Small Arms.-No AR-15 conversation allowed

[TheRomanRuler]

That question is what this thread is supposed to be about, are small arms going to be simulated well/correctly with the depth they deserve or will we have to do it ourselves? (It's just the AR-15 discussion sidetracked it completley)

I think it would make sense to make it work like for tanks: You can produce newer stuff with higher expense (at first), or you can stick to older that has already been perfected (production vise) and thus cheaper... but worse of course, it is older. So even tough you would invent semi-automatic rifles pre-war, you may want to equip your soldiers with bolt action rifles since they are only slightly worse, and only upgrade when you get assault rifles which actually made a difference.
So difference between X bolt action rifle and Y bolt action rifle is completely meaningless in game of this scale, but difference between bolt action rifle and assault rifle is meaningful and should be implented in my opinion, as it would replace both bolt action rifles and sub machine guns it could make divisions cheaper, or alternatively keep the same cost but give +X soft attack and perhaps urban combat bonuses.

 

[Gethsemani]

The number of advances made in small arms were fewer, but there were advances made none the less. Your original argument is that Small Arms had no significant advances at all, which is just plain wrong.

Instead of turning this into a pissing match of who knows most, I'll just re-iterate my original point since it seems to have gotten lost in a largely semantical discussion:
My point is, and always was, that the advances in small arms are too few to need their own research tree/branch. There were some significant advances but none of them really translate into meaningful strategical decisions, since small arms effectiveness is only meaningful on a tactical level. Once you get to the operational (not to mention the strategic) level you have so many other weapon systems with much higher kill capacities that the individual small arm is comparatively meaningless. In fighting on a company level or below the small arm is really important, but once you get up to divisional or army level the important weapon systems are the big guns. And we both know which scale HoI operates on.

 

[Novacat]

Of course, and I disagree. The fewer number of advances can already be reflected in having any theoretical small arms tech tree be smaller with fewer upgrades than the Armor techtree. After all, armor has an entire tech tree to itself, Small arms would probably be just be one subtech or at most a single upgrade line in an Infantry tech tree. You also have not provided any valid sources that backs your assertion that small arms are less significant on the battlefield than any of the other individual items that are modeled.

Overall, I think the upgrade line would be something like: Bolt Action (1918) -> Semi Automatic (1938) -> Assault rifle (1944)

 

[Czaristan]

Also, upgrading small arms shouldn't increase soft attack nearly as much as upgrading artillery. What it SHOULD do, in my opinion, especially when going from bolt actions to semi-autos to assault rifles, is increase urban attack where high rates of fire become much more important than long range accuracy. Another thing to note is that German tactical doctrine relied on the LMGs with rifles designated as support weapons essentially. A German infantry platoon in say 1943/44 could lay down as much or more small arms fire than an equivalent American platoon due to higher number of (and substantially superior) light machine guns, even if there were using slower firing Mausers for the average infantryman. Bottom line: even if it made a world of difference to individual infantrymen, I haven't seen that increasing small arms rates of fire would significantly increase any statistic except supply consumption over all terrain types, which is why I would advocate for the urban (and possibly fortified) modifiers increasing rather than a flat SA value and the differences in tactical doctrines often made various small arms choices insignificant.

 

[L'Afrique]

On the subject of tanks: Novacat is being a bit disingenuous. Old tanks were used because they HAD to be, not because they were desired. Stuff like the S-35 was in use because the germans couldn't manufacture enough tanks and stuck some reserve units with "beutepanzer". PzIIIs were phazed out by 1944 and were not "officially" on the books for units anymore (except HG-Panzer-Div, I think). They weren't being built or issued. PzIIs were relegated to a rare, special recon model. T-34 mod 1940s were practically unknown and the soviets had relegated their menagerie of early-war tanks and lend-lease british clunkers to non-critical fronts. The PzIV was upgunned and uparmoured and in the process of being replaced by Panthers. The early-war allied tanks were all gone and a variety of better shermans were being produced.

Yes, old tanks stuck around, but keeping something you built in 1940, that's now quite obsolete, because you can't afford to replace it is faaaaaaaaaaar removed from continuing production of something designed in 1898 because it's still effective.

