Weapon Purpose

[Blood Legend]

I play a lot of MW2, and I played a lot of Call of Duty 4, and plenty of other FPS's before then. As many of you probably know, weapons in these games are basically a cluster truck, a medley of anything that happens to be cool at the time, and I'm pretty aware how much of a sham video game weapons are. What I'd like to know is what these weapons are actually for, and how they're very specifically used. For instance, I cant recall ever seeing the military use a shotgun for anything more than breaking doors, windows and shooting smoke grenades.

What jobs are assault rifles used for? As in, rough and tumble opposed to marksman shooting? If assault rifles are used to provide cover fire for the LMG to get into position, and the LMG is used to lay down suppressive fire, when the hell does anyone actually get shot? Is a shotgun used in any sort of legitimately lethal capacity?

When would I need to consider using an SMG? Are all SMGs less damaging than assault rifles? Are they even provided to the military or are those really more of a vehicle defense and airport security weapon? How many grenades does each soldier really carry and when is he instructed (or authorized?) to use them? A better question, what DONT you use a grenade on? Other than any friendly fire incident (obviously I dont mean chucking the grenade under your officer's jeep) what is simply just a bad target for a grenade?

Whats the pistol for if it cant hope to even break through kevlar nevermind the trauma plates? Are sniper rifles used in a 2 to 5 man team or are they strictly kept in sniper teams? How many people compose a decent sniper team? These games also tend to use flares for just about EVERYthing. What are flares and smoke bombs used for?

How big of a blast would a real claymore do? (if there are variations, whatever is deemed typical or standard) Do Humvees and other light military transports really do anything besides protect from dirt and rocks (probably not even that?)

Now I know Gurps has loads of stats for weapons, but they dont exactly describe the nature of the tool. What determines the real life effective range of these weapons? Is there a rule for how many shots have to be on target within a certain distance or some such nonsense?

I've also heard that bolt actions are a lot more accurate than their competitors, and while this seems to be less true as time (and progress) marches on, it still holds true. How wide of a gap in accuracy are we talking here? A comparison between two marksmen rifles used by the same military would be good enough for me.


I need this info for superfluous descriptions of events as they occur in my games and to extrapolate or exaggerate the methods used today for sci-fi parallels. Hard data or broad-stroke second-hand teachings would both do me fine.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

I play a lot of MW2, and I played a lot of Call of Duty 4, and plenty of other FPS's before then. As many of you probably know, weapons in these games are basically a cluster truck, a medley of anything that happens to be cool at the time, and I'm pretty aware how much of a sham video game weapons are. What I'd like to know is what these weapons are actually for, and how they're very specifically used. For instance, I cant recall ever seeing the military use a shotgun for anything more than breaking doors, windows and shooting smoke grenades.

What jobs are assault rifles used for? As in, rough and tumble opposed to marksman shooting? If assault rifles are used to provide cover fire for the LMG to get into position, and the LMG is used to lay down suppressive fire, when the hell does anyone actually get shot? Is a shotgun used in any sort of legitimately lethal capacity?

When would I need to consider using an SMG? Are all SMGs less damaging than assault rifles? Are they even provided to the military or are those really more of a vehicle defense and airport security weapon? How many grenades does each soldier really carry and when is he instructed (or authorized?) to use them? A better question, what DONT you use a grenade on? Other than any friendly fire incident (obviously I dont mean chucking the grenade under your officer's jeep) what is simply just a bad target for a grenade?

Whats the pistol for if it cant hope to even break through kevlar nevermind the trauma plates? Are sniper rifles used in a 2 to 5 man team or are they strictly kept in sniper teams? How many people compose a decent sniper team? These games also tend to use flares for just about EVERYthing. What are flares and smoke bombs used for?

How big of a blast would a real claymore do? (if there are variations, whatever is deemed typical or standard) Do Humvees and other light military transports really do anything besides protect from dirt and rocks (probably not even that?)

