[StG44] Fresh look on the gun

[Mr. FeministDonut]

I spoke with a Tiger and I though why not to give a try on this topic.
So here it is. Sturmgewehr 44, a full-automatic gun, first of its class assault rifle. Combining characteristics of a carbines, smgs and automatic rifles.
Only today after pair of games, using grenadiers and stormtroopers with StGs, with the priority on rushing the enemy "head on head" style, crushing them all, I though about original use of this rifle.

BK mod mistaken took a example from original Company of Heroes, where StGs were only supposed as close combat weapons, where its job in hand of the panzer grenadier or stormtrooper, was only to close distance with enemy squad, while in reality, it was could be used in both ways, as in the distance fight and in close combat too, but indeed, not so strong as sub-machines gun, that has a focus on that with compacted size.
Today max. of effective range is 35, making it only useful, when closing an enemy.

So here is my idea, making this weapon jack of all trades, being good on all ranges, but not as good, as specialized weapons for those.

p.s: at least anything to stop making it look like a smg

[Krieger Blitzer]

Well, ya.. we had a talk about this.

in reality, it might be worth to mention that the STG44 had 3 different modes.. it can be used as bolt-action (more like Kar98) and it can be also used as semi-auto (3 bullets per 3 bullets) as well as full-automatic machine gun.

However, in Bk Mod.. the gun is always full-automatic.. thus, it's better at closer ranges.

I understand your idea, as you want to improve the STG at long range but in return weaker at close range.. so that Thompson, STEN, and Grease SMGs would have better chances... And I don't really oppose this idea.

Nonetheless, I just think it will be a bit weird how the STG (which is full automatic rifle in Bk Mod) would be a good long range gun!
Unless the devs would figure out a way to implement all the 3 modes (bolt-action _ semi-automatic _ and full auto) somehow...

[Jalis]

The reason why STG 44 is not good at long range is simply it wasn't.

In order to make the weapon controllable and suitable for full automatic, the original mauser ammo had been strongly shortened. New ammo was called Kurz (for short) and had in the process less explosive propellant / energy.

It is the main difference with the FG42 that used the original 7.92 cartridge and proved to be ok only as semi automatic rifle.

[Mr. FeministDonut]

"The final design produced assault rifles that had a shorter range than contemporary rifles due to German research that most of the combat that took place in the European War took place at distances less than 300 meters. With the sacrifice of range, however, close range firepower that an infantryman could wield was greatly improved. Post-war American and British evaluation criticized them as being too heavy and too unwieldy, but one could also argue that this viewpoint was incorrect, for that the StG44 assault rifles began as a replacement for light machine guns that could also serve as a rifle, as opposed to the western path of development that aimed to enhance the infantry rifle with greater firepower."

That's why I summarized that it could be jack of all trades, but master of none

[Warhawks97]

Wow, The STG and its sound is probably the most used and feared weapon in entire BK. It wasnt as good at distant range as normal rifles bc of the shorter barrel and shorter cartridge.

Mauser had 7,92x57. That one was used on K98 and FG42. The STG used 7,92x33 which means hadnt as much power. This round was even called "Pistolenpatrone which means translated "pistol bullet".


Thing is if you come up with realism stuff:

In WW1 infantry combat took place at ranges up to 1 km or more. Hitler thought the same about ww2 infantry men and wanted every soldier to be able to shoot targets up to 1 km away. Reality was that in WW II most infantry combat took place in ranges well shorter than these 1000 meters and usually 300 meter and even less.

Hitler first himself forbid the production of the Sturmgewehr at first. Later they represented this weapon to him as MP (Maschinenpistole in german= sub machine gun or machine pistol). First now he allowed the production as he beliefed its a machinepistol. Later in, when he saw that weapon by himself, he designated it as Sturmgewehr. It was made for ranges well shorter than those of Bolt-action rifles such as k98 and since Stalingrad requested by so far every commander.

It was new as it didnt fire the typcial rounded pistol ammo like the 9 mm Parabellum and instead a "Spitzgeschoss" " ("copped bullet").

So since K98 and bolt rifles in game are quite accurate at max range and also tanks and bigger guns have max range 60, we could assume its somewhat arround 1000 meter or even more. The stg was made for the ww2 infantry combat ranges for 300 meter and less while lmgs like Mg42 did the long range job for the infantry squad.
That means that a deadly range of 35 in game is very well already. No other weapon covers such a wide range of effective or even superior combat ranges as the stg does. So why boosting it even more.