There just isn't enough small-arm variation to be relevant, Gethsemani is right. Keep it to generalized infantry weapons.

And yeah, increasing urban attack would be a better way to simulate newer rifles.

 

[Gamer_1745]

I still think there is great potential to mod weapon types. The standard game will be more infantry man kits, mountain trooper kit and others.

 

[xXAgeOfPeopleXx]

On the subject of tanks: Novacat is being a bit disingenuous. Old tanks were used because they HAD to be, not because they were desired. Stuff like the S-35 was in use because the germans couldn't manufacture enough tanks and stuck some reserve units with "beutepanzer". PzIIIs were phazed out by 1944 and were not "officially" on the books for units anymore (except HG-Panzer-Div, I think). They weren't being built or issued. PzIIs were relegated to a rare, special recon model. T-34 mod 1940s were practically unknown and the soviets had relegated their menagerie of early-war tanks and lend-lease british clunkers to non-critical fronts. The PzIV was upgunned and uparmoured and in the process of being replaced by Panthers. The early-war allied tanks were all gone and a variety of better shermans were being produced.

Yes, old tanks stuck around, but keeping something you built in 1940, that's now quite obsolete, because you can't afford to replace it is faaaaaaaaaaar removed from continuing production of something designed in 1898 because it's still effective.

There just isn't enough small-arm variation to be relevant, Gethsemani is right. Keep it to generalized infantry weapons.

And yeah, increasing urban attack would be a better way to simulate newer rifles.

It's the same story the the Springfield. The US phased it out by 1944 as a "Burden on logistics and a downgrade in firepower" and that "Their is a noticeable degradation in performance in units that are not armed with the semi automatic M1 Garnd" those two quotes taken word for word (typo included) from the "US Military Forces handbook on operations in Europe 1942-45" so far I've posted two primary sources from military review and most of you just use your own analysis with no sources to back you up. In other words you are arguing with the actual United States Army as to the importance of the Upgrade from bolt to semi automatic rifles, at the very least there should be a tree going Bolt Action (1918) -> Semi Automatic (1938) -> Assault rifle (1944) as Novacat suggested. Their should be production lines fro these 3 weapons and modifiers depending on what divisions are equipped with.

 

[1alexey]

You also have not provided any valid sources that backs your assertion that small arms are less significant on the battlefield than any of the other individual items that are modeled. )

Isn`t the fact that Soviets upgraded most of their weapons, but actually deciced to back away from transitioning to Semi-auto,
that British never transitioned to something like Garand, and Germans largely deciding to not produce their new semi-automatic rifles,
a proof that for most countries, upgrading rifles was so low on the priority list, it practially didn`t happened, while in other branches like tanks and planes, countries went thrugh the pain of introducing new or upgraded model every half-year or so.

How is that, not a proof that upgrading rifles made the least difference or country scale?

 

[xXAgeOfPeopleXx]

Isn`t the fact that Soviets upgraded most of their weapons, but actually deciced to back away from transitioning to Semi-auto,
that British never transitioned to something like Garand, and Germans largely deciding to not produce their new semi-automatic rifles,
a proof that for most countries, upgrading rifles was so low on the priority list, it practially didn`t happened, while in other branches like tanks and planes, countries went thrugh the pain of introducing new or upgraded model every half-year or so.

How is that, not a proof that upgrading rifles made the least difference or country scale?

The Answer my friend is logistics. The British wanted the Garand at one point but the US was struggling to eqiup their own forces and the Australians in Asia so the Brits were told to wait. When it was available the British were already in Europe on the German border and re-equipping and retraining entire divisions was out of the question as mentioned earlier the British acknowledged that they were at a firepower disadvantage to the Germans as well as their American Allies which is why post War they began to work on acquiring a semi automatic rifle for themselves (The FN FAL).

The Soviets did not think it was worth giving it's conscripts the best quality weapons but their was a high proportion of Semi Automatic rifles in Guard Regiments and Shock Regiments would have very few bolt action rifles.

