US Sniper rifle???

[Deputy]

I was wondering what sniper rifle is modelled for the US in WinSPWW2??? Is it the M1903A4 or the M1C Rifle?

Thanks,
Dep

[thatguy96]

A quick look at the stats pretty much clearly shows it to be the M1 Garand (Weapon 112), but with 30 Acc.

[DRG]

It's "a sniper rifle" and has all the same stats as all the other "sniper rifles" same as the Belgian "sniper rifle" or the Polish "sniper rifle" or the Swedish "sniper rifle" or any other "sniper rifle" from any other nation. You can think of it as a M1903A4 or a M1C or whatever you like. In this game a "sniper rifle" is the same no matter whos using it

Don

[thatguy96]

That's what I get for not checking it against the other OOBs when I checked quickly.

[MajorDisaster]

The rifle they use doesnt make much odds. Theyre still Supermen. Extremely difficult to kill by infantry at more than 50 metres and they'll take even veteran troops with them before they finally go down. I don't have an issue with snipers shooting from concealled positions and causing havoc - that's their job - but once spotted they should be easy to polish off IMHO. Alas not so, not unless they're moving fast.

[Deputy]

DRG said:
It's "a sniper rifle" and has all the same stats as all the other "sniper rifles" same as the Belgian "sniper rifle" or the Polish "sniper rifle" or the Swedish "sniper rifle" or any other "sniper rifle" from any other nation. You can think of it as a M1903A4 or a M1C or whatever you like. In this game a "sniper rifle" is the same no matter whos using it

Don

And this is one of the problems with the game as well as sniper rifles specifically in the game.....the tendency too lump them all as "being equal. Quite simply, they AREN'T. I really don't understand this "everything is equal" concept for the OOBs. Were people just not interested in doing the research for individual weapon's abilities, or is this some kind of effort to not discriminate or hurt feelings against any one particular nationality?

I did some research and the 1903A4 sniper rifle wasn't available until early 1943. The M1C Garand sniper rifle was available in limited quantities starting in July, 1944. And the M1D Garand sniper rifle wasn't approved until September 1944. Only 7,971 M1C sniper rifles were ever built. Very few M1D sniper rifles saw service in the Korean War and NONE saw service in WW2.

There are FIVE different sniper unit descriptions in the OOB for the USA. (063, 156, 162, 323 and 324). Three of them (063, 323 and 324) show sniper rifles from 1930 to 1949. The other two show starting dates of 1/42 and 11/42. So ALL of this data is WRONG. The 1903A4 sniper rifle didn't arrive until 1943. All of these units show ONE sniper rifle...number 146.

As to the capabilities of US sniper rifles...they were not exactly spectacular. The 1903A4 was just a standard production run 1903A3 Springfield Rifle made by Remington. They were taken off the standard assembly line. No special checking was done of it's accuracy. Remington won the contract for them and all they did was bolt on a cheap (2.2 power) commercial scope, modify the bolt handle to clear the scope, remove the front sight, and install the scope mount and scope. This is in contrast to the German and Russian sniper rifles which were selected based on their individual accuracy and had a 4 or 3.5 power scope mounted on them. As long as a "casual" attitude about the weapons used in the game is maintained, realism is going to suffer.

Dep

[Mobhack]

This is a battalion level game, and for those purposes, the micro-differences between one bolt action rifle and another, or between one SMG and another is irrelevant. Thus, like any other set of 1/300 tabletop wargames rules which simply have "Rifle", "SMG" and "AsR" class weapons, a "sniper rifle" is treated the same way.

Plus, given the points system, there would be no noticeable difference in cost between a bolt rifle and a bolt rifle+ equipped section, since the values would be too small to make a difference. Not unless you used a system where a Sherman tank cost say around 1000 points, not 50 or so.

If you need to play a game where these micro-differences apply, then you should probably be looking for a section-level game, or maybe platoon at the highest, where you are being charged points for each hand grenade issued, different amounts for a single .45 round and a 9mm etc.

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

Well Dep the one sniper rifle for all was a design decision made years ago. If you want it changed you can open up MOBHack and change it but we are not going to. If the scope of the game was squad sized combat it might make sense to further refine the entire game data a bit more but not at the existing game scale. You obviously disagree but I suspect as long as you post here we are going to find ourselves on opposite sides of just about every game related issue if your previous posts are any indicator.

