I don't know, maybe it is because I am tired of SP or something, but does anyone else find that MGs just don't have the deadly firepower one would think they would have?
I don't know how many times I have opened up with MG42s, the most feared MG of WW2, and lost the fire fight against a squad in the open. I remember watching on TV US veterans talking about how hard it was to keep the guys fighting and advancing when an MG42 opened up because it was so terrifying, but not in SP.
I know in the old DOS versions the MG (all types) is a lethal weapon, and that in the Win version they changed it to a suppression weapon but it doesn't even seem to do that well.
Anyway, just wondering if others think the same or is it just me?
First shot should be lethal, after that I'd buy that there's a lot more suppression than killing, since once you know there's an MG out there, you'd naturally get a lot more cautious in your movement. But a squad moving in the open that gets opened up on by an MG42 (or most any HMG configured weapon) should lose a bunch of troops KIA and WIA if that initial volley is within the lethal range.
My 2 cents worth.
I agree, first burst or two is most destructive. The same goes with artillery, observers found that after the first couple of minutes artillery looses effectiveness as troops have found cover and gone to ground. Thus the trick of ceasing fire for five minutes and then FFE again.
IMO MGs are fearsome at range but tend to be vulnerable if the enemy rifle squad(s) get close. Their worth is in supression as few players will actually expose their infantry at range....
I've noticed that too and have started to use MGs as area weapon. I'd like to see MGs as they were, lethal to infantry.
I agree. Infantry tactics should be pretty much focused on getting the support weapons in as good firing positions as possible. If the support weapons are not as powerful as they should be, this doesn't work as well (well, the suppression effects are still extremely valuable).
Even when I soundly win a meeting engagement battle, my most engaged infantry company will typically have accumulated 50% casualties.
This casualty rate is realistic and perhaps even on the high side. Of course these losses are from different sources, but the MG is definately one of them.
Under MG fire, if my infantry are moving in the open or loaded on transport they usually take high losses; they are quickly pinned, and will take more casualties if nothing is done about the MG.
I make finding and KO well placed MGs a high priority, which speaks volumes about their effectiveness. In my last battle there were three MGs in cover firing at my infantry. I stonked them with quite a bit of my valuable arty, and then when that didn't thoroughly work, I dropped smoke in front of them.
On the other side, I love to get a MG in a position - well out of rifle range - where they can catch infantry in the open; it's deadly.
I think they've modeled the MG rather well, considering the game restraints.
For much the same reasons that you express, Chris, I'm far more fond of the MGs in SPWAW builds of the game. They do far more damage to an unsuppressed leg unit, especially if the crew lets them get pretty close. In turn, the MGs suppress easily if anything survives to fire back on them.
To be fair to the WinSPWW2/SPMBT builds, they've expanded the horizons of the game and added a ton of functionality (including z-fire, which might break the SPWAW model). I'm sure that there's a balancing act in getting all the weapon types to feel pretty much right measured against one another, and it may be that the designers consciously watered down their MGs as a balance for making them more durable.
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I too have had questions about using MGs but over time I have found that if used in certain ways they work much better than if just left to blast at anything.
At close range they are very vulnerable to return fire so i try to set them up as range weapons. I also Zero them and fire them only in my turn and often only a burst or two, this seems to work better than just firing at will, also keeping them grouped if they come in units seems o help them and finally using them as area weapons is much better than firing at one, I can button tanks, suppress whole platoons and raise merry hell if I hide them well, zero them on the enemies turn and use them less as aimed weapons and more as a cheap from of artillery.
I'm assuming you're talking about mmg MG42's here, not lmg's. Those mmg's are crew served weapons on a mount. In order to get a decent field of fire on the enemy they are partly exposed; much more so than a regular rifleman who is returning fire from as much cover as he can get. So yes, once a mmg gets into a firefight with rifleman things will go sour soon.
Those rifleman are not bunched together. I don't know where some of you get that idea but mg's opening up did NOT tend to get whole groups at once, especially not MG42's. That ony happens if the troops were dumb enough to huddle together indeed and get to fairly close range.
The game uses hexes that are 50m across and assumes that troops moving about are using a big part of it. If a 10 men squad advances towards an mg they can be spaced 5 meters apart, not even counting the distance in depth.
The MG42 was worse than other mg's in getting groups at once because it had a very tight grouping of rounds fired. That meant it was very difficult to 'spray' with it. When firing a burst the rounds of the burst were grouped so close together the targets would have had to have been literally side by side to hit both with one burst. On the down side for the target, if you were hit, odds were it would be by more than 1 round so you were much less likely to survive (which played a big part in the fear of the weapon).
If firing at full auto the weapon became much less accurate then at burst fire and chances to hit the target dropped. It also expended the ammo at a huge rate and tended to overheat the barrel. The game assumes the weapon is fired in bursts, not full auto.
Reminds me of a test done for the discovery channel when a marksman HMG gunner fired at mansized pink balloons a few hundred yards away. When firing straight at them (balloons 1 meter apart, 25 wide and 4 deep so 100 in total) with a limited amount of ammo (I think it was 100 rounds) he had hit about 15. Think about that, an expert with the weapon who could take aim and time firing at stationary targets that did NOT take cover and not taking any fire himself could hit only 15% of the targets. Translated in game terms that means 10 squads (100 men) stacked in 1 hex would on average take 1,5 men casualties (KIA and WIA). The program then went on to show what happens when firing in enfilade (4 wide and 25 deep at the same distance which resulted in about 95 hits, in many case 1 bullet hitting 2 or more balloons; unlike a body a balloon doesn't really stop a round).
Enfilade fire like that isn't going to happen in a game where squads rarely stack at all and were most mg fire comes from the front arc, not the side. So the first test result is a good illustration of how effective mg fire on infantry in the open really is.
I did some tests to see how the came deals with it. Set up was single MG42 mmg teams opening up at canadian 10 men squads moving 2 hexes in clear terrain at different ranges (400, 650 and 850 metres).
Just to be complete, the game assumes infantry moving 1 hex at a time to make full use of cover available while moving and moving leapfrog style. At 3 hexes or more there's not much consideration of making use of cover and most troops are moving at the same time. When moving 2 hexes it's a mix of the two.
Each mmg fired three bursts at the squad advancing towards it (so only half the shots available in one round). At 400m three bursts averaged into 1 casualty per squad. There were slightly more squads with 2 or 3 casualties than there were squads with none but not many. The vast majority of squads took 1 man casualty.
At 650m about half the squads took casualties, some one, some two men. Translated into chance to lose 1 men it's a two out of three chance.
At 850m getting 2 casualties became much rarer, in all there was about 50% chance of getting 1 casulaty.
Seems about right to me?
Narwan