Mounted machine gun accuracy

[Mudkip 0]

So a small 20kg tripod can keep an M2 perfectly on target while spitting out 500 .50 BMG rounds a minute. Same with every other mounted machine gun, notice how even at 1000m you can hold down the trigger and put every round on target.

I don't think mounted machine guns can have proper recoil (engine limitation) so instead they should have artificial dispersion. Like the M134 on the AH-6J.

[dm 9]

ALL mounted machineguns (whether vehicle or tripod mounted) are WAAAY too accurate and laser-like.

In real life, they're pretty much all mounted in such a way that when you fire them they create a beaten zone of fire, which is saturated with bullets.

[mr_centipede 31]

Yeah... mounted MGs are all too damn accurate. I think they dont received any suppression effect, right?

[Inkompetent 0]

Yeah... mounted MGs are all too damn accurate. I think they dont received any suppression effect, right?

Correct. Vehicles (which all mounted guns counts as) are not affected by suppression.

Thumbs up on this suggestion.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Good point on the suppression. And yeah, I also agree they are far too accurate.

[AnimalMother92 10]

+1

Agreed, it's irritating.

[enad 11]

This JUST happened while playing coop. All mounted MGs are so damn accurate, it should be ALOT less accurate.

Surely this is an easy fix?

[SoggyMilk 10]

Wait, WHAT!?

IIRC, when I was in Iraq, the mounted M240, 240's, and 249's were accurate as HELL out to 6-900M when on a vehicle, and much more so when mounted on a tripod.

When firing a burst, it was still accurate, spread must've been about maybe a foot.... If that.

*shrug*

Just my 2 cents.

[Beagle 684]

Wait, WHAT!?

IIRC, when I was in Iraq, the mounted M240, 240's, and 249's were accurate as HELL out to 6-900M when on a vehicle, and much more so when mounted on a tripod.

When firing a burst, it was still accurate, spread must've been about maybe a foot.... If that.

*shrug*

Just my 2 cents.

You are right from the reality factor, But i guess the above poster speak out their wishes from the gamers view and they want it watered down.

To all...check your A.I. accuracy settings...ArmA is tweakable to any extend, do this before crying for game content changes. a A.I. accuracy (tweakable in user.cfg around 0.33 will do what you want.

[l mandrake 9]

Wait, WHAT!?

IIRC, when I was in Iraq, the mounted M240, 240's, and 249's were accurate as HELL out to 6-900M when on a vehicle, and much more so when mounted on a tripod.

When firing a burst, it was still accurate, spread must've been about maybe a foot.... If that.

*shrug*

Just my 2 cents.

Yeah but the problem in the Armaverse is you don't have to fire in a burst, you can empty 100 .50 cal rounds into an enemy's head at 900m in 10 secs; no recoil, barrel changing, stoppages, nada :p

[Beagle 684]

Yeah but the problem in the Armaverse is you don't have to fire in a burst, you can empty 100 .50 cal rounds into an enemy's head at 900m in 10 secs; no recoil, barrel changing, stoppages, nada :p

The need for barrel change is overestimated (like in ACE) In so called reality you only need a few seconds of fire pause to cool it down to a aceptable level. This goes especially for heavy barrels with polygonal profiles. 500 round are no problem for a MG3 for example, the time for belt change is well enough for cooldown on a day with 15°C.

[Mudkip 0]

Is dynamic dispersion possible in the game? In some games as you hold down the trigger dispersion increases.

If this was possible then short bursts would be accurate but sustained fire would go all over the place.

[l mandrake 9]

The need for barrel change is overestimated (like in ACE) In so called reality you only need a few seconds of fire pause to cool it down to a aceptable level. This goes especially for heavy barrels with polygonal profiles. 500 round are no problem for a MG3 for example, the time for belt change is well enough for cooldown on a day with 15°C.

yeah true but the point is you don't even have to pause fire in Armaverse, there are no limiting factors on performance of mounted MGs (laser guns).

[vilas 473]

i agree with topic starter

[NoRailgunner 0]

Lets say only single shots should hit targets at max effective range eg M2 1500m @ point target. Firing burst should have low dispersion and sustained a higher dispersion. An artificial dispersion for all machineguns (vehicle/bi-tripod) like the M134 on the AH-6J has is simply over the top.

[Chris2525 10]

Agree 100%.

As someone stated, MGs, and even their tripods have a certain amount of inherent innacuracy built into them in order to create a "beaten zone". The entire point of a machine gun is to saturate an area - hence they are "area weapons". Laser-like accuracy makes them "point weapons", in which case you may as well use rifle.

I'd like to see this adjusted in a patch, but won't hold my breath.

[alleycat 28]

I never fired a gun, but from what I can see firing a .50 bullet is going to be laser like accurate, becuase the weapon heavy, which should absorb the recoil, especially if mounted on a vehicle. I think people finding it too accurate should get their mind off the usual action movie/fps representation where mgs shoot like a spraycan. Mgs were designed to fire rifle sized bullets at the same accuracy as rifles and at a higher rate.

All this critizism for it being too accurate is probably influenced too much by some weird logic where ROF has to be inversly proportional to accuracy.

Funny how no one complains about .50 Rifles being "too damn accurate". Is it because they look so cool with that scope? a .50 MG has to be more accurate than a .50 rifle, because it is much heavier and is fired from a much more stable platform.

Agree 100%.

As someone stated, MGs, and even their tripods have a certain amount of inherent innacuracy built into them in order to create a "beaten zone". The entire point of a machine gun is to saturate an area - hence they are "area weapons". Laser-like accuracy makes them "point weapons", in which case you may as well use rifle.

I'd like to see this adjusted in a patch, but won't hold my breath.

