*Sigh*
Alright, here goes nothing.
But that's what soldiers did in real life. Soldiers also weren't really able to count your bullets because you would usually have some buddies next to you also "plinking bullets" at them.
Then they simply wait for you and your squad of thickies to stop shooting after expending several rounds of your limited cache of ammunition on bouncing bullets off your walls. Then they would pop out whenever (and wherever) you least expected it and take your head off.
Frontline squads don't plink anything. Remember that these boys may have to operate several days (or even weeks) before getting any sort of resupply. They have whatever ammo they can carry, and every bullet wasted is one that they might need later. Suppression is something that happens quickly, and it's designed to give the squad room to maneuver closer to the enemy. Three or four guys will stay behind cover watching the threat and shooting at any movement while the rest of the guys close in for the kill. The whole span of this action wouldn't last more than 15-30 seconds. Just long enough to get your boys in close.
I'm not making this up. Go read any statistics on the average amount of bullets it took to kill an enemy in Vietnam and WW2. It was in the hundreds if not thousands of bullets. Why? Because soldiers valued their life more than bullets, and they knew that they would rather throw bullets the way of the enemy than give him even the slightest chance of being able to lay accurate fire on them. The problem is that you are thinking of a video game and the rules of a video game, not what happened in real life. In Darkest Hour, where suppression actually had an effect on the enemy's ability to engage (which is what happened in real life), wasting bullets worked, and I developed an entire training system around it and it made me and my guys incredibly successful at that game when it came down to engagements.
I've read the statistics dozens of times. You guys love to throw them around. Let me explain to you why it takes so many rounds per casualty:
Shooting the WWII German MG42 - YouTube
1,200 rounds per minute = 20 rounds a second
Shooting the Browning 1919A4 machine Gun - YouTube
400-600 rounds per minute = ~7-10 rounds per second
These are field artillery pieces akin to mortars and anti-tank guns. They are designed for long range supressive fire to cover infantry from a safe distance. They don't have to worry about carrying all their ammo, or when the next opportunity for an ammo resupply is, as they are usually far enough back that they can be resupplied fairly easily. While these -are- fairly accurate weapons, the shooter needs special telescopic sights just to see what he's shooting at, and it's not the most effective way to score kills, as most people drop to prone or take cover as soon as a heavy machine gun opens up on them.
Hence, you have these guns that are expending huge quantities of ammunition, yet their effects are mostly ineffective at causing casualties for all but the most suicidal of enemies. They keep them from moving through certain areas, yes, but this is not something that happens on a squad level.
Squads don't have the kind of ammunition stores to just waste ammunition like you're describing. Suppression on a squad level is done accurately and with the least expended rounds possible. They don't know if they're going to get into a bad situation and suddenly need to defend from a huge wave of enemies or some such, and getting caught without bullets for your gun is a nightmare scenario.
What that means is that everyone is a sniper. The only people who had that kind of an ability to suppress were snipers. How realistic is that? The fact of the matter is that you're changing the nature of suppression because other parts of the game are unrealistic, so you make it entirely about accuracy and never about volume. Naturally, this disparity in how real suppression worked changes the nature of suppression and firefights.
You mean that in order to hit someone with an incredibly accurate weapon (bolt-action rifles are nothing if not incredibly accurate) inside of 50-150 meters requires someone to have sniper-like aim?
Last I checked, snipers tended to engage enemies out to 300 meters.
We're dealing with close quarters combat here. These maps are not that big. RO1 felt artificially larger due to the gamey aiming mechanics, and someone felt like a real crack shot if they hit an enemy at 100 meters, but this is hardly the case in real life. An infantry unit is -not- a volume of fire entity. They had -very limited- volume of fire capabilities in the form of the LMG, but they could carry neither the resources nor the firepower needed to supress an enemy through sheer volume of fire alone.