Now I know Gurps has loads of stats for weapons, but they dont exactly describe the nature of the tool. What determines the real life effective range of these weapons? Is there a rule for how many shots have to be on target within a certain distance or some such nonsense?

I've also heard that bolt actions are a lot more accurate than their competitors, and while this seems to be less true as time (and progress) marches on, it still holds true. How wide of a gap in accuracy are we talking here? A comparison between two marksmen rifles used by the same military would be good enough for me.


I need this info for superfluous descriptions of events as they occur in my games and to extrapolate or exaggerate the methods used today for sci-fi parallels. Hard data or broad-stroke second-hand teachings would both do me fine.

I can probably get you some info tomorrow sometime - my cohusband came back from his second tour in Iraq a couple months ago - but one question I can answer right away.

The purpose of the pistol is to use against enemies who don't wear battle armor - for instance, the various resistance movements in Iraq. Also, even if your OPFOR is wearing full battle rattle, they can't armor their faces effectively, outside of adding in bomb-removal armor...

[bstubby]

The M4 and M16 are the bread and butter of the US armed forces. In a squad of infantry 3 out of 4 guys carry them. They are meant for precision fire out to 200 to 300 yards. The fourth man will carry a squad automatic weapon (like the M249 SAW) and his job is to act in more of a suppresive role, but its the same caliber as a traditional rifle, so its no good for anything except soft targets. Each squad will usually have 1 light machine gun (M240G was common) team of a gunner and assistant gunner, the poor guy who has to lug the ammo and extra barrels. This is used to hose down unarmored vehicles and break up formations of troops. Each man usually carried 2 frag grenades. In Iraq they started giving each squad an M14 with a scope, and you can reach out to about 600 yards pretty effectovely. I don't know about special forces and whatnot, but I never saw a single SMG the whole 8 years I was in the military, all of it in combat arms. And I never heard of anyone drawing a pistol, much less firing it in anger (its more of a status symbol for officers and seargant majors who never see combat. The ones that do fight carried rifles).
Unarmored humvees are worthless at saving you from getting shot. Imagine riding around south central LA in a jeep. The uparmored ones we had circa 2006 will stop 50 cal machineguns and IEDs, say around 50 pounds of HE? Claymores are vicious antipersonnel mines, 700 ball bearings backed with and 1/2 pound of explosives. Its like shooting 25 or 30 shotguns off at the same time. Nasty.
Of course this is only my narrow experience of the last few years in a regular army infantry unit.

Oh yeah, dont forget one of the most powerful weapons one man can wield... A radio. A TOW missle or 500 pound bomb settles an argument in a hurry. I once found a twisted fragment of a bumper about 200 yards from the smoking hole that used to be a car carrying some (allegedly) unpleasant people :)

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

I play a lot of MW2, and I played a lot of Call of Duty 4, and plenty of other FPS's before then. As many of you probably know, weapons in these games are basically a cluster truck, a medley of anything that happens to be cool at the time, and I'm pretty aware how much of a sham video game weapons are. What I'd like to know is what these weapons are actually for, and how they're very specifically used. For instance, I cant recall ever seeing the military use a shotgun for anything more than breaking doors, windows and shooting smoke grenades.

All the below is AFAIK, and I'd much appreciate corrections from people who know better.

Assault rifles are automatic weapons designed with specs that are good for open-land fighting between soldiers, at ranges of up to 300 yards (a bit less than 300 meters). For shooting at longer range, you'd need some kind of rifle (a sniper rifle for truly long range, or a .50 caliber for extreme range) or heavier gun (machine gun). Or artillery. But the point is, the military planners decided that ordinary soldiers only very rarely need more than those 270-or-so meters of range.

SMGs are for close-quarters fighting, e.g. inside buildings (or dungeons, or spaceships or stations), and probably also in street settings, and situations where the enemy will appear close by, such as in jungles.

