HMG's
Hello
Here is an interesting comment from a book called, Fire Power: The British Army - Weapons and Theories by Bidwell
The British army considered the Vickers HMG as the equal of 40 rifles.
So let's compare a sniper and a HMG 34.
OK so game stats are
HMG 34 fire control 1 rangefinder 1 accuracy 25 HE Kill 8
Sniper fire control 10 rangefinder 10 accuracy 30 HE Kill 2
Looking at the actual weapons;
The HMG 34 has a telescopic sight can be 4x, the sniper rifle has a telescopic sight usually 4x. Equal
The HMG 34 has a nice stable tripod with inbuilt recoil, the sniper rifle has a hand, MG34 wins.
The sniper might fire 5 rounds a minute, often the bullets have to be loaded one at a time because the scope blocks the use of a charger. The HMG 34 can link up 5 50 round belts to pump out 250 rounds in a go.
Think about that beautiful old Vickers with the water cooled jacket, It can fire all day. It can kill hundreds of men. A sniper just isn't in the same league....but...
In the game when you use these units the sniper gets more kills than the HMG. This is not historically accurate, far from it.
It doesn't matter which way you carve it the big infantry killer in battle is the HMG not the sniper. In WWI it was HMGs not snipers that mowed down hundreds of men. The game reverses this, and underrates the HMG.
In the time a sniper takes out a man the HMG takes out a squad. There is no comparison.
Certainly there is a good argument to increase HMG FC to 10, the tripods usually have finely calibrated traverse and elevation gear. In many armies Mortar and HMG platoons actually had a rangefinder attached so a RF value of 10 for HMGs MMGs is also realistic. I would give HMGs a HE kill of about 40.
If HMGs got their proper killing ability it should have its blast zone removed, blast zone of 150m seems an odd characteristic for a HMG. It killed people not suppressed them. A HMG taking out or substantially reducing several squads in one turn is not unhistoric.
So what I am saying is that the performance of the sniper should be much less than the HMG the sniper seems roughly OK so use that as a benchmark to get the HMG's right.
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