And please, at no point have I mentioned bullet spread, that is a bad strategy to implement because then all it means is that the player can skillfully aim his weapon each time and get different results. That's terrible. I want players to have to think about cover and movement, so make their weapon sway just a little more when they don't have it supported. Have you noticed how many people just run around now and shoot from unsupported positions? I certainly don't remember that happening this often in Darkest Hour. RO1 might have had unrealistic sway, but it achieved the goal of rewarding players for tactical play and they sought cover to rest their weapon on more often than what we are seeing in RO2. Recoil is just another way of achieving this and player can learn to adjust for it.
That's because you couldn't run in Darkest Hour, at least not fast enough to screw with the aim of your attacker.
And you have to remember how many people are currently "visiting" RO2 from other, more arcadey shooters. That's a problem with the players, not the game. Plus, I -haven't- noticed how many players are running and shooting unsupported because they tend to -DIE- before they get the chance to shoot unsupported. I'm shooting back at them, and I'm reasonably competent with FPS controls. If they do anything OTHER than take cover when I'm prone in the bushes with my LMG, I take their daggum heads off.
RO2 rewards players for tactical play, you're just using the wrong tactics. You want to use tactics that worked in RO1, under RO1s rules. RO2 is a different beast, and it got rid of a lot of the arcadey mechanics that allowed you to get away with a lot of the stuff you got away with in RO1. You need to figure out which tactics work and bear in mind that each player is a reasonably competent shot now that they don't have goofy mechanics throwing off their aim for 50 meter shots.
I have taught that technique for quite a while now. When engaging, you always pop out of different positions because the enemy will be waiting for you or what I called "holding" you. Now, I also taught people how to break that hold in Darkest Hour. I taught that in order to break that hold, you needed to find a suitable position to be able to return fire as fast as possible. The reason I taught it is because of the following;
Well that's good! There's a tactic that -can- carry over from RO1 to RO2, because it's a legitimate infantry tactic and it works quite well! What you called "holding", the real military calls "suppressing." And as you said, in order to break that suppression, the army teaches you to -MOVE-. Don't sit there and wait to get picked off. Get prone, start crawling, stay out of sight, and get to a position where you can draw a bead on him without him realizing it. Welcome to infantry combat 101.
I know where the enemy roughly is and enemy knows what area I'm probably going to pop out of, even after moving about. There is going to be a crucial time (go time) when I get out of cover where there is going to be a stand-off, between me getting my sights over the enemy and pulling the trigger before he does. You usually only win/lose that battle by a few tenths of a second.
Here's where you screw up. Why are you giving him the chance to shoot back? There should -be- no stand off. You shouldn't ever expose an inch more than you have to to get your shot off, and you should only come up when you feel confident you've flanked around far enough that he won't see you or be able to react before you shoot him right in his stupid face. You shouldn't be relying on twitch reflexes. Ever. You aren't thinking if you have to twitch. You're betting your very LIFE on the idea that you're faster than he is. What soldier in his right mind would do this?
You obviously do your best to maximize your chances of being successful, but think about how dangerous this kind of engagement is. It's still a duel, you're still betting on your ability to not only aim your sights and fire before the enemy, but also making a killing shot.
Real firefights aren't about "duels," they're about catching your enemy off guard and killing him at a minimum of risk to yourself. Dueling is a very high risk situation and should be avoided at all costs. You are trying to minimize the danger to yourself and your comrades, something that you can do with alarming success by simply following basic tactical thinking. As I said, RO1 certainly had more of this than other shooters, but undercut it's credibility in lots of other ways allowing for a wide range of very unrealistic tactics to sprout through.
If you can't get off a shot and retreat to cover before he can retaliate, you're taking too much risk and now that you can aim properly in RO2, you will be punished for it.
Another thing I taught my guys was that becoming a better soldier was about improving your chances of survival, I taught battlefield statistics. Learning how to properly defilade yourself in cover was just one tactic out of many that would increase your chances of survival, and all of a sudden your "survivability" was not at a much higher rate, making you a more effective soldier. Dead soldiers make bad ones.
