M136 vs Smaw

[able78 10]

The Smaw can currently hold 3x as much ammo per slot as the M136... After some testing the smaw always seemed to do more damage.. In every situation i tested it in the smaw always came out on top damage wise... Soo if you can carry 3x as much ammo, and it does more damage.. why choose the M136?? what am i missing here?

I was told in Real life the Smaw is a crew operated weapon, where as the M136 is operated by only one person.. So i can see why you would send soldiers into combat with M136 in real life.. but in arma 2 im failing to see any real reason why to choose the M136 over the smaw.. Any ideas?

Edited August 1, 2009 by able78

[l mandrake 9]

agree - I always choose the SMAW now + 3 rockets, it's a no-brainer. Dunno how far this (mis)reflects reality but hey-ho such is the game ATM.

[the_shadow 0]

becouse there is RPG7, RPG18 and AT13 METIS in the russian inventory.

and bis has decided west must have the exact counterparts.

wich would be in order.

SMAW (reloadable with different warheads)

M136 (not reloadable (irl atleast))

Javelin

i dont know why it must be like that though, but thats probably the main reason there is both SMAW and M136.

[Inkompetent 0]

It's a terribly poor reason to make people only take one rocket for the 1-shot disposable M136 launcher.

They *should* in my eyes have made a new system for disposable launchers with a variable stored for the launcher object, so that once it is fired it cannot be reloaded and fired again.

That way they could have a sane size on the M136's rocket on par with the SMAW and RPG-7.

At the moment we get this cheap-o solution though. I hope ACE2 has a better one :)

[Murklor 10]

but in arma 2 im failing to see any real reason why to choose the M136 over the smaw.. Any ideas?

Ideas? What for? Its blatantly obvious that something is wrong, in favor of the SMAW. No one in their sane mind would pick the M136 over the SMAW with its vastly superior optics and plentifull ammo, given the choice.

But there is nothing to fix, really. Having free-for-all weapons loadouts is wrong in the first place. This would all be avoided if the mission designer place a group of say three people, a spotter, a SMAW carrier with a single rocket and a rifleman with 2 additional SMAW rocket (just as an example, I have no idea how such a group looks in reality).

[Inkompetent 0]

If stuff were done more properly (and indeed as Murklor say lots of responsibility is on the mission makers) we'd have a few riflemen and fire team leaders per squad (counting a 13-man USMC standard rifle squad) carrying a M136 disposable launcher.

Then there'd be up to two 2-man heavy weapons AT-teams for the rifle platoon, consisting of a SMAW gunner and assistant gunner each, carrying a total of about 5 rockets per team. Give or take one depending on distance to vehicles and such.

[frederf 0]

Rifle platoons don't have SMAWs. The "weapons squad" in a rifle platoon is 7 guys, 2 3-man M240 machine gun teams and a squad leader.

SMAWs come in at the weapons platoon level, assault section organically. They are usually detached in pairs (gunner, assistant gunner with 1 SMAW and ~5 rounds) like the bazooka teams in the old war movies.

I detest that the "fix" for the 4-round AT4 gunner was to make the AT4 round take up 6 of the 12 primary inventory slots. Really? 7 M16 magazines and an AT4 is too much? Gimmie a break. We really need the concept of the magazine in the weapon and not in the pocket for not only AT-4s but all weapons.

[Nutlink 10]

100% agree. If a weapon is loaded it's ammo should not take a spot in the back pack the same as if it wasn't loaded.

[Apocal 10]

Rifle platoons don't have SMAWs. The "weapons squad" in a rifle platoon is 7 guys, 2 3-man M240 machine gun teams and a squad leader.

SMAWs come in at the weapons platoon level, assault section organically. They are usually detached in pairs (gunner, assistant gunner with 1 SMAW and ~5 rounds) like the bazooka teams in the old war movies.

No weapons squad in a "stock" Marine rifle platoon. USMC holds all it's CSWs, machine guns, SMAWs and mortars, in the company weapons platoon. A four man (two teams of two) assault squad is chopped, although depending on mission, they may have only one SMAW while the rest carry breach.

I detest that the "fix" for the 4-round AT4 gunner was to make the AT4 round take up 6 of the 12 primary inventory slots. Really? 7 M16 magazines and an AT4 is too much? Gimmie a break. We really need the concept of the magazine in the weapon and not in the pocket for not only AT-4s but all weapons.

Doesn't bother me all that much. You almost never see people taking more than one shot with an AT4, unless they looted their buddies' corpse and plenty of high quality missions stick you with what ammo you can carry. It brings to focus the fact that you have limited resources operating light as an infantry and if realistically depicted, you get far fewer cool, shiny toys than most people would prefer.

[rekrul 7]

Didn't they brag about how every item would have their own wheigt and such before they launched "Game 2" as well as the RPG-aspect of the game?

