How does any of what you said support your argument that you are using the role how it's meant to be. The germans and the russians NEVER sent their MG out into the middle of no where, where no one could support him quickly if need be, to rack up kills. This is a silly argument and this only prove that TWI is going the way of CoD. NEVER NEVER would they send the CORE of the squad out by himself... especially with no one there.
The Russians, as far as I understand it, were more akin to the Brits and the Americans. The MG was a support unit, designed to use in much the same way that I've been describing. The riflemen were the core of the squad, not the MG.
The Germans were the exception here. The entire squad was built around the MG, and the riflemen were in support. However, this is dealing with the heavier MMGs, which were designed for sustained fire, were fired from tripods, and had a minimum crew of three to operate.
I'm not finding any information on how the LMGs behaved. The Germans weren't as notorious for their effective use of LMGs, and I'm not finding any documentation dealing with how they were used. Lots of talk about their MMG squads, which is what you're talking about, but nothing on the LMG.
Indeed you are wrong sir. I'm sorry but get your facts straight before you start posting stuff on a forum that is ripe with history junkies. You have to remember the length and size of the wall they had build. having 100's and 100's of tri-pods sent over there would be a waste of reasorces considering they were fighting another war on the other side of germany and the war to the west hadnt even started yet. right as you got off the beaches you were met with these scattered in select places:
[url]http://i45.servimg.com/u/f45/11/45/98/54/tobruk10.jpg[/URL]
And here:
[url]http://media.photobucket.com/image/normandy%20MG%20position/jgfive/Brittany10/Brittany10.jpg[/URL]
It was so the Germans could dismount and move their MG into another location quickly if need be and pop up in another place. it's also easy to carry 25+lbs plus ammo instead of un-securing the MG and carrying 45+lbs plus ammo. The bunkers were not that of saving private ryan.
The MG's that were facing the beach were dug into the grass, set up with sand bags, had special concrete holes with a wall in front of them, and so on so they had something that block shots from hitting them directly from the beach but allowed them to shoot the length of the beach. This allowed them to utilize the full effective range of the MG-34/42 of 800 meters.
I was going to argue that that there was likely some form of mounting device that fixed the gun to the concrete, but then I found this:
Undeniably firing from a bipod. I stand corrected.
Oh, and some other fun stuff I came across researching my response:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_machine_gun
A light machine gun may be defined either by the weapon or by its tactical role. It is used to fire short bursts, usually from a bipod; a sustained-fire mount such as a tripod is a characteristic of a medium machine gun. Some machine guns - notably general purpose machine guns - may be deployed either as a light machine gun or a medium machine gun. As a general rule, if a machine gun is deployed with a bipod it is a light machine gun; if deployed on a tripod it is a medium machine gun, unless it uses ammunition of .50 or 12.7 mm caliber or larger, making it a heavy machine gun. Modern light machine guns often fire smaller-caliber cartridges than medium machine guns, and are usually lighter and more compact.
Finally, one last important thing to remember is this: can you imagine if you had to have another player backing you up to survive as an MG'er in-game? With only 32 players -max- (and I don't ever play on servers that big), you're going to be really suffering on pub servers without trained players who know how the whole thing is supposed to work. So, you develop tactics that help you be effective on your own. You can't storm the objectives like everyone else, your gun is too unwieldy, so the best you can contribute to your team is gunning down the enemies as they try to reach the objective to attack/defend. We can't have a fully realistic depiction of how an MG team is supposed to work, because it's a multi-man operation and you can't count on that in an online video game. However, wait for the clan realism units to start rolling out of training and onto the battlefield. You'll see some far more realistic tactics from them.
And like I said, the only reason I lone wolf is so that I can reach a position and strike from an unexpected angle so I'm at minimum risk of getting countersniped. From the flanks, I can decimate an enemy force. I -CAN- hit them head on,
but only with the help of a squad, which is basically how you say MG's are supposed to work. I -can- perform the role as you described as long as I have other folks performing THEIR roles as you described. Without that, I need to rely on flanking, ambush tactics, and stealth to be effective.
