up WIA/KIA soldier's ammo. In the case of KIA, this is very quick -- it's easy to miss.

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Who is carrying what ammo is actually recorded at the individual soldier level (was this way in CMSF, anyway, and I don't see why they'd change this).

However, there is also an abstraction that allows squad members to share ammo, so you'll never see one guy in a squad out of ammo and not firing, while the rest of the squad still has ammo (assuming same caliber, etc.)

Soldiers do have to perform "buddy aid" to pick up WIA/KIA soldier's ammo. In the case of KIA, this is very quick -- it's easy to miss.

Hmm, if you would implement this at the team/section level and not at the soldier's level, there would be no way the player would notice this, while the ammo sharing algorithm would be much easier.

You would only have to take the individual into account when he fires, and when he leaves the team/section (split into teams or WIA/KIA), or joins the team/section when teams merge, or with buddy aid.

Anyway, that is black box stuff.

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Hmm, if you would implement this at the team/section level and not at the soldier's level, there would be no way the player would notice this, while the ammo sharing algorithm would be much easier.

You would only have to take the individual into account when he fires, and when he leaves the team/section (split into teams or WIA/KIA), or joins the team/section when teams merge, or with buddy aid.

Anyway, that is black box stuff.

One time it comes into play is when the guy carrying most of the ammo for a team gets hit in a very bad place to send someone out to do buddy aid and scrounge the ammo. Like if he gets tagged in the middle of an open field or something.

An MG with no ammo bearers has a very short period of usefulness.

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360rnds doesn't sound that much.

A normal soldier supporting a MG gunner can today toll around on some 500 rounds in a ruck in some cases.

360 7.92 long cartridge rounds is a friggin' lot. ;)

Fortunately, BFC did well with the fatigue model and they tire badly after running a few hundred meters.

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Since Joe Balkoski's "Beyond the Beachhead" is the only good book on the subject in my library, I'll quote what he writes about this:

Besides Schutze I (the MG42 machine gunner), "the rest of the German squad was devoted almost entirely to feeding the ravenous MG42 [it fired 1,200 rounds per minute]. One of the primary duties of German riflemen, in fact, was to carry ammunition forward to the machine gun crew. An MG42 in battle would typically expend 3,000 rounds per day -- the equivalent of 150 BAR magazines."

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