Minimum range for MGs

[Lendosan]

Totally disagree that MG's have a minimum range. This is ridiculous. MG34's, MG42's, Brens, BARs etc are all squad based, fire superiority weapons designed for suppression and to cause extreme damage at close range. If they are limited to 100m's then whats the point of having MG's in urban combat? Having an MG pointing at a doorway was a sure fire way to mess anyone up coming through it, additionally the same with street to street fighting, which was often fought within distances of less than 50m.

Even bocage fighting was within 100m often, so are you telling me that no MG42, within a Grenadier squad, will fire? If that is the case then Eugen have failed to take notice of the hardest aspect of the battle through bocage country, where 42's where the scourge of the allied forces.

 

[Grosnours]

It's really bad AT gun placement to put a gun in a situation where the engagement point is within 600m.

Not according to the way accuracy range modifiers are calculated. I know it sounds odd, but you better fire under 50% of your max range if you don't want penalties applied and under 35% to get some bonuses. So with that in mind, firing you AT gun under 600m is almost a must have.
I'm not commenting on the value of this rule, but it's described as such in the relevant thread.

 

[TGApples]

It seems we have a balance vs realism problem on our hands! If the minimum range is removed from squad MGs, certain squads are going to get a lot better very quicky - for example Panzergrenadiers will be over 2x more powerful under 100m. I still think the quickes and simplest fix is just to add a minimum range to non-squad MGs. Removing the minimum range from squad MGs would take quite a bit of rebalancing. That said, we're in beta, so maybe this is the time.

I quite like the idea of reduced supression as range is reduced. That seems interesting.

 

[fabius]

There's a fair point that infantry and AT could do with a cover buff anyway for all the nooks, undulations in terrain, gullies, rocks, etc that are abstracted, but sure t9o be found most places when under fire.

 

[Vyllis]

at least let infantry return fire at vehicles where the machinegunner is exposed on the outside...

I always supported this idea.

 

[Husar]

It's really bad AT gun placement to put a gun in a situation where the engagement point is within 600m.

First of all, the last time it happened I was trying to set up an initial position some 300-400m behind the initial front lines and the honey Stewart arrived at the initial frontline much faster than I expected, the other option would have been to keep the gun towed or set up so that the enemy would get 70% of the map right away, hardly better.
And then there are of course the Bocage maps, where you can often get 1km engagement range in every direction if you set up near your spawn and just let the enemy have the enire rest of the map. So that's really a bit of an odd comment IMO. Not using AT guns early on is not a great option for every deck unless you use all the phase A unicorn units like the Beute Firefly (which IMO should all be removed from phase A anyway). But if you're going to force players to choose specific units over others with the current selection of available units, you may as well remove the deck building options entirely and give every division a standard deck.

That's all besides the point though, which is that (some) vehicle machineguns seem to resemble sniper rifles with a higher ROF in the game. Perhaps part of the issue is also that vehicles turn almost instantly and can then use up to three or four of their MGs almost instantly on anything in range, as discussed in another thread.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Veterancy is a big part of it. 3AD Command Stuart and Scots MMG carrier are notable offenders. 2, possibly 3 star vet + he 7/8 (15 on mmg carrier!) mgs causes near instant deletion of infantry and ATG.

 

[Husar]

Veterancy is a big part of it. 3AD Command Stuart and Scots MMG carrier are notable offenders. 2, possibly 3 star vet + he 7/8 (15 on mmg carrier!) mgs causes near instant deletion of infantry and ATG.

That could be it indeed, I will admit that I tend to undervalue the effects of veterancy or just not notice the stars often enough.

 

[Karlburg]

Not according to the way accuracy range modifiers are calculated. I know it sounds odd, but you better fire under 50% of your max range if you don't want penalties applied and under 35% to get some bonuses. So with that in mind, firing you AT gun under 600m is almost a must have.
I'm not commenting on the value of this rule, but it's described as such in the relevant thread.

600m is actually not really a penalized distance per accuracy- all of the AT guns have at least 1000m range. If you put your AT gun up close within machine gun range of the gap where you expect to see the enemy tank, that's your fault. If you want to defend up close, use pzshreck teams, or use AT guns in multiples. Keep in mind that one of the lessons of 1940 and 1941 was that it wasn't enough to just put one AT gun covering any particular position.

First of all, the last time it happened I was trying to set up an initial position some 300-400m behind the initial front lines and the honey Stewart arrived at the initial frontline much faster than I expected, the other option would have been to keep the gun towed or set up so that the enemy would get 70% of the map right away, hardly better.
And then there are of course the Bocage maps, where you can often get 1km engagement range in every direction if you set up near your spawn and just let the enemy have the enire rest of the map. So that's really a bit of an odd comment IMO. Not using AT guns early on is not a great option for every deck unless you use all the phase A unicorn units like the Beute Firefly (which IMO should all be removed from phase A anyway). But if you're going to force players to choose specific units over others with the current selection of available units, you may as well remove the deck building options entirely and give every division a standard deck.