Shotguns were apparently popular in Vietnam, according to "GURPS SEALs in Vietnam" (and I'd trust HCV to have his facts straight) during jungle patrols.


One thing I'm doing in one of my homebrew RPGs, Modern Action RPG, is give each firearm weapon a minimum range for normal usage. Anything less than that counts as Point Blank (PB) usage, and different kinds of weapons perform radically different when used at PB. A bit like how physics start acting up when you get involved with black holes, although rather less extreme.

Some weapons are good at PB usage. Gleaning from "GURPS SEALs in Vietnam" I've decided that this is shotguns and SMGs. Also pistols and revolvers, of course. So they get a bonus when used at PB range, and this bonus gets even bigger for sawn-off shotguns, or shotguns fitted with a muzzle choke that causes the shot to spreard out in a particular pattern (duckbill pattern, e.g.).

The bonus can either be in the form of a bonus to effective skill (so that more dice are rolled), or it can be in the form of reduced Action Point cost. The former simulates greater precision (more likely to hit, and to hit good so as to cause more damage), and the later simulates speed. A sawn-off shotgun would be an example of the later: A short weapon is faster to turn towards a suddenly appeared enemy.

(The PB rules are really intended for use against active, hostile targets, so they will probably produce very wonky results if used to mow down helpless victims, or to shoot on target ranges.)

Damage is constant per Success, e.g. one particular weapon does 3 damage per Success, another 4 damage per Success. Up until now I haven't given any damage modifiers for PB usage, but it occurs to me that a shotgun with a choke to spread the shot in some way (into a wider pattern) should get a bonus to hit and a penalty to damage per Success. More likely to hit, but won't hit as hard.

Likewise, weapons that are poorly suited to close-quarters combat usage, get a penalty when used at PB range, possibly in the form of a skill penalty, but more likely costing more Action Points to use.

A regular weapon attack (at non-PB) tends to cost 4 APs, a burst attack (3 shots from an automatic weapon) costs 5 APs, and a full auto attack (10 shots) costs 6 APs.

Using a rifle-sized weapon at PB range then costs 2 APs more (sending a serious "dude, you're using the wrong kind of weapon!"-message to the shooter), and using a carbine-sized weapon at PB range then costs 1 AP more.

(There's also an under PB range. Some weapon's PB range only starts when the there is 1 hex' space between you and the enemy, or even two or three hexes of space. Using a weapon at under-PB range is always a bad idea. Generally, only pistols, revolvers and sawn-off shotguns have a PB range that begins at 1 hx, meaning you get the bonuses if you're standing adjacent to the target. SMGs and regular shotguns start their PB range at 2 hx, and it's worse for bigger weapons)

Characters can also specialize in various combinations of weapon and usage, via binary skills, so that for instance you can represent close-quarters battle (CQB) training, e.g. that of a counter-terrorist military man or a member of a SWAT team, as a series of binary skills that gives bonuses for using SMGs or Shotguns at PB range, and another character being specialized in laying down suppression fire with an assault rifle or a machine gun, with a different series of binary skills, and a third character being an expert long-range sniper via a third series of binary skills.

It's a lot to keep track of, on the character's weapon usage sheet (since the very stats of the weapon, AP cost for use at PB range or normal ranges, bonuses or penalties at various range, where the various ranges begin and end, ammunition usage for bursts or autos, are individual to each character because they're changed by binary skills), but it does serve its purpose, which is to cause real-world-analogous behaviour to emerge: Characters are rewarded for using the right kind of weapon for the situation, and punished for using the wrong kind of weapon.

As an example, one of the playtests I'd like to run, once Modern Action RPG is ready for testing, is the same counter-terrorism scenario twice, once where the PCs are using assault rifles, and once more where they are using SMGs or shotguns (preferably some use one and the rest use the other), to see how big the difference is in a real situation.

Hopefully those of the initial playtesters who go on to play in the first playtest campaigns will have learned a very valuable lesson about just how much PB matters. (As far as I know, very few other RPG systems include rules for inappropriate use of assault rifles, e.g. indoors/QB usage. And those that do might do it in such a way that the players can't see it coming at all.)