The Germans found their Semi Automatic G41 to be a literal piece of shirt and they began in 1944 to issue the G43 almost unanimously to units that were involved in combat with American forces. The US during the Battle of the Bulge were surprised when they engaged German squads that were armed almost exclusively with G43s MP44s and MG42s and the US military handbook on European Operations states "...this accounts for the high casualties suffered in relation to US Forces in relation to other operations in Europe" almost 20000 US soldiers were killed and 50000 wounded. It was the first time where they were at a firepower disadvantage against the Germans and this "minor tactical point" combined with poor weather led to one of the hardest battles in US History.

 

[1alexey]

The Answer my friend is logistics. The British wanted the Garand at one point but the US was struggling to eqiup their own forces and the Australians in Asia so the Brits were told to wait. When it was available the British were already in Europe on the German border and re-equipping and retraining entire divisions was out of the question as mentioned earlier the British acknowledged that they were at a firepower disadvantage to the Germans as well as their American Allies which is why post War they began to work on acquiring a semi automatic rifle for themselves (The FN FAL).

Exactly, even USA didn`t chose to rush the Garand, if they needed to, they could`ve made millions more Garands by sacrificing production of Shermans or planes. But they chose not to sacrifice anything for it, thus it was a low-priority thing.

Instead of supplying every member of of the allied block and Soviets with semi-auto rifle, that was clearly ahead of it`s time by almost a decade, US chose to supply it`s allies with various decent, but not really superior to Axis or Soviet, designs of tanks, planes, artillery pieces, trucks, jeeps, APCs, ex.

Why would they do such thing, unless supplying their allies, and their own forces with all the above mentioned was clearly more important than supplying them with much better rifle.

The Soviets did not think it was worth giving it's conscripts the best quality weapons but their was a high proportion of Semi Automatic rifles in Guard Regiments and Shock Regiments would have very few bolt action rifles.

Where did they get those semi-auto, considering the production droped very fast, and Soveits made no effort to rise it, prefering to get PPSH and other weapons production up.

The Germans found their Semi Automatic G41 to be a literal piece of shirt

But Germans had a history of going for an over-engineered piece of shirt all the time, but somehow, not for semi-auto rifle.

 

[Gethsemani]

The Germans found their Semi Automatic G41 to be a literal piece of shirt and they began in 1944 to issue the G43 almost unanimously to units that were involved in combat with American forces. The US during the Battle of the Bulge were surprised when they engaged German squads that were armed almost exclusively with G43s MP44s and MG42s and the US military handbook on European Operations states "...this accounts for the high casualties suffered in relation to US Forces in relation to other operations in Europe" almost 20000 US soldiers were killed and 50000 wounded. It was the first time where they were at a firepower disadvantage against the Germans and this "minor tactical point" combined with poor weather led to one of the hardest battles in US History.

The Battle of the Bulge also involved encircled US forces without artillery or air support and with only limited armor assets. Of course they would suffer more losses and fight a harder battle when the best fire support they had was light company organic mortars. Once the weather cleared and airs support returned the Battle of the Bulge quickly turned into yet another turkey shot.

It is also worth noting that the Germans equipped their Volksgrendiers with higher amounts of semi-automatic and automatic weapons in an attempt to off-set their lack of training and experience. By all accounts the volksgrenadiers still didn't perform as well as regular infantry divisions, which in itself suggests that, as long as the small arm is adequate, many other factors are much more important than the rate of fire of individual small arms.

 

[D Inqu]

Isn`t the fact that Soviets upgraded most of their weapons, but actually deciced to back away from transitioning to Semi-auto,
that British never transitioned to something like Garand, and Germans largely deciding to not produce their new semi-automatic rifles,
a proof that for most countries, upgrading rifles was so low on the priority list, it practially didn`t happened, while in other branches like tanks and planes, countries went thrugh the pain of introducing new or upgraded model every half-year or so.

How is that, not a proof that upgrading rifles made the least difference or country scale?

The Soviets never backed away from semi-auto. During the war, they simply could not afford mass semi auto during the war, so switched to a simple cheap PPSh.
The germans produced the same number of semi-auto as they did assault rifles.

Upgrading infantry weapons was high on the priority list, just that it was very expensive to implement.