Again, you're talking the right talk here. Defilade and enfilade are still vital concepts in RO2. Keep using these as you used them in RO1.
The kind of engagement I just previously mentioned is an example of engaging in a manner that does not improve your chances of survival, it's risky. In order to combat this, I need some way of returning fire that actually has an effect on the enemy and reduces the chances of me getting hit. Darkest Hour gave me that way, because I could shoot much quicker than my enemy so long as I tried to just shoot bullets his way, rather trying to take that killing shot. What happened is now the enemy had to get back down under cover or return fire, and all of a sudden, you have a real firefight. Not a showdown, but a firefight.
And that happens in RO2 too, between competent, tactically thinking players. I've seen several legitimate firefights in RO2, where players will pop out, take aim, spot movement, take cover right as bullets ping off their window, move a few feet, pop out again, return fire, take cover, move around, etc. for a fair while before anyone gets killed. Of course, this usually takes place on my clan server, where everyone knows these tactics and how to use them properly, and we spend a lot of time figuring out what works and what doesn't. As I've said several times before, if you're relying on showdowns, you aren't using your tactics right.
RO2 accomplishes the same effect as RO1 did, without the gamey mechanics. You just have to alter your playstyle to accommodate for the lack of bullet plinking.
As another poster previously mentioned, soldiers did a lot of "quasi blind fire" in order to return fire. If they were getting shot at, they just wanted to throw bullets the enemy's way so the enemy didn't have fire superiority. I was able to do this several times in RO2 when using SMGs or Semis, because I could desaturate the player's screen and do other effects. I'm not a big fan of this method but whatever works.
Not sure what soldiers you've seen, mate. I've never heard of the military endorsing or training any sort of blind fire for their soldiers. Such a thing only expends ammunition and greatly increases the likelihood of a friendly fire incident.
No it's not. It's designed to get more bullets over your enemy's head than he can get over yours. It was about scaring your enemy and showing him you had more firepower than he did. That's what achieving fire superiority is all about. If you have to expend dozens of bullets to kill one guy, then so be it, a soldier valued his life over dozens of bullets. Volume is entirely about "plinking MORE bullets"; over one enemy, two enemies, or an entire company. That's what firefights were all about, returning more fire than the enemy so they would say "well, we're probably going to lose this battle, let's either dig in and get in some cover or retreat".
*sigh*
But they -wouldn't- say that. If they returned to their base and said "well, they were being scary and plinking bullets off our cover and we got frightened!", they'd probably be executed for treason and cowardice.
If they aren't already in cover, than why aren't you just KILLING them? That's a far more effective method to keep them from firing back.
Volume of fire is -all about- covering as many angles as possible at once. It has nothing to do with shooting MORE bullets at the same guy, it's about covering a wider swath of land and keeping MORE people's heads down so your guys can move in for the kill.
Any action that you make that doesn't either directly lead to the death of your enemy or bring you closer to his demise is a waste.
What you just described is entirely how a veteran soldier would NOT behave in the same situation. A real veteran soldier wouldn't just stand there thinking "oh, this guys is just throwing bullets my way, I'll just brave it and carefully take a controlled aimed shot and kill him". Remember, in real war, you usually only got hit once before your war was over. Veterans knew that while the returning fire might not have been the most accurate, if the bullets were close enough to you, one of them might eventually hit. And that's all it took to put a veterans head down. Not said by me, but by Osprey. Not like that of course, but it was well known by some generals that veterans didn't make for the best soldiers because they took so little risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_42#Operation
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. 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.
That's right, both the US and the UK trained their soldiers to time their assaults
during the 5-7 seconds it took to swap out an overheated MG-42 barrel. That's more than enough time to cover 20-30 meters, get into grenade range, and find cover again. With your buddies suppressing the machine gunners buddies with pinpoint rifle fire, you could get in close and take out the nest while they were helpless to retaliate.
Waiting for the enemy to burn through his ammo is a -very- legitimate strategy when dealing with small units. This is why trigger discipline is such an important doctrine in armed services around the world.