Even in semi auto it could be used at 600 meter but inf to inf combat at that range was rare and everything but accurate shooting and instead was more from a suppressive nature.

But even nowadays snipers prefer bolt action rifles for long range shooting. While semi auto weapons reload process begins already before the bullet letf the bullet, this process shakes the weapon which effects the accuracy. Furthermore when pressing the trigger of a automatic weapon you do have more resistance as you drag the firing pin backwards during this action. With bolt action (or single action revolver) you do that manually which means pressing the trigger only releases the this pin with little resistance on the trigger which also helps to fire accuracy.

I hope you got the point and the whole picture of normal rifles and their intention and so called assault rifles, their usage, cons and pros and esspecially about the stg.

Sure it could get equiped with gunsights etc to help the aim but still. The standard aiming device on a K98 iron sight could be set up from 100-2000 Meters. I do have a K98 from ww2 here at home, or lets say my Grandfather had one. Not functional anymore but still. This gunsight is visible and you find it everywhere on the internet.

The STG was better than the K98 bc it was more suitted for ranges within 300 meters and infantry combat situation and urban warfare, but the K98 held a clear accuracy advantage at most ranges and esspecially the very long ranges.
The FG42 was the actual real multipurpose rifle as it had to work as lmg, sniper rifle and assault rifle since weapon for parachuters got dropped in crates that had to get picked up and not every crate was found, thus all weapons found had to be suitable for all roles. Since it became obvious german fallis wont jump out of planes anymore after crete, production was ceased after 7500 build FG42. There was no more need for a multiprupose weapon. The STG was much cheaper to build and did the short range jobs, the MG42 was also much easier to produce and these did the long range jobs. There was no more need for a Multirole weapon such as the FG42.


Else, lets say it gets as good as you want it in BK, i want its number reduced to certain docs, ammount per squad limited etc. Currently in late game every damn squad as access to them, even inf def doc which is just hilarious. The bulk of weapon upgrades would be MP40´s and MG42´s, while STGs would be only available to certain doctrines (Blitzkrieg for example) and/or certain units such as Stormtroopers or PE assault grenadiers.

What i know is that every Volksgrenadier squad (or at least some) have got a single STG. Thats why in vanilla coh the volks squad has one STG which is realistic.



I mean there were less than 500.000 STGs build and also G43 was less than 500.000 build compared to over 14 Million K98. Yet pretty much every squad has an stg. Also Mp40 got build over a million times but only two early game units have access to them.
This weapon is already largely overrepresnted. You dont even have to pay something to get a few of them (BK storms have one at default, Terror doc later for free, Assault pios have them for free as well)

And it already does better at long range than normal machinpistols which are perhaps good at ranges less than 25 in BK.

[Mr. FeministDonut]

Standart ranges of infantry firefights was never beyong 400 meters points, because anything like that was just a suppressive fire just as you said, or firefights with special tools, such as optics. I don't even think that MG42 gunners could shoot at coming infantry at long distances, instead of letting them come close, to be not revealed and destroyed too early.
Gun could provide supressive fire and shoot in semi-automatic mode to provide more accurate shots. Automatic for close ranges.
Easy reload, just incept your clip.

While bolt rifle shooter was needed to get used to the gun and it's reload.

Let's say we give a +5 to range more

but in return weaker at close range.. so that Thompson, STEN, and Grease SMGs would have better chances...

[Warhawks97]

Let's say we give a +5 to range more

but in return weaker at close range.. so that Thompson, STEN, and Grease SMGs would have better chances...

What do you mean? Range increase or the effective range of stgs increased from 35 to 40?

[Mr. FeministDonut]

Range increase with some tweaks for RoF of course, because of the ranges

[Warhawks97]

i wouldnt add a range increase to small arms. That would mean that they fire further than tank guns. I dont see a reason why that should be done.

[Mr. FeministDonut]

Oh, I didn't wanted to say that. Language problematic, you know, sorry.
What I wanted to say that STG need a slighlty accuracy buffs at long ranges while equal accuracy nerf at very close close ranges.
Also a bit of nerf of reload speeds and cooldown time, to not let STG outclass other specialized for close range, submachine guns of same tier, for example, at reload speeds and having more higher accuracy at close ranges, which is not right way as it really should be in the game.
Giving assault rifle more a rifle stats and making it less looking like OP smg.
Imagine a Thompson, we had topics about that where people told how broken are they, comparing to the same tier weapons. StG that good with accuracy over the basic close range, is good and understandable, but why it should be better just than smg in close range?