That's all besides the point though, which is that (some) vehicle machineguns seem to resemble sniper rifles with a higher ROF in the game. Perhaps part of the issue is also that vehicles turn almost instantly and can then use up to three or four of their MGs almost instantly on anything in range, as discussed in another thread.

I don't think you should be required to use artillery to deal with AT guns. Use the C key to find spots in the rear that watch where you need them to watch and have the engagement start further out- if a tank is doing pillbox duty in a little hedgerow area, use smoke.

 

[Klausewitz]

It's really bad AT gun placement to put a gun in a situation where the engagement point is within 600m.

Sure, but even then a Stuart shouldn't be able to neutralize a PaK within seconds... those things had gun shields for a reason.

 

[Karlburg]

Sure, but even then a Stuart shouldn't be able to neutralize a PaK within seconds... those things had gun shields for a reason.

A single stuart vs a single pak at that range is risky and there's a pretty good chance that the pak still wins that. Besides, if you get pinned, mash the retreat button and live to fight another day.

 

[Husar]

I don't think you should be required to use artillery to deal with AT guns. Use the C key to find spots in the rear that watch where you need them to watch and have the engagement start further out- if a tank is doing pillbox duty in a little hedgerow area, use smoke.

The smoke may work, if the tank doesn't pin down the infantry squad before it is even done aiming the PzShreck or bazooka.
I also think tanks vs AT guns is relatively fine as it is, if they both engage at cannon range. It's just that once the tanks get to MG range, they seem to dominate in some cases. It could indeed be related to enormous veterancy bonuses or something like that though. I know that it doesn't happen with tanks that have no veterancy and just one machine gun.

A single stuart vs a single pak at that range is risky and there's a pretty good chance that the pak still wins that. Besides, if you get pinned, mash the retreat button and live to fight another day.

They were dead about half a second after they were pinned, again, it could be that the tank was so superior due to veterancy. Which would still make me ask whether it's a good idea to give everyone veteran tanks early on that sort of dominate the early battlefield unless the enemy gets a lucky hit. If phase A is supposed to be about infantry engagements, armored cars and all the units that used to be obsolete in previous games, why then would you also give every second deck the equivalent of a T-80U or three BMPTs? Surely they're not unbeatable, but they take away all the attention from the units the phase should actually be about...
Sorry for the Wargame reference to those who didn't play that.

 

[Fussel]

AT guns that get caught at close distance should more often lose then win those fights. Otherwise you can just attack moving them around or unloading them right infront of the tank instead of wisely positioning them.

 

[EUG_FLX]

I think this thread is heavily drifting out from its original subject...

 

[BrotherPedro]

Removing minimum range on MG will require another pass on all infantry squads, figure out way to make infantry not instantly kill each other with close range MG bursts, tweak close quarter squad like flamethrower and strosstrupp so they make sense, etc.

I doubt Eugene will do a bunch of extra work to make a new convoluted system where MG gets worse in close range when the current system already does a good job of making different infantry load out distinct and interesting.

 

[Wolke]

I think supporting weapons should have a minimum range, even MGs.

But not only MGs, either. AA guns could use a minimum range as well, probably higher than 100m, too.

 

[Model]

I think they should just give more squads grenades like they'd have in reality and let the squads with MGs have no minimum range (maybe not fire in buildings). This would stop squads with MGs from annihilating everything in CQC, and it would stop this weird situation where you can't do MG42 ambushes at 50 meters.

 

[GermanPower]

The quickest fix would just be to reverse the accuracy table for the mg 42. Instead of making anything minimum range. Besides that the entire focus point of a german infantry squad was to get the mg42 to kill/suppress everything. Weird weird weird.

 

[Vyllis]

I do like the idea of making LMG and HMG lose a bit of their efficiency at close range but removing the minimal range for them. I do think at 50-80 meters grenades, sub machine guns, semi-auto and even a bolt action rifle can be almost as potent as the MG.

 

[Lendosan]

"German doctrine was the reverse, with the machine gun placed in a central role and rifleman employed in support. This meant that German forces deployed far more machine guns per equivalent-sized unit than the Allies, and that Allied troops assaulting a German position almost invariably faced the firepower of the MG 42. It was possible for operating crews to lay down a non-stop barrage of fire, ceasing only when the barrel had to be replaced. This allowed the MG 42 to tie up significantly larger numbers of enemy troops. Both the Americans and the British trained their troops to take cover from the fire of an MG 42, and assault the position during the small window of barrel replacement, which took around 5 to 7 seconds (estimated). The high rate of fire of the MG 42 sometimes proved a liability mainly in that, while the weapon could be used to devastating effect, it could quickly exhaust its ammunition supply. For this reason, it was not uncommon for all soldiers operating near an MG 42 to carry extra ammunition, thus providing the MG 42 with a backup source when its main supply was exhausted."

Give the MG42 a minimum range and you effectively, and historically, take away why it was created and used. As a squad based support weapon it was used from point blank to its 1000m effective range, they didn't just stop firing because the enemy came close. Additionally if the enemy are close enough to assault it whilst the barrel is being changed, they were either within 100m or every allied soldier of WW2 was Usain Bolt (and even then, it took him 9 seconds to cover 100m).