 

[xXAgeOfPeopleXx]

Exactly, even USA didn`t chose to rush the Garand, if they needed to, they could`ve made millions more Garands by sacrificing production of Shermans or planes. But they chose not to sacrifice anything for it, thus it was a low-priority thing.

They made over 7 million M1 Garands and even offered the British the M1 Garand once they had surplus stock... They always had surplus stock of Sherman's and Jeeps as their automotive industry was already in full swing transmissions and tires differ very little between civvie trucks and millitary vehicles. The M1 Garand on the other hand was very different to the hunting rifles that were made at the time (most gun makers were still manufacturing lever action hunting rifles).

Instead of supplying every member of of the allied block and Soviets with semi-auto rifle, that was clearly ahead of it`s time by almost a decade, US chose to supply it`s allies with various decent, but not really superior to Axis or Soviet, designs of tanks, planes, artillery pieces, trucks, jeeps, APCs, ex. Why would they do such thing, unless supplying their allies, and their own forces with all the above mentioned was clearly more important than supplying them with much better rifle.

Because as I just said they were more prepared to make millions of cars and trains (stuff they were already making) whereas gun especially semi automatics were not already being made to be needed until Japan declared war.

Where did they get those semi-auto, considering the production dropped very fast, and Soviets made no effort to rise it, prefering to get PPSH and other weapons production up.But Germans had a history of going for an over-engineered piece of shirt all the time, but somehow, not for semi-auto rifle.

Wikipedia "In 1941, over a million SVTs were produced, but in 1942 Ishevsk arsenal was ordered to cease SVT production and switch back to the Mosin–Nagant 91/30. Only 264,000 SVTs were manufactured in 1942, and production continued to diminish until the order to cease production was finally given in January 1945. Total production of the SVT-38/40 was around 1,600,000 rifles" So assuming that 50% of those were lost in combat and that entire divisions did not use anything else that is still 800000 Rifles available to Russia which tended to end up in the hands of said Guard and Shock divisions.

And the Germans over engineered the G41 that's why is was a piece of shit, it was to complex just like the MG34 and MP18 itt's why they switched to the G43 of which they made over 400000.

Just because things were expensive to make so they were delayed or not mass produced doesn't mean they were'nt leagues ahead. I'm sure the M26 Pershing speaks for itself but was surprise surprise delayed because "Shermans got the job done"

The Battle of the Bulge also involved encircled US forces without artillery or air support and with only limited armor assets. Of course they would suffer more losses and fight a harder battle when the best fire support they had was light company organic mortars. Once the weather cleared and airs support returned the Battle of the Bulge quickly turned into yet another turkey shot.

It is also worth noting that the Germans equipped their Volksgrendiers with higher amounts of semi-automatic and automatic weapons in an attempt to off-set their lack of training and experience. By all accounts the volksgrenadiers still didn't perform as well as regular infantry divisions, which in itself suggests that, as long as the small arm is adequate, many other factors are much more important than the rate of fire of individual small arms.

Again US Forces own assessment disproves your point, the US Froces in the region had integrated artillery support and plenty of it, especially the 101st Airborne who had the M1 75mm Pack howitzer in large quantities.

The Forces used during the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge were primarily veteran fighters not the generic volksgrenadier trash that the US fought before and after and these forces when equiped in a near identical way to the US forces began to push them back. It's only once the Germans ran out of fuel and supplies and the skies cleared that they pulled back.

 

[Novacat]

Just because things were expensive to make so they were delayed or not mass produced doesn't mean they were'nt leagues ahead. I'm sure the M26 Pershing speaks for itself but was surprise surprise delayed because "Shermans got the job done"

Note that the reason for this is because there was a lot of hostility in the upper echelons of the US Armed Forces to use tanks against enemy tanks. Half of it was that bigger, heavier tanks would be more logistically difficult to transport across the Atlantic, half of it was that one of the leading Generals has his Tank Destroyer pet projects whom would obviously be axed if the US tanks did the job. Only after the Tank Destroyer doctrine had miserably failed had the US finally started sending Pershings across the atlantic.

Isn`t the fact that Soviets upgraded most of their weapons, but actually deciced to back away from transitioning to Semi-auto,

Its not so much they backed away from semi-auto, as they thought the SVT-40 was an overengineered piece of junk. The switch back to the Mosin Nagant was only temporary, as the Soviets replaced it with the SKS later and the AK-47 after the design/manufacturing bugs were fixed with it.

