jenrick -> RE: Red Storm: Under the Hood - Questions and Comments (1/13/2014 12:20:38 AM)
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How is the ammunition amount figured for units? Looking at an M1A1 for instance, main gun ammo appears to be obviously 1:1 in terms of in game versus actual rounds carried. For the .50 machine gun it appears to be an abstraction for "bursts" of .50 fire, which makes perfect sense as well. My question is in regard to aircraft/rotorcraft weapons, rockets in particular. I noticed that my rocket armed Apaches in the scenario 3rd Herd, were able to stay in the fight for a LONG time before running out of ammo (in excess of an hour of fairly steady engagements with ground forces, so close to 30 attack resolutions). From everything I know of aerial rocketry employment they probably would be out in just a couple of attack resolutions involving rockets. The US has access to the 70mm Hydra series of rockets. The Apache and Cobra both carry the 70mm Hydra and the info line for it has listed ammo 19. Now yes there is the M261 19 round rocket launcher. Is this designed to reflect a 1:1 rocket to ammo correlation? The reason I ask is that unguided rockets are not normally used as single fire weapons in a rocket engagement (the very large WP rockets are exception). They are area weapons, and are normally fired in bursts just like a cannon or machine gun. To quote from FM 3-04.140 (Helicopter Gunnery): "1-7. Target neutralization is the standard for rocket engagements. Because rockets are most effective when fired in mass, the rocket training strategy is to train crews for neutralization engagements." On average 4-6 rockets will probably be fired per engagement at a single vehicle type target as specified by the gunnery training tables in the FM. A large bunched up target (say a pack of trucks in march formation, or an artillery battery), would probably get the entire pod at once. This would give a US chopper 6-9 engagements per pair of rocket pods at most. This same issue extends to the other NATO nations, and the WP as well. The smaller 80mm and 57mm WP rockets are all listed with very high ammo numbers, with one version of the Hind carrying 40 ammo of 80 mm rockets twice. Yes it's carrying 80 80mm rockets, but in reality it has maybe 15-20 point attacks worth of rockets. Not 80. Now it's possible I'm typing all of this for naught, as I have no clue how ammo is used in an attack resolution (I'm going to assume 1 per attack resolution). If it is used in this manner, the current ammo counts for rockets and having them in single pods versus pairs is providing much more firepower then it should. Grouping them into pairs of pods and having the ammo be in bursts/volleys of rockets would provide a much greater fidelity to the simulation of aerial rocketry. Now as noted above the WP heavy rockets, the 122mm S-13 is fired as a single rocket a lot of the time, but at fixed targets like buildings, bunkers, and soft area targets not at moving vehicles. Having this listed as 2 seperate 5 ammo weapons makes perfect sense. -Jenrick
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