AmmoSgt
Posts: 1002
Joined: 10/21/2000
From: Redstone Arsenal Al
Status: offline
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Couple of factors come into play here ... first off the stability of the mount and the ability of a mount to provide stable continious fire. The ability to quickly engage mulitiple targets or engage fast moving targets is diametrically opposed to a stable mount for sustained fire. Typically AAA MG's are on very flexible "pintle" mounts while HMG are on heavier mounts with T&E ( Traverse and elevation) devices designed to provide a very narrow but fixed stable and reapeatble zone of fire. Pintle mounts are concidered much less accurate against a fixed target than a proper tripod mount with T&E , however with your T&E engaged on a proper tripod you have no reasonable chance other than pure luck at hitting an aircraft. There are several types of mounts for MG's in the game all have advantages and limitations.
Lethality is another factor , typically speak a casulaity in SPWAW, is just that a casulity, not necesarily a fatality. German MG's and most other countries MMG and water cooled HMG's are rifle caliber of approximately the same ballistic and energy characteristics.. 303 brit, 7.6x54 r Russian , 8 x57mm German ,30-06 American are all, give or take, about the same , in this category the crucial factor is rounds fire per critical period of time ( reaction time to folks taking whatever cover the terrain affords) this is obviously a fairly short period of time and in ammunition of this caliber/ energy, cover is reasonably easy to find , sand bags , small earth berms, trees about a foot in diameter, even dead bodies or dead horses, brick buildings. small depresions in the ground will suffice to deflect or asorb the bullets and their energy. You go up to true HMG like US M2 50 cal or Russian 12.7 mm and the picture changes significantly, what was cover for the 30 cal MMG's, watercooled rifle caliber HMG's, MG42's on heavy tripod is now merely concealment , a 50 cal with 5 times the bullet weight and significantly greater velocity at any range over 200 yards and 3 times the effective range will penetrate not just armor , but a significant ammount of what natural obstuction would normally protect a soldier from rifle caliber/ MMG ammunition. Thus the critical period of casulity production is conciderably longer and appropiate cover is harder to find, and casulities are produced over a longer period of time. If you are spotted and fired upon and "take cover" in say 1 second your chance of being in sufficent cover for a MMG is much greater than if a 50 cal is shooting at you and blowing straight thru the engine block or concrete/ rock wall, sand bag, dead horse or whatever you hid behind in your haste and is still inflicting casulities.
So while rate of fire alone is a good gauge to measure rifle caliber MG's , one against the other, in a relative way, for game purposes it is not sufficent by itself to represent true HMG in the 50 caliber/12.7mm class. Just as rifle caliber MG have a low probablility of reliabily inflicting causilties against troops behind armor plate in a halftrack regardless of their rate of fire, 50 cal can reliably inflict casulities behind not just armor plate but other obsticals typically used by troops for cover on the battlefield. However typically 50 cal/12.7mm are on AAA pintle type mounts and have significantly more recoil and thus are less accurate in general than a locked down heavy tripod rifle caliber MG firing at a point target.
Somehow the very different nature of the two classes of MG's have to be reflected in a rather one dimesional system that does not acount for or reflect the varying protective nature of natural cover and concealment randomly found on the battlefield by troops under fire. Thus MG's and the terrain the privides cover from them within the game system are not modeled in the detail that would be desired and compromises must be made. Costs are aledgedly based on effectivenness in a general way, but again compromises are made to compensate for the games basic assumption that all concealment is cover, and all bullets under 20mm ( where explosive warheads start being used) are all warhead 1 in size, wether it is fired from a childs 22 caliber rifle or a profesional big game hunters 458 caliber weathery magmum.
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"For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary periods, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which
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