I think thuis it totally made up. There is no intended inaccuracy "to spray an area". MGs are supposed to hit at long ranges. Not just make noise and supress. The suppression is a result of people fearing being killed by something firing at a high ROF AND accurate shots.

Edited September 1, 2010 by alleycat

[nkenny 1051]

I never fired a gun, but from what I can see firing a .50 bullet is going to be laser like accurate, becuase the weapon heavy, which should absorb the recoil, especially if mounted on a vehicle. I think people finding it too accurate should get their mind off the usual action movie/fps representation where mgs shoot like a spraycan. Mgs were designed to fire rifle sized bullets at the same accuracy as rifles and at a higher rate.

All this critizism for it being too accurate is probably influenced too much by some weird logic where ROF has to be inversly proportional to accuracy.

Funny how no one complains about .50 Rifles being "too damn accurate". Is it because they look so cool with that scope? a .50 MG has to be more accurate than a .50 rifle, because it is much heavier and is fired from a much more stable platform.

I think thuis it totally made up. There is no intended inaccuracy "to spray an area". MGs are supposed to hit at long ranges. Not just make noise and supress. The suppression is a result of people fearing being killed by something firing at a high ROF AND accurate shots.

Eh. No.

MG's, even tripod mounted ones, are designed to have a 'beaten zone'. Once you get your head around it you understand that this is a product of their design and in many ways an advantage! Though less accurate than their arma2 equivalent(laser beams) -- proper MGs are by no means inaccurate.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-22-68/c05.htm

Example: RPK mounts its bipod at the end of the barrel -- this introduces a certain degree of inaccuracy -- thus creating a beaten zone. Another classic example is the BREN gun.

The Bren had an effective range of around 600 yards (550 m) when fired from a prone position with a bipod. Initial versions of the weapon were sometimes considered too accurate because the cone or pattern of fire was extremely concentrated, resulting in multiple hits on one or two enemies, with other enemy soldiers going untouched. Soldiers often expressed a preference for worn-out barrels in order to spread the cone of fire among several targets. Later versions of the Bren addressed this issue by providing a wider cone of fire.[4]

Proper Machineguns are AREA weapons.

-k

[CarlGustaffa 4]

I have to agree, although from a gameplay standpoint. The laser like behavior of vehicle fire limits the use of a sniper. I mean, why send in a sniper for a couple of high value targets when you can kill off everyone with an M2 CROWS equipped HMMWV? For distant targets, it would be far better if it was used for suppression than for sniping. I've used the M2 CROWS HMMWV in Domination with devastating results; AI fail to react due to reacting distance (game limitation), and targets being so small allowing us to turkey shoot everything from safe distance (mission limitation).

Just check the barrel movement in this video:

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No way the spread at the other end is similar to what we have in Arma. Maybe the first bullet is accurate, but...

The only thing I really don't want this applied to is the miniguns. On choppers they're typically too hard to aim due to framerates, and doesn't have enough rate of fire (again, probably due to framerates) to warrant the limited tracer action we get from it. This makes the weapon unreasonably hard to hit with.

Minigun aim by tracer, not possible in Arma:

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Edited September 1, 2010 by CarlGustaffa

[Chris2525 10]

Funny how no one complains about .50 Rifles being "too damn accurate". Is it because they look so cool with that scope? a .50 MG has to be more accurate than a .50 rifle, because it is much heavier and is fired from a much more stable platform.

That's because in reality, sniper rifles are indeed accurate. MGs are not. Theyre not supposed to be. They're AREA weapons. Sniper rifles are POINT weapons.

I think thuis it totally made up. There is no intended inaccuracy "to spray an area". MGs are supposed to hit at long ranges. Not just make noise and supress. The suppression is a result of people fearing being killed by something firing at a high ROF AND accurate shots.

No, it's not totally made up. It's fact. You say you've never fired a gun, well my niche in the infantry for my first 4 years was medium and heavy machine guns. Ive fired tens of thousands of rounds out of MAG58s (both dismounted and from a tripod) and .50Cal M2s.

Ive also instructed numerous machine gun and support weapons courses, including many theory of machine gun fire classes. It's clearly taught that the guns and their tripods have inherent innacruacy built into them. It's in the manual. And i also know for a fact that weapons techs will tighten/loosen the bolts on a tripod in order to give it a particular amount of play - as opposed to eliminating the play - in order to allow the gun to rattle about when firing. I've seen them do it.

Google "beaten zone", and "area weapons" vs "point weapons". We certainly didn't make that up.

[Inkompetent 0]

A certain Carlos Hathcock proved that M2HB machinegun (i.e. .50 BMG ammo) can be very, very, very accurate. So accurate in fact he mounted a sniper scope on one to test, and managed to first-shot-kill a target at 2,286 meters.

So indeed the first shot accuracy should in general be very high on most machine guns (heavy, long-barreled weapons using ammo with good ballistics), but as others say they are purposefully designed to saturate an AREA with fire (either through the weapon platform or weapon itself being instable by a certain amount), and automatic should be anything but dead accurate.

Edited September 1, 2010 by Inkompetent

[Chris2525 10]

That's right. Unlike other common MGs, the M2 doesn't have innacuracy built into the barrel. The variation all comes from the tripod (relying on recoil to create spray).

I met a guy who was US sniper in vietnam and he said they would sometimes hump an M2 through the jungle to use as a long range sniper weapon. But they fired it single shot (which can be done with an M2, but not an M60, M240, or M249).

When fired on automatic though, the gun rattles and creates a beaten zone.

As an example of built in, inherent barrel innacuracy, If you take a look at this, you can clearly see how the barrel for the FN Minimi is tapered (narrower close to the muzzle). The point of this is to create vibration in the barrle as the gun is firing, which creates a cone of fire (read: spray)