[MarKr]

This feels like one of those "let's change something that works in the game just fine, only to make it work a little bit different with very little practical impact" topics... Is there really any problem with StG efficiency? It doesn't seem so, on contrary, it is considered one of the best weapon upgrades in the game.

Weapon efficiency is not only about accuracy, it is also about number of shots (where more shots can make up for worse accuracy), cooldowns, reload times etc.
In terms of accuracy the StG has the highest accuracy at close range (along with thompson: 90%), at "medium" range it is 45% (same as Thompson, Grease gun or MP40, better than Stens, but worse than FG42), at "long" range it has already 15% (beating Thompson/Grease gun 7%, Sten/MP40 10%, only worse than FG42 30%), at "distant" range it has 5%, only beaten by FG42 (15%) and MP40 (6%).
So when you say to make it "jack of all trades" then it would pretty much mean to only nerf it at short range, where it currently has the highest accuracy, and keeping the other values because there it already is not the best but not the worst either.

As for bullets per burst, StG fires 10 shots per burst which is same as FG42 and Thompsons, however given that it is "realism" you want, this would be already a problem because in the engine there is no way to set burst-length based on range to target and from realistic point of view, having an assault rifle shooting relatively accurate 10 shot bursts at long(ish) range makes no sense, that is where the selective firemodes came in handy and we have no way to imitate it.

[The New BK Champion]

This feels like one of those "let's change something that works in the game just fine, only to make it work a little bit different with very little practical impact" topics... Is there really any problem with StG efficiency? It doesn't seem so, on contrary, it is considered one of the best weapon upgrades in the game.

Weapon efficiency is not only about accuracy, it is also about number of shots (where more shots can make up for worse accuracy), cooldowns, reload times etc.
In terms of accuracy the StG has the highest accuracy at close range (along with thompson: 90%), at "medium" range it is 45% (same as Thompson, Grease gun or MP40, better than Stens, but worse than FG42), at "long" range it has already 15% (beating Thompson/Grease gun 7%, Sten/MP40 10%, only worse than FG42 30%), at "distant" range it has 5%, only beaten by FG42 (15%) and MP40 (6%).
So when you say to make it "jack of all trades" then it would pretty much mean to only nerf it at short range, where it currently has the highest accuracy, and keeping the other values because there it already is not the best but not the worst either.

As for bullets per burst, StG fires 10 shots per burst which is same as FG42 and Thompsons, however given that it is "realism" you want, this would be already a problem because in the engine there is no way to set burst-length based on range to target and from realistic point of view, having an assault rifle shooting relatively accurate 10 shot bursts at long(ish) range makes no sense, that is where the selective firemodes came in handy and we have no way to imitate it.

But rifle garands shoot slower at long range and faster at close. U could theoretically set stg the same way to fire 10 shots burst with longer cooldown between shots while at distant, and almost no cooldown at close. Or am I wrong ?

[MarKr]

That is a difference in weapon settings - Garands shoot single shots and between each of them is "cooldown" - cooldown can be set differently based on range.
SMGs and in general any burst-weapon work the way that they shoot a burst and there is a cooldown between bursts. You can set how many bullets per burst are fired but bursts have no setting that would allow to change them based on range. You can still change the cooldowns but that only changes how long the soldiers "wait" between shooting each burst.

And no, it cannot be set to make StGs shoot "single bullets but fast" - when the weapon fires, it plays the burst sound so each bullet fired would sound like a burst and playing the sound with each bullet fired would sound weird and probably make some sound glitches.

[Warhawks97]

Nice, i had a talk with him on steam and giving him all these numbers.

What i told him what could be possible is that stg accuracy at max range gets from 5 to perhaps 7%. MP 40 is definitely accuracy of 6% seems quite high at max range.

In return the STG shouldnt have such superior accuracy at close range over most smgs. It also beats certain smgs (i think it was mp 40) in terms of reload speed. Its cooldown is also insane, esspecially compared to Thompson whos cooldown makes it probably the worst close range weapon of all smgs in game. So here the STGs cooldown could be a bit higher and those of smgs need to be lower at very close range.... esspecially Thompson. Reload speeds are as well an issue.

So atm the STG is some sort of jack of all trades already with huge advantage at ranges 20-35 over normal smgs and outclassing all smgs in close combat. Perhaps a few things could be changed here.

[Mr. FeministDonut]

True, just changing a bit their advantage from close range, to middle, won't hurt anything, since it won't be a nerf anyhow.
But again, why Thompson could not get a buff in cooldown, as it seems having a problem in comparing a low tier Mp-40?..