(One thing I haven't gone into at all in the design, yet, is shock effect. I imagine being hit by a large amount of shotgun pellets is going to cause some kind of temporary stun - presumably that's one reaon why one or two members of each SEAL team carried a shotgun in 'Nam, but I don't yet know how to simulate that.)

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

When would I need to consider using an SMG? Are all SMGs less damaging than assault rifles? Are they even provided to the military or are those really more of a vehicle defense and airport security weapon? How many grenades does each soldier really carry and when is he instructed (or authorized?) to use them? A better question, what DONT you use a grenade on? Other than any friendly fire incident (obviously I dont mean chucking the grenade under your officer's jeep) what is simply just a bad target for a grenade?

About the only thing here, that I can say, is that grenades are probably good for taking out machine guns, provided the character can throw far enough and accurately enough (Harry Turtledove has a couple of minor league baseball players use grenades in his "Worldwar" tetralogy, a few times, but they don't do anything extreme with them. They're just skilled throwers.)

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Whats the pistol for if it cant hope to even break through kevlar nevermind the trauma plates? Are sniper rifles used in a 2 to 5 man team or are they strictly kept in sniper teams? How many people compose a decent sniper team? These games also tend to use flares for just about EVERYthing. What are flares and smoke bombs used for?

Keep in mind, not all of the enemy are wearing bullet-resistant vests. Pistols can also be used to threaten or intimidate civilians, especially since recent fighting has often been against guerilla-type enemies that don't wear proper uniforms and that hide among the civilians.

I also have this vague idea that officers are given pistols so they can execute really badly behaving enlisted men on the spot, but even if that once was the intent, I kinda doubt it happens very often.


As for snipers, movies tend to depict sniper teams as two-man groups, one actual shooter, and one spotter. For RPG purposes,t he spotter should give some kind of bonus to the sniper, but I can't offhand see what that might be.

Present day US Marines also have soemthing called "designated marksmen" which are sort of semi-snipers, that go out alongside regular marines. I don't know how common they are, as in one-per-squad or one-per-company.

That's really all I can say, but I hope others can give better answers.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Assault rifles are kind of the swiss-army-knife of firearms for the military. They can provide accurate fire, or suppressive fire, and can be used in close-quarters, but they don't especially excel in any category. They're the most common weapon because they can handle most situations adequately, while giving support to the people with more specialized weapons to use theirs.

LMGs are primarily for suppression fire, yes. They're better than ARs for it because they tend to have higher ammo supply and can lay down more and longer fire (Incidentally, they also tend to be accurate to longer ranges). Once the LMG is suppressing, the riflemen maneuver to gain advantage over the enemy and take them out, if possible.

Many squads also include a designated marksman. A marksman rifle is typically an accurized assault rifle or semi-auto sniper rifle, and useful for accurate long-range fire in-combat. It gives the squad accurate longer-ranged firepower, and can largely fill in for an assault rifle if needed.

Sniper rifles tend to be more accurate and/or slower-firing than marksman rifles. They tend to be poorer for filling in assault rifle roles than a marksman rifle would, and are intended for specialized snipers. Actual snipers typically operate in pairs, one as a shooter and one as a spotter, though a couple teams might join up for an operation. Not too sure there. But there'll pretty much always be a spotter there.

Flares and smoke grenades are mostly used for signaling and marking targets for aircraft or observers. Might be able to use smoke grenades for some improvised concealment, but I'm not sure how useful they are for this purpose or how often they are used for such.

Let's see, grenades... Best use for those would be in a place where cover or structures are a large factor in combat. If you need to breach a room that you know has badguys in it, frag it first. Basically, best when used where enemies will be concentrated and you have cover between you and the blast. Also great for suppression (People tend to keep away from explosions!).