The only thing funny about all this is how some people, you included, think tinkering with something like sniper rifle accuracy for each and every nation is going to make any kind of significant change in the overall game. After fighting 45 turns with 350 units per side do you think the game result will be any different if one sides "sniper rifle" accuracy is 28 and the other is 26? The "Accuracy" of the weapon is just one of many factors the game uses to calculate a snipers accuracy. It's like adding one drop of colour to 5 gallons of paint and then claim that makes the colour "more accurate".

Your posts consistently show an lack of understanding about the game and it's not getting any better . First it's "death rays attached to the bombs" then completely off the wall complaints that the OOBs are slanted to give an Allied advantage and now your latest where you claim that "ALL of this data is WRONG" in regards to US sniper units then you argue about which sniper rifle was available when we have already said the sniper rifle in every OOB is generic. Please try to pay attention. There are three generic US "Snipers" that run from 1930 until the end of the game with three different "fire control" and Range finder" settings because that is how we set up snipers with differing basic abilities ( then all the other factors such as morale, training, etc, etc are factored in when they are used in the game.) It has NOTHING to do with any specific sniper rifles introduction. The other two snipers in the US OOB are Airborne and Ranger Snipers and are only introduced at "1/42 and 11/42" to fit into Airborne and Ranger formations and both are given the maximum FC and RF "abilty" due to their "elite" status but I will repeat again, those dates have nothing to do with any specific sniper rifles introduction and you should have seen that yourself



Don

[Deputy]

Mobhack and DRG: I understand "This is a battalion level game" and that for MOST people things like sniper rifle info isn't important. But I'm sure a lot of folks like to have things as accurate as possible. Having a sniper rifle available months or even years before they were even produced may not mean much to guys moving masses of tanks around in the sim. But since this sim IS based on history, why purposely have the info incorrect? If sniper rifle data is meaningless, why even incorporate snipers into the sim??
It's the very DETAILS of the weapons and equipment that attracts lots of guys to this sim. I'm not asking the company or designers to incorporate all these, to them, nitpicky errors into a new patch or update. But it might be worth it to keep all this info recorded SOMEWHERE so that any individuals who do release an OOB correction would have it available. BTW...I HAVE seen a scenario where sniper vs sniper were the ONLY combatants. It was a nifty recreation of the "Enemy at the Gates" movie. It was a blast to play.

I have ONE more comment and then I will withdraw. Yesterday I was playing a generated campaign and noticed that when I blew a US tank apart with an 88, the Infantry troops riding on the outside of it all hopped off it and NONE were injured. This happened REPEATEDLY in the game. That is about as unrealistic as it gets. I have seen the results of troops riding on armored vehicles when the vehicle is hit by an RPG. Very few of them could walk, much less continue to engage the enemy. The Sherman tank had the nickname of "Zippo" among the US troops because of it's tendency to blow up in flames due to it using gasoline as a fuel. I can imagine the ghastly results of riding on a Sherman when it gets hit with an anti-tank round. But in WinSPWW2 they just hop off the tank and continue to march. Good grief!

Dep

[thatguy96]

Deputy said:
Having a sniper rifle available months or even years before they were even produced may not mean much to guys moving masses of tanks around in the sim. But since this sim IS based on history, why purposely have the info incorrect? If sniper rifle data is meaningless, why even incorporate snipers into the sim?? It's the very DETAILS of the weapons and equipment that attracts lots of guys to this sim.

The sniper rifle data is not meaningless. Its that small variations have such a negligible effect on the game that having anything other than a generic "sniper rifle" is more about name flavor than about stats. You could create every small arm you can think of and incorporate it in game, but the differences would be so small that it simply would not be worth it in the end. Furthermore, if you tried to make them all different you'd probably quickly find that it makes some inaccurately powerful because there isn't enough room to maneuver at this scale in the stats. Furthermore, remember that the training and relative skill of the marksman is not included in the stats for the sniper unit entirely, but in the stats for the weapon, and that the acc figures are as much a comment on the sniper's personal ability as the weapon's base accuracy.

Furthermore, do you have information that suggests that since there was no specific rifle that there were no snipers or marksman? I just don't know, but I think that would be much more of a case to modify the dates at which snipers can be bought than the existence of a type of rifle that it has already been suggested has little to no bearing on any specific type.