 

[lordboy54]

The semi auto rifle offers extreme advantages in suppresive fire and close quarters situations. It matters tremendously what rifle your forces are using because even a minuscule effect multiplied 500,000 times is a huge effect.

Not if the scale increases with it. What i mean is, if you say that the bolt action kills say 1 man per 10 hours(completely made up and inaccurate numbers here and the units are arbritrary, you could pretend its an apple and its price, it doesnt matter) and the assault rifle kills 1 man per 8 hours. Now, we spend 500,000 combined man hours in our test, so the bolt action kills 50,000 and the assault rifle kills 62500. Nice, 12500 more dead, that's a lot. But hey, the numbers we deal with here are so much bigger, so in relative terms the difference becomes exactly the same as it was before, 20%. Even 20% for 500,000 people/hours/shots is still 20%.

 

[Secret Master]

We should point out that in an ideal world, infantry formations would be equipped with more weapons than players on a COD PvP map.

You'd have a nice rifle for long range open terrain, a submachine gun for clearing rooms in urban warfare, a nice pistol as a side arm, a scoped rifle with bolt action for extreme ranges, a shotgun for breaching certain doors or walls in urban warfare, a grenade launcher for taking our weak hard points, a heavier anti-bunker weapon for superior hard points, a light anti-tank weapon for lightly armored vehicles, a dedicated anti-tank weapon for heavier tanks, an a dedicated squad automatic weapon for suppression, assault rifles for suppression and room clearing with the range for more open kinds of warfare, hand grenades for utility work, heavier machineguns for killing vehicles and deny movement across any terrain you can see, a phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range for killing Terminators, and so on.

The reality is that a single infantryman can only carry so many weapons, and even a dedicated weapons company has logistics and weapons limitations. You can't issue the right weapon for the right situation for every infantrymanevery time your troops enter combat, especially in WWII when you might save a ton of logistics effort by standardizing ammunition. At the fire team level, the weapons a squad is actually using can make a big difference. Sometimes you really want a "room broom" for clearing something, while at other times you'd rather have the range and accuracy of something close to an old school rifle.

But the game doesn't operate at the fire team level. We're equipping units at the battalion level and going up from there. I think splitting hairs on rifles and automatic weapons might not be as productive as you think it is. Since I'm guessing we won't even have dedicated weapons companies (below the battalion threshold), we probably should think in terms of overall firepower, not even specific weapons.

Unless the game allows for equipping infantry formations with different "kits" based on mission (as in, "Let's give 55th Division an urban warfare kit for an attack on Paris") worrying about whether you have BARs and their stats may be a waste.

 

[Novacat]

You'd have a nice rifle for long range open terrain, a submachine gun for clearing rooms in urban warfare, a nice pistol as a side arm, a scoped rifle with bolt action for extreme ranges, a shotgun for breaching certain doors or walls in urban warfare, a grenade launcher for taking our weak hard points, a heavier anti-bunker weapon for superior hard points, a light anti-tank weapon for lightly armored vehicles, a dedicated anti-tank weapon for heavier tanks, an a dedicated squad automatic weapon for suppression, assault rifles for suppression and room clearing with the range for more open kinds of warfare, hand grenades for utility work, heavier machineguns for killing vehicles and deny movement across any terrain you can see, a phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range for killing Terminators, and so on.

A vast majority of the weapons you listed are going to be used by specialists, not issued to every man in the squad. Overall, the only thing your average GI is going to use is either a Rifle or an SMG.

One of the big issues with bolt action rifles is not that they were lousy weapons, on the contrary, they were excellent weapons. The problem is that the average GI simply could not take advantage of the accuracy and range with such weapons, so the extra range and accuracy was completely wasted. The Germans also figured out that even within normal combat ranges your average GI is probably not going to be a sharpshooter and thus will take a lot of shots to bring a hostile down. That brings the SMG into play, but the huge problem with SMGs is that they had significantly diminished effectiveness outside of 100m, which was too short.