SMGs and shotguns pretty much don't show up in military combat. SMGs give nothing that a carbine wouldn't, being of similar size but lower powered. Shotguns have lower ammo capacity, rate of fire, and much shorter range than a carbine, and are pretty much useful just for their less-lethal options. And contrary to popular belief, shotguns are not the pinnacle CQB weapon. In general, a carbine gives a higher volume of fire, better control, and a shorter and more maneuverable weapon. The advantage of a shotgun in spread is pretty minimal, especially when compared to the higher volume of fire that a carbine can put out. And the only way you'll get any real spread out of a shotgun is a custom choke (Cutting them down have very little effect), but it's not very impressive, and it makes it pretty much useless at range. Ditch it for a carbine if you can.

Claymore mines are huge compared to what they are in most games, and has a good writeup in High Tech (Page 189). The explosion itself is significant (Much larger than a hand grenade), so they have to either be placed far enough from friendly forces, or with solid cover between the mine and friendly forces. It throws out a cone of fragments in a 60-degree wide arc, which at about 50 yards is about 50 yards wide and about 6 feet high.

Most light vehicles give no more protection than a civilian one would. Basically, they won't stop anything, especially not rifle rounds. Up-armored light vehicles (Like the newer armored HMMWVs) give good protection from rifle rounds and nearby explosions, but that's about it.

Real-life effective range would be incredibly hard to work out in game terms, since it relies on "effectiveness," a hard-to-define trait. Basically, it's the maximum range the weapon is considered useful. Accuracy is probably the most important value here, but RoF and Rcl has a large effect on it.

Bolt-action vs semi-auto is pretty close for the top-end rifles. Regardless of how it's done, semi-autos will have more moving parts than a bolt-action rifle. More moving parts means more possibility of drift or poor fits that can reduce accuracy. However, the difference for well-made and maintained weapons is small. It's the king of thing you'll only notice at extreme ranges, but it the reason bolt-action rifles are still favored for such extreme-range shots. Bolt-actions are also largely easier to maintain (Again, fewer parts). There's also other minor differences, but they are, for the most part, minor. For a sniper that's intending to put out only a single, long-range, accurate shot, the lower rate of fire for a bolt-action is largely irrelevant, compared to the small increase in accuracy. And when you're trying to make an extreme-range shot, every little benefit is nice.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

As for snipers, movies tend to depict sniper teams as two-man groups, one actual shooter, and one spotter. For RPG purposes,t he spotter should give some kind of bonus to the sniper, but I can't offhand see what that might be.

Another set of eyes for detection and observation is a good benefit. The spotter finds targets for the shooter, can determine range to the target, and judge weather conditions and target movement to tell the shooter how to adjust his aim. A bonus to precision shooting for having an assistant seems appropriate (Using the assisting skills rules that've shown up in a few places should work). And in an emergency, the spotter can help defend the shooter, or give them more tactical options (Withdrawing with alternating covering fire, for example).

[Johnny Angel]

I'm not sure how much more I can add to what has already been said. However, I will say that I actually have used and seen shotguns used in combat. They were by no means a primary weapon though, and they were only used on a few missions in which the circumstances were somewhat unusual.

SMGs? Honestly, I've never seen one used by a line unit; neither by Army Infantry nor Marines. With today's machine guns being more easily portable than they once were, SMGs have had some of their niche invaded. SMGs are still very useful for many types of units, but a typical line unit will tend to choose the more versatile assault rifle over the SMG as a primary weapon. One accurate shot tends to be more useful than a spray and pray over the long haul in a wider variety of situations.

I'll also say that the M4 as represented by Call of Duty is not the typical M4 used. Usually, a normal soldier will never have nor see an M4 which has full auto fire. The M4 which is normally used is virtually the same exact weapon as the m-16, but shorter and with some nice perks such as an improved rail system. Typically, the full auto M4 is carried by special forces units, and full auto fire is used more as a defensive tool than an offensive one. By using a peel technique, the members of a SF squad can successively burn through a mag and creature the illusion that they are either a bigger unit than they actually are or fool the enemy into thinking they have a LMG or a heavier weapon - which are considered more of a force multiplier.

