[Marek_Tucan]

Deputy said:
High rate of fire in a subgun does NOT equate to more kill potential. Other factors like controllability come into effect.

As they do in-game.

"Spray and pray" may work in the movies and for gangbangers, but for military use it is frowned upon as wasting ammunition.

Worked quite well for Czechoslovakian SMG troops accompanying tanks in WW2. Not by causing a lot of damage but by forcing any Panzerfaust wielder in the trenches to keep their heads down at ranges where artillery was unable to supress enemy anymore due to danger zone issues. Of course they were helped by better ballistics of 7.62x24mm cartridge. And they were also helped by realisation that the three tanks they have for support is the entire force their assigned battalion was able to get together and if they let harm come to them, they would have no tanks coming to support them on the next day.

It is NOT taught even in machingune training. It has been repeatedly proven that aimed, rapid semi-auto fire is much more effective at actually killing people than full auto fire out of any handheld weapon.

If you are to employ aimed semiauto fire, you have to wait until the enemy sticks his head out of his trench (or from behind his pile of rubble), risking that he'll have time to send his ugly Panzerfaust into the tank you're supposed to protect. But sound of bursts of bullets splatting over his head might convince him it's not even worth looking out. As it is said, "It's not the bulled with your name on it you should be wary of, it's that with To whomever it may concern".

The subguns is deadly in CERTAIN instances. The Soviets made excellent use of them in house-to-house fighting and close assault combat.

SMG regiments weren't used just for close assaults and house-to-house - and it was quite often used tactic to use that 71-rounds disk magasine for suppressive barrages when closing on enemy, firing it empty and then in close-in fighting use handier 35-rounds mags.

But a sungun is NOT a "handy rifle". At ranges beyond 50 meters/yards, it's pretty useless. The 9mm as well as the .45ACp drops rather rapidly the further out it goes.

Finns evidently thought otherwise - doctrine for Suomi KP/31 was counting with harrassing fires up to 500 meters (10 hexes), aimed fire at man-sized targets up to 300 meters (6 hexes) and burst fire generally under 100 meters (2 hexes). Of course KP/31 was a high-quality SMG, but the ammo was still 9mm Luger. In reality, close terrain on Karelian isthmus led to employment in the last role being most frequent but the longer-ranged action still took place in favorable conditions.
Bear in mind, it would be hard to simulate such distinction in-game, as there's no means how to "switch" the weapon from semi auto to full auto and from one range to another, so compromises have to be made, so Suomi gets the same kill and range (and accuracy) rating as most other SMG's.

They are PISTOL CARTRIDGES, not rifle cartridges. Again...lots of lead flying in the air is great for suppressive fire, but you need that lead to be ACCURATE to be effecive.

Granted the "5000 bullets to kill one man" statistics are correct (most likely it was lower as they are taking into account SUPPLIED rounds, not those actually fired), seems accuracy wasn't guarded so closely Not to mention similar statistics from Vietnam or WWII Pacific warfare.

The maximum range for the subguns in WinSPWW2 shouldn't be more than the hex they are located in.

IE 25 meters and less, since the troops aren't lined up on the far side of the hex? I was able to hit reliably man-sized target at that range with my fery first 9mm pistol magasine to fire at that range. True, the target wasn't shooting back.

Beyond that, they are just noisemakers.

As they are in game as well. The closer the weapon is to its max range, the more often does it "hit" as far as neighboring hexes go, ie complete total utter miss. Since in-game SMG's have generally range of 3, it happens quite often and saw it happen repeatedly even at 1 hex range. IF they do hit, they are devastating (and again, Primary inf. weapon class in SP means squad's worth of SMG's is firing to prosuce those 1-2 casaulties) but that's pretty big IF and it's hard to get to have such a chance unless the enemy infantry is suppressed well enough by other means. Like by other two SMG squads covering their advance by short bursts from a bit farther away.

The weapon that was actually USED for suppressive fire in WW2 was the Browning machinegun or the MG42.

As would be in-game, if for nothing else they have significantly longer range.

BTW...more Infantry were killed by artillery than ANY other weapon in WW2.

AFAIK those studies were based on hospital records, so are inherently biased by fact they don't take into account those poor buggers who didn't make it there. And anyway, many of these artillery casaulties would happen outside SP game scope - further in the rear, in preparationary fires before the battle, in random artillery duels before or after the battle, long-range interdiction fires far behind your back and so on. The game doesn't want to simulate all this, it is content to try to emulate combat that's actually happening on your few square kilometers.