Thus, the Intermediate cartridge was concieved. The intermediate cartridge combined the immense damage and penetration of a rifle round but a significantly cut down case which reduces recoil and ammunition weight, paired with a scaled-up submachinegun (this is an oversimplification but run with me on this) designed to use these rounds. Basically, you develop a rifle that is extremely effective at the 0m-400m range bracket, thus, you have the foundation for the Assault Rifle. The best aspects of both the rifle, and the submachinegun, and the only weakness being that it was ineffective at engagement ranges the average GI is not going to fight in anyway.

However, getting from the bolt action rifle to the assault rifle was not a one-step process. Most major armies tended to introduce autoloading rifles of varying effectiveness before introducing the assault rifle proper. The Americans had the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine, the Soviets had the SKS, the Germans had the G-43. These autoloading rifles had varying strengths and weaknesses, and generally incorporated some 'Assault Rifle' features but not others. Still, they were more effective than a plain jane bolt action rifle in WW2 combat.

 

[Zinegata]

The issue people keep forgetting is that small-arms complement even at the squad level is to a large extent a function of doctrine; rather than a function of the qualities of the small-arms themselves.

The Germans for instance retained First World War era bolt-action Mausers for the most part, but that's because their squad-level philosophy was completely different from the Allies. To quote Ty Bomba: In every other army, the squad supported the LMG. In the German Army, the LMG was the squad.

Indeed, the main reason why the Germans kept the Mauser was because the MG34s and 42s were supposed to be the main firepower of the squad instead of the rifles; as it put the majority of the squad's firepower in the hands of just one operator (who can be a veteran) with the rest serving in large part as ammo-carriers. By contrast the US rifle squad somewhat spread the firepower around - each man having a semi-auto Garand - but their "LMG" was just a BAR that was closer to a souped-up rifle rather than a machine gun. Instead, in the US Army MGs were supposed to be support weapons found in the platoon HQ.

Which is why I agree with the general thesis that modelling details on individual small arms is largely an exercise in pettyfogging. The RoF of an MG42 or minutae of the Stg44 definitely doesn't matter very much when you're looking at battalion or Division-sized formations, and is arguably already extremely overstated even in the squad level. How a squad is designed to fight is much more important than the minutae, and small arms are developed based on these roles rather than the other way around.

The reason why the Americans didn't believe in bolt-action rifles for instance isn't the nonsensical idea that their troops couldn't make use of its better range/accuracy - instead they realized very early on that the range of bolt action rifles was excessive in light of regular combat ranges in WW2, and everyone was using conscript armies that can't have years of training that made RoF important than accuracy (besides which, the only army that ever made good use of the range and accuracy of the bolt action rifle was the long-dead all-regular BEF of the First World War). Hence, giving everyone a semi-auto rifle made sense, especially when they didn't want to weigh down a squad with a true machinegun since they were supposed to constantly attacking. They chose a gun based on how they wanted to fight.

Meanwhile, stuff like the Stg44 really don't make sense other than another belated Hitler "IT WILL TURN THE TIDE OF THE WAR" placebo. An assault rifle seems like a great idea in the context of mixing the best features of a submachinegun (rapid fire) with decent combat ranges of a rifle, but those features benefit primarily troops on the attack (hence "assault" rifle) since it combines firepower with mobility; whereas on the defensive your standard machinegun already provides that capability with much greater levels of firepower (you lose mobility, but again you're defending anyway). Heck, this is why the Germans developed a semi-automati rifle for the paratroopers to begin with - those guys were supposed to have a paucity of MGs and heavier weapons hence they needed a more "equalized" spread of firepower like the Americans had.

And finally, and most importantly, it bears remembering that the vast majority of casualties was still ultimately inflicted by artillery. Your standard Division's four or so artillery battalions generally had much more effect on the battle than any squad or small arms.

 

[xXAgeOfPeopleXx]

The issue people keep forgetting is that small-arms complement even at the squad level is to a large extent a function of doctrine; rather than a function of the qualities of the small-arms themselves.

The Germans for instance retained First World War era bolt-action Mausers for the most part, but that's because their squad-level philosophy was completely different from the Allies. To quote Ty Bomba: In every other army, the squad supported the LMG. In the German Army, the LMG was the squad.