YOU ONLY HAVE SO MUCH, AND YOU HAVE TO TAKE YOURSELF OUT OF COMBAT TO RELOAD AFTER A SET NUMBER OF SHOTS. The enemy knows this, and he is trained to take advantage of every little opening in your strategy to exploit to his advantage.
Also, lets not forget all of the flying debris and possible shrapnel or other flying objects that come about bullets destroying your surroundings. If people didn't get back down under cover because of the bullets, they probably got out of sight of all the crap that could've fallen into their eyes.
Ricochets and bullet shrapnel can be dangerous, yes, but expecting to get kills from ricochets or bullet shrapnel is foolish. It's like trying to bounce a bullet off a metal plate and hit a target you can't see. Odds are one in a billion.
My friend Logical Fallacy would like to have a word with you. What you presented has absolutely no bearing as to WHY these soldiers died, only that they died. 75% of soldier casualties were because of some form of shelling. 10% was caused by bullets and anti-tank shells. So less than 10%. This is according to Osprey.
*Le sigh*
How again is that a logical fallacy? Let's go back to what you said in the first place:
And I quote:
This kept me relatively safe and also helped me hold my territory. WW2 combat was more about taking and holding territory than it was about killing the soldiers.
It doesn't matter how they died, the point is that the primary method of capturing territory was to inflict such horrific losses on the enemy that they were forced to retreat or face the complete decimation of their fighting forces.
Again, your final conclusion just shows that you have been playing video games way too much and don't understand how morale impacts a battle. Defenders rarely held to the last man, despite what Hitler and Chuikov may have told you.
Ad hom. Nice. I addressed the legitimate part of this argument above. The rest of it is just bollocks. I'm pulling legitimate references in from outside sources to back up my data, and never once have I referenced a video game as a source of legitimate tactics. I have suggested that legitimate tactics can be used in a video game, yes, but never the other way around.
I haven't had a curve, this game is too easy for me as it is. All I need is a semi or an smg and I'm almost guaranteed top 3-5 score on the server.
Because you're fighting idiots right now. Wait for BF3 to clean out a lot of the smacktards and you'll find yourself against some pretty stiff competition.
Implying I need to "read up on honest-to-goodness infantry tactics" makes me want to ask you, what the hell have you been reading? This whole time you have shown me rather limited knowledge as to how this war was fought by WW2 infantry. Your vision of how WW2 went down is as if entire armies were comprised of Black Ops Agents who were all stealthy and conducted small arms operations. A lot of the tactics you have mentioned are used, but by different types of units, in different eras, with different equipment. WW2 was more about fire superiority, and that was achieved with lots and lots of bullets. It's kinda hard to be stealthy when you're a battalion of 500 soldiers.
Er, I've actually been reading the U.S. Army Handbook for Small Unit Tactics, the same book that my dad learned his small unit tactics from when he attended West Point. Something very similar to this:
http://www.marines.mil/news/publica...8 The Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad_2.pdf
Abiet a bit older.
While I would never deny anyone wanting to discuss tactics, I do want you to be aware that I have pages of training documentation I have written up for Darkest Hour and I led a realism unit that I personally trained everyday. I will always welcome you or anybody who wants to talk, but please don't be condescending. I will pretend that you are not being so, as long as you recognize that my tactics are not some random made up thing or things I'm asking for because I lack tactics.
I will admit however that I don't want to discard parts of my training that applied to Darkest Hour, so rather than have to adjust my training, I wish to get some of that gameplay back. However, I can assure you, it's not because I don't want to do the work, it's because I saw just how good Darkest Hour suppression worked and simulated the style of combat WW2 infantry engaged in.
It's obvious you do have a clue when it comes to tactics, a lot of the stuff you're suggesting is solid. You're just not implementing it correctly.
The weapons are fine. ![2Lt.Horvath [6th AB]](/data/avatars/s/36/36264.jpg?1568638684){kind=avatar}