Matrix Games Forums

Not really a "Wish", more of a quick fix (I hope).

HMG's (tripod mounted MGs) need their max range increased. 400m is far too short. My US War Department facsimile Handbook on German Military Forces cites the max effective range of tripod mounted MGs -34 and -42 as 2000 - 2500m. Sov HMGs like the Maxim were good for at least 1000m.

I raise this because it's the sort of unnecessary inaccuracy that gives a game a bad name. Surely, something this simple can be easily corrected?

Cheers,

Andy

ORIGINAL: Andy Brown
US War Department facsimile Handbook on German Military Forces cites the max effective range of tripod mounted MGs -34 and -42 as 2000 - 2500m. Sov HMGs like the

Actually, the handbook shows the units to be in yards. 2000 - 2500 yards. But to assume that 50% of the bullets from a burst to hit a man sized static target at 2500 yds. is a little optimistic.

ORIGINAL: Andy Brown

Not really a "Wish", more of a quick fix (I hope).

HMG's (tripod mounted MGs) need their max range increased. 400m is far too short. My US War Department facsimile Handbook on German Military Forces cites the max effective range of tripod mounted MGs -34 and -42 as 2000 - 2500m. Sov HMGs like the Maxim were good for at least 1000m.

I raise this because it's the sort of unnecessary inaccuracy that gives a game a bad name. Surely, something this simple can be easily corrected?

Cheers,

Andy

Andy,

That is certainly an easy thing to do. This is something you could do yourself if you wanted to modify that. But note that if you do, any PBM games will fail unless your opponent is also using that modified killpower table. But a fair bit of thought did go into the effectiveness ratings of the various guns and how they performed relative to other weapons in the game. The effectiveness also plays a part in the point value of the unit.

Thanks
rick

The whole point of tripod mounted MGs was their range. Their purpose was to engage at ranges beyong the capabilities of section weapons, leveraging the ballistic characteristics of grazing fire and beaten zone to engage area targets and to deny obvious manoeuvre routes to an enemy. I know this because, years ago as a young soldier like MR, I did an MG support weapons course.

If the point of the game is to allow the simulation/recreation of real-world tactics, restricting HMG ranges to 400m prevents them from performing the very function they were primarily used for.

Cheers,

Andy

I just went in and modded my MG34 HMG team to extend the range to 800m. Players can make this edit themselves. You need to edit 2 files:

one is the MG34 gun file in the Data\Guns folder (there are several MG34 files, but you need to edit: MG34 7.92mm.xml).

the other file you need to edit is the Data|Tables file named: Shell Killpower.xml. In that file you need to find the section on the MG34: <weapon type="MG34 7.92mm"> and make the changes you want.

Keep in mind that if you try PBM with someone it will fail with an error message, if they do not have these same edits on their side.

I think one of the manuals talks about editing these files for adding new guns.

Thanks!
Rick

What is the effective range if the Kar 98K in the game? The MG34 would have a greater range in a tripod mount that German rifles and the MG42 in the tripod mount came with telescopic sights. Not something you need at 400 meters.

Good Hunting.

MR

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

What is the effective range if the Kar 98K in the game? The MG34 would have a greater range in a tripod mount that German rifles and the MG42 in the tripod mount came with telescopic sights. Not something you need at 400 meters.

Good Hunting.

MR

The 7.92 98K fired the same 7.92mm x 57 round as the MG34 with slightly more muzzle velocity. If both had telescoptic sights like on a sniper rifle would they have the same range?

ORIGINAL: Mobius

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

What is the effective range if the Kar 98K in the game? The MG34 would have a greater range in a tripod mount that German rifles and the MG42 in the tripod mount came with telescopic sights. Not something you need at 400 meters.

Good Hunting.

MR

The 7.92 98K fired the same 7.92mm x 57 round as the MG34 with slightly more muzzle velocity. If both had telescoptic sights like on a sniper rifle would they have the same range?