[no use for a name 0]

I agree that an m136 rocket wouldn't take up anything in your inventory because it's already loaded in the tube. I think if they did that; and still made it single shot it would be a lot better

[galzohar 31]

No need to go into unit structure is, as it's all based on the fact that the reason you carry M136 over SMAW is purely due to weight. Since weight is not simulated in the game, and the inventory system totally messes up launchers and especially messes up the M136, the SMAW ends up being better than anything. But it's far from the only problem - there's also the problem that it's practically stupid to not have a launcher with you, while IRL most people won't carry launchers because those things are generally damn heavy compared to how useful they are. Speaking of usefulness, nobody sends mostly infantry forces against large amounts of armor.

In short, the causes for this problem are:

- M136 takes stupid amount of inventory space.

- Weight (specifically of launchers) is not modeled in any shape or form.

- Mission designers usually send you to fight armored vehicles that infantry wouldn't normally be sent to fight (unless you're in a some kind of an AT unit).

Not enforcing weapons is not what is causing these issues. On servers that enforce weapons you still have everyone want to take a SMAW with 3 rockets over an M136. The only difference is that they have to wait for the SMAW guy to die if they can't be the SMAW guy.

I think I'm officially not including heavy launchers (not even RPG7) in any of the missions I make until some kind of weight modeling is made. If that means that they need to either include no armor or include armor on both sides - then so be it, it's quite realistic anyway.

[eagleone 1]

You should see how this is done in the ACE, it is perfectly realized.

P.S. I think that the RPG-7 can not be a counterweight to the SMAW, RPG-7 grenade launcher is very outdated at this point in time is much better to give the Russian RPG-29

sorry for my english)

[Inkompetent 0]

True about the heavy weapons teams not being on platoon level, but my point was more that of that if they expect to need SMAWs they aren't likely to get more than one, max two SMAW teams attached to the rifle platoon for that mission.

And as Galzohar says people are put against completely fubar opposition. Take out T-90 tanks with SMAWs and M136s? Only sane things to send against an MBT is one's own MBTs, CAS (be it fixed or rotary wing), guided precision artillery, or guided AT missiles (Javelin or TOW).

Even against other AFVs like the BMP-2/3 or BTR-90 you wouldn't WANT the infantry to have to engage it with simple AT rockets. It can be done, but unless they have a very good opportunity to circle it and get a good side/rear/top shot (urban environment) it'd always be prefered to use guided AT munitions like Javelin or TOW, CAS, or own AFVs or MBTs.

And yes and no for the RPG-7 vs RPG-29. The RPG-7 is old indeed, but it can use the heavy PG-7VR rockets that are tandem shaped charge warheads. It is essentially a PG-7VL (MUCH improved armour penetration over the PG-7V) with an extra charge to defeat ERA armour.

It is a very, very potent weapon, although suffering from short range and fairly poor accuracy.

[eagleone 1]

although suffering from short range and fairly poor accuracy.

and just this is a very important drawback, RPG 29 is similar to 7VR on the characteristics of the munition, but RPG 29 has a very good accuracy and speed projectile

sorry for offtop

Edited August 2, 2009 by Eagleone

[JackandBlood 10]

It's a terribly poor reason to make people only take one rocket for the 1-shot disposable M136 launcher.

They *should* in my eyes have made a new system for disposable launchers with a variable stored for the launcher object, so that once it is fired it cannot be reloaded and fired again.

That way they could have a sane size on the M136's rocket on par with the SMAW and RPG-7.

At the moment we get this cheap-o solution though. I hope ACE2 has a better one :)

Ya but then doesnt the M136 become even more irrevelant, since you can only carry one launcher? Maybe make it so all US/allies ground vehicles have 5-6 AT4 tubes by default?. And if u can only carry one as an a infantry man you gotta make the thing stronger, maybe not better armor penetration but better anti-personnel and larger anti-ppl radius. Personally I would want this:

http://www.defensereview.com/airtronic-usa-rpg-7-amerikansky-rocket-propelled-grenade-launcher/

ammo limited by enemy AT corpses!

[akd42 10]

If you could carry and fight with only an M9 with the SMAW, I bet the M136 would be a lot more appealing.

[galzohar 31]

The only way to implement the M136 properly has to add a weight factor. IRL that is the only real reason to carry it over other AT weapons. If it wasn't for weight all soliders IRL would be carrying Javelins or even TOWs, or against infantry they'd be all carrying mortars, mark19s and M2HBs. IRL weight is a big factor, though, so those things aren't done. Same goes for loading up everyone with a SMAW and 3 rockets. Even if it's something you could carry and walk around with in combat IRL, you still can't run up a hill assaulting enemy fortified positions with it.