Indeed, the main reason why the Germans kept the Mauser was because the MG34s and 42s were supposed to be the main firepower of the squad instead of the rifles; as it put the majority of the squad's firepower in the hands of just one operator (who can be a veteran) with the rest serving in large part as ammo-carriers. By contrast the US rifle squad somewhat spread the firepower around - each man having a semi-auto Garand - but their "LMG" was just a BAR that was closer to a souped-up rifle rather than a machine gun. Instead, in the US Army MGs were supposed to be support weapons found in the platoon HQ.

Which is why I agree with the general thesis that modelling details on individual small arms is largely an exercise in pettyfogging. The RoF of an MG42 or minutae of the Stg44 definitely doesn't matter very much when you're looking at battalion or Division-sized formations, and is arguably already extremely overstated even in the squad level. How a squad is designed to fight is much more important than the minutae, and small arms are developed based on these roles rather than the other way around.

The reason why the Americans didn't believe in bolt-action rifles for instance isn't the nonsensical idea that their troops couldn't make use of its better range/accuracy - instead they realized very early on that the range of bolt action rifles was excessive in light of regular combat ranges in WW2, and everyone was using conscript armies that can't have years of training that made RoF important than accuracy (besides which, the only army that ever made good use of the range and accuracy of the bolt action rifle was the long-dead all-regular BEF of the First World War). Hence, giving everyone a semi-auto rifle made sense, especially when they didn't want to weigh down a squad with a true machinegun since they were supposed to constantly attacking. They chose a gun based on how they wanted to fight.

Meanwhile, stuff like the Stg44 really don't make sense other than another belated Hitler "IT WILL TURN THE TIDE OF THE WAR" placebo. An assault rifle seems like a great idea in the context of mixing the best features of a submachinegun (rapid fire) with decent combat ranges of a rifle, but those features benefit primarily troops on the attack (hence "assault" rifle) since it combines firepower with mobility; whereas on the defensive your standard machinegun already provides that capability with much greater levels of firepower (you lose mobility, but again you're defending anyway). Heck, this is why the Germans developed a semi-automati rifle for the paratroopers to begin with - those guys were supposed to have a paucity of MGs and heavier weapons hence they needed a more "equalized" spread of firepower like the Americans had.

And finally, and most importantly, it bears remembering that the vast majority of casualties was still ultimately inflicted by artillery. Your standard Division's four or so artillery battalions generally had much more effect on the battle than any squad or small arms.

Where is any evidence backing up your point? When I have a primary source stating that once Germany had enough Semi Automatics to start equiping battalions with them when fighting America it sounds pretty significant, when I have a primary source from the United States Army that states the Germans doctrine was an abysmal failure against them until they adopted the G43 and MP44 on a widescale in the west, when the same primary source states than in 1943 the British, Canadians, French, Polish, Australians, New Zealanders and pretty much every occupied military force requested the M1 Garand and that the only reason the US declined most of them was due to production just Gearing up.

It makes me wonder what you're thinking, going "it's a matter of doctrine" is such a double standard it's mind blowing. The fact is that the US attributes the Garand to why they were so successful in fire fights, not the 105 mm howitzer, not the M4A3 Sherman, not their doctrine (which they re-evaluated after the war). The main thing I look to is that things on the tactical level afect things on the strategic level. A German soldier failing to get to a detonator because of suppressive fire means the bridge survives, the bridge surviving allows heavy armour across, heavy armour across means forces can smash the hard point. It's a butterfly effect, even the most minor things on a battlefield that seem trivial to people who haven't seen combat can have a major life changing consequence.

 

[Secret Master]

A vast majority of the weapons you listed are going to be used by specialists, not issued to every man in the squad. Overall, the only thing your average GI is going to use is either a Rifle or an SMG.

That's why I said "ideal world."

In the real world, training budgets aren't infinite, time is not infinite, logistics capacity is not infinite, manufacturing isn't infinite, and the carrying capacity of the average infantryman isn't infinite.

If it was, every infantryman would be perfectly competent at using all of those weapons in all appropriate situations, could carry them all, and the logistics train could carry replacements and ammo for them all.