Not all ammunition was loaded with the same amount of gunpowder even if it was the same calibre and nationality. I don't know what the specific case with the Germans but I've seen British aviation .303 rounds for sale on the surplus market that were considerably "hotter" than standard infantry ammo. If the Germans had heavy duty rounds for sniper or MG use would be interesting to investigate. I don't specifically recall reading of such, but don't assume that just because the calibre is the same, the ammunition "has" to be also.

The Luftwaffe did use aviation rounds, for example - from Wikipedia:

PmK-Geschoß - (Phosphor mit Stahlkern) ("phosphorus with steel core") German Luftwaffe (Air force) 7.9 mm high velocity machine gun ammunition loaded with the 10.15 grams (156.6 gr) PmK (Phosphor mit Stahlkern—"phosphorus with steel core") ball bullets, featuring a higher muzzle velocity than standard ammunition due to a more powerful smokeless powder charge. These rounds were designated as V-patronen, with 'V' being short for improved (German: verbessert). This cartridge can be recognised by the black circular cap groove, yellow bullet.

I've seen references to special rounds for snipers also but not a lot of info online.

I don't think there is a need to worry about hot ammo as the muzzle velocity of the 98K was 2493f/s and the MG34/42 was 2477 f/s. So what could be the difference in US definition of the effective range of a K98 sniper (1,000m) and effective range of the MG42 (2200-2600yds)?

Well, it could be the target. Man sized vs. what... truck size? Or, effective = 50% chance to hit per round vs. what....50% chance of one hit from a burst of x number rounds? The definition of 'effective' seems a little fluid.

Rick,

Thanks. I'll certainly have a fiddle with those files at some stage, although I first need to get a better idea of how the various values interact with each other.

Is there a file that contains the dimensions of the beaten zone for area fire? Strictly speaking, these dimensions change according to range. I wonder if it's possible to reflect that?

Andy

I think the effects of bullets buzzing past you, even if they don't hit anything might make a person think twice about moving around too much.

ORIGINAL: Andy Brown

Rick,

Thanks. I'll certainly have a fiddle with those files at some stage, although I first need to get a better idea of how the various values interact with each other.

Is there a file that contains the dimensions of the beaten zone for area fire? Strictly speaking, these dimensions change according to range. I wonder if it's possible to reflect that?

Andy

The closest PCo has to modeling the 'beaten zone' is the area fire zone. I dont know of a file that shows that for the MGs. It should reasonably match the area depocted by the targetting box though. and I'm sure it doesn't vary by range. Perhaps one of the others recall what the actualy dimensions are.

Thanks
rick

Rick,

Not to worry. The targetting boxes look so close to what I was thinking about that I wondered if they were user definable somewhere or hard-coded into the game. Either way, you've given me more than enough info to be going on with.

Cheers,

Andy

I was wondering if it would be easy to have a feature where you could save the battle unit details ( Kills etc ) from your last battle saved game to output to html, you could then make a sort of almanac of your unis battle history.

Ive seen this done in the past on a cricket sports game I beta tested.

Cheers


PS Also a basic sketched map showing your progress (or setbacks ) through the campaign.

Can smoke dischargers for (appropriate) AFVs be added to the list please?

It would be appreciated a different color for the order path when an unit is selected (ie instead of blue red). When there are many units together with orders assigned is really hard to see between them.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before but is a dedicated PBM server ever likely for this series? If ever a game cried out for one its Panzer Command.

ORIGINAL: falco

Sorry if this has been mentioned before but is a dedicated PBM server ever likely for this series? If ever a game cried out for one its Panzer Command.

PCO system for PBM actually came about just before Matrix had dedicated servers (They may have had them available before it was released). I actually prefer PCO system, because it allows you to use ANY cloud based storage that can be remotely shared, but I would imagine that Matrix would support a move to their dedicated server system.

Thanks
rick

Hey Rick, how bout through Slitherine?? Battle Academy works great and its turn based.

I too like the cloud based servers. I did play BA on the servers but after playing LOTS of people around the world on the cloud based systems and plain old e-mail on CM1/ CM2 and many other games, the servers are ok.
They are great for finding a game, but I wounder what happens in the future when a game is dropped.