During one of my tours, pistols were regularly given to vehicle gunners as a back up weapon. It can be awkward to try to keep your rifle on you while standing in a turret. It was nice to have something as a last resort if someone got too close to the vehicle. I wouldn't say they were officially issued, but it was a common practice in that particular area.

I also carried a pistol during some time I spent as an RTO for a similar reason. The officer I was with seemed to think part of my job was to carry whatever he didn't feel like carrying. I had so much crap attached to my gear that it was nice to have an easily accessable weapon. One plus was that carrying a pistol garnered some amount of respect from the locals, but that was more of a cultural thing than an actual combat benefit of the weapon.

In my experiences, there are several ways to incorporate a sniper or a sniper team into your operations. In most of the experiences I've had, a sniper team (usually a spotter and a shooter, but sometimes with a third person for added security) will operate somewhat independently. However, during one of my tours, a dedicated sniper team was integrated into a platoon and used in a manner similar to what you may have seen in some WWII movies. This was pretty useful in a lot of urban environments where they could be placed in an overwatch position to cover rooftops and get an elevated view of movement between buildings.

HMGs are far more useful in a real battle than they are in CoD. One reason is the psychological effect they have. The sound of a M2 tends to keep heads down and out of play when the risk of being hit with one is real. Without that risk and realism, they tend to be too much of a sniper magnet in CoD. Likewise, a person usually doesn't keep running even if a shot from the M2 doesn't hit center mass.

While both are games made by the same company and part of the same series, the first CoD: MW had -in my opinion- a far more realistic treatment of weapons than the second one does. I'm not saying either game is a great model of reality; only that I feel the first one did a better job of trying to make the weapons seem real. This may be in part due to MW2's story taking place in the future, but there are still a few oddities when you look at the MW2 weapons. In particular, a lot of the sniper rifles in MW2 woefully suck compared to what their actual performance should be.

On a related note, M203 chalk training rounds can be useful when you aren't allowed to use lethal force or if you're trying to apprehend someone. A speeding solid ball of chalk tends to hurt, and it's difficult for someone to deny they were the suspect when they have a large blue dot on them.

I've found the information in High-Tech to be both accurate and well researched.

[sjard]

There are multiple reasons that snipers work with a spotter.

The spotter uses a scope with a larger field of view, allowing them to see targets that might be just outside of the shooters field of view. The pair will set up a shorthand of terms for items in the field of fire for quick reference.

A spotting scope also allows for an interesting bit visual detail. Placing the scope a few feet away from the shooter allows the spotter to actually track the flight of the bullet on its way to the target. The bullet leaves a distortion trail through the air that the spotter can see. This gives an almost instantaneous feedback for fire correction.

For assault rifles, at least with the M16 series, it is viable to engage at ranges of up to 800 meters (at least my unit regularly trained for those ranges in a desert enviromnemt).

I'm not sure what use SMGs are put to at this point aside for specialized entry and close quarters use, and frequently for vehicle crews. They are generally depicted as doing less damage as they tend to use pistol ammo.

[Blood Legend]

Lots of helpful stuff.

Just cuz I feel like ranting a bit on a video game; Cod4 was definitely more balanced. The weapon sets had certain roles, and the individual weapons in each set were purely down to preference. Now it's so clustered and random you've really got to prestige to get all those extra Class slots. I appreciate that shotguns have twice the range now, but all of the maps are 4 times bigger! And the Vector is the weakest per-bullet weapon in the game, doesn't that thing shoot .45 caliber bullets or something? I enjoy the game, but the logic of it is mind-unhinging. I can certainly go on, but I won't.

Oh, that reminds me of another question. Hip Fire! Is this trained at all? Does it have a purpose? Is it really as inaccurate as some of these games portray?