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.