Marksmanship - longish

One last thought:

A lot of people have pointed out most gunfights happen at under 25 feet, and
the hit rates are abysmal. They also point out that many of the fights are in
poor light and with kind of panicky or nervous people firing. Some people
alluded to some of the better known stories of the guy who fires 15 rounds at
close range without hitting anything.

All these things are true. And combat does make men more nervous, and shooting
changes its nature somewhat under that circumstance.

HOWEVER - many of the people on whom the above stats are compiled are
not combat soldiers. They are civilians, criminals, or police. They are not
stats for the military. At least in the CF, they have taught
us that most ranged combat will occur in the 100-400m band. Close
assaults occur, but so too do gunfights at 300m. In the case of civilians, you
can't assess their level of firearms skill, but many times it is not great I'd
guess, and their level of panic may be high. Same goes for criminals. And the
police have an evil job in the sense that they are trained for violence, but
don't spend (in most departments) near enough time on the range or in the
training sims and even if they do, they have a job that requires they don't
fire at longer ranges for the potential side effects. And I know quite a few
cops (used to be in my job description) that have NEVER used a firearm to take
a life, many of whom have only drawn in a 'situation' a few times. So they
don't end up under fire very often, they don't end up
in life-or-death situations all that often (though any situation could
be that) and consequently when the lead starts flying it is an unusual
experience even for them. This set of characteristics is reflected in the game
by motivation, quality level (green or yellow) quite often and that should be
the mechanic that handles this inaccuracy of fire.

Contrast this with serving line soldiers in a hot war. I'm sure they get shot
at more often, and the regular or veteran troops are far less likley to flinch
or fire stupidly. I'm sure the fog of war prevents some of the longest range
shots sometimes, but if we read historical accounts of skirmish battles
between seasoned troops (esp I'd say eastern front WW2, Korea, etc), we will
find that many engagements of hostile targets occur successfully out beyond
200m (or at least, the killing starts there... it often ends closer in or even
in HTH). These soldiers realize they can be killed, but they don't flinch as
much, panic as often, and their recovery is far faster. And they do kill
people at a distance.

And I didn't say it should be easy to hit things at a distance, though
I'd point out to those of you who might not have thought about it -
target movement is very potent under 20m, the further out you go the less it
means. It is easier to hit a crossing target (relative to a stationary one) at
150m than it is at 15m. This has to do with how
fast you have to track the target - the longer the range the fewer
minutes of arc you have to track through. Shooting at range in combat isn't
like shooting on the Range on a sunny day lying on your belly. There, quite a
few folk can routinely put 90% of their rounds inside a 1m area at 500m.
You'll do worse than this most times in real combat, but this should be a
function of poorer troop quality (poor training, lack of practice, panic or
inexperience comes to the fore), environmental modifiers (darkness, cover,
movement), or suppression. Assuming the troop quality is good, the shooter
isn't suppressed (no one is shooting at him AFAHK), and his target is in
reasonable light
or out in the open, etc - it shouldn't be impossible for him to hit
that target. If he's a poor quality troop (trained but inexperienced) of if
he's being shot at (suppressed), is in poor light, target in cover, etc. the
shot will obviously be harder and he could fire 15 rounds at close range and
miss all of them (but again this should be a product of those modifiers, not
the basic inability of a rifle to hit anything at any notable range). Of
course there is another side to those shootout examples quoted: The veteran
beat cop that has to open up at 5m can also drop 2 or 3 targets in less than
10 seconds (a la Real TV video of a Texas trooper shooting it out with some
baddies in front of his patrol car).

Now, the best defence of poor range bands for rifles is what Jon
said - (not best in terms of it makes me very happy, but best in terms
of justification for why FMA has them) - it's a game and balancing it
might require it. (That's a paraphrase). And what the Tuffleymeister feels is
how things should be is how the canon will likely read. And we'll all still
buy it <grin> and play it and I'll bet there will be as many house rules as
there are list members....:)

In a message dated 7/14/99 10:40:40 AM EST, Thomas.Barclay@sofkin.ca
writes:

<< Assuming the troop quality is good, the shooter isn't suppressed (no one is
shooting at him AFAHK), and his target is in reasonable light
 or out in the open, etc - it shouldn't be impossible for him to hit
that target. If he's a poor quality troop (trained but inexperienced) of if
he's being shot at (suppressed), is in poor light, target in cover, etc. the
shot will obviously be harder and he could fire 15 rounds at close range and
miss all of them >>

Muzzle movement is indeed more extreme when the target is closer. Which is why
when caught in an ambush doctrine tells you to move TOWARD the enemy

fire. That's because troops moving towards the fire make themselves harder to
track and gets them out of the crossfire quicker! Though
self-preservation
makes that a tactic that only hardened troops will foloow all the time.

Howdy!

> On Wed, 14 Jul 1999, Thomas Barclay wrote:

> One last thought:
<snip>

I concur.

        Ken