The reason you don't want to go against IFVs with infantry is not really because your weapons can't destroy it, but more because the IFV's weapons will destroy you first due to range and accuracy. M136 is what, 300m max? IFVs can fire HE rounds for much longer distance than that. I'd give you that, though, just about any IFV will most likely get destroyed or at least take critical damage from a frontal hit by an M136 or even PG-7V. Most don't have more than 30-50mm of frontal armor. That's at least true for the BMPs/BTRs/BRDMs/LAVs/M2s and I think the AAV as well.

[Murklor 10]

The only way to implement the M136 properly has to add a weight factor

... or of course, not allow free-for-all weapon equips, which can already be implemented with ease. Just dont slap down a 1x1m crate containing enough weapons to equip a 3rd world country army.

Inventory weight has been brought up several times, but that's just complicating things beyond necessity. Its true that weight dont exist, but it really goes both ways: you can equip 50 M136 rockets if you want!

[galzohar 31]

Restricting weapons by itself is not a real solution, as like I already said it turns it to a "support the guy that did get a SMAW and follow him to take the SMAW when he dies" game. That's not realistic. If you make the SMAW guy have worse movement abilities like he should have IRL, then suddenly there's a purpose to being a regular infantryman as well, as there are actually things that the regular infantryman does a lot better than the SMAW guy.

Restricting roles is bad if it results in some roles being more desired/useful/important than others. You don't go far when you try to encourage a realistic behavior by implementing features that only encourage that behavior in the game and not IRL.

The current space limitations are trying to make up for the lack of weight system, but they fail to do so in a large variety of loadouts. IRL you don't have a squad of designated marksmen because it's simply ineffective in short range. In the game, though, assault rifles are gimp at long ranges unless you tweak your FOV via the player.arma2profile, there is little cover compared to RL which increases the average engagement range by a lot, and crosshairs make scoped weapons at least as good as assault rifles for CQB. So while you could just force people to not take DMRs, the result will not be good. Same goes for weight and heavy AT weapons, and that issue is only made worse by the retardedly high amount of space M136 takes up.

I'm not all against weapon/class restrictions, but if it's going to be done it needs to be done right - that is, your squad actually needs to be well equipped to handle the mission with the restrictions. In other words, restrictions need to be done so that if the restrictions were removed, people wouldn't choose extremely different loadouts. If you don't know what loadouts are effective for your mission or what loadouts are used in RL units that go on missions like the one you made, you're better off staying away from restrictions.

Personally, like I already said, I'm probably completely excluding all weapons that are implemented in a too unrealistic fashion (javelin, smaw, M240, M107 and their russian counterparts - even the RPG is unrealistic since it IS something that is rather heavy to carry with rockets).

Edited August 2, 2009 by galzohar

[wolf_Eversmann 10]

For me, being a new player in the arma series, i use to take the m136 because is smaller, and if i want to snear around, i'm less visible.

Other than that, m136 is a worse weapon. I guess if they implement the weight system, it could come to sense.

[IronPants 0]

Yes, the current M136 implementation is mindbendingly retarded. Why didn't they just hardcode it so you can't carry rockets, and it shoots once? Having the rocket take up a ridiculous amount of inventory space is lazy and stupid - especially contrasted with the SMAW implementation, which allows you to carry more magazines and an additional rocket despite being much heavier.

[Raznor09 10]

id say the only up the m136 has is that it looks better then the smaw, the smaw is straight up ugly especially hauling that on your back. in the next patch they should increase the m136 power, since its only 1 shot and would give more incentive to use it.

[galzohar 31]

Increasing the power of the M136 is probably the worst possible solution. You kill some realism in order to balance an issue that was created because you killed some realism earlier. Instead of fixing an unrealistic issue by creating a new unrealistic issue that balances it, just fix the unrealistic issue.

[JackandBlood 10]

I dont think i've ever seen a soldier with more than one m136 on his back. After some research (e.g wikipedia and google), i'm starting to see why both systems are relevant and serve a different purpose. AT4 was adopted on the doctrine of lightening soldiers equipment (so they can carry more gear and be more versatile, not to make life easier ahaha). Pre-loaded with rocket the AT4 weighs similar to an empty SMAW. Its unit cost is reasonable.

SMAW on the other hand is much heavier when loaded,(The ammo is quite heavy). The unit cost of a SMAW is more than 10 times that of an AT4 so soldiers cant discard the launcher after all rounds are spent.

So they each serve a different purpose. Any soldier can carry an AT4 and instantly give him/her new capabilities. A SMAW guy would have to be a designated AT guy, carrying only the most basic gear, his m4, and the SMAW w/ ammo. So his rucksack is mainly rocket ammo, none of the tons of stuff soldiers carry to be versatile.

So how would they implement this in game? Well make it so only the AT specialist (or whatever that class is called) class can carry it, And said class gets one defensive firearm limited to m4 or lesser and 4 clips max (more if he chooses to go pistol). And cant sprint for as long as other classes.

I think that balances quite well, and is probably the way the two systems are employed IRL